Desert Island C90 Challenge - My Tape

So, here it is, frozen in time at the end of 2008, my Desert Island C90. As ever, tomorrow's will be as different as yesterday's.

This should have been a lot easier. Armed with a lot of data from last.fm I shouldn't really have to think what I like listening to, it is all there to be seen. But a C90 isn't as simple as that.

It struck me while doing this that I never put this amount of preparation into a actual C90. Therefore, very often, tracks would get cut off at the end of side, maybe I should have allowed that!

One thing I'm sure of, the second I hit 'publish' I'll immediately remember 3 songs I really should have put on this list and regret something that I did add. Such is the way of it. In fact, I already want to change it but it's way too much hassle when you've finally got the times to add up almost right. Especially as I've just noticed that Life On Mars has mysteriously gone missing a some point during the edit. Ho hum. Published and be damned. Sorry David.

For anyone else having a go this helps add up the times.

Side 1 44:55

Smelt Like A Pedestrian - A Witness 3:15
Way back when (probably around 1986) I got a C90 from my friend Dave Benger. At that time (and most likely still now) he had far better taste in music than me. The C90 he gave me was a sampler of the world of music that was largely passing me by at that time. To say it (with subsequent tapes) changed my musical direction is an understatement. Smelt Like A Pedestrian was the first track on that tape and it still provides a great punchy start to any such compilation today. There really was no other way to start my Desert Island C90, "I felt restless and a trifle bored..." sounds like Desert Island life to me. Probably not what they had in mind though...

Now I need to return to the attic in the hope of finding that tape. I do hope it's there. If I find it, I'll post the track listing here. I know what came next "Hot Aftershave Bop" by The Fall - strangely accessible.

Frightened - The Fall 5.03
This is a lot of time to give up to a lump of lo-fi Manc-burbling. But it's just great, so has to go on.

Not entirely sure how this constitutes a video, but here it is nonetheless.





50ft Queenie - PJ Harvey 2:27
When you are putting together a compilation where time is of the essence, 2 minutes 27 seconds of snarling Polly is just about as perfect as it gets.





Teardrop - Massive Attack 5:31
This is a large investment of time. And one that I nearly dropped. But you really have to have this. Sublime.





This Charming Man - The Smiths 2:43
This was a toughy. There had to be at least one Smiths song on (and was sorely tempted to add more). At 2:43, this represents very good value. Could easily have been What She Said (2:41) but that was in my album tracks post last year. Anyway, have a listen and concentrate on the bass.





Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks 3:13
I was a little concerned that too many songs like this might see me sitting on my Desert Island constantly in floods of lonely tears (which is why there is no Sunshine on Leith) but, in essence, this is as uplifting as it is beautiful. And, after all, I would actually be in paradise. So, an entertaining reversal.





Just - Radiohead 3:53
It was a real struggle picking a Radiohead track. I went for Just because the rest of the tape was getting a little too laid back and quiet so I needed to add some punch. Could easily have been 6 or more other songs. Great video too.




I Want You - Inspiral Carpets with Mark E. Smith 3:10
In its own right a really thumping drum-driven guitar-pop song. Add crazy Mark over the top and it becomes, well, something else entirely. Much like this list, no one did ever said it was going to be easy. A second apperance for the boy Smith. Might have had a third if I'd gone with The Rhinohead, but it lost out. I do like the trademark reading lyrics off paper in this video.





Birthday - Sugarcubes 3:58
When I were a lad at Uni, Stephen Wallace and I would often meet in the QMU bar at lunchtime. He always knew if I had already arrived if this (or Hey Luciani by The Fall) was playing on the jukebox. So, this song has been with me for a long time. It has a very difficult feel from most music, it's just lovely, no other way to describe it. Björk at the beginning and Björk at her very best.





Only Living Boy in New Cross - Carter 3:57
Hello, good evening welcome. I needed something with an 80's - early 90's feel and this fitted the bill nicely (it very nearly Two Tribes).





Feeling Good - Muse 3:19
A little bit of a time compromise here. A great track, great cover but probably not the number 1 Muse track I would have chosen.





Long Distance - Turin Brakes 4:26
What a great chorus. As I mention in my Dog Man Star related prattle, I'm a fan of the big, euphoric build up. This is a great example of same.





Side 2 - Total Length 44:51

Sexx Laws - Beck 3:39
The last.fm stats don't lie. I listen to this song quite a lot. Depending on mood it may not even be my favourite Beck song but when you're looking for something to get the second side off and running this is as upbeat as it comes. Obviously loving the horns and that vague Prince overtone.





Firestarter - The Prodigy 3:44
There is a need to have something dancy/loud/dance about. I considered the Status Quo stupidity of Stop The Rock/Apollo 440 but you really can't see past this gusty, biled-fuelled techno-romp (oh NME how you missed out on me). Worth it just for that noise at the start alone.





Cannonball - The Breeders 3:33





Say Hello, Wave Goodbye - Soft Cell 4:32
Here it is again. My love of big choruses.




Blister in the Sun - Violent Femmes 2:25
At 2:25 a must. I suppose I would have preferred Add It Up but at 4:42 was it really worth nearly double the time? Obviously, hugely popular now with film and advert appearances but I'm pretty sure it was on "the tape" back in 1986.





In My Life - The Beatles 2:28
There had to be a Beatles' song and it had to be this one. Short, beautiful, perfect. Given that it also appeared on my album tracks list does further confirm that I like this song a lot.
I had to use this vid, one of the most ridiculous things you'll ever see...





I Will - Radiohead 1:59
This is such a short piece of loveliness it was begging to get in and snuck in at the last minute with some timing jiggery, and indeed, pokery. This is probably the safest way to watch some of Dancer in the Dark - much less crying involved.





Song 2 - Blur 2:01
Again, what more can you ask for from 2 minutes. Got a big help from being played very loud in the car tonight.




The Last Goodbye - Jeff Buckley 4:19
The boy could sing.





View from the Afternoon - Arctic Monkeys 3:42
According to last.fm I've played this more than any other track. Now, I know that is because the Arctic Monkeys start with 'A' so I often start a trip through the randomiser with this but it's still worth it's place. Needed more guitars.





It's A Good Thing - That Petrol Emotion 2:36
OK, you knew it was coming. I had to have a TPE song somewhere. And at 2:36, this provides great guitar pop value. Senses do fail. And we do know why.





Still Life - Suede 5:23
The problem here, of course, is that The Asphalt World but this is no great step down for the inevitable song from Dog Man Star. Even without the 40 piece orchestra ( as seen in the video below ) you see what a great song this is and how even Brett struggles to sing it.
Note to self: get the chords for this, looks almost playable.




Clair de Lune - Debussy 4:30
The quiet, classical denoument would probably have been Barber's Adagio (the linked choral version is particularly great) but it's just too long. This great bit of Debussy appears everywhere these days, films, adverts etc but is no lessened by it.

2008 - Review of the Year

At the end of last year I wrote a list herein of things I'd like to accomplish this year. This is how badly I fared.

1 Great Photograph - FAIL
I didn't really manage it. There are a few that I really like but nothing anywhere near what I was hoping for. Despite all the opportunties The Sucata Run presented I was largely handless in the extreme.

There are a few photos that are worthy of mention.



This is my favourite picture of the year. And, oddly, took it on my very first outing with the 70-200m f4.0 L. Super sharp, super cheeky.




Love this photo (for obvious reasons) but I think I nailed the composition too. Has been very popular.

And finally on the photo front, I have to give a special mention to this:



Although a 2007 image, this image has been downloaded over 7000 times this year and has appeared in all manner of places and, of course, this film poster is clearly my favourite photo use of the year.

100 Sales - FAIL
With December sales still to trickle in I've made it over 50 but the chances of have sold 50 in December are, well, zero. I suppose I could have gone at the marketing with more gusto or, in fact, at all. A vague attempt at Facebook/Google ads was never going to work to any great extent. Still, those that have read it have been positive, which was nice.

1 Draft - MAJOR FAIL
Not even close. In fact, there is a very good chance that everything I did write will get binned. Various difficulties around the plot and style, too much other stuff to do and generally being a butterfly have made this my worst performance against target by far.

1 New Job - PASS
I'm giving myself a pass for this. Although I didn't actually *start* a new job I did end the year doing 3 and things are set fair for next year. News as it happens.

No Alarms - FAIL
As I said in my half year review, we lost my Uncle Tony this year. Since then my father-in-law sadly passed away too. Very sad but did demonstrate to me quite what an incredible woman my wife is.

AOB
Sucata Run was a lot of fun. Many thanks to ShortShanks and Rooney for a great week. You can still read the blog we did live from the road at the team website. And why not relive one of the General's finest moments as he thunders down the Mulsanne straight at Le Mans.




Delighted that Stuart has finally got off his lard and has starting doing something.

This was definitely a year when I started to fully embrace social media, as is evidenced by the plethora of (slow-loading!) gadgets adorning this very page.

All in all - not a great performance against target.

I'd like to end this post by wishing you all a very happy 2009 and, in tribute to my late, great Uncle Tony, I love you so much I can hardly shit.

Desert Island C90

Last New Year I had much fun putting together my list of best album tracks. So, to continue the 'tradition', I'm going for something similar this year. Inspired by my earlier (failed!) meme Desert Island Amazon Challenge I'm going to do a Desert Island C90.

Young readers may wonder what a C90 is. As ever, Wikipedia can explain all. People of my vintage have a long association with the C90. Many hours sweating over a music centre putting together compilation tapes. It was an art, a joy and a trial all rolled into one. We sat on buses and trains, walked about rainy streets, listening to the fruits of these labours. Always regretting at least one song on the tape that should never have been put on and was too expensive on battery to skip past.

I found a big bag of these C90's in the loft the other day. They are a little bit of social archaeology. Each one freezing a moment in time both in terms of music and what I was doing at the time.

So, here's the challenge. You can take 1 C90 on to a Desert Island. What are you going to put on it? Rules are simple, you have 2 sides of 45 minutes each, pick tunes to fit. Don't worry about leaving gaps in between (we'll assume you are a master of the art and, anyway, the tapes were always slightly more than 45 mins) so just add up the track durations.

Just as the Amazon challenge was defined by value for money, this one is all about value for time. You may love something big and long in a prog-rock way, but can you really afford to use 10 precious minutes?

I'm working on my tracks now, its quite tricky, I'll post them soon.

Ipernity Slideshow and Award

While the world is stayed generally Flickr obsessed, Ipernity has snuck up on the rails. I've been a member for a while and I have to say I like it a lot.

First of all, it is a really neat implementation. The UI is neat and makes great use of all the Ajax-y goodness you'd expect from a modern generation site. And especially a photo site.

In addition, there is a really good community feel and, being a European site, has far less of a US feel.

Delighted to see that this week, Ipernity won the best Photo Sharing site prize in the Mashable Open Web Awards.

They have just produced this slideshow widget thing, so to celebrate the award win, I'm sticking it in my blog, showing my latest Ipernity uploads. After all, I did vote quite a few times.

How to Display Your Twitter Location using Google Maps on a Website or Blog

Further to my previous post about displaying your location details using the TwitterVision API, here's how to extend that to display your Twitter location on a Google Map.

You'll need to get a Google Map API key first by going here. The steps from there are pretty similar to the non-map version.

1. Add the code for your API key into the <head> of your page.

2. Add a div to your page where you want the location info to go, make it's id your Twitter screen name like:

<div id="scottmliddell" style="width:200px;height:200px"></div>

You can size this to be the size of map you'd like.

2. You need a simple bit of code to extract the information and set up your map location:

function loc(locObj)
{
 var longitude = locObj.location.longitude;
 var latitude  = locObj.location.latitude;
 if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {
     var map = new GMap2(document.getElementById(locObj.screen_name));
     map.setCenter(new GLatLng(latitude, longitude), 13);
 }
}

You can download this as a file here.

3. At the bottom of the HTML page you want to add the location to, add:

<script language="javascript" src="/gloc.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script
src="http://twittervision.com/user/current_status/scottmliddell.json?callback=loc">
</script>

Obviously replace my Twitter screen name with yours.

You can see this implemented here.

How to Display Your Twitter Location on a Website or Blog

In preparation for next year's Sucata Run to Split, I was pottering about with some updates to the Team GI blog. The plan was to be able to display our current location on the blog using or Twitter location (which we could set with BrightKite or an iPhone). Anyway, it is very simple to do using the TwitterVision API. Here's how I did it...
1. Add a div to your page where you want the location info to go, make it's id your Twitter screen name like:

<div id="scottmliddell"></div>

2. You need a simple bit of code to extract the information and format it:

function loc(locObj)
{
    var loc="";
    loc += "Longitude: " + locObj.location.longitude + "<br>";
    loc += "Latitude: " + locObj.location.latitude + "<br>";
    loc += locObj.profile_location + "<br>";
    document.getElementById(locObj.screen_name).innerHTML = loc;
}

You can download this as a file here.
3. At the bottom of the HTML page you want to add the location to, add:

<script language="javascript" src="/loc.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script
src="http://twittervision.com/user/current_status/scottmliddell.json?callback=loc">
</script>

Obviously replace my Twitter screen name with yours.
It will look like this:

Where am I?

Loading...

There is much more info you can grab out of the API - this is just a very simple version. I'll leave styles and formatting to you.

Scale Free Networks and Social Networking

A while back, I blogged an article I had written on Enterprise System Adoption and Scale Free Networks. I was reminded of it recently in relation to my experiences with Twitter and, in particular, @ruskin147's blog post on the impact of @stephenfry's Twitter reaction to the new Blackberry Storm.

It's not an new observation, but networks like Twitter clearly show the basic structures of classic Scale Free Network. There are clearly many 'hub' people on Twitter, such as Stephen Fry, who have many, many more followers and therefore impose a far greater influence on the rest of the network. As I wrote with regard to Enterprise System Adoption, these hub influencers govern the thoughts of the network at large.

The nature of Twitter makes this phenomenon even more prevalent and this is further reinforced by services like the Twitter Grader, with its notion of the Twitter Elite, and @mrtweet with its direct implication of those who can influence. Both act to significantly reinforce the size and influence of the hubs in the network.

This amplified influence may not be sitting comfortably with Stephen Fry, but it is obvious that many people are seeing the power of being a strong hub with these new social networking scale free networks and using this to great advantage. I'm afraid Stephen can't avoid it, with over 20,000 followers, he is now a significant hub in the scale-free network. It's science.