Street Musician - Guitar Blog

Hangover In Newquay

Kier — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:26:14 +0000

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s been a serious lack of blogging going on around here over the last month or two, and no, it’s not because I’m still recovering from my stag do, it’s because every year around this time, my life turns into one constant celebration for a few weeks as all the important dates in the calendar materialise at once throughout the months of June and July.

This year however, it’s been even worse as we’ve had to squeeze a stag do, a hen do, a World Cup and my soon to be wedding in there as well.

Normally, the more parties there are going on, the happier I am, but all this fun is seriously affecting my ability to deal with all the serious things going on in my life. Don’t get me wrong, I can still provide a good service for my business, but my plans for World domination in the guitar blog stakes have gone right down the pan.

Don’t worry though, once I recover from the last months celebrations and get this wedding done and dusted, I’ll get back to the real world and stop posting useless stuff like this in my waffle section ..and I’ve not forgotten about those charity busks I’ve been promising either.

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So what have I been doing ? Well for a start – on the 10th, 11th and 12th of June I embarked on my stag do, which was a God almighty piss up with a load of my mates to Newquay, which also conveniently covered England’s first World Cup match against America, giving us all even more excuse to commit our braincells to the funny farm.

Newquay World Cup Fever

We hired a van, hit Newquay by about 2 on a Friday afternoon and after a few beers whilst checking in at the hotel, headed out for the surf on Fistral Bay. Now for a newbie surfer who’s never actually set foot on a surfboard in his life, it probably wasn’t the best idea to get beered up before my first surf, cause I couldn’t really tell if I was just crap on a surf board or it was just the beer…probably a bit of both.

I used to skate when I was a kid, (who didn’t) and after doing martial arts for a few years and also taking up windsurfuing, you’d think I’d at least have some sense of balance on a surfboard, not a chance after a couple of Stella’s and a can or two.

The best thing when you are out there in the ocean fighting the waves, freezing your nads off, getting wiped out and thrown around like a toy, is the feeling you’re getting your ass kicked by something that is infinitely more powerful than you. It reminded me of those years when I was just a kid and we moved to the sea side. We used to head down to Ringstead beach where the waves were always massive (when you’re 8 anyway) and dive in the white water to get slammed about like some sort of sadistic fairground ride. Then you’d come up for air and get hit again before you’d had a chance to breath and get smashed up again for round two.

After a few lung fulls of salt water, a change of clothes and more beer at the beach bar, we headed off down town for our pre-booked Indian.

View from Fistral each bar

It’s always a bit dodgy when you’ve booked a place to eat on the net, but when we got there it was a nice joint and the food was pretty good too. Mind you, by then I was pretty pissed so I couldn’t have told either way.

I would have gone for the vindaloo, but I stuck with the Madras just to give my a*$e a fighting chance for the weekend.

Sauce overload – I hate it when that happens !

You can’t beat a good Indian when you are getting hammered

After stuffing our faces till everyone felt sick we pissed it up a load more and ended up in the hotel bar till 5 in the morning.

You can’t beat that, a hotel that will stay open till the last man standing. By the time we left at 5 it was still going strong.

The bar staff weren’t too bad either, once you got your beer goggles on…erm..so my mates said.

After a relentless evening getting totally bladdered on beer, cider, vodka and whatever else was on offer, and unknowingly having my pints spiked with extras to wipe me out, this was the last picture I took, just before lapsing into a coma.

This picture disturbs me, cause I now know what is going to happen next.

That’s my mate on the phone at six in the morning, taking great pleasure in telling his Mrs. I’ve finally caked out and what he is going to do to me…bastard !

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3 hours later…

Jesus ! Have I got a bad hangover

After after passing out on the floor of one of my mates’ rooms for a couple of hours and missing breakfast by literally 10 minutes, it’s beer for brecky and down to the local cafe for some swag.

And that’s the moment I realised my bastard mate Jamie had shaved my chest.

Then gave me one of these to soften the blow

She was fit !

A roam around town with the new Mrs. and a bit of fun in the arcades..

with the obligatory ‘who’s hardest on the punch bag’ competition.

then back to the hotel to wake up the lazy gits who are still asleep in their clothes.

… I turn my back for 5 minutes and

…not to fussy, my mate J.

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Next on the list was more beer, a beach barbeque and more surfing, so with a new member of the crew, there’s only one way to carry your woman.

Following a quick spell in the bag and seeking ever more opportunity to humiliate the stag, out she came again, and after being forced by my mates to carry my new Mrs. around Sainsbury’s while getting stuff for the barbecue, I was then subsequently (and very publicly) kicked out of the store by an angry store matron, who started shouting at me for being obscene and that it was a family store.

Ejected in shame, the guys had to finish the job and once we’d got the rest of the supplies together it was back down the beach for a blistering day of beer, burgers and barbecue.

Fire up the barbie

5 minutes later…voila

..the first of about 20 rounds of some seriously dodgy nosh.

My barbecue is great, it cost me £6 about 10 years ago and has 6 bolts. It gets used about 20 times a year and is in such a state that every time I use it I am determined to chuck it away after, but all my mates persuade me that there is nothing wrong with it, it still does the job as good as the day it was bought and if I threw it away and got a new one, it would look just the same after a couple of uses anyway…so the barbecue lives on… I don’t think I’ll ever be able to ditch the bloody thing.

After another day of hangovers, beer and burned burgers, we stashed the stuff in the van and headed off for the World Cup match between England and Germany, which was another good excuse for more excessive behaviour, but as usual England played bloody awfully and it ended in a draw so the match was a total let down.

We’d ditched the camera by then so there’s no more photos apart from a few on my mates’ phones etc, but we hit the bars and clubs which were heaving as usual and even more so due to the World Cup. We ended up at the end of the night in the Walkabout which was heaving with a really good live band playing Chili’s, Muse and loads of other stuff, and when you are that wrecked and been dancing to cheese and club music all night, some real tunes are just what you need to get fired up. They had a really good sound and all their covers sounded pretty much like the originals.

By the time ‘Killing in the Name’ came on at the end of the night the front of the dance floor had turned into a massive mosh pit, which was even funnier when you realised while getting bounced off a bunch of really fat people (into a bunch of really skinny people) that the band wasn’t even playing, they’d all walked off stage and were playing a freaking cd. No one even noticed or cared cause we were all to busy throwing each other about.

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It’s funny how when you are in a mosh pit in a club, you can get a head butt in the face, a pint spilled down your trousers and a ripped shirt and you think it’s great fun, where as if the same thing happened 20 feet away at the bar, you’d be in a scrap.

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Once they’d kicked everyone out of the club we headed back to the hotel bar eagerly expecting to have another massive all nighter and were all absolutely gutted to find it was totally shut.

Man, it was like getting to a Slayer concert and finding out they’d cancelled and Climbe Fisher were playing instead.

We just couldn’t believe it. The problem was compounded by a distressed girl who appeared from nowhere outside the hotel in a somewhat dishevelled state, claiming she had lost her friends (who apparently were lesbians) because of an argument on a night out and they had left her there and she had no money, no phone and way of getting home.

We were like, “You think you’ve got problems, the hotel bar’s shut.”

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Once we had got over the shock of having no more alcohol (and miraculously remembered we had loads more booze stashed from the barbecue), we did our best to try and sort her out. It seemed she was a bit of an impossible situation. We offered her our phones but she had no numbers because her phone was broken, we offered to pay for a taxi but she wouldn’t have it and said she lived something like fifty miles away, she couldn’t call her parents for some reason I can’t remember and didn’t want the police involved. In fact, she was so stuck that it seemed a bit suss.

You know the ’stranded girl outside the hotel’ gag, where you have no choice but to invite them in and then wake up next morning with all your wallets and jewellery missing.

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The thing is, we’re all sound blokes and couldn’t leave her roaming the streets in a drunken state all night, just in case something bad happened to her, and if that was my daughter in a few years time, I’d be worried sick about her so at least she’d be safe with us. The thing is, on her part there was no doubt about it – it was a bloody stupid idea to suddenly meet 7 complete strangers in the street, at 3 am in the morning who had all been drinking heavily for two days and agree to go up to their rooms for a party.

We all knew we were fine and most of us have wives and girlfriends, but to be honest we could have been anyone and she could have been putting herself in serious risk.

…but hey…lucky for her none of us are weirdos.

As soon as we got inside, she thanked us and promptly crashed under the covers in my mates bed (on her own – I might add) and we didn’t hear a peep out of her all night.

Although I think she might have got a bit worried when we returned with the beers and the blow up doll 5 minutes later and forgetting we were no longer an all male group, announced there were three holes and we would all take one each.

Oops ! We just hoped she’d crashed out by then and not heard.

So we drank until morning and at about 7 o’clock, realising there was still almost 2 hours left to breakfast and there was no way I was going to make it, hit the deck again on my mates floor.

Jamie had caked out half hour earlier and it took a lot to keep my inner demons at bay and not to take my revenge on him for the night before. To be honest, I was happy that I hadn’t been strapped naked to a lamp post and left there so after thinking about it some more, I decided to let him off.

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Waking again 30 minutes after breakfast and missing it for the second time, I was gutted and realised that over the last two days, I had not slept in my own bed even once and had missed breakfast on both days, what a waste of £80, I might as well have kipped in my van.

My other mate who never sleeps no matter how smashed he gets was still up and had been all night, just in case anything untoward happened. Apparently she had awoken and left half an hour before with simply a polite thank you.

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Even more brain dead and all with double hangovers, we got back our deposits, headed out for breakfast around town, bought some prezzies for the misseses and headed home – another surfing session for me after two days on the piss was just not going to happen.

We thought we’d been pretty good and not got into too much trouble over the weekend, until my fiance discovered the photos of the girl asleep our beds and the hotel barmaids. That didn’t go down too well I can tell you. We then spent the next two days trying to explain our way out of it.

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The stag do was then followed up over the next 3 weeks by the rest of the World Cup, Father’s day, more barbecues, my Mrs’ hen weekend, my birthday, my fiance’s birthday, the Weymouth Seafood and Music festival and next is my wedding, which is happening in a couple of days…. I think I’d better get on and write my speech, or I’m going to be in deep s#*t.

I’ll post some pics when it’s all over.

Take it easy !

Stag Do

Kier — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:49:04 +0000

The owner of this blog is away on his Stag Do.

Oh Shit !

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Pray for him.

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Ok ! He’s back …and he’s alive ! Yee Ha !

Win a Genuine Andean Quena Flute

Kier — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 01:10:37 +0000

It’s about time I posted another competition here on Street Musician – so this time instead of giving away free beer money, I thought I’d go a bit more upmarket and give away one of these.

Aymara Jacaranda Quena Flute

This is a genuine Andean quena flute made of Bolivian Jacaranda wood and is one of my best selling instruments on my Bolivian website.

Yeah, I know this is supposed to be a guitar blog, but I’ve not yet got the cash to start throwing guitars at my viewers, so maybe next year.

These flutes are amazing things and you can’t get any more genuine than this one.

Sourced from the hands of the maker ‘Mr Mamani’ himself - high in the mountains of the Andes, this flute has already travelled over 6,000 miles to get here and could be travelling another few thousand to any one of my readers across the globe who enter this competition.

This flute is one of the best makes you can get and comes with a free woven quena cover of your choice. I’ll post some pics of those in a day or two.

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It is worth at least £25 £32 not including shipping costs and that’s from my own web shop, it should be worth a lot more. Many of my customers who buy these Aymara Jacaranda quenas end up coming back for more, and they’ll often also buy one of my Wayacan wood quenas to try out the difference in sounds produced by these wonderful South American hardwoods.

Being a guitarist, I never thought playing one of these would interest me, but once you give it a go you’ll find they are completely addictive. The main challenge is just trying to get a note out of the thing in the first place, never mind the three octaves they produce.

They say the Andean quena is one of the hardest flutes in the world to play and for a beginner you’ll probably find that is completely right. For the first few days you’ll probably spin out a few times and get major head rushes while you struggle to get the angles and air flow to split just right over the mouthpiece, but once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll find it gets easier every time you pick it up and it’s really good fun just to mess about with.

How to Enter

Entering the competition is easy, just use the comment form below to post a few words on why you want one of these Andean quenas, and who ever I judge to have posted the best comment wins.

I’ll be posting the winning entry later this month on 29th June (my birthday in fact), so who ever wins we should both have a great day…or two as in my case.

My last competition only had one entry and that was me, so I got to win my own cash back. Let’s see if we do a bit better this time.

Just so I get a crack at it, incase no one else does – I’ll post my comment first.

Cheers.

Competition Update

After marketing these things at ridiculous knockdown prices for months, I’ve just introduced a long overdue price rise across my entire range of flutes ( can’t keep selling all my stuff for peanuts you know ! ) making this amazing quena even more valuable and an even better prize.

…not only that, but instead of the beautiful woven cover that I was going to include with this prize, I’m now upgrading it to one of my special ‘deluxe’ woven covers, providing extra thickness and added protection for your quena. These deluxe covers have been made especially for Original Artisan by our luthier’s own wife…how cool is that.

…aren’t I good to you ! Eh ?

Birthday Winner Announcement

Right, I was going to announce the winner this afternoon, but I’m being dragged out for a birthday celebration…so the chances are I won’t be in a fit state to judge in a few hours time.

I’m going to keep the competition open till 12 midnight so you can get the last of your entries in and tomorrow when I’ve sobered up a bit, I’ll announce the winner.

Stay tuned cause someone’s going to have a very lucky day.

Happy Birthday people.

Kier

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Ok…So thanks to everyone who entered and special thanks to Sarssipius from who gave my competition a huge boost by announcing it on his excellent competition site G.A.S. a Gogo. All your comments were so good I couldn’t decide which one deserved to win so I thought I’d choose another method to select the winner.

Check out my vid below to see how I chose the winner, and yes… I am a bad shot and no, I didn’t know the horse – I think it was just hungry…and yes, I did have a birthday hangover.

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That crazy horse wouldn’t stop hassling me as I was packing up and was chewing everything in sight, we made friends in the end. I don’t know why but I seem to get hassled just about everywhere I go nowadays. If it’s not buy some nutty tramp, it’s some crazy animal.

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So ‘Congratulations’ to our well deserved competition winner Cédric Lechevrel, your Jacaranda quena and deluxe cover will be on it’s way to you as soon as you mail me your shipping address and tell me what colour cover you would like me to send with your flute, red, green or blue.

Fate decided who kept the prize this time but stick around cause there’s going to be loads more competitions to win more cool stuff like this here on Street Musician over the next few months, (if I can afford it that is). If any of you guys or girls who entered the competition would like one of my Andean quenas, just for entering you get %15 of any of my Andean quenas from my shop Original Artisan, just drop me a line and I’ll give you a discount code.

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Thanks to everyone who entered, your comments did crack me up and the fact that so many of you entered just made my day.

Take it easy and keep an eye out for more competitions coming soon.

Cheers.

Get Your Teeth Fixed

Kier — Sat, 22 May 2010 00:44:37 +0000

Here’s a quick post about something I learned form my dentist after I visited him a while ago which might be useful for anyone needing excessive dental treatment or procedures that usually cost a bomb – like crowns, bridges, special teeth whitening treatments or dental veneers.

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One thing many singers are paranoid about is the state of their teeth (unless of course you’re referring to guys like Shane MacGowan of the Pogues who’s rotten teeth have been his life long trade mark) and the condition of your teeth and gums can often impact on your self confidence as a performer, especially singers who spend most of their time with their mouth open.

When you’re young, you can drink, smoke and party as much as you like and still keep a perfect set of gnashers, but as you get older the years of abuse eventually start to take their toll and that’s when most people start to think about getting them fixed up.

Shane’s teeth weren’t exactly the perfect set in the first place but he didn’t do his smile any favours by falling over a wall and smashing his teeth in on a pile of bricks whilst on an all day bender in Ireland.

So far my teeth have survived intact and still look alright, so I’ve never really considered engaging in cosmetic dental procedures to brighten my smile, but if I had the cash to waste or perhaps the treatments weren’t so costly, then maybe I would think about it.

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Save Money on Dental Work

The good news is, if you do have an expensive problem with your teeth and are willing to travel a few miles to get things done, or you happen to live near one of the sixteen dental colleges around the U.K. then you can get all these sort of treatments at greatly reduced rates by having them done at the dental training schools as part of the training program for final year students.

My dentist was telling me that they do it in many colleges around the U.K and the particular one he was referring to was the Bristol Dental College.

All the treatments are supervised by qualified dentists and cost much less than they would at a private or NHS dentist.

I thought that was a pretty good bit of advice, so in a few years when I’m really looking in a state and need a bit of a lift, I’ll go and get myself a nice set of gold teeth on the cheap.

Nice !

Here’s a list of the 16 dental colleges around the U.K

Barts and The London, School of Medicine and Dentistry – Queen Mary, University of London
School of Dentistry – Birmingham
Bristol Dental School – Bristol
School of Dentistry, University of Central Lancashire – University of Central Lancashire
Guy’s, King’s & St Thomas’s Dental Institute – King’s College London
Leeds School of Dentistry – Leeds
Liverpool Dental School – Liverpool
Manchester Dental School – Manchester
Newcastle University Dental School – Newcastle
Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry – Exeter
Plymouth
Sheffield School of Clinical Dentistry – Sheffield
University of Aberdeen School of Dentistry – Aberdeen
University of Dundee Dental School – Dundee
Glasgow Dental School – Glasgow
Cardiff University Dental School – Cardiff
Queen’s University Belfast School of Dentistry – Queen’s University Belfast

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Give them a call and see what they can do for you.

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Incidentally, last year Shane finally got round to having his teeth fixed.

I can’t believe it !

Win £50 000

Kier — Thu, 20 May 2010 00:41:30 +0000

With the World Cup coming up and the first England match being smack in the middle of my stag do in Newquay, it’s gonna be a blinder…if I’m conscious enough to watch it that is.

I thought this would be appropriate. If you want a chance of winning £50,000 check out the vid below.

..and no, it’s not a porn video !

Rock House On Demand Promotion

Kier — Wed, 19 May 2010 00:39:45 +0000

Just had a heads up from Curt over at the Rock House Blog about a hot promotion they’re running for the new Rock House On Demand tuition system.

The promo gives everyone the opportunity to try out the On Demand Program which uses the excellent MOD Machine Media System to allow users to directly download full length programs and lessons from the likes of legendary guitar heroes such as Alex Skolnick from Testament, Alexi Laiho ‘Children of Bodom’, Rob Arnold ‘Chimera’ and loads more.

The Rock House Method’s instruction programs, dvd’s and interactive lessons, cover just about every music genre and style you’ll ever need and is one of the world’s most widely used instruction systems featuring some of the world’s best known musicians as instructors.

With blues, metal, rock, bass, acoustic, drums, keyboards and vocal tuition from beginner to advanced, there is something there for everyone.

Rock House On Demand Promotion Code

I’ll be reviewing the On Demand program in the coming weeks but right now you can save $10 off the purchase of any Rock House product by using the code below.

ROCK10OFF

Just enter the code when you make your purchase.

They are also throwing in an additional $5 coupon code for a further purchase of any product from the Rock house On Demand library.

The second savings coupon code will be included on your receipt after you make your purchase using the ROCK10OFF coupon code.

Check out the video below to find out more and download the setup program for free. Take a look at their video catalogue with no obligation to buy. There’s some great stuff and a lessons package to try out for free.

Make sure you’ve got the latest version of Quicktime installed to make things run smoothly.

How to Care for Your Wooden Quena – Quenacho & Traverse (Transverse) Flute

Kier — Sat, 15 May 2010 09:04:19 +0000

I sell quite a few Andean flutes here on Street Musician and go to great lengths to make sure my customers get the best quality quena flutes, quenachos and traverse flutes that I can source from the skilled Bolivian luthiers of La Paz, via my family in Boliva.

Each flute I sell makes an incredible journey to reach my customers, covering over 6 000 miles (10 000 km) across the North Atlantic Ocean from Bolivia to the U.K. and then from my shop on to many destinations around the world to finally end up in the hands of my clients.

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Many Andean flute players around the world already have a good level of knowledge and experience in caring for wooden flutes and understand the importance of treating them in the correct way, but for those of you who’ve never owned one before or perhaps are thinking of buying one in the future, I’ve put together a quick guide to help you get the most out of your wooden flute and keep it in good nic.

Follow the guide below and ensure you complete the first few stages until your flute is nicely played in, from then on you can relax and enjoy the sounds of your Andean quena, quenacho or traverse flute, safe in the knowledge you’re caring for it in the best way possible.

So to ensure you get the very best from your woodwind instrument and to maintain it’s beautiful sound and tonal qualities for years to come, please ensure you carefully follow the instructions below.

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Andean flutes are beautiful, but fragile instruments and need to be cared for correctly, especially in their first few days of play when conditioning to their new environment is vital. Failure to do so will invalidate your guarantee and could result in cracking or split wood due to uneven moisture retention in the instrument.

Flute Care

Caring for your flute in the correct way will minimise the risk of damage, improve it’s tonal qualities and make the instrument much more robust in the future. A well cared for flute can last hundreds of years.

It is essential for all new wooden flutes to be oiled and then ‘played in’ very gently over a period of time until the moisture content in the wood stabilises, having spread evenly throughout the instrument.

Oiling Your Flute

When you first receive your flute and before playing it for the first time, it must be thoroughly oiled inside and out using either almond oil or linseed oil. This can be done using an oil soaked, lint free cloth or preferably a sponge passed gently over the outside of the flute. Then using a thin rod, carefully pass the sponge through the inside of the instrument ensuring a good coating on the inner surface.

Be sure to oil the holes, mouthpiece and each end of the flute, achieving an even coating throughout.

Once you have oiled your flute leave to dry for a few hours.

Playing In Your Flute

The process of ‘playing in’ your flute, is to allow it to adjust gradually to it’s new conditions over a number of days, allowing the moisture absorbed from the breath and surrounding environment to spread evenly throughout, stabilising over time and minimising the risk of cracking or warping.

Conditioning Your Flute

Day 1 – When your flute is dry you can now play the flute gently for 5 minutes only on it’s first session. You may then play it on two more occasions throughout the first day, preferably leaving equal gaps of a few hours between each session.

After each session, be sure to dry out excess moisture from inside the flute and around the mouthpiece with a lint free cloth to prevent excess moisture absorption.

Day 2 – On the second day you may play your flute on three further occasions, increasing your playing time by 5 minutes per session, again leaving a good time limit between each play. This will result in a maximum of 3 x 10 minute sessions evenly spaced throughout the day.

There after you should increase your playing time for each session by 5 minutes each day over the next two weeks i.e

Day 3 – 3 x 15 minutes

Day 4 – 3 x 20 minutes

Day 5 – 3 x 25 minutes

…and so on, until the flute can be played at your leisure.

Be sure to wipe excess moisture from the mouthpiece and inside of the flute after each session.

Ideally the flute should be oiled after every 5 – 10 hours of playing. Good practice would be to oil the flute once a day for the first few days until it appears the wood can no longer absorb any more oil and there after every once in a while throughout the duration of the flute’s lifetime.

The frequency at which you do this depends on the type of oil used. Linseed oil is heavier than almond or peanut oil and can be used less frequently. Be sure to use a good quality oils and not low grade industrial oils.

Storage

When your flute is not in use, always store it in it’s protective case to shelter it from temperature and humidity changes in the surrounding environment. Never expose your flute to direct sunlight or a heat source such as a radiator or excessive lighting.

Be careful when passing from one environment to another and if conditions vary considerably, allow a reasonable amount of time, say 1 – 2 hours for your flute to adjust to it’s new surroundings before removing it from it’s case and playing.

Sudden changes in temperature and humidity will cause the wood to expand or contract very quickly and may easily result in cracking. Excessively dry conditions should also be avoided.

If your flute is to be left for longer periods without playing, it should be stored in it’s protective case and placed inside a plastic bag to help prevent drying whilst in storage. When reviving your instrument, be sure to gradually play your flute in again over time as if it were new, as the moisture content in the wood will have undoubtedly dropped over extended periods.

Above All – Have Fun

A well cared for flute will last a lifetime and a little common sense will go a long way in ensuring it’s longevity, but try not to become too obsessed with moisture levels, oiling and temperature issues once you have successfully ‘played in’ your flute as this could become detrimental to your enjoyment of the instrument. As long as you treat it well over the first few weeks of ownership and take the basic precautions described above, your flute should last you very well and provide many years of enjoyment.

If you are thinking of buying an Andean flute, take a look at my flute page here on street musician or even better check out my Woodwind instruments section on my Andean website Original Artisan where you will find a good range of Andean flutes of all types.

I’m in the process of redesigning my site and expanding my collection to include native flutes, tunable flutes and all sorts of weird and wonderful instruments to ensure we have one of the best collections in Europe, so keep checking back to see what’s new.

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Take a look at my extra special bone concert quenas.

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Thanks a lot.

Kier

Weymouth Kite Festival

Kier — Mon, 10 May 2010 08:36:04 +0000

I just read in the paper that my home town is apparently the 4th most sought after travel destinatinon in the world.

That’s hilarious, Weymouth’s alright, but it’s not quite St. Tropez.

Apparently, the results are based on a travel website that identifies up-and-coming holiday destinations around the world based on web searches over the last year.

So really, it’s the 4th most ’searched’ place in the world, which is slightly more believable seeing as we have the Olympics coming here in 2012.

But Weymouth is actually a pretty cool place to live, especially in Summer. There’s always something going on and once the season starts to kick in, you get all sorts of fireworks, festivals and events happening throughout the year.

Cat Kite

The first fireworks of the season kicked off last Sunday to end the first of the year’s kite festivals that happen in the windy months.

There’s still not many people around but with a kite festival going on a hundred yards up the road and a 5 year old to entertain, you’ve got no choice but to pull out last years kite, head up the beach and join in, even if it’s gale force.

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Saturday afternoon was a nightmare, even for a kite festival the winds were seriously bad, with spitting rain, darkening skies and sand hurtling down the beach getting in your face and eyes, there was no chance the kite was going to survive a flight, or even getting it out the bag. It was one of those days where you know your kid’s gonna get carried off to Iceland if you dared fly the thing.

There were still a few displays going on with the hard core kite crew still fighting it out, but even the deck chairs on the front were being pulled in early so unless you were a serious kite nut, for the average Joe it was a right off.

Sunday was pretty good, still really windy with the complementary face full of sand watching the displays, but there was some good stuff going on. Loads of weird kites in the air and the pro’s flying multiple stunt kites at once, pulling off synchronised air displays and choreographed routines etc.

It’s bizarre but there is something quite addictive about flying a kite, even if you’re an adult. Just standing there with a crappy £6 kiddies kite, trying in vain to make it do all the wicked things a professional £40 stunt kite will do is quite fun.

It sort of sparks something primeval in you, bringing you back to your childhood. It only takes 5 minutes before your kids get bored with it and start demanding ice cream, but the strange sense of freedom you get in those few minutes when your excuse of ‘getting it ready for your children’ holds out, giving you the chance to fly it without looking sad - really makes you think, ‘Yeah, man – I’m going to get me one of them things’.

This guy was having fun – not sure whether his kid was !

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Here are a few quick shots I took on the phone.

Synchronised displays.

That is one massive kite !

That’s enough of that, the next one’s in September. Gonna get me one of these next time.

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That’s a real air guitar.

Niemann-Pick U.K Charity Busk

Kier — Tue, 04 May 2010 07:58:43 +0000

It’s about time I started thinking about doing another mission for the 100 charity challenge.

I’ve promised to do another charity busk to promote Niemann Pick Type – C, sometimes known as childhood dementia, but this time I’m going to try and do something for the U.K branch.

Since my last attempt, the weather has got much better as Summer draws nearer and I’m hoping to do a little better this time.

Want to Help Out ?

What would be good is if I had someone else with me on the day, either to help collect and hand out information for a few hours or maybe if there are any other musicians out there in the Dorset area, perhaps to take turns while one collects and the other busks, take a few photo’s or maybe even get some sort of jam going to make things more interesting.

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Anyone willing to help in some way, whether you are a musician or not would definitely add a bit of colour to the session and hopefully make it more successful.

I’m not going to book it yet, I’ll give it a while before I plan a date just to see if anyone’s interested.

If no one shows up, I’ll be doing it myself anyway, but if you think you might like to help out in some way for 3 or 4 hours at some point over the next month or so, send me a message and we can sort out what we’re going to do and where we are going to do it.

Should be fun.

Warning : Back Up Your Files – Right Now

Kier — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 18:11:02 +0000

This week was supposed to be really productive and I was intent on getting my massive backlog of web work out the way so I could get out and start doing some proper busking.

Like a lot of p.c users, my laptop is seriously crammed full of stuff, with just about every program you could possibly imagine having been installed at some point over the last two years.

I try and keep it as clean as possible and run it through the usual maintenance routines every couple of weeks, and although it’s also got it’s fair share of dodgy programs hacked from all corners of the internet, I have never once had a serious problem and as yet haven’t been plagued with any nasty viruses or trojans that wipe out years worth of work in seconds.

I spend a fair bit of time fixing mates’ computers aswell and most of the time, although my cheap, bog standard 2 gig Acer is practically bursting at the seems, struggling to cope with hordes of massive programs I cram into its tiny hard drives, apart from the odd ‘Blue Screen of Death’, the over heating and the death rattle of the over stressed fan constantly ‘whirring’, it’s pretty damn reliable and has never failed me.

Until last Wednesday.

It's f*&%$d !

Like most musician/computer/blogger type ecommerce heads, I have some seriously heavy duty apps on my laptop and sometimes I’ve got so much going on a once, I’m surprised the thing hasn’t melted. But what was the cause of Wednesday’s melt down ?… a 20 gig installation of Adobe’s Master Collection ?.. a Cubase and Reason multitrack rewire recording with simultaneous webcam application ?..no, just a simple Canon camera disk.

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I bought this thing on EBay and I swear it’s jinxed. First I got it with the factory fitted memory card missing so I couldn’t even use it, then when my SD card came through, all my rechargeable batteries were so knackered none of them would power the thing, so I had to buy some more and wait for them to charge.. then after I installed the camera’s software and everything looked o.k, all of a sudden my P.C critically fails to a black screen without warning, not even so much as a nice blue screen of death. That was it, my computer was totally f~@*$d.

Nothing would get it running again, I spent all day trying to fix it, I couldn’t get into safe mode, couldn’t restore anything, couldn’t use the repair modules, nothing… it would even take hours getting into the dos.

I’m reasonably good with computers but not an expert and after trying every possible thing I could think of and scanning the net on my Mrs’ spare for more solutions, I realised the only thing I could do was boot my recovery disk from the hard drive and start again.

At this point I thanked God for me bothering to create a recovery disk when I first got the laptop, and even more for buying another external hard drive a few months ago after my previous one failed. I’m not one for religiously backing my files up all the time but I knew that I’d done a quick system back up a week or so ago, so whatever I’d lost and however much of a pain it was, it could have been much, much worse.

Recovery

After booting up my recovery disks I got the laptop running again and was greeted by a nice clean install of Vista. I dragged my external hard drive out and restored the rest of my files.

The problem was although all of my files were restored, the hundreds of essential programs I need to run my life were no longer present and although my program files were there, the installs were not, so the next day and a half was spent trawling through old, badly labelled disks and downloading applications needed to get it back up to scratch.

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Through the computer related carnage that ensued, trying to get things back to normal as fast as possible, about 4 am Friday night the whole thing went tits up again. This time it was my fault as I was trying to do too many things at once and not taking proper care. Programs were conflicting with each other and basic applications were working but pulling up errors, this led to another fatal crash that I couldn’t recover properly from and eventually I just thought ’sod it’ and started again from scratch using the recovery discs.

What annoyed me was that I was intent on saving everything I possibly needed to get back on track on a few emergency disks when I’d returned my P.C to normal, but after screwing the task up on Friday night, I lost them all again before I had a chance to save them.

Even the first task of downloading and installing the Vista service pack takes about three hours on my broadband connection, so having to do everything again for the second time was another lesson learned.

This time I took it easy and instead of recovering everything at once, I restored them slowly, saving all new executable apps on external drives as soon as I’d downloaded them and labelling all my old disks properly. I made sure everything worked correctly before moving onto the next mission.

After a massive clean up as well as trawling through loads of badly recorded videos containing old chord progressions and riffs that one day I might actually get round to turning into real songs, I’ve finally been left with a well organised laptop, void from the clutter that’s been draining my soul for months. I was pretty hacked off about it all, but now I feel pretty good.

I’ve lost 3 or 4 work days doing the job and am still missing about a weeks worth of notes and emails, but luckily most of the work I had done up until the crash was web based and so the damage was kept to a minimum.

The thing is, I was just about to overhaul my entire accounts which was going to take days, and if I had done that before the crash had happened I would have been in a real mess and wasted loads of important files.

It was only pure chance I had backed my files up a week before and sometimes I’d leave it weeks or even months before doing so. I know it’s bad practice but I risk it purely because I couldn’t be bothered to rig up my external drive and push a few buttons. How lazy is that.

Hard Drive Saved My Life

Listen Carefully !

The moral of this story is that I have put my system through some real hell over the years and what ever I’ve thrown at it, I’ve never had a major problem that couldn’t be corrected without needing a new install. I thought it would only happen if I was careless and contracted a virus or pushed it to critical limits, but the one thing that finally knackered my laptop was a simple camera install.

My life, business, music and career are on my computer, and if I hadn’t backed it up on a hard drive I’d have lost everything. It would have taken years to replace and I’d probably top myself.

The fact is, you never know when it’s going to happen, and it could happen to you in 5 minutes time…so for your own sake, go and back your files up right now. It is easily done in one click through the ‘Back Up & Restore Center’ in your control Panel. All you need is an external hard drive.

I only wasted a weeks work, but even that was sloppy. From now on I’m backing my stuff up every two days.

Years ago, external hard drives were expensive, now you can get a 500 gig hard drive for about £50 so there’s no excuse.

Take my advice and do it now – before it’s too late.

I forgot to mention there are also some great tools you can get that copy the entire contents of your P.C, including all your drives, operating systems, installed applications, settings and everything else, so you can restore everything in one fell swoop without having to screw about for days on end.

These apps will save you one massive headache.

Check out some of the comments below for some good suggestions.

I’m now using Acronis True Image Home – Cheers John.