Song 4 wrapped

It's been a bit quiet on the music front, in case you were wondering. Our last recording session - September 9 - was spent re-recording one of the vocals we weren't happy with, which didn't really count as progress in my mind although the result was much better, and since then we've been on another mini-hiatus what with one thing and another. Sore throats, other projects and commitments have conspired to mean the September 9 session will be the only one this month, and an autumn release of Weird & Wonderful (the title of our second album) is looking increasingly unlikely.

On the upside, it's given Annie the time to concentrate on production, and last night she announced that she'd finished work on our fourth recording: Sovereign Stranger.

All this is relatively relaxed and comfortable, but that's about to change. In an effort to promote our stuff, Annie recently suggested we do a local live gig. Chorlton is a thriving centre for live music. Mainly artists building a reputation by gigging their way around local pubs and clubs but it also has its fair share of famous names - the Bee Gees and Badly Drawn Boy to name but two. So with that in mind she's approached one of the bars which regularly hosts live events to see if they'd be interested in putting us on.

Have to admit the thought of it gives me a clenched sphincter. Apart from the odd karaoke session (a relatively safe environment with the words scrolling up right in front of you) I haven't been on stage since I was 9. I've determinedly - and so far successfully - avoided being roped in to any of the Chorlton Players productions during the nine years I've known them. Now it looks like I won't be able to avoid the spotlight. Assuming bars have spotlights.

Don't go running off with the idea that I can remember the lyrics to our songs just because I wrote them. Unfortunately it's not that easy. MUCH practice will be required!

Locking horns

A short hiatus between painting doors is coming to an end, but because the bathroom door is next on the agenda, timing is everything! It would be very embarrassing to have anyone in the house except Nikki and I during the (approximately) ten days the door will be off. Heck, it'll be embarrassing enough with just us!

So with that in mind, I've stolen a march on the job by fitting the new lock first. We bought this - along with a full set of new brass knobs - about eighteen months ago when we found them online at Cast In Style. Most of the rim latches on the bedroom doors are in fairly good condition, only needing replacement knobs, but the bathroom door latch was pretty chewed up, with its small shoot bolt bent almost at 90° and not looking very secure. When we saw this "Regency Cast Iron and Brass Rim Latch" we knew immediately it was exactly what we wanted.

As you can tell from the exposed screw holes, it's considerably more compact that the previous latch, which will give me a Polyfilla challenge on the edge of the door, but I'm really pleased with the look - even on the unpainted door - and the latch is a thousand times more solid and secure. So much so that I'll be sure to fit the "emergency release" mechanism once the door is painted!

A visit from the squad

Ding-dong!

Always an annoyance that, when we've locked up at the front after returning from a highly successful shopping expedition, and weren't expecting to have to sally forth again until Monday.

"Hello!" *smiles*
The face of the twenty-something girl on the front step positively gleamed with her inner radiance. A twenty-something lad shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot on the path behind her. She clutched a thick, black-leather-clad book in one hand.

"Is that a Bible?"
"Yes!"
*slight pause*
"Seeya then." *closes door gently*

I wonder what their conversion rate is? Oh, hello, we've come to talk to you about God! Really? How wonderful! I've never thought much about it before, but you're right! Where do I sign?

I don't think so.

Half way-t

Today marks the 6-week anniversary of my manuscript submission as a result of Query 44. The agent's quoted turn-round time for reading a full manuscript is twelve weeks, so I'm half way through the wait. Half wayt.

I don't know their modus operandi. Is it queued, waiting for a reader? Is it with a reader, and they're half-way through? Do they use more than one reader to gain a consensus? Have they already read it, and made a decision, but not got to the part where they send the email yet?

It hardly ever leaves my mind, my story. Out there in the big wide world, trying to impress someone who could make it famous, or condemn it to a few more months or years gathering dust on my hard drive. Proponents of positive thinking claim you can influence events by envisioning the outcome you desire, so I do spend a few minutes each day "seeing" myself responding to their positive email; signing a contract; telling family and friends about publication dates. Right now, it's still a dream. But everyone needs a dream, right?

Almost imperceptible...

I rehung the dining room door yesterday. All painted up and with nice shiny new brass handles, it went up without any bother and looked really spiffy. Closed perfectly too, the latch clicking satisfyingly into place. Good job!

Except I couldn't open it again.

It was binding at the top right-hand corner. And when I say binding, it had grabbed hold of the door frame like a dear old friend that it had missed desperately all those long lonely weeks it had been lying on its back in the conservatory being subjected to the unbearable heat of day; the chill of night; the indignities of sanding and painting; not to mention the forceful SCREWING in of new hinges, but now it was back - BACK! - and it was damned if it was ever going to let go of its frame again.

In the end I had to use a chisel to lever the blimmin' thing open.

A few seconds with the electric plane while I buzzed a millimetre or two off the top edge, and all was well.

It's a funny thing though. The door was off for three weeks. When it first came off the room looked incredibly bare, but we got used to it. Kinda. Now that it's back up, and having a door in a doorway, well, it's not exactly unusual is it? But the room looks different, so I find myself squinting at it with a vague sense that something's changed and taking a moment or two to realise that it must just be that the door is back from treatment.

A long way to climb

The new series of Strictly Come Dancing started last night here on UK TV, amid a huge media hoo-ha regarding the replacement of long-time judge and dance expert Arlene Phillips with 2007 winner Alesha Dixon (pictured). Were the BBC being ageist as some commenters claimed? Were they trying to redress the overwhelming whiteness of the panel and meet their ethnic quota? Or were they just after another bit of eye candy to brighten the programme up for the blokes?

There's no doubting that Dixon ticks all those boxes - young, black and attractive - but are any of these suitable credentials for joining a panel of judges whose job it is to critique a dancing competition? Judging by her performance last night, I'd have to say no. And judging by the reported reaction of the television audience, forum and chat room posts, and media critics in all their various flavours, I wouldn't be alone. Thousands of nos have been resounding up and down the country. Compared to the knowledge and experience of her fellow panel members - Craig Revel-Horwood (dancer, choreographer, theatre director), Bruno Tonioli (dancer, choreographer), and head judge Len Goodman (four times British champion Exhibition dancer, dance teacher and professional judge) - her single credential is having won the competition itself two years ago.

So having her comments restricted to knowing "how the contestants are feeling," enthusing about the way they relate to each other, and agreeing with the other judges tells us nothing more than we can see for ourselves.

Question is, will the BBC be big enough to admit their mistake, climb down, and offer Arlene her old seat back for the next series? Because for now, a lot of the sparkle seems to have gone out of Strictly, and putting more sequins on the costumes won't help.

The fun gets funner

More work-time language fun, this time from one of our... no... I'll stick to my Principles of Anonymity. This arrived in an email yesterday:

... as far as I am a ware...

What? As far as you are an illegally-obtained piece of software? As far as you are a piece of pottery? As far as you are an ethnic native of Tanzania? As far as you are a small town in Hertfordshire? No, dear boy. You are aware. Or rather, you ain't.

ZoomZoom

A few years back I joined ZoomPanel. You may have heard of them - they run online surveys on behalf of marketing companies to gauge opinion before adverts, products, etc come onto the market, and also keep tabs on the public's views on issues of the day. With a self-selecting audience I'm not sure how meaningful the results of the latter are, but let's not get sidetracked with that.

In exchange for completing their questionnaires, members rack up points which can then be exchanged for "gifts." When I first received an invite to sign up it sounded like a bit of a laugh. Register my opinion (always an attractive proposition) and win some prizes while I was at it.

Two things weren't immediately apparent:

• the rate at which points would be accrued
• the value of the "gifts" on offer

The reward for any survey is usually around 50 points, but with survey requests only arriving sporadically, often with several weeks between, the maximum rate at which points can be won is limited. The reality is worse than that. Surveys are often oversubscribed, or aimed at a different demographic, so I'd often answer a few questions only to be told that the survey had closed, or they were looking for someone with a different profile.

Far be it from me to cast aspersions, but it did seem after a while that some quite useful marketing information was being gathered before the survey suddenly announced it was full, or decided I didn't fit the bill. Not only that, but every survey always asked for information - gender, location, age etc - that was already available in my profile. Tedious, to say the least.

Even so, with the eagerness of youth (this was about three years ago) I pressed on, keen to make my first 1,000 points and gain access to the cornucopia of delights available to me. Gifts are arranged in "portfolios" which require a certain number of points before they can be opened. 1,000 points for the first, 2,000 for the second and so on. When eventually I began to approach the thousand-point mark, I took a look inside the first portfolio.

Hmm. Nothing much there to get excited about. I decided to press on towards the 2,000-point barrier. It's taken more than three years, but I did eventually reach it. Sadly, the prizes in the second portfolio proved almost as uninspiring as the first, so I cut my losses, ordered two things from the first portfolio, and cancelled my account. What had appeared to be "a bit of a laugh" actually proved a complete waste of time. The surveys took around 20 minutes on average and to reach 2,000 points I must have completed something like 40 of them. Over thirteen hours effort in exchange for two objects worth no more than a couple of quid.

So why am I telling you all this?

Well, the first of my two shiny new toys arrived yesterday morning. A small tripod "ideal for use with all types of camera."

Unfortunately, mere seconds after removing it from its blister packaging, I made the mistake of trying to deploy the legs. One of them snapped off in my hand.

When I stopped laughing I did wonder whether it was worth breaking the other one off and using the pathetic thing as a monopod. One more look at its cheap plastic construction was enough to dispel that idea. It's now in the bin, along with my ZoomPanel account.

And then I noticed...

...people who can't tell the difference between 'then' and 'than'.

My latest example: I just read a blog post by a famous author; some idiot flamed him in the comments; and a later commenter wrote (and I quote): "There are better places to be a troll then here."

I don't know whether this kindergarten grammatical error is becoming more common or if it's just that I'm *seeing* it more often, but I've caught it dozens of times in the last few weeks and it's becoming about as irritating as people who write "I should of been there" or "I would of come if I'd known."

What's more, I suspect it has the same root. That is, people writing how they speak. Should of, could of, would of, all come from hearing should've, could've, would've in their daily lives without ever seeing them written down properly or being taught the grammatical explanation for the contraction. I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover "better places then here" has a similar explanation. It probably started in the U.S. where "than" is often pronounced closer to "then" and pretty soon with a lame school system (both there and here, sadly), no-one knows the difference.

The real sad thing is that it's not confined to kids and illiterate forum dwellers. Even those who should know better - professional writers among them - have fallen into the trap.

We recently watched the final series of The Wire - a marathon viewing session lasting most of Sunday - and I was struck by the way not only the kids manning "the corners" but also senators, lawyers and the police expressed themselves with minimal vocabulary. A single word like "shit" - uttered with variable expression and dependent on context becomes something like a universal noun.

An expression of surprise: Shit!
An expression of disgust or disbelief: Sheeeeeeeeyit.
A generic description of one or more objects: Don't mess wit' my shit.
A reference to a horrific event or something that must not be spoken of: Shit like that.
A misdemeanour: What's with that shit?

etc, etc.

After a few hundred years of increasing literacy - pretty much since the invention of the printing press - anarchy is returning to language. At this rate it won't be long before we're all communicating in a series of grunts again. Sheeeeeeeeyit.

Say what?

A lifetime love of language occasionally manifests itself in mild amusement at the verbal knots tied in the sentences of others, malapropisms and general mis-speaking. Mild internal amusement, I should add. It's not my style to wag fingers and snort with derision or anything like that. I don't get pleasure from others' embarrassment(*).

So there'll be no names or other identifying material in my relating a comment from a colleague on a recent voice conference, when describing how his current project was going:

It's got a status of 'quo'

I wonder where they get it from sometimes.

(*) Note: I don't count forum dwellers. I'll wag fingers, snort, pick apart, ridicule, correct, bang on about apostrophes and generally not give any quarter when I'm on a forum. It's all part of the fun. Besides, they deserve it.

Eradicate!

For several weeks now we've been finding dead wasps about the house. The odd one on the stairs (one perched rather precariously on a newel post), in our bedroom or the lounge. Occasionally flying around a lightbulb or crawling dazedly across the carpet. But mainly, and in copious quantities, in Blythe's room. Now regularly shared by Nat.

The last time they stayed for any length of time Blythe mentioned casually that there were a lot of wasps flying OUTSIDE the bedroom window too. A quick glance up at the fascia board above her window revealed a constant stream of the little blighters crawling under the eaves, and flying out, while several hovered about like transatlantic aircraft stacked above Heathrow.

We had a nest in the loft.

With an alarming lack of procrastination, I booked a pest control officer from Environmental Health. He turned up yesterday afternoon. I expected him to be kitted out in a full-body protective suit a la bee-keepers. No. Jeans and a T-shirt. Clearly a man of experience. I offered him frontal access, or the alternative of a short crawl across the rafters. "I'll do it from here," he said, and went to fetch his ladder.

The information sheet he handed me on completion of the job a few minutes later stated that we "may see increased activity around the nest for 2-3 hours after dusting." They're not joking. Heathrow never had a stacking problem like the one around my eaves. A temporary phenomenon - they should all be dead in a day or so.

Your call is really important to us

Those people who record the well-meaning messages that regularly interrupt the music on IVR systems. Do they realise how counterproductive they are?

All our operators are still busy.
Your call is really important to us.
Please continue to hold and someone will be with you shortly.

Sounds so friendly and comforting the first time you hear it, doesn't it? You're REALLY important to them and they're so sorry you have to be kept waiting, but hang in there. It won't be long now!

By the tenth time you're ready to wring the stupid bitch's neck. If I was so sodding important to you, you wouldn't have kept me waiting fifteen minutes, and that bit about "shortly" is clearly a total lie. Why don't you STFU and answer the call, damn you?

I know how helpdesks work. I know that the usual reason they want you to keep holding is they have targets about minimising the number of lost calls. People who phone and refuse to be kept waiting. They just hang up and try again. Or, worse, hang up and don't try again. I know that whoever answers the call, finally, knows how long you've been waiting. So, armed with that damning statistic, do you think they apologise for the wait? No...

>click<
Hello-this-is-Simon-do-you-have-an-account-number?

I can't help myself. I sink to their level. I recite the account number in a bored monotone. I attempt no normal human interaction. Simon's frustration with his job has communicated itself to me and been converted in real time into my frustration with him and his organisation. Want to change that? Don't keep interrupting your music with messages of false hope and meaningless overblown declarations of my importance to you.

Healthy debate

A three-and-a-half-thousand mile perspective on the current debate in the U.S. about health care can make the whole thing seem like some sort of political pantomime played out on the nightly news bulletins. Living in a country which, for more than 60 years, has had ubiquitous health care free at the point of use (or as near as makes no difference), is a far more significant barrier to understanding the issues than distance. I wonder how many in this country stop to realise how fortunate they are.

A package on this morning's Today programme brought it home to me in a "WHAT?" moment of epic proportions.

The article concerned a regular working mum in the US (so I should probably say mom?) for whom one thing separates her from most other regular working mums. Her medical condition: rheumatoid arthritis. Her health insurance allows her one course of treatment per year costing $500. Unfortunately a year's supply of just one of the medications she requires to alleviate the pain from her crippled hands costs $50,000. As a direct result, she lives with constant pain.

I didn't quite catch whether or not this was directly related to the problem with her hands, but she was recently dug out of a car wreck in which she almost died, and found an ambulance waiting to take her to hospital.

Shaken from her near-death experience and having sustained several injuries, she was nevertheless reluctant to step into the ambulance. She knew she couldn't afford the trip to hospital, let alone the treatment when she got there.

A single ambulance ride costs $11,000.

That was the double-take, jaw-dropping moment for me. First, a silent prayer of thanks that if I'm ever unlucky enough to have a significant car wreck, and lucky enough to be pulled out alive, the last thing I'll have to worry about is the trip to ED. Because our ambulance service, much maligned as it often is, doesn't cost a penny. But second: how much? $11,000?!? How on Earth can one trip by ambulance have that kind of price tag. Someone, somewhere, is raking in an enormous, toe-curling and utterly immoral profit from that, while ordinary people standing beside their written-off vehicles try to work out whether they can afford to be taken to a place of safety and given the treatment they need.

And this, in what is supposedly the richest nation on Earth.

A nation now engaged in an almighty bickerfest of shouted half-truths and vested interest, trying to protect the profits of those health insurance companies at the expense of that nation's most disadvantaged citizens. Wake up people. Someone said that most of middle America is only a single accident away from bankruptcy. It could be you tomorrow.

Thank God for the NHS. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, it needs reform. Yes, it's been allowed to bloat until it is, apparently, the world's fourth largest employer at approximately 1.3 million staff. But for all its faults it will be there when you need it most, and whether or not you can afford it.

Spider Mum

For the last few weeks we've been nature watching through our new kitchen window. A spider took up residence there and shortly after we noticed she'd spun a small sac. By a lucky coincidence I happened to be standing by the window when she started laying her eggs into it, which gave me a kind of "godfather" proprietary feeling towards the little guys as I've watched the sac grow and swell over the weeks since.

Pretty soon individual spiderlets began to be discernible through the silk and then, shortly before the weekend, one of them crawled out. Followed by another. Pretty soon they were all moving slowly about in the space under the window rail, protected from wind and rain by a large web their Mum had spun over the corner of the window.

Now my camera is notoriously bad at extreme close-ups - the autofocus is always totally defeated (in this case it insisted on focussing on the neighbour's wall) and the manual focus is totally useless - so I've had to back off and zoom in from a distance for this shot, but if you click on the pic to expand it and then zoom in you should be able to see the little guys, who at this stage are still spending most of their time inside their old sac.

During the period of development, Mum has faded away almost to nothing. I mean literally. When she laid the eggs she looked like a regular small spider, but having not left their side for two whole months she's become gradually more transparent. A shadow of her former self.

All this has been a fascinating pageant, developing in front of our eyes as we check up on the family every time we do the washing up or make a cup of tea, but we've decided that once is enough. If there are any signs of sacs or egg laying next year I'll be deploying the hose. Incy Wincy she ain't.

Twitterati

Sorry, I'm still thinking about this bloody Twitter thing.

It's like a few guys thought "hey, let's think up the most seriously messed up Internet thing. You know, something that's really stupid and off the wall, and then we can pretend it's like the coolest thing ever."
"Yeah! We can get all our mates on it, and they'll get all their mates and pretty soon it'll go viral and all the sheeple will join in cos they'll be scared shitless that they're gonna miss out on something."
"Right!"

Actually the Twitter page on Wikipedia makes really interesting reading. Some serious up-front investment with very little money made so far, but "revenue projections" into the billions. Makes me laugh. They assume it'll keep growing at the same rate - or faster - that it has done so far. Totally failing to grok that the sheeple they rely on can be distracted to "the Next Big Thing" just as easily as they were to Twitter in the first place. And the fact that the mainstream media has caught on to it - witness Burns and Humphreys starting to Twitter as I mentioned yesterday - could well be the kiss of death for their target demographic. We're already hearing "I'm SO over Twitter." Once it loses that cool cachet, it has nowhere to go.

The Twittering classes

Before you ask, I don't tweet. I mean, I like to think I'm considerably more net-savvy and "down with the kids" than yer average 52-year-old, but I really don't get Twitter. OK, there might be a slight buzz in knowing what someone like Stephen Fry - a famous twitterer (notice I avoided saying twit. Oh. Damn.) - is doing from moment to moment, but for most people it must be a constant stream of mundane trivia.

Maybe that's the point.

Someone recently wrote that updating your Facebook status (something else I've stopped doing more frequently than once every couple of weeks) is equivalent to stepping out into your street and shouting "I'm going to have bangers and mash for dinner tonight!" and then going back indoors.

A good analogy which, if true, must make tweeting the equivalent of
"Going to the toilet now"
"Oh - I think it's solids"
"Wiping my arse now"
"No, still leaving a mark"
"Still wiping"
"OK. Clean now"
"Washing my hands now"
etc.

I think people sign up because they're afraid they'll miss something. Trouble is, the more people that sign up, the more likely it is that you will miss something. It's like having a website. Not so long ago - maybe, what? Ten years? Fifteen? - you were bleeding edge if you had a website. Now URLs are everywhere and you're considered a bit weird and antiquated if you don't have a website. Businesses especially. Everyone expects to be able to type in "hoover.com" and immediately find product details, nearest dealers, latest news, history of the firm, returns policy, recent recalls, whatever. It's just part of the fabric of society. And with immense and frightening rapidity, Twitter is getting there too.

Now, I'm seeing "follow us on Twitter" on company websites. Imagine that. You can follow Hoover and get minute-by-minute updates about new vacuum cleaners. Sorry, what? I mean, seriously, WTF?

So last night, North West Tonight (for the benefit of non-UKers and, probably, most non-Northwesters, that's our local magazine news programme) Gordon Burns was making a big thing about His First Tweet. He's been sending out an email newsletter for ages, which is pretty net-savvy and down-with-the-kids in its own right. I mean the guy's 67 ffs, so all credit to him. But now he's caught the Twitter bug too.

And then bugger me but here's John Humphreys on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning - that bastion of British Correctness And Rectitude - and he's doing it too!

Christ on a bike.

Niagara revisited

I don't write about the weather very often. I know it's supposed to be British to talk about it a lot, but for blogging? I don't think so. Unless it's extraordinary. Well this afternoon, it was.

In a moment of total awe I failed to take a photo of the deluge, or the longest and most violent hailstorm I have ever witnessed, but the memory will stay with me for a long time. So much rain that it overflowed the gutters back and front, delivering a sheet of water across my study window to almost rival Niagara. So much hail that the lawn turned white and the deck was completely hidden from view. When I left to pick Nikki up from work an hour later, there were still piles of hail beside the front path. When we returned 40 minutes later, two of them hadn't yet melted.

The good news: this was the first serious rain since I painted the damp patch on the study ceiling. After close scrutiny, there's no new evidence of damp. The roof held up!!

The bad news: all that water pouring onto the study window sills somehow found its way into the conservatory, saturating the dust sheet underneath my half-painted door and splashing up onto the door itself. Painting activities will have to cease until it's dried out. Rain stopped play, you might say.

An Internet era closes

About twelve years ago, having already spent 4-5 years reading and contributing to Usenet newsgroups from work and generally browsing the embryonic web, I decided the time had come to get myself online from home.

Even back then AOL had an appalling reputation, but one of their freebie CDs stuck to the front cover of one of the glossy magazines gave me a bootstrap account with which to do a little investigation and sign up with an alternative ISP. The one I chose: FreeUK. Still a fairly new service back then, as evidenced by the fact that my preferred username - earthmover - was still available, it was simple to sign up, fast (a whole 28.8kbps for my first connection), and best of all as its name implied, free.

Sounds almost too sadly geeky now to be true, but I'll never forget the thrill as the modem popped, whistled and gurgled its way to establish its first connection and open up those worlds of possibility. FreeUK even offered a small amount of webspace too, allowing me to experiment with web design and start down a path that has kept me busy making sites for friends and family from that day to this.

But their business model, built as it was on taking a percentage of the charge for dialling up using a LoCall number, was doomed with the advent of ubiquitous ADSL. Sure, they developed other models. A broadband offering and a paid email service. But having these under the banner of FreeUK always struck me as a bit fail. With them not being free, and all.

A few years ago they introduced a requirement to dial up at least once every 120 days to keep the account alive, and for a short time I did: setting a reminder, listening once more to the modem's song, and leaving the connection up for a minute or so to reset the count. I wonder how many other subscribers with broadband access bothered to do that? When we moved here, in October 2006, it became very awkward to string a modem cable across the study 3 or 4 times a year, so I stopped bothering.

FreeUK emailed me today.

"According to our records you have not used your dial-up service in the last 120 days and as such the account has been flagged for deletion."

Either their records are woefully out of date, or they simply don't bother to check them very often, because by my reckoning it's been at least TEN TIMES that long since I dialled up. Still, they caught up with me. And having flagged the account, they tell me, any further dialling up won't save it. The only way to keep it is to pay for one of their email-only accounts, at a totally non-free price of £14.99 a year.

It gives me a nostalgic pang, but I'm going to have to say goodbye to earthmover@freeuk.com. I can happily render the address here, in full view of the spambots, because in a couple of weeks it will be gone. It has been grossly spammed over the years, as my 1997 self was not so Internet savvy as he thought, and built a personal website with the email address in plain sight. The spam count was small to begin with, but climbed rapidly until at one point I was labouring under a deluge numbering over 100 a day. It's a bit better now. I guess FreeUK spam filters are cleverer, and I haven't ever replied to a spam mail, even to "unsubscribe", so there's been no positive feedback on that address for years. But it was kinda useful as a registration address on the lame sites that require an email address but don't offer you the courtesy of protecting it with an encrypted connection.

I have a googlemail account for that purpose now, but I'll always have fond memories of earthmover@freeuk.com. My very first and, so far, longest-lasting personal email.