That’s 87 days of self-abuse and semi-sobriety for me, 87 days of grumpiness for everyone else, but all in a good cause as I’m running the Paris Marathon in April. As previous fundraising has been for overseas causes, I wanted to do something closer to home – so I’ve chosen 2 charities. First MusicSpace, a music therapy charity based in Bristol, and second, Isabel Hospice based in Hertfordshire.

http://www.justgiving.com/musicparis and http://www.justgiving.com/hospiceparis for further information!

When I was a child, I remember a television series called Poldark. I say “remembered” but I don’t recall all that much about it – some period costumes, sombre lighting, a few ships on Cornish waves, and the occasional bit of dialogue is about it.

One bit that stuck in my mind for the past thirty-five years is a court scene. In it, a gentlemanly type (I assume Poldark?) is being accused of having shouted, “Pickings for all!” on the tragic occasion of a ship being wrecked on a nearby shore. The witness is a heavily-accented local man: I think I can remember sideburns and a waistcoat, though I could have added them later.

Quite clearly, the courtroom is baying for Poldark’s blood.

“Did you make the cry of ‘Pickings for all!’?” asks the judge (I can’t remember what he looked like).

“No sir, I did,” says the man. The court case crumbles; Poldark is released without charge and the credits roll. Perhaps the villager gets it later, but I don’t think so.

Humans are no strangers to talking crap. To shouting out when quiet would have been better; to making false accusations, dubious suggestions and unnecessary outbursts. No doubt, we have been doing all these things since the beginning of time. “Get him!” “String her up!” “I’m going to have you!” “Let’s go kick their heads in!” and so on – whether or not there was any intent to actually get, have, kick or string. We’re like that – particularly blokes I think, but maybe that’s due to my lack of experience.

Enter the internet, and however bad our spelling might be, stuff we might have said out loud is now being recorded, broadcast, archived for playback at annoy point in the future. On Facebook I see usually-gentle people saying that they’d give so-and-so a good slap. Or that they believe hanging is too good for someone. Or whatever. Do they mean such things? Perhaps – at the time. Do they seriously expect them to be acted upon? Of course not – and indeed, the fact that sometimes people feel their views are not being heard may itself lead to more vocal, and indeed more dramatic expressions of such views.

People talk crap online just as offline – and other people are watching and listening. So we end up with the case of AA, who ‘threatened‘ to blow Robin Hood airport “sky high”. Did he mean it? No, of course he bloody didn’t. Was anybody else going to say, “Oh, good idea”? Of course not. Did his sentence send out a deterrent? It’s difficult to see about what, unless it’s to deter people from speaking their minds.

The case of the two rather disappointing “rioters” in Northwich is more complex. Let’s “Smash d[o]wn Northwich Town,” they proposed – but nobody went, other than the police. Were they jumping on the bandwagon? Most likely. Did they succeed in increasing the violence or anything else in any way? It doesn’t seem so, not in their areas.

There’s a straightforward scenario, which starts with someone saying, “Let’s do a bad and illegal thing.” Bad and illegal thing is done, people get arrested and punished accordingly. Indeed, the fact that Jordan and Perry turned up will not have helped the case for the defence. But just how much of the sentence was against the act, and how much was it to do with the hopelessly bungled online post?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for criminals being shown the error of their ways, whether they are rich or poor, in positions of authority or on the streets. We all have choices, whatever our circumstances, and we should face up to the consequences. And incitement to crime – where crime clearly taking place, or where its continuation (in the case of hate crime for example) is encouraged as a result, that’s just plain wrong.

On this day of all days however, let’s recognise that not all remarks, whatever the words are, should be interpreted as such an incitement. Yes let’s have a robust legal system, and give our courts the tools they need to separate right from wrong. Let’s recognise our online responsibilities, understand that cyber-bullying and insults to the non-PLU have no place in a civilised society. But let’s not create a world where people can no longer make an online remark for fear of who might come knocking on their door, however stupid it might be.

I had an idea I wanted to test – that business texts and self-help books are written by people who are sufficiently compelled to do so. Here’s the principle: we keep going with our humdrum lives until we reach a point we don’t want to do it any more, for whatever reason. Some of us reach a kind of crisis point – which we emerge from, sometimes feeling all the better for it. An even smaller subset exits from this stage thinking, “Eureka! I’ve worked out the answer!” and feels sufficiently compelled to write a book about what they have learned. On occasion the book gets extremely popular and a new “guru” is born.

Now, I’m not going to say whether this is good or bad – but I thought I would test the idea. First I looked at the ages that people tend to hit mid-life crisis: this chart comes from a “2008 Gallup phone survey of 340,000 Americans” cited here:

As you can see, the “happiness slide” starts at about 34 and troughs at about 50. Now let’s look at the ages of a few popular “gurus”, and when they published what is generally seen as their seminal work:

I didn’t restrict this list in any way – if I thought of someone (or they were suggested for me), and I could find their date of birth, they they were in. There’s a question on Richard Carlson (Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff), rest his soul starting so early – as he was in the psycho-analytical game anyway – but then so was M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Travelled).

I’m not saying that everyone has to fit – after all, it’s just a theory; there’s also the question of whether one needs 40-odd years’ experience before anyone, including publishers, would take you seriously. But it certainly would be interesting to know the back-story on some of the authors.

Apologies for this – but I’ve stumbled across the command that enables an SSH session to run on my SS4000-E storage server. With thanks to kevinsloan, the command is:

https://IP-address/ssh_controlF.cgi

From this I’ve discovered it is indeed a Falconstor IPStor disk server, which is based on Debian Linux apparently – according to this chap. I was hoping to be able to Wake on Lan (out of sheer laziness – and to ensure network backups take place)… but it might even be possible to configure the box as an iTunes server.

Update: instructions in German, here.

How the winter evenings will fly by.

The only thing we lacked was the numbers. There, I’ve said it. Thirty-forty people came, that’s a few over the number of tickets we sold; plus some local friends popped along for the afternoon to have a beer and listen in to the acoustic sets.

But, despite the turn-out, the Summer Garden Party was fabulous. Magnificent. Stunning. Those who know me, know I rarely get effusive, but this was one of those occasions. It isn’t just me – here’s a selection of reactions:

“Twas excellent, will have to bring a tent next time!”
“That was the most awesome day/night I’ve had for a very long time. I don’t use the word lightly…”
“Please, can we do it all again!”
“Absolutely fantastic! One weekend, two brilliant – but very different – GPs …”

And that was just the artists! So, what happened to make the 2011 Summer Garden Party such a great event?

The afternoon kicked off in the garden with Fergy, one man with an acoustic guitar and a bucketful of gentle charisma. To me, he epitomises everything music should be about. “But I only know three chords,” he says, somewhat embarrassed. Yes indeed, Ferg, but you have that indefinable quality known as ‘soul’.

Howard Sinclair was up next. I must get some of the set lists as specific song titles elude me – I know The Beatles were in there, and a number of other hits as well as some of Howard’s own compositions such as Nine Tenths. Howard’s a talented guy, and always worth listening to.

All of this in a beer garden at The Tunnel House, one of the most beautiful settings you could have for an outdoor performance. The beer was Potwalloper, locally produced over the border in Wiltshire – or if that didn’t tickle your fancy there were three or four other brews on draft. The garden itself was full at lunchtime, then emptied and filled again as the evening tide of local folk came for a pint.

For the final afternoon set, Rich Harding and Simon Rogers performed covers of Radiohead, Pink Floyd and others, as well as some Also Eden tracks, finishing with a rousing(ish – it was acoustic!) rendition of Fish’s The Company. “Thank you very much,” said Rich, “I’m now going for a lie-down.”

Of course, the fact Rich was even performing beggars belief – just a week before he was having yet another bone graft operation following his near-fatal motorbike accident last year. It wouldn’t be too far from the truth to say that a generation of Welsh medical students will qualify having used Rich as their worked example. Of this, more later.

Time for a barbecue, and a quick hat-tip to the staff and management at The Tunnel House for being so accommodating, helpful and friendly. Nothing was too much trouble. Meanwhile, in the barn behind closed doors, preparations were underway for the evening performances.

It’s difficult to describe the atmosphere of the barn. A great little venue, for anyone who knows Riffs’ bar, it’s like that only a bit wider with the bar at the back rather than down the side. From the punter’s perspective, on the night, with thirty-forty people stood up and dancing around, it was “critical mass” – any less and it could have felt sparse, but it was enough people to party.

Jo McCafferty had travelled all the way down from Aberdeen to perform. For anyone who doesn’t know her stuff, think a Scottish singer songwriter, Dido with an edge, singing of the joys and disappointments of life. A great singer, a genuine gem who has toured with Steve Hogarth and Midge Ure to name a few. It’s a good job Jo’s voice was so radiant, as the lighting was not – at least the way it was initially set up. A beautiful set, anyone who doesn’t have a couple of Jo’s CDs in their collection is missing out.

And so, to the Skyline Drifters. Five people who last played together seven years ago – Dave Woodward on guitar, Ade Holmes on drums, Tony Turrell on keys, Tony Makos bass, and, yes, Rich Harding on vocals. Seven years, one rehearsal the night before, and in a stone barn in the middle of the Cotswold countryside on 11 June 2011, five musicians blew the bloody roof off.

I can dig out the set list if anyone’s interested – but it was, in a word, ‘esoteric’. It kicked off with Robbie Williams, then mixed Pink Floyd with Queen, Iron Maiden with ELO, and yes, Marillion with Fish. Ade drummed like it was the last chance he was going to have, Tone’s hand was flying round the neck of his five-string bass, and Tony’s keyboard rig (and his playing!) would have put Asia to shame.

Two highlights stand out – Comfortably Numb, where Dave’s bandmates stood back in awe as he pulled off one of the best renditions of his namesake’s solos that has perhaps ever been heard. Even this was transcended by the sheer joy of Mr Blue Sky. And then the laughter at Tie Your Mother Down (Rich reading lyrics with a torch), the passion of 100 Nights… it was all there.

Finally, a double-bill encore of Hooks in You and Market Square Heroes, both of which had the crowd bouncing. Then the lights came up, the adrenalin drained and Rich had to almost be carried off stage. Rich, I take my hat, coat, shoes and socks off to you. It’s not just your talent – the range of material you can tackle, and the way you change your style to suit. Short of Steve Jobs, I’m not sure I can think of someone with more strength of will.

What a night. Snatching the best kind of victory from the jaws of the mundane. Things could have been so different – any one of the thousand tiny details could have tipped things off the edge (dare I mention staging? ☺) – but they didn’t. To be fair, we chose the right crowd – what a great bunch of friends, who really get what it means to party.

We’ll be meeting up – the planning team – in a few weeks to have a cold, hard assessment of the Summer Garden Party. The big question is why more people didn’t come. There’s no right or wrong – nobody should be expected to turn up just because of their musical affiliations, friendships or geography. But the fact is, despite our best efforts to inform people (I hope we kept one step away from cajoling), we were very lucky to have just enough numbers to make the event a success.

Right now, I don’t know if it will remain a one-off. If it does, I think I speak for everyone who came that it was a privilege to be among such fine company, such great, talented musicians in such a great place. There’s an element of magic sometimes, when everything comes together and just works, if I have any sadness it’s only for the people who I know would have got such a kick out of it too.

I have already thanked everyone – but I repeat my unerring gratitude to all that made it such a success – organisers, artists, participants, venue. I’ll leave the last word to the guy who was on the bar in the barn on Saturday night. When I went in to pick up the staging on the Sunday, he looked at me with a big grin, shook his head and said, “You guys know how to rock.” Yes, yes we do.

For all those who expressed an interest in procuring a mug bearing “Unusual Suspects” design as featured on Separated Out, the good news is a couple of boxes of the blighters will be turning up on Tuesday. So get your order in now and you should be sipping your tea courtesy of your favourite characters by Friday! Combined profits from these and the Summer Garden Party in two weeks’ time is going to Nordoff Robbins‘ music therapy charity, so it’s all in a good cause as well!

Mugs will be available at the SGP, or for those not able to come there’s a Paypal link below the – ahem – mug shot. If you want any option not in the drop-down list please email me and I will let you know how to order.

All prices include postage

Single Mug (UK) £10.50 Two Mugs (UK) £20.00 Single Mug (Europe) £12.50 Two Mugs (Europe) £22.00 Single Mug (World) £15.50 Two Mugs (World) £25.00

Before I start, I should say I’m all for justice. Find the bad guys, get the evidence, have a trial before jury, and if they’re found guilty, bang them to rights. Justice isn’t always such a simple, binary thing however – and our ancient legal system has evolved over the centuries to take into account not everything can be as clear cut as people would like.

And so to the case of Gary McKinnon, the erstwhile hacker who has spent the past ten years on extradition row since he dared to break into a number of US military and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002. A few elements of Gary’s case are pretty clear cut: he openly admits that he accessed US military systems and had a good look around.

Where things are less clear are whether he undertook “the biggest military hack of all time” as the US authorities would have it. The whole area is subject to debate – which is why we have courts of law, evidence, juries and all that very important stuff.

So, why not just get Gary on a plane and in front of Judge Judy at the first opportunity? Things aren’t quite as simple in this context either. For a start, Gary has been diagnosed with Asperges Syndrome, a very real condition which could explain both why he didn’t fully appreciate the impact of his actions, and why he would not come through the court process psychologically unscathed.

There’s also the very real potential for mistreatment. Guantanamo and Bradley Manning’s current conditions both illustrate how US incarceration can stoop way below the level that what our own government and people would consider humane. Our historical record may have dark spots as well, but that doesn’t mean we should just go along with others.

The point is not whether or not he did access US computer systems – it’s whether someone with a medical condition should be handed over to a foreign authority with such a reputation. I would say no, and a number of far older, wiser and more legally astute people have said the same – such as Justice Mitting, who granted a Judicial Review into the lawfulness of Gary’s extradition.

Gary should be tried for his actions, but he deserves a fair trial in the UK that takes into account the complexities of computer hacking, and how thinking has evolved over the past ten years since he was spotted. When Gary accessed US systems, he did so by running a simple script that looked for blank passwords – and he found plenty. It is unlikely that such weaknesses would still exist today.

Meanwhile, plenty of examples of far more malicious hacking, for financial or other gain, have emerged which put Gary’s own actions into perspective. From TK-Max to the PlayStation Network, these are cases which deserve weighty sentences should the perpetrators be caught. The fact that Gary has spent the past decade with a dark shadow hanging over his head should also be taken into account.

I met Gary in London in 2006, when we both took part in the Infosec Hackers’ Panel. Now as then, I thought to myself, he’s just a bloke who happened to be caught at a time when computer defences were weak and his curiosity got the better of him. Five years later, with Barack Obama in town we have an opportunity to put a full stop on the extradition and end this lengthy saga.

Along with the large numbers of people who have already voiced their support, I appeal to anybody who has ever opened a drawer to see what was inside to flag Gary’s case over the next 24 hours. It might make all the difference.

To coincide with our Summer Garden Party bash, we’re having some mugs made with Dazz Newitt’s homage to Messrs Wilkinson and Glover, as appeared on the cover of Separated Out. It would be good to get an idea of quantity before I put the order in – so, if you are interested please let me know by emailing jon at joncollins dot net or as a comment/message, then I’ll know how many to order. All I need are names, quantities and emails for now!

Pricing shouldn’t be more than £10, including UK shipping for those who can’t make the event. Additional costs will apply for international shipping. Any profits will be donated to Nordoff Robbins, a music therapy charity, so it’s all in a very good cause as well!

Click on the picture for a bigger version – and apologies for my dodgy photoshop skills

It all began with the bright lights…

It doesn’t seem at all wrong that as I write this, I should be on my way to a music convention in the name of Marillion. Going back a few years now, as the millennium approached I remember buying the album ‘Marillion.com’. I was bowled over by the inside cover – hundreds and hundreds of passport photos, faces of the fans on whom the band had become entirely reliant for its income. Here was a symptom of something far deeper than selling recordings to casual listeners. Whatever was going on, I knew, I wanted to be a part of it.

Meanwhile some big changes were taking place in my working life, as I stepped away from hands-on IT and became an industry analyst. These were exciting days for technology: the ‘.com’ had arrived, and what a splash it caused. The good times were not to last of course, as for a thousand reasons, the over-inflated bubble of expectations collapsed and many who had gambled on the promise of e-commerce lost their shirts.

The visions of online nirvana weren’t necessarily wrong, just architecturally incomplete, technically premature and economically unsustainable. Despite the dot-bomb, many of the principles have continued to be developed – and while some new brands such as Amazon and eBay survived to become household names, many other, older organisations have reaped the rewards of their evolving online presence. This evolution continues.

As I once again start out on a new journey, things don’t seem all that different to how they looked 12 years ago. Today’s commentators talk about cloud computing like it was in some way new, and social networking like it is an end game. Neither is true – both are just way-markers, brightly coloured handkerchiefs tied to sticks along the road. Look back and they are clearly visible, still fluttering. Look forward, and they are harder to discern particularly as both marketers and pundits try to re-direct traffic towards their own, agenda-led targets.

Technology is shaping the future for sure, but I don’t believe that humanity will fundamentally change – either to become something it is not, or some augmented version of itself, homo steroidiens. Rather, IT will have succeeded when it fades quietly into the background and enables people to be more what they are – bringing up their families, watching and playing sport, and indeed, listening to music and sharing the experience. Such things are fundamental to being human.

Technology can help, but all too often it still hinders. One challenge is to put the emphasis in the right place, on the goal, rather than the toolkit. That’s why I chose to step away from looking at technology per se, and why the next stage of my own journey will involve more of a focus on how technology enables communities to exist, in all walks of life. Best practices learned by musicians and artists will be just as valid to governments, aid agencies and private companies – and vice versa of course.

Of course I will still have an interest in all things IT – just as a craftsman needs to know which chisel to use (though these are new crafts, and nobody can claim to be more than an apprentice). At the same time, the best thing about communities is that they encourage participation, and I am thoroughly looking forward to rolling my sleeves up, building, facilitating and above all joining in. More very soon, but for now I will close the computer and go enjoy a weekend with wonderful people and great music, which is ultimately what it is all about.

I was alerted to the article “The death of the music industry” by @featuredartists on Twitter earlier today.

My reply:

“@FeaturedArtists Interesting, upcurve 89-95 looks incongrous as well. Returning to realistic level vs failure to monetise? NB shipments only”

It was only a few hours later that a better answer revealed itself – oh the serendipity, as a friend on Facebook highlighted an article on ThisIsLondon. To quote:

“So dry your tears at the thought of all those struggling record companies. The truth is that when a previous new technology called compact discs came along, they drove up margins to milk fans as they repackaged back catalogues. This made them so rich and complacent that they turned down the opportunity presented by Napster – which they could have bought for £10 million to dominate the digital market – and allowed Apple to steal their industry.”

Nuff said. for now.