So, how do I listen to my music while I’m working? MediaMonkey doesn’t work too well in WINE, it’s OK in Parallels but running a 2nd OS solely for music isn’t ideal…

For a while I used Spotify. I was using it ‘wrongly’ apparently though as I used to listen to albums I already owned rather than for discovering new music. They have recently limited the free version to only play a track a maximum of 5 times so my use has been severely affected.

I’ve been hunting for a method to play music on my MacBook Pro that doesn’t involve iTunes. Someone mentioned Airfoil for streaming music across a network which sounded OK but I would have to physically go to the computer to change tracks / playlists… Then I discovered MonkeyTunes which, put simply, allows you to use Apple’s Remote app on iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad to have full control of MediaMonkey. Sweet!

So, now I have my MacBook Pro running as an Airfoil ‘speaker’, the windows machine running as the Airfoil source and I use my iPhone to control it all. I can also use my Android phone as the remote too, or my iPad.

Another bonus is I can install the free Airfoil speaker app onto my old iPhone 3G and stream it to that if I wanted to connect that to my stereo or the dock when I have guests and the MBP isn’t loud enough.

I’m pretty chuffed! So even with iOS 4.3 allowing HomeSharing of iTunes library, I can still use MediaMonkey for my music AND have all the benefits (and more) of that being shared across handheld devices and computers!

The only thing that annoys me is I didn’t discover all this 2 years ago…

Well, as the title suggests, working at home this way has it’s pro’s and it’s con’s…

The Pro’s

Mrs-MaFt works shifts so child-care is relatively easy. If she’s working then I do the school/nursery runs and catch up on my work later in the evening once it’s passed bed o’clock for the kids.

If I’m not too well I can still get work done without worrying about infecting my fellow co-workers with the lergy. With an office job I would lose a whole day even if I would have been well enough to get some work done.

I could come to work hungover and no one would know.

I could come to work naked and no one would know.

I could come to work naked and hungover and no one would know.

If I lie in (unlikely, I have kids!) it takes me 12 seconds to commute down the stairs and open my laptop.

I can nip out to the local Farm Shop, Morrisons or Town during the day and miss the busy times.

I can listen to punk rock and metal all day long instead of the awful pop ‘music’ pumped out by Radio 1 and Galaxy (the requisite ‘entertainment’ in all the non-home jobs I’ve had)

Courier deliveries result in actually having your item when they deliver it rather than having until the weekend and then driving a 15 mile round trip to pick it up from the depot.

The Cons

It can be all too easy to waste too many hours dicking about on eBay or doing too much research on a gadget I simply can’t afford to buy.

People assume that, because you’re at home, you’re not busy and can jump to their every whim.

No ‘snow days’.

It can get quite lonely at times. A lazy, fluffy black cat and a handful of cyber-colleagues on instant messenger software just doesn’t match real, actual physical company.

On a morning if I have Mini-Mrs-MaFt then, generally, she will be watching CBeebies. That itself isn’t a bad thing – it keeps her entertained and she practises her dancing when there’s some music on. However, as pointed out by ‘Mrs TheBoyAndMe‘, it usually results in having “please tell me, please tell me, pleeeease teeeeell meeee your name” stuck in your head for too many hours.

It’s too easy to get lazy. Sometimes after Mrs-MaFt has taken Mini-Mrs-MaFt I can’t be bothered switching from CBeebies to Kerrang! Radio on the tellybox.

In Conclusion

Working at home has it’s pro’s and it has it’s cons. However, I wouldn’t change it for anything! Following various people on twitter and general day to day dealings with other real people it would seem I am in a minority – you see, I actually enjoy my job and the work I do. I work with some great people spread out about the world in various different time-zones yet still get time with my family. A lot of jobs can’t offer that flexibility – if I had to commute more than a staircase away then that would, straight away, remove 2 hours of available time from the day. And I’d like to keep those those 2 hours, thanks!

Postscript:

Well, in case you were wondering what brought this post about, it was the result of a brief conversation on twitter with @TheBoyAndMe. Click the image to the left to see the whole thing. It’s a quite tenuous link once you actually read it, but that’s what made me think of writing the post! Having CBeebies songs in your head is definitely a ‘con’ of working at home!

* Top left image from MediaMonkey

Anyway, this random musical ‘knowledge’ helped pass the time on more than one occasion. The premise was simple – say a few words from a Green Day song and the other person would have to guess the name of the song. Because both Neil and I were sad/anal (delete as applicable) we were able to dig up such random lines as “silhouette of your dreams” and the other, after some thought would correctly says “1,000 Hours”. See, it was fun and a useful time killer. One other time killer I remember was twanging elastic bands at ‘Lars’ so called because he looked like Tim Armstrong from Rancid. Yes, I know, that doesn’t make sense but we always used to get Tim and Lars from Rancid muddled up…

So, the years went on, and the size of my record collection grew fairly steadily and the number of bands I had seen live grew too. It got harder and harder to keep track of all the great music I had access to and, gradually, I started realising that I couldn’t sing along with every word at a gig. Initially this threw me somewhat; I felt like an imposter, a ‘kid’ who’d just discovered this ‘new’ band (that had been around for years) and had gone to see them live solely because they saw the name drop in Kerrang! magazine. Surely a real fan would know all the lyrics? Looking back I think I was just as bad as the kid who went to the gig on Kerrang!’s orders – I was too concerned about knowing all the words and band history so I could ‘look’ like I was a better fan; that, perhaps, I was more deserving of the hallowed ticket than the other people in the sweaty circle pit.

Eventually I had seen so many bands and owned so many albums that the number of times I didn’t know the words far outgrew the number of times I did. I just got used to not knowing it all, to be totally honest I didn’t even attempt to try and know it all. It just wasn’t as important. Don’t get me wrong, I love my physical CD collection primarily because I love reading the liner notes and the lyrics sheets – but I no longer remember them all. There are some bands that I ‘grew up with’ such as Therapy?, Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Terrorvision, Metallica, Megadeth etc who’s lyrics and random facts I can still sometimes recall but anything after 1998 I struggle with…

Fifteen years ago if I had gone to a gig not knowing the bands entire back-catalogue I would likely have come away feeling a bit short-changed. In 2001 I saw The Offspring supported by A and AFI. For some reason I hated AFI; I think partly because I’d only heard one of their older albums before they went sort of ‘gothic’ and partly because I didn’t know any songs to sing along to. Today, they are one of my favourite bands and would love the chance to go back to 2001 and see them again and actually enjoy the music without being so strung up on knowing the words! On the opposite, more recent end of the spectrum last year I went to see Paramore at the Sheffield Arena along with 11,999 other people – a band who I would class as being one of my favourites at the moment. I have all of their albums but seeing them live I could genuinely only sing along fully to a small number of their songs. It was a great gig though, very tight as a band, great performance and visuals and simply awesome music. The day after that we went to see Demon Hunter at The Well in Leeds (a tiny little back room – there were about 60 of us!). I only own one of their albums and knew about 5 of the songs they played. Did it bother me? Nope. It was probably one of the best, most intimate gigs I’ve been to in my life. So, I couldn’t sing a long to every song but I got to actually enjoy the music, have my ear drums pummelled and have a brilliant night out with my mate and my brother.

So, has my love of music faded? No, certainly not. Has my method of appreciation changed? Oh yes! I can actually enjoy the music and the whole album without worrying about the bands history or line-up changes or wanting to know every single word to the song. If I go see a band live I do my utmost to simply enjoy them and have fun. Who cares if I know the words or not – I’m not 15 anymore, I have far more pressing things to worry about!

Anyway, if you’re interested here’s an excerpt:

“but god does it feel so good… to steal it all away from you now. and if you could then you know you would. cause god it just feels so… it just feels so good.”

i’m ashamed to say that, although i’m a believer in Jesus Christ and i claim him as my God, when i wrote those lyrics i wasn’t addressing him. i was using his name casually. in vain, to be blunt. if you know much about the Christian religion (which i’m not too fond of addressing my faith as), you’ll probably know that one of the ten commandments is “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your God in vain”… it goes on to say, “…for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” As a believer in Christ, that last part scares the hell out of me. i don’t want to be held accountable for being the cause of so many people using his name in vain. you don’t have to believe in what i believe and no one in Paramore is ever going to go around forcing our faith into people’s lives… but believer or not, i might have led some of ya’ll to believe that i take my saviour lightly. and i don’t.

Read the full post including the background for the song here: http://paramoreband.livejournal.com/31376.html

Recently I’ve bought a few MP3 albums via iTunes, Amazon and Play – ones for which I simply couldn’t get a physical CD (eg “It’s A Life” by de Heideroosjes and “Live in SoHo” by Linkin Park) or where the digital version was ridiculously cheap (“Forget and Not Slow Down” by Relient K – $3.99 [£2.60]!!)

So, here is my dilemma: There are a few albums I want to buy but physical storage is an issue. I like to have something physical to hold, I like to read the booklet / liner notes, I like to have something I can re-rip to MP3 should my hard drive decide to pack up. Hence I like to own a physical CD. On the flip side, a digital download requires no extra physical storage space (although I would need to back up these files), they are available straight away (no need to wait for Royal Mail) and are generally slightly cheaper. And therein lies my problem – they are only slightly cheaper; if at all! Sometimes it is cheaper to get the physical CD! We’re talking pence here, though, not pounds. For example, the new Paramore album “Brand New Eyes” (which is on Spotify) and AFI album “Crash Love” are both around £8 for digital download or physical CD. What should I do?! Do I take up more space to physically store a CD but then get the added bonus of having the liner notes to read or do I save space and download at the sacrifice of not physically owning anything? So, tell me, What Would Jesus Do?!

NB: I started writing this aaaaaaages ago – sorry for the delay in posting it!

I had the pleasure of receiving Guest Passes for Leeds Festival for this past weekend. Due to family / home stuff I was only able to make it for one day – thankfully I picked the one day of the weekend when it stayed dry! I set off about half an hour later than planned to go pick up my mate, Shaun, from Wrose. However, I thought it would be a wise move to phone him to confirm his house number and road – I knew roughly where he lived but wasn’t 100% certain. It’s a good job really as I’d completely forgotten that he moved house about 4 months ago to Pudsey…

So, anyway, we finally got there after a mix up between J45 on the M1 and J45 on the A1(M) and after exchanging out tickets for the wrist bands headed through to the guest area. Wow, flushing toilets and picnic benches to sit at! Needless to say we were impressed! The first band wasn’t on until 12 so we wandered around the site to get our bearings. It didn’t take too long so we both decided to buy a new belt each from the bargain bucket at one of the stalls and grab some money from the cash machine to pay for them…

OK, so, first up on the Main Stage we had Kids In Glass Houses from Wales. I’d only recently heard of these after asking Punktastic Paul on Twitter for some new bands to listen to. They were great on Spotify and great live! One of the best festival openers I’ve seen. They drew quite a big crowd too for so early in the day but they certainly deserved it!

We then headed up to the BBC1/NME tent for In Case Of Fire who looked rather neat and tidy in their matching red shirts and black armbands.They were alright to listen to but some of the songs sounded a bit samey and I never really ‘got’ why some bands have a uniform… In fact even Shaun said to me that if I ever said that we (seventyseventimes) should have a uniform then he would quit!

Next up we headed to the Festival Republic tent and caught a bit of The Magistrates (I think that was their name) – not really my cup of tea but I could see why people would like their disco/rock/pop kinda sound. Anyway, by this point I wash hungry so we headed for a pint and a burger in the Guest Area – much less queuing time!

It was soon time to teach Shaun how awesome Australians could be with the fantastic The Living End. Not only do these guys play great music (punk-rockabilly is the easiest way to explain!) but they put on an amazing performance too! This was the first time I’d seen a bottle-neck slid used that was not only still attached to the bottle but also still full of beer – although the guitar tech wasn’t pleased to have to clear all that up… The upright bass also makes for good entertainment value with various spins and an extra platform to stand on. You may be able to guess, but I was blown away by The Living End!

Another bit of wandering round, past the ladies urinals and we found The Teeth playing at the BBC Introduces stage. An obscure, quirky, synth-pop band in matching reflective silver jackets (uniforms again!) that was actually strangely addictive! They had the best line of the day too with: “our bassist has two children; that means he’s had ful sex at least twice”.

Next stop was the Alternative Stage which ended up being the comedy tent for over half of the day. We saw a string of three comedians who were all very, very good. Doc Brown, a rapper-come-comedian, had a great mix of rap and comedy (rather unsurprisingly) and had a very good set. Holly Walsh was fantastic at ad-libbing with the crowd and was , again, very funny. The ‘headline’ for this section was Brendon Burns – probably Australia’s angriest export who spent ten minutes of his set trying, successfully,  to get a heckler to the front because no one could hear what he was saying. By the end of his set my face was aching from laughing so hard!

We then headed over to the Main Stage for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs who were, to me at least, more like No No Nos… There were one or two half decent tracks but it was a bit too indie-poppy-rocky for me. We hung around to see some of Bloc Party who I actually quite enjoyed considering I’d never heard any of their music before.

To finish the evening we headed up to the Radio 1 / NME tent to catch the end of the Gallows’ set; a bit of a shout-fest culminating in a few blokes banging on snare drums, one of whom was wearing just their boxer shorts – well, he was until they were leaving the stage where he was rapidly de-kegged!

Next up were AFI, a band I had seen back in 2000 supporting The Offspring. At that time I wasn’t a massive fan but have since grown to love their pretty unique style. I was very much looking forward to their set and I wasn’t disappointed either! We were about 7 or 8 ‘rows’ from the front and in the 2nd song when singer, Davey Havok, was in the crowd it all went a bit mental – subsequently I lost Shaun! They played an incredibly energetic set and, even though Havok was clearly exhausted, he didn’t let it get the better of him.

The Radio 1 / NME headliners were LostProphets – a band I can listen to on record but I’ve never really got into them. I hung around a bit further back mainly to recover from AFI but also I thought I’d let the real fans have a chance of getting closer to the front – how generous am I? I recognised a few of the songs and the whole audience loved them. I did like the gig but not knowing any of the songs does make a difference with this band. Earlier in the day we saw The Living End and there were a lot of the newer songs that I didn’t know but they were great performers so it made it enjoyable. LostProphets, however, were very good BUT harder to enjoy without knowing the songs.

Partway through the set I headed down to the Guest Tent to grab a Relentless to keep me awake on the journey home – it set me back £3 but you start to get used to the extortionate prices at events like that. Back at LostProphets I located Shaun who also had a Relentless but, to rub it in, his only cost £2 from the general punters stalls… Grr….

Anyway, we got home tired, sweaty, smelly and all rocked-out! An awesome day was had by all!

Some Videos:

So, moving onto 2008/9 we’ve had new albums from each of those bands. The Offspring released “Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace” at the end of 2008 which was a classic Offspring album – fast tempo’d American punk rock with the odd ballad/slower song thrown in. Next up we had NOFX’s “Coaster” (or “Frisbee” if you bought the vinyl version). This was a return to form, the previous couple of albums were a bit too political and it kinda spoiled the records. Rancid’s “Let The Dominoes Fall” is probably the best album of 2009 (so far) – a great mix of punk rock and ska with Matt Freeman even taking on more of the lead vocals than the last few offerings. Of the four bands Green Day have changed the most. Now, don’t worry, I won’t be going down the whole ‘sell out’ thing cos I honestly don’t think that they have; they’ve just changed their style somewhat. Green Day have a special place in my heart as being the band that got me into punk rock in the first place – as clichéd as it sounds, they changed my life! However, “21st Century Breakdown” is not a punk rock record; that’s not to say it isn’t a good record though! Green Day may have gone more stadium rock than punk rock but they still know how to make good, catchy music – even if it IS five times longer than their previous offerings!

So, in July 2009, if you asked me who my favourite bands were I would have to say, still, Green Day, Rancid, NOFX and The Offspring regardless of how they have changed.

I like my music and I’ve been using Collectorz.com Music Collector for about 7 years now. MuC (as it is often referred to) is a fantastic piece of Windows and Mac database/collection software specifically for cataloguing CDs, LPs etc. It has a tonne of features that can be viewed via their website (I’m blogging this on my iPhone so am too lazy to fully review it!) but earlier today their ‘clz music’ app was finally added to the AppStore. So I bought it!

Now, instead of having to export my collection to HTML, format it, split it into groups by letter, upload and update the search database I can simply export it to my iPhone and view/search from there! It’s great! No more will I be rummaging around Discovery (local 2nd hand music shop) and end up buying a CD I already own (yes, I’ve done it a few times) or cursing the shopping center for no GPRS signal to check my collection online…

Oh, they also have software for movies, comics, books, photos most of which have iPhone apps to go with them.

MaFt

It has just dawned on me how much I need to get done this week! Not only have I work to do but I also need to get some decorating done at the In-Laws. Then on top of that, tomorrow night we’re off to St Georges Hall in Bradford to see ‘Love So Amazing 2‘ – a collection of modern worship stuff. Mum and Dad are singing so we’re off to support them. Ro, Punk Worship bassist, is operating the projector for the night so he’s gonna spam it with PW2 adverts so I’ll have to get a photo of our massive promo!

I also need to get the laptop’s prepared for various events at church this week: Thursday is Brigades Christmas event, Saturday is PW2 and Sunday I’m on the rota to project the normal worship service… Thing is, I can’t get hold of the church laptop until Wednesday and I’m STILL waiting for people to send me what they want putting on it!

So, that’s about all!

See ya

MaFt