Livemocha - Social Language Learning Community

So it's off to Mexico I go. Well, soon... so I've been improving my Spanish recently, and discovered a great website to do it.

Livemocha is a kind of social educational networking site, where you can do language exercises and your livemocha "friends" can mark them and help you improve. The site caters for a whole range of languages, and one of the best features I've found is the instant messaging which allows you to type away to real people.

Ideally they speak to you in your language (which they are learning) and you type in the language your learning (their native tongue), so you can have conversations and help each out with your mistakes as you go. It's a great way to use your language skills in a real conversation without even leaving your house.

There's loads of other stuff too, from drag and drop activities to interactive video sections where you can record yourself responding to a video conversation. It's also free to join the community and you can unlock new sections by collecting points which you earn by contributing and marking other peoples work. In fact it's this switching between teaching and learning, and helping and being helped, that makes the community feel so very warm and friendly.

It's truly a great website, with a great community, and if you want to learn or practice a language online - I have found no better way to do it.

I'm useless, but not for long. The future is coming on

Woah... where am I? Well, bizarrely, in Lichfield it would appear. Somehow I ended up living in a neat and tidy little city with good food, old buildings, a huge cathedral and a herb garden belonging to Charles Darwin's grandfather. Samuel Johnson invented the dictionary here - yup it's that kinda place - and the other day I sat in a sea of white hair at the Garrick Theater listening to a talk about visiting Burma and planning my escape.

It's not that I don't like it here, but I've just been made redundant from a job I took building computer games for school kids, and have managed to save up some money to go travelling with. Sadly this might mean the end of my band unless we form some kind of virtual counterparts and perform as the Gorillaz. But right now things seem to be tough in the creative industries. The music industry is saturated and no one seems to be getting by, and things don't seem much better for the film industry or the arts.

A while back I worked with the charming Martin Gooch (a filmmaker who has worked on East Enders, Harry Potter and Big Brother) and his words are ringing in my ears... When asked about his choice of 'career', Martin (dressed in scruffy jeans, loose T-shirt and with a foppish non-descript haircut) had said "It's not a choice of career, it's a choice of lifestyle.". It's a quote that clearly demonstrates the creative person's relationship between what would be considered work and how they live.

In a recent interview for Birmingham's Fierce Festival, independent arts curator Charlie Levine's advice on 'making a living in the arts in Birmingham' was "find a part time job... the arts won’t be a 9-5.".

So before I pour yet more money into my creative pursuits, and find other sources of income, I feel like it's time to take a break and regroup. A break to Mexico and Central America.

So for now I ain't happy, I'm feeling glad. I got sunshine, in a bag. I'm useless, but not for long. The future is coming on. Is coming on... Is coming on... Is coming on...

Awesome surreal animation from David O'Reilly

This is just so sublimely weird, completely surprising and unique I had to share!

Birmingham Djent & Avant-garde Metal

Djent : It's a word a friend mentioned to me yesterday, is a term coined by the band Meshuggah to describe a particular heavily muted and crunchy guitar sound, and is apparently becoming known as a musical genre. I'm new to the word Djent, but luckily I'm not new to bands like Meshuggah with whom I grew up with.

Next week my band Meatfeast play a Birmingham Jazz gig with Djent band Husk.

Husk are led by trumpeter Sam Wooster and supply heavy, rich, jazz-infected doom-metal. I saw them support Trio VD at The Rainbow a while back and knew straight away they we're someone we needed to hook up with.. Wooster scowls a lot - like he hates his band and wants to kill them. It's mesmerising.




My own band Meatfeast have just finished a music video for our track "Self-inflicted Haircut" which was shot in the Green Street Warehouse in Birmingham, near the Custard Factory. The video came together with the help of Fat Baby films director Kevin Chapman and Director of Photography Djonny Chen, who led a skeleton crew from across the Midlands (brought together by Richard Wood of the Coventry Warks Filmmakers Network), and who we cannot thanks enough for making it happen.



We have also released our 2 track EP "Hands Like Claws" - recorded at the lush Monochrome Productions studio near Banbury with the awesome Tom Gittins (of The Culprit). We've been struggling to find a genre we fit into, not really being Post-hardcore, Progressive Metal or anything else we seem to get labelled as. Maybe we're Djent, but I doubt it...

Hands Like Claws EP by Meatfeast

Buy it for £1.38 from Amazon Here

 
Meatfeast & Husk play Jazz Club at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath, Birmingham on Wednesday December 7th. Tickets £5.