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blogonblogoff

blogonblogoff - side b

'everything is nothing if you've got no one'

Thursday, July 17, 2003

Needs something here
Hello strangers, it was only a week ago I moved from Bath back home to Manchester. Although it's been scorching you just can't avoid the rain and it's been quite heavy all morning. Life is a bit strange at the moment. Having no space of my own makes it difficult as my brothers room is full of his stuff that all I have are lots of CD's and LP's stored in boxes all over the place. Just started going through all my CD collection in order to sell some of it. I used to buy mainly singles and have a lot of Britpop singles from people like Lush, Cast, Northern Uproar etc. I plan to convert them all to MP3 then sell the actual CD's off as one job lot. There are a few special promos and limited edition things to tempt the punters on eBay.

One good thing to have happened since I came back home is that my digital radio started working again. For a while it would only work for 15 minutes then lose the signal. You had to leave it off for half a day for it to work for another 15 miniutes. Glad it's working again as Videologic were being a real pain when I asked them to have a look at it. It's nice listening to Oneword again.

The 48 hour film challenge seems like a nice little competition for the aspiring film makers. Make a 5 minute film in 48 hours using DV cameras, it's made more spontaneous by now revealing the title until the day of the event.

Posted by Edward @ 12:11 PM GMT
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Thursday, July 10, 2003
You and me are over and I'm getting high tonight
One hour to go and counting till my Sister arrives to pick me up. It was meant to be a couple of hours ago but she got held up with work. That was a stroke of luck really as that meant I got to see Evan Johansen from Magnet play a live set at Fopp. As per usual no one ever turns up for these in store things unless they are very well known and I think I was the only person who went along just to see him play. He only did three song (probably because of the tiny audience) but it was really great. His rendition of Where Happiness Lives was excellent as is the album On Your Side. He plays an instrument that can only be described as a sawn off guitar with only the actual fret board and played faced up on the knee, a cross between playing a slide guitar and harp. There must be a name for it. It seemed really versatile at making a range of sounds.

It's quite nice to end Bath with a live set as I remember early on my arrival to Bath I watched Malcolm Middleton play a set at Fopp too.

Right that's it off to do a final bit of cleaning. Not sure if this means farewell to this weblog as my time has come to go to work and earn my living again.

Posted by Edward @ 03:12 PM GMT
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Wednesday, July 9, 2003
All we need now...
Okay 24 hours to go till I leave this place that is Bath. My room is pretty much cleared out and restored to it's original condition. Hopefully get my full deposit back. Look those black stains on the carpet were there when I came along, and those paint stains on the walls, well some sneaky person was covering up before I came.

Glad to be out of here because it looks and sounds like the new neighbours next door don't seem to be too sensible and have very late nights playing music. I know I shouldn't be spying but the burning from the barbeque was a cause for concern. Peered out of the window and there was huge amounts of smoke coming from their garden all over their washing. They must like smokey clothes. It is a bit sad to leave though, leaving behind some great times.

Hopefully I will have encountered enough slugs for a while, last night walking to the toilet, one was crawling straight at me as though it was try to get revenge for the dozens that I have thrown out of the bathroom window.

Just before I go here's a great little speech tool that's quite realistic. AT&T are developing Text to Speech programs and they are very promising. No more Stephen Hawking sounds. You even get to choose different voices. Try the Interactive Multi-Lingual Demo. You need something that can play wave files.


Posted by Edward @ 11:04 PM GMT
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Tuesday, July 8, 2003
Travel disaster
This is one of the most stupid things I seen from using a website for a while.

Error ! The current browser is either too old or too modern (usind DOM document structure).

I copied it exactly so the spelling mistake is there too. The actual route planner of the GMPTE website is actually very good for planning travel in Greater Manchester, shame you have to use IE for it to work. There's nothing on the page that shouldn't work if they use stylesheets. This 'who cares about other browser users' attitude by many (professional) web developers/designers really does need to change.

Posted by Edward @ 10:01 AM GMT
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Saturday, July 5, 2003
So that was submerged in washing up liquid
For the past three days the idea of standing around for six hours at a time was the main event. The course was exhibiting at the Watershed in Bristol for the Submerge event. It's a showcase for digital arts and media for students in the South West of England.

Standing around for hours wasn't too appealing but getting to see the reaction of people who try your projects was great. Almost like a big usability test but in a loud banging evironment. There was much work of a outstanding nature from each university but many just design focused. There was a big difference between the work produced on our course and the rest. Our work was much more in depth and complete. Anyway Tim's Balloonsender won thrid prize for innovation. The actual award was very nice, a perspex and metal cube but he got a full version of Flash which isn't exactly what he needs. It was difficult to tell what criteria the judges were using though as I thought he should have won that category.

Overall a good experience just talking to people and giving out business cards. Very tiring though, having to be there for 12 hours on your feet.

Posted by Edward @ 10:08 AM GMT
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Tuesday, July 1, 2003
Ho hum there's no work to go
It's tough having mot much to do, I keep wasting my time endlessly packing my things into boxes then rearranging them so that they fit better. One other thing I have been doing is watch TV. Not most people know that I watch a miniscule amount of television a week but over the weekend I watched all the overnight Glastonbury Festival coverage on the Beeb. Lot of it was good but also a lot of bad stuff too. I am ashamed to say that Junior Senior doing 'Move Your Feet' for the show was a highlight. The quality of presenting was dire though. Continuing my television adventures, yesterday's Henman match was pretty special, plenty of great moments and the nation routing for him.

Anyway will be at the Submerge showcase for the rest of the week which may or may not be good.

Posted by Edward @ 03:53 PM GMT
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