Weird Stuff & Art on Amazon!

Now my blogging has lapsed a bit recently, but I just had to share this with anyone who might stumble across this blog.

Amazon are now selling art!

Well a sculptor has used amazons create a listing page to advertise their wares.

Unfortunately they haven't supplied a thumbnail image, but they have a number of images on the listing page, so you'll have to click on the link.
metalgnu

Banksy Mural For Sale (includes Free House!)

He must be the most hyped modern artist in the UK since Tracey Emin. Banksy's roots are in Bristol and his artwork is found all around the city, on walls, buildings and even boats in the harbour!

Recently due to publicity around some high profile Gallery exhibitions his work has become very collectable, if not controversial! Rumours are that even Tom Cruise has been purchasing his work. Recent works have been sold in Sotheby's for as much as £102,000 for a canvas of his work!

Now £102,000 for a canvas might not be so great compared with the millions that are paid for the works of some artists, but you must admit it's a tidy sum! Well, it must have rang the cash registers for the owners of a house that Banksy had painted a 25ft x 6ft mural on quite early in his 'career'. This is a rare example of his freeform work, he moved into using stencils shortly after this work it's believed. The current owners are proposing to set up a street art gallery in an adjoining derelict print works with the proceeds of the sale.

Apparently they had looked at selling it a few times but decided to reject offers that were made when they found out the buyers wished to cover the work. Maybe they should be public funding for this sort of thing, maybe a blue plaque and a listed building status?


Here's a couple of pics of his other work in Bristol
Courtesy of Visit Bristol

On the side of the Thekla, bristols floating music venue

The Mild Mild West, Cheltenham Road.





For more details of the forthcoming sale and exhibition of his work check out the Red Pepper Gallery in Devon.

Please also check his own website for his comments about the prices his work is going for at auction.

Here's the BBC gallery of Banksy art work snapped by the public in London

My favorite all time Banksy Art has got to be the rat he installed in the natural history museum.

His latest book is definitely worth a look or two

Travel Tax Petition Madness

Peter Roberts, from Telford, Shropshire, a member of the Association of British Drivers (ABD) since 2001. Created the largest ever e-petition yet on the Downing Street website. Ok, it's a short history as the No10 website only introduced e-petitons in November 06.

The petition has been backed by an almost viral email campaign verging on Spam. As of time of posting over 1million people have put their name to the petition as a result of emails such as this -

"Sarah Kennedy was on about this proposed car tax scheme on the radio,
apparently there is only one month left to register your objection to the
'Pay as you go' road tax.

The petition is on the 10 Downing St website but they didn't tell anybody
about it. Therefore at the time of Sarah's comments only 250,000 people had
signed it so far and 750,000 signatures are required to stop them introducing it.

This is legit... from 10 Downing Street 's website.

Once you've given your details (you don't have to give your full
address, just house number and postcode will do), they will send you an
email with a link in it. Once you click on that link, you'll have signed
the petition.

Democracy in action?
The government's proposal to introduce road pricing will mean you having to
purchase a tracking device for your car and paying a monthly bill to use
it. The tracking device will cost about £200 and in a recent study by the
BBC, the lowest monthly bill was £28 for a rural florist and £194 for a
delivery driver. A non working mother who used the car to take the kids to
school paid £86 in one month.

On top of this massive increase in tax, you will be tracked. Somebody will
know where you are at all times. They will also know how fast you have been
going, so even if you accidentally creep over a speed limit in time you can
probably expect a Notice of Intended Prosecution with your monthly bill.

If you care about our freedom and stopping the constant bashing of the car
driver, please sign the petition on No 10's new website (link below) and
pass this on to as many people as possible.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk Then click on view petitions.

So you see it has gained plenty of support, but is it democratic to only formulate the argument against and not the argument for, using scare tactics to get a knee-jerk response from the British Public?

The proposals aren't new, and have been discussed openly. This over reaction seems to be based upon the publication of the "Eddington Report" a study commissioned by the government in 2005. This report looked into the possibilities for road pricing, road building, rail and airport investment, as well as the planning system. This report was published in November 2006 and was widely reported on at the time.

The purpose of this petition organised by a minority using scare tactics is quite shameful as it does nothing to discuss or highlight the problems we face if we do nothing.

PROFESSOR DAVID BEGG, FORMER GOVERNMENT ADVISER
If we don't do national road pricing, and we want to keep congestion constant in Britain over the next 20 years, we'd have to build five times the amount of roads the government are planning.

EDMUND KING, RAC FOUNDATION
We believe road pricing on 10% of the network at certain times would help.

SIR PAITRCK BROWN, INDEPENDENT TRANSPORT COMMISSION
We ought to be saying the technology is available for road charging, let's get on with it. Politicians in every party are running scared.

JAMES HOOKHAM, DEPUTY CHIEF EXECUTIVE, FREIGHT TRANSPORT ASSOCIATION
Protecting freight flows along our key Trade Routes should be a priority for government that cannot wait for the introduction of road pricing or the other recommendations in the Eddington Transport Study.

No. 10
doing nothing would lead to a 25% increase in congestion "in less than a decade".

Here's a link to the petition which is in favour of taking action to stop uncontrolled traffic growth, just to provide a balance
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/TRACK-CARS/

Bear in mind that by choosing to do nothing is something you may regret in years to come, and that in doing so you will be condemning this country to traffic chaos. We are a small country with a very poor public transport infrastructure, economically we can't shy away from the difficult decisions that need to be made now, before it's too late! The Eddington study said charging could benefit the economy by £28bn a year.

Here's a couple of other links that are worth checking for a more balanced version of what road charging may involve and why it may be needed.


BBC 1st December - some good links to other reporting of the eddington report

The first news report of the petition as it reached the 230,000 mark on the 11th January

Roads petition breaks a million - BBC News on the story of the petition breaking the million

Added on Monday 12th Feb -
It looks like the weight of the petition has caused the government to admit "it was important to have a proper debate on the subject and consider a range of views"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6352957.stm

Also have been informed the Sunday Post did a rather good job of reportingand investigating the false claims around this petition using this headline-

More than one million sign “nonsense” petition

E-mail lies spark
road tax protest

Does Anything Work on Vista?

I've just received a warning that a major piece of software I run to maintain my business will not run on Vista. There is a promise that this will be remedied within a month, but it also comes with a warning - "based on our experience with Vista so far, we would not recommend the upgrade without serious testing as it appears to break many applications that may impact your business."

Now, having looked about on the web it doesn't seem many of the smaller software designers were ready for Vista and were ready for this operating system.

Vista also isn't compatible with older pc's, requiring huge amounts of ram and blisteringly fast processors just to open a folder on the computer, nevermind having any ram left to process the data!

It will be interesting to see what the business community make of it, especially as many programs they have used successfully for years will no longer work and will need to be reprogrammed. I wonder if any one has ever counted the number of programs in use around the world that will have to be almost totally re-written for Vista? I'm not saying that reprogramming should be unnecessary, but having had no prior warning of the OS has meant many programmers having to start from scratch again with a OS that hasn't had all it's bugs knocked out of it. And we know they're still knocking bugs out of XP, so we're used to the fact that we've got to download patches for the lifetime of it's use until the next OS is designed!

C'mon Bill! Get your Sh*t Together!

The Hours - Thekla, Bristol January 28th 2007

The night started very well! On arriving in the car park just outside the ol' tub that is the Thekler Social, discovered that the payment meter was out of order so - Free Parking! Now for those not familiar with Bristol premier floating venue, (is there another venue afloat?), it has recently had a bit of a refurb and a lick of paint. The white paint on the superstructure gives it a little class, though this illusion is shattered as you begin your journey down into the hull and your feet struggle with the stickiness of the floor. Maybe it's time they hired a few cabin boys to 'swab the decks' on occasion! The layout and decor is pretty minimal, with the stage at the for'ard end of the vessel, a bench down each side of the dancefloor. Further back is the bar, with a seating area opposite that could probably comfortably accommodate 20 people around tables. back fiurther still are the stairs to the exit/entrance and the toilets, or should they be called the heads? There is also a gallery level, with a little seating and a balcony to lean nonchalantly over or sit and dangle your feet over. Though beware, if you do dangle unshoed feet, the people underneath will be tempted to tickle them!

The first band, well they weren't quite a band, just a 2piece on guitar and bass who started by apologising for the absence of the other band members, and didn't stop apologising for this until they left the stage. In their defence they did state they were asked to do the gig at short notice and warbled on about living in London, but being currently homeless. It was delightful to listen to their apologetic ramblings, but only as it was a break in their tedious art-school music. I don't really know how how to further describe the brand of art house music they were playing and it wasn't exactly offensive or driving me to any emotional conclusion, just a pleasant kind of noise. Didn't exactly inspire me to find out more though.

The real support were called The Master Chaynjis a Bristol Based three piece, compromising of a Too-Tall Bass Player, suitably coupled with a double bass, a violinist looking like she's just stepped out of a parisian cafe circa 1957, and an elastic faced front man strumming along on guitar with a very rich, almost operatic in depth, voice. Now this band were impressive, I don't tend to seek out Avante Garde music, but this was a fine example of the genre, love/hate lyrics delivered powerfully and with humour. At points the band did remind me a little of Nick Cave in his Murder Ballads phase with their darkness in lyric and almost jingly jangly rhythm. Your certainly going to enjoy seeing them, I hope they do play a few of the smaller festivals this summer! I think they delivered the best description of their music themselves - B-Movies set to music.

Well, the night is wearing on, people are starting to get a little restless and the dancefloor is filling, the venue looks close to capacity and The Hours arrive on stage to a very warm applause from the eager audience. The first thing that grabs your attention in their blistering audio onslaught, is how tight they are and that they look, and sound, as if they have been playing together for years. They have been described as the old new band due to the fact that they are in their mid thirties but seem so new and fresh. The music was great, the banter light hearted and witty. At one point about 3numbers in the earlier observation of how light it was in the venue was repeated as the house lights were still on at pre-gig levels, he did keep it quite polite but it didn't get any response from whoever was responsible for lighting directions, and his bitterness about this didn't show until after a call from the audience of "house lights down, stage lights up", it was not until they started the next tune that the LD got back to the lighting board and complied with the request and was then applauded by the crowd. It was a great set and a good night out. The leaving the stage after 10 numbers meant the encore was predictable, especially due to them not having played their big hit - Ali In The Jungle, and their roadie resetting guitars on stands on stage.

The encore started with a little talk by about "serious stuff" but due to crowd muppets calling out "zombie" after it was mentioned about rising from the dead,but not in a zombie way, the little serious bit turned into a zombie jam, which just showed how easily these boys work together and can adapt to the situation. Finishing the set was a blistering rendition of Ali which gave everyone a good buzz to go home with. Tomorrow the members of the audience will remember "how quick can you get back up?", but will be wondering why their shoes are sticky.
I'm wondering if they'll ever play a venue so small again after their upcoming album release.

Here's the set list for tonights show, straight from the sweaty roadies hand!

• Murder or Suicide


• Moment


• Love You More


• Breathe


• Need To Know


• Icarus


• Back When


• Narcissus Road


• People Say


• Big Black Hole


Encore


• Car Crash


• Ali

My final thoughts on the night - How easy would it be to sort out the ballast on that rusty tub so it didn't list at such a crazy angle.

Their album is released in February, order yours from Amazon!

A Moan About Amazon.co.uk

I've just spent hours creating listings on amazon for about a dozen or so audiobooks. Now when I try to actually search for them now I have done the hard work of adding them to the catalogue, complete with picture and all attributes such as running time, unabridged, etc, etc, they do not show in searches! Not only that I can't add them to my affiliate store to provide a nice easy link for customers to browse items I have in stock. Now I can comprehend that amazon sucks on occasion, but configuring a search engine should be one of the simpler tasks of managing a website, yet amazon just seem to get it spectacularly wrong on an irritatingly high number of occasions.

I'm now going to have to do lots of painstaking work to list these on ebay. If I did think it worthwhile creating listings on Amazon for them I would, but unless they can sort out their search engine, titles like these might as well go on ebay. After all, I don't work for amazon, even though as a seller I do contribute to their profits, and I am not going to create listings for items that will not show in their search. And it's quite annoying adding lots of attributes such as running time, format, number of tapes, if amazon aren't going to include this info in the newly created listing. Also, what's the point in uploading photo's for these new listings when I have yet to see an amazon listing for an audiobook that actually displays an image.

Here's a link to the ones on amazon (note no images) Amazon Audiobooks
And here's one to those I have put on ebay. Ebay Audio books

Audio Books - CD, Tape/cassette or Download?

I've just taken delivery of a staggering number of Audio Books and am amazed at the prices these command and the lack of availability on Amazon. In over 90 editions I checked only 5 were offered secondhand and most were only available from Amazon on a 2-3week delivery, and a sourcing fee! Now most experienced Amazon users know that when they advertise a long delivery time like that their ability to actually source it are about nil, and they will just keep extending that deadline until you cancel the order.

The situation doesn't seem very different whether it's tape or CD, though it does seem to dominate the unabridged editions from Chivers, Isis, Soundings and BBC AudioBooks. But, what's the most popular way that people listen to audio books? My Girl Friend prefers tapes as it's much easier to keep the "page" your on. I know some cd players have a similair function but it's not a common one on most cd players. MP3 is something I prefer as I don't mind shuffling back and forth and it's quite easy if the recording is broken into handy chunks of chapters or 30minute blocks.

In an increasingly digital world the CD and Tape versions of the audiobook will certainly demise in popularity as more people get used to listening to mp3 players and more used to operating them. There will always be the people that have seemed stuck in the prehistoric technology era, the sort of person who'd be much happier with a horse and cart than a car. These people will probably ensure that the tape market survives but I predict a demise of the CD within the next few years.

On a different note, of the Tapes I checked I found about 1 in 5 didn't exist on the amazon uk database. What really surprised me was the half dozen i checked didn't exist on the .com site either. I expected to have practice some shifty practices to be able to list them as items that are listed on .com, and a similair listing cannot be created on the uk site. (There is a way round this though ;) It's long winded so I won't cover that here!)Imagine my surprise when they weren't listed anywhere on the internet, not even bookfinder, bookbutler or addall could find them! The big drawback to this is that creating a new listing is just as time consuming as listing an item on ebay! So have only done 2 so far! Results below!

Well they would be, but the links aren't showing the scans I uploaded yet! Maybe there's a timescale before the images can be syndicated?






Do you think I'm being a bit optimistic in charging that much?