asides Blog

One line thoughts of the day.

The trouble with reviews is no matter how careful you are to balance any criticism with plenty of positives, somebody is always going to quote the negative bits out of context.

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Tim Hall | Comments Off

Dear organisers of Let’s Rock Bristol. You use the word “Rock”. I do not think you know what it means. Unless of course I’ve totally forgotten Bananarama’s metal years.

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Tim Hall | Comments Off

For those of you who haven’t noticed, I’m taking an extended break from Facebook. At the moment I have yet to decide whether or not this will become permanent, though one Large Halibut is claiming Facebook is boring without me. One thing I’m trying to discover is how well I can maintain contact with FB acquaintances via blogging, other social networks, or plain old email.

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Tim Hall | 1 Comment

When a major prog website’s annual end-of-year poll has ten slots for album of the year, three for DVDs but just one for gig of the year, it does leave you wondering if some people need to get out more.

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Tim Hall | Comments Off

Recruiters are still talking about “Rock star developers”.  One consequence of being a software tester by day and music critic by night is that I don’t even want my rock stars to be rock stars. Do we really want the sort of egos who send emails in 14 point red bold arguing that the bug you raised was a missed requirement rather than a coding error?

Give me Rock Star Developers and I’ll test their work as if I’m Paul Morley writing for the NME in 1981…

Posted on December 28, 2013 by Tim Hall | 2 Comments

Ronnie Biggs was a criminal thug who destroyed the lives of two innocent people who were just doing their job. The people we must not forget are Driver Jack Mills and his secondman David Whitby, both of whom never recovered and both died before their time. Biggs and his accomplices were no folk heroes, and screw those who try to romanticise their crimes.

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Tim Hall | 1 Comment

I am beginning to think it’s time for all of us to dump Facebook and go back to forums, blogs and email. Facebook tries to be all of those things mashed into one, and succeeds only in doing them all badly. Its only success has been in killing off everything that did those things better than Facebook does.

Posted on December 17, 2013 by Tim Hall | 4 Comments

“A willingness to treat a concert as if both the band and the rest of the audience are merely the scenery and soundtrack for your own night out” – fantasic piece in The Quietus about talking at gigs.

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Tim Hall | Comments Off

Not that Beyoncé is really my kind of music, but I’ve got to admire the way she’s annoyed the music critics by releasing an album to the public without any advance warning, acting as if she’s a small independent prog act. Reviewers in the broadsheets have grown accustomed to hearing big mainstream mainstream releases months before the rest of us, and some of them don’t seem happy at the way she’s gone and short-circuited the whole process. More power to her, I say!

Posted on December 14, 2013 by Tim Hall | Comments Off

I wonder you can troll indie hipsters by taking the dullest bits from Yes’ infamous “Tales From Topographic Oceans” and telling them it’s the new post-rock act everyone is talking about?

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Tim Hall | 1 Comment