holyrood christmas party

We have a meal at the radison high street.

Bands at base.

Live music for a change!

justins party

Crazy dancing.

Carlton hill

Harriette looking cold on top of Carlton hill.

Foam party @ Base

Look at the pretty foam!

Busy

Been ages since I posted. I've been very busy. Heres a few of the things that have been keeping me occupied.

We are going to try and sell our flats in order to buy a house.

Harriette and I went on a NIce Holiday down to the Lakedistrict.

I've got a new job working at daxtra.com

Now that term is back my dj shifts are back up to 5 nights per week!

Top Tune

If you get a chance listen/watch this tune on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9KnuJZkBjg

Its certainly one of my favourites at the moment.

Freshers week

I havent posted for a while as I have been very very busy with Freshers Week at Edinburgh University.

Things are still pretty busy now freshers week is over. Students are back so regular weekly shifts have started up once again.

This week I'm playing in;

Tuesday - Shagtag @ Stereo - Indie / Rock.
Wednesday - Flirt @ Potterrow - Mainstream + PoP Anthems.
Thursday - Base @ Base - Party Music.
Friday - Sapphire Rooms - Music for girls to strip to.
Saturday - Sapphire Rooms - Music for girls to strip to.

In addition im also running the SI sound and light office from Monday to Thursday daytime!

West Chapel Culross

Harriettes birthday and we went for a plesant walk through some fields and discovered this hidden church yard.

Missile Shield in Poland

So this seems to have pissed the Russians off. They are threatening a response....

Anyone placing a bet that they send some missiles to be based in Cuba?

Spam Email

I receive more spam email than most people. Over 58784 spam mesages in a month maeans 1.4 spam emails per minute! Google seems to have picked up on this and tries to advertise me Spam Quiche.

My Great Granddad. H. G. Riddell

My dad just sent me this scan. Pretty cool job, though probably not for me.

Trip To Glasgow

I had a trip through to Glasgow today. We had a few CD players to repair and I had to make some deliverys and collections.

There was a very very heavy rain storm round Glasgow while I was driving. It made the trip slightly more interesting.

Edinburgh Military Tattoo

Harriette and I bought some tickets for the tattoo. We went for a nice meal at Darios then braved the crowds!

After the slow walk up past the security check we made our way to our seats. The weather just about held out for us with only a slight drissle at the begining of the show.

We went to one of the shows that the BBC was filming. Its always funny when the mobile camera men almost get trampled down by the marching bands :)

Skiing can be dangerous. Skiing with fireworks down hill on the esplinade... One guy trips over, though he gets up so fast that it almost looked like part of the show.

One of the bands this year had a comedy dancing dragon. I missed the abseiling down the castle walls that I'd seen a previous year. But the marching bands were every bit as good as I remember them being.

All in all the tattoo is a must see show if your anywhere near Edinburgh in August.

Web Cam / CCTV

I'm currently thinking about integrating my cctv system with my computer network to allow public access to the cameras via a web page.

There are several different options for doing this. The easiest two methods are.

1) Use the network monitoring software to view the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) inputs on a PC, Perform a screen capture on the PC and pipe that to the streaming software on the web server.

2) Capture the video output from the DVR using a tv capture card then stream the tv capture to the web server.

Unfortunatly both of these options require running 3 machines the DVR, Web Server and a PC that processes the DVR signal. I dont have a problem with the DVR or the web server, these run 24/7 and are dedicated to what they do. However I cant justify the system performance hit that processing the video stream would have on my destop computer.

What would be ideal is if the DVR featured its own streaming web server, or I was able to capture its network stream directly on the web server. Unfortunatly the DVR needs its own custom software to view the network stream and I cant find a way for the web server to capture it directly.

Hmmm.

Stock Markets

Why do stock Markets close at night?

With electronic trading and a closely linked global economy, it seems old fasioned that stock markets close for the night. Its true that traders need to sleep and they cant all trade 24/7 but, its easy to set up trade plans to buy/sell in your absence. Or in the case of multinational companies, have another office (different time zone) continue the trading.


Just a thought.

Beatbox Poster

A few posts ago I was talking about historic club nights. Here is the poster from 'Beatbox' the regular Friday night club in the Teviot Row House union in the early 90's.

Lamas Fair St Andrews

We take a trip to St Andrews for their anual summer fair.

My first experiment at attaching a video to the blog!

This video is from big wheel on Market Street in St Andrews during the Lamas Fair. Staring Harriette and John Riddell.

Flat pack furniture

I spent the afternoon building some draws. In the evening I reconfigured my instilation of JTVLAN for more fluid streaming of TV through the flat.

JTVLAN is a handy solution for streaming TV over ethernet LAN from a PC TV tuner card. It was the first software redily avaliable to do such a task. I've been running it for almost 2 years now! Another handy package that I use for remote streaming is 'Orb Media' not so great for use on a LAN but great for streaming TV to your mobile phone.

Georgia War, Google Maps

Wondering if there had been any censorship of satellite images etc. I decided to take a look at Georgia in Google maps. Was slightly surprised to find that all of the Town/Road names are missing. Either they were never there or they have been removed as a reaction to the conflict. Though curiously enough the satellite coverage still looks ok, and it still takes you to the correct place on the map if you search for a Georgian town name. Weird.

I would be interested to know if the map information has been removed or if it was just never there.

Asian wedding.

Probably about 1000 seats at this gig. Which is quite typical. You can see our pa and plasma displays by the stage.

Asian wedding in glasgow.

Im called in to configure the pa system control unit and video systems.

Facebook

After abstaining from Facebook for some time my wife persuaded me to sign up.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1300896876

Sapphire Rooms

One of the more interesting places that my work has taken me.

Get free entry to the Sapphire Rooms, print off this web flyer.

Lots of fine dancing girls can be found here!

For further information visit.

http://www.sapphirerooms.co.uk/

Or see my review below.

Here is my google-local review of the Sapphire Rooms.

Opened in Dec 2007 Sapphire Rooms is Edinburghs newest and largest strip club. At the weekends you can find as many as 16 fine young ladies working here.

Sapphire Rooms is on the edge of Edinburghs "pubic triangle" (main spot for strip bars/clubs) its on Lothian Road opposite the Sheraton Hotel and within a minutes walk of a number of Bars, Night Clubs, Theaters, Cinema and a Taxi Rank!

Various shows and packages are available to suit a range of tastes and preferences. VIP private shows and group shows available. Be afraid of stags on the stage though!

Photos

Well I found two. The Ark and Establishment. The building has since been knocked down to make way for a Scottish Widdows Office.

Club Nights

Hey

The web realy does have a short memory! I've just been searching round for photos of what some of the venues I work in used to look like as there dosnt seem to be much photo content out there. I'll have a dig through my photo archive and find some shots to post here.

My DJing career started when I moved to study at Edinburgh University. I think I was attracted to Edinburgh after seeing the lighting rig in Teviot! I wasnt long till I was working as a LJ at the regular Friday night club "Beat Box". One thing led to another and I became a DJ rather than an LJ. My services have been in demand ever since.

I have had residency's at the following venues.
Teviot
Potterrow
Hollyrood Union
Berties
The Ark
The Attic
Establishment
The Lighthouse
Prive
Jaffacake
Gaia
Stereo
Qba
Frankensteins
Espionage
Sapphire Rooms
Sportsters
Sandermans
Jongleurs

So I'll try to dig out photos of a few of these venues to bring back some memories.

Work at SI sound and light

I seem to have been working in the si office a lot recently!

www.qualitydj.co.uk

Grad ball

We all loose a lot of sleep and pull off another massive setup.

Snowdon railway

We take a trip to wales and look at the Mount Snowdon railway.

A nice stay in Shrewsbury

Harriette and I have a quick get away for a few days.

Finally getting back to normal

Hi

Its been a while since I updated this site. So here is a quick round up of whats been going on.

Our wedding was fantastic. Thanks you to everyone who came along and special thanks to those who helped us.

Honeymoon was great. I will have to try and put some of the photos onto my picasa page soon.

We just got some new mobile phones. Nokia N95, fantastic seems like there is nothing it cant do. Its almost a PC for your pocket!

We have a trip down to the Lake District and Wales planned for the coming week. That will give us some time to finish writing our wedding thank you cards. Hopefully some sight seeing too!

John R

Photo of harriette taken with new nokia phone.

Boat ride in london

Good weather too

Stag party

Dave takes photos.

Stag night.

In the hotel in london. Most folk are here.

Jurys inn

Room 231 ready for the weekend.

My stag party

Train to london.

Harriette at morcambe bay

We took quite a few photos of each other.

Harriette

At morcambe bay

Short holiday

Interesting chocolate shop in kendal

Wedding preparations.

4 months to go and things are happening.

Alan and Kirsty's Wedding

My Photos from Alan and Kirsty's wedding are now online @ http://lobster.johnriddell.co.uk/
The site is a little slow so please be patient.

A small selection is now also avaliable @ http://picasaweb.google.com/john.riddell/AlanAndKirstySWedding

My Dads edited photos are appearing on http://picasaweb.google.com/frank.riddell

Happy new Year

Enjoy.