I’m about to leave for my short trip to North Wales as mentioned in one of my previous postings. I will be back on the weekend, but until then I am leaving my computer(s) and so my blog behind. I will be sure to take some nice pictures while I’m there though and post them up for all interested

As many people know I am an avid supporter of the phpBB group and their superb bulletin board project, which I enjoy using and writing mods for on many different websites that I build and maintain.

It was therefore great news when I read that limited edition phpBB Bears were going on sale for the second time (as far as I know, in history). There were a limited number available before a while back, and I missed them, but this time, I managed to get my order off on time, so hopefully in the not too distant future I should be getting my bear in the post! They are going on sale in recognition of the forthcoming release of the next generation of phpBB bulletin board, codenamed Olympus.
If you know all about phpBB then you will recognise the significance of the bear and why I really want to have one, otherwise, just enjoy the bear cuteness in the photo below

I haven’t been blogging for the last few days because I’ve been taking some time off. Its amazing how cumulatively tired you get over the course of a busy term and I have been enjoying some long lie ins and late nights as my sleep pattern gets all messed up, still as a couple of people were telling me today its does you good to unwind and chill out occasionally, and it has been nice to kick back and watch a couple of movies and suchlike.

I’m going to be taking short trip up to Noth Wales on Thursday, coming back on the weekend, which should be a very nice addition to my rest; good sea air for a few days with plenty of walks and a nice pebble beach, after a long term in a city I couldn’t ask for anything more really.

I will try and take some photos while I am up there so I have something to pop up in the gallery. It will be nice to get the cam out again

There is something about having a ticket for a late train. Something that makes you get ready really early, then have to kick your heels for ages waiting for the time to come when you can make your way to the station. Not because you don’t have anything to do, but because everything you have to do will take more time than you have available. Ah well.

I’m heading home tonight, but will keep blogging hopefully. I’m going to try and “unplug” for a short while though; its amazing how much I feel myself morphing into a computer sometimes. Its when I find myself thinking about re-organising my file structure rather than cooking myself some food that I start to worry. Will be good to have a little rest at least.

On the music front I’m looking forward to Incognito at the Jazz cafe at the start of April. Matt just e-mailed me mentioning that he couldn’t make it, but as I’d nearly forgotton it came as a nice reminder I had that to look forward to in just a few weeks!

Its only two days to go till I’m going back to St. Albans for the Easter break. Problem is I can’t really see at this stage how I’m going to get everything done! Theres two pieces of coursework to finish, all the while trying to get little bits finished up I can’t do from home and then I’m trying to get as much python done as possible for the project. Hectic just isn’t the word. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to veging out in front of the TV for a few days once I get home. On the other hand, perhaps a little break is what I need. Wardrobe tonight…. hmmm, I’m sorely tempted.

With a nice progress bar! The number of files that TIM has to chomp through is quickly calculated (a second or so of time), and then this number combined with a piece of code to increment a second value by one every time a file is indexed provides all that is needed for wxPython to produce a progress bar. As screen shots look nice I have posted another one below, illustrating TIM’s progress bar. This is very useful for large numbers of MP3s as the user is given both a physical indication of how much has been done and has left to go (the bar) as well as an accurate “time left to wait” figure. This is dynamically calculated depending on the average time between each operation, and is kept up to date and gets very accurate within a couple of seconds.

Who was typing the news banners tonight then I wonder?

I read in the papers today that the French parliment had voted through a bill to force online music stores operating in France to open up their copy protection technologies to allow any player to play the tunes downloaded. An article of a similar nature on the BBC tells the full story.

Its interesting and encouraging to see someone leading the way on this issue. They are fighting DRM from another angle; rather than saying they don’t want it outright they are saying that users desrve the opertuinity to use their purchases on their player of choice, and also, in purchasing a particular player of choice, shouldn’t have to be restricted to the use of just one player.

This is important because thats been half the argument of DRM. Its like codecs; if you don’t have codec, you mind the fact that a system holding media you want uses a different codec. If everything you want to listen to uses the same codec, or everything it’s possible to watch/listen to the media on has all the codecs, its no longer an issue.

Ultimately what consumers want is their fair use rights, and if the new French laws pave the way to meaning regardless of DRM implementation music and movies with DRM must play on all players and not just a restrictive group of them from one company, its certainly a step in the right direction.

It still doesn’t help the open source community of course. Its all very well sharing DRM between companies but then they can just sign contacts of non-disclosure between themselves and keep the net tight, while cutting users of open source systems, such as Linux, and UMS type players out in the cold. Ah well, still work to be done I guess.

If this post on phpBB announcements is anything to go by, we could soon be using a brand new version of phpBB on future forums we create! It’s all exciting stuff, and the feature list published so far is still non-exhaustive and already seems to provide everything you could want from a bulletin board.

As an avid supporter of phpBB, I implore any bulletin board admins to setup a test board and help out with the testing and bug reporting when the time comes. At the moment its still all in the CVS, but if you are experienced you can join in now as the post suggests.

I will be attempting to port all my mods not superceeded by olympus functions to the new version, and am starting work on this in a week or so’s time. At the very least I need to have an idea about how they will work under the new system. Due to the improved features of Olympus, we can hopefully expect some new features on my CMS system as well. Watch this space

When it comes to good funky jazz and soul, one of the artists that always comes to mind is Roy Ayers. His music expresses many of our care-free summer feelings in just a few words “Everybody loves the sunshine”, and the musical skill of both himself and his band (Ubiquity) is practically unrivaled. It was therefore to my utter delight when I realised that he would be playing here in Leeds on March 17th at my favorite jazz club, The Wardrobe.

Never have a I seen the venue as packed. I had a ticket in advance, but of those who bought on the door many were disappointed, and the gig was sold out and the club rammed within a mere half hour or so. By the time Roy came on stage the atmosphere was electric and the dance floor in front of the stage was rammed 10-15 rows of people deep, all eager to be as close as possible to the first blast of sound.

I’ve only ever heard Roy’s music on CD or internet radio broadcast, and all I can say is that neither medium does him and Ubiquity any justice what-so-ever. As soon as the first riff rolled out across the club, I knew I was in the right place.

Roy started easy on the vocals with occasional vibes, but it warmed the audiance up nicely, for what was soon to come - a 15 minute long jamming session for the band, in which each member displayed outstanding skill. Matt (a friend who came along with me) and myself were just jiving to the amazing work of the guitarist and saxophonist, who also turned out to be quite the “Bob Marley” on the vocals when it came to it.

Roy has certainly got a solid band, with each solo as good as the last, with no clear winner in an all too often biased competition with most groups. The combination of Roy’s presence and skill on the vibes, combined with the awesome sound of his badn created one of the most atmospheric and electric events I have gone to to date.

Everybody Loves the Sunshine was the highlight of the whole evening as I always knew it would be, but not half like I had expected. Cool as ever Roy thanked everyone for coming down, and then with a glint in his eye said “And who loves the sunshine down here tonight?”. We all went crazy. After what we’d just heard from the group, we knew this song was going to be the highlight. Roy got us all joining in with the words, and we were treated to what can only be described as a funk marathon as the band jammed their way through Roy’s most famous number.

Traditional jazz fans were also rewarded when Roy and Ubiquity covered some superb Dizzy Gillespie tracks, which really put the icing on the cake, and was a throughly enjoyable chilled out few minutes in what was otherwise a gig of excitement and constant frenzy.
An hour and a half exposed to this kind of quality jazz funk and soul gives you what can only be described as a super “high” or “trip”, really quite something, and I wouldn’t hesitate to go again. Really inspiring and refreshing stuff.

Luckily for those of us who struggled to come down off such a trip with a bump at midnight, they played some great hard bop, jazz and house over the speakers until 2am for us all to continue dancing and jiving too, and it made the whole evening that little bit more polished and complete.

If you haven’t seen Roy Ayers and Ubiquity live yet, you haven’t lived. Thats all I can say on the matter