I, along with a significant minority of tech geeks, am always interested in the 'latest, great thing. I've always loved Avatars and web personal representations and any great new service that helps you 'add-on' to your own sites. Avatars and virtual presenters are getting better in beta SitePal is on the curve of that. Web 2.0 has brought up some amazing sites' Flickr does it for photos. Del.icio.us does it for links. There are many great Web 2.0 apps and TechCrunch keeps an eye on them. There is a great article called Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without which lets you right in.

I would say Flickr and Del.icio.us are essential, although Del.icio.us is under pressure at mo (i'm testing out Shadows to replace it at the moment.

My big recent news is that I bought a PC laptop. I'm really enjoying it although I am choking on humble pie :-)

I am totally enjoying vlogging. I use iTunes to watch them. I don't have a video iPod but I do have a friend with one so I have seen them at that size. Clark Saturn's Vlog Digest is a great place to start. Really like 'Chasing Windmills', 'Channel Frederator', 'Happy Tree Friends' and 'Daily Planet TV'.

Good directories at Blip.tv, mefeedia.org, vlogdir.com.

There is something here for everyone. Personal media IS punk Rock :-)

A joyous day with glorious sunshine, momentous decisions and a real sense of change and freedom. We are being visited by Chris Love Grocer and family today and all is good. Am enjoying the Alan Bennet Diaries and he has inspired me to read more poetry. The children are being a delight and the kittens are all over the place. Life is good. New Ricky Gervais podcast today and my new music for the day is The Mahavishnu Orchestra live in Boston in 1972.

Today is the start of my regular blogging. I need order in my life and part of my 'new regime' is to blog each day and listen to a piece of music that I already own yet have seldom or never listened to.

As I type I am listening to King Crimson Live at The Summit Studios on 3rd Dec 1972 which I downloaded recently from Bootcity. Its a concert played in a studio for the benefit of US radio station KFML. It captures this almost perfect band at the height of their powers in a pristine recording. I was astounded and delighted to see that they do the Pharoah Sanders classic 'The Creators Has a Master Plan' as the finale of the show.

This four piece Crimson line-up is a brutal and beautiful unit with power dexterity and wit. Mel Collins' (Sax and flute) playing is awesome and so sourced from the muscularity and technique of the sixties masters that this 'joining of the dots' is a joy. Fripps guitar is fluid and economical and the rhythm section are two beings as one. This is neither Rock nor Jazz but somewhere between the two and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The 'official' legacy of this astounding band is the live album 'Earthbound' which was recorded live to cassette from the desk. This recording betters that album in sound quality and performance and was previously unknown to me and so comes as a total delight. I urge anyone interested in serious music to check Bootcity and Lossless Legs where there is a wealth of amazing music and music fans awaiting.

So day one of 2006 is off to a good start despite a staggering hangover and a casual 2pm rise! A happy New Year to you all - onwards and upwards :-)

I am a music hog. I love to find a new sound space and then immerse myself in it. The more obscure and profuse the artist the better (with the obvious proviso that real music is what is being produced - not for me the James Last ghetto). I have extensive collections of Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Merzbow and Throbbing Gristle.

More recently I have succumbed to Frank Zappa and via downloads have been able to indulge in a retrospective overview of Jandek ( Sterling Smith, for it Jandek is he, requires a post of his own he is so enigmatic). My latest 'investigation' (fad or indulgnce fit equally) is aided in no small part by http://www.archive.org/audio and its awesome Grateful Dead live recordings archive.

As with all 'deep' artists dipping into the Dead involves reviewing websites and forums for perspective and recommendations. There are 2995 live concerts listed for the Dead at archive.org. Most are downloadable and so a guide of some sort is required. Dead tape traders are legendary in music circles for their de(a)dication and opinions and so to find such a community online and happy to share is a great joy.

My love of the Dead isn't new, I saw them at wembley on halloween 1990 and have surfed many of their albums but the live shows are where the magic is.

Concerts are referred by date and tracks of particular greatness can be traced through significant live versions. Pure bliss for an anorak like me. So I am living to a soundtrack of psychedelic americana and I'm loving it. I have my favourites which I'll point you to here

One of the most celebrated is Cornel 8th May 1977 my current favourite is The Graet American Music Hall 13th Aug 75 and I have really enjoyed Rotterdam 5th May 1972 and there are a couple of British beauties in The Bickershaw Festival May 7th 1972 and Newcastle City Hall on the 11th April 1973.

All of these downloads are free and veery well annotated and reviewed by fans.

There are many, many bands with free gigs to download from here includung Godspeed You Black Emporer, Fugazi, Hayseed Dixie, Acid Mothers Temple, Dub Trio and The Butthole Surfers.

When you explore a place like archive.org the Interweb feels like a wonderful thing.

Beginning a blog is so much harder than setting one up. Lots goes on that I could jot down but i never seem to find the time and I'm not sure that anyone is reading or cares.
I am working hard on the Powersteppers album. Am designing a flyer for a Shaka session in Leeds in October and have just started reading Dostoyevskys 'Crime and Punishment'. As usual with me things are all over the place. Am really enjoying the Led Zeppellin live DVD and have been on a hardcore punk binge with 'The Decline of Western Civilisation part 1' Penelope Spheeris' documentary on the early West Caost Hardcore scene, 'Another State of Mind' doc about a 1982 tour by Youth Brigade and Social Distortion across the US which is hilarious. Have also been listening to loads of post-81 UK punk as a result of the mighty fine 'Burning Britain' book which Ian Glasper has just put out. Got a brilliant Blitz CD of early singles and rarities on the fine Captain Oi label. In a not so punk vein i got a very nice Junior Delgado comp on Trojan and as always am downloading old school Hip Hop and Disco fairly constantly.
I am going to try and keep this going this time so lets hope its worth it :-)

This is the first message that I am posting in our very own inhouse blog maker.

Life is a habit, or rather life is a succession of habits.
Habit then is the generic term for the countless treaties concluded between the countless subjects that constitute the individual and their countless correlative objects.
The periods of transition that separate consecutive adaptations ... represent the perilous zones in the life of the individual, dangerous, precarious, painful, mysterious and fertile, when for a moment the boredom of living is replaced by the suffering of being ...
A quote paraphrasing Samuel Beckett