Planet Afterlife @ Seldo.Net

By at 09:53AM

By at 07:11AM

By at 06:35AM

So at lunch today myself, Isaac and a bunch of other co-workers who would probably prefer to remain nameless were having one of those free-flowing, ultra-nerdy conversations that you only get when you concentrate a bunch of incredibly technical people in one place and then prevent them, through social convention, from talking about work. These are pretty much a daily occurrence at Yahoo! at lunch time.

The conversation somehow turned -- I think it was Isaac's idea, so perhaps he can illuminate us as to his inspiration -- to the idea of simplifying conversation by referring to common workplace situations by their equivalent HTTP status codes. This turned out to be incredibly easy, and possibly even useful.

For the non-nerdy, a brief explanation: HTTP is the language your web browser uses to speak to web servers to request your pages. It's how the web server knows which content (such as a web page) you want to see. This happens before HTML or any other language gets involved, and it's used whether the content you're requesting is a web page, a picture, a movie or a file to download. The status codes are how the web server tells your browser (aka your client) roughly how things went -- so your browser knows whether the page you're seeing is the page you asked for, or whether it's an error page, or any number of other things.

This maps pretty well to a conversation between a programmer and a normal person. The normal person -- a manager, or a product person, or a marketroid -- wants something from the programmer, and the programmer needs to tell them what's going on, and often they can't just do that by giving them exactly what they asked for. And since programmers are notably bad at communicating with normal people but notably good at being very accurate about codes, this translation guide can help.

I'm not sure how often we will end up actually using these in real life -- although people occasionally use 404 already, and I am absolutely positive that 502 is going to come in handy -- but they at the very least serve as a very quick way of reminding you what the codes mean, if you happen to be building a web service. And if you're me, you're building a new web service every other bloody day, because that's all they want these days, another goddamn web service. Ahem.

Without further ado:

Interesting side note: even at the protocol level, the programmer's expectation that it is nearly always the client's fault and hardly ever the programmer's fault is obvious.

These codes and their definitions are based on the HTTP 1.1 specification. We welcome suggestions for further refinement.

By at 02:20AM

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isaac_schlueter: Apparently Obama met Leonard Nimoy once and gave him the Vulcan greeting. I did not know this.
Seldo: Obama is a huge nerd.
S: He collects Spider-Man comics.
I: yeah. spider man is totally a geek's super hero
S: He really is.
I: i mean, all comics are for geeks, but... spidey, i mean, he's a NERD.
S: And X-Men are the gay's super heroes.
I: hahahaha
I: totally
I: they're a big fabulous party.
I: with crazy costumes and afrikan queens.
S: Well, it was more that their powers only manifest at puberty
I: ah, that too
S: And some can remain hidden, while others are totally flaming, sometimes literally
I: yep
S: And people hate and fear them for no reason
I: they're a minority group
S: Plus they're obviously way better than normal people
S: It's pretty much a direct analogy.

By at 17:00PM

Were The World Mine (more info on Wikipedia) is a new movie from Speak Productions and it's pretty much my idea of a perfect movie: a musical based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream about a hot gay boy who discovers a potion that can turn anybody gay. There's singing! Dancing! Hot boys in glitter and silver pants!

The only problem: I can't find anywhere that's playing this movie. Keep in mind that I live in San Francisco, the town where, out of the whole world, you would most expect to find this movie in theatres. I can't find it anywhere in the world. This needs to be rectified. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures, the trailer and hell, the the full soundtrack (including surprisingly large chunks of dialogue) is already available on the Amazon MP3 store (yes, that's an affiliate link -- my first ever. I hear they're all the rage).

Here's a track from the album. I dunno if you think iambic pentameter sounds sexy when it's sung, but I sure do:

By at 16:38PM

Currently on Hulu, I am forced to watch -- 3 times per every half hour -- an ad for a product called Regenerist Eye Derma-Pod Anti-Aging Triple Response System. In addition to the reality-warping product name, it comes with this mind-blowing copy:

Regenerist Eye Derma-Pod puts the benefits of three treatments at your fingertips...for radiant, younger-looking eyes.
Resurfaces — regenerates surface cells, revealing younger-looking skin
Decongests puffiness — massage helps remove excess undereye fluids
Fills lines and wrinkles — microspheres help fill creases for a smoother look

1. What does regenerist mean? Maybe it's just a brand name, so I might let it pass
2. What is a derma-pod? It translates to "stuff you put on your skin", i.e. it's a cream.
3. The "Triple response" is actually all one function. It's like putty you plaster over the cracks in your face.
4. What is a "radiant" eye? Eyes do not glow, so this one is pretty much pure bullshit.
5. How exactly does it regenerate surface cells? The surface cells of skin are dead. You can't reanimate them. Nor can a topical cream cause your skin to grow more cells, the other possible meaning of "regenerate". This is also clearly bullshit.
6. How do you "decongest" puffiness? Puffy skin is not caused by congestion. And if massage helps remove excess under-eye fluid, then what is the cream for? You can massage your face without it.
7. Microspheres? This means "very small balls". That you are pushing into the cracks in your face. Grreat.

This is not even a particularly egregious example. All US cosmetic advertising (and there's a lot of it on Hulu) is similarly inane. Are there regulations about this crap? What you can and cannot say? I can't find any.

By at 14:54PM

I was and am passionately against California's proposition 8, an unprecedented rearguard action on the part of religious conservatives to strip the rights of marriage granted by California's constitution. It is heartbreaking, and unfair, and a travesty. But it wasn't illegal, and it certainly wasn't undemocratic. So I will not be protesting against it, and I do not support the ongoing legal action against it. I twittered to this effect and immediately received several responses questioning this decision on a variety of fronts. I've been meaning to blog about this for a while now, so here goes.

We lost, in a reasonably fair election

Proposition 8 polls immediately before the election and six months before showed extremely similar results: a clear majority of the population, between 55% and 65%, think that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Despite a ton of campaigning on both sides, those numbers didn't change very much. It was always going to be an uphill battle.

No On Prop 8 were a little slow out of the gate but picked a pretty good strategy, turning the focus away from the unwinnable referendum on gay marriage to a question of rights, and whether citizens should be stripping them away from other citizens, "regardless of how you feel about gay marriage". It helped a lot, and the gap was narrowed to a tiny 2% margin, but proposition 8 still passed.

The concept of a fair election in the modern United States is a tricky one. Political donations qualify as free speech, and money is airtime, so there was a ton of money involved. There was a lot more on the side of Yes than on No -- but then, there were a lot more people in favour of 8, too. Nobody (well, not too many) people are saying it's unfair that Obama won the election because of his gigantic fund-raising advantage. He got a lot more money because he was popular, and he got more popular because of all the money.

Of course the Mormons complicate things. A lot of money was donated to the cause by Mormons -- somewhere between $20 million and $30 million dollars -- many of whom live outside of California. This is a little unfair, but it's not like there weren't non-Californians donating to the No campaign either, and they were also donating vast sums of money. It was, as far as US elections go, fair.

We lost the election. It sucks that we did, I hate that we did. I donated my time and effort* to this campaign, and many of my dear friends gave far more than I did, and lost far more than I did when we lost. But we did lose.

Courts are not the way to win rights

I realize that this is not a settled matter, but I do not believe that lawsuits striking down Proposition 8 are the way that queer people in this country should get their rights of marriage. I think courts should be about striking down dumb laws -- and that's what they did, when they legalized gay marriage in California in the first place. That's the way courts should be used. But legal wrangling over the definition of an "amendment" or a "revision" of the constitution, even if successful, will look and feel like a back-door** way of getting rights. We're overturning a clear majority vote. That is undemocratic.

Devolving into racism and religious bigotry is a shockingly dumb idea

Exit polls about 8 revealed some uncomfortable truths about voting patterns. Notably, black voters were hugely in favour of proposition 8 -- and because of Obama's popularity with black voters, their turnout was higher than usual (this was to a lesser extent also true of the latino vote). This sparked some repulsive reactions in the gay community that bordered on advocating voter suppression.

The wonderfully clever Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight has eloquently debunked this narrative. Obama did not inspire black voters so much as he inspired new voters. These voters, on balance, helped narrow the gap between Yes and No on 8. If they had been a little more solidly against 8 it would have failed, true, but on balance they helped -- latinos in Obama's strong 18-29 demographic voted 59-41 against 8 (there's no equivalent figure for black voters 18-29).

There was also a tremendous religious backlash, particularly against the Mormons. There's a little more truth to this: the involvement of the Mormon church clearly overstepped the bounds of separation of church and state on this matter. However, churches across the country routinely do the same on a variety of matters. I'm okay with stripping churches of their tax-exempt status (regulate them just like regular charities, or if they are not charities, then as profit-making businesses). But there are a huge number of faith-based organizations against 8 as well.

Old people are the problem

The problem isn't black people or religious people, it's old people. But, in the soon to be immortal words of Dan Savage, "they're dying, which is some comfort". Old black people, old religious people, old white people, old people of every stripe voted in favour of Prop 8. And yet, they still only won by 2%.

We get to try again

The beautiful thing about democracy is that the will of the people can change the law, and as the people change, so will the laws. We lost this round. It was an overreach. We have suffered a hurtful loss, and it stings. We need to continue to fight for our rights, but the right time to do that, the honorable time, is in 2010, when we can put yet another proposition up for a vote giving us those rights back. Those 300,000 people who made up the margin this year will have died or been persuaded by then, and we will win. If not in 2010, then in 2012, or 14, or 16.

Everyone can see the way the tide is going on this. In Massachusetts and Connecticut and New Jersey and more, we are getting our rights. In other states like Florida and Arkansas, those rights are being taken away. Gay marriage is abortion 2.0: the new moral issue that the religious right will use to divide us. But they've chosen a losing battle this time, because while abortions are always unpleasant, no matter how sensible, marriages are beautiful, happy things. It's hard to remain a popular religion in America when you advocate making strangers unhappy: Americans are pretty nice, generous people on the whole.

So I disagree with proposition 8. It remains a cold little dagger of intolerance thrust into my back, which twists a little every day, reminding me that the beautiful state of California and its friendly, prosperous inhabitants think that I am not worthy of the same rights as everyone else. It leaves me hurt and frustrated and angry. But I will not be joining the protests, and certainly not supporting the lawsuits. We lost this time. But we will win eventually. And I take comfort in that.

* I am legally unable to donate money to political campaigns in the United States.

** Pun intended.

By at 16:33PM

The Obama administration has announced a national CTO position and geeks across the line are lining up to suggest what the CTO's priorities should be. The idea of a national CTO position is one of my favourite parts of Obama's platform, so here's my own wish list.

Define the role of government IT

Specifically, the role of IT systems should be to increase efficiency or provide new services. If the new system costs more to run than the old system, your bid is rejected. If your new system does less than the old system -- thus requiring, as too often happens, the parallel maintenance of the older system in order to cover these cases -- then your design is rejected. IT is powerful and gets cheaper every year. IT should make government cheaper and more efficient to run. That's why businesses use IT: because it makes them more money to do so than not. So no excuses.

Of course, the definition of "efficiency" can be a little tricky to come by, so here's two suggestions: speed of transactions (performance), volume of transactions (scalability), cost per transaction (efficiency). As a rule of thumb, new systems should be on the good side of at least two of these metrics.

The other issue that's even trickier to define is "quality of service". The government already has pretty strict rules about how accessible things should be; these can usually be applied to IT systems successfully.

All government IT should be open and interoperable

I don't mean open source; I don't care if your department chooses Windows or Linux (and the cheaper solution is not always an open source one). I mean that if one government department has a valid and reasonable reason to use data that is already collected and held by another agency, it should be practical to do so without re-collecting that data. There are tremendous inefficiencies in government produced by having to constantly re-acquire data that the government already knows about you.

To that end, I propose federally mandated APIs to all government data. No matter how big or small, if your department gets data in, it should be able to put data out again. Obviously I don't mean that the whole government should have standardized RESTful APIs lying around, but a basic federal standard for data exchange should be produced to provide a minimum baseline of functionality. At the very minimum, any citizen should be able to electronically access any data a government department holds about them at any time. Obviously this requires a federal-level system of authentication; that's a big job, but if Yahoo can do it for 400 million users, then the US government can do it for 300. It's tricky, but it's definitely been done before.

To be clear, I am not talking about a huge, central government database. Few things are less efficient than mandating that everybody has to store their data in the same place and giving one department the keys to the castle. Departments have heterogeneous needs and capabilities; they should store the data how they like, as long as it can come out again. Third-party services will soon evolve to aggregate and collate this data, should that turn out to be a useful service. The lack of a single central database will also reduce the "honeypot" effect having so many systems online could create for malicious third parties.

All government paperwork should be online first, and primarily

Paperwork is what people did last century. All government data will be (and should be) stored in digital form eventually, so skip the expensive and costly data entry process and collect it all digitally in the first place. This will be another huge boost in efficiency and another huge cost savings -- again, you need only look at the private sector. Everybody does everything online these days (with some extremely important exceptions; see below).

I don't mean bullshit like "the PDF of the form is on our website, print it out and mail it in". I mean actual, online, digital-to-digital data capture. Need passport photos? Upload 'em. Software is more than smart enough to detect photos that are not good enough; it could even crop them to size for you. Need signatures? Digital signatures already exist and are already legal, and have been since Bill Clinton's presidency.

Sure, there's a few things you need to do offline -- your driving test, for instance. But physical, offline parts are the only parts you should have to do online. You should be able to turn up with all the paperwork already done, at the appointed time, do the test, and get out. No standing in line to get a number to sit and wait for your number to be called so you can hand in a form. All that is is a waste of your time and taxpayer dollars paying keyboard monkeys to type in the data, and people to manage them, and guards to guard them, and people to clean their offices. Bureaucracy is expensive.

The Department of Getting Shit Done

With everything online, accessibility is a big concern. The visually impaired are not an issue: screen readers can read out online forms significantly more easily than offline forms. But there are other kinds of accessibility: poor people may not have a computer or Internet access; the illiterate have a lot of trouble with online forms (though they have a lot of trouble with offline forms too, to be fair); the homeless may have both of these problems. It seems that for a certain subset of edge cases, it's still necessary to have a physical office where people can go and ask questions and get help with the forms.

The thing about handling all bureaucracy online is that computers are much more versatile than big physical buildings. At the moment you have a DMV building, a social security building, an immigration office, a hundred other government departments, each with their own physical premises, offices, staff and maintenance costs. It's tremendously expensive. But you can solve both these problems -- access and expense -- with a single solution: the department of getting stuff done.

Instead of a separate office for each function, you collapse them all into a single office that consists of ranks of computers set up for government bureaucracy, with screen-reader, magnifier and other accessibility software and peripherals already installed. If you lack a computer, you come to the DoGSD and you can do it there, for free, no matter what department it is you need to deal with. With all the separate customer-facing government offices we could close in this way, we could afford to have a lot of outlets of the DoGSD -- maybe we could put one in every post office and library, giving new purpose to institutions whose relevance is fading in a digital age. That would mean everybody would have an office nearby, meaning greater accessibility for the poor or infirm.

Each computer at the DoGSD would have a phone next to it, which in case of difficulty you can use to place a call to a helpline for each government department. At the other end would be a civil servant trained to help you get your task done. Because that civil servant could be anywhere, the government could place these call-center locations anywhere in the country, generating new sources of employment in depressed areas. And because you only have one center for the whole nation, these civil servants would be more fully employed and efficiently used -- no long waits for customers, and no bored government employees sitting around wasting taxpayer money.

There's a reason we use so much IT

As I've said over and over, there's a reason we use so much technology in the private sector: it makes things easier, faster, more efficient and more useful for everybody involved. Government has been woefully slow in adapting to this, and it's time for that to change. That's what Obama's CTO should be taking care of.

By at 04:25AM

A couple of recent incidents in the wake of Obama's election have left me wondering just what the hell is wrong with Republicans. Consider this one, talking about Obama's recent "gaffes":

Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed.

In fairness, if you subscribe to the definition of a gaffe as being "when a politician accidentally tells the truth", then perhaps it's true that George W. Bush was remarkably gaffe-free, because he never told the truth about anything, although I suspect he only gets partial credit because he doesn't seem to even know what the facts are half the time, so he can hardly communicate them to us. However, no verbal blunders whatsoever? How do you rationally express that opinion?

Then there's this little invocation of Godwin's law:

It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, [Obama is] the one who proposed this national security force. I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may -- may not, I hope not -- but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism. That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

Leaving aside the amusing conflation of Marxism -- a theory which mainly relates to economics and the means of production -- with Hitler-style fascism, this raises a more serious question: is this guy for real? Does he live in the same reality we live in? Does he truly, genuinely believe that Obama's backing of a proposal to establish a civilian corps for nation-building in foreign countries, an idea put forward by George W Bush, constitutes fascism? How can you rationally deal with someone like that? Is our national dialogue going to turn into this:

Left: So we have this new economic plan...
Right: Stealing food out of the mouths of our children! SOCIALISM!
Left: Uh... okay? What's wrong, exactly? Would you like us to change someth--
Right: FASCISM!
Left: Look, we're just trying to negotiate with you here...
Right: APPEASEMENT! Never negotiate with terrorists!
Left: But you're not terrorists...
Right: Now they're accusing us of being terrorists! POLICE STATE!
Left: Sigh. Fine. We'll ignore the economy for now. Can we do something about health care?
Right: KILLS BABIES!
Left: Great.

Now, I know that the right is not alone in having its share of crazies. Especially in San Francisco, where I live, you run into a lot of vegan peaceniks who seriously accuse the republican administrations of times gone by of inventing AIDS and distributing crack to inner cities while planning 9/11. The difference between the Democratic and Republican parties is that in the republican party, the crazies are the ones in charge. Also, note that I say Republicans, not conservatives. There are lots of calm, rational conservatives. But they are not in charge of the Republican party.

It makes it hard to see how everyone's best friend, Barry Obama, is going to bring about the kind of bipartisan unification we are all hoping for. How do you negotiate rationally with someone who is not rational? How do you have an argument about policy with someone who does not even share the same frame of reference, far less the same assumptions about the cause and nature of the problems?

I don't know. But I sure hope Barack does.

By at 05:24AM

In a brilliant moment of pop / tv crossover, Fascination Records (home of GA & The Saturdays) have signed up Hollyoaks very own band, the Dirty Diegos to release a single at the end of November. Now I love Hollyoaks and love Fascination, so to me this is hilarious but brilliant news.

They’re treating them totally in character and the promo cd reads, “The Dirty Diegos are a local band from the Chester suburbs. They met at Hollyoaks High where they are all currently studying. The band first started life as the baby Diegos with Amy as the lead vocalist but she stepped down when she gave birth to Leah. etc etc” Brilliant.

Of course, you would expect the song to be properly rubbish. But it’s not. Instead it’s a fierce 2.36 of Michaela McQueen actually on vocals sounding pretty hot. It’s originally a song by Dimestars, a short lived band in the early 2000s fronted by Roxanne Wilde (sister of Kim) and featuring Morgan who’s now in DoesIt Offend You Yeah. It’s snarly, snazzy and I’d be able to play it pretty much immediately main set at Popstarz and get people dancing with them having no idea what it is. Just listen to that middle eight.

Fascination are, however, RUBBISH because they won’t let me embed the video. I don’t understand when people do that on youtube, so lose your prejudices and go watch it here. The single is out on November 24.

Here’s the original:

By trixie at 06:53AM

If you live in San Francisco and you are applying for renter's insurance, the insurance form will ask you how far your house is from a fire hydrant. It turns out there's no really easy way of working this out. If you search for fire station, you get one or two of the actual stations and a bunch of fire-related businesses. No good.

If you dig around the SF fire department's home page long enough, you might find this list of fire stations in San Francisco, which at least gives their addresses. But short of reading every single address and mapping it to a location in your head (omg! so much thinking!) you wouldn't know which one was closest, and if two were pretty similarly close you'd have trouble working out which one. Pshaw! We live in the future, there's got to be a better way!

My first thought was to try and build a Google MyMap of the stations. This involved a lot of tedious cutting and pasting, which I started to do, but then I realized it still wouldn't tell me which was closest -- I'd have to do all the comparison work myself! Clearly unacceptable.

So, after a few hours of fiddling around with websites, here you go: the San Francisco fire station distance finder app. See where all the stations are at a glance, and better yet, type in your address and it will tell you precisely which one is the closest to your house, and exactly how far away it is -- ta-da!

Of course, cynics might note that it took me about 3 hours to develop this and a further 2 hours to get it launched (because I spent 90 minutes debugging what turned out to be a lowercase "i" when I should have been using an uppercase one...) and that I completely failed to actually buy any renter's insurance, which is going to be super ironic when my house burns down tomorrow. But there's all sorts of side benefits:

• I got to play with the Google Maps API, which I've been meaning to do for a while
• I got to build some javascript, which I'm way out of practice with.
• If I ever move, I can easily recaculate my fire station distance
• Other people can use it to calculate their own fire station distances. I'm helping the city!
• It gives me something nerdy to blog about
• We live in the future. You have to do it the complicated way. Duh.

By at 18:13PM

I’m so predictable. If you have a pretty female singer with a synth chances are I’ll love it. So when my friend Ben passed on The Good Natured there was a good chance I was going to think she was the new best thing ever! And I did.

The Good Natured is black haired, red lipped 17 year old Sarah McIntosh.  Don’t let the over enunciated accent put you off though, this is gorgeous synth pop that raves away with a church organ & drum machine going at rocket speed.

She released her debut ep Warriors in October and it sold out almost instantly. Think Kate Nash meets The Postal Service and wallow in it’s excellence.

Download The Good Natured - Warriors [MP3]

By trixie at 08:23AM

Even before Queen Cheryl of Cole sharpened her perfectly manicured judging nails to become the nation’s new sweetheart, Girls Aloud were adored by everyone from misery guts Noel Gallagher to toff David Cameron. Now teaming up with hit factory Xenomania again for their fifth studio album, our girls show no sign of giving up the hunt for the perfect pop song.

By trixie at 06:30AM

In one form or another, I’ve been banging on about Little Boots since 2005 featuring her old band on cduk.com, getting ‘Stuck On Repeat’ played on Radio 1 and generally pimping her out to any media outlet I possibly could. Now, signed to a major deal on Atlantic Records, and appearing on this week’s Jools Holland, 2009 will no doubt be her year.

As part of a feature about new female popstars I worked on for Attitude with gaypop, I interviewed Victoria for the mag and here it is. FYI my other selections for the main feature were Lady Gaga, As In Rebekka Maria and Janelle Monae.

Little Boots is as small as Kylie. She’s also going to be just as big. Her mission statement is to create epic disco pop and from what we’ve heard, she’s the best thing to come out of Blackpool since Chris Lowe put on his tight yellow sweater.

We first met ‘Boots, or to give her her real name, Victoria, as part of glamourous Leeds indie band Dead Disco back in 2005. Like an evil version of Girls Aloud, their super catchy tunes, and Victoria’s presence as a frontwoman was incendiary. Despite getting signed up to a major label she decided to go solo late last year, waved goodbye to the illuminations, headed to East London and leaked her first song onto the internet. This was the suitably epic ‘Stuck on Repeat’ and almost immediately bloggers fell in love. Produced by Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard, it was 7 minutes of pulsating disco euphoria peppered with sleigh bells and a hypnotic vocal that got world class DJs like Pete Tong straight on the phone.

But Victoria didn’t want to rush things. As we talk to her in the middle of London Fashion Week, she’s hungover from her very first live performance in front of friends in her studio last night. Instead of getting straight on the road, she’s been writing her debut album with the likes of Greg Kurstin and Pascal Gabriel and learning to DJ. Arriving in London she was skint and after learning to spin some tracks in a pub, she went out as tour DJ for the Wonky Pop Tour and now finds it hilarious that people are flying her to America to play gigs as some amazing electro DJ .

But back to ‘Stuck on Repeat’. Coming out properly now as a single in November, it’s the song that really introduces the concept of Little Boots, even if the album itself is filled with shinier pop songs. Sounding like it’s fallen out of the stars, it reveals Victoria’s obsession with space, unicorns, crystals and the cosmic disco sound of the late 70s and early 80s. Citing people like Dee D Jackson and Klaus Nomi as influences, Victoria isn’t prepared to do things by halves. “Everything has to be epic. I don’t like twee DIY stuff, Kate Nash singer songwriter vibes just isn’t my bag. I’d rather try and do something ridiculous, that ends up being funny. Anything Studio 54 inspired works. My hair’s in braids, there’s glitter, it’s just epic. That said I don’t just want to be the one in the wacky outfit.”

Epic certainly seems to be where it’s at when Victoria tells us about her live show. As well as geeking it up with lots of synths, a Theremin, stylophone and an amazing Tenori-On she’s also got lasers, smoke machines and fake wolves and owls with eyes that light up! Planning to make the shows as extravagant as possible once the money starts rolling in, the dream is to travel up to space and do a gig with Richard Branson in orbit. Obviously!

But don’t worry if you think we’re getting hung up on someone so cool that you won’t be allowed into her gigs unless you’re wearing the right brand of glittery eyeshadow. Victoria’s dream is to be “massive, massive, massive, massive”. Despite being heralded as part of the blogeratti, she adamant that she’s not arsed about the critics. “I hate all that hipster stuff, it means nothing. I don’t give a shit if idiots in London that reckon they’re super cool don’t like me.”

Victoria’s wild imagination means we have no idea what might happen next. But we’re sure whatever it is, ends up being epic. “I just want to make amazing pop songs”, she claims with a glint in her eye. “Whatever anyone says about manufactured pop, it’s rubbish. The people who write pop songs are so talented and there’s no special magic formula to get it right. It’s just a myth. Writing pop music is the most challenging but also the most enjoyable thing I can do.”

Watch Little Boots on this week’s Jools Holland doing a very melancholic version of ‘Stuck On Repeat’.

By trixie at 06:12AM

Yes. Oh hell yes.

By at 14:27PM

Vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote.*

* Does not apply to non-US citizens. My apologies.

By at 02:13AM

When The Saturdays appeared on our pop radar we felt sorry for them. Here were five girls dreaming of being the next big thing in a world where the Girls Aloud & Sugababes monopoly showed no signs of letting up. Then we heard the kick-ass music, and suddenly The Saturdays felt like a viable proposition.

First single ‘If This Is Love’ seemed to spring out of nowhere with it’s Yazoo sample shining an electro-pop beacon but there’s been plenty of behind the scenes work going on. Signed to Fascination Records, home to Girls Aloud, they certainly have a pedigree with Rochelle & Frankie alumni of S Club Juniors, the irritatingly enthusiastic Mollie, an X-Factor reject, as well as soloist Vanessa. Then there’s Una – eight years older than the others, she’s a singer songwriter who already oozes disinterest in the project, and could be their Siobhan Donaghy.

If we’re looking for a word to sum up The Saturdays, it’s feistiness. Although nothing can beat the robot disco of 2nd single ‘Up’, there are only really one or two soppy ballads like ‘Issues’ that let ‘Chasing Lights’ down. Instead it’s the fierce chorus of ‘Keep Her’ and the sass of ‘Set Me Off’ that get us excited. ‘Work’ is an irresistible dancefloor puller destined to be a single,while ‘Lies’ is an electro-ballad that proves these girls will be taking no mess from the boys.

Energetic and fun, ‘Chasing Lights’ is a promising debut. It’s not perfect but it’s better than any of us could have expected.

By trixie at 13:47PM

Pop groups rarely make it to six albums, but Sugababes have managed just that.  Sometimes described as a brand rather than a band, their distinctiveness has faded through the years - culminating in the personality-free, but very successful ‘Change’.

Uninteresting lead single ‘Girls’ aside, ‘Catfights and Spotlights’ could be the album to make us fall back in love with them. We wouldn’t normally praise an album so ballad-heavy, but if there’s one thing the these girls can do well, it’s a killer ballad, the likes of ‘Stronger’ and ‘Too Lost In You’ still sending shivers up our spine. The Karen Poole penned  ‘Sunday Rain’ is an epic tearstained tale with a nod to Sam Brown’s ‘Stop’, while Klas Ahlund (who produced Robyn’s album) introduces quirky sounds and swelling strings on ‘Every Heart Broken’. Newest member Amelle has finally found her position within the band, her smoky voice adding a dangerous edge on the haunting ‘Side Chick’ and self-penned ‘Beware’.

The tempo lifts only occasionally and even then it’s somewhat forgettable. While ‘Hanging on a Star’ could be a Dana Dawson B-side, second single ‘No Can Do’ will certainly bounce its way into the heart of your favourite radio station.

The girls claim they’ve grown up and ditched pop. Not at all - they’ve just added some Motown horns and a twinkling of eighties funk. The result is an album that sounds the most like the Sugababes since ‘Angels With Dirty Faces’. We’re glad you’re back.

Originally published at Orange Music

By trixie at 13:28PM

A new Girls Aloud album is a surefire way to put a smile on my face so I was super excited to receive their new album Out Of Control this week. I’ll be reviewing it for the BBC later, but here’s my first listen thoughts.

Overall you might be a bit disappointed if you’re a fan of the ‘Girl Overboard’ and ‘Biology’ side of the girls. They’ve cut back on frantic-ness and replaced it with gorgeous, soaring electro pop that’s just as good.

1. The Promise - It’s so exciting that they’re about to have their 4th #1 with this song. You’ve heard it though, although the album version has a longer intro and a repeat to fade ending.

2. The Loving Kind - This is a collaboration with Pet Shop Boys and the first of quite a few synth ballads. Being a GA & PSB collaboration it’s kind of a disappointment as it should be amazing. It has an epic verse but then the chorus doesn’t quite cut it. There’s no great hook.

3. Rolling Back The Rivers - Starts with a really strong big vocal almost acapella. I have no idea who is who though when they sing. Then when the music kicks in it sounds a bit like ‘Somethin’ Stupid’. It’s really smooth sounding and makes me roll my shoulders all about. Has a great ‘a-wooooo’ sound.

4. Love Is The Key - The first stomper! Starts with a male choral sound and then kicks off into sarcastic country with the girls even doing a Southern American twangy accent in their talky verses. The bridge makes me want to do chicken dance movements with my arms & then of course there’s a chorus. It’s Xenomania - there must be 40 different bits! It’s ace

5. Turn 2 Stone - Now if this had been the PSB track I could have accepted it more easily. Starts with whispered vocals and there’s some amazing electronic whizzy noises going on next to a really strong baseline. Then when the chorus drops it lifts and goes all ethereal and swirly. This has serious trance potential. Some DJ will remix it and it will be huge in the clubs.

6. Untouchable - This is 6.42 long. No one other than Girls Aloud could get away with that. Starts with some very Balearic sounds and then the first chorus is sung very softly before a powerful chorus sweeps it into another place. It’s very sad sounding. There’s a briliant lyric about robots dancing in the dark.

7. Fix Me Up - Popjustice nailed it when he said this was ‘low-slung’. It’s *very* All Saints or Spice Girls a la Naked and very Sarah heavy. It’s fun, but an album track.

8. Love Is Pain - Wow. This is gorgeous synth pop. Has a Depeche Mode feel to the music. It’s all floaty, swirling and above all epic. It sounds like they’re singing ‘First I saw the letter, heard your secret code, telling me walk away, what a waste, turn to coal(?!)’ Yes coal probably isn’t right. Is this the Cheryl vs Ashley track - ‘just be faithful to me’. Sad, tearstained pop.

9. Miss You Bow Wow - If you’re missing the frantic tracks then this is one you’re going to love. It starts quite calmly with Part I and talky singing ‘Everybody love love loves’. Then there’s Pt II about calling 999. Part III grabs the ‘Miss You Bow Wow’ title and repeats it before Part IV flirts and teases about ’slipping into your girlfriends jeans’. 4 parts - but then there’s even more later! It’s really fast, really repetative, and really amazing! It goes completely instrumental at the end for about 45 seconds

10. Revolution in The Head - I don’t think many Girls Aloud fans will like this one for some reason. The first 30 seconds has elements of DJ Luck & MC Neat in it, coupled with some Sean Paul dancehall clapping and beats. It’s a bit exotic sounding.

11. Live In The Country - Alex James will love this. As the name may suggest it’s absolutely ridiculous, the music is all drum n bass-y while the girls ponder on the idea of life being much better if they live in the country. They want to escape ‘the rat race’ that makes them ‘dead on their feet’ by saving money, moving to the country where ‘the sky is always blue’ and they can have a ‘family portrait, a pipe and a dog at my feet’. The lyrics are really great, and then it ends with some farmyard animal sounds. Ace.

12. We Wanna Party - This is a cover of a song released on Lene from Aqua’s debut album. It’s very ‘What Will The Neighbours Say’ but a fun end to the album.

By trixie at 19:24PM

As the owner of possibly the sexiest voice in music, John Legend has got it going on. Now releasing his third album shows that he’s lost none of the magic that gave his debut, Get Lifted, such crossover appeal.

Here in the UK, we’ve now got a special soft spot for John thanks to him signing Estelle and transforming her into a superstar. She returns the favour by lending her vocals to the reggae tinged ‘No Other Love’. Being John Legend, it’s not hard to attract guest stars, but we’re impressed that Evolver manages to avoid overcomplicating with so many ‘featurings’ that the main artist is relegated to second place. The other chosen two are Andre 3000, throwing a futuristic spanner into the unusually upbeat Green Light and a vocoded Kanye helping him ditch his lady in We’re Over. Impressive.

Confirming his position as an elegant ladies’ man, the dreamy Good Morning leaves us feeling that we couldn’t turn down any request made by this man. His seductive qualities are further cemented as he tries to turn his best friend into his lover in Cross The Line, begging her to stop, ”dancing ’round the moment”.

It’s not all love and ladies though - a fierce Obama campaigner, the album ends on an epic note with If You’re Out There. Originally performed at a Democratic convention, John rallies his listeners to change the future and, ‘’stand up and say it loud”.

Although we might miss the piano solos that made songs like Ordinary People such classic show stoppers, Evolver is a colourful burst of soul. Packed with incredible melodies and exquisite arrangements it’s yet another step to further confirm Legend as one of the most talented songwriters of the moment.

Originally published at BBC Music

By trixie at 06:02AM

Far more glamorous than your average indie band, there was a time when it looked like The Long Blondes were going to make it big. NME and Radio 1 loved them, three singles from Somebody To Drive You Home went top 40, and ‘Once & Never Again’ was the soundtrack to every indie disco. Then came Couples; album number 2; and everything seemed to unfairly dry up.

So, presumably to renew some interest, the band are going back to basics with Singles - a compilation of their first four 7″s released on small labels like Thee Sheffield Phonograpic Corp, Angular and Good & Evil, and thus essential only for your most die-hard fan.

Like so many Sheffield bands before them, Kate Jackson and her fellow scarf wearing pals make intelligent indie music with some of the wittiest lyrics in town. Now we hear them at their rawest form, before the likes of super producer Erol Alkan got hold of them and added unnecessary whizzes and bangs.

The very first releases New Idols and Long Blonde are, in fact, so rough and ready that the distortion hurts your ears. But Autonomy Boy soon presents their delicious melodies that we that made us love them so, with the original versions of the complicated ‘Giddy Stratospheres’ and ‘Lust In The Movies’ a definite highlight. On the flip side, the shoutier riot grrl side of the Long Blondes blasts through on tale of heartbreak ‘Separated By Motorways’.

Distinctly English with tales of Peterborough and darts, The Long Blondes should be a national treasure. Despite having lost their way, this compilation shows that going back to basics isn’t perhaps the step backwards it might seem.

Originally published at BBC Music

Of course, having a promo copy, little did I know that once you took the CD out of the case underneath it said ‘We have split’. Here’s the sad story.

By trixie at 11:48AM

Is this going to be the greatest thing ever?

Andrew Lloyd Webber is writing the 2009 UK Eurovision entry, and you can enter to be a part of it. I cannot wait!

By trixie at 21:46PM

There’s nothing intrinsically sinister about the title above, but probably a lot of people would interpret it somewhat negatively.  It illustrates the point that too much fear can make harmless situations overly suspect.

Last week a self-described “old man” wrote a letter to the Worcester News about how he felt about being suspicious in the park.

When my wife Joan died in the spring of 2006 we had been together for more than 62 years. One of our joys since moving to Barbourne was a stroll in Ghelevelt Park looking at wildlife and children playing on swings or splashing around in the paddling pool enjoying innocent fun.However, since becoming a widower, the park has now become out of bounds for old men like me. Why?

It has become very uncomfortable to sit in the park and enjoy the ambience of the place, owing to the weird knowing looks I get from young mothers with children.

I wrote back.

H A Kendall’s story is very sad (September 29) and he is honest and brave for speaking out.

Obviously, we must accept that diligence is due whenever we consider adults with responsibilities over children, and anyone taking advantage of any vulnerable person is to be abhorred.

But due diligence has been greatly over-inflated if a widower cannot sit in a park without receiving accusing looks. If the parents Mr Kendall mentions cannot imagine any reason beside sexual predation for why an old man might want to sit in a park, then their imaginations have been horribly warped. There is a climate of fear which affects not just old men in parks, but younger men, teachers, passers-by, even relatives of young people.

On a train last week a girl of about five started talking to me. I think the presence of my Nintendo DS broke down the social barrier!

Perhaps some of the looks we received across the carriage were, in part, due to surprise that two strangers should hold an open conversation on the tube at all, let alone an adult male returning polite enquiries from a child who is unknown to him. But that doesn’t fully explain the prolonged glares and my own absurd, fleeting sensations of danger.

Parents should worry about their children, yes.  Concern is understandable, yes, especially in a climate where sexual predation and sexual abuse are discussed more openly.

But people should realise that, in a sense, nothing sexualises children more than if we are constantly thinking of them as the potential victims of sexual predation.

Also… the music debate rumbles on, in the hideous form it has reached.

By Bob at 09:41AM

This increasingly unfocused, largely-syndicated-from-the-Worcester-News, hotchpotch mind-dump of a blog that I call Bob: Popper’s Troll-man Thing, now has a little brother over at — you guessed it — the Worcester News website.

See Bob’s Worcester News profile which should come complete with a short bio some time soon. My first post is “At Somerset House” and here’s a short extract:

I’ve never liked crowds. It’s not that I’m claustrophobic. I just hear “crowd” and I picture grey-faced suits stacked up on escalators closer than dominoes. Or I feel the crushing collective narrow-mindedness of a Nazi rally. And there’s something so sycophantic about a throng of gig-goers gyrating at the feet of some short-burning star, something so obsequious even about fans at a public lecture gushing as they line up to get their hardbacks John-Hancocked by the latest, greatest celebrity intellectual.

I had wanted to coin the term ‘celebrillectual’ for the end of that sentence but it didn’t quite fit.  There were no other hits on google for it though, so I really did invent it.  So I’ll coin it here instead: ‘Celebrillectual’. There, I just coined it.  It means anyone a bit famous for being at least a bit clever, but how famous/clever are two cumulative factors so that if you were really clever but only a celebrity to a particular niche then you could still be a celebrillectual, while if you were very famous but not really very clever then that could count, too.  But obviously some times these thigns go up and down together, where people are only a bit famous (for exampel if they’re only famous in the UK but not the US then that’s rubbish) and also they’re only clever in a narrow or not very academic way.  So at one end of the scale you’d have, like, Carol Voderman, Trevor McDonald, and Johnny Ball. Then up the top there’s folks like Salman Rushdie, Richard Dawkins, Noam Chomsky.

It will probably be quite a long time before my Worcester News blog has anyone classify me as a celebrillectual.  In fact it probably disqualifies me because even if I was really, really famous in Worcester, I’d have to be very, very clever to compensate for my relative lack of fame.

By Bob at 09:10AM

By M at 22:11PM

The vivisection debate rumbles on.

Obviously, in between trying to develop medical technology via vivisection, scientists should wherever possible work toward replacement development processes.  There is a complex cost-benefit equation, here.  How much time can we spend speculatively developing new ways of testing and developing medicines without non-human animal test subjects, when any such effort may be at the cost of actually developing cures right here and now?  Assuming that greater and greater theoretical understanding, computer modelling and so on, could eventually replace all animal testing, that’s great.  But right now that’s not the reality, and I don’t want to die of something potentially curable, because rather than using vivisection now we held off in order to develop a theoretical model, when actually tests which killed some mice might have achieved the same results.

I don’t get how people who are against vivisection can cite, as someone in this ongoing newspaper debate has cited, the study of human corpses as one of the viable alternatives to testing on animals.  I’m not denying that autopsy is sometimes a good way of understanding a disease.  But the point is that there would be many more human corpses to study if animal testing was stopped today.

Anyway, here’s today’s letter in the Worcester News, unedited text below.

Apparently, despite being subject to continual assessments of efficacy and benefit, and despite being conducted under multifarious laws and codes of ethics ensuring rigorous review, the truth is obvious to H Handy (Letters, 8th September).  Vivisection is “archaic” and completely unnecessary.

In saying so, Handy contradicts three independent enquiries in the last five years (the House of Lords Select Committee, the Parliamentary Animal Procedures Committee and the independent Nuffield Council on Bioethics) which all found that animal testing was scientifically sound and worthwhile.  (Despite this, anti-vivisectionists continue to call for “an independent enquiry” as if none had ever taken place.)

The Nobel Prize for Medicine has been awarded to researchers who used animals 71 times in the last 103 years.  Is the Nobel Prize committee hellbent on rewarding fruitless and unethical research?  H Handy must think that they are.

Handy asks us to imagine all the pain that laboratory research animals endure.  And allow me to agree that we must indeed accept this.  Just as surely as we should thank the veterans of just wars, just as we should be aware that each turn of the ignition key brings flooding and destruction ever closer, we should be aware that many of our medicines and medical procedures come to us at a terrible price.

But if H Handy can ask us to imagine the animal suffering again, I must ask one more time that we summon in our minds the would-have-been suffering and deaths of millions of people from, for example, smallpox if it had not been eradicated by 1979 (300-500 million died before 1979 in the 20th century alone).  Multiply out that hypothetical unnecessary suffering by the numerous other diseases and conditions cured or alleviated through animal research, far sooner than they could have been by conducting all research via human autopsy and the like.

No one said animal research was an intrinsic good in its own right.  No one said it was flawless (no research is). But vivisection is, by far, the lesser of two evils.  And that makes its pursuit an ethical imperative.

One final point.  H Handy is right that research animals themselves never (or only very rarely) benefit by the research.  However, it is worth pointing out that animal testing has resulted in numerous drugs and procedures which are used routinely by veterinary surgeons, day in and day out, to the benefit of pets, farm stock and wild animals the world over.

By Bob at 08:24AM

Remember the Bishop of Worcester basically saying that music pretty much gets its power from his favourite god?

Apparently, “the Bishop of Worcester is perfectly entitled to state that music (especially the one [sic] played in cathedrals) brings us closer to God.”

Which is of course true - he is entitled to say that.  But that’s completely besides the point, isn’t it.

Some people can’t stand any criticism [Worcester News, 3 September 2008, unedited version]

At the moment it seems like every time someone hears a criticism they don’t like, rather than either taking it on board or offering a counter-argument, they instead react as if someone is trying to actually ban them from holding their view.  It seems to be a defence mechanism.  People would rather say, “Hey, I have every right to my opinion,” than to actually think about the criticism offered against their opinion.

John E Iebole (August 22) notes that “the Bishop of Worcester is perfectly entitled to state that music (especially the one [sic] played in cathedrals) brings us closer to God.”

I didn’t say the Bishop wasn’t “entitled” to say anything he likes.  I’m not a censor.

But there is a world of difference between having the right to say something on the one hand, and being right in saying it on the other!

The Bishop had said (August 13) that “music has the power to move human beings deeply because it speaks … of the God who created us.”  I expressed that his statement felt to me like an over-confident gardener erecting a fence across a public footpath.  Music is a near-universal aspect of the human condition and associating it with monotheistic beliefs which we do not all share is a kind of metaphysical territorialism.  In other words, I said I didn’t like what the Bishop said.  In didn’t say he wasn’t “entitled” to say it.  Basically, Mr Iebole simply failed to address my points in any way.  Rather (probably without realising it) he simply threw up a completely irrelevant decoy about “entitlement”.

One further point, Iebole says he sensed “some anti-Christian barbs” in my letter, then he points me at the Bible!  Again, this kind of attitude seems to be nothing more than an attempt to shut down honest debate.  Just because I make a criticism of something a Bishop said, does not mean I’m “anti-Christian” in some kind of prejudicial way.  We hear much worse, much more personal criticisms than mine made in other domains (politics, theatre reviews, school playgrounds) all the time.  It is only the domain of religion which is so protected from debate that even a mild rejoinder is insinuated as a kind of hate speech.

That’s one thing I’m afraid you’re really not entitled to: you have no right to be protected from perfectly legitimate criticism.

This prompted a reply from one Linda Roberts who, frankly, I think just didn’t really read what I said.  So I wrote back again, published today.

Misunderstood for the second time [Worcester News, 15 September 2008, unedited version]

For the second time I am misrepresented with reference to the Bishop of Worcester’s comments on music.

Linda Roberts (10 September) believes “the Bishop of Worcester is correct in saying the playing of sacred music in church brings us closer to God.”  Well, okay, but this was very clearly not the part I objected to.

What I objected to was the further implication that all music, whether designated “sacred” or otherwise, derived its power from God.

Roberts also says I should “temper my views” and my “ways of expressing them”.  This is unfair.  Yes I was voicing a criticism (a mild philosophical criticism at that!) but unless you think religious representatives are exempt from criticism this shouldn’t be a problem in itself.  And if my words seem harsh, it’s probably just that religion is so often protected from normal standards of commentary.

Finally, Roberts expresses sadness that I “cannot experience” mystical feelings induced by church music.  Ms Roberts, there’s really no need to feel sad for me. Different musical genres appeal to different people, and there is probably plenty of music that I appreciate, even profoundly, which you would appreciate less.

By Bob at 14:15PM

Does that sound like me?

Worcester News, today, “Animal testing helps halt human suffering”:

Mrs Marilyn Brown, presumably referring to my own recent letters defending medical testing on non-human animals, writes (August 26) that she is in “despair” to see these arguments. She says she can only assume that the defence of animal testing is made by people “without compassion and/or ignorant of the appalling suffering of millions of sentient beings each year.”

Surely, Mrs Brown cannot be unaware that suffering human beings are also suffering sentient beings?

I specifically defended medical testing on nonhuman animals on the grounds that it helps to alleviate or end the appalling suffering of millions of human beings each year.

As horrible as it may be to inflict suffering on a small number (relative to the people who benefit) of non-human animals through our actions, this is surely better than leaving many more human beings to endure much greater suffering through our inaction.

To question the empathy, or lack of it, to be found in those debating this issue, is not to address the issue itself.

It is head-in-the-sand ignorance, let alone insulting, whichever side of the argument you are on, to try and paint this image that anyone who disagrees with you over vivisection is “without compassion and/or ignorant”.

Disagree by all means, but the pro-vivisection argument is deeply routed in a mature, consequentialist ethics, and is empowered at every stage by compassion for the suffering of others.

By Bob at 16:16PM

The Archbishop of Worcester kind of implied that music comes from God.

I think this is a bit narrow.

Worcester News, 22nd August, “Music is for everyone not just the religious” (unedited text follows below).

I agree with the Bishop of Worcester (Bishop’s Diary, 13th August) that great music can awaken “a realm of wonder”.

However, I’m not sure who exactly would be confused as to “why the Church should be so closely associated with a music festival”, especially the Three Choirs!  Surely the historical domination of the Church over artisitic life in Britain is well known. Across Europe it was very often the clergy who commissioned (one might even say ’sponsored’) classical and choral works. And for a long time any art without a religious motif risked drawing suspicions of non-conformism or outright blasphemy.

In fact, given the pressures to conform to cultural Christendom, it may surprise some to know just many great composers were not, in themselves, ecclesiastically motivated.

Beethoven, for example, adopted Goethe’s pantheism. Berlioz often stated his atheism, though he composed much church music. Bizet said of Christian writing “I find only system, egoism, intolerance, and a comlete lack of artisitc taste.” Brahms revealed his agnosticism in private letters and some of his lyrics deride the concept of immortality. Debussy was a neo-pagan. Delius was almost certainly an atheist.

The great Mozart turned from Catholicism to Freemasonry. He famously refused the priest access to his death bed (though of course Vatican lists still claim Mozart as one of their own). Paganini was a well-known atheist and left instructions for a non-religious funeral. Schubert, despite his Masses, said of religion “Not a word of it is true”.

Schumann, like Beethoven, was a pantheist. Strauss, inspired by Nietzsche in his irreligiousness, penned the infamous and beautiful Also Sprach Zarathustra, which the church roundly denounced as atheistic. Tchaikovsky appears to have been inspired to atheism by Flaubert. Wagner was an out-and-out atheist.

Today, now that church money isn’t required to fund musical professionals, far fewer notes are penned, as it were, to the glory of God.

I say all this because the Bishop says “music has the power to move human beings deeply because it speaks … of the God who created us.” I believe the Bishop is wrong to associate the source of musical potency with his God. Previous supposed deities of music have included Hathor, Myōonten, Saraswati, Apollo… Clearly the power of music is almost universal, transcending religious beliefs, and just as important to all the humanists, atheists and agnostics, who may well resent having the beauty of music continually boxed up in a religious package, as if it doesn’t really belong to them.

Music belongs to everyone.

By Bob at 11:52AM

Obviously it’s very important to take a break at lunch time, to do something a little bit different, to free up the mind and recharge your batteries, rather than spending the whole day slumped in front of the computer or on the phone or whatever it is that you do in an office.

In a total perversion of this goal, I have been spending my lunchtimes for most of August exhaustively entering everything I’ve eaten into a personal database at www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate.  And this lunchtime I exported the data and dropped it into a Google Spreadsheet which you can view: What I ate between 4th August and 20th August.  That is, which you can view if you have nothing better to do than look at a list of foodstuffs comprised mostly of banannas, Sainsbury’s meals, and far more booze than could possibly be good for me.

Also I then generated this graph in Excel:

That’s right, I have become a calorie-counting hippie after all. But I’m using technology and databases and the internets to do it, so my pride is intact.

(No it isn’t.)

As you can see, I had a bit of a slip this last weekend at Sam’s 18th birthday, and yesterday somehow got away with me a little bit, too. But otherwise I’ve stuck fairly well to a limit of somewhat under 1500 calories a day, a full 40% under the 2500 figure which is recommended as the average daily intake for an adult male. This lower limit was provided for me (given my height and so on) by the aforementioned Daily Plate website as a target goal to meet if I wanted to lose approximately 2 pounds a week. Although, clearly, binge-drinking amaretto does not facilitate the reaching of this goal.

Some people might think it seems a bit pathetic to record everything I eat on a website like this, but actually there is now science to justify the thrill of doing so.  A month or two back, Sanjay Gupta spotted the same reports I did, and happened to start a “food diary” of his very own (in fact using the very same online food diary website, it so happens) as he reported recently in TIME:

I started the diary because I wanted to test the striking new results of a paper published in the August issue of American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Scientists at several clinical-research centers in the U.S. found that dieters who kept a food diary lost twice as much weight as those who didn’t.

The study tracked nearly 1,700 overweight or obese adults across the country who were at least 25 years old. Men and women were included, and 44% of the group was African American. All participants were encouraged to use such weight-loss maintenance strategies as calorie restriction, weekly group sessions and moderately intensive exercise as well as to keep a food journal. The senior investigator, Victor Stevens of Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore., told me that “hands down, the most successful weight-loss method was keeping a record of what you eat.” In the six-month study, participants who kept a food journal six or seven days a week lost an average of 18 lb. (8 kg), compared with an average of 9 lb. (4 kg) lost by non-diary keepers.

In other words it’s a kind of personal blogstamming - oh yes! It’s about externally symbolizing the goal, and the activities which lead to - or detract from - that goal, so that these activities are easily visible and quantifiable to you. And you could even show the data to your wife, as Sanjay says he does.  Obviously he’s under the thumb, but then I’ve just put the data online, so I am under the thumb of the entire world. And that’s the point.

Some people may find the transparent, blog-everything, Facebook-me culture nauseating in the extreme for all its vainity, self-obsession and public narcissism. But me symbolically regurgitating my food over your web is the future. I am a bit too fat, but the main reason I’m restricting my calorie intake is because I can do it online. I don’t even weigh myself, I just assume that if the intake line on the graph floats around the goal line then over time it will work out. My diet is entirely virtual. It exists more on the internet than in real life. It overshadows the actual act of eating, making the real life food more real…

Oh, piffle, piffle, science this, philosophy that. The point is that writing it down helps.

UPDATE: Also in today’s news, Oxfam finally gets its priorities right, telling us: “You can live ethically, without giving up pies.” Good to know.

By Bob at 10:37AM

Pigeons, or people?

The choice is ours.

From the Worcester News, 14th August, Birds could be spared but humans would die: (the unedited text follows below)

Pauline Burgess (Letters, 8th August) again writes to lambast medical testing on non-human animals.

She deploys a common myth spread by anti-vivisectionists. The myth is that “the introduction of blood transfusions was delayed more than 200 years because of misleading results of animal tests”.

Like many pseudo-scientific myths, the truth is in fact quite the opposite. It was animal testing between 1900 and 1916 which enabled blood transfusions to become a viable medical process.  The notion that, in the early years of the eighteenth century, twenty decades earlier, blood transfusion could have been anything like a routine medical procedure, is simply nonsense.  Both immunology and technology were a considerable way off the required level of development, and that had nothing to do with any misleading results from any animal testing.  It was testing on animals in the early twentieth century which rounded off the theory and gave us this procedure.

In refuting this particular myth, I should not be taken to mean that animal testing is in some way infallible.  Science is messy, whatever the discipline.

However the overall benefits of medical testing on non-human animals are incontrovertible.

Currently, common pigeons are being used to develop treatments for Malaria.  If you don’t know, in addition to over 500-million non-fatal cases, malaria happens to kill between one and three-million human beings every year. The majority of these lives lost are children.

In research like this, there are two options.  1. We can knowingly and with intent, inflict suffering on perhaps dozens upon dozens of pigeons, for which the possible consequence might be the alleviation of the suffering - and perhaps even the saving of the lives - of millions, upon millions, upon millions of people.  Or… 2.  If we have lost all sense of proportion, then we could spare the pigeons, and waste perhaps years of research looking for a way to make progress more “humanely” with regard to pigeons… while millions of human beings continue to suffer and die.

Pauline makes the latter choice, pigeons before people!  I hope she understands that people on both sides of this debate feel they are arguing from the heart.  But in order to give true moral insight, the heart must glean from the longer view, afforded by the light of reason.

By Bob at 06:45AM

Various reasons. I’ve been busy at work, busy at Glastonbury, busy flying around various European countries. The usual. My absence from the blogosphere has not helped by the fact that Facebook has recently been giving me that quick fix of Internet-based broadcast expression but with a lot less effort than is required to actually sit down and write something. But it’s time to stop the rot.

For once, I’ve had a weekend that I actually want to pen something about - and enough time on a slightly grey-looking Sunday evening to do so. Last weekend was all about G’s birthday weekend, too much Pimms and recovering from the effects whilst paddling around Chichester harbour and beyond in a vessel clearly not designed for such purposes but which worked surprisingly well.

This weekend has been similar, but with the Saturday festivities and socialising having been moved 40 miles south down to Brighton and the Sunday paddle consisting of the slightly more challenging 18 mile Maidstone to Tonbridge marathon, the latter having been completed in 2 hours, 48 minutes and 26 seconds (though estimated to be some three and a half minutes short due to the closure of the river at the last portage ).

Brighton was good. Sufficiently different from the last time round, a scary five years ago. There was still plenty of Park-based fun, the rather gusty yet still utterly fantastic beach - where fish and chips were eaten - a little bit of drinking, and plenty of meeting new people. My pictures are about to go on FB, which though no doubt missing a large part of the evening after I trundled back off to London I must say I’m still rather happy with.

Next time it won’t be so long

By Will at 13:51PM

Opening up another front in my personal battle against everyone…

Unfortunately I still haven’t learned the rules about how long letters should be, so the end of this has been somewhat butchered when published in the Worcester News today, and in particular some of the more forceful moral arguments were lost.  But the full text follows below.

Medical research on non-human animals is not, as Pauline Burgess suggests (Letters, 16th July) something which should be “outlawed”, nor should it be contrasted to “real science”.  Development and testing on non-human animals has been and still is of fundamental importance to medical research and is a very real science.  That’s not just me talking, that’s the consistent conclusion of three independent inquiries held in just the last five years in the UK.

It is no evidence in favour of the anti-vivisectionist position that “more than 250,000 Britons are hospitalised every year by adverse drug reactions”.  This number would be even higher if we did not test on non-human animals.

If Ms Burgess has never suffered from smallpox, she has animal-testing on cows to thank.  Smallpox had killed 300–500 million people in the 20th Century alone, until the World Health Organisation declared it eradicated from nature in 1979.

Polio treatments we owe to testing on mice and monkeys.  Insulin was developed on fish and dogs. There are vaccines for tetanus (thank the horse), rubella (thank the monkey), anthrax (sheep), and rabies (dogs and rabbits).

Would Ms Burgess refuse any of the following advances on the basis of her objections: anti-blood-clotting drugs, penicillin, open heart surgery, a cardiac pacemaker, lithium, treatment for leprosy (not such a big problem here but still a major issue for example in parts of South America and central Africa, India, Burma and Indonesia…), organ transplantations, laproscopic surgical techniques, and some AIDS treatments?

Only the ignorant, and tabloid newspapers, are unaware that ethics runs deep in scientific discourse.  Of course there are often alternatives to animal testing, and using these alternatives wherever expedient is obviously an ethical principle to uphold.  And it is a principle already binding on scientists by law. Licenses to test on animals are not handed out like fliers on the street!

It should also be noted that many of the medicines and treatments used by vets for the benefit of animals are also a result of animal testing.

Arguing for vivisection has often been difficult because it can seem like a heartless betrayal of our animal cousins.  But when you consider the millions upon millions of human lives saved, and the millions upon millions of future lives that will be saved, and the further diseases that are being fought and techniques that are being developed to alleviate suffering, then medical testing on non-human animals can only be the most moral route to take.

A relatively new Oxford-based group called Pro-Test has been lobbying the government in favour of medical animal testing, and I got some of the above information from their website.  They also point out that 71 of the Nobel Prizes for Medicine won in the last 103 years, a prize awarded based on the merits of the results, went to scientists who used animals in their research.

One final note: There has been talk in Worcester lately about the pigeon “problem” and what to do about them, including possible culls.  Some will be pleased to know that pigeons do have a use.  They are being used with a view to developing treatment for Malaria, which if you don’t know, in addition to over 500-million non-fatal cases, happens to kill between one and three-million people every year, the majority of which are children.

A deadly serious question for Ms Burgess: Would you seriously “outlaw” this research?

By Bob at 09:01AM

Some of my millions of readers may have noticed that most of the blog entries here for the last several months have been nothing but recycled letters to local press, pasted into the blog with a minimum of comment.

My legendary, never-appearing novel has been languishing almost untouched for literally years (I can’t believe it’s actually been so long, am I really such a stereotype?, I just have to finish it!).  And certainly since taking my new job in January I’ve written more words in letters to the Worcester News than I have on the book, because the latter is such a mammoth thing and it’s so hard to get into without significant available time.

(Also see my recent guest blog on the BHA Science Group site — why can’t I just write my novel?!)

On the other hand, that new job is going extremely well.  It’s amazing to be doing something meaningful, and interesting, with a combination of technical, interpersonal, communications-y and even philosophical elements.  There have been horrendous website-based delays (in my role as Web Manager), but otherwise the various responsibilites I have when wearing my other hats (membership guy, Groups liaision, general communications, internal ICT, occasional spokesperson/representative…) are all going great and I very much feel part of the team.

I am still living partly in Worcester (in my rented house) and partly in London (on friends’ couches, floors and spare beds, and sometimes in “pod hotels” and hostels). This arrangement is partly responsible for the dearth of material besides letters — it’s hard to find time to work on my own stuff in the evenings after work, when I don’t have a real place to live. (I am on the third ocean in Zelda on the Ninetendo DS though.)

And of course at the weekends I am home, and tend to spend most of the available time with the delightful and delicious Kathryn. In recent weeks we’ve been to see films, plays, art galleries, we’ve even been rafting on her lake. All busy and lovely.

The other week I was on the telly, wearing the spokesperson hat. It was the West Midlands regional section of the Politics Show on BBC1 - so respectable telly, but local.

I haven’t even had time to convert the video I captured from the website afterwards in order to share it with you. But I’m going to say right here and now, quite plainly, that I’m trying to convert the Real Player .IVR file type that I recorded from a streaming video, into a format which is more shareable, like .AVI or .WMV or .MPEG, or even into Real’s own formats like .RM or .RAM. I say this in such detail, and in bold, in the hope that someone in the near future who is searching for the solution to this problem will find this post, realise I can’t help them, go away and find the answer, then come back and leave the answer here for me as a comment. They will do this just because they appreciate the ingenuity with which I drew them here and asked them to help. Also I will increase the relevance of this post to the topic in question — of converting .IVR to non-proprietary video formats — by linking it to existing discussions like this, this and this which are all trying to do the same thing but which either fail, or make a meal out of it. I just want a nice easy solution like a freeware conversion tool. Thank you in advance, future problem-solving google fly-by person!

By Bob at 15:00PM

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Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

By will at 11:58AM

People often ask me: "Rik, why on earth do you buy all that rubbish from the Oxfam bargain bin?" But that's another story.

What I want to talk about is when people ask me "Rik, where does a guy like you listen to music from these days?" After all, when you're an ex-teenage rave freak, used to work as a student DJ, have more than a passing interest in all things synth, and own a Jive Bunny album without shame, where do you go to satisfy that nagging urge for new music?

Well, the answer is that for a while, I didn't. Instead, I revelled in the warm neon glow of Radio Nigel. With the help of Nigel (run by a bloke called - wait for it - Steve), I rediscovered the 80s.  Contrary to those "party classics" that immediately spring to mind, there's actually a lot of "forgotten" 80s music out there that's actually not terrible. Martika, anyone? The Other Ones, New Order, Wang Chung, Murray Head, The Assembly? I could go on, but I'd rather you tune in.

And slowly but surely, you make your way back into the land of the living, to find artists like Rex The Dog, Tepr, datA and Trademark keeping the dream alive, albeit with a 21st Century twist. (Who knew that the Human League were still touring, by the way? Blimey.) But where can you, the poor impoverished reader, find and listen to all these people before buying an album or three? Simple. Pig Radio is your friend. Merely visiting their website will guarantee your face is flushed magenta with excitement, and that's even before you wrap your ears around the eclectic mix of new new things that burst forth from their playlist.

Finally, I know I'm about a year late, but this has been making me smile all week. Whatever happened to the Hardcore Cleaning Sensation?

By at 19:24PM

(This isn't the blog post I was planning to post, but I thought I'd throw this up while it was fresh in my brain.)

This is the second time recently that someone I know has remarked about how Thunderbird is worse than Outlook Express. It was an odd enough coincidence that I thought it worth a quick mention.

Now, I've used a fair few mail clients in the past - Pine (mmmm) and Netsc(r)ape Messenger, for example - and I used to be an Outlook user, of both the Express and "proper" flavours,. Conversely, I was glad to see the back of it. The Express version felt fragile and flaky (not to mention its Swiss cheese-like nature), and the full version was too enterprisey. I just wanted to do email - surely it's not too much to ask! (Eudora at the time wasn't free.)

Mozilla Mail was my next stop of choice, and it struck the balance far better for me. It was, however - like the Mozilla Suite in general - suffering a bit from the all-in-one clunkathon syndrome, and you did get the impression that it could have been more, well, alert, and generally a bit better than Netscape Messenger. Mozilla had the same idea, and smashed it all into bits, which brings us circuitously to Thunderbird.

I like Thunderbird mainly due to it's Ronseal-like qualities. Simply, it's a solid, no-nonsense mail client. It reads mail and newsgroups*, and it does it well. Since version 2 in particular, it's had decent filtering and search capabilities, and it's uncluttered and responsive. It even integrates with Google Mail so you can avoid using their hideous web interface.

What is Thunderbird "actually quite poor" at, then? Well, it's not crap at reading mail, that's for sure. It is quite poor at having flowery email templates. (As a rule, I don't use HTML email, so that's fine by me.) Against Outlook, integration with other services is poor. There is an integrated Calendar plugin, but it's not finished yet. But then again, the same goes for the free version of Outlook, and there's no changing that at all.

Steve mentions a "memory leak" which I thought sounded interesting, so I left my copy of Thunderbird running for a while. It's been sitting there for quite some time at around 82MB (I've got some big .msf files), and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Thunderbird for sure has a larger memory footprint than Outlook Express, but I'm not yet convinced it leaks memory in the same sieve-like fashion that Firefox does**.

So... thoughts? What else is Thunderbird rubbish at? No doubt there's more, but I'm not awake enough to remember. Comments appreciated!

*If anyone does that any more, that is.

**Yes, I know that's not really a memory leak; it's the tab caching being enthusiastic.

By at 23:31PM

It's going to be a busy month, really. Turnmills is closing down, so I'm off to see Mr Ferry Corsten play there in a couple of weekends time, accompanied by a plethora of people named Steve. It should be pretty good, but there's always the problem that the headliner DJ is always on at about 4am, by which time you're invariably too shagged out to stay awake, let alone dance enthusiastically like a loon.

Also, I'm going to be leaving these urban shores to head back to the balmy rural paradise of home during the Easter weekend, which should make for a nice break. I have a fair inkling that what I'll be doing will include at least this:

Mix in some Six Nations matches, a birthday lunch or two and some mates visiting from back home, and suddenly the old Moleskine is practically brimming with appointments.

Right, I'm off to do some late-night flat-scrubbing. If I get back in time, I'll blog about some of the software stuff that I've been looking/hacking/swearing at recently.

By at 20:32PM

I'm writing this blog entry from something really quite shiny. Yes, after all this time, I've finally bitten the bullet and bought a new home PC. A completely new one, rather than my usual tactic of cobbling together any old electronics to produce some semblance of a working system, replacing any item that's completely knackered with one that's merely slightly broken.

Now, for the first time in a long while, I'm the proud owner of a PC that:

• Has a PS/2 keyboard socket that's not inexplicably broken and doesn't prevent the mouse from working when anything's plugged into it
  
• Has a soundcard that doesn't arbitrarily stop playing sound and crash the whole system
  
• Is running an Operating System that doesn't date from 1999
• Doesn't have all of its drives held upside-down in using gaffer tape
• Can reboot without randomly losing at least one harddrive when starting back up
• Doesn't have a non-working floppy drive stuck in it because it won't come out
• Has a proper case that's not fallen to pieces, or been dropped countless times
  
• Doesn't have the speed and urgency of a snail in treacle
  

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the future.

By at 14:52PM

After all this time, I've finally got past the stage of just thinking about blogging something here to actually doing it. Quite an achievement, considering the size of the interim period in which I've done, frankly, bugger all.

For the first time ever since this site started, for example, I didn't wish all my friends Merry Christmas from here on Shinypixel. So for that I apologise, but then again given the amount of texts that I sent out over Xmas and New Year, I don't think I missed many people. (If I did, then... bugger.)

To continue in the usual vein of posting stuff that I've knocked up, here's an extremely rushed flyer for something that I produced in December:

Now, the more astute among you might have noticed that the 14th December wasn't on a Saturday, nor the 15th on a Sunday. How could a stickler for perfection such as myself make such a stupidly obvious mistake (and not notice until a whole day afterwards, no less)? Cast your eyes toward the right-hand side of the flyer, and squint a bit. If you still can't read it