Last seen Saturday night...:-(
Regards,
djp
Monday, November 24, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
And the password is...
A couple of days ago, I had to ring Sky because I was having trouble with my reception. After waiting a while to get through to a customer service wallah, and having answered a number of preliminary questions, I was asked for my password. I couldn't remember it.
Some years ago, I had to ring Eircom Phonewatch because our monitored alarm system kept going off at around 4 in the morning. Every morning for like a week. The only respite I could get was to turn off the alarm entirely, which defeated the purpose of having the system on. In desperation, I rang Eircom asking was there anything that they could do to help me out. The representative was very helpful right up to the point at which I was asked for my password. I couldn't remember it.
Passwords are the bane of my life. I have one password which I use for most of the sites I visit. It's a six letter password - all lower case. Occasionally, I use variants of that password when I am required to mix letters and numbers, or where I am required to use a password with no less than eight characters. I also have a password where I am required to use letters (upper and lower case) and numbers. So far, so couch...
I have two main problems with passwords. The primary one is that there are some passwords which I only use on a very infrequent basis (Sky and Eircom Phonewatch would be two good examples of this). And because of that, I tend to forget them. Of course, I could just write the passwords down somewhere, but then the words "purpose" and "defeat" spring to mind.
My other main problem is where sites generate a password for you and don't give you the option to choose/amend a password to suit yourself. Almost invariably, the generated passwords will be a random character string, comprising upper/lower case letters and numbers. Occasionally one might come across a requirement for special characters. I can never remember these damn passwords, and because I can't trust my eyesight 100%, I tend to copy/paste the passwords from whatever e-mail the site sends when one initially registers with it. Which is all well and good, except that doing this removes the immediate necessity to memorise the damn password. And then you clear your cookies one fine day, re-visit the site and find that you can't remember your password. And you can't find the relevant e-mail so that you can repeat the copy/paste process.
One final comment on passwords:- some months ago, I was involved in an online collaborative project with an individual. Now, my idea of online collaboration is that you e-mail me your files, I'll do my bit on them and then e-mail them back to you. That's how people born in the 1960s do it. However, my collaborator seemed to be involved in the internet security business, so my chosen methodology was obviously not "comme il faut". This was going to be online collaboration in the true sense of the word - live and online. All of this required me to have a password. In our initial correspondence, a particular word was used which caught my collaborator's eye. He suggested I use that word as my password. Reluctantly, I agreed, but I requested that he would not generate a password which substituted number for letters in that word, 1f y0u s33 wh4t 1 m34n. So what did he go and do...? It was a bad start to our collaboration and some weeks later I withdrew from the project altogether.
Now, I'm not saying that the collaborator was wrong to do what he did. Since he seemed to work in the internet security industry, then I am sure that his actions were perfectly "natural" and in order for him, just as much as it would be for me to favour one hand over another when scratching my itchy bits. But I'm getting too old to remember passwords. Whatever steps can be taken to make the process easier for me are most welcome, whereas any steps taken which make the process more difficult for me are almost acts of provocation.
But that's just me being a curmudgeonly old 801106k5, I suppose...
Regards,
djp
Some years ago, I had to ring Eircom Phonewatch because our monitored alarm system kept going off at around 4 in the morning. Every morning for like a week. The only respite I could get was to turn off the alarm entirely, which defeated the purpose of having the system on. In desperation, I rang Eircom asking was there anything that they could do to help me out. The representative was very helpful right up to the point at which I was asked for my password. I couldn't remember it.
Passwords are the bane of my life. I have one password which I use for most of the sites I visit. It's a six letter password - all lower case. Occasionally, I use variants of that password when I am required to mix letters and numbers, or where I am required to use a password with no less than eight characters. I also have a password where I am required to use letters (upper and lower case) and numbers. So far, so couch...
I have two main problems with passwords. The primary one is that there are some passwords which I only use on a very infrequent basis (Sky and Eircom Phonewatch would be two good examples of this). And because of that, I tend to forget them. Of course, I could just write the passwords down somewhere, but then the words "purpose" and "defeat" spring to mind.
My other main problem is where sites generate a password for you and don't give you the option to choose/amend a password to suit yourself. Almost invariably, the generated passwords will be a random character string, comprising upper/lower case letters and numbers. Occasionally one might come across a requirement for special characters. I can never remember these damn passwords, and because I can't trust my eyesight 100%, I tend to copy/paste the passwords from whatever e-mail the site sends when one initially registers with it. Which is all well and good, except that doing this removes the immediate necessity to memorise the damn password. And then you clear your cookies one fine day, re-visit the site and find that you can't remember your password. And you can't find the relevant e-mail so that you can repeat the copy/paste process.
One final comment on passwords:- some months ago, I was involved in an online collaborative project with an individual. Now, my idea of online collaboration is that you e-mail me your files, I'll do my bit on them and then e-mail them back to you. That's how people born in the 1960s do it. However, my collaborator seemed to be involved in the internet security business, so my chosen methodology was obviously not "comme il faut". This was going to be online collaboration in the true sense of the word - live and online. All of this required me to have a password. In our initial correspondence, a particular word was used which caught my collaborator's eye. He suggested I use that word as my password. Reluctantly, I agreed, but I requested that he would not generate a password which substituted number for letters in that word, 1f y0u s33 wh4t 1 m34n. So what did he go and do...? It was a bad start to our collaboration and some weeks later I withdrew from the project altogether.
Now, I'm not saying that the collaborator was wrong to do what he did. Since he seemed to work in the internet security industry, then I am sure that his actions were perfectly "natural" and in order for him, just as much as it would be for me to favour one hand over another when scratching my itchy bits. But I'm getting too old to remember passwords. Whatever steps can be taken to make the process easier for me are most welcome, whereas any steps taken which make the process more difficult for me are almost acts of provocation.
But that's just me being a curmudgeonly old 801106k5, I suppose...
Regards,
djp
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Blogospherical odyssey
You may or may not know that I have a new album out. It's called RAW MESH, and if you want to stream it, you can do so here.
In the past, when I've been trying to promote an album, I used to burn up a number of CD-R copies and send them to various newspapers/magazines/radio stations/labels. This was very time-consuming for me, and, more often than not, was almost totally non-productive. I got very little response from the traditional media and the CDs most likely ended up in a wastebasket, unplayed.
Given that someone like me is most unlikely to get any kind of exposure in the traditional media, this time out I decided on a different approach. I chose to prepare an electronic press kit, comprising of the entire album in MP3 format, some jpegs and a "virtual" interview. I sent the traditional media an email with a link from which they could download a zip file containing the kit. As an alternative, I also sent them the streaming link above which you've undoubtedly already accessed. My thinking is that since the traditional media is going to ignore the album anyway, they might as well ignore it in a manner which is cost-effective to me.
But I went a step further - I found a blog from an Irish "rock" journalist and followed all the links from that blog, sending them the same email that I'd sent to the traditional media. But I went a step even further than that. Each of those links is itself a blog, so I'm now following each of the links in those blogs. To date I've sent close to 500 e-mails using this methodology, with perhaps as many again to follow. Even if I conservatively estimate the average cost of burning a CD-R. printing the packaging, buying jiffy bags for each CD and posting them at €5, I will potentially have saved myself around €5k...
...of course, the reason I say "potentially" is because I would never ordinarily have sent out 1000 promo packages to the traditional media. But I most certainly would have sent out 50 packages, so realistically I've saved myself €250. Not bad, eh?.
I think PR via blog is the way to go for me in the future. In spite of the amount of reportage the traditional media carries on downloading etc., they still insist in reviewing hard-copy albums. Since I can never raise enough sales to justify a large enough print run of CDs to justify sending a meaningful number of PR packages out, I would never have covered as much ground as I have done in the last few days alone. That's one thing I'll say in favour of the blogs. Almost invariably, they will insist that you don't send them hard-copy albums -sending them MP3s or links to download/stream MP3s is perfectly acceptable to them. And that's how I'll be able to send out around 1000 press kits to various locations around the globe by the end of this month. For as next to nowt as matters nowt. I may have to offer up the odd free MP3 here and there, but that may not necessarily be a bad thing (I never would have said that two years ago). I'm getting some small levels of feedback even at this early stage in proceedings, about as much as I normally get from the traditional media but for a fraction of the cost and time.
But one thing has struck me in my odyssey around the blogosphere - the desire to express oneself and to self-publish has never been greater, now that the means of doing so are almost readily available to anyone with cheap internet access. And everyone has something to say - not that I'd ever guessed otherwise, but when you see blog after blog expressing opinion after opinion, most of which are meaningless (and even incomprehensible) to me, it's all a bit overwhelming and unsettling. All those peoples' lives out there - it's a curious thing, but the more you see of their lives, the more you feel excluded from them - "Here's some pix of the party at Johnny's gaff last weekend - oh, sorry you weren't there - you weren't invited".
And I have never felt so old as I do now, looking at the lives of young people through their blog windows. Here's hoping I get to bed before the Ovaltine gets to my incontinence pants...
Only joking. For now...
Regards,
djp
In the past, when I've been trying to promote an album, I used to burn up a number of CD-R copies and send them to various newspapers/magazines/radio stations/labels. This was very time-consuming for me, and, more often than not, was almost totally non-productive. I got very little response from the traditional media and the CDs most likely ended up in a wastebasket, unplayed.
Given that someone like me is most unlikely to get any kind of exposure in the traditional media, this time out I decided on a different approach. I chose to prepare an electronic press kit, comprising of the entire album in MP3 format, some jpegs and a "virtual" interview. I sent the traditional media an email with a link from which they could download a zip file containing the kit. As an alternative, I also sent them the streaming link above which you've undoubtedly already accessed. My thinking is that since the traditional media is going to ignore the album anyway, they might as well ignore it in a manner which is cost-effective to me.
But I went a step further - I found a blog from an Irish "rock" journalist and followed all the links from that blog, sending them the same email that I'd sent to the traditional media. But I went a step even further than that. Each of those links is itself a blog, so I'm now following each of the links in those blogs. To date I've sent close to 500 e-mails using this methodology, with perhaps as many again to follow. Even if I conservatively estimate the average cost of burning a CD-R. printing the packaging, buying jiffy bags for each CD and posting them at €5, I will potentially have saved myself around €5k...
...of course, the reason I say "potentially" is because I would never ordinarily have sent out 1000 promo packages to the traditional media. But I most certainly would have sent out 50 packages, so realistically I've saved myself €250. Not bad, eh?.
I think PR via blog is the way to go for me in the future. In spite of the amount of reportage the traditional media carries on downloading etc., they still insist in reviewing hard-copy albums. Since I can never raise enough sales to justify a large enough print run of CDs to justify sending a meaningful number of PR packages out, I would never have covered as much ground as I have done in the last few days alone. That's one thing I'll say in favour of the blogs. Almost invariably, they will insist that you don't send them hard-copy albums -sending them MP3s or links to download/stream MP3s is perfectly acceptable to them. And that's how I'll be able to send out around 1000 press kits to various locations around the globe by the end of this month. For as next to nowt as matters nowt. I may have to offer up the odd free MP3 here and there, but that may not necessarily be a bad thing (I never would have said that two years ago). I'm getting some small levels of feedback even at this early stage in proceedings, about as much as I normally get from the traditional media but for a fraction of the cost and time.
But one thing has struck me in my odyssey around the blogosphere - the desire to express oneself and to self-publish has never been greater, now that the means of doing so are almost readily available to anyone with cheap internet access. And everyone has something to say - not that I'd ever guessed otherwise, but when you see blog after blog expressing opinion after opinion, most of which are meaningless (and even incomprehensible) to me, it's all a bit overwhelming and unsettling. All those peoples' lives out there - it's a curious thing, but the more you see of their lives, the more you feel excluded from them - "Here's some pix of the party at Johnny's gaff last weekend - oh, sorry you weren't there - you weren't invited".
And I have never felt so old as I do now, looking at the lives of young people through their blog windows. Here's hoping I get to bed before the Ovaltine gets to my incontinence pants...
Only joking. For now...
Regards,
djp
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Auto-suggestion
For the last while, I've been ploughing through a book called "Mellotron - The Machine and the Musicians that Revolutionised Rock". The book is written by a chap called Nick Awde.
If you want to know what the hell a Mellotron is, click here.
My principal reason for buying the book was because it contains an extensive interview with one of my musical heroes, Dave Gregory, the former XTC multi-instrumentalist. Apart from Dave's interview, and that given by Andy Mc.Cluskey (or Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark fame), the book is really of little interest (my personal view anyway) unless you like prog rock. And if you want to know what the hell that is, click here.
One point that is hammered home by the book is the fact that Mellotrons are heavy bastards. It is repeatedly pointed out that roadies hated touring with 'Trons. The risk of ruptured hernias and other physical injuries caused by lugging around these yokes, which seemed to weigh only marginally less than lead wardrobes, was rather high. No wonder roadies took loads of drugs - to ease the pain...
Anyway, the more I read the book, the more I noticed a throbbing feeling in my left foot. After much pondering on the matter, I have come to the conclusion that all these references to heavy 'Trons has awoken some forgotten "memory" of dropping some heavy weight on my poor foot. Possibly a piano (well, not "dropping" an entire piano - possibly tilting it over slightly to move it and then accidentally letting go of the piano), maybe a filing cabinet at work.
The thing is, I can't actually remember this happening to me, but the throbbing feeling is so real to me that it surely must've happened. Unless the whole thing has been caused by some form of auto-suggestion. Either way, it's an odd feeling. Not, perhaps, as odd as a phantom pregnancy would be, but still...
Regards,
djp
If you want to know what the hell a Mellotron is, click here.
My principal reason for buying the book was because it contains an extensive interview with one of my musical heroes, Dave Gregory, the former XTC multi-instrumentalist. Apart from Dave's interview, and that given by Andy Mc.Cluskey (or Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark fame), the book is really of little interest (my personal view anyway) unless you like prog rock. And if you want to know what the hell that is, click here.
One point that is hammered home by the book is the fact that Mellotrons are heavy bastards. It is repeatedly pointed out that roadies hated touring with 'Trons. The risk of ruptured hernias and other physical injuries caused by lugging around these yokes, which seemed to weigh only marginally less than lead wardrobes, was rather high. No wonder roadies took loads of drugs - to ease the pain...
Anyway, the more I read the book, the more I noticed a throbbing feeling in my left foot. After much pondering on the matter, I have come to the conclusion that all these references to heavy 'Trons has awoken some forgotten "memory" of dropping some heavy weight on my poor foot. Possibly a piano (well, not "dropping" an entire piano - possibly tilting it over slightly to move it and then accidentally letting go of the piano), maybe a filing cabinet at work.
The thing is, I can't actually remember this happening to me, but the throbbing feeling is so real to me that it surely must've happened. Unless the whole thing has been caused by some form of auto-suggestion. Either way, it's an odd feeling. Not, perhaps, as odd as a phantom pregnancy would be, but still...
Regards,
djp
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Obituary
Please read the Wikipedia obituary for Columb Farrelly.
I met him once. In fact I spent an afternoon in his company sometime around 1989/90, when I was trying to set myself up as a freelance MIDI programmer. I put an ad in the Hot Press or in one of the music shops in Dublin, offering my services. Columb saw the ad, rang me up and we agreed to meet at his house in Stoneybatter. Things didn't go terribly well, basically because I didn't have a clue what I was doing (still don't as it happens). He was very nice about it, though.
Next thing I heard about Columb was the fact that he'd written the original theme music for Fair City. After that, the Wikipedia obituary...
The only other significant thing I can think of was the fact that he'd discovered Sinéad O'Connor and put her in a group call Ton Ton Macoute. I was recording a demo in a studio in Dublin in 1988 and the studio proprietor stuck on a tape and said "Listen to this". It was a Ton Ton Macoute demo that he'd recorded in the studio. It was pretty damn good, as I recall.
That's it. My brief encounter with Columb Farrelly.
Regards,
djp
I met him once. In fact I spent an afternoon in his company sometime around 1989/90, when I was trying to set myself up as a freelance MIDI programmer. I put an ad in the Hot Press or in one of the music shops in Dublin, offering my services. Columb saw the ad, rang me up and we agreed to meet at his house in Stoneybatter. Things didn't go terribly well, basically because I didn't have a clue what I was doing (still don't as it happens). He was very nice about it, though.
Next thing I heard about Columb was the fact that he'd written the original theme music for Fair City. After that, the Wikipedia obituary...
The only other significant thing I can think of was the fact that he'd discovered Sinéad O'Connor and put her in a group call Ton Ton Macoute. I was recording a demo in a studio in Dublin in 1988 and the studio proprietor stuck on a tape and said "Listen to this". It was a Ton Ton Macoute demo that he'd recorded in the studio. It was pretty damn good, as I recall.
That's it. My brief encounter with Columb Farrelly.
Regards,
djp
Monday, November 03, 2008
You know you're getting on in years when... (No. 1)
...you realise that you will never ever get through all the bottles of after-shave lotion in your bathroom cabinet...
Regards,
djp
Regards,
djp
Saturday, November 01, 2008
My Top 10 iPod tracks - 01/11/2008
- (8) - No Way Of Knowing - A. Tent
- (-) - My Kind Of Soldier - Guided By Voices
- (-) - A Time To Be So Small - Interpol
- (-) - She's Alright - Phil Thornalley
- (-) - Helicopter - Red House Painters
- (-) - She Really Wants You (acoustic version) - Aimee Mann
- (-) - Roger's Cheeks - The B12 Boys
- (-) - Broken - Belly
- (-) - What Do I Get? (Peel Session) - Buzzcocks
- (-) - Light Of Your Love - Carlene Carter.
Regards,
djp
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