I'm on the Gadget Show tonight

It's utterly bizarre that a full two years after I appeared (and promptly lost) on the game show Brainteaser on Channel 5 some Wednesday daytime, people (admittedly, only rarely) still come up to me and say "Oh My God! You're that Brainteaser guy". Clearly some people need to pay more attention to their degrees.

Well, I was on that for a princely 15 minutes, and tonight at 8pm on Channel 5 I'll be appearing on the Gadget Show, as part of a test panel for some new toys. Not many of us had even bothered to watch the Gadget Show before, we weren't very impressed by the gadgets and I'm still not quite sure who 'recommended' me to get me on the whole thing.

If you're very bored, you can switch over and hope to catch a glimpse of me standing around in the background. They might even put on one of the glib remarks I made about the mostly pointless technology we looked at. More likely though, they'll just use the stuff from the people who said exclusively positive things.

Enjoy.
Xx

Christmas 3/4

Apparently, flying out to America isn't enough for me over Christmas. I've been thoroughly spoiled with three Christmas parties (and sets of presents) already - with one to come in North Carolina! I get to open my Cool Stuff whilst others have to look longingly at the wrapping paper and shoot me jealous looks.

A surprising amount of people have taken it upon themselves to buy me toothpaste and shower gel. Is this really because people know quite how badly prepared I am and expect me to travel everywhere with a bagful of gadgets, but no underwear or toothpaste? Or a subtle comment on how pleasant it is to be in my confined company? Surely the first, at Christmas.

The main problem with the timing of my Christmas presents so far, however, has been that of timing. I love getting copious amounts of chocolate, I really do. It's just a bit galling when I have to fly off and leave them behind for two weeks the next day. Guitar Hero Aerosmith seems awesome...but I've only played it for a short while before having to leave my XBox behind. And so on.

A few presents have been based on things I've blogged about over the past year. Wouldn't it be nice if that trend continues on into the New Year and up to my birthday? On an unrelated note, here's some links from the Internet:


<sub>Did you know you could buy a full-size T-Rex


But, I wonder if T-Rex will bounce on this?


Incidentally, isn't the wood panelling here nice? You know, on the wall behind the 47inch Giant Chocolate Fountain</sub>

Kids in America

Tomorrow I'm off home to Cardiff...and on Tuesday I fly out to the US of A to spend Christmas and New Year with Lucie. We're going to be hanging around her home-for-the-year in North Carolina for Christmas proper before riding on over to do some touristy things in Washington D.C.

From there we're off to New York, where we'll spend New Year's eve in Times Square. The night before that though, we're heading over to the legendary Smoke Jazz Club to see the New York All Star Sextet play, and enjoy the whole experience. Can't wait.

Any further suggestions for places to go or things to see are much welcomed. Get in touch :)

Xx

Hallelujah

When I heard that the winner of this year's X-Factor was to release Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah', I was mildly annoyed. Mostly because they'd picked the song before they even knew who was going to be singing it - not a great recipe for a good piece of music. Then, I promptly forgot about it.

Clearly I wasn't as annoyed as the creator of this Facebook group persuading people to buy Jeff Buckley's beautiful recording of the song, and hoping to get it to Christmas #1 ahead of the X-Factor winner's version.

Impressively, they've gotten onto Radio 1, and into a lot of online media (and to cap it all, they're now on my blog). Jeff's version is currently at #3 in the midweek charts and, although it has no chance of getting to #1, it'll still be amusing to hear it played alongside the inevitably worse X-Factor version on the radio chart shows. Not that I've actually listened to radio for about 3 years, but you get the idea.

Most amusing of all however, is the comments section of the Daily Mail's hilarious report on this 'news'. Now, Daily Mail readers aren't the most intellectual of stereotypes, and indeed the opening line of the article rather sets the tone:

"Anti-X Factor campaigners are trying to sabotage Alexandra Burke's chances of taking the coveted Christmas number one spot by downloading an alternative version of her winner's song.".

Or, as someone back at the Facebook group translated it:

"Pro-immigration eco-terrorist anti-capitalist Maddie-hoarding haters of Great Britain have launched a Nazi-esque attack on the poor defenceless winner of patriotic family-orientated show, the X Factor.".

I'll leave you to read the rest of the comments hilarity. You could even go and digitally download the Jeff Buckley version too if you have 79p to spare and aren't a fan of reality TV. Me? I really just don't care enough.

Campaign/BrandRepublic

Most people think that marketing students are good for nothing - but this isn't quite true. You see, a couple of them keep linking me to fun pages on BrandRepublic (or its magazine, Campaign). These are generally focused on advertising and marketing - and with those being such wide-reaching and trendy industries, there's always something good to see.

There's loads of fun content to choose from, from farces such as Pizza Hut rebranding to Pasta Hut to disturbing news about direct marketing and the usual collection of 'top ten...' (I'm quite a fan of the top ten failed adverts of 2008).

It's in my bookmarks now so - marketing people, I don't need any more links - it's back to trying to discover the alchemy of viral marketing for you.

Fair Game

As I mentioned below, Tesco.com haven't exactly been the best in terms of their recruitment. In fact, they've probably been the worst. They have an entire flashy website - tescoitjobs.com - which advertises vacancies and has an application process. I applied via this site, and received the following a while later:

"Dear Ian

Thank you for your interest in the Tesco Graduate scheme. Unfortunately I cannot process your application sent in this way.

..yep, seriously. The person on the other end of that email address has simply not bothered to reply to any further emails - nor has anyone I tried to reach via the 'contact us' forms. Nice.

A week or two later I decided to abandon principles and go and complete the other application process anyway - and for a .com company the shoddy web design was near unforgivable. So I stopped again. However, today I persevered through and got my application submitted, and was then presented with the following:

"Now that you've completed the application process, please spare a moment to tell us what you thought of our process...your reply will not be attached to your application form"

Even better, there's no word limit. Back in an hour.

Xx

Interview Time

I've just had my first interview - in phone format, with a lovely lady from Qinetiq. Tomorrow I'm off to Cambridge to meet some other folks from Red Gate Software - so they can find out if I can still remember how to write any code.

I find myself being drawn to these two (and a couple of other) companies, simply because of the professionalism they're showing in their recruitment process. Others, notably IBM and Tesco.com so far, have done a pretty awful job. Confusing websites, ridiculous questions on the application process and if you do ever manage to put a human face on the communications, it's not someone you're very keen about dealing with again.

But, should I base my final decision on things like these? Will a job at <x> be awful just because the recruitment agency they hired wants to ask me inane questions? On that point - please, someone, tell me why the full name of my High School or the grade I got at GCSE Welsh are useful in the recruitment stage?

On the one hand, it's symptomatic of a lack of professionalism within the business. If a company is happy to put sub-par quality processes live, then they're probably happy to do the same with their shipping products and customer interactions. On the other hand, I know perfectly well they have some great products and switched-on staff...should I base my decision on the fact that they're let down by poor HR?

It's not a big/small divide either. I've seen small companies that simply don't bother to respond to their emails and big companies where you get a personalised touch - and replies straight away even at 8pm.

Right, off to find some more places to apply to. I'm not applying anywhere new that can't code a basic website though.

I don't have a stamp so I'm sending you this money instead

As you all seemed to enjoy I don't have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead a lot more than reading the stuff I actually write, you can have this one too:

I don't have a stamp so I'm sending you this money instead

Enjoy.

More Jazz Recommendations

People often come up to me and say "I think I'd like jazz, but I don't really know where to get started or what to listen to - it's not like other music where you can just put on the radio. Can you recommend some stuff?". I'm not fooled, I know they're just desperate to be seen talking to me, to find out if my hair colour really is natural, to stare into my eyes...

..I digress.

1. Ramsey Lewis - Sassy Stew
Ramsey Lewis is a pianist probably most famous for his hit, The In Crowd - a perfect example of what a traditional jazz trio should sound like.

Sassy Stew, on the other hand, is more of a jazz funk track - a bit more Herbie Hancock than Bill Evans. The drums are great, the bassline and changes gorgeous and the alto sax hits notes that are barely even audible to anyone other than children and dogs. What I love best about this though, is that it's a pure jazz funk track, but the pianist's playing a real piano all the way through - rather than the keyboards that dominate the genre.

Well worth a listen.

2. Cal Tjader - Mambo Mindoro
Latin jazz is always popular. We've had club hits from Azymuth, Mas Que Nada has been on a million adverts and covered by some awful pop band. Recently, Bebel Gilberto has been letting down her father and her namesake (both Latin jazz greats) with some chart music.

Mambo Mindoro featuring percussionist Cal Tjader on the vibraphone is a great, and much less well known example of the genre. It's also highly worth a listen if, like me, you cringe at the mere word 'vibraphone' - mostly thanks to how awful it sounds within the music of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Trust me, he does it well.

3. Victor Wooten & Carter Beauford - Zenergy
This is not only a fascinating video - watching top-class musicians at work, but it's also a great track, easy to listen to whilst being extremely technically impressive. If the names Wooten & Beauford aren't enough to get you to listen, then note that Béla Fleck is playing banjo in this track too. Yes banjo. Yes, it works, yes he's that good. Just go listen already:



4. Lianne Carroll - Fever/This City Never Sleeps
It would be remiss of me to only mention past greats, and to just link you to freely available tracks that the artists possibly get pennies a year from. There's a decent jazz scene in any town, and if you're willing to make the effort to travel (central London's the only real UK hotspot) you can hear some unbelievably good performers.

Lianne Carroll is a pianist and vocalist playing around London and the UK, and is amazingly passionate and talented. For a preview of the recommended track, and a chance to buy your own copy, head over to her Amazon album page.

Better yet, go see a gig.

---------------

That's all for now. Enjoy.

I was planning to also recommend you go and see the Tie-Dye Quartet at The Yardbird tonight, 8.30pm, free entry, but that would be a bit tacky, so I won't.
Xx

I don't have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead

Too busy to actually write content, so here's some from elsewhere on the Internet.

I don't have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead

Highly recommended.

Xx

Facebook 'lost' my data

I recently received the following email:

'Unfortunately, the settings that control which email notifications get sent to you were lost. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

To reset your email notification settings, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?notifications

Thanks,
The Facebook Team'

Interested to see what the Internet had to say about such a well executed hoax, I visited some search engines to take a look, and discovered it...wasn't.

Yes, seriously, someone with that many data servers (and presumably a whole ton of backups and archives) managed to lose a whole load of data. The O'Reilly blog post about the whole debacle is quite amusing, and I must admit I'm tempted to agree with their overall recommendation:

'It's time to fire the entire engineering staff.

And then go out and find software engineers who understand what the phrases "data redundancy", "system and data backup", and "system failover" actually mean.'

Amazing.

Swansea's only export

Just as I was about to walk into a (cancelled...but that's another story) lecture today, I got a phone call from 01792 761030. Not recognising the dialling code (Swansea) I assumed that it must surely be someone calling to offer a job and asking whether £15k would be enough for the Golden Hello.

Having looked it up recently though, it appears to be someone randomly calling as many mobile numbers as they can. Quite what they do when they get through appears to be a subject of debate on the Internet. Either they hang up as soon as you answer, offer a new phone contract, or keep ringing and use a combination of the two approaches.

Bizarre. Maybe I'll ring them and offer them a new phone contract.

MTV African Music Awards

I really can't do much better with this one than to just copy/paste and highlight:

From: MTV holds its first African music awards - Associated Press

Two Nigerian singers won top awards Saturday as MTV held its first-ever music award program for Africa, with acts from across the world's poorest continent being nominated for prizes.

Winners were selected by fans sending text messages, said Alison Reid, a spokeswoman for MTV Networks Africa.

And yet, after all that, it's still more credible than Eurovision.

I love mass production

Take a look at this video from the BBC:

Inside a frozen pizza factory

When I first saw the link I was expecting some Panorama style hidden camera tour of immigrants working in amazingly unhygienic conditions - as with the ready meals for supermarkets a while ago. Instead, we're at the other end of the spectrum of journalistic integrity, with a straight-up presentation from a product development manager for the factory.

I prefer fresh food, though I'll happily eat frozen stuff like this. What I really love though, is seeing these mass-production factories in operation. There's something incredible about the precision and efficiency and ingenuity that's gone into every tiny part of the system...I almost wish I'd taken up engineering rather than compsci.

When I worked there, I was always really impressed by the level of detail that went into the efficiency of processes in a McDonald's restaurant. I still am, to some degree, but it's all too often ruined by the human element - which leads me to wonder why on earth such establishments are not more automated. The quality would be better, the waiting times lower and the food safer.

Plus, it'd kill off a bunch of low paying jobs and ensure that graduates weren't just ending up on the dole. Seems to be win-win for the economy. Get to work folks.

On responses to email

I really do quite like it when I see people and organisations acting professionally. I also get quite annoyed when I see them not bothering to do so. Being a geek, I see a lot of this through the Web, and often get in touch with a short (generally fairly friendly) note to let people know if they could do with improving their service (or indeed, if they're already providing a great one).

I have, however, noticed quite a disparity in the replies I get. I'd have thought that the ones I send positive feedback to would just nod and get on with their work. The ones I send negative feedback to would immediately look into the problem, take some positive action and get back to me with an apology and a listing of how they intend to improve.

As you might have guessed, that's not always what happens. Here's some key culprits:

People failing with mailing lists
Here's an example - today I got an email which was sent to all undergraduates in the school of engineering and applied science at Aston. There's a perfectly good seas_ug mailing list which would hide all of the addresses the message was sent to. Alternatively, there's always the 'bcc' field. However, this mailer chose to put all ~2000 email addresses into the 'to' field, for any enterprising student to harvest and sell/abuse.

I sent a link to the Data Protection Act to the offender, and some kindly advice about how to use mailing lists and email in general. Based on past experience of sending similar emails, I'm near certain I won't get a response.

Edit: What're the odds? They replied a couple of hours later. This is literally the first time someone's replied to such an email. Their excuse of 'incompetence' wasn't really too reassuring though, especially as the damage has already been done. They seem a nice enough person though.

Recruitment agencies/departments
I've been applying for some jobs recently. Some of the companies have unbelievably awful processes - I actually decided not to go for one particular job because their recruitment process is that bad. If they don't care enough about quality to at least glance at what they're putting live, I don't think I want to work there. I won't name names, as the agency which put up that tat is also processing some of my other applications at the moment.

For the companies that have been particularly awful (or particularly good) I've sent some communication outlining this, and suggesting simple methods for improvement. The good feedback has gotten me a 100% response, whereas the negative has gotten me a 0% response. Presumably if they're so unprofessional they put that kind of application process live, they're also unprofessional enough not to care.

People putting information online in proprietary formats
Hint: Not everyone has a copy of Microsoft Office installed. Yes, I'm aware there are sub-par tools I can use to get a rough idea of the content of your .docx, but if you put one up online you can expect an email asking for an open document type.

Feedback (and a document anyone can read) is about 50% from people I email with this one. Although, that's dropping since I started mailing recruitment agencies that are (shudder) using .dot templates to, presumably, automatically extract data into their Access databases. Classy. Remember that these are technology companies that I'm applying to.

--

Right, enough bitching. Time to go back to coursework..

Depressing

A while back, ZDNet reported that:

"IT graduates have the highest unemployment rate across all degree subjects at almost double the average for students leaving UK university courses...IT graduates have higher unemployment rates than students in performing arts (6.6 percent), media studies (8.6 percent), history (6.8 percent) and art and design (10.2 percent)."

Today, I'm guessing that Icelandic Studies and Finance graduates are probably a bit worse off, but it's still rather difficult to find a job.

So, who's up for a PhD then? :)

0.62% of a degree!

Final year's a bit more exciting than other years, even when it comes to just the little one hour practicals. Unless I found the subject interesting, it was hard to summon up the enthusiasm to do background reading and prep work for assessed lab classes in second year - given that they counted towards about 0.06% of my total degree mark.

This year I did put the effort in, and it's rather nice to have two 100% marks behind me (for quizzes that took all of 15 minutes), and 0.62% of a degree to add to the 18.75% (out of a possible 25%) I got from last year.

Now then, time to sell my soul and go and answer the coursework questions as set, rather than interpretations of them I find interesting, or digressing into long (albeit well reasoned) discourses about why the underlying principles behind the coursework question are at fault.

Alex Harmon

Whenever I go along to open mic nights, there's often a performer or two I really quite like, but for some reason as I walk out of the door, it never quite sticks. I don't look them up again, don't recommend them to others...it's just a part of the night.

I always mean to change that attitude and, in that spirit, here's a chap that was playing at Einstein's this Tuesday.

Alex Harmon

Only three songs up there, but I do like them. Not entirely sure about the recorded versions though, I think he might have been a bit better off just putting a tape recorded in front of a microphone at one of his gigs. Still, have a listen.

The Celluloid Orphanage

In yet another testament to the power of viral marketing (oh and, by the way marketing graduates, please stop going to large corporations and trying to 'force' viral marketing campaigns to work by throwing money at them, it's just annoying)..

where was I?

Oh right, The Celluloid Orphanage ostensibly started out with someone throwing all the photos on their computer with no classification into a folder, and putting that up in a Facebook group. There's now a couple of thousand members, and an absolutely bizarre collection of photos. Don't you just love things that don't really seem to have any purpose at all, but still manage to make people smile?


<sub>Even more amusing is the comments thread accompanying this photo






Another glorious moment for those aforementioned marketing graduates</sub>

Find me some more good ones people.

Videos of Tie-Dye Quartet at The Yardbird

As promised, courtesy of YouTube, here's some videos from parts of our second set:

Chameleon


Spanish Guitar Jam


Fever


Ina's Jam


Wade In The Water


Silver Rain


The tracks are also up for free download on Last.fm. Or, at least, they will be shortly. Try back tomorrow if you can't find them now.

Sokobina

I wrote a game!

You can download it here. You'll need Java installed in order to play it. If you don't know if you have Java, visit Sun's Do I have Java? page, and install it if necessary.

There shouldn't be any bugs left, but leave me a comment if there are. Also, please get in touch if you've made any cool custom levels, and send them across. You can find the levels you've made in the 'customlevels' folder that appears when you extract the game. Make sure you extract everything from the zip file before trying to play :)

There's a prize for the first person to beat every level. And yes, I do have a way of checking. If any of you CompSci folks manage to circumvent that then I suppose you deserve a prize anyway.


_{A screenshot from level 20}

Before you get too excited, I should point out that Sokobina is just another version of Sokoban (also known in English speaking countries as BoxWorld). I wasn't aware this genre was quite so popular though, when I started up I only had vague memories of a really cool Amiga game (this particular one had cavemen pushing rocks into holes, I believe).

I wrote it up myself for three reasons - to relive the fun of the game; to give some challenges to some friends I know like to solve puzzles and to work on my AI skills.

Only later did I find out that Sokoban, as a genre, is NP-HARD, and comparable to chess in the depth of the search trees you need to solve it with AI. In fact, Sokoban solvers have already been the subject of quite a bit of research, and for some harder levels, there are still no solvers that can do a decent job. I even found someone who wrote a solver for his Final Year Project - why didn't I think of that?!

I'm still working on an AI, which can then be used to find out if levels made via the creator are feasible or not. For now, there's just very trivial checking, so I'd recommend you play through your custom levels yourself (you can start a new game while the level editor is still open) to see if they're solvable before you email them to me or your friends :)

Let me know if anyone fancies dipping into the code and lending a hand, it's not too messy :)

--

Thanks for Forx for lending a hand with the graphics :)

Tie-Dye Quartet at The Yardbird

Last night was our exciting (and nicely paid, wink wink) gig at The Yardbird jazz club in Birmingham city centre - and it went pretty well if I do say so myself. The place wasn't packed, being bonfire night, but there was still a respectable audience and we played two 50 minute sets or so, with an encore when some folks started shouting.

Pics below, videos to follow once they're done uploading to YouTube.







Excuse the quality, our usual photographer was on a date :)

Gigs In November

It's a good month for music. Early in the month you can find Manu Delago playing various gigs in London - and I'm off to see him at The Rainbow in Birmingham on the 8th. See his site for show dates.

On the 20th I'm finally going to see my favourite musician of all time, Herbie Hancock, playing at Symphony Hall in Birmingham, with a brilliant line-up at his side. Tickets for that one are sold out now I'm afraid.

Tie-Dye Quartet have a very nice gig at The Yardbird in Birmingham on the 5th - I expect you all to be there. Free entry, 8 'till late. We're also playing a Ball in a lovely hotel and possibly the odd show in some nice restaurants.

Alas, the month isn't perfect though. McFly at the NEC on the 13th has sold out :(

Toothpaste Chicken

In my bathroom at the moment, we have four empty toothpaste tubes. No, sorry, let me rephrase:

In my bathroom at the moment, we have four very very nearly empty toothpaste tubes.

They have been this way for weeks now, proving that Bill Bryson's insight...

"there's always a little more toothpaste left in the tube...think about it"

...actually had nothing at all to do with optimism or strength of character, but was indeed in fact the musings of a man who really likes to investigate such things. If you haven't yet read any of his books, shame on you - and I highly recommend them.



I could, I realise, simply pop along to one of the many retail establishments I pass daily and simply pick up another, full, tube. It's not like we're always arguing over whose turn it is to buy the toilet paper, or who took the rubbish out last. I could also save myself five minutes of intense squeezing and bruised fingertips and simply cut one of the tubes in half, helping myself to the goo within (but - and this is critical - dispelling the hidden delights of what lies inside).

However, I don't want to lose. If no-one else has had to resort to that yet, then I shouldn't have to either. After all, I live with a girl and a guy with pink hair - think of the shame if I gave in.

In other toothpaste related news (albeit from 1937):


_{Why the frown?}

You might also be interested in this method of creating a fibre-optic flashgun for a professional camera using an empty toothpaste tube - the Fring.

Trolling

Has someone you loved died? says CBBC (nice past tense there, nice). I tried not to fill out the form at the bottom. I really did.

Oh well.

"Two weeks ago my favourite parrot died. I think the French boy from across the street killed him. He was playing football and then the football hit my parrot. I was very sad and now I don't talk to French people any more."

I really hope that gets published.

In other trolling news, I was really tempted to delete the page for Wikipedia - Military Of Georgia a short while ago. Or maybe just change everything to the past tense, like I did (where appropriate) on the Economy Of Iceland page.

If that's not enough of fun and slightly dated stories for you, here's a comparison of the militaries of Georgia and Russia. Before they had a big party with one another:

Georgia
Total personnel: 26,900
Main battle tanks (T-72): 82
Armoured personnel carriers: 139
Combat aircraft (Su-25): Seven
Heavy artillery pieces (including Grad rocket launchers): 95

Russia
Total personnel: 641,000
Main battle tanks (various): 6,717
Armoured personnel carriers: 6,388
Combat aircraft (various): 1,206
Heavy artillery pieces (various): 7,550

I love so much how they've written the word 'seven'. Note how the Georgian armed forces would have fitted quite happily into the Russian personnel carriers.

The Brokers With Hands On Their Faces Blog

I don't really think this one needs much explanation:

The Brokers With Hands On Their Faces Blog

Here's my fave:



I love the Internet so much.

Dead Set

Dead Set is the best thing ever.

Ever.

Big Brother, but with zombies. Davina McCall as a zombie. ZOMBIES.

Best ever.



Go watch the first episode on demand.

Little moments

A large percentage of F1 viewers, so unscientific surveys carried out without a proper representational sample size, proper interviewing technique, prop...

A large percentage of F1 viewers only watch F1 for the crashes, that was meant to read.

But, I hate people who don't carry out surveys properly. I just saw an ad saying "80% of women (sample size: 22) would recommend this to their friends". Hint: 22x0.8 = 17.6 - at least pick sample sizes that give your percentage an integer result. I was reading an academic textbook yesterday which claimed:

"In a University in Australia [another reason not to have Universities in Australia] 336 Computer Science students were sent an email ... asking for their password. 138 replied with a valid password ... 200 changed their passwords without prompting."

Now, hard enough though it is to believe that every student in a department actually read an email and took this kind action based on it, does anyone else see a problem with that statistic?

Anyway, I had a point when I started this post...people watching events just in case something bad happens. Here's a little something to keep the faith going:

South African MP's chair breaks on a BBC Interview

and..


_{George Bush tries to leave a press conference}

Not enough time

Since coming back to University I've been busy pretty much constantly, with no spare time to just sit back and relax, or even to complete the occasional ancillary tasks that crop up from time to time.

I'm in University early every morning, even when I don't have lectures, so that I can get some research into Artificial Intelligence and Multi-Agent Systems done for my Final Year Project. When I'm not working on that, it's preparation for assessed lab classes (each of which is worth 0.6% of my total degree!) or finding obscure references to satisfy the lecturer who's set the other coursework I'm currently working on.

When I get a break, I grab an orange juice and a banana or head down to the pool for my daily swim - I normally manage about 1Km a day before it's time to head back to lectures. Once I'm back home it's practicing and learning music for Tie-Dye Quartet gigs, more work on my Final Year Project and co-ordinating all my various extra curricular activities - societies, job applications, MS student partner stuff, all that jazz.

Mondays and Wednesdays are for Squash, Saturdays are for Ultimate and weekends in general are spent helping the homeless, raising money for charity and volunt...

---

Ok, enough lying. Let's try all that again:

---

Since coming back to University and getting addicted to Team Fortress 2 I've been busy pretty much constantly, with no spare time to just sit back and relax, or even to complete the occasional ancillary tasks that crop up from time to time boring paperwork I should really, really do sometime soon.


I'm in University early every morning, even when I don't have lectures [seriously], so that I can get some research into Artificial Intelligence and Multi-Agent Systems done for my Final Year Project. When I'm not working on that, it's preparation for assessed lab classes (each of which is worth 0.6% of my total degree!) or finding obscure references to satisfy the lecturer who's set the other coursework I'm currently working on finding amusing stories on BBC News, following link after link on Wikipedia and continually F5'ing in my inbox.

When I get a break, I grab an orange juice and a bananaa sausage roll and a bottle of Lucozade or head down to the pool for my daily swim - I normally manage about 1Km 500m a day before it's time to head back to lectures collapsing in a heap and needing resuscitation from the lifeguard. Once I'm back home it's practicing and learning music for Tie-Dye Quartet gigs, more work on my Final Year Project and co-ordinating all my various extra curricular activities - societies, job applications, MS student partner stuff, all that jazzPLAYING TF2 FOR HOURS AND HOURS UNTIL MY EYES BLEED AND I GO TO BED WITH DREAMS OF HEADSHOTS AND SENTRY GUNS PLAYING THROUGH MY BRAIN.

Dear Coca-Cola

Stumbling around the Internet on a lazy Sunday afternoon I came across this seemingly bizarre directory listing of various correspondance to and from various food companies.

http://www.razza.fsnet.co.uk/dearcocacola/

I realise I could probably put the whole thing in some kind of context if I were to put in a couple of minutes' work, but it's much nicer just to randomly browse the directory, which is mostly out of order despite the dates on the files, and wonder what strange mind came up with it.

Enjoy, I recommend the ones starting with 'coca'.

New TDQ website is up

Go take a look at

http://www.tiedyequartet.com

and let me know what you think of the new design. If you see anything particularly wrong, I'd appreciate an email with a screenshot, and some details on what operating system/browser/resolution you're running. If you don't know how to do any of that, just write me a letter.

Thanks for the lovely design from Pete, the lovely photos from Clush and the lovely er...poses...from Ju. Oh, I did some writing and web dev and image hacking too.

Enjoy.

Xx

Tie-Dye Quartet Pictures

The wonderful Chris Lush not only took photos of Tie-Dye Quartet for our album artwork, but also comes along to the occasional gig and photographs us. Here's a few shots from our show on Thursday - be sure to click on each image to get sent through to the full quality pictures, the previews really don't do them justice.


<sub>Our good looking drummer, Pete Ford


Presumably this was a tricky passage...


Guitar solo!


Can't forget the trumpet


There was a very good crowd on the night


Seriously, people were queueing up outside the door, one in - one out</sub>

I'll also see if I can dig up some audio from one of the people who was either filming our set, or just watching the entire thing through a digital camera lens. Presumably the former.

Xx

Here comes another bubble

A little old, but I've only just stumbled across this video:



Love it :)

Thanks to sooz_g for the find.

The Apprentice

Last night we played a fun, cozy little gig at the White Swan in Birmingham - a trendy little pub just off Broad Street. We played whatever we wanted, we were surrounded by friends and it was all quite wonderful.

And unpaid.

So, naturally, the next thing to do was to sell-out. I spent a couple of hours with Ju traipsing around restaurants in Birmingham city centre (and we've spent many more hours on the phone) convincing them of the business value of having some live music. She wore a skirt and I did the pitching...lovely combination.

Some positive responses, some maybes and some people to get back to. I love presenting :)

Omega Sektor Closes

CompSoc's first gaming trip of the year was a tour of Omega Sektor, followed by 10 hours of gaming. About 30 members showed up and everyone had a great time - clearly the long hours I put into getting sponsorship for CompSoc were definitely a good investment of my time.

...the next day, Omega Sektor closed their doors and declared that they were in administration (leaving behind a large pile of Kit-Kats in the internet cafe area).

Apparently giving free LAN parties to large groups of students isn't a good business model eh? One to remember kids.

Now, what do I do with a hundred CompSoc t-shirts with the Omega Sektor logo nicely plastered onto them? Ideas?

First gig for a while

Last night was the first gig I've played with the Tie-Dye Quartet since recording and...whew. I think the best description for the night would be 'a bit Spinal Tap'.

Our guitarist got held up (after giving a guitar lesson, what are the odds?) and we were almost about to start playing without him when he came through the door. The stage set-up was, to be generous, not the best I've ever seen. Suffice to say that I could only hear the drums, as could the drummer. Lots of head gestures were in order. Oh, also my bass string snapped during the third song and we had to have a quick improv guitar & drums jam whilst I changed it in record time.

Still though, no matter how badly we thought we performed, everyone genuinely seemed to think it sounded great - even the other musicians in the audience. We even got offered a gig at someone's Ball in a fancy hotel, and sold a few albums once we were done playing. Clearly the acoustics were fantastic eh?

We're going to be practising hard now for some of the more important (and/or paid) gigs we've got coming up - this was just a free show at the University bar. If people thought last night was good, then I don't see how we can fail :)

I'll get some pics up once our official photographer has finished Photoshopping them to make us look good. I might even put a short video or audio file up too if I can find one which doesn't make me wince too badly.

In brief

New Tie-Dye Quartet website is looking beautiful and almost ready to go online.

The time difference between Britain and America is rubbish. Americans should stop being so damn lazy and get up at 8am GMT like the rest of us.

Have started swimming every day, either before, after or between lectures. All my muscles ache constantly.

On a diet, please don't bother leaving your opinions on the matter. Apparently I'm spectacularly good at losing weight though, might not need to be doing this for long.

I hate 9am lectures.

Am now playing squash once a week. Felt slightly guilty at playing 'how nastily can you return the tentative serves from the girls who've never played before' with the other guys at the training session.

First CompSoc trip to Omega Sektor was a success, had about 30 people show up to beat me at Warcraft III DOTA, COD4 and other such games.

I hate 9am lectures.

Gig 8.30pm tomorrow. Guitarist is meeting drummer 3pm tomorrow. I'm sure it'll be fine.

I'm excessively busy. Seriously. I bought TF2 a week ago and I haven't even had a chance to play it yet.

Freshers' Fair '08

Today was the chaos that is Freshers' Fair, where hundreds of impressionable new students see the Guild Hall in daylight (and free of vomit and alcohol) for the first time, and cyncical final year students try every tactic they learned in their Business Studies lectures (which, let's face it, had to come in useful somewhere) to con the freshers out of their student loans.

I was on joint duty for CompSoc and LMS (Live Music Society), so it seemed logical to have the two stalls placed next to one another with Guitar Hero inbetween them. Unfortunately this rather impacted on my work ethic at times, but at least I looked rock 'n' roll:



Actually, it turned out to be a great idea, though it drew a lot more geeks over than it did musicians.

We got about 50 members for each society, which wasn't quite as good as I hoped, but we should get a bunch more over the next couple of weeks for each society. Now if you don't mind, I'm off to practise Guitar Hero III religiously for the next 50 hours straight. There was a chap there who could beat me at Dragonforce, and that just won't do.

We also sold a few more Tie-Dye Quartet albums, which was nice. Might need to print more if this keeps up ;)

Proposal

Browsing the pop-humour over at GraphJam, I came across this:

Carrie, Will You Marry Me?


Yep, someone's proposed to a girl on GraphJam.

I don't bring this to your attention to show the supreme idiocy of men, or the extremes to which people are addicted to bad Venn diagrams, but to recommend you read the comments section of this graph. It's packed full of little gems, and is almost as funny as reading a thread on Mumsnet.

Oh, by the way, she said no.

Ouch.

Sell-outs

I was more than a little perturbed to receive an email today inviting me to a Credit Suisse recruitment event for IT students. The email was sent by a member of staff at Aston, and the recruitment event was scheduled for a Thursday in term time - when IT students will all have lectures. It seemed I was being actively encouraged to ditch lectures in order to visit Credit Suisse.

Bizarre no? I was sure Aston was meant to care more about our education than Credit Suisse's graduate scheme.

I did a bit more digging around and discovered this document. It's basically an offer from Aston Careers' Service to prostitute themselves for any company willing to pay for the pleasure. Now you see why I do all my job hunting away from the University - at least I can assure I'm getting impartial advice.

What I find even stranger though, is that it cost a mere £50 for Credit Suisse to have that invite sent to every technology student. These students though, numbering in their hundreds, all paid thousands of pounds for the education they're receiving this year. You'd think the Uni would ask for more than £50 before they suggested throwing that out of the window...

Microsoft Student Technology Day

I've resumed my duties as a Microsoft Student Partner for this year, and the second treat* was an expenses-paid trip down to London for me and some friends for a series of technology talks from a few folks from Microsoft, including the CEO himself, Steve Ballmer.

The whole shindig was in Festival Hall, and started off with the CEO of Huddle.net giving some advice on how to start and run your own little start-up company, drawing on his experiences from starting Huddle. There were some really useful tips about how to deal with venture capitalists, how to get funding in general and how to get help and support from various groups, one of which I can personally vouch for - Minibar London.

Next up was 'The Science Behind Live Search'. Unfortunately, we didn't actually get to see much science, but saw lots of cool usage trend graphs - bit scary to see how much you're monitored as you search away. Also interesting to note that 40% of searches end in failure, 50% of searches are just repeats of something that person has looked for before and that enough people actually use Live Search to be able to gather reliable statistics like these ;)



The third talk was the reason I turned up - Artificial Intelligence by Microsoft Research. Given that my final year project's going to have a bunch of that stuff in it, it was great to see it explained, and the various formulae put into context. Cool presentation too - mostly based around computer games.



Next was Steve Ballmer...and if you've never seen him present then:

a) Find a YouTube video
b) Find a YouTube video

Seriously, the guy is hilarious. 'Exuberant' doesn't come close to describing his style. He also had some very interesting stuff to say about the future of technology, and really knew his stuff well.

We rounded off the day with a presentation from my old colleague Paolo, who got to show off the trendy Surface, which even has a programmable API and emulator that'll be released to the public soon. Sweet.

Edit: Found a video of a bit of Paolo's talk:



Get in touch if you want any more detail on the above, or some contacts to talk about this stuff with :)

--

*_{The first treat was a nice shoulder bag filled with goodies and software...and four RJ11-RJ11 adapters. Note that that reads 'adapter' not 'extension'. If anyone can think of a use for a RJ11-RJ11 adapter, let me know.}

Toys for me

Well, after less than two weeks my XBox 360 is on its way home, which means I'll finally be able to properly play Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis (surprisingly awesome) and some cool XBox Live Arcade games, such as Schizoid and Castle Crashers - both of which I was playing at Will's on the weekend.

I'm also getting a new PC (AMD Athlon X2 4800+, 3GB Ram, 2x 7800GT and lots of nice cooling and other bits) and a new monitor (see above), which means I'll be able to properly enjoy my latest acquisitions, Spore and TF2.

Seems a great time to start back to University, eh?

Toys for cats

After an exciting trip to Maplin today, we popped into Pets At Home to laugh at the animals who were so unloved by their owners that they're up for adoption. They had some great stuff there...

1. A new friend
Whilst looking at the hamsters, it occurred that I hadn't yet gotten our house's cat - Roscoe - a present for his birthday yet. Now, he's not much of a hunter outdoors, and has yet to bring me back anything dead as a present yet. Quite a disappointment I'm sure you can imagine. So...how about a hamster?


_Rawr

I was thinking we could make a YouTube video, called 'really super cute hamster'. We could film the hamster washing himself, eating little bits of cucumber and playing with bits of string. And, just when the teenage girls have called their mother, little sister and favourite doll over to watch the video, we let Roscoe into the room.

He can chase the hamster around for a bit, catch it, toy with it for a while and then, having ripped its heart out, present it to the camera - smearing the blood all over the lens.

Alternatively I could just get him a little toy mouse stuffed with catnip.

2. Litter Kwitter
"Toilet train your cat" read the box. "Guaranteed results within 6-8 weeks". What?



This little box contains three separate rings which are placed in the human toilet (and hopefully remembered and removed when people are sitting there), and taken away one-by-one until the cat is taking up the bathroom for 15 minutes at a time and filling out all the answers in the crossword in the Sunday papers.

Seriously.



You might think it's a bit wrong to watch this video for more than about 22 seconds. Don't turn it off...you'll see.

Obamashot

The conscientious folks over at Twitter decided to set up a special area of their site, Election 2008, to gather up-to-the-second opinions on the American election - including some big debate that's apparently going on tonight between all the major candidates.

The conscientious folks over at The Internet decided to take that area of the site, and use it to talk about the things they find most important about the American presidential election.

As such, the hottest topics on Election 2008 right now are...election drinking games.

Obamashot
Drink one shot every time Barrack Obama says the word 'change'.

McCainshot
Drink one shot every time John McCain says the word 'my friends'.

It's going to be a messy night in many, many American households. I bet the electoral debate will have record viewing figures amongst students though.

CDs have arrived!

Totally awesome, I have a large box full of CDs with my face and my music all over them.



It's entirely possible I've forgotten who amongst you actually ordered copies (except those that have actually paid), so get in touch. £3 if you want one in person, £4.50 if you want one posted to you. If you want one posted, either grab me online to get my bank details or pay via Paypal.

They look pretty awesome ^^

More blasphemy (now in picture format)

I love the internet.







The bottom two are from the Perry Bible Fellowship, highly recommended. Click all images for higher-res versions.

Sexism == success

From BBC News:

Men with sexist views 'earn more'

Interesting, eh? Almost as interesting as the fact that three separate people have linked me to this page. Am I really that successful?

Musical Road

I love Honda, they come up with such awesome stuff, such as this - a musical road. They've cut ridged grooves into a road in California, which interact with your tyres to create a little melody as you drive along. I can't think of anything more awesome:



Next challenge: make a spoof video of what it would be like if the British public sector tried doing this on the M25.

Artwork's Done!

Well, Somnesia's been sent off to the printers for duplication, printing, boxing and wrapping. As there's not really a lot more to say about this (other than to regale you with my exciting trip to the post office, which my lawyers advise me is unwise), here's a peek at the front cover:



Can't wait! :)

Contradiction/Affirmative Action

I'm applying for some graduate jobs at cool places, the eBay family (eBay, PayPal, Skype and others) amongst them. On their form, I found the following two sentences, very close together:

"As such, eBay Inc. is required to take affirmative action to employ qualified minorities, women, and veterans."

"eBay Inc. maintains a policy of considering all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability or veteran status."

Now, I don't bring this up to pick holes in their logic (or their spelling of 'colour'), but more as an example of quite how ridiculous 'affirmative action' is, in my opinion*.

If a company is found to be actively discriminating against say, people called Jim, then I agree entirely that they should be punished for this. This is known as 'anti-discrimination legislation' and has nothing to do with 'affirmative action'.

However, if a company just happens to have no Jims on its staff, then it's ridiculous to say that they should take 'action to remedy this'. You see, action to remedy this lack of Jims will have to involve actively discriminating against the Steves of this world. And then the company needs to be punished for discrimination again...

Affirmative action is, quite frankly, a joke. There's stopping discrimination, and there's advocating it - and I don't see quite how the twain are supposed to meet.

eBay should always employ the best suited person for the job. Given their success, I don't doubt that this is exactly what they do. So, why on earth are they being asked in the first sentence above to 'take action' to ensure they employ certain demographics? And how do they reconcile that legal requirement with their equal employment policy set out in the second sentence above?

Seriously, I have no idea. Anyone?

--

* <sup>I write 'in my opinion' only to make that sentence scan a bit more nicely:

a) Of course it's my opinion, I'm the only one who writes here.
b) My opinion is right. Always. Don't get the impression I lack faith in my beliefs simply because I added those three words.</sup>

The semicolon

Whilst proof-reading the artwork for Somnesia (printing tomorrow, I promise!), I was lucky enough to spot an inconsistency within a semicolon separated list. One item following a semicolon was capitalised, one was not. I was fairly sure I knew which of the offending pair to change, but quickly stepped over to a search engine to find a reliable source to confirm my beliefs.

Behold:

Sussex University

At Sussex, the claim is that the use of the semicolon as a 'supercomma' (a ridiculous term) is frowned upon. Tut tut Dickens, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Austen et al. They also have the ridiculous sentence 'Do not use the semicolon otherwise.' on their page. Hardly an academic institute to be taken seriously.

Bristol University

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I don't think I'll ever take a graduate in English from Bristol University seriously ever again (not that I recall ever having done so, but, y'know...). They start off by claiming the semicolon will take 'no more than a few minutes to master' and then proceed to misuse it themselves, in the example sentence for how to use a semicolon. I have not the words.

Please, read the following from Bristol's guide to the semicolon:

In the meeting today we have Professor Wilson, University of Barnsley; Dr Watson, University of Barrow in Furness; Colonel Custard, Metropolitan Police and Dr Mable Syrup, Genius General, University of Otago, New Zealand.

I hope you're as appalled as I was. Rest assured they've received a strongly worded email.

Also, Bristol University English Department, please stop putting full stops in headers on your web pages. Please.

University of South Florida

Yes, shaming though it is, the one decent academic guide I could find near the top of Google on the semicolon comes from the Americans. I disagree slightly with the banality of what they term 'sentences' when demonstrating how a semicolon may join such a pair, but can't fault their English. You can find their guide here; it's very good. That preceding pair is an example of exactly what I meant by their 'banality'.

Be ashamed Brits, be very ashamed.

--

I considered explaining Bristol's unforgivable error, but, frankly, if you're a regular reader of this blog I do expect you to uphold certain standards. Try looking at some of the Americans' examples if you really need to work it out.

Recording Pics

Lots of people I've been talking to over the past couple of weeks think that recording studios are exciting places full of fairies, neon lights and whirring machinery. There were a large selection of machines that did indeed emit varying green and red lights, but other than that, it really was just a couple of (rather cold) rooms that get quite tiring after 10 hours a day, day after day.

That being said, here's some pretty pictures:


<sub>My pretty guitars


(Not my) Steinway Grand Piano, 1872


Could you try that again please Ina? And again...and again...


...screw it, we'll just get Tim to fix it


Drum boy, drum


Harpsichord, hand-made by William De Blaise


Parking facilities were...sparse


But the views were lovely</sub>

Omega Sektor Sponsorship

I headed out today to meet with some folks from Omega Sektor about partnering up a bit with my lovely Aston CompSoc. It seemed a fairly logical union, as we've got a bunch of geeks and they've got a hell of a lot of gaming PCs and consoles.

They gave me a quick tour of the place before we talked, and I was far more impressed than I thought I'd be. They're building a Wii area downstairs, with a bunch of large screens in cubicles for gaming fun. You know the only game that'll get played there is going to be Wii Tennis though.

There's also a giant-screen Wii (not sure how that works with the motion sensor), a PS2/PS3/XBox 360 console room and a whole bunch of rooms filled with gaming PCs, in varying formations for different team strategies - mostly shamelessly sponsored by big gaming companies that have little connection to the rooms.



After the usual kind of deal was agreed on (we promote their stuff, they give us free and discounted stuff and talk to our members), they even gave myself & a friend free run of the facilty 'till we got bored.

Great fun, highly recommended (and not just because they're now paying me to say that) - more details after our first CompSoc LAN there ;)

My XBox 360 is broken :(

Today, my XBox 360 decided to stop reading any DVDs or CDs that I put into it. All that comes up whenever I put anything into it is 'Open Tray' or 'Disc Unreadable'. It's little consolation that I can still play the various arcade games on XBox Live - but I can at least still watch films and the like from external hard drives.

I can send it back in to Microsoft for repairs, but as it's not the specific error they've extended their warranty on (3 Red Rings Of Death), it looks like I'll have to pay £65 to get it fixed.

Rather annoyed :(

5 Songs from the Recording are up

Well, I've put 5 tracks from my recording jaunt up online.

You can find them on:

Tie-Dye Quartet's Website
Tie-Dye Quartet's Facebook (add us as a fan)
Tie-Dye Quartet's MySpace (add us as a friend)
Tie-Dye Quartet's Last.FM

Hope you enjoy. You can buy the whole album from me for a whole £3, or buy it online with a bit of an extra fee for postage and PayPal.

Enjoy, tell your friends!

Xx

Awesome animals

I recently stumbled across a little article on MSN Environment about some very cute, and some very bizarre animals. Had to share.

The Leafy Sea Dragon



Any animal with the suffix 'dragon' is immediately cool, but this one looks like it came out of a computer game. I was, however, disappointed to find that the male of the species is the one that looks after the kids. I bet they don't even breathe fire.

The Star Nosed Mole


A cross between a mole and a sea-monster. Awesome. More here.

Looking Good

Sneak previews of some of the music from the album will be coming soon. Just tidying up some web stuff and sorting some artwork now.

Speaking of which, here's a glimpse of quite how good some of the photos that will be going into the album, and be used for general publicity are going to be:



Sweet or what?

Thank You, Random Folks

I'd just like to say thanks to the completely random folks out there who come and chat to me via the Digsby Widget down the right hand side of this blog. You folks give me faith in the...diversity...of humanity, as well as wonderful, intelligent, witty insights into your own little worlds. Ok, I might be stretching it a bit far - but here's a few of my favourite recent random folks, if you're still reading, feel free to say hi in the comments at the bottom:

Thank you 'BT Guy', for your inimitable mood swings. One moment I'm absolute scum for daring to disparage the good name of British Telecomms, the next you hate your job, your employer and even the BT connection you have at home. Oh, but how dare I slag off BT on the internet, when I'm just one user and don't give a representative sample...a representative sample of the company you hate. Oh God how you hate them, how you wish you could just quit (but inexplicably, haven't), how you wish you had cable in your area...

My thanks to you 'BT Guy', and also a recommendation that you go see someone about your mental health.

Thank you 'Lara', for approaching me to proof-read and offer advice on your GCSE coursework on Romeo & Juliet. I'm baffled as to why, but it was a fun way to end a long day and hopefully you've got a better grade out of this. However, this isn't a general offer of coursework advice folks.

Thank you 'Ass', for asking me to look at your band's myspace page, then swearing at me when I (politely) gave you my opinion. I won't even link to it here because, let's face it, it was pretty awful. Please stop playing music, trying to design web-sites and breathing. Assuming you're still reading here. Assuming you can read.

Thank you 'Guest15439', for sharing with me in great detail your recipe for the perfect roast dinner. I don't believe I've ever mentioned having trouble with cooking roast beef before, which is why it's especially nice of you to take the time anyway. I must admit I thought you were some kind of scammer, right the way up until 'hope it works out for you, post on your blog if it does'. Well, as I've mostly been living on Micro-Chips this week, nothing to report yet, but keep hoping eh?

Thank you 'Geraint', for letting me know out of the blue one day that you've been reading my blog for over a year, to find out what working at Microsoft was like. For then telling me (after a full year) that I didn't post enough about the things you wanted to hear about, and that you were disappointed in me. Such feedback is always appreciated and, if time-travel is discovered, will certainly be shortlisted for potential consideration.

Thank you also to my various friends who read my tweets about my beautiful random chatterers and then pretend to be a stranger too. It's always reassuring to know there are people with as much time on their hands as me.

Keep it up folks.

Xx

Finished

Years of playing, months of composing, weeks of rehearsing, over 100 hours in the studio, 20-something hours of driving and not a lot of sleeping later...Somnesia is complete.

We've got 12 tracks, totalling around 66 minutes' of content. It sounds wonderfully professional and is far better than I'd even dared to dream.

Over the next week or so I'll work on getting some pretty CDs printed with a nice full colour booklet and all that jazz. I'll also be putting some of the tracks up for free play online, along with some of the photos we had done before we started.

Copies of the album will be £4 or so to cover the CD & postage costs (unless you're lucky enough to get one free), and will probably even come signed by the band - good or what?

For now, I need some sleep. Normal blogging will resume shortly.

Xx

Recording

Well, I'm off recording for a week. See you when I'm done!

:D

I'd like a job, please

Back at the start of June, I applied for jobs at a few of the major international technology firms. I wanted to get my applications in early, in case I got myself a US-based job, so that I could get a work permit and such things sorted in plenty of time.

It's been coming up to three months now, and I've not heard a single thing back from any of them. I'm fairly sure that Microsoft will at least phone me, given the three years I've spent doing various things for them and the lovely reference my manager (apparently) will give...so I'm not sure whether this should worry me or not.

Is it simply that their recruitment processes haven't started yet, and my applications haven't even been looked at? Or perhaps they have been looked at, but there'll be no contact until their processes start? Or they all hate me?

I simply don't know, and it's quite frustrating waiting with no knowledge at all. I appreciate they probably get a few too many applications to have a weekly 10-minute chat with each one, but perhaps a little transparency would go a long way. Would it really kill these people to let applicants know a little about the internals of their recruitment processes?

Better not bitch too much though...I still want those jobs.

Xx

Boogie Wonderland

I quite like dancing, and I quite like the 70's. Specifically, John Travolta, The Trammps, Earth Wind & Fire, The Bee-Gees and (some of) the dress sense. Clearly, therefore, a night out at Flares is a good idea.

The music was mostly good, and the dancefloor packed at all times. Well, except when one of my favourite songs came on, of course:



No, I'm not available for marriage proposals. However big the dowry.

I love Americans

I heard (and repeated) various stories about this confusion happening, without being entirely sure they were true. Whilst I'm not sure the particular post below is authentic, there must be some Americans this dull, mustn't there?:


_{Click to embiggen}

Found on Failblog, via Rob.

Photo Shoot

Yesterday, the wonderfully talented Clush came by with all of his snazzy gear to take some photos of Julie, Pete & I (aka, 'the band').

After much moving of furniture, laying of white sheets and gathering of lights we'd turned the living room into a photo studio of sorts, and then spent the next couple of hours posing and contorting ourselves in a variety of outfits for his amusement. Hopefully he took some snaps too.

After that, it was off to the park to see precisely how many strange looks we could get from locals enjoying the scenery as we climbed trees, lied around on the grass and generally just got things in our hair.

As soon as the pictures have been selected, post-processed and other technical things, I'll share a few with you on here. Still more will end up on the band website (still coming along nicely) and on the CD we get when we're done recording.

Improvisation

A rock or pop song is generally very well written indeed. Everyone knows exactly what notes they should be playing, in what way, and at what time. At a live performance, there may be a little elaboration on the solo, the band may drop out so the crowd can sing the chorus and there might even be a nice big ending..but the song will pretty much remain the same.

Alas, not with jazz.

The soul of jazz, the reason it survives so well in a live music environment, is improvisation. There are countless examples of albums which contain two versions of the same song - not out of laziness, but simply because the two takes - by the same band, in the same studio - are really quite different, and wonderful in their own way.

This makes recording with just three people very challenging indeed. On some pieces we have six instruments playing, so clearly just recording a live 'take' of the song won't work. As such - what do we do? Play through the piece, improvising, with just three instruments, and then try to play over the top later with three more?

We want to preserve the feel of the improv ideal, but also be able to improve and perfect upon every section of every song, so that we have something which really epitomises the piece we're playing. It's a difficult set of choices to make.

We've ended up with a few different approaches for a few songs, but mostly what I think we'll be doing is playing with all the instruments, but only recording the one which really drives whichever song it is. We'll then do new takes of the other instruments, so that the person playing knows exactly what is coming up, and has a few chances to get it right.

Hopefully it'll work out :)

Restraint

With the wealth of possibilities opened up by a recording studio, it's become a very real temptation to make the 12 tracks we're going to be laying down overly complex, and/or structured. With a live show that only comprises of three or four instruments at a time, the thought that we can suddenly have 9 playing along at once seems a very sweet one, but it's important to remember that all that really matters is the aesthetics of the piece.

Likewise, some changes, some difficult technical passages and super-high notes that just can't reliably be done in a 'live' environment are now opened up. In some pieces, like Somnesia, this is a breakthrough which means the piece can finally see daylight. In others, it's an ever increasing risk that we'll lose the simplicity that gave the songs their feel, by showing off how clever we can be musically.

Although jazz is, by its very nature, a genre more suited towards the ear of musicians than lay-folk, I'm also trying hard to make sure that (most of) what we record is accessible, and enjoyable for all. There'll be some hidden nuggets which a musician will (hopefully) love, and a gentile will skip over - but it's difficult to make things so that someone without a solid grounding in jazz and musical theory won't just think is simply weird.

One of the pieces I think this hard-earned restraint will really help is a little-known track we're covering, by Jill Tracy, entitled Evil Night Together. She gets real depth in her recording, with wild strings and full piano dominating the piece. We're going for a much more laid back feel, which gives the song an entirely new texture, whilst still staying surprisingly true to the original. Hopefully that one will not only turn out well, but will also sound unique enough to have been worth the effort - because there's no point in simply playing back someone else's composition as it's written...it'll never sound quite as good (with some very rare exceptions).

We've also got a lovely little piece called 'Dreams', which isn't even two minutes long and just has guitar and vocals. Sounds gorgeous and...should be a doddle to record ;)