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Blog of Funk

• 

  Another Month, Another Mayhem

  Posted: July 18th, 2008, 9:07am BST

  It's the full moon once again, for those of you are interested, and equally for those of you who don't notice these things, or who pay as much attention to them as you would the shape of any particular cloud or the reflection of an attractive body in a pavement puddle. Oh come on, don't say you weren't looking up whilst looking down.
  
  Being observant isn't the same as being suggestible, obviously, but if you can bring both of these qualities to bear at the same instant then you're really onto something. Those "random" synaptic blasts come up with the craziest shit, like putting a lighter-than-air inert gas on the menu of a NoHo café. Grilled helium cheese, eh, who'd have thunk it?
  
  
• 

  Alternative Accident

  Posted: July 14th, 2008, 6:28am BST

  Yesterday, GGF and I enjoyed a pleasant day on the south bank of the Thames. We cycled down took in a couple of art exhibitions, we saw a capoeira performance, we ate chocolate cake and drank black coffee whilst listening to people read out architectural treatises from inside a clear plastic inflatable bubble.
  
  Then we cycled into the west end, ate Japanese food at Misato in Wardour Street, sat in the sun for while. We bought tickets for Persepolis, that wonderful animated film by Marjane Satrapy and when we came out, after all that, we were pretty mellow.
  
  On the way down to the Thames we'd been less mellow. GGF had been a little bit annoyed that I was zooming ahead in my confident London cyclist's manner, and she called out, so we had stopped and sat on a cold stone wall and chatted until we got to the bottom of it. She was right - we were cycling together, I could afford to slow down, so I did. In fact, I took this as a sign for the day - slow down. I don't always feel the need to do this, but I really wanted to have a mellow day, so I figured the cold arse was worth it.
  
  On our way back, we headed up to Holborn and positioned ourselves at the front of the traffic queue diagonally opposite Central St Martin's Theatre, waiting for the lights to change. The cars had thinned out as the evening drew in. London lights have all been phased to allow plenty of time for pedestrians to cross the wide thoroughfares, and we were patiently waiting for the green light, with another cyclist to our right after the cars crossing from the right, next to the Kingsway Underpass had ceased.
  
  The lights changed, and the cyclist beside us moved off, so, still in not-so-fast mode, I started to move off after him before the cars started to hem us in. Something wasn't right, I heard GGF's shout of alarm, heard a loud car horn, looked up to see a black Ford practically on top of my front wheel, and a black face cursing me through the windscreen. I didn't catch it all, just the anger.
  
  Assessing the situation, I heard someone say, "The light is green!"
  
  "The light is green!" I sputtered, "You shot a red light!"
  
  "No I didn't fucking shoot a red light!" he yelled, and drove off.
  
  The lights were still green. I turned to see GGF's concerned face, indicated we should cross. We did, and I pulled up shortly afterwards, gave her a hug.
  
  "He was crazy!" she said, "the light was green!" "Yes, the light was green," I said, "But I am OK, and I could have died, so, I am really very happy."
  
  A little later on, I realised my bike chain needed some manual adjustment after the abrupt stop I'd made, and so we stopped again. I was using a chocolate wrapper to try to prevent oil getting all over my hands, and a guy walked up to me and, with a slightly wacked out but kind smile, said, "Do you want to use these?" and offered me a bunch of clean tissues which I gratefully accepted.
  
  In another universe, the man offered me the tissues as I went to cross the lights, distracting me for a second and slowing me down. The cyclist to my right was killed, we both witnessed his awful death, gave statements to the police, and evidence at the trial. In another, the car driver saw me too late, and veering out of control, he critically injured the driver of another car and paralysed a pedestrian, himself suffering only whiplash injuries. Later the press expressed outrage at the leniency of his punishment.
  
  In another, we never healed our argument, and I never slowed down. The car hit my front wheel, I was injured, I'm still in intensive care, fighting for my life. In yet another, he didn't brake, I didn't brake, and I went under the car. I'm now lying cold in a mortuary prior to being prepared for my funeral, my loved ones are grieving, and somewhere else the wacked out man still has a bunch of clean tissues in his pocket.
  
  
  
• 

  The Nokia Software Challenge

  Posted: July 7th, 2008, 5:56am BST

  I woke up thirty minutes ago at 5am. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of thinking something very precise and clear. This time, it was how to go about winning a competition in which I am no expert. I was thinking, well at least my beginning point is the profound knowledge of my ignorance.
  
  The competition was a strange one. I found myself in an executive reality-show scenario where the group of winners, suited and booted, young-ish uber-earnest types - presumably heat winners - were being given their final challenge, and this was to write the software which Nokia should have included in their smart phones.
  
  "That's right," said our dapper host, "all the functions which we all know should be in there..." - and here's where my freshly awoken mind erased all the details which might be really useful to recall, as I cannot now remember any of the detailed specifications which so impressed these candidates, but of course, they were wonderfully precise and very useful.
  
  Cut to a future scene. Deek sits in the wooden-framed window seat of his country house, surveying green manicured lawns stretching into misty woodland and lakes beyond.
  
  "So, is it true?" asks a curious voice off camera, "you literally dreamed up the groundbreaking suite of mobile software which made you your fortune, and coded the entire thing within a month?"
  
  "Just like the man said..."
  
  Except in the dream, I knew that I had none of the skills needed to construct the software, so for all my wit and understanding, I was going to have to rely on my connections, my ability to take shortcuts, and crucially, to persuade others to aid the cause of rejuvenating the Nokia smartphone capabilities. Quite what I was doing in this challenge surprised me not however, since many times in this life I have found myself in the position of having to take on tasks for which I have no adequate preparation, or even prior intention, so this kind of thing is grist to the mill.
  
  In real life, before bed I had spent some time setting up my Nokia N95 email client, so it was easy to spot the origins of this odd dream. What interests me now that I am awake is how in the dream I quickly cast aside any pretense of having powers beyond my actual experience, and instead, concentrated on devising a strategy that would allow me to have a chance of winning without having to actually take on an impossibly steep learning curve.
  
  As the dream dissipated into my sudden and complete awakening, I was thinking that the task was extremely likely to be completely and utterly beyond me, and wondering whether I should just relax and enjoy the month which I was supposedly about to dedicate to the struggle for mobile code supremacy. Enjoy it, surf the effort, and look to change the game into one I could win.
  
  Now that feels like good really advice.

Podcast Nation

• 

  Podcasting In China

  Posted: July 1st, 2008, 10:22am BST

  
  I saw this very interesting article at Podcasting News ...
  
  
  As mainstream media promotes itself to new heights (depths?) over the upcoming summer Olympic Games in Beijing, and with the International Olympic Committee raising hackles with its severe restrictions on blogging, podcasting and new media, it seemed like a good time to look at citizen media efforts coming from China itself. This week’s edition of the Beijing Review, an english-language publication about China, has an article about the growth in the use and popularity of podcasts in China.
  
  The article talks about the proliferation of blogs and bloggers in the country. They cite statistics from November 2007 that “one of every 30 Chinese citizens or [one in] four netizens was writing his or her own Web log.”
  
  Indeed, a flurry of blog, video and podcast activity by citizen-journalists in China cropped up in the aftermath of the devastating May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province. Blog, video, and podcast entries have progressed over the past six weeks from posting information about the disaster, to using these new media for inspiring and coordinating disaster relief efforts.
  
  The article continues,
  
  “Podcasting, which emerged at the end of 2004 in China with the launch of the first site in this regard, is also gaining popularity at a speed faster than that of any other Web service. According to official statistics, there were more than 200 podcasting sites in China in 2006, registering more than 10 million podcasters and having a viewership of 76 million. A lot of emergencies, news and gossips [sic] have been recorded live and made known to the public by home videos posted on the Internet. Prominent examples in recent years include those about the infidelity of a famous TV sport anchorman, which was brought to light by his wife at a public gathering, and a pet cat being tortured by a cruel man.
  
  “Due to the large number of users and wide coverage, blogs and podcasts have also become major outlets of public opinion. Many bloggers and podcasters use their posts to discuss public affairs, raise suggestions and air complaints. At the same time, a growing number of officials have opened blogs to do real-time communication with the public, which is widely hailed as a new way of government transparency.”
  
  The Beijing Review article says that most blogs and podcasts created and consumed in China, however, tend more toward entertainment than public opinion, government transparency, or citizen reporting of local news as in the Sichuan earthquake.

Blog of Funk

• 

  BBC Spinal Tap

  Posted: July 1st, 2008, 7:48am BST

  No matter how esteemed your corporation or your institution, there is always some wag who will find a way to usurp the carefully manicured lawn of your public image with a comedy molehill.
  
  Whilst catching up on the epic Murray v Gasquet Wimbledon tennis battle, I noticed this morning that the embedded BBC news player goes, just like Nigel Tufnel's Spinal Tap amplifiers, up to eleven.
  
  
  
  Well done BBC - my commendation for this elegant means of achieving superior audio quality. It is comforting to know that whenever I want that extra push over the cliff top, the BBC player (unlike all the others) can provide it.

FUNK: we make nice stuff happen

• 

  June Bugs

  Posted: June 30th, 2008, 8:00pm BST

  We've been hot on the heels of some evil spam hackers across all our Wordpress sites recently. Some of them were not compromised, only a couple were and no users passwords were stolen.
  
  Now we've upgraded to 2.5.1 we should be ok for while.

UKPA: UK Podcasters Association

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  NCFE Establishes GCSE Podcasting

  Fetched: June 30th, 2008, 5:53am BST

  The UK national awarding body, the NCFE has established a school grade in podcasting which is to sit alongside the many vocational awards in the Arts, media and publishing sector. From the Times: The UK’s first qualification in podcasting, in which pupils will learn how to make audio and video broadcasts available ...

Dean Whitbread: Poetry

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  Tobacco and Shit

  Posted: June 24th, 2008, 9:28am BST by Dean Whitbread

  Her elbows smell of tobacco
  and her shit smells of burnt toast
  She's dead, but in my dreams
  she's warm and real, no ghost
  She dresses up for going out,
  and down for going in
  And spits out all the little words:
  "Alright?" "ok?" "how you been?"
  
  She sits in sunlight shaving off
  the hardest parts which grow
  Removing and refining,
  a buffer for the ego
  Every day another
  opportunity for sleep
  Every night another dream,
  Slept calmly, slept deep.

Dean Whitbread

• 

  Creativity and Business: Priceless

  Posted: June 23rd, 2008, 8:27am BST

  Creativity is inherently revolutionary. Business is inherently exploitative.Is creativity inherently anti-business?
  
  These thoughts have been rolling around my mind like a marble in a sweet jar for some time now, as I ponder my own paths in creativity and in business.
  
  Business requires predictability, results and judges by the balance sheet. It demands efficiency, proof and reports. Business exploits ideas for profit. Business people have a platform, a position, and a salary. Creatives on the other hand have a trajectory, a vocation and a journey. Creativity generates ideas, celebrates strangeness, and messes with your head. Business makes money, maintains the market and will sell you whatever you will buy. Creativity wastes time, disrupts the market, and even if you can own it, it's probably worthless.
  
  The art business is the most conflicted in the world.
  
  Creative people alight upon something new and invest it with form and meaning, showing the way forward and lighting the path. Business people seek financial gain, and will gladly steal the patent for the lighting system.
  
  Not being able to sell your idea means nothing to the truly creative person. Ignoring trends is essential if you are to follow the thread of your inspiration, wherever it might lead, even to your personal extinction - although that is not essential. Creativity reinvents itself just by continuing - change is its only constant. Creativity demands the pointless. Blind alleys are the stuff of life. Purpose is a necessary sacrifice along the path of enlightenment. The search for enlightenment is packaged and sold as weekend breaks in the picturesque Cotswolds, £400 per person including organic meals.
  
  Thanks to television, radio and the internet, there is now little left of undivided attention, lingering examination, or even careful re-reading. All is subservient to the immediately useful, the entertaining or the alarmist. The timelines speed past like landscapes viewed from a train, remote, unvisited, unless robot search alert takes you back there. The windows of attention are shrinking as we stare more and more at screens, and less and less at the faces of individuals.
  

  "Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" - T. S. Eliot
  
  "Finding a businessman interested in the Arts is like finding chicken shit in your chicken salad" - Alice Neel

  
  

Blog of Funk

• 

  Accidental Realisations Are More Fun

  Posted: June 22nd, 2008, 10:48pm BST

  It was 23rd April, 2008, at quarter past three in the afternoon, in the heart of the Troodos mountains that I spouted accidental insight which made me stop in my tracks.
  
  I can't really explain it except to say I didn't mean to say anything at all profound. But, I realised at once that I really was being shown something that I ought to listen to, despite the fact it had come from my own mouth, and since returning, I've been working steadily on preparing my way forward.
  
  
• 

  Disillusionment

  Posted: June 22nd, 2008, 12:41pm BST

  The state of disillusionment is a frequently unhappy one, but disillusionment itself we should really welcome, as the freeing of oneself from falsehoods or wrong thinking is a necessary part of evolution, without which we are entrapped.
  
  Just thought I'd mention it.
• 

  Simple

  Posted: June 20th, 2008, 5:14pm BST

  Arnold Schoenberg the composer defined the creative process as "contracting into abundance".
  
  
  
  Innit.

UKPA: UK Podcasters Association

• 

  Comments, Please

  Fetched: June 20th, 2008, 9:23am BST

  Independent podcasters: the Guardian are holding an in-house "festival" called Fuure of Journalism - yesterday's topic was audio on the web. Your thoughts on this Guardian discussion on podcasting are welcome: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/digitalcontent/2008/06/future_of_journalism_internet.html

Blog of Funk

• 

  Funkpod Thirty Four

  Posted: June 18th, 2008, 7:08pm BST

  This could be the last Pod of Funk emanating from Funk Towers. Flat is back on the market, and tomorrow Men arrive to take Things away.
  
  
  
  Soon I will follow things, innit?
• 

  Annie's Horses

  Posted: June 17th, 2008, 5:36am BST

  There are certain things I know. One of them is when I have gone far enough down a certain path and must turn back. Responding to this is difficult only when people are following and the path is narrow. In which case, I might have to leave the path entirely in order to get back to where I need to be going without treading on people's toes.
  
  Another is when I should stand up to an accuser. Sometimes, I just need to remind myself not to give a flying fuck, no matter how intrusive, misguided or hateful the words, and to remember that whatever it is that weighs them down need not be any major concern of mine, however bad I might be already feeling about my own sins, past or present, real or imaginary, connected to them or not. Another one is that sometimes, no matter how innocent you actually are, or whether you meant to do harm, you should simply apologise if harm was the outcome.
  
  I recall how focused I was when I was at art college, and the day-to-day glorious absorption of the time. Ideas and techniques flowed freely and unjealously from person to person, space to space, evenings and mornings were communal experiences of discovery, books were passed around like joints, and this shared experience created a living fabric of experimentation and expression. In this environment I thrived, learning, tasting and testing new things, passing on as much as I came to know. The majority of that learning was gained from my peers, as one particularly bright and sensible tutor, Norman Brown, pointed out one fine, sunlit morning, factory glass reflecting the fringe of his words with his scraggly rollup cigarette, inspiring me with his unabashed honesty.
  
  From a starting point of clumsy social skills but quick intelligence, making many false starts I grew in confidence while at Middlesex, and as I did so, within a term or two lost an almighty dose of the ruinous self-doubt which had hitherto prevented me from expanding my heart, my mind and my prospects. For the first time in my life I was able to simply be, for good and bad, and my spontaneous self emerged blinking and mostly smiling. I started to glow with the red-orange of the sodium streetlights, which I had spent the preceding years oil painting into my semi-urban night landscapes.
  
  One September day it was my fellow housemate Graham Gussin's birthday, and I took it into my head to create a large birthday card for him in primary colours. Although he hardly used his allocated workspace except to meet tutors and discuss earnestly with them the meaning of meaning and the poetry of poetry, sharing trendy brown licorice-flavoured cigarette papers, he was in college that day, and in my extravagant and affectionate way I wanted to amuse him and celebrate. I took an A3 piece of paper and some water-based acrylic paints to his space, and proceeded to paint there, in a deliberately naive and supposedly comic fashion a horse - a very bad horse - upon which I wrote, "A GeeGee for G.G." Ha ha ha. Satisfied with my tribute, I grabbed a coffee, and returned to my more serious endeavours in my own space a thirty or so yards away.
  
  Twenty minutes later I became aware that Annie, one of the cute art students in my year, was upset. She was being comforted as she sat sobbing, bright, visible tears dripping off her nose, splashing onto the paint-spattered concrete. What was up, I asked her female friend, and to my surprise got nothing but a filthy look.
  
  Perturbed I ventured nearer and discovered that Annie had interpreted my entire horse-painting episode as direct mockery, an out-of-the-blue, unwarranted personal attack upon her personally. The fact that I didn't even see that she was there as I gaily painted my birthday card was lost upon her. I had only vaguely noticed that she had been painting horses for the past few weeks, inspired by Chagall. I did not know how insecure pursuing her muse had made her feel over the preceding months, surrounded by clever, intellectual, Guardian-reading students who had sneered at her simple representationalism - I wasn't one of them. She didn't figure in my scene, I barely knew her, except to say hi, and admire her curves.
  
  I really was aghast. Did she really think I was singling her out for some kind of mocking plagiarism? What kind of person would I have to be to be able to enact such an elaborate stunt? She was of course the centre of her own universe, but who was I to know how low she had fallen, crouched into her defensive posture?
  
  I stumbled through my explanation, which, sincerely given, did much to reassure her. Annie was a good-natured girl, and we made up easily, with her laughing at herself. I was glad of it and always had a soft spot for her afterwards.
  
  To be so misinterpreted that day has stuck with me ever since. I can still remember the sick feeling of guilt which fell upon me like a winter coat. When it has happened since, I remember Annie and her quick kindness, she who taught me the lesson of forgiveness for imagined slights, and showed me how blind one can be to other people's sensitivities, especially when on some single-minded mission which has no reference or relevance to them.
  
  But the injustice of being singled out for having done wrong when no wrong has been done has always sat badly with me, and even though the lesson of apologising even though the mistake was made elsewhere is a valuable one, kept on the shelf alongside the twin tomes, "Fuck It" and "Fuck Off", sometimes I'm still torn between which pages to turn, and even whether to read the book, or simply, like a Paris surrealist, to throw it, aiming for the head.
  
  
• 

  Pâtisserie, Boulangerie, Charcuterie

  Posted: June 13th, 2008, 1:10pm BST

  Went to Paris this week - it was just like Paris - large, busy, bourgeois and full of itself. I had a day of business, an evening of socialising, a morning of planning, followed by an afternoon of leisure. Rescued from the rush by my evening train, I took myself off to Montmartre, climbing up La Butte from Pigalle, in the heat, carrying a none-too-light bag containing a change of clothes and my laptop.
  
  I found myself in Place Émile Goudeau, a blessed space surrounded by tourists and film crews and sun. I sat and breathed in this shadowed pause, letting the city sink in to my old London bones, before climbing steadily up through the tourist trap which surrounds the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur.
  
  I found myself in the courtyard of the church of St Pierre - St Peter, the rock upon which all churches stand; after a moment's hesitation, I entered the building and immediately felt very much at ease.
  
  
  
  I entered a stone building almost 1,000 years old, the quiet relative of the gaudy Basilica around the corner. In contrast to the summer heat, over-priced drinks and busy cash registers outside, it was deep, cool and peaceful.
  
  I walked once around the church, then sat on a left pew with space all around me. Not much to see, really, except ancient stonework, and modern stained glass. Off the nave, there was a library, through a large, impressive door, which after five minutes opened up suddenly at normal volume, a small child and a middle-aged man being greeted with love by the librarian, a grey-haired woman with a bright face.
  
  A few visitors walked respectfully and slowly down the aisles, three young asian tourists making use of the wooden benches near the altar to repack their rucksacks and sort out their packed lunches. Two elderly women were a little in front of me and to my right, in a bubble of their own, one of them grasping the other's shoulder and speaking directly and precisely into her ear, ceaselessly whispering earnest words of comfort while the other listened and mourned. It was a touching scene, a truly valuable function of religion, played out in churches since time immemorial.
  
  The noises abated, except for the murmur of solace ahead of me. I considered praying, remembering the last time I had entered a church seeking guidance and been promptly given it. This time, with no specific need in mind, I tried to dismiss my selfish desires and ask for guidance. Shutting my eyes, I found it difficult at first to remove myself from my focused concerns, so I just continued to wait, and to stay calm, to contemplate, and to listen, which was easy in the space. I felt unrushed, and in no need of reply, just wondering if there was anything I needed to know. My mind slowly quietened. It was as restful as lapping waves on the seashore.
  
  I stayed in the church for thirty minutes or so, and eventually I did notice something emerging from my thoughts which if not a blazoned message, was certainly something I needed to consider carefully, attached to a subject which has been consuming me of late.
  
  
  
  I left more content than I had entered, thankful and slightly surprised, wondering how I was going to explain my insight to other people, and realising it really didn't matter.
• 

  21st Century Funk: Black Feeling

  Posted: June 6th, 2008, 9:07pm BST

  I must share with you the album I am most enjoying right now. I've played some of the tracks from this excellent compilation on Pod of Funk several times, but the album is wonderfully consistent and rewarding as a whole. Here I am right now, cup of darjeeling to hand, enjoying the summer evening and this wonderful, soulful, funky music. Shades of latin enhance the best piano and brass playing I've heard on these re-worked old tunes, old style grooves lovingly rekindled for modern ears. Retro funk for the 21st Century. Blog of Funk Recommended!

  
  
• 

  Out

  Posted: June 5th, 2008, 9:12pm BST

  Cliques - London is full of them, based on class, race, sexuality, political persuasion, musical preference, district of residence, etc. There are cliques formed around information technology, and within that, devices, and within that, software, and of course, the software which is designed around this habit of human herd-formation is "social" software.
  
  Do you have the N95? And if so, do you run this application or that application? Do you connect via WiFi or 3G, and if 3G then which network are you on? Are you online 18 hours a day, and if not, why not? Do you subscribe to this newest of shiny web platforms? Are you inside, an alpha tester? Then again, are you really inside, part of the inner-inner-circle or just inside for their convenience, in order to boost the kudos of exclusivity?
  
  It seems to me that so many human interactions are based upon this formula that it must be part of our clannish baboon-like instincts, pre-civilised behaviour stemming from the limbic system, subliminal and covert signals designed to reassure - you, yes YOU - you are in the select band, and those other people, why, we are superior to them.
  
  So, are you in, or out? Didn't you get the invitation? I'm not the kind of person to look on passively, indeed, I'm likely to comment, intervene, expose, which makes people feel uncomfortable, so I guess that means I'm out.
  
  My feelings are truly mixed. I like some of the people, but I see it happening and it makes me sad. I don't have to join in, but I watch people who are intelligent enough to know better showing their weakness and insecurity by letting people down. I am so deeply uncomfortable with this ongoing process of exclusion - for that is what it is - because it leads to smugness, bitching, snide jokes, denial, scapegoats, pogroms and eventually genocide down the line.
  
  It's all about stigmatising the "other" - so that you can feel better about yourself, and I don't need to do that because, deep down, I feel good and like James, I say it loud.
• 

  Nuts Inside, Olives Outside

  Posted: May 27th, 2008, 1:44pm BST

  So there were these two kids sitting on a bench, and one of them was explaining olives to the other, while the other was proving difficult to convince.
  
  "Olives," said the bigger kid, "they are Just Like Nuts. You Don't Eat All The Nut. You Only Eat the Soft Bit IN THE MIDDLE."
  
  "OK," said the smaller kid, dubiously.
  
  "See, the bit in the middle is tasty, yeah?"
  
  "Sort of."
  
  "It IS! It's nice. But, it's like nuts."
  
  "It's easy when they're in bags." The small kid's plaintive voice stood for a wide world of advertised convenience. The big kid was using a sledgehammer to crack the nut of the smaller kid's ignorance.
  
  "Yes, but, they are nicer when you get them fresh, innit? Like Christmas," said the big kid with inexorable logic, and he stretched out his legs, and gazed about them, satisfied that the argument was well and truly won.
  
  There was a pause. Then the small kid said,
  
  "But, you said this before, yeah, and I still can't swallow it."
  
  Flabbergasted and exasperated, the bigger kid said,
  
  "Well, why not? Just chew it up."
  
  "I've tried," said the smaller kid, "but it's too hard. Look."
  
  He pulled a small, dark, oval object from the recesses of his jeans and held it up between thumb and grubby forefinger.
  
  "See? How am I supposed to eat that?"
  
  Dawning was a moment of gentleness, as the bigger boy realised his mistake. Beaming and generous, he lowered his voice, and taking the olive stone, said proudly and confidentially, with a gastronomic flourish,
  
  "Ah, you see, that's where you've got it wrong, mate. Nuts, you chuck the outside, eat the inside. Olives, you eat the outside, chuck the inside."
  
  A deft flick of his strong wrist sent the inedible olive stone flying across the grass, where it was immediately siezed upon by a couple of flapping, pecking pigeons, who took some time to discover that fact. A silent air of deep calm descended on the boys, as the far distant Mediterranean sea lapped at their feet, and sunlight broke through, warming their brows.
  
  

Dean Whitbread

• 

  Gore Vidal - American Hero

  Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 8:26am BST

  
  
  What I love about the United States is that they have produced people of the stature of Gore Vidal. I wonder how many more sharp, fiercely intelligent, independent thinkers will arise from that nation.

Blog of Funk

• 

  Funkpod Thirty Three

  Posted: May 22nd, 2008, 2:53pm BST

  
  
  Just the weather for some funk - it's warming up again. It's been well over a month since the last podcast, but though they may be irregular they sure be funky. Coincidentally, it's my significant other's birthday very soon, and she will be 33 years old.
  
  Grab it here!
• 

  Drug Dreams

  Posted: May 20th, 2008, 9:54am BST

  It's been a long time since I loosened my tenacious ego's hold on my consciousness by indulging in drugs of any kind, with the noble exception of caffeine as delivered in a tasty brown beverage, which in any case serves only to temporarily sharpen the mind whilst eventually exhausting the body. Ninety nine per cent of the time I am certain this self-control is a good state of affairs, but every so often I wonder whether total abstinence is such a good thing.
  
  I can easily point to the benefits of not drinking alcohol, not smoking tobacco, not seeking the comfort of cannabis, nor self-medicating with the great, varied range of pharmaceutical candies which are easily available in Britain. My life is stable and my moods are manageable. My body is fit and my sleep is sound. My friendships are not based on a co-dependent self-annihilation, and that raw, inflamed, eventually insatiable greed for sensory overload is refreshingly absent. Not that I dwelt long in these tangled jungles of desire; but visit them I did, from time to time, somehow managing to avoid becoming prey to the beasts who inhabit those dark spaces.
  
  To fall back now I would have to risk the balance I have worked hard to achieve both mentally and physically. It wasn't so long ago that I was told it would be necessary for me to remain on thyroid-controlling drugs for the rest of my born days. I recall the doctor who discharged me, fit and well, casually letting me know that the drugs I was on for eighteen months would probably have had the "side effect" of damaging my bone marrow... I am content with tea, meditation, exercise and acupuncture. My sex life is good, my work is improving. I feel good with myself for having taken the decision and stuck to it to lead a cleaner life.
  
  Still, I dream. We discussed, my artist friend and I, last night in the pub, she with a small beer, me with a back coffee, the necessity and the pain of restraint. We debated the balance to be found between letting go and holding on. She told us a tale of Easter indulgence which left her reeling and which made us all laugh. The following weekend, she said, on the same tip, someone had ended up in hospital. We needed a blast, a boogie, we decided, a night out, music would do it, companionship and moving our bodies. We parted, and later I slept peacefully under the full moon and I dreamed of getting high.
  
  In the dream I questioned my actions, even as I found myself repeating long discarded behaviour, going through the embedded ritual, savouring the anticipation, the method and the hit. I was gloriously and thoroughly stoned, my heart sang and my eyes burned, my pirate nature was extravagant, jubilant and victorious. Retracing the old steps, I felt the guilty rush and experienced the mental meltdown, and though fast asleep, I knew I would regret it later.
  
  Except, later, I woke up, with a clear head, next to the woman I love, had a cup of tea, and wrote this.
• 

  Listen: Shut The Fuck Up!

  Posted: May 16th, 2008, 12:12pm BST

  "I really hate it when..."
  
  How many times have you said that recently? "I really hate it when... " I've been noticing that it's a thought-pattern that increases with stress. I really hate it when I get that stressed that I start sentences with those five words. I really hate it when I start to feel that it really isn't worth bothering to be positive, and I really hate it when people listen to me loudly, vigorously hating things - anyone would think I was an aggressive, neurotic, abusive, resentful person all the time, instead of just on the odd occasion when it really is necessary.
  
  It's not just me, it's other people. I really hate it when I think I know what people are thinking and it isn't very nice stuff about me. I hate it even more when I am proved right, but know that they are still very, very wrong. Because, I'm a nice person! A really nice person! I'm the kind of person anyone would want to hang out with, generous, kind, affable, witty, inclusive... the long list of attributes precious beads on a string I hang around my neck like a noose of social kindness.
  
  I really, really hate it when people can't see past their own aggressive, neurotic, abusive, resentful traits and look bang smack at mine. I want to say to them: Listen: Shut the fuck up with your accusations that you haven't made but I know that you are thinking! Shut THE FUCK UP with your snide insinuations of superiority! Sometimes I walk away from these situations. Other times I sigh, and reply condescendingly, but even then the amount that escapes is miniscule, tiny. I really hate it when that happens.
  
  I really hate it when I hear myself being nice, warm, and smooth to some eager capitalist, when what I'm really thinking is, what a wanker. I bet they pick their nose, I bet they cheat their expenses. I bet they cheat on their partner and lie to their friends and think that's big. I bet they masturbate and then (like 25% of the population) don't wash their hands and then they fucking shake mine and smile a big, cheesy smile. And I'm supposed to smile back at them and their teeth, and not think of the microscopic traces of their genital DNA which now attach to my palms. I really hate that I'm supposed not to shudder when I think of this. I really hate suppressing a shudder when a shudder will at least rescue me from the urge to vomit my breakfast all over their suit.
  
  But most of all, I really hate it when all I can think about is my own petty responses when there are so many more serious things to think about like the end of life as we know it.
  
  
  
• 

  Baishakhi Mela, Brick Lane

  Posted: May 12th, 2008, 9:10am BST

  
  
  This was a fun event, and a great way to spend a few hours on a warm spring day in east London.
• 

  Two Cups of Tea

  Posted: May 9th, 2008, 11:35am BST

  I sometimes find myself going calmly along a path of apparent insanity, as if it is the most conventional, well-ordered and sensible route to fine achievement that I could possibly have chosen. This morning, I awoke in a good mood, still rested from my lengthy April break, engendered by several warm days of London summer sun, buoyed up with the unassailable feeling that everything is going extremely well.
  
  I slept deeply after being beautifully pampered as a result of going early to bed, having avoided evening television, which these days I find disturbing. My simple rule of thumb: any programme with either politicians or Bruce Willis, switch off. I do not want lies, explosions or Hollywood blood clogging my mental arteries.
  
  I'm feeling quite fit and well, despite occasional bouts of sneezing brought on by early season hay fever (why is this not called "pollen fever"? - I see no fields of hay in inner London...) I have some sorting out to do with various business affairs, and I have some inroads to make, all of which are fairly unproblematic and of course now I am thankful for the great efforts I have made previously, since getting up frightfully early, travelling the world, explaining my particular creative take on internet media, and giving people good advice on podcasting seems to be paying off. I am enjoying my interactions with my friends and colleagues, who all seem to be talented, friendly and capable.
  
  My underlying concerns are not too disturbing either, self-appointed tasks consisting of communicating the inner changes that I experienced in the mountains to the people in this and other cities who actually need to know. It's the age-old clash between urban and rural, as expressed via a boy from Croydon. And all this as a preamble to explain, no, to demonstrate my apparent sanity and level-headedness and to go some way towards proving to you, dear reader, that I don't generally do apparently insane things, like make two cups of tea at once, even though there is only me here.
  
  Now it's totally clear to me how this came about. First, the initial cup of tea, made by GGF in a morning rush, was lukewarm and rather weak - unsatisfactory. Please note: this situation is often reversed, and we wait upon one other in a fair and balanced way, frequently attaining high standards both culinary and domestic. Since I love her, and she loves me, thus I have great compassion - particularly today, as she is I know still dazed from the excellent play we enjoyed before crashing out, stunned and exhausted by the sublime physical expression of the love we share. So, a model of tact, I said nothing, and merely waited until she was well into the clothes-donning part of her leaving sequence.
  
  Then I went into the kitchen, and prepared my own cup of tea. Except that I calmly made TWO CUPS, as if compensating for the bad first cup. Making one cup immediately after the other, I can understand, but two at once? Then I get a hot cup and a going-on-lukewarm-again second cup. Actually, I rescued this outcome by using one of the ceramic lids which turn our cups and mugs into mini-teapots, and so, I'm drinking it now, and it's not too bad. But why did I make two cups at once? What was I thinking? I just found myself doing it, and went along with it, as if it were the most natural, normal thing in the world! For whom exactly am I making the second cup? Me! Me, and then me. Right. Right.
  
  Now this may not seem all that insane to you, but I am convinced that this is how it begins - small actions, apparently insane, cropping up in the day-to-day melange of decisions and actions and consequences we call life, bizarre, counter-productive, non-sequiturs going unquestioned and unchecked. The brain, the regulating organ which is expected to keep us on track goes into a kind of "what the heck" mode, and the next thing you know, you're driving on the wrong side of the road with an oil-powered high-velocity wall of steel and glass moving towards you at a combined speed of 200 miles per hour, you're stepping off the very high balcony and whistling a jaunty tune as you cash in your kinetic energy and plummet fifteen floors into concrete, you're balancing the mains-powered music machine on the edge of your bubble bath...
  
  Right now, I can live with the second cup of tea, enjoy it, feel good about myself. But what if this happens after some inconsolable badness has happened to me, when I am haggard and sleep-deprived after a mind-numbing credit-crunch of an argument with some deadbeat bigot, after the best bet I ever placed comes stumbling in last on broken legs and is shot dead at the finish, and I'm reeling like a tanked-up homeless piss-smelling drunkard looking for smack to take the edge off the brew? What then?
  
  This is the fabric of the world - we are trapped beneath the warm duvet of stultifying convention and scared to be without it. Like Reggie Perrin, who faked his own death to escape, after ordering ravioli followed by ravioli followed by ravioli until he was sick, what we need is not more of what we like, but the freedom not to care about what we know to be valueless.
  
  
  
  
  
• 

  I Feel Fine

  Posted: May 4th, 2008, 7:00pm BST by Deek Deekster

  No really, I do. Fascists are taking over the world and we're all doomed to starve, trapped inside a polluted, depleted ecosphere, but I do feel absolutely fine. Nothing can shake my fabulously good mood, because I know how to handle the situation:
  
  Go with the flow
  
  
  
  The flow is towards the sea, and so upon my small boat, I am carried down towards that great inevitable ocean, containing all things. The flow is to the peaks, and so upon my miraculous hang-glider, warm air currents float me upwards until I rest upon the smooth, breast-like surface of the welcoming mountain top, from where I may view the entire visible universe. Oh yes, the forces are no stranger to me, and I shall not resist them.
  
  But I can do better than that. Witnessing the oncoming rise of the right in Britain, in this newly conservative world I now inhabit I've decided to anticipate this more punitive, curmudgeonly, old-fashioned, archaic, and fundamentally anti-celebratory culture by initiating a new regime of financial penalties for activities that are deemed to be herewith unacceptable.
  
  As from today, there shall be non-appealable, mandatory, on-the-spot fines for:
  

  • Public Nose-Picking - this habit is revolting, and people simply seem to have developed a complete lack of respect for public decency;
  
  
  • The Playing of Loud Popular Music on Mobile Phones - opera will of course be exempt;
  
  
  • The Wearing of Informal Clothing - outside of working class areas, and in all shopping centres and places of public assembly;
  
  
  • The Making, Watching or Participating in So-Called "Reality" Television Shows - these set an entirely bad example to our young people and so will be replaced by coverage of Ascot, Badminton and other pre-eminent equestrian events;
  
  
  • Frog Hunting - this torrid stain on our nation France must be stamped out!
  
  
  • Sirens - police, ambulance, fire - all banned, to be replaced with the music of string quartets

  
  
  
  
• 

  The Hammer Falls

  Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 9:21am BST by Deek Deekster

  As newshounds trumpet the worst Labour election results in 40 years, and Londoners contemplate the ghastly spectre of a TV personality with a history of public idiocy and insults taking control of the capital, the left in Britain is reeling.
  
  The journalists' tendency is to believe completely in the success of the dumbing down of the past twenty years, but the UK population is more far savvy than the media and politicians give us credit for being. We remember, we assess, we are sensible and cynical, and we are not fooled by newspapers or television to the extent that their acolytes believe we are. We come to our own conclusions, and so we have.
  
  No longer can these results be blamed on anti-Blair feeling, I read somewhere. Oh yes they can - do they really think we are such idiots? The current administration "stood shoulder to shoulder" with that particular conscientious Christian soldier while 200,000 innocents were cut down and slaughtered for the Democratic West's oil greed, the carnage continues daily, and we have not forgotten. Politicians decry the lack of respect our armed forces personnel are given, but fail to mention the dishonourable war they sent them to fight. Among decent people the guilt lingers, and since decent working people vote Labour, Labour will suffer for that until they sincerely revisit their morality.
  
  We know that the change of face does not mean a change of heart. We know that these proto-socialists have done too little to bring about the changes we voted them in to effect - the system of government itself partially, badly reformed, insufficient attention given to ecology, a decade of glib assurances about the economy now turning sour, food prices rising, and now the very poorest suffering with the removal of the 10p tax bracket. Neither did people like the shoe-in of Brown for Blair - even though that is the way things are done in this country, we feel that we want a say in who runs our country. Dour Brown does not cut it - he's just not likeable enough on a human level, and people cannot relate to him, even as they did to Butcher Blair.
  
  Politicians ultimately think only of themselves and retaining power. We all know that by now, Labour are thoroughly corrupted and will have to go.
  
  The terrible truth is that the right, gathered hungrily in the corner, and now edged by real fascists - the ultra-right in their shiny new PR suits, glossing up their policies like the French Front National - are preparing to take the country, and they know that barring accidents, the slide back to them is gathering pace and will probably be achieved within two years.
  
  Having betrayed their core vote, the British left is now in disarray, and like Italy, France and Germany, will soon cease to be electable. A new generation, oblivious to the penury and destruction of Conservatism (witness the USA's last eight years) will vote Cameron, that rich, pretty boy, pretending to give a fuck, into office; and the rich and privileged, the bigots and the bullies, the oppressors of the weak, marginalised and voiceless, will be back in power.
  
  Which gives me 24 months to get the hell out of here!
  
  
  

Dean Whitbread

• 

  I'm Voting For Aled Fisher, Green Party

  Posted: April 30th, 2008, 11:14pm BST

  
  
  Aled Fisher (LSE SU General Secretary-Elect) at 21 is the youngest candidate in this year's London Assembly elections, which are to be held tomorrow, so I thought I'd check him out. He seems to have good values, has succeeded in raising standards of pay for poorly paid college cleaners, and has been involved in twinning the LSE SU with An-Najah University, in Nablus, north of Ramallah, so he gets my vote.
• 

  Whatever Happened to March?

  Posted: April 30th, 2008, 1:30pm BST

  Rise and Shine happened to March... I was so involved in making this show, that I completely forgot my once-a-month post to this, the driest of all my blogs. And I've only just remembered that this is the last day of April... but then, I've been on holiday, so that's a permissable exception.
  
  After one hectic month, I was very happy with our pilot show. We proved that the concept of a live, news-based songwriting show works really well. It generated the interest we thought it would, raising over $1000 US in sponsorship and song downloads. Plus, we have a whole series of songs presented in a brand new context - more about that later. Most importantly, we have a road-tested original show format, and people to who want to franchise it, which is a really nice thing to return to...

Blog of Funk

• 

  Lemon Meringue Fever

  Posted: April 29th, 2008, 5:09pm BST by Deek Deekster

  
  
  I don't want any mizness
  I just want a little bit of business
  No champagne, just fizzness
  And a witchy-wizard kind of whizzness
  
  Open a bottle, screwtop
  Shake it out lovely fruitypop
  Nice big boots, no flip-flop
  Deep breath, count down, make it stop
  
  
  

Podcast Nation

• 

  Podcast Ads 7 Times As Effective As Television Ads

  Posted: April 28th, 2008, 9:44am BST

  New data from Podtrac and TNS suggests that podcasts may be a much more powerful advertising platform than television.
  
  The companies studied podcast advertising from February 2006 to March 2008 across multiple product categories and ad types. Unaided awareness for podcast ads was 68%, compared with 21% for streaming video and 10% for television.
  
  "The studies showed a 73% increase in likelihood to use or buy an advertised product," said Velvet Beard, vice president at Podtrac. "The studies showed that 69% of audience members have a more favorable view of in-show advertisers."
  
  "Podcasting delivers a level of end-user engagement that is rare in today’s multi-format world," said Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer.
  
  There are many reasons why podcasts could be more effective than television. People are sick of the barrage of ads on television, so they routinely tune them out. Podcast advertising is typically much less intrusive than television advertising. It also has the potential to be much more targeted and relevant.
  
  Because these stats come from Podtrac, a company with a vested interest in podcast advertising, marketers are likely to want to see these numbers independently reproduced.
  
  Article taken from Podcasting News

Blog of Funk

• 

  Back In Blighty Day

  Posted: April 27th, 2008, 6:15pm BST by Deek Deekster

  Today is Back In Blighty Day, in the Grand Calendar of All Things.
  
  Our carefully booked flight was supposed to deliver us at 10pm on Saturday, but the BA jet coming to get us broke down on the way and had to land in Venice, stranding about 50 people in Cyprus. We were stuck in 5 star accommodation in Lemesos (Limmasol) overnight and caught a flight leaving at 5am and arriving at 8.30am UK time. Turns out that had we arrived as intended, we'd have walked right into some heavy violence, at just about the time there was a stabbing and shooting on the Holloway Road. My neighbours and local shopkeeper told us all about it - most of the lower stretch of Holloway Road was blue-lined and Bobby-shut as we tried to go and re-stock with provisions upon our happy, hungry return. We went a different route. I feel strangely to be so relaxed about absolutely everything and it makes me realise what stress I am forced to accept in order to live in snobbish, status-obsessed, vain, anxious modern London.
  
  I didn't miss internet at all while I was away, nor news, nor family, nor friends. I missed making music and playing backgammon, so I bought a cheap Chinese acoustic six-string guitar which GGF has decided is now hers and regularly uses to learn chords, and a backgammon set, which we played regularly and competitively and which we left at the villa for all to play and enjoy. We read a lot, walked, conversed, swum, ate good food, and, in our cheap, economical hire car, we explored the island with it's fabulous east-meets-west natural abundance, its arid heat and its strange schismic, subliminal violence, its generous, charming, honest, greedy, careless, philosophical, ex-colonial inhabitants.
  
  I really appreciated the difference in thinking time that this brief interlude afforded me, time for deep thinking which just doesn't occur when the cylinders are firing keeping everyone else happy. Perspective has been achieved and I have had some realisations and revelations, including one spectacular moment high in the Troodos mountains in the centre of Cyprus. There arose a spontaneous moment of truth such as only comes when you are unprepared and mistakenly believing you are doing something else, in which all was revealed to me. And when I say all, I mean all.
  
  Better still - due to the wonders of technology and the nature of fate, I made a video as this enlightenment actually happened. Now as you, dear reader, may or may not know, this is not the place for that kind of rich metaphysical experience - I run a personal podcast for that over at deekdeekster.com - and soon I shall post it up there, but not right now as I am still putting things in order.
  
  Since I got back four-ish hours ago, aside from opening a stack of snail mail, I've checked over 1500 emails (not spam), filtered the same number of emails (spam / unwanted), deleted a couple of dozen spammy Twitter users who have decided to follow me in the past three and a half weeks, and now I'm uploading around 200MB of photographs to Flickr. I also received a most marvellous present in the post which I am totally enjoying - the new Unio and Petitio album, entitled Cheers fanx ta - which if you've a mind for sheer anarchic fun and audio beauty, I urge you to purchase.
  
  Food is ready - time to eat!
  
  
  
• 

  Water and Junk

  Posted: April 20th, 2008, 4:58pm BST by Deek Deekster

  What ho, brethren. Still here in sunny Cyprus and experiencing water shortages and land development frenzy as the locals attempt to build as many concrete houses and sell as many plots of land as they possibly can before the VAT deadline - which is July 1st. Cyprus joined Euroland January 1st 2008 and VAT is an EU requirement on land sales, but they sensibly negotiated a six month respite to avoid stalling the relatively buoyant economy. So, the Euro currency is in but the laws are delayed, and just as well when building and development are 20% of GDP.
  
  What none of the local headlines are saying is the effect that this huge splurge of urban expansion and fast-track modernity is having on the local ecosystem. Cyprus hasn't had rain for many months and even hospitals are suffering water rationing. It was of course not a real hospital which found its taps running dry, but merely a clinic in the old Limassol hospital, housing (among several other things) a drug rehabilitation centre. This scandalous situation took many days to remedy. Meanwhile people living in districts high up in the hills and mountains are not recieving even their ration of water.
  
  We've coped pretty well due to the fact we're living in a luxury villa with tanks on the roof (most new houses have these, along with efficient twin solar panels) and so on the days when drinking water is out, we're still able to shower and wash up, and we drink from the litre bottles of water we stash when the drinking water is running, which is around 50% of the time. But we also have a swimming pool, which aside from the appalling loss of life it wreaked upon the insect life when we pulled off the covers (they seem to have got the message now, for I'm just fishing out the dumbest of shield bugs, small spiders, and the odd millipede now - or maybe we killed most of them on days one and two!) takes up gallons and gallons of the precious stuff.
  
  Still, all around where we're staying, the building continues. Yesterday I was woken at 7am by the sound of an earth moving truck, and a medium to large caterpillar bulldozer, which proceeded to spoil my early morning appreciation of the wonderful bird life by removing a good proportion of the local shrubbery and creating a moon landscape between us and the building site we've adjusted to already. I became disconsolate, depressed. I come away from London to relax and find myself thinking deep thoughts about humanity and greed and brutality and lack of knowledge and respect for nature. As I top up and chlorinate the pool.
  
  The rest of the countryside round about is agricultural; orange and lemon groves, olives and artichokes, and the scent is so intoxicating we wind down the windows of the little efficient Nissan Sunny we've rented and breathe it down into our city-tarnished lungs to keep it there forever.
  
  But look closer and you'll see junk everywhere - this is a working environment and farmers are the least sentimental about nature you'll ever meet - not just empty agrochemical containers and spent shotgun cartridges, but abandoned fridges, food wrappers, coca-cola cans, dumped vehicles and the whole appalling detritus of modern living tipped without care into any available gully. Every roadside is littered with cigarette packets and lighters and metal and more food packaging; and every beach, even the protected ones where turtles nest, has a high tide mark of multi-coloured plastic which makes me wonder whether there is any concept of nature guardianship operating here, and feel embarassed to be a part of the culture which is creating a rubbish tip from this paradise.
  
  
  
  
• 

  Cyprus Hots Up

  Posted: April 14th, 2008, 11:17am BST by Deek Deekster

  I have ten minutes left in this internet cafe so this is going to be a case of speed blogging.
  
  After a week, I cracked - in a nice way, like a mature cheese - and bought a guitar. I could sense my fingertips becoming soft. After a month of playing for hours a day, they were hot-coffee-cup-pick-up hardened and I didn't want to lose that. So I found one of two music shops and bought a cheap Chinese steel-string acoustic, a capo and a set of strings.
  
  Now Cypriot detente is a fact, looking forward to visiting the north of the island in a couple of days, for a couple of nights. Also it's now hot enough to justify taking the cover off the pool and adding some chlorine to make it nice and baby safe.
  
  Oh the sunsets the fruit the birds and the British... but actually it's a lot of fun, my first real proper holiday in over two years, and just in time for my precious insanity...
  
  
  
• 

  Polis

  Posted: April 8th, 2008, 3:59pm BST by Deek Deekster

  

  -------------------------------------------------
• 

  The Real Cyprus

  Posted: April 8th, 2008, 3:39pm BST by Deek Deekster

  I've come to Polis, the Greek north of the island to get away from the
  plastic which is strewn everywhere around Paphos. It's been a
  delightful and successful journey. I'm amusing myself by observing the
  clash of old and new, rich and richer, functional and decrepit. And
  moblogging, as I drink thick coffee and wait for my grilled
  mediterranean fish, silver bream.

  --
  Sent from Google Mail for mobile | mobile.google.com

  [funk.co.uk]

UKPA: UK Podcasters Association

• 

  UKPA Podcast

  Fetched: April 5th, 2008, 3:59pm BST

  We've released the videos from last Saturday's sessions at the Guardian as two long videos available here. Also see James Cridland's notes on the sessions.

Blog of Funk

• 

  The Beauty Of Potato

  Posted: March 31st, 2008, 9:19am BST by Deek Deekster

  Potato is a handsome creature
  A tasty skin is his best feature
  And when invited to your feast
  You will agree he's quite a beast
  
  He'll kiss you with his crusty lips
  He'll lay across your stomach, hips
  Lumpy, fluffy, straight or wavy
  Mashed he'll soak up all your gravy
  
  Potato is a lovely lad
  As a foodstuff not half bad
  Baked, boiled, chipped and fried
  He feels great when he's inside.
  
  
  
  
  

UKPA: UK Podcasters Association

• 

  UKPA / ORG Guardian Sessions: Qik Videos

  Fetched: March 30th, 2008, 5:13pm BST

  Guardian Session 1: Regulation and Podcasting Guardian Session 2: Music and Podcasting
• 

  Live Video Stream from the Guardian

  Fetched: March 29th, 2008, 5:46pm GMT

  This is a test. If it works we'll be able to bring events in real time to members who cannot attend our events. During today's event we should be able to interrupt the pre-recorded video playback with a live stream from the venue. You can also use the Mogulus site which ...

Blog of Funk

• 

  Celebrating The Bendy Nature Of Cheese

  Posted: March 29th, 2008, 11:06am GMT by Deek Deekster

  Cheese is bendy
  Cheese is my friendy
  If you have a need
  I can lendy
  
  Cheese is bendy
  Do not be offendy
  There is only cheese
  Others are pretendy
  
  Cheese is bendy
  On that you may dependy
  Put a stamp upon it
  In the post sendy
  
  Cheese is bendy
  Cheese is trendy
  If you have a hungry belly
  Cheese is plendy
  
  Cheese is bendy
  Cheese club attendy
  Meet other bendy people
  That is the endy.
  
  (Blog of Funk Post #777)
  
  
  
• 

  Insufficient Profanity

  Posted: March 23rd, 2008, 9:24pm GMT by Deek Deekster

  It's Easter Sunday, the day the Christians stole from the Pagan Goddess of the Dawn, Ostara, and latterly, Oestre, to replace our Spring Equinox festival. Like a loaf of bread, he is risen, like an egg, he is consumed.
  
  Taking a few days off from my intense (but welcome) songwriting project, has thrown me into a state of quiet reflection and I have been hearing the resonance of various truths emanating from the depths like a sunken ship's bell sounded by the Spring tide swell. I recognise this metallic calling as a sound of clarity heard previously from time to time, and just now ringing all the louder in the relative silence.
  
  I am not doing the work I need to do. I am condemning my best to the books of forgetting. It is not enough to have the ideas - they must be realised. Like Charles Ives, I know totally and without question that I would rather do a job which left me completely free to operate culturally in my "spare" time in the manner of my own choosing than compromise the work I must do.
  
  The fact that I posit this as an imperative shows the urgency that I am experiencing. I know that I must move forward with some speed and determination this year and from that will emerge the real and still somewhat hidden purpose of my work to date.
  
  I feel like the last kid in the sweetshop as it's about to close, still clutching my fiver and with my eyes fastened on the top shelf where all the big chocolates live. I can't yet tell which one I'm going to get but I sure as dammmit know I'm not leaving without at least one of them.
  
  In the middle of this lies the knowledge that I've been far too polite recently - I'm in danger of losing my rude and healthy punk; I've been far too serious about all the wrong things - I'm in danger of losing my sense of hummous. I'm going to have to move things around, including my arse. I need to go out and dance my celebration. I need to swear a lot until the words mean nothing and can't stop smiling.
  
  
  
  
• 

  Dead Rabbi On A Stick Day

  Posted: March 21st, 2008, 5:55pm GMT by Deek Deekster

  It's Good Friday, and what's good about it is that I slept for nine and a half hours last night. Went to bed with a classic stress headache, woke up with the end of one, but felt good about being on strike.
  
  Yes, I'm on strike. At the end of yesterday's Rise and Shine we walked out in sympathy with our ASLEF brothers and sisters. I think it was the realisation of a militant tendency in myself which I have been encouraging over the past few months, knowing that it is the path to my own particular brand of enlightenment.
  
  I'm sure that once the management meet our demands we'll be back to finish off the final week of the show - it's been a blast. But it is nice to have a three day weekend in praise of the dead rabbi, Jesus, and his unfortunate death by torture 2,000 years ago.
  
  Now listen to the song we wrote yesterday, co-written and sung by the indomitable Danny "Peruvian Socialist Chocolate Hat" Brittain and his left wing army of reds.
  
  
  
  
  

Podcast Nation

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  Podshow lays off 30% of its workforce

  Posted: March 17th, 2008, 3:03pm GMT

  
  According to a report from Podcasting News, Podcasting startup PodShow has laid off one-third of its staff.
  
  PodShow, the San Francisco-based online-video network best known for launching the career of CNET’s Natali Del Conte, is laying off about 20 employees, or as much as 30 percent of its staff.
  “There are no secrets, only information you don’t yet have,” is the slogan for former MTV VJ Adam Curry’s podcast. Curry, a PodShow cofounder, didn’t show up to deliver the bad news about the layoffs; we’re told he left that to middle managers.
  None of the heavily hyped podcasting startups in the U.S have delivered on their promises, despite a one-year jump on the mainstream competition and inexorable trends driving people to podcasts and other Internet media.
  It will be interesting to see how companies based in the UK will take on the wealth of new media opportunities.

Blog of Funk

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  Funkpod Thirty Two

  Posted: March 16th, 2008, 11:16pm GMT by Deek Deekster

  Managed to squeeze out a podcast. Wonders will never cease.
  
  
  
  Credit to justpedalhard for the photo of Range Road 32, Calgary, Alberta.
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  Rise and Shine: Breakfast with Perspiration

  Posted: March 15th, 2008, 10:49am GMT by Deek Deekster

  After fourteen days, over three weeks and forty two hours of early morning songwriting, producing the Rise and Shine breakfast show, my fingertips are guitar-hardened and my daily routine is established. At this point I feel the need to distill my thoughts like a fine London gin.
  

  
  How To Rise and Shine
  
  
  1. Begin the day before. I have to get to bed before midnight, 11pm better, 10:30pm even better. Some days, starting the show, there has been just me and my audio-visual shadow, but most days, there is an expectant waiting audience of real people, and it doesn't matter whether there is one person, ten, fifteen or fifty. These kind, interested people have turned up for the show, and they matter A LOT. In fact, I like them, which helps - it feels very much like having friends over every morning. I'm making their breakfast - I don't want to burn the toast. If I'm sleep deprived and carry too much tiredness into the day, I will struggle, make mistakes, and underperform - and when people are witnessing my blunders first thing, I care far more about them, and determined not to be making them. I have not found a more effective pressure to lie down and sleep at a reasonable hour in many years.
  
  
  2. Awake at least one and a half hours before starting the broadcast. That way, all the computers will be set up, I will have had breakfast, I will be well dressed, and I will have meditated. A couple of times I have found myself meditating at 6:45 which does not work quite so well for the meditation, but actually does very well for the show as I feel very centred and grounded at the outset.
  
  
  3. Collaborating is crucial, as I suspected it would be and intended it to be, both for reasons of writing and show production. Songs really spring from the imagination and flights of fancy which spark from the news and it's often easier doing this with other people around. Finishing up is another matter - sometimes the brutality of the edit feels harsh! But we are grown ups, and we can handle it by now... Our viewers and listeners have written some of the best lines, and provided audio, speech and music, as well as suggesting great news items.
  
  
  4. Be decisive early on. Only having three hours means that on bad news days, or days where several stories vie for subject-spot, I really need to know what subject is going to frame the song by 7:20am if the song is going to be finished to any good standard.
  
  
  5. Give myself a break after the show. If I don't do this, I make less of a good show the next day, and it means my other work decisions are coloured by a background level of mental tiredness - which so far, thankfully, I have not experienced.
  
  
  6. Use whatever energy is there on the day. Thankfully the rules of Rise and Shine mean that the writer(s) have the final say in story selection, style, and treatment. I would not have been able to write anything March 7th otherwise, a day I was on my own with the audience, feverish and emotional, and yet, this turned out as one of my personal favourites, something I am proud of having written because it is so unusual and poignant.
  
  
  7. Keep the project in the semi-public eye. This stage of the project is quite deliberately restricted listening and viewing. I like that my friends in various social networks are enjoying what I am doing, and that the great general, unwashed and entertainment-hungry public are not. It means I can iron out kinks, play with the form, try things which might bomb (nothing has yet) and maintain the discipline necessary to keep the show on the road technically and organisationally without compromising the future of the show. It also means I can push people to donate to the good cause, Busk Aid, either by direct donation or else by taking part in our sponsorship auction.
  
  
  8. Maintain realistic expectations, set achievable goals - without these, nothing can happen. So if in the early part of the song, the dreaming up of the scenario, the summoning of the muses present a hugely attractive but completely time-draining project outside the boundaries of the three alloted hours (see #4), it gets rapidly dumped. Note to self: I could and should apply this philosophy more to my life in general.
  
  
  9. Food. Eating ahead of the show, during the show and after the show is crucial - it's demanding work! I have to plan ahead and get stuff in. Thankfully, Danny my regular co-writer often provides milky coffee and croissants to make up for his persistent lateness...
  
  
  10. Broadcast by every means possible. I've been using a veritable breakfast table of technologies to make this work. Amazingly, so far, it has completely worked - in fact, it has improved. I now record the final parts of the show on video, using both Mogulus which although takes some getting used to is pretty reliable and has professional tools built in and a handy (though censored) chat room; for live video I also use Qik which is (over WiFi) amazingly good quality - all the more so considering that this is emanating from a Nokia N95. I use Skype (riseandshinetv), Twitter (deekdeekster), email, FTP. I'm using a Mac Mini and Brian Greene's server (thanks Brian!) to deliver a rock-steady Shoutcast audio stream which in some ways brings the listener closer to the musical heart of the show, especially in the second stage when we are arranging the song and trying out verses and choruses. It's also convenient for people who want to hear the outcome at work... there is still a lot to be said for providing audio-only access.
  
  
  11. Support is a good thing, and we need more of it! Having only three hours (see #4) on the writing task focuses the mind admirably, but this show also requires a technical structure that needs managing - just like tv and radio - which distracts. The more support I have, the show will be generally of a much higher standard, since I am not continually bearing sole responsibility for everything, including presenting, songwriting, blogging, moving microphones, cameras and computers around, and generally interacting with the audience. It also means, I can answer the call of nature. I would like to achieve more of this before the project ends, just to see how high I can push the standards within the limits.
  
  

  
  
  Ten more writing days to go...
  
  
  
• 

  Eleventh Hour Comedy

  Posted: March 11th, 2008, 6:32am GMT by Deek Deekster

  I keep on thinking about where I really want to live.
  
  In the last six months, I've done more to facilitate moving than I have ever done, and yet, events made it more and more difficult to get out of London. It has its big hairy capitalist paws upon my hide, and as the economic tide starts to turn I found myself heading out at the wrong time, in the wrong boat, heading towards the wrong shore.
  
  Now that I've adjusted to staying longer, I am beginning to recall my original vision for an alternative place to live. Where I was planning to move wasn't where I was destined to live. This makes me wonder why I was prepared to travel a path which didn't take me to where I know I want to be.
  
  Aside from doing the work, there's doing the work... somehow, in the middle of this burst of songwriting, living alone, I found myself returning to normal. Which means, my version of normal - passionate, idiosyncratic, focused and dedicated. So if I can bring all that to bear upon work, then why not work?
  
  Next: comedy.
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  On The Marriage of Johann and Anitale

  Posted: March 8th, 2008, 10:30am GMT by Deek Deekster

  
  
  This is the face of a man whose bachelor days are over. Johann and Anitale are getting married RIGHT NOW, as I type. It's possibly the final image of his unmarried status. Girls - you missed out. Anitale is also cute and groovy. Boys - you missed out. By the time you read this, they will be married.
  
  I met these lovely people via Seesmic since Johann is lead developer for the site. When I went to Paris a month ago I got to hang out with them, and really enjoyed their company.
  
  Meanwhile, some explanation of my temporary absence in these parts. I've written or co-written nine songs in the past two weeks by dint of waking at 5.30am and writing for three hours every morning, exposed to public gaze. The first week's tunes are all on sale, and the free podcast is doing just fine.
  
  My favourite two songs of the project so far are Three Feet Off Gabriola and The Other Side, both of which rather selfishly I wrote on my own - except that I got plenty of input from the "audience" during the sessions. I'm going to have to find a replacement for that word, which combines the concept of audience with collaborator. Hmmmm....
  
  I am currently feverish, though sadly not with anticipation - I just have a cold virus. Now I am going to attempt breakfast.

FUNK: we make nice stuff happen

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  Rise and Shine: Breakfast with Inspiration

  Posted: March 1st, 2008, 8:03am GMT

  We're backing Rise and Shine, the online breakfast show which broadcasts live weekdays 7am to 10am, Monday to Friday, and raises money for BuskAid.
  
  Seesmic, the "video conversation"