Advice for the Young at Heart....Soon you will be Older

A couple of months ago I purchased a decent-ish spec system unit to attach to my 19" LCD panel and finally kiss goodbye to my IBM T21 laptop with the missing keys. It cost me £137 for a dual processor 300Ghz box with 2Gb of RAM, a 250Gb hard disk and Vista Home Premium. Bargain.

I splashed out for this for two reasons. First of all I needed adequate disk space to mirror the external 250Gb hard disk I have all my photos and music on and, secondly, I needed a PC that could handle my M-Audio MIDI controller keyboard without any latency.

Well, the adequate disk space is sorted but, when it comes to the smooth running of decent sound recording software, it's a complete and utter failure. The Vista drivers just can't handle realtime simultaneous playback and recording. The message boards and forums are full of aggrieved musicians detailing their heartache and subsequent return to XP. I've tried the onboard Realtek soundcard and two M-Audio Audiophile 24/96, top-of-the-range jobbies.

I sit there playing an augmented fifth, major seventh or even a bog-standard C major and it's a good tenth of second before you hear what you've just played. And I'm not on my own. 99% of the dissatisfaction with the OS is down to latency issues.

So i guess until we see Service Pack 5 or so, music recording on a Vista PC is a no-no.

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So it's back to my tried and trusted Yamaha MDS4(pictured above) and, furthermore, whatever I record over the next few months will be basically acoustic. Guitar, slide guitar, mandolin, harmonica, dulcimer, percussion and plenty of vocal harmony. All I need to do first is transfer all the stuff I've already got recorded on the 4-track Mini Disks that the machine takes to CD or my free space on my gmail account to ensure it doesn't disappear forever. You can still buy 4-track minidisks, but they cost an arm and a leg.

So, recycling. That's the future. Honest.

And the funny thing is, given all the upheaval and heartache of the past 24 months or so - redundancy, loss of a parent, new job x 2 etc., most of the songs I have put together have been quite jolly - for me. I don't know why. Or perhaps I do. I don't know.

I've set myself 6 months to record and mix six songs/tunes and get them up on my MySpace site

Targets. That's what I need. Well, targets and money. Lots of it.

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There's a few of us off to the Acoustic Festival of Britain this weekend. Tents 'n' stuff! Wish me luck!

The Sound of the Crowd

If you're not a Scot (or a Mancunian for that matter), you may be forgiven for not knowing that Glasgow Rangers are taking on Zenit St Petersburg at Manchester City's stadium this evening with the EUFA cup going to the winners.

This has resulted in the biggest invasion of England by Scots since the diminutive Bonnie Prince Charlie made it down to the Midlands back in the day. They started arriving yesterday and last night the centre of Manchester was awash with blue. As I drove to work past the stadium this morning at 8:30am there were pockets of fans wrapped in Union Jacks and swigging from cans of lager.

I got in work at 9:00am and noticed coaches of fans arriving and parking up near Lancashire Cricket Club - miles away from the centre and the ground. All day they came; ejaculating well-oiled 'Gers followers who promptly urinated wherever they could before heading towards Manchester centre clutching cans, bottles, flags and banners.

By 1:30 pm they were marching down the road outside my office and I took the video above with my mobile phone (hence the quality). I had to leave work early to ensure I could get home as my journey takes me onto the Manchester inner ring road and past the ground via the designated route from the City centre. A bit of delay but not much and it was great seeing all the supporters enjoying themselves in the sunshine.



Here are some of them in Albert Square enjoying the sunshine.

The atmosphere has been great all day with upwards of 150,000 entering the City and clearing the shops of every drop of alcohol they could find. Sadly, as the game kicked off, the big screen in the fan's zone in Piccadilly failed and it 'kicked off' there as well. As I write riot police have been brought in and fans are throwing bottles and traffic cones.

The sad thing is, this will be a minority of dickheads. The same type of dickhead you get following any football club.

It's been a great day for Glasgow and a great day for Manchester Sadly this minority of dickheads will probably be getting all the media attention tomorrow.

+++ UPDATE +++ +++UPDATE +++ +++ UPDATE +++

For some reason I can't leave a link to this so you'll have to cut'n'paste.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7401814.stm

QUOTE "Fans who had been waiting in Piccadilly Gardens all day were unimpressed [when the big screen in Piccadilly failed].

One said: "This is absolutely ridiculous - there's Rangers fans throwing balls** and cans at each other because the game's not on.

"We've been sat here since 12 o'clock waiting on the game coming on. The coverage started at seven o'clock and then five minutes later the game's off.

"It's an absolute shambles, shame on Manchester, shame on Manchester - it's let the country down." UNQUOTE

"Shame on Manchester"? How much have I as a taxpayer forked out to accomodate fans who have turned up without tickets regardless of advice given? I've forked out to provide facilities and policing and ambulance services and probably hospital beds for people who quite frankly had been drinking since early morning (see above).

Glasgow Rangers, you were great today. Tonight, a minority of dickheads were a disgrace.

And now I hear a Zenit fan was stabbed outside the ground.

I thought today was going to be different to my experiences with Manchester United playing Celtic. I thought it was going to be a cheery affair.

Ah well.

Still, thanks for the slagging off. We tried but obviously we're crap

After all, it's a doddle dealing with 150,000 in an area that can hardly cope with 50,000 om a Saturday.



Shame on Manchester?

**Lost in translation? ;-)

Life Gets Tedious Don't It?

If I hear anyone else pontificate about how exciting this season's Premiership run in is I will scream and scream until I'm sick.

Who, apart from United or Chelsea fans gives a toss which one of the World's richest clubs wins? Exciting? I don't think so. I bet anyone with a modicum of football interest could have predicted which teams would be sat at the top of table without a problem.

Keegan was right, the Premiership is boringly predictable and the only way that the monopoly at the top can be broken is via the mega-rich billionaires of the world buying into clubs and funnelling astronomical sums of money into them. Even then the more unfashionable clubs (Reading and Manchester City for example) will struggle to attract true world class managers and players as the gravitational pull of the 'big clubs' exerts its influence.

Ho hum.

So the Premiership becomes a three mini-league bore-a-thon whereas the Championship provides all the footballing excitement and truly is exciting.

But for how much longer?

As of this season the club that comes bottom of the Premiership receives a payment on a par with what the winner of the Premiership got a couple seasons ago. A cool £30 million give or take a few pence.

£30 million.

Now how will that amount of money affect the rest of the Championship? How are the likes of Swansea or Nottingham Forest or Barnsley or Pymouth Argyll expected to compete against teams that come down with a minimum of £30 million in their back pocket?

I think it will trigger another 'mini leagues within a league' as the Championship mirrors the Premiership with a top six or so of clubs that yo-yo between the Championship and the Premiership picking their hefty promotion/relegation payouts on the way up or down. Next there will be a mini league consisting of the Ipswiches, Barnsleys, Prestons and the like who float in the middle. At the bottom there will the Championship's equivalent of the WBAs and Watfords; constantly winning promotion and relegation but never able to break through to the top of the league on account of the gulf in money.

Depressing isn't it? It doesn't stop the fans dreaming though does it?

So, good luck to Stoke next season and let's all cross our fingers for Hull City who, not so long ago were fighting to stay in the Football League never mind fighting to achieve Premiership status.















Have a good un.

Always Crashing in the Same Car

Hmmmmm....TimesNewRoman tagged me - the sod!

Now, if it had been anyone else I would've ignored it, but, well, we go back a long way. So here goes:-

1. What was the last 1980s song you heard?

"Downtown Lights" The Blue Nile. Beautiful. Beautiful and beautiful. What more can I say? Beautiful. Machines and human voices can emote. Beautiful.

2. What was the last thing you saw on You Tube?

Peri Urban "Over".

3. What was the last entry on wikipedia you viewed?

The Scuttlers of Manchester.

4. Last computer /video game completed?

Football Manager when City were in the third division. Certainly not the fuckin' Division 1 it's now known as. Bought some cracking foreigners for a pittance and employed a 4-4-3/4-5-1 continental approach that threw the opposition completely. Promotion in the first season. Sacked within three weeks of season two. So that counts as completed. 'Cos, once your sacked you have to start again. I felt at one with Peter Reid, Brian Horton, Frank Clarke, Alan Ball, Joe Royle and the rest though. Sven too....probably.

Empathy. That's the word.

5. What did you last Pig Out on?

A ChilliBurger from Prima Pizza on Easter Sunday. Not for any religious reasons mind it was all down to an all-dayer with our lads culminating in an inability to cook for ourselves when we got home. Wrong though. Doesn't help the blood pressure.

6. What is the last undeleted text message on your mobile?

"Have a virtual pint instead"

7. When did you last have a conversation with someone other than a family member?

Errr..today at work Does that count?

8. Aside from where you live, what is the last village/town/city you visited?

Birmingham to see Seth Lakeman, Tunng and Sharron Krauss last weekend.

9. What was the last Competiton you won?

Peel. Isle of Man 1964. Talent competion. I was ten years of age and I sang "Chicago" unaccompanied.. A song I had only heard Sinatra sing. But, given the fact that is pretty much all we heard in our house at the time unremarkable.

10. What were the last 3 Blogs you visited?

Well..TimesNewRoman obviously. Yorkshire Pudding and Alastair's Heart Monitor.