I’d assumed I’d be able to dig out a handful of textures, patterns and shapes that I may be able to re-use or package up in some manner, I didn’t expect there to be quite so much. It’s all in a terrible mess. I have an awful habit of creating a pattern or template for one job and leaving it in that job’s folder so I’ll never find it again if I need it elsewhere. A couple of times in the past I’ve started trying to categorize items without much success. This time round I’ve created a categorized Dropbox folder to keep everything in (yes, it will be backed up somewhere non-cloud based).

I need to get into the habit of adding any re-usable asset to the library as soon as I’ve created it (rather than assume I’ll get round to it later). The big challenge is going to be going through the 50 Gig of designs I already have and extracting anything of value. To compound the lack of organisation many of the assets only exist within the designs themselves.

It’s quite nostalgic going through old work, especially the bits related to the record label, hopefully I’ll find something of use!

We were supposed to be visiting friends today but Alexander has been a little unwell (he’s actually much better today) and didn’t want to risk making him any worse so we canceled (sorry Max and Fi). My immediate thought was to spend the day writing WordPress plugins but considered that my nearly-wife would probably kill me in the face so opted for the more family friendly option of harvesting some stuff from the garden.

We usually make a sort of effort to freeze a bulk of the apples but don’t do that with the pears as they are a pain in the arse to freeze (you need to cook them first), so opted to make pear jam instead. Did two batches based on this Pear and Lemon jam recipe we split it into two batches, one of which we followed the recipe and the other we added some stem ginger in syrup. We thought this would supply us with some gifts for Christmas, I hadn’t realised that 2 kilos of pears makes about 4 medium jars of jam. I managed to burn it (along with my hand) a bit as well so probably best we keep it for ourselves.

It was fairly straight forward, although I fucked up a bit by trying to make jam, freeze herbs, prepare apples and pears for freezing (made the effort to freeze some pears this time) and make pear muffins all at the same time. Nothing went horribly wrong but there were some moments of flailing and disharmony within the kitchen.

Lessons learned today are to do one thing at once, especially if two of the things you are doing you have never done before; wasps like pear trees, they don’t like you being in pear trees; spending the morning in a pear tree makes me itchy; I really shouldn’t have recycled that big bag of jam jars the other week.

We now have a kitchen full of tasty fruity goodness.

Three of the things I most want to do with my life are art, photography and music, not for profit or the adoration of others (although both would be a pleasant bonus) but for my own enjoyment. I have as yet failed to do much of any of these. I had a brief spate of success with photography – success in the sense that I actually did some, rather than I was a successful photographer – which I put down more to the enthusiasm of my good friend Scott (a very talented photographer) with whom I used to make many trips to explore and photograph things. Unfortunately a change my life circumstance have made it increasingly difficult to find time out for such trips and I can’t seem to get up the enthusiasm for the art on my own at home (a poor excuse).

The primary issue I have is that I just don’t know how to write music, I don’t quite get the creative process and as such am afraid of mediocrity and failure, although as with any other art form failure and mediocrity must be part of the process, very few (if any) are able to pick up a skill and be stunning at it straight off, you need to fail to learn and be a bit shit before you can be less shit.

An important part of any creative process (for me) is the social side, having people you can learn with and from. The times I’ve been most active have been when I’ve been spending plenty of time with proper musicians, most notably Nick Reincarnationfish -  who introduced me to the software I love (Reason and Ableton Live) and also to an awful lot of the music that has inspired me over the years. Nick has unfortunately and selfishly moved to Leeds which prevents my easily hanging around his flat making unpleasant noises. There are plenty of online locations for the socially impoverished to knock about ideas and techniques, but frankly I’ve always found them to be a bit intimidating and scathing to the uninformed (me).

Recently my relationship with writing music has changed for the better. Some friends had some ideas for a small musical project which I’m helping out with, this has instantly highlighted how fucking awful I am at writing music, but also given me the impetus to start learning properly. In the past I avoided the need to actually learn and understand by insisting on writing impenetrable experimental noise and shitty remixes (which I shall not be posting online), to be fair to myself, I was interested in writing impenetrable experimental noise so it’s not all bad. When sitting down to write something a bit more straight forward – you know, choruses, verses, drums, bass and lead – I have not a clue where to start, but that’s fine I’ll start at zero and work my way up. I’ve shed the fear of mediocrity, I know everything I write initially will be shit, I just won’t play it to anyone.

One of the big setbacks I’ve had to deal with is my workaholism. Having spent years with the mindset that if I’m awake I should be working and if I’m awake and not working I’m worrying that I’m not working has made it difficult to do anything that I cannot tie directly to work. I’m working (haha) on this and intend to be 40% less mental by the end of the year. I’m currently forcing myself to spend an hour a day doing something creative which is not work related. This generally happens about midnight when sleep would be more sensible but it’s a step.

This has all caused me to become stupidly excited about the forthcoming release of the next version of Reason . I absolutely love Reason, and Propellerhead in general, their attitude to their customers has always been fantastic, as displayed in their current Pay What You Want deal. I’ve always had this awful habit with Reason (and Ableton Live) of upgrading to the latest version, playing with it for a few hours  and then ignoring it until the next version comes out. I’ve been fighting this with my sudden massive geek love for James Bernard whose blog and tutorials manage to be exciting, interesting and not at all elitist or condescending. I’ve learned more about sound design and production in the last week than in the entire previous 35 years (thanks James).

So, maybe this year I’ll finally write that album I keep promising myself.

(I am aware that this blog is increasingly a blog of excuses for not doing creative things rather than a blog about the creative things I have done. I am very aware of this.)

Have not yet got back to a point where I’m managing any real creative output but starting to feel more mentally ready to get some stuff done.

Anyway, part of my ongoing plan is to start trying out new things so after a hard first gardening day of the year I had a crack ad doing a stencil to decorate the shed. Used this rather helpful tutorial on Instructables. I am such a spod:

Hello! I am Alexander Matthew Barker, I am in charge now.

Thank you to everyone for your kind wishes, especially to Damon for this hugely appropriate message:

You’ve done well and I like your baby. But could you just make a few changes? The baby’s head needs to be made a bit bigger and rotated approximately 73 degrees counter-clockwise. I’m also concerned that my clients won’t know how to understand a baby with two arms. Give it eight arms. The smile isn’t right either. And with the nose, I found this awesome flashing clown’s nose on another person’s baby. Use one of those instead. Also, My daughter is an expert on babies and she thinks you should have given the baby more ‘pizazz’ – so do that too. And get these changes back to me by this afternoon please.

worriedaboutsatan as recommended a couple of times by Nick. Some words that may or may not describe them: ambient, electronic, interesting, exciting, strange. My favourites are Arrivals and Arrivals Remixed. There’s plently of free stuff on their website to download and get a taste and a fair amount on their soundcloud account – worriedaboutsatan on soundcloud – including a full length live set.

Yndi Halda another great band to code to. Enjoy Eternal Bliss is just beautiful instrumental post-rock. Few reviews have rather negatively complained about lack of originality with comparisons to Mogwai or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but fuck ‘em it’s a lovely EP, a little more accessible than a lot of post-rock and at an average of about 15 minutes a track for 3 quid there’s not much to complain about.

Sick Music 2 as pointed out by DeathBoy. I know close to fuck all about Drum ‘n’ Bass and breakbeat aside from a growing love of the stuff. No idea of which artists to look for or where to look but apparently Hospital Records is a good starting point. Excellent set of tracks for very little cash. Much prefer the instrumental tracks, although those with vocals don’t grate too badly. Ace for keeping energy levels up when working until the stupid hours.

The Gentleman’s Review Favourite podcast of the moment, heard about it through the fucking awesomely funny Precious Little. I don’t know how to describe it other than: Three men, sometimes a lady, sometimes a dog, Doctor Who, cheese, chaps, filth, leftie, humour, shouting, drunk, Yorkshire, geeks, what? Listen to it, it’s free. Even when it’s not outstandingly funny (which it often is) it’s always engaging.

Reincarnationfish – War With The Newts video – Ace new mashup video for the new Reincarnationfish track.

This Is Radio Silence – I Blame – Sublime music (as always) from This Is Radio Silence

Spucktute – Go To War - Free to download EP from Max from History Of Guns new band. Dark, harsh and not afraid to terrify.

Jim Bob – Storage Stories – Having completely forgotten I had pre-ordered this it was an extra-nice surprise when it turned up. First novel by Jim Bob of Carter USM, it’s heaving with the same dark wit (sometimes a little cheesy in a good way) that I’ve come to love from Carter lyrics. About halfway through and it’s absolutely brilliant. Story of an ex-rock star who has taken over the running of a self storage unit and the strange and interesting characters he encounters. You can get it on Amazon – Storage Stories (and get me some affiliate pennies) but I’d recommend going straight to the source and giving the author a bit more.

Pip pip!

A strange event to go to. The fireworks were cool, although both Tim and Myself seemed to remember them being a little more impressive when were younger, there was a lack of catherine wheels or static display type things (I have no idea of a better way to explain that), just a shitload of rockets. Fifteen minute walk to a field, fifteen minutes of fireworks, fifteen minute walk back to the car and it was all over. Still, a great deal better than sitting in watching fucking X-Factor.

Our intention to go for a meal afterwards was a little misplaced, the entire rest of the world had the same idea and we ended up having to drive into Wycombe to find anywhere without a stupidly long wait for a table.

I took a couple of hundred photos, mostly messing about with long exposures, like a grade a shit-conductor I left my tripod in the car so they were a bit hit and miss. The results were ok for a first go at photographing fireworks, I’d like to give it another go as none of them were very impressive.

Full set of Cookham fireworks photos is here (21 shots).

Here’s some of the better ones:

I took a few photos on the day we did the V&A and Hyde Park, most were a bit too fuzzy. It seems I have old man shaky hands to go with my failing memory. I’m 33 for fucks sake.

Most of the shots I took were for reference (a load of religious bits and pieces and a bucketload of skylines), most will not be uploaded as they are very dull out of context. I’m quite happy with this one:

Why the hell had I never been to the V&A before? It’s possibly the best place in the world ever (this week). Seriously, I can’t start to explain how inspirational that place is. I’m not going to try and review it, I find it hard to string a sentence together as it is without pretending I’m in some way qualified to provide critical evaluation of a subject of which I have minimal knowledge or experience.

We were fortunate to see the Telling Tales exhibition on our first visit which was a thing of disturbing wonder. A dark but beautiful selection of pieces, mostly furniture, arranged in a wonderfully fairly tale arrangement. The sound design was excellent and creepy and the exhibition setting really added to the experience (from the subjective angle of someone who has been to far too few galleries to make a comparison), although one of the sections was a little over-mirrored which freaked me out a little (not a sign of old age, just a sign of not getting out of the house enough). Anyway I loved it and balls to anyone who disagrees. Go to the V&A it’s fun and inspirational.

Oh, the building looks nice as well:

We wandered round Hyde Park for a while on the way to Selfridges. It’s easy to forget there’s so much green space in London. We probably see more nature on a day trip to London than a week of staying in Maidenhead where we live on the other side of the road to the damn moorland.

Hyde Park:

The whole set is here. I need to get some more practice at landscapes.

I nearly had to physically remove Lady K from the Serpentine Gallery. She can just about deal with ‘proper art’ (old paintings) but gets a little angry at anything she deems to be modern art. The gallery had an exhibition of fairly aggressively modern art including a smashed car, piles of newspapers, buckets on a shelf, etc. I wasn’t too fussed, I prefer my art visually interesting (although not necessarily attractive) but I can understand the purpose of more thought provoking works. Karen on the other hand looked ready to kick the nearest artist in the balls and had started mumbling hatred, I daintily removed her from the premises before she spontaneously combusted.

We wandered round a few of the notable London shops; Fortnum and Mason, which was nice but we didn’t buy anything. Liberty, interesting building, there was some cool furniture I will never be able to afford and a nice chocolate department I could afford stuff in. We also visited Selfridges, which I enjoyed less. I may be a middle class twat who sometimes shops in Waitrose and M&S but fuck me, that place is such a temple to consumerist excess I wanted my fucking head to explode and take out as much of the building and it’s yapping fuckhead customers as possible, of course I could have just been in an arse because my feet hurt. Barbie pink Christmas trees can fuck right off along with gold plated mobile phones, jewel encrusted mp3 players and other such shit. Uck. We visited the ‘Wonder Room’ which is so laden with needless luxury it threatens to break reality. On the positive the food court was nice. Mmmmm…. tasty hypocrisy.

We probably went to some other places, but my oldmanhead can’t remember much else.

(Thanks Damon for the biscuit suggestion). Mmmm… biscuits.

Recipe from here.