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Photo treasure hunts, workshops & competitions, London - photography services
Organised the Gumtree photo treasure hunt in Henley. Nice people. Nice ideas.twitter
davorg: Following @alessisark because I saw her play in Hyde Park on Saturday and she was wonderful.
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Hard Rock Calling
On Saturday I was at the Hard Rock Calling festival in Hyde Park. It's a pretty good idea to have a three-day festival in London over the same period as the Glastonbury festival as it's easy for the acts to play both festivals over the weekend and those of us whose camping days are long behind us get to enjoy some of the Glastonbury bands and sleep in a comfortable bed.My main reason for going was to see Neil Young, but there were a number of other acts (across three stages) to see first.
We arrived just as the first act started on the main stage. They were called The Original Sinners and my friend said he was interested to see them. It turns out that there must be more than one band of that name as these really weren't the band he was expected. They were pretty dreadful all in all. They were followed by Rudy Vaughn who had apparently won a competition in the US to come over and play at the festival. They were even worse. And instantly forgettable (I just had to look up their name). The only thing I can remember about them was that they finished with a cover of Michael Jackson's "Beat It".
By now I was desperate for some decent music. The next band on were The Pretenders and they didn't disappoint. To be honest I was surprised that they were still going. Haven't most of them died? But Chrissy Hynde still has it and their set was head and shoulders above what had gone before. They were followed by Seasick Steve. I've seen him on TV a few times and I've never really understood what the fuss is all about. But live, it's a completely different story. He was brilliant. It's just him and a drummer, but they had the huge festival audience hanging on every note.
The next act on was Ben Harper with his new band. I'd never heard of him and nothing I'd read about him filled me with any enthusiasm so I took the opportunity to explore the other stages. I didn't get very far as on the first stage I walked past I came across Alessi's Ark. I was completely entranced by their modern folky tunes and I sat and listened to all of their short set. After that I wandered back to the main stage where I was unfortunate enough to catch the end of Ben Harper's set. Which really wasn't very good.
The sun had be shining all afternoon, but as Harper left the stage it was becoming obvious that a storm was on the way. And sure enough, within fifteen minutes we were all rather wet. There was even some thunder and lightning.
The next band on were the Fleet Foxes. It was still raining when they came on, but it stopped soon afterwards. I love their music, but I'm afraid the rain rather dampened my enthusiasm. When they were playing and singing it was fabulous. But they take their music all very seriously and that means that inbetween songs there is interminable retuning of instruments which rather destroys the atmosphere. I'd love to see them again in a more appropriate venue. It sounds like I didn't enjoy them, but I should point out that even after two hours of Neil Young, it was still Fleet Foxes tunes that were stuck in my head on the way home.
Some time later Neil Young took the stage. I've been a Neil Young fan for years (we all had copies of "After The Goldrush" when I was a teenager) and I'm appalled that I've never seen him before. It's not like he rarely tours or anything.
Young opened with "Hey Hey, My My" (or perhaps it was "My My, Hey Hey" - I get those two confused) and the next couple of hours is a joyful blur of music and feedback. He played pretty much everything I wanted to hear (the full setlist is online). Oh, ok, there were a couple of things missing, but with a back catalogue the size of Young's you'd need to play all day to fit everything in. In amongst the grunge and feedback he found time for a more folky section where he played things like "Heart of Gold" and "The Needle and the Damage Done". If I have one tiny criticism, it's that if he learned to finish his songs a bit sooner he could fit in twice as many. For example, he finished with "Rockin' in the Free World" which had at least four false endings.
The encore was the Beatles' "A Day in the Life". I understand he's be playing that a lot on this tour. But when he got to "Woke up, fell out of bed..." Paul McCartney joined him on stage. I can't really see Paul McCartney and Neil Young as a double act so it all seemed a bit strange to me. I suppose I can say that I've now seen McCartney live. And I won't have to go to one of his (increasing rare and, I expect, overpriced) gigs.
This has to be one of the best gigs I've ever seen (and I said that after seeing Magazine earlier this year too - been a good year for gigs so far). I think this was the last night of the tour. But he'll be back. And if you get the chance to see him play, I strongly recommend that you take it.
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Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair
Dave Cross posted a photo:
Talking about writing about London at the British Library.
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Meet Melody YAPC::NA 2009
The slides from the Introduction to Melody talk from YAPC::NA.
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Alessi's Ark
Dave Cross posted a photo:
Rather lovely folky act that I came across at the Hard Rock Calling festival in Hyde Park.
Something about the camera in the G1 gives everything this ethereal glow when there's a lot of sunlight. Ususally it's a crap effect, but I quite like it here.
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Perl Continous Integration
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Checking Copyright
There's a lot of material out there on the internet. And the nature of the internet means that it's easy to reuse that material without paying any attention to copyright. If my browser can display an image, then I can save that image to my local disk and then, perhaps, use it on my own web site or in some other publication.But just because it's easy from a practical perspective, that doesn't mean that it's legal to do it. Much of the material on the web is subject to various copyright restrictions. And if you're going to be a responsible internet citizen then you're going to ensure that you are careful not to use any material in ways that are contrary to the copyright.
If you are, say, a national newspaper then you're going to want to be really sure that you're being careful about copyright. I'm sure that someone like (to pick a paper at random) the Daily Mail would get very upset if they found someone using one of their photos without permission or without giving correct attribution. It's therefore reasonable to expect them to offer the same courtesy to others.
Take a look at this story about Philip Schofield and Twitter. Don't bother to read it. It's the usual Mail nonsense. They're complaining that Schofield shares too many details of his life on Twitter. But they do it (ironically, I'm sure) by poring over every detail of a meal in the Fat Duck. No, don't read the words. Take a look at the pictures. Schofield has illustrated his evening by posting photos to TwitPic. TwitPic is a Twitter "add-on" that allows you to share photos as easily as Twitter allows you share text.
Notice that the Mail have put a copyright attribution on each of Schofield's photos. They all say "© Twitpic", implying that that TwitPic own the copyright on the photos. But if you take a few seconds to read TwitPic's terms and conditions, you find that they say:
All images uploaded are copyright © their respective ownersTwitPic lay no claim at all to copyright on the pictures, so the Daily Mail are attributing copyright to the wrong people. It's not at all hard to find this out (it's a link labelled "terms" at the bottom of the page - exactly the same, in fact, as it is on the Mail site), but the lazy Daily Mail picture editor couldn't be bothered to do that and just guessed at the copyright situation.
And whilst we're talking about the Mail not understanding copyright, it's worth remidning ourselves of the nonsense in their terms and conditions.
- 3.2. You agree not to:
- 3.2.1. use any part of the materials on this Site for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from us or our licensors;
- 3.2.2. copy, reproduce, distribute, republish, download, display, post or transmit in any form or by any means any content of this Site, except as permitted above;
- 3.2.3. provide a link to this Site from any other website without obtaining our prior written consent.
Update: They have now changed the copyright on the photos to "© Philip Schofield/Twitter". So that's one less piece of stupidity in the world. The struggle continues.
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