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Wednesday, March 7th, 2012
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Two people were looking up directions on an online map via a smartphone. One read out to the other "it's a 500ft walk from the station". The other replied "Feet? That's a bit archaic, isn't it? How far's that? Why don't they use standard units?"
This pleases me. The country was just starting the transition to metric units when I was born, so I've grown up with metric units. I embraced metric units wholeheartedly, but many of my generation (probably in part due to parental influence) didn't. But time passes, and now it seems that imperial units are seen as archaic. About time too.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, February 6th, 2012
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Dear Mozilla developers. I know you're a bunch of incompetent morons, but would it really be so hard to change that and release a decent product? Please?
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
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This time around, I'm less than a month late! A year end overview in January. Who'd have thought it?
( Read more... )
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Friday, January 20th, 2012
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Thursday, November 24th, 2011
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Monday, November 14th, 2011
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Object orientation and code readability are mostly mutually exclusive.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, November 9th, 2011
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Wednesday, October 26th, 2011
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I've just returned from a weekend in Belgium. I brought back with me two things; a stinking cold and a broken camera. The former's an annoyance, but I'm sure I'll get over it in a few days. The latter has really pissed me off, though. I was there for the annual Metal Female Voices Festival.
( Read more... )
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Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
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Interesting reading. It's a shame it's spoiled by gratuitously incorrect figures about the cost of a pound of venison. But it does highlight the arbitrary lines drawn in the sand by vegans and vegetarians that most refuse to admit are there.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, September 21st, 2011
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Ever increasing storage capacity is making me lazy. In years gone by, when resources were more limited, a full filesystem would be cause for investigation, to find out why it had become full, and what could be done about it. These days, the easy option is to just extend the volume a bit more and grow the filesystem. I'm running a bit low on free PV space, so last week I didn't grow my home filesystem by as much as I normally would when it filled up. But even so, I was a little surprised to find out that within a couple of days it was already full again. That's not normal. It turned out that a single log file was continually growing and had taken up nearly a third of the total space on that filesystem. But because the default assumption is that I have more disk space than I'll be able to use, I hadn't been keeping an eye on what was taking up the space. D'oh! So a single rm has taken me back to having loads of free space.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Saturday, September 17th, 2011
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Tuesday, August 30th, 2011
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In the past fortnight, I've seen live performances from over 80 bands. Of those, somewhere around 50 were support bands that I'd never heard of before. So why is it that of those 50, only one did it right? Is it really that hard? Surely all it takes is a tiny amount of common sense? What you have to ask yourself is what are you trying to achieve as a band? Given the state of the music industry, fame and fortune is probably even more out of the question these days than it was in the past. But it's reasonable to assume that bands would like people to know about them and their music. What can you do to achieve that?
Few people going to a gig will check the list of support bands beforehand. They're there for the headliners. The chances are, they won't know your band name. It doesn't matter if you put on a storming performance. Unless the audience know who you are, they're never going to check out the band on facebook/myspace/reverbnation/whatever. So my #1 tip is: tell people who you are! I mean make it absolutely clear to the audience who you are. A banner to hang behind the drummer costs 30 quid. A vertical banner and stand to put at the side of the stage is maybe double that. If that's too steep for you, get a bed sheet and paint your logo on it yourself. It'll still be better than nothing at all. 30 minutes of staring at the band name behind the drummer rams it home much better than a muffled "We're Houston And The Problems and we're from Cleethorpes" through a crappy PA that no one can hear.
Secondly, be prepared. What could go wrong on stage, and what can you do about it? You can't hope to cover every eventuality, but there are common problems that can be easily worked around with a little advance preparation. 20 years ago, a friend of mine was doing a gig at a local pub and I was horrified that he hadn't taken a spare set of guitar strings with him. Had a string broken in the first song, he'd have been screwed for the rest of the show. And bands are still making the same mistakes. Guitar leads are hooked through the strap so that if they get caught or stood on, they don't pull the plug out of the guitar. Yet several of the bands I saw didn't bother and just plugged them straight into the guitar. One did indeed put it trhough the strap but left the loop long enough that he stood on it and pulled the lead out anyway. D'oh! If your wireless setup breaks, have a spare lead ready. You'll lose a bit of mobility on stage, but you'll be able to finish the show. Have a copy of your backing track on your phone or MP3 player, so if your Mac laptop breaks, you can still get by. A quote from one of the bands I saw at the weekend: "Are there any drummers in the audience? Could we borrow a drumstick?" Really? You've turned up at a gig with only a single pair of sticks? What were you thinking?
So you've done your set, the crowd loved it. Now what? My #3 tip is give them something to buy or at the very least, some means of finding out more about the band. Have some CDs for sale. Get some T-shirts printed up. If you don't have a professionally mastered CD, burn an EP yourself and give it away at the end of the show. Throw some out into the crowd. It costs you pennies. But it all helps to get your music out to a wider audience. Which presumably is the point of the exercise.
Why don't more bands see that a little bit of preparation and self promotion can make a massive difference to how you come across? FWIW, the one band that got it right? Silverbox. They weren't really my thing. But they were the only ones with a banner. They had people handing out flyers in the audience with details of the band and their next show, they were taking names for a mailing list, the works. I just don't understand why more bands don't do it.
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Utterly disgusted by the bastards at FOM who have sold their souls to Murdoch. I guess there's no F1 coverage for me from next year, then :-(
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One of these days, the top step of the podium will be mine. But for now, another second place is good enough to move me up to I think 5th in the championship. It was insanely hot sat in a racecar in a fireproof suit and helmet with air temperatures of 28 degrees outside, though.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, June 18th, 2011
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Hmmm... The Mission, supported by Fields Of The Nephilim. Tempting.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Hospitals primarily involve long periods of waiting, interrupted by short bursts of medical care. And waiting is very draining.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, June 8th, 2011
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I will commit wholesale genocide. All lawyers, solicitors, judges, in fact anyone who has even thought about studying law will have their cancerous presence removed from this planet. That is all.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
thargol's journal
melancholy.
okay.
sick.
tired.
geeky.
nostalgic.
angry.