Hello, I have been away for the most of the last week in Luton with james and Beth. We went to Legoland

It was a lovely day, plenty to see and do, and I managed to bump into an ex of mine who I hadn’t seen for about 15 years.  In the words of Harry Hill - “What are the chances eh?”

That pic was taken on my new phone which I think is great, I am not usually a phone type person but this is my new phone. It has Wi fi, a passable camera, 3G and loooooads of other stuff. I can listen to online radio and watch Youtube videos, so ner ner ner to your iphone, this cost me about £100!

Anyway, thanks to Beth and James, and their lovely kids for putting up with me.

I came back to find that I am still no closer to getting the money that I am owed. For anyone that doesn’t know I am due a large windfall which will mean I can think about moving house and paying off my debts. It was supposed to take 4 - 6 weeks back in May…

While we were there james and I pretty much nailed the next North South Divide even writing and recording a Flash Ramsbottom bit. His first, long awaited outing. I am now taking my chance to do some work on my own side project FLUX. Which will be a while as I have a lot to do, but it is a start.

Ta, you gorgeous slice of internet you.

As I am sure that you are aware, we are as always,  a little behind on the next NSD. I openly admit that this is my fault, I have been finding it very difficult to motivate myself. I also want to get some stand up done soon, but again I was struggling with this and all of the other stuff going on in my life at the moment.

Then it dawned on me, I am going to start a new podcast, it doesn’t have a name as yet but it is basically going to be short bits of stand up style comedy done totally by me. I was intending for it to be fairly regular and also fairly short, probably in the region of 5-10 minutes each.

It is still in the very early stages at the moment, and it might not happen, but I think that it might as I am very excited about it. I am hoping that it will give me the kick up the bum that I need to get on with the next NSD too.

Have fun people, and remember wherever you are in Britain, you are never further than 10 feet away from a rat… (Insert a hilarious Darren Day joke here, using the EC joke insertion scheme.)

Well, it’s been a while. I will really have to update this more often. I really will. Anyway what’s been happening to me? Well the main thing was last week, when I came home to this:

And as you can probably guess, I had been burgled. In fact there was an attempt about two weeks earlier, but they must have been disturbed. They took my faithful old laptop, and my Xbox 360 and all of the games etc. So the last few days has been police, insurance, phone calls, changing passwords on websites and so on. Helpfully my laptop had some photos and scripts from the next NSD that I hadn’t backed up. Gah.

In other news, I finally remembered to upload this:

This is the class of October ‘07 at Cardington, not the most flattering photo of all of these stunningly beautiful people, but hey ho. (Names have been withheld to protect the innocent.) I will put a bigger one in my gallery once I get the website working again.

On that, I updated it the other day, and then had to change the passwords due to the theft, and now it eeeees broken. I shall persevere, just not sure when yet!

So then, how have you been? You’re looking great let me say. Stuff to tell you:

If you are an FTLer, and you haven’t been there, please go here and let me know what you think. Ta.

I am involved in lighting for Allo Allo, I really am not sure that it is going to be that good for me if I am honest. I will stick with it, and see how I feel afterwards. It has made me feel like being more creative though, so that is positive.

Not much else to tell at the moment, I am eating better and looking at getting some exercise. Hard to believe that I used to be really fit, it would be nice not to be out of breath and hacking up a lung after a brief jaunt upstairs…

I am planning some bits for the next NSD, which I will be starting on seriously after Allo Allo, which is the beginning of next month. Then I shall crack on with it.

I also want to do more with trevs-shed.net, I like the basic format but I think that it looks ugly, and you know how shallow I am folks. I go for looks over content everytime! I want to sort it out so that I can get some of my stuff on there. Ah well, soon.

Well, after a few busy weeks, I had last Sunday to myself. So what did I spend it doing? Well you know all those jobs that you have been meaning to do, but never got around to? That was what I did, mostly FTLFM related stuff.

I got the “Now playing” working again, with doug’s help, I like it too. I have decided not to re implement the voting facility for two reasons:

1: I don’t want a list of songs that we have played sitting on my server should the RIAA come to call.

2: I have no idea how to set up the required database as doug has deleted it, and it would take forever to reverse engineer.

I added a redirect so that www.trevs-shed.net/ftlfm goes to www.trevs-shed.net/FTLFM and www.trevs-shed.net now goes to my Joomla pages, so that is now my home page.

I made a new logo for that, and updated my radio playlist pages, and made new buttons and a new logo for that too. http://www.trevs-shed.net/radio/playing.html

Wood the latest NSD podcast is going great guns too, we have had a fantastic reaction to it overall, only one negative comment and that can be duly ignored due to the source…

And in other performance/comedy news I am joining Wakefield Little Theatre, who are the best known Amateur Dramatics group around here, they are currently rehearsing Allo Allo, and I am going to be involved. First rehearsal tomorrow night. Nervous? Me? Ha! I was on stage the first night as an extra, and I was only supposed to be going to meet people…

I hope that this is the start to me getting my performance confidence back, I really miss it.

Ta ra for now folks.

http://www.thenorthsouthdivide.com

The new North South Divide podcast -Wood is available for download there, or you can listen from here. How clever is that eh?

 

 Wood: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Well, sorry again for not updating this much but things have got a bit out of hand. Let me tell you a story:

Well, in the beginning of FTLFM we used to use http://www.b3ta.com/talk/ as our place to post stuff when we were on air. It annoyed the regulars (understandably) and although we originally sprang from B3ta, we were becoming more than that attracting listeners and DJ’s from further afield. Doug and Tico 24 set up the FTLFM.com board and the booking system. And this is how it has been for sometime now. Anyway earlier this month doug decided that he no longer wanted to host the board as he was worried about music piracy and so on, so he pulled the plug. FTLFM was left with no home, I looked for other options, but frankly they were all pants. james asked if I had considered asking doug if I could use the board that he had written on my hosting. Shamefacedly I had to admit that I hadn’t…

Doug was more than helpful letting me have the software and plenty of help, and I got the board working about a week ago. I had to disable some features and amend lot’s of links but it was working. The only problem was that I was still (inadvertantly at first) using doug’s database. I say inadvertantly as I put the board up into my webspace, and it worked before I had set up a database. Which was a pointer. Normally that wouldn’t work, but I think that it did as both Doug and I are on the same hosting company.

http://www.trevs-shed.net/FTLFM/index.php

Anyway, following a hectic Christmas (Merry Christmas and a happy New Year everyone, if a little belatedly) I have taken the time to set my own up, and it works. Still stuff to do, but now I can at least slow down and do bits and pieces when I have time. I have also set up my own webpage, which was something that I was doing anyway. I wanted somewhere to put my own stuff, like writing, podcasts, and stand up dates. If I ever get around to that. It is not finished yet, as you can probably tell, but the FTLFM events scheduler is in there too.

Lots still to do, but at least it is working for the DJ’s, and there is a permanent home.

In other news, the next North South Divide is almost done, sorry for the delays but there you go. Anyway, we have one more thing to record, which we should hopefully do tonight and then james will finish editing it. It does sound very good so far.

Ta ra

So, hey, it’s err been a while. I still love you and everything but I have been terribly busy. My first month as an examiner has been hard work, but I am really enjoying it. I am sure that will stop soon enough…

My desktop PC is dead dude, I mean really dead. I started getting the odd BSoD about two months ago, and assumed at the time that it was one of the two 80gb hard drives that I had in it. It was currently set up so that one was a system and programs drive, with the other holding all of my media and files. All good, so I took out one and swapped it with a 160gb drive that I had in the network case. Re-installed Windows and… It was worse, so I took out that 80gb drive and swapped it. Reinstalled Windows again and it was the same. (I had good reasons for believing that it was the hard drive.) It would appear that it is a problem with the either the PSU/motherboard/processor/graphics card/memory/a slight problem with the user. Either way I am going to have to gut it at some point soon and rebuild it.

I was planning a rebuild and upgrade later next year anyway, it may just mean that I have to do it earlier. Pity that I can’t afford it, oh well.

This does have one side effect, we have recorded most of the next podcast, and james is currently sourcing the SFX (audio effects for you non audio geeks out there), he uses real sounds, and has an admirable attitude to it. For example in a previous NSD we needed McDonalds ambience, he went and sat on his own in Maccy D’s with a coffee and an audio recording device, make of that what you will. We still have one thing to record, we did record it previously, but through my own stupidity I overwrote the file. Duh, but now we cannot record it. I will see if I can fix the PC, if not I will have to write a new opening that james can do on his own.

The other knock on effect is that I will not be able to do any FTL shows for a while, the laptop that I have is nowhere up to snuff for that kind of work. No music recording either. That’s the problem when you have lots of hobbies, but when they all revolve around one thing, when it goes you lose everything.

In non geek stuff, things are good, as I said my job is fun (mostly), I have some great friends, my cooker works (see previous entries - I think) and I am dancing, yes I am. Right now while I am typhkfgbksrhbg…

I am also getting exciting about writing again, although I haven’t actually done any, but as they always say at Christmas, it’s the thought that counts right?

Ta ra.

It’s been a busy month for me, I have been in Cardington, DSA (Driving Standards Agency) training centre for the last month. I am now a fully qualified driving examiner, and I start in Rotherham on Tuesday. ( I have to go to the local area centre in Newcastle on Monday)

Anyway, in other new, the next NSD is written, and we should be recording it soon. it has been difficult with me being away and james flood (More about that at james’ blog.) We will be on it soon, I promise.

I will be updating this more often from now on, in fact I will soon be putting pics from my course on here.

I am getting some paper so that I can make static cling window stickers for the North South Divide.

Who is interested in having one? They will be free, as long as you are going to actually put them up somewhere. Advertising you see?

I would also like any ideas that you have for the design, you are a talented lot after all.

Thanks