A Leased Line to the Collective Unconscious

I recently set XAMPP up on my mac (get it here). It’s an easy to setup and flexible web server environment. The best part is you don’t need to have it running all the time - just fire up the XAMPP control panel whenever you need to do some localised development (ie. when you’re on the train or out of range of wifi) and start the relevant servers. It’s a one-click install and lets you flip between php 4 and 5 at the click of a radio button. Sweet!

The only thing is - call me a snob - the dock icon for the control panel is rubbish - it’s pale and faded, and a bit meaningless looking…
See for yourself

I had a peek around the net and there’s some much better logo images for XAMPP but not available as a replacement icon file. So I grabbed one and made my own. Here it is in action:

OK it’s not perfect - the anti-aliasing at the top is a bit hooky but at least it’s a bit more presentable.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. First download the xampp.icns.zip file from here
2. Unzip it

furniture Bulgaria

3. Open Finder and browse to ‘Applications>XAMPP’
4. CTRL-click the XAMPP Control Panel application and select ‘Show Package Contents’
5. Browse to ‘Contents>Resources’
6. drop the xampp.icns file into this folder
7. then copy it and replace ‘xcp.icns’ with it

That’s it. Job done and nice shiny more XAMPP like icon on your dock

This will copy a table, structure and data from SQL server database to another.
Damn handy!

Man, I kid you not, I'm almost in tears right now - I've just got back from seeing one of the best bands of my adolescence play in a stunning return to form at Brixton Academy. I'm talking about the Jesus & Mary Chain - the band that made me want to pick up a bass guitar and turn the gain up to 11.  I'm spellbound, shocked and slightly awed.

There's more to this than you might think - I've always, always rated this band - Just Like Honey is one of my favourite songs of all time. And I have seen them before - back in the days when they'd blast through the set with such feral animosity that you couldn't tell where one song ended and another began. Where Jim would say nary a word to the audience and William would turn his back on us. Maybe they were just a bit shy back then.

None of that was in evidence tonight: they opened with Never Understand and the gig just got better and better. Jim acknowledged the audience with a few sharp wisecracks and the performance was pitch-perfect. By the time they played Happy When it Rains, I was already in the moshpit being bounced around by hundreds of like-minded JAMC devotees. Have you ever been in a slow mosh?

Nine Million Rainy Days made it for me - not least because they played it straight after I'd shouted it out - it just blew me away. I'm pretty sure they closed out with an old Syd Barrett song, Vegetable Man, and I think they played I Wanna be Yr Dog at one point too.

This wasn't a gig, this was a five-star moment in Rock'n'Roll history.

Right, I'm off to find my PsychoCandy LP...

Rob

yep.

We've been deep in rehearsal for what seems like months now and we're finally coming out to play. The big gig is Rough Beats 2007 - we've played this for the last couple of years and it's one of our favourite places. This year it takes place in Clapham, North Yorkshire. More details available here:

Rough Beats myspace page

We've also booked a warm up gig with those nice chaps from College Pinks, at Catch. Details here:

Wednesday 29th August @ Catch
22 Kingsland Road
Shoreditch
London E2 8DA

We're on shortly after 8.30

We went to the Wireless Festival in Hyde Park yesterday to see Modest Mouse (sadly they didn't play), Queens of the Stone Age (they rocked) and White Stripes. White Stripes were magnificent - one of the best times I've seen them and they've always been good. To come on after a full on rock band like QotSA, with just a guitar, keyboard and drums, and to make a bigger sound was frankly amazing.

We managed to catch another band - a New Zealand band we've never heard of called Connan and the Mockasins who were absolutely bonkers but who turned in a great performance. Very entertaining and I'd very much like to see them again.

I managed to record a teeny tiny clip of the White Stripes playing "Jolene" on my camera. I can't say as the audio is that great but it gives you a great feel for the atmosphere at the festival. Enjoy.

I've just got my hands on a new* web browser, Flock. It's built on the Mozilla core (Firefox, Camino etc) but boasts a number of interesting and innovative features, such as in-browser Flickr viewing and uploading and in-browser blogging.

Lets see if it works...

(you can get Flock from here www.flock.com)

Blogged with Flock

I had the pleasure of visiting Walsall's New Art Gallery at the weekend (to go and see an exhibition about the art of the graphic novel) and was stunned into submission to see a lifesize replica - it's about 12 feet tall - of this amazing piece of work by Jacob Epstein.

The story goes that Epstein sculpted this in 1913 as a celebration of man's embracing of technology and the bold optimism of the future.

As he became drawn into the Vorticist movement and with the onset of the First World War, Epstein's opinions changed; he saw that technology was being bent to the purposes of war, cruelty, abuse and destruction and this lead to his destroying his own piece of work.

I can't explain what kind of impression this piece made on me, save to say that an image does it no justice. It really is awe-inspiring.

Update: I've just noticed the similarity between this and the battle droids in the last three Star Wars films. I guess Jacob wouldn't have been too impressed with his creation being armed with laser rifles and told to Kill on Sight.

my good friend Dan has been exploring the quirkier side of Photoshop CS3 recently. It seems that when he hooked up his shiny new Dell monitor to his MacPro that it reset the CS3 Colour space to a Dell RGB one... that then forces all images and colours to be converted when they are saved out for web. Here's the lowdown:

The problem I was having with PS CS3 web export was to do with the color profiling set up.

The Dell monitor(s) installed automatically impose a Dell RGB color space on PS leading to a color shift when you go to 'save for web'. This is because the default profile (Dell) is automatically converted to sRGB when you select 'Save for web/devices'. The shift in tone, gamma and saturation levels means that the colours become lighter and quite obviously different to the original.

To ensure this doesn't happen (and that your colours are correct when they are exported out as GIFs, JPEGs and PNGs etc.) go to:

1) Edit > Colour Settings

2) Change your RGB space to 'sRGB IEC61966-2.1'

This seems to fix the issue that I was experiencing and sets a precedent for future set ups.

Over the last few weeks I've been entertaining a new boat guest.

This is Dame Margot Fontaine and she's very curious. She likes to drop in during the day to see what I'm up to.

She officially belongs to my neighbour Beth.

Update: Beth's been away for a month now, getting her boat replated and I haven't seen little Margot for ages... =(

This is a video clip from 2005 that I took of a very talented musician: Ohad Rein. He's a solo artist who is also a member of an Australian band called 'Nations By the River' and has played with the likes of the Sleepy Jackson and Gomez.

His MO is a little peculiar - he travels round the world, stops off for short periods and then assembles a band to play his music. Everywhere he goes, it sounds different.

I was fortunate enough to see OMR in late 2005 - I saw them by accident at a gig at the Rock Garden in Covent Garden, where my friend Arda was playing, and they were so good that we all went to see them again the same day. We saw them one more time, for their final gig at the 12 Bar club in Denmark Street, before Ohad left for warmer climes.

The gig was amazing - a tiny venue, about 30 people there and the band managed to rouse us into a frenzy by the end with a stunning Bob Marley cover. The band's own songs were great and I've spent the last couple of years trying to get hold of the album they recorded whilst in London (you can only buy it in Australia). I've received a copy in the post today and I can't wait to listen to it.

Anyway here's the clip. It might give you the slightest clue as to what's so special about this man and his music