October 2005

The recent earthquake in Pakistan has had me upset, relieved, angry and confused in equal measure. I have been active in another forum about this issue, where an element of religion and sectarianism has crept in, leaving a rather bad taste in my mouth. The issue requires more context than anyone has time for here, so let’s just say that my family back home are fine and that it’s upsetting to hear that tens of thousands of children have seemingly perished.

What’s bothering me is that very little cash has been promised from us in Britain, with much of it seemingly from the people who have family back in Pakistan. It will be interesting to do an analysis on the donation figures for various countries, but I will leave that as an exercise for the reader.

It really has been the year of disaster. Earthquakes, tsunami, hurricanes, landslides and that’s just the “natural” stuff… it’s enough to make the “end days” proponents squirm with anticipation.

I’ve been fasting. As a type I diabetic, one must take every precaution. If there is the slightest danger of falling ill, then one must break the fast. I had to do this on Saturday as 8 hours in, with 5 hours to go, I got a hypo and had to end my fast early.

So far I’m doing fine.

It’s an interesting process of self-denial; food and water I can do without for 13 hours. The difficult pat is not swearing. Or more abstractly, engaging in “right thinking”. One must exercise patience and humility. Ramadan is a superb teacher of self-restraint. That’s a lot of swearing I’m not doing. Which makes me practically unrecognisable.

The end of the day is a marathon. The last few minutes trickle down like rocks don’t through an egg-timer. Then eating just a couple of fresh dates leaves me feeling exhausted and not a million miles from satiety, especially after half a glass of water.

My eldest has gone on a school trip for a week. I have been able to pay for it and all the stuff she needed to, as well as give her some pocket money and allow her to take her ipod as well. Given my financial constraints for much of this year and most of last, that’s an achievement that I won’t be taking for granted!

My youngest also told me that she wants to see me more often, that she can’t wait until the following Saturday and she needs to see me before then. That was gratifying. My efforts have not been in vain i seems.

Political life is not intruding into my thoughts much, as I want to exercise patience and restraint this much, thus the dearth of output of my usual vitriolic nature. I’m not even reading xymphora.

Peace.

I’ve been using web-based software by 37 Signals for some time now. I like their stuff because it’s clean, elegant, simple, web-based and does the bare minimum. No clutter, clean design. pleasant interface and useful enough to integrate into your daily life.

37 Signals does web software the way I always hoped it would be done. No bloat, no confusing features, no twisted interface.

I might have mentioned them before, but I’m mentioning them again because they’ve just introduced my favourite of the bunch - Writeboard. It does exactly what it says on the tin. A simple, collaborative whiteboard, online and available to anyone you choose to include. It features visual comparison of changes and it stores all major versions of your document. I’m using it all the time.

Their biggest draw is Basecamp, a project management tool that makes you look at the obscenely gluttonous Microsoft Project and ask “why???”. I remember struggling with Microsoft Project back in the mid to late 1990s and needing an entire night to level a single project. I’d make a few changes last thing at night, then if I was lucky, my project would be ready to print in the morning. Basecamp is Project Management done simply and it is astonishingly cheap. Indeed, the basic version which allows you to work on just one project is free. Can’t ask for more than that.

I’ve been using Tadalist for a year or so I think. It’s free, and it’s spectacularly simple. It’s especially cool when you have more than one person trying to maintain a to-do list.

Some software claims to change your life through its features. This software makes no such claims, but becomes a useful part of your life because like any good design, it gets out of the way and lets you get the job done.

Finally, I also use Backpack. It’s a filofax done right. It’s a wonderful way of keeping assorted components of your life together. Again, the basic version is free, and I have been using that for quite a few months, maybe a year. However, the $5 per month version seems interesting enough that I’ll give it a go.

I thoroughly recommend all their software and you should know that their web site is as clean as their software. The best thing is, most of their stuff is free. Give it a try and please do tell me what you think! Maybe you already use their stuff and can pass on some tips on the interesting uses you have for it?

If I was still writing software, this is the kind of stuff I’d hope to be writing.

I started playing guitar in the mid 1980s. Let me qualify this. I had some money. I had already learned the bass guitar. I thought that translating my knowledge to the electric guitar would be straightforward. It was not.

Electric guitar is very much its own instrument. Electric guitar requires a completely different mindset to other instruments. But no matter what, electric guitar has been and always will be the coolest instrument in the world.

My love affair wih the guitar began with a Squier Telecaster. It was rubbish, but I loved it. I bought various electrics, but my facourite is my irreplaceable Parker MidiFly which I bought in Boston and brought back with me as hand luggage. Mercifully, that wasn’t stolen, and now I store it in the office.

I wasn’t a heavy metal freak, I preferred a more rhythm based approach and liked picking out unusual chords. I got a few guitar lessons and there was the guitar tab in Guitarist magazine if you were really desperate. Five guitar lessons in the early 1990s and I was £150 lighter and all I learned was that my string bends were pitching a little flat.

I just wanted to play sexy guitar from time to time. Not too much to ask, right? And books were not quite cutting it and neither were my chops. I’d already done all my “woodshedding” for bass for a few years and wasn’t about to do it for a new instrument. Of course, these were the days before the Internet. Now we have all manner of audio-visual aids, some hardware technology based and therefore quite expensive and some software based.

I kept thinking that a new effect would make me sound better, but years of practice taught me that there’s no substitute for being a good clean player. Even distorted guitar would sound cleaner than my cleanest playing. I put this down to poor control of the plectrum. Coming from a bass background, where I felt really at home using my fingers and thumb and nails to pick, slap, tap and generally abuse the fat strings, it was a bit awkward for me to learn how to abuse the much smaller electric guitar.

I wish I’d had then what is available now. I read an article about Jamorama. It looks awesome. You might like to try it out, but I will report on it in full myself very soon. The value for money of Jamorama seems a lot better for the online version which is a sixth of the cost of the CD version. I’d say unless you had broadband, don’t bother looking. The thing I like about it from listening to the samples is that Ben Edwards teaches you what you really need to show off with - how to copy the pros. That is something that a lot of people, no matter how good, can’t quite manage to get across. Do ignore the cheesey intro stuff, that seems geared to teenagers. Obviously, if you’re a teenager, you might well be fine with it.

I had a bass teacher for a while and even he made mistakes in copying the best players because he read the transcriptions and didn’t really listen. If he had really listened, he would have realised that he missed a whole bar from the transcription. I pointed this out to him in class once, he was not too happy, and of course, when I played the whole thing properly in front of the class, I got a lot of respect. Haha. Those were the days.

I’ll let you know how I get on with the Ben Edwards system, I just hope someone does something like it for bass, this old dog would still like to learn some new tricks.

Dear Burglars,

You believe your crime to have no victims because you don’t mug at knife or gunpoint. Let me disabuse you of your fanciful notions.

You steal high-value electronic items, absolving yourself of guilt because the insurance company will pay out:

• When people claim on their insurance, they lose money. Everybody loses. The claimant loses their no-claims discount and everybody’s premiums skyrocket.
• High-value electronic items often contain data that has not been backed up. Data that can never be replaced. Sentimental pictures, recordings and videos of children at events that can never be reproduced.

I was not insured.

You stole my Canon Ixus 400

Fine. If Allah (swt) wills, He will give me better. But that camera had 50 pictures of my daughters having fun playing video games at my flat, together. I will never recreate those pictures, that light, the laughter on their faces. IU also had movies of them laughing. Those movies are all I have for the days during the week when my chidlren are not with me.

You stole my Nikon SLR with zoom lens

There was a film in there with very rare shots that I reserve an SLR for. I will never recreate those shots, nor do I remember them. That’s why I took pictures. To help me remember. To seize moments, all of those moments now stolen by you. I don’t care about the camera. If Allah (swt) wills, He will get me a better one. Frankly, that theft was the nail in the coffin of SLR for me.

You stole my old Sony Hi8 movie camera

In the camera, which is probably worth almost nothing, was a tape of my daughter from 6 years ago. There were scenes from her birthday which we will now never be able to show her. That tape was not worth nothing. That tape was worth more than you will ever amount to Mr and Miss Burglar. That tape was a twinkle of something that gives me hope. You are beyond hope.

You stole a laptop…

…which had a diary for my children on it, dating back three years. It also had a novel on which was close to completion. None of these were backed up. They will never be replaced. Years of work and sentimental value utterly destroyed. A treasure for my children and answers to many questions - annihilated.

You stole my Dunhil XCentric watch

I won this in a competition. It symbolised a lot to me. I was going to give it to a trusted friend. You taught me not to wait. You will never understand the symbolism behind that beautiful watch. You will never have such values.

You stole my music box

Fine, It was around a couple of grand worth of stuff, which Allah (swt) will give me again if He so wills. However, at the bottom of that box were over a couple dozen cassette tapes with every music demo, every song I had made, rough and finished. All my music is now gone forever, never to be re-created, never to be played. You cannot imagine just how damaging this is to a songwriter. And you never will.

Ramadan starts today. I am fasting. I need to be especially careful managing my diabetes at this time.

As for the burglary - the person they caught was not the thief, but just a crack addict who had been handling stolen goods and found with my phone. God alone knows what has happened to the thieves. I doubt I will see my stuff again.

Someone from the Wtiness Support group, or Victim Support group, wahtever, called me and in the tone of someone who handles customer services for T-Mobile, asked me if I could use any “Victim Support” help. I said “No, thanks, the best thing you can do for me is your job, if that’s possible”. I said this with the least sarcasm I could muster. I meant what I said. Unfortunately, I don’t think they have the resources to do their job. I don’t think they ever will.