Mr Happys online journal

In the modern day and age everything in indie music has changed. No longer do bands seem to have to trawl through waves of gigs, supporting people they don’t like in venues they’ve never heard of. Every indie stormtrooper seems to think that all they need now is a digital 8 track (DIGITAL – when I was a lad…) and a MySpace page.
Please god let the pain stop.
MySpace is full of bands who make records no one wants to hear.
Take glasgow alone you have:

• Dead City Radio – rubbish
• Hey Princess – yep another group of lads and lasses who would be better off investing in getting a job rather than a new guitar.

My mate made some songs up for a laugh, when he was drunk, put them on a MySpace page and people listened to them – and then used them in online radio shows! I’m trying to find it but can’t – it probably got kicked but as I avoid MySpace like the plague it could be why. But for some, strange reason, it seems that many people like it. Go figure. Next I’ll be buying a record by the Ninja Death Monkeys painting my shoes yellow and adorning them with stickers.

In some of my spare time I am a bit of a noisemonger. I know I’m getting old but rattling the hell out of a guitar induces a state of zen like calm in me.
I’ve always had a strange love of anything a little bit strange sounding – hence my love of flying saucer attack and much of this stuff which I’ve recently found voer at LastFm tagged as being dream pop.
Anyway to the echobender effects unit. I have no idea what it does or how it sounds but it looks lovely. It would appear to be made by a company called Casper Electronics. And it is a special limited edition of ten – I used to build limited editions of one using old schematics in magazines but not done it for years.
Click here for more info on the EchoBender effects unit.

I was just reading some of the other blogs on Equatorlive and saw that none of us really talked about what we do here at Equator. So I thought I’d do some stuff on what us Search Engine Optimisers are upto here at Equator.
If you’ve not heard of Search Engine Optimisation, or are scared by it, don’t worry. Its not a black art – and those who tell you that SEO is are lying. All SEO entails is ensuring that you give search engine evidence that your website is relevant for a users query.
In simple terms we make sure your web pages use the relevant words in the appropriate ways and get other people to talk about you and show search engines why your website is relevant for a query. As our SEO is focussed around generating sales for clients all these query are business related and designed to drive traffic which is likely to convert into a sale.
SEO folk are geeky – but the good ones will help you understand the whole process without getting into horrendous language such as “keyword co-occurance theory” (which I find interesting but know that only a few others do) or Link Velocity tracking.
Its you SEO companies job to monitor these – and keep you abreast of developments without bombarding you with ‘geek speak’.
At the moment here at Equator we’re doing some cool work, and driving great results, for a number of companies throughout the UK including:

• De Vere Hotels
• Ramada Jarvis Hotels
• Scottish Hydro
• Southern Electric
• Swalec

Over the next couple of months we’re kicking off more work for some great UK based brands from our Glasgow based HQ which has got us all really excited.

If you’d like to find out more give us a call on 0141 299 1800.

On Monday I watched a Panorama documentary on BBC 1 which was about the environmental impact of consuming bottled water. And for once I found Panorama to not really be giving me the facts.
In the first half they went through statistics and figures about how bottled water was affecting the environment, all of which were supported by figures and statistics. And then folowing this the second half descended into what seemed to be based on tenuous linkage and some causal relationships that seemed to be over simplified.

1. Paying £21 for a bottle of water does seem excessive – but if idiots will pay for it who gives a damn
2. The claim that London tap water is drinkable – no it’s not! – its vile.
3. Plastic bottles litter the UKs coast and are causing environmental damage. Seems reasonable – they float and coasts are surrounded by seas and coeans that contain currents which pushes anything that floats toward the coast. Find the idiots who throw the bottles away and give them a slap or put them in jail
4. The guy presenting it goes to Fiji – whilst earlier having highlighted the Carbon Footprint of bottled water. what was his carbon footprint in getting him and his crew to and from Fiji?
5. Dirty water causes infection – yep seems reasonable. Water factory opens and people still get water bourne infections and illnesses. Hmm – is that not a governmental issue – and what did the Fijian government spend the money from this internationally available water – maybe improving the quality of the water supply would be a good start.

God – I’ve just ranted against Panorama. One of the greatest series of programmes that the BBC, who I love, have produced. The main reason being that I can’t agree with dodgy reporting that makes inference rather than having something factual to report. It was the equivalent to the BBC making a blog post…

Over the last couples of days I’ve had the pleasure of encountering too much 1337. It seems to be re-surfacing at a rate of knots I’ve not seen since Google search was available in 1337.

For some reason 1337, or leet, whatever you call it has resurfaced into the office lexicon. I implore the world to react against this deviance and speak plain English and not send messages in 1337.

I was just running about the Internet as I wait for the DNS on a server to upload so I can start hacking together a finished WordPress theme for a blog. And I had a sudden urge to make a plugin for it.
Having asked Google for some stuff about building WordPress plugins. the best I’ve found so far is Asymptomatic.net. I’m not exactly renowned for my PHP skills – most programs I write work (eventually) so if anyone has any other cool wordpress plugin tutorials I’d be grateful if you could stick them in the comments.

For a long time I resisted the urge to buy Arab Strap records. Maybe its because they come from Falkirk, maybe its because they were always at the same clubs as me, maybe its because Aidan used to give me grief about the bands I liked as a kid. Anyway for whatever reason I may have been wrong about Arab Strap.
I’ve always liked Malcolm Middletons solo stuff, for some reason I could accept buying the solo records. But I recently bought a couple of Arab Strap albums and I’m convereted. I did see them live a couple of times but I was so pissed on each occassion I can’t remember much about it.
So here’s to Arab Strap – I’m still of the opinion that Rabid Lettuce should reform : dont know if they do but I hope they still want to rip someones face off with a fridge!!!

It would appear that the UK government is thinking of developing legisaltion to stop you all from downloading pirated music/movies/programs from the Internet.

In a Jedi Mind Trick of a move they want Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to uncover who is illegally downloading files (I thought that was the role generally given to the police of FACT but hey what do I know). You’re palced on a three strikes and you’re out system!

Batter Up – ISP Pitching to Torrent Downloader

• Strike One – The Curve Ball - ISP tells you that you have been caught illegally downloading and to cease and desisit from sushc activity via email. Yep this is great – oh unless you’re me and don’t know why the hell your ISP made up an email address for you on their email system and you never access it – as you don’t even know where it is and no one is willing to tell you – Yep I’m with Virgin Media!
• Strike Two – The Fast Ball – ISP suspends your account as you’ve been caught illegally downloading again. Hmm – can you switch ISP at this stage. Maybe but you’ll probably find like having a bad credit rating and getting credit you’re going to have to pay an over the odds the connection.
• Strrrriike Three – The Splitter – ‘you’re outta here’ – you get caught – again! You’re ISP removes your account. Oh well do I have a right to appeal – the old I had a virus that wasn’t being tracked excuse seems like one to keep in reserve.

So get ready to start batting those balls if you do download illegally! Batting practice is held every weekend at the Glasgow Barras between 10 and 4.

I guess its kinda like the force – the Jedi have the force and the Sith have the Dark Side of the force. Some people call the cool div pop-ups you get on websites containing images, text or other media as light boxes or shadow boxes (I’ve now renamed these as ‘Jedi Boxes’ and ‘Sith Boxes’).
Anyway I like these and Nick just sent me a link to a quick how-to-guide which is great as I’d been trying to rip them from sites for a while but as my JavaScript skills are more padawan than Jedi Master I needed as much help as possible.

Have Fun!

For a while I’ve been listening to the podcasts over at Not Quite Rocket Science – what a fantastic name for a blog.

Today I went over and needed some music to help get to the end of the day – and their tracklistings are pretty fab. I’m proud to say that Podcast 14 keeps up the high quality of previous podcasts.

I have to say that the cover of Beat Happening “Cast No Shadow” by Cub (nope I’ve never heard of them either) and “You Shook me all night long” covered by The Darlings was equally great.

So get over to them and have a listen. Maybe if we all petition them we can convince them to get onto a self hosted system of Wordpress and then we can make their blog so much user friendly – I hate the comment system on all Blogger blogs (pain in the ass).

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