October 2009 Archives

Now that Gmail, including Apps, supports the Exchange sync protocol, the iPhone native email client allows a rather nice way of using Gmail. After a few days of really flaky performance when it was launched, and little filter surgery so that all my list traffic doesn't hit the iPhone inbox, I have a really slick almost-Blackberry experience going on. The Calendar and Contacts sync just works, and the email integration is very nicely implemented.

For example, the Gmail way of doing things is to put mail into the 'archive', not to delete stuff. This works especially well with paid-for Apps, where one gets 25GB of storage per user! So, the trash icon on the iPhone archives the mail. Actual deletion works differently. Sounds counter-intuitive, perhaps, but it's absolutely the right choice and it works really well.

That's something that happens a lot with Google applications. They may not always be the prettiest, but someone's really sweated details like that. It would have been trivial to make the trashcan delete stuff, and force users to (say) move to a special folder in order to archive. Instead, they chose to deviate from the canonical function and do the thing most likely to work properly with Gmail, risking the wrath of the legions of Apple UI fascists.

It's a bit arrogant to change the way the trashcan works, sure, but Google are still the industry's rockstars so to my mind that's the kind of thing they should be doing. When they stop doing 'fuck you' stuff like this, we'll know it's all over and start looking for the next big thing.

For years, I've been playing drums to amuse myself. Playing along to others' music is great fun, and it's better than not playing at all. However, now I need to play live, and whilst singing lead, and as with any skill there comes a point where you have to start taking it seriously in order to improve. With the drums, that can mean only one thing:

Drill. More drill. Then some drill.

This is my drumkit

Getting the kit setup right is taking forever, especially since I've started playing an acoustic drumkit at rehearsals. (Life's too short to cart the TD-12K plus extras around.) It needs to be set so that I can switch smoothly between kits. At the studios I have a badly-tuned, uncared-for Mapex kit, which has size-mismatched, barely-tunable toms on annoying, difficult-to-set brackets. I'm having to take in more and more of my own hardware to deal with it.

Meanwhile, at home I've had to make more space so I can set the TD-12K up as I want it, rather than the only way in which it fits. Playing 45 mins a day is ok, but I'm doing three-hour stints at times right now, and having a badly set kit is painful.

There are many like it, but this one is mine

Actually, there aren't many like mine, at least not that I've seen at gigs. Certainly not at rehearsal studios. It's a slightly jarring transition from crisp-sounding, predictable V-Drums, to crappy-sounding acoustic, as well as never quite getting the positions right. It's a shame, because it's another thing to concentrate on, when I have enough to think about already.

I must master it as I must master my life

Having to sing makes drumming a lot harder. Essentially, because I'm not a very good singer, when I'm singing the drums have to be on autopilot. Sometimes this is easy, when the beat is simple and the lyrics follow a somewhat normal rock pattern. Sometimes, it's incredibly hard, when the lyrics cut across the beat, or the beat has all sorts of accents in funny places.

I think that's enough of the Rifleman's Creed.

There really is no substitute for just doing the rudiments. So, whereas previously I might just have put an album on and challenged my fitness, now I sit with a metronome and a stopwatch, and crank out steady notes on various parts of the kit for a set length of time, to build strength. It's tedious, but it works. And it hurts. I need to do it, because the fact is I'm a bit shy. I need to know that it's all in order before I do this stuff live, otherwise I'll be tight with self-doubt, and I won't enjoy it. If it's not fun, what's the point?

So: Drill some more.