Tales From The Riverbank

OK, it was only a matter of time. I've got so fed up with LiveJournal being so slow and unhelpful (not to mention those bloody ads that give me an aneurysm every time I come here to log in) that from hereon in you can find my blog over at Wordpress:

http://hippydave.wordpress.com

I'll keep reading blogs here (and commenting on 'em, no doubt), but I won't be posting here any more. It's just such a ball-ache: no wonder I haven't been doing it as often as I intended.

I'm sure at least some of you have heard me holding forth at great length (and occasionally volume) about just how distasteful things have become (or sometimes are, depending on your POV) on both the Marillion and Mostly Autumn official forums. Well, this week I dared to air my perhaps controversial thoughts about one of the many reasons why the official Mostly Autumn forum is so damned unpleasant, and it seems that already my words have caused grave offence to some of the people who are admins/moderators there. Consequently, I feel I should mount some kind of more reasoned defence of my words - which, I'll freely admit, were harsh, somewhat generalised and unleavened by tact... :-)

There are many reasons why I find the forum in question so unpleasant. However, the chief reason is that it is so closely moderated. Without some sense of community, there is absolutely no point having a forum at all - unless people feel comfortable posting there, no-one will post, leading to a 'Ghost Town' tumbleweed effect. Considering that it's dedicated to a band who have been around since the 90s and turned in about 10 albums-worth of material, the Mostly Autumn forum has very few members, and even then, it's a tiny minority of around 15-20 people that post on more than an occasional basis. I would say that the chief reason why it's so quiet and people seem so reluctant to post is because the level of moderation is utterly asinine. It's been the case for several years now (and as far as I know, still is the case) that EVERY SINGLE POST to the forum is moderated BEFORE it is displayed. For a forum with such a modest membership, comprised (one would hope) of fans of the band, this is a level of overkill somewhat akin to treating acne with a tactical nuclear strike.

I could speculate why the band - or their representatives, more accurately: it's hard to be certain of the level of involvement of the band, since I've never seen any commentary from them concerning the forum - seem so worried about what might get posted. I can only assume that (a) they're concerned lest there still be fall-out from the days when they were signed to Classic Rock Productions, who made some highly questionable business decisions for the band and issued a stream of poor quality live releases and DVDs at premium prices, both of which did for a lot of fans around the time, or (b)they're simply not viewing the forum as a place where community needs fostering, more as a 'vanity board' of the type that causes so much mirth when such a thing appears in the public domain.

Now, if the OTT moderation was the only thing that made the board so unpleasant, it could perhaps be addressed (assuming, that is, that anyone cared to acknowledge the issue). However, as on the Marillion board, there is a subset (or subsets) of the board members that make the whole thing even more unpleasant. I hasten to add that these are for the most part small groups, spoiling it for the majority of members - however, this is less obvious on the Mostly Autumn board since it is for the most part only the members of these small cliques that actually bother to post much. It's fairly easy to spot the board members who aren't part of these little virtual 'Flash Mobs', since they seem to spend a lot of their time wondering why their remarks caused offence, or trying in vain to forestall the inevitable by prefacing all their remarks with comments like, "I'm not saying that [a] is bad, but..." or "Without meaning to offend anyone, I feel that..." Typically their attempts to be reasonable or express some opinion that's out of step with the 'party line' is greeted with lengthy responses couched in the sort of condescending language used to talk to asylum inmates, or flat, unreasoned rebuttals that essentially say "You're wrong, and you're an idiot. As you clearly don't know what you're on about, just shut up and stop stealing our oxygen." The comical thing is, those who post such bilge often then turn around and congratulate the board at large (i.e. themselves) for 'allowing' such 'spirited debate', and enabling the airing of diverse views. What a crock: they're just shouting down a dissenting viewpoint, posting for the sake of re-entrenching their opinions and hearing themselves speak.

Most amusing of all is when said denizens rail against people who have a poor opinion of a particular release or band, and then turn around do exactly the same thing themselves. One of the moderators on the Mostly Autumn board has been caught several times saying very unfortunate things about one band in particular. Since Mostly Autumn currently features at least two people from said band, one can only wonder if said blabbermouth is aware of the irony of their unthinking caterwauling.

What can save the Mostly Autumn forum? An immediate lift on the anticipatory moderation, for one thing. Moderation should never be used to prevent a conversation: how then should the members trust the forum to be a true community? True communities largely police themselves. Moderation should only ever be necessary after the fact (i.e. in cases where blatantly offensive comments can be removed, or when there are problems with spam, etc). Misusing the ability to moderate people's posts to prevent comments being made in the first place is akin to telling someone to be honest and then holding a gun to their head.

Once the pre-emptive moderation is lifted, things should start to improve. The next step would be to stop the 'Flash Mobs' bullying people to the extent that they don't see the point in trying to post their honest opinions. Bands shouldn't be afraid of honest opinions: it's impossible that everyone will like everything, and I'm sure we're all fans of bands who've released a few duffers in their time but who we still love dearly. As long as opinions are expressed clearly and with respect, no-one should take offence - and if they do, those who choose to take offence should probably take a good, long hard look at themselves and find out why they've become so socially incompetent. Persistent offenders should be banned - if people don't learn from their mistakes (or even understand why they are mistakes!) then there's no good reason to continue to allow them to contribute.

That's all it would take. But does anyone over at the Mostly Autumn forum have the courage to do this?

I feel sorry for the band, really. After all these years making (largely, but let's not get into that) quality music, they should have a thriving online community. However, because this issue has been allowed to fester, the Mostly Autumn 'family' is anything but. The forum should be alive with chatter and have many more members than it does. I know several big Mostly Autumn fans who aren't members of their forum, despite being members of other band's forums: why should this be the case? Clearly there is a problem there somewhere, and I'm convinced after talking to them that the above issues contribute in no small way to these fans not contributing to the forum.

If the band and their support system don't want that kind of forum, then that's fair enough. Unfortunately, the band have started to be portrayed negatively because of the actions and attitudes of some of their more outspoken fans, and that's a real shame.

Just when you thought it was safe to take a breath, another great band has bought the farm.

This time it's Breathing Space, a superb York-based band. Originally, the name 'Breathing Space' was just the name of the first solo album by Mostly Autumn's keyboard player, Iain Jennings. However, as Iain assembled personnel to both play on the album and to perform the material live, the project took on a life of its own, and became a 'proper' band. Despite frequent personnel changes, Breathing Space went on to make two further albums, Coming Up For Air and Below The Radar, both of which were truly excellent. Many a happy hour at Hippy Towers has been soundtracked by Breathing Space's output.

However, Breathing Space has always lived in the shadow of its musical mothership, Mostly Autumn - not least because Iain rejoined the band (after leaving to record the Breathing Space album), and because Breathing Space vocalist Olivia Sparnenn has been a backing vocalist for the band since 2005. Consequently, the band has had to work around Mostly Autumn's fairly busy schedule, resulting in a relative dearth of live performances (outside of the York area, at least) and lack of promotion. As a result they never really reached the size of audience they so richly deserved.

All seemed lost when Olivia announced her departure last year. Mostly Autumn's vocalist Heather Findlay had decided to leave Mostly Autumn to pursue a solo career, and Olivia was offered the lead vocal position. I don't blame her for accepting, really: it's hard to say no to a band comprised of people you've known and worked with for so long already. However, this left Breathing Space at a bit of an impasse: whilst the band was about more than Olivia's (extraordinary) vocals, it was going to be very tough to find someone of the same calibre to replace her.

Taking a leaf from Marillion's book, the band replaced Olivia with someone every bit as talented but very different, in the shape of ex-Mostly Autumn vocalist Heidi Widdop (yes, it's all a bit incestuous really!). Heidi possesses a much rawer, ballsy voice and I suspect many fans were desperately hoping that Heidi had the power and charisma to pull it off when Breathing Space returned to the live arena last summer. No-one need have worried - their set at the Cambridge Rock Festival last August blew the bloody doors off. The band sounded re-energised and confident, and Heidi's performance was superb in every way, despite her falling ill shortly before the festival. Everyone was looking towards a bright future for the band...

And now, mere weeks after a string of live dates for 2011 were announced, the band have issued a statement saying that they had disbanded. Happily, it seems that it's a fairly amicable situation, with everyone deciding it was for the best. One can't help thinking that perhaps the pressures of constantly playing second fiddle to Mostly Autumn's activities might well have become a factor.

I'll miss Breathing Space a great deal. Their material was always inventive and passionate, and Olivia's recorded vocal performances are something that she should continue to be very proud of. Personally I've always felt that she was a much stronger vocalist than Heather, and I'm pleased that she now has found a potentially much larger audience - Heather's departure and her emergence as a frontwoman for Mostly Autumn seems to have woken that band from its recent stupor as well, which is good news for everyone (well, except those few who seem unable to accept a Mostly Autumn without Heather, but - as with the fans of Fish who refused to accept Marillion's new vocalist Steve Hogarth - that's very much their loss). I hope that Iain either finds a new channel for his writing, or channels it more into Mostly Autumn, too, as I've always felt he was Mostly Autumn's best writer.

As for the other band members... It seems that there is already talk of a new project featuring the core of the last Breathing Space line-up. There's a wealth of talent there, too, as anyone who heard the rejuvenated band's recently-aired new material will testify. I wish them all the very best and will most definitely be keeping a close eye on what they come up with.

I find it really hard to believe that we're already three days into 2011. Where the hell does the time go? It only seems like yesterday that I was coming home from the last day at work before the holidays. The passage of time definitely appears to accelerate proportionately dependent on the amount of time that you have already experienced. It must be just one huge blur to senior citizens.

So... 2011 - and with a new year there is the expectation of New Year's Resolutions. I used to delight in setting myself targets for the year ahead, but bitter experience has taught me that making resolutions appears to be the easiest way to ensure that they never come to pass. What's worse is that when those resolutions are not met at the end of the year, there's a tendency to feel somehow that you've let yourself down, no matter how unrealistic those resolutions might have been, or how much you were able to control the circumstances that allowed you to fulfil them anyway. So these days, I tend not to call them resolutions so much as aims or hopes - that way if I once again totally fail to make them happen, it's not such a karma-sucking experience.

So, what am I looking to do better with this year? Well, there's the usual desire to try and be a bit healthier. I look back to the tiresomely lengthy kidney stone episode from a few years back and remember how much I missed being my usual healthier self when I was dealing with that, and can't help thinking that since my recovery I've been taking a lot for granted. So this year it's time to eat a bit less junk, get out and about a bit more regularly and try and treat my body with a bit more respect (i.e. a bit more like the clichéd 'temple' than the slum-like shanty town that it currently serves as). On yer bike if you think this means less curry, though - sacrifices can and will be made elsewhere. I've already cut down on the booze over the past couple of years (down to a couple of bottles a week now, unless I'm out on a jolly with friends of course), so that's not really a concern.

Then there's my return to studying, courtesy of the Open University. Well, as long as the tuition fee controversy doesn't result in skyrocketing fees, I intend to keep at it. I've really enjoyed my current course thus far (nearing the halfway point as I write this), and am looking forward to taking on something else in the same sphere as this course winds down. Ultimately all of these modules will bolt together into something more substantial - probably a BSc. However, I'm not putting any pressure on myself to set a deadline or focus on anything too specific, as I've discovered that this is usually a good way to ensure that I lose interest in it all or get fed up with it all. As long as I continue to enjoy it and what I'm learning is potentially useful down the road, then I shall keep plugging away at it and see where I end up with it.

Naturally, there are other less significant things I'd like to address too: I think everyone wants to try and be a bit more responsible with their spending ('Austerity Britain' or otherwise), especially after splurging at Christmas, but we've already made some agreeable progress on that front. More of that, then - it's nice to be able to go and do things if we really fancy doing them without planning long and hard for every little thing as we had to a few years back, so more progress on that front would be good. I'd like to read more. I'd like to spend more time listening to music, particularly new music, which doesn't always get the amount of ear-time that it deserves. It'd be good to spend more time honing the IT/programming-related skills that I'm updating via the OU course(s) I'm doing, which also takes time. And I'd also really like to spend more time with some of the friends I see far less often than I'd like (often due to geography, but there are other factors), and communicate more often with the people who really matter, too. I'm uncomfortably aware that I've been pretty useless at answering E-mail over the past few months. I've fallen into bad E-mail habits before, so I really should have learnt my lesson by now. So hopefully those of you reading this will find me a bit more communicative this year. Feel free to nag me about it if I'm not... :-) This also applies to updates here, too - I've frequently promised to blog more regularly, but it rarely seems to happen. Time to do better.

So there we have it. The New Year is here and is rattling along the tracks, careless of how slow we are trying to jump aboard. The holidays are over, we're back at work tomorrow, and it's time to carpe the diem. In fact, most of us could probably generalise down our New Year's Resolutions/hopes/aims to those two simple words: carpe diem. Which reminds me, I really should pick up Dead Poet's Society on DVD. At well under a fiver these days, there's really no excuse. And if you haven't seen it, you should.

And on that note, I'm off to prep my nosebag for tomorrow.

Feeling my age today, for sure: a mixture of the cold (back to the arctic temperatures of last week after a much nicer weekend) and spending entirely too long this week slumped on the sofa, under (or inside) a sleeping bag, poring over my OU course materials. I'm making an effort this week to sit up properly and spare my poor spine any further unnecessary abuse.

The OU course is going rather well, though in fairness (and as Steen is fond of pointing out as she nears the end of her degree in humanities) this first course is 'only' a Level 1 course and therefore isn't anywhere near as involved as some of the other stuff I'm going to encounter down the road. Still, for someone like me who hasn't really done any study of any kind since 1995 (barring that web design primer I did this year as a warm-up), it's a nice way to slip back into the studying mindset. After the scramble to finish my project at the end of the web design course, I'm finding it a lot easier to manage my workload and keep on top of this new course - so much so that I'm more or less a week in front of where I should be at the moment, as opposed to three weeks behind, which is where I was back in October. It does help that the course is dealing with things that I actually find interesting and would therefore be likely to read about anyhow. The web design course was all very well, but for me it spent entirely too much time waffling on about design principles: such principles may be ultimately useful, but I think the course fell into the trap of focusing so much on a bunch of design tropes that the final project came as a massive anticlimax (plus I think they didn't give you anywhere near enough time to piece the project together, compared with the time they spent talking about design - it might have been more productive for the course to let you get your hands dirty with WYSIWYG web design (oooh, no HTML coding on that course - perish the thought!) right from the beginning, and let you piece together your site week by week using new design ideas, then spent 8 weeks talking about design, then a couple talking about the WYSIWYG editor provided, before saying, "Right, you've got a week to put together your site." A week may sound like a long time - especially for a site as simplistic as the course was concerned with - but when you work full time and are out several nights on the week in question, it's not particularly helpful... ;-)

Anyhow, so far so good. I got my first assignment back last week with a mark of 96%, so I must be doing something right. Since then, we've delved into coding and the actual physical components of computer systems, so we're actually dealing with the stuff I'm really interested in. I can feel my coder-senses, unused and disregarded for so long, returning to life. My coding skill set is ridiculously out of date - other than a smattering of assembler (which they didn't let us play with too much at technical college, it was just a bridge to high level languages rather than a means to an end itself), my most recent coding experience was with COBOL and Pascal, for goat's sake. I've longed to join the 21st century for a while now, and after teaching myself some basic C & Javascript, it's nice to feel that now I'm actually going to get to do something with it all and develop my skillset a bit further.

I've always been fascinated with programming and the inner workings of computers. It seemed to me that I had the poor fortune to be taught by people who didn't understand that fascination, rather than the cool tech teachers you sometimes read about who had the same kind of enthusiasm and did their best to encourage it in their students. No such luck for yours truly - it seemed for the most part (my programming teacher at technical college was a real character - it's a real pity that the rest of the mob there weren't cut from the same cloth) that I was taught about computing by a bunch of business-obsessed stuffed suits and tweed-wearing nerds obsessed with logic tables and binary maths. Some of this stuff is all very well, but it's not how you hold the attention of young people who want to get involved in computing (unless, of course, the young people involved are business-obsessed stuffed suits and tweed-wearing nerds, and I confess there were a few of them in my class). Some of us are just not cut out for the 9-to-5 cubicle-bound grind. A classic case of the mentality Gerald Scarfe illustrated so aptly with his animation of the teacher feeding the kids into that massive mincing machine that he put together for Pink Floyd's The Wall.

I'm nearly at the point of submitting my next assignment (due shortly after the New Year), where I get to actually do some coding. Now if there was a course that consisted of little else than getting my head down and putting together something in Visual Studio, I'd be a very happy camper. Still, before I know it it'll be time to decide what course I'm doing next, so who knows? :-)

And we have proper hot water again.

I had another look for the instructions for the immersion heater again yesterday morning. They came on an utterly ridiculous fold out piece of paper about the size of the instructions you get with Kinder Egg toys, which makes finding it a bit of a chore. Sure enough, I've still not managed to find it. I'm sure it's in the filing cabinet somewhere. Perhaps it's just so small that it's fallen out of the folder it's in and down the side of the cabinet - wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Ah, but the web came to our aid once again... :-)

I went down to the bathroom cupboard (wherein the immersion heater lurks) and used the flashlight on my phone to read the teeny, tiny text on the immersion heater control dial that gave the manufacturers name. Then I fed it to Google, alongside text akin to "bloody immersion heater instructions OMFG", and sure enough, the second or third link I clicked on was a lovely PDF of instructions. A quick read through, and I returned to the bathroom cupboard, phone flashlight in hand, and solved the issue in minutes. Sure enough, the time on the immersion heater clock was correct, but it wasn't synced to the time being used by the timer, so it was coming on 12 hours adrift. No wonder (a) we were running out of hot water at times, and (b) our last couple of leccy bills were so high! I've actually taken it off during the day altogether, and am now running it purely during the wee small hours.

Of course, this process meant we still had no hot water when we got home from work yesterday as we had to wait until this morning for the heater to cycle through at the correct time, but today we have lovely, lovely hot water. There is also a degree of smug mode in finally having the beast running at the right time, something which (as Steen reminds me) I've been meaning to do for ages, but never managed to get around to. We should save a bucket in leccy fees, too - that'll probably pay for next summer's US flights all by itself... ;-)

Right, back to the OU books, then...

...but it's cold.

Thank Goat for the little space heater we bought on Monday. If we hadn't picked that up, we'd probably be meatsicles by now, double-glazing or no double-glazing.

Brrrrr. I've spent most of my time at home so far this week inside a sleeping bag. Steen laughed at me when I climbed into it for the first time upon returning home on Saturday, but WHO'S LAUGHING NOW! :-)

I usually don't mind the bit of winter immediately prior to New Year - it's usually the long, gray, icy slog of January & February that depresses me - but if this is how it's going to be this year, roll on summer. Wet or not, at least I'm unlikely to get frostbite.

Brrrrr.

Scratch that last entry... We may have new taps, but the cold tap in the bathroom still doesn't function as it should, alas. Sometimes you can twiddle it for ages and nothing happens; other times you can turn it straight on, but then can't turn it off without messing with it for an age.

And now it seems, the time settings on the immersion heater aren't bloody right, either. I felt sure that I'd set it correctly upon restarting it, but when we got up this morning, there was only tepid water, not hot. Bugger it.

LATER: A brief but reasonably thorough search of the section of the filing cabinet with the instruction manuals and stuff in it has not yielded the immersion heater's instruction manual. Time to go looking online, then...

It's getting bloody cold, too. Arse.

We have new taps!

Our landlord came to collect my keys this morning, so that he could come back later this morning and fit our new taps. There was hope that he could actually fit a mixer unit in the kitchen, but alas, it was not to be - once again, our non-standard fittings sabotaged our plans, and our landlord was enforced to fit lesser, stand-alone taps. Cruel fate, how you mock us!

Still, my keys were returned to me this afternoon whilst I was still at work, and it was with a sense of great anticipation that we've come home tonight to examine the new shiny miracles of metalwork that now adorn our sinks. Yes, I suppose we're easily pleased. Then again, after weeks of faucets that simply will not budge, this is sweet, sweet manna from heaven... :-)

In other news, it's just occurred to us that it's Thanksgiving on Thursday. I swear we're caught in some kind of temporal glitch... It seems only yesterday it was Easter. Perhaps time really does speed up comparative to our age.

Well, guess who broke the toilet?

After lunch, I nipped out to the bog for a much-needed pee, flushed the loo and... something went CLANG and the handle went limp, and resolutely refused to return to its pre-flush position. I guess I knew it was only a matter of time: our water is quite 'hard' here, and the toilet handle was starting to get a bit crufty with limescale - we've been favouring it a little when we flush for a while now. Shamefaced, I shambled back to the lounge to tell Steen what had happened, and left our landlord a plea for assistance. There's little in this world more onerous than being throne-less, after all... :-)

Setting aside our chosen afternoon's viewing (Guy Ritchie's take on Sherlock Holmes), we decided we'd best clear up a bit before our landlord arrived, so there much washing-up and deck-clearing for half an hour or so before our landlord arrived, toolbag in hand, to restore our throne to proper working order. Bless his adjustable spanner, a new throne handle was fitted within minutes and order was restored. Much to our delight, our landlord then offered to look at the malfunctioning taps in the bathroom and kitchen whilst he was around, which was most welcome, especially since we'd complained about the taps already during his last visit back in the summer to deal with our chimney/bird interface problem. The cold tap in the bathroom had seized up altogether (there's that limescale again), and the hot tap in the kitchen had a bit of a washer problem - you had to turn it on and twiddle it a fair bit before any water issued forth. After examining the problem faucets for a little while, he decided that he didn't have the parts to hand that would fit the taps (naturally, as with everything else at Hippy Towers, our taps are a non-standard size), but promised that he would be back tomorrow with the parts to effect repairs.

All in all, a profitable visit - and it's nice to think that my inadvertent throne abuse had some side-benefits, and that we now have a fully-functioning throne in readiness for the festive period, when the throne is always given a particularly tough work-out... ;-)

We've just finished watching Sherlock Holmes (not bad, really: one of those films where you can turn your brain off and enjoy the ride, though props to Robert Downley Jr. for making Holmes a believable and likeable character - not like the emotionless laudanum-casualty that seemingly every other TV series/film has presented him as), and now it's time to get out the Open University literature and finish my first assignment for my current course.