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Neil's Blog

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About this blog

the eFestivals blog

Entries in this blog

burning down the house

I was charging a high powered rechargeable battery for one of my boys toys on Sunday morning, when it exploded - proper fireballs (several!) and everything. Because it went up with such a bang, straightaway it was a biggish fire (18 inches across i guess), and it set light to my toy (), and things nearby (books, chest of draws, placcy bags of stuff, etc). If I hadn't been in the room at the time, within seconds it would have taken proper hold, and I'd now have no house. Very luckily I was, a

Neil

Neil

the cult of celebrity

The last few weeks have shown that we as a society have sunk incrediably low into the cult of celebrity. People are trying to censor others reasonable opinions on the actions of these celebrities, as tho the only thing allowed is star worship. And thinking back 50 years, we used to take the piss out of the cult of leadership in dictatorships: at least those leaders had a real effect on people's lives of more than fluff.

Neil

Neil

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.

Neil

Neil

ticks on the list

I've been working thru a list of to-do's since the end of the summer, putting in place certain things for the new year for eFestivals. As ever with these sorts of things getting thru the list never quite goes as fast as hoped for, but even so much of the stuff is now sorted. One of the more important things is sorted, and that's new staff for certain tasks. There's a new full-timer who's going to be having a big role, plus another part-timer who I've been bugging for a while and who is now in

Neil

Neil

so long and thanks for the smiles

:) There's a small handful of people without whom eFestivals wouldn't exist. Very sadly one of these passed away at the weekend, and she'll be sorely missed by me and her many friends but more importantly by her children and husband.

Neil

Neil

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?

Neil

Neil

confusion

It seems that my 'disappearance' is confusing some people. After ten years of breathing, eating, sleeping and farting eFestivals I've decided to take a different role. 5co77ie has been appointed as full-time editor of both eFestivals and eGigs, and I'm moving on to develop new projects while still having a little involvement in both of the sites. In the short-term I'm around to help and advise 5co77ie as necessary, as well as keeping a long-term role in developing and improving both sites

Neil

Neil

eFestivals myspace

... is very obviously at http://www.myspace.com/efestivals And I hate it - it's the most user-unfriendly website I've ever had the misfortune to interact with. Can anyone tell me how I can edit the URLs that display on the page? I want to link to the main efests site, and can't work out how too.

Neil

Neil

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?

Neil

Neil

My brain is currently in development, you may experience some instability

For the last three minutes, I have been working away behind the scenes () to add details about this year's festivals onto the forum calendar and the main forum page. This is just one of many new developments coming that's the culmination of 3 weeks work - it would have been sooner but we do have to stop to eat a curry now and then, and to whip the hamsters to paint your computer screens that bit faster. Although a project of (not) enormous complexity and scale, we're going to waffle in a pato

Neil

Neil

performance testing

a major bit of performance testing has just been carried out, and given me one set of numbers. I now have to do some re-configuration of the servers, and do the test again to get a another set of numbers. Hopefully, the second test will give significantly different - and better - results. If that proves to be the case, then the re-configuration will need to be made permanent, and these forums will perform better* on Sunday than they did when the Reading/Leeds announcement was made. (*actua

Neil

Neil

server tuning

It's that time of year again when my thoughts start to turn towards the mad ticket on-sale days and the stupid load it puts on the eFestivals servers for just a couple of hours each time. Last year I came up with a solution that worked reasonably well but not as well as I'd hoped for. So this year a number of steps have already been taken which have improved things substantually, and with some more things still to do I'm reasonably confident of a better result this time around. Fingers crosse

Neil

Neil

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

Neil

Neil

thieving bastards

just gone outside to my car, to find the side window smashed and my stereo nicked

Neil

Neil

radio star? :-)

I've just been approached by a major radio station to help them with a long show they're doing about festivals - from what they've said so far, it sounds like there could be me droning on about festivals for around 15 minutes! Those that know me know that I can talk about festivals for hours and hours and hours, but that doesn't mean it's actually interesting or anything anyone wants to actually hear. It looks like I'll be spending some time in a recording studio tomorrow to do the piece

Neil

Neil

the scores on the doors

I've just received a Comscore report for hit stats for websites that fall into the "Entertainment - music" category. I knew that eFestivals had a significantly greater amount of traffic than many other better known general music websites, but up until this point I hadn't realised by quite how much!!!! eFestivals comes in at number 35 in the list, but many of the sites listed above it aren't really in the same market - things like yahoo music, myspace, seeklyrics.com, last.fm, napster, etc. I

Neil

Neil

there's so much bullshit around here

eFestivals has had a problem for a while with a certain music-based publicity company having their staff making publicity posts here. The terms & conditions of the use of these forums is that they're not to be used for commercial purposes. To try to get around that, these staff have made numerous registrations in the normal sorts of usernames that genuine users use, and then made their posts in a deceptive manner, in a "have you heard the latest album by XXXXX? It's superb, check it out"

Neil

Neil

that's another summer gone....

Well, that's another summer that's been and gone, with just a few more outdoor fests left before the weather gets bad. Except the weather is bad already - in fact did it ever get good? That's two summers on the trot where it's been generally awful. Hopefully it's all been due to La Niña, which is normally a two-year weather event and started in early 2007, which means that it's likely that next year will be back to a normal British summer (Yes, that means it rains, but also means it doesn't

Neil

Neil

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

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

Neil

eFestivals on TV?

I've just had a chat with a reporter from Channel 4 news. They'll be running a piece (probably this Thursday, 7pm) about the explosion of live music and festivals, and they wanted my expert ( ) advice to help with their piece. They said that eFestivals would be mentioned, and it would either be a quote from me (not my voice tho) or a screenshot of the website ... but I never quite believe these things till they happen. Anyhow, fingers crossed!

Neil

Neil

moan moan moan

Six months ago I got flashed by a speed camera in Bristol (where I live). Thru came a form giving me some options, I ticked the "i want to pay a £60 fixed penalty", and sent it back. Then nothing. Today I got a summons. So not only have I not had the option to actually pay the fixed penalty (the first form didn't give the option to pay at that point), the frigging summons is for Taunton Court - how does that work then? So I phone the camera unit and say "I never had the option to pay the

Neil

Neil

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

one for the personal 'cool moments' list :)

I stopped at a garage today to fill up with some petrol, and about a minute later a posh-ish motor pulls in. Out gets Peter Gabriel, and he looked across at me, nodded and said hello.... like I'm his mate. OK, I had met him earlier in the afternoon at a press conference, but that was there (I don't count something like that for a 'cool list' as I expect to come across such people now and then thru my job), and this was out there, on the street. BTW, if anyone is wondering if Peter is get

Neil

Neil

upgrades

eFestivals has been moved to a new server, to help ensure that on the busiest days everything will still cope. Fingers crossed that the new configurations works as well as hoped for.

Neil

Neil

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