Martin Dupras

1) Actually parking in the garage.
2) Having a shower
3) Having a dishwasher
4) Being able to play Gears of War 2 at full volume
5) Having to remove excess kitchens and bathrooms
6) Keeping the guitars in the house.
7) Keeping the amplifiers, also in the house.
Not having to move furniture to make space for the christmas tree
9) Being able to leave something in one place, and not having to move it to make space for the next thing
10) Coming in the house from one street, and leaving the house on a different street.

Not so groovy:
- No internet access for one month (”NoooooooooooooooO!”)
- No phone for one month (”Oh well…”)
- No cable TV for one month (”Fuck.”)
- Doing one DIY job, which demands two more jobs.
- Textured wallpaper.
- Floral WC fittings
- Caramel tile in the kitchen
- Beautiful wooden floors interspersed with patches of concrete flooring.
- Trees growing through the garage roof.
- Triggering the alarm system, which could only be stopped after chopping down a small tree.

Oh what fun.

Pictures to come, following “No so groovy” item no.1.

I am dismayed, no mesmerized, no f*cked-off disappointed that California Proposition 8 got through.

For those who don’t know, it’s the new amendment that invalidates the previously acknowledged right for gay marriage.

It beggars belief.

First of all: if the rights were given in the first place, it’s because legally, morally and socially they were recognised as valid.

Second: it’s puzzling that a simple majority vote would be enough to reverse a law. What if, for the sake of argument, a state voted on an amendment to ban Heavy Metal? That the majority doesn’t like it should not be the sole governance of the law. I’ll let you imagine all the horrors that would follow.

But third: it is repugnant to think that revoking already granted rights can be done so easily. Even more so when one thinks that “Proposition 8″ is by definition an act of exclusion: it denies to a certain group the same rights as the collectivity.

Isn’t that, from an ethical point of view, the same rationale behind every war that America has waged on other nations?

I have played with my band at BSB waterside on several occasions.

At the one-before-last gig we played, the management tried to underpay us (i.e. pay us less than previously agreed.)

At the last gig, they simply refused to pay us, on the ground that there was not enough money in the tills. This was a on a busy Thursday night.

I don’t think they would find it acceptable if a punter ordered a drink and did not pay for it; yet, somehow they find it acceptable to treat artists this way.

May I politely ask you to avoid this place like the plague?

The other day I came home to find a brand new copy of the Yellow Pages phone book. Wrapped in plastic no less.

When’s the last time you used one? Personally, I don’t remember using one this century.

I understand that some people may want it, but most of us probably don’t. Now, with daily reminders about reducing waste and recycling packaging, it strikes me that there is a double standard here.

In the UK, the population is about 60 million. If we estimate from that there are say, 20 million homes, that is a lot of unwanted bulky paper wasted, and that’s not counting the plastic it came wrapped in.

The point is that, just like junk mail, it is not requested and often not wanted and it adds to our waste. Now that some city councils are imposing fines for having more rubbish than a given quota, I find it even more insulting that we are then lumbered with that extra rubbish.

They’re hand-delivered too, which means you can’t just “return to sender.”

So why do we tolerate this?

I have a long-standing relationship with Apple. I grew up with an Apple II+ from around 1981, and I used macs from the Macintosh 1MB (and several other along the way.)

Having said that I wouldn’t consider myself a Mac user per se. To start with I use many operating systems (XP, Linux and OS X mostly); they all have good things and bad things, and I’m fickle enough that at any point I’m happy to switch to the (momentarily) best choice for me.

What really gets to me though is that as far as design decisions (at least from the point of view of usability and compatibility) Apple makes some really good ones, and then does something really stupid to completely negate the advantage.

Example number 1:

On OS X, there is a search engine that searches through everything: inside files, email messages, etc. Great. But half of the time, the reason I’m searching that way is because I’m looking for another file in the same folder. But there’s not obvious way to find out where the file resides. I have found a work around: command-I will bring the “Get Info” window for it and you can then see the full path. But really: what I want is ctrl-click to bring a menu with “reveal in finder.”

Example number 2:

On OS X, searches can have selection criteria such as Kind, file size, etc. The other day, I noticed m disks were getting full, and my usual method is to search for really big files to delete. As it turns out, the search returns a list of the files that match the criterion (say file size bigger than 200MB.) That list has just three fields: Name, Kind, and Last Opened.

I’m after the size of the file you dummies. Why can’t I choose to display that field? It’s in every other window?

Example number 3:

I needed to make an audio CD from student work for an open day. I had to grab one file from an audio CD, and three files from a CD-rom. That, really, should be straightforward.

As it turns out, you have to bring these into iTunes. I really hate that because by default that populates my iTunes library (why would I want those in my library?) and by default they will be checked and will sync to my iPhone (once again, why would I want that on my iPhone.) So I uncheck those.

Now, to burn a disc, you need to make a playlist. (sigh…) Fine. But that won’t burn because they need to be checked. (Re-sigh…) Fine. Now when that’s done some time later, I need to remember to uncheck those again.

Example number 4:

iTunes sucks big hairy donkey danglies; we knew that, and Apple has a nasty habit of imposing it on the world. Not quite sure why really either because it as far as I understand them, it violates Apple’s own usability guidelines. But that’s by the by.

I’ve got an iPhone 3G 16GB. Fantastic phone, brilliant user interface design, love it.

I was until then quite happy to not use iTunes.

You need to activate the phone with iTunes. Why?

You need to use iTunes to sync anything: contacts, calendar, whatever. Whether that’s music or not. So I add one contact entry in the Contacts app, and to sync it to the phone, I have to launch iTunes and initiate a sync that will take forever and be a pain in the arse because it will try to sync everything including everything that’s now in iTunes and checked by default.

So let me ask you this: who in their right minds but Apple would make you do everything to do with their phone with a music application?

Apple: please just let me do what I want the way that I want with my hardware. The simple way was great, I’d like to keep it please.

I saw this poster on my office building today. Really wish I could go. Likely to be an ace gig.

When I was a kid, supermarkets used paper bags. With all the fuss about plastic carrier bags now, why are supermarkets not reverting to brown paper bags? They’re tough, big and recyclable. So why not?

250 fresh spaghetti
200g kale
100g butter
4 garlic cloves
25g chopped walnut
25g chopped olives

Cook the pasta as per pack instructions.

Blanche the kale, then rinse under cold water.

Melt the butter in a large frying pan, then add the garlic cloves, walnut, and the olives and cook for 1-2 over moderate heat.

Add the blanched kale and the pasta. Heat through for 1-2 minutes,

Serve with parmesan shavings.

One month in and I still love my new iPhone 3G. The interface and the integration of services is great. For instance, if you have the address for a contact in your address book, clicking on the address opens it in google maps.

Beats my old Sony W950i by a very long shot.

iTunes, however, still sucks big time. I’m used to it by now, and I’ve managed to discover the settings that need to be changed for it to stop deleting my tracks. Apple: sort it out.

However, there are a few things I’ve discovered that make life with iTunes easier.

PhoneView allows you to see the files on the iPhone and download back the tracks that iTunes in its stupidity has deleted from the computer.

GimmeSomeTunes automatically downloads lyrics for tracks playing in iTunes.

The headphones that come with the iPhone were really bad. I mean baaaad. And because I have small ears, they didn’t fit properly and hurt my ears.

Solution:

-  the Monster Cable headphone adapter for iPhone. £15 well worth it. That takes care of the microphone portion and allows you to connect:

- a nice pair of Ultimate Ears Triple.Fi 10 Pro in-ear monitors. Very expensive, but worth every last penny. The sound quality is stunning. It’s like a pair or studio monitors in your ears. Well maybe not, but close. And they don’t fall out of my ears either, which is good.

I’ve recently started to learn to scratch. It’s a world onto itself, and the more I learn, the more fun it gets.

It is however not easy to find resources to learn from.

YouTube is a good starting point. I partularly liked DJ Shortee’s lessons, and Q-bert’s.

I found that the people at Chemical Records were particularly helpful, and the store is great, even though they don’t stock that many scratch records.