ASIWYFA

Its not often that you get to legitimately call a band "And You Will Know Us By A Trail Of Good Recommendations" but "And So I Watch You From Afar" were just that band.
To be met with a half full Ruby Lounge was a bit of a surprise but the majority of the audience being young blokes with t-shirts and semi-expensive haircuts was really not.


So for me it was 'Does it offend you Yeah' playing in Sheffield or a night out with my dad in town, not much competition. The limited research i had done (3 last.fm plays during my day in the lab at work) had convinced me that a trip over the peak district to listen to a band who blew me away the 'In The City' before last could be better avoided. The Ruby Lounge as it is, a small an perculier shaped venue, hosted not only a night of a quality performance, but also a sound system that was manipulated to within an inch of it's ability to produce a night that would leave even the deafest engineers ears ringing in the morning, (if sans earplugs!)
It was the bands bass sound that kept the mood riding on a buzz, and the Irish guy's sound sported a bass distortion that roared at a frequency much less than that of the instrument, threatening to rip open the chest cavity of all those who dared not to pay attention (which I must admit was verging on zero, ASIWYFA are not to be ignored). The band, most completely hidden in smoke bathed light to all but the front row, played a set not only acceptable, but ideally timed in terms of it's length and variety, but well composed, if only for playing their 'hits' in the unreserved encore.
It's not often that you get to discovered a band twice, but Oceansize's support off their last tour really did 'cut the mustard'.

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Les Arcs 1800

The alps was awesome, indescribably so... I have finally managed to upload a slide show of the mountains and beautiful scenery that was on show. The music accompanying is the only song I listened to while skiing, and (for me) was the soundtrack to my trip :)

Arduino - First Project

Got my Arduino this week, as inspired my the Maker Faire at the Newcastle Science festival. Needed to save penny and have a friday night it, so stayed in and made it work. Got a 16-way rotary switch and a line of 5 LED's and made a kind of Christmas Lights arrangement, selectable patterns. Flexing my electronic and C basic skills.

Tomorrow might be a nice day and warrant a walk up Pendel, if not, have to see if I can't get my stepper motor working :)

Glade 2010

Spotify playlist of the Glade 2010 artists, as informed by their press release dated Wed 17th March 2010!

Foures into electronics

Inspired by this years Maker Faire (and the nature of my job) sees me needing to make a decicive move towards understanding a bit more of electronics. An Arduino has been ordered, and I have been inspired to design and build a musical instrument, using an aluminium bowl, a bag of ball bearings and a few stepper moters I have liberated of an old dot matrix printer from the warehouse at work. The sad thing is, it seems like I am a few decades too late. Getting microelectronic parts that aren't surface mount or £5 delivery charge seems nearly impossible. I went to Maplins for a bag of transistor, and they only had 4!! This is a shame, cause it means people are going to find it hard in the comming years to get into electronics, meaning all hardware development will be taken abroad, just like every other industry we have ever had! Yikes!

Damn Studio

The problem with recording in a studio that have over 100ms latency, is at first, you do not notice it, and you play correctly to the click, or backing tack. Then after a while, your subconscious takes over and begins to allow you to play slightly behind so that the instrument you are playing sounds in time with the rest of the music. The end result is a take that is half in one time and half in another (or in other words, Out of time). As far as I can see, without different recording /studio techniques this is unavoidable... Meaning everything recorded in a studio suffering latency will always be a little bit crap....

Damn Studio!

Matter is Clever

If gravity is exerted by all matter, and gravity is a form of energy, then in accordance with the conservation of energy rule, then where does matter get the energy from to convert into gravity!?