My Bloody Valentine

So, another of my lifelong wishes achieved. I got to see My Bloody Valentine at a sold-out Hammersmith Apollo on the 12th March 2013. I went with a couple of friends from Uni; Ewan and Erin, as well as Ewan's sister who was celebrating her 50th, and Erin's friend from the U.S., Rachel.
I've never been to the Apollo before, and I was impressed by its grandeur. It must have been a theatre or a cinema in a previous life, but all the fittings in the main auditorium have been taken out, except the strips of carpet leading up and down in between the rows of chairs.
On the bars were free earplugs, and signs saying earplugs are available everywhere, so I took a pair and placed them very carefully in my coat pocket. We got a beer, and moved into the main room. The support band, Le Volume Courbe, were good and worthy of further investigation - I may have to check if they have any releases on Amazon. They reminded me a bit of Stereolab at times, but then they went a bit folk-y. So, 'drone folk'? Is that a musical category? I'm not sure, but they were interesting.
Then, about 21:15, MBV came on. They didn't talk much; I don't think anyone expected much chat. They built slowly, played a couple of songs I knew - I've got the "You Made Me Realise" EP, with five tracks on it. They played a couple off that, some off Loveless, I think I recognised "Soon" off the Glider EP.
Then they played the track we were all waiting for - You Made Me Realise. Wow. What an epic track. The wall of noise MBV produced was amazing. I could feel my jeams moving around my legs with the air vibrating, which was unexpected, and the drums were thumping against my chest.
I would have put my earplugs in, but unfortunately I had taken off my coat and packed it in my rucksack. The noise was building and building, and I did have to plug my ears with my thumbs instead - for the very last crescendo. So I can say that I experienced the MBV wall of noise - and survived.
And then, it was time to go home.
Unfortunately I missed the 23:17 so had to wait for the 00:06, which meant I didn't get in at home until 02:00.

But bloody hell. What an experience. People were nodding their heads, or semi-dancing, but IMO, MBV just make a noise to experience. Standing there and letting it wash over me was pleasure enough.

And I've got the added bonus that the new LP and CD are waiting for me at Resident Music, when I can get in to pick them up - so I can listen to the new tracks and fall in love with MBV all over again.

Partitioning a Disk

So this morning I have mostly been trying to repartition my netbook disk drive. It was very frustrating. I had some unallocated, unformatted space next to my C: drive, and as part of my adventures with Linux I had partitioned the Windows C: drive to just 20GB.
But recently the C: drive has been filling up, probably with error reports as I have been trying to stabilise Windows and install Windows 7 Starter Pack 1, unsuccessfully :(
So I used the Disk Management function but was unable to increase the size of the C: drive.
Eventually I downloaded a third party partition manager and reformatted the unallocated space into drive D:, as NTFS. Then I deleted that partition, and then I was able to extend the C: drive up to 231GB.
That sounds quite straightforward, but it took me three and a half hours of looking, googling, trial and error, as well as restarting and scanning disks to complete. At times I was quite frustrated. But I have now resolved it, and I'm happy with the result.

Todd, The Ugliest Kid on Earth

So, have just read Todd, and looking at the cover again i realise i completely missed the kid with the paper bag over his head in the middle of the picture. D'oh!

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Amazon and Tax

An argument I've heard recently is that if Amazon paid more tax, prices would have have to go up and we would all end up paying more for our CDs.

This is utter tosh.

Taxes are paid on profits. So let's take a working example and see it through...

Amazon get a CD in at £3.50 cost. They sell it for £5.00. They have a profit of £1.50 on that CD. It's a simplistic example, I grant you.

The interesting thing is what happens after the sale and the profit is earned. It's how Amazon decide to declare that profit. Or, do they pay that £1.50 in 'licence fees' to their U.S. HQ so that it's not registered in the UK?

In a perfect world, Amazon would pay corporation tax on that £1.50, which I believe is about 22%, or 33p. But thanks to the wizardry of the Amazon accounting team, that £1.50 is not declared as £1.50, or it's declared in Luxembourg where corporation tax is 3%, or it's set off against previous 'losses'. So it's about how Amazon declare their profits, not how they price their goods.

If they choose not to indulge in complicated tax affairs, they would pay the 33p for the CD. If they choose to complicate things, they may pay as little as 5p (or even less, who knows?). But that doesn't change the price of the CD to the consumer. The difference is in how Amazon decide to declare the profit. Or do they declare it as profit at all?

So Amazon pay tax on their 'profits'. Any company can follow Inland Revenue guidelines to minimize their 'profits' and so reduce their tax burden.

The issue is that companies like Amazon and Google, who are actually HQed in the U.S. and don't give a rat's piss about the economic welfare of the UK, are aggressively reducing their tax profile. This means that although they transact plentifully in the UK, apparently (according to the Inland Revenue) it's not worth their while.

And we ("the people", or David Cameron, if you want to be specific) claim this is immoral, despite the fact that it is not illegal. DC, the Prime Minister, the person in charge, thinks that "aggressive tax avoidance" is immoral, but is not changing the law to make it illegal.

Well, you work it out. Me, I think that the companies have a declared responsibility to their shareholders, and if they are not committing explicitly illegal acts, they're okay.

It's not nice, or pretty, or moral, but they aren't breaking the law.

If we want to change the situation, we need to change the law.

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Blog Email Test

Email Test

#test

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Restoring a Kindle Fire (1st Gen)

In case you weren't aware, the first Amazon Kindlle Fires were only sold in the U.S. This annoyed non-U.S. technophiles who liked the look of the devices, and some people outside the U.S. got their hands on them. Their frustration increased when they found out that access to the Amazon Store through the Kindle was limited to those with credit cards with U.S. addresses.

Anyway, a friend of mine got hold of one, during a trip to the U.S. During an official update, the device appeared to break. It was probably not charged enough, or the update was flawed; I'm not sure. Amazon were running a returns programme, but as he was in the UK and not supposed to have it, he thought he would take a different approach. He knew someone who had rooted the device previously and thought he would do that. 

Unfortunately he 'soft-bricked' it. That is, it would switch on, but would not proceed beyond the power up screen. I read a bit about Kindles and I thought maybe it was stuck in Fastboot mode. I offered to help, and downloaded the Kindle Unbrick Utility (from XDA) on to my netbook and took it in to work. When we plugged the Fire into the netbook, it wasn't recognised as a device - which pointed to a driver problem. So I brought the Fire home and had a play here. 

The first goal was to get the Fire recognised by the netbook - which meant messing about with drivers. I found this site run by Jayce Ooi and followed the instructions there. This involved installing a generic Kindle Fire driver so that the netbook could talk to the Fire, and then the Fire itself installed the correct drivers.

Once that was done, I re-ran the Kindle Unblock Utility and Hey Presto! The 'brick' was revived. 

The Kindle Fire is a nice device, with a good screen and a nice UI linked to the Amazon ecosystem. If I were in the market for a tablet now, it's one I would consider.Unfortunately it don't mean much if you can't actually buy anything from the store...

So, almost as an afterthought I rooted the Fire with the Kindle Fire Utility and installed Google Play. Now, at least, the Fire's owner should be able to access Play Books and other apps from Google Play.

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Dutch Tvashar Plumes

I bought an album from Resident Music last week, based purely on their description of it. It has to be said, I was intrigued - Dutch Tvashar Plumes by Lee Gamble.

Having listened to the first couple of tracks, I think I made a good decision; it sounds a bit like Ambient Classics, or at least in that sort of mood. I'm looking forward to listening to the rest of it.

A detail I was really impressed by was the record sleeve. At first glance, it looks like your common or garden plain transparent plastic sleeve. But take it off, and you realise that the album name (the white writing in the photos is actually on the sleeve itself. Genius!

See the full gallery on Posterous

It's little touches like this that make me smile. And yes, I know that makes me a bit of a nerd...

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iTunes Frustration

Technology can be frustrating sometimes. I was installing iTunes the other day to upload some songs on to ED's iPod but it just didn't seem to work. When it was connected to the computer, the computer recognised that the iPod had tunes on it but when I detached the iPod Nano from the computer it said it had no music on it. I had installed iTunes on the PC from a CD which came with the iPod Nano- the first generation one . I did try to update it through iTunes itself but the message I kept getting was that the service could not be found. I looked online and I found articles advising that in order to play aac files I would need the iPod software version 1.3 which I knew that the new iPod Nano could not support. So I tried loading other files - wav files, mp3 files, anything I could find. But still no music appeared on the iPod Nano. Then I decided to update iTunes by downloading the latest version from the Internet, from Apple's website itself. That took an absolute age; it was deleting files, restoring files, replacing files, registering files. By now it was about 22:20 - past my bedtime! So I thought I would give it one last try. Once iTunes had installed itself - the latest version of iTunes, that is - I synced the iPod Nano with iTunes and hey presto! the tunes appeared on the iPod Nano. I believe it was because I was trying to use iTunes version 6 to upload songs to a newer machine. Once I installed iTunes version 10, which is the current version, all of a sudden life was very easy indeed. So that's a lesson learnt for me. Always use the latest software when required. And in the process I've learnt more about which files iTunes and my iPod support!

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Hats Off to Apple...

So, we chose to be really generous and give our eldest daughter an iPod for Christmas. It was an iPod Nano, and to be fair, it was a 1st Generation iPod Nano which Amy had been given a number of years ago, But, thanks to my inability to throw anything away, we had all the original packaging, so we were able to clean it up and make it look like new - like a Christmas present, in fact.
We charged it up, and on Christmas Day we gave it to ED. I loaded some songs on to it when I had a moment. On Boxing Day, ED brought the iPod to me and told me it wouldn't switch on. I thought maybe she hadn't held the button down for long enough, so I gve it a go. Unfortunately that didn't work, so I thought maybe I would reset it. I went online to look for tips, and while I was browsing around, I came across a "1st Generation iPod Nano Replacement Scheme". It turns out that some of the batteries in the 1st Gen Nanos were a bit dodgy, and as a result they had decided to replace all 1st Generation iPod Nanos. Result!

So I went to the Apple website, entered my serial number, and clicked 'Enter'. I got an instant reply; Apple were sending me some packaging I should use to return the Nano, and they would replace it. ED and I waited a day or two and the packaging arrived. We packed up the Nano and sent it off, and waited. I checked the website regularly for updates, and then I saw it - a replacement unit had been dispatched and UPS were going to deliver it last Friday. Unfortunately TW wasn't in, so UPS took it back to their depot and advised they would redeliver it on Monday.

Monday came, and I sat on UPS's website, refreshing my tracking number every five minutes. I was worried that TW had such a full day of exercise and work and dropping off the kids and picking up the kids and driving and errands and BEING OUT OF THE HOUSE that she would miss the delivery. I think I was more eager to receive the delivery than ED! Late in the afternoon, I pressed F5 for what seemed like the 1,000th time, and instead of being "Out For Delivery", the replacement iPod Nano was "Delivered and Signed For by Customer". I rang home immediately to check, and counted down the minutes until I could leave the office and get home.

Upon arriving home, I went to look at the delivery, and we had been sent a 6th Generation iPod Nano. This iteration has a touchscreen and 8gb of memory.

So because Apple had identified a potential fault in a 6 or 7 year old piece of tech we had lying unused in the bottom of a drawer somewhere, an old bit of kit with a clickwheel and 1gb of memory, they were willing to replace that with a two-year old newer bit of kit with a touchscreen and 8gb of memory. And it's got a 90-day warranty. I'm sure that by then ED will be bored of it. :-)

Great customer service - but then I think most people say that, right?

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And So the Festivities End

Welcome to the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas. It's been a period of over-indulgence in several ways; we've had lots of fun, lots of presents and lots of booze.
TW spent a lot of time in hospital with her gran - she's fine, still going strong and is as stubborn as ever.
Our Christmas Eve drinks party / open house tradition was a success again. I say 'our', but really it is all down to TW. She loves it. The Day itself was a restrained affair at M&P's, and then friends came over for the evening.
I was back to work on Thursday 27th as I had drawn the short straw at work.
New Year's Eve was a second wave of over-indulgence and January 1st was a very slow day indeed - all the girls saw in the New Year though, which was a good thing (I think).
Then 2nd Jan was back to work again and for me it's been back to normal every since. TW, on the other hand, restarts her routine tomorrow - and that might be a shock to the system... :)
Me? I've already been out running twice this year, and looking forward to getting out more.
Happy New Year!

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Early Sunday Morning

So here I am again, up early and watching India vs Pakistan first ODI. We have six people asleep upstairs - five girls aged from three to seven, and TW. We're having a sleepover to help out some friends who had a party to go to. I'm glad to see the girls are actually sleeping...

Not much going on today, possibly a trip to Arundel later, as TW mentioned she wanted to visit Sparks Yard. It's always nice having a mooch around that shop :-).

We'll see...

And then tomorrow morning it'll be back to work for me, albeit from home, for the morning, and then will we see in the New Year in style? Possibly...

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New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of year when thoughts turn to the coming year and how we can improve our lives in the next 52 weeks.
Serious resolutions will be made. Ho yus.

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The Wonder Stuff not Wonderful Any More...

So I went to see the Wonder Stuff on Wednesday; they were appearing on a triple bill with PWEI (Pop Will Eat Itself) and Jesus Jones in a night entitled "Sleigh the UK".

I met up with my sister at Victoria and we made our way to the Shepherd's Bush O2. We got in just as Jesus Jones were starting up, with International Bright Young Thing. They stormed through a number of songs off Liquidizer, as well as a couple from Doubt which I recognised, and of course they played Info Freako - but it wasn't the closer, surprisingly.

The songs were good, but it seemed there was something missing; I'm not sure what it was, but the music didn't seem quite rounded out. It was very enjoyable though, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle at several points during the set.

Next up were PWEI, which now only contains one original member - Graham Crabb. But he's backed up by (apparently) an ex-member of Gaye Bikers on Acid, and they certainly look like they're having fun on stage. The guitarists looked younger, but also joined in the fun. I saw PWEI last year at the Concorde II in Brighton and was initially sceptical, but they produced a full-on wall of sound and they know how to get their crowd moving. There was some serious moshpit action, which looked scary to me! But from my vantage point, they were the highlight of the night.

Lastly, The Wonder Stuff came on. Again, they only contain one original member, but I think we would all agree that Miles Hunt is the original member; he was the songwriter, the mouthpiece and the creative engine-room of the band. Miles took the stage like the all-conquering hero he is, but the band didn't seem to interact at all. It seemed like they were doing it by the numbers, and the only one enjoying themself was Miles. Things did pick up a bit when Erica left the stage so that the band could "play their boys' music", and the band romped through a few of their hits, but it was 22:45 by this time, and it was too little, too late.

The last time I saw the Wonder Stuff, Malc Treece and Martin Gilks were onstage (must have been 2005 or 2006) and the sense of communal enjoyment was palpable. It just wasn't there last Wednesday, and it probably would have been better billed as "Miles Hunt sings The Wonder Stuff". I still listen to 'Groove Machine and Hup, and I was reminded how good Never Loved Elvissounds (and my sister re-bought that for me a few years ago). I also have Escape From Rubbish Island and Suspended By Stars from their new incarnation, so I think the creative spark is there, but there was some enjoyment, some joie de vivre missing from the gig.

I'm glad I went; it was good to see Caroline and hear Jesus Jones and PWEI again, and Miles had his moments, but I shan't be attending Sleigh the UK 2013.

TTFN !! 

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Gay Marriage

I don't understand what the big deal is. If people want to get married why shouldn't they be allowed to do so?
How can the fact that two people are married have any impact on anyone outside the marriage?
Surely supporting gay marriage should be the default laissez-faire approach of the conservatives.
Why would anyone want to deny the benefits of marriage to others?
If marriage leads to stability in society, why would one want to deny that to anyone?
Just asking...

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Shopping With Hattie

This morning I have taken a day off to help out TW - she's got a Christmas Fair to organise later, and doesn't need to worry about the kids.

So I've got Hattie for the day. I asked her what she wanted to do and she said she wanted to go shopping. And she especially wanted to go to Tesco - that's apparently her favourite shop.

So we went into Worthing, moved from bank to bank, and then went to Caffè Nero, where Hattie could have a melted cheese sandwich - she'd been banging on about it all morning. She also got to run up some steps and down a slope twice. And I collected a birthday parcel from the Post Office. And that took eighty minutes. It's slow going with a youngster... :-)

.

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Apple got Served

So, I see that Apple have been told off for not complying with the judgement handed down by the UK courts. As well as publishing the required apology, they published additional detail confusing the issue and making it look like other courts disagreed with the UK judgement.
Looking at the 'apology' the last phrase is "Samsung willfully copied Apple's far more popular iPad." which kind of misses the point.
Apparently Apple asked for 14 days to make the change but were denied. As someone else pointed out today, they didn't wait 14 days to publish tributes to Steve Jobs. They were obviously playing for time, looking for a way to weasel out of the judgement again.
Well, I don't think it went their way.
Apple make lovely products, they should rely on that. Going after Samsung boosted sales of the SIII - so the action Apple took was self-defeating.
I hope these companies stop their court activities soon, it's getting tedious.

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A London Weekend

We were very lucky that a friend of TW's was going away for the weekend and offered us the use of her flat. We pootled up on Thursday night after work without incident and installed ourselves in Earlsfield, SW18.
Friday we spent the day at London Zoo. It rained but the kids enjoyed it. Saturday we spent walking through London - we visited Leicester Square, Chinatown, Trafalgar Square (the NFL were in town), and we were entertained for hours by the street performers at Coventry Garden. There was a very funny guy who majicked oranges from under hats - great patter! and also a guy on a unicycle, who I think was underselling his skill, but being funny with it.
We also went to the National Gallery and the Tate Modern, and finished the day off with Pizza Express and a walk in the dark back to Waterloo along the Embankment, to see the London Eye illuminated.

Just a Distraction

I'm beginning to get a bit fed-up.

The main stories on Friday were Andrew Mitchell's resignation as Chief Whip and Gideon Osborne's train incident.

I'm reminded of small boys playing in the playground, gloating loudly at each other.

"Naa naa, na-naa naa!"

These stories are just a distraction from the news / real events going on in the world.

Can we just stop it?

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Farewell Strauss

I read with surprise the news yesterday morning, suggesting that Strauss was about to resign as captain of the England cricket team. As the morning wore on, articles and items on the Guardian website and Sky News persuaded me that it was not just an idle flight of fancy. 

And then at 12 midday the press conference took place and Strauss resigned from the captaincy and all international and domestic cricket.

It was a real shock. I can understand resigning from the captaincy and the England team entirely - although if he only resigned the captaincy in order to concentrate on his batting, that would have been okay. But a complete break with the England team makes sense - he won't be a shadow, interfering in Cook's decision-making. He's done the decent thing and given Cook a clear run, so well done to him.

I am surprised that he won't be returning to Middlesex though, I would have thought another season or two could have cushioned the blow of his England departure. But again, I suppose we are coming to the end of the season, and he wouldn't play again until March next year. 

I know Cook is the anointed one, and he's been groomed for this role, but I'm not sure. And his first experience will be against India in India - not the easiest way to bed yourself in. In fact, it may be a bit of a baptism of fire. But let's wait and see, I suppose.

Fingers crossed he makes a good fist of it. I'm looking forward to it.

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Saddened

Kevin Pietersen. I know that pretty much everything has been written already, but I wanted to say that I will miss watching him play. And it's a shame England can't accommodate him because I still think he has a contribution to make to English cricket.
Can't they just accept he's not a team-player and give him his own dressing room or something? That might seem like special treatment, but he wouldn't get to share the highs and he would have to internalise the lows.
That could be seen as a punishment rather than a privilege. And we'd still get to see him play for England.

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