Alex Harries's diary

It's another late night, so it must be time for another rambling blog entry about "what I've dun lately". If you read this, I can guarantee you'll be bored... ;o)

This is going to be a bumper blog entry of all the really really boring stuff I've done this week altogether, so you only have to "ignore" one thing instead of loads ;o) 

Pugwash, gatecrashed 

Yesterday, I gatecrashed the Pugwash graphic design team's weekly "social", where they get together to organise who's going to illustrate and lay out what article. Having spent a very busy hour accosting members of the team and asking them what they would change about Pugwash if they could, I've got some great ideas for improving the way the writers' and designers' time is organised, and some suggestions to improve the tools available to the Union's creative teams, e.g. Pugwash, Purple Wednesdays, and more.

One of these is actually something I lost sleep over last night while trying to figure out the maths in my head; in short, I'd like to invest a chunk of money on the Union's multimedia suite - which at the moment is home to a collection of PCs - to see them using industry-standard kit which should be good for the next four years and to provide a set of really good training and production tools for graphic design, video and audio editing. In other words, with a little investment, the Union could boast a really solid production suite for Pugwash, Pure:FM, and Purple Wednesdays, and also be available for use as a classroom for teaching students to use the various software packages the Union makes use of.

Aside from that though, I was impressed - again - by just how enthusiastic every Pugwash team member is about what they do; it's nice to see they're so self-motivated, and talking to Mike Cooter - the comms manager - about the team's development, it's obvious there are some real success stories to be told there. In terms of what I'd love to achieve with the Union, these success stories are as close to role models as I think I'm ever going to get, and I'm keen to see more of the same stuff happening with UPSU media throughout the next year.

No matter what happens in the elections, I really hope next year's MAPO realises just what an asset Pugwash is, and invests a good deal of time and money in the magazine!

"Vlogging"... Or not... 

I still haven't made any more progress with my video blog entry thingy I mentioned at the bottom of this post; that's mainly due to stage fright, laziness, and a chronic case of being not-at-all-photogenic ;o) I promise I'll try to do something by next week, even if it's just so you can laugh at me... :oP

Anyway, I'm not sure it's such a great idea until someone thinks up a better name than "vlog"ing - it sounds a bit too kinky for me... 

Housekeeping 

Before I lose my admin access to the site on Sun 11th (the campaigning period has been cut from two weeks to one - March 12th to 16th; good thing or bad thing?),  I've been setting up the UPSU and UPEL homepage adverts (pic on the right somewhere); we've got Captain (March 16th - elections night, straight after the results) and - much more importantly (I think!) - the MoS's Cut Up Boy...

(The tooth is out. I'll refrain from posting the picture of the remains since there's little point apart from the "ewww" factor which you could probably find easily enough elsewhere on the 'net...!)

It's Friday night. It's 6pm. Somewhere in the Balearics, Pete Tong is going out to the world live on air, playing - almost certainly - to an adoring crowd of sun-kissed Ibiza clubbers gearing up for possibly their biggest Friday night out of the year. It reminds me of something I wrote last summer, and I reckon it's almost time for me to pop my Ibiza cherry - anyone want to tag along? (I'll need someone to carry my records... ;o) ).

Meanwhile, back in reality (or at least, "Portsmouth-without-the-students"), I'm sitting in the Union preparing to babysit a sound system for The Listening Company (you may not know the name, but you've probably dealt with them on the 'phone at some point in your life, whether you like it or not...!) while six hundred-or-so Italian summer language school kids get fed and watered by our catering bods, upstairs in Lux.

Although I can't say I enjoy the music - apparently it's going to be a fairly rocky night - I do enjoy the babysitting work I do with UPSU Ents. Usually I work the Friday night babysit in Lux and CO2, which for the last year or so has also seen me on the decks for a brief spell most nights (my apologies to anyone unfortunate enough to have had to listen to me playing on abusing the soundsystem on a Friday night - who'dathunk I've been bedroom DJing since I was fifteen, a good 7 years ago. And yup, I'm really that old mature .... no, I definitely meant old).

Sadly, for me at least, I don't know whether I'll be able to play in the Union at all next year, as the line-up on most nights is being "tweaked" (as happens every year). I don't know if anything is changing or not, but the bosses will naturally be taking an ever closer look at how things are run on the nights to make sure things are at their best, and naturally having a relatively unknown person behind the decks like myself might not exactly thrill them to bits. I don't know; this is just speculation.

In any case, the whole point of this post is simply that October can't get here soon enough - Pompey's pretty dull during the summer, so short of me managing to escape the country and get out to Ibiza, or hooking up with some house music lovers, or even moving into Fabric London, I'm probably just going to have to become a workaholic to pass the time until the fun begins again (along with, of course, the small matter of my much-delayed final year of my degree needing attention then as well - argh, work!).

Ah... Boss has just informed me that TLC want a karaoke machine running tonight. So much for a quiet one...(!)

P.s. big thanks to a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, for the text last night - while I was doing some laundry - letting me know she and her friends had just blagged VIP guest list at Ibiza's Amnesia. I spent the rest of the night drafting plans for an escape tunnel from my house to the White Isle...

An upda...

(Excuse the rare ramble not connected to the site, but I have new toys and am telling everybody who doesn't run away first... ;o) ).

Having received Final Scratch 2 yesterday (and nearly giving myself a black eye trying to unwrap it at the speed of light) - God bless student loans ;o) - I'm going to be trying it out in anger at FRFs in the Union's Lux tonight (well, unless DJ K Ray and chums get all upset at the extra cables in the DJ booth or it gets beered...).

So, an advance apology to anyone who might be in Lux around the start of the night and who catches me making a pig's ear of having a mix.

This of course assumes I can make the thing work and that the real DJs let me have a play...!

UPDATE 10.30pm: well, I'm standing in the DJ booth in Lux; only had a little mix so far but blimey, this thing's rather good. "But then, it damn well ought to be for the amount I paid for it" says the Northern part of my genes... ;o)

UPDATE 2: 12.30am: I've just played a few more tunes in Lux and dear God I can't believe I haven't bought this toy before now - having 5,000+ records at the end of a search (and a drag-and-drop), to play on vinyl... Blimey, it's all rather fun! If that's not geeky enough for you, here's what I played: The Beginnerz "Reckless Girl", Benjamin Thieves "Texas", Dave McCullen "B***h", and Switch "A bit patchy". Then I got chucked off the decks to make way for some more Kev Ray ;o)

Interestingly, Fabric are the only London club listed by Stanton as having FS2 installed - it's a shame really 'cos it's such a cool toy, but I guess most DJs would rather spend their hard-earned chasing down elusive white labels rather than put their faith in technology. Understandable, but if you're thinking about getting FS2 (and you can afford it), I'd definitely recommend you go for it. The software's very very easy to use and runs very fast - and is very stable - on my 1.8Ghz lappy. 9.5/10 (half a mark knocked off 'cos it costs £500-ish beer tokens).

I wonder if I can get the program to send out the "what's playing now" info so we can get it on the Lux big screen...?