clear vision, anyone?

I know we've just been told the date for the budget as 24 March, but although there's election posters all over the place in central London now, there doesn't seem to have been a date declared.

Perhaps naively, I find this slightly insulting to the British electorate. Much of the normal business of Parliament has been turned into the theatre of pre-election sound bites and the two main parties seem mainly intent upon point scoring.

Brown eschewed the opportunity he originally had to be voted in as leader of his party, or to have an election about a year ago when there was a previous opportunity zone.

Now, instead of declaring his position on this publicly, he leaves us all guessing that it will be 6 May, aligned with the date that other local elections are due to take place. I believe there's theoretically a few weeks into the start of June which would still be available, but it would seem slightly odd to get everyone voting twice in a matter of weeks.

So now we are hearing of senior civil servant pay freezes and no doubt some candied words in the Budget, whilst Brown presides over a 12.8 percent of GDP borrowing level (just slightly higher than Greece and about double the rest of Europe).

We'll be hearing more 'weathering the storm' and 'bumps in the road' speeches over the next few days as well as the Conservatives promising to rescind whatever gets stated in the next Labour budget. On top of the sundry scandals, these points reinforce the purposelessness of the last days of the current Government.

This time, to add to the fun we appear to be getting the politician's partners being propelled into the limelight. Miriam, Samantha and Sarah are all being blended into the campaigning to support their husbands and no doubt to receive camera scrutiny of their own.

At least Brown's recent comments about the economy may be accurate: "There will be many months ahead of conflicting statistics, false hopes and mixed signals."

As long as all this doesn't start to affect Britain's credit ratings too.

collecting stamps and badges

Its quite difficult to keep up with all the daily new social software now vying for attention. I tend to route most things back to rashbre central as a sort of hub with the occasional link to other things of interest.

Like many, I'm also on twitter, flickr, last.fm, del.icio.us and have a myspace, facebook, friendfeed and similar. Of course, that particular set all seem relatively traditionalist nowadays.

Professionally I use LinkedIn and Plaxo and for fun I've contributed a few entries to Qype when it was starting up as well as adding things to Wikipedia over the years.

I've also gone through that process of unpicking some of the links that cross post between one system and another. I know that OpenId and microformats can make it simpler for these systems to divulge information to one another, seemingly at the click of a tick box. I'm not always sure I whether I really want everything linked to everything else.

There's been the well-reported issue with Facebook and more recently with Google Buzz, both of which seemed determined to become über-aggregators of content. Presumably in Web 3 selective disaggregation will become the new aggregation.

So when we were sitting together in the Brasserie a couple of days ago and the iPhones appeared to type in the latest foursquare rendesvous, I was thinking about the sparks from the electronic trail we are all being encouraged to leave.

Foursquare is another system that uses a community model with little badges as you contribute more things into its files. People become 'mayors' of localities and can be deposed when someone else earns more points.

Qype has a similar model (actually I've no idea who got there first). I can understand the point of getting everyone to create the underpinning reviews for the various venues featured, but I suppose there could be a difference between people filing genuine impressions compared with those simply collecting badges. I was on a site a few days ago and someone had managed to post 25 reviews in just over an hour, which seemed -er - suspect.

The social network issues continue too. Privacy, security, trust, reliability of information, expertise, vested interests, noise, clique filtering are some simple top of mind examples. I suppose most of us get an instinct for the area of the interweb we are browsing and the consequent likelihood of reliability or otherwise.

Caveat browser, I suppose.

Axis: Bold as Love

A few days ago I put up the short video of Jimi Hendrix playing 'Bleeding Heart' live at Glastonbury 2010 in some kind of parallel universe. It concludes with Michael Eavis in a Land Rover picking up the folk who'd wanted to say they'd played the Pyramid. Sony music decided it wasn't suitable for Youtube though and have removed it.

This replacement post is a Hendrix guitar lesson in the blues on a stage still littered with speaker systems stencilled with 'The Who'.

My original post related to the anniversary of Hendrix and I notice a new album of unreleased tracks has just been issued.

What I've found interesting is another different new release, which is the remaster of Axis:Bold as Love. There's a new 2010 version which has been freshened up from the two track(!) master tapes.

Alongside the great Hendrix material is a little DVD of Eddie Kramer, who engineered most of the Hendrix music. It's a great little 20 or so minutes as he talks through several of the tracks and plays around with the engineering, so that you can hear how the relatively simple 4 track mixing technology was used.

The video has him sitting at a mixing deck and as he plays with the controls you hear the differences in the sound. For someone like me who messes around with this technology for fun, it's fascinating to see a master at work.

Kramer has also been a photographer and his own site kramer archives has some great photos of various bands he worked with including Hendrix, Zeppelin, Zappa and many others.

And the same package also includes a couple of samples of Hendrix lyric writing, complete with the scribbles.

Quite a good way to spend ten quid.



Update: they unblocked the Glastonbury video too...

battersea sunshine

A walk through the park yesterday afternoon on the way the Mason's Arms, which is by Battersea Park train station and just across from the old Battersea Power Station.

There's an interesting mosaic of the power station in the pub and we all thought it was made of those little tiles, but actually its 380 Rubik Cubes stacked together.

I shall try not to think further about making art from Rubik's cubes although there is something faintly compelling about that particular idea.

After our pleasant late Sunday lunch, we headed back with the real power station as a backdrop almost as colourful as the cubed version in the afternoon's cold bright sunlight.

Look carefully at the picture and you'll be able to see the London Eye and Big Ben.

alice in wonderland

An evening visit to the Electric Cinema in Notting Hill for a spot of madness. As it said on the curtain before the film, "We're all mad here'.

Curiouser and curiouser, we thought as we clipped on the high tech 3D glasses to watch Alice and her friends in the Tim Burton sequel to the well-known Lewis Carroll stories.

As the opening titles rolled I was already thinking 'ooh I want to see this again' and sure enough after a slightly cumbersome alternative beginning, the White Rabbit pulled us all down the rabbit hole and eventually through the little door.

There was enough plotline similarity to keep a general sense of the original stories, although the chess boards and card games became somewhat blended.

The 3D was surprisingly good after a few minutes in the 'real world' scenes to become adjusted. Not quite the MuppetVision of Disneyworld but a produced in way that was generally additive to the experience.

There were various Tim Burton trademark moments in the script and staging, including a funny little moment where the Mad Hatter (Depp) snipped a very Edward Scissorhandian little dress for Alice.

I enjoyed the experience of the film. There were a few Disney overloads in it like the strange dance that the Hatter performed close to the end of the film and which I think could have been safely edited out. I hear that Burton only finished it a couple of weeks before the premiere and as we sat in a cab after the film, there were a few comments about 'the director's cut' implying there might be some unfinished business in the final edit.

I've always enjoyed the Alice stories and thought this movie played a warm and affectionate update.

casino royalties

I mentioned a few days ago that I'd received my first royalty cheque from the novel 'The Triangle'. I also decided that I'd spend part of it precipitately, in keeping with the original spirit of the 'novel writing in a month' experiment.

So today's the day I gamble part of the cash.

Actually I've already done a small test gamble and am already a little bit ahead, so now I'm hoping I haven't used all of the luck.

In between my experiments in 3D later today, the casino had better watch out.

6music radio comparisons

Before I get onto my gambling, I thought I'd drop an extra little post in today about the ongoing debate about radio station playlists. There's some interesting differences between the commercial channels with their circa 500 track playlists (very limited DJ autnomy) and the broader tastes available on some of the other channels.

Take Capital FM 226 unique tracks over the last 30 days. 12 tracks in common with 6music.
Or the more indie/rock XFM London with its 540 unique tracks over the same period including 226 with 6music.
Maybe a softer cored Heart with its 508 unique tracks and 22 in common with 6music.

And how many unique tracks did 6music play? 3,258. About 6 times as many. Of course you still need to like the music. I think the only one to compete on variety would be Radio 2, but their 2,392 unique tracks have a rather different audience profile.

"Those Charts In Full" as comparemyradio.com might say.

6music and CapitalFM

6music and XFM London

6music compared with Radio 2

eating porridge

I've been somewhat subdued today except when I was 'on stage' in meetings and had to do various tap-dances in time with the PowerPoint.

I've had a sort of headache and a couple of unexpected bouts of sneezes.

Throughout the day I avoided taking any medication.

Then, this evening, after the lengthy traffic jams of my homeward journey, I plinked a small bowl of instant porridge through the microwave as an experimental remedy.

It has worked surprisingly well and I feel a whole lot better.

muggy evening

Too many mugs of tea this evening; I've just counted three including the one I've just finished.

And I'm still thirsty.

I realise I've forgotten to eat anything as well.

Never mind. I'm also tired, so I think the sleep will beat the hunger.

But not the thirst.

springing the light fantastic

Somehow February has escaped without me really noticing.

There's a new light in the morning. I managed to get home in daylight a couple of times too.

There's little snowdrops showing off in the front garden. I can see signs of greenery re-appearing.

The blackbirds are showing new interest in the nearby bushes. Perhaps it was January's distraction with the snow, or maybe I was otherwise engaged, but this year the change into Spring is happening fast.

6Music

I usually like the BBC but am annoyed to see that the director general has decided to shut down 6Music. That's the relatively X-Factor free channel playing broad music that sets it apart from many of the regular commercial channels. rashbre central has certain eclectic music tastes and 6Music is one of them.

I decided to do some digging to see how much this digital channel costs to run, per annum and it seems to be around £6 to £9million, depending on whose version you read. In the scheme of things, that's a small amount for some originality and quality programming. As an example, Radio 5 costs £72m and Radio 4 is around £109m.

I also checked on the BBC Broadcasting House Refurbishment project which was originally planned to run to around £1billion. It has overrun by a currently projected £55million. Thats enough to pay for a few digital channels alone.

I can't help wondering whether the priorities are somehow becoming unbalanced?

Instead of promoting new format digital channels, we see them cost cut to offset bad project management.

I can't help wondering whether the BBC top brass was ever really behind the 6Music idea in any case? New music, independent artists, some not signed to labels, live recordings...whatever next? Maybe that's why it was a DAB and internet only channel instead of one that could also be listened to in the car. It would also make it easier to close if the audience figures were somewhat disappointing.

There's some story about boosting the playlists for Radio 2, but equally there's a discussion already running about keeping the Radio 2 demographic north of age 50 or something. It amounts to just running a time machine of safe old tunes from Radio 1 in the 1970s and 80s as a form of lazy programming.

If even Mark Thompson himself says there is a lot of 'great content' and 'some real talent' on 6Music, then it poses a serious point about where BBC is positioning its values.

On this occasion, a brief line to the BBC complaints department is in order, I notice it can be found at:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/
as well as at 03700 100 222.

There's also the BBC Trust to consider, which is to review the intended decision and which has its own email and member list.

I won't directly add the emails here in the interests of spam avoidance, but michael.lyons, richard.tait, jeremy.peat, mehmuda.mian, david.liddiment, janet.lewis-jones, rotha.johnston, patricia.hodgson, alison.hastings, anthony.fry, diane.coyle, chitra.bharucha as well as trust.enquiries and srconsultation all take an AT bbc.co.uk suffix as the publicly disclosed names of the members of the Trust. They would love to hear from people with views about BBC decisions.

Of course, there is more about all of this at the BBC consultations website for their strategy review

Whilst writing this, I notice that there's now a Facebook group and a new www.love6music.com website which are part of other folks' attempts to register a similar point.

If you are not already a listener, I'm told that iPlayer is the way to get your listening noticed, via http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/playlive/bbc_6music/

Stay tuned.

Five Days

I've just watched the first episode of the week long drama strip called "Five Days". There's some of the coincidences that this type of drama requires to create the storyline, but is does seem to have the potential to be good.

I enjoyed the three-parter "West Riding", which I think played out over three weeks, but with my own schedule I suspect I watched it over three days. Sometimes the compressed format can work well and in a story where you have to look at what is happening in the background of the shots that can be quite interesting.

I'm hoping the remaining parts stay with new action rather than become overly involved with retracing steps and flashback sequences. With something over a few nights it is easier to keep the story progressing because is should still be reasonably fresh in the memory. By contrast the little formulaic programs in four parts over an hour with breaks and then a recap at the start of each subsection drive me nuts.

In Five Days there are already several different story trails being set up beyond the obvious pair and it will be interesting to see how many develop, whether they throw in a few curves and how many of the plot-lines get knitted together.

I'll need to hit record on Sky though because I'm bound to miss at least one episode and then need to catch up.