Rob's Blog - August 2004
Contents
Here are Rob's Blog entries for August 2004.
Blog entries for other months can be found in the main blog index.
I've just been to the 2004 Kerrang Awards at The Brewery. As I helped build the voting website I was given a red wristband, instead of a gold, that gave me access to a limited area of the awards. However, most the door staff weren't checking bands, so just walking in like I owned the place got me into supposedly restricted areas.
The highlight of the night was when arriving seeing The Darkness outside talking, and Justin Hawkins argueing with someone from the NME. Oh, and as Carling sponsored the event, all the booze was free.
Rock 'N' Roll baby!
Entered: 2004-08-27 09:07:41
Modified: 2004-08-27 09:09:58
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=410
From Saturday 4 September 2004, the 73 bus will be no longer be run by the trust old Routemaster but by a one of the new bendy buses.
For those who don't live or work in London, this bus runs from Victoria to Tottenham Swan, and is the only bus to travel the entire length of Oxford Street. I use it myself from Victoria to Oxford Circus.
I haven't been too big a fan of the bendy buses in the past, and after several of them went up in flames in March I asked are bendy buses safe?
Although the new buses can carry more people, they have a third fewer seats than the old Routemasters, meaning more people have to stand.
I'll be sad to see the end of the Routemaster on the 73, but after my trip to Germany last week, I have to admit to being impressed by the bendy buses. The major benefit was the public information system that told you what stop was coming up next, a life saver if you don't travel regularly by that particular bus. I hope this feature will be included on the new 73s.
A few things I don't think will work well with the buses favour is that the ability to just hop and off, especially on Oxford Street. Oxford Street is fondly known as London's largest bus stop as the traffic is regularly a halt. With the old Routemasters it was possible to just jump on or off the back, the new bendys will force users to wait at offical bus stops as the doors remain shut until the stop has been reached. The bendys may also cause problems for pedestrians trying to cross the road due to the their length.
There has been quite a bit written about the 73 bus, and the demise of the Routemaster. Here are a few links.
Anyway, here's a snap of the 73 bus travelling down Oxford Street today. It may be the last time you see a Routemaster with that magic number on.
Entered: 2004-08-25 17:12:14
Modified: 2004-09-07 08:57:04
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=409
It's a hard life being the resident pub cat at the Wheatsheaf Inn in Willingdon as this picture of him taken last night shows.
Entered: 2004-08-25 09:06:15
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=408
I'm still having problems with crossed lines on Orange when using my new Nokia 7610.
I decided to give customer services a call, and after a few crossed lines, I got through.
The customer services guy says he's had quite a few reports of the problem, and it seems isolated to the Nokia 7610 phone. If someone with a 7610 in the same area (cell?) as you is making a call, it will connect you to that instead.
Engineers are working at resolving the problem, but in the meantime it can be amusing to listen to other peoples conversations. The best one today has been someone going mental at Orange customer services.
Entered: 2004-08-10 10:24:49
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=407
The Vintage Hot Five, who regularly play at Maxims in Eastbourne on Sunday evenings, have released a new CD. Recorded in Clair Hall, Haywards Heath and at Maxims, Eastbourne, it features live recording from December 2003.
The band stars...
- Andy Woon (cornet, vocals)
- Brian Hills (clarinet, saxophone, vocals)
- Wild Bill Parsons (banjo, guitar, vocals)
- Allan 'Doc' Sokell (brass bass)
- Johnny Muxlow (drums, vocals)
The track listing on the CD is...
- Wa Da Da
- Shine
- I'm Not Rough
- Bouncing Around
- Crazy 'Bout My Gal
- Got Butter On It
- I've Lost My Heart In Dixieland
- Alligator Crawl
- I Can't Dance
- How Come You Do Me Like You Do?
- Two Dueces
- No-One Knows What It's All About
- Gee Baby, Ain'tI Good To You
- Potato Head Blues
- Maxim Stomp
- My Melancholy Baby
- Why Can't You Behave?
- Wa Wa Wa
- Meet Me Tonight In Dreamland
- Willie The Weeper
- After You've Gone
So just who are The Vintage Hot Five? Well here's the inset from their CD.
It's stretching the point slightly to say that "The VINTAGE HOT FIVE
was formed eleven years ago". The last bit is correct, but wether the band
was ever actualled formed is open to discussion. It sort of tottered
into existence, almost by accident at MAXIMS in South Street, Eastbourne, in
April 1993, and is still going strong all this time later, to it's own manifest
surprise. Originally (and, thank goodness, briefly) known as the "The Jazzaholics"
- a name which at least had the merit of neatly implying the band's two main
preoccupations - The VHF's huge repertoire of over 700 numbers reflects its
affection for the recorded output of the American small jazz groups of the middle
to late 1920s and early 1930s. These include the Louis Armstrong Hot Fives, Jelly
Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers, Bix & His Gang, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
and Red Nichols' variously-named recording groups. But the mix also includes some
ragtime; English dance-bands; Eddie Condon-style Dixieland; and one or two originals.
Musically blinkers The VINTAGE HOT FIVE is not, and therein lies its perennial
freshness and vitality.
If you have a 3GP player you can see
a short clip of the Vintage Hot Five in Maxims (72kb).
Remember, this band features the near legendary Johnny Muxlow on drums and
anything with the old sleazemeister in is worth catching. The book the Vintage Hot Five, or to order the CD, give Andy Woon a call on 01903 773473.
Update: Feb 2006
Brian Hills has been in touch to say the Offical Vintage Hot Five Website has just gone live. Check it out for more information on the band, and to order the CD.
Entered: 2004-08-09 13:40:23
Modified: 2006-02-08 18:53:12
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=406
At last my printed issue of The Perl Review arrived today.
It's good to have a printed Perl magazine again after the demise of the glossy Perl Journal.
Anyway, many thanks go out to brian d foy for getting The Perl Review this far.
Entered: 2004-08-09 12:58:53
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=405
I'm currently enjoying a few refreshing real ales at CAMRA's Great British Beer Festival at London's Olympia.
The beer is running out so it's only half price to get in. Excellent!
Mobile Blog Entry - Posted from an MMS enabled camera phone
Entered: 2004-08-07 17:28:44
Modified: 2004-08-09 13:00:46
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=404
The Register has a story about Orange customers in London having crossed lines.
Orange are blaming an intermittent crossed line fault on the Orange UK network for the problem.
I've been getting this the past few days but thought it may have been to do with the new Nokia 7610 phone and it incorrectly connecting to other Bluetooth devices.
I can only hear one side of the other persons conversation and have to wait for the other person to hangup before I am able to make my call.
Hopefully Orange will get this fixed soon as it's been happening since last Friday.
Entered: 2004-08-06 11:05:05
Modified: 2004-08-06 11:05:10
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=403
What is it with Southern's Electrostars? They seem constantly beset with problems.
I caught one back from London Victoria to Eastbourne earlier and the doors failed at Polegate leaving us waiting again for the computers on board to be reset. The driver apologised and blamed the selective door opening for being faulty yet again.
Once the driver managed to open the doors we were able to proceed to Hampden Park. Here, despite the platform being long enough to handle 8 car trains, and the new platform extension, only the first 5 carriages of the 12 coach train can open their doors. The problem is yet again the selective door opening.
Bring back the slam doors!
Entered: 2004-08-03 23:49:50
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=402
It seems that someone isn't too impressed with the London bus ticket machines.
On the "Buy tickets here before boarding" sign, someone has added the prefix "TRY AND".
This photo was taken last night while waiting for a nightbus at Oxford Circus.
Entered: 2004-08-02 14:12:08
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=400
One problem I've had with my new Nokia 7610 phone was transferring the contact information from my old Nokia 7250 to it.
As the SIM cards seemed incompatible, I had saved my contacts from the old phone using the Nokia PC Suite. However, it seems that the 7610 phone is not compatible with the "Contacts and messages" application. The 7610 uses vCards to store contact information.
Hunting about on my hard drive, I found that the "Contacts and messages" application saves the details into a Microsoft Access compatible database called Contacts2.mdb. Once I had discovered this all I had to do was import the database into Access and save it as XML. I then wrote the following Perl script to extract the name, number and email information from the XML file and generate vCards for each contact. The generated vCards are then just dropped into the phones contacts folder when it is connected to the computer with the DKU-2 USB cable or with Bluetooth.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
## Perl script to take a Nokia contacts database saved from the Nokia PC Suite,
## that has been converted to XML with MS Access, and then turn the contents
## into individual vCards suitable for importing into a Nokia 7610 phone.
##
## Robert Price - 02/07/2004
## http://www.robertprice.co.uk
use strict;
use XML::LibXML;
## create a new XML parser object.
my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
## parse the contacts file.
my $document = $parser->parse_file('Contacts2.xml');
## find each Contacts2 node.
foreach my $contacts2_node ($document->findnodes("//Contacts2")) {
## extact the name, number and email from the contacts2 node.
my $name = $contacts2_node->findvalue('./Name/text()');
my $number = $contacts2_node->findvalue('./Number1/text()');
my $email = $contacts2_node->findvalue('./Text1/text()');
## write the data to a vCard with the same filename as the contacts name.
open(CONTACT, ">contacts/$name.vcf");
print CONTACT "BEGIN:VCARD\r\n";
print CONTACT "VERSION:2.1\r\n";
## we should make REV dynamic with a current timestamp,
## but as we're only running it once we won't bother.
print CONTACT "REV:20040802T093000Z\r\n";
print CONTACT "N:;$name;;;\r\n";
print CONTACT "TEL;CELL:$number\r\n" if ($number);
print CONTACT "EMAIL:$email\r\n" if ($email);
print CONTACT "FN:$name\r\n";
print CONTACT "END:VCARD\r\n";
close(CONTACT);
}
I am using the excellent XML::LibXML module to parse and extract the values.
Each record is wrapped in a node called Contacts2. The contacts name is in a node called Name, number is in Number1 and email is in Text1.
I should really generate the REV entry dynamically as it's a timestamp to keep the data in sync, but as I only need to run the script once, I've hardcoded it.
In conclusion, the Nokia 7610 is a really nice phone, but it doesn't link to the Nokia PC Suite very well. Hopefully this script with make it easier for others to retrieve their old names and numbers from series 40 phones and import them into their new series 60 phone.
Entered: 2004-08-02 10:54:49
Modified: 2004-08-03 23:41:20
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=399
Charles Worthington Anti Dandruff Shampoo For Hair.
Although I can't find it on his site, I guess Charles is planning to branch out into the carpet and car shampoo business as he has to state that his Impact shampoo is only for hair.
Entered: 2004-08-02 10:53:38
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=398
I've just seen Twisted Sister play the London Astoria. Rock and roll!
Mobile Blog Entry - Posted from an MMS enabled camera phone
Entered: 2004-08-02 01:51:06
Modified: 2004-08-02 09:07:42
TRACKBACK - http://www.robertprice.co.uk/cgi-bin/robblog/trackback.pl?id=397
