How Free Is Free?

In today's Sunday Times was a voucher for 5 Live Blur songs from iTunes, a follow-up to the free CD last week in the same newspaper. This is all well and good, but it turns out the songs are DRM'd and can't be converted from iTunes format, and hence can only be played on a PC if you install iTunes, and on an Apple Mobile device such as an iPhone or iPod.

In my opinion, that's very restrictive. I do have iTunes (which is free, incidentally) , but would have to spend at least £50 on a portable device to play them (iShuffle) , which I'm not prepared to do. Given that Blur and their record label supply the music, probably paid for by The Sunday Times,  how come Apple can stick their oar in and dictate how you listen to the damned stuff? Anyway, here's some Apple product if you like that kind of thing!!

What Will They Complain About Now?

Now that the mutant offspring of Bros have been ejected from X-Factor what will people complain about. X-Factor is a method of making a quick buck for Simon Cowell who is excellent at media manipulation. He is the onlsolid thing in the show , everything else is peripheral ephemera. The show is the latest in a long line of prime time rubbish stretching back to Opportunity Knocks , New Faces and Seaside Special. Anyone who watches this can't complain at what the get.




I saw thirty minutes of it over the weekend that confirmed that my general decision to ignore it was correct. Now I DO know what I'm missing , and thank god I am!!!

Incidentally during the adverts they were advertising a Chris Moyles' Parody Album !!! Weird Al Jankovic was bad enough , but Moyles manages to plumb even deeper depths of rubbish . "I Predict A Diet" indeed!!




Oh and they's just announced U2 are headlining Glastonbury next year!! I still wont be going!!

Tickets , Touts and Gigs

It's that time of year when there seems to be a hell of a lot of decent gigs on , and promoters seem to find even better ways of ripping you off. The O2 Academy use some legalized touts called ticketweb who charge a £1.50 processing plus a 10% service charge if you buy one line or by card. Get round it by paying cash at the venue. Previously they had a print your own option, where for £2.25 (plus ticket price , plus service charge) you could use your own materials to print your ticket!

The other venue I've used is the Sage at Gateshead who charge about a pound to send the tickets out to you . Admittedly their tickets are normally about double the acts at The Academy , but they don't rip you off.

Having said that , Paolo Nutini at the Academy was £22 a ticket , and with charges that came to about £26 quid a ticket , provided by my very good friends Jan and Lynn for services supposedly rendered. Gig was great though massively overcrowded and I definitely owe them one!! Here's the offilcial "Pencil Full Of Lead" video:

Remastered Deluxe Derangement

Just checking the reissues this month and it seems that everyone is going overboard with 2 CD , DVD deluxe reissues of old albums. We've had the Beatles Remasters series , where the sound has been scrubbed up and CDs augmented with a documentary which is unfortunately in Quicktime format . Why they couldnt do it as DIVX so you can play it on your DVD player I dont know, Quicktime is part of the Apple Bloatware Empire.

I recently acquired "In The Court of The Crimson King" and "Red" by King Crimson which sound incredibly great on my basic 5.1 system. These are part of the King Crimson 40th Anniversary reissues:

While this is all very well these Deluxe Reissues seem to be becoming the norm rather than the exception, very often augmented by out takes which were deemed "not good enough" for the original release. So this poses the question - "Is this just annother money grabbing exercise by the record companies?".

Probably , but it does give you the opportunity the hear stuff that would have been lost , and hopefully doesn't affect the production and promotion of new music , but I feel that shops and companies are more likely to push a Beatles reissue than a new record by , say , General Fiasco. And that's a bad thing!!

You Too Can Microsocialize

While Facebook has loads of flaws it , and other "social networking" sites seem to be promoting the rise of Microsocializing , that is to say having absolutely minimal contact with people while still having the ability to know where they are and what they are up to.

I was introduced to Facebook by a good friend , although I didnt have a clue what it was, and since then found it useful to post online photo galleries , make, regain and keep contact with friends from Tynemouth , to Tanzania and New Zealand , as well as playing online Scrabble and being involved with the Time Vampire that is Mafia Wars!!

In the end I think that Facebook is a good thing , but wonder have I really got 111 friends, though today someone who I met playing Scrabble who at the time was going through a bad time , today became happily married , and that sort of thing you can't buy . The good feeling affects everyone in touches.

There are many people who wont touch Facebook , maybe it isnt for them , but I've found it extremely beneficial since signing up and it's also probably responsible indirectly for getting me into Ice Hockey!!

Dust ...

Our house is not dirty , I reckon it gets dusted, hoovered, cleaned every seven days. However I've just used our Dyson Trackball Hoover thing and done the main bedroon and office room and it's filled the dust compartmentment. It proves the Dyson is very efficient , but you have to wonder where it all comes from. Amazing!!

Having said that the rest of the house only half filled the dust compartment, that's it for another seven days. Just need to buy a new garden hoover as the one I got from Wickes packed in ...It had their name on it!!

Apple, The Devil and Bloatware

Supposedly The Devil tempted Adam and Eve with an Apple . Now Apple are trying the same withe rest of the human race with theie iProducts.

I recently downloaded iTunes Version 9.0 for the PC , 88 Mb big. What the hell is the reason for that. It plays music and video's and allows you to buy stuff from their store (it their proprietary format of course).

The irony being that physically in the iPod Nano and Shuffle you have some of the smallest music players possible , however you need the afformentioned bloatware to pre load the damned things. Apple arent the only culprits , though , almost anyone with a market presence seem to think that size will impress . NO!! Functionality impresses , though I can't see Microsoft and Apple and the rest going for efficiency while they can make money without providing an efficient product with a relatively small footprint. Meanwhile we can watch Apple's latest product in their (simulated) advertisement soundtracked by "She Got Me Dancing" by Tommy Sparks , available here :