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Where You Been?
Everyone has been asking, so here’s the deal. Unless you count Butlins in a wet and windy Skegness (and I do), I haven’t been anywhere.
Nowhere that doesn’t have at least a flaky internet connection, or a sleeping family.
While I suppose I have been ill with what turned into an acute exacerbation of my chronic lung disease, that makes it sound worse than it was. I was still here, just under the weather.
Everyday activities became more difficult. Breathing became more difficult. But it’s carry on, or what? Throw in a few anti-sleeping pills and sleeping became more difficult. Concentrating became more difficult. For my sins, I did take a few weeks off work. But I did have a lot of free time on my hands.
As regular readers will know, I recently began excavating my old band Hovercraft from the analog archives of cassette tapes stored in cardboard boxes for thirty years. Why? Well, it’s not the first time, and it sure won’t be the last. It’s something I do periodically. Hovercraft were easily the best band I ever played in, and our life was cut short after an exhilarating nine months. I didn’t know why at the time, and I don’t know why now, but of course I have blamed myself aplenty. As well as Sir Gareth Southgate.
What better way to put all of that self-recrimination behind me than to reinvigorate the band, bring them back to life and tell the world how great we were-and still are?
With my old friend and bass player Aaron (aka Ron Nasty), I resurrected Hovercraft’s songs, created a website (hosted here on micro.blog), and began the boring, expensive, hard work of promoting our songs and searching for our lost singer/songwriter Charlie Pepper. We have a couple of big, exciting album releases planned before Xmas, and more than anything else this project has reinvigorated me, in between coughs and wheezes, and kept me going into the wee hours mixing, mastering and co-producing the whole package.
Another personal project I have been working on is a reorganisation of my website here, and more significantly, thinking about my “social” output and writing. I haven’t been very social recently, and I seem to be less interested or good at it as I get older. Plus, my time has been invested elsewhere. Anyway, I will keep at it, and will streamline my actual, proper writing so it all makes a bit more sense. I started by curating all my diatribes on local democracy and community activism and creating Southall Stories (also hosted here on micro.blog).
Yes, I am an investigative journalist! (According to Claude.)
Hopefully it will be a useful resource for anyone who is interested in all the political shenanigans in Ealing. Another archive restored!
Another personal project, and one I rarely talk about publicly, is my management of a one hundred strong online soccer management gaming community. This summer we celebrated ten years together - no mean feat at all. That’s kept me busy, too, and while the old website isn’t new (or hosted on micro.blog), it did get a makeover and some improvements, and another new website (hosted here on micro.blog) and community, and another archival project (created by Claude and ChatGPT with me as their copy and paste coding monkey like I was a teenager all over again).
Yes, I am a web developer! And an archivist! And a community manager! And (thanks to our AI overlords) yes, I am a coding monkey!
On the work front, which I haven’t forgotten about, before my recent illness, I developed a £1m+ funding application for a cross-borough youth project that will transform young people’s lives in two of the most-deprived areas in west London - and, we hope, support them to become our community leaders of the future. All very exciting, and not a little stressful - a lot depends on it being accepted and successful. I hope we find out soon if we get the grant.
Yes, I am a project development and sustainability lead! On an administrator’s salary!
On the home front, my kids are transitioning from Reception to Year one (so far so good, loss of afternoon playtime is the main complaint) and from Primary to Secondary (so far so good, all the other kids being so much taller is the main complaint).
Mum looks set to move at the very start of next month. Moving house is the most stressful life event, and doing so when you’re 80, unwell, and from the home you bought expecting it to be your final home in the town where you went to school is harder. She’s handled it pretty well, to be fair, although the anxiety has kicked in the closer we got to the desired completion date. It’s not been easy for me, either, as there’s a limit to what I can do from a distance. It’s mostly “ask your solicitor” or “tell your solicitor” and trying to reassure her that everything will be all right in the end.
Lastly, and least (and this has turned into a half-time team talk), I helped raise over £600 for my son’s school PTA. So not a bad half year’s work at all.
I might not have “been” anywhere, but I’ve been here, now. Breathing (sometimes with difficulty), creating, preserving, caring for others. Breathing new life into old. That’s not “nowhere” - that’s everything.
Rigid, inflexible, and easily countered by even the weakest opposition. No Plan B.
Why Amorim's system isn't working - tactical analysis: bbc.com
Two years into the genocide and this is now all perfectly normal and acceptable.
Israel struck Gaza's Nasser Hospital four times, analysis finds: bbc.com
“United have backed Amorim by spending £200m on attacking players this summer, while negotiations likely to end with Alejandro Garnacho, Antony and Rasmus Hojlund joining Chelsea, Real Betis and Napoli respectively, are continuing.”
New £73m signing Sesko looks every bit as terrible as unfairly scapegoated Hojlund he has replaced in Amorim’s totally inflexible “system”.
Garnacho isn’t perfect, but he’s a matchwinner. Antony looked reborn on loan at Betis last season.
So, it’s pretty obvious it’s not the players, but the manager’s tactical inflexibility.
Man Utd chiefs back Amorim despite Grimsby defeat: bbc.com
The Thought (For The Day) Police are here!
BBC apologises after Jenrick accused of xenophobia: bbc.com
Back to work today with a cough and a cold I brought home from our wet and windy holiday by the North Sea. I did enjoy the one fine morning we had on the beach.
Digging the Lost Tapes Restoration of Grimsby's No. 1 Band in 1996
Hovercraft (UK) were a real live band, briefly, in 1995-96.

We hovered in, made a lot of noise, broke down and sank without a trace, all in the space of nine months.

We were number one in the first, and possibly only, South Bank Demo Charts in the Grimsby Evening Telegraph.
There’s no chance of a reunion. That will be a relief to many. Our drummer emigrated to Australia. Our singer-songwriter-lead guitarist is MIA, last seen in India (or Boscombe). Our bass player plays in a semi-professional covers band. And our guitarist/tech guy is me.

Every few years I get out the digitised versions of all our old demo and home recording tapes and remix and (re)master them with the he latest free tools available. In the early days, that was Audacity. More recently, it’s Soundcloud’s and Bandlab’s (free) online mastering tools.
The goal is always the same. To transform the lofi, degraded analog recordings preserved on mangled old cassette tapes that were digitised using the cheapest USB analog to digital converter tape deck available twelve or fifteen years ago into something resembling what we actually sounded like in our rehearsal room, the studio, the pub, and - most importantly - in our own imaginations. (If you’re interested in learning more about mastering and how Bandlab mastering works there’s a couple of good articles here.)

Last October I went down the same old nostalgia rabbit-hole. Every time I think I’ve made the tracks sound better with the latest software, which usually means adding reverb or preset effects (which are likely a mixture of reverb and compression). The end result is something which sounds a bit louder, more atmospheric and less rough around the edges. Although all the reverb and compression can also make for a lot of additional noise, when noise is an integral part of the original sound AND the degradation of the original sound that was digitised.

Anyway, it’s all a bit of fun and allows for reconnecting with Ron Nasty, our old bass man (now known as Ronnie Nice). Ronnie and me had a lot of fun writing the band’s not entirely factual or unelaborated back story. Putting that into Claude.ai produced more amusing results, as did giving it some of the lyrics to the songs. These AIs can make pretty good music critics if you tell them that’s what they are, even if they’ve never heard a note. Claude is now like the fifth Beatle.

And that was what got me thinking… Can AI listen to music? That’s how I discovered Suno Music, Microsoft’s online AI music creation beast. And it is a beast. (Other beasts are available.) Me and Ron started off simply pasting in lyrics to the songs Ron had lovingly transcribed by listening to the old songs over and over again (only the other day I realised I had some of the original lyric sheets, but don’t tell Ron). Click on

That was back in March. The originals, if you wanna listen.
Then I realised you could (then) upload and use two minutes of original audio. Not quite a recreation or restoration of the original songs, but getting close. We also enjoyed doing an album of Hovercraft songs as if covered by a female singer in a more chillout style.

Finally (!), Suno v4.5 now allows up to eight minutes of uploaded audio. Frustratingly, I haven’t been able to recreate some songs at all (Mr Tooting Brown seems impossible), and still the AI seems to insist on missing out intros, outros, middle bits, solos, lead guitar work. But it’s getting a lot closer to an actual recreation of the original songs and band sound and style.
We also had fun generating song and album covers with ChatGPT.

Lastly, to reiterate, all of the songs bar the originals were created using Suno. Most of the later ones I downloaded the stems, uploaded them to Bandlab and remixed and mastered them there, before uploading to Bandcamp.
I’m not expecting anyone to listen to any or all of this, but hope it’s a useful contribution for anyone wondering what or how to go about a similar restoration project, or indeed, to create your own new songs (I’ve also done a few of those, too). Some people are pretty sceptical about AI generated art, and that’s fair enough. But this has been tremendous fun, and it’s great for me, Ron and everyone else who remembers our band to be able to recreate, restore, produce and hear the old songs again in a way that doesn’t hurt the ears so much.

While it was never the original “plan”, we’re now looking at releasing tracks through Bandlab’s distribution service, and reworking some of the songs to make them poppier and more accessible to a wider audience. And we’re looking for Charlie Pepper. Last heard of in the Bournemouth area ten years ago.
We should put a card in the local Spar shop window: “Chilled out lamppost wanted to front retro space pop band”. That should do it.
This is so messed up!
‘Yves Bonnet, the intelligence chief who tried to negotiate Abdallah’s exchange in 1985 and is now a member of the far-right National Rally, said he was “treated worse than a serial killer” and that “the United States was obsessed with keeping him in jail”.
‘According to a report in Le Monde newspaper, no Palestinian prisoner – even those condemned to life imprisonment in Israel – has served more than 40 years in jail. Abdallah served 41.’
Pro-Palestinian convict freed by France after 41 years: bbc.com
“…even modest step counts of around 4,000 steps a day are linked to better health compared to very low activity of just 2,000 steps a day.”
Phew!
Forget 10,000 - just 7,000 steps is enough for health benefits, says study: bbc.com
This explains why our government is so keen to suppress dissent.
The UK 'House of the People' parallel parliament - 50 people nominated by their communities and 50 people selected by democratic lottery - has agreed 5 top priorities for political action:
1. Tax wealth by removing tax loopholes and closing tax havens
2. Slash political corruption by banning lobbying, gifting, and second jobs in politics
3. Establish a Future Generations Act which priorities people and nature over GDP
4. Implement an immediate embargo on all arms, trade and support for Israel and other countries which violate international law
5. Grant councils power to repurchase disused homes and protect renters’ rights.