Will the Facebook coding finally be at an end? My constant struggle to interact with the distinctively unsociable "social" phenomenon appears to be at an end... I might actually be able to put gigs on there without visiting it.

I'm still carefully picking my way through Poulenc's gorgeous song, La Reine de Coeur; and learning charts for the gig in Settle. I might even do some admin—that's how productive I'm feeling at the mo.

Looking forward to some music time with Dave Kane and Otto Fischer in Leicester today. It feels like an age since I last gigged with Dave; and Otto's a really special guitarist. I think it's the first time they've played together so I'm hoping it'll work!

Josh was originally down to do the gig, but unfortunately he's super busy. But it's a great chance to try new things, and I haven't worked with a guitarist in ages either... as I'm not really a fan of the instrument, then it isn't my first choice when putting a band together; but there are some who really make the instrument sing. Otto is one of those people.

Wow. I really needed to do that gig. Many thanks to all those who came out to hear Dave, Otto and me. Blew away the cobwebs in my head...

Having Otto there provided a totally different aspect of the music too, and made us think differently—it's like having a reminder that you're alive! Very refreshing.

Heaps and heaps done; and more to do today. Had a great meeting with Lydia Towsey, Jean Binta Breeze and Dave Dhonau yesterday, to figure out what more needs doing for Lydia's The Venus Papers. Fresh new poems to work with—they will require several reads to get the moods right, but I have a few ideas already. The work is so good.

I'm also having a day of contacting promoters. It's a very unexciting and sometimes frustrating experience, but the last couple of gigs have pushed me into action. I'm pretty certain that someone would like some adventurous, fun music! Know anyone??

The early morning has been spent putting together a iCalendar to HTML bridge for the site—no more boring entering gig information to a database for me! This is almost finished and I'll roll it out probably in the next couple of weeks. You won't notice much of a difference, but that's entirely the point.

yes, yes I know; I have loads to write about. But I've been coding; and preparing for things. So I'm on light blogging duties. But I have a question for you, if you're reading:

Imagine that someone has asked you to DJ for their child's 16th birthday party. There's a real chance for you to turn the kid to your musical tastes—but the set is INSANELY short—15 minutes. WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE?

Pop your answers below!

Had a good one on Saturday with Arun's Prince Achmed music—and there was a great jam afterwards!

There are also some fantastic photos of the jam from Helena Dornellas.

some more great photos of Arun's gig at the Alchemy Festival—this time from Richard Kaby.

Bit more Bash scripting today to distract me from the music I should be writing for Lydia's show in June. Really intrigued as to why xmllint is faster than the xpath command when they're doing the same thing.

I'm writing more weather and location scripts. On my laptop I use them to tell me where the nearest amenities are when I'm away... thanks to Open Street Map! http://openstreetmap.org/