David Emery Online

Koko in Camden has a stupid camera policy

This post is mostly going to be for the benefit of Google as I checked on Google first and turned up nothing.

Koko in Camden has a pretty stupid policy and what cameras it lets in; basically, if you’re camera looks “professional” you can’t take it in and it has to go in the cloakroom. “Normal” cameras are let in fine.

For reference, my camera is a Minolta Dimage 7 – these days you certainly wouldn’t class it as a professional camera (it’s only 5mp for a start) but it does look quite “pro”.

So to all you gig-going photographers – beware!

It’s a shame really – I was hoping to post up some pictures of the rather excellent Rapture who played tonight, but not to worry. They were very good, though – it’s always nice to see a band where you know all the songs. Interestingly, they were much, much better the Klaxons last week.

Make of that what you will.

Show us your stats!

Inspired by Robert’s post and Scott Stevenson’s post on site statistics I thought you lot might be interested in the stats of this site.

Firstly, lets have a look at the platforms that the visitors to this site use:

It comes as no surprise – to me at least – that the majority of readers are using Macs. Obviously I write a lot on mac specific topics, so to have more Mac readers then Windows readers isn’t too odd. It also touches on some of the fallacies of the continuing Mac-Windows market share debate – what market are you talking about? Are you talking about the market share of all computers? Does that include ATMs, for example – quite a few of them run a form of windows? Do you mean home computers? What about the market share for readers of mac-based websites? Etc…

What’s interesting about this set of statistics is how evenly matched the three main browsers are – obviously it’s nice to see Internet Explorer so low, but I’m quite surprised how Safari is edging out Firefox. I would hazard a guess...

New Hype

Last night I had the pleasure of experiencing the peak of a hype wave in full force. This particular hype wave is a category 5 “NME” hurricane-force wave; last seen on these shores about this time last year surrounding a little known band called the Arctic Monkeys.

I am, of course, talking about New Rave.

Koko in Camden was the location – although somewhere in trendy Shoreditch would probably been more appropriate – and the gig itself, featuring three of the most hyped up bands around at the moment, was (against all probability) excellent.

First on were the always entertaining Datarock. The only of the bands who have been around long enough to have released a full length album, Datarock mix the expected indie-dance-electro mix with a healthy dose of humour, which really worked well live and really got the crowd going. Their were some moments of pure genius – including a brilliant bit of saxophoning in “Nightflight to Uranus”.

As you may be able to tell from that title though, Datarock aren’t afraid of using pretty childish humour in their lyrics, which I’m sure appeals to teenage boys but means that their shelf-life may be quite short. It’s a shame really – if...

Less Less

More is always better.

We want less less.

Waste fewer.

Greater sales.

Up.

Up. Up.

“We not going to sell many of this.”

“How else shall we make the money?”

Reward.

Recompense.

Website Skinning

It never ceases to amaze me how many things you can do these days with modern browsers and CSS; the scope for hacking and customisability is huge due to most modern browsers ability (whether built in or by plugins) to use a custom css file to change a website’s appearance.

A case in point comes today from the always interesting Jon Hicks in the form of a custom skin for Bloglines. As regular readers will know, I’m a bit of a Bloglines fanatic (I currently have 499 feeds a read every day), but it’s not the nicest site to look at so this skin is more then welcome.

If you take a look at the picture above you’ll see a couple of differences with the version on Jon’s site, which hits on another bonus with CSS skinning – it’s really easy to wade into the source and change any bits you don’t like. I’ve made a couple of changes to remove the wood effect seen on Jon’s original, and to change the feed list so it’s move like Mail.app’s source list.

Jon says in the comments of his post that a non-wood version is coming soon, so I’m not going to polish...

Importance

Yesterday, amongst all the millions of things that happened two things which you’ve no doubt all ready heard about occurred: Firstly, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. Almost simultaneously, North Korea conducted their first nuclear weapons test.

Which one of these was more important?

Which one of these is going to have more of an effect on the world?

I think it’s the Google-YouTube deal.

Put down that rotten tomato; let me explain!

Obviously, the possibility of North Korea becoming a nuclear power has a huge knock-on effect to the rest of the world; as we’ve seen with the current mess in Afghanistan and Iraq it really doesn’t take much of a reason for one country to invade the other. A nuclear arsenal is a pretty big reason.

We’re not, surprisingly enough, talking about America invading North Korea – Iran is next on their list”. We’re talking about China, which is possibly even worse. I see this playing out like this (baring in mind I-am-not-a-military-tactician): North Korea keeps on with the nuclear testing, as military might is the only things the North Koreans have left – from what I can tell they’re not much better of then Iraq was before the war (not as...

All opinions here are mine

A couple of times in the comments on recent posts people have been calling me out on only giving my opinions on this blog; I should – at least according to them – be trying to write from a neutral-bystander point of view.

They are, of course, wrong.

This blog is here as a form of expression; a way for me to express my thoughts, views and ideas. It is not trying to be a news source, or a specific niche blog – this is all just my views, and while I may elaborate on opposing viewpoints for the sake of interesting discourse, equally I might not mention them at all.

I have also been called arrogant and self-centered, and those accusations I agree with; on this blog, I write about what I want to write about. As you may be able to tell by glancing at the recent posts to the right, I’m interested in a whole host of things ranging from the future of music and web development to the mac and mac development.

I’m fully aware of the conventional blogger notion that focusing on one topic brings both more readers and also more respect in your chosen field; but that’s simply...

Robot Arms

Jack Schulze and Matt Webb have just launched a new blog, Pulse Laser and I think it’s already one of my favourites – the level of creativity and thought behind the posts is stunning and I can’t wait to read more. This quote from Drawing Phones sums it all up quite nicely:

“Definitely needs to be more exploration of robot arms in the future.”

There always needs to be more exploration of robot arms.

Anyway, after reading Pulse Laser and instantly wanting to post a link to it I realised I haven’t posted any of my favourite sites in quite a while; my Bloglines addition has now got to the point where I’m reading about 500 sites a day – I’m sure there must be something in there that’s interesting!

2lmc spool – Always interesting tech/mac/uk blog that is slightly unique in that it’s a joint blog where both people contribute to all the posts.

Ben Metcalfe – Often outspoken, but always interesting.

A VC – Very insightful writings of a venture capitalist based in New York.

BlackRimGlasses – Blog of the Senior Director of Technology at Warner Bros. Records. Interesting reading for anyone interested in the future of music.

Read more ➔

Art is bollocks

Not all art.

Some of it is brilliant; Kandinski, Dali, Magritte, Mondrian.

But some – most – is pitiful. While it may have thought and reasoning behind it, that by itself does not make it good.

Creativity by itself does not good art make. Creativity is only useful if you have a problem to solve, not an idea looking for a problem.

The incredibly intricate reasoning behind most modern art is quite simply bollocks – simply the by-product of a broken schooling system that is breeding ever large quantities of “artists” that have been trained to come up with bullshit that justifies whatever technically simple work they have come up with. Not that the “difficulty” of a piece is what justifies it or makes it brilliant, but the idea has to be interesting; unique; innovative.

All of this bollocks really is art, however – unlike the Daily Mail et al I’m not trying to decry things as “not art” – but it’s simply bad art.

Art is not good just because it’s art.

On Monday the shortlist for the Tuner Prize went on display. Rebecca Warren’s exhibit and Mark Titchner’s exhibit are both quite obviously utter bollocks. They both show no creativity, and prop up...

My Dream App

You may well have heard about the My Dream App contest, which is now entering it’s final stages. If not, the basic premise is that initially you could submit your idea – a couple of paragraphs is all you got – for your “dream” mac application. As the weeks have gone by, the originally chosen finalists (picked out by the team of judges) have been whittled down by a series of public votes – right now the third vote is just take place.

Before I get much further, I’d just like to highlight how well the site for this contest has been put together – the design is really nice, and the usability and layout of the voting process is really top notch. The whole thing has an attention to detail that is incredibly rare to see, online or offline.

At this stage I’m going to run through my favourite ideas, incase any of them get voted off soon.

Personally, by far the most interesting idea is Richard Whitelock’s Whistler – the concept is just genius; you just whistle a tune, or drum a beat using the microphone in your mac and it turns...