The Tea Set

Chart of the Day

2012-02-16T16:36:00.001Z

Guess the chart...

measures of success on a publisher website

2012-02-01T14:02:00.000Z

As a marketing scientist with a special interest in media sites, a few interesting posts and developments have come to pass in the last couple of weeks.

This post from Greg Linch came on my radar – discussing how a measure like "engaged minutes" makes more sense for content evaluation on media sites. Using page views stems from advertising models established from print circulation models. In the more-digital era page views can give a bum steer, so you should derive your own measures…

http://www.greglinch.com/2012/01/quantifying-impact-a-better-metric-for-measuring-journalism.html

Some publisher sites will have defined their KPIs organically as the online presence evolved, but now may be in the last throes of reporting this first wave of measures, or submitting to legacy standards, as the accuracy and granularity demanded by advertisers is not satisfied by a big number that looks a bit fishy, but has been audited to the highest professional standard possible, on that measure.

The race to 'that measure' has seen many publishers shift strategy over time,. If this has not publicly admitted, it has seen many well known publishers become more famous for the content that people are finding from their organic search and referral traffic.

Facts:

In May, The UK Daily Mail saw its highest traffic not reporting the death of bin Laden, but for some Kim Kardashian bikini shots…

The politically left wing Guardian newspaper sometimes gets its highest single volume of inbound referrals from right wing Drudge Report.

In terms of then using PV and CPM based models, the Daily Mail should focus on more US celebrities and the Guardian should put up more stories about disappointing US economic news and military tensions.

Discussion of how the Mail became bigger online than the NYT is featured in this BBC piece

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16746785 and the message is clear – they do what they do well. A mixture of very clickable viral bait, tempting picture links and glossy magazine images to keep you on site, and get you to share. Houses that look like Hitler.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371091/Swansea-house-looks-like-Hitler-complete-naff-parting.html

The thing with right wing Drudge is that inbound referrals are distinctly un-sticky. Huge volumes come in to view that carefully selected poll showing the GOP up but don't feel compelled to browse around the rest of the site. Which is where engaged minutes come back in

Following the Pacman Google Doodle, The Guardian have launched a Space Invaders window with an amusingly blunt request to 'Help make our analytics dwell-time figures skew this month'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/interactive/2012/feb/01/tokyo-play-games-arcade-space-invaders

One final thought is that a favourite reference site of mine, BBC Sport may see fewer engaged minutes in the coming weeks. Redesigned in canary yellow, the site will glow radioactively on the screens as previously discrete males try to quickly scan the fixture lists and transfer gossip.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/sporteditors/2012/02/changes_to_the_bbc_sport_websi.html

My Top Photos of 2011

2012-01-07T14:20:00.000Z

Since my boy was born in June 2010, my photos have been less about eastern European architecture at obscure angles, and more about partially digested carrot. Not as appealing to everybody (though Mrs Tea Set points out that Budapest Bus Station is not exactly gripping material for most either..).

Anyway, in 2011 I took a few non baby related photos, and here are a few of my picks.

The o2 Arena - in the Spring, I went to see a couple of expensive mega prog gigs - The Wall and Rush. This shot of the o2 and surrounding buildings to showcase an entirely modern part of London which could just as well be in Istanbul or Qatar for the stylings.

Boris bikes... I suppose this is in as an editorial shot - a sign of the times where austerity is taking over, and the London commuting public is encouraged to get on their Boris bike as a way of avoiding the horrible Tube and overpriced trains.

Freelance 'gigs' are always a bit bizarre, but earlier this year I was asked to take photos of Handel House for a photo gallery backdrop to the Montreal Tafelmusik chamber orchestra's season. Nuts, but a great opportunity to have a museum to myself and take photos of harpsichords. And also discover the legalities of not being able to show any images of someone else's paintings! Who knew?

London Zoo penguin enclosure had a revamp, as the lovely art deco concrete curves were giving old pengiuns arthritis or something like that. The new enclosure is a big perspex tub which has a viewing gallery in front of it. the penguins swoop around when the zookeepers drop fish in, and the local seagulls go crazy at the same time too.

Sunset over Newquay. Just a nice sky shot from a fun wedding weekend in Cornwall.

A bicycle in Bruges. Ah yes, the old bicycle against a fairly ugly paint colour wall in Belgium - the Lepki photography of my youth is coming back to me.

The London Shard will be finished this year. There is a better picture to be had here, but this is just a placeholder whilst I get to it - the old British phone box and the largest tower in Europe.

Tiny birds. Again not a brilliant picture, but one that shows a few tiny birds and a big bird and a bit of focus.

Well on Ukrainian Christmas, my blue and yellow photo from Alberta, Canada is reminiscent of the flag of my ancestors!

Chains and mountains in Canmore - I quite like this empty playground shot. Nothing deeper really.

A bit postcard like this one. The Chinook sculpture, by the Bow in Canmore. I can feel the summer day around this picture.

Sunset over Somers Town - at the end of my time with the Guardian, the sunsets were huge. This one was in my final week as I prepared to move on back to Critical Mass.

Answering the question of how reindeers handle warmer climates - Santa arrives by speedboat in Antigua.

Examples that will come in handy, possibly

2012-01-07T13:52:00.000Z

Just a few handy bookmarks - not really anything you won;t have seen anywhere else, but useful for me to have in one place.

This is how the BBC is seen as a trusted source of news on some external research

Who needs passports? A Canadian man entered US using an iPad - I tried to use an iPod touch once to pull up some wedding details - UK immigration were not super impressed.

And also, Facebook starting letting you print business cards. The service is through moo.com, who I have used for printing custom cards before and always been very happy with their results.

Gigs Gallery

2011-11-04T09:51:00.000Z

I updated my Flickr account again, so I thought I would try embedding a photo gallery...

My Completo versus a Boots Meal Deal Sandwich

2011-09-22T20:38:00.000+01:00

Check out the measly number of prawns in my Boots Prawn Cocktail meal deal... Made look all the more paltry by delicious bespoke Chilean sandwich of last night...

Boots Meal Deal BLT, Chicken Salad, Prawn Mayo

Completo (Sausages, Guacamole, Onions, Chili Sauce, Mayonaisse, Tomato, Garlic in a freshly baked bun)

Visually Similar

2011-07-01T10:11:00.006+01:00

Google Images now enables you to drag and drop an image from one browser, into the Google search box...
the bonkers thing is that it returns 'visually similar' images, as well as letting you know where on the web your picture is from... Spooky, and kind of uselessly funny too... I applied the lepki.com image test...

beer turns into people

train tracks into a roundabout

and a horse turns into a motorbike

not quite figured out the utility just yet, but bonkers work Google...!

Non-disposable camera

2011-04-18T09:52:00.122+01:00

I thought my lovely brown Canon Ixus - IS1100 was a goner back in December 2008.

I took it into the Canon repair centre in Calgary on a quiet Tuesday afternoon just before Christmas complaining that the lens didn't open and close like it used to, and that it didn't focus properly any more, despite the fact it was only 8 months old.

"Did you get any sand in the lens sir?"

"No, surely not, I haven't been anywhere near sand..."

On Saturday, after 3 years, and several thousand pictures and videos, amassing Airmiles, Aeroplan points, OnePass Priority points (you get the idea), it looked like the little camera had met its maker in a riverside lunch spot in Kingston Upon Thames.

This made me think about the things this camera had seen... sunrise over frozen over geysers in Bolivia.

Fearless seals on the beaches of islands on the Galapagos

The first wigglings of the feet of my son

as well as a plethora of nerdy time-lapse experiments

Quit repurposing material Lepki - get to the kicker.

I was sort of a little bit excited when I thought I lost my camera that I could justify picking up a new shinier one, that could maybe do more stuff. What stuff? I have no idea, but I never knew I needed time lapse functionality before this camera and I could never have made this (which is possibly my favourite non baby related video).

Once I reflected on the happy days and nights captured with this little dense block of engineering cleverness from Japan, I was reluctant to see it go - nostalgia, Don Draper's carousel...

The moral of the story? Well, none really. Take care with things, for no matter how replaceable everything appears to be, you can get a little bit attached to the idea that you and technology have shared a moment or two.

As it turns out, my camera is safely in an office store room, and so lives on to capture a few more portions of life, and live on good old http://www.lepki.com

my love for my new, old walkman

2011-03-01T08:06:00.065Z

I recently recovered a box of tapes from my brother's loft a good 5 years after I put them up there, in what looked like it might be the last resting place before landfill.

That landfill has recently claimed a large mass of low quality plastic with the magnetic footprint of low quality comedy abutted with long forgotten weather forecasts.

My rescue of the tapes was primarily to scour those largely unindexed reels of Chrome Dioxide BASF C90s for some old band material to digitise and play on my ipod, but something about the ahem, user experience, made me wonder about the medium and our attitudes to stuff these days.

In order to actually play the tapes, I bought a Sony Walkman, for just over 20 UK pounds.

So, to unbox, what do you get for that these days?

The Walkman unit has a tape player with rewind and fast forward functions. It has bass boost. And there is an FM and AM radio. And a case. And some earphones.

First up, the tapes. I put in one Duracell AA battery, stuck a tape in and bingo, I am back in 1995, as the great Tallgroove jam away. The sound quality is very good given it was recorded on a Bush tape recorder, in the corner of an LS6 bedroom, using the last available plug socket.

The real magic here is that the tape played. It had not been touched for 5 years and sat patiently in a box as Windows Media Player, iTunes, Winamp, Sonic Stage (yes, I used that as my main player in my Vaio days) and various phone based music applications and tools went through hundreds of builds, moving to and fro around DRM issues wrestling with limited hard disk space, then limitless lossy rates, sluggish store interfaces and the death of Woolworths on the high street. The tape sat patiently, and as soon as it was called for, continued on without missing a beat.

It was not so much an attention span issue, but a surprisingly interjected U2 song which made me first reach for the next track function. Ah! A flaw. I have to "Fast Forward", where the unit forwards, but not that fast.

The Walkman can not send and receieve emails. And I can't play Peggle on it.
On the plus side, I do not need to upgrade the tape playing mechanism and spend hours on blogs trying to identify why version 10.1.4 behaves slightly more idiosyncratically than expected.

The world a tape transports you to is flawed, but curated. Not necessarily always curated with the first compilation for new girlfriend level of detail, but with songs cut off, DJs plugging the Radio 1 roadshow, and traffic updates from days before the M25. Quite a few of these little addenda add the colour to the compilation.

12 songs slid into an iTunes playlist does not cut this level of affection. And what if you only want the reprise of I Am The Resurrection on one compilation, but are looking to fill space on another?

And then you have the attention issue. Track 2 sounds a bit iffy, but rather than skip straight away, the peril of fast forwarding past track 3 means you are more likely to stick it out rather than instantly dismiss material as incorrect from the off due to 200GB more unindexed music on various other portable hard drives.

A case in point, I listened to two Seal songs just in case the me of the 90's had recorded a few chords in the middle of whatever came after Kiss from a Rose on Seal 2.

As well as the tape, you now have the radio. Imagine now, having an untethered free data source with content readily available in any country of the world. Apple would charge you crazy amounts for bandwidth for this service!

So what have I learnt from this... Imagine the prospect of checking your work email on a Walkman back in 1997. Did you really need to? You probably knew all the phone numbers off by heart of the people who you called most often so didn't need to Sync your contacts. Or you had a little book that you kept relatively safe.

There as something of a commodity about a tape - it captured that moment in time, the addenda mentioned earlier, alongside those live gigs taken from the radio, the first play of Love Spreads, and of course, the lovingly crafted adolescent compilation tape.

Eternal love was up for grabs if you could just cram as much appropriate material into that 90 minutes. You could dictate the whole flow and mood of the tape without there being the option to skip over to Facebook and see if any other suitors looking for fun and feeling groovy.

Quite what the end game with my Walkman remains to be seen. The initial novelty will no doubt fade, but then I can choose to either store the memory in a box in the loft, or tape over it.

Ecuador!

2011-02-24T22:43:00.000Z

Oh Ecuador! It feels like a long time ago that I swanned around Ecuador on my honeymoon... Two and a half years later, the first video comes off the production line...

I have finally got a method together for using Adobe Premiere 3 to make these videos. I was finding that importing 30 or 40 clips was possible, but when it got to render time, all my final adjustments would either take an age, or crash my system completely.

Effectively, I now import a handful of clips, and set the length of the video to be the length of my audio file. It's a bit of a guess at the start as to how long my video will eventually be, but I can usually find enough material to get into 3 minutes or so.

This Ecuador video was rendered in 3 stages... One with the first 10-20 clips and the full length soundtrack. Once that video was done, I could just import that as a clip into the next version and chop the video at the end of the last frame, and build from that. Long winded I know!

Anyway, the end result is a jaunty trip round Quito and the Galapagos islands. I would have liked to put a bit more consideration into 29.97 or 15 fps as you can tell a bit of the smoothness is lacking around the birds, but for now, enjoy this, before YouTube remove the lovely music by Evinha.

Stop Motion Animation

2011-02-24T22:30:00.002Z

Great example of some lovely stop motion animation here...

beats my version, but you get the idea!

New Years Resolution for 2011 - Watch Less Reality TV

2010-12-31T15:14:00.002Z

I have some great books unread on the shelf, and have maybe seen only 3 or 4 Hitchcock films in my time.

I usually like to give something up for Lent, and this year, considered ditching crisps or Facebook, but decided to obliterate any Hollyoaks related programming from my life schedule. Oh how the family Lepki rejoiced in the additional two hours of parlour games and home baking. Well, not so much on the parlour games, but the bread making has come on leaps and bounds in 2010.

The start of 2011 marks a good opportunity to review some of the other time filling crap that filled slots in between work and bed. After a tough-ish day of bringing home the bacon, I have to set expectations with some relative sanity and am unlikely to thrash out a quick screenplay between 9 and 10 when the firstborn teases between cosy sleep and wide eyed attention seeking.

During the last few months of the year, I found myself watching the time sapping drain of the X-Factor, as Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole paused and manipulated the proles into buying and voting and eating up column inches for 12 weeks and made names of the lesser talented participants such as Wagner and Cher Lloyd who made good copy that was constantly referred to in the show, but I ignored out the context of the 4 hours I was already watching. This spring, Michael McIntyre is added to the BGT panel, but I am not going to get sucked in.

I have managed to steer clear of Strictly and anything on Ice, long may that continue.

On the BBC, I also tuned into Alan Sugar's The Apprentice which whittled down another 12 or so candidates and padded an hour with a couple of well edited points and lots of nice HD flyover shots of London. I bought the bagels in Kingston and they were stale. the show can probably disappear from my schedule in 2011 too.

I doubt that I need to see another season of models move into house, bounce on beds, get makeovers, have a few ups and downs and one eventually gets some contract but you never seem to ever see again. I learnt that lesson from the Search for the New Pussycat Doll. The winner, Asia, never actually got to be that Pussycat Doll, but the 12 week elimination process had enough dips and grinds in branded PCD booty shorts in between time lapse shots of LA and painful renditions of Lady Marmalade to keep viewers intrigued.

I have probably seen enough The Hills for one lifetime, and on some occasions, have seen the same episode several times. I no longer spend Sundays in a hungover trance, so Lauren, Spencer and Heidi can do one, and take their accompanying The City with them.

Two reality shows that I am more reluctant to lose are sewing show Project Runway which actually showcases some kind of talent, and the Amazing Race for the semi-selfish travel bragging opportunity to see speeded up slowed down shots of nice places I've been to.

E4 and More4 staples Location Location Location and Relocation Relocation seem so pointless now considering they were all filmed in 2005 and feature conveniently indecisive couples who fill and hour, or rather about 30 minutes of original content as they ponder neighbourhoods they would consider moving to with the profits from their one bedroom flat in Balham which tripled in value between x and y in the early zeroes. Rather than the speeded up footage, the Kirsty and Phil shows have slanted angles of a tube station, and zooms into coffee shop signs to show the product of early decade E4 gentrification.

Supernanny and Wifeswap are another couple of tired E4 shows which tantrum their way through empty slots in the schedule.

So, unless any great new reality shows come along like Rollergirls, The Tourist Trap or The Town That Wants a Twin, I plan to steer clear or pretty much all of this stuff.

Unless it is about home baking that is, like the best show of 2010, The Great British Bake Off, which maybe in some way helped me kick the reality TV habit.

Pop may indeed eat itself.

2010: The Lepki Musical Review of the Year

2010-12-10T14:13:00.000Z

In a predictably highbrow twist, in a year where the impact of being featured on the X Factor could recycle a flagging career, being featured on a BBC4 documentary led to a glut of plays on the only chart that matters - The Lepki Chart.

Neu burst into Lepki consciousness in 2010, years after their influence seeped through countless Stereolab albums. Masters of the sparse 1 chord marathons, Neu featured on BBC4's excellent The Birth of Krautrock documentary. This view of the genre also led to the discovery of Faust, Popul Vuh, Kluster and a renewed appreciation of Kraftwerk, and only the second ever David Bowie song to make an impact (A New Career in a New Town finally toppled Lets Dance as the most played Thin White Duke song).

BBC4's Dennis Wilson documentary followed the Karen Carpenter story, and both detailed the lives of ultimately doomed figures from the 60s and 70s. Pacific Ocean Blue provided a soaringly inconsistent but occasionally magical backdrop to the spring, and the drum breaks on the Carpenters All I Can Do will surely come in for plundering when LTJ Bukem launches his long awaited return from DnB exile.

Bradford Cox ended the year as the top composer, with his double whammy of Atlas Sound and Deerhunter. The bands have a definite common thread of dreamy sonics.

All of this material is from before 2010...

Looking at the iTunes play counts, an intriguing thing becomes apparent when looking at plays by year.
The 80's were shit.
1983 only just managed to register as one listen through the Final Cut was deemed to be a necessary requirement for a Pink Floyd completist.

Probably the best year for music ever was 1970, as tunes from this year are still being played in their droves. Os Mutantes A Divina Comédia ou Ando Meio Desligado, Pink Floyd's Zabriskie Point, and Doris's Did you Give The World Some Love Today were all released 40 years ago. Blimey.

As the years roll by, it is in 1997 that music really starts to have a decent significance again, and this is largely down to Broadcast and Yo La Tengo and the release of various David Lynch soundtracks by composer Angelo Badalamenti. These artists are yearly mainstays.

My Gig of the Year would have to be Broadcast at the Royal Festival Hall a gig the Guardian called "Hypnotic, lulling, yet faintly unsettling". I would have gone for loopy myself with all sorts of swirling patterns and trippy visuals.

Less exciting was Rufus Wainwright who played a solo show in Sadler Wells on a boiling hot evening.

Oh and Screamadelica live was excellent too. Musically superb, though the sound was a bit crummy in places, right by the speaker.

Most Played Artists of 2010 - by number of tracks played

Yo La Tengo 642

Atlas Sound 541

Angelo Badalamenti 522

Pink Floyd 360

Iron & Wine 336

Broadcast 322

Stereolab 296

Broadcast & The Focus Group 280

Deerhunter 275

The Aliens 234

Caribou 221

Leonard Cohen 206

Massive Attack 198

Os Mutantes 198

Quantic 179

The Velvet Underground 125

The Beta Band 124

Dennis Wilson 111

Fleet Foxes 110

XX 102

Sparklehorse 101

Lou Reed 94

The Bees 94

Neu! 94

Rufus Wainwright 90

Spacemen 3 90

Animal Collective 89

Neil Young 88

MGMT 88

When looking at the most played artists, you need to go all the way down to Caribou for the first 2010 album in the list.

"electro heavy, slightly disintegrating melodic trance packs a punch of intruguing non-resolution."

Melodic and largely acoustic music was flavour of the season, with Iron &a Wine springing in from nowhere with their 2007 album The Shepherd's Dog accounting for most plays.

Early days of having a child in the house meant gentle songs were the preferred accompaniment.

Doris - Did you Give the World Some love today baby is a lovely timepiece from the late 60's which is a little bit of European Motown. I think of Doris Svennson as a cross between Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, with a little bit of Cardigans/Carpenters thrown in.

Finally, the Dark Night Of The Soul was the token melancholy album of the month, with the Sparklehorse collaboration heavy piece of work mixing up catchy lyrical hooks with moody menacing nightmares.

You can listen to highlights on Spotify here...

Overall quite a good year, and due to the continued appropriateness of the music, I would give IRON AND WINE my artist of the year award.

London at 7.30am

2010-10-26T10:48:00.000+01:00

This picture was featured on BBC Breakfast as part of the "should we put the clocks back" argument

Metallic Spheres (Metallic Side) review

2010-10-15T16:54:00.000+01:00

Here is a incident-by-incident review of Dave Gilmour and The Orb's 29 minute Metallic Spheres...

40s into the spheres - this is going to be quite funny
1m 35 bass
1m 40 out takes riff from run like hell
lots of cars passing - panning from side to side
3m 50 drums
6m 30 a bit of keyboard twiddle the weed has kicked in
9m sounds like the orb here
9m 45 lyrics!
10m 30 can't help shake the feeling that this is pretty improvised
11m 30 piano
13m 40 moog twiddles. i expect a dog barking sample shortly
14m 30 reboot. acoustic guitar
16m 30 percussion still includes occasional milk bottle. alan's still psychedelic
17m 30 like the equivalent minute in echoes - whooshy noises.. will it all resolve by m 22?
19m looped talking... toast i like marmalade, but not quiet
19m 30 "choir" voice on the keyboard. gone a bit indian
oh wait its 29m long
jeez
22m 30 sawing away with the reverb delay
23m twinkles, sounds like the orb have woken up after 9m off
24m 30 finally??
28m the car pans again
well, that was the Metallic Side

Initial thoughts 6 out of 10.

First snow of the year

2010-09-17T15:28:00.001+01:00

Ludicrous! Snow in September... well I am in Canada, but still. September...

The Lepki Chart - Summer 2010 iTunes Play Counts

2010-09-17T14:28:00.000+01:00

Every so often I have to bin some music from my laptop. This time round artists twixt A and E felt the wrath of my delete key...

I love Manchester music, and the whole baggy sound, but when Ian Brown gets serious and over James Lavelle's his groove it all loses its sloppy charm somewhat.
Both Arctic Monkeys albums bit the digital dust this month as did some choppy changey Avalanches tracks. The early zeroes feels quite dated now as archives were plundered and remixed for the ADD generation.
Bjork's later albums - Medulla and Volta albums probably need some serious listening, but I can never quite find the mood. A few Tchaikovsky symphonies were worthy but largely unplayed and made way as did some unsorted Charlie Parker.

Jazz in general needs to be loved and have a back story. You can't just plonk 6GB of someone else's music on an ipod and start enjoying it - you need to have been in a record shop when a trumpet caught your ear, or in some east London flat at 3am as the conversation became quieter and slower and it was just Miles filling the pre-sunlight void.
Chemical Brothers, Deep Purple's Come Taste the Band, and Duffy bid adieu too.

So what was top of the pops in Summer 2010? Well you can listen on Spotify here...
Melodic and largely acoustic music was flavour of the season, with Iron & Wine springing in from nowhere with their 2007 album The Shepherd's Dog accounting for most plays.

Early days of having a child in the house meant gentle songs were the preferred accompaniment.

Next down the new entries is Caribou's Swim. In a classic piece of counter-programming, Caribou's electro heavy, slightly disintegrating melodic trance packs a punch of intruguing non-resolution.

Deerhunter - Microcastle is a logical continuation of the Atlas Sound Sound which has been popular on the Lepki Pod since this time last year.

intercontinental cultural differences: 1

2010-09-17T14:12:00.000+01:00

My complete cultural thesis is based on watching daytime TV feeds from Detroit...
We think that TV is bad and getting worse in the UK, well, the US has that nailed. OK, they produce Mad Men and Weeds and a few things like that, but the majority of output is so brash, and there is a lot of it.
Chat shows require you to a) dance (Ellen) b) cry (Oprah), c) give stuff away (Oprah) d) cook (Rachel Ray) e) talk incessantly (all of them) f) applaud (all of them).
The applause to content ratio is about 8 to 1.
Why so noisy?

Prediction of Lawro's Prediction - Match Day 1

2010-08-13T14:42:00.000+01:00

Lawro, oh Lawro. He of the bland opinions on the BBC website. Every week, the former Liverpool defender plumps for home wins for the "Big 4", predicts 1-1 draws for anybody in mid table, and uses his weekly column to make largely inoffensive and stunningly obvious comments about the characters and circumstances in the weekend fixtures.

Oh, it's an early kick-off for "television"? That probably means that teams might not have woken up, and we never see the best of the players in these games. It's Champions League week? Managers may look to rotate their squads with "one eye" on the crucial fixture in Honved.

As a text of my copy writing skills, I offer my services as a ghost writer for this column. As a service to my reader(no s), I have put in Lawro's predictions - this was after I had compiled my prediction.

Saturday, 14 August 2010

Tottenham v Man City, 12:45

This game is a repeat of the crucial Champions League decider from the end of last season. Since then, City have spent like they were the ones going into the top competition, adding Touré, Silva and Boateng amongst others, and I fancy them to have a very good season. These big names are in addition to the set Mark Hughes bought a year earlier, and therein lies the worry for Mancini - a run of poor results or any dressing room disharmony and he will be under threat like Hughes was last autumn.

Both sides will be looking to get off to a good start, but I fancy City to edge this one, as Spurs will have one eye on their Champions League qualifier.

Score 1-2. [Lawro went for 2-1]

Aston Villa v West Ham, 15:00

Manager-less Villa haven't had the best of pre-seasons and Martin O' Neill's are some pretty big shoes to fill. His team won't become bad overnight, but the new man will have to get in quick and make sure they don't get off to a stinker. Avram Grant tries something new after this thankless task at Pompey and has a bit of rag-tag team at West Ham to try and steer to safety this time around.

Score 1-1. [2-0]

Blackburn v Everton, 15:00

Blackburn improved last year and are a tough team to break down, particularly at home. Some of the fancy boys from London have problems on their trips to Lancashire, and Big Sam certainly has a few issues with many of the other managers in the division, but Everton under Moyes continue to chip away and should be a solid, if not necessarily thrilling match to open up their campaign.

Score 1-1. [1-1]

Bolton v Fulham, 15:00

I'm worried about Bolton this season. They did just enough to stay up, but looked like they were drifting downwards. Fulham won all the plaudits last year for their Europa League campaign, and will take some time to adjust to Roy Hodgson's departure for Liverpool. Mark Hughes has never stuck around too long in a job, and will be under pressure from the start to prove to himself and Al-Fayed that he can keep up Hodgson's good work.

Score 1-1. [2-1]

Sunderland v Birmingham, 15:00

Both teams did a good job at picking enough points up at home to not have to worry about relegation last season, but the real challenge for both is to get into Europe. Like a lot of the mid table teams, there haven't been to many notable ins and outs, so there may be a bit more continuity. Darren Bent will be looking to prove a point to Fabio Capello and I fancy him to get on the scoresheet in this one.

Score 1-0. [1-0]

Wigan v Blackpool, 15:00

Wigan Pier and Blackpool Tower are steeped in history, and may both have seen better days, but this will be a local Lancashire celebration on Saturday. You'd have been considered insane 10 years ago if you would have said Leeds, Wednesday and Forest would be struggling in the lower leagues and that these two would be in the top flight, but that's what can happen. This will be the first of 38 cup finals for Ian Holloway's side, but you have to fancy Wigan's experience will see them with the 3 points.

Score 2-1. [2-1 - man I am good at this]

Wolverhampton v Stoke, 15:00

Wolves flirted with the drop last season, but managed to steer clear, mainly due to the awfulness of the teams below them. I can't see them getting off to a ghreat start here either. Stoke don't always play the prettiest football, but this is a business, and Tony Pulis doesn't have the resources to bring in Xavi and Iniesta to the Potteries.
Score 0-1. [1-1]

Chelsea v West Brom, 17:30

The first real gimme of the weekend. Champions Chelsea have lost Joe Cole, but brought in Benayoun, and with the improving Malouda to add to Lampard and Essien, there looks like there will be too much for any team - let alone West Brom.

Will the legs of the older Chelsea players keep going for the full season? Only time will tell, but its difficult to look further than them to retain their crown in May.

Score 3-0 [3-0]

Sunday, 15 August 2010

Liverpool v Arsenal, 16:00

These two teams have had some great encounters over the years, and you only have to look at Arshavin's 4 goal haul to sum up Premiership entertainment at its finest. Can the teams get to that standard on the first Sunday? Probably not, but look for lots of personalities with something to prove who will look to set down a marker for the season.

Arsenal usually kick off the season with great style, but run out of gas in the Spring. Wenger will be looking to change this and bring some silverware back to the Emirates, but I can see them getting a point at best this weekend with Gerrard and Torres looking to show their new gaffer that they are committed to the cause at Anfield.
Score 2-2 [1-1]

Monday, 16 August 2010

Man Utd v Newcastle, 20:00

All eyes will be on Old Trafford on Monday as Man United kick off their campaign, and the Geordies return to the top flight.

Newcastle won the Championship quite comfortably last term, but weren't facing the likes of Rooney and Vidic week in week out. Like Chelsea, Man United are a team in transition with quite a few tired legs supporting some of the new players who are yet to really make their mark. Giggs and Scholes have been great ambassadors for the game, but may finally get displaced this year as the improving Nani and industrious Valencia look to mark their names in the folklore of the club.

Score 2-0 [2-0]

Note: A 10p bet with Coral on this stands to win me 112 MILLION pounds.

I think they would probably cap it before that amount of money.

Nintendo 3DS review

2010-03-25T16:18:00.000Z

This is the Nintendo 3DS: video review from the Guardian's Tech team.

The Commuting Dilemma

2009-11-22T08:26:00.000Z

I like to cycle to work, but it is not convenient every day of the week, especially on days when it is very rainy or windy, or I need a cleanly pressed shirt, or have something on in London afterwards.

So how do I not get hosed by the cost of commuting? These are the prices for an array of travel options over the course of a week.

Currently, Oyster is not available on South West Trains, a situation which may change in January, but this has been promised for quite some time (I registered my Oyster card back in 2003 and have commuted to Old Street, Putney, Farringdon, Embankment, and spent 3 years in Calgary since then).

The cheapest way to get between Earlsfield (or any other Zone 3 train network station) and Kings Cross (or any other zone 1 station) would be to take 2 buses on a daily basis. The 77 to Waterloo, then the 59 up to Kings Cross. At rush hour this weighs in at 90 minutes; 3 hours daily commute, at an average of about 11 miles per hour and total commute cost of £20.

There must be a faster option than this, but then you need to pay for it. A weekly Zone 1 to 3 travelcard currently costs £30.20, and this will increase shortly. The travelcard opens up the train and tube lines.

The frequency of both is good at rush hour, but the carriages of both are full at best, regularly packed, and around once or twice per week, a delay will make one or two travel legs overcrowded with some trains inaccessible.

Any sane person would only want to do this journey a few times a week, but then the issue again becomes cost.

From the above chart, it appears that the best 'hedging strategy' is to buy a fixed weekly train pass between Earlsfield and the Zone 1 hub Vauxhall. This 8 minute journey costs £2.10 as a single, £3.70 as a return and £13.20 for a week... The maths here is already slightly baffling, and I studied quantum physics. Buying a week's pass saves you at least £7.80 on single tickets - but, only if you use all 10 of those trips. Still with me?

That £13.20 would only get me as far as Vauxhall though, with another 3 or 4 central London miles to cross before I can sit at my desk and start to computer all sorts of other things.

In addition to that fixed cost, I then to have a "Pay as you go" Oyster card (PAYG) with money on it, and tap in at Vauxhall and out at Kings Cross. At £1.60 this is miraculously good value still.

Everything unravels if Vauxhall is having a bad day, as there is no plan B from there. A bus from Vauxhall heads loosely in the direction of north, but not particularly quickly.

In order to help myself out, I have used another chart... How do I make sure I don't pay more than the £30.20 travelcard costs or pay over the odds?

Now if I wanted to ride 1 day, I should probably go for then weekly Earlsfield to Vauxhall and then PAYG it from there to KX. This would cost £26.00, and save the hassle of buying tickets every day. The psychology of the "free ride when you've already paid" also comes into the picture, as often, the ticket barriers at Earlsfield are open. I don't condone paying without a ticket although I think my credit with TFL ticket buying karma is good.

Murphy's Law says that as soon as you get a week long pass, the clouds will part and the rest of the week will be blissfully sunny, and the Tubes will be subject to delays, strikes, passenger incidents etc.

To keep further bike riding still an option, daily returns with PAYG Oyster tickets are the best option. This does involve a calculated risk that the weekend will not require any trips into central London. The total weekly cost for one day bike ride, and 4 days train and tube would be £27.60

Riding can be very pretty, but does come at a slightly not free cost though, as inner tubes cost £4.50 each, and a bike, lock and helmet will set you back a few hundred quid too!

Charting this would then need to factor in my consultancy costs :)

The Lepki Chart - Autumn 2009 iTunes Play Counts

2009-11-21T09:44:00.000Z

Spurred on by finding some The Farm on my iTunes... DELETE DELETE... I have put together the long awaited LEPKI CHART for Autumn 2009.

Atlas Sound Logos burst onto the scene in September, racking up 130 track plays in little more than 2 months. The band look likely to overtake Fleet Foxes in the 2009 chart, as the bearded harmonisers struggle to maintain their pre-Glastonbury momentum.

Perennially popular Yo La Tengo released a new album which includes a mixture of sticky and now overplayed songs. Some slower burners should make their way onto the work playlists and maintain the Hoboken trio's continued presence at the top.
Luna by The Aliens has now become 2009's most played album, while the Neil Young Premium playlist draws songs from a range of albums, as do the Velvet Underground.
As Spotify becomes a useful sample source, it is timely that a new "artistic impression" is launched, with the inaugural award being shared by David Bowie's A New Career in a New Town and Can's Vitamin C.

Nirvana, Tosca, King Gheedorah and some lower quality Ian Brown songs have been and gone without troubling the scorers.
Blur drop out of recently played artists table.

Autumn Most Played Artists (Sum of Tracks played)

Atlas Sound 130

Yo La Tengo 112

The Aliens 69

Angelo Badalamenti 68

The Velvet Underground 57

Radiohead 56

Neil Young 54

Pink Floyd 52

Broadcast 51

Stereolab 45

Broadcast & The Focus Group 40

The Beta Band 38

John Wyndham 37

My plans for the future of the Premiership

2009-11-12T10:04:00.000Z

Rather than have a 2nd Premiership division, have a 30 team Premiership

Top 10 play each other home & away, then play the rest once each
11-20 play each other home & away, + 1 game against top 10, + 1 game against bottom 10
21-30 play each other home & away, + 1 game against top 10, + 1 game against middle 10

Getting into and staying in the Top 10 is the goal, and the league is printed in the blocks of 10, so Team 30 couldn't just have an easy draw, the highest they could get is 21.

2 teams up and down between blocks.
Slightly random element about who you get at home or away - gate attendance is shared.

Sky would probably like this as you could have a Sunday triple play of progressively more important games; one of the 5 games each week from the Top 10 would be a fairly juicy one, but you would often get 'improving' and on form teams who had won lots of games in a row against weaker opposition coming up against a Top 10 team.

Not that it is a great model, but NHL has teams playing each other slightly random numbers of times.

The image above shows how the league would have started this year.
One other benefit here is that the current Premiership end of season is focused around the top and the bottom; having nothing to play for once survival had been secured makes for a dull set of Bolton vs West Hams from March onwards; here they would be critical to survival.

Ludicrous?

Google Doodles

2009-11-07T18:59:00.000Z

Part of my job is to look at fast moving search terms and try and figure out what the heck the internet is doing.

One huge source of traffic can be whenever Google puts up a 'Google Doodle' - a limited edition logo which is usually in celebration of somebody's birthday, Stravinsky, Hans Christian Orsted, Pac Man... It can be anything!

Today it is the 71st anniversary of the Wizard of Oz... What? It wasn't in your Google calendar?

To further celebrate, here is a picture from my gallery, of Dorothy's Ruby slippers from Washington's Smithsonian museum.

I specifically checked Google today, as this day last year, a ton of traffic came through Google due to the Perseids meteor shower, which is again tonight...

Sesame Street provided a rich seam of such logos late in 2009.

First up were Big Bird's legs seen representing the L of Google. Considering this logo was brought to us by the letter L and the number 2, it looks like someone in San Francisco needed to watch a little more of the educational show!

Next up in the UK was Cookie Monster, who got his own Google Doodle with some of the G's devoured by the anarchic blue biscuit fiend.

All this Sesame Street nostalgia, for a show which hasn't featured on UK TV since 2001 was quite suprising, but led to other aspects of the educational puppet show to come back to mind, like the fantastic pinball animation music.

Day 3 of the Google doodle series celebrated Bert and Ernie -the fuzzy haired couple who somewhat controversially co-habited happily for many years until many grouches (other than Oscar) found this politically incorrect.

In case you never figured it out, like me, Bert is the thin yellow one, Ernie is the friendlier orange one. Imagine me watching an episode of Lost...
Next up, it was Oscar, the grouch, himself adorning Google's search homepage.

.

Elmo took centre stage over the weekend,

And then for Monday morning, it was Count Von Count bringing a little maths into the equation.

And possibly finally, a selection from the cast, as first lady Michelle Obama made a guest appearance on the show.

Back in England this week, it was Happy Birthday Wallace and Gromit! Google celebrated the UK's favourite clay dog and Northerner turning 20. 20! Yes, that means that for roughly 19 Christmases, families up and down the country have been glued in a post-turkey slump which is enlivened by the charming stop motion animation. In a world of ridiculous CGI and noisy robots, Wallace and Gromit make for a charming hour.

About the only franchise untarnished by Mel Gibson's recent involvement (Chicken Run, the multimillion dollar grossing movie from 2000), Nick Park's deservedly Oscar winning Aardman studios continue to create happy productions, so cheers to you, and see you at Christmas.

London autumn colours

2009-10-30T07:47:00.000Z

I've got a bike, and I'll ride it if I like... pictures taken on the journey home

Battersea Power Station, lit up due to some snowboarding rave thing here

Battersea Power Station and the dark side of the moon

Pictures from my bike riding in the autumn of 2009.

Chelsea Bridge

making Tooting look suprisingly ornate

apt, Haymarket.

More London.

Top Photos of 2008

2009-10-29T20:24:00.000Z

Some of my Top Photos from 2008 - taken in Calgary, Rio, Colonia, Glastonbury, Brighton, Iguazu

All Photography by Andy Lepki, 2008 with the exception of 2 wedding shots. Best of 2007

The long road ahead - nice Winter sunlight in Alberta. This was taken right at the start of 2008, a year which saw me getting married in Canmore, Brighton and Calgary, before taking some time off to travel round South America. Rather than keeping to 10 pictures, I put in 19 this year

More Calgary.

Las Vegas proved to outridiculous even the image I had of it beforehand

More Vegas.

Mo, with Tom and Sarge in the background kicking around Calgary on my Canadian stag do

More Calgary.

Immediately after Wedding #1: The Legal Bit

More wedding.

My attempt at making a calendar style picture!

More Calgary.

I staged this shot at the pavillion to get a handful of poppies into this quintessential British picture.

More Brighton

More England - here with PJ and Chris on hampstead Heath for my English stag do!

This picture was taken by Scott Ramsay as part of the official wedding picture set - this one featuring the rest of the UK Lepkis.

More Weddings.

The annual trip down to Glastonbury was a great one in 2008 - here Chris, Scott, Lisa, Clare, Jill and Sheps make the team shot.

More Glastonbury.

Scott and Scott in full flight at wedding #3 in Calgary.

Rio! The best city from the honeymoon tour, and maybe my new favourite city in the world. excellent views, and food and nightlife and beaches and music and atmosphere!

More honeymoon.

Flowers close up... I like the colour balance in this one. I learnt a couple of tricks with my aging Rebel XT, this being one.

More honeymoon.

Two Brits we met in Bolivia, adding a bit of youthful agility to some stunning landscapes

More honeymoon.

Pigs on a beach? Bonkers old Bolivia again

More honeymoon.

A lizard eating a scorpion. Pretty easy to take wildlife pictures in these circumstances.

More honeymoon.

Can't really fail with this one either - the very photogenic Macchu Picchu in Peru.

More honeymoon.

About the only time I put portrait pictures in. Amazing power of nature at Iguazu Falls.

More honeymoon.

One last wedding shot, without us in it, and taken by Marv or Erica. I think this captures the fun of the day, and something of the decadence of the time!

Marv's Flickr page

The lovely wife. I like the way this one is framed - the pink blossoms of an October spring in Uruguay

More honeymoon

Top Photos of 2007

2009-10-29T09:41:00.000Z

Some of my Top Photos from 2007 - taken in New York, San Francisco, Brighton, Seattle, and Toronto.

The Calgary Tower taken through a fence on 10th Avenue, just near my work (Critical Mass).

The fence has since been taken down so this view no longer exists.

More Calgary.

The Golden Gate bridge, San Francisco.

This is where i popped the question waiting for tourists to get out of the way, and trying to make myself heard with all the traffic (it is a very busy road!).

More San Francisco.

The beautiful Chrysler building in New York, taken from the top of the Empire State Building.

More New York.

Not a still from a Michael bay film, but a picture which shows the dizzying scale and patriotism of New York.

More New York.

Thanks again to everybody who sponsored me on my 90km bike ride for the Alberta Cancer this June. Thanks to great support from Lisa and her family we raised around $8000 (4000 quid!).

More Bike Ride Pictures. For another good cause, click here

This is a fairly random shot form the Calgary Stampede parade. Maybe it sums up the mixture of conservativism and sluttiness of the whole event!

More Stampede.

I was in Toronto for a couple of days for a bit of a business jolly. I didn't have much time to explore but found this picture present itself, with its moody sky and eerie glow.

More Toronto.

In what was apparantly the wettest UK Summer for quite some time, Lisa & I spent one morning on Brighton beach where the sun was blazing and the colours were sharp. Here's hoping we get another day like it in 2008 :)

More Brighton.

This Summer, I became the stand in wedding photographer for friends Anna & Tom. Bookings now taken...

More Weddings.

Yet more business travel presented itself with a great opportunity to nose round Washington DC. Lots of picture perfect scenes on a plate, of which this one is my favourite with its 70's colours and a couple of semi-staged visual metaphors.

More Washington DC.

My final trip of the year to Seattle - no conferences or team building, this was just about eating seafood, cheesecake and taking the obligatory trip up the Space Needle.

More Seattle.

Uruguay

2009-10-28T23:13:00.000Z

Anywhere but was taken, so I picked this domain for my photo blog

More things will arrive here soon. Maybe.

My old blog links from Critical Mass days.