There has been a huge surge and outcry at the pushing through of the Digital Economy Bill through parliament which was today made law!
This insane practice by the UK government, from pressure via Music Industry lobbyists has shown how corrupt the current government and inept the Conservaties and Liberal Democrats are.
This week the term #debill has been trending on twitter globally as technology savvy individuals have seen through the wash up process and have tried to contact MPs in a plea, not to ignore that the digital infrastructure in britain needs attention, but that if you’re going to pass law on the digital world, then understand it, scrutinise it and listen to the people. None of this has happenned.
Protecting music Industry copyright has been the main driving force behind the bill’s passage and all the other issues around it will be collateral damage in making the bill a reality. It seems that even the MPs who’s stand directly behind it are ignorant to the technicalities of the internet itself.
Here are some links for you to see the absurdity for yourself :
I think the only solution here is for all labour and conservative voters to swing and vote for Lib Dems – I support the Green Party so if you want vote for them, but definitely do not vote for Labour or Conservative.
I’ve got to start collaborating with 2 developers on a single codebase that has 2 unique branches. Its been quite a headache working out the best way to manage this.
So far we’ve all opted to use Netbeans, and are using the excellent Beanstalk service. So it remains to see how we can keep the system managed working copies in sync and maintain a codebase that will feed different production sites. Each with minor differences.
I came up with the chart to help work out the process, although I think I will update the graphic with some accompanying text. So far this process seems to work, but only time will tell how effective it is in practice.
There is usually a great big buzz surrounding any movie, never mind a comic book movie. It seems the most common virals and trailers build up months and months in advance, designed to keep rabid fans eager but satisfied. Kick-Ass the movie just feels different in so many ways. Only last week we saw a mature rated trailer released to show fans it’s fans that the currently released trailers were “cleaned up” for public consumption, full of profanities and “themes of a violent nature” it suggested that this movie, would be no ordinary one. , the Kick-Ass movie website is full of flash deluxe activity too.
And it just so happens that I managed to score 2 fan tickets to the european premiere !
Premieres in London generally attract a lot of attention, but as Brad Pitt was rumoured to be showing… Also due to 200+ fans being treated to be some of the first to see this movie alongside the creators, actors and other movie industry bods, made this an extra special evening.
Still, the fans had to earn their tickets.
Roll back the clocks 32 hours and take a trip down Shafstbury Avenue, London… and you would see comic book geeks/nerds running round the back of the store queueing up to get into Forbidden Planet to meet the co-creators of Kick-Ass.
Having been informed that the first 75 through the door would get a pair of tickets to the premiere. A genius marketing move and a nod in the direction of the hardcore fans that have given the comic book into it’s cult status. Also guaranteed that the most ardent Kick-Ass fans would show ! Some even camped out overnight.
My Kick-Ass Journey – Sunday 21st March 2010
I headed down to the store early on Sunday, but nature called and I had to go seeking, by the time I returned to the back of the store the queue had grown, and this nervous feeling in my gut began to grow, after 3.5 hours of waiting and being made to watch the team managing the ticket allocation up ahead, it felt like I was going to miss out. But as luck would have it, a clipboard was passed to me, and i was second to last to be given the opportunity, there being only one more sheet of paper underneath my one.
It seems the production team increased the allocation from 75 to 103! I got to get my first issue of Kick-Ass signed and grab a couple of stereo (3d) image of the co-conspirators.
Showtime – Monday 22nd March 2010
Rushing down from Reading, in record time, I got to the pick up point after 6pm – so all the decent tickets had gone, but hey … I’ve now seen the most bad-ass insanely funny and entertaining film that has happenned to cross my eyeballs in a very long time. Even though I was right at the front and off to the side (C8) at the huge Empire Leicester Square theatre, not the easiest and most enjoyable way to experience a movie. Never the less, the movie made me and the audience laugh hard, whoop and clap. Be warned, there is extreme violence and swearing throughout the film. I think the movie may in itself become a cult classic just as the comic book has.
I took the opportunity to grab some 3D shots on the red carpet – and here is a video of Mark and John being interviewed at the same time:
Half way through the clip above you see me take the picture below, using a canon Stereo Data Maker 3D digital camera rig – I wasn’t really prepared for shooting 3D so there isn’t much flash power in the shot below. But its still in 3D – grab your red/cyan specs.
Being treated to the red carpet, kick-ass girls and the red mist mobile, had Leicester Square me and 200 other fans all buzzed up with energy. I only recognised Edgar Wright, whom I had to squeeze past in the foyer of Empire to get into the screen. I always forget how big a screen Empire 1 is … so we were treated to an intro by Director, Matthew Vaughn and Actors, Mark Strong, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Aaron Johnson and Chloe Moretz – who all stood in front of the audience to massive applause.
I will admit that I’m a comic book fan, not only of Kick-Ass’ 8 issue comic series, but also of writer, Mark Millar and artist John Romita Jr., both co-creators of Kick-Ass.
Find out more about their work and some of their popular titles: Chosen, Wanted, The Amazing Spider Man and World War Hulk to name a few.
This movie has surpassed my expectations, but a movie is always fresher, more exciting when you’re amongst fans, so go with friends, don’t look for anything serious and if you’re easily offended, don’t complain afterwards. The movie stands up to the comic in so many ways and avoids the trappings if having to run back stories and characters yada yada…. Kick-Ass is simple, funny and bloody and it’s got no baggage attached!
With no power, comes no responsibility .. you’ve got nothing to loose, go see it.
Kick-Ass is on General release from 26th March 2010, check you’re local cinema listings.
One of my resolutions for the past decade has been to engage myself more with the live music scene, something I desperately want to do, but find time and money to be two of my most immediate hurdles.
As a part-time hobby musician – playing bass guitar in a live band, and tinkering around with some songwriting ideas, seeing talented musicians live is always a treat. And well worth doing often if you can afford it.
My last proper gig-outing was to see Massive Attack play at Brixton Academy, quite a different experience to small intimate gigs where you’re practically sitting next to the musicians.
So I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from my local Dawsons music shop announcing that Stu Hamm would be holding a Bass Clinic and showing off the latest Hartke amplification. I’ve known for a small while that the store would be axing their Ampeg Bass Gear, I had just bought a 2X10 cab from them 2 months ago and had been given a heads up that the Ampeg kit was just too expensive for most of the customers.
So I was half expecting the clinic to be sold out – and thus I replied to the email the following day and surprisingly got a response saying my name was on the list.
Bass clinics – go to them, especially if you have a talented musician doing his thing. I wasn’t quite sure what would happen, but being greeted at Dawsons, after checking in with Foursquare, with nibbles, juice or beer was a nice welcome.
Stu flew in especially for this Clinic, which surprised me being in the sticks known as Reading. After warming up with some amazing solo work with a track, title something like “My boss drives a Mercedes whilst I’m working a minimum wage”, we were treated with the amazing cover renditions played entirely on the bass plugged into the Hartke rig.
Songs such as :
Star Spangled Banner
We Will Rock You
Going To California
Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds
I had intended to draft a post over Christmas, but as usual the inevitable drama of visits and unwinding from a very hectic 2009 accelerated time.
As I type this, a lot has happenned and it makes me wonder about the pace of development we have all set ourselves, that and perception of time. What are we expecting in society and how much are we compelled to innovate.
The iPad was announced, Haiti sufferred a horrendous earthquake and pretty much the while of January has been spent developing and working on an intense project.
I’m currently travelling to London, building this post using an iPhone. The smartphone I resisted, but secretly desired, has been in my hands for little over 2 months now. It’s changed my whole mobile digital life. For all of its faults it remains an over used piece of digital communication and entertainment and for all its faults excels in usability and usefulness.
Key of all is that it syncs with all my Mac contacts and emails with little effort on my part, and has a whole host of useful and well designed applications that keep me plugged into the social media and my digital workflow. Apps for Basecamp, Podcasting, Blogging, Gaming, Music, Searching . The screen size and intuitiveness, plus its UI make it a hard device to top.
It was either the iPhone or an N900, but for usability and headache relief, I opted finally for the iPhone.
A statistical analysis of engagement with the Twitter Community
Twitter is usually a fascination, addiction, or a complete enigma to many. Unlike Facebook whose growth and popularity seems to boil down to virtual farms, quizzes and questionnaires, the twitter model is more based around direct communication with chosen group of individual streams that you subscribe to.
On the most basic level you follow people that interest you, and their updates show in your stream, the secondary aspect is that individuals in the twitterverse can choose to follow your updates.
These 2 channels of information flow are what make up the basic use of twitter, and for many, it seems pointless. I must admit I first dipped my toe into the twitter pools after the SXSW presentation that really brought twitter to a wider audience, and I really didn’t have a clue what to do (how to make use of it)
It seemed an almost alien form of communication, my inability to grasp the simple concept behind its usage and the uphill struggle a newcomer faces, that is no-one knows you’re there. There are Twitter Directories and using search is a good way to find people to follow.
I began using SMS to send updates to my twitter account which was the first liberating aspect of using the service, something that is not easily achieved on other systems. This freedom to send a status update anywhere with a mobile signal would form the seed of my transformation to that of a “twitter user“.
As you can see by the chart, my use of twitter fluctuated in a very constant pattern for over 16months – I had linked my twitter updates directly to my Facebook updates, which allowed me to consolidate my updates into one action, and this was the only Social Network Updates I would use. My dependency and use of Facebook had been waning for many, many months and then all of a sudden as you can see in March 2009 My updates exploded and went through what I am calling the Tweet Barrier.
What I find interesting about this is my understanding and usage of twitter exploded at this time, now there can be a number of explanations, changes in personal circumstances, major events, conferences etc .. Whatever the catalyst is, I believe there is an assimilation of knowledge and discovery associated with using twitter and this includes using the facilities that it has to offer including Hash Tags, Search, Retweeting, building a following and communicating about what you’re passionate about with others that share the same interests.
I feel that this only happens when you’ve grasped the nature of twitter and there is a roughly equal ratio of give / take which I also think is proportionate to a balanced Followers / Following Ratio.
When this happens, the benefits of Twitter are unlocked like a special bonus screen in a coin-op game (showing my age !) – and it allows you to refine your involvement and allows you to make a decision on How you want to use Twitter, rather than constantly scratching your head or immediately thinking Twitter is just there to announce your performing some daily personal routine .. thats not what Twitter is about, and if you can break through the Tweet Barrier you will find all the fruit, bonus points, extra lives and multipliers your digital avatar will ever need.
I’m fascinated with these Statistics and intend to write a more personal analysis once I can get further detailed data out from my Twitter archive. I think there are other factors that contribute to my findings, so I’d like to thank @dacort and his online http://tweetstats.com/ Web Application which is where I created the chart above and inspired me to write this post, I also used the Skitch appliction on Mac OSX to enhance and annotate the chart.
I can recount the number of times I’ve travelled through Paddington Station, this bench is on the Central, District line platform.
Its a major hub and much like a lot of areas of our lives, that we have to travel through frequently we find similarities, and certain comforts to ease the passage. I also like old signs .. designers cared then I think.
The mainline station is undergoing some MAJOR renovations and there will be some overland links to key hubs in the London Network, lets hope they do a good job for us.
Dramatic blog post titles aside, I’ve been quite busy this weekend attempting to get an OK’ish mix of 3 tracks online for the band.
I’ve been using Cubase since buying the Saffire unit, and am very happy with the results it gives me, but still find it incredibly challenging to get the mixes done satisfactorily with limited monitoring and mixing time available to me. I tend to pop on over to the Home Recording Forum for very down to earth advice and get your mixes bashed by other listening engineers, I would highly recommend spending some time there if you’re ever in need of audio recording help of any sort.
Brandon Drury – who set the site up from lack of good information on recording, has spent the last 2 years collating a Killer Home Recording suite of eBooks that will take beginner/amateur and working engineer through the gamut of the band recording experience, keep your eye open for that. one on his site. Forum users were treated to a preview release of his book.
Also I’ve been following @solobasssteve who put me onto Bandcamp and a bunch of other musicians, who provide good tips/advice and new sites/ resources tracks etc, from around the web, that can help you discover new technologies that will help you take your creative projects out into the digitial domain and beyond.
I’ve branched out getting involved in the social web explosion (one benefit of being a geek) – And gone for an all out approach to promote the band through use of the web and social media sites. Some sites offer free streaming/downloads/revenue generation/profile management etc ..
So for this experiment, I’m going to run through how a band that plays part time (We are all in full time jobs) and wants to gig occasionally, sets up an internet presence and uses the social media tools around you to get a digital shout/light box. Hopefully I’ll be able to show / chart the progress we make and the fruits of our labour.
Roll back the clocks 32 hours and take a trip down Shafstbury Avenue, London… and you would see comic book geeks/nerds running round the back of the store queueing up to get into ![Mark Millar & John Romita Jr - Signing [3D]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4008/4451913479_0ffe350aa2_m.jpg)
![Kick-Ass Premiere Red Carpet [3D]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4017/4458343650_8cae5f3401.jpg)
