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Neil

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Blog Entries posted by Neil

  1. Neil
    I've just had confirmation that something that has been planned as a nice addition to the eFestivals website for the last 18 months is able to go ahead - the current plan is for it to hit the website on 1st May, tho it might slip back a little as there's still a lot of planning to be made.

    This is an exciting development, and one I hope that people will enjoy.

    I'm going to be keeping the exact details of what this is under my hat for the moment (so those that know, no mentioning what it is please), but they'll be full details announced when all the bits are in place.
  2. Neil
    I've spent most of today updating the system software on the eFestivals servers (which explains why they've gone off-line occasionally today, if you were wondering), and despite my novice knowledge of linux they've all gone exceedingly well.

    The newer server is all completed, but there's still some stuff to do for the older one. Because its an older installation and hadn't been updated before (whoops ) there's still a little more to do... Back to it.
  4. Neil

    internet archive

    By Neil,

    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 sprung from for an article on how things grew from a very small comment on just one page, that was put there as a joke. I don't think I'll have any luck on finding a copy of that original page, but you never know. What I did find on my hunt tho was a picture that I thought was lost forever.

    This is a genuine photo of a road sign that still exists (I drove past it the other day) in Radstock in Somerset.


  5. Neil
    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 much money - if those attending have enjoyed what's on offer they can rightfully consider what they've done a success. They then have something to build on, and provided they build and don't start to think they have it made, the future should bring them better things - to these people, very well done!! We wish you ever-more growing success.

    There's also the dreamers. This year saw a lot of planned new events seeing pre-publicity as a way to get off the ground, and in that pre-publicity it was clear that they believed they'd be able to book the sort of acts that would guarantee success merely from their chosen mega-acts being on the bill. Aside from the fact that a successful festival is more than just who's appearing, their dreams of getting those bands exposed their ignorance of the music biz at the most basic level - if it was only as simple as booking your chosen act(s) and then watching the cash roll in, we'd all being doing it. The reality is that the biggest acts want to limit their exposure to leave a feeling of people wanting more (and so ensure a demand for them into the future), and the promoters who they trust to pull off the sorts of shows those bands want to do and who have the bucket loads of cash to afford the bands fees also want to limit the bands exposure, to ensure that the tickets sell for what they've invested their cash into both now and in the future. To you people, haven't you realised that 'Wayne's World' was fiction? There is more to it than "if you book them they will come".

    There's also been some attempts at festivals and events which, from where I'm sat, didn't have good intentions. Anything which is using bullshit to create a false interest isn't going to pull off an event that people will be satisfied with. Here at eFestivals we often have the skills to spot this, and you won't find festivals where we've identified that bullshit listed here; on occasions, we even go so far as to pass on our concerns of these to competitors as we feel the integrity of the festivals industry is more important than anything else (sadly, they sometimes chose to ignore such warnings, perhaps influenced by payola cash waved in their direction). Thankfully, these charlatan events only account for a small number each year.

    Outside of those above, there's those who have the right ideas and the right skills, but whose plans just didn't capture the imagination of the paying public for a variety of reasons - from one angle it's just unlucky. But these need to review why they failed before trying again, as more of the same is likely to bring more of the same poor luck. Perhaps you simply weren't destined to run a festival after all - maybe it's time to move on?
  6. Neil

    getting a bit flash...?

    By Neil,

    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 Flash application of some sort, where the photos from a festival can be viewed as a slideshow, as well as categorised by band and the like within that. Despite days and days of searching and testing the plenty of in-theory suitable applets I could find, I never found one that was as flexible as I wanted it to be. In the end, I picked the one nearest to my requirements which also came with source code, and bought that. A mate was due to have a quick go at it to make the changes I wanted, and that would be that. Months later, for a variety reasons nothing has happened.

    This coming weekend is the first weekend of the year that eFestivals has people out covering a festival, so the deadline is here. I have to get something sorted by Monday, else I may as well forget it for this year.... I guess there could be some late nights coming up.
  7. Neil

    server tuning part 3

    By Neil,

    Yesterday was announcement & ticket day for Reading & Leeds festivals, and eFestivals had a new record for the number of users. There were around 40% more users than there were for the previous record, and (mostly) the servers coped better than they did for the previous record.

    There were still some issues tho. One of the servers that has been problematic over the last month didn't operate as it should, and led to things slowing down when it shouldn't have - the servers could and should have coped well and at a near-normal speed with the traffic that there was. That problematic server will be replaced in the next few days, and with some other temporary tweaks performance can be improved some more.

    I'm very confident that for Glastonbury tickets on Sunday things will cope much better than they did last night, particularly as I don't really see there being any more traffic for that than there was last night.
  8. Neil

    movin' on....

    By Neil,

    It's now nearly a year since I moved more into a back office role for eFestivals, and it's been pleasing to have the time to get many of the things done that have been put to the side for years simply because there's not been the time to do them without putting myself thru bad insomnia. It's been great to get a bit of my life back.

    Much of what's been done won't have been noticeable to anyone, and even many of the bits that are visible to website users will have probably passed many people by.

    But things are now starting to move on at a faster pace having cleared much of that backlog, and tho you can't see them yourselves just yet, much of that work is going to have a greater impact fairly soon. It finally feels like things are moving on.
  9. Neil

    finding my god

    By Neil,

    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 starts to become a nightmare to manage, if only due to having to remember each one and its purpose. So I've been trying to think of a name which would be suitable to encompass all possible uses of a second server.

    I don't fancy using the fairly standard 'www2' for a second server, and had been running various options thru my head without anything jumping out at me as particularly good ....so I thought about using a Greek mythological god, as there's a tradition of those being used to name servers. As I'm not particularly familiar with Greek gods, I googled for them and ended up on the wiki page which has a comprehensive listing.

    I'd been thinking that I'd pick a short name for easy convenience such as 'zeus', but there was one that jumped right out at me as so suitable that it just had to be used - Dionysus.

    According to Wiki, Dionysus is the "God of wine, parties/festivals, madness and merriment. He represents not only the intoxicating power of wine, but also its social and beneficial influences. His symbols are the grape vine, ivy, and thyrsus." .... what could be more suitable for a festivals website server?

    So a sub-domain dionysus.efestivals.co.uk is going to be created, and over the next few months the references to 'archive.efestivals.co.uk' and 'images.efestivals.co.uk' will be removed from eFestivals, with everything moved to the new dionysus.efestivals.co.uk sub-domain. If you happen to notice this sub-domain being used, you now know that it's genuine.
  10. Neil
    There's been a big fuss about flags this summer, with many people complaining that their enjoyment of acts at festivals have been spoilt by the huge number of people in front of them in the crowd with flags, blocking their view of the stage. They have a point - at times, particularly at Glastonbury's main stage, this long-running problem stepped very firmly into the realms of huge excess.

    Why do some people have these flags?
    At the most simple level, they have them because they think it's a fun thing to do, that it makes them different and special in some way. Except of course that with so many having flags, it doesn't make them different or special in any way.

    With a more purposeful reason, they have a flag so that their mates can find them within a crowd, and I can see that this would work. Yet in my 28 years of attending festivals I've always managed to locate my friends in a crowd without the need of flags - but then again, I am taller than most, so I guess that does make a difference. But even so, it's still not a difficult thing to do even in the biggest crowds if you've told each other where you'll be.

    And with little purpose? The modern disease as demonstrated by the likes of Facebook - "look at me, look at me". One day they'll realise that no one is looking, or that if they are they don't care.

    Why the fuss right now?
    It's the Reading and Leeds festivals this weekend, and they've taken the decision to ban flags.

    Melvin Benn, the man behind these festivals, recently talked about that decision (reported here), saying that "I'm doing everything I can to ban flags this year. For some reason those that buy a flag want to be closest to the stage." and that at Glastonbury (which Melvin also has involvement in running) fans complained about the view during Bruce Springsteen's headline set in particular. "You couldn't see the acts. The flags were everywhere. There have always been flags but not to the level that there has been. And the flags have become very long and tall.".

    So Melvin has reacted at Reading and Leeds with a ban, and says that he is also talking to Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis about introducing a ban there. All very worthy in the name of the paying customer. But....

    When is a flag not a flag?
    Melvin also said that some people were using flags to advertise goods.

    That's more than a little over-stating things I feel, as although there are indeed company or product branded flags to be seen amongst the other flags, they're there I feel not directly in the hands of the company involved, but simply because that flag is the one that a particular festival goer has because it's come into their hands somehow, quite possibly because the company involved was giving them away as a promotional item at some point - in fact, much like the promotional things done with Melvin's backing and for his company's financial benefit at some of the festivals he's involved with.

    For example, a certain drinks company gave away many hundreds of flags to festival goers earlier this summer, and they're bound to start being seen on poles in festival crowds sooner or later.

    Melvin said that some people were using flags to advertise goods - and it seems a rather strange thing to include when it's of no relevance to anyone's blocked view. And I wonder if this is the heart of the matter. :angry:

    When a festival organiser has taken a fat pocket of fifties from a drinks company for that drinks company to have the exclusive rights to sell their drinks to the festival attendees, and with the festival being broadcast all around the world, then that drinks company isn't going to be hugely pleased to see other drinks companies get better promotion - and for free rather than at huge expense - via their flags being seen on TV than that drinks sponsor is getting.

    Is this flag ban, at least in part, a ban on festival-goers' fun for the commercial benefit of the festival organiser and the festival's sponsors? Or is it only because people's views are getting spoilt?
  11. Neil
    I'm really pleased that I've succeeded in knocking together a comprehensive and free Android app for eFestivals.

    You can download it here:-
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nrgi.efestivals


  12. 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.
  13. Neil
    As some of you might be aware, eFestivals is committed to giving 1% of turnover (turnover, not profit) to charity, and our chosen charity is WaterAid. I've just given them another sizable donation (the second this year) as a result.

    Thanks goes to every user of eFestivals - without your support of eFestivals, this just wouldn't be possible.


    WaterAid is an international charity dedicated to helping people escape the stranglehold of poverty and disease caused by living without safe water and sanitation. http://www.wateraid.org.uk
  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

    I sleep all winter

    By Neil,

    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 with some stuff).

    The most recent additions/changes/upgrades on eFestivals are:-
    - the latest version of the chatroom software has been installed.
    - an upgrade to the line-ups software, to make it nicer to use.
    - several upgrades to the festivals listings, to make it nicer to use, more searchable, and to display some confirmed line-up info. There's still much more to add on this, time depending (I've moved onto other things for the moment).

    Several other projects have been started too, rather stupidly. They've taken more time to get part way than I expected them to take in total. For the moment, I've put these to the side.

    Coming very soon by the looks of things is a major-ish upgrade to the forums, member galleries and blogs ... when the new software for these things is released, there's some other tweaks for the forums planned, but you'll have to wait and see what exactly.

    And of course, there's eGigs to develop and upgrade too - and with that now having the staffing levels it needs (and having more gig reviews than any other UK website some weeks ), the time has very nearly come to properly promote eGigs on eFestivals - I didn't feel it was worth doing until eGigs was actually of a standard that people would want to revisit ... with the hit stats now starting to climb, as soon as a few minor-ish improvements have been made it'll be done.
  17. 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?
  18. 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!
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. Neil
    ... when everyone should be watching the footie, and defo not tuning into Radio 1 at 9pm for their show "In music we trust...", which tonight is titled "Radio 1's Ultimate Festival Guide" and will probably include yours truly blabbering on about festies.
  24. Neil
    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 behind it would sell, while other perhaps more worthy records wouldn't get a look in.

    eFestivals is aware that within the music & festivals websites market that similar payola has been going on for some time. Over the years we've sometimes received direct approaches to take money to big up an event (which is always refused), and occasionally we've been sent an email meant for an other publication which has shown that that other publication is taking money to falsely present a festival as more to their liking than is really the case.

    After last summer's awful weather, some previously successful events are this year suffering a downturn. It's not really surprising, as whatever fantastic attractions an event might have put on, it can be hard for attendees to walk away after a rain-soaked weekend stood ankle deep in mud thinking that they'd had a fantastic time and want to return. Because of that downturn, some promoters are understandably getting worried that their event is going to bomb out, and they have limited options on what they can do to help it sell. And payola is it.

    Be careful what you read and where you read it - there's people trying to take your cash using bullshit. Sometimes it's very obvious, where a site has "sponsored by" and then bigs up that thing within its content, with some even go as far as to suggest that their sponsors doings are the best thing since sliced bread - but luckily most people are too smart to fall for something so obvious. But behind the obvious there's often things far more deceptive.
  25. Neil
    "Boutique" is being applied to festivals attended by numbers from 500 to 50,000. So what does it mean?

    From Dictionary.com:-

    bou·tique [boo-teek]
    –noun
    1. a small shop or a small specialty department within a larger store, esp. one that sells fashionable clothes and accessories or a special selection of other merchandise.
    2. any small, exclusive business offering customized service: Our advertising is handled by a new Madison Avenue boutique.
    3. Informal. a small business, department, etc., specializing in one aspect of a larger industry: one of Wall Street's leading research boutiques.
    –adjective
    4. of, designating, or characteristic of a small, exclusive producer or business: one of California's best boutique wineries.


    As you can see, it means either "small" or "exclusive" or "customised". But "exclusive" or "customised" cannot be applied to any festival, as tickets are on sale to the general public, and attendees cannot customise the festival. So it means "small". Yet when "boutique is applied to festival of all size, it ceases to have any meaning, and just becomes marketing blurb - meaningless marketing blurb.

    If a festival is having to rely on mis-using a word to try and get the punters in, what does that say about that festival? At best it says nothing at all - after all, thru mis-use of the word its meaningless in the festivals marketplace - but at worst it says far more and nothing good.

    It says that a festival rates meaningless words above substance; it means that that festival will say anything to try and get the punters in, when their efforts would be better spent putting on something to get the punters in; it says that it's very likely that the festival is going to deliver something short of what you might hope.

    In a world full of shit and a music world full of hype it's always best to keep it real.
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