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Neil

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Blog Entries posted by Neil

  1. Neil
    I've today removed the 'member mugshots' feature that's been part of this website since 2002.

    It was originally included as a way for members to put up their photo, but since this feature was added to the forums at some later point, the 'member mugshots' section had near enough become redundant ... and it hadn't worked for a while as well for uploading new photos, due to its integration with the forums membership and the fact that the forums had changed how it encrypted users passwords - I could have fixed it, but there didn't seem to be much point.

    If you want to put your photo in your forum profile, you can do from the 'My Controls' option at the top right of the forums pages.
  2. Neil
    I get endless press releases about various bands playing a "secret show" - it's so secret that they're sending out press releases.

    What's the score with this idiot tosh? Is it something that's been made up as a marketing tool in a "oooo, I got tickets to their secret show, I'm such a big fan" kind of way, or are they shows that they thought they didn't need publicity to sell tickets for but then found they couldn't sell the tickets?

    Either way, they're generally for bands I wouldn't for a second waste my time on seeing. Does anyone get suckered by these really?
  3. Neil
    It's now just over a year since the revamp of eFestivals, and the massive increase in traffic thru the year proves that it was long over-due and that it's gone down very well. :angry:

    There were about 6.2M unique users over the year, which is over 3 times the number claimed by our nearest competitor. There were about 75M pages viewed thru the year.

    Approximately 40% of those page views were for the forums, with the rest being on the main part of the site. The percentage of unique users for the forums was approx 20% of the total.

    Compared to 2008, there's been an increase of 26% in unique visitors, a 34% increase in visits, and a 41% increase in pages viewed - with the increase at the end of the year being greater than the increase at the beginning of the year, implying that there should be a further increase in traffic through 2010.
  4. Neil
    What you like is what you like; you don't have to agree with me.

    Ali Campbell
    UB40's ex-frontman is now out on his own. The fall-out with his brother and other UB40 members looks like it's pretty large - perhaps as large as Ali himself now is in his ill-fitting suits - because the set contained absolutely no original UB40 compositions as far as I could tell. All you get linking back to then is the classic covers - 'Red Red Wine', 'Kingston Town', and the like.

    Meanwhile, Ali himself puts in very little effort, crooning away and hoping that by charisma alone he can pull it off. Sorry Ali, but you just don't.

    James Blunt
    Just about everyone's favourite rhyming slang, everyone's favourite hate figure, even James' quite often - he's not scared to take the piss out of himself .... but it's not like he's short of reasons why. He might sell shit loads of records but they're surely being sold to the Westlife crowd who wouldn't know a challenging composition if it hit them in the face. Status Quo could show Blunt an extra chord.

    Perhaps Blunt manages an endearing performance. I wouldn't know, I was long gone.
  5. Neil
    I always get scam emails with false rumours - I've become rather good at spotting them i think (tho a few always get thru) - but one I got last night is just brilliant.



    Surely he didn't really expect me to fall for that?
  6. Neil

    blaggers

    By Neil,

    Well, it seems as tho some people think that eFestivals are the people that hand out passes for festivals, and some people will go to extraordinary lengths to try and blag a freebie.

    Yesterday I had someone telling me how they're a director of a couple of music biz related companies, and he suggests I check at Companies House. So for the fun of it I check, and it turns out one is dissolved and the other is dormant.

    He also told me how he knew one of the directors of eFestivals, so I asked which one. He gave me a name, which was a name that had never been a director of either of the companies that has owned eFestivals.

    If you're gonna bullshit, at least make it credible, eh?

    Still, his emails provided some great entertainment on an otherwise boring afternoon.
  7. Neil

    Blockheads

    By Neil,

    Lee, the guitarist/manager of The Blockheads has posted a few comments in the Summer Sundae forum, saying just how much they all enjoyed playing there at the weekend. He also dropped me a mail, asking if eFestivals had managed to photo their second performance at Summer Sundae (nope), and I took the opportunity to say thanks...

    A couple of years ago my son (then aged about seven) went to Plymouth Festival with his mum, and afterwards he phoned me all excited, to tell me that he'd somehow (I never discovered how) managed to get backstage and meet the band, and was also given a CD.

    It turns out that Lee remembers him, and was how my son managed to get backstage - he said "I saw them after the show and was so surprised that he was enjoying himself so much that I asked them if they wanted to come back".

    He's a kid that's loved 'New Boots & Panties' since almost his first breath, and one of my favourite memories of him at a festival was him dancing his socks off to The Blockheads at Guilfest (when he was about four), so he really was totally thrilled to meet his heros. Thanks again Lee!
  8. Neil

    blog software install

    By Neil,

    To help people get started, there's some step-by-step instructions on how to set-up your own blog here:-
    http://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=66794.

    --------------------------

    Well, the install of the blog software all went smoothly ... the difficulty came with sussing out a few bits and pieces of the configuration, and I had to ask for a quick bit of support from the makers to get a few things sorted out.

    They were on the ball with getting the bits fixed, but what they haven't said is what exactly they've done - I don't much like that, as I have no real idea if things have been properly fixed forever, or if the same problems might surface after an upgrade of any one of the three extra components now attached of the forums, or the forums themselves.

    And it appears that I might have found a bug that the makers are looking into, and don't have a fix for at the moment. Where it has "Forums Blogs Help Search Members Calendar" at the top right of the Blogs pages, it should also have 'Gallery', as the gallery component is installed. (And it should also have 'Flashchat' too, but that's something I'll need to add in myself, as the Flashchat chatroom isn't made by the same people).

    Anyway, that's enough for now.
  10. Neil

    burning down the house

    By Neil,

    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, and managed to beat it out, mostly with a newspaper of all things (the newspaper was the nearest thing to hand). But I also somehow (I've no real idea how - it was mad panic) managed to burn my hands quite badly, so after a trip to hospital I now have bandages around five of my fingers (three on right hand, two on left), and typing isn't easy.

    Today my fingers aren't hurting too badly, so I'm hoping they're not as badly burnt as I first thought (although with burns it's quite often the more minor burns that hurt the most). I have to go back to the hospital tomorrow for these dressings to come off, and then I get to find out what's what. I'm hoping that at worst only the two most burnt fingers (2nd finger left hand, 3rd finger right hand) might need further dressings.

    But why did the battery explode? I guess it's down to a cock-up on my part, plugging leads in wrongly, although as far as a I'm aware I didn't. The other alternative is that the the battery had a fault somehow (as it's now a molten mess no one could ever know). A friend cleared up much of the mess for me while I was at hospital so I'll never know for sure.

    And my very expensive and almost unused boys toy? It's a wreck, completely useless now - there's just a few bits that can be salvaged for spare parts. I'm so pissed off about it that I can't decide if it's a hobby I'm going to continue with - if I do, I need to shell out hundreds of pounds again to rebuy what's been destroyed. And the house? Other than a coating of soot just about everywhere I touch, it's mostly fine, tho the nice wooden floor is ruined.

    Ho-hum.
  12. Neil

    chilled out big

    By Neil,

    having been ill and missed Sparks at Guilfest, I made a late decision to go to the Big Chill. I hadn't been before, and Lynz_star was going for efests, so I attached myself to her little group (who made me feel very welcome - thanks peeps ) and checked it out.

    It's a great festival - bigger than I expected, and more free of corporates & advertising than most fests. The majority of time is spent sat down (it's the big chill after all ), with regular trips to the bars for more cocktails (yummy ... and they work out cheaper than beer). The downside (actually, more of an up than a down ) is the hill of hell when you want to get back to your tent.

    Music-wise , Arrested Development were superb, X-Press 2 Live were as live as my CD player (except for the "hello Big Chill" ), and Sparks were .. erm ... like 80s power synth-rock, and not what I wanted to hear (I enjoyed hearing the 'hits' tho). The stand-out act for me were The Blue Man Group (http://www.blueman.com/), a great mix of music and performance.

    As ever, I bumped into a few faces, including old efester Suzy of the Butterflys (who a few of the older efesters might remember?) who it was great to see. Suzy was helping me out when I started eFestivals back in 2000, and without her help I'd have been floundering in the dark.

    As a result of too much beer and cocktails, Lynz is now forever to be known as Lynz_lightweight . But I'm sure she'll get her own back, by pointing out that I skipped Sunday ... but then again, I'd gone mainly for Sparks, and i fancied a day off (I'm allowed an occasional one each summer, surely?).

    Now I think it was a waste of a day off, as today I've woken of feeling shit, I think i'm going down with something nasty.
  13. Neil
    The weather has been dreadful lately, it's hard to believe that the country is suffering a drought. And last summer's festival weather was dreadful too, the worst I've encountered across a summer since I started running eFestivals back in 2000.

    With this year's summer festival season just about to start, I'm betting there's lots of festival organisers and festival goers wondering when it'll stop.

    For some they're now in the two-week range, when the more reputable weather forecasters are prepared to give general-ish forecasts for that long into the future. So up pops one of the festival season's more ridiculous happenings.

    Everyone of course wants great weather for their festival, and there's nothing that will stop them finding it - in theory at least. People will trawl around the various weather forecasting websites looking for the best one, and will then try and convince everyone that the weather they'll get will be what is forecast by the best forecast and not by the worst forecast.

    Perhaps there's a place for a new weather forecasting service, where only good forecasts are ever given? It'd certainly get a lot of traffic from festival goers.

    PS: cheer up folks, this summer IS going to give us some great weather.
  14. Neil

    computer death

    By Neil,

    It's always a real pain when a computer dies, but thankfully my most recent computer deaths have been about as kind as they could possibly be.

    Prior to this one today, I last had a computer die on boxing day last year. That was my own 'work' computer - the one I run eFestivals from - so it really couldn't have died at a better time. Nothing happens in the festival world between Xmas and new year, so that gave me the chance to get another built and configured before everyone started back at work in the new year ... the only down side was that I spent the xmas hols working.

    Today, my 'test server' has died - very conveniently at the end of the festival season. The test server is a linux server that mirrors my live servers set-up, and is used for developing and testing new things for the website. I've not looked at why it's died yet - I'm hoping it's just a power supply (and I always have a spare or two of those in my computer bits cupboard),l and if that's all it is then it'll be going again very shortly.

    This test server is the oldest PC that I have, and I've had it in mind to build a new one this autumn anyway (the plan was that I'd do that before the old one had problems). It's also got a very old version of Red Hat on it, and it would be good to have an up-to-date version.

    Currently I'm downloading the CD images of the latest version of Fedora (the free version of Red Hat linux) - there's five to download, each of 600+MB which I then cut to CD, and then use the CDs to do the install ... it should all be straightforwards, here's hoping.

    Then I'll probably have to install some extra bits and pieces to get all the functionality I need, but it's possible that these extra bits now come within Fedora (they didn't in the old version I had) ... I hope they do come within it, because doing these extras will be where things will get complicated - I'm far from a linux expert even tho I do know a fair bit. Time to get on with it all I guess....
  15. Neil

    confusion

    By Neil,

    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, running the business side of things to some extent, and managing the servers.

    I'll still be posting as Neil occasionally when I feel there's something worth saying under my own name, and I'm sometimes posting as 'eFestivals' too, tho this account is also being used by others. The 'eFestivals' account will be being used to present eFestivals information.
  16. Neil
    I've spent much of the last couple of weeks thinking how to get the best out of the efests servers during the mad Glastonbury ticket rush tomorrow, mostly doing little things which combined will add up to something hopefully worthwhile ... but just now I've had a brainwave which will make a great difference to things.
  17. Neil

    crap bureaucracy

    By Neil,

    I just picked my post up from my doormat.

    I opened a letter from DVLA, saying that I hadn't sent them my licence to be endorsed for speeding as they'd requested, and so my licence will be revoked from this coming Sunday.

    I open the next letter, and it's also from DVLA .... all it contains is my licence, newly endorsed for the speeding offence.

    If the guys at DVLA could add two and two to make four, they'd be dangerous.
  18. Neil

    dodgy addresses

    By Neil,

    The second lot of passes for V Fest have turned up today, for the efests reviewer and photographer that are attending.

    Somehow, the press office seem to have lost the first line off the efestivals address on these passes (the set that turned up yesterday for the other site were fine), and they only contain the company name, town and postcode.

    Luckily I seem to have a smart postie, who worked out where they should go - thanks Mr Postie.

    God knows what would have happened if they'd have gone astray.
  19. Neil
    I'm pleased to say that eFestivals is now a carbon neutral website.

    We're working with The CarbonNeutral Company to offset the emissions created by our business, as well as doing all we can to reduce our energy usage and emissions creation.

    Climate change is happening - just look around you. We can wait for governments and businesses to stop pointing the finger at anyone but themselves, or we can take responsibility for our own actions and the consequences of those actions.

    The amount of energy a person or business uses can be reduced by a significant amount by a few simple measures - and save money too! Turn your heating down just a little, and put on warmer clothes; turn your TV off properly (don't leave it on 'stand-by'), and unplug your chargers when not in use; fill the kettle with just the water you need; turn lights off, and use low-energy bulbs; and think about whether all your journeys are really necessary, and whether they could be made using public transport.

    eFestivals is urging each company we do business with to act to reduce and offset their emissions, and we urge you to do the same. The longer we take to act, the more we'll have to do.



    Offsetting and reducing our emissions is one part of eFestivals' ethical policy. We donate 1% of our turnover (turnover, not profit) to charities, with the major beneficiary being WaterAid. We also put 10% of our turnover directly back into festivals.
  20. Neil

    eFestivals myspace

    By Neil,

    ... 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.
  21. Neil

    eFestivals on the up

    By Neil,

    The new website design seems to be going down extremely well.

    While it's not possible to do a true like-for-like comparison of last year's website traffic compared to this year's traffic due to some of the changes in the redesign as well as some other background changes, it's certainly the case that there's been a very significant increase in website readership, and the 'stickiness' of those readers.

    For example:-
    - number of pages viewed is significantly up.
    - number of pages viewed per visitor is significantly up.
    - visitors from .uk domains is significantly up.

    Unfortunately, due to the 'background changes' mentioned above, it's not possible to make a like-for-like comparison of website visits or unique users by IP address. Even so, visits are up, while the recorded (just recorded!) number of unique visits by IP are down - which suggests that if it were possible to make a like-for-like comparison then both visits and unique users would both be showing a significant increase.

    And of course, also from those 'background changes', the significant increases in the 3 items mentioned above would actually show a far higher increase than they are showing. So it's all good.

    The other very noticeable difference within the hit stats is the proportion (just the proportion) of pages read on the forums. While the number of pages read on the forums has increased by around 15% (which is great considering the popularity of facebook and the like), the proportion of all pages read on the website that the forums account for has fallen very sharply, by over half of what it was. Again, this shows that the trend on the main part of the website is a massive increase!

    So a huge thanks to all of our long time readers for their continued support, a 'welcome back' to those who didn't like the old-style eFestivals but who like the new style, and a big hello to all those who are new readers here. We hope that this year's festivals are all that you dream of.
  22. Neil

    eFestivals on TV?

    By Neil,

    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!
  24. Neil
    Today is the first really busy day since all the recent upgrades were put in place ... there's currently over 900 people on the forums (and many times that number using the green pages of efests), and the servers are ticking along nicely, no stress at all. Good news!
  25. Neil

    efests survival

    By Neil,

    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.
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