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Neil's Blog

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About this blog

the eFestivals blog

Entries in this blog

lower sales means it's payola time ... but not at eFestivals

It's not only Glastonbury that's suffered from slower sales this year - although it's not being said explicitly, from where I'm sat it seems pretty clear that a number of festivals are suffering from slower sales this year, and desperation is starting to set in for some. In the days when there was a huge singles market, record companies used to fill DJs pockets with cash to play their records and say how fantastic that particular single was. The result would be that the single with the payola

Neil

Neil

latest website changes - galleries

The latest changes to to the website have now gone live, with the re-jigging of the photo albums/galleries now just about complete. The photo albums pages have now been split into years, and a photo from each photo album added alongside that album. For albums from this year, there's the option to view the album as either traditional galleries or, via a Flash application, as a slideshow. One result of the changes is that currently the eCards program is a bit messed up. This will be fixed an

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it's all free

I've just downloaded and installed the latest version of Fedora (Red Hat linux), and it's a dream. It has everything you could ever want on your computer straight out of the package, all as least as good as anything Bill could ever buy in (it's not like microshit actually come up with anything good themselves), and it all runs far faster than Windoze does on the same hardware. Why is anyone still enriching Bill?

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it's a small world

I've just had a PM on here from an old mate, who recognised the name of another old mate in a post I'd made (tho he doesn't remember me, the bastard ). edit: a few PMs later with some reminders, and he now knows who I am.

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is there anybody out there...?

The festival scene well and truly has hit the point where anyone and everyone thinks they can put on a successful festival. 2007 has been full of attempts at running new festivals and events, with various success. There's those who have a good idea as well as the skills to pull what's needed together, and who know how to sell their idea to a paying public. They put in the months of hard work on all the angles needed to pull the event off, and even if they lose money - as long as it's not too

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internet archive

I've just dropped by the Internet Archive, trying to find copies of the original webpages that grew into the Glastonbury website I started, which then grew into eFestivals. Those pages aren't in the archive, so I'll have to do some further 'net hunting to try and track them down, or search thru my 500+ CDs of backups. Ho-hum. Why am I wanting them? Well, it's coming up to ten years since I started the site, so thought it would be good to try and find some very early examples of where it all s

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Inner City Unit

WOW! - Nik Turner's reformed them, and they're playing a gig in Slough in mid-November .... I quite fancy going, but Slough's a bit of a trek ... I guess I'll have to decide soon, I'm sure it'll sell out pretty quick.

Neil

Neil

I'm sorry, Dawn Penn

I once wrote a review saying how dreadful I thought Dawn Penn was as a live act. I saw her a second time and that didn't change my mind. Both of those times she was backed by a DJ and not a live band.   I saw her again yesterday at Bristol's Harbourfest, with a live band. She was great!   That was a hard crowd to win over, too - and she got them.

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i'm on speed

... a ramped up broadband speed that is - today I've had my upgrade to 8Mb.

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I sleep all winter

Now is the time of year when most people seem to think I spend my time sunning myself on a beach. I wish. Although there's not much festie news at this time of year, now is when lots of little bits and pieces on the website get improvements made to them, the company accounts gets sorted out, deals are made for next year, new servers are installed or upgraded, etc, etc, etc - it all takes time, and normally more time than I think it will (hence me asking for a php programmer to help me out wi

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I hate plumbers

Why the f**k do plumbers say "I'll see you in an hour", and two days later I'm still waiting?

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holidays

Well, for the first time in six and half years of running eFestivals, I decided to take some time off last week. I'd forgotten what doing nothing was like! And now I'm back, refreshed and raring to go ... watch out world.

Neil

Neil

Glastonbury Licence Hearing

This was the first time I've sat thru a licence hearing under the new licencing act, but the procedure was much the same as under the old one. The only noticeable difference is that "interested parties" who are members of the licencing board are no longer allowed to be involved with making the decision. This meant that a certain Pilton councillor (I won't name him, this isn't meant to be personal) who has been a member of the board in the past was excluded this time around, tho he was still f

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getting a bit flash...?

For ages I've wanted to jazz up this website a little, but simply never had the time. With new hands at some of the controls I've finally got some time to start to work thru that horrendously long to-do list. One of the things on the list is a re-jig of the photo-galleries, to make them a little less of the quickly cobbled together mess that they've always been, and hopefully one side result of the re-jig will be a bit more eye-candy from photos thru-out the site. Anyway, I've wanted to use a

Neil

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fun with Fedora

Geek alert - Fedora is a version of linux. Why does anyone buy Windows? Having just downloaded and installed Fedora, it's bloody brilliant! It's got everything a 'normal' computer user might need included - including an excellent fully featured 'office' suite (word processor, spreadsheet, etc) - and it's dead easy to install! The fun comes when you start to try and set it up anyway from a 'standard' install. So far I've managed to break apache (the webserver that comes with it) several tim

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frying tonight

It's not frying tonight, it's flying today. There's a break in the weather, and for the first time in weeks I get to go flying. :)

Neil

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free tickets

Every now and then, I get emails from people that think eFestivals are the organisers of the festivals we list. In the last week I've had a few of these, and in each case it's people trying to blag free tickets. The most common theme is "I'm a mate of so-and-so, and he said to email you to sort out a freebie". Oh yeah? If you're such a good mate of so-and-so, how come he isn't sorting you a freebie himself?

Neil

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free money

yep, it's true, there's now this thing called free money, here's how it works. What you do is set up or have a business. Then when you have some work to do, don't be a fool ... don't go doing it yourself! Do what Rupert Murdoch has his staff doing at the publisher Harper Collins (which he owns). They come up with a book idea, an idea they know zilch about. Rather than waste their own time doing their job and researching it all, they try to find a few suckers - today I've been their target.

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forums upgrade

The forums software (including the galleries, blogs, and chatroom) software has all been upgraded to the latest versions.

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forum patched

I've just applied a new security patch for the forums, keeping them free from being hacked.

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first blog post .... hellooooooo

My first proper blog entry ... I'm going to use this blog to detail a little of things going on at eFestivals towers that aren't directly related to festivals. It might be of interest to you, or it might not.

Neil

Neil

finding my god

As an easy way to take some load of the main eFestivals server, I've fairly recently created some new sub-domains of eFestivals.co.uk on another server, of 'images', and 'archive'. While these are good for their created purposes, I've realised since I set them up that they're only really any good for those specific purposes, and aren't particularly good for use for any other purposes. If I was to carry on in the same way I could end up with tens of different use-specific sub-domains which st

Neil

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fashions come and go

With yet another festival (Blissfields) having fallen by the wayside for this year, it's pretty clear that fashions are changing. Blissfields hasn't been hugely ambitious and had (in comparison to other fests) a good offering at a good price, but this was an unfortunate year to go for it - many established festivals appear to suffering a downturn in sales, and i wouldn't be surprised to see a big-name established fest fall this year (it might happen this year but might well not be back next y

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fakers

I've had an email from someone today who was emailing to say hello to the efestivals staff they met at the Big Chill. ... the only thing is, the people they met aren't efestivals staff. In the past, I've even heard of someone who slept with a girl at a festival I wasn't at, and they were claiming to be me. I guess imitation is a form of flattery.

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efests survival

eFests stood up well to the hammering of Glasto ticket day yet again ... it slowed down at times, but was never in danger of crashing, and succeeded in breaking the previous forums record by over 50%. The tweaking done since the Reading/Leeds announcement obviously made a good difference. But I guess that's the last time that eFests will get away without a full-on load balancing system rather than me working a kludge, so I guess I should start saving some pennies for next year.

Neil

Neil

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