Performance at Derwent Arms

Last night was my debut singing gig as a supporting act to regular and professional performer, Ami Walker. Was I nervous? You could say that, but who wouldn’t be when they didn’t actually know the words to one of the songs they were singing?

In total, I sang 4 songs; Elton John – I Want Love, Will Young – Your Game, Maroon 5 – This Love and Billie Piper – Because We Want To (thankfully no-one was listening to hear me forget the words in that, since it’s such a dreadful song).

It was a brilliant night – I loved every second. Ami’s very talented and supportive, and has offered to take me with her to any other gigs, until I’m eighteen and old enough to have my own gigs; which I appreciate greatly as it will boost my experience and confidence levels.

Something else worth mentioning, I don’t think I’ve laughed as much as I did last night either.  When Ami called up all the men in the room to do a bit of a “Full Monty” dance to her rendition of ‘Hot Stuff’, it was hilarious to watch as Ollie, some old geezers and Ami’s boyfriend Dan fumbled about nervously, trying to work out what to do.  Then Dan ran off to the toilets when Ami turned away, and an old guy walked out of them straight after – looking like Dan had done some sort of transformation – which was so funny.

If you’re in the area on September 2nd, do come along for my next gig with Ami!

Stolen Phones Locked

Thank goodness someone’s finally doing something about this.

I know of so many incidents of phone theft through my friends’ experiences. Luckily for me, I’ve never experienced it; but it’s becoming a worryingly possible danger nowadays. A few years ago, it seemed even more common than it is today.

So now, phones reported stolen are set to be locked within 48 hours. Not just the phones themselves will be locked though; oh no – all 5 major British networks will be inactive to these phones too.

It’s brilliant because something like this needs to be done in order to retain as much privacy as possible and teach the thief as much of a lesson as possible, but somehow I can’t see this act putting a total end to phone theft.

Then again; when will there ever be an end to any form of theft?  Maybe when the cow really does jump over the moon.

Google Sees No End

I’ve just heard of Google Vision; a new invention which you carry around like a phone or PDA, and if you see something on your travels that you want to know more about, you ‘point’ this at it, and using built-in image recognition and GPS, it Googles it for you.
Genius or over the top?

I say over the top. It’s things like THAT that makes this world a lazy place. The degree of desperation that technology is reaching has started to worry me.

I thought mobile phones were intelligent enough to display Google on their screens now – why do we need one of these additionally? ‘Scanning’ things with a Google device is just plain lazy.

And why Google? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this designer isn’t a member of the Google team so why not Yahoo! or MSN Search? If Microsoft can be sued for using their own search engine on their own software, then surely there’s something wrong with Google getting all the credit here too?

The only thing I will say is that it’s a relatively good idea, in that it’s original and – I suppose – useful. But this comes down to the saying of “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man how to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime” – technology’s giving almost anything and everything to people nowadays.

Maybe it’s becoming too easy to rely on.

Frozen.eu

No, not the actual website.

It’s come to my attention that thousands of .eu websites have been frozen due to people buying them in hope of selling them to people for a profit.

I hate people who do this with a passion.

It’s selfish, greedy and disheartening. I know the early bird catches the worm, but this is just ridiculous. I can’t remember what it was now, but I was looking to buy a domain name that made no sense, and I wanted it to be spelt incorrectly (intentionally) – and guess what; it was taken. By a legitimate website? Oh no. One of those “This domain name has been parked” sites. Cheesed me right off.

I’m really pleased to hear about these frozen .eu websites.  It’s about time those people got a taste of their own medicine.

World Dance Masters 2006 Countdown

7 Days To Go!

Well, this is it! Next Thursday, I’ll be heading off to Blackpool, UK for the annual Masters’ World Line Dance Championships. For those of you who haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, allow me to shed a little light on the subject.

Every year, hundreds and hundreds of line dance competitors gather to compete for many different World titles. I’m going in for the “Division 4 Teen Female” title; but my real aim is to reach the final seven. At last year’s Masters, I reached the semi-finals and so hopefully, with a year of training since, I might make that all important final on the Sunday.

All line competitors have three routines to learn – usually styled as funky/hip-hop/street, cha-cha/latino and waltz – but sometimes with the replacement of nightclub-two-step, traditional, jive and occasionally, Lindy Hop. Dancers are called onto the floor by their individual divisions in turn with a 3 digit number pinned to the back of their costume, and after dancing all three routines, await the call-backs. And let me tell you now. Call-backs are hideous things. They make me want to die right there on the spot. You stand there patiently, listening as almost all the dancers before you have their numbers called, expecting not to be put through. But when you are put through… it’s the best feeling in the world. When I was put through to semis last year, I cried my eyes out! It’s so twisted having the world’s most horrible feeling followed by the best feeling, but I guess that’s just how it goes.

Other competitions that take place include Pro-Am (where a competitor dances couples dances – typically including east or west coast swing, cha-cha, waltz and two-step with a professional), duos (where two competitors perform their very own routine to one set piece of music), quads (the same as duos, but with four people), teams (where 6 or more competitors perform to their own medley of music, but there are several rules to what songs can be in it) and cabaret (similar to teams, but no real restrictions on music). There’s a new competition starting at this year’s Worlds (or so I’ve heard) named Masters Invitational; starring the best of the best. That’ll be interesting…

Since I only have a week to go, and in that week I start my new job at a dance shop, have a singing performance and countless trips into town to get everything I need; my blogging will unfortunately slow down I expect. I still aim to blog regularly, but what with all that, and as much practising as I can manage, AND my classes, I probably won’t be as active as usual.

Time’s going so fast… it’ll be over before I know it!

Cyber Bullying Continues

Is nowhere safe these days? I blogged about this a while back, and yet it’s still going on.

Can I just ask; why do they do it? What sort of buzz do they get out of bullying? Do they enjoy the sight of the scars on innocent people which constantly remind them how pathetic the bullies are?

I’ve been subject to cyber bullying before – as I have with ‘normal’ bullying – but thankfully, I don’t let it bother me. I have a way of life which – rightly or wrongly – consists of ignoring anything I don’t like. If someone walks up to me and tells me they hate me and that I should die, I just shrug it off. It’s their opinion, and in most circumstances, those people that do say that to you, tend to mean they hate themselves and not you at all. They just choose to take it out on you because you might be an easy target to them. Someone living a happy life. And they’re jealous of you for that.

Anyway, sorry to go off on one.  Why I’m blogging about this is because of how much it disturbs me that bullying has now gone hi-tech – instead of coming to a well-needed end, it’s just upgrading itself.

We all need to work together to put a stop to this.  And from experience; if you find someone bullying you online, click ‘block’.  If they get extreme and say things like ‘I’ll beat you up’ or ‘I’m gonna kill you’, then definitely, please, please tell someone you trust about it.  No matter what the bully says about keeping quiet.

Let’s hope this cyber-bullying doesn’t develop like the rest of the technology world…

IBM Put the “B” in Back-Up

IBM are now selling new product, Tivoli Continuous Data Protection for Files in a bid to prevent computer users’ data from being lost through not backing things up. It works similarly to anti-virus software; working in the background, unnoticed.

This is fantastic, because it’s so true that so few people back-up their data regularly. I admit to not being one of the few that do – I have so much on this computer that I just never get round to it, so I would equally be devastated if it was all deleted.

I would definitely get this software myself, and advise it to anyone who values the files on their computers. This product is extremely useful; even to those who already back-up their data regularly.

On a non-tech note, me and my friends participated in breaking two World Records yesterday and I was interviewed by the local radio station to talk about it; be sure to listen to local BBC radio tomorrow to hear it!

Deafening Success

It’s all happening for the world of music at the moment.

First of all, the ‘MP3 generation’ are being warned that they could be causing themselves serious hearing damage as they continue to listen to loud music 24/7. I admit to being a victim of this – I always play my music loud, and frequently; but my motto is ‘there’s no point in playing it if you can’t play it loud’.

Secondly, Microsoft are going head to head with Apple, with their new media family of products under the name “Zune”. This announcement denotes that the rumours of Microsoft’s allegid competition with the iPod are true, despite comments that they weren’t. I’m looking forward to seeing these products – that are aimed for release sometime this year – because the only reason I haven’t bought an iPod is because of the fact they’re so anti-Microsoft. I use Windows XP Home, WMP and a lot of my songs are .wma format… I’d have no real use for an iPod. That’s why I’m pleased about this news; I use pretty much Microsoft everything, so it sounds good for me.

Thirdly, Yahoo! have just released their first music track for download without copy protection. I recently read that record companies are ‘learning their lesson’ when it comes to the strictness of music and downloads — could they be loosening up a bit? Illegal downloading is – wrongly – getting more and more popular; but are you honestly surprised at that? Legal music is very expensive, and has so many ‘catches’ to it (eg. you may only copy to CD 5 times before needing to pay again, etc.) – illegal downloading probably comes across much more simple and easy. But it’s illegal. Maybe these companies are beginning to realise that.

PowerPoint’s Got the Power

Microsoft are having to hurry along with producing a patch in order to protect against a new, nasty virus which is found in a PowerPoint presentation, attached in an e-mail.

The presentation is said to be attached to a GMail address with Chinese characters in the subject heading.

Microsoft are warning not to open or save any unexpected PowerPoint presentations received.

The virus is known to install a keylogger once the presentation is opened, which then watches and records everything you type. The presentation is apparently about love between men and women. Which is quite ironic considering watching it causes viruses.

Maybe I’m over-careful, but I wouldn’t dare open an e-mail attachment from someone I don’t know or trust; especially if it had no relevance to anything. After this though, we’ll all definitely have to be even more careful around our inboxes – and when it comes to unknown e-mail attachments, trust no-one.

Taken For Granted

I got back from teaching my class, and found that my internet was down.

This frustrated me, because I usually get home, get online and start downloading step sheets so I can learn new dances to teach at my class next week. Obviously, without the internet, I couldn’t do that.

Thankfully, my internet was back up after 5 minutes or so, but it made me realise that I just couldn’t do my job had it been down for a week or longer. You wouldn’t think it, but to run my dance class, I need the internet. In order for me to find out which dances are being taught around the world, I need to check online chart listings. Usually, the songs we dance to are quite rare, which requires the aid of the internet in order to get hold of them.

Three years ago, and I didn’t even have the internet. Now, I’m relying on it to do my job.

It’s scary how times are changing.