Category: Blog

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Kacey Musgraves at the Birmingham Institute

One of the best concerts I’ve been to.

Although the wait in the queue outside lasted about half an hour, we were soon inside the small-modest sized venue, heating up with the ever-growing crowd and singing along to Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).

The opening band, Sugar & The High Lows, were pretty good. They soon got the crowd revved up and ready for Kacey and band for their opener: Pageant Material.

Kacey and her band were spot on – one of the tightest performances I’ve heard live. And her voice was just as perfect as it sounds on her albums. The songs weren’t precisely the same as on the albums – and that’s a good thing. The band’s improvisations – and indeed the covers they did – were performed with style.

As a note to self I must rememeber to take plently of water and not wear my coat inside again – by the end of the night I was dripping. I look forward to seeing them again on the next tour.

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What Is The IndieWeb And Why We Need It

Facebook, Twitter, Google plus – all places that help you to publish easily – and for free – on the web.

But guess what, the web is already free – or at least it should be – and many people’s only notion of publishing on the web is through one of these, or other, third party silos. It doesn’t have to be this way.

And it shouldn’t be this way.

Where are we now?

In the beginning there was the web. This completely revolutionised publishing and gave everyone a chance to have their voice heard. 25 years on and that is still the case. Only now we have these monolithic silos that have made publishing even easier, and for free (zero cost).

The problem with free though, is that it comes at a price. All of these companies that offer you the opportunity to publish and get your thoughts out there, are doing so to serve their real customers – their partners and investors. You see, every piece of information you pass into these silos, whether knowingly or not, is used to help profile you and your friends. This profiling and tracking goes on to help make you more susceptible to targetted advertising – the core business model of most modern-day tech “startups”.

Imagine a world where everyone’s thoughts and opinions are only published through one of the current “Ministries of Truth”, where the publisher only shows what it wants to show; hiding what it wants to hide as it “currates your timeline”.

We desperately need many more independent avenues of information and points of view from people, not corporations, if we are ever going to get a chance at a more free on open world online.

The Indieweb

The Indieweb is an initiative; a community, with the aim of publishing on ones own website and taking back control over the content that they publish.

Everyone who has access to the web has the potential – and it’s not as hard as it may seem – to get started publishing with you in control. The Indieweb isn’t about jumping through hoops to publish in a particular way either – the whole point is to do it your way and under your terms.

You should be able to publish and present your content in exactly the way that you want to. This post is about introducing you to the concept of the Indieweb – to the concept of your being in control of your own writing and publishing.

To get started on your path to online writing freedom, head over to the Indieweb site now for advice.

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Implementing Jams

Jams were a type of content popularized by the website This is my jam.

This is my jam has since gone into read-only archive mode. This is such a great way of closing a website — especially one whose content is mostly community-created.

I started to use the site at the end of last year to start saving songs that stood out to me at a particular time.

Thanks to This is my jam for making me an archive of my own. This means I haven’t lost all of my data with them just because they have closed doors.

I still love the idea of saving individual “jams” though, so I have implemented it on my own site as of today. I have also pulled my old jams into my site. Going forwards I look forward to documenting any new and/or forgotten gems that I hear in the future. They will all be found on my Jams page.

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On rethinking my database structure

I’ve been using Laravel for my personal website for about eight months now and haven’t looked back since.

This huge advantage to my rebuilding it in that way — from its original WordPress foundations — was that I had a crash course in using Laravel as well as learning some best practices as well.

Now that I have been using my site daily for all this time, I have found places where it has got messy — unavoidable through the learning experience — as well as places where I want to refine how I publish.

At the moment I am using what are called explicit post types. Meaning that I manually choose which post type a particular post belongs to before publishing — picking the appropriate create form to publish from.

However I have been thinking more and more about implicit post types — post types whose contents define what sort of post it is. Going the way of implicit may also see me abolishing the need for post-type-specific areas of my site.

I could still do this to some degree I suppose. e.g. If a post doesn’t have a title, it’s a note; If it has a location, it’s a checkin; etc.

The only way to see how this is going to go is to build it and actually publish with it for a while, I guess.

Update 8th February 2021: I now use WordPress for my website and have done for a few years now.

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100 Albums #2 – The Wall: Live in Berlin by Roger Waters (and various artists)

A couple of weeks ago I went to see the one-night-only showing of Roger Waters’ The Wall at my local cinema. That performance rekindled my love for that album – indeed Pink Floyd in general.

Yesterday I revisted an older performance of the album, which was given at the Berlin wall at the time when it was being torn down.

Very apt.

This performance of The Wall is unique, in that many of the songs are performed by guest artists. My personal favorites of these perfomances are Bryan Adam’s “Young Lust”, Paul Carrack’s “Hey You” and Van Morrison’s “Comfortably Numb”.

For any fans of The Wall, this album is a milestone performance and must be experienced.

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100 Albums #1 – Kiddo by Tove Styrke

My very first album write up goes to Tove Styrke’s Kiddo. I had never heard of her before tonight – she was a recommendation by Google Play Music, based on my interest in ‘Say Lou Lou’.

As soon as the first song started, I was hooked. Hooked enough to take advantage of my Android 6.0 update’s new context awareness by demanding – “Google! Play me her first album”* – that one is also great.

The first song sounded to be very Prince-esque – purple rain Prince – which can only be a good thing. Then there were other songs that had the sort of catchy hooks and beats you can’t help but move your body to. I had been getting nowhere with what I was building tonight, which was annoying, but this album soon got me feeling on top of the world.

Stand out songs: Borderline, Even If I’m Loud It Doesn’t Mean I’m Talking To You, Walking a Line.

*I am since trying to rid my life of Google Inc. as much as I can.

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All in all – thoughts of Roger Waters The Wall

A slow, winding blade of green weaves across the ever-growing familiar white brickwork from the left side of the stage. Then another from the right. They wind slowly across the length of the wall – both to the centre and up – until they blend seamlessly into one of the most iconic animations from The Wall – the flower scene over Empty Spaces.There are a few albums that have moved me in ways I can still feel: Radiohead’s The Bends, Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence. But the one that has had the greatest effect on me – and still continues to do so – is Pink Floyd’s The Wall.Tonight I went to see the one-off showing of the new film by Waters which was about 80% concert show and 20% pilgrimage by Waters to visit the resting places of his father and grandfather. The thing as a whole went together beautifully.One of the songs that continues to get me each time I hear it is Vera – and this time was no exception. I was suprised to hear, in the discussion that followed, that this was Waters’ favourite song off the album.The songs I were looking forward to the most were Comfortably Numb, The Trial and Empty Spaces. I love how the full version of Empty Spaces gets used when performed live.The usage of some of the animations from the 1980s film of the wall were a nice touch too.All in all it was a great performance of The Wall.

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Facebook is a cancer on the web

I commute into Birmingham each day to work and see people on there phones and tablets passing the time.

I’m a bit of a nosy git, so I can’t help but take a glance at what they’re looking at.

I’m always disheartened when I see — most of the time — it ends up being Facebook.

It is sad to see that a lot of people’s only experience of the web is through the guarded corridor that is Facebook.

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100 days 2015 – 10 days in

For the past ten days I have been doing the 100 day challenge.

I decided to have a go at building my own e-commerce CMS.

I don’t have a big passion for e-commerce. In fact most of the time I work with e-commerce it frustrates me. But then I always remember hearing the old saying:

“The best way of complaining about something is to try and build something better”.

I won’t say which e-commerce CMS has me often cursing. Those who know me will know by the curses and moaning directed at it.

It feels good to be 10 days in. It’s also the longest commit streak ever on my github account.

I think the biggest thing I am taking away from my 100 day project is the learning I’m doing along the way. The outcome is kind of irrelevant at this point in time — although it would be nice to have something to show for it at the end.