Archives

Thank you part 2

Thank you to the whole of the ICU ward including Nicole, Sarah and Shelly who looked after me while I was in ICU (say my parents because I was obviously sleeping) They explained to my parents exactly what was going on and with such compassion plus they sympathize with there position unlike nurses later on the stroke ward. I was out of it but you made a dent in my parents memory that they remember you all. But I would be wrong to just rule out all the nurses on the stroke ward, there were some good apples mixed in with the bad ones. Ginger was great, there was also a bunch of male nurses which were excellent and ever so witty. I will never forget the male nurse who ran half way to somewhere to get my pills for the last night. He was totally out of breath by the time he returned. Oh and how could I forget the dinner ladies, good fun and always got a hi from them.

Thanks to everyone who wrote to me on Facebook, you all know how much I hate facebook but these were worthy of a mention and a thanks.

Claire Phillips (sorry for the scare, hope it didn’t ruin your holiday in vegas), Waheed Rehman (we need to go to a real imax soon, no better place that manchester), Matt Pass (sorry for not being in touch, my parents moved from Fishponds to whirl near weston), Tim Cowlishaw, Jennifer O’Grady (I don’t think I’ll be going for a drink anytime soon sorry), Louise Ferguson, Frank Wales, Imran Ali (Not quite marked all as read and delete but almost), Tasha Fear (thanks!), Gia Milinovich, the mythical dot (good to hear from you), Marissa Mulvena (newcastle will have to wait sorry), Tim Cowlishaw, Anders Lewis, Vikki Leaney, Ivan Pope, Kate Norman, Tom Leitch, Sarah Khan-Wuttka (you have two children now?), deena denaro-bickerstaffe, eileen jones, sheila farrell, ryan alexander, Ashley Angail,, Tim dobson (again), dave crossland, deborah cawkwell, Joanna Rodriguez, Herb Kim, and Stephanie Kit Kat Lease, Maz Hardey (yes theres more that lost but lost was extremely good TV, better that the average american stuff), Roberto Beto, Ann Michael,
Of course I forgot to look at my private twitter messages, so thanks to @Fidothe, @leeky, @imran (didn’t know you did a shout out to me at ignite, thanks! would have preferred to have been there), @kidhelios, @mike_lott, @vickyjo (thanks for the hugs) @sheiliaellen (again and thanks for visiting me). Those on Identica also get a mention too. @rajmarshall, @methoddan.
Thanks to everyone who sent me a card incluing Amy, Claire,  Paul & Ann, Birch and Suzie (all the way from the states) Paul Chessbrough and the telegraph dev team, Chris Tasha and family, Antie Melrose, Antie Kathleen, Uncle danny, Cousin Patrick. My old Neighbours in Lodge Causeway, Kellie Hancock, Waheed, Most of Worldservice new media, Suw and Kevin, Herm B + Tom (thanks for the magazine), the rest of World service new new media, Interaction 05 (the last class I taught before leaving Ravensbourne), everyone at Clearleft, dave crossland with the biggest card of them all, Jo and family, david marks (thanks for the pages), Bryan and Michaela (not seen you guys in ages hope your well), Rain, Beryl + Lockley + debbie + tony + amanda + lewis, Social media cafe manchester, deslyn and mike. Suw & Kevin,  Waheed, Kelly hancock, my old neighbours from lodge causeway, Antie Melrose + Patrick + Uncle danny + antie Kathleen, Paul + Ann Ross’s parents, Birch + Suzie (all the way from america believe it or not), Chris + Tasha, + family, Waheed
And I came home today to find even more cards that my parents kept for me because it would have caused a problem having so many cards at the hospital.
Carl (germany), Sarah + Steve, lucy briges, Emily, Anty Halline + family, melrose + patick,, megan + billy (home made card from the kids awwwww), bert + joen, harry + tiffany (thanks for the snippits of news, really helped in ICU), Adam + Helen, dj adams (@qmacro), Rachael Neagle + Neil, Oli (@cdddimate) (nice to hear you bashing out some trance), Marissa + @herbkim, rachel, Samantha, the project north team at work, tim + funmi + andre, + Otis (Otis? Really another little one?). Andrew + Kerry from geekup, Glyn + Sheila from London, BBC r&d, Nicky Smyth + Sal (work mates), Adia & Amari (cousin), Ross + Carley + Megan + Billy (how many more times shall I thank them).
Most of the people I know at BBC Manchester including derek, andras, Toni, Bruce, Binh, Kev, Nik, Paul, Matt, Andy, Leanne, Alice, Angus, Tony, Minesy, Heather, Paul (and more), Alphonsa, Andras.  Laura, Jon Paul and Geeks of the world! (can’t work out who this one came from but its a touching end to the long list).
Told you my memory isn’t so great, I almost forgot the caring bridge site,  which my ex-wife sarah helped setup with help from my sister and mother (the mystery blogger, wasn’t she good?)
Trish Veale (Hanrahan), Rachael Neagle, Mike Lott (Singapore), Kellie Thatcher, Mo McRoberts, Pauline Randall, carl rauth (germany), Maz Hardey, Funmi Alexander (how many kids do you have now), Antie Millicent (thank the lord, Jamaica), Waheed Rehman, Samantha Chadwick (nice story about thick and easy), Bruce Weir (lost was good and you know it), Vanessa Westwood, Rachael Neagle (facebook still sucks), Jason Legget, Glen Ford, Steve J, Sheila Thomson (thanks for visiting me again), Jay Caines-Gooby (a what plot?), John Dodds, Bahi P (yep I really put my personally in those posts), Lucas Gramajo (Toronto), Trish Veale (Hanrahan), Deena DeNaro-Bickerstaffe, Carley & Ross (again), Stephen Knights (6k gosh really!), Kellie Thatcher, Herb Kim, Andy Goodwin, Brian Butterworth, Dave Brooks, Kat Pattison (still hope to make that box), Melinda & Cristiano (my newsreader certainly kept me busy for a while), Hayley Showering, Sarah blow & Steve, Rick Curran, Ben Metcalfe, Sarah Wuttke (baby zac?), Peter Mills, Deena DeNaro-Bickerstaffe, Peter Schübel, Chilon Forrester (new york), Cristiano & Melinda, Dan Lynch, vanessa westwood, Sandra Haines (antie), Kellie Thatcher, Brendan Quinn, Nigel Crawley, Mark Tanner, Vikki Leaney (you got married), Simon Alexander, Justin Souter, Lisa Connolly (would you have come to manchester?), Dave Brooks (New Haven, CT, USA), Lola White (Jamaica),  Melrose forrester (antie), Harry Lo (Pepsi is better, Hong Kong SAR China), Dan Oliver (.net magazine), Jack Murray (enjoyed media 2020), Sabina Bhugun, Rachael Neagle (more cryptic status to come), Dave Mee, Chi-chi Ekweozor, Nisha Ray, richard Tank (sorry to hear about your dad), carl rauth (Switzerland), Hemmy Cho, Ross Michael, Ant Miller, Philip Trippenbach, Matt Locke, Bruce Weir, Rowan de Pomerai (the iphone put me in hospital), Marc Price, Sarah Blow, Samantha Chadwick, Julian Tait, Pukul Rana, Rachael Turner, Pauline Randall, Delia Stearnes, Bahi P, Herb Kim, Thelma Jones (racine, USA, sarahs mum), Jon Jacob, Farooq Ansari, David Marks, Harold Cattron, and Sheila Farrell.
If I missed you in either thank you’s, I’m very sorry I only checked a few places and couldn’t put down all the text messages, emails and voicemails I got over the last few weeks. The cards were slightly special because the nurses and my parents was able to read them out to me when I was sleeping.
I want everyone to know this is a very serious condition but I’m doing alright now. I do have memory lost which is really ignoying but I honestly its not that bad (only forget the rarest things like ex-girlfriends names – whoops!). It could have been a hell of a lot worst.
People have been asking me could it happen again? No honestly it can’t. Why do I know? It was all down to the amount of work and the fact that I have High Blood Pressure but never did anything about it. Hence the bleed in the brain which was the brain releasing some pressure. However this manfest its self with a bleed on the brain which is deeply worrying. So as I said I could have been a veggie with a ventilator for company but I got away lightly with some memory lost and a slightly weak body. The body will get stronger and my brain will fill in the things I can’t remember. Generally I think I got away with murder. People still can’t believe the time to recovery from waking up to being ready to leave (about a week or so) I was in hospital for about 3 weeks before that. A very short period of time going by what the nurses was saying to my parents.
So I’m one of the lucky ones and I know it. Thanks to everyone and I really mean it… I might not have been here if it wasn’t for the great thinking of a few people and the contuning support of people around me like the ones mentioned above and in part 1.
People always ask me what I remember, so here’s what I remember
The only thing I really remember about that time was waking up on Saturday when the cleaner was banging on the door trying to get in on Saturday morning to clean the flat. I woke up and thought Tim will wake up and let her in because I got a headache and couldn’t be frankly be bothered to get up and let her in. That was the last thing I remember, I don’t remember anything else till I woke up in hospital with my parents and sister standing over me. My mums voice willing me to open my eyes. I don’t remember going for a meal or anything like what happened in my bathroom let alone my bedroom. I don’t remember going for a meal or eating hob nobs or anything, the whole time from the UK elections to a week ago is blank. I’m surprised the iphone 4 came out today, before this all happened gizmodo just landed a scoop of the year finding a iphone4 in a bar
Thank you to you all…from the very bottom of my heart….

Mix transfer from elsewhere, great but…

Upload mix

Lets mix has launched a new way to upload a mix. Enter a url of a Mp3 and it will grab it and upload it for you. This should be a standard feature on a lot of social sites. The next step would be upload a RSS feed and it would strip any links to mp3s.

What I don’t get is Let’s Mix generally, is it use to be based around the Pacemaker and now the pacemaker seems to have been forgotten. For example when you upload your mix, it gives you the option of where you made the mix. So you got all the usual options like live, virtualdj, pcdj, etc but no pacemaker option.

Let’s mix is a weird place right now, I can’t work out if there trying to replace Soundcloud.com or do something different. They had better sort it out before I have a uploaded library on both.

Selling old Rave stuff

Dreamscape 1 flyer

Over the Easter weekend I have been cleaning out all the old crap I own and found not only my vinyl collection (mainly hardcore/rave and happy hardcore) but also my magazine collection. I have a load of the home computer course magazines and early T3’s but more interestingly I have Eternity which is not the monthly conservative Christian magazine according to Wikipedia. Nope its the controversial underground dance magazine and I seem to have issue 4 onwards till the last one. Currently Fantazia.org.uk are selling them at between 9.99 and 14.99 a issue which is a markup of at least 500 percent, and they seem interested in buying more. Which is good, because I could shift my lot and it will go back into the hands of someone who will enjoy them.

I also have a ton of Rave flyers in a briefcase (heaven knows why). I was able to remember the combination even after so many years and so now have access to about 250+ flyers. Once again Fantazia seem to want to buy them, but I also noticed Fantazia don’t just sell them, they can put them on Canvas and ship it to you if you like. So I’ve been thinking it would be great to get some of the really good flyers up such as the Obsession fish flyer. Like the magazines, I’d be happy to help out on any project which puts all the flyers online including Fantazia, raveflyers, its-all-about-flyers, phatmedia and hyperreal.

There is so much that happened during this short period of rave culture. The history of house music timeline is worth reading if your not aware of the differences and don’t know where house music came from. Its also quite interesting to super impose the timeline of house music on top of the history of rave timeline. There are some classic bits that even I remember reading or hearing about….

1988

At a time when football violence was escalating, rival fans dance together in an ecstasy induced euphoria thinking the world is going to change. – “…like angels from above, come down and spread their wings like doves…”

Paul Stone & Lu Vukovic start RiP. They provide a harder edged party. Located in a labyrinth like warehouse complex on Clink Street, near London Bridge, home centuries ago to Britain’s first prison. RiP sees Mr C (Later of the Shamen – who played their first experimental acid set at RiP) and Eddie Richards & Kid Batchelor play a harder more underground house (“as opposed to the pop songs at Shoom” – Mr C) to a very diverse crowd, from gangsters to people in shell suits.

In Manchester the Hacienda’s Hot & Nude nights kick start acid house in the North.
April – RiP (still at Clink) move to Fridays with their ‘A-Transmission’ nights and Sundays with ‘Zoo’.

April 11th – Paul Oakenfold opens Spectrum in London. A brave move, in that it is to be held at Heaven, near Trafalgar Square (at the time one of the biggest club venues in London). To make matters worse it is held on Monday nights. Even so after 3 weeks they had 1200 people in every week with just as many locked out. Spectrum quickly gains a musical reputation as anything goes. Paul Oakenfold even plunges the complete club into total darkness and played Tchaikovsky’s 1824 Overture on one occasion. They also hold a few nights at Legends in Manchester and one party in a marquee by the Thames.

1989

The location of these events was a closely guarded secret up until an hour or so before the start. Meeting points would be made available through flyers and pirate radio stations (Sunrise, Centre Force, Fantasy). Mobile phones were still widely regarded as Yuppy toys but thanks to BT’s messaging service they became an ideal way to co-ordinate people to different meeting points (Motorway service stations usually) and eventually the venue itself. It generally turned into a game of “follow the car in front” until you find a party. By keeping the venue secret like this they could get everyone on the move heading for the party or in the wrong direction if needed. The police have no option but to follow. So the end effect is that 1000’s of people can descend on one location in a matter of minutes. Once a party’s goes past a certain size there is, in reality very little the police can do.

June 24th – Sunrise’s Midsummer Nights Dream at White Waltham airstrip, Berkshire is attended by over 11000 people. The Sun newspaper runs the headline “Ecstacy Airport”. Other reports involve “youngsters so drugged up they ripped the heads of pigeons!” & “at the end of the night the floor was covered in empty ecstacy wrappers”, unsurprisingly , both are untrue, the empty wrappers are actually pieces of silver foil that fell from the ceiling – dead pigeons nowhere to be seen.

1990

10th August – “It’s a fad. It will be over in 3 months” claims Superintendent Mick Bromwich of the Coventry police.

Alex  paterson (later of the ORB) and Jimmy Cauty (KLF) take over DJing in the VIP room at Land of Oz (held at Heaven in London). They play a weird mix of film music and animal noises! Ambient music is born.

October 13th – The Legendary Eclipse opens at Lower Ford Street, Coventry. Britains first legal all night rave club. The club is packed all night every Friday & Saturday.

September 1st – Pirate radio station Kiss becomes Britain’s first legal dance radio station.

1991

January 30th – Hacienda closes after door staff are threatened with a gun. “We are sick of the violence” – Tony Wilson

New Years Eve – 12,000 at Fantazia at Westpoint Exhibition Centre ending with the now legendary Top Buzz set &  Raindance-Big Bad Head at Melton Mowbury.

1992

April 10th – ITV’s Hitman & Her program do a show from the Eclipse in Coventry. A classic TV moment see’s Michaela Stachen having to leave the club because “its too hot … they’ve all got eyes like saucers … “. – I have this somewhere!

June 27th – Amnesia House hold “The B
ook of Love” at Brayfield Stadium. After first announcing hit intention to get married at a rave on the BBC’s “The Time, The Place” back in 1989. Mickey Lynas (partner in Amnesia/Nemesis) gets his wish and marries with 15000 ravers as witness’ and Grooverider as the best man.

July 25th – Fantazia hold “One Step Beyond/Castle Donnington”. Licensed for 25000, the totally outdoor stage is made to look like a castle with a huge dragon in the middle of the crowd.

1993

April 30th – Universe do the first Tribal Gathering with 25,000 people at Warminster near Bath. Total chaos on the surrounding roads with a 15 mile traffic jam leading up to the site at about 9pm.

August 13th – Universe stage their Big Love event attracting 30000. With 2 totally outdoor stages set back to back, Heaven (House) & Earth (Hardcore). Probably the last totally outdoor event. Sound restriction problems cause the levels to be turned right down half way through the Prodigy’s set.

The Criminal Justice bill is put to parliament. With the new rave clause, defining a ‘Rave’ as 100 or more people dancing outdoors to music “mainly comprising of repetitive beats”. New powers for the police will include the right to detain anyone they believe is heading to an illegal rave and the right to confiscate sounds systems (like they hadn’t been doing this anyway)

Phone7, What the ipad needed

An ipad using the Windows phone 7 interface

One of the things I never quite understood about Apple’s idea of a massive ipod touch as a ipad, is the interface. Steve Jobs may point the finger at Adobe for being lazy with Flash, but to be honest the ipad interface isn’t exactly cleverly thought out or exciting in anyway. I have already said lovely things about Microsoft’s Phone 7 and even with all the other things it doesn’t do I’m still very impressed. So take the form factor of the ipad (although I prefer the 6 inch screen of my ebook reader) dump out all the Apple crap and load it up with Windows phone7 and you got something much more interesting and the dawn of slate computing. I’m not saying its a perfect match but if it was to happen, I’d much more likely to buy a ipad. Dell and HTC get on it….

Manchester’s Werewolf chapter is back this Wednesday

Manchester Werewolf poster

(amazing what you can do with inkscape in a 30mins)

February 3, 2010 7 – 11pm : Manchester Werewolf Chapter at Pure Space, 11-13 New Wakefield Street, Manchester

We’re looking to play once a month, there’s no need to register or understand the rules just turn up and play along.

Be part of the game, beginners to pros its all good fun. Werewolf is a game that takes place in a small village which is haunted by werewolves. Each player is secretly assigned a role – Werewolf, Villager, or Seer (a special Villager). There is also a Moderator player who controls the flow of the game. The game alternates between night and day phases. At night, the Werewolves secretly choose a Villager to kill. Also, the Seer (if still alive) asks whether another player is a Werewolf or not. During the day, the Villager who was killed is revealed and is out of the game. The remaining Villagers then vote on the player they suspect is a Werewolf. That player reveals his/her role and is out of the game. Werewolves win when there are an equal number of Villagers and Werewolves. Villagers win when they have killed all Werewolves. Werewolf is a social game that requires no equipment to play, and can accommodate almost any large group of players.

For more information about the game

Boxee + dropbox = P2P sharing of media

I called it a while ago I'm sure. It was obvious that with Boxee allowing you to see and share what you currently watching/listening to, the ability to actually share that media wouldn't be far off.

dropbox enables users to share files between computers in a super-easy way.

once you install dropbox it adds a folder to your PC/Mac that you can
share across your own computers or with friends (watch the video on
getdropbox.com it’s pretty straight forward).

it becomes really cool when you add your Dropbox folder as a source on boxee.

go to Settings->Media Sources choose to add a Local Source and select the Dropbox folder.

now whenever a friend is uploading new pictures/music/videos you can
see it immediately on your boxee. in case of Music or Video, boxee will
automatically scan it, and you’ll see the artwork appear in Recently
Added in the home screen of boxee.

Awesome, will try it out once I get home tonight. To tell the truth I've not been using Boxee much since XBMC Media Centre beta 1. I'm sure once it catches up with XBMC again, I'll use it more often again.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Boxee brings social extras to xbmc

Frankly xbox media centre better known as xbmc is the best media centre application I've ever seen and the most forward looking. Better still is its now moved from its xbox background to linux, mac and even windows platforms via the ability to compile the whole lot yourself under the GPL licence. So it almost comes as no suprise that some company has eyed up xbmc and decided to use it as the base for its own take on the media centre. Boxee is a funded team of about 10 people including a guy from Slingbox media.

Boxee is currently still in alpha and you have to be invited on the alpha to get it. I've looked over the blog and looking at the specifications for the linux version, you can certainly tell its xbmc underneath. I'm sure my replacement xbmc box will manage the alpha fine, so if you have a invite which you'd like to share with me that would be great.There's little about Boxee online but hopefully once I get an invite (wink wink nudge nudge), I'll be able to do some comparisons and post a load of screenshots (spoke to soon).

There's no douht xbmc is a powerful platform. Its great to see a open project branch out like this. Currently you have the main trunk which is somewhat controlled by the xbox media centre guys, then a osx only port by plex and now boxee. I look forward to seeing where others take it, but i'm sticking with the main trunk for now.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]