Pete Ashton’s Blog

Tax rebate came though. I’ve just ordered a Nikon D70s camera. Eek.

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Anyone want to buy a Fuji Finepix S7000? One careful owner?

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Still working for Nat, currently painting the fence green though there’s more digging to follow. I’m thinking of moving into their shed if I can rig up an ethernet cable.

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Shaved my head, which involved sitting in front of a mirror with my shirt off (not something I do very often), and discovered I have muscle tone, specifically around the upper torso and shoulders. Was somewhat taken aback by this. Combined with my working-man’s-tan I believe I might possibly be “buff”. Whodathunkit?

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No I’m not going to post a photo.

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Meg moved to WordPress (and broke her RSS feed in the process) mainly for the ease of using the Themes system and not having to worry about template coding and CSS so she can just get on with the content part of the CMS. Part of me agrees (there’s a new version of MT out and I’ve got no real inclination to download it let alone upgrade) but part of me is screaming “DIY! DIY!” That latter part might have to grow up, I dunno. I still have a dislike for off the shelf templates but despite growing tired of the current look for this site I really can’t face another redesign from scratch. Maybe I should just go plain text and be damned.

Hmm… That’s not a bad idea…

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The Wire is a superior TV series that I urge you to seek out.

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Thank fuck for the rain!

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Caption, the small press comics convention in Oxford, is next weekend. For the first time in over a decade I may not go. This is nothing to do with Caption so please don’t read anything into it as I’m sure it’ll be superb. Then again I may go at the last minute. We’ll see.

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You’ll have noticed a lack of new photos in the last week. The films from Supersonic haven’t come back yet and I think I’m having a break, which is probably no bad thing.

Chum-through-Flickr Harri B, who you might know as the guy who does the Through The Viewfinder photos amongst other left-field stuff, has turned out to be something of a renaissance man as he’s also in a band called Routine. He sent out an email yesterday which I’ll reproduce in full:

Hi,

As you may (or may not) know, I have a few audio projects that i’m involved with. One of them being “Routine” so I hope you bear with me while I outline it a little here. We are currently working on a show which has, at its heart, a new song called Everyone’s Dying. Last week we recorded a live version with the audience joining in on the chorus (which was amazing!) and this is being mixed into the final track…We are also planning a picnic / party to record a video as part of the project.

Another part of the project is to have a photo slideshow, sooooooo, I’m getting in touch with my flickr contacts to see whether you would like to contribute an image to the slideshow?

We are looking for images that are personal to you, maybe people, friends family…An image which you may remember fondly for the rest of your life… that kind of thing.

It can be something from your stream or a new image if you like. All the images will have the title and photographers name during the slideshow. The slideshow will available for you online too once its finished. Also there will be a big link to Flickr should people wish to further check out your images.

(the whole shebang will take place at a local gallery late summer / early autumn…depends when we get everything finished!)

Here are the lyrics and this is an mp3 of the demo which, frankly, blew me away with its beauty.

My problem is I haven’t been thinking about my photos in this way for a while now - it’s all been about the art/craft rather than the emotional resonance (yes, there is an overlap but not in this context) so I’m struggling somewhat. But I’m sure not everyone is a wanker like me in this regard so, with his permission, I’m extending the invite.

You can contact Harri (or Stu as he’s know in reality) via Flickr or the band’s site or MySpace, and needless to say, you don’t have to be a Flickr user to be involved.

Lickey Hills, July 15th

Selly Oak, July 11th

Home, July sometime

Too hot…

South of Birmingham, July 15th

This is from my first deliberate go with expired film, a roll casually thrown at me by Gareth a few weeks back that I’d been putting off using. After all, what if I took a wonderful photo and it came out all shite cos of the film? How tedious would that be?

The end result is quite a relief, especially when you compare it to my digital shots from the same day. Yes, they both have their merits but I’m bored with the cleanliness of digital at the moment. Too crisp, too perfect. These shots on film that should have been binned in 2004 have a bit more character, even if it’s that they look like they’re from the 70s.

They way I see it photography is like a big field with different disciplines and techniques scattered all over it. I’m moving around that field, dipping into this and that to see what I can learn from it. Right now expired film has me mildly excited. Next week I’ll see how I feel about high speed Ilford black and white. In a month or so I’ll be onto something else (I recently scored something interesting on eBay but you’ll have to wait and see what it is) and there’s still plenty more to explore.

That I’m happy with the art of expired is a good thing. Gareth, Alex, Andy and I clubbed together on a motherlode of the stuff on eBay last week. 164 rolls of it, some dating back to 2000. Eek.

Expired set on Flickr where I’ll be dumping more of this sort of thing.

Brief notes on the acts I saw at Supersonic, the music festival organised by Capsule at the Custard Factory in Birmingham on Saturday 22nd July 2006.

Una Corda - Very good set from the local post-rock boys (disclaimer - I live with one of them). They’re always good value but the size of the stage and the sound, not to mention their obvious pleasure at opening Supersonic, really brought out their best. Good crowd reaction too.

Hanne Hukkelburg - A complete switch of gear with this eclectic Norwegian band (instruments included saxophone, flute, accordion, violin and a bicycle. Yes, a mic-ed up bike) fronted by a diminutive singer with a beautiful voice and powerful presence. I liked a lot, especially the divine cover of the Pixies “Break My Bones”. Lovely.

Circulus - “Medieval Neo Acid Psych Folk” said Capsule and that’ll do as a description. I only caught the end of the set but it was hugely enjoyable with an old-worlde hippy-nerd vibe and very danceable. I need to see them again

Michael Gira - Think Johnny Cash in a really fucking bad mood. Okay, that’s a superficial description. Solo acoustic from the singer of Swans, one of the more aggressively negative industrial rock bands. This set was more subdued but still relentlessly dark and quite hypnotic. I was a little scared.

Modified Toy Orchestra - Previously experienced in November this was one of the acts I was most keen to see and they didn’t disappoint. On reflection the performance is as important as the music itself but it’s all tremendous fun with five guys in spiv-suits making strange noises with plastic toys they’ve fucked about with.

Broadcast - The legendary Birmingham band who epitomize that late 90’s era of retro-electronica experimental bands that Brum produced and who I’d never seen before, something I was determined to rectify. I’m a something of a loss to describe them but the sound they made was great, creating strange noises with great control, while singer Trish Keenan exuded indie-goddess power and attitude. I was rapt.

Isis were the post-rock / metal band I was keen to see on recommendation and they didn’t disappoint, giving me that anger and raw energy I love live (but can’t be bothered with on record - go figure). They were evil, they were loud, they were absurd, they were intelligent. For half an hour or so I was in love.

Zombi - I only caught a bit of their set but liked what I saw. Initial impressions were 70’s prog keyboards with drums, but it was more than that. The music was kinda techno-ish but the live drums really brought it all out in a kinda Math-rock way, maybe.

Rother & Moebius were the sort of act Supersonic was built for - two 70s electronica musicians who are legendary to the select group who filled the Theatre space. They were on about midnight and I was feeling a little tired so I lay down at the front and let their beautiful music wash over me while heavy metal raged outside. For a moment the ICA was in Birmingham and it was a good thing.

Shy Child - Another drums and keyboard act, this time more happy dancey than Zombi, they were the last act on and I liked them a lot. They’re playing the Sunflower lounge on August 24th and I think I might check them out again in a slightly less frazzled state.

As you can see I liked everything I saw and I didn’t see half the acts. Supersonic was tremendous and a credit to everyone involved.

On a personal note it was good to meet up with fellow photographer Stu (aka harri b) whose Supersonic shots are here. I got to play with his Through The Viewfinder contraption and think I might be hooked. Anyone got a defunct twin lens reflex box camera they don’t want?

There were, as expected, hoards of photographers at the festival, most with their fancypants DSLRs and monster lenses. (Here’s the Supersonic Flickr tag in case any of them feel like sharing.) I went with a manual SLR and 3200 speed Ilford film and it was good shooting bands in a very different way as I’ve gotten bored with gig photos generally. It was especially nice to be able to shoot in the dark at 1/60 f8! I also got a few comments as I stood at the stage changing lenses and winding on the film - “kicking it old school” was my reply. Here’s hoping the results, due in a week or so, are worth it.

I also bumped into Suzi, my old chum from Uni days who I thought was in London. Turns out she’s now in Nottingham and might be moving back to Brum, which was keen news. She’s the theremin player I’ve mentioned on this blog in the past.

So, a top day and no mistake. I’ll be there again next year for sure!

Moseley, July 19th

Off to Supersonic in a bit (I bailed out of the Friday - too tired) and it’s raining, which has thrown me. Do I wear a coat? It might be wet but it’s still warm. Do I cycle? If I don’t cycle I can walk back (unless there’s a taxi-share going on) as it’s only 4 miles. I’ve got about an hour to deal with these traumas…

Okay, I’ve only just started playing with Vox so these will be more negative than positive, and on the whole kinda niggly. Also remember Vox is still in “preview” so things I’m missing might turn up later.

No HTML option. Entries posted with HTML, such as links and bold, will be displayed as raw code. You have to put in hyperlinks and styles within the Compose window by clicking on buttons. The arguments for this being a good thing are reasonable but it’d be nice to have the option to switch to raw HTML (as I believe Blogger does), if only so I can run the post through an external spell checker. Also that Compose page is kinda annoying, but then I’m used to something different.

Tags on blog posts - I’m really not convinced by this. I get where it’s coming from but its going to take a bit of getting used to. Tags are for photos, because photos don’t have words. Blog posts already have words.

[This Is Good] - If I was still participating in the FleePlii community then I might be pissed off about Andre letting this go mainstream, but I haven’t been in there for years and, to be honest, every blog system should have this sort of thing by default.

Notifications - As far as I can see there’s no way to get external notifications of comments posted and the like. LiveJournal emails this sort of thing. I expect this to come. [Later: They do send email notifications of comments - they just went into my spam folder, which is not Vox's fault of course.]

Icon - Kinda confusing upload system. I had to load it into my photo library which seemed like unnecessary duplication.

Privacy - This was my main reason for trying out Vox - the desire to write in varying degrees of privacy and to limit who could comment on my writings. Currently you can specify Neighbours, Friends and Family in the same way as Flickr does. I was kinda hoping for a more granular system whereby you could put people into groups and then allow those groups to read certain posts. So, for example, person A could be in my Comics Chums group and my Birmingham Chums group while person B would just be in the Comics group. In real life I have many different social groups to whom I communicate in different ways and it’d be cool if this could be reflected on Vox.

Design - Ooh, I really want to tweak the blog design. Yes, this is in my nature but remember user-customization is cited as one of the main reasons for MySpace’s success. The problem with a limited selection is the plain ones all look the same and the decorated ones are too specific. There must be a middle ground between rigid formality and the chaos of MySpace. To be honest I’d be happy with a really basic layout if I can’t do anything with it.

Feeds - It might seem obvious, but the RSS feed for Vox blogs doesn’t include private posts. But LiveJournal allows you to read Friends Only posts via RSS with a little bit of hackery (use http://username:password@www.livejournal.com/users/journal/data/rss?auth=digest) so it shouldn’t be too hard to port this over.

Flickr Integration - I’m assuming the ability to post from inside Flickr will come in time.

Adverts - This could be the killer for me. They’re just Google ads but they feel really intrusive and I’m sure I’ll get sick of seeing Ashton Kutcher’s bloody name every time I look at my blog. This’ll be the first time I’ve considered using AdBlock on Google ads. At least they’re at the bottom of the page though.

At the end of the day most of these issues stem from my having had complete and total control over my blogging experience and Vox is the polar opposite of that. It’s my intention to use Vox for a type of writing I don’t normally do (thanks to this blog being wide open to the world). Right now there doesn’t seem to be much difference between it and LJ, but since they’re both owned by Six Apart I can’t imagine this staying that way.

One thing that really struck me was how it felt like Flickr For Words but in a good way. I’d like to see more Flickry features like being able to add posts to groups (yes you can do this with tags but it’s hard to build a community around tags) and so on. One of the motivations for Vox seems to be to reclaim that spirit of community that existed in the old days of blogging before it all went wanky after 9/11. Mimicing Flickr would pretty much achieve that.

I’m going to stick with Vox at least until it launches properly (if anything launches properly these days…) but you won’t be able to read most of what I’ve written unless I add you to my network, which I might not do, and you have to be in Vox to begin with which is kinda hard right now. It’s nothing personal!