Rogers looking studious, though he might be doing his lottery ticket

Just another quick football update. I posted my thoughts on Liverpool’s search for a new manager last week and made Andre Villas Boas my favourite candidate. Since then the rumour mill has turning overtime with everyone from Pep Guardiola to the apparently undead Elvis Presley “about to take the job”. I’ve been following reports all night though and it seems talk of Brendan Rodgers accepting the job may be legit. The 39 year old manager has already left Swansea City according to their chairman Huw Jenkins. The BBC have published the news under the headline “Brendan Rodgers is new Liverpool manager” and if you need more proof his Wikipedia page now says “Current Liverpool manager”. Wikipedia never lies does it? Ok, so maybe that one isn’t the best evidence but it seems to be true and confirmation from Anfield is expected in the next 24hrs.

So what can we make of this move? Well, despite my early support for AVB I’ll be quite pleased if this is true. Rodgers is a gamble no doubt. He’s only had one good season in the Premier League and if signing Charlie Adam has taught us anything it’s that you can’t judge someone on one season. I’m still positive and I think this is a gamble worth taking. If Rodgers is allowed to really stamp his mark on the team and get them playing the kind of passing football Swansea displayed last season I’ll be very happy. I don’t think we’re going to be winning the league or even cementing a top four place any time soon, but given time he could build something interesting at Liverpool. The story is that he’s been offered a 3 year contract and I hope he’s given that time to work. It’s no small job rebuilding Liverpool and Rodgers needs patience and support from the clubs owners and fans. I hope to god he turns out to the next Brian Clough but I’ll reserve judgement for a good while yet, let’s not get carried away. I’m sure the media will go crazy over this but to put in perspective we need new ideas and fresh blood, Rodgers seems to offer that. Let’s see what he can do with an increased budget and a bigger club.

Of course it could be that by the time you read this it’s all been refuted and he’s not coming to LFC at all. In which case this post will look rather silly. Never mind, I’ve looked silly plenty of times before.

Dan

Day 2 - Friday May 18th – I arrived quite early which is unusual for me. After missing the morning sessions on Thursday I wanted to make amends and see more of the conference. I met up with good friend Neil Morrin of Defnet Media and we headed to the first session of the day, appropriately named the LSC Start Up panel. I was still half asleep and didn’t take in all of what was going on but it was a discussion about starting a new business in the music industry and the challenges involved. Unfortunately I only saw the first 20mins as it clashed with the start of the LSC digital distribution panel which I REALLY wanted to see. So I snuck out as discreetly as I could for a lumbering 6ft 3 inch guy who weights over 260lbs and made my way next door.

Albert Dock & Skyline (taken on the way from the expo)

This panel was probably the best thing I saw in all of the LSC conference section if I’m honest. It consisted of some leading names in the distribution game discussing strategies and recounting tales from the trenches. As a podcaster (i.e – digital broadcaster), web developer and online musician this ticked all the boxes for me. On the panel were: Lee Morrison (Believe Digital), Ally Gray (EmuBands), Matt Parsons (Ditto), Scott Cohen (The Orchard), Jake Baumont-Nesbitt (MMF) and Phil Patterson (UKTI). I’ll level with you, I had no clue who any of them were before the event but that was just my ignorance, looking it up now they are clearly big movers in the field. The discussion was lively and interesting I thought, very engaging. I disagreed with some points and agreed with others. These are companies whose business is distributing your music onto the likes of iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and the overall message seemed to be “you can’t do it without us”. That’s rubbish. You can get your music onto iTunes, Amazon, Google Music and more through all kinds of avenues. Will you do it as effectively as them? OK probably not. I raised a couple of questions at the end, the first about Bandcamp and the second about Google Music. The panel largely dismissed my comments but they did answer to their credit. A few people in the crowd sided with me which was nice. I’m not going to pretend I know more than these people who work in this industry day to day, I’m sure using a distributor like this is highly valuable. The experience and promotion they can offer may be worth it alone. I just wanted people to know you can do a lot of this yourself with the right application and commitment. After the panel I headed for lunch with my friend Andy and then we checked out the expo at the Echo Arena. I was sorry I only had half an hour to look around the expo really. The stands were mostly music technology stuff and obviously I felt right at home. Guitars, keyboards and drum kits all over the place. I met some interesting people and saw a few demos. Sadly though I had to head off to FACT for a meeting and cut the visit short.

Following my trip to FACT I had a gig of my own with 20lb Sounds. We played the Cavern Pub at 6:15pm for the IPO Festival and it was a lot of fun. Possibly the most chaotic gig we’ve ever done as the bass amp broke, the guitar volume was up and down like 2 kangaroos in the mating season, and to top it all off the kit started falling apart and the kick drum was trying to escape across the stage. That’s rock and roll though isn’t it? We pressed on, had fun and I think the people watching did too. It was an odd crowd really, not as busy as I’d expected for a Friday night but we won them over. After the gig we hung around in the pub a while before walking back to the rehearsal room with our stuff. I like doing gigs where you can walk there in 10mins, that’s very cool. The night was still young and armed with my festival wristband I wandered into the night with the others. We had a few drinks and eventually made our way over to LEAF on Bold St where I’d been told to check out a guy by the name of Ben Caplan and his band The Casual Smokers. They were an interesting outfit with a kind of bluegrass feel to the music. Guitar, double bass, drums and violin. Very interesting stuff and Ben’s powerful voice was almost as impressive as his massive (and I do mean massive) beard. I wonder if he knows about Unix? He really should do with that facial hair. Sticking in LEAF (my home from home) I headed upstairs to see who else was on and caught an interesting 3 piece called Bear In Heaven who I enjoyed a lot. They had a really big sound for 3 people and there was a lot of instrument swapping going on which I like. I don’t know exactly how I’d describe their style really, a mixture of indie rock and electro almost with programmed synths and effects. Well worth checking out.

After a very long and exhausting day I headed home when the last band finished and put myself to bed. Satisfied and sleepy.

James Vincent McMorrow & band on stage at the Epstein theatre

Day 3 - Saturday was a fairly mixed up day for me involving a LivLUG meeting in the afternoon and some podcast editing in the early evening. I made it back out later to meet friends and see a few interesting gigs though. The first stop on my late night excursion was to the Epstein Theatre, that’s the old Neptune Theatre to you and me. It’s been reopened and renamed but little else has changed as far as I can remember, despite the reported £1million renovation. It’s a beautiful venue and I’ve seen many a gig their over the years, I’m glad it’s had some TLC and it’s back in use. The architecture alone is worth checking out. I was there to see James Vincent McMorrow at the recommendation of a friend. I didn’t know much about him beforehand but he was truly excellent. His voice is fantastic, his songs anthemic and his band top class. His version of Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” has been very popular. Being a musician and all round music geek I often access the different members when watching any band. I can’t help it. They were all good but the drummer caught my eye particularly. I saw the last 5 songs of the set and was really glad I did. I should have made it along earlier but never mind. After this a group of us wandered over towards the Kazimier to see 90′s Britpop legends Space. I hadn’t heard from them in years but I did enjoy their music back in the day. I thought we’d missed most of the gig by the time we fought our way into the crowd but we heard all the classics really. “Ballad Of Tom Jones”, “Female Of The Species” and “Neighbourhood”. The band seemed to be in good form although Jamie was having a bit of a diva fit and he’s a pretty hard guy to like. I’d heard that from mutual acquaintances but never knew if it was true. Picking on your roadies and getting the crowd to chant abuse at them is a good way to ensure your coffee always has a healthy serving or spit in it. Nice work. I felt a bit sorry for Tommy and the others as they apologised but we all enjoyed the music anyway. After this it was a quick hop over the square to see one of the current darlings of the Liverpool scene the Tea Street Band. This was my recommendation and I wasn’t sure how the others would take it. They seemed to get into it after a rocky start. Tea Street Band basically blend your typical house anthem style with live instruments, guitars and the occasional vocal. I’m still not 100% convinced their songs are diverse enough but I do like them and the local media are really pushing them to succeed. I hope they do.

The word on the street among all the conference industry types was that Tall Ships were the band to see, so we headed to their gig right after Tea Street Band. We made it in plenty of time and I was pleased to see the whole set. I had no idea what to expect but it was again a 3 piece with a big sound. It seems to be all the rage right now. They were much more rocky than I’d expected with grundgy guitar at times. I have no idea why they’re called Tall Ships but they did seem to be in danger of headbutting the lighting rig a few times, they were all over 6 ft tall. Maybe I’m taking the name too literally. Great set though and probably the best band I saw in the whole event if I’m honest. I’ll be checking out much more of their stuff in future. Give them a listen.

We headed back to the open garage space and saw a great bit of high energy ska from Dexter Dangerous & The Fingersmiths. I had no idea who they were but the band really put some effort in and jumped around non-stop. All 10 of them. I was massively impressed and I love ska anyway so it was always going to be an easy sell. After finished their blistering performance I assumed the band would get a well earned rest. Oh no. They were back about 15mins later in completely different outfits doing a circus style cabaret act to a lot of fast paced dance music. No rest for the wicked I guess. This was all punctuated by the 4 DJs spinning great beats and keeping the crowd going between acts. Can’t Mix Won’t Mix Shouldn’t Mix Don’t Mix is a moniker and a half but they really were great. Anyone who plays 2 James Brown records in the pace of about 10mins can’t be bad in my book. Along with stuff like Fun Loving Criminals, Otis Redding and more. All got a big thumbs up from me.

As the cabaret continued my energy was all but spent and after a short period of propping myself against a pillar I decided it was probably best to head home. This was about 3:30am. Pretty respectable I’d say, there’s life in the old dog yet. Overall I enjoyed Sound City a lot and while I would have liked to see more local bands get prime slots I think they did pretty well in organising it all. The plan is to try and make this like the South By Southwest festival and I’ve already heard the term “Scouse By Scouse-west” crop up a few times. If I had to sum it up in one sound bite I’d choose “exhausting but fun”.

Dan

Today sees the start of a new venture for me on YouTube. I decided I should be recording little live acoustic performances and posting them. The intention is to do one every week until either people get fed up of it or I run out of songs.

Please share this around and encourage friends to subscribe as well. I appreciate your support. I started off today with a blues standard called “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out”. In future I plan to post original tunes and some selected covers too. If you have suggestions for songs you’d like me to do then leave them in the comments. I’m open to ideas.

Hope you enjoy the video

Dan

Kenny Dalglish

Following on from my recent post “The Problem With Liverpool FC”, manager Kenny Dalglish was sacked by the club last week, along with most of the senior staff. Interestingly assistant manager Steve Clark submitted his resignation in support of Dalglish but it has been rejected. Whether he’ll stay is still anyone’ s guess. Was it fair? I don’t know. I can’t say I’m surprised Kenny’s gone. He’ll always be a legend at Liverpool as both player and manager (in his first spell). His actions in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster will never be forgotten and rightly so, but how long can you rely on the past in the face of dwindling returns in the present, and grim prospects for the future. Personally I’m not upset he’s gone, he did a great job of stabilising the club when he came in but I wasn’t convinced he could really take us any further. From the national media reports you’d think everyone in Liverpool was up in arms over Kenny’s sacking. That’s not what I see walking around the city. Most Liverpool fans were bitterly disappointed with our return this year. We won the league cup but it hardly papers over the cracks. Even winning the FA Cup wouldn’t have hidden our shortcomings. The league is what matters and finishing 8th is unacceptable. I’m sorry things haven’t worked out for Kenny and if he’d been given another year things might have gotten a bit better. The key phrase there being “a bit better” though. So where do we go from here and who do we trust to lead us back to success? That’s the big question.

Picture the scene. It’s early morning in Boston, Massachusetts and Liverpool owner John W Henry arrives at his office to begin another day. He’s greeted by his PA and asks “anything important come in overnight?”. “Another 20 answer phone messages from Rafa Benitez’ agent” they reply. “Oh christ not again!” says Henry. Rafa is desperate to get the job back and it’s no secret, he’s stayed in Liverpool and wants to manage a Premier League team again. I keep seeing articles with headlines like “it’s got to be Rafa” and “Benitez is the only choice for Liverpool” and I wonder who’s writing them, because whoever they are they’ve got a few slates loose. I believe reinstating Benitez as manager would be a massive step backwards for the club and I’m surprised how quickly people forget the drudgery of Liverpool’s performances towards the end of his reign. It’s no secret that I lost patience with Rafa a good while before he was fired, having previously defended him. He did well for us in the early days and of course I was delighted at winning the Champions League in 2005. I thank him for that, but his handling of the Alonso affair cost us one of the best midfielders I think we’ve ever had. So for me no, I’m sorry, I don’t want Benitez back. Not on your life.

Rafa Is Desperate To Get Back In

What are the other options? Well if you believe the press it seems Roberto Martinez from Wigan is in the frame and has even held talks with Anfield officials. I’m not sure how I feel about that really. He’s done ok at Wigan without setting the world alight. You could argue he hasn’t had the resources to do much more and he’s taken Wigan as far as anyone could with that budget. His style of football seems good and at 38 he’s still young but seems to command respect from his players. He’d be a massive gamble in my book but maybe one worth taking. Another young manager who’s done well in the league this year with an unfashionable team is Brendan Rodgers at Swansea City. Some of the smooth, attacking and cultured football they’ve played this year has been sublime. I’d like to see the reds play more like that and I’m certainly not alone. He seems to have a decent future and like Martinez could be a gamble worth taking. However, he has declined to speak to Liverpool and seems happy to stay at Swansea, which is probably a wise move at this stage of his career.

Another name being heavily linked is former England manager Fabio Capello, who at the age of 65 could offer a more experienced head. I’m not sure he’d be right for Liverpool but he certainly has a good club record with the likes of AC Milan and Real Madrid. The rumours are that he’s very interested but he’d demand a large transfer budget and would want complete control of football matters at the club. I couldn’t see him working well with Johan Cruyff or any of the other names being touted for a Director Of Football role at Anfield. If Capello were appointed then one thing he could offer is a bit of star quality. He’s still a respected name in world football despite a mixed spell with England. I don’t think anyone can be judged on their record managing a basket case like the England national team these days. If he had the money he could attract big names to Liverpool which may be useful. It should be remembered though that he’s never managed in the Premier League before and his tactics may not please many LFC fans.

AVB is my choice

Among the many other names linked one stands out to me. Andre Villas Boas, or AVB for short. I’m not sure whether he’d come to Liverpool but he is a talented young manager there’s no doubt about that. He doesn’t have the experience of a Capello but he does have a bucket load of potential. He had a bad spell at Chelsea earlier in the season but wasn’t given the backing of the board and it looks as though the senior players tried to actively undermine him. He’s my favourite candidate because I believe if given time and resources he could turn us back into a quality team in 3 or 4 years. The LFC owners say they’re looking to appoint a manager for 5 years minimum, but then Chelsea told him that and he was sacked after 9 months. So he may need some convincing. It takes time to build a successful team and we need a lot of work, you can’t expect that overnight. Just look how close Alex Ferguson came to getting fired at Man Utd. In today’s football climate he probably wouldn’t have survived and all Utd’s success in the last 20 years may not have happened. Whoever we go for we have to give them time and space to rebuild. On arriving at FC Porto AVB immediately dumped the 2 most senior players and completely rebuilt the team, successfully as it turned out. He wasn’t allowed to do that at Chelsea but I believe he could at Liverpool, if he’s given the time and really is interested in a long term project. That remains to be seen.

Who do you think should be the next Liverpool manager? Maybe you believe I’m completely wrong. If so please feel free to chip in with a comment. Whoever gets the job it’s going to be an interesting summer for LFC fans and we’ll all be biting our nails again.

Dan

Day 1 – Thursday May 17th – At the beginning of Thursday I was feeling pretty exhausted if I’m honest. I’d been up late getting the live recordings from the Rathole Radio gig out as a podcast. I’d also been contacted the day before by a friend to ask if I wanted to come to Sound City in the first place. I was very fortunate to get the free ticket and I wasn’t going to waste it. Having said that I did sleep a bit late to recover some energy. So I arrived at the swanky Hilton hotel on the Liverpool waterfront at midday, just as others were breaking for lunch. I’d only missed one session but I did feel very slightly guilty for being late. I saw some friends in the lobby and headed up to join the signing in queue. There were a lot of music industry people milling about as you’d expect. Some looked very rock and roll, some not so much. As I stood there behind a guy who looked to be in his 60′s one of the organisers ran over and I could hear him saying to the man “your VIP table is ready for 4pm sir, there’s meetings till 6 and then….blah blah blah”. “I wonder who that guy is and why he’s so important?” I thought to myself. I even contemplated tapping him on the shoulder and asking “should I know you?”, but in the end I never did find out. Perhaps it was Elton John in disguise, this disguise only consisting of a hat really though hehe. I got to the front of the queue eventually and after a little bit of convincing and checking the girl behind the desk found me on the register, then tried to print out my pass. I say “tried” because she did this for about 15 minutes and even asked a colleague to help. Fair play to her she wasn’t giving up. The label printer wasn’t working and my inner IT support technician was bursting to get out. I kept telling myself “you’re not here for that Dan, just let someone else fix it” but in the end I couldn’t. I said “do you mind if I have a look?” explaining that I did know a bit about computers. She obliged my interfering and pretty soon I had my delegate badge.

The Random Panel I Ended Up At

My friends were having lunch downstairs in the Hilton restaurant by the time I got back to the lobby, but when I tried to walk in and join them at the table I was told I was “too late for lunch”. It was 12:30, what time can lunch finish?! I was dressed quite smartly I thought but I suspect my slightly shabby trainers had “too late for lunch whatever time it is” written all over them to the staff. I waited in the lobby watching my friends eat from across the way. They’d pretty much finished anyway to be honest and I got a pasty from Gregg’s round the corner later. So put that in your pipe and smoke it Hilton restaurant! Not literally, it’s an English figure of speech. You’d need quite a big pipe for that sort of thing I imagine. Anyway, I digress. After lunch I attended my first session of the day and it turned out to be a cracker. It was titled the LSC Digital Marketing Panel and featured Darren Hemmings and David Emery. A 3rd panel member had dropped out but nevertheless it was a fascinating discussion about using the web to promote your music as an artist or label. It was interesting to hear from people inside the industry just how effective Youtube pre-roll ads can be, and also just how ineffective paid Facebook ads are. It satisfied the geek and the musician in me all at once I think. Darren and David were both funny and informative. I was glad I went. Later I popped into another random session quite near the end but I don’t think I even worked out what it was about. I’m sure that information is really useful to you.

Following this I headed to the LSC Tech Keynote, which turned out to be an interview really and not a speech. Journalist Eamonn Forde interviewed Andrew Mains the head of a company called Mobile Roadie. I’d never heard of Mobile Roadie but they must be a pretty big deal as they’ve built mobile apps for Madonna and many others. The room was pretty empty when I arrived and sadly after 20mins I could see why. The discussion was boring and pretty hard to concentrate on. Out of British politeness I stayed another 10mins not wanting to obviously walk out on the speakers. There’s only so many levels of Angry Birds you can complete on your phone though before you think “I should just leave and see what else is on”.

The last session of the day I attended was titled the LSC Social Media Surgery. The discussion was a bit slow and I think I already knew most of what was mentioned but had hoped to pick up some tips. It came as something of a relief though when I had to leave before the end anyway. I was making a habit of it. I’m no social media expert but I wasn’t convinced any of these people were either really. It’s quite an esoteric subject as a whole and anyone who claims to be a social media guru usually turns out to be a buffoon. I headed home to meet a friend and unfortunately didn’t catch any of the gigs on Thursday night. I was too busy. All the people who tried to get LSC tickets and couldn’t may now boo and hiss at me.

At this point dear reader I should warn you that I’ve decided to serialise this recap. I’ve rambled on so much about day 1 that it seems a good time to stop and have a break. Let’s have a cup of tea and come back to this hey. I’m putting the kettle on, and like Mrs Doyle I won’t take no for an answer. “Will ya have a cup of tea? Ah go on. Go on, go on, go on.”

….TO BE CONTINUED….

Insert your own dramatic music here, dun dun dun!

The Liverpool FC crest

In keeping with my new agenda to post on any topic that takes my fancy, I’m going to talk about football today. That’s English football. You know, the game you play with your feet. I just wanted to say up front that the following is a football rant.

It’s pretty much the end of the season now for my team Liverpool FC. We’ve played 37 league games and only won 14 of them. There’s one more to go at the weekend and if we win that we could finish a mighty 7th in the Premier League. Not good enough by any measure. I’m not going to hark on about the past, others do that more than enough and while I’m proud of our history it’s the future that concerns me. I’m not delusional like some other LFC fans either, we have no right to be at the top of the league these days. We’ve slipped a long way down the pecking order and while I don’t like it we have to be honest with ourselves. We’re light years away from the Manchester clubs and we’ve even been leap frogged by teams like Tottenham in recent years. So what’s our biggest problem? I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and one thing keeps coming back into my mind.

You might expect me to say “lack of goals” here. True, we’ve only scored 47 goals and that’s definitely a problem, but I can sum up our most pressing problem in one word – midfield.

Take a look at the midfield we had out for the FA cup final. We were effectively playing a 4-5-1 formation: Gerrard, Spearing, Henderson, Downing and Bellamy. If you believe this is a world class midfield then you need to your head examined, and probably your eyes too. Steven Gerrard has been a fantastic servant to the club and bailed us out many times over the years, but on Saturday he seemed to be attempting to play 4 positions at once while covering for Spearing, Henderson and Downing. Nobody can do that. Not even Gerrard in his prime could have. I don’t subscribe to the argument that he’s “past it” now. I’m probably biased as we’re only 5 days apart in age but he turns 32 at the end of the month, it’s not that old. I think his problem this season has been injury and lack of playing time. He hasn’t been able to build up any form or rhythm. Long term we’ll have to look to a younger player of course, I don’t argue with that. But he has 2 or 3 good seasons left in him. Possibly in a less mobile role slightly deeper breaking up play. Moving on, Jay Spearing seems like a really hard working lad and he’s trying, but I’m not convinced he’s up to the level we need, or whether he ever can be. Henderson looks lost since moving from Sunderland. We paid 20 million for him in the hope he’d be “the new Gerrard” but he hasn’t showed much of that so far. It’s only his first season and I know he’s young, but he needs to start improving fast. Neither Spearing nor Henderson look capable of breaking up play and controlling the midfield. The “midfield general” is an often used phrase in football folk lore and right now we don’t have one. Every successful Liverpool team had a clear boss in midfield, from Emlyn Hughes to Didi Hamman and many others. Lucas Levia was doing a reasonable job in that role and losing him to injury for most of the season hasn’t helped, but come on. It says something when the stats point out that Lucas has still made more tackles than any other Liverpool midfielder this season. He hasn’t played for months!! You need more squad depth than that. Charlie Adam isn’t going to fill this role either, he had a good season at Blackpool but he just isn’t up to it. We need a midfield anchor and that would be my priority in the summer. It’s the unglamorous but essential heart of every decent team. The reason Bobby Charlton and George Best looked so good was because they had Nobby Stiles winning the ball and giving it to them. Ok so they were obviously special players, but they needed a provider. I don’t see that in the Liverpool team today. A few years ago we had Mascherano and Alonso in the middle, we’ve definitely gone backwards in this department.

Onto the wingers then. Bellamy has done well when he’s played but he can’t be relied upon every week. He’s not fit enough. When we signed Stuart Downing from Villa last summer and Ashley Young went to Utd people said things like, “oh but Downing is the better crosser, we’ve got the better player”. Bollocks, utter bollocks! I said it at the time and I still believe it. Young is infinitely better than Downing in almost every department and Man Utd certainly got the better deal. I still believe Downing can be a useful for Liverpool next season but the key thing is he needs to believe that himself. He seems to lack confidence and I’m not sure how he’ll adapt. Our other options on the wing this year are Dirk Kuyt, a man who’s never been a winger but forced to play there by Rafa Benitez. He’s done a lot for the club and I like him. How could you not like his attitude and effort? But he’s still a striker out of position. Maxi Rodriguez is a good player and he’s been criminally underused this season. He’s coming to the end of his career now though and looks set to leave the club anyway.

It’s not all doom and gloom, I like the look of young Jonjo Shelvey. He seems to have a lot of potential as a playmaker in the middle of the park. We should give him more of a chance. Perhaps there are some other youngsters we can try. We might as well. That big expensive academy out in Kirkby has produced precisely nothing and it’s becoming a white elephant. There must be talented kids out there, so why aren’t they coming through?

Our defence is pretty solid and the record supports that. Reina is a good goalie and Luis Suarez is probably our only world class player. Andy Carroll is another one who needs confidence and people forget he’s only 22. It’s not his fault we paid far too much for him and I believe he will come good eventually. We could still use at least one more decent striking option but if Kenny Dalglish really wants to fix this team he needs to look at the gaping quality vaccum in the middle of the park. That’s where the problem lies. Napoleon said an army marches on it’s stomach, well a football team marches on it’s midfield.

You can comment over there and also share the article. Hint hint. Thanks

Dan

OggCamp 11 - Photo by Henry Patrick Reilly

If you’ve followed this blog or listening to my podcasts for any length of time you’ll probably know what OggCamp is. If not, I suppose I’d better explain. OggCamp is a 2 day Free Software and Free Culture event we organize every year. Since we began in 2009 it’s grown to become the largest Linux and Open Source event in the UK. Last year we had well over 400 attendees and this year it looks to be even bigger.

We’re returning North to Liverpool for OggCamp12 on August 18th & 19th and the official website has now been launched. The tickets are available via Eventbrite and they’re completely FREE. All we ask is that you’re serious about coming when you claim a ticket. If not then please leave space for someone who can actually come.

I’m really excited to be hosting the event in my city again and I think it’s going to be the biggest and best OggCamp ever!

If you’re still unsure whether OggCamp is for you then just ask around, anyone who’s been before can tell you why you shouldn’t miss it.

I hope to see many of you in Liverpool later in the year

Dan

(Photo credit – Henry Patrick Reilly. I got this from Google+)

I think my main problem (amongst many) over the years has been fragmentation, or to put it another way, spreading myself too thin. Originally I set up different websites to post music, Linux reviews, personal articles and many other things. Each new idea I came up with had to have it’s own dedicated site. I thought this would make it easier for people to concentrate on the parts of my output they were interested in. In reality though all that happened was I ended up with a lot of sites that were hardly ever updated. It seems a bit silly looking back but I swear the plan made sense at the time.

Now though I hope to post live music videos, photos and articles about everything from Linux to Liverpool FC all in this one place. I want to make this a proper hub for all my online activity. I’m still mad busy and can’t promise the output will be prolific, but I’ll certainly do my best. Onwards and upwards!

Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience

Dan

March has given way to April and spring should be on the way. You wouldn’t know it from the recent weather though. Last week it was over 20 degrees Celsius and now we’re back near zero. Snow in some parts of the UK and ice on the roads. I knew I shouldn’t have put my shorts on last week, it was only tempting fate. Anyway, I’m sure Al Gore has some thoughts on this. If he’s not too busy jetting around the world warning people about their carbon footprints. The little tinker. But I digress. I last reported back in mid-March and since then I’ve posted about my planned changes to this very site. Those are still ongoing but should be completed in the next week. I’m migrating a lot of stuff from Drupal to WordPress. Not because I have anything against Drupal of course, it just seems silly to use both on one site when I don’t need to. I’ve transferred most of the content and got the new site structure sorted. I just need to find (or knock together) a decent theme and then I’ll switch them over. I don’t want to break the RSS feeds or current URL structure if possible so it’s a delicate process. Stay tuned.

What else have I been up to? Well, I finally got myself a new phone. An all singing, all dancing, Galaxy Nexus, running the shiny new Android 4.0. I’ve only had it a week but I’m settling in already. I unlocked the bootloader straight away and got it hooked up to the Android developer kit on Ubuntu with the help of Andy (Oscillik) from LivLUG. He’s had the phone a bit longer and he’s my go to expert on these matters. I let the phone restore all it’s setting from “the cloud” as the kids like to call it, and it seems this was a mixed blessing. It was cool that it knew all my wifi networks, installed all my apps and updated so easily. But I have been seeing some stability issues with the Android browser and suffering app crashes. The browser is embedded into so many other apps that I think this is the culprit. I have a plan to reflash the phone and not restore anything this time but set it up manually. I’ll let you know how that goes. Minor niggles aside I’m enjoying Ice Cream Sandwich very much. It’s slick and seems a big advance from the Android 2.3 I was running before. I’m still waiting to see what CyanogenMod 9 brings to the table when it’s finally released. This phone is so powerful it feels more and more like they’re starting to be our main computers. I’m reminded of Quantum Leap in a strange way but it feels like we’re heading there. Not time travel, but ever more sophisticated handheld computers at least. I eagerly await the day my phone will remark – “Ziggy says there’s a 90% probability you’ll enjoy this fart app Dan”. I can dream.

In other news we announced the long awaited details of the next OggCamp, and decided to keep the name after all the renaming drama. It will be called OggCamp 12, to the relief of many. It’s happening on the weekend of 18th & 19th of August in Liverpool again. Yeah, you can blame me for that. It may be a bit further for all you Southerners but it’s a lot nearer for those coming from Scotland and other places. So it cuts both ways. We have an amazing venue in LJMU Art & Design Academy and I have to thank my wonderful friends at Open Labs for all their help. They’re sponsoring all the venue costs for us and taking care of a massive chunk of the hassle. We have an official hotel which is in sight of the venue and 5mins walk if you’re slow. So no paying for taxis to and from the venue this year. I’ll let you all know the hotel details as soon as we release them. If you want to keep up to date you should follow OggCamp on Twitter, Identi.ca, Google+, Lanyard or Facebook. You can also keep an eye on oggcamp.org where more details will be posted soon.

I seem to be rambling a fair bit so I’ll summarise some of the other recent events more quickly. I presented FLOSS Weekly with Randal last night and our guest project was Chamilo. It made a fascinating show and I really recommend you have a listen. I didn’t realise the size of this project and if there’s one area where free and open tools matter most it’s in schools. Rather dramatically a sound proofing panel fell out of my studio window and hit me on the back of the head during the show. It was only light so didn’t really hurt, but left me pretty dazed. You’ll hear a loud noise in the background at the start of the interview, that was it. Luckily I wasn’t on camera at the time but it would have made a hilarious blooper. I also attended Liverpool LUG last night where we had a great talk from Bob Ham on IPv6. Not a subject I know a massive amount about but I felt more confident after it.

My band 20lb Sounds are on a short sabbatical right now while our drummer follows England’s cricket team out in Sri Lanka. Alright for some hey? He’s back after the weekend and then we’ll crack on with training for our upcoming gigs. We have 3 in a week which is a first for us. Starting with the Rathole Radio live event at LEAF on Friday May 11th, we’ll continue with a gig at The Cavern Club the following Tuesday as part of the International Pop Overthrow Festival we played last year. Finally there’s another gig at The Cavern Pub on the following Friday. It should be fun and I’m looking forward to it. In the meantime I’ve stalled on completing my long threatened solo album but it is getting somewhere I promise. I hope to have that ready in the next few weeks. That just about brings us up to date. So let’s talk about what’s coming up.

Upcoming:

First up is Easter weekend obviously. Linux Outlaws may be pushed back a bit from Monday night but will happen early in the week. I may well be co-hosting FLOSS again on Wednesday but I don’t know for certain yet. Then there’ll be another Rathole Radio on the following Sunday, April 16th. I’m also in the process of completing a slightly overdue article about digital development in Liverpool and Internet access for my Seven Streets technical column. I’ll let you know about that as soon as I can. In the meantime stay tuned for website changes, more music, more writing and a lot more podcasting. I hope you all have a great Easter Holiday and take care of yourselves.

Over and out,

Dan