Saturday, June 24, 2006

Sven's Art of Football Management

As a country we should be 100% behind the England team. I am and think England are going to win the World Cup Finals.

Compared to the last one in 2002 it looks like more of the population are rooting for the team because more and more cars and van around the country are bearing England flags.(photo: www.sillyjokes.co.uk) But you can’t help feeling that the more national flags on display the worse the England team seem to be playing.

There is already talk in the news that the manager’s halftime talks are not blood and guts and thunder that you would expect in an important battle. [BBC NEWS: England's second-half struggles]

In fact after 15 minutes in the company of Sven-Goran Eriksson the England team seem return to the pitch un-inspired and definitely lack lustre.

Strangely enough this is quite similar to how I feel after my shopping experiences at Ikea, the Swedish furniture store. So is there a connection between the England manger and this shopping experience? Is it being Swedish? Or just management? Let’s explore!

On paper both the England teams and Ikea products look great. But when you get them out in the open they seem to loose some of their sparkle.

On paper they look easy to put together but after many frustrating attempts to put them together some how they don’t quite fit.

The England team seems to have only one way of playing and when you visit the Ikea store… there is only one way of going around!

I’m sure there are more connections, and if you can think of any then please send them in but for now I conclude that it is management style rather than being Swedish which tempers the current situation in both camps.

Come on England!

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Foon or Spork?

Possibly the most useful picnic/fast food culinary utensil invented s the combination of fork and spoon. Some call it the spork, some call it the foon.

According to Wikipedia(and that will be the catch phrase of the next five years) the spork was invented in the middle ages and not, as I thought, in the last 100 years.

Personally I feel they work best when you are eating a baked potato with beans and cheese although some will say they are useless at being a spoon (too shallow) and for eating meat (forks too short).

You won’t find the words Foon or Spork in Microsoft’s spell check dictionary you will find them on the tip of your tongue.

Monday, June 19, 2006

How to tell if a pineapple is fresh

The pineapple has to be the most dangerous looking fruit.
Just look at it.
It seems to be covered in armour plating. Look at those spikes on its flesh. You wouldn’t want those brushing your side. Feel its weight. You wouldn’t want that dropping on your head. It is more weapon than dessert.

The last thing it seems to be saying is: "Eat me." So how do you tell if it is ripe?

This was the question I found myself asking at the market on Friday. It isn’t like an avocado that you can squeeze at the top. It isn’t like a melon, which after a good push on its crown revels whether or not the fruit is ready. With the pineapple I was ready to be taught.

The lady behind the stall took hold of the pineapple and then pulled at one of the leaves. It came out easily and the leaf had a white base. It was ready to eat. So simple an answer. The picture above shows you what it looks like.

But is it dangerous to give out such information? With this fruit tip out amongst the food faddish public are we going to start seeing bald pineapples in the supermarkets?

It could happen because if you go to a market these days almost everyone is prodding and squeezing the fruit and veg. Going from avocado tip to avocado tip testing for freshness; digging their thumbs into peaches and some even sniffing the herbs.

That’s why you should washing your fruit and veg before eating it. It isn’t the pesticides you should be worried about it’s the germs from the handling they are given by the food cognoscenti.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

HDTV World Cup at the Cinema

And where will you be watching the England’s matches during the World Cup? At home, at work, in the pub with your mates trying to see the screen and wishing you had a chair and waiter service? Why not try the cinema?

That’s right the Odeon are showing all of England’s games in Widescreen High Definition TV. I went to the first one in Guildford to witness a bit of cinema history and was very impressed.

Although my drinking hand felt a bit underused I had a comfortable chair, an excellent view of the game and revelled in the quality of the picture.

I think that is why I am more positive about that football match than other commentators.

With widescreen you get more of the pitch and closer too. So when England kicked off you could see the whole team but you weren’t viewing them as tiny specks on the grass.

Once they started passing it around you could see more of their movement off the ball. This was wonderful. It was a revelation. Plus the screen was 40 feet across.

But the match wasn’t the best and we had to pay for the privilege but I really enjoyed the occasion and so did the others who went. We were given free flags too.

After the match I spoke to the happy fans as they left and then interviewed the man with the magic boxes, Geoff Hewitt, who is the Chief Technician at the Odeon Guildford.


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Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Hand Built Web Pages

The world has changed since the birth of web page building. Back in the good old days (Web Beta anyone?) we used to make them by hand - typing the code into Notepad and, where possible, copying and pasting somebody else’s into your own work. For making images we used Paint Shop Pro.

As most people had a dial up connection, every line of code was scrutinised and reduced so that pages loaded quickly.

Simple web sites were all we knew and animated gif’s were considered a luxury. I still have a classic old page on my site.

Then along came big business and advertisers with their new browsers, WYSIWYG software such as Front Page and Dreamweaver and with them Microsoft's asp (Active Server Pages) and, as I wasn’t born with the maths part of the brain functioning, I drifted into site design and customer relations (i.e. management).

I’m currently casting my eye around the job sites and although web authoring isn’t currently my first choice of occupation I can do it, and do it well. But nowadays the job spec is crazy. This is what you are expected to know if you want to earn £25,000 per annum.
ASP; ASP.net; HTML; XML; XHTML; XSLT; JavaScript; CSS; RedDot; ADO; OLEDB; COM objects; SQL Server/Query Analyser; Dreamweaver; Contribute; Photoshop; MS Office; Flash.
I can do about seven of those skills but that isn’t enough as they also want…
Exposure to methodologies, processes and controls including at least some of: Rapid Application Development; Object Orientation; web integration; firewall technologies; MS Project

As I said above… In the good old days we used to make web pages by hand…

Monday, June 12, 2006

Holy Fathers of Punk Fathers

The Stranglers have another greatest hit album out. I know it’s another because I already have one from a couple of years ago - bought second hand from Ben’s Record Collectors.

So I watched the advert intently wondering what new tracks they had found but there was no inkling of anything extra.

The voice over went through the usual motions, reminding the forgetful of this punk bands musical triumphs and, just as we got to the end, he announced, with no hint of irony, that this album “would be an ideal gift for Father’s Day.”

“What?!” I thought. “How can something that once seemed so rebellious now be suitable as a gift for Father’s Day?”

It makes commercial sense as most punks are now fathers. In fact I’m a recent father and this Sunday will be my first day of feet-up “I’m doing nothing honey it’s father’s day” attitude.

But to be told that The Stranglers, responsible for songs about heroin addiction, bottom watching and Leon Trotsky getting an ice pick that made his ears burn, were ideal gift material for something as soft as Father’s Day was quite a shock.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Bands Score With IndieStore

I remember the day when I used to shake my head with despair when ever I heard someone say: "I remember the day!"

And yet here am I, looking back to the time when I was in a rock band, thinking that musicians nowadays never had it so good. MySpace, flickr, YouTube and now indiestore: a fantastic selection of tools.

Let me take you back to the late 1980’s. London was booming, yuppies were thriving and the east of the City of London was under massive re-development. If you could afford it you were buying property in the docklands if you couldn’t you were drinking with us.

Well, I exaggerate a little. It seemed like that. The band was based in Bethnal Green road at a pub called the Stick of Rock, close to the junction with Brick Lane.

From the front door you could see cranes and concrete going up around Liverpool Street station. The money was over there.

We played some great gigs at The Stick. Hot, sweaty and always fun. We had a mixture of rockers, skinheads and east enders willing us on and we had a pocket full of happy rock songs which people could dance and sing along to.

Naturally we decided to put some of our music onto vinyl. CD’s were just coming out but it seemed a pretty stupid idea for us to make one as no one we knew actually owned a CD player.

So we plumped for 2000 12 inch records. Why on earth 12 inch? Well, to help pay for it we had sold advertising squares on the back sleeve. Also it was said that it gave the songs more oomph.

I’ll cut this story short because those days were great fun and to get to the point would take ages but 2000 12 inch records is a weight and a half. You get 25 discs in a box and so that’s 80 boxes and strong young rockers can only carry two packs at a time. It took ages to load and then unload.

Nowadays? Ha! Bands never had it so good. You’ve got MySpace to help your fans connect and listen to your tracks, flickr to share photos, YouTube to post your videos and now IndieStore - somewhere to actually sell your music.

You can upload your songs for free and people can download them for 79p. You get 70% of the money.

To get onto iTunes you have to have someone distribute your music, here you are on in moments. You can for songs available for sale, at no cost to the band, within minutes.

Brilliant. You can even open a pro account and if your sales go massive you will enter the actually charts. No shops, no distribution just one pure connection between you and your fans.

This is a fantastic site for new acts that are prepared to gig and publicise their material.

Look at the Trophy Boyz and their World Cup song "Name on the Cup". They are number 3 in the Indiestore charts. With the right momentum a band can start selling.

But if you are just going to add your music and hope then nothing will happen.

If you have time to visit just click on the random band link and you’ll see hundreds of acts waiting for people to download their music and good luck to them.

Hard work, hard gig is and many miles in the back of a van will get you sales. It is how we did it. We sold 1600 copies at gigs and you still see one or two for sale on ebay. But if we had had an indiestore page...

Monday, June 05, 2006

New Music Collection - Midlands


This is the second New Music Collection and its sub-titled Midlands. Maybe each one should have a number but I think numbers are good for just football players and houses; whereas odd subtitles suit art a lot better.

First act in the podcast are Overproof Soundsystem. They started life in 1998 as a monthly reggae night called "Overproof" held at the Medicine bar in Birmingham, England. The song I have picked is The Plea. Their version of kraftwerk’s The Model is brilliant it would make the Top 10 in the charts if released.


Next up it's way out cinema They are a new band fusing the sound of 60's west coast harmony rock with contemporary indie. They were formed in 2005 by Rob Blackham who needed an outlet for his original material. He is from the Midlands too and the song is called Drowning.

Second podcast in a row we have a poem from Greg Buddery. Greg’s a writer living in Guildford, South England and is currently attempting to publish a novella - "A Young Artist in the Modern World" and a poetry collection (working title- Self Help). This poem is called Drinking Poem and was recorded in one of the few pubs that doesn’t have music in it. The deep hum in the background is the air con.


Emerging from Northampton, InVerro draw together so many wide ranging influences it's hard to understand how they manage to blend them all together into such sweet melodies and driven beats – well that’s what is says on their MySpace site! This mild mannered Midlands meleody is called DimLo.


Another Fine Day
Between 1992 and 1994 Tom Green created his classic album Life Before Land which made the Top 3 ambient albums as chosen by the Independent newspaper. You’ll hear the song Esperanto as well as a clip from an interview in which he talks about the equipment and processes he used to make the album. Buy this album!

Desert Heat
come from rural Quebec and formed nearly 17 years ago. Apparently there has not been a major country band emerge from this part of Canada in industry memory. In 2006 they hope to conquer America. Their debut CD (which was co-produced by Wayne Warner) on the B-Venturous record label, is called “Forever Road” and this is the title track.

We end the podcast with a blast of electronica - Subsource. I know the bass player in this band. Although I didn’t know that he was in this band until I received their publicity photo. Stuart Henshall is his name and he also plays bass for the Naked Sunday Collective. Both groups play their mix music live so try and see either if you can. Subsource play breaks/drum and bass and this powerful track is called Fight ‘Em Off.

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Saturday, June 03, 2006

How To Save Celebrity X-Factor

It is only when you are truly exasperated with something does it become pants.

This Celebrity singing competition, in which we discover if the said 'celebrities' have the X-factor, is pants for the very simple reason – it wouldn’t work on the radio.

If the audience only heard their voices people would switch off immediately. Most of the positive comments the X-Factor judges make about our 'celebrity entertainers' concern their looks not their vocal skills.

That's why Walt Disney, when auditioning actors for the voice of Snow White, asked them to sit behind a screen – he didn’t want to be distracted by their appearance.

So here is how to make the show interesting.

When they do the voting there should be one extra number for people to call. It is for those watching who think the show is pants. i.e we think “None of the above” should get our vote.

If that spare number gets the most calls a new celebrity should be added to the roster, the cast is therefore enlarged and the show has to go into an extra day, adding pain to the TV network that dare put on such puerile tripe.

This should be the law, because then they would actually put people on who could sing and we would start to celebrate art rather than these sad wailings.

There is only one person on that show who actually has the X-Factor and he is not a celebrity but a sportsman. Matt Stevens I applaud you.