Offmessage

I done gone made a thing – portify converts audio files from any format to one more suitable for your portable player.  For me, sadly, that means converting everything to mp3.

Testers are welcome, particularly on non-Linux platforms, but please be gentle

I don’t really want to get all banker bashing, but these 3 stories really sum up my utter confusion about the end result of the “financial crisis”.  I’m an intelligent enough chap. I ought to get it, oughtn’t I?

• RBS paid £1.3bn bonuses on profit of just £1bn
• Threat to ‘25,000 council jobs’
• Gordon Brown tells police to keep officers on the beat

I seem to have this awful Emperor’s new clothes kind of feeling that just won’t go away.

Has the BBC signalled the death of DAB? Today’s announcements detail the closure of the only two BBC stations that both broadcast original content and are only available on DAB. Now all original BBC radio content, barring the very few 5Live Sports Extra events that aren’t also on LW and the little CBeebies/CBBC stuff on Radio 7, is again available on a traditional FM/AM/LW radio.

While we get up in arms about the loss of the stations, perhaps we should be getting up in arms about the failure of DAB, and start asking ourselves what that means for the wider picture of the “Digital Switchover”.

Having spent most of the Nineties in a darkened room listening to music that went “bang, bang, bang, bang” at somewhere around 140bpm I felt pretty musically adrift when, sometime around 2001, I started sleeping at the weekends again and techno stopped meaning quite what it had.

To find myself some new musical roots I started reading about all sorts of music, going right back to the Fifties. My theory was that I should start at the beginning and see where I ended up.

Along the way I’ve read some fantastic books*, recommended by some very knowledgeable people. I’m amazed to only just discover the existence of the Continuum 33⅓ series. Nigh on 100 titles, each book the missing sleevenotes of some of the greatest albums recorded. What an amazing list; from the cult, like Zaireeka, Maggot Brain, Radio City, Unknown Pleasures through the classics like Forever Changes and on to pop like Abba Gold and Sign O’ The Times. If anyone’s wondering what to buy me for a gift just start at the beginning of the list – I’ll have one of each, ta

* My favourite music book, by the way, is Fierce Dancing by C J Stone which documents, among other things, the transition from the free festivals of the Eighties to the open air raves of the Nineties. Is there a music book I should have read?

This led me to this.  Which in turn led me to this, which led me to this, which ultimately led me to buy this, which is this week’s favourite album.

Like yer man Boon says, touches of Arcade Fire and Phillip Glass.  I’d add some Flaming Lips and even some Erlend  Øye. Lovely.

Ten word wiki. Everything defined in ten words. e.g. second, minute, hour, day.

You may have noticed I’ve started this up again.  I’m trying to do one post a day again – I reckon it’s either that or kill it altogether and accept that all I’m actually good for is tweets about snow.

Anyhoo, today’s post is actually on the Isotoma blog.  It’s about old versions of python. Well, I’m not going to write two in a day, am I?

Florence and the Machine’s cover of You Got The Love is really starting to get on my tits.  If I hear one more gushing “ooh, what a great version” or, worse, one more person telling me what a great track it is, completely unaware of the original, I shall be moved to violence.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is John Truelove’s original version – melding Candi Staton’s acapella vocal with Frankie Knuckles Your Love in the one true version. Re-released, remixed, re-recorded many many times this is, for me at least, the one we should all remember.

And please, if we’re going to get gooey about modern cover versions, sod Florence and The Machine and Joss Stone.  Try The XX version instead.

You’ll be needing a title for your new masterpiece.

…for writing fiction.  Parts 1 and 2. Some great names giving their advice to would be writers – Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy, Hilary Mantel, Michael Moorcock, Michael Morpurgo, Andrew Motion, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Philip Pullman, Ian Rankin, Will Self, Helen Simpson, Zadie Smith, Colm Tóibín, Rose Tremain, Sarah Waters, Jeanette Winterson.

“It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.”