The problem
I’m overweight. It’s hardly a secret. Have been for years.

I’m not massively obese or anything, but I am carrying a fair bit more weight than I should and I’d prefer that I wasn’t. It’s not ruining my life, but I am aware of it. It fluctuates – and every now and then I go on a diet, but it always ends up back at the same level – or worse.

It’s a very common story.

My line was always “I’m prepared to carry a few extra kg in the interests of good living.” But realistically, I’m in my 40s. You’re supposed to think about your health, and it can start to be a bit of an uphill battle around this point. I gave up smoking about 6 or 7 years ago (I forget when, actually) and I reckon this is something else I can get a handle on, if I just figure out the best way to manage it.

So, I decided a while back, after my last attempt of dropping a fair bit then putting it all back on, that rather than try and lose the weight as quickly as possible or go on a diet, I’d just be a bit more sensible about what I ate, and do a bit more exercise – and aim to hit my target weight in about a year’s time.

No hurry. Gradual. Not dramatic.

And then I thought about ways of making sure that happened. And I had an idea. Quite a geeky idea, actually – and therefore, rather a fun one.

The plan
The usual stuff hasn’t really been working, and nor have I been putting much effort into it. For instance, I’ve been weighing myself recently, and that just goes up and down in a miniscule, unrewarding and unsatisfactory way. And because I have an iPhone, and I’m a bit of a geek, I’ve been using an application that tracks your weight and BMI. I’ll probably keep doing that, just as a way of monitoring where I’m up to – but I’m not going to weigh myself every day. Maybe every other week or so.

I’ve also started to do a little more exercise. I’m not down at the gym every day – but I’ve been swimming, out on my bike and walking around a bit more than usual. I do plan to gradually escalate that, but my reluctance to work out is quite remarkable.

But I’ve hit upon a way that I think might be interesting and motivating for me – and may lead me to be more deliberate and thoughtful about the food I eat. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea:

I’ve decided to photograph and blog everything I eat and drink for a year.

One for me, one for Clutch

I’ve been known to photograph food on my travels quite a lot. It actually became a bit of a talking point at one of the conferences I went to. So taking photos of ALL my food is not such a stretch.

It sounds like a massive hassle – but it’s actually not.

Using an iPhone app called PicPosterous, I can just snap the food, and publish it straight to a Posterous blog. Two button presses, essentially.

Every meal, snack and drink gets a moment’s thoughtful reflection while it’s framed in shot – and then it’s published on my food diary blog. I don’t expect it’ll be of any interest to anyone anywhere, but it’s really useful and kind of fun for me. And that’s all that matters.

My 42nd birthday is coming up – so that’ll be the official start date. I’ve already started, just to get in the swing of it, but this is just a warm-up. Kick-off is on the 14th of September. It’ll end on my 43rd birthday a year later.

Hopefully, I’ll have had some interesting meals in cool places with lovely people along the way, and with any luck, I’ll be a bit skinnier and healthier when it happens. We’ll see how that goes. But if nothing else, it’ll be interesting for me to see how much I eat in a day, a week, a month…

Of course, doing it somewhat in public puts the pressure on a little bit – but this is not going to be one of those reality-TV style dieting things featuring photos of me with my shirt off and my belly out. Just nice photos of nice things to eat.

Hopefully it’ll also make me think twice about eating junk food too – because it’ll all happen in plain sight.

The inspiration
I was sort of inspired by Vaughn Rowsell, who cycled the length of New Zealand from the bottom to the top to raise money for charity, get active and lose a bit of weight. Really impressive and a great combination of interesting, personal narrative, an awareness campaign and sightseeing by proxy. He did the journey online and it became his whole thing for a while (and understandably so). Really brilliant stuff.

I love cycling too – and I did entertain the notion of a similar journey, but only very, very briefly. I don’t want to completely change my life for a month to drastically alter my lifestyle, and nor do I want to fill this blog with news of how much I weigh or what I had for dinner. That’s boring.

I want this to be a kind of background affair. I aim to lose weight while I carry on just doing my work, living my life and continuing all my other stuff. I’m not on a mission to raise awareness or money for anything – I just want to gradually get thinner, and this seemed like a fun way to try and do that. Nobody has to look at it. It’s a process, rather than a product.

For quite a while I’ve been doing a daily mugshot – just one snapshot of my face each day taken on my computer’s webcam. And I know people who’ve done other sorts of routinised web activity (song-a-day, etc.).

And I love food – so it seemed like a great way to celebrate it, pay extra attention to it and capture it – rather than simply turn eating into an ordeal of self-denial (as was the case with my previous weight-loss attempt). It’s a way of reflecting upon each meal. Thinking about what I’m eating. Stopping for a second and thinking “look at this food” before I dive in.

The added bonus and the caveat
One of the cool things about this strategy is that the iPhone knows what city it’s in, so that’ll get published underneath each photo. I travel a fair bit, so this will also serve as a reminder of fun times and travels.

Everything’s going to be included – restaurant meals to airline food, morning coffee to pints down the pub with friends, gateaux to sausage rolls. Sometimes I may even include shots of the people I’m eating with and the place I’m dining, if it’s interesting and appropriate.

I’m not going to tell you how much I weigh, nor what my target is. It’s nobody’s business, as far as I can work out. But if you like pictures of food, and the idea of seeing the sum total of one man’s dietary consumption for a year play out in real time online, then knock yourself out.

It’s imaginatively called Dubber’s Food.

If I forget to do it – please remind me, though I’m not going to throw my hands up in the air and call it a disaster if I forget to take an image of an apple or a pie every now and then – and nor am I going to wait for my iPhone to charge while dinner goes cold. But I’ll try and be conscientious about it.

Like I say – it’s already in operation, but the year commences on Monday next week. It may not be the length of New Zealand, uphill on a bike – but all the same… I’m looking forward to the journey.

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• How Food Diaries Work – TIME (time.com)
• How Weight Loss Helps the Heart (nlm.nih.gov)
• Avoid Crash Diets: Healthy Weight-Loss Tips (fitsugar.com)

We’ve been back from Shambala a few days and it was, once again, a very laid-back and relaxed affair. Good music – mostly by bands we’d never heard of, but occasionally there’d be one or two that one of us had heard of (or, on occasion, met).

Here’s a quick glimpse of some the bits I managed to catch:

[Video link]

As with previous years, we booked a tipi, crammed half a dozen people into it, stuck a New Zealand flag on top, built a campfire in the middle, and then used that as our base from which to go exploring.

The crew consisted of me, Bobbie, Brendan, Jo, Suzie, Juliet, and Louise sleeping in the kiwi tipi, plus Jake, Hannah and Ethan in the teen tent – and Jo’s cousin Geoff, who had his own (luxury) tent.

During the day, mostly we just hung out around the campfire, chatting. However, some interesting stuff happened, as it always does.

Juliet was significantly delayed by train shenanigans; some friends in bands played gigs and were really great; I played disco records (and some people even danced) in a Wild West themed tent; we all had naps – especially me; Brendan chased away noisy drunk people at 5am; eight full cans of baked beans made the trip to Shambala and came back untouched; we took a brand new (cheap, plastic) swingball set which managed to break without any of us playing it; Bobbie made enough biscuits to feed the 5000 – but we ate them all by the middle of the second day; some lovely friends came to visit us in the tipi; we made a bucket of Pimms and Jo made faux sangria out of cask red wine and lemonade; and we didn’t try very hard at the fancy dress.

On the whole, another very good year. It’s a great festival to go to and just hang out, sample what’s on offer, and generally just relax and enjoy the vibe. It’s one of those things where pretty much everyone’s in a good mood all the time, there are probably as many families as there are party-aged concert-goers, and even with a spot of rain along the way, it’s a good holiday with good friends.

Here are some photos I took.

Just took Jake in to collect his GCSE results. Here’s how he did:

A – English
A – Science
B – History
B – Additional Science
C – Mathematics
C – Art & Design
C – English Literature
C – German

He didn’t get his ICT result – which is a BTEC course, and that comes out later on in the year, but he has already heard about his Music BTEC, for which he got two A’s. So that’s pretty cool. By my count, that’s four A’s and two B’s confirmed.

I don’t think the results have quite sunk in for him yet. The thing he’s most pleased about is that he’s finished with his old school and that he’s off to a new school in September.

But more important things are afoot. He’s dumped his results at home, grabbed his skateboard and headed off into town to hang out with his friends. Tomorrow we’re off to Shambala, so we can enjoy this last bit of school holidays hanging at a music festival, not worrying about exam results.

Very proud, of course.

Related articles by Zemanta

• GCSE results (constantlyfurious.blogspot.com)
• GCSE results: A simple solution to grade inflation (telegraph.co.uk)

Jake summons his minions to lay waste to Hannah’s troops

For some reason, after about a five year hiatus, Jake suddenly went digging through our never-unpacked boxes of stuff from New Zealand for his Magic The Gathering cards.

He and I used to play and collect a long time ago and he’s got the bug again. Fortunately, we’d hung onto them.

We have thousands. I’m not exaggerating either. Thousands. Which is just as well, because half the fun is assembling the decks. You stack your deck with combinations of creatures and spells that you think will work together well in a particular strategic way to crush your opponent. And when it all goes wrong, you go back to the drawing board and re-tweak your deck, adding and removing cards.

Like contract bridge with goblins
It’s a good game. Yes, it’s really geeky – but no, it’s not a puerile kids game like those Top Trumps and Yu-Gi-Oh cards you see around. This has been going for a couple of decades now, is extremely strategic and rather addictive. In terms of complexity and skill, it’s been compared to Bridge.

As a result, Jake’s quite good at it.

I can still beat him from time to time (which is more than I can say for chess), but he does tend to plan more moves ahead than I can consider, and builds his deck in a holistic and strategic manner, rather than the more haphazard ‘Ooh – Lava Axe!’ approach I take.

I met a world champion of Magic once. It was at a party, and he may have been drinking a little. He’s pretty much retired from the game, but when he played the international competition money was pretty good. $100,000 prize pools and so on. He’d won a couple of pro tours, but it was hardly a reliable income.

No magic in this town
Sadly, Birmingham’s not too good for MTG. There seem to be very few places to hang out and play, no good specialist shops and hardly anyone playing.

Fortunately, Jake’s girlfriend Hannah was willing to learn the ropes, and claims to enjoy playing it late into the evening every night for the past week. Hopefully, a few more of Jake’s friends will pick it up so there’s a bunch of them playing. That’s always more fun – and it means they can have tournament days on the weekend from time to time.

I may even join in. I have a killer green and red deck featuring a Silvos, Rogue Elemental, a Metamorphic Wurm and no fewer than FOUR Lava Axes.

This is what your iTunes library looks like when you’re a bit OCD

I don’t have one of those big iPods that can fit tens of thousands of tunes on them. I have a little clip-on one that can take about 200 songs, a larger one that can take about 50 albums – and now I have my iPhone, which can comfortably carry 100 albums.

And 100 is one of those numbers that you just have to make lists out of. Take it from me. I’m one of those people who like lists of things. And I know for a fact that there are at least several people reading this who also like lists – and, like me, enjoy looking through other people’s records and books.

So – I’m going to list them (they’re all full, commercially-available albums – no partial albums or single tracks) for no other reason than I happen to have them handy. If you’re not fascinated by lists, there’s probably nothing interesting to look at here. And before you point out the obvious… yes – there’s hardly any jazz in the list at all, because that’s not really what I feel like listening to at the moment.

Of course, some people will make comments pointing out that album X by artist B is better than their Y album I’ve chosen – or will want to know “Why on earth would you listen to that dreadful band Q?”, but that’s kind of the point. Let’s have a conversation about pop music.

The List:

Afghan Whigs – Gentlemen
Audiotransparent – Nevland
August Engkilde – Kaotic Brain | Beautiful Noise
Bachelorette – The End of Things
The Bats – Daddy’s Highway
Beastie Boys – Licensed to Ill
Beck – Guero
Brian Eno – Here Come The Warm Jets
The Brothers Johnson – Light Up The Night
Buck 65 – Secret House Against The World
The Chills – Kaleidoscope World
The Clash – London Calling
Curtis Mayfield – Curtis
Dam Native – Kaupapa Driven Rhymes Uplifted
Danger Doom – The Mouse and the Mask
David Bowie – Hunky Dory
Death Cab For Cutie – Plans
Dilated Peoples – The Platform
Dimmer – Degrees of Existence
DJ Shadow – The Private Press
Donny Hathaway – Everything Is Everything
Eels – Daisies of the Galaxy
Elvis Costello – King of America
The Fall – The Frenz Experiment
The Fall – I Am Kurious Oranj
The Fatback Band – 1972-74
Feelstyle – Break It To Pieces
Gil Scott-Heron – Pieces of A Man
Grace Jones – Island Life
Grant Lee Buffalo – Fuzzy
Grant Lee Buffalo – Mighty Joe Moon
Grinderman – Grinderman
Handsome Boy Modelling School – So How’s Your Girl…
Headless Chickens – Body Blow
Hoodoo Gurus – Mars Needs Guitars
Humphreys and Keen – The Overflow
Hüsker Dü – Warehouse: Songs and Stories
Ian Dury – Reasons To Be Cheerful
Joy Division – Substance (1977-1980)
Jurassic 5 – Jurassic 5
King Kapisi – Savage Thoughts
Le Tigre – Le Tigre
Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – Rattlesnakes
Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – Mainstream
Lou Reed – New York
Magazine – Secondhand Daylight
Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog – Party Intellectuals
Mark Hollis – Mark Hollis
The Mars Volta – De-loused in the Comatorium
Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get It On
Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On
The Meters – The Very Best of the Meters
The Mutton Birds – Flock: The Best of the Mutton Birds
N.W.A. – Straight Outta Compton
Nirvana – Nevermind
The Pixies – Death to the Pixies
Primal Scream – Screamadelica
Prince – Around the World in a Day
Public Enemy – It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
R.E.M. – Document
Radiohead – In Rainbows
Radiohead – Kid A
Rickie Lee Jones – Duchess of Coolville: An Anthology
The Rolling Stones – Beggars Banquet
Scritti Politti – Anomie and Bonhomie
Sex Pistols – Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
Shriekback – Big Night Music
Shriekback – Oil and Gold
Shriekback – Cormorant
Simple Minds – New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
SJD – Dayglo Spectres
Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
The Smiths – The World Won’t Listen
The Specials – Greatest Hits
Steely Dan – Aja
Steely Dan – The Royal Scam
Steinski – What Does It All Mean? (1983-2006 Retrospective)
The Stereo Bus – Brand New
Stevie Wonder – Innervisions
The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses
Straitjacket Fits – Hail
T-Bone Burnett – The Talking Animals
Talk Talk – Laughing Stock
Talking Heads – Remain In Light
Terry Callier – I Just Can’t Help Myself
The The – Infected
The The – Soul Mining
Tom Waits – Blood Money
Tom Waits – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombones
The Universal Quartet – The Universal Quartet
The Veils – The Runaway Found
The Veils – Nux Vomica
The Veils – Sun Gangs
The White Stripes – Elephant
Why? – Alopecia
Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
Wire – On Returning (1977-1979)
(x) is greater than (y) – Negative Snow
XTC – Drums and Wires
3Ds – Hellzapoppin

Sometimes I play whole albums, but mostly I throw that lot on shuffle and see what comes out. That’s what I have in my pocket right now – and to me, that’s important, because all of those albums have meaning, biographical connection, emotional significance, a story I could relate about it, sentimental value. Or, in some cases, I just happen to like it and that’s good enough.

Any stories, recommendations, criticisms or observations of your own about that lot?

This is a bit of a test.

Yesterday, after months of wanting one – arguably needing one – I finally managed to get myself an iPhone. And to be honest, now that I have one, I’m not entirely sure how I managed to go this long without.

I’ve only had it around 12 hours so far, and I’m not as fast or as accurate as I’d like to be typing on the touch screen, but I did manage to knock out this blog post on it in just a few minutes. Haven’t yet worked out how to link to anything – but the mere fact that I can put together and publish a blog post on my phone is impressive enough for me.

I can also take videos, find my way around on the map, listen to music, play games and all that other clever stuff that iPhones can do… But this is the thing that’s impressed me most so far.

Most important, I guess, is the fact that quite a lot of the consultancy and knowledge transfer work I do seems to gravitate towards mobile applications, and the iPhone is already the default platform for the vast majority of that stuff. I’ve been recommending that artists use applications like Audioboo (how do I link to that on this thing? Oh… there we go) and yet I hadn’t been able to do that myself until now.

Undoubtedly there’ll be spelling mistakes or stupid errors in this post, and I’ll no doubt figure out how to put links, images (ooh look – I figured it out), audio and video into my blog posts on it soon enough… But to all my friends who have been wondering what’s been taking me so long, and have been listening to me gripe about my rubbishphone all this time – I’ve finally joined the club.

Or do we say ‘cult’?

I went on that boat. I got wet.

Before I left to go to Canada, we had a look on the map to see where things were. Jake was the first to notice that Hamilton was not far from Niagara Falls.

“You can’t go all that way and not go to Niagara, dad…”

And he was right. Mike from Vibewrangler, and Dave from the band Mississippi Kings offered to take me there on a day trip, and it was a really incredible experience. The magnificent grandeur and the spectacle of the falls themselves is brilliantly offset by the most outrageously gaudy, cheesy and Disneylandish tourist trap parade you’ve ever seen.

It’s jaw-droppingly awful.

This is going to take a few images to sink in. Diabetics may need to avert their eyes…

The worst/best sign ever. Every letter a different shade of wrong.

The Rainforest Cafe – in the least rainforesty bit of North America.

Not shown: giant burger-eating Frankenstein’s pirate flag, left of the photo.
No, I don’t get it either.

This picture is not sideways – the building is. And that window-cleaner is a robot.

Mike basks in all the awful

We kicked things off at the casino, where we headed to the roulette table. I’d never played before so after carefully watching Mike go up and down in fortunes for a little while, I purchased a little pile of chips with the intention of spending that money on the experience of gambling – just to see what it’s like.

It turns out that what happens is you put the chips on some random numbers, watch a wheel spin around, and then a man in a bowtie takes your money away. The whole thing takes about 30 seconds.

Interestingly though – Mike tripled his money, and so offered to take us out to lunch, which for my part cost him more than I’d gambled – so in a sense, I was the overall winner of roulette and barbecued ribs.

Maid of the Mist

After we’d had enough of the beer, the meat and the absolute cheese Niagara had to offer, it was time to get in a boat, put on a big blue plastic bag and get wet [Facebook readers* - the video is here].

One of the things Canadians love about Niagara Falls is the fact that their one is bigger than the American one. There are two main falls – one really impressive one, and one horseshoe-shaped, amazingly impressive and super huge one. Canada wins at waterfalls.

And it’s the moment at which you get to the centre of that horseshoe, the water is churning beneath you and you feel like they’ve turned a firehose on you that the famous announcement comes over the speaker:

“Ladies and Gentlemen – THIS is Niagara Falls!” – and everyone cheers in a Canadian accent.

Later, I found myself wondering whether it shouldn’t be “these are Niagara Falls” – but it’s not important.

Zoltar speaks

But impressive as the Falls were – nothing could top the excitement of our discovery of Zoltar [video link] – the very same one that that turned a kid into Tom Hanks in the movie Big.

Zoltar was awesome. Uncannily prescient and insightful. Or, looked at another way, a vaguely racist robot-in-a-box sideshow contraption. It’s one or the other.

We readied ourselves for the drive back to base with some cool refreshments. It was an amazing day, weather-wise and so we were somewhat depleted in the heat.

Mike opted for a slurpee – a radioactive and nutrition-free drink made of chipped ice. That cup he’s holding is completely transparent. That two-tone orange and blue you see is the colour of the drink itself. Later, he complained of a headache.

In all – Niagara was an absolute highlight for me. The three of us had a complete ball: a real guys day out. We steered clear of the wax museums, ‘entertaining’ rides and strip clubs, but we did have beer, gambling, boating, hilarity, food served in piles – and we had pitted ourselves against the elements.

What’s not to like?

If you’re reading this in Facebook, it’s because my personal blog automatically imports here. It’s great – except it leaves the videos behind. For the sake of Facebook readers, I’ve included video links where appropriate. People reading my blog proper will see the videos in the correct place.

My second day in Hamilton was spent doing a full-day consultancy at the home of singer/songwriter Jacob Moon, whose rooftop version of Subdivisions by Rush has earned him a fair bit of attention – including some positive feedback from the band itself.

I arrived at Jacob’s place on the Saturday evening. He and his wife Allison had headed south of the border to attend a concert and so I had the place to myself. Lovely place with a separate building out the back for a home studio and office space.

The note on the kitchen counter said ‘help yourself to anything’, but I pretty much headed straight to bed as I’d been on the go for a week, with plenty of late nights out. I was pleased with a comfortable place to crash and a seriously good night’s sleep.

In the morning, I met Jacob and we headed out for breakfast at a local cafe. It was the full deal with bacon, 3 poached eggs(!), pancakes and maple syrup. It came with a bottomless cup of coffee, and it gave us time to sit and chat so I could get to know him a little bit, find out more about what he was about and what he was trying to achieve with his music.

Back at Jacob’s home studio, we went through a range of different things – from Jacob’s live schedule to his online activities, his releases to his physical mail-outs. He has, quite rightly, a fairly substantial following that you could measure in the thousands – if not the tens of thousands – but it’s a weird place to be as an artist.

You know if that many people like what you do, then surely there are other people you haven’t reached yet that would also like what you do – and it’s just a matter of connecting with them and letting them hear what you do. But it takes all the time you have to just maintain what you’ve got – and when you’re on your 7th or 8th commercial release, it can feel like a case of diminishing returns, even though each record is better than the one before it.

So we talked through the day, over lunch and long into the afternoon about a range of activities that would make more money for less work (‘while you sleep’ is winning the game, as far as I’m concerned), and about different products and online communication approaches that would help spread the message and develop income streams.

One of the things we tried out was the idea of creating what I call ‘vernacular videos’ – short, conversational, ‘non-produced’ videos that create great content with very little time and effort, but which could build over time into a really useful or interesting resource.

At the moment, he has some very slick and post-produced videos up on his website. They’re great, but they could come across as a little rehearsed and inauthentic – but he’s a natural in front of the camera, so I thought it would be a great idea to make the most of that fact.

Jacob’s such a killer guitarist, and I’m convinced that many of his fans will be other guitarists – particularly beginners – so I suggested he make some quick, rough and ready videos showing how to play his songs. I set up my digital camera on a stool, hit record and we did the above ‘test’ video. I think it works – though next time, he’ll have to take his hat off so his face isn’t in permanent shade…

I love doing full day, single artist consultancies. You get far more indepth and long-term strategic than you can when you’re just doing troubleshooting, problem solving and advice sessions in short doses or in groups. You get to know the musician far better – what’s important to them and where they’re at.

And sometimes, there’s icecream too.

When you have one of the worst city tourism ads ever, it’s hard to rise above the poor reputation that former steeltown Hamilton Ontario (‘the Hammer’) is subjected to – but in actual fact, it’s an utterly brilliant place.

Especially if you like music (despite the evidence above).

After the radio conference in Toronto, and a quick wander around the city, I made my way by train to Hamilton – about an hour away – and was collected at the station by Glen – co-owner of Vibewrangler Studio, who had organised a public event and a series of consultancies with local musicians – and in whose house in the country I was staying.

The event itself was amazing – certainly from my perspective: the people who turned up were diverse and interesting, all at different stages in their music career, and all with different questions and challenges about how they can make the most of the changes going on in the music industry.

We spent about 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon – kicking off with me talking about some general principles for about 20 minutes or so, and then going around the room talking about what people do, what they’re stuck on and what their online strategies are.

It was my first introduction to some of the people I was to spend the rest of my week with – and to the amazing studio I was going to be hanging in for much of my time in town.

Vibewrangler’s a great space, and quite an unusual set-up.

The room is enormous and comfortable. There’s an isolation booth, but the musicians mostly play live together in the room with the mixing desk. That in itself is uncommon – but what stands the studio apart is the collaborative and creative process that the team brings to the recording environment.

It’s quite amazing – and difficult to describe. Rather than simply provide the service of professionally capturing musical performances (which any studio worth its salt can manage) the team at Vibewrangler get involved right from the outset from a production perspective – but not in a controlling or manipulative way. The best way I can describe it is that Vibewrangler has a culture that musicians can become immersed in, and that changes and develops the music through the process of recording – and beyond.

I was seriously impressed. Michael, Glen, Amber & Jon create a unique environment that’s simultaneously laid-back, friendly – and gets amazing results from the people they work with (check out Dark Mean for some of the results). And even better, Glen insists that everyone reads my ebook.

I did get to see some waterfalls during my time in Hamilton (more on that soon) – but every bit of music I encountered was better than that cringe-worthy bit of promotional nonsense. The city council should get Glen on the case next time…

Every two years (give or take) the Radio Studies Network holds their international conference somewhere in the world. I went to my first one in Madison, Wisconsin in 2003 – and that’s where I met Prof. Tim Wall, who was the guy who arranged for me to come to Birmingham in the first place.

We were on a panel together. He gave his paper, entitled ‘The Political Economy of Internet Radio’, and I followed it with my paper, entitled ‘There’s No Such Thing As Internet Radio’. We got into a debate about it over pizza and beer, and somehow by the end of it I had the promise of a job in Britain.

The radio conference after that was in Melbourne in 2005, which I didn’t get to – and in 2007, I was at the Lincoln conference. Toronto this year has been pretty good so far, and I’ve met some really interesting people along the way. You always get some of the same faces, and it’s been good to catch up with the people I know and like already – and you add friends each time you go to one.

There aren’t too many people doing radio studies around the world, so it’s good to chat with the people whose work you read and teach from.

Upgraded then downgraded
The flight over was good. A quick jaunt to Amsterdam first (yes, that is the opposite direction to where I was heading – I didn’t book the flights) where I waited around for my flight to Toronto. There’d been some confusion and it turned out the plane had been overbooked – and so everyone’s seat number was moved around.

Somehow, I managed to get upgraded to business class in the process, which was an absolute godsend for the 9 hour flight. I arrived quite late in the evening, and so rather than chance my luck at the student halls (where I’m staying – no flash hotels for me) – I arranged for Tim to pick me up, and I stayed at his place.

Tim and his family do house-swaps when they go on vacation. And so in a suburb about 45 minutes out of the city centre, they’re living in someone’s home for a couple of weeks, coinciding nicely with the conference.

I stayed in the downstairs room – which had its own kitchen and living room, complete with massive flat screen television. But the business class comfort didn’t last for long.

We headed up to York University (another good 45 minutes out of the city in the opposite direction) to go to the conference, and I checked into the Pond Rd Halls of Residence.

Here’s a picture of my cell. Don’t be fooled into thinking that’s a bed. It’s a plank of wood with a blanket over it.

The rooms are semi-shared. That is, you enter what you think is going to be your room, but find yourself in a small kitchen and bathroom area. There are two doors beyond that, which are the little sleeping quarters you see above. I’ve stayed in worse, of course – but not much worse.

The walls are paper thin, and any movement you make can be heard by the other person in the other room – which at least means you know when they’re having a shower, so you can lie awake waiting for them to be done so you can sneak out and have your turn.

Fortunately, my room-mate is fascinating company, incredibly tolerant and, as a result of some time in the army, a very sound sleeper.

He’s a broadcast journalist, university lecturer, former biker and author of the book Sit Down, Shut Up and Hang On: A Biker’s Guide To Life – often simply quoted as Biker Wisdom.

We had a great night last night hanging out in our little kitchen, drinking Bowmore, chatting with some colleagues and a couple of students, who were pretty well wide-eyed at his stories. As, I have to admit, was I most of the time. Great craic, as my Belfast friends would say.

The kiwi crew

One of my favourite things about the whole radio conference thing is that I get to hang out with the AUT boys – (from left to right) Peter Hoar, Matt Mollgaard and Rufus McEwan. Before moving to the UK, I worked with Matt and Peter in Auckland, and Rufus is a reasonably new addition to their team.

Interestingly, while they’re a really strong team, and as kiwi radio scholars, have a great deal in common – Peter is also a classical music DJ on Concert FM, Matt is a rock DJ on Radio Hauraki, and Rufus is a hip hop DJ on Kiwi FM. It’s a good mix.

And the good news is that they’ve managed to arrange it so that the next radio studies conference will be in Auckland in 2011. Already looking forward to that one.

How it all works
If you’ve never been to an academic conference before, the format generally works like this: three people make up a panel on a related theme (say, history, technology, music, etc.). Each person speaks for 20 minutes in turn and then at the end of the three presentations, there’s about half an hour of questions and discussion. And then we go and have coffee and talk some more.

More than one panel is usually going on at a time, and so you get the chance to compare notes, and discover that you should have been in the one about CB Radio rather than the one about podcasting. But while it may seem counter-intuitive, it’s really the social side of it – the lunch, the dinner, and the long evenings at the bar down the road afterwards – where all the real work gets done.

You continue discussing the ideas, develop plans to collaborate – and you start stuff with people that you otherwise would have had no occasion to meet.

I did my paper on a panel with Tim and Chris Priestman, who studies music royalties, internet radio and radio station programming. Tim and I talked about the research we did last year at the BBC, and I focused particularly on my case study of Zane Lowe’s radio programme.

Internet friends

In downtown Toronto, I met up with some people I really only know from Twitter and the web – as well as Valerie, who I met while James and I were doing our ‘buscast‘.

As you’d expect, everyone was uniformly interesting, all doing interesting things with music and the internet, and were great company.

I’m off to Hamilton (the Canadian one, rather than the NZ one) tomorrow, where I’m spending a couple of days at a recording studio doing a bunch of consultancies for local musicians, and the plan is that I’ll head up to Montreal after that. I’ve been asked to meet up with someone in Ottawa as well, while I’m in the neighbourhood – but I don’t thing I’m going to be able to fit everything in.

Hacked off
The only thing that’s really been a downside to this whole experience (other than that poor excuse for a bed), has been the fact that the problem Jake and I have been having with hackers hitting our websites has just got worse and worse.

Jake’s site has now been blacklisted by Google as a dangerous website, because the code that the hackers have put in it can theoretically damage your computer. He’s working on a website for a band, and is on a tight deadline, but can’t do anything because the hackers have done so much damage.

I asked for some advice and help on Twitter – and very kindly, two computer security specialists offered their assistance at no cost. One of them, a guy called James, has been putting an awful lot of work in, so every spare moment, I’ve been at the laptop, working over the internet with James, trying to put everything back together.

Happily, we’ve managed to get my site (this one) back up and running and with extra, enhanced security on it. Fingers crossed, we should have solved the hacker problem at this end.

Jake’s site is, unfortunately, proving a lot more problematic. James has already put in three days work on it so far (in amongst his other stuff) and it’s definitely getting there, but we’re still a couple of weeks away from everything being fixed for him (including begging Google to un-ban his site), which must be so awful for him. Poor Jake.

However, I think by the end of today, we’ll have managed to get the band website mostly fixed so that he can put the finishing touches on it before the deadline. He’s going to have a busy weekend though… and there’ll be no blogging from him for a little while.