Host Rant

Grrrrr - The joy that is my hosting company - Here's the latest in my attempt to cancel my hosting for a dead domain...

I already have an outstanding ticket, which has been closed - TICKET ID: XXXXXX

I have been trying to cancel my hosting package for this domain, which is no longer being used. I was told that someone would get in touch with me but, instead, I received an email invoice of £72 for another year.

What part of 'I want to cancel my hosting' is a problem here?

I have tried to phone up and I spent over 10 minutes on hold - Thank you very much - That's another pound you owe me!

I fully expect my hosting package for the XXX domain to be cancelled and my money returned to me within seven days or I shall be taking all of my business somewhere else and I shall take up the transaction, which I regard as illegal, with my credit card company and the appropriate customer bodies.

Not only did I not choose to renew the package but I explicitly told you NOT to renew it. Your website is far from clear what to do in the event of wanting hosting to lapse. It's very clear with domain names. I don't understand why I can't just cancel the hosting service I have online.

I have many domains registered with you and I have, for a long time, been a satisfied customer, but this conduct is, quite frankly, inexcusable. You have intentionally made it extremely difficult to cancel your hosting packages and your telephone lines are not particularly well staffed. For an online service provider I expect to manage my services ONLINE!

(and breathe....)

Found Bear

Much Sadness...

Return to Goa

Back around 1995 / 1996, two albums ignited an interest in electronic music in me that opened up a whole new world of possibilities. One of these albums was Paul Oakenfold's Goa Mix. While not strictly an album, I had a couple of old bootlegged cassettes knocking around for a while of what I still think to this day was probably one of the greatest DJ mix albums of all time.

The mix was originally aired on Radio 1 during the Radio 1 Essential Mix programme and it was never actually released as a product due to copyright issues. Well, 15 years later and (with a few slight adjustments) the mix has been redone and is now available in iTunes (and I'm sure, all good record stores). This is truly a seminal mix album, taking the Indian influenced psychedelic Goa Trance sound of the mid 90s underground scene and mixing it up with a selection of classical and film pieces. The two key featured artists on the album are Vangelis, through heavy use of music (and samples) from Blade Runner, and Man With No Name, whose first album 'Moment of Truth' was the second of the albums I mentioned at the beginning of the post.

What makes this mix so eminently listenable, other than the obvious nostalgia trip, is that the mix of styles means that the music, although heavy at times, always feels part of a bigger piece and never drives on too long as many dance mixes can do, there's always a contrast which enhances each element, never clearer is that shown than in the transition between the Blade Runner main title (complete with Harrison Ford voiceover) and Man With No Name's classic 'Floor Essence'.

The package on offer here doesn't stop with the mix itself though, on top of the excellent mix each individual track is included in it's entirety. This not only gives you a running time around 7 hours but allows you to appreciate how the mix is constructed. I remember fondly, desperately trying to track down several of these tracks during my brief time spinning decks 5 years later. At around £7.99, this is an absolute bargain.

Back & Moved

I’ve been a faithful Apple boy for many years now but once in a while Apple do something that I, as a user, find monumentally stupid or personally immensely annoying. One of these things was the new Apple TV (which is cheap but sucks as you can’t sync music to it anymore - the sole purpose I bought the old one!) A second of these things is that in the new version of iLife there is no upgrade to iWeb. iWeb has many shortcomings; but it has advantages in ease of use; anyway it seems that it’s moving toward the end of it’s life. I assume that Apple will eventually replace it with some kind of online service to enable blogging from iPads and iPhones and stuff but, until then, I have moved this blog over to blogger.

If you’ve subscribed to my old RSS feed then that will stop working, so resubscribe using one of the links on this site! Welcome to the other side.

REDISCOVERED GEMS: Vibrator

Every now and then, something pops onto your iPod which prompts you to stop the track and play the whole album again. This happened to me today and I rediscovered a classic album, ‘Vibrator’, by Terrence Trent D’arby (He since converted and now goes by the name Sanada Maitreya).

This is, in my opinion, one of those few albums which is perfect; the quality of the instrumentation and production is simply second to none and the lyrics are of a quality that is very rarely seen (not just in modern music, but ever).

I’m very aware though that, when you rediscover little gems like these, that you are always affected by the associations that the music has for the time in your life that it represents; particularly when that music is from your teenage years when everything seems to have more significance and seems so new as you fight to gain your independence as a person in your own right. Music is an important part of this process but, with this association, comes perhaps a ‘rose-tinted’ view on the music. This particular album brings back memories of long hot summer days hanging around aimlessly with Bill, George and John H amongst others and preparing for John H’s legendary parties at his parents spare house.

With this in mind, when I find these gems I’m going to post them up here; please give them a listen and write back a comment to the blog - tell me what you think of the album. Are these albums really hidden gems or just a musical association to our formative years?

Spotify link