Flickr and the looming threat of digital disaster

With the exception of the odd copy for family and friends, I don’t think I’ve bothered getting photos printed for a few years now: it’s easier and quicker to browse my pics on the laptop, and from time to time I sync my photo library with the Mac under the telly so I can browse old photos from the comfort of my sofa. Unfortunately that’s a fairly risky approach, because if something were to happen to my computer(s) – or if I were to make an arse of things and overwrite an album by accident – then the photos would be gone forever.

On the face of it printing your pics is the simplest solution, but then you need somewhere to put the things (my photo library isn’t particularly big, but there’s still several thousand photos in there) and of course, you need to pay for the prints. You could always burn them onto CD, but CDs are easily lost or damaged, and according to recent news reports the life expectancy of a cheap CD-R can be as little as two years. Or you can do what I do and make regular backups to an external hard disk, but as with Mac to Mac syncing that won’t recover your photos if god forbid, your machines got nicked or your house went on fire.

For me, the answer’s Flickr – or rather, the £15-ish-per-year Flickr Pro account. The 2GB monthly upload limit can be a pain, but other than that you’ve got unlimited storage, unlimited albums and if you use the FlickrExport plugin for iPhoto, really easy uploading. Of course, it doesn’t have to be Flickr – you can use any service you like – but the combination of full-quality pic storage and the various levels of privacy Flickr offers make it the best solution for me. Plus, I like Flickr’s way of doing things.
So now, if my house gets hit by a missile, my unflattering photos will live for eternity. Or at least until Flickr realises I’m buried under rubble and deletes my account.

Bitch and hose

Sorry about the title, but I thought it was funny. Anyway: Megan is a girl dog. Megan likes water. Megan particularly likes fighting the garden hose.

YouTube video here…

Must we throw this pop at our kids?

From last night’s Evening Times:

NEW boy band US5 have launched a tour of UK schools starting in Scotland. The band played their debut single Maria at Mearns Castle High School and Mearns Primary. Today it was the turn of Renfrew High and Cleveden Secondary to hear the quintet. 

OK, maybe I’m getting grumpy as I approach the grand old age of mumblemumblemumble, but how exactly does this benefit the schools? I can see how it benefits the extremely well-off record companies – schools tours are an established way of breaking new acts, whether it’s boy bands or lostprophets – but why should schools provide a promotional outlet for giant corporations to flog their wares?

I’d be interested to know the mechanics of these tours if anyone out there knows the ins and outs…

Why I don’t get invited to many parties

An Italian restaurant in Glasgow, a few weeks ago. I’m there with my wife to meet friends I haven’t seen for months, and their friends who I haven’t seen for a few years. One of the latter group asks me about my dog, Megan.

Me: She’s a monster. She eats shoes, digs up the lawn, chews the wall…

Girl: Yeah, but they grow out of it. Eventually.

Me: I hope so.

Girl: My one’s the same. I have to keep an eye on her all the time or she’s trashing the place. You can’t leave her alone for even a second.

Me: It’s a pain, isn’t it? But they’re so cute that they can get away with it.

Girl: Oh, absolutely. I’ll be glad when she calms down a bit though.

Me: So what breed is she?

Long silence.

Girl: She’s my daughter.

“A guy who can take buttholes, midgets, and fried fish, and make a love story”

This is a fantastic bit of journalism: David Foster Wallace goes to the Adult Video Awards. It’s a very long piece that’s hilarious and depressing in pretty much equal measure:

Alex Dane is now telling Harold Hecuba about a stray dog she found and has decided to keep. She is excited as she describes the dog and for a moment seems about fourteen; the impression lasts only a second or two and is heartbreaking. One of the B-girls, meanwhile, is explaining that she has just gotten a pair of cutting-edge breast implants that she can actually adjust the size of by adding or draining fluid via small valves under her armpits, and then—perhaps mistaking your correspondents’ expressions for ones of disbelief—she raises her arms to display the valves. There really are what appear to be valves.

[Via MetaFilter]

Live review: Eels, Glasgow ABC

[photopress:sj3640.jpg,thumb,alignleft]I hate gigs. Unless you’re down the very front, the much-vaunted atmosphere of a hot, sweaty club is massively overrated in my experience: instead, you spend the whole night putting up with people who don’t really understand the concept of live music, and who make ten trips to the bar despite the obstacle of a few thousand people between them and their pints.

Then there’s the inevitable collection of Really Tall Blokes who think they’re midgets, and who have perfected the knack not just of blocking your view but of anticipating your every movement and intercepting each one so the view remains blocked, and of course the constant chitterers who spend the entire concert wittering on witlessly. Factor in the bad sound and the fresh joy of Scotland’s smoking ban (although at least the ABC lets you nip out between the support band and the main attraction) and you need to really, really, really love a band to bother going to see them.

As I may have mentioned once or twice I love Eels, although I also realise that buying a ticket to see them is something of a lottery. Will it be an electric set or a with-strings one? Will E play the stuff you know, or spend the night amusing himself with obscure back-catalogue cuts and strange covers? That’s part of the fun, I reckon, and after a long tour with a string section you just knew that E would be gagging for some rock this time round – and he was, although not to universal acclaim. “Play some slow songs!” one bloke kept yelling. “It’s too heavy!”

I thought it was more garagey than heavy, but if you prefer the low-key Eels then you’d have hated the gig. As E might put it, last night was rock o’clock: twin distorted guitars throughout, slow stuff speeded up and played like the stooges, and a stone-faced “security guard” throwing karate shapes and offering cryptic between-song comments before finally climbing behind the keyboards. No bass, though, and while the keyboards provided the occasional bit of low-end thump the bass’s absence left a rather big hole in the sound – especially when, as happened far too often, songs were extended for years with nothing but droning feedback.

Still, it was big dumb fun. A tremendous cover of Iggy’s Rock Show, a (remarkably faithful, ie. demented) version of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ I Put A Spell On You, Sinatra’s That’s Life positively drenched in cheese, everything turned up louder than everything else and a sweet conclusion that involved two delighted young girls trading dance moves with the “security” chap. Souljacker at insane volumes, the rockier stuff from the Blinking Lights album, howling versions of Rags to Rags and Cancer for the Cure, and best of all, a heartbreaking version of Railroad Man with just E’s voice and guitar. I still prefer Sad Eels to Rock Eels, but I’d rather have Rock Eels than No Eels.

I still hate gigs, though.

Recommendations wanted

Never mind blogging about blogging: I’m so hardcore that I’m blogging about writing about blogging. And if it works, I might write about it and then blog about the writing about the blogging about the writing about the blogging.
Er… anyway. I’m doing a feature about great British blogs, and I thought I’d ask your good selves whether you’ve become addicted to any good ‘uns. I’ve already got politics, personal and sci/tech/web stuff covered (although if you know of something that’s utterly, blindingly brilliant then by all means let me know) but I’d be interested in any lifestyle/entertainment blogs you like.

As you’d expect, I can’t plug friends’ sites, or my own. Bah.

The best Xbox 360 game is £4.25

…if you buy it second hand, or around £9 if you buy it new. And it’s…

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Okay, it’s not actually *for* the 360 but Bungie’s tweaked the graphics via the 360′s backwards compatibility and I reckon it looks much better than, say, Perfect Dark Zero. There are a few bugs, but not too many and not too often (you get the odd ghosting on the screen when textures don’t disappear, but at least you don’t get permanently trapped under vehicles like you do in the 360 version of Far Cry Predator). I’m currently playing through it again from scratch and I’m consistently surprised by how good it is.

How to beat the banks

You may be aware of this already, but if not: it might be worth suing your bank. If you’ve never paid a penalty charge in your life then you can ignore this post, but if you have then you might find this interesting.

The Office of Fair Trading recently investigated credit card firms’ penalty charges, and concluded that the lenders were breaking the law. The law says that yes, they can levy penalty charges – but it also says that those charges must reflect the cost to the lender, rather than kicking someone when they’re down. According to the OFT, a fair penalty charge is £12; anything beyond that is punitive.

The thing is, the same law applies to banks’ other penalty charges. Here’s a fairly typical example of what might happen if your wages are late one month, through no fault of your own:

Three direct debits and three standing orders are due to come out on your normal payday. You have no wages, so the bank bounces the lot.

• The bank charges you £38 for each bounce. That’s £228.
• The bank charges a “referral charge” because it bounced the DDs and SOs. That’s another £90.
• The lenders whose direct debits were bounced charge you penalty fees. Let’s say £25 each, so that’s £75.

In total, then, your late wages have left you facing £393 of penalty charges, not to mention the extra interest. However, if – as the OFT says – those charges shouldn’t be more than £12 a pop, you should only pay £108: six penalty charges from the bank, and three penalty charges from the lenders whose direct debits bounced.

I’m not arguing that banks shouldn’t penalise misbehaviour, but penalty charges are very profitable – and if you’re in the financial shit then excess penalties can make a bad situation worse. I’ve got some experience of this: in the last four years, on two occasions problems with firms’ accounting systems have left me without income for nearly two months apiece, which wasn’t a lot of fun. When the money finally turned up, almost all of it was eaten by penalty charges.

Now, here’s the good bit. If you’re willing to take on your bank, you can raise an action in the small claims court to get the excess charges back. And you can go back six years, which can mean an awful lot of money. Here’s how to do it:

• You contact the lender and file a Subject Data Access request under the Data Protection Act. This request asks for a breakdown of penalty charges dating back six years, and you have to pay £10 for it. The lender has 40 days to comply.
• You calculate the difference between what you should have been charged, and what you actually were charged.
• You write to the lender detailing the unlawful penalties and asking for the excess to be refunded.
• If the lender doesn’t comply, you take them to the small claims court for the excess fees plus interest. Judging by the posts on moneysavingexpert.com, you’ll almost certainly win.

Nice, eh? Of course, there are some downsides. The following list of sneaky tactics are anecdotal, but I’ve read enough of them on various forums to believe that they’re true:

• Banks are telling customers that the only way to let them know the charges is to issue duplicate statements, at £5 per page, which is a serious amount of cash for six years’ worth of transactions. They’re wrong.
• Banks are telling customers “hey, you agreed to the terms and conditions, so tough”. That’s no defence. If, as the OFT suggests, the T&Cs broke the law, then you’re entitled to the money.
• Banks are ignoring letters asking for refunds.
• Banks are threatening to blacklist customers. They can’t do that, or at least they can’t do that just because of this particular wheeze.
• Banks are closing the accounts of those asking for refunds.

Sounds about right to me. So if you’re thinking of doing this – and it’s worth looking at; people are getting serious refunds if they stay the course and go all the way to the small claims court – you should be prepared to switch banks (which means getting another current account set up before you start this stuff) and you should be prepared for foot-dragging, inaccurate information and the hassle of a small claims court action. Despite all of that, it could be very lucrative. You’ll find out a lot more at moneysavingexpert.com.

Flickrs of talent

One of the reasons I stopped playing in a band (other than the obvious ones: geography, a face only a mother could love and the increasing feeling that once you’re over 30, you’re too old to rock) was frustration: while a lot of the stuff we did was really, really good, I never felt it was good enough.

To me, there was always a yawning chasm between the stuff I was writing and the stuff I was listening to, so while I could easily write a 1,000 word forensic analysis of, say, Red Dress by Sugababes, There There by Radiohead or (yes!) Biology by Girls Aloud that tells you exactly why they’re great, what sneaky musical tricks they use and what particular moments elevate them from ordinary tunes into something special (in Red Dress it’s the chaotic “woah woah woah” bit before the second part of the chorus; in There There it’s the chord change underneath the line “just ’cause you feel it / doesn’t mean it’s there”; in Biology it’s the spooky backing vocals that come in halfway through the chorus), no matter how hard I tried (or how talented my fellow band members) I could never reach the same heights myself.

I feel the same thing on Flickr when I browse other people’s photos. Sure, I know a bit about composition and photography so I can tell a good pic from a bad one; I can also tell when a pic’s benefited from professional lighting or from sneaky Photoshopping. But the really good ones aren’t just about technique: the really good stuff comes from people who could take better shots on a crappy cameraphone than I could ever manage with ten grand of camera kit. There’s things I can do – I can (and did) upgrade from a basic compact camera to a pseudo-SLR, I could learn about shutter speeds and other technical stuff (if anyone can recommend a good book for digital camera owners who’ve no idea beyond autofocus and pre-defined picture modes, I’m all ears)… but while those things would certainly help me take better photographs, they can only help with the technical stuff. What differentiates the really good pics from the quite good ones isn’t equipment or technique, but talent.

The best example I can think of is in my day job. I’m not suggesting I’m some literary giant, but I do think that there’s something going on that means unlike many people, I find writing easy. The something is this: 99% of the time I have absolutely no recollection of writing an article. One day it’s a blank page and I’m howling with frustration, then something clicks in my head and the words start flowing. Before I know it I’ve got a finished piece, but my involvement is a bit like when you drive somewhere and arrive with no recollection of actually driving.

I’m reminded of a comment by a musician (I can’t remember who): the songs are just floating through the air, and it’s your job to catch them before some bastard like Mick Hucknall gets his hands on them. But that’s not just the case in music; I reckon it’s the case with writing and photography too.

Writing, then: there’s technique in there – planning out a structure, editing and refining, editing again, particular word choices, deciding the whole thing’s shite and starting again from a different angle – but the bit that matters to me, the process of turning a bunch of ideas or facts into a feature, or story, or book, happens on a subconscious level. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using Notepad, Word or some amazingly clever document editor: if you don’t have that subconscious thing going on, then no matter how good your software (or your pen and paper) the process of writing is bloody hard work. The tools you use can make things easier, but they can’t write the words for you.

And that’s the big lie behind a lot of tech marketing at the moment. Sure, programs such as GarageBand put amazing power in the hands of would-be musicians (when I started playing in bands, the only way to get even a crappy recording was to spend hundreds on kit and then hundreds or even thousands of pounds on studio time), but if you want to create a Red Dress, There There or Biology you’ll need to bring the same alchemy to GarageBand that those songs’ creators brought to the studio. Yes, upgrading from a crappy cameraphone to a digital SLR will enable you to take better photographs, but it won’t make you a better photographer. And using a state-of-the-art word processor or blogging system will make the nuts and bolts easier, but it can’t help with the actual writing. Technology firms can sell you the tools, but they can’t sell you the talent.