Sadface/Happyface
I've a couple of mega busy weeks at work that have left me too knackered to do much, so I haven't done much in accordance with my knackeration. But now, I feel compelled to write and tell you all that I am in mourning, albeit a temporary state of bereavement. Yesterday I had to go and see my friend Laurie at T-Mobile and hand him my shiny lovely HTC phone. In return all he gave me was a dull and lifeless battered brick of a Motorola, which has clearly been a courtesy phone to so many people that I'll be utterly shocked if I don't contract the Hanta virus just by holding it up to my ear.
It's been less than a day and already I fell like I've lost a limb. I know that to the vast majority (i.e. all) of you this will sound very silly, but I've become very dependant on my phone, although I rarely use it as such. It is my RSS reader, my portal to Twitter and Facebook, my music player and my podcast reader. It is a portable search engine, my bus timetable, my reader count, my calorie counter, my exercise tracker and more besides. Even though I sit and write this at a computer which has the internet, without my phone I still feel a little bit adrift, cut off from the wider world. This is due to continue for another two weeks. Hence, sadface.
But let us not dwell too much on such hardships, let's face it in the grand scheme of things this barely even registers as a problem, so I shall move on, albeit whilst simultaneously glaring at my replacement phone like it might bite me at any moment. Last time I spoke to you I was about to install Ubuntu and it was a staggering success. It's a lovely operating system, although it has taken me a few weeks to recover all my old files from the old Windows set up. The best thing about it is that it now has Chrome browser which is staggeringly fast, the applications do everything that's been asked of them so far (which is not a lot, admittedly) and the move from Word to Open Office has been very easy. But the best thing of all is the speed. Switching on my PC with Vista was the sort of thing you used to have to do in stages. Turn it on, go and make a cup of tea, come back, log on, go and do something else for five minutes, come back, hit the browser, go and make a Sunday roast and hey presto the computer is ready. All told the whole process could take up to 15 minutes. I timed it with Ubuntu the other day and from hitting the power button to having a web page open and fully loaded took 32 seconds. And my computer is so much happier, no longer roaring at me liked a wounded bull staggering on its death march, but more like a happy cat, purring lightly. I love it. If you are having problems with Windows (ie if you have Windows) I heartily recommend making the change. It's really easy too.
Other than that the big thing that has happened is the wedding of my two good friends Laurie and Clara. It was an absolute belter of a day, and Rosie managed to make it (almost) to the end without any problems, although we paid for it for the next few days with her sleep routine being shattered. And it seems as though weddings are the 'in' thing this year, as my oldest internet friend (and phenomenally talented writer) Lis got married to the also excellent (and prodigiously talented writer) Jay, which I was very moved to get an invite to but very disappointed not to be able to attend. Also, my old friend Emma and her fella Laurence managed to elope in some style and get a Vegas Wedding, replete with Elvis impersonator. Very pleased for all concerned.
Other than that I don't want you to think that I've been completely lazy, as I have been working on BOTM (stop sniggering at the back) as I got about 9000 words in and then decided that I need to have a rethink, and have decided to move away from a single 1st person narrative to a more traditional 3rd person narrative. Obviously this is daunting and somewhat irritating to do this far in, but which is definitely the right move, not least of all because it allows me to move to multiple story arcs. I was starting to worry about what I have but this has really resparked the fire. In truth I was basically working with stuff I wrote over a year ago, and it felt a little stale, and I was struggling with the story. Traditionally I am more of a suck-it-and-see writer, which is all well and good for a first draft but when you are serialising online you have to realise that your first draft is going to be a final draft. I really need to plan the whole thing out, or at least come up with a general plotline.
This is definitely new territory for me. One of the things I most enjoy about writing fiction is that part when you are writing and what you write surprises you. It's great fun and that is to me when you know that your characters are taking on a life of their own, when they start to make decisions that you wouldn't take. But I'm also aware that this method of writing is very hit and miss and considering this is going to be pretty much the first time my writing has ever really been read, I don't want to find myself building up a readership only to box myself into a corner plotwise, which is always a real risk. I'm never going to be the kind of writer to plan things out in meticulous detail plot wise, I still want to go on the journey with my characters, but more structure is definitely going to be the way to go with this. I'm not sure how I am going to implement it, and I still need to sort out a time to sit with Jonic and talk about the design but things are most definitely progressing. Incidentally if there are any writers out there who know of any good support software for detailing all your thought processes, plots, characters etc, I'd love to know. At the moment everything is spread about in various Open Office documents, and it would be nice to play around with a new toy.
Anyway, it's nice to be back, and here's hoping the good people at the HTC factory send me my phone back ASAP.
Ubuntastic
A while back I flirted with the idea of completely junking Windows from my computer and replacing it with Ubuntu, the freeware Linux system, on the sage-like advice of Mr Jonic. I got pretty close to doing it too, even bought a magazine with the boot disk, but then it didn't work and I got frustrated and the whole idea fell by the wayside. But recently the old computron has become more and more laboured and tired from having to run Vista, and I have to say I can't blame it, it must be like being a paper-boy with arthritis, having to labour on when the kit you've got just doesn’t cut the mustard any more.
Last night was especially bad, and trying to do more than one thing at a time has become night on impossible, and so I downloaded the Ubuntu software and burnt it to disk and thought I would give it a go. And my dear Creamy Jesus is it nice. Firstly, it looks so pretty. It shares a fair bit of both Mac and Windows sensibilities, so basically it looks really nice but doesn't have the navigation issues that I always seemed to have on Macs (to be fair I haven't used a Mac in years so this is probably not the case any more) that prevented me from ever buying into the cult of Steve Jobs. Not only that but the responsiveness of the computer improved exponentially, and that was just from using the CD to boot. I gather it will improve even more once I install it to my hard drive. I love it. It is a bit alien still, and I seem to get requests to download software every time I want to do anything, but I imagine that'll calm down pretty quickly.*
So tonight I'm going to take the plunge and install it, probably only on partition for now in case I change my mind and go back to windows, but I'm quite excited. Before I do I still have a few things I want to test, like playing movies (can't see any issues there) playing with the word processor, and make sure I can still stick music on my phone without any issues, but if it passes these tests then by the end of the weekend I will hopefully be free from the shackles of Windows.
It does feel strange though, to be saying goodbye to it (not completely, work computers will apparently soon be upgrading from XP to Vista, deep joy) as it's the only operating system I've ever known. I still remember using a computer for the first time in a classroom back in about 1991, and getting told off for moving the mouse before I was told to. Since then my world, like pretty much everyone else, has become more and more reliant on the world of computers, and although I haven't always been on the Internet, I've consistently owned a PC of some kind since about 1995, and seen them grown from glorified calculators with basic word processors, into the super-whizz computrons we have today. And all of them, run on Windows.
And while we're looking back, I was reminded today by Joe in the comment thread of my last post that come October of this year I will have been blogging for seven years, since my first ever post on Livejournal (again, at the instigation of Mr Jonic, I really should buy him a beer at some point to say thanks) started with some vague grumbling of my then job. Madness. Also, in the same comment thread, it has been pointed out to me that my favoured shortened name for Blood On The Motorway is liable to cause giggles. So from now on I shall try to refrain from using it again. Cheers Jen.
*I actually wrote all of this earlier on, but the install has gone ahead and this is coming to you live from Ubuntu-land. I'll post more on this later, but by golly-gosh it is marvellous, so much quicker, more responsive.
Monsters and Resolutions
'Jesus Christ!'
This was the response of the nice lady from the disconnections team at Virgin Media when I recounted my tale of woe to her. As promised, I took the bull by the horns and phoned up to cancel my account with them, armed with the fresh knowledge that the £30 recommend-a-friend discount hadn't gone to my chosen friend either. The woman on the other end, who I imagine cannot have the nicest of jobs working in the disconnection team, was obviously authorised to do more than anyone else I had spoken to previously, and after she had spent a good five minutes apologising for the incompetence of her colleagues, she has now arranged a delivery tomorrow of a shiny V+ box, and my wireless router. Of course I won't entirely believe it until I am recording programmes at my leisure, but there you go. A little bit of persistence and eventually getting through to someone with the sense to do what was promised initially, and I have exactly what I wanted. So that's nice. Thanks again for everyone who sent advice on here and on Facebook, you lovely good good people. And apparently the £30 discount will come through after we've been paying on time for 3 months, so don't worry Jen.
So hopefully this tale will only need to be a trilogy of posts, I'll be very disappointed if I have to return to write a fourth installment. But onto other things. In the last few days I've really started to grasp how cool my phone is, as it seems to be able to play YouTube videos at a rather nice quality, even given a general paucity of connection. Honestly, aside from a few stutters, it's able to play videos when my connection is snot strong enough to even send a tweet. Yesterday I finally got around to watching something that a good many friends have told me about, Zomblogalypse. This is a web series made by some friends of a friend, and as such I wasn't expecting that much from it, in the same way you never really expect a huge amount when someone tells you about their mate's band. But actually this is lo-fi horror heaven, brilliantly scripted and acted, and funny as anything put together by more famous zomcom creators. On the bus home yesterday and the bus to work this morning I managed to cane the whole first series, and can't wait to travel to work tomorrow to get cracking on series 2. I'm also immensely jealous that I didn't come up with it first. Click on the image below to go check it out.
Also, I am currently listening to the full Glastonbury set by Radiohead from a few years back, which is every bit as splendid as I remember from watching it on TV, and it's all thanks to my little Android. Cheers little buddy.
The Internet is your friend
Ellen has a new phone, and the response it has engendered in me has not been pretty. It's one of those all-singing HTC Android phones that falls under the title 'smartphone.' And by Christ is it smart. Up until I saw it I actually thought that my lovely LG phone that I have had for the past year was quite good. It allowed me to look on the internet and everything. Ellen's phone makes my LG look like a Jackson 5 reunion, absolutely surplus to requirement. Added to this that the software is all Google, my online brand of choice, and it makes this new intruder into my home seem like a wanton hussy, flirting with me while my old phone sits in the corner of the room and weeps.
Now I don't intend to run through all the reasons that the HTC is so good, but trust me, it's every bit as nice as an iPhone, with the added benefit of you not looking a complete ballache by holding it. (Sorry Gray, couldn't resist) but it has gotten me thinking about just how much the internet has become a part of my life in the few short years since Jonic took me aside and really explained it all to me. Right now if I had Ellen's phone I would be streaming music on my Spotify while scrobbling to my last.fm, updating my twitter and facebook in one swoop and reading the 60 odd blogs I have on my Google Reader. And that's even before we get to the three websites I now run.
I honestly don't know how I would cope now, without the Internet. I mean, I'm old enough to remember a time when there was no Internet, at least not for me. For a good few years we just didn't have the net at home, and I didn't have access at work, and I was fine. Possibly had a bit more free time as well. But the idea of never speaking to someone I have never met on twitter ever again, or discovering what new music is out there at the touch of a button, to not have these things now would terrify me. And yet at the same time I know that I have barely scratched the surface of the wonderful world of the Internet.
At the same time, I do look at little Rosie and wonder exactly what this new interconnected world is going to mean to her. Obviously, she's going to grow up an a house where information and connectivity are a big part of her world, and by the time she gets to school the world will no doubt have moved on dramatically once more. It's an exciting time. But anyway, I don't really know where I am going with this, except to say that my envy of Ellen's new phone made me sit up and think hard about how dependent on the net I am these days, and how that seems to me to be a very positive thing. As one of the readers of this here blog, you are a very big part of why I love it. So cheers.
Um, anyone still there?
So it's official, I am utterly shit.
Having promised not to let my extracurricular activities preclude me from updating this place, the truth is that Year of Health and Demon Pigeon (not to mention the fallout of that business at the tail end of last year) have been keeping me pretty busy of late. Incidentally, both sites are now live, and I have to say I'm pretty pleased with the results, both in terms of the lifestyle change that Year Of Health has enacted within me, and in how Demon Pigeon has turned out, given it's my first foray into the wider world of 'doing the internet' properly. If you haven't done so yet, do go check them out.
But enough of the digital pimping, what else is new with me? Well, I'm in a new job, so that's nice. Things are going pretty well at the moment, although I'm bloody knackered by the end of the day. Ellen got me the complete Buffy box set for Christmas, and to my pleasant surprise she's really enjoying watching it with me at the minute, and we're not even up to the bit in season two when it all gets really bloody good. You know the one, where the person does the thing? Yeah, you know. Don't pretend you don’t.
I saw Avatar twice at the cinema, both times in 3d. The first time I was staggered by the sheer beauty of it, and the second time I realised that under all that brightly coloured 3d fauna there lay at the heart of it a distinctly average film. I'm going to be interviewing one of my all time favourite bands, and even if it is going to be via email that's pretty bloody cool. Oh, and I've become a Gleek.
So I just wanted to pop by and let you all know that I'm still here, which I am, and that I fully intend to update this more often, well aware as I am that I owe you good people a lot of Cross Blogination posts. The fact that it's my turn as well should spur me on a bit.
So how are all of you?
Rage against mediocrity
The current war in the charts for the Christmas number one spot has me conflicted. For those of you who don't know (in my last post I left out one American in particular and I don't want to do the same again) in the UK we have a show called X Factor, much the same as American Idol but with just enough format tweaks for it to justify its relabeling. Every year I watch it, for the same reasons that I watch American Idol, because not everything has to be cerebral, sometimes I like to watch dumb shit. During the show I pick the one contestant who seems to be marginally talented, and then they either win or lose and I never think of them again. It's just not my cup of tea, music wise, but as an entertainment show it's gloriously awful and entertaining to watch.
But then the show ends, and the winner releases their single, just in time to trample all over the competition for the Christmas number one. The X factor winner's single has been Christmas number one for the last five years, all but destroying what used to be an entertaining British pastime, namely talking down the pub with each other who was going to be Christmas number one. It used to be a big deal. I remember being a kid and suddenly the charts seemed quite important around Christmas.. But that's no longer the case.
Until this year. Sick of the situation, a groundswell movement has to try and get 'Killing In The Name' by Rage Against The Machine to be Christmas number one instead. A ridiculous idea, doomed to failure, except that with over half the week gone, Rage are beating the X factor single by about 40,000 copies. So there's a very real chance that this could happen.
But enough background, most of you will be going, 'yes Paul, we know this.' But anyway, my initial thoughts about this were pretty much against it. For one thing, this is mainly gonna benefit Sony, of whom one of the main people is...Simon Cowell. Both singles are on the same label. Second of all, there is something to be said for the idea that everyone buying the single are behaving with the same sheep-like mentality that the people buying the X factor single are exhibiting, especially given the song's 'Fuck you I won't do what you tell me' message. And so at first I dismissed it.
But then the other night I was sat on Twitter that all of a sudden it occurred to me that I was looking at it all wrong. I then considered the situation again.
- Do I love Rage? Yes, unreservedly, they are one of my favourite childhood bands, and they introduced me to both metal and hip hop.
- Would I like them to be number one at Christmas? Totally.
- Do I like the idea of Simon Cowell in a strop? Indeed I do.
- So why don't you buy the download then? I dunno, how much is it?
- 65p from play.com......
And so I made up my mind, and downloaded a song that I have previously bought three times on CD, once on single, and once on tape. And now I am hooked, scanning the news hourly for fresh sales figures. But now, as if to confirm that I made the right decision, Rage appeared on Radio 5 live at 8.50 this morning. So, just as people were pulling into work, they were greeted with this:
Now I should point out this is decidedly NSFW. But the fact that Rage are back, playing together, and getting to do that on Radio 5 with Nicky Campbell (a horrible little turd if ever there was one) is surely cause for celebration.
So what are you waiting for? Go buy the single!
Demon Pigeon
After some deliberation the decision has been made that now is the time to unleash onto the world our new project, so get down on your knees, and make Demon Pigeon your new God.
That is not to say that we've gone live with it just yet, but more that we're getting quite bored of not telling anyone about it. Besides, it might be a good idea to build expectations, so that we can roundly let those same expectations down when we launch in January.
To wit, expect nothing short of the greatest website that your eyes have ever witnessed, and prepare those same eyes to weep with unbridled joy at the marvellous spectacle. Oceans will shift, cities will be levelled. Women and children will tremble in fear. Governments will fall. It's all gonna be a bit epic, to be honest.
So what is Demon Pigeon, you may well ask yourselves. Well at the moment it's a holding page, but come January the somethingth (we're not altogether decided on that) it will be a metal site, chocked full of news, reviews, interviews and more. Unlike other sites out there, we will also be covering areas that are of general interest to metalheads, from books to comics to film to art.
But who these magnificent bastards who will be helping me with this endeavour? You may well ask. My Co-Editor and all round fancy gent is Daniel Cairns, and he will also be running the new @demon_pigeon Twitter feed. If you are on Twitter, go follow us now, since Dan is a lot funnier than I am.
As well as this we also have Games Junkie extraordinaire Andi Hamilton. And no, it's not the little writer of Drop The Dead Donkey, and yes, I'm as disappointed as you are. Also joining us is Noel Oxford, writer extraordinaire, and fellow escapee with Dan from another metal site. Rounding out the team is Dom Sohor, who will be making the whole place look awesome with his lovely shiny visuals, and occasionally words too. Go check out his gallery, it's full of awesome.
So that's the big news that I couldn't tell you, so consider yourselves duly told. If any of you are massively disappointed by this, you know what to do.
Cryptic
So today was supposed to be Cross Blogination but I haven't had the chance to do it yet so that'll be tomorrow. I'm mega busy at the moment but I just wanted to say that I am currently a very excited Paul.
I've mentioned before that I have got a couple of projects lined up for the new year. One of these in particular I have agreed not to talk about until its ready to launch. But I want to talk about it. But I can't. So I'm going to be vague and cryptic instead. I do hope you don't mind.
Today heralded some excellent news, because through the magic of twitter I contacted someone who is a little bit of an idol of mine, in writing terms. I'm sure he would shudder at the prospect of being anyone's idol, but I've been reading his work for many many years, and it was his work, biting and witty and blunt, that was the first of its kind to really stand out to me. Put simply he is one of the reasons I wanted to become a writer in this particular field.
I met him a few years back and was a bit overly gushing, so since then I've tried to keep my fandom a bit under the radar when talking to him on Twitter. It's wierd how the strangest people become idols in your field. I suppose it's a bit like entrepreneurs becoming fans of Alan Sugar. Anyway, it's not like I follow him around, or even read every single thing he writes, but his influence on me was profound at a particular moment for me.
So anyway, today I sent him a message telling him briefly about the project we are working on, and asking if he had any advice. He messaged back and said that he'd be glad to share it, and also he'd be glad to contribute some writing to it. So now we have one of the biggest and best writers around bringing his considerable expertise to bear on our little project, and suddenly it all feels very real, like something we can actually achieve. I am quite excited about this project, I'm working with some really talented writers already, but this latest addition, in whatever capacity he contributes, will just be the icing on the cake.
As I say, a very excited and happy Paul today. Come back tomorrow for Cross Blogination, where I shall be reviewing an album so far outside of my normal tastes that it might as well be a Jedward album.
Blood Update
For all of the 'big ideas' that I have on a regular basis, I have a terrible knack of letting the dust settle on them for long enough that I move on from them. You may have noticed that there has not been a lot of movement on the Blood On The Motorway front recently, so I thought I'd make some promises on here that might spur me into action.
So here goes. Blood On The Motorway will be launching in January 2010. There, I've said it now. Have to live up to it. Can't go disappointing you now.
In this spirit I've also tried to kick-start some action on my other 'Untitled Online Project' that I am doing with some chaps I met on Twitter. This one seems pretty exciting actually, so hopefully by the end of month one of next year I should have more than enough on my plate.
Around here I've decided to make my 'Letters to Rosie' a more permanent feature, since they seem to go over pretty well and they are a nice thing for me to do. Hopefully one day she will read them all and decide I'm not such a bad Dad after all. I'm going to keep it to one a month to start with, but we shall see from there. Cross Blogination is going pretty well, and if anyone else has any ideas for things they would like me to do more of, then let me know.
Reformation
In a year that has been dominated by the reformations of some of the biggest bands in rock history (AIC, Pavement, Rival Schools, hell even Led Zep) an announcement crept out the other night that will make absolutely no impact on the worldwide music scene but managed to make me and a very select group of metalheads happy as a collective of pigs in excrement. Will Haven have reformed.
Will who? You may well ask. Will Haven (not a person) were a band from Sacramento, California, friends of the Deftones and Far, and purveyors of one of the most ungodly rackets ever known to man or beast. Thunderous and tectonic riffs and the guttural and hugely emotional roar of lead singer Grady Avenell. They split a few years back and reformed again with another singer, but never had the chemistry of when Grady was in the band. But now he is back.
I met the band when they were touring their third album,Carpe Diem. They were playing at the Manchester Academy, and myself and my friends Rich and Barker arrived in plenty of time before the gig, as we wanted to see both the support acts, but also because we were determined to go backstage and meet our heroes in the flesh, young and lacking in shame as we were.
Our friend Moira had worked at the venue and had told us a secret way to get backstage without hassle, but when we arrived we quickly found that a redesign had made this nigh on possible. So after a while we retired to the bar. We had been there only a few minutes when in walked the band, minus Grady. We tried to remain as calm as possible, and were going to wait for them to sit down before we approached them, but then their guitarist Jeff looked over and spotted Barker's home-made Far T Shirt, and they all made their way over.
They asked if they could sit with us, and we stammered our appreciation, and then for about half an hour they sat with us, chilling and talking and laughing at our jokes. They may have just been a struggling metal band who still had their day jobs back at home, but this was like meeting the Who for us. They were the sweetest and loveliest guys you could meet. Later, we saw them again as we milled about between support acts, and I met Grady, who took my song suggestion and gave it pride of place as their opening encore song.
Of all the bands I have met they remain my favourite, no matter that nobody has ever heard of them. They were probably shocked to find that a bunch of kids from the other side of the Atlantic had been so humbled to meet a band that struggled to even get a record deal in their native land, but not as shocked as I was to find that the old adage of 'never meet your idols' can thankfully be absolutely wrong.
-
Last night was the climax (oo-er) of Gray's 48 hour tweetathon, and in the last few hours he got loads of high profile support from the likes of Jonathan Ross (who even donated £50) and he smashed his £1000 target with hours to go. I was there for the last hour and I must admit that everyone got a bit emotional at the end, when Gray posted as his final tweet the theme from Cheers. Well done mate, and lets hope all those new followers stick around to check out Cross Blogination!
Tomorrow I will be doing something a bit different as it is Blog Action Day in support of action on Climate Change. I haven't decided fully what I am doing for it yet, but if you have a blog and would like to get involved, check it out.
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