The future of sheds...

I've always wanted a shed. When I was young, there was a classic, cheap, wooden thing at the end of the garden, that stored a few tools. It was ugly, damp, had holes in the walls, and was generally unappealling. But, it could have been so much better...
25 years on, and Ecospace have created a modular studio, which would fit perfectly at the end of the garden, and could become my bright, light, spacious and beautiful shed...
There's even a model with a pitched roof and a mezzanine chillout area. And at a shade under £20k, it's pretty reasonable too.

Categories Life, Style

Opening Pandora's box...

Pandora is the web-based radio station which runs off the Music Genome Project. Its a great idea, breaking down 10,000 songs into a series of "genes", which describe the core attributes of each track, and using these to suggest other artists / tracks that you might like, based on similarities between songs... as an example, Moby's We are all made of stars, is tagged with the following: electronica roots, disco influences, rock influences, a thin male vocal performance, a laid back male vocal, ambiguous lyrics, use of tonal harmonies, melodic part writing, dry snare, a tight kick sound, a synth bass riff, layered electric guitar riffs, synth riffs, trippy soundscapes, a synth-electric sonority...

I typed Hybrid into Pandora and got the following tracks:
Hybrid - I'm Still Awake: a good start. At least it recognises Hybrid...
Nick Rodes - Come Alive (Tiga Remix): not bad. A little derivative for me. Apparently shares the same "ambiguous lyrics" as Hybrid...
Snapshot - Fluke: classic stuff. Along with The Orb, Orbital, Underworld and Red Ninja, Fluke put me onto techno with their first album Techno Rose of Blighty and the awesome Peel Session which follwed...
James Hardway - See Through Me: nope. Not a good choice. Nothing to it...
IPG - Thinking About Tomorrow (IPG Dub): nice choice. You may not have heard this one, but it's a Beth Orton track form a remix album. A rather inspired choice by Pandora...
G-Spliff - I Know (Melancholic Outtake): nice track but we're getting far too downbeat here.
Moby - We are all made of stars: need to get back to basics here, but not a horrendous choice...

All in all, it was a slightly empty experience. I'm sure that, if I registered, and even subscribed, I'd be able to get a pretty good station going which reflected my musical tastes... but isn't that why I have 4000 songs on my iPod?

Categories: Life, Gear, Music

Schmap

You may have noticed a new banner / link on the sidebar, pointing to a Travel Guide to Florence, produced by Schmap. A few of my Flickr photos have been included in their guides to both Florence and London, although there are quite a few more guides now available online, including Dublin, Paris and most major US cities.
It's a neat idea, and free, although the "Schmap Player" is a little bulky (approx. 7-11 meg each to download).

Categories: Life, Style

Musandam

The Musandam Peninsula is an exclave of Oman, separated from the rest of the country by a strip of the UAE. It's also a rather nice place to dive, and there are a number of operators running trips from both Muscat (Oman) and the UAE to various dive sites along the coast.
We took a liveaboard, run by Al Marsa Dhows, and transferred from Dubai to spend six days on their Brown Dhow.
The diving itself was pretty good, with a few tricky currents and a little bit of swell at times, but generally speaking it was relatively relaxed diving. The visability was a little poor, with a lot of particulate matter in the water, leading to some horrendous back scatter on some of the photos... the light was also not quite as good as I'd hoped, but the quality of the reefs and the fish / invertebrate life made up for it...

Categories: Life