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We’re back

Looks like orangeacid.net is back after some down-time due to security exploits.

I’m writing this from Urbis in Manchester on some old Macs – wow, getting some weird bugs on Safari. Looks like they’re mostly cosmetic, though.

[Fast forward four hours]

Back home now, in the comfort of my newly cleared-out room. So what was I doing at the Urbis center in Manchester a couple of hours ago?  I’m one of a team of young people from Derby collaborating with Derby QUAD to participate in the Portrait of a Nation project.

Based in Liverpool, Portrait of a Nation is a creative project that aims to discover people’s perceptions of the cultural world around them.  From the Portrait of a Nation website:

“Portrait of a Nation offers the opportunity for communities – especially young people – to get involved in identifying what it is special about their city and their local culture and what they want to save, share and pass on for the future.

What does being British mean to them and what do they want it to mean in the future?”

It’s an exciting project which I feel privileged to be a part of, and I have similar feelings for the QUAD project.  Great things are going to come out of QUAD.  It’s going to be interactive and fun and relevant to the city and its citizens.  Expect to see more of it around here soon.

The Firefox Submit Comment Bug

Viewing this blog in Firefox and trying to comment may be a stressful experience for you – the submit button bounces around the page when you try to mouseover.  I’ve only encountered this in Firefox and IE 7 and Opera seem fine, although I guess it might occur naturally in Safari and elsewhere in the wild.  It’s almost as if the site were mocking you.

It’s starting to really wind me up.  Can anyone suggest a cross-browser workaround?

Stress release

Ever been so strung out that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be able to take things at your own pace?  It sucks, but returning to ‘normality’ is an excellent feeling.

I took my last AS examination for this period earlier today.  It was comprehension, cunningly disguised in an Applied-ICT-shaped suit.  Before that there was Business, but in between there was a photo job at the opening of Landau’s new ‘Learning Center’ (presumably the old building is now the ‘Eating a nd Dossing Center’) and work at Comet.

This is all following the manic Peak (aka ‘Christmas’) period at Comet.  We were targeted for upwards of £15k per hour at certain points; to put this into perspective, we sometimes manage £45k on a good Saturday.  My employers were gracious enough to provide me with 3 days off, however.  Although 25 December is classed as official holiday time.  And I had to work New Years Day, and Boxing Day, the busiest day of the year.  And on one of the remaining two ‘holiday days’ I was photographing a wedding between 10am and 9.30pm.

The respite is lovely, though.  Despite being back into the swing of being at work or college every single day.  I don’t have to worry about the next batch of 350 wedding photos until next week.  I have more manageable hours at Comet, but extra employment at College as a contracted photographer (more on that later).  Time to relax

Procrastination

You would think that loitering around my computer until gone twelve night after night would be a good indicator that work is getting done.  The fact that I’ve acheived little of any real consequence over the past week, therefore, is somewhat alarming.

I am a prolific procrastinator, you see.

Whatever I plan, something more pressing always seems to crop up.  Or, rather, something presents itself as a more worthwhile pursuit.  Sure, I have notes due, coursework deadlines, notes to be handed in for checking prior to the January exams… but there are much more interesting people on MSN, important phonecalls to make and text-messages to send, and people to invite round and to entertain.

I think one of the problems is that I am still, despite my efforts, surrounded by distraction.  Ironically, removing distractions is self-destructive.  The organisational system that I made part of my life can consume me.  Minimalising and simplifying has become an obsession.  I have allowed myself to become so tied up with the processes and systems that I’ve lost sight of the purposes and outcomes.

And here I am blogging, when I have pages of work due for tomorrow.

Names for perceptions

We alter of choice of language to infer our opinions and perceptions.

Sometimes this is subtle and effective, such as in politics and the opinionated media: freedom fighters and martyrs are terrorists, deeply religious non-christians are fanatics, legislation is bureaucracy.

Sometimes this is a little less subtle; for example, my former Business Studies would set us exam questions at least once a lesson and cycle through the names ‘test’, ‘assessment’ and ‘quiz’ and expect us not to notice.

And sometimes it’s glaring, such as in the way a friend of mine recently decided to brand with a man-name every female who she knew I’d had any sort of relationship with beyond acquaintance. Guess who the following are (out of a number of apparent she-males):

• Henry
• Edward
• Jonathon
• Harry
• Norris

James Warner Prophecies album launch

I’ve just returned from the James Warner Prophecies‘ album launch. Those of you who couldn’t make it/didn’t know/didn’t care, you have no idea what you missed.

JWP have been around for a while now – I first saw them at the legendary Vic back in 2004 or so; I guess this completes the circle. Despite only knowing two of their oldest songs, the atmosphere was electric to the point where the deliberate self-control required to prevent throwing oneself around the crowd like some drunken prick was almost consuming. This is how music should be.

Their genre is the intellegent lovechild of I suppose hard rock and folk and is surely universally irresistable. The audience ranged from kids of perhaps 13, to teenagers, to twenty-somethings, to my English tutor, to the perhaps 60-year-old father of the vocalist. He wasn’t bad in the pit either; he was marginally more energetic than us sprightly students. It was nice to be able to make out individual notes, too; those of you who stopped gigging at the Vic because of the frankly painful cheap and aging PA will be glad to know that the new Mackie system is holding out.

Admittedly, I was at the Vic by chance, on a whim, on the off-chance hope of meeting up with a friend who happens to be JWP’s photographer. Aside from being a good friend who I haven’t seen for far too long, attractive, and someone to geek about cameras with, I’m in the process of buying an unwanted contract mobile off her dad and wanted to find out what was going on. Despite her absence (she missed an hourly bus by five minutes) the Vic was packed out, aided I suppose by publicity from playing a set at Derby’s popular Markeaton Park Fireworks display last week.

Joe can certainly get the crowd going, too: I haven’t bounced and jigged so much since Fintroll at Bloodstock. Their crowds rival those of Zenith. If you haven’t experienced them yet, I advise you to listen to a couple of tracks off their MySpace and catch them at the Christmas Lights event in Derby City Centre on the 18th. If you miss that, definately go see their Christmas gig on the 19th and perhaps I’ll catch you at the all-day event at the Vic on Dec 1 with Zenith and others.

More gigs like this, please.