Modern advertising - is anybody watching it?

Having spent a few weeks at home has given me a chance to catch up with the advertising around at the moment whileb hoovering, etc. yes, this is a bass player who does housework heh heh!

It's total pants, isn't it? (the advertising)

I mean, there are some tragic obvious bits like continuous wobbly camera to try to make it look like "real footage" (despite the fact that all modren camcorders have stabilisation), negative positivity (by that, I'm referring to ads which say the service provider doesn't do something obviously nasty like "talk down to you" - what company would, you morons?), a profusion of CGId nasties (domestos-you can keep putting different voices over that crap "bug" but it won't make that ad work).

I think even less people really take notice than we think. But this is another unaskable question, isn't it? We can't kill the advertising industry, so it just strides on, the money gradually drying up and everybody keeping their heads firmly planted in the cat tray...

O'Neills last night.... nutters!

Well, that was a fun gig, from the bass point of view ;)

I took the minimum I could, and didn't regret it - walking across Oxford with all my gear meant it was easier to get out of town at the end of the night, I didn't have to drive back across town to the pub. Oxford is a pain in the arse for the jobbing musician, the one-way system means you spend huge amounts of time driving up and down the same two streets to get to that part of town.

Had to park in the multi storey again, that small weird shaped car park was full with the usual zombie-like space-crawlers trying to grab a place quickly, and as usual, we'd just finished soundchecking and I needed to park the car and get back to O'Neills asap! It is cheap (certainly cheaper than a £20 parking fine, which I've had a total of 3 times now)...

The gig went well. We thought it seemed a bit quiet for a friday night on a bank hol weekend but figured it would get lively. Lots of hen parties and large groups of large women in small denim shorts with turn-ups (this season's widely-adopted crap fashion choice) and a large group of pink cowboy hat wearers who seemed to convene on O'Neills en masse over an hour (which is pretty scary if you're about to whip the whole place into a frenzy).

Steve and I ripped out a wicked groove for the soundcheck - his time off has freshened up the whole vibe. In fact, he was in seriously good form the whole night... the bruises on my right shoulder have definitely faded already heh heh! :) I suspect Steve thinks I'm not listening sometimes and cues me by giving me a quick hit. Steve, I'm not a cymbal. But ta for the cues mate!

Great at the end of the night - a lot of compliments, and a bunch of guys Jay knows who haven't seen us for ages who I did recognise! Thanks for the shouts guys, appreciate that loads. A big shout to the guy who said they'd been out to see a pro band that night and then come to see us and thought we were better (!) - and thanks to the guy who said we knew how to really milk a guitar solo! Richie was really havin it last night, his solos on the last two tracks really soared. That's a good word for it, they soared. Definitely. Thanks for doing Comfortably Numb last night Jay, I made sure I got the chorus on there for the big exit solo (which I'm sure went on for at least 8 minutes, maybe more!) and we had that HUGE SOUND.

The fella at the front who bought Jamie a whisky - ta mate, pity Jay doesn't drink whisky but then Steve will drink pretty much anything so it didn't go to waste. The same fella rang his wife on his mobile during the Proclaimers(!) so she could hear 500 miles!

A great night all in all, with loads of people at the front, loads of people singing (what is it about Oasis and Guns n Roses???) - BTW, I heard from a fella last night a band called "fake plastic chairs" played in O'Neills during the week and they JAMMED their way through "Sweet Child O'Mine". HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE??? Answers on a postcard to FunkyBass@vodafone.net and we'll publish the worst ones here!

Cheersh m'deersh!

loki and bartleby again

Here's me, once again, the victim of over zealous estimation of how crappy the drive to terminal 4 heathrow would be. I suppose the pessimistic amongst us might propose that this was sod's law in action, and the geeks would have suggested I check traffic reports properly in future. The hippies would tell me to chill out, the middle-class parents would tell me to stop being so self indulgent, don't i know grammar schools are threatened, the bloggers would accuse me of another tragic waste of bandwidth. The musicians would tell me to find a bar, the drunks wouldn't have heard me, likewise the deaf.

But this does give me a moment to reflect outside the house, where I have been working flat out for the last 3 days, and briefly spy on people as they wait for other people. I may come down here again next week, this could actually build some faith into me.

If you've seen "dogma" you'll know what I'm talking about. Kevin Smith's witty philosophical flick on the absurdities of Catholic Faith includes a great scene in an airport arrivals lounge (although I reckon it was actually filmed in a departure lounge to give them the seats they needed) with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck debating if, at the moment of greeting on arrival, humans are at their very finest, that all traces of the crap we stack inside ourselves are momentarily forgotten and we reveal our true love for one another. I'm not seeing that right now, sitting here in Starbucks watching the arrival gangway-in fact I'm not seeing any smiles at all!

I still believe though.

Gravellin'

Anyone else out there ever moved a hundredweight of gravel 50m using nothing but a spade and a huge plastic bag as a sled?

Just wondered if you had as hard a time as I did...

heh

Gig in London last night!

Yep, I gigged in london.

First time since the last Janeiro gig at Pop Bar in Soho... a bit of fun in the grand style, a la Aspen bar. Justin, Mr S-Bar himself, saw us in Soldeu and decided he wanted us to play in London. I'm pleased he did!

Thoroughly enjoyable, and the first time I've ever mended a speaker cone using gaffa tape and superglue ;)

Cool, now I'm an electronics engineer! Well, a hacker anyway.

I've got a Warwick CCL combo - wicked little piece of 250W 15" kit, works well with the 2x10 trace cab. However, it has suffered from the usual warwick problem of crappy internal connectors which partially fell off during transit last year - on powerup, it clicked wildly then crapped out, all the LEDs come on but no poweramp - can't unmute it.

I've got a multimeter now after Andorra, so i decided today to try to diagnose the problem and fix it. After a little investigation I've got an order in with RS for a few cheap components in the signal path from the switch for the mute (no probs there!) so I'll have a crack at replacing them from smallest to largest and see what happens! If it works at least it'll be easier to sell!

Damned if I'm going to give someone £80 or so to fix it when I could do it...

That's me all over that is. Wish me luck ;) It's not a valve amp btw, so little chance of my frying myself. heh heh

Big shout to James for the comment. New job!

Thanks for the LDV parts site link James, appreciate that.

I've got a new job, phew. In the end it was a choice between local (less than 3 miles!) with really good money but some of the hallmarks of the management pointyheadedness that narked me off an Panasonic (large company, odd people promoted, possibly to places they can't make a mess, etc etc. Very dilbert.) or more distant (but still half the commute to Panasonic) with slightly less cash but a really keen bunch of guys who pulled out all the stops to make a position for me (initially they wanted a 6 month contract, but now it's permanent - they liked me that much and that counts).

In the end, short commutes and more cash didn't win. I'm just not that kind of employee - the job's got to be good: after all, you're there for a bloody long time each day, it's got to be something you take pride in and I can sacrifice £3K and a few minutes of commuting time for a job I actually want to do. I'll even brave M4 junction 11... you heard me.

So that's a new day job sorted. Cool. And I don't start until beginning of June, so there's time to work on some tunes for the Myspace site, give my website a kick up the arse (just got a new URL - http://www.funkybass.co.uk - telivo rule, dead easy to use and cheap too) and sort out other things around the place, like fitting my Car PC (which is totally ready!) and getting my bike license! I need the Virago overhauled and MOTd as well mind... but that could be a cool way to beat the J11 blues and no mistake.

Right, I'd better go fix the house aerial, which appears to have stopped working. Bah!

Tragic spam and complete rabbiting nutters...

I thought emails like this one were a thing of the past...
"
Good day,

Its my pleasure to inform you that your draft has been stayed more than necessary And I went to the bank to confirm if the Cheque has expired or getting near to expire and Mr.JOHN YABAGI the foreign operation Director of Financial Trust Bank Plc, told me that before the cheque will get to your hand that it will expire.
Then I told him to covert the $800.000 UNITED STATES DOLLARS to cash payment to avoid loosing this funds.However, all the necessary arrangement of delivering the $800.000 UNITED STATES DOLLARS in cash was made with GLOBAL diplomatic COURIER COMPANY here in Cotonou Benin Republic,
Mr.JOHN YABAGI the Director of Financial Trust Bank Cotonou have packaged the sum of $800.000 in consignment in your favour. Then he also helped me to Register the Consignment with GLOBAL trust COURIER COMPANY. Thank God very much for all the movement I made, every thing goes smoothly.
As for our agreement with the GLOBAL trust COURIER COMPANY they promised that your consignment will leave this Country as soon as you provide the necessary information to enable them deliver your consignment to you,as the Director of the GLOBAL trust COURIER COMPANY said that they need your contacts informations to enable them locate you immediately the Diplomats arrived to your Country.
Please write a letter of application to the given address below including the below registration number,
global/mtm/ped/214/2005
ATTN: MR SANI MBAJI

EMAIL:(global_courier_comp@myway)
Please, Send them your contacts information to enable them locate you immediately they arrived in your country with your BOX .This is what they need from you.
1.YOUR FULL NAME
2.YOUR HOME ADDRESS.
3.YOUR CURRENT HOME TELEPHONE NUMBER.
4.YOUR CURRENT OFFICE TELEPHONE.
5. YOUR IDENTIFICATION,PERSONAL ID OR PASSPORT.scan it and send to them
Please make sure you send this needed info’s to the Director general of GLOBAL trust COURIER COMPANY MR SANI MBAJI with the email address given to you above.
Note.The GLOBAL trust COURIER COMPANY don't know the contents of your consignment. I registered it as a BOX that contains fabrics materials. They don't know it contains cash,this is for security reason. don't let them know that it contains money .
I am waiting for your urgent response as soon as you have received your consignment.
Thanks and Remain Blessed.

Mr Denis morh
"
and I hope you die in your sleep, you sad muppet!

BTW, check this blog out. It's insane and appears to be written by a bunny oiler. No missing B there.

Cool, P990i on apples!

Apple blossom
Originally uploaded by Spammy Spamton.

I'm very VERY impressed with this camera on the P990i. You really can get some decent shots with it... now, to buy that 4GB memory stick... :)

That P990i camera...

White flower closeup
Originally uploaded by Spammy Spamton.

Blimey, it's not bad - I remember the first digital camera I got (a 1.3MP Kodak) and I guess it was about time I got something with better res... this P990i camera is actually making me think I'll get a bigger memory card for it and use it on holiday (etc) - the quality of the shots isn't bad at all. The autofocus works rather well...

Excellent!

O'Neills BLACKOUT!

Nah, we didn't drink so much we all forgot about the gig. We left that to the audience... I had a couple of pints of water (rock and/or roll yeah) and jumped about a lot in front of the stack (ah blissful bi-amped sound! So much headroom! Woohoo!) and sang until I got hoarse. Actually, I did all the above things until the power went out on stage and couldn't be persuaded to come back on!

Apologies to all of you who had a great time in the 2.75 sets we managed to play that night ;) on the plus side we did literally only have a couple more songs to play. It was going so well as well! You were all dancing like nutters, having a great time... then the lights dimmed a bit and it all went quiet!

All I can say is we had a chat while we were trying to get it all working again, and the band in O'Neills the night before had the same problem... the sparky got called out but said there wasn't anything wrong, and charged 150 quid for the callout! Talk about a rip off...

Anyway, a big shout to everybody who came along on friday night, total stars.

It's all good news...

Cool, lots of stuff happening... I redid the Janeiro myspace profile over on http://www.janeiromusic.com, I've saved the old one so we can rotate them about a bit. Janeiro have got what might become a residency at S-Bar in Battersea in ol' london town, which is cool, some london exposure and maybe some original material and who knows?

I've got employers lined up at different stages of giving me a new day job, and I'm pleased to say I'm hopefully not going to get hit by the time out I took in Soldeu. BTW, on the whole job hunting thing, I've only got one great tip, which is for gods' sake don't lie on your CV. Apart from the unprofessional creases (sorry) it will always get noticed. I remember at PMCDE a guy came for interview and he'd quoted some stuff he said he'd tested and worked on, but within 2 questions from the (knowledgeable) interviewer it was obvious he didn't know about the stuff he said he did.

Why do that to yourself? Over-reaching is one thing, but setting yourself up for stressful interviews where you have to try to fake knowledge of something? Don't bother - be totally honest.

That's probably dead easy for me to say, I've got 7 years behind me with a lot of different stuff that I've done at Panasonic so I can probably say I've touched on most stuff, and some of it I've done in a lot of depth.

But don't lie, please don't lie.

Holy cow, Speak and Spell!!!

We had one of these when we were kids... sweet emulator!

Amplifiers... a new search begins. Why?????

Well, I've finally got to the stage where I need to unpack and organise the studio. This means I have to think once again about how to keep the stack available to take to gigs, and looking at the stairs in the new place the 32+ kilo cabinets are starting to look a little excessive.

It's a 900 watt Warwick monster and I love it to bits but it's just too big... it only just fits into the Xantia! So it's time to consider some other options I reckon.

I saw some Gallien Krueger stuff out in Andorra which looked the part. Classic for them, it was small, portable, and had a massive power rating. Sweet. :)

I'll keep looking...

Getting stuff off camcorder...

It's not as hard as I thought, actually... the software that came with the Sony is a bit basic, but it does work. The avi files it captures are mental huge though, I'm using Nero Recode to bring them down to post to Myspace.

Now I can get into video editing (after I get another huge hard drive to fiddle with, mind)!

Looks like my interview technique isn't too bad.

woohoo! Got a call this morning from the agent fella, these tetra radio guys are apparently pleased with our meeting yesterday. 6 month contract with a good chance of a permanent position afterwards, so it's nice to have got things off the ground.

The actual job doesn't sound too bad (i didn't know the details before I went!) some testing to do in implementing a new feature.

And now, for a change, I can make a choice rather than being pushed into accepting the first position that comes along. That's liberating, you have no idea! Big thanks to Nic once again for supporting me like a trooper. Bless!

Cheers punters!

Summer? Maybe...

Blimey, I come back and the sun comes out... what a weekend! This is the only time of year I really have a lager or two, otherwise it's time for wine :)

But seriously, this is a very nice change. To think 4 weeks ago I was snowboarding where I lived!

A big shout to all the new friends at http://www.janeiromusic.com - thanks for the love people :)

Carpe Diem!

Now don't get into a hissy fit because I used some latin. It was in a Robin Williams movie anyway...

I was just thinking that a lot of the things that happened to me recently were pretty cool, especially when things were up to the wall, like moving house and needing to do it very quickly (like before going out Soldeu) - I was just looking out of the window at Bass Towers here and thinking how lucky I was, and then I suddenly realised the really obvious cliche. It sounds like one of those simplistic American Disney Cartoons about "How Capitalism Is Great"...

If you grab hold of a task and wring its' neck to do it right, good things happen more often than not.

Now, bad luck does occur, but I'll tell you right now that I can remember more good things happening to me when I grabbed hold of something I had to do and applied all of my resources to it than when I really didn't want to do something because it seemed like too much hassle, etc. Not just the extra effort: like something fell into place and the Gods themselved smiled down on the enterprise and decided that, well, yes, since I had put that extra effort in they'd lend a hand etc.

That's how it feels: like when I really tried and it worked out, that the hand of fate had almost helped out! You have to be careful with those rose-tinted specs: they can skew your perception. The truth is that you do, to a certain extent, make your own luck. Armed with that knowledge, and without any of that excremental american self-improvement garbage, go out there and really engage with what you're trying to do. Don't do the 21st century "oh, it's too hard" thing, really go for it. Properly.

You might be surprised how much you believe in fate afterwards :)

P990i problems... yes, I do have some

Ah, the thrills of a handset-still-in-development. It's been months since I had that... but this is mine, and it's a sonyericsson, not a pre-production Panasonic!

Basically, on the latest P990i software version, the phone app gets confused if you've got contacts which are in both the SIM and the handset phonebooks, and as a result personalised ringtones, number to name lookup etc don't work.

Simple solution - delete all the contacts on your SIM. It's not as if the phone uses them anyway...

I only stuck that on here so Google'd index it and some other poor sap will be able to find this solution pronto. Only one problem though... how do you access your SIM phonebook on the P990i...? I used an old Panasonic GD96!

Hmmm.

A little geeking can go a long way, musically speaking...

OK, Myspace is a cool way to get people into your stuff. The band are a covers outfit, but we do give one hell of a show, so while I'm looking for another job to occupy my waking hours behind a desk (poo) I decided to try making something using AutoIT v3 - an automatic Myspace Friend Adder!

There are plenty of things on the market which do the job, but you can pay upwards of $15 for them, so I thought "I wonder if AutoIT could control a web page?" - little did I know that the latest version has a whole user library pre-written to do just that.

I now have an app (windows only now) which can auto-request friends! There's a limit of 50 adds a day (which I'm working on, there are a couple of known workarounds which seem to work a bit) but for nowt and only about 5 hours of dev and test it works pretty well.

If you want to try it out for yourself (free at the moment, maybe a small paypal donation of £2.50 to spam.account@virgin.net) drop me an email at the same address...

Cheers m'deers

A

P.S. Still playing a lot of fretless 5 string Warwick. I've started recording some stuff too, in the "let's see where this leads" style, rather than coming up with something concrete like a melody and moving from there.