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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in iangregory's LiveJournal:

    [ << Previous 20 ]
    Saturday, July 9th, 2005
    3:48 pm
    Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005
    3:52 pm
    Woo! Glastonbury awaits!

    The pyramid stageSo, in a little under two hours I'm off home to meet Kate and Daisy for the journey down to Worthy Farm (via Didcot to meet Veebs) to arrive at Glastonbury tomorrow morning.

    I can't wait. There are a load of bands I already know of which I really want to see (again in some cases ) - The Killers/Coldplay/KT Tunstall/Athlete/Keane/Garbage and Martha Wainwright amongst others, but one of the things I'm really excited about is seeing a whole load of new stuff which I probably wouldn't otherwise come across. Plus there is the theatre stuff (Giles is teching there again this year), the circus stuff, random performers and the whole general atmosphere.

    I'll be taking lots of photos so expect a few links to Flickr when I get back! (And I promise they won't all be of random bits of sound equipment!)

    See ya!

    MovableType version

    Wednesday, June 1st, 2005
    12:25 pm
    Automation central!

    Giles, my housemate, has just updated his website with an excellent overview of the hardware he's designed and built to control our lounge's AV system and lighting, and the various bits of software that sit around it.

    We've now got touchscreen control of our Freeview reciever, amp, DVD player, audio/video routing and control of lights and other mains-powered items in the lounge! Despite this appearing slightly excessive to the casual observer, the "1-button does everything" convenience of it all is great, and easily beats the multiple-remote control nightmare that preceeded it!

    MovableType version

    Wednesday, May 11th, 2005
    8:48 pm
    BBC Backstage

    A colleague alerted me to a very interesting development earlier - BBC Backstage. To quote:

    "backstage.bbc.co.uk attempts to encourage and support those who have provided most of the innovation on the internet - the passionate, highly-skilled & public-spirited developers and designers many of whom volunteer their time and effort.

    In the past the BBC has not always encouraged such "amateur innovators", however public-spirited their intentions and products. backstage.bbc.co.uk aims to foster a newly constructive and open dialogue with the wider development community using BBC content and tools to deliver public value."

    I think this is a great idea - after seeing some of the developments that came out of the Internet community as a result of Google's API launch, I forsee a whole host of innovative ideas and tools built around BBC content and the web. Unlike Google, it seems to be more much of a two-way process which can only benefit both sides.

    It's also refreshing to see this kind of foresight and openness from the BBC - kudos to the team behind the site. The site is still in beta at this point but hopefully it will continue to develop into a really useful resource. I think this is what the BBC is all about - leading the way in a particular field and setting the standard.

    Now I just need to come up with some interesting ideas!

    MovableType version

    Monday, May 9th, 2005
    11:52 pm
    One for the techies

    What more could you want - cheesy music meets interesting tech - visit the Eurovision Diary.

    Thanks to Peter for spotting that one.

    MovableType version

    Monday, May 2nd, 2005
    1:39 am
    Glossop Operatic and Dramatic Society - My Fair Lady

    By popular demand, some pictures of the most recent G.O.D.S show - My Fair Lady.

    Crewing this one were ajv, Peter, Veebs, Rob, Matt, Nathan and myself. It was a fun week - good show and mostly hassle-free technically. Already looking forward to the next one :-)

    MovableType version

    Sunday, May 1st, 2005
    1:16 am
    phpBB

    Grrr! Somebody should nuke every instance of phpBB in the world from somewhere high in orbit and save the web from being riddled with this buggy piece of #!@%.

    This concludes the party political broadcast from the not-more-hours-wasted-patching party

    .

    MovableType version

    Monday, March 21st, 2005
    10:49 pm
    Ooops.
    #kill 1
    #Connection to xxx.xxx.xxx.xx.uk closed by remote host.
    Connection to xxx.xxx.xxx.xx.uk closed.
    $

    stupid stupid stupid

    MovableType version

    9:57 pm
    BBC
    Brutal cuts involving the loss of 2,050 jobs - more than 400 in the newsroom - were unveiled at the BBC today, with unions branding the day the 'worst in the history' of the corporation. The extent of BBC director general Mark Thompson's job cuts were unveiled today with severe cuts in TV and radio news and current affairs.

    [..]

    Today's job losses come top of Mr Thompson's announcement earlier this month that 1,730 posts will go in the BBC's professional services departments

    [..]

    And by the time the sell-offs of the Broadcast and Resources commercial subsidiaries are complete, the reduction in the BBC staff count will top 6,000 - or one in five of the workforce Mr Thompson inherited from his predecessor Greg Dyke.

    MediaGuardian

    It would be inappropriate of me to post what I think in public, so draw your own conclusions...

    Click here to find out why.

    MovableType version

    Tuesday, February 15th, 2005
    11:52 pm
    SFT Released under the CDDL

    SFT, my frequency-training program for sound engineers and operators has now been released under the OSI-approved Common Development and Distribution License.

    Contributions and comments are welcome.

    MovableType version

    11:51 pm
    SFT Released under the CDDL

    SFT, my frequency-training program for sound engineers and operators has now been released under the OSI-approved Common Development and Distribution License.

    Contributions and comments are welcome.

    MovableType version

    11:43 pm
    To do!

    Those of you who've seen my desk will have experienced the crumpled bit of dog-eared paper that is my to-do list. Most people keep their to-do lists in their head, but I like having a physical list - trouble is, it extends to a couple of sheets of A4, is messy and doesn't travel!

    I've tried web-based todo lists before, but they've always been overly complicated, too clever for their own good or too time-consuming. However, I came across Ta-da list last week, and it's actually quite good. It's simple and very quick - no waiting for obvious roundtrips to the server etc. I've set it as one of my home tabs now and sure enough it's slowly filling up with tasks!

    MovableType version

    Monday, January 24th, 2005
    10:43 pm
    Not... Enough... Music

    One of the (many!) things i've been doing the last few days is encoding all of my CD collection into AAC files for ease of playability (lazy? me?). Aside from realising how little music I used to buy (i've only got 40-odd CD's, about 90% of which i've bought in the last few years) it's also been a good opportunity to listen to stuff i've not dug out for ages.

    AlishaConclusions: most of the music at the bottom of my CD pile was there for a reason. I suspect that Savage Garden CD won't be seeing the light of day again for sometime. That said, despite the fact I bought very few CDs when I was in school, I still like the stuff I did buy. A good example is Alisha's Attic - just been listening to their first album again for the first time in aaaages and found myself singing along - okay, it's pop, but it's damn good pop.

    Anyway, turns out that one of the duo has now embarked on a solo career and is gigging in London. Definitely one I'll be looking out for.

    MovableType version

    Sunday, January 16th, 2005
    11:58 pm
    Weekends

    I seem to have a astonishing ability to do all of those things on my todo list which are unimportant and inconsequential at the weekends.

    This of course leaves all the critical and important things, which I inevitably end up trying to do last thing on a Sunday night -and fail miserably.

    Is it just me?

    MovableType version

    Saturday, January 15th, 2005
    10:53 am
    Lj Downtime

    So, livejournal is down due to a major power failure at Internap.

    Fair enough, sh*t happens: LJ are somewhat reliant on their colo provider keeping their power maintained, as all users of a colo facility are. They're working on checking database integrity etc. before bringing the site back up.

    Why is it then that Slashdot have decided that this is a good opportunity to have a dig at Six Apart, who purchased LJ last week?.

    Perhaps Six Apart wasn't quite prepared for the responsibilities of a website of this size?

    Six apart have hardly had time to sign the contract, let along influence any of the infrastructure that makes up LJ! They can't really be blamed for an outage this soon. From the initial information it sounds like Internap had a catastrophic power failure of all main and reserve systems, which neither SA or LJ could have had any control over (and for those slashdot users who say "why didn't they have their own UPS systems? - standalone UPS systems often decrease the mean time before failure of the power system in facilities like these, because they are less reliable than the buildings power systems on average - or should be).

    MovableType version

    Wednesday, January 12th, 2005
    12:38 pm
    State of the music industry

    There's been a discussion on UA this morning about the state of the UK music industry - specifically how the singles chart is becoming increasingly irrelevant as time goes on. This lead to this article revealing that the lowest UK number one single of the year sold only 23,519 copies.

    Now, call me cynical, but:

    • Single needs to sell ~24,000 to get to number one
    • Single probably costs around £2.50 in the shops
    • Record company therefore needs to sell around £60,000 worth of singles
    • Record company's marketing budget for single is > £60,000
    • Record company has an easy way to number one....

    Far fetched? I doubt it!

    (By the way, this is my first (real) dual-post on both MT and Livejournal. The plan for the moment is to run them both in parallel with LJ being used for comments, but long term I may well migrate fully to LJ.)

    MovableType version

    10:28 am
    Test

    foo

    EDIT: quotes should work now.

    EDIT: Now, what happens if I republish all my Moveable type entries?

    MovableType version

    Tuesday, October 26th, 2004
    2:23 pm
    Broadcasting Legend John Peel dies
    Veteran BBC broadcaster John Peel has died at the age of 65, while on holiday in Peru. Peel was on a working holiday in the resort of Cuzco with his wife Sheila when he suffered a heart attack.


    </q>

    It's such a shame to lose someone who can honestly say they had as much of an influence on music as music did on them - someone who shaped the industry and championed new music to several generations. A sad loss for the world of radio and music.

    MovableType version

    Friday, August 13th, 2004
    12:39 am
    Monday, June 28th, 2004
    8:58 pm
    Spammers

    As a result of spammers hammering the comments script (and it eating up all the available CPU on the server), comments and trackbacks have now been disabled. Old comments remain visible.

    MovableType version

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