Ruminations on the state of music , bands , technology , town and country and anything else that takes my fancy
Friday 30 December 2011
Six Point Eight Millon Phone Activations On Christmas Day
Wednesday 28 December 2011
Christmas Resistability
No doubt Apple will come up with a marketing idea and Samsung will come up with an innovation , but I cant see for the life of me what it will be . We'll have iPhones 5s , iPad 4s , Galaxy IIIs and some new Blackberry , but we shall see .....
Tuesday 27 December 2011
A Playlist For Christmas
Am quite impressed with Grooveshark , not sure how exactly it works , but thought I would try this playlist I put together in "Crimbo Limbo". Hope you enjoy it , I certainly do!
Crimbo Limbo
Did you do the sales (I didn't) ,
Any hope everyone had a great Christmas , and hope the "crimbo Limbo" has kept you on a high.
I nearly filled up my hard drive with films , and we still have Sky 1's Treasure Island to come!!
Saturday 24 December 2011
Ghost of Christmas Future
Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!
Anyway there will always be Christmas films on at Christmas (most a variaton on Dickens' Christmas Carol) and business entrepreneurs will continue to try and remove the spirit of Christmas in the name of money!!
Friday 23 December 2011
Ghost of Christmas Present
As well as the food technology gives us things like catch up TV , mobile smart phones amd timy music players that will hold most normal people's music collections. Never has life been more convenient with such choice. Despite all the golom merchants predicting global coolapse , the reality is that we probably never had it so good. And it feels good at Christmas
Ghost of Christmas Past
Anyway we don't have these places anymore and it was interesting the read the comments from various friends in there . I remember seeing Rocket From The Crypt , supported by the Coyotemen on my birthday, and remember seeing loads of bands such as Faith No More , Stiff Little Fingers etc at The Mayfair , the Academy seems to do its best to crush the life out of gigs , The Mayfair was just the most perfect venue ever for concerts.
We humans have a penchant for progress and nostalgia and while both can be good , sometimes they can also be destructive!!
Sunday 18 December 2011
Christmas , 911 , The Gulf Wars and Good Will To All
Anyway This caused me to take some notice , after all this war was played out on television for all to see and was scarily weird because all Bill Hick's routines about the first Gulf War were eerily pertinent to the second!
Q: How do you know they got weapons of mass destruction?
A: We got the receipts !!
Thanks for that one Bill
Also I didnt realise till that point that both Christians and Islam worship the same God!! Their main prophet was a different guy , Islam had Mohamed and the Christians have Jesus, so what the hell were the Crusades about.
These days it's the fundamentalist few who screw it up for everyone , at this time , well all the time you should "Be Nice" , "Love Your Fellow Man" and the world will be a better place . Look out for each other , stop worshipping power and trying to control others and the world will be a better place despite what the Dail Mail and Express tell us.
All my Muslim friends enjoy Christmas and join in , and if Diwali means I get nice stuff and get to enjoy myself with friends then thats a great thing!! All the restaurants have Christmas menus regardless of origins yet politically correct left wingers say we cant mention the "C" word for fear of offending others. Christmas offends no one but idiots
It's a week before Christmas but we who are Ok should enjoy ourselves , count ourselves lucky and help others if we can. Be of good cheer and may your God go with you , even if He is Richard Dawkins!!!
Sunday 11 December 2011
The Greatest Riff of All
Once you start thinking of this lots of thinks start crawling out of the woodwork , such as "Layla" by Derek and the Dominoes , "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin , any number of Black Sabbath and Hawkwind songs.
Above is a carousel of albums and here is a Grooveshark playlist featuring ten great riffs (in my opinion).
RIP MOF - The Car Hits The End of the Road
MOF In Snow |
A local car scrapper gave me £70 for the car so that was a bonus.
The DVLA was an online tax refund situation which will take six weeks and carries all sorts of threats on how I'll get nothing if I don't satisfy every condition , so we'll see in six weeks whether thats ok.
The worst was the RAC insurance , before I go any further RAC dis provide the cheapest insurance by about £75 , however ....
I rang up and explainened the situation , expecting to pay about £22 for the month I'd had insurance , plus the rather steep £35 cancellation fee (pic left in red on page 16 of my policy) . Not so - I was charged £22 plus £83 short term insurance fee. I thought this was steep and when I queried it was assured it was detailed on page four of my policy , which I found on further examination, (in blue left) .
Now I'm going back to car hire as Enterprise Car Rental give you a new Ford Ka or equivalent for £110 a week with pick up and drop off!!
Saturday 10 December 2011
December Starts Quietly
Appleby was interesting veering from discussions on extreme violence , to excellent coffee shops and superb architecture . The village is wifi'd up as well but our cottage was just too far out to benefit.
Rheged was an interesting shopping centre with so quality stuff on sale , an excellent restaurant and an interesting art gallery , and it's all under grass!!!
I know this is a short post but needed to get December started . Holiday pictures are here.
By the way the Dail Mail and Express have been forecasting Armageddon again because it's a bit cold and windy!!
Sunday 20 November 2011
What Is The Point?
Basicall my three are Boots , Starbucks and Tesco and I aint too keen on on Tesco!!
Thursday 17 November 2011
Facebook and Leicester and Me
I've met players of Mafia Wars ,Scrabble and now I find the guy from one of my favuorite record shops (RPM in Newcastle) hails from Leicester. The latest incident was a guy asking about a Supercharge CD who actually went to my old school , but is now Director of Physics at Leicester University.
I've never been to Leicester , but everyone I've encounterd from there have been absolute top people, which is maybe the reason I don't live in Leicester , I obviously wouldn't meet their quality control!!
Tuesday 15 November 2011
Kindles and Kobos and Bright Shiny Ribbons
The Kindle and it's associated free software also bost and impressive range of free books . The Kindle boast a decent advertising campaign , the power of Amazon and lots of other things going for it. The Kindle is the same price as the Kobo , so what is the Kobo's selling point , the Kindle s ubiquitous and almost becoming a generic name.
Saturday 12 November 2011
Multimedia @ The BBC
This month has seen the release of some excellent collection from TheYardbirds , Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple , that latter for some reason incorporating CD and vinyl copies in the same box , surely you dont need both!!Though over the years I've accumulated ELO and Bowie at the BBC introduced by Bryan Matthews, and am waiting for a definitinive Half Man Half Biscuit compilation which would surely sell by the barrow load. Anyway this could be another reason to succumb to Orange's excellent Christmas Box package to get my hands on the Angle & Curve Headphones for a £40 outlay (with a PAYG phone , piggy bank and other extras thrown in).
Friday 11 November 2011
Orange Temptation
I don't need a new phone , yet. But Orange are giving away an excellent value Christmas box with any Pay As You Go phone over thirty pounds (plus ten pound top up). The blurb goes like this:
"We’ll give you a free pair of Angle & Curve headphones worth £60 when you buy any pay as you go phone priced at £30 or more. It’s all part of our Christmas gift box"
This is the power of advertising , I keep finding good reasons to go out and buy a phone I dont need. I also dont need headphones, If I did I could by a perfectly good set of Sennheiser Headphones for £20 , rather that fork out the £40 my free gift requires.
As yet I haven't given in to temptation but I have been close . This is the essence of a brilliant advertising campaign, get people to want to buy , even though they dont want to or need to .
Very good Orange!!
"We’ll give you a free pair of Angle & Curve headphones worth £60 when you buy any pay as you go phone priced at £30 or more. It’s all part of our Christmas gift box"
This is the power of advertising , I keep finding good reasons to go out and buy a phone I dont need. I also dont need headphones, If I did I could by a perfectly good set of Sennheiser Headphones for £20 , rather that fork out the £40 my free gift requires.
As yet I haven't given in to temptation but I have been close . This is the essence of a brilliant advertising campaign, get people to want to buy , even though they dont want to or need to .
Very good Orange!!
Monday 7 November 2011
An Orange Widget
Though this is at a time where Orange have just produced an excellent Muppets based Goldspot advert to promote Orange Wednesdays film nights!!
Saturday 5 November 2011
Steve Jobs - Fur Q
Q's Idiot Side Bar |
Well the album is generally exceelent if not exactly what expected , so that was a win.
However I then flicked through the nagazine ad came across this article titled "5 Ways Steve Jobs Changed Music" , Err let me stop you there , Steve Jobs / Apple have nothing to do with music , unless you count things like Garageband . Jobs was an OK guy and a master of marketing. He never produced or supported music unless it's ultimate aim was to make money for Apple.
1: He Made Music Truly Mobile: Did he well we've had portable radios since the late fifties , the walkman allowed you to take any music anywhere , mini disc and CD and micro HD drives increased that , then Apple jumped on the bandwaogon with a better looking product that still uses a non standard format for everything it touches!!
2: He Invented The Shuffle: Pardon CDs did random play , even with the 10 disc jukebox in your card . The iPod Shuffle was a masterstroke of marketing . It's hold 250 tracks that it can play in any order and you havent a clue what you are listening to and Apple marketed this as a desirable attribbute . Pure genius.
3: He Revived The Singles Market: Well only when downloads started being counted , adn I reckon Amazon and a lot of others did the same thing at the same time . Again a good marketing move.
4: He Changed The Retail Landscape: Er Amazon did that way before Jobs was properly up and running. Allowing peole to cherry pick albums , well I've been doing that from ripped CDs for years. Again nothing new and was pleased when Pink Floyd won the case to sell albums as albums!!
5: He Made Your Favourite Bands Go Digital: No he didnt , and Q still manage a cheap stab at AC/DC . Bands go digital because there is a market , End of discussion.
So basically a rubbish article about an OK guy , a marketing genius who got lucky and was in the right place and the right time.
Labels:
AC/DC,
Apple,
iPad,
iPhone,
iPod,
Pink Floyd,
Steve Jobs,
U2
Sunday 30 October 2011
October Draws To A Close
t's been an interesting month . I've spent the month looking for a free , web based , social calendar and playlist generator and sharer supported by ads. My first points of call used to work but dont now , the concept is simple and works but so many people want to control what you listen to , watch and see. Don't these organisation realise that majorly skews reality !! Although it does ensure that X-Factor take the number one single spot at Christmas and the winners autobiography gets pride of place in Waterstones displays.
Last night I missed a Los Coyotemen gig and the Central , because their gigs are rare as hen's teeth , but I was not feeling physically that well , c'est la vie!!
I've not anything about writing a book , still haven't had an idea , but have enjoyed the slew of new releases than have come out being majorly impressed with the new Half Man Half Biscuit and Magazine releases as well as discovering Beverley Knight - Come as You Are is a scorcher.
Oh aye Apple launched the iPhone 4S and Steve Jobs died on the same day , that's a heck of a way to promote your new product!! You can get it on T-Mobile and Orange on the links below , go on you know you want one!!
Anyway it's 5:42 which is really 6:42 , I'm washed and will just dig out a few embellishments to this before zipping to bed... or not.
Last night I missed a Los Coyotemen gig and the Central , because their gigs are rare as hen's teeth , but I was not feeling physically that well , c'est la vie!!
I've not anything about writing a book , still haven't had an idea , but have enjoyed the slew of new releases than have come out being majorly impressed with the new Half Man Half Biscuit and Magazine releases as well as discovering Beverley Knight - Come as You Are is a scorcher.
Oh aye Apple launched the iPhone 4S and Steve Jobs died on the same day , that's a heck of a way to promote your new product!! You can get it on T-Mobile and Orange on the links below , go on you know you want one!!
Anyway it's 5:42 which is really 6:42 , I'm washed and will just dig out a few embellishments to this before zipping to bed... or not.
Sunday 23 October 2011
How Expensive - More Ways To Get More Money Out Of You
This comes on the back of the Pink Floyd Immersion editions which weigh in at a now seemingly reasonable £100 and the Who's deluxe Quadrophenia at £70 is almost pitifully priced!!
We also have the complete box set collections nby the Smiths , Beatles and Floyd to substaially lighten your wallet , but essentially none of this is new product , just new packaging. It looks good but where will you put it? Is one enough , and what is next? Who's going to break the £500 and £1000 barrier for a reissue of a classic album? The Rolling Stomes?
I'm still tempted by Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon Immersion Edition though!!
Sunday 16 October 2011
RnB vs. RnB
In general I’ve always loved RnB and I’ve always hated RnB. This might sound a little odd, but remember that RnB originally was used for Rhythm and Blues and is now used for Rhythm and Beat. Ask your average RnB fan under thirty what RnB stands for and you’ll get the answer “I don’t know” or “RnB” or maybe “You know, Rihanna!”, unless of course they’re a Rhythm ‘n’ Blues fan!!
Any way here’s my brief guide to the two genres, Rhythm ‘n’
Blues will win every time for me, but you always have to have a winner.
Rhythm ‘n’ Blues
Rhythm ‘n’ Blues
Essentially evolved from the slow blow blues but adding the rhythmic electric guitar and bass and drums, paving the way for Rock ‘n’ Roll and eventually all forms of rock. The finest examples of this are Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley, early Rolling Stones, Pretty Things and Yardbirds.
Rhythm ‘n’ Beat
I think that this evolved from soul music, but to me is mostly, bland rubbish from Bobby Brown to the wobbly lipped Belinda Carlisle impression that is Whitney Houston, real elevator music. However I’d completely missed the excellent Beverley Knight, and must say most of Beyoncé’s output is well worth hearing, and Rihanna is also worth a listen.
More Kindling
Just another thing occurred to me about the Kindle and eReaders
in general. It’s similar to the digitisation of music. One of the problems
about producing a book, like producing a record , is that there has to be a
minimum initial run produced to make it worthwhile for the printer.
However in this digital age the book or album can sit on a
server without a physical copy having to be produced. While this makes the item
more open to piracy, prudent pricing and marketing could mean we see a lot more
authors published , with a possible physical print run following a successful
digital debut. We’ve already seen this
in the Amazon Kindle charts.
I think digital books are already a resounding success, and
will complement rather than replace their printed counterparts and companions.
My Advent Vega is a more than adequate eReader, so I won’t be getting a Kindle,
but I think they are here to stay.
Can I Write Two Thousand Words In A Day?
1: Where Do I Begin?
This is a follow on from the National Novel Writing Post. In
order to write a novel in a month you would have to maintain an output of two
thousand words a day. As yet I have not even written that many words this week,
let alone today. So last night I thought could I sit down and write two
thousand words on the task of writing two thousand words or preparing for a
novel. I have distractions, but am going to give it a go. This is not about quality,
but entirely about quantity. I know there are people who can sit down, type and
not be distracted. I am not one of those creatures. I have my first distraction
about a hundred words into this task but will continue this later. It is eight
thirty now, fifteen and a half hours left to complete my task!!
2: Here I Go Again
The second of today’s instalments , and still I haven’t made
any impact on my two thousand word target for today , but every journey starts
with a single step and that just added another
twenty words to today’s target. I will be going out , again to Alnwick
to visit the Garden , Treehouse and maybe Barter Books , so there will be a
great big gap in today’s writing , but that is the nature of thing. Life tends
to get in the way of what you actually want to do!! It is Nine twenty now so an
hour has passed since my last entry , there are things to do like showering,
putting contact lenses in , getting dressed , and obviously driving to the
Garden and parking up.
I’ve already breakfasted on coffee, burnt bagel with
raspberry jam and cheese and onion muffin , so I am replete and prepared for
the day ahead . Amazingly I suddenly realise that this morning I have already
written five hundred words, that’s a quarter of the way there. I would be quite
hopeful of reaching my target if it wasn’t for the days excursion , but really
it’s only ninety minutes since I woke , so in theory four and a half hours is
all I need to make the two thousand for the day , although the more I write now
the less I need to do tonight.
Another thought is that my intention is to post this as a
blog entry, and I hope it can actually take the two thousand words that I aim
to fill this bit with. Though if not it will just consist of part one and part
two or however many bits I need to do the post.
The more I write the closer the end of the line gets, and
I’m quite amazed about how fast this is developing. As I stated this isn’t
about quality, or being interesting, it is just a test as to whether I can keep
words flowing from my fingertips via the computer keyboard into this document ,
and therefore reach my goal. Really I don’t expect anyone to ever read and
finish this entry in my blog , but it will give me the satisfaction of knowing
that I can actually produce text at novel writing speeds. The next thing is
obviously to think about concocting a short story and god forbid actually doing
the novel thing.
Well I am quite pleased as this diatribe a now hit eight
hundred words, forty per cent towards my target, meaning that I should be able
to hit the line in under three hours when I return tonight. Of course I am now
going to shower and dress and will no doubt add a little more before I leave,
so I am now getting a bit cocky in my attitude towards actually doing this. God,
I may actually start to think that I can write! Shower time, contact lenses and
time to dress, I am sat in the front room looking out on the grey North Sea. It
is incredibly peaceful and I wonder if this is something that is enabling me to
produce this. There are no distractions barring everyday necessities. By the
way at this point I have hit two thousand words for the week!
3: On The Road Again:
It’s just after ten o’ clock and I’ve just discovered that
you should never rub your eyes after applying Deep Heat cream! This task I’ve
set myself reminds me of those essays you would get from your teacher after
transgressing some rule or other. One hundred words on the inside of a ping
pong ball. I was always tempted to dismantle a ping pong ball and transcribe
“One Hundred Words” on to the inner skin, but never actually did it. I think
that a stiffer punishment may have been my reward for such inventiveness,
although I am sure someone must have done it at some point. Anyway this is my
last entry before I depart for Alnwick Garden , nine hundred words to go
tonight , and I think I have a very good chance of making it assuming I can
think of something to write.
4: Again and Again:
I am back in the house now; it is twenty past five, so just
over six hours to go. Nine hundred words to write about something. I’ve just noticed that the word count in
Microsoft Word sometimes counts spaces as words, I think, so the word count may
not be as accurate as I would like.
Still it’s the only guide that I have so I will have to go with it.
The main thing is that if you are willing to write and talk
about nothing in particular, you can start to hit your targets fairly quickly.
It’s like when I buy a weekend paper with all its supplements. There’s no way
that I’m ever going to read everything in there, so it could be lots of
meaningless drivel. But I’m sure it isn’t as they must have some quality
control even in The Mail and The Express!!
Although I have already written twelve hundred words today,
the remaining eight hundred still seems
like a hell of a lot of typing to do . Harking back to the punishment essays
from secondary school, eight hundred words on the inside of a lead pencil. I’m
sure that inspiration will rear its fickle head and let me limp over the line
of two thousand words successfully before the midnight hour strikes. Remember this still has to be pasted into a
blog entry. I do hope they use memo fields so that I can fit the whole of this
into a single post.
The sea is getting rougher, but is still remarkably calming
and I’m now only six hundred words away from my target. It’s hard waiting for
inspiration to turn up, looking round the room hoping something will give me
the green light. We’re still without a mobile or internet signal but that may
be a good thing. All the ideas have got to come from between my ears, which is
becoming a bit dead at the moment. Maybe I will go out for a walk and let the
sea air blow away some of the mental cobwebs and unearth some of the obvious
nuggets that must be lying around
waiting to be discovered.
5: Four Seasons In One Day
Just watched episode three of series four of The Sopranos ,
which finished with a Four Seasons song featuring the falsetto voice of Frankie
Valli. It’s an amazing series despite its eighteen rating. I now have four and
a half hours to make up around four hundred and fifty words. Can I do it? It
has gone dark outside, and its time I took my drugs, before having tea and
watching more Sopranos. Obviously
despite all that is happening and the fact that I am trying to keep my own
interest up, the thing that is on my mind is the number of words still to go. I
have done far better than I expected but am almost at the seventeen hundred
word mark which is eighty five per cent of the way to the finishing line. Three hundred and thirty more words to be
precise, so really, to be honest I do have the speed of word production to
actually produce a novel. I just need to think about planning, story line, diction,
grammar, spelling and generally making the thing interesting. Obviously the
addition of a few expletives could always be used to pad out the piece although
that would make it more readable for some and less than enticing for others,
still you can’t please all the people all the time , though I doubt this piece
will please any people. Still it may give a little insight into the general
machinations that go on within the confines of my skull. Anyway this little
section has taken me up to eighteen hundred words, two hundred short of the
target , and I still have four and a half hours of the day left. I made a
mistake before in my timing. The section was start at seven fifteen not seven
thirty as I thought. It is now seven twenty five, so two hundred or so words in
four and a half hours should be well achievable. Admittedly I need to eat tea,
watch more Sopranos , take drugs and the like but I’m sure I should be able to
easily do that. The more I write the closer I get to the end.
Anyway time for a drug break now and my next entry should be
the one that rolls over the line. But before I do that I’ve just remembered
that this is not set up to save a backup copy of the document. I have now
rectified that in the Word options.
6: Here I Stand
I’ve arbitrarily chosen lines from songs or song titles to
split this up in the belief that white space makes things more readable. I
certainly find that with technical documents and with prose as well. Ths is the
final paragraph and it’s going to run over the two thousand word in one day
mark. It’s actually taken me less than twelve hours elapsed and maybe about two
hours actually typing. So there is no doubt I could actually write enough words
to fill a novel within a month. The trick of course is to make those words
worth reading and that is a whole other ball game , but I’m just really pleased
that I set myself a task today and I did it. This is the end. I wonder if
anyone else will actually read this. I could mention Saddam Hussein and Al
Quaeda and get picked up by a CIA search engine who will then search the piece
for coded messages , but that’s a bit of a cheap shot, preying on peoples
stupidity ….
National Novel Writing Month
Apparently next month is National Novel Writing Month.
Entrants are to submit fifty thousand words in their attempt to capture the
imagination of the paying public. Fifty Thousand is quite a lot of words though
you could probably sit down and do it in a day if you were that way inclined. I
am just thinking of the Novel Writing Sketch that Monty Python served us all
those years ago.
To put this in perspective I’ve been jotting some notes for
my blog while I stay in Craster. Because there is no internet access, I’m doing
this in Word before transferring it to the blog when I get home. On the fifth
day I’ve just written eleven hundred words so far, so that’s two hundred and
twenty words a day , so at this rate ,
if I were writing a novel it would take me two hundred and thirty days , that’s
about seven and a half months, with no editing or quality control!!
So if I do decide to go for the Novel this month, looks like
I have maybe two weeks to do it, I will have to increase my throughput to three
thousand six hundred words a day (that is eighteen times my current rate) , and
of course, think of a story. I’d love to do it, but really need the inspiration,
and not end up in the book of worst opening lines!!
So even with a full month you would be looking at twelve and
a half thousand words a week, that’s above two thousand words a day! I may, at
some point see if I can do twelve and a half thousand words in a week, just to
see if I could actually have the output to produce a novel. I thought that this
would be some going for me.
Seriously probably my only attainable goal in this is to hit
a thousand words by the end of this holiday , and I’m about half way through
, so by the time this is published on
the blog I should have done my thousand words , one fiftieth of a novel!!
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