My good buddy Tom McShane is on the road, halfway through a tour down the US west coast. He's part tourist, part troubadour ;-) promoting the US release of 'Departures' and taking in some sights along the way. Tom's new website is now online at tommcshane.co.uk using Wordpress and a nicely adapted theme (motivation perhaps for me to lose the default theme on these pages), and more pics are online at flickr.com/tommcshane/.

having done the poster for tomorrow's Escape Act gig at Club NI:NG, Smitty asked me to create one for the triumphant return of 'the Dirt' in late December. I'm quite pleased with the result.

My friend Neil has posted his HND Photography project on flickr. Some nice images taken around the waterfront area in Belfast City Centre.

this is something that i made up a while back when i'd more bacon than i knew what to do with. i've hoked out the recipe for my friend Laura who is living in Paris with only a two ring hob. 1. cook 8 strips streaky bacon in the oven or pan till they're just crispy, allow to cool, reserve some bacon fat 2. fry 2 chopped carrots off in a some oil and some of the bacon lard for 5 mins 3. add a chopped onion, 2 garlic cloves crushed and two chopped sticks of celery for another 5 mins 4. add 2 bay leaves, salt and pepper 5. add 1 can of chickpeas (drained) and stir in for a few mins 6. add 1 pint or more chicken stock, bring to boil then simmer gently for 10 mins 7. break bacon into little bits 8. add some parsley to taste 9. cook out for 10 more mins 10. use a potato masher to mash it up a little, but not too much 11. leave overnight to develop flavour mmmmm tasty stew!

i've been bereft of interesting things to post, obviously, since my last post, tho i've a few thoughts on the NIMIC seminar yesterday that i'll deliver later. in the meantime here's some celery soup that I made the other day, it turned out to be tasty enough. I made quite a large quantity cos I was in Tesc0s and came across two big packs of celery in the bargain bin for 10p each, the rest is cookery.

1. Heat some oil and sweat half an onion and a small leek, both finely chopped, with two bay leaves
2. Chop a small carrot and a small parsnip and add to the pan
3. Sprinkle in a tea spoon of thyme and stir
4. Chop about 15-20 celery sticks, add to the pan, and stir
5. (You can score the back of each celery stick with a knife to remove the tough filaments, or sieve them out later)
6. Pour in two pints of freshly boiled water and stir
7. Add a chicken stock cube, and a vegetable stock cube
8. Season with salt and black pepper
9. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes, until the celery is cooked
10. Check the seasoning and adjust accordingly
11. Allow to cool and blend 70% of it
12. Serve with a dollop of cream and some nice bread

My good Myspace buddy Tom just posted a global message to bands assuring us that our players would recommence automatic playing asap once a bug has been ironed out. Great, I thought, my chance to share some thoughts on the mattter:

hi tom its good that the player doesn't play automatically as this can be irritating. i normally stop it immediately on most pages it may not sit well with people who just want to increase their plays counter. but i think real people prefer to choose whether they listen to the music, why not leave the choice with the user? hope this feedback helps cheers rich

I get fed up hearing really bad music again and again on myspace, even 3 or 4 seconds of it as I scramble to stop the player. If someone has recommended I listen, of course I'll hear 'em out, but if i'm there for another reason then I'd like to choose when I listen. Anyway, dear old buddy old friend Tom aint interested in my feedback... I can't comment him, or send him a message as he's disabled these functions on his profile. I guess when you have 207617155 and counting friends it all becomes a wee bit overwhelming.

yes, its official - i am now an Apple fan-boy as evidenced by the completely unnecessary purchase of this beautiful keyboard! it truly is a work of art and a dream to use. it even smells good! all i need now is a black turtle-neck...

Another inspirational post from the good peeps at Trizle about happiness... Basically, the more you think you're changing the world, the more real happiness you'll have, and apparently thats been proven by the London School of Economics!? I totally agree. At Club-IT, when we feverishly set about improving the nation's computer skills (and therefore their general employment prospects) by implementing the Home Computing Initiative, we worked with the passion and belief of religious zealots. We truly believed that we were helping to change peoples lives. The level of creativity and innovation was intoxicating. We all worked so hard, designed and built systems, wrote and designed stuff, developed the product and service to be the most effective platform to deliver computers to the masses. When Gordon Brown and his buddies in the Treasury pulled the plug on HCI, it was a cruel blow. Three years of endeavor and learning and achievement, just tasting the first sip of success, not to mention millions of investment across the fledgling industry, all wiped out in one paragraph in the 2006 budget. It was a disgusting slap in the face by a treacherous Government, and in light of the 07 pre-budget statement, it was only the precursor to further anti-commerce measures and political treachery. However that's a different post! In spite of my complete loss of faith and trust in our Government, I haven't lost faith in my own ability to help change the world. Through music and web apps I and my buddies can make the world a better place, and those projects give me a renewed zeal for making meaning, and not just a profit.

NIMIC have announced a seminar on 'Making a living in the Live Music Sector' to be held at Belfast's Spring and Airbrake on November 7th. With Feargal Sharkey and Paul Clegg among other, it should be interesting an entertaining, but will it impart the secret ingredients needed for bands here to get sustainable on the touring front?

Its not surprising that Universal have announced the release of some upcoming singles on USB memory sticks, or that its been done before. Its just funny cos I've been investigating an idea for distribution of escape act's music using a cheap alternative to the CD. The USB memory stick just doesn't fit the bill however. For small time operator like me, its too expensive, as it can't be bought with a low enough capacity to make sense, and creating a reusable drive is teeming with pitfalls. This is still a digital file we're buying here. As a punter, why would i pay the £5 proposed by Universal for something i can get for a fraction of that cost, or for nothing, online? Even with a bunch of extra multimedia content and the storage itself there's no real added value in the memory stick itself, at least after the first purchase, and even so, do they expect customers to reuse it? When i plug it into my PC will it take over and install some crap I don't want? Will it even work on my Mac? If I already have a memory stick can I just walk into the shop and load it up? Or what, in this carbon conscious world, should I just throw it away?!? Sounds like a lot of hassle to me. If i'm going to the bother of going to a shop to buy a single, i want my CD and my artwork! If i want it on my iPod, i can rip it if I want to! It will be interesting to see how successful this experiment is, and if people are open to receiving music in other forms however this smells like the mangled interpretation of focus group feedback (with a little Apple-avoidance thrown in for good measure). Universal have deep enough pockets to try it out though.