March 2004 Archives

I've been reading some interesting stories in the news today about file sharers in Europe being targetted by the authorities for illegally downloading music from networks like Kazaa and WinMX. Apparently the music industry are getting their neatly ironed knickers in a twist over the damage these cads and bounders are doing to music sales.

Odd then that the same day such stories appear there's another less publicised article on the Register (see it here) from two univeristy professors in the US who say that downloading has little or no impact on music sales. PArt of the report reads:

File sharing has no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample," their report states. "Moreover, the estimates are of rather modest size when compared to the drastic reduction in sales in the music industry. At most, file sharing can explain a tiny fraction of this decline."

A seperate article published yesterday by the British Phonograph Industry show that album sales in the UK are actually on the increase but profits aren't as good as they once were thanks, in part, to the price wars which are currently on-going between major retailers. CDs which once retailled for £13+ can now be sought out for as little £8.99.

It seems to me the whiff of greed is strong with this one but I can't help thinking that the record labels would do a lot better if they didn't insist on realise talentless shite which we're then brainwashed into buying. By way of explanation here's a snippet from the modern Shakespeare's of pop music, the popular beat combination "The Streets" :

And this is the day in the life of a Geezer For this ain't a club track Pull out yer sack and sit back Whether you white or black Smoke weed, chase brown Or toot rock We're on a mission, support the cause Sign a petition, summon all your wisdom The Music's a gift from the Man on high The Lord and his children Triple teenyear rudeboys Come rain or snow the boodah flows You don't know?

A couple of things spring to mind here:
1. Apparently it's always good to get some drug references in - it's very .. "street"
2. According to a DJ on Virgin the bloke that wrote this is a "highly talented lyricist" though I'm sure I misheard it as talentless twat.
3. Are the Lord and his children really triple teenyear rudeboys? I think not.
4. Should I ever feel inclined to pull out my "sack" I will not be smoking anything at the time for fear of burns and/or dropped ash

To sum up this mini-rant, the music industry would do well to produce reasonably priced, quality tunes for the mass market and not some incomprehensible toss written by a semi-literate baseball cap wearing half-wit from a council estate in Chigwell.

And don't get me started on Will Young ...

and finally; Word up to all the bad mofo's who "reed ma sheet" and "goodbye for now" to all those who have evolved sufficiently to stop listening to (c)rap music and can read without running their fingers under the words ...

Bugger ... bugger bugger bugger ...

I loved my Mp3 player (a Creative Labs Jukebox Zen) it went everywhere with me. I took the time to upload over 2000 albums to the bloody thing. And now it's broken. Worse, it's out of warranty and for some unfathomable reason it rattles when picked up.

I can't really justify another £200+ for a new unit and I don't fancy those iPod things so i guess I'll have to resort to plan B which involves singing to myself tunelessly instead.

So, if you see a sad looking figure wandering down the street clutching a handful of useless electronics and muttering "dern-dern-dern-boom-chick-boom-chick-dern-dern" stop me and say hi ...

Apparently Britain is following in the footsteps of the US when it comes to obesity. I read today that the catering industry has revealed that customers are asking for increasing portions of food when eating out - not good when there's a huge drive to try and slim people down.

Looking at the details of the report it's not difficult to see why we're heading for dietary meltdown:

The survey also highlighted some of the most shocking dishes ordered by customers, including:

A 36oz T-bone steak,

A full English breakfast with six eggs,

Three bread rolls, two starters, two 8oz fillet steaks, with two bottles of wine and a plate of cheese - ordered by someone who weighed 25st.

Four pork chops, baked potatoes, 12 eggs and garlic bread.

A breakfast of chips for a three-year-old.

If you're the kind of person that eats this volume of food then stop reading this, bugger off outside and do some exercise .

Modern technology is a wonderful thing, until you actually come to use it...

Recently I bought an Ipaq 4150 and a GPS module, most of the time the Ipaq is used for run-of-the-mill PDA type things but occasionally I have the need to electronically navigate my way around the country (and it might come in handy for Elly when she has appointments in hard to reach places in London.

So, on Saturday night when it came to travelling down to Vauxhall to check out Club Wicked's new venue we decided to see how accurate Ipaq+GPS really was.

Things got off to bad start when the 'paq refused to communicate with the GPS unit and no amount of swearing would get the pair to talk to each other. I gave up and threw the lot in the glovebox of the car. Elly fiddled with it for a bit. Nothing happened. It was only after 10 minutes of travelling I realised I had forgotten to turn bluetooth on on the Ipaq. /me = dumbass.

That embarassment aside, the first part of the journey down the M4 and through Hammersmith was a breeze and we didn't think anything of it when my electronic guide told me to deviate from my usual "20-minutes to the door" guaranteed-success route to the South of the river and insisted on a jaunt through Knightsbridge.

In fact it didn't bat an e-eyelid when traffic started to bunch somewhere around the heart of London and it remianed strangely quiet when it landed us in a traffic jam that took an hour to negotiate, turning my 20 minute journey into a 70 minute rant about slack-witted London drivers, buses, political protestors and irritating bloody portable navigation systems.

Still, at least Wicked proved to be a good night out :D

I think it's fair to say that after a long and mildly tiring weekend that Dawn of the Dead was a total winner. It was terrifying, horrifying and hysterically funny all in one perfectly formed length of celluloid. It was interesting to see how director Zack Snyder took the original premise of Romero's DoD script and bolted on a whole raft of new and interesting bits, even to the point of taking the slow, ponderous nature of the original zombies and swapping it for hyper-fast "attack undead" - I wasn't sure it was going to work but it certainly adds a new dimension to the movie to see blood-covered loons tearing about the place at high speed ripping chunks out of the living. Marvellous !

Elsewhere this weekend myself and Elly went to Club Wicked's latest fetish venue in Vauxhall. One of the benefits or being a photographer's husband is that I get to go to a variety of new and interesting places where folks are often half-dressed (or less in some cases ...) The new place was fantastic, lots of room to move, plenty of interesting nooks and crannies and a whole new experience for all who attended. A couple of things seemed unduly restrictive however, the couples area was way too small and needs to be extended and there really should be some form of warning up as to where people can entertain themselves - I don't think I've ever been to a fetish venue before and seem people being told not to shag one another ...

Anyways, after a weekend of debauchery and the undead it's back to normal life. Given that I'm currently undergoing something of a zombie revival I decided to dig out my copy of Resident Evil Zero for the GameCube and settle down to some quality survival horror mayhem. So far it's been a success, with a few caveats, namely the bloody zombies seem to fasten onto my character like limpets to a ships hull - bah humbug say I.

Dawn of the Dead is on "special preview" tomorrow and Friday night. The wife doesn't know yet but her caring, sharing husband is about to take her to the movies for a night out ... hands up all those who think she'll be seeing something other than "Cheaper by the Dozen" :)

Much to the horror of the Web developers I work with, it's been sunny today and light has been flooding in through the office windows. Like wannabe Gollums they scuttled to close the blinds and at lunchtime I swear I saw them huddling in a corner, preying for rain - "what has it got in it pocket-(pc)-ses ?"

Fantastic news!!!

In a couple of weeks a big screen of George Romero's classic zombie movie Dawn of the Dead is going to be released. Even better news is that shortly after that a British "romantic zombie comedy" called Shaun of the Dead is destined for general release. I saw the online trailed earlier today and it's looks hilarious - I command anyone who reads this drivel to go to the cinema and support your local horror movie !!

It's not often I get homesick (especially for a city like Hull) but I managed to get in one of those terribly nostalgic moods this morning while listening to my MP3 Jukebox on the way into work.

Years ago, when I still lived up North (I'm currently in the Berkshire area) we discovered an excellent British Country Music artist called Mike Greaves who had a band called MG Greaves and the Lonesome Too. Once a week, Mike and the band would play a local pub. They were rally very good combining a country music style with a cheeky British wit that Americans would never understand.

Mike put out a couple of albums and was pretty successful by all accounts - a number of his tracks were covered by the Beautiful South over the years - but I haven't heard anything of him or the band for ages until I picked up the CDs from home and chucked
them onto my portable device.

Anyways, sitting in backed-up traffic on the M4 on the way into Slough I fancied a listen to some of Mr Greaves' quality material and was immediately taken back to the banks of the River Humber and the odd whiff of fish from the docks (and they say nostalgia isn't what it used to be ...)

What it did hammer home was the fact that I am, sadly, getting older - not a pleasant thought at the best of times but disgustingly inevitable. Thinking back to when I was living on the verge of poverty working like a lunatic and wishing for a decent salary, it hit me that my current monthly wage cheque is way above what I used to earn but I'm still miserable for eight hours a day only now with the added disadvantage of having to sit in traffic with thousands of other mindless drones from Sector 7G for two hours a day.

After mulling the thought over for a bit around junction 8/9 (Maidenhead) it struck me there are only two ways out of this situation:

1. Win the lottery
2. Become King of England

Sadly option #1 is giving me more difficulties than one might expect - when the lottery launched they promised one if every four tickets was a "winner". After years of playing the bloody thing on three tickets a week I expect more than £50. Option #2 is equally unreachable as the Divine Right of Kings doesn't apparently extend to the sons of journalist's from Hull - bummer.

All things considered I may have to head for the newly invented option #3 and rob the Bank of England or the easiest option of the lot: chuck in my job and go on the dole where all I have to is whine constantly about how I need an updated Sky subscription and develop a heroin habit so some other bastard can pay for me - free council house and clothes for Wayne and Treesa anyone?

Not that I'm bitter you understand ;)

My place in geek heaven is now totally assured ...

Just before Christmas I convinced myself it would be a magnificent to take the plunge and buy my own personal mobile phone. However, the standard run-of-the-mill telephonic instrument would have been sub-standard so I settled for a rather nifty Nokia 6600 on the grounds it had a calendar, contacts book, camera etc etc.

For a couple of weeks all was well until I realised that all teenagers have evolved and possess a special kind of "new wave" thumb which makes it possible for them to type endless text messages without an ache, a pain and without breaking into a sweat.

Being over 30 I don't possess such opposable dexterity and I quickly realised the only way to store my information usefully was in some form of PDA. So I replaced my £70 phone with an HP Ipaq (which I have to admit is a fantastic toy !!!). There were minor rumblings of discontent from the wife but let's face it, my old HP Jornada just wasn't up to the job of keeping me up-to-date. Really. It wasn't. Swear to God!

Now after a month or so of furious stylus flourishing I finally got around to buying a GPS nav system for the iPaq - and it's totally cool !!!

I can now drive around with a PDA wedged on my dashboard, surrounded by flashing lights and an electronic voice which tells me to turn left, take the motorway then leave at junction 6. I never again have to wake up in a cold sweat thanks to nightmares about getting lost and most importantly I no longer have to rely on out trusty old AA Map of the Road which has the page for west London missing.

"Does it work and is it accurate ?" asked Elly. "Of course it does," I told her, "I got all the way to work and back without getting lost once ..."