I was 20 when I left my parents home. We’d just gotten engaged when Louise’s flatmate had to move out. Or her flatmate moved out so we had to get engaged? I forget… I just do what I’m told.
How old were you when you fled the coop?
Year: 2005
bookmark_borderSome Cities
Doves – Some Cities @ Amazon.co.uk
Album Reviews from Metacritic
I missed their previous album for some reason, although I think I’ve got a copy at home but I can’t actually recall anything about it, ohh hang on. I see a trend developing already. F is for Forgettable.
Maybe that’s a bit harsh as this isn’t a bad album, trouble is, it’s not a great album either. No, it falls directly into the “good” album category and struggles to get back out, do not pass the Top 20, do not collect a 5 album deal. That’s a bit harsh too, as this is precisely the kind of album that is selling bucketloads at the moment spurred on by the success of Coldplay, Keane, and Snow Patrol.
Ahh but you see that’s harsh as well for comparing the Doves to those three would mean that I think they, the Doves, are capable of imparting a little more emotion into things than they seem able (it’s harsh on Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol that is). I mean, c’mon, call yourself a rock group at what point are you going to actual “RAWK”? You know, up the tempo, give us some electric guitars, drums…
And that’s my main gripe with this album, it’s close to being a very good album but at every turn it falters and falls just short. The upbeat tracks don’t ever really get all the way to being good rock tracks, the slower tracks don’t have enough emotion to carry them, and the others feel like cast-off tracks or B-Sides that are in there to make up the numbers (which they probably are).
There are some redeeming features scattered here and there – Black and White Town you’ll have heard, and … em … that other one… nope can’t remember it’s name – and at the very least it will be worth a re-listen in a few months, if only because by then I’ll have forgotten what it sounded like.
I read recently that they were trying to get permission to sample Delia’s recent footballing chant (Let’s be ‘aving ya!) and to be honest, if that is their aspiration then I can begin to understand the lack of ambition displayed by this album. By all accounts their first album was “very good”. This album seems to be lost, directionless and very much in need to a half-time pep talk from Britian’s favourite TV chef. That’s NOT a good place to be.
bookmark_borderScrob this
1 year equals
52 weeks OR
365 days OR
8,765.81277 hours OR
525,948.766 minutes OR
31,556,926 seconds
AND (at time of writing)
~31,700 tracks
One year since I installed audioscrobbler and I have to admit that I’m astonished by that number. Granted I have, on occasion not regularly, left iTunes running overnight, so you can probably knock that down to around the 30,000 mark.
Ohh and that doesn’t include iPod tracks on the journey to and from work. Or music played in the car. That’s just at work and at home.
Expanding on the maths then, and presuming an average track length of 4 minutes, that’s over a quarter of last year spent listening to music. Is this a good thing? and why do I still complain that I can’t find anything decent?
bookmark_borderLovely People
What a nice way to start the day. An email from Flickr which says:
You may have heard on the grapevine that we planned to reward our dear Flickr members who bought a Pro Account in the early days. Well, it’s true! And since you’re one of those lovely people, here’s a little something to say YOU ROCK!
1. Double what you paid for!
Your original 1 year pro account has been doubled to 2 years, and your new expiry date is [details hidden], 2007.2. More capacity!
Now you can upload 2 GB per month.3. 2 free Pro Accounts to give away to your friends!
This won’t be activated for a day or two, but when it is, you’ll see a note on your home page telling you what to do.Thank you so much for putting your money where your mouth is and supporting us, even while we’re in beta. Your generosity and cold, hard cash helped us get where we are today.
Lovely. Made my day that has! Only slight problem is who I pass those two free Pro Accounts onto… start begging people!!
bookmark_borderTopol
I’ve often pondered if there were any way I could make money from this silly little hobby. That pondering has been doubly deepened recently given that my wife’s hobby (“occasions” card making) is now bringing in a little cash each month and that kerfuffle about Mr.Kottke quitting his job to blog has got me a-pondering like a pondering person who ponders a lot.
How could I make money here? Adverts? I don’t think my traffic is high enough for that, for example, whilst I do post Amazon Associate links on my site when I can, I’ve made precisely an amount less than £5 in the three years since I signed up. Hardly what I would call anything approaching a steady income, it’s even a bit of a stretch to call it an “income” at all.
Subscription fees? Charge people to read the blog? Well, firstly, it would be a tad hypocritical as I don’t pay any subscription fees anywhere else. Secondly, and let’s be honest here, who in their right mind would pay to read my waffling nonsense (I bet half of you stopped before you even got this far).
Ahhh maybe I’ve hit on something there. They say that content is king, so maybe I need to focus my content, pick a market niche and dominate it THEN I can pull in adverts and sponsors and the like. That’s what all the Pro Bloggers do, they start with one or two blogs then start to expand their empire. Trouble is, anything that I’m interested in is already taken and, as it happens, I quite enjoy being able to point this little hobby (horse?) of mine wherever I damn well please. I’d hate to have to constantly please devoted readers all expecting posts on the same core topic/genre, that would be awfully restricting.
And then the next question pops into my head: Should I be making money from this hobby?
Put it this way, I spend a lot of time in front of the computer in my own personal time (discounting breaks from work) and have done so for the past six or so years. The main “skills” I’ve learned, aside from improving my casual writing style, are focussed around web design. I’d love to do it full time but where would I start? Well I’ve been slowly building a portfolio of sites I’ve worked on, but the leap from doing the odd personal site for friends to handling small business sites is larger than I care to admit and would require that I spend even MORE time learning additional technologies.
Or maybe I’m just stuck in a rut?
bookmark_borderWade In
Awful news over at Fuddland although I’m sure that statistically he was one of many that got mugged on Saturday night (on re-reading this sentence, it may sound like I’m belittling what David went through, I’m not). Stick that in your election fever “we’ll have more police on the streets” pipe and smoke it.
I’ve never been mugged (touches wood several times) but I have been, to use the local parlance, “jumped”. When I was 16, on a lovely summer’s evening on the banks of the River Leven.