Dave's Little Bit On the Side: February 2009
25-Feb-09 Is this the end of my music collection?
I bought my first album, The Goodies Criminal Records, when I was 10. Thankfully, my tastes have improved a bit since then and Jules and I now have an absolutely monster CD collection - easily 1000 discs or more - and, no, most of them are not unsold copies of Future Forever.
I'm currently playing with Spotify, an on-line music collection/listening service, and pretty much every album in my collection is here. I'm listening to Disc 1 of Hybrid, a remix project centred around Gary Numan with the likes of Sulphur, Flood and Mark Gemini Thwaite all contributing tracks. It's superb and, yet, here it is, available to listen to for free.
Likewise, I've found Placebo, Tangerine Dream, Ultravox, Visage just in the first minute or so... and that list of TD albums includes a whole bunch that I haven't heard (so no need to buy them...)
Spotify make their money from subscriptions and presumably the artists get paid per listen. However, my experience of this kind of site i.e. AmieStreet.com isn't good. Lots of people listen to Future Forever over on Amie Street but, so far, we haven't been paid a single bean. Not one red cent. So, number one question is Do any of these artists get paid? And how can a High Street retailer compete with this kind of outlet when the very commodity they need to stay in business is available for sweet FA? No wonder ZAVVI went to the wall.
I can't help but think that this is great news for consumers but an absolutely rotten deal for artists.
I just checked and Future Forever is available to buy from Amie Street for $1.50. 12 songs for $1.50. 3 months of effort for $1.50. I feel insulted. Who is going to buy that album from iTunes for $9.99 when it's available for just $1.50 somewhere else.
My next step is to remove Future Forever from Amie Street.
23-Feb-09 Myspace
I finally got off my ass and put together a Myspace page for Ion. It's a bit minimal at the moment but all part of the plan to push Ion as hard as I can, and to provide punters with more information as more and more Ion tracks are used in TV and various other promotional outlets.
Another Ion track, Logoscape, was licensed for a soundtrack this week and I become more and more impressed with Shockwave Audio with every passing day.
22-Feb-09 Second Life concert (Part 2)
I've decided to remove Ion from the Second Life concert originally scheduled for April.
I felt that we were being rail-roaded, being asked to do stuff inside silly timescales using untested and unreliable technology. More so, the organisers were not willing to help us work through these difficulties, which I felt was unprofessional and unhelpful. Experience has shown that rushing rehearsals on untried platforms is a recipe for disaster and a professional, safe, reliable relationship with the organisers is essential if the performance it so be a success. I'd rather withdraw from an activity than risk damaging the band's reputation at this point in time.
There were some personality issues too. I don't like rude people. End of story. Some of their attitude may be down to language differences but, without wanting to sound like an egotistical arsehole - and I'm sure I will anyway but this is the truth as I see it - let's just say that some of the artists in question couldn't actually cut it, live, in front of real people. That's why they prefer Second Life. Their chops are just not up to it.
Anyway, virtual rotten tomatoes are easier to dodge than real ones and they don't leave such a mess on your keyboards.
Suffice to say, I informed the organisers of my decision yesterday and, 24 hours later, there's been no reply, no response, no "maybe next time...", which sort of confirms my suspicion that I was intruding on a closed shop and they wanted me out. So be it.
As Granny used to say "There are lots of other fish to fry..."
22-Feb-09 Data / Datarama and Humans
This week has been a bloody difficult. No doubt the issues around the astronomical society detailed elsewhere will resolve themselves in time though, right now, I feel numb towards them. Life is too short to piss around with people like this. I've caught some criticism for being moody and unpredictable which is a fair point but I'd rather have a reputation for being moody and predictable AND for getting off my fat ass and doing something done rather than go through life with the reputation for being a lazy, pen-pushing jobs-worth.
One of my goals this month has been to get the new forum for the Freemen of Newcastle up and running. That's been fairly successful but there have been some issues with the naming convention applied to the login names. Members have to supply their full name plus the name of the company through which they hail and, with only 25 characters in the login field, this is proving difficult. Suffice to say, there have been a few disputes and some hissy fits along the way.
Then it became clear that yours truly was stuck between two factions, each attempting to score political points off the other. This situation culminated in an e-mail which included the directive that I should "Fuck off!", which was the first time in over 20 years of SysAdmin work that I've ever been told to fuck off by a customer.
Even though the offending member rang me at home (twice) to apologise and to state, absolutely, that his comment was meant in jest and was not meant to cause offence, I went straight to the Forum's Administration Panel and deleted his account. I won't put up with that kind of behaviour for one second. He's gone. End of story.
Last night's Datarama event at the Tyneside Cinema was terrific fun. The events is described as "... a unique, democrartic data event hosted by Polytechnic...". Past contributions have included mobile phone documentaries, home made audio hardware, flash animation and Gameboy Rock. Sounds brilliant to me.
The cinema is a long way from any useful car park so that meant dumping the gear at the venue first (double parking on Pilgrim Street is not for the feint-hearted), successfully navigating the car to a suitable car park and then wading, knee-deep, through the throng of Geordies performing that most elaborate of Saturday night rituals, the ever-popular Ganin' on the Pull (like) - always a challenge. The highlight of this social happening is the large number of Geordie women who dress for the occasion as though thay had just stepped off stage at the nearest lap-dancing club. Though they may look available and, in local parlance, seriously up for it... , this is not the case. Heaven forbid the innocent who makes that mistake. Generally speaking, the more risque the attire, the more they tend to object to members of the opposite sex leering at them. Any approaches offering friendship, eternal love and devotion and/or sex are declined, usually with a punch in the face. This is just plain weird - and all part of the fun of living in the North East of England.
Ever fearful of another encounter with those former Stazi officers, the City's traffic wardens, I'd dumped our stuff in the cinema foyer and we were then faced with the task of lugging the whole lot upstairs. Instead, I opted to use lift, which wasn't an easy option because it was full of confused middle-aged ladies in their Sunday-best eager for an evening of cultural entertainment. They did not look at all happy when I got in the lift with a bag of cables under one arm and a ZEIT Sequencer sans backing plate under the other. I guess anything electronic with a bunch of wires hanging out the back can look intimidating but I don't think they would have been any more frightened if I'd introduced myself as Akmed and asked if they knew a good place to become a martyr.
We set up the gear very quickly and hooked ourselves into the PA, a process that was almost (but not quite) neat and slick and professional. The organiser, Dominic Smith introduced the event and got the ball rolling with a quick introduction to his random data exchange project, a scheme whereby members of the public contribute a set of instructions to a database and get another set of instructions in return. One of the examples given was a gent who had provided a method for getting a car to run on tap water who, in return, received a knitting pattern. That might not sound like a useful exchange of information but the overall effect is that you take your new set of instructions away with you and do something different, something outside of your comfort zone. A few days later, the gent returned with his completed item of knitwear, explaining that he'd learned something completely new and different, which was the whole point of the exercise.
I stood up next and delivered a rambling missive on why I'd created ZEIT in the first instance, going back to its real origins in 1993 when I set out to record The Infection of Time but quickly ran up against my own limitations as a non-musician and a non-keyboard player. It was a bit rough around the edges but seemed to go down well.
Next up were a brother and sister team who had been looking at our relationship with the mundane, stuff that we take for granted. It's just part of the background. You see it, but never really associate it with anything except its purely utilitarian nature. In this case, they'd been looking at a spirit level - an abstract project, designed to encourage abstract thinking, thinking outside of the box, outside of normal experience and a reflection upon an object that is so utilitarian and functional that, for most people, has no artistic merit beyond simply working out what is level and what isn't. Emmensely enjoyable. Jules went up to talk to them afterwards and I could hear a lot of laughing as I got on with the heavy business of explaining to a couple of fellow tech heads how you can programme a sequencer like ZEIT with just an 8-bit micro and 64k of RAM.
After that, Ed Carter from the Pixel Palace introduced us to his Game Boy music in the form of Kommutah, a series of pieces inspired by his routine commute between Leeds and Sheffield last year. An interesting collection of songs with more than a passing nod towards the likes of Kraftwerk circa Computer World.
A few other projects followed - some interesting experiments with an Arduino board, some excellent animation with a Nokia Drawing Tablet and a couple of other odd-ball ideas. I loved it all. Fresh thinking, new ideas, a group of like-minded brainiacs not afraid to step outside of the box and live a little.
I can't wait for the next episode. I've decided to use these regular gatherings are the framework for showcasing some of my current work-in-progress projects. They should provide the much-needed incentive, motivation and, above all, encouragement, to keep at them.
21-Feb-09 Cheap, crappy Taiwanese keyboard
20-Feb-09 Dismay
Total dismay is how I would put it. Dismay coupled with abject disappointment.
Regular readers will know that my twin passions in life - okay, tertiary passions, okay, okay, okay... I stand corrected... quadruple passions in life are music, physics/astronomy, my family and, of course, chocolate.
In recent months, I've put a huge amount of effort into getting something sorted for the International Year of Astronomy, mainly through Newcastle Astronomical Society but also through discussions with The Centre for Life in Newcastle and Sunderland Astronomical Society. Just this month alone, I've organised talks to Milecastle Primary School and Sunderland Astronomical Society as well as a promotional appearance on Radio Newcastle. I have several talks scheduled for later this year including one to the highly prestigious Trefoil Society and, of course, The Centre for Life. Other talks are in the planning stages and will be announced in due course.
Why do I do this? Because I really do feel that you can make a difference to people's lives if you get them interested in science and astronomy. Their lives are richer because humans crave answers and have a thirst for knowledge at a time when the mainstream media outlets (with the obvious exception of the BBC's Radio 4) are actively attempting to dumb down their content to make life easier for the intellectually challenged and those whose religious beliefs are incompatible with modern science's view of the universe.
Generally speaking, the committee of Newcastle Astronomical Society has been behind these activities. Or so they say. They might nod their collective heads and generally agree, in a wise and sage-like manner, that Plan X is a good idea and Plan Y is worthy of further discussion but, generally speaking, nothing ever gets done. Six years after I joined the committee, they're still waffling on about the same library books and storage issues and I guess they'll still be talking about those issues in another six years. But that's committees the world over for you.
However, there has been a clear and obvious reluctance to participate, at any level, in the Outreach Programme or The Talks for Children as they prefer to call it, even though the Outreach Programme is about talking to people of all ages about astronomy and physics. Only one member of the committee has been in touch with me following the interview on Radio Newcastle. No effort at all was expended to promote my talk to Sunderland Astronomical Society last weekend. There was no feedback whatsoever on the talks to Milecastle Primary School even though formal letters of thanks sent to the secretary. The principal members of the society i.e. the President and the Treasurer have made no attempt to get involved with the day-to-day activities of the group via the web even though there is no functional barrier to prevent them.
A few months ago, a group of us made it absolutely clear that we were unhappy with the lack of progress on certain issues and the attitude of certain committee members in particular. These exchanges were vigorously rebuffed using the language of the committee, weasle words with a smack of authority. Certain committee members were, without a doubt, primed ahead of a potentially confrontation meeting so that they could prepare a defence. Much was promised. Nothing was delivered.
Another committee meeting was held last night. I was not invited. According to the secretary, the agenda and minutes of the previous meeting (which I typed incidentally) were dispatched last week via snail-mail. They never arrived. Even though I knew what time the meeting started, I decided not to attend. A copy of the agenda was passed to me and very few of the extra items I had requested had been appended.
During the meeting the President, Professor Stephenson, asked if everyone had read the minutes of the last meeting which he'd been told had been posted on the web some days before. I informed Professor Stephenson and the assembled members that the minutes had not been posted because they had never been sent to me.
Later on, I was asked to comment (without any notice) on the web pages, which I maintain for them. I am sad to say that my response was somewhat rude, probably because I was tired and caught off guard. I would like to apologise for my rudeness, which was uncharacteristic and probably as a result of a very tough day at work.
I've written 10 e-mails to the secretary in the last month. He's responded to just 3 and only then minimally. Clearly there's a problem here.
So, what do I do? Resign? Again? Or fight on? Do I go after the changes that were promised but never delivered? Or just let the whole thing die? After all it's just an astronomical society... Or should I stand by and watch an organisation that is over 100 years old and has produced some of the country's most outstanding astronomers and physicists expire thanks to the mismanagement of a few well-meaning but functionally ineffective old duffers? I really don't know.
I feel a sabatical coming on, at least until the AGM.
19-Feb-09 Canopy New Music
I went to the Canopy Music Event at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle last night for an evening of experimental music.
First off, the place was packed out - a surprise and almost reminiscent of those far-off, heady days down at Spectro Arts Workshop when all of this experimental stuff came around the first time only with tape loops instead of the semi-ubiquitous Akai digital looper. An interesting mix of individuals too - some old geezers thoughtfully nodding into their luke warm pale ales, Jesmond Moms and their attendant broods out for an interesting alternative to sitting in front of the idiot box with another Pob DVD, capped off with a fair smattering of lusty, pissed-up metrosexuals on the hunt for anything vaguely male.
I turned up at around 8:30pm, late as usual, to find Hapsburg Braganza either setting up, sound checking or in mid-performance, it was difficult to tell. That said, the mix of ambient, floaty dronescapes coupled with minimal melodies created out of random clicks and squarks was really quite intoxicating. However, I spent the first 10 minutes of his set attempting to ignore the cultural Nazi with the Eva Braun bob and the fat ass standing to my right. "It's really not f*cking right you know. This is not a f*cking hippy commune, like. What's the point of sitting at the f*cking front and just f*cking talking all the f*cking time. I'd shoot the f*cking lot of them...". I wondered if she was on day-release from the local Tourettes' clinic but I gather this is just how psuedo-leftie intellectuals talk these days.
Anyway, this was raw, gritty experimental music, the sort of stuff that would normally be uncomfortably outside of my comfort zone but, well, I liked it. Enjoyed it even. I just let my imagination wander amongst the mess of circuit diagrams, bills, code fragments and build schedules currently cluttering my mind and, best of all, I came away feeling that even at my most nauseatingly self indulgent, I was still on safe ground.
The applause at the end was equally inspirational. Make no mistake - this was hard, difficult music to listen to, a gazillion miles away from anything mainstream and yet it was still more thoughtful, clever, intelligent, enduring and epic than the vast majority of stuff I've heard in recent months, my own stuff included.
After a break of 10 minutes - I was still smarting big time from getting fleeced at the bar for £2.45 for a large Diet Coke - The Long Lonesome Go took to the performance area. A mix of percussion, bass and moody keys, which was interesting but didn't change much in terms of dynamics, tone or key. 30 minutes in and my head hurt. Okay in small doses, I guess. I'm listening to the samples on their web page as I type and this is much better. Much, much better. I can get lost in this easily. Moody, haunting, seductive, enticing. A soundtrack to a tripped-out, avant-garde, european, art-house porn film, all fuzzy round the edges with Kate Beckinsale rubbing coconut oil over black leather and stilletto heels. Hang on. I got lost in my own fantasy there. Scrub that last sentence. Okay, don't. Keep it. Treasure it. It's yours. Cherish it for as long as you want. It's my personal gift to you this morning.
It's possible that The Long Lonesome Go were having a tough night or not quite together or that I just wasn't in the right mood any more so I'm not going to be a twat and have a go at them. And, besides, their web page is full of excellent noodlings which I intend to spend the day downloading for future enjoyment.
Like I said, my head hurt and I skipped the pleasures of The Brood. Maybe another day. Maybe. Maybe not.
I came away from this concert feeling inspired, wonderfully inspired. It was almost but not quite the same as getting a permission slip from the boss to just go mental. A bit.
16-Feb-09
Tired but happy is the best way to describe my state of mind this morning.
Jules and I went into Newcastle on Friday night to see And So I Watch You From Afar at World Headquarters, a band I'd heard on Myspace on the day before and, well, they blew me away - a strong mix of melodics and heavy guitars. Think U2 on Tizer and without the shaking hands with Tony Blair embarrassment factor. As ever, through a combination of goof-ups, misunderstandings and total screw-ups on my part, we were late getting to the venue where kick off should have been 8pm. However, the doorman told us that we needn't worry as the club didn't open until 10pm anyway and the band probably wouldn't be on stage before midnight, or something like that. Alas, my response is not printable in a family-friendly blog and the whole experience was highly reminiscent of the tiresome Turnbull A.C.'s fandango of a few years back when every gig we went to was pulled hours before the start time, often for no apparent reason.
We quickly decamped to The Bridge Hotel to partake in some random beer samplings before wandering over to the University to borrow their projector for the SAS lecture. This was a big mistake. I went to the bar, had a look at the guest beers and picked a beverage that looked nice rather than one that I'd heard of or received a recommendation from somebody else. I can't even remember the name - something like Slightly Snuffy Snickers or whatever - and, well, it did taste nice at the time and it wasn't particularly strong either, which was good because I was driving and had no desire to have another encounter with Her Majesty's Finest. However, an hour later, something, somewhere started to get to my alimentary canal. What more can I say except that the weekend then decended into one long, drawn out and somewhat explosive eruption of methane. In short, my guts were a real trainwreck. Jules, who is normally polite and somewhat mild-mannered when it comes to this sort of thing, got fairly sick of the whole business by midday on Saturday and was even threatening Bloody Murder if she heard so much as one more toot! coming from my direction. Even the poor dogs were somewhat shell shocked by Saturday night. You can only blame them so many times, after all.
Last night's lecture to Sunderland Astronomical Society - The Sound of Space - went off very well indeed and the attendance was excellent with hardly a spare seat in the house. Better still, the response from the audience was very positive given the subject matter which, I gather, was a little outside of their usual comfort zone. One guy came up to talk to me after the show and commented that it had been "a long time since the hairs in the back of my neck stood up like that", which is a very satisfying comment to receive.
Typing this, I've just received a letter of thanks from the chairman of Sunderland Astronomical Society, Graham Darke, for last night's talk. Seems it went down very well indeed. He was also disappointed to learn that the talk won't feature in the Centre for Life's forthcoming Science Week event and so, mischievous little tinker that I am, I have forwarded his comments to Marissa Buckingham at the Centre for Life as a pleasant reminder of what they're missing. (Yes, I am somewhat pissed that the lecture was pulled due to timing constraints...)
Anyway, there is much else to amuse and delight this morning. John Sherwood of Awakenings sent me a link to an eBay auction where a copy of The Fabulous Neutrinos had just sold for £21. Eh? £21. Yes, £21. Apparently, it's become a collector's item of sorts. I think it only fair to point out that I have roughly 300 copies stacked up in the loft. Mmmm....
The adventure at Shockwave Audio continues apace where another track - Voyager - has been licensed for sound track purposes. Wow. This was just another track that I knocked up in one night, one which I had formerly considered to be little more than just a throwaway ditty. Just goes to show what I know, doesn't it?
13-Feb-09
When I left the house yesterday, there was but a single dot of snow floating in the cold morning air. As the dogs and I rounded the corner of the local nature reserve, the heavens opened and, within 10 minutes, we were in the middle of a near-total white out. The dogs loved it and, in truth, I loved it too. We also stayed out a bit too long and came back tired, soaked and freezing but, ultimately, happy.
The snow persisted for another 2 hours and the BBC began to issue warnings that the roads in Newcastle City Centre were getting difficult, and the A1 motorway in particular had turned into something nightmarish, perhaps of Stephen King proportions. I started to become concerned that Jules wouldn't be able to get home easily so I called her and we agreed that she would come home earlier than normal.
Back at t'Mill, I set about birthing a new sequencer and, after some minor teething troubles, the delivery went according to plan. You can see it here though there's no sound on this video except my (heavy) breathing.
The forum I've set up for the Freemen of Newcastle is proving troublesome. There's been some disagreement over the naming conventions used, particularly with respect to the Freemen of Trinity House. The problem stems from the number of characters in the login name, which is limited to just 25. FreemenOfTrinityHouse takes up 21 of those characters, leaving just 4 for the user's name so we have to abbreviate the name somehow. How they do this isn't a concern of mine. However, I have become stuck in the middle somewhat and so I have backed out of the discussions for the moment.
It's a minor set back in a bold project. As an organisation, they've made some terrific changes in the past year or so and the new forum is another sign of their commitment to the future at a time when the whole concept of the Freelage is very much under attack.
Last night, I designed and began assembling the power supply for another new project, VeroBox, a generic hardware development platform built around, you guessed it, Veroboard, that staple of the electronic enthusiast's tool kit. That was a lot of fun and alot more fun that putting together the lecture for Sunday night.
Last week, Jules found someone else's lecture entitled The Sounds of Space, recorded last year and available as a podcast on a well known astronomy web site. Looking at the flow of the lecture and the samples used, it very much appears that they've creatively cloned my talk, which was originally delivered in 2004. How were they able to replicate the talk? Probably because I published the slides I used on our astronomical society's web site where they were visible to anyone, as was my intention. They've even used to same images.
So, I now face the challenge of finding a whole new set of samples the enlighten and entertain only, this time, I won't be posting anything up on the web afterwards. :)
I've just written a letter of complaint to the BBC regarding Wednesday night's Make Me Smart, which featurered the Blue Collar Philosopher Chris Langham. Their conclusion, that Langham's enormous intelligence was wasted because he seemed to content to fritter away his time shovelling horse shit in Princeton, Missouri, was wrong and completely ignored Langham's considerable output, his books, his essays and his contributions to meta-physics.
Make Me Smart was actually pretty dumb but then what else can you expect from the BBC these days? For instance, look at their flagship political debate Question Time, which was on last night. The day's hot topic was the expulsion of Dutch MP Geert Wilders over his anti-Islam film, Fitma. Most of the panel felt at ease commenting on the video even though they fessed up that they hadn't actually seen it. They must have known that the video would have been the day's hot topic and yet none of them bothered to research it properly, if at all. The video is easily available on the web though it isn't comfortable viewing so why didn't they do their homework?
I just dispair at the BBC. From personal experience, I was cut off during my interview with on the Paddy MacDee show because he was concerned that I would say something on air that would bring about a legal action against the BBC. Is the BBC, a champion of free speech, now running scared in the face of those most undemanding of critics, Daily Mail Readers?
Okay, here's a little game for you called Dumbing Down. The next time you watch a TV programme - The One Show is a good example - just count the number of times the presenter says "I was never any good at maths/science/physics/chemistry when I was at school". Then see how quickly you can find that presenter's academic qualifications using Google. You should quickly find that such a claim isn't true. Not in a million years.
My best find to date is a well-known former presenter of a children's TV programme who said "I was never any good at maths when I was at school" and yet she has a 2.1 from Cambridge University in Economics.
This is dumbing-down in action. It's wrong because, firstly, it's a lie and secondly because it encourages kids not to try hard at school. It tells them that it's okay to be dumb, it's okay not to try and that you can get by without being literate or numerate or knowledgable about science or maths or engineering because you can always rely on some nerdy geek to fix your car or your computer for you.
Here's another one. On Wednesday night, The One Show had a feature on about the Twitter service. Twitter is another social networking tool. I have an account though, so far, it's been of little or no value. It gets in the way, frankly. I've had more fun with Facebook, which has a least put me in touch with a number of musical people I'd lost contact with.
What's the The One Show's take on this? They can't see the point. It's fun but why? Why are they apparently so opposed to these tools? Is it because anyone who is using Facebook, MySpace or Twitter isn't actually watching the TV?
You really want to see dumbing down in action? Go take a look at Channel 4's "The Big Bang Theory". The premis is this - four science nerds try to get on with a cute but dumb chick and fail miserably because they use long, complex sentences containing long, complex words, which she's too dumb to understand and (here's the killer) so are the audience... and, well, they're geeks and, by definition, geeks are useless with women, right?
Incidentally, the dumb chick is really, really cool. Like, cool, man. So cool she's like, cool. Dude! LoL! You ROK! LMAO!
My Granny used to say "Ignorance is bliss." No, it isn't. Ignorance is just ignorance, and the world is run by fuckwits and retards.
My! That was a fun rant! been a while since I blew off like that!
11-Feb-09: A nice surprise
On Monday morning, I checked our sales figures over at the new Shockwave Sound licensing service though this inquiry was more out of curiousity than a burning need to see a huge jump in sales. The files were only uploaded to the server on Thursday or Friday of last week and so I wasn't expecting a result so soon. In confidence, hand on heart, I was just arsing about really, killing time between breakfast and the official start of the day shift.
And so it was something of a pleasant surprise to discover that we've had three licensing deals confirmed in just the first three days of operation. Wow! Yeah! Break out the hard stuff! That's a neat result - it took months for the same to happen on Magnatune and they're really on the ball.
Although we're not earning the megabucks just yet, it does mean that the audience for these tunes is growing more and more. This news really put a smile on my face for the rest of the day. Indeed... "One Small Day... one small day" :)
Listening to the TDFZ Pod cast on Saturday night, I started to get annoyed with Chris Newman's voice-over. It's become very obtrusive, to the point where I think that the programme is starting to suffer. Equally annoying, the focus of the show has shifted and now concentrates soley on artists who have signed up to their Sound Futures Direct download service, to the point that it seems like if you're not on the service then you don't get the airplay. Humpf! Annoying. Then I had to ask myself "Is this fair?"
Yes, I think it is. From their point of view, why should you bother to promote an artist or drive sales in an artist's direction when that artist doesn't do anything to promote you or help keep your service running. Why should you help an artist if he isn't going to help you but others will? Who gets priority? A named artist who doesn't help anyone but himself or an unknown who will actually put your name around?
But the relationship has to be symbiotic. It has to be an exchange and not just one-way trafic. Why should an artist bother to promote a dealer who isn't doing anything to help sales. What do you do when a dealer ignores all of your e-mails? What do you do if you fall over backwards to help a dealer, only to find that said dealer ignores your output and, instead, gives special treatment to bands who knock out one identikit CD after another?
Answer... kick 'em off your list of preferred dealers.
Anyway, since airplay is the driving force behind what we do these days, I signed up to the Sound Futures Direct service. Call me a hypocrit if you want, I really don't care. It's one more outlet and also one who actually gives you a record of your sales, which is nice. Of course, this point is lost completely on the large number of alternative download services who sell my stuff but who don't actually pay me for what has been downloaded. Mmm.. what was that? The sound of a pin dropping over a Amie Street?
A couple of weeks ago, I signed up to another download service. I won't name them right now because I want to give them the opportunity to correct the error before I pull our discs. Initially, they promised much - a good place in the shop, promotion, reviews, blah, blah, blah. Now that they've got the files, it looks very much as if they're just going to sit on them. No reviews, no promotion, not even a listing in the new releases section. Apparently, they have other composers who are ahead of us in the queue. Fair enough. I can live with that but I can't afford to have them sit on a bunch of discs that are just going to sit on their shelves for months and months without seeing a bean in returns at this end.
Like I said, I'll give them the opportunity to remedy the mistake. If they don't do so in a timely fashion then I'll pull the files. This sounds mighty negative but I really did bust a gut to get them set up quickly and their attitude has been somewhat disappointing.
I've had to walk away from the presentation for Sunderland Astronomical Society. I've lost the plot and can't focus any more. However, there's still 5 days to go which is more than enough to get my act together.
On a positive note, I received a large, plain brown envelope yesterday - not that type, Stuart - from the children at Milecastle Primary School in Newcastle. It contained a collection of drawings they'd produced following my little talk the other day, and they were terrific. Well done, year 2!
06-Feb-09: Milecastle Primary School / Smelly Araldite / Facebook
The trip over to Milecastle Primary School yesterday was a lot of fun, certainly more fun than I expected. Some kids quite clearly can't be bothered with anything of a technical nature, especially when it's a Friday afternoon and it's snowing outside. It's just more work, someone else telling them what to do and another distraction from TV or the Playstation. However, this small group of 7 years olds were really up for it, and they made my job that much easier.
I was there as part of Newcastle Astronomical Society's Outreach Project and the idea was to give them a quick presentation about the subject and then do a question and answer session. Now, some of the children's lectures I went to when I was a child were utterly, utterly boring, mainly because the lecturer utterly failed to connect to the audience. Some people just can't talk the same language and they can't remember how they, themselves, felt at that age. This is why some TV children's presenters are so toe-curlingly naff - they just can't remember what is was like to be a kid. They assume it's all daft noises and arsing about. It isn't. It's about getting them interested and then retaining that interest by involving them and not in a way that you could call patronising.
The trick, it seems, is to connect with the children straight away, and not in a manner that is artificial or false. It's a technique that is acquired rather than learned from a text book or from classes. You either develop that skil or you don't. Some days it works, some days you suck. I gave a similar talk to a group of Boy Scouts a few years ago and, 30 minutes in, a small voice from the back of the hall called out "This is boring!". That was a truly humbling moment though the root cause was probably because the audience was a mixture of 7 year olds and 14 year olds. As any parent will tell you, adolescents don't speak the same language as any one else and are virtually impossible to enthuse about anything except music and the opposite sex.
So, off I went and, well, I enjoyed it a lot. So did they. I can more or less do the presentation in my sleep though the question and answer session that followed is a good way to test your own knowledge and understanding. Questions like "Why does the sun shine?" are okay if you're talking to a bunch of fellow geeks but how do you convey the answer in a way that group on intelligent 7 year olds can understand? The best question yesterday was "Why does Saturn rotate on its axis so quickly?" and that floored me. It's easy to talk about the collapse of the proto-planetary disc and the principle of the conservation of angular momentum but how do you get those ideas across to a group of kids who don't have any concept of angular momentum? I tried to explain in the simplest of terms but, in the end, I had to shrug my shoulders and accept that scientist's don't know everything. I also promised to go have a look at a book later, (which I did). All through this, the kid looked at me with a blank expression tinged with the slightest hint of a wry smile. Had he beaten the clever teacher? Had he put one past the expert? Yeah, he had. But I also suspect that this was a put-up question from a parent who wanted to throw a spanner in the works. This happens from time to time. I've often been in a lecture when someone has asked a really, really difficult question that implied that they knew the field in depth but then looked blank and confused when the lecturer delivered the answer. A lot of people don't come to lectures to learn. They come to demonstrate how clever they are. Sad, but true.
Anyway, the kids clearly loved what they heard and several promised to go outside and look at Venus that night. They probably did. If so, great. It could be the start of a career or a hobby that lasts a lifetime. Is it all worth it? Of course it is, though the joy of the subject is often lost on me, particularly at 5am when you're hunting for the ever-so-elusive Comet Lulin, it's something like -2 C outside and you've just gotten out of a warm bed.
I came home full of optimism and enthusiasm only to be completely confounded by our electric kettle, which needs a minor repair job. The Smelly Araldite applied to the defective part before I went out had failed to work and the broken piece had fallen off. Worse still, the remaining glue had set solid and subsequently glued the part to the kitchen work top. Rude words issued forth.
My Twitter experiment isn't really delivering the goods. I'll give it another week and if it doesn't pick up then I'll delete the account.
Facebook is a lot more fun and has put me in touch with a lot of folk with whom I had lost contact. The converse is that I am now visible to a small collection of folk whom I would prefer not to talk to. However, yesterday I discovered perhaps the most powerful of Facebook's tools - the Ignore button. Works a treat.
05-Feb-09: The Interview and thereafter
The interview on the Paddy MacDee show was broadcast on Tuesday night. It went over too quickly though I was able to get in a lot of information about astronomy and the astronomical society. However, I think I suffered from a major adrenalin rush. Jules was concerned that I was becoming more and more hyper as the interview progressed though, listening back, I don't agree. I think my enthusiasm for the subject matter took over a little and I became more energetic than usual but I wasn't out of control and babbling like a loon. I managed to stay on track, keep to the plot and not go overboard. I probably over-prepared for the show. I did too much homework and, for want of a better term, I think my scientist's hat was on a bit too tight.
The interview was cut short by Paddy. He was concerned that my opinions with respect to the UFO community might upset a whole bunch of people at a time when the BBC has its guard up thanks to recent events involving Jonathan Ross, Russell Brand and now Carol Thatcher.
However, in light of what Paddy had said in our pre-interview chat, I'd switched tack because I knew that attacking the UFO community would just get me banned. Instead, I had planned to simply talk about the dangers of pseudo-science and why we need to employee more critical thinking, as a society.
We are, by nature, a skeptical species. We're not easily hoodwinked. Or at least we like to think that we are. We like to think that the age of fact by authority is pretty much over in the developed countries but it is more than a little worrying that in a 2007 poll for MSNBC 48% of Americans don't accept the theory of evolution and are convinced that the Biblical version of events i.e. creationism is right. In the same poll, 30% felt that evolution happened but was guided by an external entity i.e. God. and only 15% accepted that Darwin's Theory of Evolution is right. Frankly, that's more than a little scary especially coming from the most technologically advanced nation on the planet.
Right now, I am enormously bored by the whole UFO/alien abduction discussion. I think a lot of it is pure invention and just wishful thinking on the part of gullible, nay, stupid people. I will say nothing more on the subject for a couple of weeks, until the whole sorry episode is a fading memory.
Jules and I took a day off yesterday and went to see the National Glass Centre in Sunderland. I hate to say this but this was quite possibly the most boring museum visit I've ever experienced. One small room dedicated to the science of optics is not enough especially when very few of the exhibits actually worked effectively or had items of furniture parked in front of them or had been installed at odd angles. Worse still, there were errors in the information boards - stars are not all at the same distance from the earth. They are if you accept Ptolomey's model of the Universe but that was old 700 years ago.
Neither did Jules and I appreciate being stalked by over-zealous staff as we were looking around the beauty exhibition, nor did we appreciate being told where we could sit in the cafeteria. (Under the stairs and right next to the toilets). Instead, we left and walked down to the sea front, where we found a cafe that served food that was better quality at half the price.
We did return later on to see the glass blowing demonstration, but this was the centre's only redeeming feature. I left think "Yeah! That looked like fun! I would enjoy that!" but, overall, we both felt that this was not something that we could or would recommend to anyone.
I've been experimenting with Twitter to see if it could form a useful tool for the business. Currently, I am not convinced. We'll see. So far, I have one follower but this is early days and, given that I was two years late joining the whole Myspace phenomena and missed out on (potentially) some exciting opportunities, I want to make sure that I stay up to speed with latest developments on the net. I've installed an RSS feed from Twitter in my area to make it easier for non-Twitters to follow what I'm doing.
Yes, I do think it is monstrously arrogant to assume that people are that interested in my day-to-day activities but, like I said, this is just a test to see if it's of any real, tangible value to the business. If not, it will be history but, right now, it's quite good fun.
Okay, back to work.
02-Feb-09: Festivals, licensing and (Oh no! Not more) UFOs
The paperwork for the licensing deal with Shockwave Sound was signed and sent on its way over the weekend. Let's see where this little adventure leads.
I've been sniffing around a couple of local festivals - Newcastle's Green Gathering is one, the Ouseburn Festival is another. Again, we'll see where these leads take us.
I had a meeting with Ed Carter of The Pixel Palace in Newcastle on Friday. They have a project called Step Sequence and we both felt that there could be some way we could work together. Sadly, I can't see that happening. The prospect of leaving a sequencer and synth in a public area for a couple of months doesn't thrill me. However, Ed did point me in the direction of their Datarama event, which looks just down our street. I'll provide an update as this develops.
With some reluctance, I started to check out the UFO stuff again. In short, I hit information overload and found myself unable to digest any more facts. Indeed, I lost my temper on more than one occasion and ultimately declared that I am sick of this BULLSHIT! Jules commented that she too can't wait for Tuesday's interview to be over and done with. Maybe some resemblence of sanity will be restored.
Why? Well, it's because so much of what is out there is blantent fraud. It's the work of con-men and liars, thieves and vagabonds who have found a way to persuade Joe Public to part with his/her cash. And in large quantities too. They'll do and say anything to persuade you that what they believe is the truth. Just buy the book! Then you'll be convinced. It's impossible to find one single UFO-proponent who isn't trying to sell a book or a DVD in some way. Very little of the subject matter stands up to any form of rigourous testing. Dig ever so sligthly beneath the surface and these cases fall apart. Events don't match, details are wrong, documentation is either missing or was never there in the first place. Of course, they have their instance fail-safe fall back. "The government fixed my records".
Look, it just goes on and on and on. Even when publically outed as a fraudster who lied about is doctorate, lied about his background, lied about his experiences in the woods with an aggressive alien species who, incidentally, killed his dog with a ray gun, Dr. Jonathan Reed still maintains that he's telling the truth. What about the dedicated UFO researcher who maintains that he's working for NASA and the CIA as a consultant whereas, in truth, he works at the local burger bar serving slurpies. Or the guy who was caught, red-handed, faking UFO photos in his garage? Or the guy whose UFO images were celebrated right across the US as the real deal, only to be outed by his own accomplice a year or so later when the bucks started rolling in and his conscience suddenly started to go into overdrive.
Very little of this junk is worthy of further study. It's a waste of time. You can't get at the truth. The witnesses are either unreliable or working with the fraudsters. There is no solid, tangible evidence. Universally, the facts don't fit reality. Frankly, I can't wait until the interview is over. I very much regret stepping up to the plate on this one. It's been a huge waste of time and effort.
There's a lot of snow around today. Poor Jules went to work anyway. She was not a happy bunny.