Here’s an odd one. I’ve been playing about with using del.icio.us to deal with the waves of Created in Birmingham related stuff that comes my way. Currently I’ve got it on its own page but I’m slightly uneasy about ghettoising all that stuff away from casual sight. I’d like to try integrating it into the main blog, at least for readers of the site. (Feed consumers can pick and chose as they wish since they’re by definition active users, not passive surfers.)
Now, in Movable Type this is a common thing to do. You can see it in action on Strange Attractor. But I can’t for the life of me find a plugin for Wordpress that does the same. This could be because it’s buried under the hoards of plugins for getting readers to post your stuff to del.icio.us, etc rather than pulling links in but it occurred to me I haven’t seen this sort of feature on any Wordpress blogs, at least not that I’ve noticed.
So, to cut a long story short, anyone know of one?
Update 2: Trying Postalicious which *shock* appears to be up to date. Got it running on CiB. Nothing picked up yet. Sinking feeling in heart. Will wait an hour.
Update 3: Give up with Postalicious because, frankly, it didn’t work. Sure, it posted code to a new post but the title and descriptions were missing. Still, thanks to Hg in the comments I’ve discovered del.icio.us do their own version that works in the same way as Flickr’s “blog this” button. It’s not very customisable (I’ve had to use CSS to hide the tags and the post title is pretty ugly) but it works and that’s all that matters. Thanks Hg!
Continuing on from the Garbage House post, here’s a rather special looking converted lorry.
$1 Image Stabilizer. Bolt in base of camera with string held steady by foot. Hardly needs a video tutorial and I’ve heard the idea before, but never considered it for camcorders. Be great for talking head shots in the street. via DF
This rather long article on browser specs might not be of interest to most of you, and understandably so (though it is written well), but it does throw up a couple of interesting nuggets that go against the commonly held belief that Internet Explorer is the dominant browser. The first is the statement that Mac users, while a small minority, are a marketeers dream as they tend to be more affluent and demonstrate brand loyalty. They can’t use IE. This is rather like how the News at 10 used to be able to command high advertising rates despite lower audience figures due to the quality of that audience. This was when ITV news wasn’t godawfulshite, of course. Add on to this the fact that we now have a browser market, in that people who develop browsers earn money despite giving them away thanks to referrals from the search box. Firefox made $50m in 2006. That’s a heavy incentive to widen the user base. Opera going free, Safari being released for Windows, etc. They all generate revenue. Bring this together (along with the halo effect of people like me installing Firefox on our parent’s computers) and coding for IE only is not an option, no matter how dominant it is in the market. Hell, I find this stuff interesting… (via DF)
Cruiser Chimps. A band comprising of Lisa and Iain from Bearsuit and some other guy. So far my impression is “like Bearsuit only really, really fucked up” which is a good thing.
A while back I changed the password for peteashton.com, as you do. I neglected, however, to inform my Gmail account of this. I’ve set Gmail to suck in my pa.com email allowing me to get it all in the same place and pass it through Google’s rather fine spam filters. And for some reason I didn’t notice Gmail wasn’t getting any pa.com mail. I’m not sure when I started to fail to notice but it looks like it was before Jan 22nd.
Gmail is slowly (for some reason - you’d have thought it’d be an automagic process) bringing the email in but there’s a chance it won’t. So if you sent me something urgent and wondered why I never got back, that’s why. Normal service resumed, at least until the next fuckup.
Ooh, that’s rather cool. Think I’ll be making some of these so watch out for fire engines in Kings Heath. I’m guessing this doesn’t burn the hands because he’s moving them around quickly and because the vapour is burning, not the liquid fuel. But I’m sure Jez will put me right on this. via Kottke
U2’s mananger Paul McGuinness’s speech at Cannes is very long and covers a lot of ground about how the music industry and the internet might work together. While certainly progressive in places I think he’s wrong in a lot of areas. In short, he seems ignorant of the concept of network neutrality and ultimately comes across as believing the very nature of the internet needs to be changed, rolled back to a more authoritarian model. I, obviously, think this is a bad thing. But hey, it’s not my industry on the line here… via the NMS Newswire
Bottom line, all weblog apps suck in some way. Matt Haughey upgrades MT and WP and decides life is too short. This is pretty much the reason I haven’t upgraded Wordpress since I first installed it.
(You’ll excuse my 15 seconds in the spotlight, I hope.)
The Life Cycle of a Blog Post. Interesting infographic illustrating what happens after you press “publish” and the automatic processes kick in. Misses out a lot of human processes but I guess that’s not what it’s about. Notable that it doesn’t mention any technologies by name (RSS, etc). via Currybet
Congrats to Phil and Beth on the birth of Alfred John Vincent Walsh. There are certain people you just know are going to make rather special parents and they be a couple of them.
The only other thing to add is that while CiB is a Birmingham-centric thing it builds on everything I’ve learned from my years blogging here and my work in zines and comix in the 90s, so thanks to all the people I’ve read and communicated with over the years, from the high-level social software theorists to the folks playing about with the medium on their own terms. Couldn’t have done it without ya.
We’re having drinks on the 21st Feb so feel free to come along to that. I’ll post details soon. And then it’s off to the big awards night on March 6th in London at that Dome thingy. That should provide some blog fodder…
If you missed the first part of Zine Scene and are reading this in the future and missed the second part, Speechification comes to the rescue with mp3s. Actually, this one bears keeping for the archives, so thanks chaps.
Last.fm’s new full track streaming thing is very interesting, especially as it comes with a subscription service giving artists a revenue stream. I’m rather disapointed to see there’s no embedding though. Sure, this would complicate the licensing a bit (going from personal use to some kind of broadcast) but allowing people (perhaps if they pay a bit more) to use music on their blogs, etc would bring audio up to speed with video and photos, not to mention helping musicians publicize themselves virally. mp3 blogging without the hosting?
A list in no particular order, as promised to Russ L. These are bands from Birmingham that I like. I also like other bands. Audio follows each blurting but always remember I’m basing my love on their live performances on the whole and some of them haven’t been near a high-end recording studio, or have come on in leaps and bounds since. All of them are worth checking out.
Courtesy Group There’s something about Al’s merry bunch that’s both disconcerting and comforting, evoking bits of Zappa / Beefheart along with elements of British underground music that never made it above. And, most importantly, something I can’t quite put my finger on. I feel like I’m missing a reference point and that makes it all the better. Al himself is a master showman, seemingly speaking in tongues as he takes the show right into the audiences faces (and sometimes into the corridor outside) while the band are tighter than tight. They’re both intelligent and from the gutter, arty and populist, and, above all, rather hard to describe. A gem. Questret
Misty’s Big Adventure Misty’s have become a bit like a curry. After 10 years of active cooking as ingredients were added, the flavour is pretty much there and they’re simmering, letting the juices flow and the magic settle before the final serving. They’re touring a hell of a lot right now and, to be honest, the gigs are becoming a little repetitive, but then I have seen them at least 15 times now and they do still manage to surprise and really should be experienced at least three times a year in order to restore your faith in music. Just started their own record label with the intention of releasing records by other quirky Birmingham bands. A scene is in the making. Never Stops Never Rests Never Sleeps
Beestung Lips The current glory boys of the Birmingham live music scene, Beestung Lips are nigh on perfect. Been around for a while in various guises, I first came across lead singer Biff (if that is his real name) fronting Noise Noise Allore, a Devo-style post-rock thing the defied description. The Lips are more accessible, drawing their juice from punk and metal, but still utterly unique. Most importantly they’re loud and fast and frightening to behold and you never forget the experience of seeing them live. I expect big things of them. Reverse Alchemy
Einstellung It would be wrong not to have a proper instrumental post-rock act in here. Birmingham has many of them combining the heavy metal heritage with musical intelligence to produce some beautiful if brutal music and Einstellung are the ones who’ve impressed me the most recently. The signature of this kind of music is the quiet-loud-quiet-loud build to crescendo which means it can get a bit repetitive but Einstellung put so much power behind what they do, yet control with with such precision, that it’s frankly mind blowing. The tsumani of noise beats you into submission while your brain is unpicking the intricate details. Magnificent. Tot (edit)
Modified Toy Orchestra They play with toys, toys that have been modified, and it’s all good fun. You’d be forgiven for thinking MTO are a novelty group but they’re not. In fact they probably have at lot in common with the KLF. Brian Duffy, y’see, is an artist with a very big brain, as was first reveled to me in this Guardian interview. The theories of Buckmeister Fuller fuel his experiments in the art of circuit bending but it’s his ability to take this traditionally po-faced discipline and become one of the most populist art-pop bands in recent memory that makes MTO so special. A Grand Occasion
Shady Bard I wanted to have a more “normal” band in here, someone from the folky / singer songwriter end of things that you could play to your mum as there’s a lot of that in Birmingham. Shady Bard were always a shoe-in though, mainly because of their album, From The Ground Up never ceases to surprise me. On the surface, and Lawrence Becko’s vocals especially, they appear to be another maudlin self-obsessed English band, tinged with a brush of Coldplay. And yet their songs have a depth and power that blasts such wrong-thinking away. I’m often listening to them in the kitchen when a building song will suddenly grab my attention and I’m standing there, wooden spoon in hand, completely unaware of what I was supposed to be doing. And Lawrence’s vocals are quite beautiful, confident yet cracking. Very special. Penguins
The Destroyers What can one say? They’re a 15 piece classically trained bunch of musicians who take Eastern European music and go all punk with it. They’re the most danceable outfit you’ll ever come across (especially from a bunch of white boys), their musical credentials are impeccable, their work with local folk legend Paul Murphy is inspiring, their politics spot on, and they’re lovely people. The Hot Bulgar
Kategoes… Lots of older types on this list, which isn’t a good thing. Kate Thompson isn’t old. She’s like a precocious 9 year old who’s started a rock and roll band. So much about Kategoes just shouldn’t work. From their first gig I’ve watched with with a creeping sense that at any moment the crowd could turn on their twee-ness. They almost demand too much with their mix of performance art and toddler television antics. But last year they survived a national tour with Misty’s Big Adventure and came out stronger and tighter than before. Behind the novelty it’s clear Kate has brains and vision and beyond the music she’s someone to watch for the next 10-20 years. Right now she’s under the nurturing shadow of Misty’s Grandmaster Gareth (himself part of a long Birmingham tradition of this sort of thing) but given time she’s going to blossom spectacularly, mark my words. Heartbeat
Untitled Musical Project The current incarnation of “indie” as practiced by young men in shirts and tight trousers sort of leaves me cold, but then I’m not the target audiences so it’s no bad thing. Birmingham, as you’d expect, has it’s fair share of this sort of thing and I wouldn’t want to make Untitled Musical Project my representative of it, but in these two sentences kinda have done. I first came across them at one of Zoot’s nights at the Flapper during the first GDFAF in 2005 and immediately liked them a lot. They proceeded, through hard work and treating gigs like free rehearsal time (so it didn’t matter if no-one turned up), to get some attention and gigs in that London but never got too big for their boots. I saw them a year or so later, frazzled from a week of constant gigs and parties, supporting Polysics in the Barfly. The previous band had taken an age to set up. They marched on stage, plugged in their single guitar peddles, made sure they were making sounds and burst into their set. Short songs, shouty songs, stupid songs, perceptive songs, they’re some kind of post-post-post punk, bursting with confidence but very self aware of the absurdity of what they’re doing. I haven’t seen them for a while but I see they had a mini-album out last year and are still touring. Must get back in touch. Take Your Funk And Funk Off
Mistress Finally, Mistress, who I confess I threw in as an afterthought and haven’t seen live for over a year or more. They are awesome though. Very heavy hardcore thrash metal stuff but, and here’s the trick, accessible to those who don’t usually go for that sort of thing. At least I don’t. They take their art and message very seriously indeed but there’s also an awareness of how utterly daft this whole thing is, and an understanding that in order for the comedy (if comedy is the right word) it’s got to be done straight faced. (Their current album is called “The Glory Bitches Of Doghead”.) And they have tunes. They’re hiding under the racket but they’re definitely there. A Mistress gig is supposed to be a frightening thing, and in many ways it is as limbs flail about the place, but it’s also an exciting, vibrant and spiritually uplifting experience, something you might find surprising to hear. But it is. Honest. Hmm. I appear to have no music by them. Check the MySpace
There are others, of course, and this is really just based on checking through my gig photos. In fact if you’ve been following my blog this last year there won’t be any surprises (except maybe Shady Bard as I’d kept quiet about that one). I’d be interested to know what Birmingham bands you think are beyond marvelous in the comments so I might see them and maybe add them to next years list.
Go read Go, a fanzine that opens the second part of Javis Cocker’s Zine Scene documentary where he looks at the phenomena of regional zines, which raised a smile as it showed every city has the same problems Birmingham does. I particularly liked the bit where Liverpudian zinesters, disgusted that the council had torn down posters for independent gigs and club night the before dignitaries for the City of Culture visited, put up protest posters the night before pointing out that this was the real culture. Unfortunately the latter part has some pretty narrow views on blogs, etc, claiming they don’t have the same level of intimacy, which is bollocks. They’re different but just as valid and if not more empowering. Less focus on MySpace and a bit more on the development of LiveJournal would have shown this. Still, another triumph from Cocker.
About ten years ago, when I was running BugPowder as a mail order company for small press comics and fanzines and, naively, thinking it might turn into a business, I had this idea about buying a lorry and converting it into a house on wheels which I could drive to festivals and marts selling my wares. I even drew cack-handed diagrams of how it might be fitted out. It looked oddly like this:
Except with a shop in front of the sofas there. But then I was thinking about a proper lorry thing and this is a converted garbage truck and it’s a thing of wonder.
I like how, from the outside, it still looks like a garbage wagon - perfect for parking overnight in cities. I’m guessing it’s an American model where the bins are tipped over the front along those bars and into the “roof”, rather than the model more common in the UK where stuff is thrown in the back and crushed by giant maws.
Seeing it has a toilet reminded me of my bin-man days in Aston and Erdington circa 2004. Marc, the driver, was desperate for a shit so he disabled the crusher and climbed in. Five minutes later we were ready to go.
Two things about this fantastic set of 396 photos, most of them portraits, taken by a secondary school teacher in the 70s.
1) Given that this was 10 years before I was in secondary, and that was 20 years ago, there’s something familiar yet alien about the situations and faces. This is the era of my older cousin Karen who I remember looking up to as “cool” because she listened to pop music and had that new romantic hair. Not disimilar to this girl in some ways. Except completely different of course.
2) A teacher, especially a supply teacher, would never be able to take these photos today without signed permission slips from all the parents. So don’t expect to be looking through photos with a similar social history value from a 2007 school in 2037.
Currently my process for getting an image onto a blog is a little long winded because I like to have a little control over what happens. A screen grab or jpeg goes into Preview or is uploaded to (the quite wonderful) Picnik to resize them. Then they’re uploaded either via ftp or within Wordpress. It’s a bit of a hassle. Skitch looks to streamline this process tremendously. Screen grab, resize, annotate, upload and grab the html code in about 15 seconds. And, in a refreshing change to the current trends, you don’t have to use the Skitch.com hosting account - you can set it for your own web server. Great when you can’t be sure the service will be around in a year’s time. Hope this one is though. It’s really rather good. (Mac only) via Waxy
The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World. If you’re skimming, just check the video for the Japanese Giant Hornet as 30 of them decimate a hive of 30,000 bees in minutes, produced in that excellent melodramatic “When Insects Attack!” style. via Cleanskies
This is the personal blog and main internet hub-thing for Pete Ashton. What you'll find here is a seemingly random collection of stuff I want to talk about and share.
My more sensible business blog is ASH-10 where I talk about understanding and engaging with the social internet.
This is the personal blog and main internet hub-thing for Pete Ashton. What you'll find here is a seemingly random collection of stuff I want to talk about and share. 
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