Sky in excess.

Sky in excess.
Originally uploaded by davehodg.

I want glasses that do this to a sky.

Wagamam - rubbish again

I don't know why I bother. The gyoza were dry and the spicy coconut soup tasteless.

Son's chicken ramen and chicken yakitori were excellent however.

Maybe it's me?

Vodafone 3G USB Modem.

Today in JFW world...

I've been racking up stupid PAYG data bills recently. Then, NTL have failed to fix my cable at home.

So, I've bitten the bullet and paid the £45+VAT/mo for a Vodafone USB modem dongle.

Wow. Install some software, activiate the hardware, click "Connect". That's it.

I'm on lowly GPRS here in Bath (curse you mast protestors) but I'll be back in lovely RF-saturated London shortly.

Two thumbs up!

Robinson, Way and Co.

They've written to me demaning I "prove I don't owe eBay/PayPal any money".

Riiiight.

A major national newspaper is now putting together (another) story on them. Amusing stuff.

Outsourcing fundamental services

I'm not, generally speaking, a huge fan of outsourcing stuff. As a geek, I know how to set up and run stuff.

However, and as Greg recently pointed out, there's a spectrum of utility that makes these things compelling. Personally, I've gone from having two servers at Rackspace to a mashup of Dreamhost, Flickr, Blogger and a few other services.

Now I'm involved in a startup again, where there are only two developers and some freelancers, I'm finding the same model applies.

Today, I was mostly moving our mail over to Google Apps for My Domain, and very smooth it was too. With our marketing folks trialling Salesforce, the developers using Backpack, I can only see this spreading.

Anyone else?

Where's the tipping point where you bring everything back in-house?

A legendary night

OK, so people do this all the time but it's a long time since I have on such a scale or with these folks before and the first time in my new manor.

So, Matt texted me in the afternoon that he, Tim "QPR" and Kez were up in London for a gig and would I be up for a quick one afterwards?

Do bears shit on the pope?

So we slope off to Paddington for beer so they're well placed to get the last train back at half eleven. The appointed hour approaches and no-one showed any sign of actually boarding the train. "Can we kip at your's, Dave?" Um, OK. So back to Camden and the after-hours madness that is the Dublin Castle. We lose several of the party in search of fags in the wee small ones and then having found them again, the lure of the kebab proved too strong.

Finally, back to mine for coffee and well-deserved sleep.

Of course, their train tickets aren't valid for today, so I ended up driving the posse back to Bath; the gas money will go towards an emergency bottle of Jack Daniels to sit behind an "In Emergency, Break out Glasses" sign.

Ah, good times.

Screw the car petition, photography is much more important

I've already been hassled by a PFY transport cop at Camden tube. Let's assert our rights:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Photography/

Spread the word!

Update: No, don't. It's pointless. There are issues with freedom, but this isn't one of them.

Cavalar at the Purple Turtle

They make me smile :)

Video

OK, so Saturday night was a blast, what with the Quireboys and all.

But!

I also happened to have my video camera there and shot about 20 minutes of Cavalar.

Wow. Matt is Ritchie and Luca is Jesus Christ Superstar.

People, there is no excuse for not having a £300 DV camera at every gig and putting one song on youtube/myspace/your site for every gig. You've got fan boys/girls who can do this stuff or if you need some tips I'm happy to share, but really, just watching a few minutes brought the whole thing back and I'm smiling all over again!

Legendary Music Photographer

Just browsing my google stats. Apparently, I'm third hit for "legendary music photographer".

I'll grant David Redfern top hit, but poor old Ross Halfin and Fin Costello.

Although, as a "friend" pointed out, doesn't legendary mean: "dead"?

Quireboys DVD Launch, Purple Turtle

Quireboys DVD Launch, Purple Turtle
Originally uploaded by davehodg.

As a birthday treat for my daughter, I arranged for two of her favourite bands to play the Purple Turtle. Well, not really, it was just a happy coincidence. First, the Quireboys plugging their new DVD and rocking out as usual followed by the mighty Cavalar throwing out some good old fashioned naked thunder. They make me smile :)

Counterfeits, Kiss The Dirt

Counterfeits, Kiss The Dirt
Originally uploaded by davehodg.

A firkin' freezing night in Hoxton, the band insisted they be dragged out into the cold, dystopian murk with its inherent edgy menace.

Well that was an interesting week.

I'm pleased to announce that I am now CTO at iSporty.com, a community site focused on sports participants. Better still, I'll be working with David Maher
Roberts, formerly Director of New Media at Future Publishing, for whom I'd done several projects over last few years.

I'd been working at Venda for the last couple of months, hacking away
on perl in a pretty large-scale e-commerce system. After a couple of
months I started to seriously reconsider what I was doing. Having
taken the decision to move on, the iSporty opportunity came up. I will
however be keeping a very close eye on Venda and its progress in the
US. There are very interesting and rewarding technical challenges
ahead for them.

Camden will still be my base, although Bath might be seeing me a
little more often now, and the music photography is still firmly on
the agenda with my target of 100 gigs this year!

Nev's new guitar

Nev's new guitar
Originally uploaded by davehodg.

I can't wait for summer, when there's actual light for a reasonable amount of the day and I can take picutres without having to shepherd every photon in the room into the lens.