Paradasos (παράδάσος)

Songs of the year

2008-12-14T14:47:00.014Z

In no particular order, these are the songs that have soundtracked my year.

Friendly Fires - Paris

Black Kids - I'm not going to teach your boyfriend how to dance with you (Embedding Disabled)

Frank Black - The Seus

The Notwist - Good Lies

Mae Shi - Run to your Grave

Brian Jacket Letdown - Sometimes (couldn't find a vid for that so here's Piratas)

The BPA ft David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal - Toe Jam (Genius Video)

Ida Maria - I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked (embedding disabled)

MGMT - Time To Pretend (embedding disabled)

Johnny Flynn - The Box

Neon Neon - I Told Her On Alderaan

Mercury Rev - Senses are on Fire

Santogold - Lights Out

Joan As A Police Woman - Holiday

Mystery Jets - Young Love

Elbow - An Audience With the Pope

Ron Sexsmith - Impossible World

Ladyhawke - From Dusk Til Dawn

Noah And The Whale - Five Years Time

Courteeners - Not Nineteen Forever

My Hope (I hope you forget about your Myspace) - Sweetafton23

Top 5 films of 2008

2008-12-14T14:16:00.005Z

With everything else that's been going on this year (the new job, the new house, the new wife) I've hardly been to the cinema at all this year so this will have to be a top five rather than a top ten. There's only one other film we saw at the cinema this year that I can think of (Indiana Jones and the Ridiculously Improbable Third Act (which wasn't as bad as many people made out but still far from great)). Three of the five were animations, one was British and two were from the Middle East. Wouldn't have guessed that one.

1. Waltz with Bashir

When I first saw the trailers for this, I figured it was just a Persepolis derivitive but, although I loved Persepolis, this one is easily the better film. One of the best war films I've ever seen. Jawdropping, rotoscoped animation and a Max Richter soundtrack tell the directors true story of his invovlment as a young man in the Lebanon war in 1982 and why his brain has blanked out any details of it.

2. Wall-E

3. The Dark Knight

4. Persepolis

5. Happy Go Lucky

We went to see this the day we were originally supposed to move house. That was the day it fell through at the last minute. We, understandably went a bit crazy that weekend and decided to get married on the spur of the moment on the way back home from the GFT. (Three weeks later, we were married and breaking the news to the relatives).

EDIT: and I completely forgot that Son Of Rambow (which I loved on levels normally reserved for Michel Gondry) was this year. So call it a top 6 and stick Son Of Rambow in at 2

Top 10 Albums 2008

2008-12-07T07:37:00.007Z

1. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

He played Edinburgh on my birthday but me being me, left it too late and it had sold out by the time I tried to book. What sounds like nothing more than a nice wee album on first listen, given time and repeated listens, blossoms into a complete gem. Hands down my favourite of the year.

2. Remember Remember - Remember Remember

First discovered him when he opened for Aidan Moffat in the Arches back at the start of the year (and started with a Daniel Johnston cover). Saw him again a few weeks later at the Mogwai Tryptich gig and have been waiting eagerly ever since for the album to finally drop in November. Musically, he fits in well with Mogwai's gentler side but he's really worth seeing live. Like Andrew Bird, he plays most of the instruments himself and builds up layers using samplers. He utilises everything from scissors snipping to sellotape ripping to create sound effects which he loops to make percussion and builds up on top of his washing layers of guitar. For reasons I cant quite put my finger on, there are bits of the album that remind me of Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

3. Glasvegas - Glasvegas

Chuffed as I am that I was hyping the band on this blog a full year before they hit the big time, it would serve to be pretty embarrassing if the debut had turned out to be rubbish. Fortunately, there was nothing to worry about. The Mary Chain guitars and Oasis swagger are present and correct throughout the album and the hooks are a mile wide.

4. Max Richter - 24 Postcards in Full Colour

I had never heard of Max before this album but my interest was piqued by a review on Pitchfork of a German born, Edinburgh based, classically trained but electronic music inclined, musician making an album of short instrumental pieces designed to be used as mobile ring tones. Having gone back a bit further, some of his earlier albums are much better but since this was the first one I discovered and the only one out this year, its on the list.

5. Mogwai - The Hawk is Howling

If you look at my last.fm charts, I would guess you'll find that I've listened to Mogwai more than anyone else this year. I hadn't really listened to them in a long time until this album came out and I got back into them big-style. I still don't think they'll ever top New Paths to Helicon but this is a fine album.

6. Ron Sexsmith - Exit Strategy of the Soul
Sounding quite different to the last album, going more for a horn drenched soulful sound, I found myself listening to this album more than I expected.

7. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Had heard the name bandied about a few times but finally heard some music on the Rough Trade Counter Culture annual. They've gone huge since then but it's about 3/4s of a great album (with the bits that sound like Sting not being so good, obviously).

8. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
Fated to pretend was one of the best pop songs of the year with its trademark Dave Fridman production but it didn't really prepare me for the eclecticism of the album which ranged from 80's synth to Air style ambient ballads.

9. Elbow - Seldom Seen Kid
Another band I had always heard good things about and never quite got round to checking out. A few corking singles off this album finally prompted me to give it a listen. a well deserved Mercury Award winner.

10. Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
Basically just a big, balls out, rock album with HUGE chorus'. First heard them at Mogwai's Triptych all-dayer shortly after the album came out. Was struck by their resemblance to Idlewild at their most visceral.

Special mention goes to:

Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
Would have been number two in this years top ten since I first heard it around April this year, except for the fact it was released May 2007. Bugger. Have intended to get into this band for years due to the early Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev comparisons but didn't give the bits and pieces I downloaded enough of a chance so couldn't get my head around them. Finally found an entry point with Strawberry Jam and have realised that the early stuff I dismissed as noise before are subtly nuanced works of musical genius. If you imagine taking newborn babies and then shutting them off from all music except Priest Driven Ambulance and Yrself is Steam right through until adolescence then asking them to write an album, it would sound like this. Will be seeing them live in January around the time their new album comes out and I cant wait for both.

Version 0.5

2008-10-20T19:15:00.002Z

So now a flash version of the site is up but I haven't yet figured out how to embed RSS into flash. Once I figure that one out, its about an hours work to finish version 1.0 of the site off.

That'll have to wait until December though since I've got a busy few weeks followed by NaNoWriMo in November. 4 more gigs before the end of the year as well...

Finally...

2008-09-20T14:39:00.002Z

The websites up then. It looks crap and the images arent displaying but at least its up. It's only really a placeholder until I get something a bit more original designed..Don't have time to fix it today but will hopefully get it working over the coming week...

Presentation

2007-12-28T16:31:00.000Z

As part of the development course I'm on at work at the moment, I had to put together a presentation. It could be on any subject at all as long as it was around the 10-15 minute mark. While I was thinking about what to do, BBC2 screened Adam Curtis' fabulous "The trap: whatever happened to our dreams of freedom".

It touched heavily on statistic driven culture so tapped a nerve in relation to the way things are going at my work right now. I decided to use this as a starting point for the presentation.

In the interest of clearing things out as the end of the year approaches, I've decided to publish the presentation here.

The slideshow can be found here and the notes are below. loosely each numbered slide relates to the numbered paragraph below, although due to some last minute editing to tighten it up and remove jokes which were falling flat, it's out slightly. The presentations moment has passed so I probably wont return to it to fix these errors.

So without further ado:

1. Thank you. For my presentation, I was going to look at my specific area, but I figured that by this point in the afternoon, an in depth analysis of how SJPB operates might just send you to sleep. So I decided to look at my job in a broader scale…

2. Which lead me to have a look at call centres in general, and, apart from the fact that its impossible to find a picture of a call centre worker where they aren’t grinning insanely, I had intended to talk about the history of call centres and how they evolved. But the more I thought about the topic, the more the subject presented itself to me that I should look at one specific area. It’s an area that many of us accept as a fact of working life, albeit one that is generally unpopular with workers but popular with managers...

3. Targets, Key Performance Indicators, Statistics…whatever you want to call them. If you work in a modern call centre, they’re inescapable. But are they the best way of working? Stats might measure that Tom sells more than Bob but it doesnt measure that tom will do anything to get a sale and many customers will never come back, whereas Bob gets to know his customers more so builds loyalty which leads to more repeat customers for the company. Still, looking at the stats, Tom is a better worker. Surely there must be a more accurate way of measuring things? Why do we even do things this way? I decided to trace back to the roots of this way of working in the hope of understanding it more. Surprisingly for such a dry topic, it's history couldn't be more vivid.

4. It's a tale that encompases everything from cold war spies to the story of how Psychiatry became huge business in America. On the way, it touches on Thatchers Britain of the 1980's and Psychologically disturbed Nobel prize winning economists having their life story made into Hollywood films. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

5. I decided to look back at the history of KPI's. Believe it or not, much as we take it for granted that all aspects of life are in some way influenced by KPI's, they are a relatively recent invention.

6. When we think back to the work life of our parents and grandparents, it is very different to the work life which we take for granted now.

7. It's easy to look back through rose tinted glasses, especially when it is something which we only view through the forced optimism of post world war 2 western media but when we think of the average working life back then, we think of a job for life…

8. One of happy workers turning up to the office and working their hardest all day but already in the 1950's the seeds were in place which led on to the targeted, performance driven workplace we all know today.

9. THE COLD WAR - After world war 2, much of mainland Europe was left devastated. There had always been a mutual distrust between Russia and America but it was through them uniting to fight the common enemy that ultimately led to the Nazi's downfall. After the Nazi's were defeated, much like is happening currently in Iraq, the victors had to create an interim government to run the country until a new governing structure could be put in place.

10. Since America and Russia's political ideologies differed so much (Capitalism vs Communism), no agreement could be reached on the shape this government could take, meaning that ultimately…

11. the country was divided into capitalism in the west and communism in the east. The divide which can most simply be illustrated by the construction of the Berlin wall which cut Berlin in half from its construction in 1961 until its ultimate destruction in 1989

12. And I’d like to stress at this point that it wasn’t me who painted that!

13. The distrust between the 2 nations never reached violence but resulted in an ever spiraling arms race until the disintegration of the USSR in the late 80's. the distrust, rivalry and espionage which resulted was dubbed the cold war.

14. In America, a government instigated group called the RAND corporation were largely involved in structuring the strategies of the US against the USSR.

15.When planning strategies, they had to try and predict as accurately as possible what Russia's reaction would be to each of their proposed strategies, so they could decide the best course of action. A formula was devised which was hoped could predict with accuracy the likely reactions of Russia.

15b. This was called Game Theory and was outlined in the book "Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour" by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, although, was more famously refined by

16. John Nash, who won a Nobel prize in economics for his work which became known as the Nash Equilibria. Nash gained mainstream fame after the Hollywood Movie "A Beautiful Mind" was made about his struggle with mental illness.

17. The ideas and formulae of Game Theory are way more complex than needs to be explained in this presentation (which is just my way of saying I don't entirely understand it all!) but, as the name suggests, takes its ideas from gaming tactics.

18. For example, Chessmasters are said to always be thinking between 3-5 moves ahead. Before they make their move, they will consider the moves available to them. for each, they will consider how the opposition may react and what choices that leaves them, etc.

19. Obviously, it is achievable when trying to read the actions of an individual sitting a few feet in front of you becomes impossible when trying to anticipate the actions of an entire country. In order to try and predict with some degree of accuracy therefore, the models used by RAND were based on the assumption that everyone, even politicians at the highest levels would, when it came down to it, base their decisions and their actions on what was best for them, their family and friends first. Even if that contrasted what was best for the country.

Over time, the ideas of Game Theory, and the fact that we were all essentially simple computers who's next actions could be predicted with a degree of accuracy began to take hold of the public imagination. But, in America at least, it really took off in 1972, when Science magazine published a paper called…

20. "on being sane in insane places" by David Rosenhan. Rosenhan arranged for 12 subjects to present themself at the doors of 12 different psychiatric hospitals across the US. They were told to tell one lie, then otherwise, act completely normally. That one lie being that they herd a voice which simply said the word 'Thud'
At all 12 hospitals, the doctors assessed that the subjects were insane and commited them. Despite their protestations that it had been an experiment and they were in fact sane, in every case, the doctors refused to release them. It became obvious that the only way to get back out was to agree with the doctors that, yes they were crazy, but they were getting better.

21. He conducted a further experiments which all cast the psychiatric profession in a bad light and left its reputation in tatters. It destroyed the idea that psychiatrists were a privelaged elite with specialist knowledge. and, in an attempt to turn round its fortunes, a new way of diagnosing was devised. One which, yet again, incorporated many elements of game theory.

22. Since Rosenhal was criticising that doctors allowed personal opinion to influence diagnosis, questionairres were devised whereby people could accurately gauge their state of mind This was presented as being irrefutable since it was based on numbers and therefore cold, hard facts. based purely on the surface behaviour of humans. A system in which the diagnosis could literally be done by computer. a series of yes no questions. meaning they could be administered by lay people, not psychiatrists... the numbers would be fed into a computer and, instead of deciding whether someone was sane or insane, it would simply illustrate whether the subject demonstrated the characteristics of, for example Attention Deficit disorder or depression. They tested using hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Previously, psychiatrists had only diagnosed people who were recognised as needing help so this was the first time psychiatrists had analysed 'ordinary' people.

23. The results...more than 50% of normal americans sufferred from some kind of mental disorder. The public imagination was arrested by this, so the ideas of Game theory, where peoples behaviours were boiled down to simple, predictable behaviours was now seeing full mainstream acceptance.

.
24. The 70's became the 80's and on both sides of the atlantic, there was political change afoot. In america, Many of the RAND corporations workers had worked their way up through the political stratosphere and were in high positions of influence in Reagans administration. Over here, Thatcher professed an admiration of the reasearch and work of James Buchanan. In an attempt to revolutionise and modernise british culture, she set about selling off many state owned institutions.

25. it was obvious however, that certain institutions, such as the NHS were better served remaining under state rule. She had plans too, however to bring them in line. Rather than run them with the reliance that people would work their hardest through simple public duty, things were turned on their head so that, instead, workers would be incentivised. The theory, which was lifted directly from the cold war game theories, being that at the heart of it, people would make their choices through self interest and ultimately, by playing up to their selfishness their actions could be predicted.

26. The man she drafted in to overhaul the NHS was called Alain Enthoven and had been one of the key nuclear strategists in RAND during the cold war.

27. He devised a system whereby every job would be boiled down to its constituent parts. each part could then be set targets and, in this way, performance could be measured. through offering incentives, desirable performance could be rewarded.

28. Based on the Game theory notion that ultimately, everyone is selfish and looking out for their own best interests, the government decided that by waiving the carrot of better pay for those who met targets. They were then shocked to discover that productivity, rather than increasing as they had expected stayed more or less the same. The simple fact was that most of the doctors were already working as hard as they possibly could so there was little more could be squeezed out of them All the performance targets did was add to the overall stress of an already stressful job and, as we will see, led to some very unsavoury actions.

29. What started with the NHS soon spread through all aspects of society and was soon accepted as the normal way of doing things. This was the moment when Game theory truly took hold of western society. It could be viewed that this acceptance was vindication. and proof that Game Theory, and the statistic driven society and worklife that followed was truly the best way for society to be. However, time and time again, managers, faced with dire consequences because their department or organisation are not reaching the targets set to them, have demonstrated that the system is flawed. The main flaw in the system being that, with some creativity, the goalposts can be moved enough for the targets to be achieved.

There are many famous pieces of evidence which show how those in power, faced with the pressure of meeting seemingly unachievable targets playing the system to 'massage' the figures.

30. Lothian and Borders police drew criticism when targeted with reducing their violent crime. The figures fell drastically which was originally seen as a huge success. But when examined more closely, it was seen that they had simply reclassified many types of crime from knife crime to rape check facts so they were no longer considered 'violent crime'.

31. As you might expect, the NHS are responsible for some particularly memorable ones. When targeted with lowering the waiting time between entering Accident & Emergency and being seen by a medical professional, they introduced the 'Greeter'. Anyone who has ever been in A&E and, after waiting for 5 minutes have had a nurse come out and have a quick look at whatever you are there for then disappear again will know what I mean by this. The sole purpose of the greeter is so they can put a tick next to your name and say you have been seen by a medical professional within the required timescale. Never mind the fact you might have to wait a further 2 hours until you are actually treated.

31b. When targeted with increasing the overall number of beds, in wards, in the hospital, they removed the wheels from stretchers and reclassified them as beds. Hallways and waiting rooms were reclassified as wards, meaning that you could be lying alone on a stretcher in a hallway but, as far as the government targets were concerned, you were on a bed, in a ward. Many hospitals also started re-prioritising and treating minor, easily treated ailments first just so they could be more quickly removed from the waiting list.

31c. Far more disturbingly, one particular hospital wrote out to all the patients who were on their waiting list for treatment asking if and when they had holidays booked. Most patients assumed this was to help with scheduling and duly filled in the questionnaire. The hospital then deliberately sent patients appointments for treatment which clashed with their holidays meaning that most had to cancel. because they cancelled, they would be added back to the bottom of the waiting list, resetting the clock and buying the hospital a further 6 months check that it was 6 months they were targeted with

32. So clearly, incentivised, statistic driven culture at best is seriously flawed and, at worst, just doesnt work at all. Time is spent playing the figures which could more productively be spent doing the job they are paid to do. If we get rid of this way of doing things though, what can we bring in to replace it? To look back now more specifically at IF/SJPB customer service again, could there be a better way of working?

33. I've devised a way of working which could drastically improve the way the contact centre operates. A way of working which would improve productivity and empower the staff to claim recognition for good work

34. The fact is that game theory is half correct. For some people, self interest does shape their performance and drive them to perform at a higher level. Typically, these people thrive in a sales environment. This is fine since the company needs good salespeople too. However, for people who's skills lie in customer service, they have a different set of motivators. They are more likely to take pride in doing as good a job as they can in a customer service perspective and are left cold by targets. these are the people who don't fit into the game theory models and for whom targets just don't work. As a company, we should recognise this and innovate in creating an environment which fits this way of working.

35. The company eradicated all team coaches, leaving the day to day running of every team to just team managers. The team mangers job involves many activities extrenious to the running of the team meaning that, on any given day, the manger isn’t actually present a great deal of the time to see what the individual team members are doing. This means that they, and their own managers must resort to reviewing their team on the only information at their fingertips, that of statistics and targets. These targets are often on things which CSC's have little control over, like how close to your break you actually go for one. if you are stuck on a call when its time for break, there is nothing you can do about it. This leads to unrest amongst those who are working hard to serve the company well and do their best in the customer, and therefore the companies, interest when they see those who, to their mind are performing on individual calls to a lower level than them, be recognised and rewarded by the business. we have a reward process in place but too often, this is focussed on those who bring new business rather than those who retain business. To those who excel in customer service, this is very demoralising.

36. By looking at every team in the business, and choosing the most experienced agent within that team as a ‘mentor’ and promoting their responsibilities accordingly, they would be tasked with being with the team constantly, without the distractions of meetings and other responsibilities and through a weekly, half hour meeting with the team manager, could brief the manager on those who were going beyond the call of duty to perform the high level of service which, as a company, we strive to deliver. This would take into consideration those unusual cases which don’t fit the normal, measurable criteria but are, overall good for the business and which otherwise go unrecognised.

The individual agent would be responsible for briefing the mentor in any cases they had dealt with which deserved special mention and the mentors main role would be to document this service and feed back to the manager. In this way, we could record, and reward, the true high performers within the company. Those who’s quiet, unrelenting work to promote the brand in the customers eyes as a service of world beating quality would no longer go unrecognised. The main targets could still remain but staff would now be measured on actual, measurable performance in customer service rather than arbitary measures of performance which don’t measure overall customer impact.

37 As a company, we must decide whether or not we want to be seen as first for customer service or first for sales. Sales, which is what our targets are currently based on, is a very powerful, influential (at least at executive level) way of measuring performance and certainly should not be ignored. But through accurately measuring service, and those who daily go out their way to provide a world beating level of customer service, we can retain more customers. Although offsetting is ultimately better for most customers, they still chase the best rates for mortgages. However, service is a great retaining power. Customers who like the service become loyal. loyal customers will stay with us beyond the end of their special rate mortgage and through to ultimate termination. Only through world beating service can we achieve world beating retention. this has the knock on effect of world beating profit. It’s a win-win situation. The client, the agent and the company all win. We can chose to be a company who constantly chases the lowest rate and the best marketing strategy to bring new customers in to compensate for those we have lost, or we can choose to reward excellent service…promoting excellent service has the knock on effect of making it seam a desiarable thing to do meaning even those who are self serving will rwealise it is the better aim than pursuing the arbitary targets currently imposed. With that mindset, the company can progress to a new age of world beating service.

New Years Resolutions

2007-12-28T11:36:00.000Z

I have 3 things I want to change this year...there's plenty overall but if I can change these 3, I'll be happy.

They are...

1. Find a new job
2. Move house
3. Get my screenplay written

Hopefully number 2 will be sorted out in the next month or two since the wheels are already in motion. 1 shows no sign of changing but little by little, Im edging towards getting somewhere and I've just set up a new blog to chart the progress of 3.

Happy New year!

Link Blog

2007-12-05T06:20:00.000Z

I've tried for a while to get the Del.Icio.Us daily link post to work with this blog but for some reason, it doesnt appear to work with Blogger. So I've signed up for a Wordpress blog and that should keep a running daily tally of all my latest bookmarks.

Christmas...

2007-11-13T09:57:00.000Z

Great minds think alike...I decided to get my collection of christmas tunes back onto my ipod (14 minutes short of a full days worth of tunes) last Sunday just to prepare for when the mood takes me to listen to it again...then I read that Soma FM's annual Christmas in Frisco radio station is live as of yesterday.

I always love listening to this since there's very few cheesy christmas tunes and plenty cool rarities.

Glasvegas

2007-11-12T11:01:00.000Z

6 months from now, they'll be huge. Daddy's Gone is just out on a 7" limited to 1000 copies and reminds me of the excitement I got when I first heard Oasis all those years ago. It sounds like Jesus and Mary Chain covering Phil Spector. Over on their Myspace, you'll hear that, the b-side and a few demos...the homepage is here

More Gigs

2007-11-12T08:52:00.000Z

A few more gigs since the last post. Saw Andrew Bird supported by Loney, Dear last Monday at the arches. Loney, Dear released one of my favourite albums of the year and they were great live but it was Andrew Bird who really blew me away.

He uses a sampler to build up layers of violin, whistling, handclaps, vocals and guitar so he is accompanying himself as a full string backing section. It's quite incredible to watch close up. We'd seen him earlier in the year at Indian Summer but in the context of a full headline slot made much more sense. I've since gone on and ordered a few old albums to catch up. Photos

Wednesday was back through to the arches to see Beirut. They have a website for their new album with a video for each song here, but I'm still getting into the first album. A combination of balkan horns, casio keyboards, rufus-esque vocals and accordians. It sounds like pretty much no one else out there right now, although there are elements of Yann Tiersen and the inimitable Sufjan Stevens in there. Photos

Who Knew

2007-10-25T14:07:00.000Z

According to the BBC today, Simply Red have announced theyre splitting up...Was anyone actually aware they were still together?

Misc update

2007-10-25T13:23:00.001Z

So a few things have happenned since I last updated...Got the new Radiohead album as mentioned below. loving it! Probably the best thing they've done since Kid A. As you might know, I really disliked Hail to the Thief when it came out and have been pushed back to reassess it and realise that I was completely wrong!

Since I last posted, We've been to see Manu Chao. Thanks to the Academy plastering big warnings about no bags all over their tickets we decided not to risk taking a camera meaning that all the pics we took were on my phone. Not exactly the best quality gig pictures we've ever taken but theres some good ones. fairly annoying to see that there were plenty people there both with bags and proper cameras. Overall a great gig but live he sounds so completely different to his records...his records are generally so chilled out but live everything seems to turn into a trashy rock song half way through. Sounds great when you're there but not so good on his live CD as just listening to the studio versions.

Went to see Control as well. I don't think it justified the hype but overall I enjoyed it. The performance of Ian Curtis shows him as self obsessed and kinda unlikable. Pretty much how I had always imagined he actually would have been. To be honest, the only one from the band who came off well from the whole thing was Bernard since he came across as really nice but the rest of the band seemed like complete dicks.

Also had a moment of prime surrealism when we won tix to go and see 'Once' at the GFT. Really sweet wee film (although I'm glad I had never heard of it when I went to see it since it seems to be everywhere now and looks like it might become quite big) but the 2 main stars made an appearance afterwards to play some of the music live. Is one of the strangest sensations to watch someone on screen for 90 minutes then turn round and realise they are standing literally 2 feet away from you...made me think of that scene from father ted about dreams/reality.

A few gigs coming up befroe the end of the year...Andrew Bird, Loney Dear & Beirut are all bought and we're still swaying about Mum and Patrick Wolf...

In Rainbows

2007-10-08T06:01:00.000Z

Just went online and ordered the new Radiohead album...had only intended to order the download for now but, since they cant say exactly when it will be issued, I just imagined coming home from a crap day at work a few months from now and unexpectedly finding a huge parcel from Radiohead. Yup, ordered the box! I love that they're big enough now to just put out a big fuck you to the whole recording industry. One of the biggest bands in the world releasing their albums independently and selling direct to the fans online. And this only 2 months after Prince gave away his new album with the Mail on Sunday! (the one and only time I will EVER buy the Mail!).
I also love the fact that no one knew they had a new album out. They just announced 10 days before the release date and, since they recorded it in their own studios, there's no lowl-paid studiohands with access to the tapes so there's no chance of a leak onto the torrent sites or newsgroups. And it would appear they didnt even send out review copies, so while I'm sitting here waiting for the email that gives me the link to download the album later today, so's the guy from the NME and from Rolling Stone or whereever. No favouritism. The whole world waiting to hear it all at the same time! It's almost like a return to the old days when the whole country gathered round their TV's to hear the beatles unveil 'All you need is love'.
Just hope I get the email in time so I can d/l it and whack it onto my ipod before I have to leave for work...

Radiohead mentally scar a whole generation of kiddies at the smash hits poll winners party

Brian Wilson

2007-10-08T05:47:00.000Z

So much for keeping the blog updated!

Anyway, The photo's are up from Brian Wilson. We were seated way up in the rafters so weren't too close to the stage, which is reflected in the pictures. Brian and the band themselves were incredible. Sounding exactly like it sounded on record which is something even the original beach boys never managed.

The new 30 minute musical piece he played sounded interesting but so far, I haven't read anywhere regarding a release of a proper studio recording. Hopefully that will be out in time for christmas!

Para(dasos)noia

2007-06-24T12:25:00.000Z

Ok, Here's a weird one...but first some background (which, on re-reading is over long but stick with me).

As I explain at the top, the name Paradasos is basically a literal translation of the meaning of the name 'Fraser' into Greek. The short version of the long story stems from the 'His Dark Materials' books and the fact that everyone had a personal Daemon with a grand, classical sounding name. I decided Paradasos would be my Daemon name.

Unlike the many variations of my full name I had chosen for usernames at various points, Paradasos had the advantage that I seemed to be the only one online (ignoring the Italian Restaurant in Alaska) and over a period of time, it stuck.

I once became aware that one of our Flickr pictures had been used to illustrate someone elses blog post. That's covered by the Creative Commons Licence we assigned the pictures and I'm more than happy for this sort of thing to happen, but it made me curious if anyone else had done the same. So I googled 'Paradasos'. And amongst all the expected entries, was a site about Kilted Pride which collected pictures of men in kilts. There was a piss-take picture we took ages ago of each of us wearing my kilt and doing a mock highland fling. Someone had posted this picture on the board and a few people had made light hearted comments underneath. It was funny and I knew I was potentially opening myself up to ridicule by posting that picture on a public photosite anyway so, again, this didnt bother me.

Cut forward 6 months and I became aware of Google Alerts. Basically, you can set a search term you are interested in and Google will send you an email either as soon as it finds a new result, or once a week send you a roundup. Just because I was interested if anyone else was using our pictures, (and to feed my egotistical side!) I decided to sign up for a weekly email for 'Paradasos' search results.

Again, mainly what you would expect. Various posts I've made around the place, more mention of the alaskan restaurant and a German White Stripes message board posting our Flickr pictures from the Raconteurs gig.

Still with me?...this is where it gets weird.

There was a result in the weekly Google Alerts email this week which was a search results page from a web-dating site, confirming that there was no results for 'Paradasos'. This means someone searched for 'Paradasos' on the dating site. Everyone that knows me personally, knows I'm engaged so they're unlikely to go searching for me on a dating site. Meaning that, if the search was in any way connected to myself (and about 98% of all google results for the word are), it had to be someone I don't know personally.

It could be pure coincidence, but it seems possible that some random stranger has seen my profile somewhere, and decided to see if I was registered on their dating site of choice.

I know a lot of people are creeped out by lack of privacy online, but I cant help but think that having a random stranger checking me out online is less creepy than the fact that I immediately knew they'd done it.

Loney, Dear

2007-06-22T20:46:00.000Z

I've just added a new post to my Lastfm blog which can be found here.

Heres some videos

I Am John
Saturday Waits

That is all

Me...but online

2007-06-15T23:32:00.000Z

I'm kinda addicted at the moment to the idea of having a whole other life online. I stop short of checking out of reality and signing up for Second Life or WoW, but in the last week have updated profiles for Lastfm, Twitter, Bebo, Facebook, Flickr and the dreaded myspace. Don't know why I bother when the only site that any of my friends use online is bebo but I just prefer a few of the others. I also have a macabre fascination with the stories i've seen where people die but their myspace page becoming a living memorial to them. More and more I'm using stuff like Google Docs, Calendar, backpack, basecamp and my internet enabled phone.

I already have my entire, 16000 song music collection with me 24 hours a day on my ipod, so it makes sense to have access to my entire photo collection, important documents and anything else pretty much wherever I am.

I'm going to make an attempt to stick with the blog this time and update it at least once a week. More than anything else, should be a good place to stick those stupid ideas that pop into my head from time to time that amuse no one but me, which shouldnt really matter since no one but me is likely to read this anyway!

Slight Return

2007-06-12T22:05:00.000Z

Wow, its been almost 2 whole years since I last posted here! I decided to return to the blog since a lot more of my friends have an online presence than they did 2 years ago and I want somewhere I can pull everything together. Am still toying with the idea of actually registering paradasos.com and just sticking everything on there then pointing all my various web profiles back there. we shall see...Also, I still dont have a whole lot of a great deal to say about my life that I would want to share on a blog so it remains to be seen whether I will actually post anything more than I did last time...

PostSecret

2005-06-04T15:50:00.000Z

Heard about PostSecret a few days back and just stumbled across it.

If you have a secret, you write it on a home made postcard (the artier the better) and mail it to this websites publishers by snailmail. They then scan it in and publish on the web for the whole world to see!

Layout

2005-06-04T15:34:00.000Z

Incidentally, the current layout of the blog is a pure 'off the shelf' number just to get it up and running. Hopefully, I'll customise it a bit more and design my own layout soon

Side Bar

2005-06-04T13:11:00.000Z

Playing around with Flickr and Blogger I discovered I could add this cool wee flash animated link button of all my photos...If you cant see it, it means that, as I suspect, It's completely draining my allocated bandwidth for the month on Flickr...I'm tempted to pay for full membership but we'll see

Photo's are up

2005-06-04T10:22:00.000Z

OK, Change of plan...I've decided to use Flickr for all my photo posts. I'll start with my Germany Holiday from earlier this year and will work through from there.

I've picked out my Fave pics from day 1 in Berlin and they are now available to view here

The photo's are a combination of those taken by me and by Sydne.

Hallooo

2005-06-04T09:33:00.000Z

The intention here is mainly for somewhere to show my photo's and record random thoughts...havent yet decided if I'll use Flickr for image hosting or not...I'll see how much this place lets me upload first