london licensing mayhem

So.. I find myself sat at home in front of the computer at 12am on a Saturday night after trying to go out for 'big drinks in town' with an old friend. Unfortunately, it turned out that the pub we were in shut its doors at 11, sharp, and so did every other hostelry within walking distance. So I reluctantly came home, since the only other options were clubs with entry fees, 'bangin' tunes, and no decent beer.

This doesn't feel unfamiliar at all. In fact, it was exactly what it was like to go out drinking on a Saturday night in Aylesbury in 1997. The question is, why is it that an 11pm closing time for pubs is still more-or-less universal in central London, but you can easily drink until 2 or 3 in pubs in supposedly 'residential' areas like East Dulwich ('home' for me), and even in other cities (Oxford)?

I'm not convinced that the opening hours revolution is being implemented consistently, is all.

Mind you, if I hadn't come home early, I wouldn't have got to listen to this.

My guitar has holes in it

...mostly in the places I intended to put them, but in some other embarrassing places as well.

The idea of getting a scratchplate to cover up all the damage I've done is looking increasingly appealing. For now, I've just filled up all the unintended holes with plastic wood. Maybe that'll do the job.

urgh.

R Kelly is Trapped in the Closet

It's true. R Kelly's Hiphopera is the best thing I've seen in music for a while.

'Oh God I'm trapped in the closet!'

Check it out here

Did I really have to do this?

Emails are cheap, and someone had to keep Radio 4 on its toes. I quote their response in full:

"Thank you for your e-mail regarding 'Redonda - the Island with Too Many Kings'.

I understand that you found it unacceptable for a BBC continuity announcer to
use the word 'Less' when the word 'Fewer' should have correctly been used.

I can inform you that our staff newsreaders and announcers, over whose speech we
have direct jurisdiction, undergo a period of extensive training and are only
confirmed in their appointments if the required standard has been reached.

Your comments have been fully registered on our daily audience log. This
internal document will be made available to Senior BBC Management.

Thank you once again for taking the time to contact us.

Regards

Marie Therese Gibson
BBC Information"

Nailed it!

Nice. Was on the point of switching to a different Linux distribution when I got down to some serious searching on the Ubuntu forums, and have now fixed the 'flash no sound' problem I was moaning about.

For those who care, the solution was to edit some config files to force ALSA to recognize the USB sound card as default. Code and comments are here

Brilliant. Now I can rock out with John Scofield videos all night long.

Ubuntu update

So - it's not all that bad. After a second re-install, the soundcard now works, and playing around with config options seems to have done the job for the keyboard issues. BUT: still no sound for any flash applications running in Firefox or Opera, even if I roll back the version of flash from 9 to 7.

This is a BIG problem, since I divide my time online mostly between a load of neat flash apps. Not counting youtube, that means:
Interval ear training
Randomchord.com (which I co-invented)
In the Groove , a weekly jazz show with a built-in player and a stonking jazz guitar show this week.

Without these, life is not so good, and consequently the full migration to linux has been delayed until I find a workaround.

ubuntu... spoke too soon

So, turns out the conflict between my shiny new PC and linux only went as deep as the graphical front-end used by the installer programme. It's possible to download an alternate version with a text-mode installer, which works fine. Well, worked on the third time of asking.

Of course, in linux-land 'fine' is relative. So far:
My usb audio device works intermittently, and not at all with flash in firefox
The wireless (PS/2) keyboard fails to register every other keystroke
The best linux-based multi-track studio "installs" itself without leaving any trace of its presence to enable me to boot it.

This is a shame, because apart from those niggles, it's all been nicely pluggin-an-playin' all the things I'd want it to. It's also nice to get to play around in a terminal window from time to time. Takes me back to my youth....

Linux reverses the natural order of things

Traditional wisdom has it that you have to keep buying ever quicker PC hardware to keep up with the ever-increasing demands Windows makes on system resources. What isn't so well known is that with Linux, having something a bit old and creaky around the kness might prove to be an advantage.

I've just been trying to install Ubuntu on my machine as a secondary boot option, but it keeps dying early in the installation. Various forums opine that the problem is caused by intel's shiny new processor and chipset being rather too shiny and new for the linux kernel to deal with it.

Wouldn't be so bad, except my 'spare' computer has caused two power supplies to explode rather vigorously. God knows what the neighbours will think.