The hunters in your home...

We have 3 young female cats who get antsy when they only get let out in the late afternoon. As a result, they stay out until dusk falls and thus get into "wild cat hunting mode". This seems to have been added to with a "take some work home" mentality where they literally bring live unharmed rodents into the house to chase everywhere.

This poor little bugger is one such rodent.

grr!

Your up-to-date source from Google Trends...

Here's the up-to-date info from Google Trends for those of us waiting for the "house price correction"... bear in mind this is not a totally accurate picture and it does make certain assumptions:

• Google's search engine is by far the most popular and nobody goes looking for houses or information on when prices will drop without making a google search first
• The information from Google trends is useful as an indicator of social trend (note - we're only talking about online UK here, nothing about anyone who doesn't use google as a first-point-of-access) and the overall "feeling" of people
• That what people feel ultimately dictates what they do, no matter how hard the vested interests (estate agents, conveyancy agents, banks/building societies, mindless property TV shows etc) try to keep pumping out the positive messages to try to keep the bubble inflated.

With that in mind, here goes...

2007 only "house price crash" trend - this continues to rise, with a very noticeable "blip" in the recent Northern Rock wake. This one has to be the biggest indicator of what's on people's minds. Self fulfilling prophecy? Well, if the herd mentality holds true, eventually, yes...

2007 only "buy to let" trend - falling? Can it be that either there are enough debt-laden greedy private gits out there now, or is the lure from the TV show is waning as people realise the line of cheap credit is drying up?... I saw a guy in a crap striped suit admit that out of £7.5m of property portfolio he owed about £5m - so he'd be up £2.5m if he sold up now. At which point, the other studio guest said "assuming you could sell it"... and surprise surprise, the "polite strained argument" so prevalent in England today broke out, as our reality-aware bubble-burster was treated to a stonewalling from Mr Pinstripe who couldn't believe things would possibly change...

"Northern Rock" 2007 trend - this one shows the strartling jump in interest in this crappily-planned company at the time of the crisis - but also shows people are still keeping an eye on it...

I've seen some good new stories recently on "shoring up" mortgage markets with banks putting aside crisis funds... holy cow, they'll never be made to pay for their stupidity, will they? :)

BTW, another Windsor jam night wednesday night! Think I might take the 5 string fretless and the combo... not sure where to park for that though!

----- Today's Practise Diary -----

Jam nights... bit o'fun!

Wotcher all.

I got to that Jam night in Windsor - it's the Havana club in Windsor: a stone's throw from the station (actually, it's underneath it, in a very cool arch-basement-long-thin style).

Great night: the guys there have a PA which pretty much does the trick, but the Carlsboro bass head and a wedge monitor definitely don't cut it. I'd consider taking the combo if I wasn't about to sell it! It's always a bit of a lottery taking good gear to a jam night - you can end up with it totally fried (it's happened to me before) by people who don't understand how amps work.

Thing is though, my sound really sucked! The moment I started tweaking the warwick I knew I'd have to use more midrange honk because the Carlsboro simply didn't have the welly. While that might work in some places, I don't like bass with less BASS.

I used to have a carlsboro Cobra 90 bass combo: first proper amp I had. Got a lot of mileage out of it too, but I don't hanker after one of them again!

So on balance, I think I'll bring the combo next week. Hopefully I can park close enough by. I'll take the pod as well.

The guys there are cool - the dude playing percussion's a pretty good drummer: Nick, the guitar player, was very kind about my playing on the night. It's been a long time since I jammed with musicians I don't know... bit rusty, but otherwise OK!

----- Today's Practise Diary -----Some sight reading: a few more bars of Chromatic Fantasy!

windsor-home of great musicians?/

Well, I'm hoping it is. It seems to be a fact that musicians have to keep looking for bands to join, more than anything I suppose it's probably a function of not finding yourself in a stable act which is the main source of income for all involved. Therefore, you all don't have day jobs, and you're probably young enough not to have too much to lose. I've got the creeping realisation that I'm going to die a bit before I reach forty as my goals and ideals don't match the life I've fallen into.

This won't be anything apart from a resignation that dreams are dreams, and a hardening of the person to what life really is. Starting to realise that the best part really was good, and it was 10 years ago.

This has to change. I'm probably going to have to do something radical. nic feels it too, she's had enough of the emptiness, the vapid manic crap we put up with.

I'm not sure what to do. I could just keep sleepwalking, I suppose.

Maybe tonight will spark me up.

friendship entropy

...or, How I learned to let go of the past. Or at least started to.

Maybe it's just the feeling of passing of seasons, maybe it was the huge lucid dream I had last night about being in St Andrews again (which I didn't want to end), but I've been thinking about friendship entropy and loneliness.

Right now there are probably a fair number of people I remember from St Andrews days, scattered everywhere from the US to Shetland to Switzerland to London. All have their own lives (the ones in london seem more successful in keeping together), and a lot use stuff like Facebook.

But it's not the same. The best part of my life was with these people, and telling each other every other month by email that "we must get together sometime" is pretty lame after the first few years.

With that in mind, I guess I'm saying "you can never go home again", which is sad, because that means the place I felt happiest, safe, useful... Is in the past.

I see now that I have to give in to friendship entropy. It's time to stop trying to stay in touch with people who simply have their own lives to lead. i guess i should go get one now, even if it is a tiny, small, rather grey one.

i'm not stopping this blog though: this falls under the heading of self-publishing. I'm just going to stop trying to keep the past alive. I wonder if I've done this before?

I promise I didn't watch the race.

Well, it sounds like I missed an "eventful" race. The FIA messed up telling people what tyres to use (or so it seems - perhaps ferrari thought there was advantage to be gained in "getting the email late"?) - how hard is it to tell them all at once? Another classic cock-up...

The rain fell in Japan for the F1 weekend, and surprise surprise it was like the M4 on a wet commuting afternoon - chaos. And - double surprise - the pole position man won! Well duh, I may not have seen the start but I bet he was one of the few who didn't get pranged in the first corner or so...

Really. I think it's time for F1 to stick its tail between its legs and slink away for 2007.

The great F1 swindle... self-delusion by drivers? Never...

OK, ok, it's not music related. But it is a big "I told you so", and we've all got to feel smug sometimes.

http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=40795&PO=40795

So Felipe Massa thinks Ferrari deserve their F1 constructors title, does he? Come on mate, you should have kept your mouth shut. At least then if Ferrari had kept saying "no comment" we could limp to the end of the season and let the 2007 championship whimper to a close and lick its' wounds in time for 2008.

But no, the idiot had to open his big, fat, stupid mouth. And now everybody will be thinking that Ferrari are paranoid that nobody thinks they deserve the title. So now, in everybody's eyes, they won't!

Well done, there's a hole in your foot guys.

I don't like to extend political intrigue in sports (it diverts from everything that's good about sport) but in this case I had to say something. F1 sucks, it really really does. It's like Heathrow, it can't grow any more without pissing people off (the technology has become too big a factor) but if it doesn't grow people will think it has failed.

Let's hope F1 can find a new direction, or it'll implode in more messy ways next year. Meantime, don't watch grand prix... it's pretty boring.

small gigs, small rigs...

Tomorrow night we're at the Bricklayer's in Marston, Steve's local, tiny pub for the big noise that is Janeiro: they love it tho. I have to remember to bring mic cables so I can get sone singing in!

I'll take just the combo and 2x10 I reckon. The crating up of the two big speakers is pretty much complete, now I have to weigh them and work out how much it'll cost to ship them! On the plus side it's original boxes, so they're up to the task. Was a pain getting the boxes down from the loft.

Our pond is drying up: don't know why, but the ducks are looking worried. Think we'll have to work this one out for ourselves. Could get messy.

Btw, if you've got a wii, there are actually websites out there where you can register you wii number so connecting yourself to local gamers!

In an effort to look more well-rounded...

OK, I admit it, it's been a while since my last gig(!) - I do think about other stuff though, hate you to think I'm a one-trick pony.

So stuff I've noticed - F1

http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=40767&PO=40767 - so Juan Pablo Montoya, the world's greatest has-been in F1 (let's face it, he's a better driver than I'll ever be, but that's not the point of being a sports fan, is it?) slags off the way F1 works. Well mate, now you're really playing with the big boys at NASCAR, driving around and around in circles on unchallenging tracks and able to bang your steed off anyone who gets in your way (never did work with F1 cars did it you lead footed hot headed tit?) after quitting halfway through the 2006 season you're obviously hugely qualified to comment on the state of F1...

Honestly, what a cack-headed dimwit.

The Dilbert Blog -

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/09/900-pound-man.html (latest story)

I don't believe it, the man who writes Dilbert has time to write an acidic blog... and he's got plenty to say on a lot of stuff. Gets a lot of good comment traffic too. Well worth the odd peruse.

And if my post last night from the Globe during the intermission (complete, I might add, with elizabethan musicians on the stage!) wasn't enough to persuade you to go see a show there - I'll reiterate - the complete lack of technological stuff in there (aside from the standard white lights so everybody can see) means you just have the play, the words, the fun, the actors voices: I've never found a Shakespeare comedy quite so funny! Who thought ol' Will did fart gags? And bloody long ones too, Family Guy have a real lineage behind them (no pun intended).

Tonight I'll be packing up huge speaker cabinets in prep for selling the buggers on eBay. You heard it first here folks, I'm cutting at least 20Kgs off the 900W warwick stack by buying new cabs. Woohoo!

surprise theatre!

Alas alack-no!

I'm watching shakespear at the globe!

This place is fantastic-and the guys playing are really funny. One of the leads is on crutches (accident, not character!) and he's been using them to great effect.

Northern Rock, etc... and that McCann thing...

Right, non-contentious as ever.

So northern rock shares have rallied, hmmm? Well well well... do you think people might have bought some when they thought it had bottomed out? Oh wow, that could never happen... this doesn't mean a thing! And the government saying they'll guarantee every penny? Well, it seems to have worked in Leeds and Manchester... but surprise surprise, you get further south (north london) and they were queueing at 1am again this morning.

"I don't trust my life savings on the govt's promise" seems to be something the nearly-deads queueing outside the branch are saying. And we still don't know what the postal and electronic transfers are going to do yet... watch his space.

In other points, I'm seriously glad to see the Portugese police pointing out that engaging celebrities and high-ranking british officials is a pain in the arse:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/18/nmaddy318.xml

I suppose they might be feeling a little like their every move is being scrutinised - but just to play devil's advocate... if you'd engaged in a high-stakes high-media savvy attempt to cover up something that happened to a member of your family accidentally ( it has happened comparatively recently you know - the news conferences by the tearful boyfriend, etc and it turns out they're guilty... ) would you keep raising the stakes? I mean to say, getting Gordo to set out your case???? Holy crap, I hope Mr Brown has more sense than to get involved...

Oh - and I heard on radio 4 earlier on the classic politician-has-ears-shut response to constant calls from almost every phoned-in caller for ELECTORAL SYSTEM REFORM.

We keep shouting, they ( i.e. the two main parties ) keep shifting in their seats and nervously bleating about "minority parties having too much power"...

Look, either give us a "none of the above" or do something about that crappy one-past-the-post bullshit.

D'oh!

Wait a moment... that sounds like Rock and/or Panic...



Good fun generator, that one - http://www.signgenerator.org/church/

Northern rock... who'da thunk it?

I'm at home with a cold today, (ahhh stoppit I don't need sympathy I need more beechams) and I've seen a few more reports about what's going on with Northern Rock. Now you'll know I follow the UK mortgage market with a cynical eye so you'll find no surprise in a degree of schadenfreude on my part... but the extent to which the media-fuelled paranoia is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy is just staggering me. Once some speed gets into a story like this now, it's amazing how people will run with it.

So people are still queueing outside branches (although if you believe GMTV there aren't any north of Kingston), trying to extract their savings. Hmmm. As long as you keep reporting this, I think it'll keep happening, chaps.

There's a number of things I've heard this morning which are new, though.

• The head of northern rock accidentally(?) revealing that they can indeed pay everybody who wants their cash - thanks to the loan from the bank of england! No distortion here, he literally said that on GMTV this morning. So, how much real liquid asset do you have, Northern Rock? Hmmmm.
• Northern rock's shares have gone into freefall again this morning (I watched "fun with dick and jane" over the weekend... that poor CEO is reminding me more and more of Jim Carrey) - the pillocks reporting this story and queueing are all going to bring about the takeover of northern rock if they're not careful: then the mortgage holders will end up owing the cash to someone else... someone not so nice? It does throw Fiona from GMTV into stark contrast - the dozy bint was trying to emulate Paxman interviewing the CEO of northern rock this morning while repeatedly mentioning she had her mortgage with them(!!!) - well done dear, there's no amount of foot-shooting you can't achieve with a microphone and your incessantly annoying nasal whine if you put your mind to it.
• Paragon (who are a huge UK mortgage company specialising in buy-to-let - no deposit accounts AT ALL) are being eyeballed as the next to die - they're staunchly saying they've got credit funding secured into mid-2008 but to that, I'd say - who from, and will they still be able to supply the cash? Where are your facility providers getting the credit from? Cash? Or the global (frozen) credit market? Buy to let - your time is nigh. Here's hoping all you property tycoons jump out of the second stories of your ludicrously extended houses and impale yourselves on B&Q conservatory glass panels!!! (me, bitter? Nah)

The ol' google trend for England (the most paranoid in this search in the world, I might add) for "house price crash, mortgage rate" is starting to pick up big time! Clicky clicky for all the good reasons to wait out the storm!

I'll be in my room, sniffing, sneezing and chuckling.

why facebook might survive...

I've heard and read a lot recently about facebook, and how it differs from other social networking sites: the third party app plugins (I'm fond of scrabulous), the status updates, and I've realised they're right, but nobody I've heard so far has summed it up: facebook is more like having some shared experience with old friends, whereas myspace is always more of a "look at me! I'm here!" sort of thing (which you could do with any copy of dreamweaver and a space on the web somewhere, myspace just made it a bit easier for spods).

Although no replacement for getting out and seeing people (which I really need to do more of) it's something more collabarative than old email lists, etc. Maybe it's got something that'll keep it alive: enough quality to keep people updating their status. I'll keep leaning over the e-fence and spying on my mates status for now...

That Flickr experiment...

Didn't work, actually. I ended up trying to send the email three times, but the flickr pic email address seems to be a bit shafted: no worry though, if you include pictures with a post to the blogger email post address it includes the pics in the post, as you can see from the previous post.

And it ends up as a link in the Facebook RSS feed note trawl, which'll do. I'm lay-zee.

Still going to make an app which can post to Facebook, Blogger and Myspace though - once I get some content MP3 wise onto my myspace page I'll be making sure my blog on there gets posted at the same time. Email me if you're interested in the app, or have any suggestions for other sites it should post to: my aim is a tick-box list of sites the prog will post to via web page control, which I'm thinking will happen similtaneously in the background (i.e. it'll post to all of them at the same time, with progress bars for all of them too as it goes).

Cats can be a pain in the arse - our three are predictably great at catching things, but their habit of bringing live stuff in for practise means the poor small furry beasts often die hiding in corners, where they then start to stink after a few days. Not nice. We've aired the house all day and here's still a lingering trace of decompsing mouse.... grr!

We've been harvesting nature's local wonders again. Within 30 feet of the back door are enough brambles and an apple tree with masses of fruit on for the 5 gallons of bramble wine we've got brewing upstairs, two frozen apple and bramble crumbles and now many many pots of apple and bramble jam.

And flying off in another direction... touchscreen Ipods! No need!

Fwd: mega blog picture tastic

Ok, this is a picture of green park in reading where i work. The lakes are actually really nicely done, did get rather full during the floods, but the ducks, fish, swans, geese, and million other living things you can stroll about looking at from bridges after lunch were not bothered.

Why is this a test? Well, flickr gets this from email from my phone, which took the pic, it then posts a new blog on blogger, and facebook then gets the rss feed and it's all dead clever. But as simple as sending one email.

Btw, good time on the 6 string last night, totally funked up on some beats on the pandora. Nice.

Oh dear, well, it had to happen... I'm on Facebook.

And this post is echoed to it as well. That's possibly a good example of why I'm thinking I'll probably keep an account there - I've been thinking recently that E-Mingling is nothing compared to real mingling (which is definitely true) but then again, how much mingling do I get to do these days? Best days of your life, student days. You socialise in a random way which is stimulating, life-affirming and definitely exciting. Adult life just kills all that really!

So in the absence of real mingling, we'll declare that E-mingling will do for now.

BTW, anyone need a bass player to play some danceable stuff?


----- Today's Practise Diary -----This evening Andy will mostly be clearing a space and setting up his studio!

Friday night gig...!?!

Well well well. No sooner am I predicting my own spiritual demise when an O'Neills gig comes along and saves me :) Great night, I was knackered before I started but soon got into it, and the familiar berserker instinct kicked in. Must remember to always bring my own mic cables though. However, the exertions of the night definitely proved to me I could use some more gigs - just lifting the cabs was an effort where normally I wouldn't have a problem.

This should change soon when I get the neodymium (sp? who cares!) cabs for the warwick stack. I'm selling the combo (fully up to speed after the tiny fix to the relay- ran close to flat out all night at O'Neills no worries!), the trace elliot 2x10 cab, the warwick 1x15 and 4x10 and purchasing the 4x10 and 1x15 lightweight cabs Warwick currently have. Smaller, lighter, they should go into car a lot easier and be generally better! Plus, I'll take the stack places more as it won't nearly kill me (and Jamie, and Steve, and Richie.... :) to get them into and out of the venue.

Oxford on friday night seemed a little more out of control than usual - although there's usually a fair number of visible police about (and one night recently a car full of plainclothes?) last friday seemed a little less like people having fun and more of an undercurrent. Maybe my most hated topic, the media, is actually getting to me at last... still, the vespa with alarm shrieking into the 1am night sky with graffiti painted all over it seemed like a valid soundtrack to the closing of the night.

I've signed over the Myspace site to Jamie now, so if you leave messages etc he'll get the emails! I'll still sign on and do stuff (friend adding, etc) but Jamie is doing the admin.

Cheersh punters

A much revitalised Andy.

P.S. did anybody reading this get back to me with stories about why you had kids? Tell me some of you haven't done it by accident... what is it with the UK and not liking children? It's like some new form of the victorian premise of "seen, but not heard" only now we don't even want to see them... I blame the newspapers.

WOAH! A month???

Oh my lord, I've dropped off the face of the musical world again. Not good.

This space feels very like the one I was in when I started this blog: it's a rather dark, dreary place where I continue to practise to keep myself up to scratch, but I start to wonder if that was it - if I must now, finally, admit that I'll not be much more than a slightly overweight programmer for the rest of my life, not really achieving much of note and definitely not spreading much happiness.

I suppose it was rather naive of me to think I could just slide back behind a desk after the first few months of this year and think that I'd be happy... As ever, I'm torn, split down the middle between the "honest job" which I know I can do (and do pretty well) which brings in good wages (even for the UK) but isn't what you'd call socially fulfilling (especially compared to my hobby) and the "hobby" of the last 19 years which is awe-inspiringly fulfilling but has little financial stability. These are not tradeoffs you can really discuss with anybody on a level playing field either. Ever tried telling your wife ( who actually hoped you'd go for your hobby ) that the reason you can't is in no small part that it would change everything so badly that she can't realised what she's asking?

I've been listening to the UK zeitgest again as well, which is always a bad idea. The current frenzy of reported stabbings, shootings, square mile financial sector bonuses (obscene!), public sector pay wranglings and sudden interest in emigration of Australia just makes me shake my head and want to do the Keanu thing - stick up a hand and just say "stop."

I thought about this on the way in this morning. I heard a Tory who vociferously maintained that violence was getting worse, on the basis of stuff he'd read in the papers and heard from his constituents. The (government) minister was counteracting with remarkably reasonable sounding assertions that it simply wsn't true - apparently the head of the chief constables' assoc in the UK was on earlier saying that firearms offences were down, etc etc etc.

At one point, the "white elephant" entered the room again - just as it has in discussions I've heard on the radio in the last few days - where someone mentioned society and family breakdown. The irony was it was the Tory, levelling accusations that the current government were ignoring this worrying phenomenon. And still, nobody suggested that we revalue how our society works, what it strives for, how it measures success... we seem to be reaching away from human contact (single parent families, single person housing, singletons, single...) and ever more towards "double digit growth"... when will someone say "stop."?

The irony is (and it pains me to reduce this rather tired diatribe to something so predictable) that the Tories' unbridled addiction to munitarism in the years they were in power prior to 1997 must have laid the foundations for the breakdown you see before you.

If 1974 was apparently the happiest the UK has been, is it surprising that the 80s are reviled as the era of the upwardly mobile oik (remember loadsamoney)? And that we now finally find ourselves bankrupt as a nation, both financially, morally, parentally...

I'm reflecting on the irony of the Tory idiot this morning, rather than blaming them exclusively. As V said in V for Vendetta (forgive me for using the quote from the film) -

Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.

The part I find interesting is "Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid." because, in the end, we still buy the papers, believe the hype, and now 47% of us are apprently scared to go out at night. The BBC regularly appears to regurgitate whatever A4 they're handed by whatever political organisation without checking it for authenticity (or, indeed, bias)... and we all grow ever more paranoid.

Try a google trends afternoon. I tried the UK trend search "mortgage rate", "house price crash" and it's an interesting view into the national psyche...

Time to close this post. Time to close my efforts? No. Not yet.

Fillin' in for yesterday's digital procrastination

Very naughty - I didn't put up what I did yesterday evening.

I could really do with an hour a night.... hmm.

Let's see what I can get up to this evening.


----- Yesterday's Practise Diary ------Warmups with special emphasis on right hand exercises at 133bpm - triplets, 1/16th note work- iPod work: random stuff including "Riviera Paraside" by SRV (a great example of blues bass with taste), Stillness in Time (Jamiroquai - great Latin feel) and moreTotal time: approximately 45 minutes