A Rainbow in Curved Air

Last night saw me in Bristol's Old Vic theatre for the third night in a row, this time to see and listen to a performance of Terry Riley's "A Rainbow in Curved Air" by Charles Hazlewood's All Star Collective and Danceroom Spectroscopy. I'd seen the All Stars perform the piece last year - in fact, embarrassingly, their performance was my introduction to this seminal work - and was keen to hear it again, and whatever else they'd play in the concert.

Charles Hazlewood educates the audience prior to the performance

I wasn't disappointed; not at all. Charles Hazlewood introduced the piece with a short lecture about the nature of minimalist music and explained that the night's performance would follow the form of Rilley's piece but would be improvised and that the musicians would be interacting with Danceroom Spectroscopy's visuals.

Charles Hazelwood, Will Gregory, Ross Hughes 

And what a performance it was. Danceroom Spectroscopy' visuals were spot on, a great blend of abstract, photographic and algorithmic, and I enjoyed seeing the band members interacting with the visuals. Sonically the performance was grounded in the late 1960s with parts coming straight from Rilley's original and parts sounding like they'd been sampled from the more experimental parts of Pink Floyd's The Piper at The Gates of Dawn or from the first two Soft Machine albums. The piece became very free-form at times, and just as it seemed on the edge of falling to apart Tony Orrell's drumming would bring structure back into the piece and bring the audience to edge of their seats. 

Overall a great evening. I hope someone has recorded it and a copy finds its way in to my hands. The Pit at The Old Vic was a great place to see the performance from - although the next time I'll opt for standing rather than sitting. The only other thing I'd change would be to project the visuals over the whole performance area rather than on a screen - then we'd really be back in the 60s. 

Another convert

Yes, another one of my friends has just bought a Mac.

Blue Aeroplanes

From Blue Aeroplanes Thunderbolt March 2010

I saw The Blue Aeroplanes play a great gig last week at the Thunderbolt, warming up their upcoming appearance at SXSW. They had a great line-up and played a cracking set. I'm really looking forward to buying a CD or something (new album) with "25 Kinds of Love" on it. As to the photos, Chris Sharpe lurks in the background a bit, so he's easy to miss, but Max Noble doesn't and John Langley was very visible so there's really no excuse for not having managed to snap them - but I didn't.

Thanks to Chris Sharpe I am able to tell you that the setwas:-

1. Nothing (new album)
2. Up In A Down World
3. Sulphur (new album)
4. Great Movie Clichés (new album)
5. Bury Your Love Like Treasure
6. Don't You Dare (Rita song)
7. Huh!
8. Cowardice & Caprice
9. Raise The Roof
10. Oak Apple Day (new album)
11. Go Along With Me On This One (Gerard Starkie song)
12. 25 Kinds Of Love (new album)
13. Jacket Hangs
14. Yr Own World
    
    
15. Lover & Confidante
16. The Applicant
    
    
17. Warhol's 15
18. Breaking In My Heart

I recommend the support band, "Daddy Long Bones" as well.

Winter

The recent wintery weather here in Bristol reminds me of my recent trip to California. I've been there enough to know that, despite what people think, they do have poor weather occasionally.

It seems they had the coldest weather for a decade while I was there. The picture on the left shows snow on the hills to the east of San Jose. I've seen a light dusting of snow on the hills before but not a blanketing.

However, in twenty-something years of visiting Silicon Valley I've never before had to scrape ice off my windscreen which I had to do for two days running.

It was really good to get back to the mild climate of Bristol.

Elvis Lives

I've seen Elvis loads of times and I've never seen a bad gig. When he played in Bristol with "The Confederates", a backing band who seemed to be only doing it for money, he leterally pulled the audience to their feet and made the souless Colston Hall seem intimate. So, Elvis and a string quartet - what would that be like? I'd never heard "The Juliet Letters", the album he recorded with the Brodsky Quartet many years ago, but I seemed to recall it had been quite badly received, so was curious.

St George's is a small venue - 500 souls I guess - used normally for classical recitals - I've only been to the venue rarely, once memorably to sees Ronald Smith perform Alkan's "Concerto for solo piano". Elvis and the quartet came on stage and opened with "Accidents Will Happen" - I think the first song I ever saw him play on the "Armed Forces" tour in Coventry - excellent - a very good arrangement and a wonderful reinterpretation - I was knocked out by the quality of the musicianship. The evening covered a mixture of material. The Brodsky Quartet were showed at their stongest on pieces from The Juliet Letters - wonderful stuff. Of the material Elvis did with the quartet ,"Pills and Soap" and "Shipbuilding" stood out for me. But for me the highlights of Elvis's performance were the four songs he played solo, unamplified - all new and a couple of them never performed live before. The fourth song was great - Elvis started a little tentatively - unrehearsed - banging his foot on the stage dramatically and atmospherically - as he felt his way into the accoustic of St George's his performance grew and the song ended masterfully. Sorry for those who were there but missed this because they had to get back for the babysitter before he finished the fourth encore. Great show, great performers - and Elvis and the Brodskys seemed to enjoy the performance as much as the audience.

Perfect? No. Alison would have had to have been there.

Science City Bristol

See Science City Bristol

Bristol family appeals for return of stolen tarantula

I just love this story.

The decline of Geneva Airport

I use Geneva airport many times a year. It is well served by the excellent Easyjet from Bristol and provides the most convenient route to visit my company's Grenoble site. One of the factors that makes Geneva an easy airport to use is that the car hire is adjacent to the terminal. Quick to get away and quick to get back - great. No more alas. It seems the car hire has moved and shuttle buses are now needed. I hope this is just a temporary move.

But there is more - and worse. The Easyjet flight back to Bristol has usually left from a "B" gate which avoids the worst of the security queues. Unfortunately today we left from a "D" gate. This requires going through security hell and then getting lost - very poor signage and a long walk. I hope this is just a temporary move, caused by work to upgrade Swiss airports to be Schengen compatible.

[Now let me see - Schengen is about a border free EU; the UK is part of the EU, Switerland isn't; but Switerland is in Schengen and the UK isn't. Does not compute!]

Bristol City Council Dodgy Doings

Please see The Bristol Blogger.

Google driving the mean streets of Bristol

I saw the Google StreetView car photographing my house as I was leaving for work this morning at 08:42. I guess we'll see BS6 6YW on Google Maps before too long.

Virgin Media (TeleWest) v. Be Broadband

I've been using Virgin Media (was TeleWest) broadband for a number of years. I started with cable TV, phone and broadband. I dropped the TV when FreeView became available and TeleWest started charging more than about nothing. I got fed-up with the price gouging on the phone and switched back to BT, having also in mind that I now had an easy route to getting ADSL as an alternative to cable modem.

I've been on Virgin's 20 Mbit/s service since it launched here in Bristol. The last time they hiked their prices I threatened to leave and move to Be Broadband. Virgin offered to keep my service at the old price and I stayed.

Last week I got my Virgin bill through. £37 for 20 MBit/s; up from £27. Now Be looked interesting. Since my last flirtation with Be two friends have started using the service and give good reports. So, I check out Be's offering.....

"Up to 24 MBit/s" for £18. Mmmmm. Now, given my distance from the phone exchange, I guess I should get ~16Mbit/s down and at least the same upload as I get at the moment. Working through the details I find that £18 doesn't include e-mail (no problem - I use Gmail) nor webspace. Webspace is a bit of a pain - I don't use very much, but I do have some old pages I'd like to keep. However, a little investigation shows that £2 per month will cover that.

Seems like a no-brainer to me. So, I phone Virgin to cancel......

"You can only get 8Mbit ADSL in your area" say Virgin. After a discussion where Virgin try to persuade me that I'll only get 8 Mbit (in fact 6 where I live) they do offer to drop the cost to £29. No deal, I'm off.

They've been phoning me at work. Yesterday and today. In fact twice today. First off I explain Be offer me 24 MBit/s - it's ADSL 2, not ADSL Max. They ask me what I want to stay; I say £18 per month. They say they get back. They call again. This time they explain that my exchange is not enabled for ADSL-2 - "Look at SamKnowsBroadband". We look at the site. "See, ADSL 2 isn't live yet". I tell them that Be don't use BT Wholesale, they use local loop unbundling with their own ADSL 2 kit. Virgin are not convinced and don't make me a better offer.

Meanwhile, when I get home, my new ADSL modem/wireless/wired router is sitting waiting for me. Now all I have to wait for is the line to be activated.

I wonder if Virgin will make me an offer?

Wireless 2.0

Unfortunately I could only attend the second half of this one-day conference. I missed the keynote from Joe McGeehan and the presentations from Vodafone, Icera and Picochip. Although these were all reported to be very interesting sessions, I was pleased to have caught the presentations by Anders Carlius (TerraNet), Will Franks (Ubiquisys)and Stuart Scott (Intohand).

Anders Carlius described a peer-to-peer mesh communications network that TerraNet have deployed in Ecuador and Kenya. He labelled this as “communications for the last 4 billion” - developing nations where the users may be 60km from roads, power etc. The system makes money from incoming calls (from emigrants to the city calling home). Calls have a 90s maximum duration and the noise level increases as the call continues past 30s!

The TerraNet phone has a three button interfere. The concept of “identity” is built in. To make a call you scroll through your contacts and press “call”. To add a new contact you hold two phones together ("kissing"). This all sounded very carefully thought through to minimise customer care costs.

Will Franks is Founder and CTO of Ubiquisys. Ubiquisys was founded in 2004 and is now a market leader in Femtocells. Google have recently become a significant investor in Uniquisys.

So, what is a femtocell? A 3G network in box. No buttons. Idiot proof. Uses an existing broadband connection as backhaul – good value for operator – no backhaul or power cost. Offers 7Mbit/s in the home to 3G handsets. This can drive 3G phone sales – at last a reason to acquire a 3G phone. Content (audio, video, data) can be transferred to the phone at home and used away from home when (3G) network connectivity may be poor. “Sync at home; consume at will”. Radiated power is very low power in the home – 1 mW – gives very long battery life, decreases heath risks. Voice quality is very good, video performance is excellent.

Everyone I spoke to after Will's presentation wanted to buy a femtocell. But it was a very geeky audience.

Stuart Scott gave the final talk. Intohand are a software house working in the wireless space. Stuart described how grotty things are at the moment, close platforms, poor platforms (Intohand can crash some handsets from their Java sandbox). Stuart made an appeal for downloadable software, to make phones more like PCs. He said we need to have a sequence of connectivity; content creation tools – content will follow; services and mashups - service revenue will follow.

Finally, he made the observation that "The Web" will become "The Mobile Web"; most web access will be from phones.

So, overall an interesting conference. There were a mix of people there, mainstream technology, start-ups and start-ups, entrepreneurs and wanabees, VCs etc. Well done Silicon South West for putting it on.