In other news

I signed up for a .tel today. No idea if anything will come  of it, but it looks like one of those things I’ll see in 6 months’ time and wish I signed up for, after my name’s already gone.

Catfish

While turning the house upside down tonight for a wooden spoon (long story), I found this little gem. Won’t mean anything to most of you, but means a lot to me. Back in the day I was in a band called Catfish. It went through many line-ups, including 3 singers (all at the same time) , 2 guitarists (at the same time), 3 bass players (at different times), 1 drummer, 1 cellist, 2 keyboard players, a saxophonist, a violinist and a trumpet player. By the end it was a 6-piece funk outfit on the cusp of success, but then everyone left Uni and went their separate ways. We got a couple of recordings down by the end, along with some dodgy gig recordings, but what I found tonight took me right back to the very beginning. The first ever gig, in the Grovel, the bar in the Whitworth Park halls of residence in Manchester, with the original line-up of 3 people. One of them is still one of my best friends, and still my favourite person to jam with. I can’t believe it’s been more than a decade since the first gig. Since I’m blogging this, I may as well add some gig pics too.

The original setlist

The Boys

Battle of the bands Round two in the Hop & Grape (now academy 3)

Words of wisdom and comfort from Dr Boardman

And of course the sock. On the right is Guppy, desperately trying not to look at my arse.

And finally the sock itself. It’s original owner is now a well-respected San Francisco-based blogger, Married to a Biochemist who also happens to be an inspirational bass player that I had the great pleasure to be in a band with for too short a period. Catfish. Good Times.

The Value of Money

that last post got me thinking about school again so thought I’d impart another memory.

They say school is the happiest time of your life and while I didn’t think so at the time, I do remember most of my time at school fondly. One of the things that did always bother me though, was being one of the poor kids. My family wasn’t actually that poor. Both parents worked, there were three of us boys and our needs were quite simple, but the problem was I went to a public school. For any American readers, that’s the same as your private schools (I know that’s confusing, but that’s how it is). So the thing about a public school (or Grammar School as mine was) is that you have to pay fees to attend, unless you get a scholarship. If you’re under a certain income level (or rather your parents are) you can apply for an assisted place, provided your mark in the entrance exam is high enough. As my older brother had got in on an assisted place, and as my parents couldn’t afford full fees, there was quite a lot of pressure on me to get an assisted place. Suffice to say I managed it, but never did I imagine what a difference it would make.

More or less all of my peers were better off than I was. All of them had fancy calculators and watches, and new uniforms, bought for them, not handed down from an older brother (though mum was always careful to ensure it was my  name in everything, not my brother’s). If they played a musical instrument it was their own, not one borrowed from the school. So I was always conscious of being less well-off than pretty much everyone else.

Before too long I managed to get myself in Saturday morning detention (unsurprisingly, for failure to do homework) and on the day, found myself in an unheated portacabin on the edge of the school grounds, in the company of ruffians, bounders, cads and ne’er-do-wells, and sat next to a boy who was in my year but in a different form. He asked to borrow a pen. I had two, a fountain pen and a calligraphy marker. I was very particular about the fountain pen but knew I’d get into trouble if I lost the calligraphy marker as it had been expensive. Thinking I’d probably get in more trouble for handing in lines written in thick marker, I handed the calligraphy pen to my fellow detainee.

I never got it back, but over the years I came to be good friends with the boy in question and one year I was invited to his house, over Christmas. I didn’t really understand the trust that was being placed in me until I got there, and realised that here was someone who was actually less well off even than me, and realised that my friend was very slightly embarrassed by how sparse everything was, and how little they had. He was one of 5 or 6 kids, I forget exactly how many, but I remember being envious of how well they all got on (me and my brothers seldom saw eye to eye when we lived at home). My friend’s parents were divorced, but got on ok, and so at Christmas made a concession and Dad came round for the festivities. Very seldom have I been made more welcome than I was that day, and was fed to bursting point, though this weighed on my conscience, feeling that I was depriving them of a helping that would have made their own go that bit further.

If it all sounds a bit Dickensian that’s because that’s a bit how it felt. I’d known all my life we were poor, but didn’t realise how fortunate I was until then. I saw what it was like to just get by, to just make ends meet. And then the really surprising thing happened – they started giving out presents. It wasn’t actually Christmas day, just a meal in the Christmas holidays, so I hadn’t been expecting presents. I felt a bit awkward as though I was intruding on a private family moment – I hadn’t brought anything to give them, not even my friend, as I hadn’t know it was expected. And it didn’t seem logical for them to have got me something because it had been a bit of a last minute thing, so I was just kind of watching this private thing. Then my friend’s Dad said “and this one’s for Paul” and handed me an envelope. I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say. I made intrigued gratitude noises and carefully open the envelope. Inside was a puzzle. A hand-made puzzle. the instructions read:

1. This is another wall (without any half bricks)

2. It is 6 bricks high.

3. There are 48 bricks in the wall.

4. There are 16 pieces of three bricks.

5. No brick of the same colour is next to another of that colour either horizontally or vertically in the correctly built wall.

My friend’s Dad had made me a present. My friend was a bit embarrassed, but he needn’t have been. Of all the friends he could have made at school, I was one of the few who really understood what it meant to have less than everyone else. What it meant to have home-made and second hand stuff. To have to bring your P.E. kit in  a carrier bag instead of an adidas boot bag. To have a no-name blue blazer with the school badge sewn on the breast pocket because we couldn’t afford the proper blazer. I thought the present was ace. I love puzzles, but I also loved the fact that it had been hand made, and his Dad had given it to me so I’d feel included. And I did. A fool knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. That puzzle is a few bits of cardboard in a brown envelope but it’s one of my most valuable things, because it changed the way I look at the world, and at other people.

I work best under pressure

That’s what I keep telling myself at least. I haven’t felt like this since Uni. In fact, realistically since A-Levels. In a week’s time I will just have run my first full training day. The current planned attendance is 70 delegates. the day will start off with an hour long presentation, by me with some help from my Parental Unit. It will then lead to an hour long practical demonstration of the technology in the presentation. After this I get lunch and then a break as Dad talks to the delegates about library stuff I don’t understand, like funding and boroughs and other counilly words. After that the delegates which each spend an hour or so doing practical excercises which I have written specifically for this course. They will involves things like setting up a blog, following an RSS feed. sending a message to @stephenfry. Finally there will be a summary of the day, again given by me, followed by a Q&A (if anyone has any questions I haven’t been able to answer during the day).

The presentation is nearly finished, which is the basis and foundation of the course, but the rest is still very much in the planning stages. I still have 6 days to put my shit together, and I know the last bits can be done in a couple of evenings, or one full day, but between now and then I am also doing the Manchester Run, with insufficient training (just as I did last year, so pretty sure I’ll be ok) and doubt I will be in the mood for powerpoint afterwards. I remember at school I always used to leave all my homework until the last minute, doing everything imaginable to avoid doing it (thankfully there was no such thing as a blog when I did A-Levels or I wouldn’t have passed anything and would probably have four gold stars and an attitude by now) and it’s a habit I’ve never been able to break. I know that it will make things a lot easier in the long run if I get things done early, then I can relax and not worry myself half to death thinking about what I haven’t done. I know that there is less chance I’ll miss anything if it’s finished earlier so I can add to it later if need be. But despite knowing all this, I just can’t do it. I do work well under pressure, but whether I work better is doubtful, whatever the little red dude on  my shoulder keeps telling me. It’s just how I’ve always done it. I should probably address it and get myself more organised, but I know that even if I do, there will always be a little voice inside my head saying “yeah, but it works, you know?” and I’ll always inevitably say “Yeah, *sigh*, I guess I could build that snowspeeder again after all. And might as well put the trilogy on while I do. That homework’s not due for nearly a week”.

Once a slacker, always a slacker.

Sleep is a precious commodity

Opinions vary on how much sleep you need, and how much is too much or too little. Different people need different amounts and we all have very different requirements. Sleep can be a blissful regenerative experience and so its lack can be frustrating and even traumatic – both during the hours when you try, in vain, to sleep and during the following day when you have to not only deal with the challenges of the day, but have to deal with them in a foggy and slightly trippy frame of mind due to the lack of sleep the previous night.

I am very particular about my sleep and all the factors that surround it. I can’t sleep if I'm to hot or too cold. I can’t wear anything when I'm sleeping because i move about too much and on more than one occasion have woken up apparently trying to asphyxiate myself with my bedclothes. If the surface is too soft, or too hard, i can’t sleep. If there is noise outside the normal ambient white noise of a northern suburb, i can’t sleep (people rolling out of pubs drunk rarely disturb me as that’s par for the course). If my pillow is too high or too low, i can’t sleep. I take my own pillows pretty much everywhere with me because they’re at the right height and one of them is memory foam and it takes me a good 3 or 4 nights to get used to a new pillow arrangement that it generally works out easier all round just to bring my own. Getting to sleep, when all the right conditions are met, is a sublime experience. Failing to sleep due to one of the criteria falling short, can be a stressful experience, often triggering a catch-22 cycle of thoughts as i get more and more frustrated with my inability to perform the most basic and fundamental function of being human. For this reason i like to go to bed late, thoroughly exhausted, on crisp, clean sheets with my memory foam pillow, where i read until i find myself reading the same line 5 times through the drowse, or sometimes until i wake up with the book on my face.

Once I’m out though, there’s no waking me up. I would sleep until doomsday if i was left to it, so i have to have quite a complex and logical wake up system. I work shifts, which can be anything from an 8-4 to a 12-8, so week-to-week my sleeping patterns can be quite different. As you probably noticed already, I’m quite particular about things being changed, so i have conditioned myself to an easy to understand regime. I have one alarm for each shit pattern, and another for days off. Each has a different song assigned to it, so that when i wake up half dazed and befuddled, i can tell, from what song is playing, what shift i am on. Each alarm is set to snooze after 7 minutes (except days off when i have a ten minute snooze (if i have an alarm (and yes, i did just double bracket – three including this one))). I get up when it goes off for the third time, or before – if by some miracle i am awake enough.

This all probably seems terribly OCD, but if it is, it’s an OCD brought about by too many sleepless nights leading to the point where the only way to possibly *get* any sleep is to devise a system. The system has built up over many years and gradually becomes more complex and elaborate, as though sleep is an adversary, ever trying to evade capture, so i have to constantly update and refine my strategies to track him down. I suspect that by the time i reach old age, I will need three mattresses (one memory foam), a real-time temperature adjuster, a pile of cushions and pillows, a specially blended mix of exactly the right proportions of oxygen and nitrogen, and several lines of valium, just to get vaguely drowsy.

Caustic Soda

"Right, this, boys and girls (I went to an all boys' school, but Dr. Marsden tended to ironically use the patter of a  stage magician whenever he showed us something cool or funny) is caustic soda".
At this stage of our lives, none of us has a clue what "caustic" means, but we know soda is an American word for pop, and we've also come across bicarbonate of soda - if not at home then in a previous lesson with Dr. Marsden. So naturally we assume it's something along those lines.
"I want you to form a line at the front and I'm going to drop a little bit onto your thumb". Sounds easy enough, and anything which involves queuing up at the teacher's desk is clearly not going to involve any writing, or anything that could be described as "work" for a while, so we go about it with an enthusiasm rarely seen outside the chemistry labs. We dutifully queue up and Dr. Marsden proceeds to put a drop on the forefinger of the first few boys, who then amble back to their desks, rubbing thumb and forefinger together. After a few have been done, the Doc says:
"Can you describe what it feels like, boys?"
"Sir, it's a bit slimy"
"Yeah, and a bit sticky"
"feels like soap"
"OK, so you'd describe it as 'viscous'?"
"Yeah that's it", a few boys chime in sheepishly, having been taught the word only last lesson, and told to remember it.
"The interesting thing about caustic soda is that it actually has a consistency very similar to that of water"
"Sir, so why is it slimy then?"
"Viscous, boy. It's viscous because it's not actually the caustic soda that's causing the viscosity, it's the cells of skin it's dissolved from your finger tips"
The soft, barely perceptible whisper from the rubbing of 10 pairs of thumbs and forefingers comes to an audible halt and blood drains from about half the faces in the room. A couple of boys strangle a gasp, determined not to look like wimps, but at the same time shitting bricks about how much more the caustic soda was going to dissolve before he got round to telling us the antidote. The other half of the faces instead turned to a kind of macabre excitement - wanting to feel the viscosity of dissolving skin but already knowing the outcome, and more importantly they guessed - the resolution, before getting the drop of flesh-eating liquid.
"It's actually neutralised by water, you just need to wash it off"
I have never before or since, seen a group of 12 and 13 year old boys more eager to wash their hands. In seconds the four sinks in the chemistry lab were surrounded by boys trying to get to the water first, while the rest of the class clamoured round the teacher's desk to get flesh-eating liquid dripped on their skin, somehow more exciting by the fact that we knew what it was going to do, but exciting in a safe way, because you know how to make it stop.
I imagine modern health & safety laws, and the culture of law suits we have now, preclude this kind of demonstration these days, but for all it's barbarism, it was very effective - to this day I think of that lesson whenever I hear the word caustic, and I've never forgotten the properties of caustic soda.

Jollydays &c.

Well I’ve been a bit busy being on jollydays to have much time for doing stuff on here. I’ve also got lots of projects ongoing so have been busy doing stuff instead of blogging about doing stuff. This is a bit of a summary blog, mostly for my own benefit to try and keep track of everything I’m doing. In just over a month I’m running a training day with my Dad for a load of librarians who want to know about the kind of technology that is now available. Well, I say that, in fact their boss wants them to know more about it – they are a bunch of 40 and 50-something technophobes, as far as I can tell from the information we’ve been given so far. The brief is to enthuse them about new technology and specifically how it can be used to improve library services. This is a kind of ongoing project which started a few years ago with us giving a presentation at the National Library for the Blind in Stockport, about the migration from cassette tapes to digital media in the field of audiobooks. This is obviously a big subject for the NLB, but also for librarians in general as it’s a popular format and most libraries are still issuing tapes.

After the first presentation we were invited to do a couple more at various venues and library events around the country, gradually expanding the presentation into a full lecture and Q&A, encompassing more aspects of digital media and ways of disseminating information to customers. The last one was at the international “Umbrella” conference organised by CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals), where we presented to some 200 librarians (standing room only by the end) who wanted to know what all the fuss was about ipods, mp3s, RSS and so on. Clearly it is something that librarians are interested in, but it isn’t something which is covered within the profession. Various authorities around the country have dabbled with various things but it’s far from being a library standard and most web services are viewed with suspicion or largely ignored, which to be is quite disappointing, but more than that, it’s quite surprising.

Librarians are the original nerds, and their prime directive is getting information to the public for free (or at least on a very small budget). Now, seeing as the internet is largely made up of geeks and nerds (well, all the bits worth seeing are) and bearing in mind that the internet is basically a massive free resource of information, the fact that the vast majority of librarians know little or nothing about the internet and the services available to them is, quite frankly, baffling.

I am by no means an authority on any of the services available, but I am geek, and regular user of a lot of the services – some of them because they’re useful, some of them because they’re fun, and some of them cause I just like being involved with things which are new and shiny and efficient. I love the fact that the web is this massive, sprawling, interactive *thing* that everyone can have as much or as little involvement in as they like. I recently discovered that I can publish a blog post by sending an email from my phone to blogger, which will in turn notify twitterfeed, which then updates my twitter status to say that I have blogged. So I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that the course is basically being presented to the kingdom of the blind, and I have one eye. Or something.

So anyway, today it occurred to me that while I am at home being ill and coughing all over everything and doped up on lemsips and some foul-tasting cough medicine that seems to do fuck all, I might as well put the time to good use, so registered a domain, set up a site, a blog and an email address to act as a kind of interactive resource for the delegates both before and after the training day. Not really got much on there yet but just getting it set up is a load off cause I can just add stuff as I think of it. Aiming to have a fairly functional site by the end of the weekend then I’ll send it over to the organisers to pass on to the delegates. Most of them will probably ignore it pre-course, but any that do look at it will be better prepared for the course, and if anyone asks for copies of anything on the day I can just post it on the site for them, making the whole thing that bit more interactive.

So, in addition to the library stuff I’ve also been busy giving my site a bit of an overhaul cause it was looking a bit, well, shit. No major changes, just updated the pic to reflect the fact that i don’t have long black hair anymore, and changed the overall look of it. The pseudo-futuristic lettering was starting to annoy me a bit and the blue made it all see a bit cold and naff. Now it’s brown and probably equally naff, but I like it a bit more. I also added a link to my youtube page, which seemed appropriate now that I’ve actually started putting things *on* my youtube page. I think it’s safe to say that the combined readership of my site and all my blogs and tweets is about 15 people, but should it ever increase and people want an easy portal to everything, then the web site will be ready and waiting.

Still struggling with getting the HD transfer from the computer to the xbox, but adding ethernet over power to replace the annoyingly unreliable wireless connection has certainly improved it to some degree, as the xbox can now connect quickly enough to click through media browser properly, though still can’t play any of the content (even the non-HD stuff") which seems to be down to an issue with transcode not doing, well, anything as far as I can tell. Ho hum, I’m sure I’ll work it out eventually, and until then I’ll just have to survive without the 720p loveliness of America’s finest TV shows. I also this week finally got caught up with the myriad RSS feeds I accumulated during the time when I had no intertubes after moving to the new house. This is great because it means that a) reading RSS feeds is once again a joy rather than a chore, and b) I can start subscribing to new stuff without fear of what it’s going to do to my inbox. And on that note, if you get this blog by RSS, apologies for the fact that it has probably taken you a week to read all of this entry, assuming anyone actually gets this far.

Epic Fail

Today started with me failing to get the media centre set up as I wanted. There’s a plug-in for Vista Media Centre called media browser that allows you to stream HD content from a computer to an xbox. I found it also needs something called transcode 360, so I got that too. Got to the point where the xbox can see all the files I want it to see, but can’t play any of them, not even the stuff that’s not HD.

Next up the PS1 game I ordered from ebay arrived. It was tekken 3. or at least, it was supposed to be. It is actually a one-level playable demo. I have since spent a day arguing with the vendor about how hard they fail for not listing it correctly. the full saga can be found here.

I also got some software which is supposed to convert the video segments of DVDs to avi files. I wanted to be able to put a few episodes of various comedies on my phone for watching whenever I’m bored. The avi > 3GP converter converter works fine, so just need to get the source material. Only it doesn’t work. It shows you what files are on the disc but as it lists all the chapters as individual files, and doesn’t number them in any logical way, or allow you to preview them, you don’t know what files you’re looking at. So I randomly converted on of them and got a hideous, pixellated mess that was not even recognisable.

So I play a bit of Tony Hawk 1, which I have managed to download for the PS1 emulator and am looking forward to reminiscing with. The first level loads up fine, two tapes achieved, you’ve unlocked level two. click X to continue. Only it doesn’t fucking work does it? Try Tony Hawk Two – same thing. get to end of level fine, click X to continue, doesn’t work. Right, let’s try with the PS1 – USB adapter that also arrived today. It’s plug n play. doesn’t work. OK, we’ll try drivers. and a reboot. and setting the config in PSX to every possible variation of controller. Doesn’t work.

This is officially the shittest day off I have had for quite some time.

Spamming Youtube

Haven’t put much on here for a while, though I have been busy. I’ve been working on various things, not least of which is a new band. We haven’t really played much together yet and still kind of finding our feet in terms of style. At the moment it’s more of a generally creative joint venture, rather than the typical band thing. you can find out more over at reformed reality (which is where i’ve been blogging mostly of late).

This, coupled with the fact that i have a new phone with a decent camera, has led me to attempting to document all the songs i’ve written which i feel are fit for human consumption (there are a disappointingly large number of songs which definitely aren’t fit for other people to hear). I don’t have the facility to record them properly (yet) so am just doing simple one-take recordings to get them all down.

As they get recorded and uploaded, they’ll be appearing here:

twitpic