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Last night an old friend called me out of the blue. He was visiting Liverpool with work and was out for a drink with a group of colleauges.

To cut a long story short, he bumped in to Ian McCulloch, the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen.

Following this chance encounter, my friend was understandably quite excited and felt a desire to share the event. Unfortunately, none of the twenty-odd colleagues he was out with had any frame of reference… “So?”, “Echo and the who?”.

What he needed was someone he had introduced to the band’s music over 20 years ago, someone who had joined him sneaking backstage at one of there gigs and someone who would definitely know what a big deal it was to to bump into an icon!

So he rang me.

His excitement was quite infectious.

Picture “borrowed” from heavenuphere on flickr.

The main component in playing HD content on a media centre PC is Cyberlink PowerDVD. There aren’t many (if any) alternatives at present and it is a seriously flawed piece of software (possibly due to the lack of any serious competition).

So What’s wrong with it?

Due to the flux in the HD-DVD and Blu-ray specifications, and the various implementations of these by the disks coming onto the market, updates to PowerDVD are relatively frequent. This could usually be considered a good thing but unfortunately, it has introduced something of a lottery as to what will play with a particular version; fix one thing and break another seems to be the norm.

Not to mention that during one seeming minor release (somewhere between 3319a & 3319f) the ability to play HD content from the hard disk was removed.

Never fear though. Such restrictive measures and bugs are like red rags to the resourful bulls out there.
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Not least because it is so much simpler, but regular usage will result in this will becoming ingrained, (this is covered in greater detail here), but being as I’m so used to the previous incarnations of JUnit it might be worth noting the usage for quick look-up…

package junit4;

import mypackage.ClassToTest;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.After;
import org.junit.Ignore;
import org.junit.Test;
import static org.junit.Assert.*;

public class MyJUnit4Test {

  private static ClassToTest classToTest = new ClassToTest();

  @Before
  public void whatUsedToBeInSetup() {
    // test set up type activities
  }

  @Test
  public void first() {
    classToTest.doWhatYouDo();
    assertEquals(classToTest.getWhatItDid(), result);
  }

  @Test(expected = SomeParticularException.class)
  public void shouldCauseExceptionInTestClass() {
    classToTest.doThatThingYouDontLike();
  }

  @Ignore("not ready yet")
  @Test
  public void multiply() {
    classToTest.doThatThingYouWillDo();
    assertEquals(classToTest.getWhatItDid(), futureResult);
  }

  @After
  public void whatUsedToBeIntearDown() {
    // test tear down type activities
  }

}

Minor Eclipse Annoyance - organise imports changes import static org.junit.Assert.* to whatever asserts you’ve actually referenced. This being an annoying when you’re developing iteratively and may not yet have used all the asserts you might wish to use.

I received my copy of Go Away White, the new album from Bauhaus yesterday and I have to admit that I was a little nervous about playing it. This feeling of trepidation wasn’t helped by the sticker on the front proclaiming this to be their first studio recording since 1983; though this is a little misleading, since they recorded a new track Severance for their live reunion album Gotham back in 1998.

Bauhaus are still a band I listen to frequently. There may be an element of nostalgia here, but I do feel that for me at least, their music has not dated in the way so much of what I listened to in my youth has.

I was nearly sick with worry when they reformed for a tour in 1998.

The closest analogy I can think of would be The Matrix, a fantastic film irrevocably tarnished by its sequels (well the second one anyway – I didn’t even bother with the third after that).

I shouldn’t have worried though. It was perhaps the best concert I have ever been to and I would have defied anyone who even suggested that it was not in fact fifteen years earlier.

But what about Go Away White? Well, it’s not the best album I have ever heard, but equally, I should not have worried so much.

From the outset the sound and the familiar form was present and by about half way through I realised that I had stopped worrying whether next track may spoil it. I was enjoying it.

In they days when I would look at my record collection and think, “I fancy a bit of Bauhaus, which album should I put on?�, Go Away White might not be my first choice. But now, with my MP3 player more often than not on shuffle, it will fall comfortably into the collection to be genuinely enjoyed when a track crops up.

It’s no secret that the big label record companies are struggling with, or reluctant to, adjust their business models to cope with the issues thrown up by, for the want of a better term, “the digital revolution�. So it’s down to the artists to address the situation themselves and an increasing number are making independent releases.

Einstürzende Neubauten have not long since released their third supporter funded release, working on a pay upfront model that gets you involved in the process and results in a disc through the post at the end.

The latest I’ve come across is an instrumental/concept album from Nine Inch Nails. Ghosts I-IV has been marketed direct by Trent Reznor from www.nin.com and is being offered in a number of guises.

The first volume Ghost I is free and has also been posted up on various torrent sites under a variation of the GPL licence.

The full package of Ghosts I-IV however is available as a lossless FLAC from the site at a measly $5. You can also choose a “hard copy� with a “download now too� option and could even go for an all singing and dancing signed deluxe vinyl edition with the grooves in the disk hand scribed by Mr Reznor for $300, though this has sold out.

Five Dollars! That’s less than… well less than loads of things… even less than the cut American Express would get if you used one of their cards to pay for a conventional album release!

I would consider myself a fan if NIN, so it’s possibly no surprise that I stumped up without a moments thought.

Although NIN enjoy a position of status that might allow them do things this way that true independents or unsigned artists might not this still feels in some way right. Good value and the money going to the artist.

The nice image at the top is courtesy of the people working on concerts and music at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, which I found after a post on eirikso.com.