Supporting the Hollywood Writer's Strike

Music Festival #3- Sziget

I knew this festival was going to be huge and was likely to be messy but I really could not imagine the scale of it until I was actually there! Immense!

Along with my travelling buddy of the summer, I flew into Bratislava, Slovakia from where we caught the 2 and a half hour train to Budapest, Hungary. We met some girls from Glasgow on the way and got a few beers in (obviously). There had just been quite a severe heatwave in this part of the world a couple of weeks before we got there and the heat was still pretty intense but thankfully we had missed the worst of it.

We cheated and got a taxi from the station to the festival, as we just wanted to put up the tents pronto and check out the bands. Cheeky sod charged us 40€ though!! That's probably a month's rent in Budapest!!! We paid it, silly tourists that we were.

Upon arriving at the island it was immediately obvious that this was one hell of an event. The entrance to the island was absolutely teeming with people. Previous years had seen over 400,000 attend the festival over the 7 days and it was beginning to sink in how many people that meant.

In contrast to the standard English festival consisting of one flat open field for the stages and another for the tents, this was unique. The island is forested with various footpaths and roads spreading throughout it, the effect being a wooded labyrinth. Every now and again there would be a clearing with a stage or two in it, or a road with a selection of food stalls at the side. Otherwise, wherever there was a big enough gap between two trees, people would pitch their tent.

The line-up boasted some big names and I ended up seeing some acts that I would normally have not even thought twice about seeing, which I imagine was quite good for my personal music development. We managed to catch Manu Chao and I didn't expect it but the crowd went absolutely bananas! Chemical Brothers were absolutely immense and their visuals were pretty spectacular. Faithless played an infinitely better set than their attempt at Global Gathering (I think they have a bit of a soft spot for Sziget crowds).

I saw !!! (pronounced "Tchuk Tchuk Tchuk", apparently) for one song as I was on the hunt for some grub, but they weren't my thing and I was pretty hungover so I gave them a miss. Other acts who I would never normally see include Nine Inch Nails and Tool, both not really my cup of tea but no harm done in watching them from the bar. Also saw Pink whilst sunbathing early on in the afternoon and probably could have done without that, really. Madness turned up as well, which was a bit of a turn up for the books!

Had a big of a mad night in the dance tent on the Tuesday to Annie Nightingale (Radio 1) and Plump DJs, who did the business. One of the most full-on rave-ups I've been to in a long time. Lots of crazy backpackers in there, some of which had attended the Fete de Bayonne in France which is a bit of a badge of honour, it must be said. The Killers closed the festival and everybody was too knackered to enjoy them, unfortunately!

Made a nice little trip to Bratislava to wind down for a couple of days after the madness of Sziget. Ate a 3 course meal in one of the best restaurants there for about £15 each. Sorted! Place is a bit of a toytown though, like something out of a Disney film!

Music Festival #2- Global Gathering

Now this festival was the first one I camped at and so probably counts as "officially" my first music festival. In contrast to the rather eclectic assembly of styles present at Lovebox, Global is strictly dance music. And then some. It is held on an airfield near to the birthplace of Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon, but couldn't really be any further from his legacy if it tried...

I only bought my ticket and train tickets 2 days before the festival in a spur-of-the-moment, go-with-the-flow type of move that often results in the best moments one can have. This time, my mate Sean was already going with a load of his uni mates in a kind of mass post-graduation celebration. He invited me along at the last minute and I decided to go for it. What a great decision it turned out to be!

I took the train up on the Friday after work and had to queue for ages to get my ticket. As such, I missed all the fun build up stuff. After meeting Sean and then pitching the tent at light speed, we quick-stepped it over to the main stage and managed to catch the legendary Faithless live! I'm not sure if it was me being tired from work or missing the first part of the set, but they didn't turn out to be as good as I had hoped live. However, I would be seeing them later in the summer so I would be able to see if that was just a blip or not.

After Faithless, we caught up with Sean and all his mates and for the majority of them it was the first time they had ever had the pleasure of Mr. Moo Cow's company. After a good dose of house-trance malarkey from Sasha, we moseyed on over to see a young chap called Kissy Sell Out. I had heard of him by name only, but it turns out he was the absolute business! A graduate of Central St. Martin's in London, he has recently been given a regular slot on Radio 1 and I definitely recommend checking his work out. When he plays live he is one of the most "on it" DJs I've ever had the pleasure of seeing! He even has an air-horn which he likes to blast out excitedly to gee the crowd up! His set was the highlight of the weekend for me without a shadow of a doubt.

The next day (finally getting to bed despite 2 hours spent looking for the tent in the pitch black) a few more of our mates from home drove up to enjoy the music. It must be said that I went to see so many acts, it does elude me who I actually saw. I spent a lot of time in the drum n bass tent and think I saw Mampi Swift. We did catch DJ Food and Jungle Drummer, druming the drum n bass rhythms live!! Then a brief visit was paid to the hard house tent to see Yoji Biomehanika, a totally nutty Japanese DJ. Hard house is not really my cup of tea any more though, so the visit didn't last too long in all honesty.

A bit of time was spent in the Minimal house tent, listening to a music style that boasts a bit of bleeping and copious amounts of unending drum loops without any hint of a bass drop. Understandably not a great deal of time, then. However, I made sure that I was present for the whole of Paul van Dyk's set, who boasts the nickname of "God" from his followers. His naughtily-good trance set meant that the Godskitchen tent positively heaved to every new track. Tent here is somewhat of a misnomer; marquee doesn't come close either to describing how cavernous the arena was. It was quite possibly the biggest room I'd ever been in, and still it was too small for PVD and his aficionados. To quote a rather drunken Moo Cow to a load of Sean's mates who I had only just met, "WOW! It's like a cathedral of music!!!!". Suave.

Music Festival #1- Lovebox Weekender

It's been an awesome summer so far: so much so that I haven't had time to write about any of it! But being Bank Holiday weekend I have a lot of spare time on my hands and can afford to spend some time reasserting my dominance on the blogosphere! I'll start at the beginning...

Before this summer I had never been to a music festival. Travesty for a music fan, isn't it! You see the thing is that before this summer, I had never really even been to many gigs. It never really appealed to me to go to see bands live, I preferred to go to the big clubs and see all my favourite DJs and MCs instead. Unfortunately, this means that I haven't really seen a lot of my favourite bands, and now some of them have broken up (Everclear, Rage Against The Machine and so on). In this regard, summer of 2007 has been very good for my outlook towards music.

The two main reasons that caused me to go to more gigs this year are firstly that after 10 months in the music backwaters of Spain, my appreciation for the music scene in England exponentially increased. Secondly, I basically just jumped on the bandwagon with my mates, who have all been busy following their own favourite genres.

However, the first music festival I attended was actually my discovery: Lovebox Weekender in Victoria Park, East London organised by the band members of Groove Armada. I'm not sure if it counts as my first music festival though, as it is not possible to camp there and I only went for the second day of it (but let's not dwell on technicalities). I went along with a mate who knew some of the bands on the line-up that I didn't, so I was going to come away from the festival having learnt some new music, which is always nice!

The first thing we noticed in the festival was a converted Routemaster (the old London double-decker red buses for those not in the know). Upon further inspection it turned out to be a MySpace stage!!! Inside all the downstairs seats had been ripped out and they had a small space for a band or DJ. We saw a band called Tiny Dancers play an acoustic set; quite cool indeed and made cooler by being right up close to them. Definitely a fan of this concept!

Over the course of the day we saw some good new music and some excellent older stuff. Bands like Good Shoes, Adem, Hot Chip (awesome!) and Nouvelle Vague. I must say a personal highlight for me was that I got the chance to finally see Diplo DJ live. In fact, the whole reason I found out about Lovebox was due to examining his tour dates for this summer, as he is American and therefore not always touring Europe. He didn't disappoint, playing a sick little 50 minute set in front of a very up-for-it crowd. I think there were quite a few people who like me had specifically gone to see him, as they really were loving every single tune he put out!

The final set of the weekend was by the organisers themselves, Groove Armada. I'd always liked their tunes, without being a fan per se. However after seeing them live, I have to say I absolutely loved it! They instantly got the crowd in the party mood and have a cracking live sound. Not particularly inspiring analysis I'm afraid, but I'm not a journo, just a mere blogger!

Why Facebook is better than MySpace

Considering that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought MySpace for $580m (£315m) [1], he is probably not very happy with the opinions that I am about to convey. But in all honesty I doubt that I am alone on this topic.

The fact of the matter is that MySpace and Facebook are both social networking sites, although MySpace has a distinct edge over Facebook in that it has a bias towards the music industry. Various record labels and artists have their own profiles, using it to display their material and communicate with fans. In contrast, Facebook is entirely on a personal basis and leans towards photo-sharing.

I've got no problem with the MySpace focus on music: in fact, that's actually all I use it for and I think it is a fantastic idea. Now fans can stay much more up to date with their favourite artists and discover all sorts of new music all over the world incredibly easily. MySpace in that regard is quite possibly one of the best things since sliced bread.

My gripe with MySpace is that the actual website is absolute rubbish. It is slow, messy, poorly designed and the search function is terrible. As an example of poor design, when a song is running on the profile of an artist, in order to add the artist as a friend, or view their photos, the music stops. Now this is not a big deal when using it occasionally, but for people like myself who use the site to trawl through new bands to find new material, it really becomes a big deal pretty quickly.

The site is so visually noisy as well, in contrast to the clean lines of Facebook. This is, in all fairness, largely down due to the fact that the user can actually edit the code dictating the appearance of their profile using html code itself. Also the site is a lot more advertisement-intensive, no doubt due to the rule of the News Corp. For comparison, Facebook only contains at most two advertisements per page, a side banner and a discrete banner at the foot of the page.

Facebook is constantly being updated and developed by Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of his team, whereas the legendary "Tom" and co. of MySpace seem to change very little at all. In fact in the 10 months or so that I have been a member, the only significant change being a little button to flag up a friend request as spam; whereas during the same period Facebook has been through a major aesthetic revamp and more recently witnessed the addition of Facebook Applications. This allows users to add applications to their profile from independent sources in a way that it is "turning Facebook itself into a kind of operating system for internet users" [2].

Overall I am a fan of the service provided by MySpace, but I wish the developers would get their fingers out and make sure they do it in a better way! I think it's time for Murdoch to get the chequebook out and bring in the coding cavalry. Before they start losing even market share than they are now.

Sources:
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5101942.stm
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6907895.stm

Hadouken! Mixtape

I can't believe that I didn't mention the awesome mixtape made by Hadouken that I found last month. It contains tune after tune after tune, and is definitely the sound of this summer. It is totally free and available legally for download by clicking on the link below:

Download free Hadouken! mixtape

Personally I think this band are so fresh and just going to explode into the charts with their debut album, which according to the band is going to be called Repetitive Strain Industry. I'm quite tempted to put a bet on it reaching Number 1; if you could get odds on it I think they would be quite favorable!

Alan Johnston Freed!

Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter kidnapped by Palestinian militants and held captive for more than 110 days, has finally been released. Let's hope he enjoys spending some quality time back in the UK with friends and family before rushing back to the Middle East!

End of Erasmus

So, it finally happened. On the Saturday 30th of June 2007, I caught a plane back to England, marking the end of my Erasmus placement at the University of Cantabria. A sad day that I really hoped would not come, but as they say: all good things come to an end.

My final exam was an oral presentation in Spanish explaining my thesis. After this finished, I wandered over to the International Relations Office to get my form signed confirming I had been a student there all year. After, I dumped my stuff at home and made straight for the Segunda Playa de Sardinero to enjoy the excellent 27 degrees and blazing sunshine. Nothing like a cheeky bit of after-exams sunny beach Pimm's! No wonder I'm such a happy chappy in the photo!

The my final night in Santander involved the classix rendez-vous in the main Plaza before heading out to BNS, a club literally on the beach front (Primera Playa de Sardinero). There we enjoyed the delights of both a beach party (complete with guitars in addition to multi-lingual crooning and multi-national banter) and the nightclub itself. It was a fantastic night and my flatmate, his brother and I stayed on the beach, singing and playing the guitar until sunrise, with the company of a random Spanish group who were a very appreciative audience!

So after (eventually) arriving back at the flat at 10am, we embarked on a marathon 4 hour cleaning session still devoid of any repose at all! When the landlady finally came to collect the keys, all three members of the flat (and the brother of one) said our final goodbyes and then I made my way to the airport. Here's a funny photo of us in our kitchen at about 10.30am during the clean and final goodbyes:


I am going to miss all the people I met there massively, especially my two flatmates, you boys are top dollar! All the best to all the people who were graced with the joy of my presence over the year and thanks for helping make it the best year of my life so far!

Decks fixed... DJK has arrived...

So I went out the other day and invested some cashish in fixing my decks. If you remember as stated a few weeks ago in this blog, I bought the Hercules Mark I DJ controller that doesn't have a soundcard incorporated into it (its the budget option at €99). That means that it requires your computer to have two sound cards to be able to listen to the main track on the speakers and the next track on the headphones.

However, being the intuitive physics student and generally resourceful young scallywag that I am, I solved the problem quite simply. For €35, I picked up an external sound card and some headphones for €25 from PC City (Spain's version of PC World). After some gentle coercion and some software jiggery-pokery, I managed to sort it out and now it works perfectly as a set of decks should. So in effect what I have is an improvised version of the Mark II for €159 instead of €219 for the real deal. Bargain!

The final straw that made me fix the kit was the fact that the day before I made an 80 minute mixtape without headphones: the tunes are cracking but technically the mix is far from ideal. Hopefully when I move back to England in early July I'll have another bash at it properly and put it online for all to enjoy. It's not bad at the moment but still too raw to put out there.

Real Madrid: Champions!

Congratulations to David Beckham for finally winning the Spanish League title in his final season with Real Madrid! Not a bad day out for the kids either!!

Support for Alan Johnston: missing in Gaza

Alan Johnston is a BBC reporter who has been the Gaza Strip correspondent for 3 years. He wet missing on the 12th of March and has now been missing for 91 days. I have added a button in my sidebar to support the search for him connecting straight to the Alan Johnston timeline on the BBC website. It goes without saying that anyone with information about his whereabouts should contact the relevant authorities. I also urge anyone to sign the online petition for his immediate release.

Visitor #2: Sean!

So it turns out I had another visitor to Santander, one of my friends from school: Sean. Had a pretty awesome 5 days: made some music; explored the town; caught some rays on the beach; met all sorts of chaps from all over the world; and had some pretty good partying (check out the photo albums in the righthand sidebar of this page). We also found the language school we studied at during a Sixth Form trip to Santander. The pillock didn't bring me any sodding tea bags though.

Cheers for the visit Sean! You are a legend (although about time I had a visit)!

DJK's First DJ Set!

So I finally tried my hand at DJing in public on Thursday at an Erasmus party! My buddies at www.europesounds.110mb.com were organising a Hip-Hop party at Bar Sahara in Santander and asked if I wanted to try and do a little warm-up set for them. Naturally I jumped at the chance!

In January I bought a Hercules MP3 controller for my laptop which came with some DJing software and have been trying my hand since then. Thursday was the first time I tried in public and although I still have a lot to learn, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Hopefully this summer I can spend a bit more time learning and need to upgrade my kit: currently I'm using Virtual DJ but I think it is fairly recognised that Traktor VinylScratch is top banana. Also I either need a second sound card for my laptop or to get a new MP3 controller with one built in: I didn't realise in January that with the controller I bought, you can't listen to the incoming track on my headphones. Which is kind of the point of DJing. Silly sod that I am.

Future Uses for the Internet

The human being is a social animal; its full potential is achieved when working with others. Indeed, this is one of the main reasons that we have become so numerous on the planet: cooperation leads to increased efficiency. From the early humans who first started living together in settlements, they found that they could get more done by sharing work. Specialising in certain tasks meant new developments and higher production.

In this regard, the internet is a fundamental step forward in the way that humans can cooperate. Instantly it speeds up communication, sharing ideas. Before, communication between humans was limited to small, isolated social/geographical groups meaning ideas and information were shared slowly. But now, the internet has revealed itself as the portal by which theoretically any human on the planet could talk to another. The potential applications are as wide as your imagination can stretch.

So far the Internet as an entity has passed through two main stages. The first was the popularisation of the net; people began to get connected and access content at the click of a mouse. Email and Instant Messaging facilitated communication between people, and websites increased communication of products from companies to consumers. The "dot com bubble" of the late nineties crashed when optimism about the Web collapsed, due to expectations racing ahead of what was actually occurring. Money had been flooding into web companies but usage patterns and technological development meant that the incoming revenue was way below the investment and share price levels. The theme of the early Internet was Communication.

Since the dot com bubble burst, technology and usage patterns have caught up. Connection speeds are significantly faster and cheaper now due to Broadband. Far from being a novelty, the internet has become an absolute necessity in the Western world; daily use starting with just reading news or checking emails has driven user numbers sky high and meant that it is no longer a tool for youngsters [1]: many sections of the population in developed nations use the internet. The initially cautious attitudes shown by many towards financial transactions over the Web has rapidly thawed out in recent years: meaning cyberbusinesses are now actually viable compared to the late '90s (prime examples being eBay and Amazon). Rocketing user numbers has now meant that advertising has a huge presence and provides another possible means of generating revenue (the most obvious being the world's most successful Internet company to date, Google).

The early to mid Naughties has seen a marked change in usage patterns. In addition to increased economic activity over the net, the public has begun to shape the landscape of cyberspace by adding content. Dubbed by technowags "Internet 2.0", the main characteristic change in usage has been the rapid rise in Interactivity. Now the average internet user is no longer a pure consumer, entirely passive in the process of information exchange. Now the majority of users have some sort of online presence: they actually contribute to the content of the Internet in various ways.

The entirely new concept of blogging is an example of user-generated content. Sites such as Blogger allow people to have a blog effectively an e-diary) posting on the web their ideas, stories and pretty much anything that be expressed by the written word, like the very thing you are reading now! Also, social interaction sites such as Facebook and MySpace have sprung up, allotting each user a small presence of the Web through which they can interact with others. Facebook also allows users to share photos, along with other sites such as Flickr and MySpace allows people to post their own music. YouTube, recently acquired by Google for a whopping $1.65bn (£883m) [2], allows users to contribute their videos to the cyber-community. The interaction boom is growing and the Internet is no longer spoon-feeding idle users content.

One of the more radical ways of having a cyber-presence is that of SecondLife. Developed by Linden Labs, it is an online 3D rendered universe where the user controls an electronic character (an "avatar") and can interact fully with the environment and other users. It has over 6.3 million current users worldwide and a fully functioning economy using the in-game Linden Dollar that can be transferred into US$ on various market exchanges [3]. This online cyberworld is actually becoming a business for many and its market base is set to grow extensively in the future as people become accustomed to having a cyber-persona [4].

The Internet 2.0 phenomenon is widely established in the behaviour of Internet users. However, I have noticed very recently there seems to be a new pattern emerging and I predict shall become a major trend in the next five years. I shall refer to it as Internet 3.0, with its main characteristic being Collaboration.

As mentioned earlier, the human being is a highly social creature: indeed our ability to cooperate is one of the main factors for out success. Our usage of the Internet is maturing, and people are starting to realise how it can be used to enable us to act collaboratively and thus achieve things that would not normally be possible.

On the website http://www.myfootballclub.co.uk/, there is a group trying to mobilise 50,000 football fans in a revolutionary way. Each paying £35, they will pool resources and together buy a football club and behave as a collective unit, sharing decisions on the club's financial matters, staffing and even team selection! And on http://www.winthishome.org.uk/, 25,000 people will pay £60 to enter a competition for a house worth £650,000.

I personally believe that the future of the Internet will allow such group collaborations to exist and flourish on a wide scale. I also believe it will, in time, allow current democratic political system to become truly representative of the views of the people, with online polls allowing politicians to start to gain accurate indications of the views of their constituents. Political entities may even be able to get started and gain support.

In short, it is my belief that with time, the Internet will start to allow humans to cooperate in ways never thought possible. The sky is the limit.

Sources:

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6662469.stm

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6036337.stm

[3] http://secondlife.com/whatis/

[4]http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2007/tc20070416_386810.htm?chan=technology_special+report+--+virtual+life_virtual+life

Wedding Congratulations!!!!

Congratulations to Monique Maselle and Michael Kelly on their wedding. All the best for the future from myself and the rest of us in Santander.

My 21st Birthday and visit to England

Woohoo! This week I turned 21 years of age: officially now an adult! As such, I flew back to England for a 5 day extravaganza to celebrate with friends and family. Festivities involved a Friday night pub crawl around London (Blackheath, Fulham Broadway, Chelsea) followed by a house music night at Key Club, King's Cross. On the Saturday night, my friends threw me a little surprise party in a pub we used to work in and I got to see some more on my UK buddies. On the Sunday we booked an Italian restaurant for the family meal and invited some of my closest friends along. Good time was had by all and the food was excellent (although in an Italian restaurant that is hardly a surprise). What a lucky young rascal I am having three birthday parties, even the Queen only gets two! Photo link to follow in the sidebar in the next few days.

Cheers to Richard for making the Friday and Saturday nights happen, you're a legend!!! Thanks also to everyone to came out over the weekend, thanks for a great birthday.

My Drunk Aussie Mate

Here is a video of my friend Hartley drunk on St Patrick's Day. Needless to say he was in no fit state the next morning to cook the afforementioned meal.

Dazed Chicken Model

Who said Physics had to be boring? Below is an amusing analogy I found that has been proposed to help people remember what happens when a solid is subjected to positron bombardment.




Source: Physics World (IOP Publishing)

First Visit to Racing Santander!

Last Sunday I went to watch the local top division football team, Real Racing Club de Santander (commonly known as Racing) play at home in their stadium, the Estadio del Sardinero. It was the local derby against the nearest other top division team, Athletic Club de Bilbao. In addition to this local rivalry, Bilbao is in the Basque country (a province in Spain that is striving for independence) whereas Santander is in Cantabria and is loyal to Spain. The strong nationalistic emotions evoked add a further element dimension to the already tense setting of a local derby: all these factors add up to a guaranteed electric atmosphere! However, this comes at a price: it is the most expensive game of the season and the cheapest tickets start at a sizeable 60€ (£40).

Before the match, Athletic were languishing in the relegation zone, whereas Racing were in the respectable position of 9th in La Liga. Racing were the odds on favourites but that didn't seem to bother Athletic, who scored within the first 10 minutes, scored a dubiously awarded freekick by smashing it low under the legs of the mid-jump wall where it was deflected past the motionless Toño. The rest of the half saw an almost silent stadium and a tame performance from a Racing side who couldn't wait for half time. I was beginning to doubt the extortionate price I had paid for entry.

Well that all changed in the second half: what resulted was 45 minutes of end to end football and 8 goals! The final score? 5-4 to Racing, all thanks to a hat-trick from the Serbian striker, Nicola Zigic. Racing's comeback was, from my point of view, mostly down to excellent performances produced by three players. The two Racing strikers formed a classic little-and-large partenership: Zigic using his 6'9" frame to full effect, acting as a solid target man and making his presence felt; Munitis rapidly scampering about and feeding off the little nod-downs from his Serbian teammate; and Balboa the able and nippy right winger who caused Athletic all sorts of headaches down the righthand side, constantly getting the better of his marker. He provided some excellent crosses for Zigic as well as linking up well with Munitis, playing some attractive one-twos and some nice through balls allowing the striker to whizz away from the Basque defence.

The win took Racing to withing 2 points of a UEFA cup spot and committed Athletic to almost certain relegation. They were very vulnerable to the Athletic set pieces, with 3 of the goals being conceded in this manner and if I go to see them again I would hope this situation would be remedied. But all in all, very attractive football and well worth the entrance price!

Scary Statistic

Here's a scary quote from a recent issue of The Economist. If this doesn't make you want to give up smoking after reading it, you are a crazy fool indeed!!!!

"The single most shattering statistic about life in America in the late 1990's was that tobacco killed more people than the combined total of those who died from AIDS, car accidents, alcohol, murder, suicide, illegal drugs and fire. The deaths of 400,000 Americans a year, 160,000 of them from lung cancer, make a strong case for the prohibition of tobacco, and particularly of cigarettes."

I agree!!