Ambrose Online

Portsmouth this last weekend

2008-09-29T12:08:00.006Z

My word, how remiss of me. It's taken until September for me to post again. Oh well, I can only apologise for me tardiness.

TBQH - to be quite honest (I'm trying to popularise this as an internet abbreviation!), one of the reasons for my long absence from blogging has been due to my previous employer's obsessions with secrecy. Let's put it this way, there are people I've formerly worked with who didn't dare to even post *where* they worked, and there were rumblings as to whether the NDAs we'd signed actually allowed us to belong to Apple-related groups on Facebook. All of this while being treated as quasi-retail employees. People were fired for lesser things than discussing their jobs on the internet, I can tell you!

Well, although I'm sad to no longer be employed directly by one of my life-long-loves, I am delighted to be still doing many of the same things (and many more) in my new role as SysAdmin for the London Knowledge Lab. It's a very different environment, where I'm predominantly here to support academics coming on and off a corporate network, but I'm learning a lot, and people are friendly and respectful here, and it is quite relaxed. I'm also managed by a really good guy from whom I'm sure I'll learn a lot. This is a breath of fresh air.

Having worked for just over a year in each of my last two jobs, I'm very much intending to stay here for the long haul.

The title and original reason that I wanted to write this post was following a fantastic DIY all-dayer put on by L Morgan and the other guys who do Southsea DIY shows at the Fawcett Inn in Southsea, Portsmouth. At this one, we played with Beat the Red Light, Gramercy Riffs, OK Pilot and a host of other really awesome bands. But what really moved me to write was just how much there was a sense of that independent DIY punk spirit which is so often talked about but too-rarely seen. Many different bands playing many styles of music but each with a common thread of musical and ethical non-conformity. One of the best days I've had in an age, and I very much look forward to the next one.

... and eight

2008-01-20T03:13:00.001Z

Ooh, first post of the year.

Life's been carrying on in a fairly stable way since I last wrote. We haven't yet exchanged contracts for our house, but that should happen in the next month, all being well.

If there's one thing I would say, it's that I'm pretty warn out. In its own way this is a really good thing. I get to work hard five days a week doing something that I enjoy, and I'm usually also able to see the fruits of my labour. I get job satisfaction from what I do at work, and therefore I don't mind feeling exhausted at the end of the week. If there's a particular downside, it's I seem to spend such an inordinate amount of time dealing with computers that I'm sometimes reluctant to use them much at home. However, I am finding the cataloguing features of both Delicious Library (for books, DVDs, games) and Yep (for my pdfs of various receipts, software serial numbers etc) valuable, in that they make my life a little more organised.

Organisation: that brings me back to some realisations I've reached over the last couple of months. I happened to be visiting Winchester on a day off in later November, and spotted someone who I used to work with - she was about to get onto the train I've disembarked from. Now, this woman worked in the admin office for the Hampshire CC building I used to work in, and was always a pleasant, positive force in the workplace. Nonetheless. when I saw her at the station, I had no desire to go over and say 'hello', and it was this that led me to realise just how much I'd hated working there. Here was a very helpful and genuine person whom I'd spoken to on many an occasion, but by association I couldn't bear to say hello. This failing was all mine, but it did help me to put my year of local authority work into some perspective. It wasn't the right environment for me, and the nature of the organisational structure meant that it was hard to do anything well, and more importantly I wasn't in a position to make any meaningful decisions at all. I've come to realise over time that not earning as much as you'd like is one thing, but not being able to gain any sense of satisfaction through what you do, or having the necessary support and tools to perform your job is quite another proposition. I'm lucky to have escaped that now.

----
Part 2

Well, I return to writing this post, having been off work ill for a couple of weeks after injuring my head while at work. It's been an interesting period - never before have I had a head injury and never before have I seriously worried about the repercussions of an injury. Broken arms are one thing, but broken heads are quite another. You know, my brain is really quite important to me! I went to see a really good neurologist last week. He was really from the old school and I was reassured by his thoroughness and interest in the symptoms I've been experiencing. I'm going for an MRI this week too.

The whole house-buying process has dragged on. We're not there yet, but should be in situ at some point during March, God-willing. Ooh, and another Psyche Out / Action and Action tour late March. Two big things to look forward to.

Will post again soon.

November 07 update

2007-11-20T09:28:00.000Z

Again, lots of things have happened since I last put blogging fingers to keys! Naomi and I are close to buying a house in Basingstoke (aka Amazingstoke, Basingjoke, Basinggrad), which is exciting - and we should be able to buy a nice house for our money there.

On top of that, I'm still loving my job even though it's busy and the late shifts wear me out. Incidentally, I'm posting this from N's iPhone.

[.... this post ended up being short, but I had lots of other things I'd intended to write, so thought I'd add them on now, while I have a bit more time to write]

edit - - so, by now we have actually had an offer accepted on this lovely place

The location is beautiful, and it's going to be a stretch affording it, but y'know, it's going to be great.

On top of that, there were 2 other things that I thought to myself that I must blog sometime.

1) that I had a conversation with Naomi where we were trying to think of who Jesus would consort with in the modern age (the equivalent of tax collectors, prostitutes etc). I suggested people who put wheelclamps on cars and those people who try to force you to take the free newspapers at rush hour in London.

2) It was raining so hard last night that it _rang_ our doorbell! Twice!

Hella update

2007-09-30T11:30:00.000Z

So much to write about. I got an admonishment from my good friend Richard Dixon, now in California, for failing to update my blog in months, though in my defence I've been sans ADSL at home since June, and I rarely find time to use the internet at work nowadays.

Enough excuses. Well, it's been a great few months. The big day was splendid, and really exceeded my expectations in every way. I've yet to update the ambroseandnaomi.co.uk site with pictures, audio recordings etc, but promise to do so as soon as we have broadband at home again. Yes, I know, another promise! Until then, there are lots of wedding pictures of Facebook, if you use that.

In other news, I'm really enjoying my new-ish job. There are lots of good people here, and the work interests me. Exactly what I've been looking for for a while. Things have become a bit complex for Naomi in terms of her department, but I'm sure they'll settle down in due course.

Lots of exciting things over the next few months, including starting to look for a house to buy. Promise I'll post again soon.

New Split 7 Inch

2007-06-08T08:29:00.000Z

This is the first occasion on which I've felt inclined to post a picture in this blog for ages - actually, since I got locked out of my flickr account when Yahoo bought flickr and I had to create a Yahoo account to use it, which I promptly forgot!

Anyway, with a little fanfare, here's our new split with The Psyche Out Musikland Big Band. I'm really very pleased with how the record turned out, after a few hiccups and delays caused by the Czech pressing people the record itself came out really well, and Dave did a sterling job on the artwork. The Psyche Out song is absolutely brilliant - certainly the catchiest thing they've recorded yet with some impressively technical guitar playing.

The pressing is on heavyweight, and I mean, heavyweight vinyl. Each record is hand-numbered and has a slip inside so you can claim 320kpbs LAME-encoded mp3s of the same tracks. We're all about bridging that digital/analogue divide.

The idea is that this will be the first of a split 7 inch series, so we designed the packaging in such a way as to be extensible to additional releases by changing the colour scheme and the image on the front. There are a few bands who we've encountered in the last year who we'd love to put out on the label in our first non-Actions release, and let's face it, it'll be a lot easier to boast about how good something is once it's not (partly) our own music. Exciting plans ahead.

If you're interested in purchasing one of the 300 copies made, we're selling them for a mere for £3, so drop me an email to (firstname)dot(surname)@mac.com and we'll sort out paypal.

Did it

2007-05-21T10:57:00.000Z

Good news to report. I've landed a job with a certain computer company of which I'm a lifelong devotee, and will be starting in 4 weeks. This also works out well, as it'll allow me to tie up various loose ends in my current job. I'm really looking forward to the new job, though!

What does complicate matters slightly is that the work will be in London, so Naomi and I are going to have to look into moving somewhere closer to London, so I can get in for those all-important early shifts. We're thinking of Guildford or Woking, as they offer the right commuting options in both the directions. We also have a decision to make as to whether we move my stuff/Naomi's stuff before or after the wedding in July! Still, these are trivial problems in the bigger picture.

Wedding arrangements are occupying an increasing amount of my time now, though Naomi has done a lot of the hard work already. That reminds me that I need to finish that wedding web site.

The main thing to report is that life's pretty good, and things are falling into place. We're also looking towards the next tour with Action and Action in the autumn. Get in.

Tick ... tick

2007-04-30T13:49:00.000Z

Well, it's been a month since I last blogged. Slack.

Job-wise things are still up in the air. It's been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, actually. I need to find the right thing, and I need to find it soon!

The tour was wonderful fun, and I think it'll be easier to organise the next one, now that I have the experience of having done it once. We're already talking to a couple of other bands in preparation. Psyche Out were tremendous on the tour, and constantly raised the bar on themselves. They're undoubtedly one of my favourite bands, and it was an absolute joy to hear them over the course of the 8 days. I think we were pretty good too. I think touring with a band you're friends with helps you to become resilient and pull off a decent performance wherever you are, and whatever the odds. That's what I had hoped for, and I think it worked out well. I'm not sure which was the best of the gigs overall, but I enjoyed the last night a lot, playing in the cramped basement of Law's house in Portsmouth. The noise abatement people wrote to him last week.

I've watched a few good films recently, too. Apart from missing Inland Empire when it was on in Southampton, Chris VS lent me his DVD of Pan's Labyrinthe, which I thought was solid, and I've also watched both of the Exorcist prequels (one of which was far more coherent and well-realised than the other).

There's lots going on for me at the moment in terms of the wedding, obviously. We ordered the designed our invitations last week, and ordered them today, and I'm also working on a simple iWeb site to answer any detailed questions people will have.

More news soon.

The realist pessimist / optimist debate

2007-03-30T09:53:00.000Z

It's been a strange few weeks. I've had some job interviews (one of which I came tantilisingly close to getting), but I don't yet have anything on the table. Nevertheless, I'm trying to stay upbeat, and I have a few other ideas which I haven't fully explored yet. For obvious reasons there's not much point in going into detail on this topic.

I've also been keeping other plans in the air as part of this juggling act. The first ever Action and Action tour is going to happen with our friends The Psyche Out Musikland Big Band, from 9th - 16th April inclusive. This is now only 10 days or so away, so I'm quite excited that it's (mostly) come together as planned, through a lot of hard work and persistence. So far the tour goes:

Monday 9th April - SOUTHAMPTON, King Alfred's Pub
Tuesday 10th April - LEEDS, Joseph's Well
Wednesday 11th April - SLOUGH, Eco Bar
Thursday 12th April - LEWISHAM, The Fox and Firkin
Friday 13th April - ?
Saturday 14th April - HIGH WYCOMBE, The Roundabout
Sunday 15th April - ?
Monday 16th April - PORTSMOUTH, 10 Grove Road South

I'm hoping we'll get to play to some new people who may like the music we make. I'm equally happy to be able to hang out with my friends in both bands for what will amount to a short holiday, and I think it'll also help to establish a work ethic and resilience for our band in a live setting. The last gig we played was a let-down, so I'm determined that we become a leaner, more dependable machine.

Almost as exciting is that we have a new 7" record that's planned to come out to coincide with the tour, as a split release with Psyche Out. You can hear both of the songs at our respective Myspace pages, Action and Action here, and Psyche Out here. There have been a few headaches in the last few days as the test press came back from the Czech republic (where all of this stuff is done nowadays, presumably due to UK wage rates) with a problem on our side. Dave has been bothering them multiple times about it, so now we just have to pray that the final pressing happens quickly enough that we have it ready to sell on the tour itself. More stress.

Before any of that happens, I'm going back home to Cardiff (which I also did this week for the annual Cathedral Choir Easter concert at St David's Hall). I'll spend the latter part of Holy Week with my family, as I do every year, which will be a welcome break.

And then there are wedding arrangements to be made, as the big day looms closer. I'm supposed to be booking our hotel in Malcesine (Lake Garda, Italy) today, which will be an expensive phone call. Then I'm meeting Naomi after work to book the suit hire from Moss Bros.

The title of this post relates to the discussions I often have with people who are close to me about whether my views amount to realism or to pessimism. Whatever happens, the next month should be pretty eventful.

Is this the worst band of all time

2007-03-21T00:13:00.000Z

There's a great Chris Morris radio clip from many years ago when he talked about how Sade was the epitome of the 'production' artist - i.e. no substance, no performance, all-studio.

Today, I came across this travesty which not only somehow encapsulates everything that's wrong with corporate rock (and I know I'm taking on a pretty easy target there), but everything that's so truly vacuous about young people of the age that spent their teens living vicariously through Myspace.

From the way their vocals are CONSTANTLY autotuned, to the preposterous Duran Duran-style hairdos, this band actually makes me feel a bit ill.

As I remarked to Jack and Mike M at the Make Believe gig last week, the kids are not alright.

Sickening crunch

2007-02-23T14:12:00.000Z

I was just coming back from lunch at the little cafe in Winchester where Naomi and I often eat lunch (today, it was just me, as N was at a meeting) a few minutes ago, when an ambulance came hurtling up the hill of St George's Street with lights and sirens going. The problem is that St George's St is part of the one-way system, and when the ambulance reached the point next to Barclay's Bank, the cars were backed-up from the next set of traffic lights in two lanes.

So the ambulance driver decided that she could pass a Passat in front of her even though there was nowhere for the Passat to go, and there's a central reservation between lanes. She started blowing the ambulance horn, the Passat inched forward even though there wasn't really much further to go, and then she tried to go around it. Remember to picture the central reservation and the backed-up traffic. The ambulance impacted with the side of the Passat with the most hideous sound of tortured metal and plastic. Then the ambulance driver had to pull over so that she could share insurance details with the now-furious family in the car.

I'm left wondering about the fate of the injured person on the way to hospital - there was only one paramedic in the front of the ambulance, driving, so somebody must have been in the back with the patient.

Spare a thought.

Ack Ack Ack

2007-02-05T11:28:00.000Z

Finally, there was a good gig in Winchester at the Railway this weekend. Alan came to mine for the weekend and we went to watch Ack Ack Ack (you can listen to themhere). We didn't know a great deal about them before going, except that Ash, the drummer from Charlottefield, is in the band, and they were therefore likely to be very good. They reminded me a bit of a jazzier Kill Yourself, with a combination of quite danceable grooves, dischordant guitar played using a slide (none of those sounds on the mp3 are keyboards, contrary to what I'd expected), and fuzzy vocals through a gas mask microphone. I'd highly recommend you check out their 12" if any of this sounds appealing.

In order to get to the point of the evening where we'd hear Ack Ack Ack, we'd already experienced the highly entertaining electronica of Gay Death Probe, and a truly awful hippy-ish shoegazer band The Limes. Still, it was worth it. When we got home, it was straight onto a steady diet of Newkie and Wii Sports.

I wrote Sunday off for any productivity, but am going to have to do those job applications I've been putting off tonight.

Il Neige

2007-01-24T15:54:00.000Z

We had some snow this morning. I'd stayed over at the Clark household last night, and so experienced the picturesque sight of the fields surrounding Alresford covered in snow, as Naomi drove us to work.

The day became slightly less pleasant when I pulled my back mid-morning. I was only walking up the stairs after a meeting at a normal pace, but something suddenly twinged. It hasn't even gone away despite two Solpadeine Max (that were handily in my coat pocket), and the pain is now moving simultaneously up and down my spine. I guess this means I won't be going to tango class tomorrow night. Yes, you read that correctly. Naomi and I went to this for the first time last Thursday and it was quite good fun. It takes place in a room over Savannah (or 'Savannah's', as people tend to call it, much as they refer to 'Tesco's'). I think you could say I enjoyed it despite myself, and Naomi certainly had a good time too.

I spent the weekend with the other Actions in Oxford, recording a new song for our split 7" and tour with Psyche Out. I think it sounds pretty good, and it's certainly an interesting piece of music for us to do compared with what we've written over the last few months. It's in a much straighter punk/emo style than the more dancing, whimsical stuff we've been writing recently, and should be fun to play live. Reminds me a bit of Small Brown Bike actually, though we have got quite a gently sing-songy part to it too.

Will write more again soon.

2007: The Future

2007-01-02T12:02:00.000Z

You are now in the future.

Have been meaning to say sorry - my last post reads as more downbeat than it was meant to be. I'm pretty positive about life at the moment. I had a helluva cold over the Christmas period (when I spoke to DunCANE on the phone between Christmas and the New Year, he pointed out that this happens to me every year!), but still had a good time at home. I miss Cardiff when I'm away, truth be told.

I also picked up a bargainous 320 gig external USB2 hard drive from Staples which I ended up paying only £55 for, which pleased me greatly. That'll allow me to free up my existing 160 gig LaCie drive to be used to edit the video we shot while on tour in Mexico, which will be an enjoyable little project. Not sure which computer we'll do this on.

Oh yes - The Thick of It (Special) is on TV tonight (BBC4). Do not miss it.

I don't believe in 'New Year's Resolutions' as such, but I promise to blog more regularly this year. It's going to be a pretty special year, all in all.

Last day of work this year

2006-12-22T09:53:00.000Z

So here it is etc etc. I'm heading home to Cardiff tomorrow morning, on a 6 a.m. train so that I can travel by £9 ticket (it was either that or pay £50!). I'm really looking forward to spending a few days with my family, as it's been several months since I was last at home. I have firm plans to get a good number of hours in on the new Wii with my brothers (Dom has an HDTV, as well), and to watch as much quality comedy as possible. I'm also nearing that time when I'll need to start job hunting quite heavily again, so will have to make a few applications while I'm at home.

The last few weeks have been interesting. I'm now properly settled in to my new flat, and for once I've nearly put everything away tidily. Naomi's pretty pleased that I have a decent kitchen of my own, which means that she can cook the way she'd like to when she comes over to see me. When I'm on my own, I generally tend not to do anything too complex - pizza's on the menu once or twice a week, let's put it that way. I have my record player and my old Aiwa hi-fi* hooked up on top of a chest of drawers, much like I did throughout my time as a student, funnily enough, and so I listen to my records quite often while cooking or while sitting at my breakfast bar. In the last couple of days I've been enjoying Music for Egon Schiele by Rachel's. It was a Science of Yabra LP before that.

*this hi-fi occupies an almost-talismanic position in my life. I may get rid of it at some point, but I've now owned it for over 10 years. It was something I looked at longingly before buying it, being the most powerful all-in-one hi-fi you could buy at that time (400 wpc RMS). The way I found to buy it was to purchase it on interest-free credit under my mum's name, and then go in an make payments every few weeks with the money that I was earning by waiting tables at Harry Ramsden's in Cardiff Bay. I hated that waiting job that much that the purchase of this hi-fi came to signify more than the item itself. It's what I have to show for doing that job, and therefore I suppose quite valuable as a life lesson, as well as being a piece of kit that I've enjoyed owning and has served me well. Read into that what you will.

Back to the present - I haven't forgotten about the acrimonious transition out of my old flat, but I'm not really in a frame of mind to write about that right now. Since then (the last three weeks or so) I've been playing the fantastic Nintendo Wii - new games as well as downloading a few of the classic Virtual Console titles I've never before experienced, like Mario64 (N64) and Donkey Kong Country (SNES). This little white box has certainly lived up to the hype so far. I just hope they have a string of strong new releases over the next few months.

Last weekend was eventful. After playing a set of Cursive covers for Punk Rock Stars in Their Eyes in High Wycombe, I slept over on the sofa at Luigi's house. I was woken up at 5:30 a.m. by Adam who was on one of the other sofas in their lounge, who'd slit his wrists, and had to make my first ever 999 call. The ambulance took so long to arrive that if he'd cut an artery he certainly would have been dead by their arrival. I'm hoping that I get to see him tonight to have a chat about things - he's had a hell of a time over the last few months so needs friends to reign him in, even if it's not in his nature. I hope he doesn't mind me writing this up, but it's been a fairly significant event in my December.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Headbanging

2006-12-05T21:00:00.000Z

The last few days have been pretty tough - I moved flat on Saturday (which took us from 10:30am until 10:30pm), then went to church, then work, then Naomi's house, all on Sunday, then work until lunchtime followed by checkout of my old flat then off to London last night to help out at the CCF Southwark Snowball. The culmination of all of this was that I had 4hrs sleep last night, then had to appear at work at 7:30 this morning for perhaps the most important day of my job at the council so far.

I know that I cram too much into my life, but I always justify it by the fact that I'm still in my twenties, and before long I'll have a whole set of different responsibilities. Living fast (sic) while I'm still young ranks quite high among my priorities, actually.

Anyway, the move (and the aftermath) were the most stressful part. I will go into this is some detail once things are properly resolved. For now, it suffices to say that all has not been well in the state of Denmark, and my prejudices have been reinforced. Naomi was a saint throughout the move and helped me a great deal, but other players in the process were less helpful than they might have been (oh boy is this an understatement - as I say, more later).

Apart from the dislocation of moving in the last few days, everything's going okay. I've been working pretty hard in general recently, but will have to get a move on with finding something else really quite soon.

For tonight, I'm not thinking about that. I'm going to play some Gamecube instead. This Friday, I'm getting a Nintendo Wii as my birthday/Christmas present from Naomi. Get in.

Grit your teeth

2006-11-13T01:36:00.000Z

Sitting in a train stuck outside Basingjoke opposite a dimwit listening to high-BPM moronic dance music which leaks from his headphones like a swarm of hi-hat-obsessed insects is not a recipe for good mental health late on a Sunday evening.

Vinyl acquistions

2006-11-09T15:33:00.000Z

Make Believe LP,
originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

The observant among you may have noticed that, as well as changing the template of my blog, I've also added a LastFM 'recently played' graphic under my links list (bottom right). Well, obviously this only reflects my mp3/AAC listening on the computer (and misses out the iPod, though I may work on a hack for that), but I just thought I'd blog a list of some of the awesome records I've acquired recently or are about to drop through my door in the next few days.

'Of Course' by Make Believe (12"). This arrived today. Can't wait to hear more of this mentaloid intelligent indie rock.
'Orchestrated and Conducted by' Clikitat Ikatowi (12"). This also arrived today. If it's anything like their other music it'll be chaotic hardcore. I'm also eager to get my ears around it.

UPDATE - I'm delighted to say that I also picked up these vinyl gems during November (some of which I already had on CD)

The Wow / Querelle - Split 12"
This Aint Vegas - The Black Lung Captain 12"
This Aint Vegas - The Night Don Benito Saved My Life 12"
Itch - Well, Well, Well, Three Holes In The Ground 12" (had these last 3 on CD, but wanted vinyl versions as well)
Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies / Redjetson - split 12"
Bullet Union - s/t 7"
Candy Sniper - s/t 7"
Chillerton - s/t 7"
Kill Yourself - Euro tour 7"
The Oedipus / Reynolds - Split 7"
Foals - Try This on Your Piano 7"
Tired Irie - Like Gentle Men 7"

Comedy, welcome home! pt II

2006-11-08T15:01:00.000Z

Naomi has recently revealed to me that she doesn't find my conversational obsession with British TV comedy to be all that interesting. Undeterred by this ingratitude, I thought I'd share with you some thoughts about some of my favourite comedies over the last few years. In some cases they're shows that I have grown to love by virtue of having watched them along with my two brothers - and I can certainly think of a few other friends who I've discussed this with who have also got into a given comedy by laughing at them with their siblings. I'm sure that as I write this someone is doing a postgraduate degree in the application of functional anthropology to televised comedy in the British family. Probably at a world reknowned establishment such as Staffordshire University.

Anyway, here's my run-down (in no particular order) of the comedies I've really enjoyed over the last few years. If you aren't familiar with them, maybe I can suggest that you head over to UK Nova, where you'd be able to download those that don't exist as commercial DVDs.

1. The creations of Chris Morris - Jam, Nathan Barley, Brass Eye. These are essential. I prefer Brass Eye to his other Newsnight-style series, The Day Today. Jam felt like it was pushing a lot of boundaries of taste when it aired, so is certainly for the more open-minded, and if you're really loving his style of comedy, you should also seek out the DVD of his 'My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117' short film, which is quite good.

2. Where would we be without Steve Coogan? Alan Partridge was pure gold (particularly series one of I'm Alan Partridge). Possibly my number one comedy series ever. Other less-well-known things you really should seek out if you like AP would include Cruise of the Gods, a really funny film he did for the BBC with Rob Brydon and David Walliams before either of them had really hit the limelight. You can get this on BBC DVD and I'd recommend that you do so. In addition, the Steve Coogan Live DVD (called 'The Man Who Thinks He's It') was way ahead of its time and has some fantastic content of other Coogan creations such as Paul Calf.

3. Armando Ianucci. Massively influential on most of the comedy in the list here, and as you know, I'm a huge fan of Time Trumpet, his most recent series. Watching Time Trumpet made me seek out The Thick of It - filmed in a similar way (ad-libbed then edited)to I'm Alan Partridge this is like a wonderful modern-day take on Yes Minister, where you watch the main character stumble from one political faux pas to another, through no fault of his own. The presence of a horrible spin doctor creates some fantastic moments in this. Apparently the BBC had fronted up funding for a further 10 episodes, but unfortunately Chris Langham has been the focus of recent court cases which means that there's going to be a significant change of tack if the series is to carry on. See The Thick Of It on Wikipedia for more info. It would be a great shame if there wasn't more of this series. If you like TTOI and TT you may also wish to check out the Armando Ianucci show. You can probably still get these on UK Nova.

4. Lee and Herring - in quite separate comedy category were this duo who put out series such as Fist of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy. Fantastic in a puerile and sarcastic way (a bit like the Mary Whitehouse Experience), I've been reliving my late teens by watching the complete Fist of Fun in the last few days. You can get an ISO of the complete Fist of Fun from UK Nova at the moment.

5. Victor Lewis-Smith - The one comedy I haven't seen for years that I'm dying to watch is TV Offal by VL-S. It's a very underrated show from the late 90s which centred around his obsessions with different aspects of TV, and it had some amazing moments (such as Assassination of the Week, The Gay Daleks, prank phone calls to Michael Winner, and clips of really bad regional television from past archives). I would really like to see this gem of a show again. Not on UK Nova though, sadly.

Anyway, that's my comedy round-up for now. I expect there'll be other things to follow, but I do hope that this will encourage you to investigate some of these shows that you haven't heard of. Oh, and if you have a video iPod or a reasonably modern computer, I've encoded quite a number of them for mp4, so do let me know if you'd like me to send you a DVD of the ones I have in that form.

What a waster

2006-11-07T11:34:00.000Z

Last night I met up with Martin - who used to also be a Hermitage resident - at the Railway. We watched a bunch of acoustic acts of varying quality, including that Carl feller who used to be in the Libertines, and Mr Newkie Brown Ale came for a visit. I'm now really quite hung over.

What I've been saying about Winchester

2006-10-27T13:23:00.000Z

So, I move here and Winchester becomes the best place to live in the UK.

Thanks, Channel 4, that's reduced the chances of us ever being able to buy a property here!

They forgot to say on the programme (very boring, although that Sofie was reasonably easy on the eye) was that Southampton is better for punk rock. Maybe that wasn't on their criteria...

USB product placement

2006-10-27T08:54:00.000Z

Last night I received an email invitation to my friend Ben Finn's Christmas Party. Ben, as you may know, recently sold his musical notation software company, Sibelius, to Avid, and is now looking forward to a life of leisure!

One of Ben's other guests, Simon, sent out a 'reply to all' saying that he's also celebrating, having just launched his new invention, USB Cell. Despite the slightly cheeky viral promotion going on here (which I'm now participating in, of course), I have to say that this is a very convenient product, and I'm certainly going to order a pair out of curiosity. It's the kind of thing I can imagine my parents finding useful for their TV remotes as well.

One thing that was also in his email was a link comparing the interest in his product with other well-established battery brands, at Alexaholic.com, which is a really useful site that produces graphs of one site's traffic against another (or several others), so I just thought I'd flag this up here for any webmasters who might find it worthwhile.

The USB battery idea reminds me of one aspect of my 1998-1999 stint in PC World. Intel had launched USB as a connection specification in November 1997, but it really wasn't catching on by the point at which I started working at PC World in mid-1998. There were hardly any products being retailed that used the interface, the few that were available had patchy support from Windows 98, and customers weren't aware of any advantages the peripheral standard offered them. The only product that we actually had to offer customers was a Hewlett-Packard USB scanner, which cost about twice as much for the USB version as for its parallel-port equivalent. Not a rosy picture for USB, then.

This all changed when Apple introduced its USB-only iMac. PC World had at this point stopped stocking Macs altogether, in the latter days of Gil Amelio's leadership of the company. When Jobs came back and introduced the iMac, a fast (relatively) affordable Mac specifically for home use, suddenly all of the local retailers were all over it like a rash. Tesco were shifting them by the bucketload, and PC World was missing out on the sales the iMac was drawing. Eventually someone at head office decided we were to start selling them as well. The release of the iMac pushed Epson into releasing a decent mid-range USB printer (the SC740), which we started to get shipped to us, as well as various popular solutions to the lack of a floppy drive in the iMac (such as the Imation Superdisk 120 and an Iomega USB Zip drive). Initially these products were still a fair bir more expensive than their parallel, and even SCSI, counterparts; which was fairly ridiculous. Still, once on the shelves they moved quickly, and turned USB into a more popular standard that people became familiar with, both for Macs and PCs. Soon all of the PCs we sold started to ship with internal USB ports, not just the capability of supporting it on their motherboards. Fast forward 8 years or so, and USB is everywhere. For it to move from being a theoretically advantageous standard with little foothold in the market, to being available to power and connect things as diverse as sound desks and missile launchers (thanks, Frank) is really quite a noteworthy transformation. I actually have more of a leaning toward Firewire peripherals for many of the things people try to do with USB, but it's still proven to be an incredibly useful addition to modern life, and I'm always intrigued to see where it appears next.

Man and his formats

2006-10-24T09:57:00.000Z

I sometimes it funny to think of the format arguments we create for ourselves in this (largely-) digital age, in the sense of there being an A versus B argument between one platform and another, and the semi-ethical, semi-philosophical positions that we take up as a result of an affinity with a particular technology.

The first obvious example of this is the modern desktop computer. Most people know of my very deep, almost obsessive interest in all things Apple-related. I guess you could say I'm a zealot for the Mac, but this started out from a time when the Mac was simply vastly superior to the competing technologies vying for space on our desks. The obvious point of comparison is to Windows, which took a very long time to catch up with some of the basic DTP functionality (What You See Is What You Get, anyone?) that the Mac has offered from day 1, and Windows still leaves a lot to be desired on so many levels that I don't have the patience to go into it now. I'm getting frustrated - do you see - because, from my own reasonably extensive experience, I know that there is a better alternative than what most people use, because most people, for largely historical reasons, have chosen an alternative technology. Actually, the reasons for the Mac's qualitative superiority were also largely historical, and quite beautifully accidental. If you read 'iCon', the Steve Jobs biography, you'll find out all sorts of wierd little details, like the fact that the onscreen fonts were made to correspond to their printed equivalents at the insistence of Jobs, as he'd earlier worked at a typesetting company. Had this obsessive character not been behind the Macintosh (and luckily for us Mac users, still is), the end result would probably have been quite different for users of all desktop computers today. Now there's a legacy.

But back to my point - the first computer I owned was a Commodore Amiga 500. It was a good machine for gaming, but the sense of it being a real computer where you would store files and generally get things done was held back by the market price the machine was being pitched at. Without a hard disk, the Amiga was never going to catch on in any sort of serious office environment (apart from on Neighbours, where, strangely, Paul Robinson seemed to run his office with one for many years after Commodore had effectively folded). Twenty or so years later, you could say that Microsoft has won the war on the desktop. Nevertheless, to the day I die, I will still be a Mac user. Do you see what I'm saying about this almost irrational attachment to a device once you realise that despite the market it offers something that you would not be able to enjoy form a competing product.

Now, you may be wondering where I'm going with this. You may think I'm going to talk about Betamax. Well, only briefly - I actually had to buy a Beta player for my uncle a year or two ago so that he could play back some Beta tapes of a television broadcast featuring the cathedral choir (that I sang in, and my Dad conducts) from teh early eighties. I'm pleased to say that those tapes were still perfectly intact, and thanks to eBay we were able to find a perfectly servicable player to play them back. It may have cost a fair bit - you're going to see this happen more in the future, as formats move faster and recorded (visual, audio, textual) outputs look in danger of being left behind by the march of technology - but it was well worth buying and worked perfectly well, despite the absence of SCART and so on.

Where I'm actually going with this is to CDs, DVDs and their successors and predecessors. After purchasing a few cassette singles in my earliest years, the main audio format of my lifetime has been the CD. Children of the Walkman generation like me rarely bought records, but the CD offered us a compelling new format, full of sound and convenience improvements. It's interesting that they didn't complete the really high-res format they had set out to achieve (settling instead on Red Book because they were rushing to complete a superior product that would suck the bottom out of home-taping and the differential between 16-bit digital sound and the 24-bit holy grail probably wasn't economically expedient. We've seen some higher quality formats appear since then, like SACD, but they haven't made much of a dent outside of the classical market.

What's most fascinating to me is where we've now arrived in terms of music formats. As well as the CD, the most popular retail music format, most of us also have sizeable collections of mp3s/AACs. The advantage of portability has been enough to persuade most people to give up the highest resolution digital format (CD) in favour of a good approximation of CD. And of course the mp3 has liberated music distribution from physical media altogether, if you ignore the fact that you will probably need to clone your data to a new hard disk every five years or so to secure its integrity. I buy albums from iTunes when it's the best option - for example, in the past year I've bought iTunes albums by Faraquet, Cursive, The Appleseed Cast, Les Savy Fav, and even Nine Inch Nails. Sometimes there are albums that are out of print or relatively hard to find (like '3/5' by Les Savy Fav) which you can still get on iTunes, and that's incredibly valuable. Being as we have no independent record shop in Winchester, it's also handy being able to get albums like the Faraquet one, and to get them without having to wait to receive them through the mail. There's not a hugely discernable loss in quality from the CD version with well-encoded AACs like these (even if the bitrate could probably do with being a bit higher) of these kinds of bands, but I wouldn't go buying a lot of classical music this way (because of the frequency variation, which is where mp3/AAC makes some of its space savings), nor would I buy something of the musical/production complexity of an album by The Mars Volta, which I think you'd need to listen to on vinyl or CD to properly appreciate. In fact, I'm hoping to buy 'Amputechture' on vinyl, once I can find it at an affordable price.

So, now I come to the point of this post (in a way). Records are having a bit of a renaissance in my life, since I put on a This Aint Vegas single that I have had lying around for a couple of years but not been able to play due to not having a record player. Listening to this vinyl single, taken from an album that I also have on CD, made me remember just how different vinyl sounds to the digital formats. Beyond the obvious technical differences between an analogue and a digital carrier format, there're are a whole lot of subjective differences, and even putting my relatively inexpensive new Pro-Ject Debut III through my old modest all-in-one hi-fi, I've found myself falling in love with home listening all over again. There's particularly something about how a drum kit sits in the mix of a typical rock band recording that just sounds much more convincing and faithful to how things really sound when you hear them live. And all of this is just looking at vinyl as a playback medium - there's a whole separate, interesting argument as to the preservation of analogue recording methods for archival and sonic reasons (see Steve Albini lecture).

I think I'll leave it there for now, but I hope this post makes you reconsider any skepticism or prejudice you may hold for either old or new formats for enjoying entertainment. Truth be told, there's a some kind of advantageous property in most of them (apart from using Windows over the Macintosh - I still scratch my head in bafflement over that one).

If you're interested in reading any more about the vinyl side of things, I highly recommend you head over to read The Vinyl Anachronist. What that site lacks in graphical flair, it more than makes up for with good, opinionated content.

Edit - I also found this rather amusing site with listing frivolous and over-expensive products for the audiophile market today. Well worth a look.

One door closes, another door ... oh.

2006-10-10T08:52:00.000Z

This post should really be all about the interesting stuff we did in Mexico, but that'll have to wait until my next spate of blogging. I was informed by my landlady this morning that I'll have to move out of my room, as she says she can make the money she charges me in a month (£550, specifically) from bed and breakfast customers in a weekend. So I now have two months of notice. I could really do without this, as I'll be looking for a new job shortly after Christmas, and will then be stuck in a new minimum term rental contract wherever I move to, which might not necessarily be conveniently located for that new job.

Why do things always have to be in a state of flux? I really don't like all this change.

EDIT -- here's the website advertising the house as guest house accommodation, if you're interested:
http://www.winchesterhermitage.co.uk/

A Whip In One Hand And Gold In The Other

2006-09-15T15:48:00.000Z

Well, feels like it's been a while since I've written anything here. Sorry 'bout that.

Since my last finger-to-blog, I've been interviewed for a job which I didn't get, and have also found out that I'm likely to have a few more months in this one, since the lady whose job I'm doing is going to take some more maternity leave. This has allowed me to breathe a sigh of relief, and also to pay the rent! I was getting particularly worried seeing as I'm off to Mexico next week, and didn't want to arrive back and then have a couple of weeks' work, then 'unemployment beard strikes again'.

Anyway, applying for this job as a communications officer, which I wanted quite a lot, has made me realise that I want to pursue something that gives me a measure of creativity. I want the opportunity to develop my writing, and even statutory sector publications would give me a level of editorial and copywriting experience. I'm also thinking of looking for design training of some sort, as I've dabbled in this side of things for too long without any formal instruction. So I'm probably going to enrol in something soonish to get a better understanding of how to use the Adobe CS apps successfully, and to learn the ropes of good design. I figure that'll give me a good all-round basis for some sort of career that will actually draw on my eye for catching mistakes as well as giving me a creative influence. So, I'm finally arriving at some idea of what I might actually like to do with my (working) life, which is certainly a good, if overdue, development.

Happy Hollow

2006-08-24T14:08:00.000Z

This week saw the release of the first new Cursive album in a few years. As many of you will know, they're one of my favourite bands of all time (top 3, along with Mineral and At the Drive-In, I'd say). I also went to watch them this Monday as well, on the release date. It was a good show overall, they played quite a few old classics as well as stuff off the new album, and encored with The Martyr. During the encore set, I waited for a that lull of silence that you sometimes get, then shouted at the top of my lungs "Tides Rush In". They didn't play it, but it embarrassed the rest of Action and Action who were with me, and caused Cursive to give one another wry smiles. Find me a band that likes to play its own early songs if you can. I don't know any.

Back to the new album. I like it, musically - it has quite a lot of the jauntiness of the Ugly Organ about it. However, I'm not confortable with some of the approaches that Tim Kasher takes, lyrically. There has long been an element of his writing that's used religious imagery in a fairly agnostic way, sometimes quite cleverly. What's changed with this album is that he's taken a turn to be so anti-religious and specifically anti-clerical that I find it a bit wearing to listen to. It's almost too much of an easy target. Young people who listen to bands like this already have a pretty negative view of religion, so cranking up your critique of Christianity really isn't all that constructive (and though there are exceptions within this album, it's largely against Christianity because noone likes to take on a religion like Islam where its adherents might actually have something to say or do to you for attacking their beliefs). It's not even really because I'm a Catholic that it bothers me, but there's something so overwhelmingly negative about the portrayal of priests (among the rest of the cast of ever more sordid characters) that feels draining. Isn't it about time rock bands found someone else to attack?

Notwithstanding that there are lots of men and women throughout history, and out there right now, who have dedicated themselves selflessly to the religious life - which has led to a huge amount of humanitarian work, incidentally - doesn't it feel as if we played out these arguments long ago during the so-called-Enlightenment? The anti-Creationist rhetoric gets boring, and literalist, and starts to detract from the music. Maybe this is how Nebraskans see their religion, but it's not an accurate reflection of modern Christianity as experienced by most of us.

I hope I can get past this lyrical straightjacket, because I don't want it to ruin my future enjoyment of one of my favourite bands.

Tin Robot

2006-08-24T11:40:00.001Z

Last night I met up for a drink with Freddy (drummer from Second Monday) who promotes gigs under the guise of Tin Robot Promotions. He's been looking for someone to help out with the shows, and the fact that I found out that Chris Simpson from Mineral/The Gloria Record was looking for a tour date down this way (and put Freddy onto it) has sort of led me into being involved in helping out with the promotions side of things on a trial basis. It's something I've often thought I'd like to do, but it really isn't something you can do on your own, so having an existing vehicle for promoting makes this all the more appealing.

I'm sure it's going to be hard work. Unforunately it transpires that I'll be in Mexico on the date on which we're booking Chris Simpson (who now plays solo under the name of The Zookeeper), which means that I'll both miss the gig and won't be able to play at it myself. Nevertheless, the opportunity to be involved in doing what I can to ensure that more people are exposed to really good music is impossible to pass up. I suspect I may get a taste for this. I've already compiled a list of UK bands that I'd want to book at some point, and that's not even considering the wealth of amazing underground talent that seems to be coming over from the US at the moment (like the Florida band, Tubers, who we played with a month or two back). I'm quite excited by the prospect of bringing slightly more unusual bands to Winchester, as well. I'll write more here as things unfold.

Comedy, welcome home!

2006-08-04T14:40:00.000Z

Time Trumpet
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

Last night was the occasion of the triumphant first episode of Armando Ianucci's new series, Time Trumpet. Funnily enough it was Naomi's idea to watch it (now, bear in mind that she can't stand anything remotely associated with Steve Coogan, and AI was one of the Alan Partridge writers), after we watched some episodes of the Armando Ianucci Show together that I'd found on UKNova a few months back.

It was tremendous. Time Trumpet is the best comedy I've watched in ages. Highlight's of last night's episode were pundits from the future (including a grey-haired Stuart Lee!) discussing the Top of the Pops 2 intro credits as a major event in British history, laughing at the very idea of petrol, and referring back to Camilla Parker-Bowles actually having been a TV prank artist who'd been playing a joke on Prince Charles for 60 years. Truly inspired stuff. I suggest you head over to the site and enjoy some of the clips, as I don't think I can do it justice in words yet. Dale Winton suicide bomb, anyone?

An honorable mention must also go to Annually Retentive, the recent Rob Brydon vehicle. I've been enjoying Brydon's comedy since the much-underrated Steve Coogan collaboration in Cruise of the Gods, then through his wonderful solo turn in Marion and Geoff. Now, don't get me wrong, I think that Alan Partridge was actually a work of genius, and right up there with the very finest recent sit-comedy (it preceded The Office, after all), but it seems that where Coogan is now re-using comedic ideas, and Saxondale isn't quite as good as I'd hoped for, Brydon is going from strength to strength bringing forward interesting comedy concepts. Annually retentive is brilliant in the same way that Ricky Gervais' Extras is brilliant, by taking public perception of celebrities (albeit of lesser fame) and messing with it, in this case in a show that parodies Have I Got News For You. The funny parts of the show are not the actual panel faux-game-show, but the production team meetings, where Brydon voices bluntly critical views of all the guests he doesn't want to have on his show, but inevitably have to be booked to appear.

Oyster Paranoia

2006-08-01T09:25:00.000Z

Long-term readers may remember my concern about Oyster cards expressed in previous posts.

Well, in a development that seems more than a little Orwellian, a letter was sent from the police to my friends Richard and Philippa last weekend, informing Richard that usage of his Oyster showed he had been in the vicinity of a recent murder. The libertarian in me finds this concerning, even if it's going to be used for crime-fighting purposes.

Comfortable disembodiment

2006-07-20T15:14:00.000Z

About 10 days ago was the occasion of the annual barbecue put on by Naomi's law firm, which takes place at a rather nice pub in a rather nice part of Winchester (called Hyde).

I've been meaning, since then, to write briefly about a few moments that I had to myself, while I sat at a picnic table in the beer garden and Naomi was going round her assembled colleagues, saying 'good night' to them while I finished off a pint.

All around me there were different conversations taking place, and as my brain struggled to allow all of them into my consciousness I quietly noticed my own feelings of wellbeing. I couldn't quite follow all of what was going on around me properly, but for a few seconds while I was held for ransom by my own senses of sight and hearing, I felt a peace that made me wonder if this is what the afterlife is like. Not being fully there, but not being concerned about it at all.

In the role of this errant observer, I found myself looking up at a man with a beard and glasses at nearby table and started singing/mumbling to myself (to the tune of Dude Looks Like a Lady) "Dude lookslike Harold Shipman".

It's a good job I don't take drugs, isn't it.

Musical Meme

2006-07-17T09:13:00.000Z

I've been meme-tagged by FirstApostle (Andrew). I don't usually believe in these chainletter things (gawd knows, enough of them go round Myspace, which I ignore), but between 'proper' blogs, it seems to have slightly more point to it. I'll probably come back to this blog post at some point to put in links from the song titles to their locations on the iTunes Music Store so that you could buy them if you feel so inclined, but I'm at work now, so iTunes, along with most other internet technologies, has been disabled.

(If I tag you, please copy the instructions below and then list your songs)

"List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 6 other people to see what they're listening to"

Here are the first seven I could think of, in no particular order of preference:

1. "Fishing the Sky" The Appleseed Cast
2. "Ghosts" Shellac
3. "Us" Regina Spektor
4. "Here Comes the Rumour Mill" The Young Knives
5. "Fire Back About Your New Baby's Sex" Don Caballero
6. "Little Sparkee" Q and Not U
7. "Small Apartment Party Epiphany" Make Believe

Now, for my meme tags, I choose. I'm afraid I can't muster 6 other bloggers who haven't already been tagged. Sorry and all that:

The Chocolate Monkey
Milkybar Monkey
Frogspots

Pig musicology part 1

2006-07-14T15:13:00.000Z

Hotly on the tail of my last post, I've remembered that I've been meaning to write more posts about one of my great loves: music.

There really are a great many topics to cover here, but for the first foray, I thought I'd write about bands and their influences. I'm always intrigued where I can hear a music figure that sounds like its player (and in the case of most bands that'll actually be the person who has written at least some of the music - quite the converse of 'classical' composition) has taken on board something else that they've listened to.

This can end up with the musical idea (or the sound/s used to execute that idea - think of guitarists playing specific guitar/pickup/amplifier/speaker combinations to achieve a certain sound) either drawing on and reinterpreting a certain style - which is where a great many of the developments of Western music have come from, versus slavishly following an existing template in a way which fails to surpass the original in any sense.

When I get excited by bands, it's usually because they fit that classic realm of sound which is *just* familiar enough to be slightly accessible, but different enough to maintain my interest in what they're doing. Sometimes this can take the form of being able to hear their influences, and how they've decided to rework them to fashion something new. You can take a band like Biffy Clyro and examine their first album, which their press info at the time said was influenced by Far and Mineral. Yes, I can hear both of those bands, but the resultant songwriting is also something reasonably individual. Fast forward to the point at which they recorded The Vertigo of Bliss and you have a far superior beast, as it's a band that's reworked itself and pushed its own development down certain lines, becoming substantially more than the sum of its parts.

There's another band called Sucioperro who hail from the same parts of Scotland as BC. We played on a lineup with them last Summer and I also watched them supporting Dive Dive quite recently at the Railway, Winchester. Try as I might, they're not a band I can enjoy, because their sound and their songwriting is pretty much identical to BC. There are whole choruses where you can overlay BC vocal lines, and that's no good if your ear is looking for something to interest you based on the music being a little different, a little familiar. I can't listen to what they're doing and enjoy it because I've heard the original and it sounds better. The same goes for a band we played with a couple of times called Cats & Cats & Cats. They were okay, but I couldn't really get into what they were doing with any enthusiasm because the songs were close to being carbon copies of Explosions in the Sky welded to Youth Movie Soundtrack Strategies. So much so, that while I was listening to them with the rest of the band, we'd get to a new section and all be saying to each other "oh, now the Explosions bit...". Both of these bands are considerably more popular than my band, so what do I know, anyway.

Coming to that, I guess I could be accused of being in a band that's fairly indebted to several other bands, but I genuinely believe that the longer we're playing together, the less we sound directly comparable to other bands that we like. I guess that, stylistically, we're within a certain bracket, but the idiosyncracies we've picked up along the way (and sometimes it'll be just one or two of us in the band that start to get into something that the rest of the band then doesn't really ever hear - take me an Dave listening to Faraquet and taking on a little of that jazziness, for instance) are what keeps it fresh and interesting to be involved with. I suppose as long as it keeps evolving off on its own little tangent, I'll still want to be making music this way.

Manners maketh man

2006-07-10T15:00:00.000Z

I wrote a blog post some months ago about frequently misused phrases that I notice creeping into English usage in the UK. I thought I'd revisit this in a slightly different way and point out my annoyance at a couple of phrases that seem to have arrived over the past two years or so (or at least that's when I've noticed them).

1. "Can I get a ....". This one's arisen for people who are ordering a round of drinks, or food at a restaurant. The customer now asks "Can I get a pint of San Miguel" rather than saying "Can I have...", "I'd like..." or better "May I have...".

What's the effect of this? Well, I see it as part of the removal of manners from our everyday social transactions. Each time you say to a bartender "Can I get a...", you're fundamentally bypassing their involvement as the person who's responsible for serving you. Using the word 'get' implies to me that the customer is going to walk around the bar and serve himself a drink, as if to say "your service is rubbish and I don't feel like you're doing anything to make my experience in this pub more pleasant". I think that this reduction of etiquette may subliminally reduce the politeness between the two partners to the transaction, resulting in everyone feeling a little less satisfied at the manners contained within the exchange (and therefore the sense of mututal respect between the customer and the employee). Think about this next time you're about to use the word 'get' in that situation, and think about whether you've actually always said 'get', or whether, like me, your ears have picked this up as a new development in language usage.

2. "I want you to give me 110%". I'm absolutely fed up of hearing idiots on television saying this. Whether it's some kind of fitness trainer, or some obnoxious chef, there always seems to be someone demanding one hundred and *ten* per cent of the people under them. I'm interested in this on two levels. Firstly, who taught these people maths? When you're talking about human capacity there is a finite limit of ability to do something. That's called one hundred per cent effort. Anything more than one hundred per cent would therefore have to be the work of more than one person. Try telling that to the logic masters we watch nightly on our TVs. They're always saying that the person needs to make more effort, and the cliche figure they put on this is always "110%". So, the second thing that intrigues me is where this figure of 110% came from. Seeing as the demands are impossible to meet (remember, we have a maximum capacity of 100% here), why not just ask for two hundred or three hundred per cent. Those figures are no less absurd, when you look at it in these terms. But somewhere along the line, some exaggerator decided that 110% was a suitable figure.

People are daft.

... and mosquito, natural enemies

2006-07-04T21:57:00.000Z

It's bedtime at the Clark household, and I'm lying in bed, exhausted after the heat of the day (it's been stupidly hot today and for the last few days) and the fact that I've had quite a heavy summer cold over the last 4 days or so.

Naomi has left the window in this room open for me, and arranged the net curtain in such a way as to let some air flow in, but hopefully not too many of our insect brethren. My main concern is mosquitos, which are attracted to my blood to an alarming degree (confirmed by my blood-poisoned foot covered in 30 individual bites when I was in the caribbean a few years back). Naomi's parents are kind enough to burn citronella oil whenever we eat on the patio in their garden because they know just how troubled I am by biting insects.

I do hope I don't get bitten tonight.

The other notable result of the heatwave over the past few days has been that my Sony Ericsson k750i has malfunctioned. The screen stays white permanently. I went to the vodafone shop to see if i could get it serviced (it's under one year old), and the somewhat arrogant staff member pulled the battery out of the phone, pointed to a pink strip of plastic on the battery and told me that it'd become water damaged. I explained that it'd been nowhere near any water, which leaves the only explanation being that my body heat and any sweat in my pocket over the past few days has been enough to compromise the phone, and I now find out, my hardware guarantee. Pretty poor build quality, I'd say, however good the features. I'd love to know what operating conditions they do guarantee for this phone, because even within Europe the weather would generally be pretty hot in a number of countries, and phones are generally taken to be stored in trouser pockets as a matter of course.

Anyway, Naomi's given me her k700i to tide me over, but I'll miss some of the features of the k750i.

Vitamins

2006-06-23T13:19:00.000Z

For some reason, when I got back from playing a gig in Uxbridge last night I started to worry about my health. It was about 1:30 and I couldn't sleep (and I know I'm going to have a big night tonight since my buddy James is coming down from Cardiff - much beer+whiskey and little sleep will ensue).

So I decided that I needed some vitamins. As luck would have it, I'd bought these tubes of soluble orange-flavoured vitamins at Tesco last week, so I decided to take some vitamin C with zinc. Rather than be bothered to go out to the shared kitchen and find a glass, I decided to drop one of the soluble tablets into a new 2-litre bottle of Sainsbury's water I had in my room. Then I started to think to myself that dissolving that much vitamic C into that much water would have no effects beneficial to my health, so I dissolved another one in there. And another. Well, I drank about a quarter of the bottle, and decided to bring the rest of it with me to work today and was drinking it on my way down Stockbridge Road.

What suddenly dawned on me as I was walking along, listening to Don Cabellero on my iPod, was that it actually looked like I was drinking a 2-litre bottle of urine. Good job I'm not self-conscious.

I want to be welcome, not just tolerated

2006-06-19T10:02:00.000Z

As I continue to walk to the tightrope of alienating people who read my blog, I feel that I should move to feelings of being welcome or otherwise.

I'm not sure if this is something that preoccupies me more than other people (and, I suspect that if it does, this might have some grounding in my relatively uncomfortable experience of the 6th form at school), but I often worry about how people perceive me and whether or not I fit in in a given situation.

I've often thought about the dislocation between how we are and how we seem. You only need to see a video of yourself to feel self-conscious (an interesting phrase, when you think about it) and to gain an awareness that your thoughts may be translated into your facial expressions with unexpected results. I remember seeing a video of myself that had been taken on Christmas day a couple of years ago. I was in the front room of my grandparents' house in Cardiff, and was probably in a pretty good mood, surrounded by people I love. But as I looked at my face on that screen, I realised just how bloody moody I must look to other people. I don't want my face to convey this when I'm in repose, as it almost certainly isn't the case. Nervous, maybe, moody, no.

From this thought I move to thinking about how people close to me interpret these things, my face and my body's gestures. I am often a bit uncomfortable in my body. I don't quite know what to do with it sometimes, where should I put my hands?!. What if the person that people know and like or dislike isn't me at all. There's a 'me' beneath these layers, but what if the translation isn't working; what if the accidents and the substance don't match? What if people love me not for who I am but for who they think I am? I write this without irony or self-regard, I hasten to add.

There was a party at Luigi's house on Saturday. I felt a mixture of nervousness and acceptance. New people there, who I didn't know, put me on edge. Nevertheless, having a decent number of friends together (as if I can actually prove either way that they're my friends - I suppose this is where faith comes in!) gave me a very significant feeling of acceptance and wellbeing. It felt good to be there. I probably could have enjoyed the party just as much without the cushion of tequila, and that's important. People taking or leaving you on your own merits (even *if* they're a second-hand interpretation) is a novelty and a luxury I just didn't have until I left school.

Feeling 'at home' is an incredibly important part of this existence, and I aim to learn to recognise it as much as I recognise its opposite.

Thursday night optimism

2006-06-02T11:19:00.000Z

I went out with Naomi last night to see the Da Vinci Code - in brief:

1. It was more fast-paced than the book. They did well to cover the whole story within the medium of a 2hr film, but the first fifteen minutes actually felt very rushed, and the Langdon character was able to make mental connections at a quite unrealistic pace.

2. It was no less saccharine than the book. The major holes in history, theology and basic logic were glaring, and leapt out of Teabing's dialogue to accompany the plasma screen scene. The problem is that a lot of people will take this stuff as gospel (hehe), and don't actually have a background that allows them to make proper criticism of convenient glossing to support the narrative. I can't be bothered to go into it at length now, but some of it was very far-fetched.

3. Professor of Religious Symbology at Harvard. This is flat-out ridiculous for anyone who's been to university (and don't forget, that's supposed to be 50-60% of us now, New Labour kids!!). I suppose Harvard has a whole faculty of 'religious symbologists' for Langdon to preside over as well, does it?

If you want to read more (prolly not, eh?), the New Statesman review isn't too bad, save for its squealing "most people will need a lot more convincing before they start denying evolution and insist that female reproductive organs are public property" rubbish.

Anyway, what brought me to write a blog post here was not Dan Brown's successful leveraging of about £15 for a book and cinema ticket, out of my (and everyone else's) pockets (and against the odds, now I think about it...), but a conversation I overheard in the pub before I went to see the film.

There was a bloke a little bit older than me talking to a middle-aged feller about a visit to a museum he'd recently made on holiday. I didn't catch the beginning of the conversation, but I got the impression it was probably a French museum somewhere. He was saying how it had only cost him 6 Euros, "that's only about four quid isn't it", and what good value for money he felt he'd had. He went on to tell the older man how he would happily pay this to go to museums in the UK, which were of a much higher quality still, in his opinion. The older man agreed. Their conversation moved on to other things, and they left the pub.

Listening to them, I realised just how reasonable they both were. Both men who, from their brief exchange that I'd overheard, put a value in things that are edifying. I realised that, however reasonable their feelings towards paying for a valuable heritage service, these views were isolated in a vacuum of ignorance of the motives and dogmas of modern politics. These men were probably a little too old and a little too Middle England to be aware of the creed of 'access' that now drives our taxpayer's pound. I'm sure museum curators the country over are only too aware of the problems this brings.

Anyone visiting museums in London would see that the chief beneficiaries of New Labour's free museums policy (admittedly, conceived with a good will) have been foreign tourists who no longer pay admission. But they still bring the same wear and tear to the buildings, and now the museums are funded less than they were when they were able to charge. This is a classic case of the unintended consequences of an 'access' policy. In the headlong rush to be seen to address the interests of the UK's welfare/low income or minority ethnic populations, a very different beneficiary group comes out the other side of the equation. What I'm trying to illustrate here is that the two museum-goers in the pub are actually not the demographic the politicians want to go to museums, and are actually quite different again from those who stand to gain from wrong-headed 'access' policies.

The Heat of the Blade

2006-05-24T15:41:00.000Z

I can’t help but feel that part of the purpose of writing a blog is to let people into who you are and what you think about a little more than on a cursory level. Very often I find myself wanting to write things that might be construed as critical or maybe quizzical of a situation, but hold back from doing so in case this could impact on some future job, or something like that. God knows, I have strong enough opinions on enough topics.

The alternative, which is anonymous blogging, wouldn’t be for me either. I see little point in writing something that will probably never be read by anyone. But I don’t want to always write simple lists of ‘likes’ and ‘don’t-likes’ and to do something that’s intellectually lightweight. And then I don’t want writing a blog to become a vanity exercise either. Much like my career, I’m far better at knowing what I don’t want to do than what I do.

So, returning to my first point, about letting people into who you are. I thought that I’d address some of the strange things in my character that other people wouldn’t necessarily be aware of. One that has been uppermost in my mind recently is a mild case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that I seem to have with regard to shaving. So far in my life I’ve been quite lucky to have worked or studied in environments where I could get away without shaving (actually I’ve also found myself in environments where I could dress as I please, over the most recent years). No more. I now have a relatively straightforward job, where I wear a shirt and tie to work, and am expected to meet certain standards of appearance. I have no beef with this, apart from the fact that I get to wear my favourite clothes less often, and that I now have to shave, every day.

This has led to the growth of the aforementioned neurosis associated with shaving. For some reason I have a very powerful memory for a few things. Useless bits of trivia, things people have said that I’ve been surprised by, faces (I almost never forget a face – even of people I’ve only shared a train with – I’m hoping I can help Crimewatch one day); that sort of thing. I also have a good memory for things my parents say. My Dad may say something to me when I’m at home at Christmas, and then repeat it (unknowingly) when I’m at home at Easter. So, several years ago, my Dad was telling me about how over many years of shaving, he’s concluded that the heat of the blade is the most important factor. This was repeated again at some point, unwittingly, and it’s now completely lodged in my brain.

Lodged to a frightening extent. Now, when I go to have a shave, I turn the tap on, until it’s hot, then leave the razor under it, in the sink. All the while, this voice runs through my head, saying “theheatofthebladetheheatofthebladetheheatoftheblade”. It’s worrying me. I know this must all sound very David Beckham, but seriously, I hope I can shake it soon.

When I was at school, my mate Carthy used to have an obsession whereby if he didn’t write out his words properly, someone would die. This resulted in him inking over words until he tore through the paper, and it carried on until he got shouted at by a teacher to stop. He never did it again.

But I don’t have anyone to stop me. Theheatofthebladetheheatofthebladetheheatoftheblade. Argh.

Observations on the Winch'

2006-05-22T09:38:00.000Z

Winchester et al
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

So, as promised, this blog post turns to my new city of residence (for the next year, at least), Winchester.

I've now been here for a few weeks, and feel that I've mostly settled-in, although I have spent an inordinate amount of time sitting on trains between here and various places (London, Portsmouth, Littlehampton), due to rehearsal or gig commitments, so I still haven't spent *that* much time in my new flat. Don't worry though, I have been at least a bit productive in the time that I have had at home - I completed Batman Begins on the Gamecube the other night whilst eating my way through a big bag of monkey nuts.

The building I'm living in is pretty spectacular (pictured above) and I have a spacious studio flat within it, which has a fair whack of storage to accommodate all of my equipment and boxes full of stuff I've not sorted through for a few years. Something tells me that when we get married, I'm going to have to lose a lot of my old copies of Sound on Sound.

The time I have had so far in Winchester has been pretty good. I like the city a lot, and I work right in the city centre, which means that Naomi and I are able to meet for lunch most days of the week, which breaks up the working day pleasingly. On top of that, I am within 15-minute walking distance of work in the mornings, which is really convenient, and gives me the excuse for a brief exercise each morning and evening. The road that I walk down to work has two notable features. One is that it ends at the Rail Station and the Railway Inn (Winchester's most notable live music venue). I've not yet been to the Railway for a gig because the majority of bands they have put on while I've been here appear to have been of a pretty unremarkable standard (I'm judging this, by the collection of truly horrendous band names I've seen advertised). but I do intend to head down as soon as I see something decent chalked-up on their blackboard. The second thing I've noticed about Stockbridge Road is that there are loads of unsecured wireless networks. It's a Wardriver's dream. However, now I no longer have a laptop (I took a refund after PC World failed to bother to fix my iBook over a 10-week period!), I guess it's not so important for me. But still cool. I'm very much of the belief that people should share out their broadband, as long as noone is abusing it.

The tourist season in Winchester is just starting to take off, and they've been running this big Da Vinci Code cash-in exhibition at the Cathedral, so I can see there's going to be a lot of people traffic in and out of the centre this Summer. Today won't be quite so busy, because it's freezing and has been raining cats and dogs, but that's not been the norm. Actually, getting outside for an hour or so each day in the sunlight has been pretty welcomed over the last four weeks; it really helps to keep my concentration going through the working day.

The new job is going reasonably well. I'm a little nervous that there won't be anything for me to do once the real incumbent of my post returns from her maternity leave, but as always I think that'll be in the lap of the gods. While I'm here I'll do my damndest to make a good impression, anyway.

Observations on the 'Hill

2006-04-29T11:50:00.000Z

allypally.JPG
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

I've had a week in Winchester now, and Jack moves into my old room in Methuen Park today, so I thought I'd mark the occasion with a blog post about the 'Hill.

Muswell Hill
In short, the 'Hill was a swell place to live for the last 10 months, and certainly the nicest place in London that I got to live, and at by far the best price. There's something about that part of London that's generally very pleasant, with a sense of being self-contained and slightly villagey. During my time living there, we became quite attached to drinking at the Maid of Muswell (particularly during its short-lived spell of opening until Midnight), and at the Gatehouse in Highgate. Nice pubs make a hell of a difference to what you get out of your surrounding area, I always find.

Other things that I'll remember fondly include the pizza delivery service that Frank and I would use to get 18" beasts, delivered from somewhere in Tottenham (they had a two-mile delivery radius and every time we'd get a delivery, the receipt would show something like 1.98 miles, so we were just inside their catchment area. I suspect that this is a tradition that Frank and Jack will keep up. Boshed.

In terms of other culinary delights, I was pleased to see an Observer article a few weeks ago about Toff's by Maureen Lipman. Toff's is this great fish and chip restaurant in Muswell Hill that's run by a Greek family, led by the comic/menacing Costa. When we went there for my birthday, he was so insistent that Nohawk Dave's girlfriend, Sara, should eat fish, when she actually just wanted a pie, that it became quite embarassing. Still entertaining, though, and really very good fish, with unlimited top-ups of chips, which can't be a bad thing.

Other things I enjoyed about living in Muswell Hill were the views you could get over the rest of London. From Alexandra Palace (pictured), just around the corner from our house, or from the back window of Starbucks, you can get a really good vantage point, and make all sorts of visual connections between one area and another that central London's closed-in geography (and the fact that Londonders are all understandably pretty Underground-map-minded) wouldn't allow. The view from Ally Pally at night is particularly spectacular - you can see Canary Wharf and all sorts of other landmarks lit up.

Obviously I'll miss the old house as well. I feel privileged to have lived there, as their first tenant, and although living in an old building had its challenges (mice invasions, being full of someone else's possessions, fluctuating temperatures etc), in general I had an amazing time living there. David Liddell (the organist who comes to the house to play the organ-in-situ most days) became a good friend, and I feel that I owe him a lot, in terms of his hospitality, good nature, and patience at accommodating new people in a house that had a lot of history for him. David's guide dogs were always good fun too, having never been spent much time near large pets like that before. Campbell, the first dog, was very gentle and loveable, and Doge, the second dog while I was there, was a bit young and over-enthusiastic, which was always good for a laugh when he went for Frank's crotch.

I'm going to miss sharing a flat with Frank as well, and I guess I probably won't ever get to share living space with a close friend again, until the point at which Naomi and I get married and move in together. This might all sound a bit overly-nostalgic, but I thought I'd write it anyway, as these are the sorts of things that really matter to me. We had more than our fair share of stupid jokes in that house, and I'm really pleased that Jackie's going to be taking over the tenancy, which I hope will mean me revisiting fairly frequently.

In the next installment, I'll write about my "new" life, in Winchester.

"Normal is great"

2006-04-07T12:53:00.000Z

Those of you in the UK may have seen the current slick ad campaign of the online bank More Than, which spotlights their insurance products.

Its tagline is "Normal is great", and I've had this in-mind this week as I've battled with an excruciating toothache. Well, two trips back to Cardiff later - no, I haven't registered with a London NHS dentist; we do live in the real world here, after all - I'm back to 'normal' and actually really happy as a result.

This reminds me of one of my favourite passages of Schopenhauer's 'On the Suffering of the World' where he describes suffering as being a noticeable, and therefore positive, event, which breaks with our 'normal' state of happiness. Suffering is the -1 to our natural state of 0, if you like, and this is why it's our lot in this world to remember the pangs of unhappiness more easily than a distant memory of happiness. I agree with this (and most other things I've read by him), but I must say in the short term after an uncomfortable event, the sense of relief and euphoria are wonderful.

A triumvirate of annoyances

2006-03-31T17:18:00.000Z

Mindful of how easily blogs can turn into whinge-fests, I think I will get a few things off my chest from the past couple of days.

1) At Waterloo Station yesterday I went to buy a coffee to one of the numerous stands that sells hot drinks, greasy pasties etc. I handed the guy a £1 coin, a 50p coin and a 20p coin for a coffee costing £1.60. His hands went behind the till with my money as I awaited his colleague preparing the coffee and he went on to take another customer's order. About 10 seconds later, rather than giving me my 10p change, his hands came up showing me two 20p pieces and saying that it was £1.60 for the coffee and that I needed to give him another 20p. I pointed out that I'd just given him £1.70, he pointed to the 2 20p pieces in his hand. I stupidly handed over an additional 20p, there being no way that I could prove the change I'd given him. This guy obviously thinks he's a latter-day Svengali, and was probably really pleased with himself, having just conned me out of 30p.

What he hasn't reckoned with is just how much it irks me when I get ripped-off. I am probably going to go back there, order the same thing and see what happens when I hand him the same change. What will happen at that point remains to be seen, but I can tell you now that I will not be letting him have his way a second time.

2) I've been in Winchester over the last day, to look at a potential flat that Naomi has found for me, in a nursing home that's been converted into rental studio flats. When we went to see it last night, I must say that it did strike me as a lovely place, and somewhere I'd be happy to live for the next year or so. The landlady seemed nice enough, and the agent showed us around. However, the rental values that the landlady is hoping for are practically at central London levels, so I decided that I would opt to offer a bit below the asking price and see what happens.

The property is being dealt with by an agency called Lindesay's. Click the link and marvel at their unbelievably tasteless use of intro music to their site.

So after lunch today, I went into their office to speak to Kirsty, the girl who'd shown us around yesterday. She wasn't there, so instead I was directed to speak to another girl behind one of the three forward-facing desks with people at them. She looked at me like I was a piece of dirt, she didn't ask me if I'd like to sit down, and she sure as eggs is eggs didn't go out of her way to be courteous in answering my questions. And all of this before I'd suggested offering the landlady £530 per month for the room rather than £550. Bear in mind also that this agency intends to charge me £125 for administration in connecting me with the landlord, and then take a month's rent + £100 as deposit (no doubt they intend to try and con me out of that when the rent expires, by dubious charges for cleaning that they will probably never actually pay for). I don't understand how salespeople (and that is all they are) think they can be so lacking in courtesy, and it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

3) I also wanted to get some work done this afternoon, after speaking to the agents. I'd borrowed Naomi's Powerbook, and once I'd exhausted its battery, was left trying to find a way to get some power to it. Cafe Nero doesn't have any power sockets, Costa Coffee doesn't have any power sockets, and there's no Starbucks in Winchester centre. These places do offer wireless internet access, however, which seems like a wierd service on its own if you're not going to provide the means for people to use it for any sensible length of time. The next port of call, you'd think, would be the county's libraries. Maybe I've been spoiled being able to go and use the libraries in Oxford (either College or University) and then those in London, where power for laptops is always readily available. Well, when I asked if it were possible in the County Reference Library (where you'd expect that this sort of thing'd be important for those engaged in serious study), I was met with bemusement and asked to repeat my question (I really love it when people do this to me), then told no.

Gah.

50

2006-03-28T11:55:00.000Z

DSC00316.JPG
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

I find that I spend an inordinate amount of my time complaining about things, in a geriatric-inspired way. There are actually lots of things to complain about, if you look around you!

Yesterday, for instance, I was complaining about having to pay £1.80 for tie dry-cleaning. You may point out that if I were able to eat without food falling out of my mouth, then maybe I'd be able to get away without having to have 3 of my ties dry cleaned in the last week. You would be right.

When I mentioned paying £1.80 per tie at the pub last night, it prompted Jack to claim that his dad went somewhere where you could get ties cleaned for 50p each. Frank and I greeted this with no small amount of skepticism. So we started challenging Jackie about where you would get this done. He proceeded to state that not only could you get ties dry-cleaned for 50p, but that his dad has no fewer than 50 ties.

Not content with one exaggeration, he'd chosen to try and confound us by reusing the same number! The photo above was taken while Jack tried to tell us this was the truth.

Slightly more believable among last night's conversations was that Jack is the owner of 24 ties.

More wierd news soon, readers.

Result

2006-03-22T12:21:00.000Z

Boy oh boy, it's been nearly a month since I've posted something here. I wouldn't blame people if they'd completely stopped checking back here to see what I'm up to .... but to you, my stalwart friends who are reading this now, here are my updates.

Most importantly, I found out yesterday that I've secured a job in Winchester. This is fantastic news and allows me to get on with planning the rest of my life. I haven't yet received the offer letter, but the post will be for 6 months, working as a project officer for Special Educational Needs in Hampshire County Council as maternity cover. Fingers crossed that will then lead me into other things there. For the time being, I have a database project to complete for the Foundation over the next few weeks, so I'm actually back in the office, and will be helping with their move to new premises at the end of this month.

Apart from the obvious advantages of having gainful employment, most importantly of all, it will stop Frank from calling me "an unemployed". From a man I have known for over 6 years who has yet to take up a full time job, there has been no small amount of irony in these exchanges.

Let me see, what else have I been doing? Oh yes, trying to make arrangements for the wedding, which is all still at quite an early stage. I've been down in Winchester a fair bit, looking at hotels and that sort of thing for the reception, and considering our options as far as churches are concerned.

The less pleasant backdrop to all of this is that I'm rather poor at the minute. Scratch that, I'm "laughably poor" as Frank would have it. I got paid too little for the freelance work I've done over the last month, and am right at the limit of my overdraft, which is causing me some concern, seeing as I've just had payday! Oh well, hopefully things will work out soon enough.

No real band developments on the horizon at the mo. We've been trying to figure out a way of recording some new songs for a proposed mini-album (and maybe a single of some sort). Unfortunately we're constrained by drummer Chris' holidays (which are school holidays seeing as he's a teaching assistant now). It'd be great if we were able to record something before I leave for Winch, but we'll see what happens, I suppose. We have been writing some pretty interesting cut-and-paste music recently, and I'm actually really keen to get it recorded.

Promise I'll write again soon, now that my employment worries are over (touch wood).

-----
edit: Frank now tells me that I've caught the degenerative disease known as employment. The laughter never ends.

Action on the Radio

2006-02-24T17:03:00.000Z

Check it out, yeah? Our first brush with the BBC!

You have about 24 hours to listen to it, I think.....

Strait

2006-02-17T12:52:00.000Z

So I'm in the final strait at work, with two and a half working days to go. You may notice my blog updates since Christmas have been occasional, at best. This is actually intentional. I'm quite concerned about writing honest appraisals of the different interviews and meetings with employment agencies that I've had, because a negative remark might not look all that appealing to a prospective employer that has the foresight or the inclination to google my name, or variations on my name. I've just sent an email reply to a school friend's email about this. Do you notice just how circular this situation is becoming? I can't write anything in case it looks unfavourable, so I write here that I can't write anything in case it looks unfavourable. Which in itself might imply that I was going to have something unfavourable to write and therefore a prospective employer might be wary anyway. Oh hell.

I'm going to have to spend this weekend clearing up my desk and all the correspondence I've never quite got round to, and then hopefully leave things in a good order for my successor, Zaheer, to take over.

Then, my plan for next week is to sign up to some temping agencies and to investigate computer qualifications I could do in a short time period. As ever, so much to do!

Oh yes, yesterday I discovered that there are some pretty cool photos of an Action and Action gig we did at the Wheatsheaf in Oxford last month that you can see at this page.

Anyway, just bear with me until I secure stable employment before I actually write down my thoughts on the topic. If you care.

Dolly Mixtures

2006-02-06T10:27:00.000Z

My feelings recently have been pretty mixed.

On the one hand, I'm really looking forward to living in Winchester, so that I can see Naomi much more often - this is going to be wonderful - but a part of me is also going to miss being in London, where I have quite a few friends, and where it's relatively easy to meet up with people. I don't actually know anyone at all from Winchester apart from Naomi and her family. I guess starting the second band I've had in my head for some time (and it's developed far enough as an idea that I actually have a bunch of potential names for it already) might be the answer to that. I certainly intend to keep coming back to Uxbridge for Action and Action stuff at weekends, but then I still need to make sure that I have something to interest me during the week as well.

The other reason I'm a bit nervy at the mo is that I don't yet have a job to go to in Winchester, and time is running out before I leave this one. I also have a great desire to achieve some things I've always wanted to do whilst in this post, and I don't exactly have loads of time to do those things either. I have an interview this week, so we'll see if anything comes of that, I suppose. Wish me luck.

And then there are things I've seen and heard in other people's lives recently that have upset me somewhat. A friend of mine who probably doesn't read this blog has recently seen the end of his marriage, which I happened to blunder onto in conversation, unknowingly. I know I can't fully grasp how he's feeling, but I have still been pretty down for the last week or so, having seen the terrible effect on him. It always upsets me when I'm told about friends' relationships ending, and I do believe that people are better off together than single, but I felt that this was particularly a awful case and I can truly feel a small part of that hurt on his behalf. Also, a workmate of mine is being put through the mill at the moment for other reasons. It's harrowing, and there's not a great deal anyone can do about it for now.

It's horrible feeling powerless.

Engagement

2006-01-10T14:26:00.000Z

Engagement
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

I have some rather exciting news. On New Year's Day, at about 10:00pm Florida-time, I asked Naomi to marry me.

The photo above is about an hour later that evening.

(People keep asking me if she said "yes", which apart from being mildly insulting, is a bit of a daft question! Maybe I should start replying "no, she refused because she hates me. That's why I'm relating the story to you, because I like to embarass myself". I probably won't end up saying this to anyone because, let's face it, I've not been sarcastic enough to pull this sort of thing off since I left my teens)

It'd be a massive understatement to say that I'm pretty bloody pleased we're getting married (planned for Summer 2007) and it's probably about the most important thing I've written about in this blog. I've toyed with the idea of writing the evening out in full, but I think it's something too sacred to cover here, so I'm going to move on to the rest of the holiday.

Amber and Andrew's wedding, the reason we were in Florida in the first place, was a wonderful occasion. Andrew has succeeded in being the first one of our group of friends at Oxford to get married, which is some achievement seeing as he wasn't even going out with anyone at Christmas 2004. He's managed to meet a wonderful woman, moved fast, and their happiness is evident to everyone who's seen them together. I'm so glad that we were able to be there for the wedding, and very grateful to Andrew's parents for kindly covering our accommodation.

Wierdly enough, Orlando was also the setting for getting a decent number of Magdalen friends together in one place, finally. Because obviously we couldn't manage that in the UK. Most of the time Jack, Naomi and I hung out together, and Jack very kindly did all of the driving, in his beloved hired Trans Am. The weather was pretty much perfect (and warm enough that we were able to spend a day basking on Cocoa Beach, near Cape Canaveral). We didn't go to Gatorland this year (nor did we go to the slightly-freakish Holy Land Experience) but the week was a blast nonetheless, quite apart from getting engaged. It was great to see Thurston and his wife, Jamie, and we went with him to Park Avenue Records, possibly the best record shop I've ever been to. Oh yes, and a few days earlier we got upgraded to business class on the flight out. 3 course meal, 3 glasses of champagne, corvoisier. Get in.

Anyway, I'm back at work now until 13th February. That gives me a month and a day from today to find myself a job. I'll write more about this soon enough.

Over and out, for now.

Compilation

2005-12-27T10:27:00.000Z

I've just published my first iMix to the iTunes Music Store. For £8.69, you can now buy 11 songs by some of my favourite bands ever, or just listen to the 30 second previews.

In the Collective Zine review of the first Action and Action EP, we were compared to a much-vaunted British band from a few years back called Spy Versus Spy. I can't tell you how difficult it is to track down material by them - I can't find anywhere online where you can buy their CDs - but I have finally located one track of theirs, again on iTunes. Alan, if you're reading this, it's here

Now, off to Cardiff city centre for the inevitable "sales".

Comfort Food

2005-12-21T20:26:00.000Z

I have had a huge amount to do over the past couple of days, and, as ever, I haven't quite managed to do all of it.

I journeyed to Oxford this Tuesday, to hand in an application form for a job at the University, and also to sign up with an agency. The agency didn't fill me with a whole look of confidence, given that they seem to deal exclusively with the badly-paid sectors of the employment market, but we'll see if anything comes of it. In terms of Winchester, there doesn't appear to be loads of work there either, but I'll keep checking Guardian Jobs and so on.

Then, this evening, just when I was all ready to make the tube journey to Paddington, it occurred to me that I'd better check the location of my passport. I opened the top left draw of my dresser, where I was fairly certain it would be, and fished around a bit. I generally keep my passport and cheque book (i.e. the important official things) in this draw. My old passport, with the corner cut off, is there. My new one is not. Now, the last time I used it was to go to Rome, so it can't be all that far away, but after consulting my folks, they think I should find it before I come home to Cardiff. Arse.

Oh well, at least it means I can get my washing done in good time of leaving for Florida. And I might even get time to tidy my room a bit!

Right, one final things before I end this post. The first is to alert people to the truly wonderful www.uknova.com. This website lists 'torrent' files (a torrent file is a tiny file you download, then open to download parts the file from many different locations at once, thus spreading the bandwidth load) for UK television. Put simply, you find the tv show you want, then download the torrent file for it. Set the torrent file running (usually overnight, because the files tend to be quite big) and then you eventually get various British TV shows you can watch at your leisure. Apart from people uploading things like yesterday's Eastenders, there are all sorts of great shows available that people have recorded on VHS years ago, and now transferred to a computer file format (usually divx).

This might seem like a lot of trouble for anyone who's used to Sky+ and similar services. Well, it ain't for me. The primary reason why I don't just switch on the box and watch TV in a conventional sense is that the roof aerial of our house is pointing straight at the TV mast of Alexandra Palace, which has apparently been switched off for some years now. I can't really afford to pay someone to get up on the roof and reorient it so we can watch TV, and I'm sure as hell not going to do a Rod Hull myself. As a result, I'm not paying for a TV license, as I don't receive TV broadcasts into my TV (used exclusively for the Gamecube), but it doesn't stop the TV licensing people from sending me numerous, increasingly threatening letters. I'd be really interested to know the legal situation ias regards buying equipment that includes a TV tuner if you have no intention of watching TV with it.

[edit] I found my passport in the end, in the jacket pocket of my suit. Thank goodness.

Merry Christmas to one and all. Expect frequent blog service to resume in Florida, in a few days' time.

The beginning of the end

2005-12-14T12:57:00.000Z

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. Not only have things been pretty crazy in terms of my workload (remind me never to work for a week and a half with only 4hrs sleep per night), but this morning I gave in my resignation at work. I'm intending to move to Oxford or Winchester; who knows what the future will hold?

Don't touch that dial....

Famous for 15 megapixels

2005-11-19T10:18:00.000Z

I'd like to alert readers of my blog to this considerably better blog about life in London and that sort of thing. He seems to make a good go of articulating his observations about London life, drawing different things together, and he's a decent photographer to-boot.

Reviews

2005-11-15T16:18:00.000Z

I am overjoyed by the fact that the first review of my band's new CD (at Collective Zine) is a good one, by a source that I trust.

This has really made my day

I love my band!

2005-11-14T14:16:00.000Z

303721342_l.jpg
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

Continuing the theme of posting last week's events, I thought I'd tell you about one of my highlights which was playing at a mental health arts event for Mad for Arts. We were on a bill of predominantly jazz-related music and spoken-word recitations; I knew before we did it that we'd be the only rock band, and yet again we'd be on a line-up that wouldn't be of bands with a natural fit with the music we play, but it almost felt as if the more mis-fit, the better.

There was a very cool sampling duo with broadly jazz instrumentation called 'Rabbit' who were mesmerising to watch and listen to, particularly in combination with their freaky projected visuals. Delay pedals combined with saxophone occurred in one of the other bands as well, which I enjoyed listening to, in the same way that I'd enjoy listening to the wierder sections of The Mars Volta.

What really made the night for me (apart from the newky brown ale, obviously) was that when we went on-stage, it felt like we were hungry again, with the kind of aggression that we'd had when were a brand new band, only with much much better songs to back it up. Guitars were thrashing about, I was narrowly avoiding smacking my face into various solid objects, and there was a sense of barely-orchestrated yet fun chaos about the room, from my point of view. People were either retreating into the recesses of the crypt to get away from the completely un-jazz noise we were banging out (did I mention, it was a gig in a crypt!), or otherwise coming forward with renewed enthusiasm (we're definitely a Marmite band). This is why I'm in a band. I want to let loose, and getting some sort of reaction from the onlookers is a significant bonus. We're playing in Oxford this week, with my Uni mate (and ex-band-mate) Jake's band. I'm really looking forward to it, and I just hope we play as well as we did last week!

My view of the world

2005-11-07T18:31:00.000Z

Wonderwoman at my desk
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

Today, this was literally my view of the world. The wonderwoman mug I was given for my birthday by my colleagues, a huge pile of red plastic folders of work to go through. Aaaargh.

Keen observers will notice I have the This Ain't Vegas website loaded on the computer screen.

Okay, so what have I been up to recently? Well, tonight I went to see a rather excellent film called 'Totally Personal', by Nedzad Begovic, a Bosnian director, at the Blue Elephant Theatre. It was very touching and genuinely portrayed family life without being corny, and alluded to the conflicts of the balkans only very gently. This past weekend I went to visit Naomi in Hampshire, to recover a bit from the wierd stomach problems I've been having recently, and to catch up on some 'personal admin' as my wish-they-weren't-City lawyer friends would call it. I think I'm going to keep dealing with things in reverse order. Well, we went to see the new Wallace and Gromit film last night, which was very very funny, and had me laughing out loud many times (to Naomi's slight embarassment). I'd highly recommend it. During the daytimes, Naomi had law college classes to attend, so I sat in their computer room to get on with various things, like trying to find good value flights to Florida around the New Year for Andrew's wedding. Back on Saturday night, we went to the Alresford town fireworks display, which was actually really good. And on Friday evening we just watched some TV and generally rested.

During last week I discovered the most wonderful band, at a gig at the Betsey Trotwood. Called Itch, they were a Leeds-based bunch who reminded me of Braid, Mineral, Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies and Owls, i.e. a collection of superb influences. Please give them a listen.

So much control

2005-10-25T11:08:00.000Z

These days I quite often find myself reading things that seem quite absurd, but are occupying our politicians to determine what's best for this country. Several topics spring to mind.

Yesterday, for instance, I was reading about the plans for a partial smoking ban in the UK.

What's now being proposed is that there will be separate smokers' rooms in pubs, so that pub staff won't have to inhale smoke from their smoker patrons. So, I'm visualising lots of pubs having to put in partition walls and have heavy fire doors so that the rest of the pub's customers won't be put at risk from smoke leaking out of the room. Apart from changing the way a lot of historic pubs actually look, this would be quite an expensive process, and would no doubt lead to a further increase in the cost of drinking for the end consumer. In my mind's eye, you'll also have drinkers who are now no longer entitled to have their empty glasses collected for them, lest the staff of the pub inhale their smoke. Or, maybe pubs will start to specifically recruit staff who are smokers themselves and don't mind customers' smoke, in order to service these new specialist smokers' enclaves. Yes, I'm being a little facetious, but this is the way things are going. Why does this government need to legislate over everything?

My friend Giles once pointed out that although there's a high cost of treating smokers through the NHS, maybe the NHS wouldn't be able to keep going if Mr Brown wasn't taxing smokers so heavily. I don't know whether it's true, but it'd be an interesting idea to test.

I don't smoke but I'm also not some kind of anti-smoking Nazi. If people want to go to the pub, they have to accept that there may be smoking going on, just as there may be smoking on the street. The next thing will be to confine smoking to the home. If there really is such concern over passive smoking, wouldn't it be a good idea to offer licensees some kind of tax break for installing powerful extraction systems? That way everyone'd be happy. The government keeps taking its tax on cigarette sales, smokers aren't sent into a special room, non-smokers aren't bothered by the passive smoking. But actually all of this misses the point. It's the meddling mentality that bothers me most - I think people are quite capable of looking after themselves with regard to smoking, and the government shouldn't get involved. I feel the same way about fox hunting, another matter that I have no vested interest in.

If the powers that be are looking for something to spend their time on, why not sort out public toilets? There aren't enough of them, many are no-go areas for those of us who don't go cottaging, and most are in a horrifying state of piss-riddled disrepair. I'd also be very interested for something to be done about coffee shops where they don't offer toilet facilities. You can walk down Picadilly in London and go into shop after shop that's selling food and hot drinks, where you can eat in, and drink in (at great cost) and they somehow seem to avoid responsibility for providing toilet facilities. If anyone can explain the rules and regulations in this area, please add a comment to this post, because I'm really interested.

Cardiac

2005-10-25T11:06:00.000Z

Cardiac
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

Owing to there being no buses this morning, I had to run to Alexandra Palace train station, which is about a mile away from where I live. My heart has been bloody hurting me all day. I hope it stops.

I mean, I hope it stops hurting me. I hope it doesn't stop.

Evening Standard Headlines

2005-10-19T14:04:00.000Z

Today, I found out that somebody has started collecting Evening Standard billboard photos chronicling their daily orgy of metropolitan doom and gloom. I quite enjoyed it.

The day before yesterday, their front page bore the headline 'David Davis on Middle Class Drugs'. It looked to my eye as though Chris Morris had infiltrated their press room!

Transport

2005-10-13T14:41:00.000Z

Well, it was certainly interesting getting to work today, with there being no Northern Line. Took me nearly 2 hours to get to work, using a crafty combination of sitting on gridlocked buses and running down streets in the pouring rain, and I didn't arrive until 10:45 (gulp!). What puzzles me is that they must have known this was coming. I mean, the service has been pretty crap for the last week or so, and I can't help but wonder whether the removal of all services on the line has something to do with the major works that were in the press a while ago about having to shut the City branch for a couple of months because the track was in such a dire state.

I guess it's going to be interesting getting home tonight as well, *sigh*.

In other news, I'm reliably informed that Douglas Murray who was at Magdalen at the same time as me, and who sings at St Michael's with me on Sunday mornings, was on Newsnight last night, talking about Iraq. I wish I'd seen it. The internet doesn't seem to have any information on it, which is a shame.

And then there's the new video iPod released yesterday. I have to say that the idea of paid downloads of TV programmes actually does quite appeal to me. Yet another way to while away the lengthy commute!

Oh, and one final element to this disjointed blog post - for some reason there's a mysterious charge of $18.50 that was debited from my credit card on 16th August by "IT SOLUTIONS GROUP INC. 954-472-1656 FL", whoever they are. I informed my credit card company that it looks fishy, and they've suggested I contact the easily-identified (?!) IT Solutions Group about it. That'll be easy...

--edit-- Silly me! As Jack points out in the comments, it was the bill for a URL I'd purchased. Now my mind's at rest.

Roma (part II)

2005-10-11T14:44:00.000Z

The second day, we got lost in the morning and spent an hour or so wandering around a fairly ropey area near the train station. It became apparent to me that Italian men really have no idea of what is decent conduct around women, particularly those in couples. There was one point where Naomi strayed perhaps five feet from me, and two or three men in their twenties immediately started whistling and making what I assume to be sleazy remarks. Plus there is no holding them back when it comes to staring at a woman's breasts. They don't even seem to be aware that perhaps that isn't appropriate where a woman quite clearly isn't single. I'm a pretty protective, so all of this annoyed me a fair bit.

Once we got back on track and out of the crap area of Rome, we started to make our way across the city to take in some of its wonderful sights/sites. Naomi's Lonely Planet book had a suggested route that allowed us to take in many of the most notable attractions in one journey. As we walked down a little winding alleyway, we emerged into the square that held the Treviso Fountain. The sunny weather combined with the whiteness of the statues and the clarity of the water gave the whole scene an amazing silvery appearance. There were crowds and crowds of people there to enjoy the vast fountain, and some people asked us to take photos of them and reciprocated with our cameras. There was also an oriental couple having wedding photos in front of the fountain. After a few minutes we went on to the Pantheon. It's not often you see a circular church (in this case not entirely by design, as the building had undergone a pagan->Christian overhaul at some point). Again, it was a big draw for tourists. We stopped for lunch (more excellent pizza) at a restaurant on the square next to the Pantheon, directly next to a well-disguised McDonald's with pretty outdoor parasols and seating. They weren't quite so successful in disguising the smell of McDonald's food.

After lunch we went on to see more of central Rome, enjoying ice cream and coffee along the way. Later in the afternoon we went to the Spanish Steps (that's where the photo of Naomi on the previous post was taken), popping into a wonderful little specialist glove shop on the way. We went into the church at the top of the Steps to see the Caravaggio paintings inside, then emerged out into the balmy dusk air, to sit and enjoy the encroaching evening. Sellers of plastic roses flocked to try and persuade lovers to part with their money, below.

That evening we returned to the restaurant of the previous evening, Ristorante Unicum. It doesn't appear on the internet at all, I've discovered, but if anyone's interested, it's between Via Cavour and Via Liberiana, on what I think must be Via di Santa Maria Maggiore. This time we arrived before the pianist started (which was again fun), and we ordered starters followed by a huge fish (I can't remember the name of it for the life of me!) with spicy tomato and mussels. We were given several flaming Sambuccas at the end of the meal, which rounded off a really great holiday nicely, and guaranteed the waiter a good tip! I think we'll be back there again, one day.

Roma (pt 1)

2005-10-06T11:54:00.000Z

naomi in rome
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

Well, today is my birthday (I think it's the first ever blog I've written on a birthday), and I thought I'd write about what I've done over the last week or so.

Last Thursday I woke up unusually early to get my things together and make my way to Liverpool Street to then take the Stanstead Express to the airport. Naomi was coming back via Rome (where Schola Cantorum had been asked to sing for the President of Italy), and we'd arranged that I'd meet her for a pre-birthday weekend in Rome, where neither of us had ever been before.

I arrived in the early evening, and owing to the security arrangements surrounding the presidential concert, I wasn't allowed to attend. Instead, I waited for Naomi until she'd finished the concert at a little fountain in the square next to the convent where the choir had been staying. I was engrossed in the Lonely Planet guide to Rome, when I heard an excited pitter-patter of feet across the stones of the square. I'll never forget the grin on her face as we hugged and kissed. Three weeks is a long time apart.

That evening, the choir had been invited to a rather swish dinner (cocktail dressed et al) and scruffy here wasn't allowed to go to that either, so I faced the prospect of eating dinner at a restaurant alone, something that has filled me with dread for as long as I can remember. By way of context, I've often looked at businessmen or women when I've been at restaurants with friends or family and thought that that situation of solitude is an unnecessarily miserable one, and have frequently found myself quite close to inviting lone strangers to join with us to eat together. So, gathering my courage, I went off to find a restaurant.

I found that old trick of eating a lot of food and drinking a 1 litre glass of beer to help me while away the time (you know what I'm talking about - eating and drinking at an accellerated pace when you're in a place where you don't know anyone, because you don't know anyone. It's the non-smoker's approach to trying not to look awkward by means of keeping your hands busy. Generally I'm not very successful here). I also continued to read the guide book. I was in an outdoor veranda area, and the weather changed from being balmy late-summer to rainy autumn in a matter of seconds. As the rain bucketed down, it transpired that there was a leak in the roof near me, causing rain to cascade down onto the seat on the other side of my table for 2. I felt like I'd stepped into Woody Allen's world. The next thing to make me chuckle was the appearance of no fewer than 4 umbrella salesman within minutes of the start of the rain.

Shortly afterwards, I met up with Naomi and the rest of the choir for their end-of-tour awards ceremony. This was held at the impressive flat of a local guy, not far from where we were staying. Naomi was one of two people presenting the awards, and the whole thing was as funny as it could be for someone who wasn't aware of the inevitable tour in-jokes.

The next day we left mid-morning and made our way on the Roman Metro to the Vatican, where we bumped into another couple from the choir (Paul and Helen) at lunchtime. We spent quite a lot of time going through the Vatican Museums, which contained some amazing Early Modern maps of Italy, dating back to when Italy was just a 'geographical expression', as well as all sorts of wonderful sculptures and lots of trompe l'oiel frescoes. The crowds in the Sistine Chapel were enormous, and despite signs demanding silence and no flash photography, the Vatican Police had their work cut out to keep order.

We had some lunch at a little touristy restaurant(served by a brusque waiter) and then the four of us climbed the dome of St Peter's (and Naomi managed it despite her fear of heights). I counted each step as we ascended, and by my reckoning it was around 535 steps up to the top, but well worth it for the amazing views available over Rome, and into the basilica itself. Paul had a really good digital camera and took lots of great photos of the basilica, using specialist lenses to capture the way the afternoon sunlight flooded into the white and gold of the building. As the afternoon drew to a close, we went to a good - if over-priced - cafe for some ice cream.

That evening we found a great little restaurant where I had veal and Naomi had steak, after really good pasta and risotto starters. There was also an hilarious guy banging away at the piano, doing all sorts of pastiches and generally providing great entertainment. The waiters were brilliant, and at the end of the meal we were given shots of complimentary grappa. The boss of the restaurant, who seemed to run quite a tight ship, had also made various wax work busts that adorned the walls, including one of Pope John Paul II and one of a deceased head waiter from the restaurant. There was also a rather large elk head behind our table. None of these things seemed tacky. It was a really great restaurant. So great, in fact, that we would return the following night for more of the same.

Candle burning at both ends

2005-10-05T09:07:00.000Z

Sorry for neglecting the blog a bit over the last couple of weeks. I've been really very busy, but have been having a really great time. The week that I last wrote saw two Action and Action gigs - the first with a number of bands (the best of which was The Olympus Mons, who were like a 3-piece Bloc Party. Actually I've just found that they wrote something nice about us here!) - the second with the truly exceptional Meet Me in St Louis in Kingston. MMISL were easily in the top 5 bands we've ever played with and I have to say I'm really looking forward to playing more gigs with them. They were tremendous guys, quite apart from being a spectacular (and incredibly intelligent) band.

In between those two gigs, I went to see Jake's current band, Popular Workshop, on the Wednesday. Those guys have only been together for a short while, but they're getting better every time I see them, sounding more and more like an eccentric take on Shellac and McLusky. Really good stuff. Then, on the Friday, I went to High Wycombe for one of Eddie's gigs, which was an amazing night, as ever. I got to see and hear a variety of wonderful punk rock, including Circus Act who I've been wanting to see for ages. I had rather a lot to drink, then passed out on Eddie's couch, while people carried out with discussions into the night in the same room, English and American accents invading my dream state.

(have I included enough musical links to show you what I'm enjoying at the mo?)

The next morning, Naomi called me at about 8 O'Clock. It was 4 O'Clock in the morning for her, in Argentina, and she'd completely forgotten that it was Saturday morning for me - so I wouldn't necessarily be up - but it was lovely to speak to her all the same. God knows what that phone bill will amount to!

After that, I left Eddie's and made my way back to London. I then proceeded to spend the rest of the day tearing apart my room in order to locate the wedding invitation that Richard and Philippa had originally sent to Naomi, who had then put it in my bag. I'm not good with paper work, you see. I managed to find it half way through the afternoon, just in time to put on a suit, tube down to Liverpool St, then take the train out to Colchester for the 5pm wedding reception. True to form, I arrived at 6. Dinner was good, and it was a fun evening all round, plus it was great to see Richard and Philippa so happy, and all of their extended families enjoying the occasion. They had a huge marquee in the extensive gardens of Richard's parents' house, and to cope with the numbers of people they had hired fairly large portaloos (which played back amusing panpipe versions of Queen songs - I discovered this on my accidental visit to what turned out to be the ladies' toilet). Doug and Chris (Richard's brothers) did an amazing iMovie montage of Richard misbehaving drunkenly from childhood onwards, culminating in an inebriated video apology to whoever his future parents-in-law would be). It was very very funny, as was James Bendell's speech, which included some immortal lines at Richard's expense. Richard's own speech was also funny, mainly because he kept losing his place, and was understandably nervous.

Of course, my highlight of the evening came when the disco started, because everyone knows how much I look forward to dancing... Richard and Philippa got into their taxi at the end of the night to get to their hotel before flying to the US for their honeymoon. I crashed in the hotel room of one of Richard's mates, and woke up to then get the train to St Michael's on Sunday morning. A very hectic week, but a great one.

Weekend in the Wirral

2005-09-21T19:15:00.000Z

Last weekend involved a trip to the North-West of our fine isle for the stag weekend of a mate of mine, Richard, who is marrying Philippa this coming weekend. Philippa and I were friends at school and she and Naomi are good friends from Oxford, and Naomi and Richard had been friends for a year before either me or Philippa had come up to Oxford, so I've always appreciated how well we get on as a group. Anyway, that's the preamble of how I know the bride and groom-to-be.

I arrived quite late on the Friday evening. I was supposed to be working a half-day at work, but a computer problem kept me there for a few hours extra while I sorted things out. Then I came home to pack some clothes from the weekend, and David was in the house, so I stopped and had a cup of tea with him. I eventually made it down to Euston some time shortly after 7 o'clock and irritatingly had to wait for an hour or so because I'd missed the train I'd been hoping to catch (I can't count how often I've done this!). Once on the train, staffed by authentic scousers - you have to love that attention to detail on Virgin trains - I tried to while away my time on a selection of games on my Gameboy Advance, listening to some Bloc Party on the trusty iPod. All was not serene, however. A couple sitting on the opposite side of the carriage were having a barely-contained argument, with the scouse woman being unbelievably venemous in her treatment of her Irish boyfriend. I don't know what he'd done to deserve it, but she was really dishing it out, in that threatening whisper that some people seem to do so well. Meanwhile, a pair of teenage girls sitting behind them chatted and laughed loudly, oblivious to the rancour ahead of them.

Another couple sitting ahead of me also broke into an argument shortly before we reached Crewe. From what I could gather, the young man had mentioned to his girlfriend that he was thinking of having something done (I'm guessing it was a tattoo or a piercing of some sort) and then later in the same journey had actually revealed that he'd had it done already. Thankfully I didn't have to listen to too much of their argument before they alighted.

We reached Liverpool around 11pm, and I jumped on the Liverpool equivalent of the Underground, going out to West Kirby where Richard's relatives own a house we would be staying in. I arrived to a scene of poker, copious spirits and mostly-uneaten containers of chinese food. I don't actually know how to play poker, so I just watched each player get wiped out by the formidable force of Richard and the other two Dixon brothers. The evening then progressed to drinking games, and I did my usual trick of passing out through a mixture of drinks and exhaustion.

The next day we went paintballing. As well as our group of 8, there were another couple of stag parties and a contingent of about 20 pot-smoking scousers there for a 21st birthday party. The paintballing itself was a blast, but made more difficult by the fact that the scousers kept removing their masks, each time threatening to hasten a 'Biker Grove' incident. And there was very little authority to prevent this, the games being marshalled by teenagers. One of Richard's mates, Alan, got so hacked-off with this situation that he refused to play any more, and returned to the cafe in a bit of a huff. The paintballing games were fun, and quite varied. The final one was one where the stags and their best men had to run from the remainder of the participants who were trying to hunt them down. With no easy way of identifying each other, this melee ended up with me being mistaken for a stag/best man and shot repeatedly. Those pellets really hurt a surprising amount!

That night we went into Liverpool itself, for a meal, and then later on to a club. I don't feel there's any need to detail the evening fully, but suffice it to say that Richard emerged at the end of the night with some scars. These were added to when, after returning to the 'flattic' we were staying in, Richard insisted on going over to Hilbre island, staying there on his own in the middle of the night, and nearly triggering some sort of coast guard alert. He also fell over in some rock pools, hurt his back and broke his phone. A good night was had by all.

I took charge of an enormous fry-up operation the next morning, myself eating two full English breakfasts rounded off by kippers. As we nursed hangovers from the previous night, wolfing down congealed food was about all we seemed to have energy for that day!

Foreign lands

2005-09-15T23:26:00.000Z

Incidentally, Naomi went on a choir tour to Argentina this week (Tuesday). It's not a pleasant feeling knowing that a loved-one is on another continent, and that we can't have our usual daily phone call to say goodnight. This is going to be the case for the best part of three weeks, which I'm sure will get me down!

Anyway, I promised Naomi that I'd keep a decent, regular diary of blogging going for the rest of this month, so she can check up on me from time to time when she encounters a cyber cafe.

Naomi, if you're reading this, I hope you're safe, and I love you.

My banning list

2005-09-15T22:57:00.000Z

Donning my Victor Meldrew beret, I'd thought I'd write that I've been thinking for some time about a list of things I'd like to ban. I will probably update this list as other things occur to me.

- Outdoor patio gas heaters: How on earth can it be possible for these things to exist in this age of environmental awareness and concern about climate change? You're pointing a gas fire straight up into the sky and burning fuel for the sake of it. People in the UK are going to have to realise that you can't expect to sit outside for most of the year because our climate doesn't permit it. Wasting precious fuel on a heater that's for the most part ineffective is, frankly, sickening and disasterous.

- Heat magazine and the like: horrible, horrible, horrible. I can't actually believe that this kind of celeb-obsessed literature sells. Week in week out it's the same tawdry tale of infidelity and weight loss. A developed society can well do without this rubbish.

- Personalised numberplates: an ugly form of self-aggrandisement for the nouveau riche. Personalised numberplates say to me that the owner has money to waste and wants you to know it. I'm not sure if I can think of a better example of why conspicuous consumption is crass.

- Microsoft Windows: when did the computing experience become about trying to fight for control of your computer? A computer should be an appliance device like any other, but Windows is so poorly-written that it's like an old lady walking through a bad part of town in the dark. You know it's going to end in a mugging. Not so with Mac OS.

OK. Rant over (til next time) :-D

Escape velocity

2005-09-08T15:32:00.000Z

I had a meeting that went really very badly this morning. I'm not willing to let this happen again, and it's endemic in what I do professionally. I think this is going to be the spur i need to make me escape my inertia.

Myspace

2005-08-29T22:14:00.000Z

Well, not content with having an online presence through this blog, I've finally succumbed to having one on Myspace as well. If you've never come across this übersite, it's a place where you can create an entry for yourself and then state who your friends and acquaintances are in a virtual way, like.

Sounds useless, and I guess it is, largely, but it's useful if you're a band and you want to let people know what you're doing or when you're playing, and also useful for sharing pictures and getting in touch with friends of friends who you wouldn't necessarily have an email address for (through an extended network).

So, if you're so inclined, and don't feel like devoting the time required for a full-on blog, why not sign up for this.

If you're a bit wary like my mate Ian, you'll probably want to know that all of Myspace has recently been bought out by the evil Rupert Murdoch.... You have been warned.

Something worth fighting against

2005-08-26T19:10:00.000Z

I've been angry about software patents for some time now, since I heard about VideoLan Client being threatened with removal due to supposedly transgressing software patents. VLC is an incredibly useful little application that plays a lot of media types that Quicktime, for instance, can't open. I suggest you read a little bit about why software patents are basically a completely spurious way of getting rich based on someone else's work, and these patents ultimately stifle innovation in small IT companies.

So, today I read about this idiot Mr Keung and his patent. What the guy has done there is to try and patent the idea of putting in a password to access something remotely that you've paid for. This nonsense has got to stop.

If you're so inclined, write to your MEP. I haven't done it yet, but I'm pretty sure I will at some point, because this is something of gravity for anyone who makes regular use of computers.

While I'm thinking of democracy, I think I'll also put up a link to www.faxyourmp.com, an awesome service that allows you to contact your MP directly in a speedy way, for free. Pretty cool, I'd say.

Meter In the Red

2005-08-25T18:22:00.000Z

I've been really quite highly-strung for the past week or two, since I found out that I had a pretty crazy amount of work to do before I could leave London to go home to Cardiff for a week (and a short family holiday to be had in that time, hopefully). I've also been battling what I suspect is a bit of tonsilitis, just because I actually have to be here in order to get through the workload. I've been resigned to losing this weekend for some while now - I guess the measure of it will be to see when I can actually get home to Cardiff.

I'm sure my next post will be more positive, and with less of a lag!

Pavel

2005-08-05T13:10:00.000Z

Regular blog readers will notice that a mysterious person call Pav occasionally posts a comment on my blog. Well, as of today, I know Mr Pavel Jiracek's web address, so those of you with a decent grasp of German can read Pav's site. Pavel is a mate of mine from University, who we saw in Oxford the weekend before last.

Leicester Square, Tonight

2005-08-03T13:10:00.000Z

Leicester Square, Tonight
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

Tonight my band is playing undoubtedly the biggest venue we've played to-date.

I'm actually not as nervous as I have been in the past, before a big gig, but I really do hope it goes well!

Cheers in advance to anyone who's coming to see us, and to everyone else who can't be there who's wished us well.

You're so needy

2005-08-01T15:56:00.000Z

You're so needy
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

Pedantic, I know, but I found the wording of this form at Turning Point drugs charity to be quite funny. Okay, you might need mental health, but why would you possibly need a learning disability?!

Things I will do over the next 23 days

2005-07-28T13:45:00.000Z

I am worried about my finances.

I have credit cards with mounting debts on them. I have two bank accounts with substantial overdrafts on them, and I am going to stuggle to make sure I have enough money in my overdraft for rent at the end of this month. The rent situation is always exacerbated by my pay day being the 20th of each month, and rent day being the 18th, meaning it's when I have least money in the month.

To this end, I am implementing various resolutions. These will be things I will be sure to achieve over the next 23 days in order to get closer to a situation of financial stability. By writing them here, I'll feel more publically accountable to actually get these things done, and I'm going to keep a record of how things progress on the blog.

1)Eat cheaply - in general, I'm going to set a limit of £2 per meal and see what can be achieved by eating at home, rather than takeaway.

2)No drinking until payday. Everyone knows how much I like drinking, but I'm going to keep this one properly for the next 23 days. It'll also be good for my health, so a double-winner there. Not drinking will help me...

3)Stay to an upper limit of £10 per day, and spend less than that if I can.

4)Sell some things on eBay. In particular, I have some Gamecube bongo drums that I don't want. I'll get rid of a few other items I have cluttering up my room also.

5)Participate in free, or already-paid-for leisure activities. The gym membership is stupidly expensive, so I'm going to start making good use of it. I also have a very good selection of Gamecube and Mac games that I should play more.

6)This one will remain a secret until I've actually done something about it.

However much overdraft money I have left on the 20th will be used to start paying off my credit card.

Here goes nothing.

Salesmen

2005-07-28T11:10:00.000Z

Anyone who's ever held a job where they've needed to sell something in a competitive way will probably enjoy reading this. It was enormously resonant for me, taking me back to my illustrious 13 months at PC World in 1998.

Mr Benn

2005-07-27T15:49:00.000Z

Mr Benn
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

Most kids brought up in the UK in the late 70s and early 80s have an almost unnatural nostalgia for the television that we grew up on. There aren't many of us who don't have those 'oh, do you remember ...' conversations with friends quite regularly. In fact, it's a good, if unoriginal, starting point for conversation with most people I've met. I've always said, and do to this very day, that much of my early education came from television. I used to wake up at 6 pretty much ever morning, as a child (God, certainly not as an adult!), to run downstairs and watch the captivating box.

Mr Benn has endured for me as a character I enjoyed watching, and probably still would to this day. I actually gave Naomi a book of Mr Benn stories as a gift once, such was my love of this cartoon's beautifully-faded animation. Today I stumbled across this site which is sure to please any serious fan.

They don't make TV like that anymore (sniff)

Nothing to see here

2005-07-27T13:50:00.000Z

Nothing to see here
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

Sometime next year or the year after, there will be a non-event called Windows Vista. Others are yawning with me.

This Isn't London

2005-07-22T13:52:00.000Z

This Isn't London is one of the best blogs I've found recently. Enjoy.

This is happening, right now

2005-07-21T14:24:00.000Z

Road outside Oval tube
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

As I write this, we're all sitting in our office reloading this Guardian unlimited page to find out if a bomb has gone off at Oval tube station, a couple of hundred yards away.

Needless to say, there's panic on the streets outside.

Anthony Worrall Thompson was actually standing outside our building as it all kicked off and I munched on my calzone. Just a bit of detail for you (!)

Andrew and Amber

2005-07-20T09:46:00.000Z

Last weekend Naomi and I visited my friend Oz in Frankfurt. It was a wonderful few days, and we had a fair bit of fun in and around 'Mainhatten'. Naomi took quite a few photos, including one of me standing in front of a giant statue to the Euro (that one will probably appear on my blog on the day they prize my beloved sterling from my hands). We also went to various nice places to eat and I discovered an awesome drink called a Fireman's Sour. Oz was hilarious as ever (I know he'll appreciate me writing this). A top weekend in all.

When I returned home to Muswell Hill, there was some great news waiting for me in my Inbox. My good friend Andrew got together with the lovely Amber while Jack and I were in Florida last January. Well, now they're getting married, on 31 December, which is the anniversary of them becoming an item. I'm really happy for them, and we're already making plans to be there for the wedding, this Christmas. Here's to Andrew and Amber.

A week ago

2005-07-11T14:33:00.000Z

Last Thursday, as you probably know, was not a good day.

I woke up quite late, and was banking on the bus and the tube getting me to work, which was probably going to be a bit late, as I left home just before 9. My bus took its usual route along past Highgate Woods, to Highgate Tube (which is where I now catch my transport, since moving to Muswell Hill). Normally, as you reach Highgate Tube, most people get off the bus, but a message was passed, chinese-whispers-style, up the stairs, saying that there was no Underground service. Everybody assumed this meant that there was a problem with the northern line, so we returned to our seats, slightly disgruntled at the prospect of trying to get into central London whilst facing road traffic. The man sitting next to me, with his strange combination of greasy black hair in a ponytail and cricket jumper, seemed particularly pissed-off. At that stage I called work to tell them I'd be late.

Slowly making our way down towards Archway, the windows steamed up, and then we reached Holloway Road. I had the bright idea of trying to use the tube from Holloway Road station, near where my friends Richard and Philippa live, so hopped off the bus. I nipped into a little Greek cafe and grabbed myself a bacon roll and a cappucino, and then crossed the road to the Holloway Road station entrance. There were staff at the gates, telling people there'd been a security alert, so the Underground had completely shut down. Thinking only of the inconvenience of this, I crossed back and tried to board another bus. No joy - there were too many people waiting for the buses, and most of them were packed full of people who'd normally be using the tube. In fact, a lot were driving straight past the stops, with the drivers unwilling to take more people on board. Eventually, a bus stopped and as I was about to board it, Dominic called me. I asked if I could call him back once I'd boarded the bus, and ended the call. I called him back, from the crammed-full bottom deck of the bus and he told me there'd been explosions at Edgware Road and Aldgate. People on the bus were discussing what might have happened, and I told them what my brother had just told me. I wasn't sure at this stage if this was all some sort of exaggeration on either Dominic's part, or that perhaps the news reporters had their facts wrong.

The bus took everyone as far as Highbury Corner, where we were all ordered off, without an explanation. The driver kept tapping the top of his microphone instead of offering the reasons for the sudden stopping of service. A florist's stand at Highbury Corner seemed to have become a point of focus for people's attention, and I wondered over to see what all the fuss was about. The florist had a small CD radio hanging off a hook, and it was tuned to a London radio station. About twenty or thirty of us stood listening to the news as it was breaking. At that stage the press were being told that 'power surges' had caused the underground to be closed, but the reporter said that they'd been told by a senior member of London Underground staff that there may be a terrorist element to the events.

Realising that there were now few buses and no tubes, I called work and told them I wouldn't be able to get there, so I'd work from home instead. It did seem as though things were going a bit crazy, so I started my long walk home. About half way up Holloway Road I went into a big Cash Converters-style pawn shop to watch their TVs, and quite a few other people had had the same idea. It was there that the full horror of the terrorist bombings unfolded, and news was just breaking that a bomb had gone off on a bus. It was a numbing thing to watch. There was a feeling of being part of something completely unstable, while the physics were ever-shifting.

I stayed at the pawn shop for about 10 minutes, then started moving again, walking home a couple of miles further, up through unfamiliar suburban avenues. All of this time, I kept wondering if things were going to escalate. Maybe the tube attacks were the vanguard of a September 11th-style 'plane attack? Whichever the case, I didn't want to be in central-ish London for a second longer than necessary.

I'd already texted Naomi to let her know I was okay, and kept trying to call my Dad so that he could tell the rest of the family I was okay, but the Vodaphone service was working only very intermittently (it later transpired that they'd blocked it for the sake of emergency services, and probably to prevent telephone bomb detonation as well). Eventually I got through to one of my Grandmas, who thankfully hadn't had the TV on before I called, so didn't know about everything before we spoke. Various other friends and relatives kindly called or texted me to ask if everything was okay, including a text that pleasingly read "are you still alive?" from one of my bandmates! Oz even rang me from Germany, which was kind of him.

When I finally reached Muswell Hill (where I now live - I realise I haven't mentioned this in the blog before!), I queued up at Woolworths to buy myself a landline phone, seeing as the mobile was pretty unreliable, and I knew I might need to call people. When I arrived home, David was there, and his dog, Campbell, came bounding up to the door (David practises keyboard instruments at the house where I now live, during office hours). We sat at the table in the kitchen, grimly listening to Radio 4 as the death toll continued to rise during the day.

An awful lot has probably been written about the 7th July in blogs. A lot of people will be thinking that they easily could have been victims of this unspeakably cowardly act that now, it seems, was perpetrated by men as young as 18. For me, the most apparent feeling of the day was probably not how easily I could have been a victim (I don't think you can really transplant your feelings to that unless you are the victim), but how the bonds that tie society together are actually quite weak. Rather than the resilient strength that newscasters have expounded, it actually seemed to me like everything was falling apart remarkably easily. If there is to be a 'next time' for militant Islamo-fascists attacking Londoners, we may not be able to return to our lives with quite the same ease. If there is something more positive to be said, it's that London shouldn't be attacked again for a while, if we can go on the experience of Madrid and New York.

The lure of the dark

2005-07-05T15:45:00.000Z

DSCF0043
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

Okay, so in this blog post I'm not going to go into how I was fascinated with the gothic Batman universe for a good portion of my teens, but I imagine that it's the same part of my mind that finds subterranean tunnels and catacombs interesting.

Last week, I had the opportunity to go down into the Paris catacombs during some free time whilst on a work trip. By the Paris catacombs, I mean the graveyard part of the Gallic subterranean, not the 'hidden' part where all sorts of cultists meet, as the Grauniad reported last year (though going there really would be amazing). The ossiary in the catacombs literally has walls made of bones, and it was a pretty remarkable thing to see the skeletal remains of six million people. The skull in my image actually bears my initials, which was an added bonus (no pun intended).

I'm also fascinated by the disused Underground stations in London. Apparently trains still go through quite a few of these, without stopping. While it's geeky, I have to say that I think this is a really cool and interesting site.

No to ID cards

2005-06-20T10:58:00.000Z

I think I'm going to sign up to this and I would recommend that you consider it too.

Ring ring, ring ring

2005-06-14T15:28:00.000Z

At some point in modern times, the volume of mobile phones being purchased meant that the manufacturers had to start providing a way of differentiating one phone from the next, so that people wouldn't get confused as to which phone nearby was actually ringing. This led to the development of ever more intricate ringtones, then ringtone composers on some phones (that fad seems to have faded), then this led eventually polyphonic ringtones and 'real sound' ringtones.

That development led to two things, in my experience.

Firstly, non-musicians have started using the word 'polyphonic', having little idea as to its meaning, other than that it vaguely sounds 'better'.

Secondly, every time a certain someone in my office receives a phonecall, you hear a bizarre Caribbean swingbeat version of Bach's 'Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring'.

As Jeff Goldblum's put it in his most badly-delivered line: “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they never stopped to think whether they should”.

Doss Jobs (part 2)

2005-06-13T11:41:00.000Z

I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw that they're offering £24 - £27,000 of Heritage Lottery funds to pay for an audience development officer for the Bat Conservation Trust. Among other things, this person will be "developing and piloting new survey schemes targeted at volunteers from underrepresented groups". I'm reading this to mean that people from minority ethnic backgrounds aren't getting as much bat volunteering action as the rest of us.

If you need an excuse to stop wasting your money on lottery tickets and scratchcards, this is surely it.

And in the future, we'll get the internet

2005-06-10T16:08:00.000Z

When dial-up internet access became popular, back in the late 90s (you know, when it was all about whether you could make any service other than Compuserve or AOL actually work), I used to hear people saying "yeah, I've got the internet at home".

Being a literal object, I would imagine their houses as these huge server facilities full of massive hard disks so that they could contain all of the internet.

Wash your veg

2005-06-09T14:39:00.000Z

I was just discussing with a workmate, as we ate unwashed tomatoes, that washing vegetables is pretty important, and removes a surprising amount of pesticides.

Washing also helps to avoid illnesses. See this interesting site

Laugh or cry. I don't know which

2005-06-09T14:01:00.000Z

There's a strange feeling that you have when you listen to the radio in the morning, as you wake up. You're overhearing information that enters into your consciousness by the back door, and then when you hear the item of news again later, you feel a sense of deja vu. I experience this pretty much daily, since I use my radio alarm clock to wake me up. It's tuned to XFM, so a fair amount of their morning content is quite strange, veering between items for pure humour value (and I do find Christian O'Connell very funny, even if other people don't) and real news.

There are those occasions where there's a news item that's so absurd that you think it could only be an April fool, or that maybe in your half-sleep you completely misunderstood the idea being reported.

Today has yielded just such a gem, with the news that car drivers in the UK will be expected to pay-per-mile that they travel, tracked by satellite. It's as if I went to sleep in a less-than-pleasant modern society last night, then woke up today in some kind of socialist enviro-nightmare. Don't get me wrong, I would say that certain parts of my psyche lean in a socialist direction (the super-rich should be taxed a lot harder than they are to relieve the burden on everyone else - I'm thinking footballers especially). And I also have sympathy with environmental causes, because we all know that something has to be done about global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer, etc.

But pay-per-mile is insanely obtrusive. Can you imagine not only the level of individual liberty that would have to be sacrificed with the implementation of this technology, but also the cost of implementing it?

It's like the story about Prince Charles becoming Countryside Tsar from the front page of the Guardian on April 1st this year. At the time, I read that article and, being in a bout of 'flu, assumed that I was hallucinating. As I continued reading, it became clear that it was a joke.

I've now read the story about pay-per-mile several times, and the hallucinations aren't wearing off.

Doss jobs

2005-05-25T09:05:00.000Z

I was talking to a workmate yesterday about the really bizarre careers that some people make for themselves. Specifically, those women who model for the covers of crossword and puzzle books that they sell in newsagents. Imagine growing old and telling your Grandchildren that when you were a pretty young thing, you used to be a model, a crossword model.

It makes me think of the Queen's Of The Stone Age song called 'I was a teenage hand model', surely one of the greatest song titles. Now there is a great job. If I stop biting my nails, maybe one day I could make it as a hand model! But alas, all of this is a pipedream.

Beauty

2005-05-20T09:25:00.000Z

I think that the song 'Your hand in mine' by explosions in the sky is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard, and I don't even know why it took me so long to get into this band.

Look them up, and if you use the iTunes Music Store, you can hear excerpts or buy their first album there.

Tony Blair: The Wilderness Years

2005-05-18T11:09:00.000Z

A satire written by Ian Duncan Smith. Naturally.

The people who send you spam

2005-05-18T09:51:00.000Z

I thought I ought to post this up on my blog at some point. It's the response that an 'Anonymous Coward' posted on Slashdot in relation to a story about a millionaire spammer. I've chuckled at this little bit of writing several times over the past couple of years, and wish I could credit the Anonymous Coward properly.

We know where this one lives. Let's go kill him.

Of course, this is a joke. Surely there isn't a single person who reads Slashdot who has been so annoyed by spam that they would go so far as to kill him and burn down his house. Nope. Nobody like that. Even if that person would almost certainly be able to escape punishment if even a tiny amount of forethought were used in the attempt. After all, Virginia police couldn't even catch a homeless muslim sniper after multiple shootings; what are the odds they'll catch some geek who is actually paying attention to not leave any evidence behind?

Of course, this really is a joke. And everyone reading it should take it as a joke. Except for that one very special person. Yes, you my friend. You know what you must do...

Overused words of the English language

2005-05-17T15:35:00.000Z

urban: this means 'of the city'. It does not mean hip-hop and it is not a by-word for cool.

eclectic: this essentially means 'of varied sources'. It does not mean outlandish or unusual, and it is not a by-word for cool.

contemporary: this means 'current'. It does not mean futuristic, and it is not a by-word for cool kitchens.

The Holy iPod

2005-05-17T14:38:00.000Z

The Holy iPod
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

I think catholic insider has to be one of the most unusual websites I've ever seen, so I decided to flag it up here. Seriously, it's unintentionally funny and earnest in equal measure. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it before.

It's actually pretty cool for there to be a young cleric who actually understands technology doing something like this.

Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike

2005-05-16T11:55:00.000Z

Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

It's been a strange weekend. In between lengthy recording sessions with the Holst Singers, I've spent the past weekend being stuck on a particularly difficult level of Rebel Strike on my Gamecube, but I'm determined to beat it.

Oh yeah, to any Gamecube owners out there, I would recommend the Logic3 Gamecube controller which Blockbuster video is selling for £4.99 at the moment. Beats paying £25 for the official one.

Has it come to this?

2005-05-12T09:02:00.000Z

Earlier today went over the Delicatessen Piacenza across the road from where I work, and picked up a fresh lasagne which I heated up for lunch. It was pretty damn excellent.

As we crossed the road, I saw a van driving towards us with 'CrackOUT' emblazoned on its side. The subheading said that it was a service to remove sex or drug related rubbish with a telephone number to call.

I've been asking myself what level of decline our society has reached where there's the need for a special separate organisation just to deal with the scale of this problem.

The General Election: The Burning Issue (final)

2005-05-05T15:32:00.000Z

Who Wants to Be a Homeowner
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

New Labour will be voted in for a third term later today.

I saw an interesting programme on Channel 4 the other day that included excerpts from some sort of youth parliament. The one issue that brought together all of those present from all points on the political spectrum was the problem our generation faces attempting to get on the property ladder. I, for one, do not want to be stuck making the rentier class forever richer whilst treading water myself. By the time I'm a pensioner, I'll need a house to sell pay for my retirement anyway, and believe me I'm anxious enough about this already.

Yet MPs aren't really interested in debating this problem. The C4 programme contended that, since voter turnout among the young isn't high, or reliable in terms of party allegiance, it's not a sufficiently hot issue to occupy centre stage. A reduction of stamp duty to a level well below the average house doesn't wash either, and we all know it.

Right now, the only way I can see that I might ever be able to afford a house would be to win a gameshow or the lottery, or something. We all know that pinning your hopes on those odds is futile. But people with nice houses in nice areas hold something worth half a million or more thanks to the enormous inflation that's occurred in property.

When you think about it, the gap between the WWTBA Millionaire winner and the owner of a home has never been closer.

Deliberating in the pub (part 2)

2005-05-05T11:09:00.000Z

The other thing that happened in the pub yesterday was that I went into the gents' and a man standing at a urinal announced in a strong Welsh accent: "I love a good piss, I do".

Out of friendliness, and to gloss over the fact that I hadn't had enough to drink to be discussing urine with a stranger, I asked him where abouts in Wales he was from. He replied that he was from Swansea. Tentatively I said, "Oh I'm from Cardiff".

He spat at the floor.

"You Jack bastard" I called after him, descending to his level. I remember from my days at PC World that this is the best insult for Swansea people.

This little exchange was relatively good-natured but underlines a sad truth.

A while ago I wrote about my belief that nationalism within the British Isles is a nonsense, and I still find it detestable, be it Scots, English or Welsh nationalism. But it's easy to forget that people seem to hate those closest to them geographically, and it makes little sense. It's a classic form of definition in antagonism to 'otherness' so loved by cultural anthropologists. I guess people must construct some kind of ranking system in their heads along the lines of:

Being from Swansea > Being from Cardiff > Being from Scotland > Being from England.

Dumb, isn't it.

Deliberating in the pub (part 1)

2005-05-05T10:19:00.000Z

I went for a quick drink before choir rehearsal yesterday with one of my workmates. I'd bought the first drinks, but when he went up to the bar to get the next ones, he insisted on getting clean glasses. I don't understand this at all, and I've seen a lot of people do it. If you're drinking the same drink several times, why on earth would you want to have a new glass?

1) You're increasing the chances that you get a glass with germs in it that might make you ill (the obsessive/compulsive argument).

2) You're causing more glasses to be washed, therefore adding to the amount of water wasted (the environmental argument)

3) You're causing more glasses to be washed, therefore tying up staff time and electricity in the process (the economic efficiency argument).

This is why the pitcher system in America makes sense. You don't find them asking for a new glass each time they have a drink.

I think this is simple choice actually exemplifies the doublethink that goes on among young people in the UK, including my peers. The very same people who talk about ending world poverty, increasing social justice etc. are so often the same people who see no wrong in being wasteful (and this is a major sin of our generation - the 'new glass syndrome' is this in microcosm) or spending vast amounts of money on hedonistic entertainment. It's deeply hypocritical to wear some dumb plastic wristband while you consume with the best of 'em.

Language, Timothy

2005-04-29T14:41:00.000Z

Having just popped over to the shop across the road from where I work (known as the Crap Shop™, the official name, in use to this day, credited to the esteemed Giles Witcomb), I heard some people standing round, speaking about McDonalds. On the one hand, I can't imagine talking about McDonalds for as long as they seemed to be. Maybe they'd watched Supersize Me which was on TV recently. On the other, I noticed that a flame-haired woman kept saying Mackdonalds really loudly, with the stress on the Mack. And then I realised that I'm a snob.

Mayday

2005-04-29T14:07:00.000Z

oxfordmagdalentower1
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

This weekend I'm going to Oxford (my favourite place in Britain) for the May Day celebrations, to catch up with both of my younger brothers, and to attend Naomi's concert at the Sheldonian Theatre. I'll hopefully be catching some bands tonight, as well.

I can't wait to get to Oxford. Without wishing to be nostalgic, I really love the city and all of the good friends of mine who are still there, and a big part of me misses the place. I think it's where I'd like to end up, eventually, and would be a good place to bring up children.

Lightning

2005-04-27T14:56:00.000Z

image003017
Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

BAM! Some crazy-ass lightning just went off with a huge thunderclap. All of my workmates jumped. I ran over to unplug my iBook from the mains, to be on the safeside. Don't want this little feller getting fried.