Its alive!!

Crikey, I gotta say I'm surprised, but it was only a few hours ago that I'd figured out why my first forays into php had failed and now, now my skills website thing works.

Its all functional. It even has a background color!! I know!

Its still a work in progress, so don't get your hopes too high. At the moment it consists of two sections, the skill directory and the checkbox page.

The former is a crappy encyclopedia of skills, crafts and hobbies which are all linked together with tags, you can start navigating around from this page. If you click on Graphic arts, it'll take you to a brief description of the category and a list of the various types of Graphic arts, then if you click on one of those you'll get a more indepth description and a list of other associated tags.

The checkbox page is a list of all the skills in the database, you can check of the ones that you can do, then when you click the button at the bottom of the page, it logs all your selections with a random ID and counts them and presents this as your score.

There's still a long way to go, but it works, and I'm so proud, feel free to play around, its pretty robust.

Please don't tell other people about it yet.

Here's a list of features and pages I need to add:-

• statcounter code in the page footers
• sort out header and footer in all pages
• a home/index page with statistics (most popular, least popular, untried skills, average score, median score)
• an about page with me rambling
• descriptions for all the the skills
• statistics about your score
• better ordering of skills on checklist page so its more intuitive
• most popular skills on taginfo page
• my own photos for skills
• auto re-size photos
• discipline page which calculates which tag are subdisciplines
• scoring system based on popularity of skills
• your score for each discipline
• page to add new skills and tags
• page to delete skills from all tables
• page to delete photos
• page of database errors like skills without descriptions, tags without skills, etc.
• logos and stuff
• amazon affiliate links to instruction books for each skill
• links to tutorial websites for each skill
• recommendation engine.

Further adventures in php and GeekSkills or whatever

Something unseen grabbed my throat and dragged me to google, my fingers danced over the keyboard and searched for php tutorials. Before me, on my screen, the aborted php script for my websitey idea appeared and my eyes were drawn to a typo.

I had spelt html wrong.

No sooner was it corrected, and ftp'ed across to chrisgilmour.co.uk, and it worked, a few lines of my database appeared in my browser, summoned from MySQL by my php script.

And so it began once more, resurrecting my ambitions and dreams of winning the internet with an arty, crafty, etsy, songkicky website.

I came up with a new name for it too, instead of GeekSkills. I needed something that wasn't in any dictionary, a new word that sounds a little like arts or crafts or skills. I came up with 'SKILMO', like more skills, but also like half hearing someone call my name.

Anyhoo, here are three pages I've crafted for the site:-

List of Skills - this is a list of all the skills on the database, there are hundreds of them
Skill information - this is the description and associated tags for one of the skills
Skills with a specific tag - This is a list of all the skills that have a specified tag

I want it all to work first, all the php, sql and MySQL stuff working together before I try to make it beautiful.

My next task is to make it so when you click on a Skill on the first page, it brings up the Skill information page for that skill.

And then some kind of form page where you click checkboxes for all the skills you have and crafts you can do, then it gives you an arbitary score and secretly saves your skillset.

Thick Creamy Podcast 12-10-2012

Here's the latest Thick Creamy Podcast, bands playing live at a gig the other night, and me talking

RIGHT CLICK SAVE AS

Instead of using SoundCloud or whatever it was I used to use, its up on my own servery thing, ChrisGilmour.co.uk which is kind of neat, but alas there's no streaming player thing so you'll have to right click and save as...

The gig was a Odd Box Records night at The Tipsy Bar in Dalston featuring City Yelps, Fever Dream and September Girls.

It was a bit of a struggle to find the venue, and I'd set off a little late, and the venue was really dark, so I only caught the last two songs of City Yelps. They were noisy, but fun. I dunno whether its just my small palette of band descriptions or Oddbox's taste in music, but I thought City Yelps had that post-punk late seventies Liverpool sound, maybe Joy Division too. I wish I'd caught all of their set.

Second band were Fever Dream, who are awesome. They sound a little art school, really well assembled tunes.

Fever Dream at The Tipsy Bar

Headlining the night were September Girls from Dublin, they were dressed as The Bangles, and played a neat cover of The Clapping Song.

September Girls at The Tipsy Bar

On the way home from the show I tried to record all my talkie bits for the podcast whilst I was drunk and wandering through Ridley Road Market. But when I listened to it in the morning there was this water pouring noise in the background which sounded like I was pissing, and I'd mangled one of the band names.

Its possible to subscribe to these Thick Creamy Podcasts on iTunes so they download automagically every time I put up a new one.

Simply go into the 'Advanced' menu in iTunes, click 'Subscribe to Podcast' and then paste in this rss feed

http://thickcreamydischarge.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

and that should give you all the podcasts, forever.

Thick Creamy Podcast 28-09-2012

Here's the latest Thick Creamy Podcast, bands playing live at a gig the other night, and me talking

RIGHT CLICK SAVE AS

Instead of using SoundCloud or whatever it was I used last time, its up on my own servery thing, ChrisGilmour.co.uk which is kind of neat, but alas there's now streaming player thing so you'll have to right click and save as...

The gig was a Odd Box Records night at The Buffalo Bar featuring two of my favourite bands and two other bands who I'd never heard before who were also pretty ace.

First up were Flowers. I loved their soaring guitars, sounded a bit like a teenage My Blood Valentine practising in their bedroom and a lovely warbling girl sounding like the eighties, Kate Bush, Julee Cruise, Cyndi Lauper.

Flowers playing at The Buffalo Bar 28-SEP-2012

Also, they finished up with a song where the wee girl was playing a one-string bass guitar. Back in '95 when me and Pnos were still learning our instruments, we were tempted by such a thing, but never followed through. Good work Flowers!

Next up were The Choo Choo Trains, who looked pretty cool. I got distracted in their set and didn't get any photos and my recording of it has lots of me talking about bus stops and streetlighting design which isn't quite as musical as the band.

The penultimate band were Town Bike, I hadn't seen them for years, they were awesome.

Town Bike playing at The Buffalo Bar 28-SEP-2012

And then headlining were Tender Trap who fans of my podcast will remember featured in a this podcast from March

Amelia from Tender Trap playing at The Buffalo Bar 28-SEP-2012

Its possible to subscribe to these Thick Creamy Podcasts on iTunes so they download automagically every time I put up a new one.

Simply go into the 'Advanced' menu in iTunes, click 'Subscribe to Podcast' and then paste in this rss feed

http://thickcreamydischarge.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

and that should give you all the podcasts, forever.

Thick Creamy Podcast 08-09-2012

For possibly the second time ever, legendary Glasgow band The Plimptons played London. I was at a bit of a loose end last Saturday night, so I happened upon The Buffalo Bar in Islington and popped into to catch the Guided Missile night.

I had my recorder with me so I've put together a podcast of the gig. The four bands playing were Summer Hunter, The Plimptons, Keith Top of the Pops and his UK Minor Indie Celebrity Band and Dream Themes.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Awesomeness all round then. The first act were Summer Hunter, two girls from Shrag and a chap from the Fire Dept, that's a female band there. I only caught their last two songs, but they were pretty exciting sounding, lots of reverb on the vocals, you can never have too much reverb on the vox.

The Plimptons were on second, the Buffalo Bar was packed to the rafters which was quite a relief cos they were getting a bit worried. They were absolutely electric, the songs thoughtful pieces examining the drinking and music culture of their home towns of Glasgow and Motherwell, illustrated with cartoons, costumes and set pieces that had to be seen to be believed.

I was recruited for videographer duties so I didn't get to take any photies, not sure when the video will surface, but I have faith.

Next were Keith TOTP and his UK Minor Indie Celebrity Band, who were up to their usual high standards. Some might say that three guitarists is one too many, but Keith cranks it up to levels not seen since the Reindeer Section played the QMU with a mighty six guitars, only one bass player though. Maybe they could get together with FreeBase and it would all balance out.

That said, its quite possible that the fifth and sixth guitarists weren't plugged in, how would anyone know?

And headlining were Dream Themes. You know that episode of the IT Crowd where they go to the underground Countdown place, well, Dream Themes play live covers of popular TV theme tunes, and they rock. Highlights would be the Addams Family, Blockbusters and of course the sawing epic vistas of Bergerac.

Anyhoo, after spend around three hours trying to upload the podcast to SoundCloud, I gave up and went with another podcast provider, you should be able to download the mp3 from here with a trusty right click and save link as...

About 1 minute and 50 seconds in you can hear Martin from the Plimptons asking where the toilets are. Rock and Roll!!!!

#LonData

So yeah, I was at the #Londata meetup this evening, it was all about Big Data. I was a little out of my depth.

My depth being those job vacancy posts I did in 2009, those libor posts of 2008, and the London rents posts of 2012, all lovingly scraped by hand. Rather than the api-driven professional affairs of tonight's audience.

Anyhoo at #Londata a company called Bloom were showing off some pretty network diagrams illustrating influence on twitter. They look like dandelions and help companies identify who to engage with. Its all to do with who passes on specific messages on twitter and expands the reach of a client's campaign.

One thing I took away from the presentation was that I ought to change my profile details on Twitter to more accurately represent my interests. Or maybe not, maybe I can opt out of being a marketeer's pawn by having my interests as guinea pigs and Dutch politics, things completely incongruous to the content of my tweets.

Anyhoo, I was wondering how Bloom's networky authority stuff could apply to the indiepop music scene. Allo Darlin were playing at Kings College tonight so its kind of topical, and Allo Darlin are both the sort of band who's members go to lots of other gigs and are also the sort of band who played on a train platform at the seminal Indietracks 2008 festival.

There's a handful of bands and a handful of people who all go to the same concerts. Sure some gigs are full of other people and some people go to see other bands gigs, but there is a hard core who are key to the scene. This we already knew.

Maybe if they were diagrammed as nodes, each node is a person, the lines reflect going to gigs, the colours have no relevance.

This diagram is just to illustrate the concept, Alice from The Cosines has probably been to Moustache of Insanity gigs, Bill From Moustache of Insanity has probably reciprocated and Hannah from Owl and Mouse must have been to a Moustache gig at some point too. And Trev OddBox, he puts on most gigs within the scene.

But can twitter be used more intelligently than just spamming the usual suspects, and target people better than just me tugging on people's sleeves?

Information about who goes to what gigs used to be more freely available on songkick, you could look at anyone's gig history and filter it and easy build up an idea of who liked what gigs and who your gigmates are. But now this information is less visible and it takes minds greater than mine to extract it.

Hmm, I'm not quite sure what the point of this blogpost was, just a ramble I guess, with links.

Gender inequality at Indietracks: There I fixed it

Following on from yesterday's internet entertainment and also today's discussions on the Anorak forum, I thought I'd use the spreadsheet I made up of the past few Indietrackses as a force for good.

I have compiled a fantasy Indietracks lineup featuring all bands that have played there before, but carefully selected so as to be completely balanced by gender.

First a brief note as to what I mean by 'balanced by gender'. Rather than all acts being 50% male and 50% female, I've tried to figure what the make up would be if males and females were randomly distributed. So there are some all male bands and some all female bands. Considering we want about 55 acts to play in total, the mix would be as follows:-

All male	9 bands
Mixed mostly male	14 bands
50:50 bands	10 bands
Mixed mostly female	14 bands
All female	9 bands

With this in mind the lineup would be as follows:-

Disasteradio, Emmy The Great, Foxes!, Frances McKee, Helene, Kevin McGrother, King of Cats, Labrador, Loyal Trooper, MJ Hibbett (solo), Oxo Foxo, Roy Moller, Ste McCabe, Allo Darlin (2008 lineup of Elizabeth and Virginia), Berlin Brides, Burning Hearts, Everybody Was In The French Resistance.. Now, Lets Whisper (2008 lineup including Elizabeth Morris), Marshmallow, Kisses, Modular, Paisley and Charlie, Poppy & Friends, The Cannanes, The Lovely Eggs, The Middles Ones, Zipper, Gordon McIntyre (2012 lineup), Haiku Salut, The Just Joans (2008 platform lineup Dave, Katie, Rowan), Betty and the Werewolves, Teenage Fanclub, The Specific Heats, Art Brut, Butcher Boy, Cola Jet Set, Friends, La Casa Azul, Rose Elinor Dougall, Stereo Total, Tender Trap, The History of Apple Pie, The Red Shoe Diaries, The Smittens, Hong Kong in the 60s, Very Yours Truly, Stars of Aviation, The School, A fine Day for Sailing, A Little Orchestra, Withered Hand, The Loves, Little My.

This gives the following gender stats:-

Total female performers	90
Total male performers	90
%female performers	50.00%
%male performers	50.00%
All male	9 bands
Mixed mostly male	13 bands
50:50 bands	11 bands
Mixed mostly female	10 bands
All female	9 bands

Which is close enough to ideal.

You're welcome.

**UPDATE**
The list of bands was a little half-arsed, so here's the lineup by stage

FRIDAY
MJ Hibbett (solo)
Allo Darlin (2008 lineup of Elizabeth and Virginia)
Tender Trap

SATURDAY
Main Stage
Butcher Boy
Betty and the Werewolves
Everybody Was In The French Resistance.. Now
The Loves (2011 festival lineup with dancing girls)
A Little Orchestra
A fine Day for Sailing
The School

Indoor Stage
Emmy The Great
The Lovely Eggs
Hong Kong in the 60s
Gordon McIntyre (2012 lineup)
Little My
The Red Shoe Diaries
Berlin Brides
Haiku Salut

Church Stage
Helene
Roy Moller
The Just Joans (2008 platform lineup Dave, Katie, Rowan)
Labrador
Ste McCabe
Friends
Very Yours Truly

Train
Oxo Foxo
Paisley and Charlie
Loyal Trooper

SUNDAY
Main Stage
The Smittens
Rose Elinor Dougall
Teenage Fanclub
La Casa Azul
The Specific Heats
Stars of Aviation
Cola Jet Set

Indoor Stage
Art Brut
Stereo Total
Poppy & Friends
Withered Hand
The Middles Ones
Zipper
The History of Apple Pie

Church Stage
Lets Whisper (2008 lineup including Elizabeth Morris)
Disasteradio
Marshmallow Kisses
Burning Hearts
Modular
The Cannanes
Foxes!

Train
King of Cats
Frances McKee
Kevin McGrother