Karaoke - 26th July 2007

Black Maria - That's what The Webtender says it is called, a half pint of Guinness with a shot of Tia Maria in it. This was my new drink of the night as recommended to me on Tuesday and despite not being overly keen on Guinness I did quite like like this mix. This was of course helped by the fact that it tastes like a Nesquik chocolate milkshake!! It really does!

And so began another night of beer and song, albeit more beer than song (not always a good thing!), mixed with plenty of other singers and lots of new songs to make it a good night.

After first seeing them at the Academy supporting the Fratellis back in February (my review, Capn Jacks review) and despite saying in his review that they 'are not my cup of tea' :p, Scott sang The Enemys - Had Enough which, along with Biffy Clyros - Folding Stars, is one of my current top tunes and it was done well. I've not had enough of The Enemy though and I request that Away From Here is also sang. Consider this a formal request ;) The girls who were minus Louise for yet another week (is that 4 now? perhaps we should send a lifeboat out!) also waded in with another new song to their repertoire in the form of Buggles's - Video Killed The Radio Star. Nice job you two :) As for me, after the drought of new songs in recent weeks I came back with a bang with not one but three new ones tonight. Some will be sang again, others maybe not, but all three were fun to have a go at regardless. See my New Songs review below for further details.

And so, all the songs in order this week were:

• Others: Tracy Byrd - Better Places Than This
  
• Others: Shania Twain - Any Man Of Mine (4)
  
• Shaun: The Holloways - Generator (new song)
  
• Others: Elvis - Bossa Nova Baby
• Scott: Duran Duran - Union Of The Snake (new song)
  
• Others: Alison Moyet - That Ole Devil Called Love (2)
  
• Tina & Hayley: Atomic Kitten - The Tide Is High (5)
  
• Others: The Killers - For Reasons Unknown (2)
  
• Others: Sara Evans - Suds In The Bucket (4)
  
• Shaun: The Hoosiers - Worried About Ray (new song)
  
• Others: Leo Sayer - One Man Band
• Scott: The Enemy - Had Enough (new song)
  
• Tina & Hayley: Beautiful South - Rotterdam (new song)
• Others: Womack & Womack - Teardrops (5)
  
• Andy: J. Geils Band - Centerfold (2)
  
• Others: Biffy Clyro - Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies (2)
  
• Others: Savage Garden - Affirmation (3)
  
• Others: The Killers - Read My Mind (6)
  
• Shaun: My Chemical Romance - Teenagers (new song)
  
• Others: Michael Buble - Feeling Good
• Scott: Robbie Williams - Something Beautiful (2)
  
• Tina & Hayley: Buggles - Video Killed The Radio Star (2) (new song)
  
• Others: Bob Marley - Jammin (5)
  
• Others: Abba - Waterloo (2)
  
• Others: Alannah Myles - Black Velvet (7)
  
• Others: Gary Nichols - I Can't Love You Anymore (2)
  
• Others: Lonestar - Amazed (2)
  
• Others: Richie Valens - La Bamba

** NEW SONGS **
The Holloways - Generator - My first song of the night and I can definately see me starting a night or two with this one again. Originally released in 2006 and charting at #30, it was re-released in July this year and reached a much healthier #14. This was helped in part by it being used as the intro music for Radio 1's Song Generator. A keeper for me. - do-again-rating: 8/10

The Hoosiers - Worried About Ray - Currently at #5 in the charts and I love this song although it is slightly a little bit too high for me. Having said that, it didn't sound too bad (although the beer was starting to affect) and when the tickle on my throat finally goes away I may have to have another go at this. Apparently, and this is for Scott, their song Goodbye Mr A has been agreed with by EA to be one of the main tunes on Fifa 2008, so there you go! - do-again-rating: 6/10

My Chemical Romance - Teenagers - I always wanted to do The Black Parade by MCR but found it just too difficult once the chorus screaming kicked in. I thought this was easier but after virtually going voiceless towards the end of the song I'll rethink that one! Still, a cracking song and I'm glad that I gave it a go, I just won't be doing it again (although did I hear Capn Jack say he was going to give it a go?? ;) ) - do-again-rating: 1/10

And so ends another week which was so exciting for one guy that he fell asleep in the corner (he soon woke up when it was his turn to sing though...) so thanks for coming and see you all again soon :)

How karaoke CDG disks work!

If you've ever searched the internet trying to find out how CDG works then you'd be suprised as to how little information there actually is out there. I know! I invested quite a lot of my time a few years back doing just that when I set out to create EditCDG, an MP3+G CDG file editor, so I know how rare such information is.
The best piece of specification I found comes from Jim Bumgardners excellent CDG Revealed document which has been around now for quite some time, although unless you have a bit of a technical/coding background it will probably look like gobbledigook to you, and that's what this post is for, to try to explain it in way that you can understand! :)

This first picture to the left (click to enlarge) is something that you're all familiar with: the graphics screen that displays our words to sing to. This screen is made up of a set of pixels (or tiny squares if you prefer) and there are 300 pixels across and 216 pixels down. Not all tv screens can show the entire picture so there is a 'safe' area defined inside this set that measures 294 pixels across and 204 pixels down which can be displayed by all. This is where all our graphics take place and the outside border left is used as just that, a border.
This graphical area is then split down again further into blocks of 6 pixels across by 12 pixels down to give a grid of 49 by 17 blocks. In computing terms these are strange numbers as we usually keep our figures at least divisible by 2 or as a power of 2 e.g. 48 by 16, but hey ho, ours is not to question!

So, knowing what the screen is made up of we now need to figure out where the data comes from to display the graphics. The data of course, comes from the CD! But how come we can play the CD on a normal CD player and it sounds perfectly fine and not like ye olde ZX Spectrum tape data loader? The answer lies in that a CD is made up of sectors and each of these sectors contains 2448 bytes (pieces) of data. Of these 2448 bytes, only 2352 are used to store audio information which leaves us with a remaining 96 bytes per sector to store any additional data known as the Subcode. The most common data stored on audio disks is CD-Text which is how some CD players can tell you what the current track and artist is. It is also used to provide the player with information such as what the current track number is and how far into the cd we are etc... and finally, it is where we can store our CDG data that can be converted to displaying graphics on the screen. Standard CDs read 75 sectors per second and we can fit 4 CDG graphical instructions into each sector's subcode as they only take up 24 bytes each so this gives us 75 * 4 = 300 CDG instructions a second.

Although we only have just 24 bytes in which to get our graphical instruction to screen, the CDG specification does a pretty good job of squeezing everything it can out. The image to the left shows how the data in each 24 byte block is represented. The first byte is used to tell the player whether this is a CDG command or not and if it is, then the 2nd byte will tell you what kind of instruction to carry out. In display terms these instructions range from painting a single 6x12 block, defining the current colour palette or simply clearing the screen. Once the player knows what the instruction it then uses the values in the data section to determine how to carry out that instruction. For example with a Clear Screen command, the data in the first two data bytes will determine what colour to clear the screen to. A Paint Block command will use the first two bytes to determine the background colour, the next two bytes for the forecolour and the remaining 12 bytes to say whether each pixel in the 6x12 block should be set to the foreground or background colour. CDG can only have a maximum of 16 colors on the screen at any one time although those colors can be changed at any time. This is how Easy Hits disks manage the fade in/out on their karaoke disks, they simply change the colors to be progressively lighter or darker dependant on the fade direction.

And in laymans terms, that's pretty much all there is too it. Hope you found it interesting and feel free to ask any questions or point out any inaccuracies!

Karaoke - 19st July 2007

The night started early with me going out for a meal with co-workers from the development and tech support departments at a local Italian restaurant, Portofinos. It's not the cheapest of places to go to but the food is pretty good although I expected my 'bouef brochette' to be a little more than just beef & chips, literally! I have to say though that the beef was very very nice. I tried anchovies for the first time in my starter and was pleasantly suprised to find that I quite liked them. I also discovered the Italian lager Peroni (as recommended by Steve) which went down well and at 5.1% it wasn't too many bottles in before I could feel it starting to affect me!! Will have to see if they sell them at Sainsburys :)

After finishing the meal and leaving my work colleagues , I caught a taxi up to the hotel to find it totally packed outside. Upon entering I think it's safe to safe there were more outside than in (although inside wasn't dead either)! Scott had thankfully been noting down the tracks pre my arrival and we seem to have upgraded from using the back of song request forms to an actual proper note book. Amateurs eh! :p
No new songs again from me tonight though this will be definately be rectified next week with at least two news ones and maybe three if my throat/cough clears up. Still suffering a little from the virus I had the other week with a cough and slight sore throat. I thought it was going to give up on me when I did Blurry tonight but it just about held out.

This weeks playlist:

• Scott & Andy: Abba - Does Your Mother Know (3)
  
• Scott: Aztec Camera - Somewhere In My Heart (2) (new song)
  
• Tina & Hayley: Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams (10)
  
• Andy: Stray Cats - Stray Cat Strut (3)
  
• Scott: Biffy Clyro - Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies (new song)
  
• Others: Maximo Park - Our Velocity (5)
  
• Tina & Hayley: The Bangles - Manic Monday (4)
  
• Others: The Beatles - All My Loving
• Others: Eurythmics - Thorn In My Side (4)
  
• Others: Womack & Womack - Teardrops (4)
  
• Others: Brad Paisley - Ticks (2)
  
• Scott: The Fratellis - Ole Black N Blue Eyes (2) (new song)
  
• Tina & Hayley: Macy Gray - I Try (6)
  
• Others: Robbie Williams - Come Undone (2)
  
• Others: The Corrs - Dreams (2)
  
• Shaun: Puddle Of Mudd - Blurry
• Scott: Mick Jagger - Old Habits Die Hard (new song)
  
• Others: Frankie Valli - Can't Take My Eyes Off You
  
• Others: Buggles - Video Killed The Radio Star
• Andy: Keith Urban - Jeans On (5)
  
• Others: The Commitments - Try A Little Tenderness (2)
  
• Shaun: Garth Brooks - Ain't Goin' Down Till The Sun Comes Up (4)
  
• Others: Madonna - Material Girl
• Others: Robbie Williams - Angels (4)
  
• Tina & Hayley: Yvonne Elliman - If I Can't Have You (new song)
  
• Scott: Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want (new song)
  
• Others: Kaiser Chiefs - Modern Way

A new song tonight from the girls which I didn't expect and they did it very well too :) Scott added yet another new Rolling Stones song to the list although I'll let him off after he also sang Ole Black N Blue Eyes to help maintain the Fratellis lead at the top of artists charts (Question for Scott: Who sang the Maximo Park track??). I've updated the stats charts on the right hand side link up to this week. If it still shows a previous date then press CTRL & F5 on your browser to force the page to refresh as it seems to be having a problem with it caching old pages :s

Off topic, we finally sold our old house today too, woohoo!! We haven't lived in it for around 9 months and after putting it up for sale in February this year and getting an offer within days it still took an unbelievable 5 months to complete the sale! Still, done and dusted now and we'll be looking for a second car with the money we made from it as when Josh starts school in September and Lisa dropping her hours down to suit school times, having just one car is going to be difficult unfortunately. I shall be getting a new pc out of it too :) Not that there's nothing majorly wrong with this one (custom built a couple of years ago) but it's starting to struggle with newly released games as in it either won't run them or I have to have the gfx settings so low that it ruins the game.

Ah well, that's it for another week so until my next posting, see ya!

Karaoke - 12th Jul 2007

A little quieter up the hotel tonight than it's been for the last few weeks but enjoyable nonetheless.
At one point I'm sure there were more outside having a cigarette than there were inside which also means that, yes, despite being labeled 'Smoke-on-Trent' (full story here), the Hotel has thankfully stuck to the smoking ban.

There was a good selection of songs from across the board tonight, many of which I've not heard in a long time. Thanks to Scott for having a go at Linkin Parks' - Numb and Andy finally gave in to Tinas wishes for him to do Bodyrockers - I Like The Way. The latter song really needs a parody version as some of the lyrics could easily be substituted for more 'fun' ones ;) One new one for me tonight plus a couple I'd not sang yet in 2007. I'm currently working my way through Andys book to check all the songs I've ever sung from it so far but not done in a while as there are some forgotten classics in there I'm sure!!

Tonights playlist went as follows:

• Others: Eagles - Hotel California
• Shaun: Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out
• Tina & Hayley: Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams (9 times)
  
• Scott: Foo Fighters - Times Like These
• Others: Shania Twain - You're Still The One (5 times)
  
• Others: Queen - Too Much Love Will Kill You
• Shaun: Arctic Monkeys - Flourescent Adolescent (brand new!!)
  
• Tina & Hayley: The Bangles - Manic Monday (3 times)
  
• Scott: Linkin Park - Numb (brand new!!)
• Others: Gabrielle - Out Of Reach (4 times)
  
• Andy: Dire Straits - Money For Nothing (7 times)
  
• Others: Chris Rea - Road To Hell
• Shaun: Green Day - American Idiot
• Tina & Hayley: Savage Garden - Affirmation (2 times)
  
• Scott: Hootie & The Blowfish - Let Her Cry (brand new!!)
• Others: Foundations - Buttercup (2 times)
  
• Others: Texas - Black Eyed Boy (2 times)
  
• Others: UB40 - Food For Thought
• Others: Cascades - Rhythm Of The Rain
• Shaun: The Fratellis - Baby Fratelli (5 times)
  
• Tina & Hayley: Blondie - One Way Or Another (3 times)
  
• Scott: Take That - I'd Wait For Life (brand new!!)
• Others: Katie Melua - The Closest Thing To Crazy (4 times)
  
• Others: UB40 - Homely Girl
• Others: Mariah Carey - Hero (2 times)
  
• Others: John Denver - That God I'm A Country Boy
• Andy: Bodyrockers - I Like The Way
• Shaun: Maximo Park - Our Velocity (4 times)
• Scott: Eagles - Desperado (brand new!!)

** NEW SONG **
Arctic Monkeys - Flourescent Adolescent - I'd better not sing this one too much as it's a bugger to type!! This is my favourite song from the Monkeys new album and I really enjoyed singing it. I was hoping that it would knock Rhianna off the top of the charts this week but alas it only charted at number 5 which was a little disappointing given that that totally shite Kate Nash track is at number 3. The charts today eh? :p I've no doubt that this one will make an appearance again. do-again-rating: 9/10

Next week I'll be going for a meal (Portofinos - Italian restaurant) with my friends and colleagues from work who I hopefully can persuade some of to join me up the hotel after the meal is finished, although depending on how much drink I've consumed it may be them persuading me to go somewhere with them! We shall see and so until then, goodbye.

Linkin Park Chester: I sick when I sing!!

Now I'm glad that I can't sing like Chester!

Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington has revealed that his singing makes him sick.

"Every night when I sing, it kind of pisses off the hernia. Last night I was vomiting when I was singing."

He is to undergo surgery for a hiatal hernia, a condition that occurs when part of the stomach slides above the diaphragm, allowing stomach acid to flow freely into the oesophagus. It follows the mysterious stomach complaint that hospitalised Chester and forced the band to cancel its European tour back in June.

Not only did it teach him to appreciate life, it made him yearn to be a better person.

"You kind of figure out that your entire existence can be flipped upside-down in a matter of minutes and no one is safe. When I was in the hospital, I was thinking to myself, 'Oh, man, I'm upset with one of my family members, And that could have been the last time I talked to him. I don't want that to happen again,” he told MTV, referring to the stomach complaint, rather than some life-threatening illness.

"I'm kind of queasy all the time," Bennington added. "I'm basically gonna be sick to my stomach until I have the surgery done.”

Hiatal hernias are fairly common, causing burning pain and nausea. Most of the time they can be controlled with antacids, diet regulation and inclining of the head and shoulders. But sometimes, as with Bennington, they require surgery.

"Food doesn't stay in my stomach. It comes in and out whenever it feels like. So when I'm singing and I'm actually using my whole body to sing, things get forced out while I'm performing.”

Full Article here