So, following Academy Mobile Day, I rushed down to Brighton, with my daughter and her friend to see “CSS” play at The Dome. Really enjoyed one of the support bands, “Metronomy” and hope to have them on PC Podcast soon.

Unfortunately the lead singer “LoveFoxx” was hit by a shoe thrown by one of the crowd and had to go offstage. The band, quite understandably, were not impressed and stormed off leaving us a little disappointed. Let’s hope LoveFoxx is OK!

So, it was Academy Mobile Day on Friday and a good day was had by all. The event was specifically marked by two podcasting panels, which were video’d and streamed across the Microsoft Corporate Network as well as being show on the TV screens in the restaurants. (enough to put anyone off their lunch – Ed).

Session One featured Dave Coplin, who was the main organiser of the event, plus Tony Cocks, who despite being a Microsoftie, is a hobbyist podcaster like myself, and producer of the Binge Thinking History Podcast.  Also in the line-up was John Buckley (Citizen Journalist and producer of the Citizen Scoop podcast, among others) as well as yours truly. We talked about podcasting past, present and future and how anyone can produce their own podcast.

Session Two (above) featured Dave Coplin, Ludovic Fourrage, Rob Gray and Phil Morel and focused on the technology behind Academy Mobile and where it’s going in the future.

I’ll bring you some of the audio and video as soon as it’s ready!

Was sent this by someone at work. Can’t resist sharing it!

So, this is fantastic and the moment I’ve been waiting for. “The Reverend and the Makers” finally make it onto Jools Hollands’s show “Later”. Plus “The Who” on the same bill. They looked like they loved it.

Just enjoy…….

Heavyweight Champion Of The World

Open Your Window

Been a while since my last blog, and oh boy, what a week.  As mentioned, the "on-call" rota caught me by surprise last weekend and I was on-call during the US Thanksgiving vacation. Well, I’d like to give thanks it’s over and I’m sure the poor folk who actually seemed to be working 24×7 will be too. 

Wednesday had a promosing, bur rather tiring start at 4:30am with a journey to Heathrow and on to Milan by 11am (local time). So far so good, but then during lunch I did feel rather queasy and, after a short to talk to God on the big white telephone I was the proud possessor of a red eye. Petecial Heamorrhaging they call it in CSI, which can be brought on by strangulation.  Guess what… it can be brought on by yodelling as well!

So, imaging the slights and sounds of Milan. Il Duomo (above) and the sound of thousands of excitable Italians ordering anti-pasti, pizza and expresso.  Well all I heard was the sound of BBC World Service (putting news first…) and unintelligible Italian quix shows before I drifted off. And then……. a text from the missus saying that following a power cut the broadband was not working at home and was I up for a bit of technical support with my son.  Why yes dear…. I’d love to.

Anyway, got the broadband sorted, sorted out a new plan for our department at work and back in time for tea!

This weekend will be podcasting, surfing and chilling with the odd nap thrown in (one nap down by the time I write this!) which is the perfect weekend for me. Almost Christmas and 10 days off……

Alas, Mikey and I will not be seeing Dexter at Pressure Point in December after all. Seems the band have pulled out of the PP gig, and I’m not exactly sure why. Bit of a shame, but maybe another time.

OK so there’s been two occasions in the past when I’ve been the Duty Manager for "you know who" and it’s been a breeze. No one called me, the phone never rang and the (liitle) extra in the monthly paypacket was cool. Third time unlucky!

Considering I’ve worked for American firms for 23 out of my 25 working years, you would have thought I’d spotted I was duty manager duting Thanksgiving… you know, that time when all the Americans go on holiday and leave the rest of the world to pick up the mess?  Well, duh! I didn’t, and the phone has been hot.

And don’t you just love those middle eastern customers who call on Thursday, are unavailable on Friday and expect everyone in Europe to work on Sunday? Oh yeah…. do your duty…. enjoy your turkey… I have a nice slice of humble pie waiting for you!

I have to say, both my son, Mikey, and I, were really excited in going to see Asian Dub Foundation live at Concorde2 in Brighton, yesterday.  We’d really wanted to see then in 2005 when their last album "Tank" came out, but we’d been on holiday in the US at that time. After that, I’d pretty much given up on the band playing live in the UK again, and then out of the blue they play at C2!

We got straight to the stage barrier and started surveying equipment when we arrived. Apart from the massive (and I mean MASSIVE) sub-woofer at the back of the hall (which was excercising my chest muscles without me even trying) the first thing we spotted was a right-handed bass guitar. So, it was true – the left handed Dr Das – was no longer going to be playing with the band. We thought as much, but still a shame.  Then Mikey made a bigger discovery – where was the drum kit?  So, no Rocky Singh, either. Things were looking bad, but let’s wait and see.

No support and straight into the band with excellent soundsystem provided by Sun-J, who managed remakably well without Rocky, in producing a fantastic sound. Then came guitarist, Chandrasonic and the new bass player, the two rappers, the scary, scary Ghetto Priest and one bloody amazing Dhol and Tabla player, Cyber. I’ve never seen a dhol being played live, up close and personal before, and it was truly amazing. They played all the top choons – "Rise", "Fortress", "flyover", "oil" and "warring dhol", but despite it being on the setlist, no "enemy of the enemy".

Throwing caution to the wind, we bounced and danced, sang and bounced some more. Some of it may be on tape, as, next to me, was the bands official video camera lady. Look out for the 40-something white guy with no hair, joined by a rather hairier, rather more junior version. Cogle and Cogle. United!

Keep banging on the walls of fortress Brighton!

If you’re not already addicted to Karoshi Bro’s single "Love The World" then you really need to click the picture above or here and see the video. Really….. go and do it now!

An average Monday Night in Brighton? Nah, tonight was back to Concorde2 for the New Young Pony Club, with my daughter. The gig has been postponed after lead singer, Tahita, had throat problem earlier in the tour, so they were really apologetic. Never fear, we had a great time, with all the hits from the "Fantastic Playroom" album, like "Ice Cream" and "The Bomb", plus some covers such as Squeeze’s "Take Me I’m Yours" (weird choice) and "Pump Up the Jam" (oh yes!!!) which has the joint rocking.

The drummer, Sarah (above right) was excellent, with a deceptively understated performance, making the most complicated rolls and fills seem easy, when I know, dear reader, they were far from that easy.

Left tired, sweaty and perfectly fulfilled. Back in 6 days for Asian Dub Foundation!  Life begins at 46!

Taken me a while to get the photos together from last week, but here they are…

Here are a few views from my business trip to Budapest, Hungary, starting with the view from my bedroom window in the Budapest Hilton across to a tower of the old Buda Castle.

More views of Buda Castle (above) and a church being restored (below), with amazing mosaic tiles. Someone said that all the churches with mosaic like this have been converted into museums. Not sure if it’s true.

We visited the Labyrinth, which are basically caves hewn from the rock under Buda castle, and which now serve as a restaurant for tourists.  As part of the medeaval banquet we were joined by the (mock) King and Queen (above), some belly dancing girls, complete with snake and fire eater (below).

The view (below) from Buda Castle (on the Buda side of the river Danube) to the Budapest Parliament Building (on the Pest side of the river Danube).

Moving to another hotel, this time the New York Palace Hotel, in Pest. This is the view (below) from outside.

And this was the view from inside.

It’s my one year anniversary in my (not so) new job. Mixed emotions I suppose. Good to have a job and some money coming in, but as the song says… "Is that all there is….?".  I shall be "celebrating" the start of year two with some management offsite shenanigans in Budapest, which will, at least, be a change from the norm.

I’m off to Budapest next week for, not one, but two, management offsites! Yeah, Yeah, I know it’s all going to be talk and BS, but I gather there is beer and food aftewards. I shall be taking the trusty iRiver and try and capture some sounds for the podcast!

Went to see of of my work team, Jason (aka Keegan), who is the coach of the "Reading Raptors Floorball Team", who were playing at the Dolphin Leisure Centre (now more poshly titled Olympos) this morning. Took my daughters camera, but only managed to get a few blurred images of the team playing (sse above). God, this game if fast! Or maybe I’d had too much to drink……?

Spotted that both "New Young Pony Club" and "Asian Dub Foundation" are playing at Concorde2 down in Brighton in the week commencing 12th November. Very pleased to say that I managed to get tickets for both concerts. I’m going to NYPC with my daughter and she’s very excited indeed! Of course this means I do need to listen to the album slightly more!

I’ll be going to see ADF with my son. We were going to go and see them in Brighton during their last UK tour, which was way back in 2005 when their album "Tank" came out, but it conflicted with a family holiday. Since then I pretty much thought the band has disbanded. I know Dr Das was doing his own thing, so I’ve really no idea who’s going to be in the band on the night. Neverthless they seem to have a "best of" album coming out soon, so maybe new life in the bandf yet. Most excellent!

Well finally managed to shirt the cold I’ve had, which involved a couple of days working from home and a lot of sleeping in between. Not really done an awful lot besides that.

This has got to have been the worst cold I’ve had in years!  I’m back at work but the constant stream of snuffling and sneezing is pissing off the troops, rather. Lets hope I get a decent voice back for this weekend’s podcasts. 

Another day out with my Dad today, so blew a few cobwebs away with a visit to Bognor Regis.  Been quite a few years since I’ve been – and will probably be a few more before I go back again. Bit boring out of season. Plus I’m getting a bit of a cold, so not 100%.

On a lighter note, had a chat with the Clitheroe Kid earlier on and he said he’s off to see "Los Capesinos" at Colchester tonight. So that makes at least three podcasters, me, Rowley Cutler and Peter Clitheroe, who’ve been in the audience.  I dare say a few others would have headed along as well if they’d been in their area.  Marvellous!

My Dad is having a couple of days visiting this week, so today we took a look at Chatham Historic Dockyard. It was a very cold day with a biting wind, but it was interesting. Some older warships like HMS Gannet (above) and HMS Cavalier (below), the latter of which reminded my Dad of times on troop ships in WWII.

Had a great evening on Monday night at a gig to see "Attack and Defend", "You Say Party! We Say Die!" and….."Los Campesinos", which I’d been looking forward to for some time. Tooke the kids with me, and although it was not really my son’s thing… it was live and it was free and Komedia is a great venue in Brighton.

Great set by all the bands, although the Lead singer of LC, Gareth, did say that the Glokenspiel had been damaged by a stage invastion the previous night in Birmingham and the "B" key was sounding a bit flat.  Needsless to say by the end of the evening the Glokenspiel had hit the deck and was in pieces. I hope they managed to buy a new one before their Lonfon performance, when my podcasting mate Rowley Cutler, of Dark Compass, was due to see them!

Had a great evening at Fletching Bonfire last night. Fletching is a very small village in East Sussex, but has a great reputation, wlong with many of the Sussex villages for bonfire nights, in and around November 5th, which, of course, we celebrate in the UK as "Guy Fawkes night".  Guy Fawkes was a Catholic who was protesting at the persecution Catholics were receiving at the hands of King James I, and on the 5th November 1605 decided to blow up The House of Lords, with the King in it. He failed and was executed.

It’s interesting that the celebrations, in some villages, such as Lewis, involve symbolic stoning of the Pope and very many pagan cymbols, such as the flaming brands and, almost KKK style apparel.  It’s interesting that we’re effectively celebrating the excution of a terrorist.  Would we do the same for the 9/11 or 6/6 terrorists perhaps?

I have to say I’d never heard of "machinina", the mash-up of gaming technology with cinema, until I listened to the 16th October episode of BBC 5 Live’s Pods and Blogs, which explained rather a lot. Not only was this episode of the podcast front-ended with an introduction by my fellow music podcaster Gabor Kovacs from the Electrical Language Podcast, but also featured Andrew Hugill, from De Montford University (which is one of the places I’d visited with my son on an open day) who’d organised the first Machinima Festival Europe 07.

Alsoe nice to see Microsoft (the current Cogle family billpayer) being involved in helping out with a Halo 3 Movie!

If you’ve not already tuned into either of my podcasts, then you’ll have missed out on that excellent resource that is jamendo.com. And this week they managed to host over 5000 creative commons licensed albums. That’s 5000 albums you can download and share with your friends for free!

If you’re into digg then click here to digg your response!

So, half term is coming up and the whole family is looking forward to some looooooong lie-ins and some afternoon naps! It’s still going to be pretty busy, with bonfire night, gigs, my Dad coming to visit and get togethers with friends, but at least we’ll get a chance to stop burning the candle at BOTH ends!

I’m indepted to The Grumbler (a.k.a. Snelling "Saint" Paul) who’s drawn my attention to a 7 foot tall pole dedicated to us Codgers. Now don’t you just wish someone named a pole after you?

Finally back home today after an 820 mile round-trip from Lindfield, all the way up to Gateshead and back via Southwold and a trip to see my old mates Peter and Mel Clitheroe for a pint at the Victoria, Earl Soham (pictured above).  So, as you can imaging I’m totally knackered (as usual) but brought a good end, to essentially was a sad day on Friday, saying goodbye to my Uncle.

Heading up north this weekend, back to Tyneside, where I was born.  Unfortunately it’s a sad occasion as my Uncle, and Dad’s younger brother died last weekend and I’m attending the funeral. Seems that I’ve reached that age when visits "back home" are all about sad or worrying events.

So, my son’s band Hippie Juice are here again today for a spot of band practice, before their next gig on 26th October at the Montefiore Institute in Crawley in aid of Oxjam. Just seen the most enormous amp being unloaded, so we’re probably going to be annoying the neighbours again. I think I may take myself off for a walk in Brighton, whilst they perfect their cover of the Police’s "message in a bottle".

Rather proud of myself today, having managed to create my first enhanced podcast (AAC format) for The Dub Zone, which will come out on Friday 12th October. It’s a bit fiddly on windows. First you create your podcast file (initially in .WAV format) then convert to AAC using iTunes. This creates a .M4A file, which you rename to . MP4, and then use a program called Slideshow Assembler, which helps you create the chapters and images required for a proper enhanced podcast. The end result is an AAC format file which you can step through the chapters, click on website links and see the artwork. Nice. Let’s see if the listeners agree.

The gym in the basement of our new building opened this week, and so you’re truly has finally got his arse in gear and got down there – three times!! I’m actually quite surprised at few aches and pains I have, which means I’ve been doing it right for a change, not the usual mad "go for it" and "suffer later" approach I’ve done in the past. Also feel so much more energetic, which is great. Let’s hope I actually manage to lose some weight as well!  Wish me luck!

Drove up to Reading University for an open day today. This was the fourth (and final?) open day Mikey and I have attended: De Montford (Leicester), University East Anglia (Norwich) and Portsmouth being the other three. I think Mikey was impressed, pretty much as I expceted he would be. It’s a really nice campus (I stayed there a couple of weekends when doing my MBA) and a couple of guys at work went there and seemed to have a good time. 

Dropped the boy off and then went off to grab a coffee in Starbucks, quick tour of HMV (way too expensive) and then back for a kip in the car before Mikey wanted collecting again. Wow, the life of an international jet-setter!

Had a great night out with the boys from the Den collective plus assorted other friends, at the Dirt South in Lewisham. After soundchecking we all headed up to Covernt Garden, where we ended up in the Punch and Judy pub, where the picture above was taken. It must be 20 years since I’ve been in that pub, and it hasn’t changed that much.

Finally recorded a really funny interview with the guys on the train back to Lewisham and managed to capture the gig on MP3 as well, which turned out better than I expected. Look out for wednesday’s PCP#168 which will have a Den special!

Spent an interesting hour listening to the folks at Missing People give a talk at work today, which I’ll be putting together into a podcast for internal use. They are starting to use social networks and new media to get messages out to people who have gone missing from their families, or from missing people who want to let their families know they’re OK.  Checkout the fact that they have pages at Myspace, Bebo or Facebook and you’ll see the sort of thing I mean.

They can also received emails from missing people, and scrambling of the email protects the anonymity until the person until they actually want to be found.

Particulary poignant was Nicki Durbin, mother of Luke Durbin, who is a missing person. Clearly a difficult issue to get up and talk about, Nikki gave a moving account of how she now believes her son is dead, but that she’ll never give up on him and declare him legally dead.

Had a great day and evening with my colleagues last night, with some team building and ten-pin bowling. I managed to win the first game, much to the surprise of everyone else, and a great example of age and experience over youthful enthusiasm!  Then I’m afraid age and experience took it’s toll, as the heavy ball became more and more difficult to handle.  So, German efficiency won through. Vorsprung Durch Technik? Maybe….

Almost completely lost my voice today as a result! (Well a result for the team, anyway!)

So, I’m sat here in the office with a load of my European colleagues on a training course I’ve arranged.  It’s great to know that the world is small enough to allow a Canadian Trainer (via the US) give a training class to a bunch of Europeans from Hungary, Sweden, Germany, Spain, France and England, here in the UK. It really is a small world…..!

Well, managed to see Milburn live again last night.  I was rather surprised to find that the gig wasn’t sold out, considering the “less well known” Reverend and the Makers played a sell-out there in July. Concorde2 seemed strangely empty whilst the support bands played, and The Envy Corps left me rather cold.

Nevertheless the guys played a fantastic set. I’m still amazingly impressed that these guys are so young and so damn good at their craft. Joe’s vocals were just excellent. Anyway, if you get a chance to see these guys – take it!  Here’s the video of “What will you do (when the money goes)?” to be going on with….

The album “These are the facts” comes out on Monday… and yes, I have it on pre-order!

I’m off to see another of those jolly Sheffield bands, Milburn this evening down at Concord 2 in Brighton, which is a smashing little venue on the seafront. This will be the second time I’ve seen them, the last being at the Leeds Festival 2006, when they played a storming performance in front of a home yorkshire crowd.

Not content with myspace, facebook, bebo and other social networks?  Well here’s one for you: bugroff.net offers a fantastic service that, quite simply cannot be beaten. So, what are you waiting for and join bugroff.net now!

While you’re at it, you may like to checkout Clever Little Pod as well.

Woo Hoo…. the Reverend and the Makers album is finally out today.

I got mine on pre-order of course and it’s great to hear some of the demo’s I’ve been enjoying for 18 months turned into fully mastered tracks.  I did notice that John had changed the lyrics of the second verse of the title track "The State of Things", which is a little strange, but doesn’t make it lose anything.

I have to say it gives me a really warm feeling that a band I’ve been championing for 18 months have finally made it. Not that I’m saying I had anything to do with their success – that’s down to John’s genious and the bands amazing performances.  No, it’s just great to know I was right: these guys are made for greatness. Sad thing is, I can probably not play their music any more, as they’ll not be podsafe anymore. Shame, but I’ll let the mainstream DJ’s take over and spread the love.

Did I her you say you’ve not bought the album yet?  Then do so…. and do it now!  You’ll not be disappointed!