tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64971359163364811752024-02-18T21:55:42.861-08:00Steve ThompsonThe Steve T Ego Portal BlogSteve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-7069184407280962152016-04-03T00:01:00.001-07:002016-04-03T00:01:23.127-07:00http://laterbro.com/messages/<a href="http://laterbro.com/messages/#.VwC_r1lmGTE.blogger">http://laterbro.com/messages/</a>Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-1536975831668905012015-03-21T01:59:00.001-07:002015-03-21T01:59:19.567-07:00How I Gave Venom The Devil<em>This article is taken from a story I wrote ages ago called "Remembering the Eighties". The 80's story was originally commissioned by a website called "Metal Godz". The site is long gone and my eighties article remains unfinished and unpublished.</em> [caption id="attachment_792" align="alignright" width="300"]<a href="http://stmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/venom.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-792" src="http://stmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/venom-300x482.jpg" alt="Click to enlarge." width="300" height="482" /></a> Click to enlarge.[/caption] During all the recording sessions for Neat Records we had the assistance of Conrad Lant. Conrad was a good tape op and got on well with everyone. He was always going on about his own band. It seemed that they saved up for about 3 months until they could afford enough pyrotechnics to blow up half a city and then they had a major blow out and had to save up to do another show. Conrad said very little about the music, it was mostly about the explosions. One day he informed me that the bass player had quit and he was being called upon to play bass. A gig was imminent so I loaned him my Gibson EB3 I still had from my own early career. Conrad could barely contain himself seeing all these bands make recordings. He wanted his band committed to tape too. We had a slack day coming up so I relented and said he could bring his band in during down-time. Again I loaned him the bass. I produced three tracks with them but the only title I remember was "In League With Satan". I taught t he guys a musical trick sometimes called "The Devil". Theoretically known as the "tri tone" it is a very discordant combination of two notes and I thought it would be most effective in their music. Say you were playing a G, the tri tone from that would be C#. At high volume it sounded horrible and they loved it. I had no idea these tracks would come out as a single, I just produced it as a favour. Now Conrad was convinced he was on the way to mega stardom and in need of a bass so I let him talk me into selling him my EB3. I explained the history of the instrument and made him promise it was going to a good home. The next time I saw my old bass it had holes drilled in it and an upside down crucifix nailed crudely to it. My bass was now a mess and Conrad had become Chronos! <br> <br> Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-90427254837555798262015-02-24T13:20:00.005-08:002015-02-24T13:20:44.384-08:00The Do ButtonThe "Do Button" from IFTTT looks like having amazing possibilities https://ifttt.com/products<br />
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<br />Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-50003157075413158532015-02-24T01:38:00.001-08:002015-02-24T13:17:50.513-08:00Lonely At The Top<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I wrote Lonely at The Top for the Tygers of Pan Tang for their 3rd album "The Cage" back in 1982. They were already planning to record my song "Paris By Air" but their chief songwriter, John Sykes had just quit the band and strong songs were in short supply. I went round to their management office which was above a Carpet shop in Whitley Bay and played this song to their manager (My brother Graham actually). Tom Noble may also have been present. All I had was an acoustic guitar so I demonstrated the song with much arm twirling, foot stomping and shouted "kabooms". They loved it and said "go ahead and make a demo" - which I did, and the song made the album. What I didn't realise until just now (see pic) was that the song also came out as a single. To be honest in 1982 things went ballistic with my songwriting and I would have had a hard time keeping track of where any of my songs were.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEh2V9zDO4UsALpV1MbbF4KLw20bVzyG9yGWplDjSBbAxfwITmSeUpZLx2tTj3xK2b9DWAsFwHna3wTDKc3pb2-3Ces5XjQYPpRVPNHEv0-sk4_ujCtUsoZcpJeyt8k-fNY6WK7ivuqzQytWDyCH_0RDUchB_Z_wVYOAdm_47rO8XO_a=" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Picture of 7 inch single, Lonely at The Top by teh Tygers of Pan Tang" border="0" class="size-full wp-image-787" src="http://stmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/lonely-at-the-top-single.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9kNVJP0IAtkIVasSwXB6xz30jF7GVg8Ez5rDg0VKwCafVGo1raHigJ1GrmCOErZIAKbSgENt64RGGswiWRzgQTCyHi6nHtx9tE-0jww7K5_NijizrtjUPHcaqBAzgcv7tP0AOldg4CDzE/s1600/dbox-drive3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9kNVJP0IAtkIVasSwXB6xz30jF7GVg8Ez5rDg0VKwCafVGo1raHigJ1GrmCOErZIAKbSgENt64RGGswiWRzgQTCyHi6nHtx9tE-0jww7K5_NijizrtjUPHcaqBAzgcv7tP0AOldg4CDzE/s1600/dbox-drive3.jpg" height="176" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve been developing some new digital workshops lately </span><a href="http://bit.ly/embdig15" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">http://bit.ly/embdig15</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> My process work is all in Dropbox but I share the guide docs with participants in Google Drive as they all get a login and password in the Workshops. I had a mild panic when my entire process folder representing several years of work disappeared from Dropbox. I say “mild” because this often happens in Dropbox and you find your errant folder lurking somewhere you never intended it to be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">So, I figured it was time for some backup failsafes. I looked around for ways that I might auto backup my Dropbox to Google Drive. I found a few solutions but none were quite right and then I hit on the simplest solution of all. I installed my Google Drive inside my dropbox. I then moved the folder containing all this work inside the Google Drive meaning it was both in in G Drive and also in Dropbox. Each file is a unique instance but exists within BOTH drives at the same time and is therefore synched. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some people have commented that this takes a little getting your head around. I’ve posted a diagrammatic image below which I shall annotate. I hope you find this interesting, at best it’s just a note to myself about the experiment. Now I have a better working method for workshops I mentioned earlier and what I’ve learned here could well end up in this specific workshop </span><a href="http://bit.ly/embdig0327" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">http://bit.ly/embdig0327</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Resources.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline;">Insync</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">: </span><a href="https://www.insynchq.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.insynchq.com/</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> for Running More Than One Google Drive Account.I’ve not tried this yet but it looks interesting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline;">Cloud HQ</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><a href="https://www.cloudhq.net/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.cloudhq.net</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> this is really good and I may come back to it. It synchronises your various cloud accounts but I struggled with clarity about what the “free” account provided and the leap to premium was too steep and too soon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline;">MultCloud:</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> /</span><a href="http://www.multcloud.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">www.multcloud.com</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> - I like this and it’s free. It will read your various cloud stores and then you can move files between them. You have to physically initiate this though there is no automated synchronisation going on.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVjXpd5jUAimlS7R2vBJoxhuvsUb1kT8OEmpqf2lJkHIgucocfs8BUXgMgeV_Wdg5faFzfcNbNy8Frygm47KTnnwzV4ycu0RB8vL7YBcAF-6h2FzBtMVw-PMiOpo72UBjy93Ffy8AOpaKL/s1600/dbox-gdrive2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVjXpd5jUAimlS7R2vBJoxhuvsUb1kT8OEmpqf2lJkHIgucocfs8BUXgMgeV_Wdg5faFzfcNbNy8Frygm47KTnnwzV4ycu0RB8vL7YBcAF-6h2FzBtMVw-PMiOpo72UBjy93Ffy8AOpaKL/s1600/dbox-gdrive2.jpg" height="263" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Above are my Dropbox and Google Drive respectively. As you can see my G Drive sits inside my dropbox. My working directory is [2] where I develop the workshops. This sits both withing Dropbox AND G Drive. I work on the files in D Box but they're backed up in G Drive. I copy files for participants to [1] which they can access from shared folders online in Google Docs (Drive)</span></div>
Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-2920790606120553652015-01-05T06:41:00.001-08:002015-02-15T09:18:42.222-08:00Happy New Adventure<div>
Here we go 2015. The start of the working New Year is always a bit of an adventure. Started me thinking, Like many people in January 2000 I was starting the new millennium with great hopes for the future. I was working on a new musical Steel Town that would be staged that year. Also I was joining Teesside University to manage a project working with 7 steel communities in Tees Valley. I was to do this for 18 months but little was I to know that this would lead to me moving to Teesside the day of the final show of Steel Town and that I would spend the next 15 years (so far) in academia.</div>
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I recently rediscovered a VHS of the launch of the TVCO project and digitised it.</div>
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Here it is. <br />
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Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-77953071436130462032015-01-04T13:16:00.003-08:002015-01-04T13:16:54.229-08:00Social Injustices<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;">I shared <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/10OKQwuebtEW85llwaQ7WUrG7wSVP64FBTaAbjdpva2Y/edit?usp=sharing">a letter on Zero Hours contracts</a> a few days ago on Facebook thinking my little circle of bolshy friends may have something to say about it. Now I'm astounded to see it's been shared over 14,000 times and the likes may go over 13,000 anytime soon. This and the 100's of PM's I've received from some pretty desperate people tell me that this is not just one mans rant. These are big numbers that endorse my belief that there's a lot if injustice going on. It's not just abusive "employment" cond</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;">itions either. There is housing rental injustice as pointed out by my friend <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=542687372" href="https://www.facebook.com/kev.howard.1" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Kev Howard</a> who also brought to my attention recently the injustice being perpetrated on people with disabilities by ATOS et all. I'm sure there's more e.g. the financial injustices: corporate greed, bankers bonuses and tax avoidance that everyone is talking about. The exorbitant cost of life's necessities such as water, gas and electricity. The mis-labeling of our food products. I was just remarking to my wife yesterday, if we put together the money we've clawed back in illegal banking charges and mis-sold PPI over the past few years it amounts to a huge chunk stolen from our income. What the hell is happening? What can we do about it all?</span>Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-22382770892215458772014-11-28T10:18:00.002-08:002014-11-28T10:18:21.890-08:00Trying Out Quick Gallery<iframe src='http://www.quickgallery.com/embed/30134/cds2q69qovswcw80kcokkw48g.html' width='550' height='400' frameborder='0' scrolling='no'></iframe><span><br /><a href="http://www.quickgallery.com/" style="font-size:9px; font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin:0 10px;">Photo Gallery by QuickGallery.com</a></span>Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-49247501485006378352014-11-28T07:43:00.000-08:002014-11-28T07:56:19.109-08:00Hands On MiddlesbroughThese pictures are from the Aspirational Digital Stories workshop held in July 2014. All the participants designed their ideal city and then presented their ideas to the group<br />
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e group.Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-40846187288067149102014-11-16T11:28:00.001-08:002014-11-28T07:47:10.502-08:00He's Got A DreamIn 1999 Tom Kelly and I wrote and produced a musical "Steel Town". It tells of a young man's dream of escaping the Steel Works into the world of music (wonder who that could be?) Tom produced the lyric to the song I'm posting which brilliantly captures how that young man's parents may have felt (who could they be?) As we now know, those who did not escape Consett steel works saw its demise in 1980. We put the musical on at the Custom House South Shields and then we took it home to the Empire in Consett. Tom and I are now re-developing the musical to become a Teesside story. To help this we're running some community workshops complete with fantastic archive film from the North East Film Archive. This video shows a lot of Teesside people but only uses minimal clips from the archives so I feel comfortable showing it here. For more you'd have to come to a workshop.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/AeiK0U5KpmU?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-60103567900177240492014-10-31T09:52:00.002-07:002014-12-06T07:21:22.323-08:00Windows Movie MakerAfter Windows 7, Movie Maker changed drastically. There is no time line. In my opinion the timeline is fundamental to video editing (also to music and audio). The lack of a timeline in my view renders Movie Maker in Windows 7 and beyond useless.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<b><u> WMM 2.6 </u></b></h3>
<br />
Luckily there is a work around. Download Windows Movie Maker 2.6 and install on your Windows 7 or Windows 8 computer. <a href="http://on-msn.com/wmm26">http://on-msn.com/wmm26 </a><br />
<br />
<h3>
<u><b>HD Format </b></u></h3>
<br />
A couple of other things are worth doing also. Windows Movie Maker does not always support HD formats. To get around this you need to install some plugins (very easy and straight forward)
You can find the plugins here <a href="http://www.stmedia.org/dl/hdplugins.zip">www.stmedia.org/dl/hdplugins.zip </a><br />
<br />
The plugins will give you the following resolutions to save your movie to:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>1280x720</li>
<li>1440x1080</li>
<li>1920x1080</li>
<li>960x720 </li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
Look on your drive for your Movie Maker 2.6 which will be in a location something like the following:<br />
<br />
<b> C:\program files\Movie Make</b>r<br />
OR <b>C:\Program Files (x86)\Movie Maker 2.6 </b><br />
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Copy the prx files to the shared folder as follows…………<br />
<br />
<b> C:\program files\Movie Maker\shared\profiles </b><br />
OR <b>C:\Program Files (x86)\Movie Maker 2.6\shared\profiles </b><br />
<br />
If the “profiles” folder does not exist then go ahead and create it.<br />
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<br />Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-31577765650047963952014-10-26T07:06:00.000-07:002014-11-29T00:01:00.217-08:00Remembering Alvin<img class="alignright size-full wp-image-762" src="http://stmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/alvin87.jpg" alt="alvin87" width="255" height="226" />I was sad to hear this week that Alvin Stardust had died. I spent quite a bit of time with Alvin in the late 80's producing an albums worth of my songs with him. The tracks never saw the light of day so I'll attach a compilation of them to this post. I know Alvin was not his real name but I always called him that and he always referred to himself that way. He called me a while back and we talked about dusting off these recordings and trying to do something with them. Clearly that must have been before he embarked on the album that he planned to release in November but I now realise he was suffering with cancer at the time he called. He never mentioned it of course. I remember him as quite a gentleman always very polite to everyone and never the pop star. He came to Newcastle several times to work on the recordings and sometimes stayed at my home in Whitley Bay. I didn't drive in those days so we got the metro to the studio in Newcastle each morning. He didn't bat an eyelid and nobody recognised him. I did see the pop star side one time however. After one set of sessions he was due to catch an early flight next morning so he was staying in a hotel. I dropped him off there in a taxi and as he went up to reception he said "watch this". He checked in and on some subterfuge or other asked to see the duty manager. When she arrived he turned on the charm and a glowing pop star smile. The manageress asked if he would mind having his photo taken in front of the hotel and insisted on upgrading him to a suite of rooms at no extra charge. As she went off to make these arrangements he turned and winked at me and said "works every time" !
<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/173918191&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false"></iframe>Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-39684958218553942702014-08-30T02:04:00.001-07:002014-08-30T02:04:59.702-07:00IFTTT<img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-747" src="http://stmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/ifttt-blog480-300x276.jpg" alt="ifttt-blog480" width="300" height="276" />I've only scratched the surface with IFTTT <a href="https://ifttt.com/">https://ifttt.com/</a> but it looks set to become ever more highly regarded with $30M in funding. IFTTT is pronounced like Gift without the "G". It means "If This (happens) Then (make) This (happen). It's kind of a visual programming tool kit for the Internet and social media. It's pretty easy to use and there are lots of "recipes" you can use to get started. The recipes do things like: send a tweet if a YouTube Video gets commented on, send me an email if it will be raining tomorrow or Monitor a Wikipedia Page. You and edit and refine existing recipes or make your own using the easy toolkit. Now they have announced a set of recipes for outer space <a href="http://ift.tt/1sReoqS">http://ift.tt/1sReoqS</a> but what really looks like being the next big thing are the recipes for the Internet of things <a href="http://nyti.ms/1tjbb7j">http://nyti.ms/1tjbb7j</a> <br> <br> Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-70296727530347355592014-08-28T00:12:00.001-07:002014-08-28T00:12:29.867-07:00A TestTrying the Hootsuite app to post to my site. <br> <br> Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-13028721262258362632014-07-31T00:33:00.000-07:002014-07-31T00:33:00.256-07:00Stockton - Hamburg<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.5em;">
I picked up the following story from Guido Russo on Facebook. It seems just as I was crawling about under the stage, setting up for Stockton Weekender a crowd was "going wild" to one of my songs on another stage in Hamburg, Germany. Was I in the wrong place? The following from Guido.</div>
<blockquote style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px 3em;">
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<span data-mce-style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: #ffffff;" style="background-color: white; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18px;">"I was near Hamburg, </span><a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=25781684638" data-mce-href="https://www.facebook.com/tygersofpantangofficial" data-mce-style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #ffffff;" href="https://www.facebook.com/tygersofpantangofficial" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">Tygers Of Pan Tang</a><span data-mce-style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: #ffffff;" style="background-color: white; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18px;"> were performing their show. I took this picture while the band was playing a beautiful song called Paris By Air. The audience goes crazy but all of a sudden my mind goes to </span><a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=557152183" data-mce-href="https://www.facebook.com/Stmedia" data-mce-style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #ffffff;" href="https://www.facebook.com/Stmedia" id="js_24" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">Steve Thompson</a><span data-mce-style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: #ffffff;" style="background-color: white; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18px;">, the man who wrote this song so many years ago. Many thanks, Steve!"</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEXiufTsulcfS-T0fZ4UADUuC_qMwgli7BWrHApyR2GJGqAkMIL_iSfnkRej2tDYhClbBfoFsp4U-QlRrrZ6hpcPCXuud2jcu8KrXU9TWHIf2OYdAJ2OgufDMQGdqdjVRCdSQ_ORJAEw0h/s1600/tygers-hamburg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEXiufTsulcfS-T0fZ4UADUuC_qMwgli7BWrHApyR2GJGqAkMIL_iSfnkRej2tDYhClbBfoFsp4U-QlRrrZ6hpcPCXuud2jcu8KrXU9TWHIf2OYdAJ2OgufDMQGdqdjVRCdSQ_ORJAEw0h/s1600/tygers-hamburg.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-58601999076900381802014-05-04T10:27:00.001-07:002014-05-04T10:27:27.293-07:00Digital Ideas TapesI've got boxes of "ideas tapes" (Cassettes) in the attic. Luckily digital ideas are easier to store and access (see pic) Back in the 70's and 80's my various publishers and production companies were always badgering me for more songs - give is more !! make us money !! - oh the stress. Sometimes the very pressure they exerted staunched the creative flow. Lately new ideas have been dropping from me like ... well er... the proverbial dropping off you thing (again see pic). I wonder if my old publishers would be pleased to hear this. The ones I haven't either sue'd or told to F off that is. Sadly, I can't really play you any of this stuff as it is really ruff so just hum along with the picture. <img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-719" src="http://stmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/song-ideas-586x480.jpg" alt="song-ideas" width="586" height="480" /> <br> <br>Steve T Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-9347102935075059642014-03-29T00:25:00.001-07:002014-03-29T00:25:13.962-07:00Social Media OptimisationI'm making this post on the basis that it should go to all my social media outlets using a mixture of plugins + smoke and mirrors. I've pretty much cracked it all but for Google+ - Now, Google + does not play nice with very much else at all. It's a shame where Google have taken this social network as I thought it had great promise. I would like my postings to go to Google+ as there are people there that I like to connect with. However, I do not like Google+. Firstly the content is scrunched up into little boxes in the center of the screen. Then there's the fact that Google are trying to channel people into using the network the way Google wants rather than how the people want. This probably goes for all the social networks and it's a trade off between the benefits and fun we can extract from these tools offset against the annoyance they cause us with constant changes. <br> <br>Steve T Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-36050680056777699912014-03-28T23:54:00.001-07:002014-03-28T23:54:15.175-07:00FaceliftI think it's time to overhaul my <a href="http://stmedia.org">http://stmedia.org</a> website. I quite like the Wordpress skin I'm using but it has some odd anomalies. Perhaps it's time to use a more modern and updated template. I think what I'll do is create a mirror site and copy the content. Once I'm happy I'll port the skin over. I want to retain some of the retro stuff and many of the quirks are lost in the mists of time. <br> <br>Steve T Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-67177658423910033172014-02-15T02:46:00.001-08:002014-02-15T02:46:21.412-08:00Unfinished Song 2000Rediscovered this on my iTunes today. When I was in the Whitaker Band I produced an album "The Tuesday Club" circa 1999. This is one of my many unfinished songs and we slotted it between the tracks as if it got there by accident. Sorry, it's my naff vocals - maybe I should dust off the rest of the album. Once I was a loner, How did I survive? 'till the day you came my way I was barely alive Once I was a poor man with nothing to my name but a worn overcoat and a crooked walking cane <iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 142px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2477542940/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/t=1/transparent=true/" height="240" width="320" seamless=""></iframe> <br> <br>Steve T Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-88718731326228959492014-02-15T02:33:00.001-08:002014-02-15T02:33:49.155-08:00Music by the Yard<img class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-646" alt="measuring-tape" src="http://stmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/measuring-tape-150x150.jpg" width="150" height="150" />I once worked with an Irish audio engineer, I don't know if the fact he was Irish has a bearing on this but he had an interesting way of determining the length of pieces of music. He worked in a studio run by video production outfit and would be asked to music of a specific duration - quiet often 28 second for commercials. His solution was simple: the music was produced on a machine running at 15 i.p.s. (15 inches per second) therefore he deduced that a 28 seconds long piece of music would be 420 inches long i.e. 35 feet long. So he would take out his tape measure and measure off 35 feet, snip it with a razor blade and deliver it to the video producer. <br> <br>Steve T Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-74340465892397260212014-02-02T03:57:00.001-08:002014-02-02T03:57:13.503-08:00Old Days vs New Days<img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-634" alt="1024-cubase7" src="http://stmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/1024-cubase7-300x192.jpg" width="300" height="192" />Computer recording vs the old days: spent about 4 hours yesterday trying to recover a lost track. Weird stuff with lots of blind alleys trying to rectify. I'd done all the right things with incremental saves and backup files but it seems many of the saves were corrupted. So how would this play out in the old days? - If a tape became corrupted? I guess we'd have given up sooner and re-recorded rather than trying to recover or rebuild. I guess the lost time might be similar. There's always the fear of losing some of the magic of the original take but then: magically, the rebuild nearly always turns out to be better! <br> <br>Steve T Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-85249864841629556292014-01-26T03:24:00.001-08:002014-01-26T03:24:49.130-08:00SONG STORY: One Of A KindFor a while I published "Song Story Sunday" where I took a song and made a collage of it, going through the various stages of development. Today I'm reviving this feature for a song called "One of A Kind". This song was co-written with Tommy Morrison. Just under a week ago I heard this song played as we all bid our final farewell to Tommy. The version we used for that occasion was by Elkie Brooks because Tommy was justly proud that his song had been recorded by a major artist. Naked song alert !! – the collage starts with my rough "dooh be doo be dooh" rendition. All I had was the title. I gave this to Tommy to develop a lyric and next there is a version sung by Tommy when he'd done the lyrics. This is not a simple pop song lyric – "I've spent a lifetime, or so it seems, moving in circles, dealing in dreams", pure Morrison Magic. Next there is a version sung by Phil Caffrey that I used to pitch for covers. This version can be heard on the recently released "Sleepless Nights" album by<a href="http://stmedia.bandcamp.com/album/sleepless-nights "> Caffrey, Morrsion, Thompson</a>. Then we hear the version by Elkie Brooks released on her "Pearls iii" CD and also as a single in various parts of Europe. Finally, there is an updated version I started to work on about a year ago. Maybe I need to finish this? https://soundcloud.com/stevie_t-1/one-of-a-kind-collage <br> <br>Steve T Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6497135916336481175.post-36373145793213985042014-01-14T16:18:00.001-08:002014-01-14T16:18:19.346-08:00Cubase Gets It Right<a href="http://stmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/1024-cubase7.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-634" alt="1024-cubase7" src="http://stmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/1024-cubase7-620x397.jpg" width="620" height="397" /></a>With version 7, in my view, Cubase has finally got it right and I'm referring largely to the mixer. I could never really get to grips with the mixer in all previous versions. It was baffling and the window just floated all over. Now the mixer is much more solid visually and is a full window that you can dock in your second monitor. Lots of other stuff that's equivalent to real world mixers but I've not fully gotten into that yet. This has been the reason I've preferred ... well "Reason" (Propellerheads) - I really do like music software to look and behave like the real world devices they emulating. <br> <br>Steve T Steve Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14696662167204439139noreply@blogger.com0