the spies came out of the water

i don't like to obsess about it too much, but every once in a while i will spend a few minutes taking a look over what my statcounter has got to say about those that have visiting my blog

i also don't like to talk about it too much on my blog as i wouldn't want anyone that frequents here, no matter how casually, to think that i am spying on them and tracking their every move



honestly, it is more just a curiosity

to see how paper came here and what they have googled in order to find whatever page they came across with whatever i may have been waffling about at that point in time

it is always a little bit exciting to see when people from other countries have stumbled across my musings, yet it is no longer such a thrill to find that someone from sweden or spain has been looking at Roxanne Pallett in her smalls again, but i did get a strange buzz to find that someone in the Houses Of Parliament had been taking a peek at monday's blog post on the Enfield Advertiser's strike action 

in fact, that little piece did drive a little bit of web traffic in my direction, so i hope that means that people are taking notice of the cause that the journalists and editors on the picket line outside the Advertiser's offices are fighting for, although it seems that the situation has only deteriorated, with staff now being warned of possible redundancies


and sadly, it seems that this weeks newspaper is not worth an awful lot of time flicking through, especially if you are looking for the laughably titled 'leisure and lifestyle guide', as it seems that even after all that shouting and making a fuss about how important it is and who it appeals to, The Weekender is not represented in this week's edition in any way, shape, or form

i can only hope that the organisation of the aforementioned strike action is the main culprit behind it's disapearance, but i do fear now that the end may be nigh for this longstanding entertainment section, and along with it will go any hopes local bands had of gaining further exposure through their local newspaper.


at least we still have the return of Doctor Who to look forward to this weekend, i suppose.

and in fact, Doctor Who is another one of the topics that seems to keep bringing people all over the world back to my humble little blogspot, so i'm hoping that once we are back in the swing of things i shall again be offering my occasional opinion on what is goin on Doctor-wise

by the end of Matt Smith's debut season, i will admit that he has grown on me, and clearly absence really has made the heart grow fonder, as i cannot wait for the new series to get started! (although this may have more to do with Amy Pond, than Matt Smith's Doctor)

so i shall eagerly wait and see what is instore this time around, with high hopes for an episode scripted by personal fave of mine, Neil Gaiman, and the possibility of more revelations about the enigmatic River Song.

and since we have been discussing favourites, and web traffic, it would be downright rude not to give a huge shout out to what is possible my biggest pull of all time, that gets hits daily from all over the world, i am, of course, talking about Roxanne Pallett in her underwear



it is very nice of you to have joined us again, and as long as people keep clicking, i will keep being tempted to post half naked pictures of famous women....    along with your usual expected insights and geek-outs

strike!!

i've already schooled you on the shit that may or may not be going down with The Weekender's fluctuating  page count and uncertain future, yet it seems that this was just the tip of a Titanic mashing iceberg

after doing my own little bit of campaigning in order to save the section of the newspaper that i am so fond of reading and contributing to, a little more information has come to light and to be honest, it is not good news

no wonder our paper is taking such a battering, since it turns out that editorial staff that have left have not been replaced and other key positions have also remained unfilled as part of some genius cost cutting exercise

great idea, the only problem is now that the people left staffing the paper are now overstretched and unable to do a proper job delivering quality content, with just three full-time reporters having to fill the pages of nine newspapers a week, they are tied to their desks with no real scope for any type of first-hand accounts or investigative journalism, instead the former award winning newspapers are now filled with (the rather brilliantly named) 'worst kind of churnalism'




blogs, facebook and a twitter have all been set-up to raise awareness of what has been going on behind the scenes at our local papers and to further drive the point home, two weeks of strike action have been scheduled starting tomorrow


i was intending to get along and further show my support for those affected, but unfortunately work engagements won't allow me to be in Enfield Town as i would usually be.


not only will i be missing out on the picket line outside the newspapers' offices, i shall also be missing out on the theatrically staged funeral procession that shall be lead through the town with a priest reading the paper's last rites, while a menacing grim reaper shall also be stalking around as a menacing reminder of how these attitudes and decisions are leading to the death of our local newspapers

for more information of the strike read here
and more information on all this dastardly shit, and contact details to try and stop it can be found here

a crimeless victim

people may talk about victimless crime, but right now i feel just the opposite, as if i am a crimeless victim

last week i had my bike stolen, within minutes of locking it up outside B&Q and picking up what i needed, i returned to find that my bike was no longer where i left it, in fact there was no sign of it at all



a couple of kids that were near the entrance of B&Q confirmed it for me (as if it could have been anything else), that someone had quite casually come along, cut through my lock as if it was butter and then hopped on my bike and rode off

further fuel to the fire, if someone was gonna make off with my bike i do wish that they'd have had to work a bit harder for it

thankfully it was directly underneath a security camera so there should at least be a decent image of the culprit.... but of course, that camera was not recording

yes, this was the kind of day i was having...


i knew anything that follows would be rather pointless, only if i'd had my bike microchipped and satelite traced would i have a hope in hell of it turning up again

as a kid we'd had mine and my brothers bikes stolen from our garden, they'd been security marked by the police at an open day at our primary school and we took along a couple of holiday photos of us with the bikes to the police station so they would know what they were looking for, and the uber-honest cop took the details, and then crushingly informed us that they probably would never turn up again, and if they did they'd most likely resemble scrap metal

not in the best of moods, i filled in the online crime report form (as it seemed an easier option than wasting my breathe) giving as much detail as i could, including the direction i was told that the culprit had headed off in, the names of the major retailers that faced the carpark he would have gone across that i presume would have their own cctv, and a ten minute time slot that it had all happened in, there you go police, that's most of the hard work done for you.... now, if you could just think about checking the cctv in the area...


what i do get is a phone call 2 days later asking me if the bike was locked when i left it (thank you for reading my report!!), informing me of my crime reference number

and this week i get a letter to let me know that 'the crime has been assessed to see what opportunities exist for further investigation' in order to identify the person responsible for the crime, whether cctv evidence could be recovered was given as one example...

oh, they have concluded that further significant evidence would not be readily available

i'd at least like to think that the police had tried, but considering that the times it could have happened between were minimal and precisely reported and that my bike was stolen from a busy retail park, surrounded by a number of other businesses, i am certain that there would be cctv footage, considering that reports say Britons are captured on cctv 300 times a day, i find it hard to believe that someone upping and leaving with a stolen bike is completely and utterly untraceable

i was already resigned to the fact that it was all for nothing, yet the fact that the 'one size fits all' letter i recieved shows no real attempt to act upon the information i have given to them only seems to smack of the fact that the police could really not be bothered to take the time it would have taken to just check....

it makes me feel that maybe crime is a viable way to make ends meet, with no fear of recrimination, with no real consequences, whoever got away with it has a brand new bike

while i have not a lot more to show for it other than a crime number, an empty space in my shed and increased journey times




for a little more information on the crime of stolen bikes, i'd suggest giving this a read

adjusting transitions

see what i'm capable of doing when i put my mind to it?

not only have i stripped the decking to the best of my abilities whilst catching a fair bit of sun at the same time, i have also found the time to do my fair share of house work, read a comic in the sun whilst enjoying a beer that gets me up to date for reading Final Crisis, fixed the toilet, unfixed the light that needs to be returned to B&Q and fixed my dupstep mix.

of course, i thought it was finished the first time round, but a few little niggles and issues that had been raised by my girlfriend have been taken into consideration and with a little bit of tweaking i'm hoping that it shall meet with approval

nothing drastic has changed, everything has stayed the same, i have just readjusted a handful of the transitions as a number of tracks seemed to be coming in too loud and ruined the flow slightly, but like i said, i thought it was fine the first time round... let's see if i go back for any further edits....

but i am proud of it, the title pretty much says it all really...

wub be good to me, a dubstep cut'n'paste mix by Hunchbakk

Wub be good to me, a dubstep cut'n'paste mix by Hunchbakk

i basically cut and pasted the whole thing together in Acid, creating my own little loops and edits and merging tracks together as best as i possibly could, and i'll say it again, i am proud of it, for every little niggle or obvious flaw there have been other mixes, transitions and edits that have been so smooth that they have not raised any attention at all, it may not be perfect, but it's mine.

and so, perhaps for a little piece of history on this mix.

it was created for a friend that doesn't like dubstep.

we were at a dubstep night at Bar Form, and to be honest, it was slightly on the boring side, there was no real variation, nothing to really hook anybody in to the music, some of it was banging, but the rest of the time it strayed into repetitive and generic territory.

my friend was particularly unimpressed and it was easy to pinpoint what it was she didn't like about what was being played, yet i insisted that there would be dubstep that i think she would like and vowed to knock together a CD of tracks that i think she might have liked.

except some of these tracks and mixes were going on five or six minutes or more long, and strayed into repetitive and generic territory, so instead of just knocking together a playlist to burn off and wallow in the glove compartment of her car i instead thought i'd try and get a little creative and actually mix the tracks to suit her attention span.

so, in my own way i decided to splice together a mix that would reach back to the moody and pioneering dubstep of Burial as something of a history lesson, but also take in more vocal based tracks and remixes, as well as covering a number of more recognisable tunes in a filthy dubstep disguise, and since i couldn't let her get away without a little something to challenge her i also threw in tracks from Caspa and Rusko amongst the more palatable tracks as something of a contrast.

so what are you waiting for? 

download it

share it

share feedback

let me know what you think

and for those that have to have the whole package, at teh top of the post is the front cover, at the bottom of the post is the back cover, and for those with snazzy printers that can print onto CDs (you lucky people, you) i have also put together an image suitable for the CD which you can find over here

thanks

the barnyard battle

how foolish of me, there i was yesterday, typing up a long-awaited blog post and i only go and leave out something of relevance that i wanted to point readers in the direction of.

instead, you get more apologies and an extra post which i guess makes things look just a little bit more active around these parts.



so.

dubstep.


when i'm writing articles or features for The Enfield Advertiser (or possibly Seeking Susan Boyle or Glasswerk) i try to cover most bases, obviously the paper i try to anchor with local interest to keep it relevant, but i also like to mix in reviews of other artists, be they popular or rather niche, and i try to convey myself in my writing by offering up a number of opinion pieces.

something that i had been giving a fair bit of consideration to was the current state of dubstep, particularly how in the course of a year it went from bubbling on the underground, to spawning it's own 'pop'stars in the form of Katy B and Magnetic Man.

but writing takes a little time and commitment, and when i very rarely have an official deadline to meet for any of the platforms my pieces appear on, sometimes these ideas tend to slide.

so while i have been spending time becoming increasingly bored of social networking and waiting for something new to set a fire under my life, or just sinking my head deeper and deeper into comics, Eddy TM has overtaken me and given his own opinion on dubstep's current standing.

i won't bother to repeat any of it here, since it is well worth a read in it's own right.

and perhaps i'll pull my finger out, surprise even myself, and deliver a complete dubstep mix, aaand a dubstep article this week.

we'll see, eh?

credit where it's due:


accompanying image 'weird mouse' by Leo Loikkanen

journey to perplexity

please, let me explain myself.

i apologise profusely for not yet furnishing your ears with my cut 'n' paste dubstep mix.

a handfull of people of heard it, opinions range from 'tumping' (which i presume is a compliment, and shall take as such), to my girlfriends opinion that it sounded quite amateur, which of course it is, but i had a bloody good crack at it. oh, and i was also told by the friend that the mix was originally intended for, that the asda CD i burnt it on wouldn't play in her car, neither would the previous asda CD we tried, i see a pattern emerging here.

having taken my girlfriend's comments on board, i decided to postpone loading it up for all and sundry to hear and instead shall spend a little longer tweaking...

there are certainly points of the mix that i am not entirely happy with, whilst others are so smooth that few people have even realised when a track has flowed or merged into the next. so it is neither a complete success or a complete failure, it is what it is, a mix that i have cut and pasted together as best i could using acid .

the only thing i shall attempt to change are a handful of sound level issues that are bothering me, and are the reason i have not shared it just yet, the rest shall likely stand untouched, as a testament to what i can and cannot do.

as soon as i find a little spare time to give it the attention it deserves i shall tinker and upload, for now tho, perhaps just check out the artwork that i created for the compilation, and perhaps peruse the other creative outpourings of my family on a day to day basis.

credit where it's due:


accompanying image 'i wanna riot' by butterfly cool