Joel's Mundane Life

It's just occurred to me that I've not blogged for over a month - lots of things have happened (although none of them involving a holiday, for reasons I'll expand on in a tic - which makes the title of this post a little meaningless). So, hum, er, 20th July onwards, let me try and remember what's happened since then...

First on the list was taking the kids to see Pet Shop Boys at Newcastle Arena. Both Ben and Ellie have loved the live DVD and the showmanship, so didn't really see a problem with taking them to their first stadium gig. With my first ever stadium gig in mind (Bob Dylan at Birmingham NEC supported by Tom Petty, can't remember the year but they were rubbish seats) I booked seats where we were unlikely to have a problem with the view - stage left, about 18ft from the front. Brilliant, the kids could see everything and once Ellie had got used to the harshness of the support act (Sophie Ellis-Bextor, badly mixed) they had a fantastic time. Proper family outing!

During July we got involved with Wakefield Music Collective, the body which organises the annual Clarence Park Music Festival in Wakefield among other events. It sorta started with being asked to do a poster design, then both myself and Nicky volunteered to do stewarding duties and had a whale of a time walking around in hi-viz jackets. I'd also not anticipated the steepness of that hill in front of Clarence bandstand, although I sneakily managed to avoid walking up and down it too much clearing litter (thank you for taking your litter home!). A lot of good acts on but the highlights for me were Ruby Macintosh Retrospective and Jiezuberband who bill themselves as 'Scottish prog-rock' (they brought their own Hammond and a proper hardware Leslie unit, woo!). Ben particularly enjoyed rockers The Jokers, getting a CD with his pocket money and even managing to blag a signed poster of the band which once we decorate his bedroom will occupy pride of place on the wall! Photos from Clarence here and here.

In the midst of preparing for Clarence I took a little bit of time to help the Fotopic.net chaps close the Wakefield office down. It's been a long time coming and with the move to a virtual headquarters there was really no need for the overheads involved. Still a bit of a sad day but we got it all cleared out, and the furniture went to a local children's charity. I ended up with a pile of Agfa d.Lab-2 paper cassettes which I listed on eBay... if anyone wants an 8" or 12" paper cassette then drop me a line and make me an offer! In clearing the place out I found plenty of memories of times past, but I'm not looking at it as a closure - more of a 'new stuff around the corner, watch this space'... :)

After Clarence, the next thing that happened was Ben being a mascot at Sheffield Wednesday in the first game of the season versus Dagenham & Redbridge. My brother Tim took him (after all, he's a bigger Wednesday fan than all of us lot put together) and they met all the players, Ben got changed in the official changing rooms, then came out and played football followed by high-fiving all the players and generally being ace. There's an official pic of him on the SWFC website over here, but for the proper experience you need to watch the video. He really was a superstar, Tim took quite a few pics which are here, and after all that Owls won 2-0. Hurrah!

Then came Pride Wakefield, and a few days of total carnage involving Jaegerbombs and stuff. A small affair, the local Pride march was ridiculously short and I'm not sure organising it on Sunday evening was such a good idea - those who could walk the circuit from the Rainbow round past The New Union and the Harewood Arms were few and far between. I took some photos of course but certainly nothing on the scale of the London event. It got a bit debauched and apparently (!) I was dancing with Hx in Zeus Bar to Kylie and Scissor Sisters remixes... probably should mumble something regarding XX chromosomes here.

In the middle of all of this I had to do some work - I'd finished at Pace Networks at the end of July which left me without a contract for August (this also contributed to our holiday cancellation - I can't really be on-hand for contract interviews and pitches if I'm miles away) and through a bizarre series of circumstances ended up doing bits and bobs for Ripe Design in Leeds again. The place has changed quite substantially but there's no shortage of work and I'm hoping it'll be quite a long and flexible contract this time. I'm still doing stuff for the Met which is gearing up for launch, plus there's a few other private projects I'm working on including something called Pikfu... but more about that in the future.

Then there's the back bathroom. Folks who follow what I do on Facebook and Twitter will have noticed that there's been a near-constant stream of DIY-related whinges, photographs and invective over the past week or so, but the story is this: on 22nd August I had a rush of blood to the head and decided to rip out the back bathroom. We've been in this house for 8 years now and that back bathroom has been used once, instead being used as a dumping ground for anything and everything from spare lightbulbs to wine (visitors to the house will know it as 'the wine storeroom'). So anyway, I was sick of it stinking of piss and generally being icky so pulled out the bath which took down half the plaster on the wall. Then I realised the skirting wasn't done behind the bath, the tiles had torn away more plaster, and there was a big hole in the floorboards where the bath water-trap had been installed. Great. To compound the felony I decided to move the washbasin. End result is that I've spent last week plastering, doing the skirting, replacing the light, filling the floorboard holes, plumbing, removing waste pipes, tiling, carpeting, and finally putting up the new mirror. Nicky for her part has wallpapered and painted, and it looks completely different now (see photos here, plus a pic of what it looked like when we first moved in). Just need a dresser in there for more storage and jobsagoodun.

I think that's it. True to form I'll probably post this and find a zillion more things I've forgotten to mention...

(You might have noticed I haven't mentioned Obvious Pseudonym - well, that's undergoing a bit of a change and we have to wait for a band meeting before we can make any announcements. Keep an eye on the website, it'll all be public soon enough.)

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You've probably not noticed, but Keith Chegwin has been embroiled in scandal for the past 24 hours, accused of nicking jokes from other (working) comedians such as Milton Jones.

If you're wanting to be up on the whole thing, you can search Twitter.

Anyway, to celebrate the whole Cheggersgate scandal Obvious Pseudonym have released the Six Noises EP version of 'Keith Chegwin For A Day' as a free MP3 download for one day only.

You can get it here on our official website - it's excellent for annoying your coworkers.

(Not everything we do is that irritating - most of our stuff is really very good, and you can get it from iTunes Music Store or on CD by post).

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Last weekend was Pride London 2010; once again we'd been asked if we could take photos for Paleday and The Pink Singers on the main stage, once again a privilege to do so.

Given last year's experiences of schlepping to and fro from Battersea I thought it prudent to get down the day before and stay at a hotel somewhere in central London. We'd had plenty of notice this year and I booked Covent Garden Travelodge: pretty reasonable for our needs and easy for transport links. You don't expect luxury at Travelodges, just a good night's sleep so this provided all we needed.

So anyway, we got down on the Friday. After a bit of confusion I collected our Press passes from backstage in Trafalgar Square then wandered up to Camden for a lovely evening with friends (especially nice to meet Jharda again, and have unexpected company from Richie).

We were told that this year we were to have not just passes but also wristbands which I needed to collect from King's Cross before the parade started. This meant a bit of a mad dash for me while Nicky and Si headed for the parade itself. Bad timing for the weekend - I was naffed off to discover the entire Circle line was shut down for maintenance which in turn led to various bus rides to Baker Street simply trying to get there before the parade started! Good news, I managed it (with just quarter of an hour to spare), making my way to the head of the parade led by Boris Johnson and Peter Tatchell.

There were a lot of photographers at the head of the parade - when it started we were moved back. Unfortunately (and this is my first experience of such behaviour) there were a couple of photographers who didn't take any notice and started to spoil it for the rest of us conscientious lot; one photog was threatened with removal of his pass, and another idiot almost came to blows with a Parade Director. I strongly believe that there's unwritten laws of courtesy when you're a photographer, but this time it was a little... well, nasty I suppose.

I got ahead of the parade and started grabbing shots of the crowds of which there were enough to keep me going. At one point I turned back to see I was about 20 metres in front of the head of the parade, nothing in front of me and nothing behind me; at either side were thousands of cheering screaming people. Yes, it would seem I led the parade (pic here). Hurrah!

It soon became apparent we had a bit of an issue - how do we drop back into the parade to take shots of participants given all the photographers are being shoved back? Si and Nicky managed to do this by blending into the crowd while the parade flag went past, but I was skeptical of this given I'd got two huge cameras around my neck. I slipped out and walked with the spectators on Oxford Street while the first few floats went past, then found a steward near a break in the barriers.

"Can I get in the parade please?" I wibbled, after getting his attention. "I'm Press, meant to be over there. Sorry."
"Um no. We can't part the barriers."
"Bother. I'm really meant to be photographing."
He thought for a moment and grinned slightly. "Right, you could climb over?"

So I handed him the larger camera and lens, and vaulted the barrier with about £3k-worth of camera kit. I won't repeat that experience but at least I was in the parade!

I walked with lots of floats - the London Gay Men's Chorus, the LGBT Lib Dems, Labour and Tory groups, various campaign groups, and the London Raiders softball team - all the while taking photos (many of which are on my Flickr stream, all of which are on photos.jml.net). I was sorry to miss Gaz (who was apparently in Soho Square), the Gaydar lot, and one of the Pinkies I've been talking with since I photographed him last year. Never mind, there's always the 2011 parade!

Post-parade, Si and Nicky were waiting for me with a nice chilled pint in The Sherlock Holmes pub just off Trafalgar Square. Recovery time, a good sit down. Phew.

Next stop - the main stage. I arrived to find one of the performers from West End show 'Wicked' singing her little heart out, and it was at that point I discovered that this year our passes and wristbands didn't just get us into the press pit but it also got us backstage. Bonus!

The stage was higher this year, by my estimation about 18". This meant the angles were a lot sharper on some of the photos, but the press pit was also larger. Unfortunately, it was also a lot more full and there was quite a lot of shoving around - unfortunate. Some of the acts were pounced on by the photographers (including for some reason the cast of the West End show 'Hair') while others didn't get touched and my philosophy in such situations is that I'd prefer to get photos other people don't, so step back. Instead I took photos of acts waiting to go onstage, little bits of interaction between performers and producers, photos nobody else would get. Given some of the reactions so far, it was appreciated.

Anyway, back to the day. After a while, myself and Si went for a wander to see what the Leicester Square stage was like. Crowded, lots of people around. Some good shots taken, quite nice, and we got the (now usual) kick out of being able to walk through the exit and go out of the entrance cos we had press passes, baby! :P

We fought our way up through Soho, to find there was nothing in Soho Square - not even many paraders. We took a few snaps (for that is all they were) and set off back.

At that point, I received a text message from Nicky: "Pink Singers all lining up". SHIT, THIS IS THE BAND I'M HERE TO PHOTOGRAPH AND I'M STILL UP IN SOHO. We run as fast as we can through seething masses of people. We got to the main stage to find that yes, they'd all lined up but weren't on for about another 30 minutes. Thanks for panicking me, love! Still, it left me backstage to take some more candid shots - excellent.

Paleday and the Pink Singers were wonderful - a better performance than last year, and I'm looking forward to Paleday doing some more full gigs.

And so we went on into the evening, with the final act being the DE Experience, a drag act performing most frequently at the Vauxhall Tavern. Lots of photos, lots of crowd shots, some opportunity to mess with the fisheye lens. It all finished up around 8:30pm so we headed back to the hotel.

(My t-shirt went down well - I'd opted for a red number with JAN MOIR THINKS I'M DIRTY printed on it. I got stopped a few times for people to take my photo, and met someone professing to be involved with the Daily Mail who said 'don't worry mate, we f*ing hate her too'. Comedy.)

Finally after half an hour of rest, showering, etc. we're ready for a night out in Soho. That was a bit of a mess really, the whole place seemed to shut down about 11:30pm, maybe because of the broken glass? There were police everywhere and unless we wanted to go in a very very crowded club (Koko anyone?) we'd be out of luck. So, we strolled back to the hotel and in a display of middle-classed heterosexuality we had a few bottles of Carlsberg until the hotel bar closed. Meh.

There were about 80GB of photos this time round - a smaller number in total but I was shooting RAW and dumping them to a Vosonic Imagetank to prevent running out of CF (instead I ran out of juice on the BP511 batteries on the Canon 30D). I was carrying the 24-105mm f/4 IS L lens, the 70-200mm f/2.8 IS L lens and the f/2.8 fisheye (using it as an ultrawide on the 30D body at times). It seemed a good mix, and was supplemented sometimes by the Speedlite 580EX II flashgun to provide fill.

My photos are gradually appearing on my Flickr stream and over at our photo gallery.

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On a hot night in Wakefield, we took to the stage. Henry Boon's on Westgate - the stone-floored skylight-covered yard in the back. We rocked, people danced, lots of folks got dehydrated. We attracted drunk people dancing in the street outside, we made rude noises, the world stopped for a few hours as we did the best gig we've ever done. Fuck yeah we really rocked.

...that's the short version (and apologies if this sounds like an Oscars speech but I'm still buzzing).

Of course I'm talking about the launch of Obvious Pseudonym's debut release The Six Noises EP, a labour of love which left us emotionally exhausted but rightly proud. We were on-stage with Shrood (with whom we share our lead guitarist, and borrowed their drummer for the EP). They rocked also. Lots.

We hit the stage at about 10:15pm and opened with Eclipsed, going through the whole catalogue. I got to sing for one song (Just Leave) before donning a blonde wig and cape to do my Rick Wakeman impression for Baby Baby (although comments were mostly that I looked like the blonde one out of Abba; sorry, my tits aren't that great). I kept track of the keyboards better this time than on previous gigs: practice or planning I don't know but I'm sure Jim will tell me off for forgetting to cancel transpose after Me Me Me ;)

It was hot. Very hot. I'm not talking about 'the buzz' (although that was pretty fantastic too), but the heat itself, like being in a greenhouse. The doors on the back of the stage were open (which led to a little audience at the rear, mostly drunk people who'd heard us in passing). I was confined to pints of water given I was driving, and went through 8 pints before we went on-stage then 2 pints while up there. Yow. This was after we'd turned the filament floodlighting down a bit so goodness knows how badly Shrood must have suffered before us. Sorry guys.

The vibe offstage seemed good - lots of folks dancing, some of the more comedy songs getting a laugh, dancing and boogying going on - it really is an utterly excellent buzz when you see people dancing to songs you've written! I also confess that OK, I didn't want to do Cheggers again after today but given the insane crowd reaction when the fanfare started up I suppose we'll have to keep it in the set. Pity, but if you folks enjoy it... :P

My bandmates were brilliant: Dan played better than I've ever heard him before; Jim was... Jim, bouncy and intuitive on his guitar; Nicky's flute was audible and her vocals were spot on; Si was in-time and on-tune and, hell, he was smokin'. Very very pleased, very proud of them, thanks you lot.

Ah yeah, I mentioned driving: I'd hired a van for the launch, given we were shifting a rather huge lighting setup and our brilliant soundsystem which was all still set up from the Clarence Park gig last week (Si didn't have much to sort out I think). Indeed on first check it sounded fantastic, but I'd taken the Friday off work to make sure everything got sorted in time and without too much hassle, thus we were largely on-time with setup and soundcheck and only slightly crashed the door-opening time with Shrood's soundcheck.

The team I really didn't get to thank enough on the night were the merchandise/promotion team of Meghan Barber, Rachel Moore and Cat Thompson, who made sure the merchandise stand was stocked, attractive and who also ended up chasing us for band signatures on stuff. We signed some boobies too (I really hope that silver paint will come off, Clare...!). Another massive buzz was being chased to sign CDs!

Technical matters? The DMXIS lighting controller had a few hiccups (principally to do with it losing connectivity via USB, or where I accidentally hit the lighting-cue pedal instead of one of the keyboard sustain pedals) but by and large that bit went without a hitch. The monitoring worked well but I'm contemplating use of in-ear monitors for the keys now to assist with click-track work. Also I need to work out a way of flightcasing the Korg modules and the SIDstation because simply chucking them in a bag isn't working and I don't want them damaged. Si's preamp failed in his bass amplifier, although I'm not sure the treble crackling came across and he managed to mitigate it ("think fast!").

So what now? We've got a provisional (unconfirmed) gig booked in Brighton in early August but apart from that the diary is clear. Time to pimp, I think - we want to get out on the road... and if you fancy, there's some Special Edition EPs still available (signed if you like) at our website. Go on, you'll love Baby Baby, it's the best one on there. :P

(And we've got some new badges in the online shop thingy too.)

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A while back I acquired a dirt-cheap secondhand pair of SoundLAB Gyroscan units (G017X) for use on-stage as spotlights in combination with my ENTTEC DMX-IS computer-controlled DMX interface. The idea being that I can set them up for each song, mark a cross on the stage and that's where the singers stand - cheap computer-controlled spotlights, yay.

There's a couple of gotchas with this:

First, the Gyroscan DMX interface is inverted - that is to say, hot/cold are the wrong way round on the DMX pinout. While professional establishments tend to have DMX inverters to sort this stuff out I didn't have any and it seemed to be a simple matter of popping the back off the unit and swapping the cables around. Ten minutes with a soldering iron and we're in business.

Second, there's no DMXIS fixture file which will deal with them properly. The Prosound Smart Scan II file comes close but wastes a few (possibly precious) channels which makes it unsuitable if you want everything on one screen. Thus I've put a DMXIS fixture 'macro' together which if you're using Windows you can save in C:\Program Files\ENTTEC\DMXIS\DmxLibrary\Soundlab and it'll automatically find it:

Pan
V,0,255,
Tilt
V,0,255,
Gobo
S,0,24,Black
S,25,49,White
S,50,74,Pink
S,75,99,Cyan
S,100,124,Yellow
S,125,149,Green
S,150,174,Orange
S,175,197,WhDots
S,198,226,Rotating
S,227,255,Strobe
Rotation
V,0,255,

This seems to work fine for me and also makes the positioning trackpad work in the bottom left corner of the DMXIS control panel.

The only real comment I have on the Gyroscan units (bear in mind here I'm still an amateur at this) is that they're a bit slow to cue up a gobo. Other than that they seem fine!

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Last night the first few download services started listing the Obvious Pseudonym 'Six Noises EP'.

You can now get it from iTunes Music Store, apparently it's also on the Nokia equivalent. It should hit Spotify, Amazon MP3 and last.fm in the next couple of weeks.

There'll be physical CDs available to order from the band website fairly soon, but I've got to do some coding and I've got far too much work on to get that sorted quickly.

We're looking for press coverage, reviews, pimping etc. so if you can help with that (or have a friendly chum who might be able to), please get in touch with me :)

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It's only taken 17 years to get to this stage but finally we've recorded the first real honest-to-goodness Obvious Pseudonym release. Comprising six tracks and imaginatively entitled 'Six Noises' it's going to be on iTunes, Amazon, and various other places - plus you'll be able to buy a physical CD from the website anagramofhits.com.

An interesting fortnight all-told: we went to Purple Pro Audio with a solid plan (which quickly went to shit) hoping to record and mix the six songs in 5 days. No bloody chance - for a start it was the first time we'd had real percussion although the sheer professionalism and talent of Rob Taylor bashing the skins made it a bit easier. It wasn't until the Friday that I managed to record my own keyboard parts, leaving precious little time to mix the songs and produce final tracks; we added two days of production on but even that wasn't enough, finally resorting to taking the mixes home with me so I could tidy up some of the parts.

It helped that we had a damn fine engineer - Simon Wake, who has the patience of a saint in the face of great adversity; some of the methods and microphone placements for the guitars were utterly inspired and they sound fab as a result. If you're up North and want to record your band you could do a lot worse than get him in.

Still, despite Simon's calming influence and wizardry, it amounted to probably the most stressful fortnight I've ever had; I felt almost suicidal at times, sick with nerves, and pacing up and down outside the control room as if it were a delivery room in a hospital.

That said, I think the end result is excellent. As I've been telling folks I think the best track on there is Baby Baby, but on your CD you'll also get Eclipsed, Sex Noises, Coming Up On Empty, Westgate Run and Keith Chegwin For A Day. It really is a labour of love and sounds nothing like the OP of old - wailing funky guitars, Hammond organ, Bern's soaring vocals, Sminky crooning along, thumping bass and driving beats.

We're doing a launch gig at Henry Boon's in Wakefield on Friday 25th June alongside Jim's other band Shrood. Hoping for it to be a good one, I'll be going a little mental on the keyboard rig as well.

Prior to that though we're headlining Wakefield Music Collective's Solstice festival at Clarence Park on Saturday 19th June - here's hoping it'll be sunny!

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Not too bad a gig last night considering we were introducing a brand new lighting rig, a new PA, two new keyboards and four songs we'd not performed before.

Set list went like this - ones marked * are brand new: Eclipsed, Take Away The Tears, Sex Noises, Me Me Me*, Coming Up On Empty, Valentine's Day, Disco Sauce, Credit Crunch, Human Again*, Fight The Anger*, Just Leave*, Baby Baby, Westgate Run, Keith Chegwin For A Day.

The Nord C2 and the SIDstation both got their first outing which worked reasonably well.

Although comments were generally favourable, speaker/amp feedback issues in the first half were very tedious (for which I apologise) as was Nicky's microphone failing - or more specifically, the compressor having a fight with the in-house monitors. Second half was a lot better, mostly because Ryan ended up gain-riding the mics but still a lot to work on. Next time we bring our own monitor speakers and hopefully not require a helping hand!

There will be photos somewhere, I'll update this article with links when I find them.

(Plus, extra bonus points for fitting the entire stage rig in two cars - I win at car tetris!)

We're in the studio next week to record the EP - hoping that goes well. We've also managed to find a drummer and need to get him sorted with all the songs too.

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An unusual way of waking up this morning...

I normally wake to the radio (Sarah Kennedy on Radio 2 since you ask, and I've usually got up and switched it off by the time the ginger twat graces the station with his presence at 7am). It's not unusual for the music to pervade my subconscious and influence the last few minutes of sleep so unsurprising that I 'came-to' with music in my dreams, but this time it was one of Obvious Pseudonym's songs, Baby Baby.

...wait, what? Si's dulcet tones on the demo track I'd been mixing? On the radio? I vaguely rouse myself. The band on the radio is Obvious Pseudonym. Nah, must still be dreaming; it's hardly pre-watershed material. Jim's guitar kicks in, and it stops. A dream.

Then it starts again. What? "...let's make sweet love tonight..." I wake up properly. Can't be the radio, the alarm is set for 6:20am and it's only 6:15am.

The music is on downstairs. I wearily bimble downstairs to find the studio in full belt and a rather guilty looking cat. Yes, it seems the cat is mixing one of our demo tracks, or at least has managed to click the shuttle wheel.

...time for a locked screensaver on that machine I think.

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I've got a new MacBook Pro - one of the Intel i7 ones, 17", nice piece of kit. I've also re-evaluated my external disk requirements on my desktop and bought a dual eSATA/USB RAID0+1 array for storing my Lightroom library.

Sick of running it on USB (and I'm running out of USB ports anyway) I purchased a LaCie SATA II ExpressCard 34 adaptor via Amazon. Today's been the first chance I've had to switch it over as I'm working from home, and installed the drivers as per the instructions. I plugged the card in... instant kernel panic on Snow Leopard. Oops.

No problems, reboot. Except it won't - not at all. A reboot of the machine hit a kernel panic within a few seconds, not even enough for it to bring up the OS tail. The error is: "thread wants credential but has no BSD process" - a completely unusable system.

I eventually got it down to out-of-date drivers supplied with the CD accompanying the card. The correct drivers are here, and you will not be able to boot your system unless you do the following:

1. Reboot holiding down the shift key, so you enter 'safe boot mode'. This will take a while to boot so you might want to make a cuppa.
2. Download the drivers from here.
3. Install the drivers and immediately reboot.

I haven't had any problems since.

(Apparently this is to do with the SIS chipset not addressing 64-bit memory space correctly, but booting into 32-bit compatibility mode doesn't work either.)

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So a few weeks ago Obvious Pseudonym played Escobar in Wakefield, introduced Jim as our new lead guitarist, and generally played the best we've ever done - a smashing gig which included all our finished stuff. Comments were pretty favourable and although the sound engineering wasn't brilliant we still enjoyed it and had a good crowd. The sound of the band has of course changed quite substantially and we have a much more rock/indie feel alongside the 70s beats and synthpop.

More on the as-yet-unnamed Obvious Pseudonym EP which I've been wibbling on about for a while... we've finally booked a studio! Yes kids, for a whole week at the end of May the band will congregate in Purple Pro Studios in Leeds to record at least six songs, and these will form the EP itself. Jim and I popped up to the studios last Friday to visit, and we were pretty damn impressed with the facilities (and it's underground which explains the title of this entry, OK?). We've got use of the whole complex (complete with engineer) - yes, even the 1960s pinball machine that apparently still works.

The CD will be released officially on 25th June and celebrated with a gig in Boon's Yard (that's the bit at the back of Henry Boons), on Westgate in Wakefield. We'll hopefully have it on iTunes at the same time. You should mark it in your diaries 'cos it'll be an ace laugh and we'll be joined by our good mates from Shrood. There's a Facebook event page here if you want to RSVP.

In other music news, last Friday I bought myself a Nord C2 combo organ, a beautiful piece of kit which will have a by-product of reducing my main keyboard rig to 2 tiers so I can actually see the audience at gigs. Given I use Hammond-style organ fairly extensively in my music it will hopefully make a difference (plus I can hook it up to a real honest-to-God hardware Leslie unit); that's my birthday present sorted anyway.

This week is mostly arrangements and maybe a little bit of composition - I need to have the arrangements for the EP songs absolutely perfect, and I've got a couple of ideas for new songs (including a few we've been fiddling with in rehearsals) which will probably make their debut at the Clarence Park gig.

Exciting times!

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Last Saturday was Wakefield Acorn Computer Show, run by Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club.

There's not much really to report as I don't use RISC OS, but the highlights for me were an O2 Joggler running Netsurf and the current (maturing) status of RISC OS Open on Beagleboard hardware (photo).

I took along the Domesday Project of course as well as a couple of other machines. It was quite good having the Domesday running on a large 32" flatpanel (photo) given the small crowds which would occasionally gather. I am also very pleased to report that the gentleman from Archive magazine brought along some more correspondence from the 1984 'Domesday Submission Kit' with letters acknowledging difficulty in surveys and other things. I'll get them scanned in as soon as I can.

Alongside the 'normal' BBC Master 128, I'd got my ultra-pimped Beeb running: a Master 128 with ARM7TDMI coprocessor, USB interface, CF card storage, 100baseTx Ethernet, and switchable 3.2/3.5 MOS.

There was also a Chuckie Egg incident - I thought I'd hit the high-score for the show (and indeed had red mist while playing it) but then got thoroughly beaten later on with a score of over 200,000. Boo! Need more practice!

Nice to see some of the 8-bit enthusiast crowd there again including Dave Moore from Retro Software and Ian Wolstenholme (I wonder if Ian made it home in one piece on the train, carrying an A7000, an A3000 and three Technomatic Winchester hard disks?).

Finally, I was a good boy and didn't spend piles of cash on the charity stall (not that there was much of interest), coming away with a replacement monitor for the Domesday system for the princely sum of £2.

My full set of photos from the event are here.

Next Acorn 'presence' will be at Bletchley on 19th and 20th June as part of the Vintage Computer Festival. Mind, I won't be there for most of the Saturday (as OP have a gig in Wakefield) but I believe on the Sunday there is a major 'project day' effort to try and get the Domesday Community Disc properly archived. Maybe see you there!

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A couple of Obvious Pseudonym gigs booked:

• This Saturday 17th April we're playing at Escobar Wakefield again. This is our first gig with our new lead guitarist so it'll be a bit different (the sounds a lot more rock-y than before). Doors open at 8pm, we're on about 9:30pm and it's £3 in. Soem other bands we've never heard of are performing too.
• A bit further ahead on Saturday 19th June we're performing in Wakefield's Clarence Park as part of the Summer Solstice Festival. It'll be a late-afternoon gig and child-friendly so if you've got kids you can haul them along. Dancing mandatory, or bring a few tinnies and chill out on the grass.

I've just ordered myself a brand new 17" i7 Macbook Pro (whee!) so Si will be taking over some of the production duties as well giving us a bit more a professional sound.

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Unless you've had me on 'ignore' for a month or so (and that includes 'in-person'), it won't have escaped your attention that I've been going on ad nauseum about the government's Digital Economy Bill which is an attempt to deal with online copyright, broadband, and all sorts of things. It's a wide-reaching bill which will affect everyone online in the UK (yes, even you Mum).

I'm not going to go into the actual provisions of the Bill here, because it's been covered elsewhere. Suffice to say that you, as an Internet subscriber, can be disconnected and prohibited from having an Internet connection without judicial review or trial, simply if you are suspected of infringing copyright. Infringing can be something as simple as unauthorised use of someone's photo. You can also add 'blocking websites the Government doesn't like' to the mix (Wikileaks was cited as an example in Parliament) - this was withdrawn in the third reading as part of clause 18 but now lives on in clause 1 (thanks ChrisE for clarifying that - Ed.).

As a result of the impending election, it was consigned to 'wash-up' - that's the bit of the Parliamentary session where they try to get unfinished business done before they all go back to their constituencies and make promises they can't keep. Last night the Bill had its third reading and amid protest it went through (although in a small victory Clause 43 was removed, that's the 'orphan works' bill which would stuff photographers, there's an AP article here about it). I am reliably informed it was a three-line whip, although there were a few rebels which I'll discuss in a moment.

While all this was happening I was online watching both the second and third readings on BBC Democracy Live with a copy of the Register of Members Interests in another window to cross-reference. There was of course a substantial discussion on Twitter resulting in the #debill tag 'trending' worldwide (my own contributions can be read here if you wade through my feed). What was interesting was that there were politicians actually in the Chamber reading Twitter and responding to questions and suggestions - the most prominent being Tom Watson MP (Lab) ("First time i've ever broken the whip in the chamber. I feel physically sick.") and Dr Evan Harris (Lib Dem) - possibly the first example of directly influencing a debate through online participation?

After the second reading on Tuesday night, Mo put together an open letter which quickly gathered signatories. At least Peter Luff had the dignity to respond, although I don't agree with his stance at all.

The list of who finally voted against the bill is here. Kudos to the MPs who went against the whip and did their own research - I found myself agreeing with John Redwood MP on Tuesday night in the second reading, quite a bizarre feeling, that!

For my part I wrote to my MP twice - Ed Balls MP (Lab). He didn't reply, not even an acknowledgement - although in discussion with local activists this is apparently unsurprising. I hear others wrote to their MPs and received a stock 'I'm concerned and will vote no' response - then they didn't even show up for the vote. A few sent stock responses towing the party line (yes I'm looking at you Yvette Cooper MP).

I am not protesting that legislation isn't needed; I am not protesting that there are Bad Things which need addressing; I am not saying we don't need some sort of Parliamentary intervention to ensure that the UK's "digital economy" is protected. What I am saying is that it is a very very complex technical issue which MPs by their own admission did not understand, and which amid protest was forced through without proper scrutiny in a deal which (reading between the lines) was probably done against the Electoral Reform Bill. Over 20,000 of the electorate (many of them the creatives this is supposed to protect) were protesting - that should mean that it gets a better reading than a rushed couple of debates. Nor am I singling out any political party - you were all railroaded by your party whips (mind, Twitter user @holizz points out that only 5 people outside of Labour voted in favour of the bill).

(A sidenote: those of you who work in politics and have repeatedly bleated at me that 'the system works' and 'it's democracy' can take your copy of Hansard, roll it up nice and tight, and stuff it up your arse.)

So, we see what happens next; it's back to the Lords and then I suppose Royal Assent. I have it on pretty good authority though that there is already talk of a Version 2 of the Bill, so the battle may be lost but the war goes on.

The full amended text of the Bill isn't available yet, but once it is I'll link to it from here. Trefor's blog also has some good comment if you want to read more, and if you're of the opinion that 'because they weren't debating the MPs don't care' then you should also read Mark Goodge's diatribe An Empty Chamber Is Not An Empty Mind. Enjoy.

Update: As promised, Guardian Tech have posted A Quick Guide To The Digital Economy Bill - useful reading if you don't know what it's on about.

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After a period of quiet not least because I couldn't get from one end of the garage to the other, I'm back fiddling with 8-bit machines and preparing for several 'appearances' at retro computing events throughout the UK.

Sat 24th April: Wakefield Acorn & RISC OS Computer Show 2010 is a regular in the calendar and although it has been more on the brand new RISC OS side in recent years, this year there will be a stronger 8-bit presence. I will be there exhibiting 'new things you can do with your BBC Micro' including some of the flash-based storage units, new coprocessors, and the latest version of Sprow's Ethernet interface.

Sat 19th June - Sun 20th June: Vintage Computer Festival at Bletchley Park. I've been asked to demonstrate the Domesday Project and discuss its impact and history with visitors - it's also likely there will be a small Econet setup with some interesting bits and bobs, alongside vendors and a fleamarket in case you fancy spending some of your hard-earned on ancient rigs.

Sat 20th November - Sun 21st November: R3play in Blackpool. I've no idea what the Acorn presence will be at this show, but given that Arcadian's on the organising committee it'll probably feature some of us!

Some of these events will be very busy so if you want to have some old Acorn fun you probably should put these in your diary and organise tickets now. I know the recommended hotel for the VCF is almost full, so get your skates on.

Edit: Dave just mailed me and corrected on the dates, R3PLAY is now 6th-7th November.

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