This weblog relates to my interests, my creative life and my working life. Sometimes they all get blurred. Some postings may relate to my work for the University of Teesside. I would like to state that nothing in this journal is meant to represent the University of Teesside.

Testing Thumbnail
18/06/08

Written by Steve Thompson (admin) - Categories: Analogue Man


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My Space
08/09/06

A friend recently extolled the virtues of MySpace a social networking kind of thingy so I set one up. Well I set up two actually, th first one was a mistake and I seemed to be in a space looking to "date" other MySpacers or at best engage in spotty teenager stuff. I realised my mistake and set up another as a band whereby you can add some MP3's and video's. It seemed a bit of a faff at first but then it got interesting. The idea is that you promote your band by networking and making "friends". I've actually found a few people I know or have some association with and I've linked to them. Click here for MySpace

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Singing Under Fire
07/04/06

My good friend Tony Markey came to my studio to do a vocal session today.

Tony is not around a great deal because he spends 3 months at a time singing on a cruise ship and 3 months at home.

When I say "singing" I have to point out that Tony is not the kind of guy to just do anything simple. He's actually entertainments manager and probably loads of other stuff as well. He was telling me that in lifeboat drill he sits in seat number two next to the captain which means if the captain is incapacitated then he is in charge of the vessel.

We all know that singing in the Northern Clubs can be a risky business but I learned today that it's just a walk in the park compared to singing on a cruise ship. At the end of the session we were just chatting and then Tony says something like "and then we were attacked by pirates". Hang on, I say, your weren't on board the ship that hit the news recently. It turns out indeed he was. Now I know Tony's singing can come in for a bit of criticism but I think it's going a bit over the top for two boats to appear and suddenly splatter the vessel with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades !

Tony's defence could have been to sing at them which would have been enough to repel any boarders but he decided to go a bit further and on the captains orders pulled out the audio device that is apparently a non military ships only defence. This fires a burst of powerful frequency which shatters the eardrums of the target and renders them pretty incapable of piracy. Tony fired this thing and scored a direct hit on one of the boats. If this seems a bit harsh, consider this, perhaps these Somalis attacked due to Tony's singing (it's not unheard of). Well he's done them a favour by rendering them incapable of hearing his vocals or indeed anything at all.

Tony has promised a pic of a shell embedded in the boat next to his bonce which I'll publish here if he sends it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4409662.stm

Written by Steve T - Categories: Analogue Man


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Sunday Supplement
19/02/06

The Sunday Supplement on BBC Radio Cleveland with guests me (top), Hayley (right) and Paul Anderson (left) presenting. Phone in's and discussions about what's in the Newspapers. This is my second visit. I struggle to stay "with" the programme, express an opinion on things I have (a) no knowledge of and (b) no opinion on, OR struggle not do blether on and on about stuff I DO have an opinion on. Mostly struggle to be mildly interesting in the hope that no-one demands their license fee back. I think I may have failed on all counts.

Written by Steve T - Categories: Analogue Man


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Then and Now
11/11/05

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A Short History and a Visit to a Museum
25/09/05

History Of Music Machines
Back in the late seventies I was house producer in a recording studio. One day an artist brought in a little black box called a

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Happy Hacker
23/06/05

I'm currently hacking code. Struggling with three languages - PHP, CSS, and Dutch !

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The (Road) Works
17/06/05

This week saw the penultimate gig on The Works tour at the Everyman in Liverpool. The first thing I noticed on entering the City was that the Scousers had taken their European City of Culture 2008 win and started tearing up the streets of Liverpool. Such is the disruption that even locals can

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27/05/05

The head cam was uses in earnest today to interview Kerry's Gang Click Here


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Head Cam
22/05/05


Whilst I'll admit this may look a bit daft, it has a serious application. We were talking about our ways of covering different events in last Fridays community media events meeting and we agreed that some events can be covered by a live webcast hookup, others by mobile phone blogging and others like Stockton Riverside Festival may be best covered by mobile units taking footage to access points for uploading. One of the quickest and most effective ways of shooting video is with a webcam so this arrangement of a "head cam" and backpack laptop could be very useful. If you see someone coming towards you looking like this smile, you could very soon be on the world wide web.

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Three Chairs
16/05/05

Three Chairs

Sent by Email. I’ve been experimenting with Mobile Phone Blogging and
have been able to get images into a Blogger blog. Now with some hacking
and tweaking I’m able to get pics by e-mail and/or mobile phone into my
blog engine of choice B2 EVO.

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From A Distance
14/05/05

I was in Stockton today and parked in a rooftop carpark. Scroll down to see what interests me about this picture.

Stockton


Well, I was stood beside that red brick building a few days ago and took this picture.


Then I had an idea - probably a daft one. Next week I'll go to that spot across the river and take a picture of the exact spot from which I took the picture. Could be an interesting little project. Would be really cool with distant landscape shots, pics from the other side of the road, ....... well maybe? maybe not?

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Travel Warp
13/05/05

Driving home this evening down the A19 from Tyneside to Teesside, close to Hartlepool I suddenly found myself in the USA.

Diner

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Can We Fix It ????
16/04/05

My old Akai S950 sampler just died. We'll it's have a few health scares lately but I fear this time could be terminal. I have more advanced technology waiting to take over this once cutting edge machine but this would involve several hours setting up and I just need to switch on and go to bring some projects in on time(ish)

Don't let the removed cover fool you, I know only two possible methods of fixing this kind of gear.

1 Switch it off and on again (didn't work)
2 Gently push down all the chips as the heat sometimes lifts them loose.

Hurray !!! technique number two worked.

I've just lately been working up a theory of life on this planet and this episode is more evidence that I'm probably right (plus the fact that I've taken the time out to blog this instead of pressing on with my work)

The theory: - we're all just arseholes in this life, bumbling along the best we can, that includes the politicians and the scientists. We aint got a clue, just some folks hide it better than others.

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