5 weeks in dialup seems like a lifetime but I am BACK. Sadly just in time for the quietest time of the year. I will post my review of 2007 on Monday probably and hopefully everyone else is planning theirs. Please check my blurb on the homepage for what’s happening round here. This bit is particularly important though:

RECORD SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED FOR 2007. We are not accepting anything for review until January 2008. You can continue to mail the robot if you wish and he will let you know when we decide something. Until then we will be concentrating on getting the all-new diskant ready and launched and see where we go from there.

Oh dear, I have been slacking with this. I’m afraid my computer time is still limited because of my RSI so where one thing gains, another loses. Which is my way of saying, LOOK, NEW THINGS. Well, our round-up article on Supersonic is now online. We all had a great time – the bands were great, the weather was perfect, the Custard Factory is an awesome venue and the cake was pretty grand too. Go and read all about it. Similar fun was also had at Hey You Get Off My Pavement in Glasgow the other week but sadly without the lovely weather. It was still great and you can read about that on the weblog.

Over on the Films blog, Simon has started posting up a series on our favourite film soundtracks complete with video of the films in question. If you’ve got a favourite film soundtrack do get in touch and tell him about it and we might feature yours.

If you’re really bored, come join us over on Facebook in the diskant rocks group where you can hang out with us, post photos, discuss things and do whatever else people do on the internet. Waste time basically. See you there!

Current listening: Robyn, Girls Aloud, Electrelane.

Well, so much for Summer. June was a bit of a washout altogether and we had to escape up to the North East of Scotland to get some beautiful sunshine this weekend. We were in Portsoy for the annual Boat Festival and had a great time, even though boats don’t do that much for me. I purchased Irn Bru flavoured fudge, drank Moray Cup, found lots of bargainous fabric in the charity shops, wandered round Cullen beach and generally had an amazing time.

I have also been staying away from the computer as I have been ordered to rest up by my doctor due to me aggravating my RSI again. So diskant updates are very slow at the moment but hopefully not for too much longer as I am back on the mend. If you’re waiting on a response from me then this is probably why.

Our new events page is coming along nicely although the above means I have a bit of a backlog of events to go through – sorry about that. At the moment we’ve got tickets to give away to two fantastic events happening at the end of July – TrocaBrahma and Indietracks. Get over to the events page for all the details on how to enter. There’s no questions to answer so you’ve got as good a chance as anyone. Also, if you know of any other exciting events coming up, let us know!

It’s also your last chance to help out with The Future of diskant by filling out the DISKANT READER SURVEY. We’ll be picking the winner of the amazing prize shortly so hurry up if you want to be in with a chance. It only takes a few minutes.

Current listening: M.I.A., Bonde do Role, Electrelane, Pet Shop Boys.
diskant interview slackness stats: Interviewees: 0, Me: 1

Well, it really feels like Summer now and I spent most of my weekend sitting with the window open sewing tiny animals out of felt (from Aranzi Aronzo’s adorable Cute Book). I’d like to say I also reviewed a bunch of records but the nearest I got was posting out piles of CDs to our reviewers so at least some of those should be appearing on the site soon. Alasdair has kindly taken on the unenviable task of review box organisation so I figured out the genres and it seems to be working out so hopefully this will make the whole process a lot less tiresome.

The diskant rehaul continues but there’s not much new to show you yet. I’ve started on the new events section so you’ll notice we’re now doing little interviews with the organisers of the events we feature on the homepage. I thought it would be nice to hear from them what they’ve got planned and it’s more interesting than a couple of sentences summing up the event. There’s a new events page which will show all the upcoming events we’re recommending. It’s a bit MY FRIENDS cliquey at the moment (what can I say? They put on great events!) but we’ve been in touch with a whole lot more to feature soon. If you know of any exciting events coming up, let us know!

Don’t forget, if you’d like to help us figure out The Future of diskant then do fill out the DISKANT READER SURVEY. We really appreciate your feedback. It only takes a few minutes and there’s a great prize on offer!

Current listening:bis, Electrelane, M.I.A., Otterley, 1990s (even though the album is very disappointing).

diskant interview slackness stats: Interviewees: 0, Me: 1

It’s been another busy couple of weeks at diskant. First up we launched the new Films blog where we’ll be writing about new and old films, DVDs, YouTube nonsense, music videos and other film-related things. It’s already looking good so go have a read (and a watch). My other big task has been working out the best way to move all our blogs over to WordPress. Blogger has been a brilliant service but it’s time to move to something a bit more professional that we have more control over. I spent the other weekend categorising all 800 odd posts on the main blog and getting quite nostalgic for days long gone. So much so that I have been trying to coax back some of my favourite diskanteers of old to write for us again. Yay! Hopefully we’ll have some more new things to show you over the next few weeks.

Other than diskant, I have been busy with family visitations, the usual crafting, baking and photography and even a bit of writing for, gasp, other places. This has made me feel a bit guilty about my lack of reviewing and interviewing for diskant this year so I have good intentions on getting things done soon. Of course, just how soon remains to be seen.

Don’t forget, if you’d like to help us figure out The Future of diskant then do fill out the DISKANT READER SURVEY. We really appreciate your feedback. It only takes a few minutes and there’s a great prize on offer!

Current listening:bis, Electrelane, Margaret Berger, Belle and Sebastian, 1990s.
diskant interview slackness stats: Interviewees: 0, Me: 1

Well, I seem to have finally recovered from my illness and I’m now getting quite enthused about the diskant redesign. Simon has the unenviable task of recoding the entire site while I am sitting here like an Overlord coming up with ideas. New things that look likely include a news page (for both diskant news and out there in the real world news), a film blog and some kind of exciting events page. If you’d like to help out with diskant either as a writer/reviewer or with things like news, events and links then do get in touch. We’d also still like an official diskant Geek at some point for when our technical abilities fail us.

>Otherwise, things carry on as normal. I’m busy crafting away for another Miso Funky Market in Glasgow on May 12th and have just purchased a Japanese gocco printing machine which I’m extremely excited about. I’ve also booked my holiday to Tokyo for this October and I’m so excited I’m not sure I can wait another 6 months for it to happen. Before then, the diskant massive will be taking a trip to Birmingham in July for Supersonic (and a Botanic Gardens jaunt, hopefully). If you’re off to ATP these next weekends have fun and let us know how you get on, especially if all the queuing problems have been sorted out. I hope you get some sunshine so you can report back on Minehead beach, it not being at its best in December.

Don’t forget, if you’d like to help us figure out The Future of diskant then do fill out the DISKANT READER SURVEY. We really appreciate your feedback. It only takes a few minutes and there’s a great prize on offer!

Current listening: Girls Aloud, Margaret Berger, Tortoise, Trans Am, Findo Gask.

Trust me to welcome the arrival of Summer with my first proper illness in literally years. I have been sadly bedridden this week and have missed out on much, not to mention being too ill to actually make any use of not being at work. Since I famously have no concept of relaxation, this has been very difficult for me. It may also account for any delay you’ve experienced in contacting us. Sorry about that!

If you are extremely eagle-eyed (or particularly nerdy), you may have noticed that things are a-changing here at diskant. We have actually completely recoded the homepage but so well that it looks exactly like the old one, hah! It should be a lot quicker, more stable and easier to work with now. We are (slowly) working on the rest of the site and once these behind the scenes changes are complete, we will push on with plans for additions and improvements that will be more obvious. Simon Minter has been doing the bulk of the code changes and it’s been an enormous weight off my mind after nine years of being the sole coder at diskant. We are still looking for some geek help though so if you know anything about PHP, RSS, XML etc. please do get in touch.

Don’t forget, if you’d like to help us figure out The Future of diskant then do fill out the DISKANT READER SURVEY. We really appreciate your feedback. It only takes a few minutes and there’s a great prize on offer!

Current listening: bis, Deerhoof, Huggy Bear, Tortoise, Trans Am, Errors, Findo Gask.

Summer seems to have arrived at last and I’m finding it difficult to concentrate on anything of importance. Add to that my birthday, pretty much everyone else’s birthdays and two craft markets and I haven’t really achieved much this month except eating a lot of cake. Not that I’m complaining.

However, as part of my birthday celebrations I have made a list of 32 things to do while I’m 32. While this list includes things like going to the Falkirk Wheel, making a dress and catching a Tarantula in Animal Crossing, there are also some diskant-related ones including the long-discussed redesign and my pledge to write 32 record reviews for the Reviews Blog. I will keep you posted. The redesign has already begun and we hope to have something to show for it very soon. We’ll be doing it in stages as it’s all got to be done in our spare time, of which there is very little.

Remember, if you’d like to help us figure out The Future of diskant then do fill out the DISKANT READER SURVEY. We really appreciate your feedback and we’re already acting on it. It only takes a few minutes and there’s a great prize on offer!

Current listening: Margaret Berger, Trans Am, Errors, Findo Gask, The Yummy Fur.
diskant interview slackness stats: Interviewees: 0, Me: 1

I have returned from my holidays and much fun was had. I was over in Holland with my mum and sister and got to see our old family estate, the only remaining family windmill and the bust of my great great Grandfather which resides in the Zaandam windmill museum. It’s quite exciting having all this history in our family and great to see it all in real life. We also ate a lot of cake and did a lot of shopping, and I even got to further my ambition to visit as many botanical gardens as possible. Amsterdam’s is lovely. You can see all my photos by clicking on the picture above.

Speaking of photos, we have set up a diskanteers photo pool on Flickr so you can see what we’ve all been getting up to. Whether we’re away on holiday, out at a gig, off on tour, creating stuff or just eating pie we’ll post a few photos for you to see. At least you’ll have an idea why nothing’s been updated on diskant. There’s a Flickr widget on the weblog showing them all and they’ll also appear in the weblog RSS feed as they’re posted.

You can catch me in crafty action at two DADA/Miso Funky Markets this month – Glasgow on the 18th and Edinburgh on the 24th. All the info is here and you can get a sneak preview of my wares at my Etsy shop. I hope to see you there!

Don’t forget to fill out the DISKANT READER SURVEY if you have a few spare minutes. We really appreciate your feedback and we’re already acting on it.

Current listening: Margaret Berger, Trans Am, Errors, Findo Gask. diskant interview slackness stats: Interviewees: 0, Me: 1

Well, February has been….interesting. My trip to London was good fun with lots of shopping and wandering and eating but then the next day there was hella snow and I got stranded at my sister’s with no plane home! This did mean I got an extra day to have a peek at the V&A and buy more expensive Japanese books but all the extra expense has not done my purse any good. Typically, there was not a drop of snow to be found in Central Scotland. Gah! My purse was refilled slightly by the DADA/Miso Funky Market where I sold a few things and had some fun and sewed up a few new purses. There’s a few things available at my Etsy shop if you’re interested.

The big news at diskant is that we are doing A READER SURVEY to find out what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong and what we should be doing in future. The response has been brilliant so far, confirming some of my thoughts and giving me lots of great new ideas. If you have a few spare minutes do please fill it in so we can make diskant even better. There’s even an amazing prize on offer.

The main call so far is for MORE CONTENT, MORE OFTEN which is always our biggest problem. The reviews blog is ticking along as always and the weblog is picking up again but hopefully your comments will inspire our writers to get working on some new interviews and articles. I’m certainly feeling a lot less like giving the whole thing up which is always good.

Current listening: Margaret Berger, Asobi Seksu, Robyn, Joanna Newsom, Errors.