New New Life 2.0

Who said I wasn't opinionated?

2010-10-24T17:22:00.000-07:00

Hello, welcome and greetings to all you people so wonderful enough to read this week’s offering of random babbling. As is almost the religious ritual I’m writing this exceedingly late in the day so I have a feeling this may take a while to jot down as I lose concentration here and there. I just thank the people in the far east for showing a very cunning Austrian business man how to make an excellent soft drink that keeps you up all night.

So what’s happened to me this week? Well not a great deal. The scuba didn’t happen as it was the annual curry-night, of which I hate spicy food, hence I didn’t go. The extent of my distaste for spicy food extends all the way down the scale to those spicy wedges that you’d find in the freezer. So anything REMOTELY hot is a no no for me. Also this week unfortunately, the volunteer work at the local youth club was once again called off. There were only two students (myself included) who’d be running the scheme till Christmas. However the other student dropped out at the last minute and I’m certainly not comfortable with taking on and being responsible for up to 30 kids. So that project is on hold till at least one other person is willing to join the scheme.

The only thing I’ve done this week not related to work was pop down to the jam night at the Student Union. Oh dear. I’d obviously forgotten how bad the SU is in Stafford. I swear if you not into WOW, dubstep, death-metal or just generally raping the insides of a PC ‘cause you got nothing better to do, you are quite simply screwed at this campus. I headed off to the SU with my trusty Roland Alpha Juno (ah she’s a beauty, can quite happily write an entire blog on my synths... but I won’t), only to find I’m basically redundant because I don’t fit into the group of shredding guitars and pounding drum kits. By the way, the louder you play doesn’t make you a better musician, you just suck more. In fairness, hats off to the poor guy running this venture because he actually has to be there ALL the time to mind the uni’s equipment. I’m just glad that I could afford a nice lie in and full-english breakfast to help my poor pounding head recover. Never again will I venture into Stafford’s Lounge bar out of lecture hours.

Alas the majority of my week has been ticking over, bumbling my way slowly, but methodically through various projects. Minus the film project as I’ve still yet to get hold of the films, hopefully to be rectified tomorrow. Actually talking about film, the lecture on Friday was quite...er...amusing in some weird way. The lecturers on film are now focusing on this new found medium called SOUND (*aghast from the crowd*) and MUSIC! (*swoon*). Our mini-task tomorrow is to arrange and edit a very old Russian silent film to the audio we created in our Friday lecture, all within 40 mins. Now that’s really good actually, as that’s good prep work for the real world when turn around times for some applications or projects are incredibly tight. However I haven’t said what the sounds we recorded were. In their infinitely clouded wisdom of artsy fartsy la la land they tryed and put on their own-brew symphony. The Brandenberg Concerto it was not, especially considering these people didn’t really play any instruments at all. I really wanted to wrench the poor screaming soprano saxophone from one of them, Kenny G she was not. Things then picked up when the recording shifted to us the students as we attempted to try an emulate a Gregorian choir. In fairness some of the audio wasn’t too bad and I can see where these audio clips could be salvaged and put into another project with success. However the film in which these sounds will be put to doesn’t fit at all. What audio we have sounds like something that should belong to a Stanely Kubrick film or material on the cutting room floor from THX 1138. Far from the emotionally charged scene of a respected elder family member passing away in rural Russia. Hmmm fail, but an interesting fail.

Brief update on the Ableton stuff, 4 out of the 6 songs are now on the computer in some form or another, though the focus this week has been trying to comprehensively organise all the relevant files ready to be compiled into Ableton possibly within a couple of weeks. The two remaining pieces yet to be inputted into the computer will take time as there is no MIDI files or chords at all anywhere on the net, It’s going to be a pain in the arse sorting these tracks out. The other pain is going to be trying to get hold of a wireless MIDI system for my keytar. The Pro Tools work is in suspension till I can get some recording done with other people, however the organisation is out of my control with that one. Lastly the mathematical stuff, there was a marked assessment this week, one of two in this semester. Thankfully I passed comfortably. In fairness this module is pretty easy once you get the maths and the practicals mucking around with the desks are a bit of a doss to be honest. My trick is augment reality when looking at a patchbay/mixing desk and logically think of things like a flow chart. So yer not much going on in my life at the moment.

However there has been some very big news this week. The Spending Review was unveiled. Ode to Joy (sarcasm). Not only am I a university student and young but my industry is a creative one. I’m in for one hell of a whipping and wallet raping. Actually no, if all goes to plan, I should be able to just get out of university BEFORE tuition fees go through the roof in 2012. It’s people like my little sister who I feel sorry for when it comes to university as they are going to be fucked over. I’m totally against tuition fees, it should purely be based on ability, nothing else. I’m not a socialist by a long shot, but everyone should be able to make their own way in life starting from a level playing field, not from one based on the size of your parent’s wallet. Hence I hate those middle-class knobs who take great pleasure from pushing the fact their little darlings went to private school. You know those sorts, don’t you? My hatred of these people is possibly amplified by the fact that I went to a High School that didn’t have a high reputation, everyone constantly put it down and turned their noses up at it. Well I take great, great pleasure basking in the fact that 70% of the time I ended up with better grades than them, yet I didn’t pay a single penny. Ha! Tangent aside, it basically means when I leave university there are going to be sod-all jobs in my sector even though arts/creative industries make up 8% of our economy (same as banking apparently). Don’t quote me on that, I briefly overheard that from a guest on Newsnight.

In all honesty that’s my only real gripe at the cuts, but I know that we need to cut and cut fast. It’s pure common sense to get rid of a loan as fast as possible to reduce interest, simple mathematics. Something the last government overlooked. This is the point where I totally loose any venire of socialism. Politicians have been very quick to bash the bankers, quite rightly so, but the UK is in such a vast amount of debt. That’s not the bankers that’s the reckless spending by New Labour over the last decade or so, the banking crisis exacerbated a problem that was already there. Think Germany in 1929 and I rest my case.

I also think that the cuts planned are NOT enough in some places, causing a knock on effect in other departments. It was a big mistake to ring fence the NHS as that was a rod for everyone’s back, it’s got an over bloated management and poor efficiency and it sucks up well over £130bn. Ouch! Something could’ve been quite easily been done here. The last other big thing that could be happily cut is universal benefits i.e. bus passes, free TV licence for plus 75. I’m sorry but I live off less than what pensioners get and I still had enough budget to have a TV license last year. Go figure. In short if it’s universal i.e. to everyone rich or poor, it’s not a necessary benefit. If it’s not necessary for a bit, cut it. I was glad to see that the pension age is being raised, equally proud that we don’t kick off like those pathetic French unions. Your striking because your to work till your 62! Don’t make me sick, it’s going to be 66 here soon. By the way you have easily twice as many national holidays, so shut up.

Oh the last thing that annoyed me was that somehow despite all these cuts to British workers and families, they somehow managed to find another few billion for over seas aid (another ring fenced dept.). That few billion, combined with slight cuts to the NHS and universal benefit could’ve been the deciding factor in definitively saving a few more jobs. Jobs linked to close family members.

I do seem to almost contradict myself on the whole spending issue, yes I fully understand and support why we are doing it. I just think in some areas there could’ve been some tweaks to be fairer to younger people and younger families. I’m a firm believer in education that’s fair and accessible to ALL, money needs to be saved to be invested here. From then on your on your own matey. For you see, it’s going to be less of us younger people supporting more and more older people, so we need a better education to pay for your retirement. Think of it as a very indirect investment for your future. In all honesty I can’t see myself getting a pension or retirement, it’ll be too costly for that, we’ll be back to a situation of working till we die. I actually welcome that because it’s the best way to keep oneself both mentally and physically stimulated for longer, the spin off is that I’ll still be providing something to society rather than being a burden.

I’ll wrap things up now before I get RSI from my 1900+ word saga this week with this little fact. This generation, 18 - 30 year olds are a damn sight worse off, and will be for some time worse off than our parents or grandparents. I’ve heard many a yarn of ‘back in my day...’ well that’s bollocks, it’s always been bollocks. It’s like Concorde, we had progress, now we recess. Check the link at the bottom of the page. It’s a fiscal study from about 10 years ago (but still kind of relevant) and on page 9 onwards there are some demo-graphs to prove my point. So the next anyone starts giving the ‘oh but back in my day...’ rhetoric, tell them to take the rose tinted specs off and shut up. Now I’m off to bed as I’m tired and cranky (suppose you can tell). Toodle doo

http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/2946/1/2946.pdf

Whales, brain-box cats, sexy computers.... whatever next?!

2010-10-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

Greetings reader, don’t want to sound grotesque in any way but I’m not feeling best at this very moment writing. I’m just kind of glad that I don’t live in Japanese waters. If I did I’ll most certainly be hunted because after gorging my way through another one of my mammoth lasagnes I feel a cross between Mr. Blobby and Moby Dick. Ugh! Should’ve followed the rule of not eating anything bigger than my head.

Well onwards, or rather backwards in perspective, on the past week. I think I share a universal relief for the Chilean miners and unquestioned admiration for their rescuers. ‘Tis nice for once to actually see a large scale ‘good news’ story as opposed to Sally the cat that outsmarted Carol Vorderman in a sudouku-off at the NEC. Unsurprisingly that didn’t happen, (I’d of paid good money to see that though) but you get my point that the only good news stories are pointless little ditties on local TV. Another good news story this week but nowhere nearly as well publicised was the completion of the drilling of the Gothernberg Tunnel in Switzerland. It now holds the record for the longest underground tunnel in the world at 58km, and like the Chilean miner’s story shows that humanity can achieve incredible feats. X Factor doesn’t count to being on of those feats. On the contrary, I think Furbies have got a damn-sight more talent (arguably more brain power) and career potential than the contestants on that sad, sad excuse of entertainment. I know that ITV has been sold to the Americans and good riddance, to be honest I’d let them have it for free and keep Cadbury’s thank you very much. I’ll settle with good old aunty beeb.

So my week, seemed like a speedy blur, in fact I can recall exactly what I was wearing last time I was doing this. Primark ‘lounge pants’ and a Ben Sherman dressing gown. Sad I remember that? Yup! Good news finally on the Film Tech module. We can now finally get access to the films we need to do our project instead of relying on the crap system on DVDs being passed around. Hallelujah! Bad news, can’t put them on my Seagate hard-drive. All because I primarily use it with my Mac, and so formats itself to OS X that in turn make the Windows XP machines we have Avid on become like Alzheimer patients. In short, incapable of determining any sort of memory spare on my HD. Not amused.

Last week I took delivery of a new iPod 4th gen, oooohhh my god it’s sexy. (Can you tell I’m a gear slut yet?) Now thankfully that wonderful physique can be kept pristine with my new protector case (now you can tell cant you...). Over the course of the last week I’ve been testing out it’s potential as productive tool, by taking down lecture notes on it with a bluetooth keyboard. The results, it’s great! Thus I can now take that in without risking my Mac when travelling under pedal power. One other FANTASTIC trick with the iPod our Live Performance group was introduced to, was it’s ability to transmit OSC data over a Wi-Fi network. How does this relate to music says the little voice in your head. Well OSC stands for Open Sound Control, a protocol of data that’s been invented within the last 6 years or so. Utilising a Wi-Fi network, with the network host being your computer (as opposed to a hub/router plugged in the wall), you can control parameters from your iPod. These parameters can be anything from software/hardware synthesisers to the structure of your song and other global settings. It’s just another way for techy freaks like myself to foam at the mouth and have sleepless nights conceiving of it’s possibilities.

The Live stuff is coming along nicely, though I think I’ve performed a form of Chinese torture upon myself by trying to backward engineer the songs of my set. Agh! It’s close to mind rape! Thankfully for those who are moderately concerned about my health, don’t worry I’m taking a break from it to regain some sanity. While I say that, I happen to be listening to Wouldn’t It Be Nice by the Beach Boys that happened to feature quite prominently in 50 First Dates, a film that deals with loosing your mind. I only know that because it happened to be the only thing worth watching on the box while devouring my lasagne. Coincidence is a funny thing. Tangent aside, I’m taking a break from that project for a little while as I’m waiting for a DVD containing some source material which should arrive next week from the States. Besides it’ll free up some time to get on with some other on-the-side recording projects and voluntary work. The voluntary work is at the local youth club getting kids involved in engaging with music in some way, it was supposed to start this week but hopefully should commence this week forthcoming. Again outside of university, the Ocean Diver course is starting for us rookies in the club, first lecture was this week and was simply outlining the structure and what you’ll get out of being a BSAC member. I think everyone, including the lecturer were relieved when 10pm came round as that meant pub time!

Right before I wrap this all up there’s a couple of last things. I learnt yesterday the importance of checking to make sure you have everything with you at all times. This is especially true with KEYS. Yesterday I decided to take a trip into town, only to realise after a while I’d forgotten my keys. OK so I didn’t use the car, can’t be that bad? Um... I need a key to unlock my bike chain. Crap. It dawned on me that I might of left them back in the garage, meaning I had to walk ALL the way back home. Thankfully the keys were there, then walk ALL the way back into town to get my bike. Sigh. Again not amused with myself.

Song of the week! Goes to.... Television Man by the Talking Heads.

Now as my very last point for this week. I never expected this blog to gain a global audience, however I have at least 3 or 4 overseas visitors, or so my stats says. So hi to the small group in the US. And I’m pretty sure I know who my Swedish follower is, so hi to you too. The other thing I didn’t expect this blog to do was get other people interested in blogging. A good friend of mine has recently messaged me saying she’d like to start a blog herself (and who's also become my first follower on here *smiles*). Yes it’s a good way of venting annoyance amongst other emotions in a productive, if in a self-indulgent fashion. However I’ll leave you with a quote from Andrew Marr about what he said about bloggers this week, “A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting.”

Ta ta.

Pick 'n Mix Week

2010-10-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

OK, this may sound a little strange but I’ve given myself a nice little challenge for this edition of New New Life 2.0. I am determined to complete this entire post within the space of one track that I’m at the moment listening to on Spotify (ah good a old free spotify, something many won’t get a chance to relish now ha!). Admittedly the track is quite long, the 22 minute version of Autobahn by Kraftwerk. I swoon in aural delight.

So this week, well it’s certainly been quite up and down. Lets get the moans and groans out of the way first... Parcel delivery companies I now officially disdain. Now understandably people knock Royal Mail, it’s expensive, sometimes slow and has been subject to a lot of undercover investigations by various TV programs such as Dispatches. At least they get the parcels to you!

A couple of companies of whom I shall not name have been a right pain. Both of the packages I was meant to receive were quite important in many ways, one being my now fully repaired audio interface. The company that was delivering that got told by the repair company to deliver back to my home address, not the parcel company’s fault and was corrected. But, I’ve used them before and they have a nasty tendency to delivery to the next door neighbour back in Suffolk, which is very frustrating when they then post on their tracking service “customer not present”. YES I WAS, just you CAN’T READ AN ADDRESS!

The other package company also told me that I was out, however this was after I had phoned up to see when my expected parcel was due. It was due the day before and there was going to be a wait in shipping it out again. Fine, but next time leave a calling card so I bloody well know that you came. The ironically amusing thing was then an email calling card arrived in my email box about an hour AFTER I’d phoned in the first place. Tut.

Enough about parcels now, you’d be pleased to know. Though the rant continues, again at film. If getting that ridiculous excuse for an assignment last Friday came the Monday tutorial session. There about 50 or so computers in this room, by the time the tutorial started there were over 110 students. Brilliant logistics there. And unsurprisingly there were grumbles going around. The solution is quite simple, have some of the people go to the later 3pm - 5pm tutorial. It would’ve been very easy for the lecturers to draw up two groups of about 50 students, with those who can’t do the later slot having the priority for the earlier one (like me). Simple no? Or is that too much work. Let me tell you it’s bloody hard work to try and follow what your trying to say when your computer happens to be one of the few that turns out doesn’t have the dongle to make the program work. Oh and as an almost as comical as sitting at a broken computer you then send around 5 separate DVDs to load on the computer that turned out to take up the whole two hours of the tutorial. An easier solution would’ve been to have 3 - 5 computers with the data already on board, then have group members with external hard-drives to collect the data and bring back to their stations. The whole tutorial was a complete farce and totally reinforced my analogy of film being like art lessons. Bah!

Well I’ve fail in my little goal for this blog, Autobahn just ended. Drat. So I’ve gone from aural bliss to a poxy advert with Robbie Williams plugging his greatest hits. Double drat. So now it’s Brian Eno’s Apollo album. So onwards and upwards to the positives of this week. The studio sessions learning about the new equipment was nice and easy to grasp, though the maths conversions for different desks by different manufactures is going to be a pain. The other logarithms that I’ve to look at are also fairly easy to understand now, and the calculations made SO much simpler after building an excel spreadsheet to calculate all the various units I could need. So one peak voltage readout can be converted to; peak-to-peak, rms, dBu and dBv read outs with just one click. Handy.

The other projects are coming along nicely, the Live stuff is now starting to come together as now I’ve finally got my audio interface back. All weekend slaving away to try break down classic into their individual riffs and structures. I have to say that my first attempts were crap, but now got a proper little system going. I’ve also discovered how incredibly useful the label feature in Mac OS X Finder is. It’s easy to get the ‘one’ riff that recorded nicely lost in a vast array of similarly named files, so that’s good. I haven’t stopped smiling since I linked my newly acquired Octapad (god I’m such a Roland gear slut) and started bashing out vocal samples of a song from my live set. Again you idea pirates ain’t going to know what that is until I perform at the end of the semester.

Outside of university, the scuba diving is coming along nicely and now working my way through my Ocean Diver course. Hopefully be able to do some open water dives by the time I hit 20. Sigh. I already hate the thought of birthdays... Um... I’m starting to run out of things to say, thing is that I’d be doing more things at the weekend but I’ve been so engrossed with starting to compile music material for later that I haven’t really left my room. Hmm... doesn’t sound good, but I’m doing something that’ll pay off later. Suppose that’s the thing about me, I don’t live in the present as such. I live for the future, sacrificing the now for the then, hopefully a successful and prosperous then. However I look into the past and see what I can learn from personal and other sources to help me achieve the future I want. Sounds bit like that phrase from ‘1984’, “he who controls the past controls the future...”. Admittedly that was used in a slightly different context, but you get my point. Basically that was a long way round to saying that I’m very driven. And due to my drive I’ve lost out on a perfectly fine and sunny weekend. Hey ho. I don’t care, I’ve got lots of goodies that I’ve ordered to play with and keep me occupied for a little while.

I’ll leave you now for this week with my first little weekly addition to this blog. Song of the week! Basically this accolade will go to the song that, once you’ve heard it stays with you for AGES. So the first Song of the week! title goes to Enola Gay by OMD.

There we are, right it’s bloody late for me so now I’m off to bed. Ta ta.

Bring on the work

2010-10-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I’m slowly getting to grips with this blog site. Going to be doing some extra customisation to it in the next couple of weeks if/when I can find time. Hopefully that’ll attract more people into reading this. With that out of the way I’ll start.
The first semester of my second year started this week (thank god!). A very bizarre reaction from a student when commenting on actual work, many of you may think. However for those reading this, you have not got the faintest idea of how long I’ve been itching to get plans into motion. One of the songs I want to perform live in my “Digital Performance Applications” module I’ve been wanting to do for the best part of two years. Just that I’d not encountered Ableton Live prior to looking into this module.
Live is a really powerful and in some ways a unique bit of software, by where a musician can control many different aspect of a piece of music to such a degree that he/she could compose an entirely new piece of music on the fly. Unlike trying to learn Logic last year, Live requires a completely different mindset to learn it because it’s a totally different way of controlling music. I’ve grown up with the likes of Cubase and Logic that are well respected professional DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations), and the manipulation of audio is always post-production. Though the whole concept behind Live is that all these processes to audio etc. are done... well...er, Live. So that’s what I’ve been doing all this weekend, consigning myself to my room with my head buried in a book or watching tutorials on Youtube to get a visual idea on what to do. Intensive. Oh and expensive too. I’ve sunk (quite a substantial) amount of summer earnings into buying yet more gear to control all the bits I’ve got already. Some not quite as obvious as they may seem, a dance mat being one. Don’t ask, it’ll all become apparent if I can get a couple of people to film my performance and show the people back home what I’ve been dreaming of for the last 6 months. OOooh I’m so hyped about it!!
That particular project I know is going to soak up most of my free time, however I’ve got other projects to knuckle on down with. One of which is revisiting the mind sapping mathematics behind recording music that I had to look into last year. It’s intriguing, then again so is staring at a sodding huge crack in the floor of the Tate Modern and wondering if that’s subsidence, or just another shit excuse of art. Well I do learn something from this but it seems rather overkill, even I with a computing kind of mind can’t find a real-world application for it. It almost seems like electrical physics, for the sake of electrical physics. Suppose the spin off from this particular module, drawing up plans for a DIY studio for £18k is going to be a nice little venture.
My last music based module is going to be learning to grasp the juggernaut of the DAW world, Pro Tools. If trying to learn one application wasn’t hard enough already. And from what I’ve seen and played with so far, I don’t like it. It feels clunky to work with, it seems like there are so many long-winded work arounds that other applications have one button or shortcut for. Though once again it’s good to know the ins and outs of it, as many studios have Pro Tools installations. Apart from the cumbersome way to get stuff done in the program (allied to a woeful MIDI support - so controlling my outboard synths are an almost no-go) there’s one massive reason why I object to Pro Tools. For some bastardised reason the guys at Avid behind Pro Tools this have decided that only their own manufactured soundcards and other peripherals are the only hardware that is going to work with their precious creation. WHAT THE HELL! Let me put this into context it’s like Sony turning round one day and saying “from now on, Sony Playstation 3s will only work with Sony Plasma TVs”, so basically screwing over the consumers that want that product. Come on Avid, even Apple one day woke up and saw that integration for all was the way forward.
This brings me on neatly to my last module of this semester, my one and only Film Tech module. Here I’ll be learning how to edit on Avid’s own professional, and again renowned editing software for film. I’ve yet to look at the program itself, but what irks me already over this particular assignment is what we’ve been tasked to do. The objective is to create a 30 second trailer for a film. Seems simple enough I’m sure. However the big twist is that the trailer has to be concocted from five totally separate films with the goal of trying to integrate the different clips seamlessly. OK I can cope with that. But wait there’s more! The five films are of completely different genres;
The Harder they Come - 1972 film starring the singer Jimmy Cliff, plot focuses on racial oppression and the criminal ring associated with marijuana production
Hot Fuzz - 2007, legendary comedy with Simon Pegg as a copper in a rural English village
Rear Window - 1954 Hitchcock film with typical Hitchcock suspense, paranoia, murder combined with a slightly creepy leniency towards spying on neighbours in a voyeuristic fashion... OK.
Sleuth - 1972 film with Michael Caine, couldn’t quite grasp the plot on wikipedia. There is some murder game in which some guy gets shot but doesn’t and comes back to play another murder game on the guy that supposedly shot him, but he shoots the other guy again only to find out that the murder game wasn’t a game at all... confused? So am I.
Quills - 2000, a periodical costume film set in France post-revolution (a bad start for any film in my opinion). Something about this guy banged up in an asylum that from what I can work out writes literotica and gets it to a publisher via Kate Winslet. Kate has some sex somewhere in there, winds up dead in the washing basket where she works, only to be found by her blind mother. The porn guy gets his tongue cut out, as his health deteriorates he dreams of having sex with Kate’s corpse and resorts to using faeces as a form of ink... and I stopped reading the synopsis there.
So a very random selection of film that I’ve got to sit painfully through and whittle down to 30 secs. Many having the weirdest story-lines I have ever come across. Making even The Clockwork Orange seem like a fairly nominal plot that you’ll be forgiven for thinking was tomorrow’s Eastenders episode. WHAT SADISTIC PRICK CAME UP WITH THIS MODULE! And I’m not finished yet on my rant about film.
Coming full circle on my Avid blast earlier, I’m going to now take aim at the people in the film industry. OK in music we are a fairly laid back kind of crowd that really don’t care what tools you use so long as you use them well. Indeed most of the time not what the tools were intended for. However in the brown-nosed world of film buffs, it does matter what you use. Oh we were well informed of how people where considered inferior and a joke because they had honed their craft on Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro, as opposed the halo topped Avid program. This is just abysmal if this is how that industry works, how on earth does it intend on producing content for an ever increasing media hungry world if they shut the door on prospective employees based on what they have and haven’t worked with. In all honesty most of the skills required for editing can be universally applied to all software and OS platforms.
The more I look at film, the more I hate it. It reminds me so much of why I hated art lessons at school. It’s vague and wooly, there seems to be almost no logic applied to anything despite a vast plethora of ‘rules’ which can be freely broken. This is why musicians are so much better, we are tolerant class of artists who use anything to make our work, with a degree of science and theory behind our actions. Music isn’t subjective art, it’s a subjective science. With that I’ll now happily dive into my up and coming mathematics lectures with gusto and a smile on my face.

A Return to the Sausage-fest

2010-09-27T03:59:00.000-07:00

Greetings! Welcome to “New New Life 2.0”, to some this may seem like a downgrade in terms of blogging innovation as opposed to ‘vlogging’. To be honest though, the amount of effort taken to actually make a 10min video about random crap in one’s life, only to get lost in the vast plethora of online boredom that is Youtube was too much for what it was worth. Besides I’m sure many were put off when they unwittingly opened up the video only to see my acne-riddled self appear before them (sigh). The other upside of actually conveying myself to the world via writing as opposed to a mug-shot video, is that it’s a damn sight easier for me to correct sentences and change things around. My mind is always toying with new ideas constantly, so this feature is always a boon.

First off for those who did watch the videos first time round and followed my bumbled gabbling on the interweb, I would like to apologise for the sudden cut off in transmission early on in the second semester. There was a lot of shit that was going down that was upsetting me and that was all that I wanted to talk to the world about. Though if I did, then the situation would’ve got a lot more... difficult (to say the least). I’m not going to repeat what happened, as I’m sure many of the people following this publication are friends and relatives and you probably know the story. Thankfully I’m in much better surroundings and the fact that I’m more comfortable about conveying tetchy situations tactfully via writing, means that a sudden cut in communications shouldn't happen again.

At the moment of writing this I’m currently procrastinating, most of the stuff from ‘Freshers Week’ has ended and I’m stewing over ideas for up-and-coming projects in this next semester. But this stewing led me down a rather nostalgic and poignant trip last night. I came across one of my first videos I ever done when I got my Mac 18 months ago. It was a mime of Baz Lurhman’s “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” - some of you may remember me doing this. However watching it now and listening to the lyrics it seemed to strike me more than they did when I last listened to it all that time ago. Since then I’ve experienced a lot more of life, both good and bad. Here’s a quick list of some of the things said that really hit home:

“Don’t worry about the future... the real troubles in your life, are out to be things that never crossed your worried mind...” - this is oh so true. Heck I never expected what happened to me last academic year, in that situation you have to be cool-headed. Panicking will get you nowhere fast.

“Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours...” - The effect of both giver and receiver is the same... it hurts BIG time. It’s like all you want to do is go lock yourself away in your room and seep slowly and painfully into oblivion, like someone trying to pour treacle down a plug hole. Communication is the key folks, because without it people get lost as to what’s going on very quickly. The blunter and more straight forward the better. The trouble is that it’s worse for me as I never understand the implications of my (or that of other peoples’) words/actions until a lot later, only then does the guilt or heart-ache set in. I can’t grovel enough for some of the things I’ve said/done to the people I loved and regret them whole-heartily on an emotional level. However in the vast smelting pot that is life’s experiences, the lessons that can be taken from these soul destroying feelings are invaluable. It puts you on a path to make yourself a better and wiser person, while letting time hopefully heal the wounds.

“Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life...” - a wonderful example of this happened to me this summer. This time last year if you came up to me and said ‘have you ever considered work in education?’ I’d have thought you were on day release from the mental asylum. Though doing some voluntary work with the education dept. of a wonderful musical establishment, opened my eyes to whole new route as to where I could steer my life towards. Perhaps not mainstream schooling, but something with music at it’s core, as it was great fun getting kids interested in something that is so vast and fascinating like music/audio production. Though I’m still digging my heals in about having kids of my own!

“Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on to. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, whereas the older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young...” - I am determined this year to make new and more friends than I did last year, because that’s what I lacked when the proverbial shit hit the fan. Hence I’ve joined up to one society of like minded people already and seriously considering another (just humming and harring over costs). The other thing I’m going to do is try to stay in contact with more of my friends and family from back home. One thing I failed to do last year was appreciate how much those people mean to me, spending time away and then back again with both people at work, friends from school and family has changed that. So I’ll be randomly messaging people over the course of my time here in Stafford. Here is pre-empted apology for those who are going to find it a random bolt from the blue.

So that brings me to the here and now, all I can say is that I’m raring to get stuck into this year, there are some really cool things I’d like to try and do. However I won’t be going into detail about these too much as I want to protect against myself from my newly invented terminology - ‘idea pirates’. I really wanted to start compiling material together, however some vital equipment went boom shortly after I got to Stafford (typical). So I’m a bit lost without it. But not nearly half as lost being without the internet for a week. How anyone survives without is a complete mystery to me!

I proclaim that the digital revolution has come and gone and now we reside in a world of digital feudalism, as we worship the world of the almighty 1’s and 0’s in the glow of our laptop screens... OK perhaps a bit too far but certainly I’ll make a valid point, in that my ability to do anything that I’d normally do has been severely hindered this week by the lack of a net connection where I live. Thank god it’s only been ONE week!

I’ll leave you now with my quote of the week from a comedian that I saw during freshers who actually studied for four years at Stafford before failing. “Four years studying at Staffordshire University left me with an incredibly muscly right arm, and a completely withered left one... Bet they never put that in the brochures when you signed up freshers.” I can totally understand... why he failed...