Pete's Rant

Budgie - Never Turn Your Back On A Friend (1973)

2011-03-21T12:53:00.004Z

When the conversation turns to early 70's rock (as it frequently does with me, sad old git that I've become) the usual suspects like Led Zep, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple etc etc always crop up.

Budgie, from Cardiff, on the other hand, have been largely forgotten except amongst their few loyal fans. Mention Budgie to the (middle aged) man or woman on the street and they'll either think of their ageing grandmother's pet bird or they might, just might, remember the sole mainstream success the band ever had, Breadfan. On the other hand, if you were to mention Breadfan first, most people would probably think of Metallica's cover rather than the original!

Which is a pity, because Budgie are a great, underrated band, still gigging today, who deserve greater recognition. Any of their early albums, except maybe the first, Budgie [1971], which is a bit monotonous, would be a good introduction to them. I haven't heard their late 70's and 80's output because I'm not keen on rock from this era with a few notable exceptions. Never Turn Your Back... is their third offering and, in my opinion, one of their best.

First track Breadfan would be a fairly "cooking" early heavy metal number if it weren't for the delicious, typically Budgie, quiet bit in the middle, a song within a song, featuring Burke Shelley's haunting high pitched singing, before the song suddenly lurches back to being heavy metal again.

Next up, Baby Please Don't Go, obviously a cover, is a fast paced rock'n'roll number featuring all the band's skills.

You Know I'll Always Love You is a slow number. Budgie do "slow and evocative" like no other rock band of the time that I, at least, have heard, with very simple singing and sublime guitar backing.

You're the Biggest Thing Since Powdered Milk (a typical Budgie tongue-in-cheek name) starts with Ray Phillips on drums (fed through a flanging effect box) doing an enjoyable solo before the rest of the band comes in for a catchy straightforward rock bash.

In the Grip of a Tyrefitter's Hand, another classic Budgie title, features a simple but very catchy double guitar riff which keeps re-appearing throughout the track. This is followed by Riding My Nightmare.

The final track is Parents, the stand-out track on the album to my mind. It features Shelley's haunting voice and some very cool guitar playing to match. The lyrics are interesting, being recollections of early childhood, though perhaps sounding a bit "twee" in these cynical times. As the track progresses, the elegant laid back guitar licks change to powerful full-on rock guitar accompanied by wierd electronic seagull-like noises, before returning again to where it started with Shelley's quiet singing followed finally by a crashing rocky ending with soaring guitar and "seagulls"! A superb 11 minute journey which I never tire of listening to.

If you're into super slick sophisticated rock, or early prog, forget Budgie, it won't be for you. If you like your metal continuously loud and thrashy, again, it won't be for you, though you could try the first album. But, if you, like me, prefer melodic rock with big, simple, riffs and hooks, and appreciate gentle bits between the loud bits, Budgie might be right up your street! No harm giving it a go, even nearly 40 years after the event!

Oh, and I haven't even touched on the fantastic Budgie album covers...

Could you rewind that please?

2011-01-14T13:23:00.004Z

The BBC iPlayer is an amazing resource, probably the envy of broadcasters the world over. It is funded in a manner, the licence fee, which is again the envy of other broadcasters. If you use Windows, Apple, an iPhone or Nokia mobile phone, you'll have no trouble using it at all. However, users of some platforms, most notably Linux and Android, might as well not exist as far as the Beeb is concerned. I can understand the BBC's reluctance to open up iPlayer to all and sundry because of their programme licensing restrictions - they have to restrict viewing to the UK, and regulate the length of time viewers are able to watch specific features for. But, both of these platforms, particularly Android, have become widely used, and to go on denying certain licence fee payers the ability to use iPlayer is, er, reprehensible.

What the Beeb really doesn't want you to know, is there is another way for Windows and Linux users to access their iPlayer facility and download programmes for later watching on any platform completely without restrictions. The get_iplayer project originated almost three years ago, developed by disgruntled Linux users hacked off (pardon the pun) by their inability to use the official iPlayer facility, even though they had paid the licence fee like everyone else.

It tapped in to the, then new, iPlayer streams intended for the iPhone, which are nice quality H264/AAC streams of a resolution perfectly suited to an iPhone screen. These are also DRM free, they have no expiry. Of course, an iPhone can only stream them, so when they disappear from the iPlayer site, they expire. But, get_iplayer, pretending to be an iPhone (clever, huh?), converted these streaming only feeds into a stand-alone file which could be played on almost any desktop or mobile device and didn't expire.

After a surprisingly long time (two years) and after many twists and turns in authentication procedure to try to shake off get_iplayer users, always matched by upgrades which defeated them, the BBC finally got "heavy" with the developer and presumably threatened him. The project was discontinued and, more recently, the BBC finally put into place a secure authentication scheme for iPhones, preventing future "misuse" of their streams.

And that seemed the end of the story. Except, as is so often the case with determined, slightly anarchic, open source developers, get_iplayer has risen from the ashes again, taken over by a new development team. It's predominantly a Linux program, but there is a Windows version, and, I believe, Apple too. It's command line based, but very simple, anyone should be able to grasp it with practice, just don't expect a nice interface with bells and whistles. It now downloads the DRM-free flash streams, the standard ones most people view, and cunningly converts them afterwards to high quality mp4 videos, playable on any platform including Android and Linux.

I am not recommending get_iplayer, or telling you where to find it, heaven forbid, I wouldn't engage in dubious activity like that, this is a clean, upstanding family blog, and as a licence fee payer myself, I am bound to defend the rules and regulations of the dear 'ol Beeb. I'm merely relating what I think is an interesting tale for you to make of what you will...

Life with a small mammal

2011-01-07T14:21:00.005Z

I've always loved cats. I like dogs too, but most people seem to come down one way or the other, probably reflecting their own personalities in ways I wouldn't even begin to suggest. I've never, though, kept a pet before. Like babies, I've been happy enough to lavish affection on other peoples without feeling the desire to live with one full time.

That all changed recently when my partner Sandra's mum sadly died. She had acquired Lucy, a middle aged "rescue" cat, about a year before. The baton passed to us, and we unwittingly became the proud "owners" of Lucy. I say "owners" because as any cat lover knows you never really "own" anything as free spirited as a cat.

So I accepted we had a bit more responsibility, a concept I'd successfully avoided up till now, and that days out and the like would be tricky, having to be worked around feeding times, and holidays virtually impossible in the absence of a trusted person to look after her. Then came the bombshell. As a result of a test following a minor infection, we discovered Lucy was diabetic.

My carefree world collapsed. Suddenly we were tied to caring for poor Lucy's condition. Insulin injections twice a day, a special low carbohydrate diet, monthly "glucose curve" tests (a gruelling day long series of hourly blood tests to assess the effectiveness of the insulin) and frequent visits to the vet for fresh (costly) supplies. I don't know whether I felt more sorry for Lucy or myself.

In all fairness, I don't actually have to do much, for which I am very grateful. Sandra, being "between jobs", has taken on all aspects of Lucy's welfare leaving me to perform the odd jab of insulin when she's busy, a completely novel experience but actually very easy to do. You don't have to search for a catty blood vessel and worry about injecting air bubbles, like you would with a human. No, you grab the scruff of the neck and inject into the cavity you've created just below the skin. Easy Peasy. Lucy's got so used to this she sometimes even comes and offers herself up for the jab! A masochistic cat indeed!

It's been a few months now and things have settled down. Lucy's settled into what is her third, or possibly even fourth, home. I'm not feeling sorry for myself any more. Sandra's, er, working hard. Lucy's become "part of the family" in a way only a pet owner would understand. She's very food obsessed, signalling her hunger by a peculiar "now" sound, her version of the classic "miaow" cats are supposed to make. She starts this long in advance of mealtimes, we think it's something to do with the diabetes, or perhaps it's just a bad habit. We wind her up, imitating it!

She's always there, morning, noon, and night, loves a cuddle, struts around like she owns the place, having a catnap with an eye half open just in case food's in the offing, or rolling around with one of her many toy mice. She has changed our lives and I'd be very sad if she wasn't there any more.

MILFs are great!

2010-07-30T12:11:00.017+01:00

*Anyone who's landed up here after googling for MILF - leave now, this blog will be of no interest to you whatsoever*

The new breed of digital camera typified by the Sony NEX (above), the Olympus Pen range, the Samsung NX10, and the Panasonic GF-1 has spawned a whole range of new acronyms of which MILF (Mirror-less Interchangeable Lens Format) is the least serious but definitely the funniest! Popular choices are EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) and MSC (Micro System Camera) and I've seen a few more besides. Almost every photography publication and website seems to have concocted their own name for a concept which really doesn't need a new name. I even noted an Apple user magazine we get monthly calling them Mirrorless DSLRs. What nonsense. By definition, an SLR has to have a mirror! This mag's actual camera reviews are just as suspect, in my opinion. Incidentally, have you noticed how just about every computer mag has become a camera reviewing expert these days? I reckon what some of them know about cameras could fit on a postage stamp.

Whatever you want to call it, this new format is what a lot of photographers have been waiting a long time for - basically a very compact but high quality camera. Putting a large imaging sensor in a small camera is something I've personally been banging on about for years, almost since the start of digital photography. That, and the possibility of swapping the lens, is all the new fangled breed amounts to. Why would you want a large sensor in the first place? Because large sensors have large pixels, and the larger the pixels, the less light that is necessary to produce a clean image. In other words, you can take quality pictures indoors without flash. Anyone who has tried to do this with a normal compact will appreciate the speckly smudgy mess that normally results. There are other advantages to large sensors too, such as taking pictures with a limited depth of field (subject sharp, background blurred) and being able to use very small apertures, because lens diffraction is less of an issue. But, to most users, it'll be the increase in sensitivity (higher useable ISO rating) which will be most appreciated.

The diagram above shows we're not talking small differences in sensor size either.

Red: Typical compact camera
Yellow: Enthusiast compact camera
Green: "Four Thirds" - Olympus and Panasonic DSLRs and MSCs
Blue: "APS-C" - Sony NEX and most DSLRs
Mauve: 35mm film and some very expensive "full frame" DSLRs

It's quite an eye-opener to learn just how small the sensor in most cheap digital cameras is, and a miracle of modern low cost lens design that they produce reasonable pictures.

There are, of course, limitations to putting a large, grown-up, sensor in a compact camera - there's no such thing as "a free lunch", as it were. I'm talking about the lens. A large sensor requires a large lens, pretty much the same size of lens you see on big DSLRs, and these lenses need a reasonable distance from the sensor in order to form a focussed image. Bang goes the idea of a large sensor compact camera.

However, advances in lens design have enabled both Sony and Olympus/Panasonic to specify a much shorter distance between the back of the lens and the sensor, and they call this new standard "E-Mount" and "Micro Four Thirds" respectively. The lenses are similar in size to their normal counterparts, but they sit much nearer the sensor, reducing the thickness of the camera. Even with modern computer design, this isn't without drawbacks, and the image quality isn't quite as good as with normal lenses, but it's not far off.

The actual length of the lens also needs to be reduced as much as possible to make these cameras genuinely small, and this is where the wide-angle "pancake" lens comes in. So called "pancake" lenses aren't new, but with modern design they are affordable and flatter than ever without too much compromise in image quality. You are, of course, limited to fixed wide-angle. The moment you put a telephoto or zoom lens on any of these new cameras, the size advantage disappears!

The Sony 16mm F2.8 pancake (above) is the choice for the NEX to make it a "pocket" camera (in fact, at the time of writing, there is only one other lens for the NEX). It's not bad for a cheap "kit" lens. Very wide angle lenses have their problems, pancake lenses more so, and "reduced lens to sensor distance" lenses even more so. If you use it "wide open", at maximum aperture, it's plainly sub-standard, but go to F8 or F11 and the problems largely disappear.

As to the NEX itself. Yes, I have purchased one, the NEX-3. I knew I was going to the moment I first saw a pre-release picture of it. It screamed "You want me" and I answered "Yes I do". I chose the cheaper NEX-3 because I didn't need the 1080i video mode or the remote control of the better known NEX-5, and preferred the handling and appearance of the NEX-3 as well. The NEX-5 is, in my opinion, an expensive trinket for the fashion conscious photographer. Don't get angry, I'm only joking. Ha ha.

The super cool NEX-5 with pancake lens, left, and right with the 18-55 kit zoom, nicely illustrating how anything other than the pancake lens is folly if you want to pocket your camera!

So, what do I really think of the NEX? I think it took all of Sony's well known ~~balls~~ imagination and resources to produce the smallest and most desirable of this new class of camera. Sony are like Apple, they don't do things by halves, they go for the kill, and I think they succeeded with the NEX. I also own the recent Olympus Pen E-PL1, and although it's compact, it's nowhere near as small and desirable as the NEX, and, it has to be said, nowhere near as as much fun, or as fast, to use either. The NEX can be whipped out of the pocket, in any light, indoors or out, and instantly take (mostly) stunning pictures. It's capability at high ISOs is amazing, better than most DSLRs. It has Sony's own "backlit" EXMOR sensor inside, a newer version even than most of their own DSLRs, and it shows. Pictures taken even at ISO3200 are great. It is the compact for indoor events without flash.

Downsides? The user interface is OK, but try doing anything other than "point and shoot" and you find yourself struggling with the simplistic amateur-orientated menu system. It's a powerful camera with lots of options, but actually changing even basic options like ISO and white balance can be problematic. Making the pancake lens available as a "kit" lens (sold as a package with the body) was an inspiration on Sony's part, but the lens needs improving, or alternatives made available from independent lens manufacturers. I think Sony aimed the NEX at novices, but at the price it sells for and given its performance, it's attracted mainly seasoned enthusiasts, who are prone to nit-pick!

The NEX-3 (centre) vs Olympus E-PL1 (right) and Samsung NX10 (left)
Image courtesy of dpreview.com, my favourite photographic site.

The alternatives? The Olympus E-PL1 is bulkier and has a smaller last-generation sensor, a less versatile LCD screen, and can't match the stellar high ISO performance of the NEX, but it is more of a flexible photographer's tool, with a greater number of better performing lenses. In reality, 90% of the time it can keep up with and sometimes better the tiny NEX. I don't know the Panasonics well enough, but I'm sure the same applies to them too, from what I gather from the forums. And the Sigma DP1 and 2? In good light, for landscapes, they more than match up. But they are seriously slow cameras to use and don't have the sensor sensitivity, despite the sensor's size, of any of the other cameras here, so no good for use indoors.

The NEX is the first of a breed of very small system cameras. It's a remarkable and brave product, both in concept and performance. There's undoubtably room for operational improvements when Sony realise exactly who's buying it. I'm convinced it will come to be regarded as a classic, the first of its kind.

Stone Temple Pilots (self titled) (2010)

2010-07-12T10:41:00.006+01:00

The STP have had five albums before this one, stretching right back to 1992, and I haven't experienced any of them, such is my ignorance of "recent" rock. I've tried to rectify this ignorance with some success in the last year or two, but there are still times I realise what a lot of catching up there is to do! The positive side is I can review an album like this without preconception about the band or their previous output - I am an STP virgin, as it were.

I wondered about their name. Sounds like it was lifted from a sci-fi novel. I then learned that they started life as Shirley Temple's Pussy until the record label suggested they change it. Heh heh. Their recording history seems to have been punctuated by main man Scott Weiland's liking of mind altering substances and the consequent problems arising from it, but, hey, this goes with the territory of rock'n'roll, no?

This album's been a "slow burner" for me. I knew I liked it from first listen, but nothing stood out saying "play me again immediately". Gradually, though, it's become an important album which gets played when I'm in need of uplifting (like on a Monday morning). It's a "feel good" album that you find yourself humming tunes from and repeating out loud snatches of lyrics, all the while tapping your foot to the beat.

It's classic rock'n'roll, no more, no less. I've seen STP described as hard rock, but I wouldn't describe this album as such. It gets heavy at times, but not in the mindless way a lot of hard rock does. There are strong influences at work, from the 1960s and 70s, and the album does have a "retro" feel to it, but it's also fresh and "modern" too. If you want comparisons, the sheer quality of the melodies, particularly on the excellent Dare if you dare (my favourite track) hark back to the Beatles. At other times there's a sleaziness which reminds me of the Stereophonics. Some tracks are quite old style '70s "glam rock" influenced. The final track before the "extras", Samba Nova, is an unexpected surprise, a delicious very 1960's latin rhythmed slow number that could have been lifted straight from an old Bond movie.

What holds the album together is the professionalism of the song writing, and the skill of execution. This is obviously an album from a mature group with complete confidence in themselves, and rightly so. Vocals and guitar work are particularly notable. I've seen it criticised for harking back to other genres, for lacking originality, for having too many styles on one album. The more I listen to it, though, it gels as a whole and makes perfect sense.

You suddenly understand the album cover, and the fact that it's a self titled album. It's a statement. You get the impression this is the STP saying "This is what we do, and we do it bloody well. It might sound derivative to some, but we don't care, it's our unique style, take it or leave it". Then again, I might be talking b****cks, without the benefit of having heard their earlier stuff. The only way you'll find out is if you try it for yourself.

If you want new-fangled "indie rock" full of synth bleeps and falsetto warbling, or dark serious "prog rock" with 10min tracks, look elsewhere, that's not what the STP are about. But if you like rock full of memorable melodies, intelligent lyrics sung by "real" men, strong riffs, and chunky guitar work, you won't go wrong with this album. And, like me, you might not be able to get the tunes out of your mind!

WM Last Chance is Cut. RIP.

2010-05-12T11:19:00.003+01:00

Way back when Palm still ruled the PDA scene and the iPhone was just a twinkle in Steve Job's eye, there was Windows Mobile 2003 SE. This was the successor to Pocket PC 2000, Pocket PC 2002, and Windows Mobile 2003. It was released on March 24, 2004 and was hugely popular, being available on a wide selection of portable devices.

WM 2003 SE was the last Microsoft mobile OS to run from RAM rather than flash ROM. So, if your main battery and backup battery went flat, you lost everything. Of course, users would regularly back up to a memory card, so it ultimately didn't matter too much. But, as a consequence, users, depending on how careless they were, often saw the WM new installation screen. Only once the OS had been reinstalled, could the backup be copied over it to get back to where you were before the "accident".

Part of the WM installation routine was an animated demonstration of how "Copy" and "Paste" worked, something you had to participate in whether you wanted or not. You had to go through the charade of copying a schedule entry from one place and pasting to another. There was no means to bypass this interactive demo, and it irritated the hell out of me when all you wanted was to restore your device to working order. It probably irritated most users, it was so typically Microsoft. It did, I suppose, constantly remind you that WM had Copy and Paste, something we took completely for granted back then.

Wind forward a few years to the release of the iPhone. Windows Mobile users were smirking at the lack of power available to Apple's mobile users. No multitasking and, crucially, no Copy and Paste. Both of these had been available for years in WM, and made it a powerful and flexible mobile OS. It was only with a fairly recent update that C and P finally became available to iPhone users, and I believe multitasking is coming shortly.

Windows Mobile development has been something of an embarrassment in recent years. Microsoft have badly neglected this little corner of their portfolio. The underlying OS has always been powerful and comprehensive, and allowed geeks to modify quite fundamental aspects of it via the registry. The very popular XDA-Developers site was built on this premise, and no other mobile operating system has a resource like it. Meanwhile, it has taken innovative device manufacturers like HTC to improve the looks and feel of WM via their Touch-Flo and Sense interfaces, making it possible to use with touchscreens, whilst Microsoft sat back and studied their navel.

And now, just when virtually everyone including HTC, who have pretty much gone over to Android, have given up on Windows Mobile, which now has a paltry 2% of the "smartphone" market, Microsoft have finally announced the forthcoming Windows Phone 7, the mobile OS which will, in the nick of time, save their mobile presence from complete oblivion. Previews indicate a total departure from what's gone before, a complete redesign from scratch, inside and out. The new interface mirrors the Microsoft Zune HD (a media player never made available in the UK) and is apparently minimal, novel and exciting, and very finger friendly.

At last, us Windows Mobile fanboys (and girls) can hold our heads up with pride. Microsoft strikes back! Apple, look out! I was getting quite excited (fairly unusual) about the prospect of a new device running the brand spanking new WP 7. All the power of old WM with a beautiful new touchy feely interface. Until the rumours started, rumours which have now crystallized into fact during interviews with Microsoft employees. Some of these might not be true, but from what I understand, the new WP7 will:

* not have multitasking with 3rd party apps
* not have Copy and Paste
* not have the capability to instal apps from anywhere except the MS App Store
* not have any backwards compatibility with previous apps
* not support removeable memory cards

In other words: Loyal Windows Mobile Supporters, P*ss Off, we don't care about you any more.

I can understand the lack of backwards compatibility if you're developing a new OS from the ground up. I can just about accept the lack of memory card support, with the increasing internal storage of modern devices, but the rest is utterly reprehensible and unneccesary. I would have thought with a 2% remaining market share, mostly "power users" encompassing both business people and the slightly geeky (me), Microsoft would have at least wanted to retain these loyal customers whilst slowly clawing back their "mainstream" market share. It could have been a "killer" business strategy. But, it seems, they are hell-bent on a direct attack on the mainstream market at the expense of existing users, most of whom will go over to Android, Blackberry, or even iPhone. Bearing in mind the time it takes to penetrate the mainstream without the aid of a killer hardware device like the iPhone or one of the new HTC android phones, I'd say Microsoft are trying to commit Mobile Suicide.

A Post About Nothing

2010-04-28T12:53:00.005+01:00

Nothing, zero, zilch, nada, whatever you call it, has fascinated me in recent years. It's something we learn about at a very early age, and a concept we use every day. There doesn't seem on the surface to be anything strange, exotic, or profound about Nothing, in fact to most people it's one of the most banal things imaginable. It can be good as in "nothing troubles me" or bad as in "there's nothing in my bank account". What could possibly be odd about Nothing?

Yet Nothing, or Zero (they're not the same) as concepts have troubled a lot of very clever people down the ages, and will go on causing problems in the foreseeable future. It was in India, over a thousand years ago, that mathematicians started using zero as a number in calculations (can you imagine doing without it today?). It troubled the ancient Greeks before them - "How can nothing be something?" - and it troubles physicists today.

My first encounter with the concept was, strangely, back in 1996, during the tedious building of our Microsoft Access database we use at work. I had to "get my hands dirty" and learn a bit about Visual Basic for Applications, I think it was called. One of the aspects which actually interested me (OK, I'm a nerd sometimes) was how Nothing was dealt with in calculations. For example, a text field can contain a "Null value" or a "Zero length string", both different degrees of Nothing. A numeric field can contain a "Null value" or the number Zero. It's vitally important, if you intend to do calculations on several numeric fields, to convert Nulls to Zeros, else the whole calculation fails, returning "Null" instead of a meaningful answer. This made me realise for the first time that Nothing could be complicated.

My second encounter was a few years back with the popular book "The Book of Nothing" by John D. Barrow. This is an essential read for anyone wanting to learn more about Nothing. After a history of Nothing, it explains in everyday language what Nothing means to physicists, covering our current state of understanding of the universe, how it probably formed, and what it's probably made of. Incidentally, I've just noticed with interest and amusement that the same author has also written "The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless"! It seems likely to me that Nothing and Infinity are actually quite close relations. Mathematicians, for instance, certainly come across them side by side on the same graph, both sometimes a cause for headache.

It turns out, in cosmological terms, there is no such thing as Nothing. Even in outer space, where there is supposedly nothing at all (no matter of any kind, only a vacuum) there is still very much Something, though it's exact nature is a bit elusive to say the least. Only beyond the bounds of our universe would there be something which could maybe be described as Nothing. Nothing in the sense of no Space and no Time. Nothing that we, being part of the fabric of the universe ourselves, could ever comprehend. A bit like an ant, for example, somehow trapped inside a tennis ball would have no concept of what's outside its universe (ball). Maybe this defines the only true meaning of Nothing.

One of my favourite thoughts, one which I get great satisfaction from, is the theory that everything in our universe originated from Nothing, and that one day, at the end of the universe, all the matter and anti-matter will cancel out and it will return to Nothing again, a theory which effectively says Nothing and Infinite are the same. This supposedly already happens, according to The Book Of Nothing, on a very small scale, where pairs of particles are spontaneously created out of Nothing, exist for a very, very, short time, before merging and disappearing back to Nothing. If it happens at the very smallest scale, why not at the biggest, universal, scale too?

Spoon - Girls Can Tell [2001]

2010-04-22T13:10:00.007+01:00

I know, I know, this is turning into a music blog, as though there weren't enough around already! There can never be enough music blogs in my books, so I don't really care ...

I became a Spoon fan when I heard them for the first time on their latest Transference album, and so I decided to dig deeper. Girls Can Tell is from way back in '01, albeit still a while from when the band formed in 1993, and I have to say I like it even better. This is an album that finds its way onto my metaphorical turntable (well, actually my mp3 player) at least twice a week, another way of saying I like it hugely.

They're an enigmatic band in my view. Britt Daniel, lead singer and guitarist, has a great voice, one I never tire of. I'm not always a fan of singing in general, but I could listen to his soulful lyrics all day. He's apparently quite a fan of British bands from way back, and despite being from Austin, Texas, his singing sounds very English to my ears. More Souff London than, well, someone living in Streatham. I should know, I'm a born and bred South Londoner. Incidentally, one of my other favourite albums, the mysterious punky Dark Shadows by Cold Sun, in 1970, was also cooked up in Austin. Must be something special in the water there.

Spoon practice what I would call musical minimalism. At least on the albums I've heard (I believe from reviews that their early work is a bit less minimal). I mean this as a huge compliment, a very positive thing, as it's very easy to put in more, much harder to reduce. I'm not going into individual tracks, they're all very different, and all equally good, but as a whole Spoon don't have one superfluous note on this album. Every note counts, it's there for a purpose. Where extra notes would start to sound like pretty ornamentation, they desist. This might sound as though it would make for clinical, boring music.

But it's not, in fact the opposite is true. Because the tunes, the rhythms, the singing, the dynamic between quiet and forceful passages, are all so good, it doesn't need any prettying up. They make it sound so effortless, not in the over-slick super-dry way that, say, Steely Dan do, but in a way that you forget the mechanics of music making and just revel in the music itself.

In fact, paradoxically, it's the absence of ornamentation and sentimentality which leads Britt's vocals to really penetrate direct into your soul on certain tracks, such as on third track Me And The Bean. At least it has that effect on me. Meanwhile, the good 'ol hooks, which are plentiful, simmer away in the back of your brain ready to surface unexpectedly hours later when you least expect it.

There's something very honest about Spoon's music. It's a rare thing. Other bands try "the minimal thing" from time to time, but they can't pull it off 'cos they simply haven't got the skill or affinity with their audience that Spoon have, so it just ends up sounding mundane, something Spoon never are. I love the comment by Jim Eno, their drummer, who's been there, with Britt, since the start. He says Spoon's music is "just rock'n'roll". That's a statement at least as cool as the band's music itself.

North Atlantic Oscillation - Grappling Hooks (2010)

2010-04-19T12:22:00.006+01:00

Another amazing new album! Grappling Hooks is the first "LP" (funny how they're still called that) from Edinburgh band North Atlantic Oscillation. The name apparently derives from "a fluctuating change in the atmospheric pressure differential that exists between the Icelandic Low and Azores High" (Wikipedia). I personally suspect this will be abbreviated to NAO in reviews. I've got this theory that you can tell a lot about a band by the name they chose. It sounds obvious, but is probably also complete crap as theories go. The name NAO suggested to me nerds playing with synthesisors. Y'know, fairly cerebral stuff, and not your typical indie crash bang wallop material.

I was in for a nice surprise. This is an absolute stonker of an album. First, it's very mature stuff, not at all what you would expect from a first LP. Second, it's impossible to categorise. I know this is an overused expression, but it's true for NAO. To quote Wikipedia again: "North Atlantic Oscillation are a post-progressive rock and electronica band" There, I hope that clarifies it. There is something for everyone in Grappling Hooks. Synth pop? Check! Drum'n'bass? Check! Straight rock? Check! Quiet introspective bits between the full-on bits? Check! Poppy hooks? Check, loads of them, I think the clue's in the album name. I should add that I'm a sucker for hooks and rarely remain interested in music without them. Simple tastes, that's me.

I don't think there's a single under-performing or "filler" track on this album. Just to give you an idea, the opening track Marrow has a classical dreamy prog rock mystical feel to it before the drums come in and it changes to driving drum'n'bass type stuff. The next track, Hollywood has Ended, is gentle electronic stuff until it, again, gets going into driving rock, with the original theme overlaid. It's complex music, very cleverly thought through and executed. One of my favourite tracks is Audioplastic, which starts with dreamy Thomas Dolby like synth and morphs into a driving electro rock cum drum'n'bass hook laden masterpiece, which has me lunging to turn the volume up to max! Ceiling Poem has an edgy Radiohead like feel, starting gentle and suddenly becoming outrageously full-on, gentle again, then back to rocky max, a real roller coaster ride. Further along in the album the main riff from Star Chamber could have been lifted straight from Led Zep's Physical Graffiti album, as could a lot of the rest of the track. The next track, Drawing Maps From Memory, sounds uncannily like Oasis, with little grungy Radiohead bits inbetween!

Such a mix of styles can be the sign of a new band casting around for a style of their own, and is often disasterous. NAO pull it off with such flair, and in the process have created a style which is totally their own, one which will appeal to a lot of different people. Googling, I see mixed reviews of Grappling Hooks, polarised between strong like and dislike, which I would expect from such an eclectic mix. I personally think it's genius and fervently hope NAO have a long future and loads of albums to come!

Sigma DP1 Camera

2010-03-22T12:28:00.004Z

Mention Sigma to most people and they won't have a clue what you're on about. They probably think you're talking about a nightclub, and for all I know, it might well be. To a photography enthusiast Sigma means nice lenses to go with most of the big name SLR cameras. Many enthusiasts are also just about aware that Sigma make cameras, but it's such a minor part of Sigma's business that not many have seen one "in the flesh" let alone own one.

I became interested in the DP1 several years ago before it was even released. What made it radically different to other compact digitals was the large imaging sensor - just a bit smaller than the "APS-C" size fitted to most digital SLRs - together with a top class "prime" (non zoom) wide angle lens. It's a compelling combination which promises image quality similar to a bulky SLR in a light pocketable format. The lack of zoom didn't worry me, I'd lived with a fixed focus lens for years back in the film days.

Another unique aspect of Sigma cameras is their use of Foveon sensors. These are quite different to the normal CCD and CMOS sensors inside other cameras. Briefly, "normal" sensors don't have "full colour" pixels, they have red, green, and blue pixels (in fact all pixels are inherently monochrome, but it's the red/green/blue filter array in front of them which makes them "coloured" pixels). So, a 12mp camera, for example, doesn't have 12 million full colour pixels. It has 3 million red, 3 million blue, and 6 million green pixels. These are later converted to full colour pixels by a process called Bayer Interpolation, which basically guesses the two missing colours of any pixel by looking at its immediate neighbours.

One of the drawbacks of this clever scheme is you can't allow too sharper image to fall on the sensor otherwise the Bayer interpolation doesn't work properly and you get rainbow fringes. So, you need a filter in front of the sensor to soften the image slightly. This is politely called a "low pass" filter - it would be far too controversial to call it a "blur" filter! Afterwards, the picture has to be "sharpened" again, otherwise it would (not surprisingly) look blurred. It boils down to first having to remove the fine detail, processing the red, green and blue pixels by interpolation, then "re-inventing" the detail again. It sounds like madness, the photographic equivalent of mp3 music, though some might not like my analogy. Like mp3, it works surprisingly well in practice, a testament to how easy it is to fool the human eye and ear!

Where was I. Ah yes, Foveon sensors. Unlike "normal" sensors, every pixel on a Foveon sensor is full colour. In fact, every pixel is made up of three vertically stacked red, green and blue pixels. This does away with the need for blurring, Bayer interpolation, and re-sharpening. In other words, it's radically different. You can read a better description here. Too good to be true? Yes and no. It is a genuine innovation. But, if it were the "holy grail", everyone would be using them, not just Sigma!

One problem is the industry's (and the public's) megapixel fixation. The 4.7 mp Foveon sensor in the DP1 sounds very old fashioned in this age of 12 and 14 mp cameras. Sigma describe it optimistically as a 14.1 mp sensor, but the images which come out of the camera are, naturally enough, 4.7 mp. It's fair to say, though, they can be subsequently resized up to, say, 14 mp in an image editor and still be pretty much as sharp as a "native" 14 mp image, so there's some truth in Sigma's claim. The other problem (maybe due to the vertical stacking of the pixels) is Foveon sensors are relatively insensitive compared to traditional CCD and CMOS sensors of the same physical size. This means more noise, and so some of the benefits of a large sensor fly out of the window.

Forgive my indulgence. I only wanted to write a "quickie" review of the DP1 and it's turned Frankenstein-like into a techno-babble rant. In my defence, the Foveon sensor is such an integral part of the performance of the DP1 that the rant is warranted. So, what's the DP1 like bearing in mind at the time of writing you can pick up a DP1 in the UK for well under £300, about half its original price and well into "normal" compact digicam territory. Is it good value for money at this price?

The answer, again, is yes and no (did you expect anything other from me?!) Let's get the negatives (pardon the pun) out of the way first. Despite the large SLR-like sensor, the DP1 doesn't have SLR-like high ISO performance. In plain english, this isn't a camera for low light work, a pity as I had hoped it might be. Without using the (rather low powered) flash, indoor pics are hardly better than normal compacts. It only goes up to ISO800, probably a wise decision on Sigma's part, whereas most SLRs go up to at least ISO3200. At ISO800 noise is already getting intrusive, although the image isn't smeared by noise reduction too much. So, the large sensor is a bit of an illusion, sadly.

Colour is the other problem on the DP1 when the ISO is cranked up. It starts disappearing! Not dramatically so, but it can look a bit muted or washed out. Even when set to low ISO, the colour of DP1 images seems to be an acquired taste. I personally like it, I know others who don't. It's very natural (my view) or it's lacking bite (their view).

And, on a different note, this is not a camera for those who like to take pictures quickly. It suits a more considered style of photography. Performance is more like a digital camera from about 6 years ago! Start up is slow because of the sluggish whiny lens extending motor, focussing is leisurely and doesn't work at all well in low light, and the camera locks up (displaying an hourglass symbol) for a few seconds before you can take the next picture. This was acceptable in 2004, it's ridiculous in 2010!

I can see you're beginning to wonder if this camera has any good points. Absolutely! Image quality, image quality, and image quality! Outdoors (or indoors with flash) no other pocketable compact (in my view, and I obviously haven't tried them all) comes close. Even cheaper SLRs would struggle to match it. The Foveon sensor might not have the sensitivity of comparable size normal sensors, but it does have the dynamic range (accommodating light and dark at the same time), an area which all small sensor compacts fall down in. Coupled with the good colour definition, this leads to great subtlety in tones and textures.

And the quality of that 28mm (35mm film equivalent length) fixed focus lens is as good as it gets. This is a proper lens, not the apology you find on most compacts. Think razor sharp acoss the entire frame, right into the corners, very little distortion of verticals or horizontals so typical of wide angle zooms, and virtually none of that annoying CA (chromatic abberation) and PF (purple fringing) which all compact camera zoom lenses have - you know, the coloured halo around black/white edges and purple haze (man!) around bright highlights.

All this adds up to picture quality very much like what I remember from a decent expensive rangefinder camera back in the film days. I ~~Leica~~ like it a lot. It makes the images which come out of most compact cameras look very second rate and smudgy indeed. The DP1 is also, surprisingly given it's lack of speed, a fun camera to use. The fixed focus lens forces you to get more proactive with (move nearer to, or further from) your subject, which is no bad thing, you sometimes find new and better angles as a result. All the features for the enthusiast like dial operated manual focus and exposure lock are present, and all the crap (scene modes) are absent.

It's a classic camera, and quite unique. If you value good old fashioned film-like image quality, and don't want a camera which breaks your back (and wallet), which fits in a (admittedly big) pocket, the Sigma DP1 at its present low price is a bargain. If you want a "do-it-all" camera (with video, zoom, scene modes etc) or one which works well in low light, spend your money elsewhere.

Is it Real? Does it Matter!

2010-03-11T11:42:00.000Z

My perception of a computer underwent a fundamental transformation last night. I'd installed my first ever Virtual Machine a couple of days ago and started playing with it in earnest last night. Within minutes my head was spinning with the endless possibilities and I thought "why the f... didn't I do this years ago?!"

OK, I realise there's absolutely nothing novel about the idea of Virtual Machines. Computer Professionals have been doing it for years. And Mac users are probably already more familiar with the concept - there are several apps for running virtual Windows on a Mac and, let's face it, it's the only way to gain real functionality from it. Ha ha. Only a joke... But I suspect not many non-professional Windows users will have tried virtualisation software before. After all, we're already running the best Operating System on the planet, why would we need a Virtual Machine?

I downloaded my copy of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 a couple of years ago. It sounded like a good idea, I thought I'd try Linux again - I tried Linux years back and hadn't been impressed - but didn't want to give over my whole machine or create a separate partition for it. I didn't have a suitable machine for it yet, but I thought Microsoft might change its mind about giving it for free, so I downloaded it just in case. It's been a sort of program in waiting since then. As it so happens I needn't have worried. Microsoft are still giving it away and more expensive versions of Windows 7 actually come included with the latest version of it.

Anyhow, the time was right to give it a go. Not for Linux this time, but another copy of XP. My current PC has enough RAM to run it now, and provided you don't want to use the "real" host OS at the same time, the processor speed is relatively unimportant. Which is just as well, as my PC is no "speed demon". I don't do gaming or video processing, it's mainly for surfing the internet ~~and ripping CDs~~, so I've only got a 1.6GHz single core Celeron. Go on, laugh, if you will. I don't care. By the way, Microsoft claim Virtual PC 2007 doesn't support running on the "home" version of XP. Don't worry, it does. After a warning message about "unsupported operating system" it carries on installing regardless. The installation is a quick painless one, and it doesn't f*** with your computer in any way - the sort of app I'm happy to instal!

Then came the time consuming bit, installing a virtual XP computer. I'd forgotten how long a full OS instal takes. It seemed to go on and on for ever. Well, at least an hour. It was fascinating watching it happen in a window on the desktop, almost surreal! At first, my new virtual system wouldn't talk to the internet, but that was easily fixed. And, after installing on the virtual system an app which came included with Virtual PC 2007, it became possible to share a folder or folders with the host system. This is obviously vital if you want to move anything between the real and virtual worlds, other than by sending it to and retrieving it from the web, or burning it temporarily to CD!

Anyway, slap my wrist, I'm waffling as usual. The end result is a "PC in a file" situated on a removeable USB drive (as is recommended). You allocate a maximum " hard drive" size, but the file remains only as large as needed even though the virtual system sees it as the maximum size. You decide how much RAM the virtual system has. Both of these parameters can be changed at any time. When the virtual system has been booted, it runs almost as fast as your real system. You can either shut it down when finished, or suspend it, ready to carry on where you left off. Not a trace contaminates your "real" system. You can instal apps, catch viruses, completely screw up the virtual system, whilst safe in the knowledge your actual system is safe. If you've backed up the virtual system "hard drive" file, it can be restored to any point at any time. The best bit to my mind, and what really enthused me last night, you can copy and rename the file as many times as you like and create many identical virtual computers without the bloody instal hassle, each copy optimised for different things.

It's blindingly obvious really and, as I said at the start, a lot of people will already be familiar with it. But a far greater number, particularly Windows users, won't even be aware of the concept of virtual machines, and I say to them Try It, you won't look back! You'll never have to worry about installing and un-installing "bloatware" again, never worry about creeping system paralysis as the registry fills with the legacy crap of uninstalled programs. Never worry about viruses, spyware, or adware. Save on the cost of anti-virus apps (rip-offs that they are). If one of your virtual PCs plays up, just delete it with one movement of your mouse! The only negatives of a Virtual PC 2007 system are it doesn't recognise USB drives (although you could pre-specify one as a shared folder) and it only displays up to 1024 by 768. In fairness, there are other virtualisation apps for Windows which probably overcome both of these limitations.

Virtualisation really does restore power over a computer back into the hands of the user, something I feel has been slipping away for years. It's the way to go, in my humble opinion.

I went under the web...

2010-03-04T12:37:00.000Z

... the other day and poked around in the nooks and crannies which most people (and Google) can't see. It started when I read a computer mag feature about ways someone could post stuff and others could retrieve it whilst both parties remain completely anonymous and free of the prying eyes of the authorities or anyone else interested in ~~policing the internet~~ invading your privacy. There are, apparently, several similar schemes - I tried an open source project called Freenet.

I was very surprised I hadn't heard of anything like this before. We've had the internet at home since 1997 and I see myself as "web savvy" and quite used to poking around in the murkier recesses of the internet, it's the way I am. Still, I don't upload or look at illegal material, and don't live in a restrictive country (well, it's not yet) so perhaps it's not surprising that I hadn't come across these "parallel webs" before.

Basically, Freenet is a sort of private network which anyone can join after installing the software. It's a quick and painless install - I had to update Java at the same time - then when you run it your computer becomes a Freenet "node". Part of your hard drive - you specify how much, normally a GB or two - becomes gradually filled with Freenet data. It's the same for every user of Freenet, and that's where the strength of the system comes from. Unlike the normal web where data is stored on centralised web servers, with Freenet it's stored on all of the user's PCs (or Macs or Linux boxes) making it similar to BitTorrent in some ways.

Unlike that scheme, though, there's no need for a user to remain online after uploading. Files uploaded are split into encrypted chunks and spread around multiple nodes. There's redundancy too, so a node can shut down and the chunk will still be available elsewhere. So any Freenet user will, at any one time, have a random (and probably illegal) mix of all sorts of stuff, mostly the stuff people don't want to, or wouldn't dare, stick on the real web. It's strong encrypted, so it's not accessible to you or the authorities, and as such shouldn't legally pose a risk to you. There's more about the legal aspects on the Freenet site if you're interested. And when you, as a Freenet user, request a "page" or file, the request goes anonymously through many nodes around the world and the encrypted chunks are retrieved. The requests are node to node on a strictly "need to know" basis, so the final destination, your computer, is not known until the last minute.

The interface to this "parallel web" is through your own favourite browser, via a proxy which enables you to see html pages on Freenet just like normal web pages on the normal web, but minus the rich content. It all looks a bit spartan, like the web did in the mid 1990's! There are also "plugins" for forums, email and chat etc. Initially, straight after the instal, it runs slowly. But, as you remain on for several hours it starts to speed up (as popular pages are cached on your PC, I imagine) but even then it crawls at a snail's pace compared to the normal web! The interface is also quite "geeky" which didn't really appeal to me.

Anyway, searching for stuff on Freenet is very limited - or maybe it was just my inexperience of the tools available. There's definitely nothing of the same power and sophistication of Google to help you! And, the bit you've been waiting to hear, the content generally didn't really "float my boat" anyway. I wasn't interested in looking at terrorist bomb making manuals, the BNP membership list, an article about particle physics for the lay-person, or Adolf Hitler's seemingly extensive collection of pictures of children. So, after an hour or two of playing, what left to do but uninstall followed by a Windows system restore to ensure my PC was back to the pristine pre-Freenet state. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

But it was an interesting experience, and it must be a gift to people unlucky enough to live in a country with heavy censorship and even heavier penalties for accessing the wrong things. And, in theory, it's a brilliant idea, which, if enough people used it, could work really well. As it stands it seems to suffer from a distinct lack of users. I don't want to get into a debate here about the morality (and legality) of certain content, it's a "can of worms" waiting to burst open. But I instinctively don't like censorship for adults, and any scheme which anonymises users and prevents State interference of freedom has to be good in my books. I just don't think Freenet's ready for the big time yet, if it ever will be.

Brainticket - Cottonwoodhill [1971]

2010-02-21T22:51:00.000Z

And hot on the heels of a superb contemporary album (Spoon) we shoot back forty years to the brilliant psychedelic nonsense that is Brainticket's Cottonwoodhill album. The cover actually says it all. It is a big dose of screeching searing fuzz+wah guitar, distorted vocals, and infectious funky Hammond riffs, interspersed by a woman's voice talking nonsense. It is also early '70s Krautrock through and through (band members were actually German, Italian, and Swiss). If you like neither Krautrock nor the Hammond, forget this album now, you'll hate it!

The last 3 tracks out of the 5, Brainticket (Part One), Brainticket (Part One Conclusion), and Brainticket (Part Two), are related, as you might guess. They total about 26 minutes and feature an identical short funky Hammond riff all the way through. I even thought it might be a tape loop but I noticed very small variations. If you don't like repetition, best not to play this album, you'll go mad! Backing all three of these tracks are various sounds, like breaking glass, cars revving and screeching, a 70's style police siren, all sorts of things. And primitive electronic oscillators swooping up and down in frequency at high volume which make Kraftwerk sound very sophisticated indeed. But this is much more fun! And, the sinister woman comes back with a vengeance sounding increasingly stoned and hysterical.

It's a loud mind-bending, head-battering, out-of-control cacophony, but all the time underpinned by that steadfast unwavering Hammond riff. It's delightful, I can't get enough of it!

Spoon - Transference (2010)

2010-02-20T20:33:00.000Z

I confess to not having known about Spoon 'till a few days ago. This isn't surprising, since most of my listening is to 40 year old music - that "rock sweetspot" between 1968 and 1974 - when, in my humble opinion, pretty much all that could be done with the genre was done. All that followed later was derivative blah blah... Every now and then, though, even I get bored with old stuff and yearn for something fresh. And Spoon, still ringing in my lugholes as I write this, is my latest "squeeze".

A lot of modern "indie" is dross, to my jaded ears, but every now and then something really classy comes along. Spoon's Transference, their seventh studio album, is full of strong tunes and positive beats, which stay going round in your head long after it's over, always a good sign. The vocalist is superb. This band understands that less is sometimes more, a lesson a lot of bands would do well to learn. It never sounds laboured, it's understated, yet it changes from gentle monotony to rocky thrills, keeping you interested. I could ramble on, but it's boring, and I know from reading other people's reviews how little bearing it would have on your experience. I sometimes wonder whether what I'm listening to is actually the same album that I read about, like there must have been a mistake somewhere, a mix up!

The icing on the cake is that the band's name apparently came from a well known track by one of my favourite early 70's Krautrock bands, Can (a hugely influential band which I'll rant about shortly) and I reckon you can hear a trace of "Can DNA" in this superb album too!

A nice walk in the park

2010-02-20T12:52:00.000Z

My journey to and from work takes me through Hyde Park. I feel very privileged; not many people get to walk through one of the most famous parks in the world every day! My route takes me down the wide avenue which stretches from Wellington Arch (Hyde Park Corner) to Marble Arch (Speaker's Corner), I forget its name, and it's shared by pedestrians, horse and carriage, the occasional Parks maintainance vehicle, and cyclists, who have their own lane marked out by white lines. It's a subset of this latter category of users who really get my goat.

Ninety five percent of the time the cyclists have a lovely wide lane to use - it's probably about a quarter to a third of the total width of the road. Just occasionally, though, a hapless tourist will wander into their lane. It's not too surprising really, as tourists will wander anywhere with impunity, stopping and starting apparently at random, causing regular locals grief. This is just what they do, and, yes, it's annoying. Also, the Cycle Lane isn't terribly well marked as such, so you can forgive them for not realising what it is. But when they do stray into this lane, even though there isn't a bicycle in sight at the time, and one of these obnoxious cyclists eventually comes along, all hell breaks loose! You really have to witness it to believe it.

This morning I was striding along (not in the cycle lane) minding my own business (I'm very withdrawn and uncommunicative first thing) and I noticed a crowd of visitors spread out across the path spilling into the cycle lane, taking pictures of each other, as they tend to. Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by a bellowing, aggressive voice shouting "MIND OUT ... GET OUT OF THE WAY". Startled, I noticed a cyclist (male, middle aged, kitted out) bearing down on them at great speed, making no attempt whatsoever to avoid them.

Tourists scatter, bike whizzes through the middle of them. Tourists bewildered, looking at each other, gabbling frantically in a strange toungue. In fact, they got off lightly, the bellowing aggressive middle aged man (they do seem to be the worst) was in a relatively good mood this morning. Another time, they would have been subjected to a barrage of obscenities enough to make a Channel Four post-watershed viewer blush! This isn't an unusual sight, it happens every day. Quite what makes a (probably) normal person, who's charming at work, and helps lost tourists he meets in the street, turn into a foaming-at-the-mouth, raging monster when he's on a bicycle in a designated cycle lane, I have no idea. I tend to dislike tourists as much as the next person, but I don't (usually) shout or swear at them when they stray into my path.

Notice I'm emphasing "he" and "him" - you don't see female cyclists doing this as much. Also, younger men don't seem as afflicted either, being more "chilled out". The middle-aged are the worst. I've witnessed arguments between cyclists too. They shout out obscenities as they pass each other, due to some supposed transgression, both screech to a halt, and proceed to have a really scary shouting match in the middle of the road, eyes bulging, saliva flying, blood vessels popping. It's wonderous to behold!

The most worrying thing, though, I've recently started to think like them now. If a cyclist dares to stray out of the designated lane, due to too many other bikes occupying it, or there's a large puddle in the way, and they ride along the pedestrian part of the path, I can feel my blood pressure rise. The sheer bloody hypocrisy of it, I think to myself! I swear at them under my breath. It won't be long before I shout at one of them, I can feel it coming...

Hucking Fackers

2010-02-19T13:19:00.000Z

My company websites (Walrus has 3 identical ones - don't ask, it's a silly legacy thing) have recently all suffered "hacking" attacks. The first time it happened a few months back (we were alerted by a customer almost immediately) I was mortified. I mean, you read about these things, but it always seems to happen to other people with dodgy sites who obviously haven't a clue about security and brag about their clever password schemes to their mates in the pub. At least that's what I fondly imagined.

I scrambled to the computer, typed in our address, and sure enough, our content was gone, replaced by some foreign stuff which I didn't inspect closely, though wish I had with hindsight. I downloaded one of the affected pages and tried to view it in notepad (right click - send to - notepad) and was really spooked when the computer slowed down and eventually said "access denied". I did eventually twig it was only the virus checker doing its job, and after renaming the html file to txt I was able to inspect it and verify that some bastards had injected script, trebling the file size in the process. I also gleaned from a "cracked" app left behind on our site, maybe for other hacker's benefit, that the attack was probably from Russia, which would also correspond with the odd time of day the attack had taken place.

My initial thought was "someone's compromised our work machine and stolen our passwords" and that's when the panic really set in. The whole day was wasted with scanning for viruses, spyware etc etc, and changing all my banking and other important passwords. Time consuming stuff, and I hate password production and memorisation. No matter how convinced you are at the time about the memorability of a new password, you are guaranteed to have forgotten it when you really need it a few months down the line. It's an absolute bloody certainty! I was mentally exhausted by the end of the day.

Anyway, I restored the websites and everything returned to normal. I should explain now that, for reasons which I'm not going into here, it's virtually impossible for me to change the ftp passwords for 2 of the 3 sites. In any case, by now I suspected the hackers had got in through the "back door" of the webserver and gained access that way rather than from our passwords, so if the web hosting companies did their job and patched the servers, we wouldn't get the problem again. And we didn't. Until recently, when it all kicked off again.

Now they seem more persistent than ever. I correct our sites, and within several days they're back again. But, I'm ready for them this time, I have a secret weapon! It's called Fling, and it's a free product from an Australian company, just Google and you'll find it. I was sceptical at first. I am about everything, it's in my nature, and I'm not always proud of it. It involves nominating folders, containing your files, which become so-called "Fling folders". The program can be set to upload by ftp some or all files, if certain conditions are met. This didn't work for me as it would only automatically upload a file if newer than what's on your website, where I needed the opposite. But, you can invoke Fling from the command line and specify files to send, no conditions attached. Making up a batch file, and launching it with Windows Scheduler, I can now refresh key files on our sites at an interval of my choosing. And, my computer at home is similarly programmed to do the same, and does so all night. It's not an ideal workaround, but it'll have to do until I have the capability to change the remaining 2 passwords.

So, Up Yours hucking fackers, do your worst. Within less than 15 minutes our sites will be back to normal. Seriously, though, I apologise if you happen to visit during that narrow window, or if you visited during the period the rogue pages were up for longer. I don't know what the scripts actually do, and whether they infect under some circumstances. I'm very, very sorry if they have done this to anyone.

a2dp - Sings or Sucks?

2010-02-13T13:07:00.000Z

Advanced Audio Distribution Profile, a2dp for short, is the method by which stereo audio can be transmitted over a Bluetooth link. If you use a modern "smartphone" or "ppc", be it a Windows Mobile device, a Symbian device, an Apple iPhone (latest versions), or recent Android or Blackberry devices, you might have considered going down this cordless method for enjoying high quality music on the move. If not, don't bother reading on, it'll bore the pants off you!

In case you're slightly interested, but don't want to read through loads of rambling discussion, I'll put the conclusion first, so you can decide whether to read on or not. Yes, it's possible, audio quality good enough to satisfy an audiophile, without the really annoying cable, whilst on the move (using an appropriate device). Of course, this is highly subjective, there are audiophiles and there are really hard core audiophiles! If you're one of the latter, who is prejudiced right from the start against compressed formats like mp3, then don't bother reading further either.

Also, unless you have a Windows Mobile device running WM 6.0 or later, you might never be satisfied with the sound quality via Bluetooth.

This is what I meant by "appropriate device". The reason is not a failing in the a2dp standard, but the fact that most manufacturers wouldn't recognise decent sound quality if they bumped into it in broad daylight, and so they don't allow for it. It's difficult, for example, to find an iPhone user really happy with the sound of Bluetooth audio, at least from what I read in the forums. This is not because of the hardware, but because Apple chose a rubbish quality level for a2dp, and don't allow adjustment of it. I believe it's the same for other makes. Even where adjustment of the quality is possible, the "high" setting is generally still crap by "audiophile" standards, the "low" setting being unspeakably bad.

Don't get the idea Microsoft is any more "audiophile orientated", as it's not. The default settings for a2dp in WM phones are abysmal, and there's not even a way for the average user to adjust them, which is unforgiveable. Not to mention that it was only with the introduction of WM 6.0 that quality Bluetooth sound even became possible - before that, it was a travesty. Microsoft didn't even know what "Joint Stereo" meant - they thought it meant "Mono" (an in-joke).

All this has given Bluetooth a thoroughly bad reputation with audiophiles, and quite rightly so.

However, and incredibly luckily, WM has a huge plus - it hasn't been "locked" and is consequently easy to "hack" via the "registry", a place where all the key settings are stored. If your phone's hardware supports the quality level, and most modern ppcs/smartphones do, and if you have an appropriate high quality Bluetooth receiver with good sounding electronics within, the a2dp settings in the phone can be tweaked with a free registry editor to insane levels which sound as good as a wired connection!

So, if you have a WM 6.0, 6.1, or 6.5 phone, the chances are good that you can tweak it for really excellent a2dp sound. Here's not the place to go into technical details; if anyone's interested, check out the xda-developers forums, look up your phone model, and search the appropriate forum. If you still need advice, stick something in comments below, and I might be able to help.

Bear in mind the other link in the chain, the Bluetooth receiver, is also a key ingredient, as it takes over audio duties from the phone and has to be able to accept a high a2dp bitrate. I haven't tested many, but highly recommend Sony, whose portable audio devices almost always sound excellent. I use the Sony HBH-DS200, an old model but still on sale for 20-30 Pounds as of early 2010.

Its replacement, the DS220, is probably just as good, and as a bonus has a volume control too. Note that these can be used to take phone calls as well, having an integral mike! Avoid Bluetooth audio products from the usual mobile phone accessory manufacturers, as they mostly haven't a clue about decent audio. It's worth mentioning volume control again, because some phones (like the iPhone) have fixed a2dp volume, and this will affect your choice of receiver. Most WM phones either have variable a2dp volume, or there will be a registry hack to enable it.

Ironically, I only started using Bluetooth audio because my phone, an HTC, has a silly mini-usb power/data/audio combined connector rather than a standard 3.5 jack, and even with an adapter it doesn't sound very good. A chance purchase of a second hand DS200 convinced me Bluetooth was the way to go, as it sounded far better (after the WM tweaks) than the phone on its own. I cut down the cable on some cheap Sennheisers and fitted a new plug. With the DS200 clipped to my shirt, there's only a few inches of wire to annoy, and my expensive HTC can stay safely in jacket pocket away from the elements and the eyes of potential muggers! I recharge the stick every second night, but if you didn't play music as loud as me, it would last longer (as would your ears too).

The bottom line: does it sound better than my Cowon S9, a player very highly regarded for its sound quality?

Yes and no. It's not quite as detailed, and there's not so much "air" around things, but the bass is better and the sound "sweeter". The differences are relatively small, only an "audiophile" would really notice them. Overall, the HTC/Sony wire-free combo is just as, if not more, satisfying. Funnily enough, the Cowon S9 also has Bluetooth a2dp, but the quality level they saw fit to allow, as expected, isn't anywhere near the tweaked settings on the HTC, so it's better to plug 'phones into it.

The bottom bottom line: I would only go back to a wired connection with great reluctance.

Test Card F

2010-02-12T13:10:00.000Z

An iconic sight, one that most people in the UK will be familiar with. Although very rare now, if you are of a certain age (polite term) and were given to unhealthy habits like staring at the box when no real programme was being broadcast, the sight of Test Card F might moisten your eyes ever so slightly!

So, here's a few things you may not know about it. I didn't, 'till I dug a bit deeper...

* It was introduced in July 1967, the day after colour came to BBC2.

* It was the latest in a long line of test cards developed by the BBC starting with Test Card A in the late 1940s.

* It was (is) the most enduring test card, still very occasionally making an appearance today in slightly modified form.

* Obviously, the most endearing part of it is the little girl with the clown, the first time a real picture had appeared on a test card. Her presence was important to obtaining a realistic skin tone from the new colour tellies.

* The girl's name is Carole Hersee, and she was aged 8. The clown is Bubbles. Her dad, George Hersee, the BBC engineer who designed the card, took several pictures of both her and her younger sister Gillian. Luckily for Carole, Gillian had two front teeth missing at the time, so she got the job! Incidentally, Bubbles still exists, he's kept in a box.

* Carole, who has appeared on telly for an estimated 70,000 hours, is apparently a bit bemused by her fame. She used to get fan mail in her teens! She's now a costume designer who has designed costumes for several prominent theatre productions and films.

* The BBC use a modified wide screen version of the card for their new terrestrial HD channel.

* Test Card F has been widely imitated, the latest being by Sky for their HD service. In Sky's version, Carole has been replaced by Myleene Klass!

* Test Cards have fallen from favour (outside of studios) for several reasons. TV is usually a 24 hour affair nowadays, sadly leaving little time for the pleasure of test card viewing! Engineers don't really need them now either, as they can carry a box in their pocket which produces the same thing electronically. And, at least part of the reason for their existence, setting up the geometry of the picture from a cathode ray tube (a very tedious job as any old-school engineer will tell you) has become irrelevant with flat, geometrically perfect plasma or LCD screens.

* As well as being an object of reverence amongst enthusiasts, Test Card F has also suffered amusing humiliation, with the picture being replaced by all sorts of (sometimes lewd) images.

* Test Card Music also appears to have quite a following, with several CDs available crammed with the sort of light orchestral music typically used for the purpose. In fact, one wag has produced an avi video an hour long full of this music, with a static Test Card F to lovingly watch at the same time. It was doing just that which stimulated this post. Oops, just revealed my true colours...

Do take time to visit one of my favourite blogs, Cosmobells, for more test card madness, and much, much more besides!

EddieCam

2010-02-03T10:55:00.000Z

A while ago, it was a bit of an impulse purchase, we decided to get a small computer for our back room at home, the room we spend most of our "quality time" in. Our 42" TV is there, as is our hi-fi setup. The two are linked up via an ageing but still very worthy Musical Fidelity Trivista 24 DAC, which spends its time decoding digital audio from our Freeview recorder box and DVD player.

We got an Acer Revo, which cost just under £300.

It's one of the new breed of tiny "media centre" PCs without an optical drive but with a large hard drive, and it comes with wireless keyboard and mouse, vital for the intended use. Like most of its kind it has a modest Intel Atom processor (as fitted in most netbooks) but has an Nvidia Ion graphics chip, from which it derives its power to play HD movies. It's a powerful combination which results in a small cool running unit but with enough power to be a proper "media centre".

It took quite a bit of time to get properly interfaced with our TV, a Hitachi plasma, which is too old to have an HDMI input, but has a standard RGB connector. The TV's spec states a resolution of 1024 by 1024 (odd for a widescreen), and the PC defaulted to 1024 by 768, which was fine except everything was distorted. After several hours, we finally coaxed the PC to output 1280 by 768 at a non standard 59.8Hz refresh rate, which the TV and ourselves are happy with, and everything looks nice and as it should do.

We purchased the Acer without really thinking too deeply about what we were going to use it for, a dangerous recipe for wasting money. But, it's turned out to be, like the Freeview recorder we bought many years ago, one of the best purchases we've ever made. I plugged in an old LG external DVD drive I had lying around, and suddenly we had a replacement for our DVD player. Not only do DVDs look better than ever (due to better upscaling) but any format is now playable with ease, like, for example, those dodgy xvid encoded rips one gets from the web which the old player struggled with.

I had also previously been contemplating a Media Player box to go with our TV, the stand alone type with integral hard drive, and I'm so pleased we got the Acer instead. A proper computer is so much more versatile. It does the same things as a dedicated player, and so much more besides. If you don't like the interface, change it. If you can't play a particular video, grab the neccessary codec from the web. Want to watch BBC iPlayer, no problem, even in HD. YouTube, ditto. I should explain, that although our broadband connection and Netgear wi-fi router are at the front of the house, we have a Sitecom wi-fi range extender at the back through which the Acer is connected by cable, rather than relying on the Acer's built in wi-fi. It gives a rock solid internet connection, good enough for HD video streaming.

Which brings me finally to EddieCam, another unexpected spin-off from the purchase of the Acer! For the price of a cheap webcam (about £10 was the cheapest I could find) we now have the facility to view our house (or at least, a small portion of the back room) on our mobile phones from wherever we happen to be and satisfy ourselves that it's integrity is still intact (nobody's broken in, in plain English).

Basically, the computer is left running, and, using an excellent free program called Dorgem, a jpeg image is grabbed from the webcam feed at regular intervals, timestamped, and uploaded by ftp to a website for us to view. Using this method doesn't require us to connect to our PC, which would weaken our router's firewall, so it leaves security levels intact.

It's not an exciting view (that's an understatement) and it never changes. It tells us the door to the room is shut, which it probably wouldn't be if our house had been compromised. Anyway, the first thing they'd nick is probably the Acer, so the time stamped picture has value in that sense!

Eddie? He's the Elk on top of the sofa. He's quite a character, a bit bossy but very loveable, and insisted on being in the picture. He also features at the top right corner of Walrus ads, in case you feel you've seen him before!

Eddie, the Elk with Attitude

Close, but no cigar...

2010-01-31T22:42:00.000Z

It has been widely reported that a cigar half smoked by Winston Churchill in 1941, before he had to rush off to a cabinet meeting, turned up for auction recently. It was expected to go for around £350, whilst actually fetching £4500.

This doesn't surprise me; memorabilia is big business. Of course, if I had this sort of money burning a hole in my pocket, I'd have gone for a nice second hand motor. But, there's no accounting for how the wealthy spend their dosh, and the cigar strikes me as a perfectly reasonable purchase.

No, the questions really bugging me are: what was going through the mind of the person or persons who rescued said cigar stub in the first place, and then stored it for 69 years? Was it sneaked out, dropped in a jacket pocket (which had to be dry cleaned afterwards) then laid out on the kitchen table like a trophy once back home? Did it spend most of the time in a plastic bag at the back of a cupboard in the spare room, or was its future value guessed at, consequently ending up in a safe, possibly in a bank vault? The thought is mind boggling.

Furthermore, how could the purchaser really know that the half smoked thing was actually Churchill's? Did it come with a certificate of authenticity signed by the Great Man himself? Or, has DNA testing been carried out for a close match with a living relative? Hmm.

My new Pentax SLR

2010-01-29T15:55:00.000Z

I'm a bit of a camera freak. I admit it. I'm just as much, if not more, interested in the technology (as is the case with a lot of my purchases) as I am in actually taking pictures (at which I'm decidedly average). As such, digital cameras were made for someone like me - loads of features and stuff to explore, and the gratification of seeing my pics immediately. If truth were known, I would guess a lot of digicams are sold to people like me, though a much greater number go to folk who's only interest is creativity rather than hardware, be it holiday snaps, drunken mates down the boozer snaps, or whatever...

I don't use SLR (Single Lens Reflex - yes, I know you know what it means, but some people don't) cameras much. I'm lazy but walk a lot, like to travel light and hide things away in my ample pockets when they're not in use. I also don't like the idea of taking things apart on the move (in this case changing lenses) with the attendant risk of getting dust and other detritis in the works. But, there are occasions when a large-sensor (consequently sensitive) camera is helpful, and my previous example (another Pentax) was getting a bit out of date. Even a current 100 quid compact digicam has more megapixels, features, and kudos, although admittedly, not image quality, than my older Pentax *ist DL2 SLR .

So, to redress this sad state of affairs (a Gadgetophile can't afford to get out of date with his/her gadgets) I shelled out on the fairly new Pentax K-X, currently getting glowing reviews. Why Pentax? I got involved with them back in the late 70s, when they were one of the best selling consumer camera makers, and as well as having a few legacy lenses which still fit current models (though aren't up to much, sadly) you tend to stick with brands you knew years back. They're still a good brand, but nowhere near as popular as they were back then, in this CanoNikon dominated world, although they deserve to be.
And, I'm not disappointed. I got the twin lens kit, so I can go from 18mm to 300mm - that's about 27mm to 450mm in 35mm film terms, moderate wide angle to quite powerful telephoto, very nice for those ~~sneaky spy shots~~ shots of birds and rabbits. It's useable up to ISO 1600 with hardly any image degradation, as against ISO 200 for a compact digicam. That's 3 stops advantage, 1/60th second instead of 1/8th second, the difference between a nice picture and a blurred fuzzy mess in poor light.

One aspect, though, has really surprised me, in the negative sense. I'm an unashamed "pixel peeper", a term all photo hobbyists understand. As well as enjoying my pictures as a whole, I tend to zoom in and look critically at pixel level, to see what the camera and lens is really doing. It's a malaise explained by the first line of this post. And, what I see is detail often not as sharp as what I can get from a tiddly little pocket camera.

I've finally nailed it down to the method SLR's use to focus - "Phase detect". This isn't the place to go into the details, I admit I don't fully understand it myself. But, it's very quick, and can work very well. Sometimes. Some of my pics are sharp, some not so, it's quite random. When I engage the "Live View" mode of recording on the K-X, which utilises the "Contrast detect" focus mode, the same method as almost every small cheap camera uses, I get reliably sharp images every time.

I would have blamed a fault on my camera, or the fact that it's not a premium model, just a mere lower mid-range one. But, after googling this morning, I discover posts from other pixel peepers who own Nikons and Canons complaining about the exact same phenomenon. It seems to be true; you spend more on a sophisticated SLR, with a nice large sensor and a beautiful big sharp lens, both capable of pictures so sharp you could cut yourself on them, only to be let down by the crummy phase detect focus mechanism. Luckily, modern SLRs have the workaround of using contrast detect with their "live view" modes, but it's sooo.. sloowww... Yawn. Your subject will have got up and gone home by the time it's focussed accurately.

The moral? Dunno, perhaps someone will enlighten me!

Another day, Another blog

2010-01-28T16:25:00.000Z

I'm back. Don't all cheer at once, it's deafening. Ha ha.

Seriously, my last (and only other) attempt at blogging on blogspot was marred by my (work) email address (which I had signed up with) becoming unavailable without warning, and me forgetting my password. Ordinarily, one or the other wouldn't have been a problem, but both at once - fatal. I don't usually forget passwords, but it was probably Blogger's insistance on a minimum number of characters, or an alpha/numeric mix, or both, which scuppered me.

Anyhow, I'm here to stay now. I've taken precautions this time. A packet of three, whatever...

And, for the second time, a welcome to anyone coming here from my old Walrus blog!