it's about time

Sometimes all it takes is one meeting to scare the Bee jesus out of you.

 

Can’t really go into details but essentially, people have not given us enough information, we assumed everything was ok and then it turns round and bites everyone in the ass. This seems vaguely familiar in some respects, I mean lets look at what happened to the economy…from my blinkered opinionated view. Banks around the world carried on, sold packages doomed to fail, debt climbed books were cooked black magic was performed. We thought oh the answer will come it will all be ok, and didn’t worry…then we got fucked.

 

Kinda what happened here, but I’m on the front line.

 

A tip, never work in IT you’ll go grey really young. Or bald take your pick.

 

So the internet, what’s been going on, feels like I have been away for a while.

 

New iPhone 4g: It’s a Prototype case, a base hardware platform from which they can stick new toys and play around with software. The look is just kind of wrong; it doesn’t seem to adhere to any of apples recent design principles. Gizmodo boldly claims this is apples next iPhone, and yeh they have a phone in their grubby mitts but I am not sold, because of the above reasons. I mean look at the design verdict is ours I feel.

http://gizmodo.com/5520164/this-is-apples-next-iphone

 

Such Tweet Sorrow #suchtweet : Hmmm, @hannahnicklin posted a very good blog post on this, so I won’t reiterate her points, but will instead link to this…

 

http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/04/such-tweet-sorrow-a-blog-post-in-two-acts/

 

From my point of view (Oooh look at that im in the comments) I feel that actors, who are under the instruction of writers, may be ill equipped to tackle this project. I am not uniquely equipped or skilled here, I am a drama graduate, with a lot of experience in improve and some experience in writing theatre, I have been paid for my work and I have asked to perform in many places. I am also au fait with the internet and computing. I am a technician with experience with networking and desktop, I am deep in technology, and whilst I am not positioned as a great SocMed contributor, I am deeply involved. I try my best. I am upcoming I hope, I am starting to really feel I can voice my opinions in a valid way. Anyhoo I have plans in my mind, plans which have been tested in other guises, people who will be interested if I approach them.  I think I can create something new here.

 

Or recycled garbage, fuck it it’s new to me.

 

 

To those who enjoy my style of writing, it’s nothing new; I write from the gut and apply the TLDR rule to my own walls of text. Those who don’t like it aaah well can’t please everyone but I do try and entertain you.

 

Peace out yall

Digital economy Bill #Debill

Well it’s official, it is #Debill day today.

 

Ok well maybe not officially, but if you listen to Radio5 or follow @documentally and listen to his Boo’s, hell even if you keep one eye on politics and believe your rights matter in the digital economy / society then it most definitely IS #debill day today.

 

For those of you who, like me, are not always the best of informed people then let me find some links for you.

 

http://www.openrightsgroup.org well that’ll be the open rights group then

http://bit.ly/cmMZ0r what we do next...

http://bit.ly/4kHGAi a summary of the bill from the government and relevant information

http://bit.ly/cMXUim Guardian on how bill has exposed broken system

 

So first, let’s make some noise. If you are reading this and you are also, lets not say angered but instead, frustrated by the #Debill then here is something to note. The bill is not only about the infringement of rights on citizens when it comes to downloading, it also covers things like forcing Channel 4 to make public service broadcasts open to public; it seems there are some good things in the bill. However you can’t deny that there are some absolute whopping great holes in the theories and technical implementation proposed.

 

Basically, if you value your rights on the internet, you want information to be free and accessible then please make some noise with us., Lets get the word out there, let the media know how appalled we are. Ask you local MP why they voted for the bill if they did, or as I am about to do, why they didn’t show altogether!

 

Shout it out.

How Many things....

 

Can we label as HD??

 

I have to ask, really I am getting truly fed up of people putting this useless label on things which do not require it! By Definition (Get it?) thanks to some Wiki bashing, HD refers to High Definition, which in turn relates to Television broadcasts, High resolution pictures usually at 1080p (The P standing for progressive scan which redraws the entire picture in every frame, as opposed to 1080i which is interlaced which redraws the odd lines, then the even every other frame) it can also relate to sound quality generally things recorded above 24-bit or 48/khz.

 

Things HD should not apply to the following:

 

Wireless lan equipment,

 

Please do not use the Definition for wireless signals, we are talking bandwidth or frequency here not Definition. You may use these other acceptable Luke sanctioned terms…

 

• High Frequency
• High Band
• High Power
• High End Power
• Similar variations on those listed above.

 

You get the idea.

 

Binoculars / Telescopes / optical equipment

 

STOP CALLING YOUR NEW BINOS FUCKING HD…seriously, as long as we aren’t looking through Clingfilm I would argue that our eyes are seeing in Highest Definition. Again use terms such as high power or at least put the zoom rating instead of HD. It’s misleading and using HD almost as a brand not a piece of information.

 

Radio Equipment

 

Fair enough you can receive a HD signal on your radio, or transmit one or both…but your product is NOT HD! It receives High Definition signals, which are as I discussed earlier recordings up in the 48/Khz range…this in itself is pretty meaty, (on a side note, I dread to think of the bandwidth overhead an analogue signal would be, thank god for digital)

 

This was sparked when an advert popped up and thus prompting the last category here

 

Computing Experience

 

Now I have seen this touted a few times,

 

“A HD computing experience” This nugget of HD arse comes from a Citrix advert promoting it’s new virtual remote desktop solutions. And I swear it said it right there, a HD experience, why is the experience HD, it fucking isn’t, if it can deliver HD video from a remote machine then this is another matter, it is not delivering the HD content, this is done by the streaming or the remote machine, all it is doing is allowing a wider bandwidth remote session. Let me proffer this solution to your fucking idiotic problem,

 

“Capable of delivering high definition media over a remote connection*

 

*High Definition media delivery dependant on connection speed”

 

This solves your problems and mine, now bugger off with your HD Citrix, stick it up your arse.

 

 

If you have any more suggestions on things that are HD and shouldn’t be then please let me know.

 

Luke Signing out.

 

Tattoos and the meaning.

Now before I start this I want to say a few things.

1 thanks to Dave for lending me the space on his blog to publish my opinions

2 this is not meant as personal to anyone and just my views.

Right now that’s out the way let me begin.

Anyone who knows me will know that im a huge fan of tattoos and the lifestyles and cultures that involve them. But I have a problem.

It seems to be more and more that people are getting a tattoo in order to say “Look I have a tattoo and im now officially original and no longer mainstream” This is BOLLOX!!!!!

Walking into a tattoo studio and just grabbing something that you have seen off the wall or getting the same tattoo that your favourite footballer or celebrity has does not make you mainstream it makes you a sheep, becoming part of the flock and having something that someone already has as it you think its going to make you into them?

I don’t think there has ever been a month where I have bought a tattoo magazine and not see the very generic Black Panther tattoo that you see on every tattoo shop wall around the world, and I have to be honest and if you know me will know how true this is but I hate them! There are 1000’s of variations of this tattoo but they are all the same no matter how different they are. (please note this is the tattoo I don’t like not the canvass).

It almost seems to be that now a Tattoo is a fashion statement and people don’t seem to look into the meaning or history of them, e.g. saw a guy in a bar in London that had the spider web tattoo on the elbow and also a tear drop tattoo under his eye, out of curiosity I asked him how many years he served (tear drops are normally a prison tattoo obtained when you have killed someone). He gave me a strange look and asked what I ment? After explaining the meaning of the tattoo his reply was “ I just thought it looked cool”

Im guessing the message of this is if you want a tattoo that’s cool, but make sure that it is a tattoo that has meaning and relevance to you. That’s assuming you’ve read this far and have not thought im mad man that just rants on.

Thanks for your time and big props to Big Dave for letting me hijack his blog.

So more (moar??) self indulgent posting.

It’s been a while but really I have been gathering Intel on this blog post. Or I’m fucking lazy…

I am in a band, as some of you may know and for those who don’t it’s @citytorn on Twitter, and we had a meeting last night.

On thing that came out of this meeting is that my drummer, and mostly the band leader, didn’t know what the hell social media / networking is. This concerned me slightly, he is 23 with his finger vaguely on the pulse but at the same time he had no idea of what Twitter was or what it’s various uses are. Now don’t see me as some sort of social media guru, I am far from it, for that you need to be looking at the @documentally and @hannahnicklin ‘s of this world. No I would class myself in the power user category of tweeps, (this is the MS security version of a Power User, someone who uses most functionality can do basic to advanced tasks but does not do complex administration or configuration) I do not use Twitter to it’s full potential, but I understand it has potential, it’s just unlocking this that I find a little hard.

Now There are several ways I can get people interested in my band’s Twitter and get them following and possibly converting those followers into fans, most of these though I view as ethically a little dubious, namely adding every last person who mentions the words city or torn in a tweet, or just trawling and following people hoping they will view and follow the band back. Like I said this seems a little dubious to me, it’s fine for spam bots to do this, because that’s their job, the people who use them however in my opinion can fuck off, so that’s why I can’t employ one myself. The other approach would take too much of my time and investment to show little real results. So I am stuck, sort of. The other way I can get this to work is to try and generate a following base of people using other sites, such as FB with Twitter integration or any various twadgets built into other pages, or just plain ol' fashioned “Hey were on Twitter, just search city torn” . But this has it’s own problem, people are very unwilling to join Twitter.

It may seem strange to say but people just do not want to move to a new site, namely because we come back to my drummer’s position of…I don’t understand Twitter, or we hit the roadblock of, but I am on Facebook why should I join Twitter?? Well there is no moral reason why you should really, I can’t force you into it to be honest, but you could follow my band and unlock the potential for yourself, discover what a world Twitter is, it isn’t just a whole bunch of ME ME ME or “Aren’t I quirky in under 140 characters” or the invariable influx of new users #lunchtime tweets. (Ok to fess up I have my #lunchtimephoto but I am requested to do them now because people like seeing me and my friend @bearpiglett having lunch) Twitter is like the social consciousness for the online world. It is millions of users with their opinions, their finds on the internet and their blog posts putting mp’s to rights over #3strikes…

It is the central repository for the pull-centric idea of information and media delivery. The user decides what they want and they retrieve it, they aren’t having the content forced at them, they aren’t being told what to look at or which articles to read, they are generating their own content and creating a world wide repository for human ideals, interests and #failpics. It is an exciting world to be a part of…

I just wish @citytorn could get a foothold in it…

Dear _____________,

Dear _____________,

Dear _____________,

Dear _____________,

Dear Record company executives,

Dear Musicians of the world,

I am writing to you in this hour of need, in this hour of greed and hate and persecution. Yes it is a dark time for our nation and for our world. People are in media induced comas, being told not to panic about swine flu which inevitably leads to panic. People are afraid to leave their houses at night for fear of being stabbed by children on street corners, and now people are terrified by pirates, “Hackers” (Note this is in inverted commas as a hacker is your definition not ours), phishers, scammers, script kiddies, viruses, worms and Trojans roving the high waves of the internet.

And why not? We have been told to be afraid of them for our own protection, we are told everyday that these are the people who are sending our world to hell, we are looking through the windscreens of our luxury cars at the edge of oblivion, being slowly nudged towards it by these people! Or so we are told.

I looked out of my window yesterday, I work in a large building it was a good view, and I couldn’t help but look down at the analogue world (If we have a digital then what is this I stand on now? Not real world because for some the digital domain is more real than this) and I looked at the people in their cars, on the pavement. I looked at this proportionately small mass of people, and I tried to imagine their crimes for which they would be tried and punished. Films, music, television show, I looked at these people and pointed a virtual gun to their temples, but the difference is you are willing to pull the trigger.

I am a musician, I am in a band, we have recorded music, it has been copyrighted, am I concerned about people sharing it? No. Fervently not. I am not concerned by people sharing my music, I am not concerned with my music reaching a wider audience, I am not concerned with people obtaining it FOR FREE. Music is my integrity. If someone however were to perform my music elsewhere under a different guise as a different band, and claimed it as their own, then I would be furious. But this is not the issue here. We are not talking about a report in which plagiarists are punished heavily for the false propagation of my work, it is instead a report which presumes the, guilty until proven innocent, users are all downloading illegally.

I am also writing to you as a supporter of open source, creative commons and hacker based ethics, I work with computers day to day. I disseminate information from social media sources, I gather resources from the internet, it forms part of my life and my work. I understand the digital domain, I understand how quickly it will change and adapt to your moves, already the wheels are turning, people are moving against your plans and changing the way they share information, as the hackers manifesto says, you can stop one of us but you cannot stop us all. Do not think for a moment your #3strikes policy will stop people sharing, these measures have not worked in the past why will they stop now, you will simply drive the problem underground where it can boil and grow and rear its head again (This will cause you a bigger problem in the long run).

But what am I writing? (After such a long and rambling introduction?) Of course it is another incendiary and inflammatory letter about the #3strikes policy. I do not agree of course with this policy, as I said I am a musician and a computer user, and I (As well as many of us) are happy for our work to get spread among the people. Any press is good press, the more people who listen to my music are more likely to come to my gigs, are more likely to read my publications, to view my pictures and to enjoy what I do. I make music, art, theatre for the people. Of course it would be wrong of me to say that I am not in this for myself, because of course I am, but I do not make music for the money, I do not act for the fame, I do these things for the reward of being able to get on the stage, watch people react to what I do. As Hannah Nicklin has already said, money is the carrot not the stick; it is the encouragement for people to create art and music.

I guess I have no argument here, I guess there is no great literary work contained here, for that you will have to read the open letter written by Hannah. I guess there is no real reason for anyone to read this, or to have it published, after all I am not a writer I am a musician, one who is writing this as quickly as possible at work, but I feel my point is contained here…somewhere.

Thanks

wbbigdave

Man with Guitar seeks technology for passionate affair

So after a month or more without blogging it’s time to write again. Im finding it hard to think of new technology to bring to the fore and to write about, namely because I don’t seem to have the money to invest in new tech so I cannot review any new tech. Then I realised I am buying technology all the time. Guitar tech, that is my domain, it’s where my money seems to be poured, the pedal makers, the amp crafters the great steel forges where tubes are born and these are the places which thrive on my money. I am proud to wear my “MUFF” t-shirt proudly displaying the Electro Harmonix logo on the back, declaring my love for everything EHX my colours proud.

My latest purchase is the Line 6 Relay 30, it is a Bluetooth based wireless system operating at the very top of the license free wireless frequencies (around 2.4ghz I am told!) so there is little chance for interference from radio systems and mobile phone signals. This is imperative in this modern age plagued by hand held communication devices, and it allows for some fantastic stability of signal (the only interference I have encountered so far is from the other guitarist using the same wireless system and thought it would be a larf to switch to my channel). As I can hear so far there is no real loss in signal, it sounds pretty clean which is good as the box claims “Wired tone, wireless freedom!” it’s not a bad claim either. The tone I was using was mostly provided by the EHX Metal Muff pedal running through the effects loop of an ENGL reverb 50 combo amp, which meant at least I wouldn’t loose signal quality from the pedal tones. The only downsides to this set up were, A) it actually meant I used more wires, one for sending to the effects loop one for returning, power for the Metal Muff the Big Muff Pi and the Tuner, power for the Small Clone (running EHX proprietary 9V adapter) patch leads for these effects on the board (three in total) then power for the Amp, patch lead for each end of the wireless and then the power for the receiving unit as well. All in all we are talking 11 cables compared to my usual 8. B) For some reason the Big Muff Pi I am using feeds back like a champ whore when I run it through the effects loop. This could be because I am running the effects loop totally wet and need to blend it out some or the gain on the amp needs to come down some, but either way I can’t use it’s beautifully crafted muddy tone. This is something I need to play with.

As you can see I don’t have the most complex rig ever imagined but my mind is always looking for more areas into which I can expand. I am constantly looking up more and more pedals and effects. Some day I am sure I will run out of money or space in my rig, but I hope not. I can always find space for one more effect, even if it has to float on the edge of my board, or sit on top of my amp.

Oh another quick note. My favourite piece of technology at the moment are my ear plugs. Crafted by the fine people at Elacin, my ER-20 cost me quite a bit off the shelf (Can’t remember quite how much but enough to make me choke on my drink) but they are so good. I have used regular plugs in the past and I find that they are muddy and block a lot of sound from damaging my precious hearing. But they seriously compromise the sound I am hearing as well. This is good until I really need to hear what’s going on. I need to hear the drumbeat and the bass to get my timing down. Now i'm not saying these plugs are perfect, it takes a while to get used to putting them in, as they are by no means intuitive, and if you don’t put them in far enough not only do they fall out. But they have a tendency to not work properly (functioning like regular plugs) plus the can be a pure bitch to clean. But they have saved my ears on more than one occasion and I am incredibly grateful (I have suffered for up to four days with tinnitus after forgetting them once or twice)

Final word, you can never have enough pedals, guitars, amps, or good quality cables. This, my friends, is a fact.