I love 10 Downing Street

I imagine by now most of you have used the Downing Street e-petitions site to complain about student loans, or fuel duty, or some local issue. You may even have been one of the lucky ones to receive position action as a result of your petition. It's a great service, and I've been known to sign the odd petition too.

Such as this one:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister.”

Details of Petition:

“Jezza is legend and deserves a chance to run the country.”

I wasn't the only one to sign either - nearly 50,000 other folks agreed. I signed this ages ago, and had completely forgotten about it (and, indeed, didn't ever expect a response), but I recently got an email from Downing Street saying that they'd replied to this petition.

I expected some terse legalese about the fact that our democratic structure meant that the e-petitions site was unable to deal with petitions of this type, and instead found this:

We thought long and hard about the request to make Jeremy Clarkson the Prime Minister and in the end we put our thoughts down in a short film on YouTube. You can take a look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNy1w4DV5Hw

Seriously, that's copied verbatim. Here's the original link. And, for those of you too lazy to click through, here's the video they made:



Well, they've got my vote for the next election ^^

Recording

On September 1^st, I'm taking a couple of folks to Aeriel Recording Studios in Camarthen to record some jazz tracks I wrote, and some that I just like. We're spending ten, ten-hour days there, and hoping to get twelve tracks down in that time (but we may not manage that many).

Everything (as with all the jazz I play) is going under the name of the Tie-Dye Quartet, and if you click on that shiny link then you can have a sneak peek at our pretty new website where a bunch of the music (and some videos, when I get around to it) will be put up for free.

I'm sure there'll also be a CD you can buy for a nominal fee, if you're old-fashioned too - but the aim isn't to make money, it's all just being done for pleasure.

We've recently started a two week session of rehearsals, which is either going brilliantly, or is very hard work, depending what kind of mood you catch us in. So, don't expect many updates on other topics for a while, and I hope you'll humour me if I elaborate a bit more on what we're up to and how it's going over the coming weeks.

Now then, back to work for me :)

Paper

Sometimes, people mistake me for an environmentalist. It's probably something to do with the sandals, long hair and spectacular annoyance directed at people who print out things that were sitting perfectly happy on a computer screen.*

Seriously, I've seen people who will print out a document (that we can both see perfectly well on the screen in the room), scribble (in pen) the changes that we want to make, type the changes back into the document...and then print it out to see if everything is OK. To quote Mil - I have not the words.

Then we've got lovely, sweet, dear, Aston University. The Computer Science department in particular, who I'm sure you'd believe were a bunch of hip, switched on, technologically inclined folks. Right?


_{Woooooo, an orange triangle. That timeless symbol of intellect.}

We've started using a new system on placements now, called Profile, which allows students to keep an electronic diary of their placement. Tutors can view this in real time, and leave helpful feedback, as well as constant marking - rather than one big batch at the end of the year. This is implemented and working well in over a dozen Universities, including Aston. Just not in the Computer Science department...

Over here, the electronic system is completely ignored. Twice a year, students are ordered to print out the information (that the lecturers can access electronically whenever they wish) and Post It In. After much complaining, they now accept CDs...so I sent one in. They couldn't read it. So I emailed in my work. That's not good enough, it has to be paper or CD. Why? For a good reason? No, because the rules (that they wrote) say so. I suggested that they simply print out my email if they want a paper copy, I wonder how well that bit of logic will go down..


But I don't mean to rant.


I wanted to talk to you about the beauty of paper, and the few times I actually encourage its use. See, I'm not some eco-hippy after all. Despite the haircut.

Music. I quite like music, as you may have inferred. I'm up in Birmingham practising some music for a couple of weeks at the moment (more on that later), and now that the music itself is coming along nicely, I'm adding in some of the fringe details. Like lyrics for the vocal tracks.

Somehow, it just wouldn't feel right to write ('right to write', should be a campaign of some sort) these on a computer, no matter how hard I try. I don't quite see why - all of my other creative writing is done on a screen - perhaps it's simply that I enjoy the purity of music, and find that best represented through the human touch, and its untidiness (especially in my handwriting) and innocence. Perhaps it's that technology is one major part of my life, and music another, and I naturally separate them.


_{From the 'sketches' series at TDH}

I also love the drawings on Tie-Dye Heart (by the way, did you know I had a comic? Did you? Click the damn link), with simple strokes of pencil on paper. I know there's plenty of webcomics out there that harness the full power of digital art & effects, with each new image a triumph of technology..but somehow the purity and personalisation of this simplicity is far more satisfying to me.

Thoughts?

--

* _{This is an example of an unattached modifier. I leave it there, offering myself as a sacrifice, in order to bring this blight on the English language to your attention. Please, never commit this heinous crime in your own writing.}

The epic trilogy

A few weeks ago, whilst having a picnic in the woods I came up with a simple little throwaway comic:



Since then, things have been spiralling out of control on the breakfast front, but I promise normal service will soon resume. Just as soon as we find out the results of today's battle.

Xx

--

_{The trilogy, naturally, will be in five parts}

Ok I love kittens

I went and saw some kittens recently. There was also a three year old. I could write a bunch of other stuff here, but you'd all just skip to the pictures anyway. You've probably done so already.

Here's some photos and videos. Click all photos for higher-res versions:

Photo time


<sub>Forgot to mention there was also a dog


Cats like string


Ok, enough from this 5 minute period now


Dawww


ICanHazCheezBurger anyone?


Let's be friends for ever.</sub>

Video time

The young one is very annoyed that the cat dares to play with his toys. Especially the toys that he's currently dragging around the room on a bit of string.



And here's another telling off:



Sorry the videos aren't rotated. Thought there was an option to do so on YouTube. Clearly not.

--

Why yes, this post's title did come from one of my favourite comics. Thanks for noticing.

I Hate Mozart

"That seems a reasonable statement", you say, "please Ina, elaborate, through the medium of a 5-point list.". Well, OK:

1. The Mozart Effect
The 'Mozart Effect', is an idiotic theory that listening to Mozart makes you 'smarter' (their choice of word). This is closely related to a similar misapprehension that listening to Mozart makes you look smarter. Wrong.

Listening to Mozart makes you a pretentious idiot. Opera Seria is probably the worst school of classical music there is. If I hear another of his fey little minuets I'll kick someone.

Back to the list..

2. Credit hog
Mozart is often given inordinate amounts of praise for the fact that he was composing at the precocious age of five. Screw Mozart. How about Camille Saint-Saëns? He had perfect pitch at the age of 2, was composing at age 4 and gave a full recital at age 5.

Also, whilst I'm on the subject. Mozart may have composed pieces at age 5...but they're crap. Absolute crap.

3. Copyright theft



4. He's Austrian
Some other famous Austrians:

Josef Fritzl, the man who ruined the phrase "lock up your daughters".

Dietrich Mateschitz, creator of Red Bull. Their continual lies on television adverts have left many a small child with broken legs. Naturally I wasn't duped. Honest.

Adolf Hitler, who couldn't even grow a proper moustache. Also; started World War II.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Started World War I. Good moustache though.

5. ..damn
He's made me look like an idiot by promising a 5 point list, when I can only remember 4 of my original points.

Another Copyright Dilemma

A great part of playing jazz is meeting up with strangers, semi-acquaintances, good friends - it doesn't really matter - and improvising for hours on end. Doing this with no particular direction, when you don't really know one-another's compositions won't produce the best results, and will get wearing after a short while.

So, we have lead sheets.

A lead sheet (pronounced 'leeeed' sheet, it's not a 'led' sheet you'd put on your roof) is just one page which gives the reader, at a glance, the 'theme' or melody of a particular piece, with the underlying chord changes. This differs from classical sheet music in that it's just a guide, a structure - rather than an explicit declaration of what is to be played. Here's an example:


_{Click to embiggen}

Now, the problem with lead sheets, as with guitar tabs and most music that's scribbled down and passed amongst friends is...copyright violation. I'm fairly sure that the person who jotted down the above didn't have a contract with Sonny Rollins, and that Mr. Rollins won't get a payment for every person you looks at it.

This normally doesn't bother me when it comes to grabbing the occasional sheet - but I recently decided to go and purchase The Real Book (6th Edition), a collection of 500 lead sheets.

However, upon reading many comments from people who had bought the above, I discovered something. This '6th edition' is, in fact, the first legitimate edition around. The previous 5 were just bootlegs that musicians would copy and share amongst friends. This edition's fully licensed and copyright-friendly...and rubbish.

Really, really rubbish.

_{It even has the same cover as all the old pirate editions. Wonder if the original designer gets paid royalties? I think not.}

So, what do I do? Do I take the '6th edition', which builds on 30 years of piracy to make a bit of profit, and satisfies the law..but will get me laughed out of any gig? Or do I go and get myself a copy of the seminal '5th edition', which nets no-one any money, but means I can play the music I love?

Should I really care that this new edition has royalties being paid to Miles Davis (died 1991), John Coltrane (died 1967), George Gershwin (died 1937) and Thelonious Monk (died 1982)? Should I get a copy of the 5th edition, and then send a token payment to the estates/record labels of all 250 or so artists represented therein?

Well, I think the tone of this post conveys my final decision. Contact me if you'd like a copy of the 5th edition.