The new (and still cool) U2 Ipod

Very nice.

And yes, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for… I’ll get one one day.

Check it out at Apple.

BackUpdate

Good news! My aussie I.T. workmate did some of his techo-magic and has been able to get my data restored; aparently it was the NTFS (?) storage system file that corrupted – so perhaps the drive is not as badly off as I thought.

So yeah, I’m going to make sure that I’m totally backed-up in the future, by duplicating all my files on another drive, and do the whole backup deal frequently (and, if I’m smart, automatically). Might burn the odd DVD of really important documents to take ‘off site’ too.

I just ordered a cool looking Western Digital My Book. 250GB firewire etc should do me just fine.

The importance of backup

I bought myself a shiny new 250GB Iomega Firewire/USB external hard drive in early April, in the interests of storing large amounts of musically related data… and backing up my internal drive on my PC. And it just so happens that it failed on Thursday!

Well, the cookie has crumbled and all the chocolate chips have fallen out and that’s just the way it goes!

So, yeah – now I’m thinking either of writing large quantities of DVD’s to back up my various contents, or needing to run two drives in parallel in order to backup what I have.

Funny how I went from ‘blissfully unaware’ with 60GB (mostly full) on hand, to 310GB and lots of room but feeling slightly more secure… to wanting to now buy another 300GB to cover for the loss of *both* drives should one of them fail. Crikey!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, a workmate downstairs in the I.T. department is working away at seeing if he can extract all my old files… including a complete CD collection ripped to iTunes, my complete sample and midi library for recording, and a whole bunch of ‘scratch’/demo/working files recorded in Cubase over the last couple of years – including some by my mates Joe and Herbie. Ahh boo!

I’m just grateful all of our holiday photos and all my word documents are ok, on the 60GB drive. Time to do some further research into backup media.

So yes, important lesson learned. And a good one to learn before stepping out and writing my book – which will be hundreds of hours of work, and thousands and thousands of words -  too valuable to lose! So it’ll make another hundred pounds or so well worth the investment.

Shaken, stirred, but still confident I can get my data back.

Bono, and God. Again!

Some ’squeaky’ Christians were whinging in the (Christian) press about ‘outward appearances’ – I like Bono’s response:

An unrepentant Bono took on his detractors in a recent Rolling Stone interview. “People are always forcing you to make decisions between flesh and spirit,” he said. “Whereas I want to dance myself in the direction of God. I go out drinking with God. I am flirtatious in the company of God. I am not a person who has to put God out of his mind to go out on the town. It’s a key point. The divided soul of Marvin Gaye, Elvis — these conflicts tore them apart. And they don’t tear me apart. I reckon God loves all of me.”

From an article by Steve Stockman, author of ‘Walk On – The Spiritual Journey of U2′.

Why do Christians always get so caught up with specks of dust?

Pohutukawa

Pohutukawa
(C) Sara Langdon 2006

80c x 30c, acrylic on canvas. For sale, contact artist.

Travelling

Travelling

(C) Sara Langdon 2006

30c x 60c, acrylic on canvas. For sale, contact artist.

Pears

Pears
(C) Sara Langdon 2006
50c x 20c, acrylic on canvas. For sale, contact artist.

Fourth Wall – Dominic Miller

I’ve just been on a great little journey – through Dominic Millers head! Most people wouldn’t have heard of Dominic Miller, but you certainly would have heard his work – as he is Sting’s guitarist, and has been for most, if not all, of Sting’s career after leaving the force. (I say ‘most’ as I haven’t bothered to check that fact, and am relying on my own knowledge/memory of Sting’s music – he’s on all the live DVDs anyway, so that’s enough for me.)

Any man who’s at least partially responsible for a song like ‘Shape of my heart’ is automatically given ‘legend’ status in this game: Advance token to Mayfair, Pass Go, collect $200, get out of Jail Free and more…

I’ve stumbled upon a blog of sorts in which Dominic (no, we’re not on first name terms, but in the interests of avoiding overuse of ‘he’…) takes us on a journey of recording his latest solo album, the as-yet unreleased Fourth Wall. A great read, but what makes it even cooler is you can listen to the tracks at the same time – what this man creates when his fingers meet crafted wood & steel (or nylon) is simply remarkable.

As a musician, I really enjoy hearing about the whole process of creating songs, crafting music, recording tunes! And I really admire the openness of someone letting you in on that process. Dominic writes at one point what the album is about:

The title of this album is Fourth Wall. What does this mean to me? It means looking at you and perhaps showing you parts of me I wouldn’t want you or anyone to know. Kind of like showing you my hand but not necessarily telling you how I am going to play it. It means showing you who I really am which includes some of my strengths and weaknesses. When people make records they show themselves the way they would like to be seen; a kind of fabrication or manipulation of character. What you never see (or hear) is the way it really is or what is behind the gloss, mixing, muting, comping, enhancement etc.

Have a read here, and see how the reality shapes you…

U2 postpones final leg of Vertigo Tour

An official announcement on U2.com yesterday brought bad news to thousands of U2 fans ‘downunder’; due to an illness in the immediate family of one of the band members, all dates are postponed. An official statement on new dates is promised, and while there are circulating rumours about the dates being in November, these are mere speculation. Having said that, a family member of mine works for the owners of Ericsson Stadium, and he was told ‘November’ – take that as you will.

The initial shows of the Vertigo Tour were delayed by 4 weeks in March 2005, clearly due to to Edge’s daughter being seriously ill (which was reported in UK tabloid, which Edge took legal proceedings against for invasion of privacy, more here). Dublin newpapers have reported that Edge’s young daughter is currently being treated for Leukemia in a local hospital, although another rumour is that drummer Larry Mullen Jr’s father may be ill also.

Many prayers and best wishes are being expressed for the band, and the sick family member. I really appreciate the loyalty and respect that seems to be prevalent amongst the U2 fan community as a whole, both toward the band, and to each other.

U2 are a fiercely loyal, close-nit family, and it is only natural that family comes first on such occasions. This loyalty does get shown to their fans as well, and I’m sure the promoters are hard at work trying to get a tour rescheduled for later in the year.

Sydney Morning Herald has an article here which mentions that Bono and family are currently spending time together in Sydney, while the internet fan community is surging with activity about the events unfolding.

Inside Out

I’ve been looking into a little history.

People are always talking about the history of London; of Europe; and you might automatically think of grand old buildings, churches, or bells called Ben. The history I’ve been caught-up in over the past few weeks is somewhat more rock’n’roll, and the only bells involved are of the division variety…

I’ve been reading a book on Pink Floyd written by founding member and drummer Nick Mason, called ‘Inside Out’. The book covers their complete history, and Nick Mason could be considered the only band member to play in the band through its entire lifetime (which, if you’re still counting, is close to 40 years!). It was an enjoyable read, and it satisfied the curiosity about the band which has been loitering about for a few years now…

There are a few reasons for my keeping-up with the Floyds’s:

First of all, somewhat obviously, I enjoy their music. I came into Pink Floyd awareness through the album A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) – the first album of what could be labelled ‘the David Gilmour period’, which followed the exit of founding member, bassist, and main songwriter Roger Waters in the early-mid eighties. Roger Waters last big PF release was the The Wall (1982), which had a massive hit with the song ‘Another Brick in the Wall Pt II’. (If you’re getting in to your late 30’s (ish) this may well cue memories of sitting in the back of boring school or university classes with ‘we don’t need no education’ running through your head!) I say ‘big’ as those in-the-know will remind me that he followed-up The Wall with The Final Cut, but that didn’t have anywhere near the success of The Wall. Anyway, after getting my PF beginnings as a fourth former at Pompallier College in Whangarei, (on a borrowed cassette, ahh the 80’s!) I wasn’t totally sold on Pink Floyd until I bought the Pulse (1994, Live at Earls Court, London) on VHS. Now Pulse is one of the greatest concert videos of all time – and it earns that grand simile by the light show alone. Phenomenal. And the good news is that is expected out on DVD sometime this year (although, it has been pushed back many times).

There’s also a family connection in there, in that my brother likes them too. It’s one of the few bands we both like (though he has reportedly enjoyed more U2 of late!) and somehow that resounds with me. It’s good to have something in common with one’s kin (apart from the obvious!). My brother being about 7 years older, he’s more interested in the ‘earlier stuff’ – I remember him saying he really liked Animals, and I’m sure he owns a copy of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ – one of the biggest selling albums of all time (in the American Billboard Top 200 Album chart for 724 weeks, yes, that’s seven hundred and twenty four weeks!!, that’s over 14 years!!).

On the cover of Animals (left) is the ‘brilliantly-London’ Battersea Power Station, which I used to commute past daily on my way to work in 2001-2, while living in London on my last trip here. So there’s another connection. And speaking of covers, the photo shown at the top (the image for the cover of the 1993 Album The Division Bell) is real, not computer generated as one might expect these days – they actually built the heads and lugged them out into the middle of a muddy field in the cold to take the shot. Cool eh?

And it’s not all history - David Gilmour is releasing an album On an Island next week, that is, it’s called ‘On an Island’; he’s not singing about sunning himself on a South Pacific atoll! He does mention the fact that technically he lives on an island (here in the UK) in this article which was quite cool to read following the book. He’s also playing 3 gigs at the Royal Albert Hall, which I was very disappointed to not get tickets for! I found out just days too late – considering it’s the first remotely Pink Floydian gig for 12 years, and 4 years since his last solo live outing (and 20 years since his last solo record!), the tickets were in demand, somewhat!

And on a final note, it’s also very cool as a musician to be living just up the road from the legendary Olympic Studios, at which Pink Floyd and Gilmour tracks have been recorded. The list of clients at the studios is massive, a selection being names like The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, through to Massive Attack and, well, Madonna and Kylie!). Barnes rocks (literally)!