31-Aug-07: What do I look like?

This was circulating around the Modulator ESP board yesterday - a link to the Simpson's Movie Avatar Builder.

Of course, I had a quick mess around and came up with a Simpson's style rendition of yours truly and it looked pretty cool. Or so I thought. Then I began to wonder if it was close to the truth, or as close to the truth as such a rendition can get.

So, I asked Jules to do one of me too. Likewise, I did one of her and she came up with her own version of herself. We now had 4 avatars to compare. Here they are:

David by David	David by Julie
Julie by Julie	Julie by David

I found this excercise fascinating. The dark glasses, the rebel t-shirt motif and the muscleman physique make me look cool. Clearly, I don't see myself in the same way. I thought my choice of a duck motif on the t-shirt said it all, frankly.

And Jules sees herself as a slightly drab character, feminine but a little ordinary, whereas I see her as curvy, sexy and fun.

So, who's right? :)

 28-Aug-07: Go dig a hole

A couple of years ago, I heard a story about Seymour Cray, the founder of Cray Research and widely regarded as the father of modern supercomputing. The story goes that when Cray had a really serious problem on his mind, one that Sherlock Holmes might call a '2 pipe problem', he used to go dig a hole, the idea being that finding a boring, dull, repetitive task helps to free your mind of certain blockages. The Cray story is almost certainly a fabrication but the essence of it is true. If you have a big problem, go do something else that is totally unrelated and wait for the balance of your mind to be restored. After a while, the solution to your original problem will come whistling down the wind and, there you go. Problem solved.

We have some problems with both the music and the sequencer business. Not major problems - just problems that require a long term solution before we can proceed further. And the car was to become my designated Hole for the weekend.

I spent most of Friday and all of Saturday fixing up the car. I blew some cash on a decent orbital sander and a lot of paint and then got down to work. It was hard work, especially when the sun really got hot on Friday afternoon but I kept going until the job was pretty much done.

On Saturday night, I sat back and started to feel happy again. I no longer felt ashamed.

I found the whole experience very, very rewarding. I worked like a complete idiot, beginning at around 8 am on Friday morning all the way through until around 7pm on Saturday night, pausing only to eat and sleep. It's been a long time since I worked like that, like a man possessed.

Apart from the sense of satisfaction that came with the job, there was another plus. Many of our neighbours came across to talk - some of which have hardly spoken to us in the 9 years we've lived here. Some came to give advice, some to offer encouragement and one or two found it hard to believe that this was the same battered old wreck. Sometimes, I have to pinch myself too.

The new paint job isn't finished yet - the paint is a bit patchy in places - but at least all of the rust spots have been filled properly this time and the machine no longer looks like a derelict. In fact, I started to feel fairly proud of it again. I looks like a resprayed car in that it's not yet back to showroom condition but it is getting there. It will take time and effort but I feel that it's worth it. Every minute of it.

Just as Seymour Cray believed, it's remarkable how finding something else to focus on completely and absolutely helps you find focus and meaning inside all of your other jobs. For instance, I came away with a renewed enthusiasm for the sequencers - that was really terrific and much needed - and I also wrote down a stack of new ideas for the new album projects that are currently underway.

The strangest reaction came from Jules when I picked her up at the railway station on Sunday afternoon. The change from rusty white wreck to semi-gleaming 'stealth fighter' took her completely by surprise, as was my intention. I think she got a real shock. I'm still not sure that she likes it.

Anyway, I'll post some pictures of the resurrected vehicle in the next couple of days.

 24-Aug-07: Hype

I'm not normally one to bother with internet hype, that phenomena of the on-line world where some ignorant and ill-informed journo with a BA in Ancient History from Cambridge suddenly gets the idea that he's connected to this vast global super-intelligence just because his boss gave him a second hand Blackberry.

But, in one instance, I did sit up and take notice. This was the launch of Google Sky.

Google Sky is the latest addition to Google Earth, an add-on layer aimed at backyard astronomers that combines images from a large number of existing astronomical databases - Hubble, Spitzer, Cassini et al - to create one large, seamless utility for studying the night sky.

And Google Sky is utterly fantastic. You really have to applaud the folks at Google for coming up with a tool that is so damned good.

Okay, so a lot of these images have been available to astronomers for a few years, via one database or another, or perhaps via one of the pay-for astronomy programmes like Starry Night. However, Google Sky brings all of these images together to create a very enjoyable, very informative body of knowledge that is free to use - the perfect solution for the fiscally challenged amateur astronomer.

Personally, I think it will do wonders for the promotion of astronomy as a whole because I can see a whole new generation of astronomers getting their kicks with this programme. Frankly, somebody, somewhere, deserves a medal.

I spent a number of hours buried deep inside Google Sky, catching up on some old favourites, finding others that I'd forgotten even existed. And I enjoyed every minute of it.

I then remembered Google Earth. Why bother looking down at the Earth when the sky above is more interesting? But, all the same, I was a little curious.

I switch out of Google Sky and into Google Earth. Then I did what everybody else does as soon as the programme starts up - I went looking for our house, as seen from space. I typed in our postcode and, quick as a flash, the screen then zoomed in on a small cul-de-sac in Houghton-le-Spring. It looked familiar. Sure enough, there in all it's glory, was Hughes Manor.

Judging by the shadows, the picture was taken early one morning, probably late on last summer. There's virtually no traffic on the A690, which is rare these days, and there are no children playing at the front of the house - even rarer. More so, there's no building work on The Paddocks site over the road, a giant Lego set contructed by Shephard Homes as an experiment to see how many houses they can cram on a building site without anyone realising that they're taking the piss.

From space, Hughes Manor looks just like any other suburban detached dwelling in one of the many suburban housing developments that have sprouted up in this area in recent years. However, there's something else visible in this aerial view, something that, when I first saw it, left me deeply, deeply disturbed. I walked away from the computer and hid myself in the kitchen, too ashamed to look at the horrific image on the screen.

We knew it was there. We just refused to admit it. We've pretended that this ugly, disfigured, hideously deformed creature didn't exist at all. We turned the other cheek, looked the other way and pretended that all the pointing fingers and the sniggers weren't important. But we were wrong.

There it was, plain to for all to see - standing, rusting in the driveway.

My car.

I've owned this Volkswagen Golf for 11 years now. For the first couple of years, it was fantastic, the standard Yuppie status symbol, a badge of my ascendancy to a respectable position in an international company. But, as we all know, appearance is only superficial and looks never last. Sadly, the years have taken their tole and the car, much like its owner, now looks old and shabby and uncared for.

About 8 years ago, I noticed some rust spots. Not much, actually - just some fairly minor pits over the wheel arches and a minor bulge on the rear support. Hardly anything. Now, the car was only 4 years old and therefore well within Volkswagen's much trumpetted 6 year total corrosion warranty. Hence, I took the vehicle to Volkswagen and pointed the problematic areas out to one of their representatives. She just laughed. They weren't interested. The guarantee meant nothing because the car had not been bought from Volkswagen brand new and had not been serviced at regular intervals by one of their trained mechanics.

Frankly, I thought their attitude was just plain mean. I still do. At that point, I resolved to simply drive the car until it fell to pieces and all that was left was a pile of rusting metal.

Recently, the car clocked up 150000 miles. It has done so without any major failure, no major breakdowns and a once yearly service at the local grease pit. To leave it in this state seemed mean. The car badly needs a new coat of paint, a complete make-over, though I admit that it will be a complete miracle if I can get rid of all of that rust. But I think it will be worth it. And, of course, it might just stop the old thing from ending up at the knacker's yard for another couple of years. Better for it to be on our drive way than in a landfill.

Now, a window of opportunity is available this weekend. Let's see if I can still work the occasional miracle.

Why mention this at all? Surely it's just an old rusty car that has seen better days? Yes, that's true but it's odd that occasionally looking at something from a slightly different perspective, be it an old album cover, a relationship or even and old rusty car can help you see the truth of the matter in a new light.

Strange, that.

 20-Aug-07: All change

I was invited to contribute a couple of tracks to the latest Awakenings compilation CDr last week and so I set about trying to pick out a couple of good Ion pieces. I was pretty convinced that Evensong would be a good contender, as would Flying Over Blue Waters. Voyager also seemed like a suitable candidate and so I sat down with a nice, hot cup of tea and gave them a quick listen through. This turned out to be a bad idea.

Rather than listening to the choonz, somehow, I began to focus on the mistakes. I don't know why this happened but I wish it hadn't because the result was a rather nasty crisis of confidence.

Evensong has a rather obvious skip in it, around 3:54 - caused by a problem with the VAIO and the audio card. This track was improvised in the studio and so redoing the composition from scratch wasn't an option. Nobody else has noticed it or, if they did, they didn't consider it relevant.

My brain had other ideas and, to me, it became a major issue. The same was true of the distortion in the lead sound on Minerva and of the weak drums in Future Forever itself. Indeed, the more I listened to the album, the more I began to feel that it was weak, underdeveloped and absolutely not up to my usual standards. I wondered if I'd rushed it out, maybe not allowed enough time for the pieces to mature or just been so up-my-arse that I'd forgotten that the point of trying to release music is that the material has to be good in the first place. Frankly, when it came to "Flying...", I was about ready to toss the disc on the fire.

But then Jules calmly pointed out that I always feel this way about new stuff, especially immediately after a release. It's something that she's learned to expect with every new disc, a part of the learning process, a signpost if you will, that it's now time to move on to the next project.

This is why I value Jules' opinion. She has a miraculous ability to see clearly through the bullshit, when my emotions begin to cloud my judgement. She knows when I'm being "precious" and occasionally tells me too, mostly because I don't know myself. It's the musical/intellectual equivalent of a good, swift kick up the arse.

Such episodes often herald a period of deep artistic turmoil, of much woeful hand-wringing coupled with extended sessions of angst-ridden soul-searching. In other words, your typical artistic bollocks. Worse still, it can often result in a period of prolonged writer's block and she can't stand it when I'm like this. I drive her up the wall.

And so, rather than put up with yet another episode, she instead led me upstairs, to a room at the back of the house where she sat me down on the floor and bid me upwrap her secret box of mysteries.

Err, don't jump to conclusions, Sonny Jim. This isn't that kind of blog and, frankly, you should be ashamed of yourself for jumping to such conclusions. Wash your mind out with soap, you pervert. :)

Ahem. No. The secret box of mysteries contained her old saxophone.

Jules showed me how to assemble this great brass artifact, how to select and fit a reed and how to hold the instrument. Then it was all down to learning how to blow.

At first, all I managed was an ear-splitting squeak, which was shortly followed by a highly dischordant ear-splitting squeak but then I managed a really fantastic bass note, the kind of bass note where your teeth rattle and your gut heaves in sympathy. Then I did it again. And again. And again.

Then I managed to produce a crude scale, which sounded really, really rough but WOW!!!

This was a real All change moment. No electronics, no wires, no amplifiers - a real instrument, an enormously physical instrument, which requires real energy and power to master.

Jules has promised to find her Tune in a Day practice book so that I can move beyond scales. I've wanted to learn sax ever since I heard Dick Morrisey's fantastic Love Theme on the Blade Runner sound track. That's a long way off, mainly because I can't find the MIDI In port.

Frankly, this was just your perfect Saturday night - a pleasant surprise followed by a good blow, after which you collapse, breathless, on the bedroom floor.

It's also proof-positive that as one musical door closes, another opens. The Universe is a truly strange and wonderful place.

 16-Aug-07: Pissed off

This morning, I was hard at work - don't laugh - on the latest version of the sequencer's software, a bold, ambitious plan to get all three sequencer models running from a single, common code library. Frankly, I should have done this years ago, and certainly before I began work on Atem but, hey, better late than never.

I kicked off a compilation and then came downstairs to check e-mail. A few seconds later, the iMac made a gentle plopping sound and the screen went blank. I cursed (loudly) and quickly realised that every thing else electrical in the house was similarly buggered. The chorus of burglar alarms outside indicated that ours wasn't the only house affected.

I went outside and found my neighbour, Norman, looking similarly non-plussed.

It didn't take long to find the culprit. It's a simple trick, which isn't complex or scientific. Your average Joe Public layman can do this one. All you have to do is walk down the street and look for the nearest shaved-monkey standing next to a JCB.

I approached the afore-mentiomed shaved monkey and asked if he knew anything about the power going off. I knew that this was a rhetorical question simply by the look on his face. He had an expression on his chops that said "Let's see how much bullshit we can serve up to this poe-faced dick-head."

Ah... but... I'm used to dealing with shaved monkies, you see. I used to work at Sage.

"We had to turn it off for safety reasons" said the shaved monkey. His wise, sage-like mate standing next to him agreed that there was no alternative. "The power had to go off. For safety reasons."

Fred Kite would have been proud of these two.

I asked if there was any chance that, next time, they might be able to give us some warning.

"No." came the answer. "We had to switch it off at the fuses. For safety reasons."

Fair enough, I thought. At least they're being consistent.

That's when I went back in the house and called the Electricity Supply Company, NEDL.

A nice young lady called Lorriane answered the phone. I explained calmly, what had happened. She looked up the job on her computer and confirmed that these were, indeed, NEDL contractors working on adding a new supply the the Shephard's building site. I knew that. The clue was the letters NEDL on the side of the van. That's how I knew who to phone, you see. Clever, me. Right. :)

Then I asked why the power had been switched off without any notice.

"Ahhh... " she said. "That would be for safety reasons."

"Safety?"

"Yes. Safety."

"Okay", I said. "Safety is very good. I'm all for safety in the workplace."

"Good" said Lorriane.

"But..."

"Yes."

"Isn't it just a little bit unsafe to work at the bottom of a hole in the road..."

"Yes."

"With gas supply pipes all around you..."

"Yes."

"With a blow-torch running..."

"Yes."

"Smoking a cigarette?"

Silence.

"Okay... errr, right."

"Tell me, isn't it illegal to smoke in the workplace these days?" I asked politely.

"Right. Well, I'll have to look into this." said Lorriane, her voice sounding like someone had just poured a flaggon of battery acid into her pina collada.

"You do that", I said, adding a cheery "Goodbye" to make her feel just that little bit more awkward.

An hour later, I took the dogs out and the afore-mentioned shaved monkies were hard at work beside yet another hole in the road. When I say 'hard at work' I actually mean that they were reading the paper instead.

Both the afore-mentioned shaved monkey and his mate looked over in my direction as I passed. Alas, they didn't smile or wave or bid me a cheery good morrow so I think it safe to assume that I am not on their Christmas Card list.

Shame. We got off to such a promising start.

 13-Aug-07: Meteors

Last night saw the maximum of the annual Perseid Meteor shower. As usual, the news and media hyped the event so that most inexperienced observers were probably expecting a massive display of celestial fireworks, kind of like a heavenly November 5th. Alas, Mother Nature doesn't play with the same deck of cards as your average TV science corrospondent - most of which don't actually have a science degree - and the display is rarely as they show on TV. Frankly, a lot of people would probably find the display uneventful and, worse still, boring.

The peak of the shower was scheduled for around midnight so Jules and I went to observe from the middle of the playing field next to the house at around 2145 hours. This was a bit optimistic, frankly. I saw 2 Perseids and poor old Jules missed them both. We did, however, see the International Space Station go overhead at around 1005 hours. It looked very bright indeed - easily magnitude -2, probably because the Shuttle Endeavour is docked with it at the moment. (I just wonder how many inexperienced observer's saw the ISS and mistook it for a meteor?)

Anyway, Jules found that standing still and looking upwards in the cold night air, was uncomfortable and so, tired and somewhat frustrated, we retreated back into the house at around 1030pm.

It would have been so much easier to just put the telly on and sit back in front of Big Brother but then that wouldn't be very interesting and there wouldn't be much of a story to tell.

What did I do different?

Well, I started this experiment on Monday of last week. On four nights, I put on a big, thick coat and pitched up in the back garden. With nothing more than a pen, a sheet of paper and my mobile phone as a reliable source of time - who needs high-tech - I sat counting the number of meteors going overhead for about an hour. I recorded the time, the direction and a guess-timate of the meteor's brightness. I also added notes detailing the approximate speed and if the trail persisted.

On 4 of the 5 available nights, I saw 2 or 3 really bright meteors. On the last night, I saw zip, zilch, nada.

Is there any value in these observations? Yes, there is. I was attempting to work out the background rate so that, come the glorious 12th, I could work out the difference between normal and a shower.

I came to the conclusion that the normal background rate was around 1 or 2 really bright meteors every hour. Bright, as in magnitude +1, 0, -1, -2 or higher. 1 or 2 really bright metoers is pretty typical.

Jules went to bed at around 2300 hours and, as before, I sat out in the back garden, in the same position and wearing the same coat. (Science must be reproducable, you know... :) ) The sky was fantastic. Obviously, apologising to the Great God of the Sky for my previous insults worked a treat and the night was cloud-free until 0100 hours.

Whilst I didn't see the celestial fireworks display that the media was predicted, I did see a dramatic rise in the number of really bright meteors. Better still, the clear majority appeared to come from the direction of the constellation Perseus rather than any other area of the sky and so there was a good chance that they were Perseids.

I counted 21 definite Perseids during the 2 hours I spent observing properly, which makes an hourly rate of about 10 per hour. Clearly not nearly as many meteors as was predicted (one per minute, 60 to 80 per hour) but then I couldn't see the whole of the sky from my observing point so maybe there was more going on elsewhere. I was limited to a narrow east-west strip of sky through the zenith and roughly 40 degrees across. My viewing position was obtained by finding the sweet spot between various street lights. Not good but better than sitting out in the middle of the playing field at the mercy of Houghton's drunks and Paddy, the dog from Hell.

Tonight, assuming it is clear, I will go out into the back garden - still wearing the same coat - and count the meteors on the other side of the maximum.

Last night was my longest observing session in over 20 years and, this morning, I'm tired and my head is still buzzy but I enjoyed myself enormously. 3 hours spent watching stars and I wasn't bored for a minute.

 12-Aug-07: Web Page updates

The web page updates are nearly done. This has been a major job that i spread over two or three weeks and it wouldn't have been possible at all if it hadn't been for Jules scrounging an old laptop PC from the University. Without the two computers side-by-side, checking the work would have been a long and somewhat torturous process. Hang on. It was a long and torturous process.

Anyway, having a networkable PC available - none of the other PC's in the house are connected to the net because I'm totally bloody paranoid about data secruity and getting hacked - also meant that I could explore a few of the sites that I can't get access to with this ancient and knackered iMac, which is still running OS9.

One such site is the virtual world Second Life.

Second Life seems to engender somewhat polarised opinions. When I mentioned it on a forum I was (im)polite informed that I was a bit sad. Others said that they "didn't have time for a first life, never mind a second life". Anyway, that matters not alot. I'm now a hard and fast Second Life addict.

Why? Because it's fun, mostly. I've met a lot of strange and interesting people and the BIG MONEY says that this is the way the net will go in the next 5 years. Hence, I figured that I'd get in early and start learning now. I've also added a new feature to this blog which will attempt to illustrate my adventures thus far exploring this rather large corner of cyberspace.

Enjoy.