Kevin Carmody: machines, media & miscellanea

Elsewhere: Mastodon, Github, Email

Eddie Is A Stout Pusher

eddie is a stout pusher… but i love him for it.

Folkweek and Thanet Rocks

I don’t seem to do this very often, maybe time for a bit of an update.

Summer for me is pretty much over now, but it was a good one. I took just over a week off work for folk week (yes, the whole week and yes, I know the words to the clarence the dragon song) where I plied my way through many beers. It wasn’t the best year, bit of a washout at first, but it was still very good. I even managed to get in some fireclub passing going on the beach on the wednesday. I normally do alot of cicus type stuff at folk week, but I didn’t so much this year. Probably got my yearly fix doing a circus workshop for Manston village fete a couple of weeks before.

Much of my folkweek was taken up with flyering for a gig I was holding on the Sunday in Westgate which was called the Thanet Rocks End Of Summer Bash. Thanet Rocks being the recent tagline for oonagi… probably drop that a bit now as its been hammered pretty hard. Anyway, the idea of the gig was to have a bit of a festival of local original music. We had seven local bands and artists doing their own thing and all the money we made went to charity. We raised around £375 for Thanet Mind, whoop! Thats the summary, if you want to know all the trials and tribulations that went into it, plus a rundown of the day then a full write-up on The Gig 06 link at the top of oonagi. Right at the moment I’m working on a mini-site bonus feature of a DVD thats being made of the day. We’ll be selling them in the hope of raising a bit more money for the aforementioned worthy charity.

Other than that I’m preparing to go to uni in september. Oxford Brookes to study computers and culture for three years. This has raised a concern with my role in oonagi. I do so much work on the site that I’m a bit worried at having to let it go. I’ll still help out but I’m not going to be local, which is one of the fundamentals of oonagi.

Ok, see you again in…. who knows \m/(^_^)\m/

Diabolo Short

This is a video of me.

Hear My Voice

Admin authentication is starting to annoy me. I can understand in some cases with the blogs, but frankly, the admin can just delete the posts anyway, so why bother. What really annoys me is when it’s supposed to be on a social site outside of blogger. Why should the admin tick off each post? Its not the dark ages of the internet anymore, so why do small site owners still not trust the users to say something sensible. Frankly, I find it very off putting and it discourages input. I am one of the 1% who creates content, but I’m not going to if you don’t trust what I have to say.

The Wikipedia articles of Ramsgate and Margate have been recommended for the Wikipedia CD Selection. At the moment, the seclection only has just over 2000 atricles on it. So it’s pretty neat for our local towns to be chosen out of 1,291,557 english language articles (02/08/06).

The problem is that the articles need more work. I know Adem of the Big Blog has been doing some work on the Ramsgate page, posting a gallery, etc. But the two articles need alot more work. For example, the Ramsgate article states Gary Pallister as the most notable resident (he played for Middlesbrough once), yet totally neglects to mention Van Gough.

Please visit the pages and do what you can to help.

I'm not anonymous

This has been a good weekend. I started Thursday at the 50th Moon On A Stick gig. It was a neat collection of music from far and near. I also got to check out one of the acts (Neverest Songs) that’s going to be playing at my Thanet Rocks gig on the 20th of August at the Westgate pavilion. Also playing will be one of the big blogs friends, Black Primra. I have told Alex McNally’s secretary about the gig. Perhaps he’ll give it a feature or any mention. I’ll be honest, I crave attention from the Thanet Crimes.

Whilst I nipped for a packet of smokes I saw and recognised the Man Eating Sausage. I bothered him for a while, but I’ll leave that there as he has talked about the chance meeting. He did tell me one interesting thing though, I hope that he doesn’t mind me mentioning, that he uses voice recognition software and talks at his computer to write blog posts. What an ingenious idea. He did also mention that he wasn’t sure if i was an anonymous poster. I’m not. My name is Kevin Carmody and I live in Manston.

On Saturday I ran a juggling workshop for Manston fun day. I had some huge help from my friends Danny and Luce and from my girlfriend Rebeka. It was huge amounts of fun, though we were treated a little like a creche.

And today was the Ramsgate carnival…… erm ……. err …… great!

Ok, here are a couple of web treats:
Type ‘failure’ into google and hit ‘I’m feeling lucky’.
And…
A note of word verification.

1% Rule

I found an interesting article on the amount of people that actually participate in web content:

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | What is the 1% rule?
<p>The summary would be something like this. For every hundred people who view a social site (eg wikipedia, blogger etc), 1 will create content, 10 will comment or add content, 89 wil just read. I hope this makes those of you who worry about the lack of comments or input on your blogs makes you feel a little better. </p><p>So, like Lucy Mail said in this blog post, don’t worry about the fly catching audience, just power on

</p>

Thanet Times Is Watching

I’m upset. Someone smashed a cup on my car which caused a dent in the bonnet. Then I noticed that the most of the passenger side had been keyed. Why? I was parked sensibly outside the Regency in Ramsgate. I hadn’t done anything wrong. There was no need. :(

Also noted today that Gannet College blog got mentioned in the Thanet Times. Though looking at the screen shot they had as a pic I noted there was some serious issues with the way their computers display web pages. None the less though, the local papers must be spending time on the thanetbloglist to find it, so carefull what you say people. You are being watched.

Chavs

Chavs win the battle, rock wins the war.

The absolute disapointment. I wander home in the most drunken fashion tonight. Swaying from side to side all the way from the harbour to Manston… which is a long old walk. I’d already been to Margate, to the Qubar tonight. Watched some pretty downbeat rock. Could do with some more of that upbeat disco dancing feel… but that only really happens at the Lido and I’m a bit old for that now. What I noticed throughout the night though was the distinct lack of chavs. Perhaps we should be honest and say it as it is… chavs is now just a middle class word for poor. When I was a youngster, about a decade or so ago, back when we were using the word ‘chav’, it was a real statement of something we feared. No-one ever called themselves a chav, it was just the word we used for those who used to beat down on us rockers. btw, if you ever wondered where the word came from… it was at the time a verb; ‘to chav’ = ‘to steal’. We considered them thieves so we called them chavs, it was their own word! No matter what they come up with now, that was what it meant when we were using it 14years ago.

Anyway, they didn’t tuck their socks in their trousers then… though they probably did wear b-ball caps! Still, this is all meaningless now. Some how, dispite their numbers, they lost. They won the war, in so far as they won noteriety in becoming the infamous ‘chavs’, but they lost overall. Who wants to be a ‘chav’? If your not being mocked, your being labelled as poor. I’m sorry, but I think thats what chav has become, a label for those who we think of as coming out of some housing estate. So dispite ourselves, the rockers won overall. Rock is hip again and there is little we can do about it.

Thanet Highways Public Meeting

Well, first things first. We have a new/old blogger on the circuit. Ram Skate Raider has stated his/her own blog where we can expect a contemptuous view of Thanet and all around.

Ok, with that out the way I’ll give you all some bigger news. There is a Manston Parish Council public meeting being held this Thursday with with a heavy emphasis on the highway aspects of the new housing estate thats to be built at Westwood Cross. This new estate is going to seriously impact on Thanet. Probably one of the biggest impacts is going to be the increased load on the already clogged roads in the area, especially the carpark we call Haine Road. Attending the meeting will be a senior officer of East Kent Highways. Also attending will be Charles Hibberd, County Councillor and as an extra treat, probably Roger Gale amongst others. I also expect Ladyboy to avoid this like the plague as there will be constituants present and God forbid he’d be around them without a photo-op showing him in a good light.

If you want to attend (there were around 70 people at the last), it will begin at 7pm at the Hoverspeed Club in Manston. This is your chance to come and say your thing and experience first hand what it’s like to be flatly ignored by those who’s wages you pay for out of your taxes.