Lock It Down

An interesting thing happened this morning , my website has been hacked again. Last time it was some Islamic Group who replaced my home page with an absolutely cracking one promoting their agenda, it really did look brilliant , but not exactly what people were expecting to see when they visited Song of The Salesman. So at the time changed the password and removed the pagese.

This time was a bit different , they hadn't hijacked my site as such , but uploaded a lot of files for what looked like a shopping site. Thinking about this, going off the file times , they took over two days to upload , each file around 40-60K , this would have caused my site to slow down or not be available over that timeframe. I can't really think why anyone could be bothered doing this , my site is not a high volume or high profile and webspace is cheap and you can host it yourself.

So the lesson learned is to keep an eye on things , sometimes when all appears ok , it may not be. This was something that didn't affect my website , it's abit like haveing squatters in because I've got loads of spare space.

Police and Thievery

So very little to report apart from it's a nice day and always make sure your doors are locked if they need to be. After yesterdays cold and fog we have bright sunshine which always good for lifting the spirits. Oh and my mate Keith has started another blog here. So now I'm off to do more chores , set the recorder to record some more TV , maybe set up my NOW TV box which I bought with a free Argos voucher but just haven't really needed to use. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.
Wasn't sure what song to use but you can't go wrong with Junior Murvin.

Numbers

Just having a peruse of my blog stats and the average number of hits per page is 93 with highest about 450 , I'm not sure about the lowest , but it's probably about 20. As I've said before I'm sometimes surprised by the people who read and enjoy the blog, as most of it is me blathering on about nothing.

Also most of the visitors seem to come from the USA although that maybe just something to do with routing.

Winter Sun

The weather today has been a lot of very cold fog, I don't know if it was freezing , but I got very cold. This was counteracted by hot chocolates and trying to stay indoors, although I wasn't too successful in staying in.




Anyway it's not a great idea to start writing a post at midnight so maybe I will just stop and choose the Judas Priest song Livin' After Midnight as the song for this post. Thank you and good night.

Dogs and Mice

Birds in the Garden

Today has been more than a little weird. The weather is still wintery and I was going to refill the bird feeders in the garden, I went into the garage and picked up the bag of bird feed from the floor which was almost empty. I though that I was sure I'd only used about half of it , no matter, although the bag only had a small hole in it. Then I looked on the shelf and saw the half full bag of bird feed , secured with an elastic band. It look like there has been a very fat mouse or two in our garage. So I filled up the feeders and think I best store bird seed on the top shelf in future.

Oxfam Dog

Then today in the Oxfam shop we had a visit from a lovely friendly dog , who was also extremely well behaved and brought a smile to everyone's face.

The only downer is that , I think due to the wear, my knees nearly seized up causing a lot of pain, making it difficult when crouching sorting out music and looking for stuff for a Valentine's day display. The irony is that it's best to keep moving as it just hurts when you have been still for a couple of minutes , so in a way I suppose my body is telling me to get a move on and stop being so lazy.

So now I'm back in the house and will watch some catch up tv tonight , and the obvious song for this is the excellent Rat in Mi Kitchen by UB40. Have a brilliant Friday night.

First Post

This is my first post this month, despite being technically free to do what I please. This week has resulted in time at the DWP , a couple of days at Geek Talent with my friend Dom , a day in Edinburgh, Physiotherapy , a visit to my surgery to get a prescription, and a visit to the Peoples Assembly with my good friend Joan and Mark which included the excellent Jolyon Rubinstein from BBC3's "The Revolution Will Be Televised" on the panel, and tomorrow I will be going to Oxfam , so I am looking forward to the weekend for a rest.

I am just amazed how much you can find to do, and how all of a sudden you find yourself at 11 o'clock at night thinking , hang about , where did that day go. The coming weeks are looking amazing with work challenges and loads of upcoming gigs actually starting this Sunday with The Lurkers at The Black Bull 

I decided to use the Gil Scott-Heron song for this because of the guest tonight but you can see him taking on George Osborne here. Anyway it's time for bed for me , I'll see you soon.

Ice Road Trucking

It's the last day of January and we have had on and off snow for most of the last week. Today I have a 140 mile journey from Newcastle to Barrow to celebrate my dad's birthday and give him his present. The snow this week has not been heavy but the weather has been cold enough to make footpaths treacherous underfoot , so I'm more likely to slip than anything else. It's hardly an Ice Road Trucker scenario. So looking forward to that as dawn crawls over the eastern horizon.

Uri Geller and The Postbox

One of the problems on birthdays is trying to get a decent card, so I look for unusual post boxes (my dad's work and sort of hobby)  and saw this one here , on the Thames Sonning bridge which has mystified Uri Geller and the local villagers. It looks to be in good repair which would imply that it is painted and maintained, though it's hardly convenient , although it's more convenient than the oriental underwater postboxes  I've seen pictures of  (just Google postboxes)


So it's now time to shower, and pick up the car, and get ready for the drive, but just for an added complication tickets for the 6 Music Festival went on sale yesterday, but each day the tickets are on sale separately. I wanted to go everyday but Sunday is the best one (more bands I want to see) , so I will try for today as Royal Blood and The Fall are playing , and will attempt to get tickets tomorrow as Public Service Broadcasting , Wire , Gaz Coombes and The Charlatans are playing . These are just some of the bands in what are damned near perfect line ups. This gives me an excuse to include the video for Gagarin , so have a brilliant weekend everyone, it's the last day of January which is an excuse to have lots of fun and look forward to a great week next week.

Ain't Friends Just The Best

This post is not about anything in particular. You may know that I am a "man of leisure" at the moment (for leisure substitute volunteer work, interviews, traveling , networking , organising things, and generally not having a lie in but managing a bit of catch up TV, and possibly finally getting my Garageband / Alesis Dock / iPad set up so I may be actually be able to record something in the spare time that is taken up with everything else in this list) . The thing is having things to do does make you appreciate sometimes having some time to yourself.

Yesterday was really special though, a sort of leaving do that turned to an extremely chilled and brilliant catch up with five really great friends I've worked with over the last seven or eight years, and a commitment to doing more of these with the friends who couldn't make it. Starting off with a trip to a couple of record shops with Chris we bot visited Reflex and RPM but didn't get time for Beatdown and bought stuff by newish bands such as Panda Bear and Alvvays. Jon got a seven inch vinyl single by White Lung who I've never heard of as well as some nice beer glasses.

Dat Bar Decor

We then met up with Darren, Neil and Jon is the Central Bar before a leisurely visit to a few Newcastle pubs including The Town Wall, The Forth, The Stand , Dat Bar (where Neil sample some 7.2% lager that they wouldn't sell in pints) and finally finishing at The Head Of Steam. Darren told me that I was getting a subscription to Rough Trade as a leaving present from my team and colleagues (plus an Amazon Voucher , because like 'em or loathe 'em you can't go wrong with an Amazon Voucher and Steve and Sara's has already gone towards my new Samsung soundbar / subwoofer).





It was just amazing to spend a day doing nothing in particular, enjoying each others company, catching up and committing to doing this on a monthly basis. One of the great things about social media, email and mobile phones is that it is very easy to keep in touch these days if you want to. Next week I have my dad's 80th birthday and his present is going to be to get him online, so that will be great fun.

Oh and the cheery on the top of yesterday's cake is that my phone is temporarily reconnected while they sort me out with a proper tariff.

I was trying to think of a decent piece of music to go with this and the Steve'N'Seagulls just presented itself, uplifting , great fun and impressive , sort of like yesterday.

All in all and absolutely brilliant day and looking forward to a lot more like this

Disaster Can Be Fun

This week has been a bit of ups and downs and today had it's share of potential disasters, starting with my phone company disconnecting with no notification with flagrant disregard  for OFCOM guidelines. I'm not going to name them but you will know who they are.

Then I had a 10AM interview so decided to get a taxi to ensure I got to the place on time. Half way there I realised I'd forgotten my wallet and bus pass. The guy from ABC said I could owe him the money , but I said I also had to get back and wasn't sure when the interview would finish so I needed to go home and get my stuff. While it turned out costing me about three times as much as expected, I'd allowed plenty of time which was useful as Cobalt Business Park has lots of nameless numberless buildings making it difficult to find the place , but we sorted it out and we got there with ten minutes to spare.

Then I got a Facebook message asking about my availability from a great friend with a very tantalising and interesting scenario, so there is a call tomorrow top discuss that which will be followed by another afternoon at Oxfam which I am looking forward to.

The music has to be Van Der Graaf Generator's beautiful "Afterwards" from "I Prophesy Disaster". Some people seem to things going wrong as the end of things and an excuse to give up, I just see it as a reason to give it another go and try harder. Preparation and contingency does help, but you should never give up and always take the positives out a situation. It's nearly weekend now, so go and enjoy your tea.