We’re Going Live Brum!
Posted on 12 May 2008
Recently I’ve found use in Upcoming.org as a method of finding cool events in Birmingham to go to, such as the Birmingham Flickrmeet, Blogger Meetups, and gigs. I’ve also been adding stuff myself, such as Douglas Furs gigs and Midland MUG meetings in hopes of getting word out and getting more interest.
Well listings are limited currecntly. So big thanks and good luck to LiveBrum - the “comprehensive what’s on event listings for the City of Birmingham, UK”. Its a beautiful new website just launched recently where you can get all the info you want on concerts, shows, comedy, and any other public events in the Birmingham area, all nicely broken down into specific categories. So if you have a penchant for Jazz or Folk, you can get your fill here.
Its only just on its first legs (what is that referencing? do things have a second set of legs?) but there are some good features coming soon from what I hear.
I’ll be trying to get the Douglas Furs gigs on there too, but how happy was I to see our Bar Academy gig on there already!
So if you find yourself looking for a nice night out, or just want to go see a band or some theatre on a sunday afternoon, then this has to be your first stop. So go check it out, sign up and get live!
Last days at work
Posted on 7 May 2008
Today marks the final day of my working life in Financial Services. Today I had a trip to Manchester to demo a database, little knowing that I would probably not see most of my colleagues again. So Tuesday seems to be the last day for that. As of 15th May I’ll be unemployed (well 16th really). Its (hopefull) the end of an era.
I’ve been working in FS for about 5 years now, starting originally at Norwich Union in 2003 and working there until 2006, when I moved up to Birmingham, and then went into FS again just as a temporary job. As often happens I settled and put a new job on the back burner, and then over the past year, I have been slowly working toward my IT qualifications, hoping to move over.
Well that time came upon me quicker than I planned, and I also got a little pay out to go with it. Without mentioning the company name, we have been going through some changes, and found out a few months back our office was going to close. After hearing that it just became an issue of when.
Today on my train journey I was listening to Leo Laporte talk on TWiT about the Yahoo/Microsoft business and in particular, some of the comments about Yahoo sounded all to familiar. Jerry Yang and other Yahoo bods made comments about now that the Microsoft deal deadline passed, they can move on and focus on being more efficient business. And that is literally what the bosses at my work were saying.
My worry is for the company that they are already too far down that path, and that for years they have been hiding failure behind small successes, and of course that means for the current employees, a tough time, uncertainty and risk of redundancy too.
But I’ve been through it now and have to look foward to a new job. I’m looking at starting off as some sort of technician, doing installation and repairs or hardware and network stuff, hopefully in a full time position, but I’m also looking at contract work so we’ll see how we get on.
Either way, I’ve got some time to myself which I will spend making music, tidying the house and seeing a variety of films, and probably blog a fair bit too!
New Toys
Posted on 6 May 2008
Today I picked up my new bass amp - an Ashdown MAG300 C210 Combo. What does that mean? Its a 307W combo amp (amplifier and speaker cabinet) with 2 x 10″ speakers. And its lovely.
When I was looking at new amps, I had a few choices. First, do I get a split setup, i.e. a seperate amplifier head unit and speaker cabinets (cabs), or a combo, with the amp and cabs built into the same unit. There were really two differences. Firstly, with split setups, you have more flexibility to mix amps with cabs, so if you already have some, or prefer a particular brand of cabs, you can mix and match your units. The other difference is price. You’ll probably pay about another 20-30% more for split setups depending on what you choose.
For me, price was a big issue, so I went with the combo setup. I saw the Ashdown amps in PMT in Birmingham and after some reading online, decided that this was my choice of amp. So I went over there on wednesday last week and picked up this bad boy.
Of course this was not the best idea as I had a gig on Thursday at the Hare and Hounds so I had about 10 minutes to give it a try out the night before.
Anyway, the gig went well, the amp is lovely. I hope to get more time soon (see Redundancy) to play around with it. I can say that the compression and Sub-Harmonics settings do some damn good work on the sound.
If you wanna see this lush thing, check out my Unboxing photos on Flickr.
The Great Lottery Experiment
Posted on 24 April 2008
I sometimes buy scratchcards. Not often but occasionally and I rarely win. The odds of winning are about 1 in 4.29 and I seem to win less than that. So here is what I propose.
I will take 10 pounds sterling (£10 GBP) and purchase 10 of one type of scratchcard, from one vendor, from a single batch, so they are all sequentially generated. I will scratch the panels off and see what I win. From those winnings, I will purchase more scratchcards of the same variety. I will continue to do this until one of the following situations occur:
1) I win the jackpot
2) I win £100 total
3) I go broke
or 4) after doing this for 6 rounds, I seem to be getting nowhere.
Now what is the point? Well I can sell this as a real life maths experiment, to test the probability of winning against real life. Now theory says that in those first 10, I should win 2 times. Now I could only win £1 on each, meaning I then purchase 2 more cards, and with a probability of 1:4.29 and ony having 2 cards, my odds are low, so it is likely that I will reach outcome 3 soon. But then again, I could luck out and hit 3 or more cards, perhaps with higher winning prizes. Truth is, I could hit the big time (well average of £6k on most scratchcards) within that first batch. Its even possible I will reach outcome 2 fairly quickly.
Either way, it would satisfy my curiosity, and at a cost of £10, why not. And to defeat those who may say this is merely to feed some gambling habit, if I win the jackpot, I will donate between £500-1000 to a range of 5 charities chosen by me, and disclosed here, or if I win a smaller amount (outcome 2) I will donate 20% to a single charity, again disclosed here. Now bare in mind that outcome 2 might take me over £100. I mean if I have unscratched cards, I might as well carry on.
I will try and do this next week and report back with my findings.
Linux is easy, easier than XP
Posted on 22 April 2008
I like linux. Its a fun platform to try out, and you can’t beat the price. It will run happily on low spec machines, and cos its a *nix OS, you can use it for a file server, web server, lots of stuff easily. But this is about one thing specifically.
I’m still running my MythTV box, only now its in a different room, and its mainly just a backend system for me. I record stuff to watch later on my main laptop. But before I could use it, it needed to be on my network. So that means wireless. I bought a Wifi PCI card on eBay and got it today. I was a little unsure about the setup cos I didn’t know whether I needed to install some more software or drivers, so was prepared a little to haul it near the router to wire it in. So I installed the card, and booted up. After logging in, I moved the mouse to the Network icon in the menu bar, expecting to have to at least select the other ethernet connection. But much to my surprise, it gave me a list of available Wifi networks. I plugged in my key and voila! Connected.
Now compare this to the XP installation. Its all the same up to the boot. Then the New Hardware wizard kicks in, and there is a requirement to install software and drivers, choose whos configuration setup to use, and probably a reboot.
Now I thought XP was meant to support a lot of hardware, yet I seem to find that when it comes to Wifi hardware, you almost always have additional drivers and software to install, and yet Linux, which is often stated as being a little behind the curve, as there is no one being paid to work on it, handled my new hardware with no problems at all.
So I’m quite happy now, on my network, enjoying the internet and updating software to my hearts content, while I record TV. Thanks Linux
Moshi Monsters
Posted on 13 April 2008
Meet Flargle. He’s my brand new Moshi Monster. Moshi Monsters is a new social networking website, thats really more about making cool monsters and playing games. So what is he like? Well his favourite food is Mr Tea, he likes the colour Cyan, R&B music, and dislikes lemurs. And he’s only 1 years old.
So far we’ve played some cool games, and been shopping. How do you like his windows? He’s also got some more fun stuff at home. Why not pop over and visit him for a bit. You can even be his friend so he has some company when I’m at work.
If you can find one, pick up a beta code from a few lucky people online, or go to Firebox.com and pickup a MoPod for your own special invite code. Moshi Monsters should be open to the public in a few weeks hopefully, so keep checking back.
Special Thanks to Michael at Mind Candy for hooking me up with a beta code, and congrats on the lovely website!
Update: I have a few beta codes thanks to Michael to give out. If you’re interested, leave me a comment. Working on first come, first served.
MythTV - Wrapup
Posted on 4 April 2008
Well Its been about a week since my last MythTV update. So far, I’ve got it working and have done some recording. Here’s what happened.
I had Ubuntu beta 8.06 installed and installed MythTV, along with the plugins and themes, which I did from the command line. I went through the backend setup and configured for my TV card.
New Gigs for the Douglas Furs
Posted on 1 April 2008
Hello
Just a copy post here to let you all know that my band, the Douglas Furs, have got some gigs coming up. We haven’t played in a few months and have one or two new songs to play for the crowds.
Full details can be found via MySpace, Upcoming.org, Virb, and below.
- 11th April - Varsity, Wolverhampton. 7pm, £4 entry
- 1st May - Hare and Hounds, Kings Heath. 7pm, £4 entry
- 29th May - Bar Academy, Birmingham. 7pm, £4 entry
- 27th June - Jug of Ale, Moseley. 7pm, £4 entry.
Come along if you can, and bring some friends. We might be giving out some free CD’s too if you fancy it!
Birmingham Regeneration
Posted on 27 March 2008
The other day I was on the train past the Hawthorns and Jewellery Quarter going into Birmingham and saw all the abandoned warehouses and factories just sitting there doing nothing. It got me to thinking about a good use of these buildings and came up with a few ideas with Katie. Some of these were
- Vegan/Vegetarian cafe
- Recording studio for musicians
- Office space for small companies/design firms that need somewhere cheap and easy to work
- Bloggers cafe/lounge
The last item is the one I thought the most about. I have an idea that I would love to get open one day. Allow me to expand if you will.
The idea is a basic one. Its a coffee lounge that’s more aimed towards the home workers/mobile workers, the people who work from laptops where ever Wifi is available. Its a place where there are plenty of large tables to sit down at, comfy seats, power sockets, wifi (perhaps free). And you could expand that really. Have lockers for people to put their laptops if they need to pop out for half an hour, offer printing facilities at a small cost, offer PO box services, allowing people to get packages delivered.
The theory behind this was that people who can work anywhere, may not want to work from home, they might want to spend it somewhere else, with other people, but still be able to get everything done that they need to. You could come here and spend the whole day working away, get food and drink, and get that project or web page sorted.
Now this may not be a great idea. But the theory is to play on not the people on their way to work, but the people who want to sit and work in a friendly environment, where they can feel safe, and be surrounded by similar people.
I suppose my hopes are that some of these buildings could be reused and help to build up a strong sense of independence in Birmingham, where small businesses can get a good start. It could be a hive of artistic, musical, creative thinking folks. You could have community centres for groups to meet, have a flea market for people to swap and sell things to people who would appreciate them.
I realise that this is difficult to get started. You need capital to buy these buildings, make sure they’re safe, kit them out with all the necessary gear, and of course get the work out to the people you are targetting to get people to come. I would like to build on this idea if possible.
If anyone has any ideas, suggestions, or information that would be useful, please do leave me a comment.
MythTV Day 4/5
Posted on 27 March 2008
Day 4
I’ve made some progress since my last blog post. I was having issues with installing Ubuntu while hooked up to TV via the TV-out port on my ATI Radeon 7000. So I went over to my gf’s parents house and hooked the machine up to an LCD monitor. I have a bit more sucess this time. I got the installer working.
I was using the alternative install for my install as i didn’t need the LiveCD part. I booted up, and started to go through the install process. I got as far as copying and setting up the system and then it hung at 6% progress. I waited and finally got an error message which was no help at all. I tried once again and got the same thing.
This whole process took about 30 mins each time so I had just wasted an hour on this. My only solution was to go home and look into things.
After a bit of googling I found a possible issue. It might’ve been a bad burn. I checked my MD5 checksums on the ISO and CD after burning and had no issues. They were fine. I decided that I would try the 8.06 beta version as well. So I downloaded the ISO via BitTorrent (one of the many LEGAL uses!) and did a trial install in VMWare on my Macbook Pro. It went fine so I burnt a disc.
Day 5
Back at Katie’s parents house now. Trying the disc I just burnt. After a long wait, still no luck. Failed. So I tried one last thing. It was suggested that sometimes fast CD burns can cause problems, so I quickly burnt a new version of the 8.06 beta onto a CD with Disk Utility, this time selecting a 10X burn speed compared to the normal 24X.
I waited for the burn to finish and booted off the disc. All I can say is the difference was very noticable. The boot was a lot quicker this time. I launched the LiveCD and installed from there. Install didn’t take that long and I was soon happy to be greated by the Ubuntu login screen.
By this time it was late and almost time to go home. I did a quick update and also turned on VNC so I could manage this from remote.
I got home, and hooked the PC up to the TV again. No signal what so ever. So I fired up Chicken of the VNC and tried to log on. Now, I had reason to think it should work. I tried it back at the other house, and had no trouble. But for some reason, back home there was no luck.
So now I’m stuck again. I’ve bought a VGA to S-video and composite cable from eBay and will hopefully be able to get a picture on screen with that, at least long enough to get auto login set up and vnc working. Once thats done, I’ll get MythTV installed and get working.
I also need to get a new hard drive. I’ve got a 40GB drive in there now, and obviously need a bigger one. I’ll probably get a 200GB drive, and maybe clone Ubuntu across to it rather than clean install. That then gives me a a spare IDE connection for another drive.
Again we wait to fix unforseen issues.
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