Due to the increasing interest in Ana Hausen I thought it might be a good time to publish some background information on the band, formed by me in 1980.

It was late winter in Glasgow, 1980. We (The Suspects) had recently completed a three song demo at the Hellfire Club at Charing Cross in Glasgow. It was engineered by David Henderson – who also co-ran the Hellfire club with his girlfriend Jackie (drummer with Sophisticated Boom Boom). The songs in question were: Professionals, Tunnel Vision and Twilight of the idols.

We duly sent the tape off here there and everywhere. In the meantime I decided to leave The Suspects for reasons I can’t quite remember but knowing my convictions they would have been musical reasons.

I called everyone up individually and broke the news. I seem to recall I couldn’t tell Joe for some reason, anyway I don’t recall reactions generally, except for Ana saying that if the band is to split then she would like to continue working with me. It was agreed. Ana and me were pulling in the same musical direction so it was an easy and logical decision.

Ana Hausen is formed

We decided to call the new group Ana Hausen – which was Ana’s name. We brought in a new bass player and guitarist, John Gilchrist and Douglas Campbell respectively – I also played guitar. We booked rehearsal time in the Hellfire Club and began work on new material, consolidating older material.

I wanted to create a music which was dark, atmospheric and minimalistic. I wanted Ana’s voice to create all the colour and texture – she had a very pure and haunting voice which was ideally suited to the minimal dark soundscapes I was hearing in my head.

Record company interest

Things were moving along fine then around January 1981 I started to get phone calls from various record company representatives. One of these people was Saul from Human Records who was raving about the group and invited us down to Kings cross in London where Human Records was located. As a sign of their convictions they even sent us the train fares to make the journey. I had previously intimated that I was unemployed and Ana was a Philosophy student at Glasgow University. The only way we could come to London was if they gave us the fares.

We entered negotiations with the head of Human Records whose name escapes me at present. He suggested putting out an EP of the demo songs to begin with following up with another single and then an album. I said then I would rather just put out a two song single to begin with. He agreed.

Human paid for us to have the contract read by an Edinburgh music biz lawyer. We (myself and Ana) signed the contract after having some changes made. We decided at this point to allow ourselves freedom of choice over which musicians we worked with. Neither of us was too happy with the conventions of the time which was to have a fixed line up – too rock n roll.

We decided to let John go and I took over the role of bass player, we retained Douglas however as he was a very capable musician.

A date was made to record the single at Jacobs in Surrey, I think it was in early summer. However we needed a drummer. We decided to ask Craig Ferguson of The Dreamboys to sit in and give us a hand. The Dreamboys were also regulars at the Hellfire Club and were led by singer Peter Capaldi. Craig agreed to help us out and we were set.

As we drew closer to the recording date my cousin Neil Mitchell phoned me out of the blue and asked me to listen to a demo some of his friends had made. I must admit to thinking ‘here we go’. Turns out the drummer Tommy Cunningham and bass player Graeme Clark were brilliant. I arranged to meet them and asked them to join the group – they joined.

I explained that we were already committed to the musicians for the first single but after it was completed they would take over. Graeme decided to come to Jacobs with us as part of his personal learning process.

Around this time Ana and me had a bad fall-out, for the life of me I can’t remember why, however it was to prove significant in the coming days.

At Jacobs

The first day there was spent getting to know Ken Thomas and laying down the backing tracks. Later that night Ana got really drunk. The next day everyone went out except Ken, Craig and myself. We recorded Professionals first then Tunnel Vision changing it considerably from the original by adding improvised keyboard and guitar parts – Craig on piano and myself on string synth and guitar. So far so good. However a disaster was looming. Ana’s voice was so hoarse she could not sing her parts due to her drinking exploits the night before. Disaster, we were out of time.

The split

I was furious and the others were none too impressed. I called Saul in London and explained the situation. He decided to come down to the studio. In a private meeting with Saul I got Human to agree to finance a re-recording of the single and I also delivered an ultimatum – it was either Ana or me; one of us must leave the group. Human decided to keep me and give me full control over personnel choices. Ana hausen was no longer in the group but it had not been finalised at that point so I had to keep it to myself. That day in Jacob’s was the last time I ever saw Ana. I have no idea what became of her. If anyone out there knows please do let me know.

New singer

Now I had to go back to Glasgow and find a new singer. I happened to bump into May Mattisse at the Hellfire Club and in the course of the conversation mentioned that we needed a singer. She said she would do it. I was a bit sceptical at first but she insisted she could do it. In the end I agreed. May was a design graduate from glasgow School of Art and lived in a squat on Garnethill – at the time this seemed more or less the right credentials.

The single was re-recorded with May taking the vocal parts. The result is what you can hear now.

The story continues from here but that is for another day….

Craig Nugent  – 14 December 2011

Aside from knowing who your audience is and making a decision on the most effective media channels to deliver the information, you have to make decisions about how to organise the information.

So how should the information itself be organised?

The LATCH model for information organisation was developed by designer and architect, Richard Saul Wurman in the late 1970s. Wurman identified five ways to organise content:

Location
Location organises information in accordance with physical place – where it is located. This system can be used for maps, medical texts, and engineering. Of course there are many more examples.

Alphabet
Alphabetical organisation structures information by letter sequence. We can see examples of this in dictionaries, the phone book etc.

Time
Temporal structuring of information can be seen in instances such as, calendars, clocks, diaries, train timetables etc. This form of content organisation is important where the user is expected to appreciate a sequence of events.

Category
Categorical structuring is appropriate where a variety of subjects are grouped according to type. We can see this in scientific classification: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order etc. Or in e-commerce websites where items are classified under umbrella titles such as: clothing, electrical, food etc.

Hierarchy
Hierarchy organises information by importance. Examples of this could be: political structure or ecclesiastical structure etc.

Of course you have to decide which of the LATCH structures is appropriate for your content. More often than not you will have to deploy a multi-structured approach to arrive at an optimum user centered solution.

Why not take a look at the content on your own website. Does it conform to LATCH model for content organisation?

It would be impossible to write music about 9/11, it is an absurd idea. I wouldn’t know where to begin.

Yes. So why did you do it Steve? Why did you write something that sounds at best, like an incidental piece for a 1950s sci-fi movie? And that cover Steve, what were you thinking? (I understand it has now been changed, the cover that is.)

If this piece had been released as a non-programmatic composition minus the tasteless samples, then we could simply have dismissed it as a tired, cliche ridden disaster from a composer who appears to have nothing left to offer. The singular exploration and pursuit of what is now your trademark harmonic, melodic and rythmic morphing – though clever – was only temporarily interesting Steve.

However this a piece of music belonging to a whole new category. We are invited to view it as a programmatic piece – the clues are in the title and the samples. Ah yes the samples. You know the ones, those fetishised, disembodied scraps of communication flotsam and jetsam. Those sonic cliches that appear in every computer game and bad hollywood imperialist eulogy.

The use of samples requires strict contextualisation, it is not enough to hope that their weight as signifiers will assume precedence over their compositional functions. To hear samples as they should be used within a contemporary musical and artistic context you only have to listen to the music of Kruder Dorfmeister, DJ Shadow, Flying Lotus or Dr WhoDat. There are others of course. Sorry Steve I am not buying into your facile ‘their speech melody’ explanation or was it mitigation?

You have said explicitly that you want the listener to listen to the music and not be distracted by the programmatic elements within the piece. Make up your mind Steve.

Every now and then I am confronted by some offensively contrived artifice commemorating someone, something or some people. I always say to the person responsible (usually an undergraduate), imagine someone is holding a gun to your head, what picture are you going to paint, what song are you going to write?

Your answer will tell you a lot about the depth of your empathy for those unfortunates you profess to commemorate.

Steve, ‘WTC 9/11′ is a desecration, a cheap, cynical ploy to cash in on the misfortunes of others. All the more remarkable because the music itself is appalling on every level.

There is an unwritten law within the artistic community that all material is fair game. I have never subscribed to this. Latching on to emotive issues to promote artists and artworks is an appalling practice; though more often than not there is a commissioning agent or a self serving curator at the back of it.

Any way, another day another buck, eh steve.

The tutorial requires Indesign, if you don’t already have a copy of Indesign then you can get a trial version on the adobe site.

1. The first thing I am going to do is create a new document in Indesign. I am going to set a size of 1440px x 900px to match the resolution of my laptop.

Go into: File/New/Document. Set Document Preset to Custom, Intent to Web, Width to 1440px and height to 900px. Set Gutter to 0px and Margins to 0px. Click on OK.

2. I have decided to settle for a font size of 13px with a leading of 20px. For the sake of the exercise I will use Droid Sans.

To arrive at a baseline grid we divide 900/20=45. Then we divide 900/45=20. This does not always work out so tidily. Now go into the Grid Preferences and set the Baseline Grid to: Start 0. Increment every 20px. (see below)

3. Choose the font you want to use (Droid Sans) and place it on the page. Remember to set the font size to 13 px. Draw out a text box with the text tool and write a lower case ‘f’. Now convert the letter to outlines: Type/Create Outlines.

Take a look at the Transform Pallet and note the height of the “f ” (in this example, with Droid Sans: 9.182 px). We will round this down to 9px (you cannot have .anything of a pixel) Take this value and subtract it from 20px (the leading).

Now extend a guideline to the papers upper edge, select this and set it down by the value you determined (in this example: 9px).

Now select the baseline position and go to: Edit/Step and Repeat. In Count write 44 (number of baselines minus 1) and in Offset Vertical enter 20px (leading). Make sure Offset Horizontal is set to 0px. Click on OK. Now we have the guidelines to align images.

4. To create vertical guides take the new leading: 20px and multiply it by the width of the screen divided by its height: 1440/900=1.6. To get the distance between the vertical lines. 20 x 1.6 = 32.

5. Drag a guideline out from the ruler: View/Show Rulers on the left side of the document. Select the guideline and go to Edit/Step and repeat and enter the following: Repeat count: 45, Move to the side: 32.

Draw in some black blocks (in this example, five) to figure out the margins. Measure the left and right margins and write the value of these in Layout/Margins and columns: 96px. Choose five columns and be careful that the spacing between columns is the same as the vertical lines. That is: 32px. Write this number in Column Spacing.

6. Choose how many rows you want your document to have, in this case, I have made four rows. Draw these just as you did with the columns and when you see that they fit, measure the upper and lower margins and enter this in: Layout/Margins and spacing. Make sure the upper margin follows the line indicating the “f ” height, and that every lower edge of the rows are lined along the baseline (see below).

That’s pretty much it. Now you have a screen based grid that you can explore and experiment with.

“What we need to ask is why are these kids not at school?”

Hazel Blears MP for Salford interviewed by Sky TV in relation to the so called London riots.
So comforting to know Hazel that you at least have your finger on the pulse.

“…so that we can celebrate the distinguished role of these islands in the history of the world, from the role of the Royal Navy in putting down the slave trade, to the way in which, since 1688, this nation has been a beacon for liberty that others have sought to emulate.”

Rt Hon Michael Gove MP Member of Parliament for Surrey Heath and Secretary of State for Education.
Mr Gove promoting a picturesque history of Great Britain for all our young. You remember history? That thing where the rich and privileged go on tour with a large gang – raping, pillaging and barfing without excusing themselves….Not to mention confusing the locals (aka the conquered) by introducing new street names.

“…They do not watch royal weddings or notice Test matches or take pride in being Londoners or Scousers or Brummies.”

Max Hastings Daily Mail online Wednesday, Aug 10 2011.

“If you look at Baudrillard and other people writing in sociology about consumption, it’s a falsification of social life. Adverts promote a fantasy land. Consumerism relies upon people feeling disconnected from the world.”

Alex Hiller “Marketing and consumer expert” at Nottingham Business School.
Hands up if your first reaction to the so called London riots was to look to Baudrillard in order to gain an understanding of the root causes.

When asked by Tom Watson in Parliament “When you signed off the Gordon Taylor payment, did you see or were you aware of the full “for Neville” e-mail, the transcript of the hacked voicemail messages?” James Murdoch said “No, I was not aware of this at the time”.

James Murdoch just before a steward ran in with a fire extinguisher to put out his spontaneously combusting y-fronts….

“There are deep problems in our society that have been growing for a long time: a decline in responsibility, a rise in selfishness, a growing sense that individual rights come before anything else.”

By The Rt Hon. David Cameron Prime Minister in the Sunday Express, August 21,2011 – describing the behaviour of MPs or was it the “looters”…? So easy to get confused.

“There is no human right to fried chicken.”

Nick Clegg Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the guardian.co.uk – Thursday 25 August 2011.

Can I just mention here that contrary to popular belief, Paypal is indeed registered as a bank within the European Union.

Your bank is obliged to request this information from you due to EU money laundering regulations introduced by the FSA in 2007.

So what are these regulations intended to achieve? Well, among other things to prevent financial crimes such as terrorist financing. Here is a quote from The FSAs role under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 section 11.1:

11.1 All electronic money issuers must comply with legal requirements to deter and detect financial crime, which includes money laundering and terrorist financing. Relevant legislation includes the financial crime provisions in the EMRs, section 21A of the Terrorism Act 2000, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, the Money Laundering Regulations 2007, the EC wire transfer regulation21 and Schedule 7 to the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008. Electronic money issuers are also subject to the various pieces of legislation that implement the UK’s financial sanctions regime.

Isn’t it comforting to know that measures are in place to counter terrorism?

Unfortunately there are no such measures in place to regulate banks.

On a threat for threat basis unregulated banking poses the biggest threat to our future in the UK than any terrorist organisation ever could. To put this into perspective the threat from unregulated banking poses a threat on a level of a nuclear weapon suspended over the UK on the end of a shoe lace; contrasted with an individual brandishing a pea shooter in a threatening and alarming manner.

It may sound as though I am being disrespectful. I am not, we are all human beings and we all without exception bring subjectivity to bear in our everyday lives. You know the sort of thing, baseless beliefs, presenting opinion as fact etc, ‘but it said on the news….’

Within the design process we see: homemade logos, self penned content, their daughter wants to be a designer so can you include this please…the market says black but client insists on white with pink polka dots, they have a talented dog who wants to design their web presence, they want to copy the content of another site, another website done this so we should too, I love those little slideshows in the header (despite the FACT* that they are an accessiblity disaster)….I could go on and on believe me.

So how do we deal with this, how do we neutralise the influence of subjectivity and get clients to understand that design decisions should be based on business evidences, information gleaned from the market place and compliance with the localised requirements of the the adopted medium? And, not to put too fine a point on it, the execution of these decisions should be carried out by the those with the credentials, both academically and experientially.

I don’t know the answer to this. Do you?

*A major accessibility study was carried out by Learning and Teaching Scotland and found that when the viewer employed the back button they did not know where they were on the site due to the header pic changing.

What you will learn

The tutorial is specifically aimed at those of you wishing to gain some knowledge in the front end coding and design of OpenCart, in order to create your own templates.

The main thrust of the tutorial is to aid understanding of the template system in OpenCart – what each of the template files does and how each individual file correlates with the stylesheet.

The book is priced at £10 GBP: this will include full use of the template for commercial use, direct contact with me should you need some help with the tutorial, all the files required and of course the e-book itself.

Here is a screen grab of the Home page:

Contents

4. Introduction
8. Some Preliminaries
12. Screen Grab
13. Header
16. Logo
17. Search, Localisation and Currency bar
23. Localisation and Currency
27. The Navigation Bar
29. Breadcrumbs
31. The Left Column
32. The Category Module
37. The Manufacturer Module
39. The Featured Module
41. The Information Module
42. The Cart Module
44. Content
47. Products
50. The Login Screen
51. The Login – Screengrab
52. The Basket Screen
55. The Checkout Screen
56. The Create Account Screen
57. The Checkout Cart Screen
58. The Contact Screen
59. The Contact Screen – Screengrab
60. The Sitemap Screen – Screengrab
61. The Sitemap Screen
62. The Product Categories
64. The Master Product Category Screen – Screengrab
65. The Featured Links
68. The About Us Screen – Screengrab
69. The Information Links
69. The Guest Checkout 1 Screen
70. The Guest Checkout Screen – Screengrab
72. The Guest Checkout 2 Screen
74. The Footer
76. Conclusion

Purchase the e-book package here.

Please feel free to e-mail me in advance if you would like further information.

However both stallholders are selling the beans for the same price with the same guarantees and neither will offer a discount – due to an agreement the two stallholders made some time before. The two stallholders are also mirror image twins. Poor K can find no way of differentiating between the two sellers. Upon what basis should he make his choice?

K has a brainwave. He will invite each of the stallholders to present a speech enticing K to buy his particular tin of beans.

It worked. Stallholder ‘A’ delivered a speech of considerable eloquence and secured the money for the sale of the beans. K walked the long and winding road home, weary but satisfied.

Question

What did K actually buy?

I remember well as a child, walking to school singing songs in my head but deliberately drumming my fingers in a polyrhythm at odds with the monotonous 4/4 drone. Why? Because it made the music much more interesting; less facile…

Years later I was listening to John Peel -which I had done religiously for years – and he played The best batch yet by captain Beefheart. I had never been a fan of Captain Beefheart but it is not an understatement to say it was like some kind of religious revelation. All of a sudden it just seemed to make perfect wonderful sense. Here was someone actually doing in music what I used to doodle with in my head on the way to school….

When I finally got hold of Trout Mask Replica I literally could not stop playing it. When the album finished I would just put the needle back on again ad infinitum. I was utterly thrilled by the most authentic musical wonderland I had ever heard. This was soul music. There is no question in my mind it is the finest album of music ever produced. Period. It will always be a prized possesion.

I had hoped for years that Captain Beefheart would tour the UK again. Sadly it wasn’t to be. In this age of mediocrity, PR puffs and rampant vacuity (Sting, Bono, Coldplay, Radiohead etc, etc, etc,) it is unlikely we will ever hear the likes of Captain beefheart again.

Rest in Peace: Captain Beefheart: Jan. 15, 1941–Dec. 17, 2010.