Archive for February 26th, 2007

Posted on February 26, 2007 - by jono

The Big Red Recording

Well, on Friday 30th and Saturday 31st March 2007, I will be doing my bit for Comic Relief and charity – the Big Red Recording!

I am going to record an entire album, that is, writing, performing and recording all instruments, all by myself, in one 24-hour session.

None of the songs are written yet. I have one month to get my material together, which in itself is one helluva task, but at 7pm on Friday 30th March I will enter my home studio with seven songs in my head, and come out on Saturday 31st March at 7pm with seven fully recorded songs burned to a CD and available online under the same Creative Commons license as the rest of my music on Recreant View.

The marathon recording session will involve me micing, prepping and recording myself playing acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums, vocals, and also involve me editing, mixing and mastering the entire record. In addition to this, Emelye will be joining me for the entire session and playing Cello and performing backing vocals on some of the songs. It is going to be tight on timing to get the whole lot done in 24 hours, but I am determined to pull it off.

From now until the big day I will be regularly reporting progress on writing over at Recreant View and on the big day I will be regularly blogging and posting photos of the session. I am also hoping to have a documentary of the experience. What more could you want – seven Creative Commons songs and a stack of cash for charity? Well, maybe an Audi TT, but this is good enough I would say.

SPONSOR! To make this worthwhile, I need YOUR money. Well, I don’t need your cash, but the people I am doing this for do, so click here to sponsor me. I want to raise £1000 so get your arses in gear and sponsor me! SPONSOR!

GO AND DONATE!!!

Thanks to tigert for the image

Posted on February 26, 2007 - by jono

Lies, lies and more lies

You know what, I hate cough medicine. Not the taste, no. Well, yes actually, it tastes like ground up donkey balls, but it is more the promise of cough medicine that irks me. Last week I had a rather nasty cough. It was contracted in Los Angeles, transported to Ireland where I tried to cure it with late nights and drinking, but alas on my welcome return to blighty the black lung was still there. Normally I sit these things out, but life is more hectic than it used to, so I resorted to a chemist, a fiver and a shelf full of potions. I chose what looked like the most likely substance to fix said lung butter and returned to my abode where I chucked the filthy recipe down my throat. I repeated every four hours like the lies on the side the packet indicated.

What happened? Bugger all, thats what happened. It had no effect whatsoever. Instead, I took my already weakened state of health and augmented it with a regular dose of disgusting tasting, viscous, repugnant, vomit inducing liquid. Where in the name of all that is sweet and good do these companies get off selling such junk? I may as well try one of those old-wives tales solutions to such problems where you sprinkle bicarbonate of soda on your chest, bite a lemon and stand on one leg – I am sure it would be as predictable and as effective. What a load of old bollocks. I demand compensation for the mental trauma involved in gulping that disgusting stuff down in the hope of making the involuntary voluntary again.

Oh, and thanks to a kind email pointing out an image, it turns out that the trip to LA not only gave me the black lung, but the Open Source paparazzi snapped this beacon of glory:

Thats right, if my dad was Brian May, I would have turned out like that. Sorry ladies for shattering the normally handsome, manly, hunky image. Normal service will be resumed soon. If you looking for someone to blame, blame Meryl:

You can contact her at this address: Meryl, Los Angeles, America.

The shot was snapped during a pictionary competition at SCALE, which was rather amusing and run by the aforementioned Meryl. She has turned mockery into a fine art. Rest assured my vengeance will be sweet when I return to SCALE next year.

Despite such depravity I do have good news to report. My good friends in the Ubuntu Loco Community are running a Loco Docs Day on March 3rd. This is where all the juicy best practise documentation will be refined, improved and otherwise made to feel rather good and spanky. The LoCo project is growing immensely and the community is doing an incredible job. I am so proud of them all. So, get along and be a part of the LoCo docs day.