I've made a few friends, upset plenty of people, and been given some very cool opportunities, so really this is a thankyou from me to everyone who's made the last six years - and especially the last year - as fun, interesting, and challenging as it could have been. To all the staff and students I may have upset with my git-like behaviour, please remember it was never personal (if it was, I would have told you explicitly!).

I'm not sure what's next for me. I have a one-way ticket to Ibiza booked for this Saturday, and I'll be out there looking for a job and a flat with next year's Pugwash editor Steph Hall. We might only survive a week and find there's nowhere to live, or we might get lucky and make it through the last two months of the summer season - I really don't know. If you fancy laughing at me, join the Facebook group and I'll keep you updated on the latest stupid thing I've done...

Anyway, I'm off properly now. I'll be over at Greyhead.co.uk and no doubt in the news soon for being involved in some embarrassing scandal involving a goat and a nudists' beach in Ibiza.

Rena, Elle, Mike, Steve, Jaf, Fraggy, Tom, Jacob, Tallie, Laura, Pete, other Pete, Ben, Darby, other Steve, Jo, Karen, Tracey, Cherelyn, Sharon, Graeme, Wayne, Cat, Gamel, other Tom, Aakash, Caroline, Gina, Fred, Maz, Sloppy, Carl, Clive, Jim, Ryan, Rob, Hannah, Bex, Shrey, Rich, Alex, Scott, Janet, Stuart, John, Mario, Adrian... ok, «everyone» at the Union: thanks :) 

Good luck Tom, goodbye everybody and, of course, bloody cheers :o)

/al

This isn't going to be a rant - or any kind of discussion - about the role of independent student media within a parent students' union institution, but it is interesting to read the following comment:

I'll probably still copy work bits and bobs on here in parallel with Greyhead over the next couple of weeks :o)

So, apart from a few work-related bits and bobs on here, if you want to keep up with my Fascinatingly Interesting Life, you'll need to come over to the new website.

Huge thanks go to Clive at Meteoric for providing the hosting for the new website (as well as UPSU.net) at a great rate.

And, just as soon as I can figure out how this interweb malarky works, I'll be putting up some podcasts of my latest mixes.

(Please note: everything in this post was written tongue in cheek. Apart from the thanks to Clive - he really is a top chap. So please don't think I actually think my life is interesting. It isn't. Apart from the bits where I get to hang out with wild llamas. That's pretty cool...) 

• Ibiza: Steph and I have booked our flights back to 'beefa for the 2nd August. We're outta here, baby!
• DJing: new mixer arrived today. Nothing spectacular at all - just a (very) cheap 'n cheerful Behringer mixer (with an instruction manual featuring a late-80's photo of the German chap who runs the company complete with a very shiny comb-over, saying "Hi, I'm so-and-so and I'd like to thank you for buying my mixer", etc etc etc). Fun times.
• New website: Greyhead.co.uk has its own hosting, courtesy of the amazingly Clive at Meteoric. You want super-fast, reliable web hosting with a personal touch? Go speak to Clive, and tell him Bob sent you... I'm currently tweaking a Wordpress installation and working out how to get it to automagically generate podcasts. Wee!
  
• Mixes and podcasts: to kick off the new website, mixer, Final Scratch's resurrection (I finally got it working again on the Mac - woo), and my impending trip to Ibiza, I'm going to knock together a few mixes and podcast them from the new site. If you fancy some free tuneage, I'll stick a big "get the Greyhead house music podcast here" link in the side-bar of the blog once I've figured out how to use the incredibly good Podcast Maker from Lemonzdream.com
• Photos: the Nikon D50 is lovely - very fast, very easy to use, and produces great photos. What more could you ask for? :o)

Sadly (for my colleagues) I'm back to work next Monday - boo. Still, it's only 2 1/2 more weeks left before Ibiza - yey!

I can't remember whether I heard this at Space or in Paul Van Dyk's amazing Cream Amnesia set, or if I imagined it and actually heard it somewhere else, but I don't care - this is an absolute builder :o)

£1.99 at Beatport now :o) (out on Anjunabeats)

Ok, with that out of the way, my question is this: is there a significant number of publication readers who actually bother to read beyond the first 50 words of a review of a single or album? And of the minority who definitely do, do the extra however-many-hundred words make a significant difference to the opinions they'd already formed from reading the first 50?

I'm only asking because I have a gut-feeling that the shorter and snappier you can express your thoughts about a tune which might only last 3 1/2 minutes, or an album which someone might pay £10 for and then only listen to in its entirety once or twice, the more likely you are to actually influence someone's buying decision.

And that, surely, is the whole point of writing (and by extension, reading) music reviews?

Note that I think, if anything, the opposite is true of gig and event reviews - the more you info you can provide, the better (bitesize chunks though - great big monolithic blocks of text are only attractive to Sunday supplement readers).

Anyway, onto the second thing that's annoyed me today: territory restrictions when you're trying to buy music over t'interweb.

If you use the iTunes store, you probably won't have run into this phenomenon as iTunes simply doesn't (as far as I remember) show you the songs which you can't buy in your country, but for users of websites like BeatPort - a major provider of quality tuneage - it can get just the tiniest bit annoying to be told "Sorry, you can't buy this track as it is unavailable in your territory".

This, apparently, is a result of the licensor (usually the record label) restricting sales to one geographic region.

Meanwhile, all I want to do is buy a copy of Eric Prydz's "Pjanoo" (stupid name, epic song) and the new Man With The Red Face remix (again, awesome tuneage).Will the bloody website let me? Will it b******s!

Now, I understand that there are arguments for this which appear perfectly sensible when they're explained by a record company drone, but the simple explanation here seems to be that, on the globally-available world-wide interwebnet thing, it's once again the record labels that are cashing in a short-term profit by restricting sales to a territory.

In the long run, though, it's the whole music industry that loses out, since the vast majority of people who are really keen to get hold of a track and find they can't get it through legitimate means will simply turn to illegal sources, for example torrent sites. Get enough people into the habit of checking the torrent sites before they look at the legal download shops, and all the hard work put in by the online record stores to make it easy to buy fair-priced music online goes out the window.

I don't expect the online music shops to cut off their noses to spite their faces so to speak - if they simply don't stock a track, then the people who could have bought it (i.e. the people in territories which the record labels will allow it to be sold to) miss out as well, and the record shop doesn't benefit either.

So, once again it's down to the record labels, PR companies, and (in a few cases), the artists themselves to be less selfish - sorry, it's the only word I can think of here - and to accept the fact that the global music distribution landscape is changing, and their actions will determine whether they sink or swim.

Anyway, it's just a thought.

If you're looking to buy albums and singles online, you could do much worse than check out DJ Download or Beat Port (even thoughI've ranted about them here!).

The Spanish

• Me: "Hellooooo!"
• Her: "Hi! :)"
• Me: "Paul Van Dyk is a legend!"
• Her: "Yeah! What's your name?"
• (Conversation ensues)

The French

• Me: "Hi! What's your name?"
• Her: "Hello! I'm Corinne. What's your name?"
• Me: "I'm Alex. This night is f***ing amazing!" (Ok, so I'm embarrassingly enthusiastic about good tunes)
• Her: "Yeah!"
• (Conversation ensues)

The English

• Me: "Hi!"
• Her: "I have a boyfriend" (cue frosty, evil glare)
• Me: "Ooooooooooookayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...."
  

Have I missed something here? Or are some people seriously this enamoured with themselves?

Very odd... ;o)

(p.s. I'm thinking that option 2 is the best plan at the moment...)

So I'm now faced with something of a dilemma. I finish my term in office in Portsmouth at the end of July and, as things stand at the moment, I don't have any commitments, or a new job to go to... In fact, I've got a pretty clean slate to begin with, so I could do with some ideas on what to do next.

So far, these are the main options...

1. Do the whole Trainspotting thing. No, I don't mean developing a heroin habit and living in a council block in Glasgow - I mean the whole "choose life" thing - move to London, look for whatever job I can get (preferably one where I can pay off my ever-mounting pile of debts). Pros: regular employment, salary, possibly interesting positions related to my degree and experience. Cons: become a wage slave, trade in my freedom of choice and the chance to live somewhere more interesting than London for financial commitment and a career (not necessarily a bad thing though)...
   
   
2. ... Go back to Ibiza, try to get a job - any job - and live below the poverty line. Pros: live in the party capital of the world with several thousand other bods, in a great atmosphere, and have a lot of fun. Cons: being poor, my sketchy knowledge of the Spanish language, the possibility it could all go horribly wrong...
   
   
3. ... Do something else, somewhere else. Start sending my CV all over the world, trying to find a job based around my qualifications. Pros: could end up somewhere really interesting, and could end up being paid very well. Cons: could end up somewhere really rubbish, and could end up having to sell a kidney/limb/my body to be repatriated.

Right now I'm thinking 2 or 3 instead of 1 (which will no doubt upset Ma 'n Pa who are still awaiting the repayment of the £thousands they lent me to get through Uni, not to mention all my other debtors).

I guess the first thing I ought to do is update my CV - it hasn't been updated since 2002...

Answers on the back of a £20 please ;o)  /al 

* I say "fiction*", but BBC News is running the latest updates on the oil tankers' strike behind me. While I'm gullible enough to believe more than I should in a work of fiction, the vast majority of the book's story is based on fact, and the oil tankers' strike is predicted to last four days, so I can't help wondering if Scarrow's postulated figure of one week will turn out to have a degree of accuracy...?

Still, not to panic, buuuuut.... This afternoon, between my flat and North End - about 2 miles at a push - I saw no less than 9 marked police cars and riot vans, as well as an unmarked vehicle in Fratton High Street which would usually be more commonly seen stalking the motorways, and all except two of which were engaged in some kind of stop-and-search.

So. If, as the newsreaders tell us, there's nothing to panic about, and everything's going to be "Alright", why does this sudden increase in the number of officers on the streets make me feel wary?

On the plus side, if my evil and cunning plans work out, I'll be off to Ibiza tomorrow for a few days' break. By the time I come back, no doubt the country will have either descended into complete civil unrest... Actually, hang on, how would that be any different to a normal day in Portsmouth...? ;o)

Have fun, take care, yada yada. And go buy the book (but only so I don't feel like the only numpty in the country reading it).

/al :o) 

Anyway, for the last six weeks-or-so, I've been doing something wholly unheard of for me - I've been voluntarily exercising, and watching what I eat and drink. Every single day. Shocking, but true.

One of the perks of being a Sabb Officer - and I'm eternally grateful that there are, comparatively speaking, quite a few - is that we're granted a membership to the University gym. Before now, I'd always regarded gyms as a cliquey place where "outsiders" were glared at until, out of sheer discomfort, they either threw themselves out of the nearest window never to be seen again, or simply gave up their dreams of living a healthy lifestyle, turning instead to drink and junk food.

Well, ok, *maybe* I was subconsciously hamming it up so I wouldn't have to venture into a gym myself, but I definitely never felt comfortable with the thought of rocking up to a gym with no idea how to work the machines, or what machines I should be working on. Basically, my fear of looking like a numpty got the better of me, although in all fairness I've had 26 years of practise at making a complete and utter tw*t of myself in public, so I'm probably not over-exaggerating the risks here... ;o)

Having done my gym induction with a handful of other equally lost-looking newbies at the Uni's St Paul's Gym - a scary enough prospect for me - I paid a few quid to have one of their staff members write up a programme for me. This is basically a one hour walk-around the gym kit - they ask what you're trying to achieve (for me it was simply "I'd quite like to lose some of this lard", although I was a bit disappointed to be told I couldn't bank on losing two stone in a week...), and based on your answers and your fitness levels, they pick out a series of exercises for you to work on when you come into the gym.

The only problem was getting over the instructor's advice not to look at my feet as I was running. Being an idiot - there's no other explanation for it - I then subconsciously made studying my feet a number one priority, nearly going base-over-apex into the window in front of me as a result.

For the record though, all the staff at the gym I've met so far have been friendly, helpful, and more than happy to show a complete newbie how to use a machine. No doubt they go back to their colleagues afterwards saying "I can't believe he didn't know how to turn on an exercise bike" (hint: start pedalling. Oh the shame...), but I can live with that as long as their derision isn't too overt.

Anyhoo, to cut an ever-lengthening (and no doubt extremely boring from start to anti-climactic conclusion) story short, I didn't collapse, wheezing and panting, after running a hundred metres. I didn't trip over my laces and headbutt the treadmill (although I nearly have done, several times a day). And no, I haven't found God or seen The Light. But the training's definitely having a positive effect. Until last week I was making it to 8km a day, but my leg's given up on me, so the treadmill's become my new home for the time being.

In case you're wondering, this healthy living kick didn't come about out of thin air - I kinda figured out that the combination of smoking, eating junk, living almost all of my waking life in the office, consuming so much caffeine on a daily basis that I resembled a particularly angry version of South Park's Tweek, and my general inability to "do" relationships of any sort - or even conversations, truth be told - was placing me squarely into a very grumpy downward spiral. That, and the fact I was less than impressed that I weighed 91 kilos (14 stone, 5 lbs), according to the University boxing club's scales.

Since I've started, I've completely cut caffeine out of my diet, so that means no more tea, coffee, sugary drinks, etc... Ok, so I'm still enjoying a pint or three, and smoking just as much as ever - well, you've got to draw the line somewhere... My new Best Friend is a bottle of water (and although I've been tempted to add a little vodka for harder days in the office, I've managed to avoid the temptation so far...). I'm also eating much more healthily, only falling off the wagon to buy chocolate and espresso by the bucket-load when I broke down in the middle of the night, in pouring rain, somewhere in deepest darkest Hampshire a few weeks ago, after nearly giving myself hypothermia. Idiot? Moi? Noooooo... Ok, guilty as charged.

So, after a few weeks of not-very-serious exercise, and trying not to stuff myself full of carbs and sugar at every opportunity, I've dropped down to just over 81 kilos - ten kilos lost (about 1 1/2 stones). Most of that will be water mass, so it's not the massive success story it might first appear to be, but it has knocked a couple of inches off my waist, and I reckon there's less chance of Greenpeace trying to push me back into the sea while I'm on the beach in Ibiza next week, so it can't all be too bad... ;o)

Anyway, the point of this rambling monologue, if there is one, is that even the least healthy person can go down to the gym, get on a bike, or even go for a walk, and come away feeling better for it.

If you can make it down to the gym, spend a few quid and get a personal programme sorted. It'll give you a good benchmark from which to develop your exercise plan, and you can always fall back to it from a more intense workout if you're exhausted or short on time without feeling guilty. Plus, it'll help you learn how to use the gym equipment well (c'mon, who honestly can claim to have learnt how to use every single piece of gym equipment from their twenty minute induction?).

(If you are going down the gym, this is well worth a look, even if it's just so you can tick off all the ones you've seen other people doing - Rob The Bouncer's Ten Things You Shouldn't Be Doing In A Gym).

Even if you can't make it to the gym, or you just can't stomach paying the membership fee (I probably wouldn't, truth be told), the weather outside at this time of year is lovely - even the rain's not too cold, so there's virtually no excuse not to do something - anything.

And, last of all, if I can fit a workout into my day (which I can quite easily fill up with Massively Important Work Stuff if there's nothing else to do), then anyone can. Promise ;o)

Shameless plug: the University Gym.

p.s. Some related reading, in case this hasn't bored you enough: Elite FTS - training advice and features

Ttfn :o) 

While I am a lot less opinionated on matters of student governance than some of my colleagues - a conscious decision to avoid a heart attack before 30 - I have to say I wholeheartedly disagree with the way in which bluster, rhetoric and speculation have been used as the main selling points of a "reform" process whose single biggest change appeared to be the abolition of the NUS Conference which, for all its faults, has served for many years as a vital proving ground for policy review and direction-setting by democratic consensus.

What happens next remains to be seen, but I sincerely hope any similar attempts to review and restructure the NUS are carried out with a significant amount more openness, honesty, and consultation with the students' unions the NUS is responsible (and duty-bound) to represent.

(As always, anything here is my tuppence-worth and not the views of the Union as a whole, or of anyone apart from myself!)

I just couldn't resist this:

Housemate Jen told me Chargrilled - the "humourous" t-shirt and hoodie company - are selling navy hoodies at half price today (April 1st... Yes, I know it's April Fool's day), as well as their "buy two, get one free" t-shirts deal - I've just chucked £100-worth of stuff in the shopping cart and the subtotal weighs in at... £57.

Bargainous :o) Check them out today - chargrilled.co.uk (and they're on Facebook, too).

As I said before, this post is entirely my own work, is not endorsed by the Union (or anyone else), and should something go horribly wrong with any orders you place with any outside companies and you end up losing your home, your car and your family, I'll deny any knowledge. So there... ;o)