More for that wall…

Posted on 11 December, 2006 by adrian

Remember I was moaning about Universal Music and their blinkered, litigious greed? Well, how about we move up a level through the music industry hierarchy to that noble umbrella organisation, the Recording Industry Association of America…

RIAA Petitions Judges to Lower Artist Royalties (IGN News)

Basically, the record companies (who are, according to the RIAA, truly wonderful because they “drive revenue”) aren’t earning enough money from modern music delivery technologies such as ringtones and downloads. And here’s the shining, crystalline reason for why the RIAA is called the RIAA and not the “Wonderful World of Lovely Music For All” (or something)… they decide to claw back some revenue by paying their artists less. Yep, the people who make the music, without whom there wouldn’t be a music industry.

Posted in Art/Culture, Music, Music industry | 1 Comment

Litvinenko affair: MI5 missing obvious clues

Posted on 26 November, 2006 by adrian

Homer Simpson, shown negligently disposing of a piece of polonium 210, yesterdaySpy death linked to nuclear thefts (Observer)

… significant quantities of polonium 210, the substance that killed former spy Alexander Litvinenko, are being stolen from poorly protected Russian nuclear sites.

Why are they wasting their time investigating Russian nuclear sites? Get out there and search the roadside verges of Springfield!

 

 

 

Posted in Drivel, Politics | 1 Comment

Come the revolution, that wall is going to be very crowded…

Posted on 23 November, 2006 by adrian

I give you Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music. For a CEO of a major producer of electronic media, Doug doesn’t seem to be too comfortable with the modern world. First of all, he knows exactly what we’re all doing with our iPods…

“These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. “So it’s time to get paid for it.”

It’s not just the little plastic boxes we carry around in our pockets, either. Poor Doug is feeling a bit confused by pretty much everything that young people do these days. So what does he do? He sues MySpace…

Before the suit was filed, Morris said, “The poster child for (user-generated media) sites are MySpace and YouTube… We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars.” MySpace called the suit “meritless litigation.”

The Wired article mentions damages of up to $150,000 *per song*. I had no idea all those MySpace teenagers were doing so much damage to the world Emo economy…

Posted in Art/Culture, Music, Music industry | Leave a comment

Dinnerlog #6

Posted on 22 November, 2006 by adrian

Haven’t done this for a while…

Sometime last year I was at a family get-together sort of thing in Warwickshire. As it was an area none of us knew (it was chosen as a good geographical centre) I took it upon myself to hunt out a good restaurant for the evening. I found The Crabmill and we were rewarded with some splendid nosh.

I was particularly impressed with my main course, a butternut squash risotto topped with a slab of cod. Because of overfishing and pollution in the North Sea, I tend to avoid cod (especially in fish & chip shops, where it tastes like slightly fishy water) but this particular fish was clearly of a finer pedigree. What really grabbed my attention, though, was the risotto. Risotto is one of those satisfyingly easy-to-make comfort foods, but the Crabmill’s chef had done a damn fine job. I resolved to learn to make this particular variety of the classic Italian ricey stodge.

Time passed, and it was only when we found ourselves in possession of a perky butternut squash a couple of weeks ago that I remembered my plan. A search of the BBC’s recipe archive turned up a pretty close match. It’s mostly yer standard risotto recipe, which isn’t difficult, but I hadn’t thought of the pine nuts or sage. I also used one glass of Noilly Prat instead of the two glasses of wine… I like to use vermouth in risotto, for the slightly “herby” flavour it adds.

Topped with a slab of swordfish from the local fishmongers and… result! Possibly not quite as good as my memory of the one at the Crabmill, but some fine-tuning should sort that out.

Posted in Food/Drink | Leave a comment

The notWigan that nearly wasn’t

Posted on 20 November, 2006 by adrian

photo of me, courtesy of George WestonSo, last weekend marked the sixth annual uk.music.guitar national get-together. I’ve been to four of the six and find myself developing an almost complacent expectation that the event will be exciting, amusing, interesting and inspiring in equal measure. A number of external glitches conspired to threaten the very existence of this year’s event, but that just made the success of the whole thing seem even more important than normal.

The focus of the weekend, as ever, was the Saturday evening “Guitar Idol” (named with tongue firmly in cheek), our musically diverse marathon gig where anyone can perform a song of their choosing, backed by an ad hoc band. The only obstacle is the lack of formal rehearsal… you practise your own part and trust the rest to nods, hand signals and the adrenalin of the evening. I don’t think I played particularly well on my “spots” (insufficiently focused practice in the preceding weeks) but that’s no problem. We’re all our own worst critics, and the emphasis is on fun.

As I mentioned this time last year, it’s difficult to describe just what the National (notWigan) means to us. Plenty of online communities have their occasional meatspace manifestations, and each event is, I’m sure, similarly cherished by its loyal attendees. And look at ours… it’s a bunch of people from a Usenet newsgroup! Does anyone still use that dusty old text-only relic from the pre-Myspace days of the Internet?

The truth, of course, is that UKMG is so much more than just a newsgroup. There’s a chatroom, regular offline meet-ups, musical collaborations, a whole range of specialist services and abilities and, most importantly, a whole network of “real life” relationships. Quite simply, it’s a community. And that’s why I find the whole Web 2.0 more exciting than anything I’ve seen since I first started using the Internet back in 1997. A lot of the early excitement faded in the flood of corporate involvement and the one-way artist-fanbase (or vendor-customer) relationship, but the democratic community aspect is coming back. I know from experience what can be achieved with the right mix of online and offline, and the various Web 2.0 technologies have enormous potential for making things even more fun.

Posted in Friends, Guitar, Music | 1 Comment

Does English football need protecting?

Posted on 7 November, 2006 by adrian

Fifa quota proposal angers Wenger (BBC News)

… and you can see why. The customary lack of English (or even British) players in Arsenal’s first-team squad has become something of a standing joke. However, I’m not going to criticise Arsene Wenger… he’s simply working within the guidelines available to him, and Arsenal have produced some of the most attractive football in the Premiership in recent years, especially since Man Utd went off the boil and Chelsea became so bullishly charmless.

No, what I object to is the system that allowed this situation to develop. What we’re seeing in top-flight English football is the result of unfettered capitalism. That’s what the Premier League wanted when they broke away from the Football League and took control of their own TV rights, and they’re partly responsible for the outcome… precious few domestic players gaining regular match practice at the top level, with the result that the England squad is a hapless mish-mash of precocious individuals and inexperienced understudies. There are some incredibly talented players in the Championship, but as long as the sports media, the money men and even the England coaching setup are obsessed with the Premiership to the exclusion of all else, we’ll never see those players.

To be honest, I’m not completely comfortable with the idea of a quota, because it’s inspired by the same “TAKING OUR JOBS!” mentality that lies behind all the tabloid asylum seeker hysteria. However, something has to be done before the Premiership becomes a cartel of rich multinational businesses and English football ceases to exist as a unique identity. There’s no doubt that the high-quality, cosmopolitan feel of the Premiership has done much to rehabilitate English football after the dark days of the 1980s, but there are dangers. The rich-poor divide becomes wider every season, and the exclusive band of big-money clubs is becoming more and more arrogant, as the whole G-14 affair demonstrates.

The Italian FA imposed a total ban on foreign players between 1964 and 1980, in order to improve the national team. It’s impossible to prove whether Italy’s 1982 World Cup triumph was a direct result of this ban, but I’d suggest it wasn’t entirely unrelated. A total ban in England would be impractical now (not to mention illegal in the case of EU players) but perhaps there’s scope for a limit on non-EU players? Back to Italy again… at the turn of the millennium in Serie A, there was a limit of five non-EU players per club, three of whom could be on the pitch simultaneously. While that led to a damaging fake-passport scandal, a properly-policed scheme of that sort could be a valuable lifeline for English football.

Posted in Football | Leave a comment

Burn the King!

Posted on 3 November, 2006 by adrian

Greene King boss faces a roasting (BBC News)

The boss of the Greene King brewery could have his effigy burnt with that of Guy Fawkes this Sunday as a row with drinkers at a Sussex pub escalates.

Of course, Greene King are perfectly entitled to sell whatever beer they like in their own pubs, but in this case they seem to be acting brazenly in the face of local opinion. That’s nothing unusual… despite the idealistic “traditional ale plus modern forward thinking” message on their company website, Greene King represent one of the biggest threats to proper localised brewing in this country.

Their recent growth spurt is well documented by CAMRA who have expressed concern over the Greene King approach to ruthless expansion. Other large brewers, such as Fullers or Wolverhampton & Dudley, have taken over struggling local breweries recently, but have generally maintained their product ranges, striving to keep the quality and branding consistent. On the other hand, Greene King simply absorb the resources of the smaller companies into their own homogenous operation.

I’m really tempted to go down to Lewes tomorrow for the bonfire celebrations. I’ve been before and it’s a lot of fun, but there’s that extra level of intrigue this year. I don’t exactly need much persuasion to drink Harvey’s beer, so I’m perfectly happy to do it as an act of protest :-)

(By the way, there’s more info on the whole affair at the Lewes Arms blog)

Posted in Consumer, Local | Leave a comment

RSS my RSS

Posted on 23 October, 2006 by adrian

I was just thinking about XML syndication (y’know… all the RSS feed stuff) and how I’ve come to rely upon it. Having initially been baffled as to the point of the whole thing, I then gave NetNewsWire a try, and was instantly amazed by the constant stream of automatically updated news stories and blogs.

After a couple of weeks of that, I realised I don’t need to read the same dreary drivel from multiple news sites, and continued to use NNW purely for blogs. When Apple included RSS functions in their Safari browser, I had no further need for NNW. All of my RSS feeds, neatly stored in a couple of drop-down menus in the bookmarks bar… I’d rather have that sort of thing in a web browser than a separate application.

However, the way RSS feeds worked within the Safari interface was never quite right, so it’s a big “WHOOHOO!” for the new, improved Google Reader. Safari doesn’t normally export RSS bookmarks in the required OPML format, but that was sorted with a little free utility. Initial use of the Google Reader was a little sluggish, but I guess a lot of people must have been migrating the same day; it’s been fine’n'dandy ever since.

Even better… while my phone (SE P900) doesn’t support the full range of Google user account features, it does give me a barebones version of the Reader, which allows me to browse RSS headers with only the *teensiest* amount of GPRS bandwidth. RSS blogs on the move… I like living in the future!

Posted in Technology | Leave a comment

Shopping in Hell

Posted on 3 October, 2006 by adrian

From a feature in yesterday’s Guardian…

It is hard to imagine a better-stocked record shop, yet Beano’s, Lashmar’s labour of love, is soon to close its doors after 31 years of trading… Today, Beano’s is one of three independent retailers left in the town centre, along with a clothes store and a hardware shop which is also about to close.

And from the BBC today…

Clothing sales grew 19% while digital cameras and flat-screen televisions helped push electronics sales up 36%. Six years ago Tesco made its first £1bn annual profit. The latest figure equates to earnings of approximately £35 per second.

I feel quite guilty about Beano’s… I used to go there quite regularly, and although I didn’t buy much (I bought more from 101 Records, another sadly missed independent shop nearby) I was certainly “browsing with intent”. The easy availability of Amazon and Ebay have made it so much more convenient for me (and, clearly, so many others) to do my browsing online.

And while I can’t really blame Tesco directly for the demise of Beano’s, they are a major influence on the overall changes in our towns. Look at that Guardian quote again… three independent retailers in central Croydon, two of which are soon to close. In case you don’t know Croydon, there’s a *lot* of shops; I’m guessing a large proportion of them belong to companies such as Kingfisher, DSGi and Virgin Group… huge companies who want a finger in every retail pie. It might not be Tesco, but it’s the gradual “Tesco-isation” of our towns.

Another thing occurs to me… while our society is becoming more and more attuned to short-term disposability, Ebay proves that some of us are still interested in looking for tasty bargains among secondhand stuff. But when that interest is almost totally monopolised by Ebay, aren’t they almost as bad as Tesco? Rather than diversifying our spending habits (let’s drop in the obligatory Long Tail reference here!) is the internet contributing to the lazy, bland Tesco effect?

Posted in Consumer, Local | 1 Comment

The postman who hated junk mail

Posted on 28 September, 2006 by adrian

This made me grin…

Anti-junk mail postie loses round

In a nutshell, postman Roger Annies distributed leaflets telling residents how they could opt out of the Royal Mail’s ridiculous and annoying junk mail distribution service. Having been suspended, it looks like he’ll keep his job, although he’s being moved to a different round. Personally, I think he should be in the New Year Honours list.

How ironic that this story appeared on the day that the Dear Leader was giving his emotional farewell speech at the Labour Party conference, in which he listed a number of reforms made by New Labour. Several of them, admittedly, have changed Britain for the better, but Tony’s obsession with private finance makes me wonder how long it’ll be before a crumbling, failing Royal Mail is finally privatised. As Simon Jenkins wrote in the Guardian recently, even Thatcher stopped short of privatising certain things… I fear the same can’t be said of Blair.

In just a few years, an efficient and reliable postal system has crumbled into a hopeless mess. I’ve received packages from the USA and mainland Europe quicker than first class letters from the other side of London. Mail disappears far more than it ever used to. My local post offices are often unusably busy (queues of up to 20 minutes) because so many small local branches are closing. So what do they do? Make money by pushing junk through our doors.

(Incidentally, if you want to stop the stream of unaddressed leaflets and insurance offers that are bulk-delivered by the Royal Mail, write to… Opt-Outs, Royal Mail, Kingsmead House, Oxpens Road, Oxford, OX1 1RX)

Posted in Consumer, Politics | Leave a comment