dave.org.uk

Hard Rock Calling

On Saturday I was at the Hard Rock Calling festival in Hyde Park. It's a pretty good idea to have a three-day festival in London over the same period as the Glastonbury festival as it's easy for the acts to play both festivals over the weekend and those of us whose camping days are long behind us get to enjoy some of the Glastonbury bands and sleep in a comfortable bed.

My main reason for going was to see Neil Young, but there were a number of other acts (across three stages) to see first.

We arrived just as the first act started on the main stage. They were called The Original Sinners and my friend said he was interested to see them. It turns out that there must be more than one band of that name as these really weren't the band he was expected. They were pretty dreadful all in all. They were followed by Rudy Vaughn who had apparently won a competition in the US to come over and play at the festival. They were even worse. And instantly forgettable (I just had to look up their name). The only thing I can remember about them was that they finished with a cover of Michael Jackson's "Beat It".

By now I was desperate for some decent music. The next band on were The Pretenders and they didn't disappoint. To be honest I was surprised that they were still going. Haven't most of them died? But Chrissy Hynde still has it and their set was head and shoulders above what had gone before. They were followed by Seasick Steve. I've seen him on TV a few times and I've never really understood what the fuss is all about. But live, it's a completely different story. He was brilliant. It's just him and a drummer, but they had the huge festival audience hanging on every note.

The next act on was Ben Harper with his new band. I'd never heard of him and nothing I'd read about him filled me with any enthusiasm so I took the opportunity to explore the other stages. I didn't get very far as on the first stage I walked past I came across Alessi's Ark. I was completely entranced by their modern folky tunes and I sat and listened to all of their short set. After that I wandered back to the main stage where I was unfortunate enough to catch the end of Ben Harper's set. Which really wasn't very good.

The sun had be shining all afternoon, but as Harper left the stage it was becoming obvious that a storm was on the way. And sure enough, within fifteen minutes we were all rather wet. There was even some thunder and lightning.

The next band on were the Fleet Foxes. It was still raining when they came on, but it stopped soon afterwards. I love their music, but I'm afraid the rain rather dampened my enthusiasm. When they were playing and singing it was fabulous. But they take their music all very seriously and that means that inbetween songs there is interminable retuning of instruments which rather destroys the atmosphere. I'd love to see them again in a more appropriate venue. It sounds like I didn't enjoy them, but I should point out that even after two hours of Neil Young, it was still Fleet Foxes tunes that were stuck in my head on the way home.

Some time later Neil Young took the stage. I've been a Neil Young fan for years (we all had copies of "After The Goldrush" when I was a teenager) and I'm appalled that I've never seen him before. It's not like he rarely tours or anything.

Young opened with "Hey Hey, My My" (or perhaps it was "My My, Hey Hey" - I get those two confused) and the next couple of hours is a joyful blur of music and feedback. He played pretty much everything I wanted to hear (the full setlist is online). Oh, ok, there were a couple of things missing, but with a back catalogue the size of Young's you'd need to play all day to fit everything in. In amongst the grunge and feedback he found time for a more folky section where he played things like "Heart of Gold" and "The Needle and the Damage Done". If I have one tiny criticism, it's that if he learned to finish his songs a bit sooner he could fit in twice as many. For example, he finished with "Rockin' in the Free World" which had at least four false endings.

The encore was the Beatles' "A Day in the Life". I understand he's be playing that a lot on this tour. But when he got to "Woke up, fell out of bed..." Paul McCartney joined him on stage. I can't really see Paul McCartney and Neil Young as a double act so it all seemed a bit strange to me. I suppose I can say that I've now seen McCartney live. And I won't have to go to one of his (increasing rare and, I expect, overpriced) gigs.

This has to be one of the best gigs I've ever seen (and I said that after seeing Magazine earlier this year too - been a good year for gigs so far). I think this was the last night of the tour. But he'll be back. And if you get the chance to see him play, I strongly recommend that you take it.

Checking Copyright

There's a lot of material out there on the internet. And the nature of the internet means that it's easy to reuse that material without paying any attention to copyright. If my browser can display an image, then I can save that image to my local disk and then, perhaps, use it on my own web site or in some other publication.

But just because it's easy from a practical perspective, that doesn't mean that it's legal to do it. Much of the material on the web is subject to various copyright restrictions. And if you're going to be a responsible internet citizen then you're going to ensure that you are careful not to use any material in ways that are contrary to the copyright.

If you are, say, a national newspaper then you're going to want to be really sure that you're being careful about copyright. I'm sure that someone like (to pick a paper at random) the Daily Mail would get very upset if they found someone using one of their photos without permission or without giving correct attribution. It's therefore reasonable to expect them to offer the same courtesy to others.

Take a look at this story about Philip Schofield and Twitter. Don't bother to read it. It's the usual Mail nonsense. They're complaining that Schofield shares too many details of his life on Twitter. But they do it (ironically, I'm sure) by poring over every detail of a meal in the Fat Duck. No, don't read the words. Take a look at the pictures. Schofield has illustrated his evening by posting photos to TwitPic. TwitPic is a Twitter "add-on" that allows you to share photos as easily as Twitter allows you share text.

Notice that the Mail have put a copyright attribution on each of Schofield's photos. They all say "© Twitpic", implying that that TwitPic own the copyright on the photos. But if you take a few seconds to read TwitPic's terms and conditions, you find that they say:

All images uploaded are copyright © their respective owners

TwitPic lay no claim at all to copyright on the pictures, so the Daily Mail are attributing copyright to the wrong people. It's not at all hard to find this out (it's a link labelled "terms" at the bottom of the page - exactly the same, in fact, as it is on the Mail site), but the lazy Daily Mail picture editor couldn't be bothered to do that and just guessed at the copyright situation.

And whilst we're talking about the Mail not understanding copyright, it's worth remidning ourselves of the nonsense in their terms and conditions.

• 3.2. You agree not to:
• 3.2.1. use any part of the materials on this Site for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from us or our licensors;
• 3.2.2. copy, reproduce, distribute, republish, download, display, post or transmit in any form or by any means any content of this Site, except as permitted above;
• 3.2.3. provide a link to this Site from any other website without obtaining our prior written consent.

Under clause 3.2.3, I've broken their terms at least twice in this article. But clause 3.2.2 is the really interesting one. You're not allowed to download or display the content of the site. Which makes it rather hard to view it in a browser. Idiots.

Update: They have now changed the copyright on the photos to "© Philip Schofield/Twitter". So that's one less piece of stupidity in the world. The struggle continues.
 

Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

Long-time readers will know that I am not averse to contacting companies to complain about bad service that I receive. This isn't a particularly fulfilling hobby as you very rarely get any kind of satisfaction. But recently it's becoming even less satisfying than before. I've noticed that email conversations with customer service reps are becoming more and more drawn out as many of them seem less and less capable of understanding the issues that I am raising. It can often take a couple of rounds of email before they are clear what I'm talking about. And I'm pretty sure it's not me describing things badly.

Here's an example.

Last week the BBC showed an abbreviated version of Leonard Cohen: Live in London. I missed it as it was first broadcast, so over the weekend I tried to catch up with it on iPlayer. We have Virgin Media, so we can watch iPlayer content through our V+ box. I found the programme and started to watch. I didn't last long though as the aspect ratio of the programme was wrong. The programme had been filmed in 4:3, but the iPlayer has stretched it to 16:9[1]. This meant that everyone everyone appeared fatter than they should be. I know that many people are used to watching television like this, but to me it renders a programme unwatchable.

I wrote to the iPlayer support team explaining the problem. Here's what I wrote:

The version of "Leonard Cohen - Live in London" which is currently available on iPlayer on Virgin Media is in the wrong aspect ratio. It appears to be a 4:3 broadcast which has been stretched to 16:9. Everyone therefore seems to be far too fat and the programme is unwatchable.

I think that's clear.

This morning I got a reply from them. Here's what they said:

I understand you're unhappy with the size of 'Leonard Cohen' on BBC iPlayer.

The bit rate varies per programme and is dependent on the amount of changes per video frame. For example, a programme such as 'Doctor Who' or 'Leonard Cohen' will be at a higher rate than a Current Affairs programme (where a presenter is fairly static in the frame).

Considering the above information:

The average file size for a 30 minute streamed programme is around 110MB. The average file size for a 1 hour streamed programme is around 215MB.

I appreciate you may feel differently on this matter and I'd like to assure you that I have registered your comments on our log. This is the internal report of audience feedback which we compile daily for BBC iPlayer and commissioning executives within the BBC, and their senior management. It ensures that your points, and all other comments we receive, are circulated and considered across the BBC.

Nothing in there at all about aspect ratios. They seem to have assumed that I'm talking about the size of downloaded programmes. Which is strange as I specifically mentioned the Virgin Media version of iPlayer which doesn't support programme downloads.

I can see three explanations:

1. The person genuinely misunderstood what I was asking about and answered the question to the best of her ability. In which case she needs better training in the products that she is supposed to be supporting.
   
2. The person didn't read my mail carefully and just sent a reply that looked like it might address the issues I was talking about. In which case she needs to read email more closely. Perhaps the iPlayer support team needs more people so they have time to read messages and write replies carefully.
3. No-one read my email and some automated system sent a canned reply based on some (obviously flawed) keyword matching.
   

I know I shouldn't waste my time, but I've had another go at explaining exactly what the problem is and why this reply didn't address any of my issues. Let's wait and see what happens.

But it shouldn't be like this. Speaking to customer service shouldn't be like banging your head against a brick wall. People should know the products they are supporting and they should want to give the best service they can. It's becoming far too common that customer service replies appear to be dashed off as quickly as possible in the hope that no-one will actually bother to read the reply. Either the support team don't have the training to properly support their products or they are overworked and don't have time to do a proper job.

Either way, it's all very frustrating.

The BBC showed the Leonard Cohen concert again over the weekend. I recorded it on my V+ box. It was broadcast in the correct aspect ratio. I enjoyed watching it very much.

[1] I like to call this "Dixonsvision" in memory of the sadly-missed shop which used to insist on demonstrating all of its widescreen TVs this way.

Net::Twitter and Iranian Elections

Over the last few days I've seen a large number of tweets saying that the Perl module Net::Twitter is being used to post pro-government propaganda from Iran. If it's true, this is almost certainly a reaction to the large number of people who are using Twitter to get around the Iranian government's censorship.

It's disappointing, of course, to see Perl being used as an instrument of propaganda and repression. But that's one of the dangers you have to face when you release software under an open source licence. I only hope that people realise that Perl is a tool that can be used by anyone and that we don't run the risk of being linked to Ahmadinejad's regime just because of the programming language we use.

iransource seems to be one of the pro-Ahmadinejad bots, but it's been quiet for a couple of days. Has anyone been tracking these bots? And is there any previous evidence of Perl being using by repressive regimes?

The War of the Worlds

Last night I was at the O2 Arena to see one of the 30th anniversary performances of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. For some reason it was a year late - the 30th anniversary was actually last year.

I wasn't entirely sure what I was expecting. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been Jeff Wayne with a group of unknowns performing the album, I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find that with a couple of exceptions each part was played by the person who played it on the original album.

One of the exceptions was, of course, Richard Burton who narrated the album. But he was there in a way. A giant animated head was projected onto the side of the stage and recited Burton's lines. The animation was impressive but it was slightly strange that it was based on a version of Burton's face which was far younger than he was in 1978.

There was an added treat even before Burton's opening narration. The show began with an animation of the martians plotting their attack. Some research this morning reveals that it was taken from a computer game based on the album which was released in 1998. This piece is also the source of the sample "the problem is, of course, the humans" which is used in one of the Ulladubulla remixes and which has been bugging me for years.

Following this short film, Burton comes in ("No-one would have believed ...") and "The Eve of the War" starts up. The animation continues telling the story of the invasion and in the middle of the song, Justin Hayward walks onto stage and tells exactly what the odds are against anything coming from Mars.

The performance continues in the same fashion. The band (and orchestra) play almost note-perfect renditions of the music, the video screen plays out the story and occasional guest stars come onto the stage to sing. It's all really rather impressive.

The first missing guest star is David Essex as the artilleryman. I haven't heard why why he isn't involved but, to be honest, he isn't really missed. Alexis James (no, neither have I) takes the part and does it very well.

During "Thunder Child" another surprise is revealed as a large martian fighting machine is lowered to the stage and started shining bright lights over the audience. My companion pointed out that "it all went a bit Pink Floyd" at that point, but in my opinion that's no bad thing. As the Thunder Child was destroyed, Burton told us that "Earth belonged to the martians" and the first half of the show (the first album in the double album set for those of us old enough to remember such things) came to an end. We had a twenty minute break.

The second half starts in a lower key than the first half. "The Red Weed" is possibly the weakest musical link in the whole piece. Not that it's bad by any means, it's just that it doesn't (in my opinion) hold up to the standards of the rest of the album. The animation was very nice at this point though.

I was expecting the pace to pick up again with "The Spirit of Man" which is my favourite part of the album. On the original recording this is a duet between Phil Lynott and Julie Covington. I know, of course, why Lynott wasn't there but Covington was another unexplained absence. And these two were really missed. Lynott's place was taken by another unknown called Shannon Noll and Covington's by Jennifer Ellison. I really really tried to ignore my prejudice against Ellison, but she really isn't the equal of Covington. Maybe her presence drew in some people who wouldn't have come otherwise (I doubt it) but I was distinctly unimpressed by her performance.

The Alexis James returned to give us some more of his David Essex impression whilst singing "Brave New World" and the evening was back on track. Except that there wasn't really very much track left. If you were writing the piece for stage then you'd make sure that there was a big finale. The War of the Worlds doesn't have a big rousing finale. It just kind of fades out when the narrator realises that the martians have all been killed by terrestrial bacteria (sorry if that's a spoiler for anyone).

Most of the audience were people who knew the album well and knew that there wasn't much of interest likely to happen after the end of "Brave New World". Combine that knowledge with the fact that the transport links to North Greenwich were severely curtailed last night (no Jubilee Line) and you end up with a large proportion of the audience starting to leave before the show was over. I have never seen so many people streaming out of an auditorium whilst the band were still playing.

We stayed until the end. It was good, but not as good as the end of the first half. There's nothing they can do about that. The first half is just better.

All in all, it was a great show though. If you're a fan of the original recording then I highly recommend it. If you're not a fan of the original recording, then you really should be.

Now, who's going to buy me a copy of the 7 disk collectors edition?