Apparently there’s quite a lot in a name actually. Especially when it comes to online handles and call signs, to use the CB radio terminology. People spend ages trying to think of the right nickname for them and then checking nobody else has taken it before embarking on their online lives. I never did that, you’ll be surprised to hear. Much like a lot of what I do there was no grand plan at all in the beginning of my digital life. I would just go around signing up for different websites under different names and not really thinking about it. I wasn’t heavily into social networks and other such things early on anyway. That was until I joined the microblogging service Jaiku in early 2007 and my life changed forever. I quickly became hopelessly addicted to chatting with my new friends and we started so many podcasts, websites and other things together it was amazing. Many of those people are still my closest friends now, both on and offline. I didn’t have any specific username in mind when joining the service as I said. My usual logic (I use the term loosely) goes something like this:

“What shall I call myself…?”

“Dan, yeah that’ll do.”

“How can that name already be taken? I’m Dan, this is an outrage!” Read the rest of this entry »

Well now, it’s been a while hasn’t it? I missed another weekly update last weekend, what with all the madness going on round here it’s not surprising. It’s high time (sadly not High Times) that I updated you on recent events in my little world. I’ll try to cover a bit about last week as well but I can’t remember much of it now. This is the way of life when you have a Swiss cheese memory (I refer you again to the earlier bracketed link). So let’s get into it.

Last weekend I broadcast and recorded a very special episode of Rathole Radio, special because it featured the first live song by a guest on the show. I can finally say I had my first John Peel style session, well kind of. I was joined by lovely Irish band I Am Not Lefthanded for a chat and live performance, which sounded amazingly good over Skype I thought. The interview seemed to go well, they enjoyed it, I enjoyed it and it seems the listeners did too. You can’t say fairer than that. I released the podcast on Monday afternoon if you want to check it out, you know you want to. I’ve been trying to sort out my Ubuntu Studio machine in the last couple of weeks in order to route Skype through JACK and do all kinds of other such funky stuff. I haven’t quite mastered that yet but I did manage to use it for Linux Outlaws on Monday. We did the live show as usual in the evening. I worked on the audio on Tuesday afternoon and then sent it back to Fab for final editing. He released the show later in the week as episode 142 “Stroking The White Cat”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hi folks, just a quick note to let you know that the interview I recorded with the Open Source Musician podcast a few weeks back is out now, for your listening pleasure… I hope I can’t remember what I said at and I need to listen to it again but it went pretty well from what I recall. Massive thanks to Dan and Steve for kindly inviting me onto their show, I had a great time. You should really check them out if you have any interest in making music and or audio seriously with on Linux. They’re the only show I know of covering this area and they do a great job of informing and entertaining.

I was interviewed in episode 35 which you can now download.

It’s even spurred me into working harder on sorting out music production on my Ubuntu Studio set up this week. I still use Windows XP for the odd music job which I’ve always been honest about. However, all podcast production and other audio is done on Linux and has been for a very long time I’m proud to say. I’ve got some hardware gripes with a possibly faulty audio card but I’m on the case now. Earlier today I started working on a new blues song in Ardour. It wasn’t planned but a nice riff popped out of my brain and I started recording, I’ll let you know how it goes. I’ve not had time to produce much music in the last few months and I don’t see that changing very soon, but I do want to do more music on Linux and really see the how strengths and weaknesses stack up. It’s long been a goal of mine but time just hasn’t allowed it. Hopefully that will all be fixed in 2010!!

Ok enough rambling, enjoy the interview. See ya,

Dan

Digital Britain Report

Hello folks, today I have a very serious matter to discuss with you. The Digital Economy Bill is being passed through parliament in the UK right now. This is the law which would allow UK citizens to be disconnected from the Internet on the accusation of file sharing or piracy, not conviction, accusation. As a musician, online broadcaster and member of the Open Rights Group this is obviously an important matter to me. At the moment certain members of the government are trying to force this bill into law without a proper debate in parliament. This is a bill which goes against the advice of the Government’s own Digital Britain report published last year, which clearly stated Internet disconnection should not be used as a punishment.

I have written to my local MP today to ask them to call for a full debate on this before any law is made. Whatever you think of the Digital Economy Bill and whichever side you consider yourself to be on, passing this law without so much as a proper discussion has to be wrong. It doesn’t benefit any of us. Don’t let large media companies make laws like this through the back door, demand proper democracy! Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a while but I’m finally back with another Weekly Rewind. I missed last week because I was too busy, so I’ll try and briefly recap the last 2 weeks events now. It’s been an exciting and slightly hectic time of late. Much OggCamp business, some web development stuff, live talks and other things. On this bright Sunday afternoon I’m getting some spare time and it’s going into the much neglected blog. So let’s get into it.

There’s been a couple of Linux Outlaws releases since my last update. We’re up to episode 140 now, which I can still scarcely believe considering our expectations when we started the show. It continues to go from strength to strength and for that I’m very grateful. You can join us for the live show from 7pm GMT on Mondays. The IRC channel has been crazy during the show lately and we seem to average over 100 live listeners and viewers now. It doesn’t sound much and as a proportion of the 58,000 downloads per month I suppose it’s not, but the live interaction really makes a big difference and I’m glad people enjoy it. I also did another Rathole Radio last Sunday night which you can download at your leisure. I finally released the tickets for the live gig and so far they’ve sold ok but I need to sell a lot more to break even. Much time was spent this week licking envelopes, writing notes and posting those out. If you want to come along please buy tickets in advance from the website. Thanks! I also got a new logo for the show this week and I’m really pleased with it (see image below). It was created for me by graphic designer extraordinaire Scott Jones of Bad Format and we’ve also been doing a fair bit of website work together lately. I’m mostly hacking Drupal sites, customising modules and so on. I’ll give you more details on that when I can in future. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey folks, I realise I’ve missed my usual Weekly Rewind but it’s been far too hectic around here lately. I will get back to it next Sunday I promise. One of the many reasons for my omission is because I’ve just put the tickets for my Rathole Radio gig on sale. I’m doing the whole system myself (right down to licking the stamps) rather than use a ticketing company because I feel it’s the right thing to do. Besides, the punk ethos has always been “do it yourself” and I abide by that. I hate these big companies and the way they screw over music fans, Ticketmaster being a prime example (allegedly!). Not that they’d be interested in my little gig, but I still wanted to make the process personal and keep costs down. I’ve had a few people asking questions about the organisation of the gig in general, so I wanted to clear up the details here quickly.

Printed Tickets

The tickets are for sale now though the Rathole Radio website priced at £5 each plus £1.50 per order for processing and postage. I’ve kept them cheap because it’s not a money making exercise. If I sell all 200 odd tickets I will just break even, and only then. I’m putting this on because I want to have something cool for everyone to do in Liverpool the night before OggCamp, I also get the chance to play a gig alongside some of my favourite artists and that’s my payment. I’m taking it easy on public promotion this week to give OggCampers the chance to get in first and get tickets, after that I will be promoting hard and selling to the general public, once they’re sold out I’m afraid it’s tough. The venue has very limited capacity so the bottom line is this… IF YOU WANT TO COME BUY A TICKET. A lot of people seem to feel they’ll just wander in on the night and that may not be possible. Read the rest of this entry »