Recently some people

lost all their stuff on Gmail. Which rather vindicates my reservations about using online services for critical stuff. I definitely count my email and address book as critical stuff, which is why - despite temptations - I resolutely stick to running Thunderbird on my POP account for all my important email. And this is also precisely why I agonized over moving to an online blogging solution too, persuaded finally by the capability for Blogger to email all my posts back to my email account as they are created. It's not that I feel that all my stuff is irreplaceable or in most cases terribly valuable, just that I know from long computing experience that it's the odd thing that really is important that will be lost.

Keep it local if you can!

Well, another perfectly serviceable Christmas.

Mine went well, and I trust the same can be said of you lot. Now, unfortunately, it is time to get cracking on some essential property maintenance and the paying of various irksome bills and dues. At least the imperceptibly-lengthening days will lift morale a bit as I get on with all this. I note that this year I have once again been socially too busy to get around to doing much on the Internet, or indeed to watch much television. I count this as a good thing.

Will post more usefully soon...

Huh!

I, yet again, didn't get enough sleep. So I'm going to moan about my tech. Fair enough?

Just did some minor editing of a few things here regarding profile and so on, and went to save changes. Firefox disappeared. As in crashed and burnt, gone but not forgotten. This happens occasionally; my online world vanishes before my eyes, my lovely tabs full of improving content and quite often my train of research which is not always entirely anthropological. Note to self - persist in trying to get on better with the small and stable Opera, which I so nearly love enough to use all of the time.

It's turned bloody cold. To you this may be a crisp freshness or a reassurance that global warming has taken the week off, but to me it is simply bloody cold and my natural enemy.

Bought a Sagem 410-something mobile phone yesterday. This is a simple candy-bar thing whose main claims to fame are that it has Bluetooth - essential for use in my car - and that it costs (from Voda at any rate) only forty quid. I have a while to go before I get my free upgrade, after all. I noted that it was flimsy as all-get-out, but was blinded by the low cost. What about my existing phone, ask hundreds of interested readers? It's a Moto Razr thing, and it's in fact pretty solid . But it has a flip. As such, it is chiefly remarkable for being a royal pain in a car holder, and it is prone to fly off into the middle distance when hurriedly answered with cold or otherwise impaired hands. The former is countered a bit by the way the Moto deals cheerfully with the Bluetooth hands-free in my Garmin in-car chav-nav, but the latter - well, I like a drink and I cope badly with the cold.

With el Sagem I thought a cheap fix to both problems had been effected. No. Sagem has Bluetooth that does not relate well to chav-nav. Awful, in fact. Bluetooth, like so many technical standards, is apparently not always Bluetooth. It is in fact a standard for ensuring that devices can communicate with one-another always, sometimes, totally, partially or not at all. So this phone is no more use to me than various old phones I have around the house whose Bluetooth, by virtue of absence, also fails to work in-car. I will get a refund and persist with Razr, spending refund on jazz records. I never write here about the jazz records do I? Perhaps I should start.

Yesterday I completed the Christmas shopping. What is it about the retailing of children's books? If you want improving literature you take care to know the author and title of the work, and you should have a pretty good idea what the genre is. So you peg it to your bookshop and you find it if they have it, not least because the stock tends to be alphabetically ordered. Not so , in many cases, with the books for children. To find those you need to know the series or the main character or some other arcane thing about the book, and you don't because all you have to go on is the data scarfed off Amazon by your diminutive but impressively violent godson's mum. Amazon is a godsend to her because she has very little time, being mostly concerned with preventing the godson from boiling and eating his little brother or pulling down the house or whatever. Of course you can ask a human in a shop, but sadly not easily if they are world-record busy just before Christmas. Got there in the end though.

I like my local shops too much to drive them to the wall by shopping online, unless it's the only way to get something in an acceptable time frame or it's really a lot cheaper and I'm feeling poor. I can well imagine what town will be like when everyone has secured the best deal online for another ten years. Full of more crap like McDonalds and Starbucks, and devoid of book and record shops with their largely enthusiastic and helpful staff will be what. I'd rather buy less and buy local for the most part. I see this an investment in my environment. It's a bit like the "want a new telly, want one that's eco-friendly" thing. I'll tell you what's eco-friendly. No telly. Or the telly you already have. Or that someone else does. The one that requires no further manufacture.

I am of course a stinking hypocrite, but I'm damned if I'm going to let that stop me venting my spleen.

Small godson prefers fairly advanced books. He is very bright but bone idle on the learning to read front. He regally peruses the pictures, while doting dad reads and explains the text. When he's older he can read the text himself, and then he can come and complain to me that I have bought him boring books. And I will sit there fat and drunk and not much care, and explain to him that I chose them because I liked the cracking picture of a toad on the front or a volcano or whatever, and that there are no real toads any more because of the over-production of new eco-friendly toads or televisions or something and we will call it quits. Amphibiae are disappearing everywhere in Britain, even in my carefully tended (read left alone) frog-breeding pond. I really need a sign that says "don't keep bloody treading on them".

I have a Ford Fiesta now, rather than the Toyota RAV 4x4 I had for six months before that. I changed partly because people drove into the RAV because I live in a small street, and local would-be eco-warriors took a dim view of it and disrespected it by leaning their bikes insolently against it at every opportunity. They are very pleased now that I have the Fiesta, and they reckon that it is much more sensible to have a little hatchback which will not murder all their children even when left unattended nor require the environment to take one for the team any more than necessary. No matter that the RAV did 44 to the gallon on diesel, potentially bio-diesel, and had a particulate filter and will serve its new owner loyally for decades after the Ford has collapsed. No matter that the small Ford has a beast 2 litre motor and does 23 to the gallon while moving at just under the speed of sound. They are simple, bovine creatures who react only to large and obvious stimuli and in depressingly predictable ways, and I have yet to forgive them for scratching my RAV. Rude.

I usually walk or cycle in any case, as I much prefer it. I regard buses as an unsightly plague, whose purpose is to ferry the disabled - jolly good - and the lazy, whom I loathe. If you can walk, walk. Or cycle. Unless it's pissing with rain, perhaps. Or unless you can't carry all your stuff, which is of course why I have a car. Buses should not be simply a means of killing and injuring cyclists, obscuring the view of nice old buildings, blackening stonework or providing a social club for gum-chewing educationally sub-normals who believe that the word "like" is a verbal comma. They are not intended to sail past small attractive cars with five people in them while containing only two themselves, nor for that matter does it increase the sum of human happiness one jot when social detritus miss them and then work out their issues by vandalizing bicycles instead as they walk to what they call, with no trace of irony, home. Environment's a funny thing; it produces a relatively small number of genuine victims, but a seemingly inexhaustible supply of pricks. I like to roll the "r". Prrricks. Or maybe Perrricks. Public transport inbound-onlies. 2200 buses per day up our lovely High Street, every one expensive enough to discourage its use.

God bless the council's transport strategy, based on the systematic discouragement and demoralization of the motorist while profiteering inexcusably on parking. Three cheers for a policy of bleating about about how nice it would be if more people cycled while utterly failing to do anything to prevent the rampant theft and vandalizing of bikes. Why not ban all cars from the city centre except for the all-important loading and unloading, and devote all those keen traffic wardens to being instead a bike-protecting militia? That'd do it.

Right, time to freeze my arse off walking into town.

Have reached a brief but welcome hiatus

in endless round of recordings, peppered with gigs and jams. It would be nice if it were all a bit more lucrative, but at least I am getting things done and being rewarded by a lot of complimentary drinks. I have long since accepted that drinking like fury on these occasions is a fixed overhead, so reducing the cost overhead is in fact a form of decent wages. Pasties too contribute to the material gain.

In partial compensation for having achieved virtually nothing in terms of sorting out various niggling domestic problems - although I did manage to get the boiler serviced - I have at least largely sorted out the Christmas shopping. This represents probably the earliest date in December by which I could ever have said this. As I need only buy a couple more items to have totally finished, I shall mount another Mesopotamia reconnaissance mission on my way to town to tie up loose ends. There's little better than a nice winter walk.

Due to a propitious alignment of the stars, or perhaps more prosaically a happy coincidence of electrical consumption (and weren't you all wondering how long I could go without getting electrical on you?) , I have acquired some sort of fairly up-market graphics card in return to an old TV. My old computer now has the capability to run Second Life as well as the new one, so I can thrash about in this fabled resource hog without being effectively prevented from all other on-line activity. Well, if I don't mind being deafened that is. I never did really get to the bottom of how the old box was so noisy, given its decent power supply (thanks again Dan). Still, maybe I could stick it in a cupboard or something. The newer machine remains delightfully sotto voce. Oh, and the hard drive in the ancient laptop died, so that's that really. Still, too many computers is probably not good for anyone in any case. The Second Life remains quite absorbing, although I am not at all an addict. It could easily be done, but I am strong...

I envisage further mad social whirl, my dears, over the festive period. This I shall counter by healthy eating and exercise, as my epically nasty virus seems to have abated enough for me to be less worried about getting out in the cold. I've been pretty successful with the photography as well of late, although my compact camera does not seem too good in low light. I must look into this a bit more.

Mercy!

The Christmas, to which I am not averse in fact, has now robbed almost all of my free time for the next couple of weeks. To celebrate, the hard drive in my ancient (trust me) laptop has failed. Whether or not this is practically solvable is a matter for debate, but it is going to make transferring a load of vinyl over vastly more difficult. These things are sent to try us...

And, because I cannot for the life of me remember

all the things I meant to mention when I am writing a post here, this is rather good. If you play in a band, that is. If you don't, then in all probability it will mean very little to you. If, however, you do play in a band and it still means very little to you then you have a hard road to follow. Not that I am bitter, you understand, or that I used to do a fair bit of live sound work. Ahem.

I did think that this article on HDTV

was a model of clarity , and it even cleared up a few points for me. Given that, probably to my eternal discredit, I spend a fair amount of time taking an interest in this (and other) types of entertainment technology I consider this high praise. Anyway, it is a good introduction to all the confusing specs and jargon terms that really matter - to whit, the misleadingly described or unclear stuff that might cause you to waste your money. That's if, like me, you are prone to buying inappropriate or unnecessary tech instead of rather more sensibly drinking the cash or buying mid-period Miles Davis records. Not that I'm shy there either, of course. Perhaps this explains the state of my balance sheet.

Hey ho, Christmas is a-coming.

I have been very busy

with recording various people's demos for them, as well as gigging on my own account with the Talc Demons - who it seems may have to be renamed to something starting with "Rami and the" for the time being. It has been widely commented that there is a brand recognition problem, and in the delicate early stages of a band we don't need that. We need a following, of course, and these are hard-won phenomena aided considerably by people knowing who it is that they are going to see.

After a world record desperate gig the other week we turned in a good succinct set last night, restoring morale. Above us on the bill were a great band called Imogene, based in LA, who should definitely be checked out by any means possible. They have a Rhodesy, dense sound redolent of mid-period Miles Davis or a dirty Doors. My recommendation of the month, anyway.

I have also been well ill, either with a virus that mimicked being at death's door or possibly with being actually there. At the moment I'm still here, and that's probably the best any of us can hope for. I hope it serves as a partial apology for not writing more or being more entertaining or whatever. I'm afraid that right now all sorts of things in real life are going to curtail my online life a bit. But watch this space, because I am determined to do what I can. I just need to get healthy and stop the water getting into my house and work at making a few bob out of my music for the time being.

Don't go away :)

A cornucopia

Loads and loads of Pakistani recipes. That's never going to be bad, is it?

Rootling around on the web

like a pink pig after truffles, only rather more culturally inclined, I found the earth a bit hard in one of my regular spots. For some reason, although I am a subscriber of long service, John Sinclair's shows have not been forthcoming from Radio Free Amsterdam. Sometimes they pop up in my feed groper and sometimes they do not. I missed a few because of this, and the archive is down. I'm sure it'll get fixed in time, but I really miss the venerable toker and his excellent taste in music and irreverent ranting in general. It's all very well having missed the sixties by being born a little too late, and I imagine that those who were there but cannot remember are able to live with it too, but to miss the show because of something to do with bastard computers is really galling.

I hope he gets things sorted out soon. Probably some domainy hiccup or similar. Cool sounds still available to all at In The Groove, Bending Corners and no doubt a mass of other places where I dare not tread with my obsessive completism in hand. African Rhythms Radio is as good as it sounds like it might be. What did we do before the web?

I have discovered that there are a few bits and pieces from St Germain which I don't already have. Much coughing up to Amazon. Imports, they are not cheap.

My exploration of the cheesy vinyl continues apace. Records just really have it over the nasty CD in terms of aesthetics, and there's something pretty relaxing for me in being able to accept the snap crackle and pop of the shotgunned stuff people give me (or which I obtain for a quid in charity shops) and just listen to the music through it. No worrying about DACs and jitter, just take what you get. Organic. Shenzi. Fun.

A few gigs coming up, all on bills with ostensibly rather more polished acts. We will up our game, we Talc Demons, or we will die with our boots on.

Speaking of which, I had been looking for a reasonably-priced pair of boots recently. This is because my existing pair have fallen apart and are letting the rain in, and there has been a lot of rain of late. Having comprehensively failed to find anything I liked that wasn't a ton of money I then dug around in a corner of the house looking for something else and found a good pair I'd forgotten. Penny saved and all that. I am splendidly booted now.

The Torchwood

has returned to form a little of late, after almost forcing me to abandon it. It's lacks a sufficiently charismatic figure to propel it though, which is where the recent Doctors have done so well. I do find that Captain Jack a bit annoying. And is it just me, or is the whole thing degenerating into sitcom-land with the sex and relationship stuff?

I think I shall celebrate the no doubt temporary cessation of rain with a good walk in a little while. My virus has kept me from such pleasures for a fortnight, but now I think that the fresh air and exercise will do me good.

Firefox continues to work well here,

although it's true that I'm using 1.5.0.8 rather than version 2. I don't know what caused the crashing spate a week or so back, but I'm cautiously optimistic that it was something else. The thing is, I'm pretty much always running Firefox while my PC is up and running, so it's not easy to isolate stability problems. Actually, and I should think that this goes for a great many users, the PC is for me at least as much a machine for running a browser as anything else. Probably rather more so. This would explain my fixation with browsers then.

While I was having my fit of pique with the fox I took the opportunity to give IE7 a thorough thrashing, and indeed the latest Opera. I'm keen on Firefox, but I'm mercenary too, so if something better were to come along... I have to say that IE is really quite good these days, and there were only a few things about it that would prevent my using it all the time. The first was that there seems not to be any easily usable "find in this page" function, upon which I am heavily reliant in the fox. The second was that under circumstances where the computer was working hard - like having Second Life churning away in the background, IE took an age to switch between tabs where Firefox does not (too much). And thirdly, there are a number of little things I use extensions for in Firefox (change URL > current, DownThemAll et al) that have no equivalent in or for IE.

The Windows Live toolbar added a fair amount of useful stuff, and I do think the Onfolio add-in is pretty cool, perhaps the killer app for IE. Still, I'm foxing it still and hoping that they can sort a few long-standing silly bugs prior to ceasing support for the 1.5 branch in Februaury (I think it is). Opera remains a good tool, and very light-feeling. But as yet there's too much I can't do with it. Over and out. Just realized the time...