Getting There

Up until last year, getting to Glastonbury was a piece of cake. We’d set off sometime on Wednesday morning, enjoy a leisurely drive down the motorway and drive right to the entrance gate without any hassle whatsoever. We’d get parked-up, load our camping stuff on our backs and be sat in our camp site enjoying a beer in no time at all. Easy.

Last year, things changed. A few of the smaller stages opened on Thursday afternoon and featured some profile bands. Suddenly Wednesday became Thursday and the majority of people coming to the festival turned up on Wednesday. The result; carnage on the roads. I pulled off the motorway about 9.20am yet didn’t get into the site until the late afternoon. Nose to tail traffic all the way to the entrance. I absolutely hated every mind-numbingly boring mile that we had to crawl to the site. It was so dreadful that we decided that for 2010 we’d travel down on the Tuesday and sleep in a Travel Lodge or similar.

We ended up setting off at 2.00pm on the Tuesday before the gates opened, When I say we I meant me, Lisa, Becca and Lisa, Mikey, Sarah and Simon, Chris and Anthony. We’d changed the location of our Travel Lodge at the 11th hour and ended up driving down to Taunton. The hotel was just off the M5 next to a retail park and had a pub right next-door. We had tea in the pub, The Hankridge Arms, before getting a few hours sleep.

We left Taunton at 5.00am and it took us about an hour to get into the car parks at Glastonbury. We had about 20 minutes of queueing at the entrance but nothing too annoying. We couldn’t get into our usual Yellow Gate though since that was now disabled and hospitality only. We had to use the new Bronze Gate and found ourselves parked in West 31. No worries, not far from where we usually park anyway.

The car park was already pretty full because a lot of the people there had taken advantage of the car-park gates opening on the previous evening while we were in the pub. There were sleeping bodies in cars everywhere but more worrying was the fact that there was an enormous queue alongside the edge of the field. I had a dicky-fit since I hate queuing and I had a right strop on for an hour or so. To their credit though the stewards in our car-park did their best and despite having to join the massive queue, we quickly reached the entrance and we were in. It was only 9.30 or so and this time last year we were just beginning the traffic day of hell.

Camping

Since 2005 we’ve traditionally camped in Wicket Field. It’s quite close to the festival bus station but most people walk straight on by and head deeper into the site. That left Wicket Field relatively quite and peaceful and was our Glastonbury Home. This year however the field had been designated as Family Camping only so we had to find somewhere else to camp. Not only that, the field was sectioned off with fences meaning that we had to walk around its perimeter to get to our new chosen site on top of Hitchen Hill Not much fun when you’r pulling a trolley with all your kit in the red-hot sun.

I actually quite liked our new camping area even though it was a bit of a pain negotiating all the tents climbing up the hill. We set up our usual gathering of tents but despite me asking for everyone to erect their individual tents really close to our Gazebo, people were too eager to get their tents up. Also we Toasty didn’t bring his Gazebo into the site which meant we were left with just one and a big gap. That gap was filled with other people’s tents pretty quickly and that effectively cut our camp in half. I wish people would listen to me sometimes.

As the weekend progressed I could see that Wicket Ground hardly filled up at all and there were large areas of green grass. Perhaps next year a smaller field could be allocated for family camping.

Anyway, once we got our camp sorted out we all went down to the Pyramid Stage to watch England’s only win versus Slovenia in the World Cup. It was a bit rubbish because we were miles away from the screen but I suppose we had it to do.

Cheese and Wine Evening

One of the highlights of the festival for us was our Cheese and Wine evening. We’ve said for a few years that we should have a dressing up day so we decided this year we’d all bring some dressing-up clothes and have a little soiree up by the stone circle.

Everyone made the effort by dressing up and bringing food and we all walked from our campsite up through the green fields to our picnic site. We got a few funny looks, a lot of people didn’t even notice us and we had a jolly old time.

Right at the end a band turned up, Orkestra del Sol and they played an impromptu gig right in front of us. We ended up dancing the conga all around the field and I couldn’t imagine a better start to the weekend or end to the day. It was absolutely brilliant and will be a treasured Glastonbury memory of mine for many years to come.

Once the band had finished we wandered off to Shangri La for an explore, despite all getting a bit lost in the darkness. I think we were all a bit tiddly by this time and I actually have no recollection of how we got back to the tents!

Music

Obviously I saw a fair few bands at the festival. The ones I enjoyed most were Frank Turner, Mumford and Sons and The Flaming Lips. Lots more bands were great, I just enjoyed those three the best. Shortest Glastonbury music review ever, or what!

Change of Attitude

Over the past few years I’ve noticed an influx of Glasto newbies to the festival that don’t seem to get it. People chucking half empty water bottles into crowds, people barging their way through to get to the front etc etc. I reckon that they’ve cut their festival teeth at places like Reading, Leeds and V. Well it seems to be the norm to be a bit arsey at those places but please don’t come to Glasto if you’re going to be just annoying.

Glastonbury is OUR festival, not just one we’re attending. Please don’t forget that.

Come Home

I left Glastonbury after the main acts had finished on Sunday evening. I keep threatening to stay over into Monday but by the time Sunday comes I’m usually knackered and busting to get away. We managed to get out of the car park within 30 minutes and had a slow drive home through the night stopping whenever I was tired.

Since getting home I’ve had time to reflect and I always realise that I had a really great time after the event. Thanks to all the people we camped with again: Phil and Lauren, Neil, Steve, Dave and Kate, Gem and Ricky, Julien, Olivia, Megan, Dom, Kaylie (shhhh), Lynn and Damian and the gang we travelled down with on Tuesday.

It was a good festival, great weather and I’m looking forward to 2011 already. Although, I have the small matter of Bestival to negotiate first!

I’m typing out this post on the longest day of the year and tomorrow I’m beginning the journey that will take me to the Glastonbury Festival. It’s quite possible that I may meet people with whom I interact on Twitter or elsewhere on t’interwebs. So, just in case anyone has false illusions of who I am or what I’m about, I thought I’d set the record straight. Not that it’s not straight already that is.

My name’s Dave and I live in Leeds. I’m not a Yorkshireman though, I’m from Oldham. I’m told I sound a bit like Mark Radcliffe although he’s from Bolton. If you click the Audioboo player down the right hand side of this site, that’s me. My Twitter name is @caramboo which is also the name of this website. I’m 47 years old and quite possibly old enough to be the father of many people who follow me on Twitter. I’m possibly younger than some people who follow me but it’s unlikely that I’m young enough to be their son. I actually am a father and both my daughters will be coming to Glastonbury with @milliesmum and me.

This will be my eighth Glastonbury, I’ve been to every one since 2002. I really wish I’d gone to earlier ones since I spent much of the nineties going to other festivals. In fact my first sort-of festival was seeing Led Zeppelin at Knebworth in ’79. I think my career got in the way of doing fun things though so I’ll just have to accept the fact that I started comparatively late.

Here are some Glastonbury pictures from yesteryear:

2002

Just me and my eldest daughter Lisa went to the festival. It’s amazing to see how young she looks in the pictures. Having said that, it’s amazing how young I look!

2003

My Glasto posse grew by +1 when my younger daughter Rebecca came for the first time. I can remember 2003 being really hot!

2004

I think 2004 was the first time we properly experienced a bit of mud. Most of the weekend was OK but it got a bit wet by Sunday. Another posse addition this year, Lisa’s friend Kaylie came for the first time. Oh yeah and England were in the European Championships and they were showing the England games.

2005

2005 saw a massive increase in the posse. This year Helen joined me, Lisa, Bexx and Kaylie. We were then joined by Chris and Rossy and met up with our now festival regular buddies, Dave, Neil + chums. This was the year of the Thursday night biblical thunder-storm and flooded camping fields.

2007

After the fallow year of 2006 we had our worst festival for weather. It was just incredibly wet and muddy. Terrible in fact. I still enjoyed the festival but I’d become ill in 2006 with reactive arthritis. That restricted my walking and tramping through all the mud was not good. 2007 saw @milliesmum‘s first festival together with her sister Lynn and her husband Damien. We camped with the Wolverhampton lads and our posse was getting big!

2008

At last, some Sun. After what I think was a damp Friday the sun came out and the rest of the festival was warm, dry and sunny. You could actually sit on the dried mud!

The usual posse turned up!

2009

Last year was another warm year. Two in a row, awesome! Anyway, last year was a funny one for me. I had a lot on my mind whilst at the festival and it spoiled my weekend really. I’m hoping to make up for it this year. Same posse were there apart from Lisa who was away travelling for 6 months and the addition of mates Sarah and her brother Simon who were both making their debut.

There’s an event ticketing agency here in Leeds called Luna Tickets. Lisa and I have used them before for gigs in Leeds. Their website is the usual case of user name and password before you can access your account. All very straightforward stuff.

Last night Lisa and I received an email from Luna Tickets saying:

Your password to login to www.lunatickets.co.uk has been reset. Your new password is pissflaps. You can change this once you login to your account. You can access your account here: https://www.lunatickets.co.uk/login.php

Which was, we thought, a little bit odd since neither of us had changed the password. A visit to the Luna Tickets site showed it as down for maintenance and there was not much more we could do.

This morning an email has come through from Luna Tickets; the explanation for last night’s email was:

Lunatickets.co.uk would like to apologise to those of you that may have received an email yesterday evening regarding a change in your password settings. This email was sent in error whilst our development team were working on the security of the site, unfortunately when the team thought they were working offline they were in fact working online causing the security check to go wrong.

So a big oops from the Luna Tickets development team then. I can just imagine their gasps when they realised what they’d done. Good on them for sending out the apology though and other than their faux pas, they’ve always been a good place to get tickets.

The gap year is actually a six-month trip to Kenya. Rebecca has attained a place with Changing Worlds and is due to travel to Kenya in January 2011. Once there she’s going to be working in an orphanage, assisting in the day to day care of the children as well as helping to teach English. She’s determined that she’s going to spend her time away in a useful and beneficial way and doesn’t want to simply take an extended holiday before starting University.

Rebecca has to self-raise the funds to make her trip and this amounts to somewhere in the region of £2500.00. This is before she has to think about any personal money she needs while she’s away. The payments are made in stages and she needs to pay her next instalment by the middle of April. To make this payment she needs to find around £500.00. It’s not a fortune but it’s an amount that she hasn’t, as yet, got.

In an effort to get the money together she’s arranging Becca’s Fundraising Party on Saturday 10th April. Yes, fewer than two weeks away! Her sister Lisa works at the Leisure Centre in Slaithwaite near Huddersfield and they’ve agreed to provide the venue free. She’s managed to procure the services of a DJ but the more entertainment that there is on offer, the more people she hopes to pull in on the night. She’s started a Facebook Event page to further advertise the evening.

So, on to the purpose of this post. Rebecca needs a band or bands to do some sort of gig on the night. The audience will be mainly 17-22 year olds and will have mixed musical tastes. Obviously the whole purpose of the event is to raise money for Rebecca so she’s asking for any band to play free of charge.

I appreciate that no matter how nice you may be, I suppose it’s asking too much to play a gig without payment for a girl you don’t know as well as having to lug your gear to Slaithwaite. So this is where I come in. I’m prepared to build, host and maintain a website for a band or bands for 12 months. I’ll be able to provide email accounts and all the usual malarky. The site will be UK based and will sit on the same server as this very site your looking at now. As well as providing the site, I’ll be able to provide transport on the day for any local(ish) bands to and from the venue.

So, are there any takers out there? You get a freebie website for doing what you do in front of Rebecca and her pals. If you don’t have a gig lined up that night come and help out Rebecca in her quest to get to Kenya. If you’re up for it drop me a message by using this contact form.

Go on, you know you want to.

This year there will be Me, Lisa, Rebecca, Alyssa and Kaylie travelling down with Glasto Newbies Sarah and Simon. Significant absentees will be Lisa and Char who are still travelling in SE Asia. We’re leaving really early on Wednesday morning. Once there we’ll be meeting up with our usual Glasto mates and hopefully camping in Wicket Field again.

I’ll do a big blog post when I get back and upload all my images to my flickr account however while I’m there, battery life and signal strength permitting, I’m going to try and do a lot of twitter updates, mostly with pictures from my phone. So to keep tabs on what I’m doing at the festival, these are the places to see.

• My Posterous Site – I’m going to be emailing this site with images and a few paragraphs of text explaining what’s happening.
• My Twitter Site – My Twitter Account – I’ll be using text messages to send those tweets that don’t have attached images.
• My Flickr Page – The same images will appear here.
• My Tumblelog – Again the same images will be mirrored here.
• My Lifestream – The whole shaboodle will be aggregated here

So. See you when I get back!

If you do, they have to be in your own music library.

The opportunity presents itself to me since we are going away for the weekend camping in Derbyshire. We’re stopping at a camp site provided by a pub called Bull i’ th’ Thorn near Buxton. I think there’ll be about 15 of us made up of all the gang who usually meet up at Glastonbury.

So here’s the plan. Tomorrow I’m going to catalogue my day on Twitter via my camera phone and Posterous. The day itself is pretty much mapped out in advance so you can marvel at my schedule from the comfort of your own computer chair:

• 07.30am – Get up, probably take Lisa to work.
• 10.00am – Take Becca to College
• 11.00am – Do my daily website maintenance
• 14.30pm – Collect Becca and her mate Squidgy from College
• 16.30pm – Set off for Buxton
• 18.30pm – Arrive Buxton, meet up with Lisa and Sarah
• 19.00pm – Beer, BBQ, Mates, Field, Pub, Who Knows…

Nothing too thrilling there I know but at least there’s a bit of variety for me to get my teeth into. It all starts tomorrow at 7.30am. How exciting!

Automated Lifestream Blog Software

Sweetcron is software that pulls in the feeds offered by other sites, ideally your own or your own accounts. In particular it’s an excellent tool to aggregate all your social networking updates, uploaded images, loved songs, bookmarked links, favourited videos etc etc. If you use a site and you have a presence there, if that site has an RSS feed of your activities, Sweetcron can deal with it.

Having a site pull in a boat load of stuff is cool, but what’s the point. Well, you can serve up those feeds in any way you want and each individual feed item can display as much or as little information about itself as you want, provided of course that the information is in the feed in the first place. My personal preference is for bite sized chunks or excerpts which is probably the way most people go.

The really cool thing about it all is that once you’ve decided which feeds to import, figured out how you want them to be displayed and tweaked things a little, you can pretty much walk away and let it get on with things all on its own. If you haven’t got access to a cron utility, which is how the thing is automated, Sweetcron has a built in pseudo cron to update every 30 minutes.

So you end up with an automated sort-of-blog that records your activities. If you can’t be bothered blogging for a while but nevertheless continue tweeting or other such funky things, your legions of readers can see what you’re up to. If you still don’t get it, no worries, there’s plenty more other things to get excited about. The bottom line is, I think it’s fun.

Blogging

I mentioned that I nearly abandoned WordPress completely when I found Sweetcron. Well; as well as having all the super cool feed capabilities, Sweetcron has a built-in blogging feature. You can either have the blog posts feature amongst all the other items or even have them displayed more prominently, as in WordPress et al. The blogging facility isn’t as complex as WordPress’ but to be honest I don’t think it’s meant to be. It’s just there if you want it and it’s more than adequate for the task. I suppose you could say that you use WordPress for blogging but hey it can import RSS if you want, you can use Sweetcron as an RSS aggregator but hey it can do blogging if you want. Easy.

I’ve decided that the fun thing would be to interlink the two. Sweetcron takes the WordPress feed and WordPress can be made to list the Sweetcron latest items. Your blog then doesn’t get all cluttered and your lifestream just becomes that, a record of your day to day interaction with the interweb, all on its lonesome. Sweet.

Themes

Just as in WordPress, Sweetcron is themeable. OK there aren’t kazillions of themes out there but it’s relatively easy to get build your own theme based on the default ones that come supplied with the software or one of the third party themes available.

I’m currently using the SocialCubes Theme by Derek Punsalan. Tweaked a bit as usual by me. As always I’m intending to build my own theme from scratch but hey, I’m a slow worker remember!

I found a couple of pages that list Sweetcron themes:

• Sweetcron Themes
• 25 of the best sweetcron powered lifestreams

So Let it Roll

So there you go, my Sweetcron lifestream is up and running and there for all to see. If you fancy one yourself and want some help, you can join the Sweetcron Google Group or just contact me and I’ll be glad to help out where I can.

Sweetcron and Nginx

I use the alternative (to Apache) web server Nginx to run my sites. It took me a while to figure out how to get Sweetcron to work happily under Nginx as there’s some rewriting to be done. After ages I finally figured out a way to make it work. The details are below after the read more:

Server Config:

# ———-

server {

location ~ .php$ {
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/foo.bar.com/index.php;
}
}

#———————-

The /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params are unchanged from those that work for WordPress etc:

#———————-

fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;

#—————————–

In system/application/config/config.php I made sure this line read like so:

#——————————

$config['uri_protocol'] = "REQUEST_URI";


#——————————

Hope that helps someone out.