Blogging bullets

• 17th March, 2004
• My first blog post
• Over here
• I’m re-reading it all
• Sad git

Ha-ha, fooled you!

Yesterday Soph and I drove in to London, parked the car at Queensway and caught the tube to Mile End where we met Ash for lunch.

Ash is a unique guy. Genuinely talented and blessed with an abundance of creativity Ash chooses to spend most of his time working in the public sector; providing valuable services to some of our fellow humans most in need of assistance.

With his free time, Ash indulges his creative talents as a composer/musician of serious ability – we have shared just a fraction of his musical talent with our podcast listeners, under the names of artists ‘Warning! Heat Ray!’ and ‘Unsound’.

And he writes; as a music analyst/reviewer, Ash is one of the few muso-writers whose opinions – and writing – I hold in genuinely high regard.

Lunch, with Ash, was brilliant; that’s a measure of what a genuinely nice guy he is.

Later in the afternoon we went back to the West End, had lunch in an Italian restaurant in Berner Street then walked to the place where we were to meet up with author Alex Marsh and renowned blogger Jonny B.

Alex Marsh and Jonny B are the same person, obv.

The occasion was an informal launch of Alex’s new book ‘Sex and Bowls and Rock & Roll’, or as Alex put it ‘Not a book launch, just a drink in a pub with a few friends’.

Sitting next to Alex was the deliciously gorgeous Catherine Sanderson (aka internationally renowned author and erstwhile blogger, Petite Anglaise).

So that wasn’t very intimidating at all, was it? Jonny B and Petite Anglaise sitting next to me.

Erm, yes. I may have slipped in to idiot mode.

More people arrived.

Mike Atkinson (aka influential blogger/journalist Troubled Diva) was followed by a pair of very influential internet characters, bloggers, writers and podcasters, Cliff Jones and Mr Angry.

The very lovely (he did me a favour by personalising a copy of his book for Soph) Andrew Viner.

And there were others!

People whose names I can’t remember; intelligent, articulate people who said bright, witty (if not outrageously funny) things.

It was a fun, funny evening.

We bailed out, leaving the survivors to carry on, around 8pm.

By the time we got home, watched Big Brother drank tea and fell in to bed it was midnight.

This morning Soph and I are teetering around the house like a pair of newly-dead zombies.

Because we are not the grown-up people we pretended to be on two occasions, in front of all those folk, yesterday.

We are a pair of kids  who went out and successfully fooled them all.

Ha-ha, fooled you!

But not only was it really nice to meet everyone – from lunch with Ash to Jonny B and all of his friends – it was very pleasant to meet such a thoroughly nice group of people.

Ha-ha, fooled you!

Yesterday Soph and I drove in to London, parked the car at Queensway and caught the tube to Mile End where we met Ash for lunch.

Ash is a unique guy. Genuinely talented and blessed with an abundance of creativity, Ash chooses to spend most of his time working in the public sector; providing valuable services to some of our fellow humans most in need of assistance.

With his free time, Ash indulges his creative talents as a composer/musician of serious worth – we have shared just a fraction of his musical talent with our podcast listeners, under the names of artists ‘Warning! Heat Ray!’ and ‘Unsound’.

And he writes; as a music analyst/reviewer, Ash is one of the few muso-writers whose opinions – and writing – I hold in genuinely high regard.

Lunch, with Ash, was brilliant; that’s a measure of what a genuinely nice guy he is.

Later in the afternoon we went back to the West End, had a meal in an Italian restaurant in Berner Street, then walked to the place where we were to meet up with author Alex Marsh and renowned blogger Jonny B.

Alex Marsh and Jonny B are the same person, obv.

The occasion was an informal launch of Alex’s new book ‘Sex and Bowls and Rock & Roll’, or as Alex put it ‘Not a book launch, just a drink in a pub with a few friends’.

Sitting next to Alex was the deliciously gorgeous Catherine Sanderson (aka internationally renowned author and erstwhile blogger, Petite Anglaise).

So that wasn’t very intimidating at all, was it? Jonny B and Petite Anglaise sitting next to me.

Erm, yes. I may have slipped in to idiot mode.

More people arrived.

Mike Atkinson (aka influential blogger/journalist Troubled Diva) was followed by a pair of very high-profile internet characters: bloggers, writers and podcasters, Cliff Jones and Mr Angry.

Then the gorgeous Girl With A One-Track Mind rocked up.

The very lovely (he once did me a favour by personalising a copy of his book for Soph) Andrew Viner followed on behind.

And there were others!

People whose names I can’t remember; intelligent, articulate people who said bright, witty (if not outrageously funny) things.

It was a fun, funny evening.

We bailed out, leaving the survivors to carry on, around 8pm.

By the time we got home, watched Big Brother drank tea and fell in to bed it was midnight.

This morning Soph and I are teetering around the house like a pair of newly-dead zombies.

Why teetering around the house? Because we are not the grown-up people we pretended to be on two occasions, in front of all those folk, yesterday.

We are a pair of kids  who went out and successfully hoodwinked them all into believing that we were grown-up.

Ha-ha, fooled you!

But not only was it really nice to meet everyone – from lunch with Ash to to the afternoon/evening’s meeting with Jonny B and all of his friends – it was very pleasant to meet such a thoroughly nice group of people.

Wordpress comment problem, anybody?

Earlier today I got a tweet from a reader of this blog to say she had been trying to submit a comment here, but the comment was vanishing every time.

Half an hour later I experienced exactly the same problem over at Soupy’s place and moments later, the same problem again over with the Mooster.

Ten minutes ago I had the same problem with The Magnificent Frog. Less than five minutes ago I experienced the same issue with LizSara.

Is anyone else experiencing self-hosted or WordPress-hosted, WordPress issues – specifically – comments not being accepted?

insert imaginative title here

So we’ve been doing really random things today and laughing a lot and giggling like kids and singing and Sophie’s cleaned the house and is it only me that feels as if it’s been a weekend day?

I know Soph’s been home because it’s her Thursday off and that makes it seem like the weekend but the sun’s been shining and I had my hair cut this morning and rode Tom this afternoon and gave him a bubble bath and came home and wrote two PowerPoint presentations that I have to give tomorrow morning in Wiltshire and…

Oh dear.

I seem to have run out of punctuation.

Bugger.

I’ll just nip upstairs and see if there’s any spare punctuation in the filing cabinet.

Back soon.

The ultimate band website revisited

I’m going back to an old topic from a new perspective: the ultimate band website. Having thought about it for a year I have a load of random ideas, but I haven’t yet put them together into a coherent structure. This is an attempt to find out what I think about band websites – an essay in the true sense.

What’s the point of a band website?

Most bands want a website that looks cool, in the same way that they want their album art to be cool and their gig posters to be cool. Album art and gig posters have a very simple purpose: the one-way communication of a small amount of information. A website has a complex purpose: it has to be a social object¹ around which people can gather and converse, a point of engagement between fan and band, and a shop (if not more). And it has to look cool.

As with all this internet stuff, there’s no single answer that will suit every band. I rarely find band websites that I think are good, but when I do it’s always because the site completely fits with the band. Pomplamoose’s main internet presence is their YouTube channel, because they make Videosongs and that’s where their fans go to engage with them. BareNakedLadies have a full-featured website with multi-author blogs, behind-the-scenes videos, and shedloads of content², because their fans are geeks and enjoy getting involved with all that stuff.

What about bands that aren’t geeks?

There’s a problem when a band doesn’t use the internet in the same way as its fans. If a band only wants to use MySpace I’m never going to notice them. If a potential fan isn’t on Twitter they are unlikely to hear about me. If a band wants to communicate by post (I’m looking at you, Islet ;) they are going to have trouble engaging with the digital geeks who want to be involved.

There’s a part of me (the wannabe rock star) that sides with the stubborn bands. I stopped playing live gigs completely last year and just played online in various weird and wonderful ways. I love the two issues of The Isness that Islet have posted to me (in the actual post – on paper). I understand that as a band you want to define the rules of engagement and make your artistic statement. I understand that a lot of bands don’t spend all their time online. I understand that maintaining an element of mystery and theatre can make for an amazing magical live show.

But there’s another part of me (the music fan) that’s only ever had really deep positive experiences with bands when I’ve been able to get past the show and find out about the people and the story behind the music. At first it was from my Dad telling stories about records in his collection. As a teenager it was through books and films about rock stars and music scenes that I’d missed by decades, and endless conversations in record shops and issues of Record Collector. Then people started posting MP3 bootlegs on forums³ and making websites about otherwise mysterious legends. Now people recommend music on Posterous, tweet Spotify playlists and the conversations about music are easier to tap into than ever before.

Why not let the fans make all the content?

The old music industry model created social objects (records, magazine interviews, press releases, tabloid stories) to feed the conversation, so the artists didn’t have to. Now people want to engage with bands outside the mainstream press, and either the band creates the social objects or the fans do. A lot of bands are building websites that allow fans to create stuff, but it’s not that easy.

Jonathan Coulton fans make loads of videos, cover versions and remixes of his music, but he gave them loads of stuff first: he posted a song a week and blogged the whole thing. He also spent half his time answering email.

So why not let the fans make all the content? Because in almost all cases they won’t. Not unless the bands make way more first.

Why do fans go to band websites?

This may be the wrong question to ask, because I’m not sure they do. I certainly don’t (well, almost never), and in my straw poll of random people in pubs over the last few months nobody else did either. Let’s figure out the reasons why I very occasionally visit band websites:

• I visit Steve Lawson’s site for the blog. But only occasionally, because I read it in RSS and only ever click through to the site if there’s a funky embed that doesn’t show up in Google Reader.
• I went to Pomplamoose’s site after I’d watched all their YouTube videos to see whether they had anything else to offer. They don’t. Their site is just music players, the latest video, iTunes links and an about page.
• I follow links from Twitter to blog posts on bands’ or artists’ websites sometimes. If it’s an amazing blog post and I’m absolutely overwhelmed with respect for the author I might listen to a track or two.
• That’s it. I may not be a representative music fan, but I’ll bet that if you asked random music-liking people⁴ which band websites they visit regularly (or ever) you’d be met with blank stares. So…

Where do fans go to engage with music online?

Me first. Here’s what I’ve used recently to discover, share, research, listen to and talk about music (not counting my own music):

• @solobasssteve just recommended a band to me on Twitter, after I mentioned liking Pomplamoose.
• Earlier today I checked out Chris TT’s tour schedule after seeing him talk about his upcoming gigs on Twitter. He doesn’t pimp his gigs often – I follow him because I enjoy reading his tweets – so when he does I’m interested.
• Also today I saw Richard Walters tweet about Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue, and sent him a link to the fan website where I originally read about it years ago (before it was reissued⁵).
• A few days ago I listened to some tunes by The Monroe Transfer on their Bandcamp page, after I had a conversation over Google Chat with Nick about releasing music online.
• I’ve watched a load of songs on YouTube that people have recommended, embedded, tweeted, Facebooked or emailed recently – maybe 30 this year.
• I’ve listened to Miriam Jones’ Solitary Songs on Bandcamp because I keep meaning to buy them but haven’t got round to it yet.
• I’ve embedded an occasional YouTube video of a song on my Tumblr blog.
• I’ve listened to maybe a dozen tracks that people I follow have posted on Tumblr, but only when there’s a story or at least a hearty recommendation to go with it. There’s nothing less appealing than a lonely Flash audio player.
• As I was editing this post I listened to three tracks by a band called Physical Education because they flattered me on Twitter.

I don’t really know what other people get up to, but off the top of my head:

• People still seem to be using Spotify quite a lot. This year I’ve only opened it to get a couple of invites to send to people, but then I don’t listen to music radio either so let’s not read too much into that.
• I see quite a few links fly by on Twitter to blip.fm, last.fm and the like.
• Andrew Dubber is making Dubber’s Weekly Jazz (“Like a weekly specialist radio show – but on Spotify”), a weekly Spotify playlist posted to a Posterous blog.
• Steve Lawson is embedding Bandcamp players on a Posterous blog to recommend new music (he even recommended my album!)

Any conclusions?

I’ll let this lot compost for a while and see if I can come up with anything useful, but here are my initial thoughts:

1. I’m an edge case in the big picture of listening habits. But now that the homogenous glob of “audience” is fragmented into a whole load of individuals, I guess we’re dealing with an entire dataset of edge cases. I know that can’t exist (except maybe on a circular graph – anyone?), but you know what I mean.
2. Maybe a band website just needs to link to all the other stuff (sort of like flavors.me, which I used to set up benwalkersongwriter.com yesterday).
3. Maybe a band website needs to be a blog to be interesting. That’s certainly what draws me in to a band (and what I’m leaning towards with my own site).
4. Maybe a band doesn’t need a website at all.
5. Bands need to create shareable stuff. For me as a music fan that means blog posts, YouTube videos, music on Bandcamp or Spotify and MP3s for Tumblr.
6. Mysterious bands never appear on my radar. They may be getting great reviews or appearing in Sunday supplements or being on TV or making the best album ever, but I won’t know about it. And if I don’t know about it I won’t miss it.

I need to have at least half a dozen more pub conversations about this before it will start to make sense. If you can help clarify any of it, or just add an example to my painfully narrow data, please comment. I’m intrigued to know what you think. ;)

Blogging with TextMate and Markdown

What a geek. Seriously.

I should be in bed, cause I was out playing a club gig with Little Fish last night. Instead I’m seeing if I can blog from TextMate using Markdown¹. If you don’t know what I mean, you’re lucky. Your brain doesn’t make you geek out this much…

Feed reader question

… because these days we’re all using Web2.0 technology to read websites, right?

I have dumped Bloglines as my Web v2.0 Reader Of Choice.

See that blue shivering pile in the corner of the garden?

That’s Bloglines that is.

The replacement is Google Reader.

Now some folk might tut and shake their head at my tardiness in adopting Google Reader as my Web v2.0 Reader Of Choice, but the reason I didn’t adopt it earlier comes flooding back to me, now that I’m using the product.

Feed extracts.

A couple of websites I read show up as full-length articles in Bloglines, but they are only reproduced in extract format in Google Reader.

And yet they’re both reading *the same* RSS feeds.

I don’t get it.

So I have just typed the URI (not the feed address) for one of those websites in to the Google Reader subscription bar and guess what?

Yep, I’m now getting the full articles in Google Reader.

So what I have here, in my Google Reader account, are two subscriptions to the same RSS feed in the same Google Reader product, yet one subscription shows an extract of the original, while the other subscription shows the full Monty.

WTF?

Anyway, it’s an easy fix; I just follow the same process for the half-dozen other RSS feeds that were being truncated by Google Reader, delete the extract feeds and Robert’s your mother’s brother – job done.

I know this RSS reader stuff is so much easier than having to click through to every single website one wants to read on a daily basis, just to check if anything has updated, I just don’t understand where the gremlin in Google Reader’s functionality is.

Anyway, bye-bye Bloglines and welcome to my bosom Google Reader.

And to celebrate, here’s my word of the day:

Tit.

The place that’s halfway between blogging and microblogging

Imagine, if you will, a strange and wonderful place where the world is made up of postings and status updates that are longer than 140 characters yet shorter than a blog post. Imagine that this place was easy to get to, required no sign up and just worked. Easy. Believing that this exists must mean that I’m slowly turning insane, drunk, dreaming, or very, very high. Or I may have finally given in to the brilliance that is Posterous.

There’s so much cool stuff that happens that you just forget about – the classic one liner that you say and know will never be penned, the priceless photo of your aunt falling off her chair or the genius idea that you had while half asleep last night and can’t remember any more. Twitter isn’t enough to save these items to — plus it’s too volatile; a tweet will be alive for days (if it’s lucky). On the other hand, a blog post just seems a bit too formal (for me at least). Which is why Posterous is rather good. Just send it an email, and it will get added to your ‘site’.

You can see and follow the crap that falls out of my head that’s too long for Twitter and too short for slightlymore at http://iblamefish.posterous.com/; or, if you’re feeling lazy and want a save a few keystrokes, iblamefish.com will take you there too :)

Competition results

As promised, the winners of the T-Shirt giveaway (in order of close proximity to the target of blog visitors up until 22.00 last night) are:

1st place: Allister who was uncannily close with the number of the beast (666), a mere 16 adrift

2nd place: Masher who was also spookily close with 600, a mere gnats testicle of 82 away

3rd place: Sarah who was just 100 adrift with 782

The score on the visitors door for yesterday up until 22.00 was 682 as evidenced by the screenshot below. I’ll drop Allister, Masher and Sarah a line tomorrow to get addresses to send them off to.