David Emery Online

Live from SW18

14 March 2008

I can’t let our American cousins have all the fun, so today I’m going to vaguely attempt some kind of live blog. Our office isn’t quite as SXSW-empty as I think the US one is, but there’s still a bit of a vibe of ‘left-out-ness’ around these parts…

10:06

Email count overnight: 17, although 5 of those are spam that have managed to get through 2 different spam filters and 3 of them are comments on the Jack Penate site.

I’m shocked – SHOCKED – that two of my departmental colleagues haven’t turned up yet.

10:14

Looking at a design for something we’re doing for the Breeders – looks good!

10.25

Pondering finally setting up a work blog that we can post to, which has been sidelined many times by bigger things, so that silly things like this can go where they really should do.

10:27

Jane has, unsurprisingly, received a package. Jane gets packages every day, which makes all of us non-package-receivers sad.

10.39

Ok, this live blogging thing is getting pretty tiring now and possibly the most boring thing anyone else could read, like ever. As regular readers will know, however, being boring is not going to stop me. Oh no.

Just making a couple of tweaks to the new XL site so that the old RSS redirects to the new one.

11:10

Ok, it is totally shop time.

11:23

Hobnobs are in the house.

11:31

Working on a graphic for something secret to go on the iTunes store.

11:59

I would love to put some music on, but I can already hear two stereos in the distance and don’t really want to add to the noise. Open plan maybe doesn’t work for lots of people who like music…

12:12

Some people are crowding round the TV watching some form of football draw (the European cup, maybe?). I would think this was a shocking display of a poor work ethic if it wasn’t for the fact that most of the people watching are company directors….

12:29

Moving on from secret iTunes stuff to secret HTML and CSS stuff instead. Should have possibly thought about what I was doing today (secret stuff) before I started this silly live blog thing.

13:03

Sadly even us music secret squirrels have to eat, and it is totally lunch time. Secret HTML and secret CSS will have to wait (in secret) until later.

Exactly when however, is a secret.

13:15

In an exciting turn of events lunch has been postponed until half past. More updates to follow.

We’re using the time to try and come up with something interesting to put up here, otherwise we may have to admit defeat and concede that the Americans are better at blogging then we are.

Any suggestions let me know – the pride of the country is at stake!

15:08

Finally back from lunch. Global in Wandsworth has reasonably nice food, but the service was pretty rubbish. Had nice tapas-y type things.

They did have lollies though:

Looking back, this thing is almost turning into a food blog.

15:28

Sports television seems to be the theme today, as we now seem to be watching horse racing. Loud horse racing.

Obviously I’m shattering any illusions any of you had that working for a record label is in any way glamourous. And now James is threatening to use tables for non-tabular data. The day has reached hopefully its lowest point.

16:21

James has turned into a t-shirt model for your amusement (his surname is ‘Weiner’, which makes it all the more funny):

16:25

Obviously, the above t-shirt was the high point of the day.

Also, I’ve been asked to point out that – despite written evidence to the contrary – we are all hard at work.

16:48

We seem to have a drunken sounding scotsman on the stereo. Sort of good, but not music to work to.

16:56

I have decided, in the process of adding them to the XL site, that Friendly Fires are a slightly pinkish colour.

One of the more fun things about the new XL site is the different colours for each artist, but it was pretty darn hard to come up with different ones for each artist; we have a lot of artists that really want to be ‘red’…

17:13

I have discovered that the MTV Subterranean blog is also live blogging today, inspired by our friendly Americans.

I can’t help but feel that if MTV have got in on the act, it must be passé already… Sorry, typo – that was supposed to be ‘really cool and hip’.

17:21

We now seem to be having a Shearwater album playback in the Matador office, complete with donuts and beer.

Awesome.

18:13

Back from listening to the Shearwater album, which sounded pretty darn good (surprisingly, to be honest, as I didn’t think it would be all that). Nachos have been eaten, Corona has been drunk. It’s like we’re in Texas, except it’s cold and windy outside.

Now I’ve got to have my photo taken, as it looks like I’m going to be on a panel at the Great Escape in May, which is rather fun.

18:24

‘My Sharona’ is on the stereo. I feel the end of the day may be at hand.

18:32

And that’s it folks, the pub beckons. I’d like to think we all had some fun.