lolwut?

Just got this message on youtube,

	Apologies for unsubscribing. I'm somewhat obsessive compulsive about the number of subscriptions I have. It must be divisible by three and it wasn't when I was subscribed to you. I still appreciate your music, as well as the huge amount of effort I know goes into a lot of your videos and will probably continue to watch them - just as an unsubscriber now. Wish you all the best!

Things:
1) That's weird.
2) If you hadn't told me I wouldn't have known and there'd be nothing to apologise for. (And there still isn't tbh, you can use the site how you want!)
3) I have (at least) 3 channels - make up the numbers!
4) Having unsubscribed, they had 61 subscriptions, which clearly does not divide by three.

That's all.
Goodnight. x

Aim for Happiness

I made an EP about a month ago, you may remember... It's now all done and ready and available. It's called Aim for Happiness, and is on itunes and amazon mp3, which were by far the most popular choices in my (very scientific) poll.

Unfortunately, it turns out amazon are a bunch of muppets. I sent the track details, under the band name Blue Skies obviously, but for some reason that I can't figure out, they decided to add a 'The' in front of that. So my EP is listed on amazon under the band name 'The Blue Skies'. It's a pretty bad mistake to make and they tell me it happens all the time... I don't know how they can have such a terrible system in place without sorting it out. But what's worse is that even now I've seen the problem and let them know, apparently there is nothing they can do about it. I told them (in not so many words) that that was bullshit. Because if Radiohead uploaded an album and it came out as 'The Radiohead' something would be done! Still waiting to hear back from that one - not holding my breath.

So I don't know what to do, I can't find anyone that can do anything. The only thing I've been offered is to have the EP taken down from the site, and that would only hurt me and the people who want to buy it but can't use itunes. Oh and they also said they could change the name for me... Change the name to anything in the world apart from 'Blue Skies'. Brilliant, nice one.

I know it's not a major catastrophe, but I don't think it's too much to ask that they use the name I gave them. Still, people can get it there and just change the name, or have it under the wrong name, it doesn't really matter!

And the good news is that itunes has processed it, and all appears to be well there. I'm exporting a video for one of the songs now, so hopefully that will go up tonight and people might, yunno - buy it! It's quite a big step but since I really took it a month ago, and have since just been waiting for it to happen, it doesn't really feel like one.

Also Cheeky is sorting out the final things I need to order t-shirts, I'll probably start selling those at Summer in the City.

Oh and as some people have asked, I currently have no plans to make physical copies of this EP, for one thing that costs money, and also it's only four tracks - doesn't really seem worth it. I'm planning to put together a sort of live album to sell at Summer in the City with at least 10 of my tunes performed acoustically. I've borrowed a second mic from my cousin for the next few weeks so hopefully I'll have it done by the time I go away at the end of July.

I was also thinking about doing some lo fi recordings... See I'm going to be in Malta for about three weeks and I'd like to get some songs written while I'm away. I thought I could record them on my camera and then sell them, but not properly - set up a paypal thing where you can pay any amount and then you get a link to a download of the songs. Like Radiohead did with In Rainbows... Pay what you want. That way people can't moan about the sound quality! And to be fair the quality will be alright, I just don't plan on setting up a studio out there! Might not be everyone's cup of tea but I love some lo fi stuff... I mean check this shit! To be fair though I just fucking love Conor Oberst. But even so, I think the not particularly brilliant recording quality really adds to that tune.

Well, I'll stop the rambling now. If you have anything to add/ask about any of that then go ahead, I'll be in the comments! (Would especially like to hear from someone who works at amazon and has the power to remove the 'the'!)

xxx

EDIT: Video is up now, click here.

Magic bin!

Mum just threw two pieces of paper into the bin and they landed... Above it!


So basically we have a magic bin.


Or as a possible alternative explanation... we NEVER go into the lounge now we have a sofa in the kitchen and so a spider has taken the opportunity to move in.

T-shirts round 2

Thanks to Paul I now have actual computery designs.

Do you prefer lower case...
Or upper case...
Unfortunately the printers can't go right to the sides because their machines are A3 sized. But I quite like the new version. What d'you think?

T-shirt designs!

Today was too nice to be inside, so I went out in the garden and designed some t-shirts that I could sell at gigs and stuff. I've been meaning to get some done for ages and just haven't got round to it. Also I'm no good at getting designs onto a computer so I'm gonna need someone's help!

First I'll show you some sketches. I tried to keep them all to two colours to keep the cost down, and because I think it's good to keep them simple.

1.2.
I thought I might be able to carry on the lines from the guitar and the S's on to the back on this one.

3.
It's not that clear because of my poor drawing ability! It's supposed to be two arrows that would hopefully continue over onto the back, or if that would be too expensive I'd make the design a bit small to fit it all on the front. This one might require a third colour as well, in between the two arrows (above the second s and on the other side on the arm)


4 (star), 5 (stripes) & 6 (other!):


Let me know what you think, which one's you like/dislike, your favourites, whether you'd buy them and most importantly, anyone who can turn these pencil scribbles into something on a computer screen that I could send to a t-shirt printers, let me know!

xx

Road Trip part3: Heading Home

So it just occurred to me that I never finished off what the papers aren't calling 'The Blog Trilogy of the Year!'

I told you about the trip up to Scotland and stopping off at the castle... And about party times on the karaoke bus in Glasgow, so all that's left is the second road trip, which is basically the same as the first but backwards.

This time we decided not to look for another castle because it would never be as good as the one on the way. I noticed that we went fairly near the coast a couple of times, and that there was a beach at Morecambe. So we went to Morecambe.

At first it only appeared to be a pebble beach, which did not impress us. Though we did go down and dip our feet in the Irish Sea... And of course pretend to be crabs for a photo:


Turned out there was a sand beach about 50 yards away. So Morecambe was alright. didn't spend much time there, but it was a nice break.

I have one final thing to show you, a game Dale invented in the car. It's called 'The Wobbly Phone Camera Game' and it basically involves taking photos like this,















By moving your phone all over the place while you take a picture so it... Morphs.

We tried to get some of Sophie, but they all came out normal...















And that was our trip to Scotland... That happened several weeks ago now. I suck at blogging. The trouble is when stuff is happening you're too busy to blog, then you forget, then suddenly you're writing about stuff that happened three weeks ago. Ah well.

I did take some video footage, which I might use as a part of a music video because I have a song that kind of involves road tripping. For now I'm working on a big split screen project to promote my EP... Less than a month until it's out!

So that's all. If you take only one thing away from today, let it be The Wobbly Phone Camera Game. It's genius and you know it. Try it on your friends!

xxx

The Green Out

Yesterday on twitter this sentence came up quite frequently,

#helpiranelection - show support for democracy in Iran add green overlay to your Twitter avatar with 1-click - http://helpiranelection.com/

and a lot of people's avatars went slightly green.


I thought it was quite a nice idea, so I did it too, but as with most things done on the internet by more than three people, it came with the unavoidable slew of cynicism. So I thought I'd take a second to defend the green out.

The argument against it seems to be quite simple - 'How is making your avatar green going to change anything? What's the point?!' Now obviously this is not going to directly bring an honest democracy to Iran. If it was as simple as pressing a button I think someone would have done it by now. But it's a simple show of support, a way to get the word out and to keep people talking about something important. That's the way the world works - you keep people talking and solutions are at least looked for. If you let things go quietly then they're forgotten about.

I saw one tweet that said 'It won't help etc etc, remember the blackout, did that work?'

The blackout was a similar movement on twitter whereby people just used a black square instead of their usual picture to protest against a new law in New Zealand, which meant people could have their internet cut off if accused of piracy... Not convicted; accused. No trial, no judge, no jury.

Now, not living in New Zealand I didn't really follow the story, but in answer to the question 'did the blackout work?' You have answered it yourself - it worked because you remember it. The point of the blackout was to spread the word and gain support, not so the PM of New Zealand would check his twitter and say 'Oh shit, look at all these blacked out avatars, I better not pass that law!' Just like the regime in control in Iran are unlikely to hand over power based on some pictures being tinged green, but that doesn't mean it's worthless.

The green out is a minuscule part of what's going on, but it took five seconds and cost me nothing, so why moan about it? Here's something else that makes no difference - going to a protest in the street. If you lived in Iran and you had to decide between staying at home and going out to a protest, you would know that your decision alone would not affect anything, it's far too small a choice. But a lot of people made that choice and this was the result.

Sorry if you don't care about this, it just annoys me when people hate bandwagons whatever they're about. I heard someone say once they weren't going to get an organ donor card because it was just another bandwagon. Never mind that that bandwagon could save lives. Mental.

One final thought - it's nice to see the generation of people politicised during the last US election following through and talking about the election in Iran, which is far less cool because Barack Obama isn't involved.


EDIT: thanks to Laura for mentioning in the comments, another thing you can do to help is change your twitter time zone (in settings at the top) to GMT +3:30 Tehran, the idea behind this is that it makes it harder to identify those actually twittering from within Iran. I must confess I have no idea how effective this is, but I've done it myself because why not?!