Mike’s Blog

September sees the launch of Cix Forums http://forums.cixonline.com/

This latest version of the web interface to Cix Conferencing is supposed to bring the masses flocking in. So far I’ve seen no mention of it in any press (Online or printed). GOK how anyone is supposed to know its there!

Still relying on the flaky old Cosy backend (As far as I can tell and nobody from Parkglobe has refuted this claim yet), and still loaded with bugs plus no account management (If you want that you need to go to the old COL site) it hardly looks ready for prime time release. Now I could understand releasing early if they had a big launch party and media extravaganza planned but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Why release a half finished product? It is certainly going to be very confusing to a newcomer.

VMware gave a big yawn, and settled down to sleep. And of course when VMware goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too. The users’ connections were just ornaments on the hard disk. Mail and DNS services were just dolls. And apache was a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a webserver.

Even VMware itself, once he was asleep, was just an old, saggy pile of bits. Buggy, and a bit loose at the seams, but gullible IT managers loved him.

This is what a normal hard drive looks like inside. Note the nice shiny mirror like surface on the platter.

This is what happens to your drive when an internal part breaks. This is an actual customers drive opened in a clean room by a data recovery company. Not surprisingly the data could not be recovered.

Life’s strange sometimes isn’t it? Linda Watkins and I often play a few tunes together at the Buckingham Acoustic club and have fun doing it but Linda has her own full time bass player, Godfrey Yeomans so we don’t play together proper likeJ Godfrey is a great bass player (Hang on. Strike that. He’s a genius of a bass player) and I’ve learnt a lot listening to him and we’ve had some fun together with some bass duet stuff and I really look up to him.

So any way, there I was working away on Thursday and it has been a pretty awful week at work, and my mobile rings – it’s Linda. “Hello Mike” she says. “What are you doing on Saturday evening? Fancy playing a gig with me”. No hesitation, my answer was yes straight away. Turns out that Godfrey’s wife Liz had been taken ill with a trapped nerve in her back so Godfrey needed to stay with her to look after her. “Only one problem” says Linda. “We need to do a half hour set and the only time I’ve got free to rehearse is tonight!”. For those of you that don’t know, Linda writes and plays most of her own compositions so we are not talking about banging out a few standards that we both know! I’ve played some of Linda’s songs with her at the Acoustic club but this gig is proper time to concentrate and do it right stuff.

So Thursday evening there we are deciding which songs we are going to do. We pick a couple of ones we have done before to make the job a little easier. Did I mention by the way that Linda is in the middle of recording her latest album and she is going for broke to make this THE album? I’ve had a sneak preview and I can tell you now it is the business. Anyway, she says that she’d like to do the title track off the new album and it’s a song I’ve never even heard her perform before – nothing like a bit of pressure eh? We work until near midnight and I leave fairly confident I can pull it off if I can get time to try the songs through again.

Friday, at work again, the phone rings – it’s Linda. “Hi Mike. How do you fancy playing Milton Keynes Middleton Hall Saturday afternoon. You & me and some solo stuff from you. We can call it a practice for Saturday night!”. So there I was in Middleton Hall on Saturday playing to the shoppers. Another goal ticked off my list! We figure out that I’ve not quite got the bass part right on one of the songs so I work on it later – Would have helped Linda if you knew the name of the chord you were playing!

Saturday evening we drive over to Adderbury and mingle in the crowd. Linda knows a number of them and explains who I am and why I’m there to stand in for Godfrey. We sit later in the tent behind the stage just before we are due to go on and I’m as nervous as when I stood up in the Acoustic club and performed for the first time. We get on stage and I’m pleased to report that the gig went well with Linda and I making an equal number of mistakes (We agreed it was probably 2 each) but the crowd were very receptive and appreciative. Job done we mingle back in the crowd by which time we were joined by Linda’s husband Richard at the beer tent. A chap comes across to us and Linda introduces him to me as Chris and he nods an acknowledgement to me. The four of us chat for a while and Linda explains how she’d rung me up, chucked a load of songs at me that I didn’t know and in 24 hours we had been playing the two gigs that day. Chris turns to me smiles, shakes my hand and congratulates me on a job well done. I was a bit taken aback but appreciated the compliment. Later as the three of us walked back to the car, Richard says “Its not every day you get compliments on your playing by a member of Fairport Convention is it Mike?” I was gobsmacked. I had no idea I had been speaking to Chris Leslie of Fairport Convention. I thought he was just a normal resident or one of the many amateur performers like me that Linda & Richard know from the folk and acoustic clubs. Oops!

Visit Linda’s Web Site http://www.lindawatkins.co.uk

Visit Fairport Conventions web Site http://www.fairportconvention.com/

Just discovered the blogging feature in Word 2007. Makes blogging easy and maybe I’ll be able to update this thing a bit more often J

That’s me in the studio!