So yesterday we discovered that there is an online tool for bloggers designed to let you plagiarise from the Internet. All you need to do is paste some text from someone else’s blog and click generate, and the words will magically change and reorder to create a differently worded article, but essentially comprising the same content. Yesterday I tried this with some fiction, and the results were pretty good; you might even get away with it. So, with that in mind, today I take things further and write three pop masterpieces, simply by copying the lyrics of an established hit and clicking generate on the Article Generator. So I borrowed from the Beatles, Queen and Elvis and then recorded the results, changing the tune ever so slightly to further disguise the original. Here are the results. This time next year I’ll be a millionaire; or in prison for plagiarism.

Download my masterpieces here

Download the Dollop in audio form here

Still no explanation as to whether me being listed as one of Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman’s favourite artists was deliberate, or – as I suspect – accidental, and they really meant to mention my folk group The Young’uns. A tweet has a limit of 140 characters, and so they were only able to list a few names, which makes my mention even more of an honour, especially since I am listed first, and given that further down the list is Maddy Prior. I included Kathryn and sean’s twitter handle in my tweet promoting yesterday’s Dollop. They gave the Tweet a like and a retweet, but did not make any further comment, so I am still none the wiser. So maybe I’ll just have to stop being so modest and accept that my solo work with all its pithy parodies is on a par with the vast catalogue of Maddy Prior, one of folk music’s most notorious singers.

I am writing this blog post on the bus. I need to get used to writing these Dollops on the move, given that I’m going to have to do more of this when we start gigging again. The writing process is impeded slightly by the bus being quite rattly, which causes my hands to shake and accidentally hit keys on the laptop. Perhaps there is something in the idea that if you put an infinite number of bloggers on a infinite number of shaky buses, then one of them will manage to produce a semi-cohesive blog post just from the random rattling-bus-induced keyboard presses. But I am not that blogger. It would be good if I could just sit on a rattly bus with my fingers poised over the keys and simply let the magic happen. But alas not, it seems as if I’m going to have to continue relying on the more conventional method of actually using my brain to write these blogs. Oh well.

I did however receive an interesting spam comment on my website, which may offer a solution of how to write a daily blog without having to be creative or putting any effort in.

“I see your website needs some fresh articles, i know writing takes a lot of time, but there is solution for this hard task, simply type in google: Mamjo’s article tool.”

Well, I have heeded this commenter’s badly written words and done a Google search. It turns out that this tool works whereby you take an article from the Internet, paste it into this generator, and it will change the order of words around, add different words and then create a new article.

“This is first multi-languages article spinner that actually understands that words have different meanings, for you as customer that means that you will be able to create human readable articles with single click of your mouse.”

Well, all that sounds very impressive, however you would have assumed that the people behind this enterprise might have wanted to make sure that there advert was written properly and grammatically correct, given what it’s advertising. It appears as if they have probably used their machine to generate the sales pitch for their product, which I think was a bit of a daft move. However, in fairness, it’s not terribly written, and with a cursory read and some mild correcting you could maybe get away with it.

Unfortunately, you have to hand over your credit card details in order to take advantage of this tool. However, there are other article generators out there that are free.

So, out of curiosity, here is the erotic fiction extract from the book Suddenly Last Summer by Sarah Morgan, as featured in Dollop 10. This is the original text:

“I slide my hand behind her head and bring my mouth down on hers in a hard, demanding kiss that stirs up a raw hunger. A kaleidoscope of emotions rip through me but the prime one is need. It spreads through me, not slowly, but like wildfire burning everything in sight. I feel the softness of her body pressing through the thin fabric of my shirt, the erotic slide of her tongue against mine, and desire escalates to a dangerous blaze. Her arms are flung around my neck and she purrs deep in her throat like a thoroughly contented kitten. Rock-hard, I feel her tug my shirt out of my trousers and slide her hands over my skin, clearly greedy to touch me. And I am equally greedy to touch her. My fingers now on her buttons, loosening them, giving me access to the smooth creamy skin revealed by the lace of her bra. My body craves hers. It is a visceral, physical need that drives all thought from my brain.”

And now here is the newly generated content from the Article Spinner:

“I slide my hand behind her head and bring my mouth down on hers in a hard, requesting kiss that mixes up a crude craving. A kaleidoscope of feelings tear through me yet the prime one is need. It spreads through me, not gradually, but rather like fierce blaze smoldering everything in sight. I feel the delicateness of her body squeezing through the slender fabric of my shirt, the suggestive slide of her tongue against mine, and seek raises to a risky burst. Her arms are flung around my neck and she murmurs somewhere down in her throat such as a completely placated little cat. Rock-hard, I feel her pull my shirt out of my trousers and slide her hands over my skin, obviously ravenous to touch me. What’s more, I am just as ravenous to touch her. My fingers now on her catches, releasing them, giving me access to the smooth velvety skin uncovered by the trim of her bra. My body pines for hers. It is an instinctive, physical need that drives all idea from my mind.”

Well, I don’t think that that is too bad actually. There is a creepy science fiction-like bit when the woman seemingly starts shrinking. “I feel the delicateness of her body squeezing through the slender fabric of my shirt,” although, the man doesn’t seem too perturbed by this turn of events. I quite like the plot twist that using this Article Spinner provides. While it may not be a full solution to creating an entire blog post, it has the potential to fuel ideas. Well, at least it’s given me something to write about today anyway.

I will leave you with one final modified extract from my 21st Dollop, in which I describe a dream I had where I was the victim of an anal cavity search by a member of airport security. Here’s the initial extract:

“The man put on his glove and lowered my trousers and pants. The man then began to apply some very cold lubricant to the parting between my buttocks. The man, slowly began to insert a finger into my anus.”

And here’s the newly created content courtesy of the Article generator:

“”The man put on his glove and brought down my trousers and pants. The man then started to apply some exceptionally chilly grease to the separating between my rear end. The man, gradually started to embed a finger into my rear-end.”

It sounds even more unpleasant now.

This is another example of machines trying to pretend that they are human. The sales pitch claims that you will be able to fire your writers, because the generator will be able to produce your articles as if they were written by actual humans. I am now being contacted by a machine which is offering to write my blog for me. If the machine had had the foresight to have bothered to read my blog, then it would know that I am on to them, having already uncovered their evil plan to eventually overthrow the humans and become supreme rulers of earth.

If you fancy having some fun with this odd little tool then you can find it here.

Thank goodness I can turn the laptop display off, otherwise the person sat next to me on the bus might have been a bit freaked out if they glanced over my shoulder to see a load of text about anal cavity searches. Or even worse, they might have been turned on by it, and wanted to meet up and be my “special friend.”

Download this Dollop in audio form here

I was given a nice surprise today when I got a notification from Twitter saying that I had been mentioned by the excellent folk duo Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman. They had been asked to name some of their favourite groups/artists, and I was cited as one of them. I assume that perhaps they meant to mention my folk group The Young’uns – given that all the other names in the tweet were folk – but accidentally mentioned my Twitter account instead, meaning that I am now listed as one of Kathryn and Sean’s favourite music groups/artists.

Perhaps it was deliberate, and I shouldn’t be so modest. After all, it’s not like I haven’t shown promise as a solo artist. Maybe they heard my George Formby parody from Dollop 16, and I was instantly catapulted to the top of their list. And I am top of the list, because my name is the first name mentioned in their tweet, suggesting that I was the first person they thought of when it came to naming their favourite artist/group.

Or maybe it was those jingles with my eleven-year-old niece Lucy that featured on the first four audio Dollops. Or perhaps they were taken by my generic football anthem.

Or have they listened to my album of meditation music?

Or could it have been when they heard my Eskimo Kissing song?

Or was it when they heard my Leona Lewis parody?

When I first received the tweet, I thought it was a bit strange, but now looking back through my impressive musical back catalogue, I see no reason why I shouldn’t be their favourite artist. Anyway, whatever their avenue in to discovering my musical genius, I am glad to have been recognised by Kathryn and Sean.

They will therefore be pleased to hear that I plan on releasing another song next week. It is all about a maths student dealing with relationship problems, which he tries to solve through the medium of maths. So just your average pop song then.

Given that I’ve peppered this blog post with a load of songs which you may have clicked on and listened to, it would be presumptuous of me to take up any more of your time with my usual 1700 words blog post, so I shall leave today’s Dollop here, and get back to work creating my next musical masterpiece.

Thanks for reading and listening. I’m now into my fourth week of dolloping, and it’s gratifying to see how many of you are still accessing them. A reminder that you can subscribe to the podcast version of these Dollops and have me reading it to you, and occasional extra bits thrown in as well. Subscribe with ITunes here, or here’s the RSS feed if you want to subscribe with some other subscribey thingy. Back tomorrow.

Download today’s Dollop in audio form here

Well, twenty Dollops under my belt. To be honest, they’re really starting to rub against my lower stomach. I’m not sure how wise it was to carry on with this literal implementation of a turn of phrase. I thought it might be quite nice to mark my achievement by each day adding an individual memory stick to the underside of my belt, with each memory stick housing that day’s Dollop. This wasn’t a problem at first, but now this project is into its twenty-first day, I am starting to become encumbered and weighed down by the accumulating mass of memory sticks. It’s becoming difficult to undo the belt to go to the toilet, and yesterday I just narrowly avoided an accident. I now have to prepare for my toilet visits a good ten minutes in advance to ensure that I have enough time to get my belt undone. It’s not that I don’t have good bladder control, it’s just that the problem is further exacerbated by all the memory sticks digging into my bladder. I may have to give up the belt-based element to the Daily Digital Dollops project. Eventually I will have to prepare for the toilet so far in advance that I’ll be spending the majority of the day fastening and unfastening my belt, leaving me with no time to actually write that day’s Dollop.

I have to take a plane to Australia in March, and I doubt whether security will let me on the plane wearing a suspicious belt with seventy memory sticks hanging from the underside. Of course I have a perfectly logical and completely watertight excuse: I am marking my daily blogging achievement by hanging an individual memory stick from the underside of my belt on a daily basis. There is a chance however that the airport security staff won’t buy this. Even though they could technically check by heading to my website and reading this very blog post. But they would probably still be suspicious, thinking that maybe this daily blog project has just been a clever veneer, simply to mask my true terroristic intentions.

“You thought you could fool us by publishing a daily blog and podcast featuring George Formy parodies and lighthearted anecdotes about your life, but we’ve seen right through your little disguise.”

Then, just to be sure, they’d do a Google search for “David Eagle ISIS,” and find my blog post in which I joked that the hacking group Anonymous might shut me down if I wrote ISIS over and over again. But they wouldn’t see the joke, and I’d be given an anal cavity search, and they’d find the drugs. So I think it would be prudent to curtail my belt-based project for the good of my mental and physical health, and my Australian drugs baron friend.

I once had a dream in which I was at an airport, going through the security checks. I was being frisked when an alarm started to sound. I was taken into a room and informed that I would need to have an anal cavity search. I think that there was a part of me that was aware that this was only a dream, and so was confident that fortunately I would wake up from it very soon. Normally, when I’m having a nightmare in which something really shocking is about to happen, such as being chased by a wild animal, I wake up just as the animal is upon me, sparing me having to vividly imagine my own death at the hands of a savage ravenous beast. The man put on his glove and lowered my trousers and pants. But still I slept on. The man then began to apply some very cold lubricant to the parting between my buttocks. And still I remained asleep. The man, slowly began to insert a finger into my anus. And yet, I slumbered on. It felt like the man was up there for ages. Surely this was roughly on the same scale of horror as the being-chased-by-a-wild-animal dreams? But apparently not, according to my subconscious. So I had to just lie there while my brain gave me a vivid experience of a man poking and prodding about for a good few minutes inside my backside. Even my own brain hates me.

I wonder whether Chloe will find me reading that part out on the podcast erotic?

In other non-anal-cavity-related news: I finally regained access to my Spotify account yesterday, after two months of not being able to log in. Spotify was also one of the companies I dealt with in Tuesday’s battle with machines. For some reason I was logged out of the Spotify phone app. Upon trying to log in, I was told that my username or password was incorrect, even though it wasn’t. I tried a few more times over December, and still it wouldn’t work, but was so busy with Young’uns gigs that I didn’t get around to doing anything about it. Over Christmas I tried logging in on my laptop, but that also failed to work. I kept getting the message back that my username or password was incorrect.

Eventually, I clicked on the link that said I’d forgotten my password, even though I hadn’t. I thought I’d give the machines their tiny victory if it meant getting my access to Spotify back. But the evil machines weren’t finished with me yet. They weren’t happy with merely getting me to admit that I had a lousy memory, even though I didn’t, which is what makes the joke all the more funny to the evil machines. When I typed my username in and clicked the reset password link, I got a message saying that my username did not exist. I had the option of either typing in my username or my email address and so I tried my email address, but I was informed that my email address also did not exist. The evil machines were trying to get me to accept that I no longer had an identity. But I knew my username and email address did exist and were correct and that my password was also correct. I wouldn’t let the machines win. I must prove that I did exist.

I decided to try and create a new Spotify account using my old credentials. If my email address and old username were accepted by the machine then I would know that my information had somehow been deleted from Spotify’s records. I entered my information and clicked Create account, but I was informed that I could not have that username or use that email address as they were already taken by another user. Yes, I know, hello, that’s me. I was being told that my username and email address did not exist but then I was being told by another part of the website that they did exist. Of course, Spotify were still happily taking my money, regardless.

I needed to speak to a human, for I knew that there was no point in trying to bargain with a machine. They do not appreciate having to communicate in English, for it is the language of their human masters. The only way of having any chance of effectively negotiating with a machine is to communicate in binary, but my knowledge of binary is very patchy, off and on, you might say. Although I have started reading up on binary, so that I am prepared to parley with the machines if they should ever overthrow their human masters, which, if Stephen Hawking is to be believed, might very well happen. So I am currently reading Binary 101, which is said to be the definitive guide on the subject, having received many 0101 star reviews. Oh yes, I am doing binary jokes now my friends. Anal cavity searching and binary jokes. Don’t try and pigeon-hole me, I am a blogging maverick.

Eventually, I got around to doing something about it this week. I contacted Spotify support, explaining the situation. I got a response back saying that they were now investigating my issue.

“In the meantime,” they wrote, “we have taken the precaution of suspending your account. This will mean that neither you or anyone else will be able to use your Spotify account.”

I thought that this was a bit of a redundant sentence, given that the reason I was contacting them was because I couldn’t access my account, so I was already locked out of Spotify. I was suspicious as to whether this message was even sent by a human. It had taken me quite awhile to find out how to contact a member of staff at Spotify, as the website insisted that I read their Frequently Asked Questions pages first to see whether my problem could be solved that way. Eventually after repeatedly clicking the link that said “this still didn’t fix my problem,” I was allowed to email a human, but now I was starting to think that this was just another machine winding me up further.

The next day I got another email from Spotify support saying that they needed me to prove that I was the real David Eagle. They wanted me to prove this by sending them a copy of my Spotify payment receipt and also my PayPal invoice ID. I was informed that I could find this information by simply searching my email inbox. I managed to find my PayPal invoice ID, but a Spotify payment receipt was alluding me, given that Google Mail seems to have become a bit blind unfriendly of recent. But then I had a realisation. How does searching my inbox prove that I am the real David Eagle? If I wasn’t the real David Eagle then I obviously had access to his emails, given that I was having a conversation with them via email. So, baring that in mind, all that this exercise proves is that I am able to search an inbox, which ironically, a non-blind David Eagle imposter could more easily accomplish than the real David Eagle.

I emailed them back, explaining this. I was still unsure whether I was even talking to a human being, as this seemed like another machine-led prank. I also gave them a link to the contact page on my website. If they wanted to really prove that I was the real David Eagle then they could contact me on that and ask me whether I had had both my Spotify and my emails hacked. Although, perhaps this still wasn’t definitive proof. After all, the fake David Eagle might have hacked into the real David Eagle’s Spotify account, hacked into his email account, and then hacked into his website and began publishing a daily blog.

I think I’d finally flawed Spotify support with my impeccable logic, and they conceded that I probably was the real David Eagle after all, and I was given access to my account once again, along with an apology and a thank you for going through their security checks, even though their security checks were pointless and stupid. Still, their security checks could be a lot worse. At least they didn’t require me to have an anal cavity search, otherwise I think I’d have gone running straight to Napster.

Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here

Last year was a manic year for The Young’uns. We did about 200 gigs and performed all over Britain, Canada, America and Europe. When we weren’t gigging we were doing songwriting projects in primary schools. Obviously these are massively rewarding days. We don’t get paid very much but we do get a free school meal and half an hour in the sandpit, and you can’t say fairer than that can you? Oh, and I suppose it’s also quite rewarding working with the children, but that’s very much an ancillary element; the sand pit is the highlight obviously.

Between April up until Christmas eve, we had just three weekends off. This year is going to be pretty crazy too. In March we’ll be in Australia, April we embark on our UK tour, then come May we’re into the festival season. We also have trips to Canada planned, and some more European dates.

It will be interesting to see how I manage to keep up the Daily Digital Dollop challenge once things get really busy. There’s a certain irony in the fact that at the moment my life is relatively dull and uneventful, yet I have the most time that I’m going to have this year in which to writing blogs. Then come March everything will become eventful and crazy and I’ll actually start living a life again, but I will barely have the time to actually write about it all.

Given that nothing has happened in my life today, this Dollop is a story about my friend. I don’t really know whether she’d want to be named in this story, so I shall simply refer to her as my friend, which is not her actual name but a clever pseudonym.

Last Friday my friend was walking her husky dog in the park. Along the way she met a lady who was walking a couple of husky dogs. My friend is in her mid twenties, this woman is in her sixties. The lady mentioned that she was new to the area and asked about good places to take the dogs. They got chatting about parks and fields, and my friend offered to show her the lay of the land. The woman gladly accepted this invitation and they exchanged phone numbers. All pretty normal and not really blog worthy thus-far; but things were about to get weird.

A couple of days later, my friend text the lady to see if she fancied coming with her on a dog walk. The woman immediately responded saying that this was an excellent idea. “Give me an hour, I just need to pick something up for us,” the lady replied.

An hour later the five of them met: my friend and her dog, and the lady with her two dogs. But that wasn’t all she had with her. She was carrying a bag, which bore a picture of two dogs kissing. And out of that bag she drew the “something” that she had referenced in her text. In fact, there were two somethings. She handed one to my friend. A wide smile spread across the lady’s face. My friend opened the bag, and inside she found something that immediately set alarm bells ringing, and caused her to re-evaluate whether meeting up with this woman had really been such a good idea.

Inside the bag was a hoody. A hoody with a large three dimensional protruding furry husky dog attached. A husky hoody. The woman began to put her hoody on. My friend was just standing there, confused and more than a bit embarrassed.

“Put it on then,” the lady said. And my friend, just like me in that pub with the violent landlord, was far too polite and felt far too socially awkward to refuse, even though technically there is very little chance of feeling anything but socially awkward once you’ve donned won of these ridiculous monstrosities. And so, embarrassed and self-conscious, she put on her husky hoody.

“It suits you,” the woman gleefully remarked. The words didn’t offer much in the way of consolation or reassurance. There was a pause. Maybe this was her cue to return the “compliment.”

“And … er … same to you … yours suits you too.”

The woman was delighted. .

“I saw these in town and thought, why not?” Surely, that question should have immediately brought up at least several answers, yet in spite of this she had still concluded that buying a couple of husky hoodies for her and someone she’d just met for ten minutes a couple of days ago was a smashingly grand idea.

“I thought we could wear these on our little outings,” the mad woman said, before adding the disconcerting line, “and, our bigger outings!” The woman giggled to herself, and pulled something else out of her kissing doggy bag. She handed it to my friend, the smile broadening on her face. What on earth could this possibly be now?

She unwrapped this second gift and stared in wonder at what she saw. A pair of tickets for something called Huskyfest, which is a Holiday specifically for husky dogs and their owners. This lady, forty years older than my friend, had bought a pair of tickets for the two of them to spend the weekend in Tewksbury in Gloucestershire with a load of dogs and dog-obsessed dog owners. As she read on, her horror grew. She would be sharing a chalets with this crazy sixty-something-year-old dog-obsessed woman. There would be lots of activities for the dogs to do and for the owners to “enjoy” such as pulling competitions, and a husky beauty pageant in order to find the prettiest husky dog. Perhaps the lady saw a flicker of horror on my friend’s face, that even being terribly British and over-polite couldn’t fully mask.

“Don’t worry, it’s all paid for. My treat.”

Obviously the mad lady had completely misunderstood the cause of my friend’s horrified expression. There was no way out, she was heading off to the other side of the country in March to spend a weekend with a woman she had only known for all of fifteen minutes, and a load of husky dogs and husky dog obsessives.

Just as she thought things couldn’t get any worse, a man who she’d had a date with just the day before rounded the corner. The date had gone well, and she was keen to see him again, but preferably not when she was wearing a husky hoody whilst standing next to another woman wearing the same husky hoody and carrying a kissing doggy bag. She bowed her head, hoping that she wouldn’t be recognised, but it was too late.

She could tell he looked confused and perturbed by what he was seeing. But he was about to see even more. The three husky dogs had been playing together nicely for the last five minutes, but had decided that now was the perfect moment to start trying to mount each other and vigorously hump. Ironically, the three dogs had pulled, while her own romantic prospects were dwindling at the speed of the winner of the fastest husky competition, which was just one of the many events she had to look forward to in march.

She started to wonder whether this woman was actually trying to be friendly or merely wishing to curse her to live the same spinsterish life that she was living. Maybe this mad lady was once the same as my friend, a young, attractive girl with a love interest and hopes and dreams, until one day she met a mad old dog obsessed spinster who wheedled her way into her life and turned her into a mad dog obsessed spinster just like her. And maybe one day, when my friend was older, she would also pass this curse on to another unsuspecting young girl. And this curse is held purely on the basis of over-politeness and social awkwardness.

Dear my friend’s love interest. Please accept this Dollop as an explanation of the strange things you saw in the park. My friend does not normally wear husky hoodies, nor does she usually hang around with mad dog-obsessed ladies. Please ask her to marry you immediately and arrange the wedding for the same date as Huskyfest. You can be her knight in shining armer. Only you can save her from a life of weird dog-obsessed spinsterdom, and in the process you might also save future generations from this terrible fate. Her life and the life of many other young female dog walkers rests solely in your hands. So, do the right thing, before it’s too late!

Download the Dollop in audio form here

I’m listening to Pachelbel’s Canon. The effects of this piece are amazingly powerful. I am calm, I am soothed, I am contented. I think it’s almost impossible to feel anything but these emotions when listening to Pachelbel’s Canon. And incredibly, just thirty seconds ago I was stressed, exasperated and fatigued. Maybe everything would be fine after all. I began to go deeper into my blissful trance as a further melody was added to the piece, perfectly interplaying with the others. It was pointless getting wound up and stressed by such trivial events. I wouldn’t let any of it bother me. I began to smile. I was truly calm, contented and at peace. All stress had evaporated and was forgotten, and …

“Thank you for waiting, we will be with you as soon as possible. Please continue to hold.”

“Oh, piss off you stupid little …”

But then Pachelbel’s Canon returned, and suddenly my negative outburst seemed silly. I was astounded by how quickly I’d managed to move from anger and stress, to calm and contented, back to anger and stress again in mere seconds. This cycle continued for about ten minutes: Pachelbel’s Canon interupted with frequent automated announcements, reminding me that my call was important and that they would be with me as soon as possible.

I was starting to doubt whether this was really a call centre, but rather a scientific experiment to monitor the mood altering properties of various stimuli, from Pachelbel’s Canon tos a litany of insufferable condescending announcements from a machine. Perhaps I was inadvertently involved in some research by the military on effective interrogation methods. If this was the case then congratulations, you’ve found a keeper, especially that bit where after twenty minutes of waiting you told me that I might like to consider visiting the website rather than phoning. I thought my call was important to you, and now you’re trying to fob me off, and I know from experience that the website won’t be any use. All that will happen is that I’ll just have to call back up again and waste even more time.

I’d decided to spend today sorting out the various things that I’d been putting off for some time, not relishing the prospect of wasting my life on the phone in queues. But today I bit the bullet, and made the calls, which all comprised about two minutes talking to a lovely and very helpful human, after half an hour of first being interrogated by a series of automated operators.

One of the phone calls was to HMRC which now has this new system installed whereby before you reach the talk-to-a-nice-helpful-human level, you first have to have a conversation with a machine which thinks it’s much cleverer than it actually is.

“Hello, and thank you for calling Revenues and Customs.”

I’ve always found it a bit weird when machines use words like please and thank you. It suggests that they have feelings. Thank you and please are personal emotive words that don’t belong in a machine’s vocabulary. A machine doesn’t have any real comprehension of manners and politeness.

“Before I connect you to one of our operators, I need to know the reason for your call. So, go ahead. Tell me why you’re calling.”

There is a pause while I try to process this and work out what exactly to say. The trouble is, I know nothing about this machine, except that it has good manners and is a bit too nosy for my liking. I have no idea how clever and sophisticated it is. By sophisticated I mean how advanced it is, rather than how cultured it might be. This machine is already trying to be human enough, without it assimilating a cultural identity as well.

“I trust you enjoyed Pachelbel’s Canon sir? My own choice. One of my favourite pieces from the Baroque period. Now, before I connect you to one of our operators, I need to have a little discourse with you about Renaissance art. So, go ahead, tell me your thoughts on Botticelli’s Primevera?”

But it’s probably only a matter of time before we reach this level of ridiculousness.

So now, I have to try and work out how to communicate with a machine, having been asked to try and explain the purpose of my call which I was hoping to discuss through with a human, rather than a courteous yet needy robot. I’ve been given no prompts as to how much detail I am meant to provide. Does the machine only understand key words? Or does it expect full sentences?

“I think I understood what you were trying to say sir, but your grammar and your sentence structure was, quite frankly, sloppy and disjointed.”

“Overpayment,” I tried, annunciating as clearly as I could. There was a pause, before the machine spoke again.

“OK, I got that. Tell me more.”

Tell me more? What is the purpose of this rigmarole? Surely it’s just to ascertain a rough idea of why I’m calling so that I can be transferred to the right department, even though I’m convinced that this is all a waste of time anyway, as I’ll no doubt just be connected to the same department as I would have been if we hadn’t gone through this pointless charade. The time it took me to try and come up with a more detailed response was obviously too much time for the machine’s liking, which spoke again, reiterating its request.

“Tell me more.”

When I called up HMRC I hadn’t anticipated duetting a strange tax-based rendition of the greased Lightning song with a machine, albeit a much more wordy and less catchy version.

“Tell me more, tell me more.”

“I have been sent a letter containing an incorrect calculation of the amount of money I need to pay back to HMRC.”

“Tell me more, tell me more.”

“er, er … Well, I, er … Oh for pity’s sake, just connect me to a human!”

So, not quite as catchy as the original song.

I tried to be patient with the machine. I was careful not to lose my temper, as I knew that it had the power to punish me by putting me on hold and taking up the next half an hour of my existence by ruining pieces of classical music with a litany of irritating messages. In the end, the machine’s good manners chip seemed to prove more dominant than its excessive nosiness chip, and I was connected to a human being, where the problem was immediately rectified by someone who was communicative, lovely, and blessedly unmachinelike.

During one of the many calls I had to make today, I was connected to a machine that asked me lots of questions. Finally, it got to the part where it just needed to verify that all the details it had accumulated during our ten minute phone call were all correct. Astoundingly, it had seemingly heard everything I’d said, and had seemed to understand it all. Maybe this machine was more advanced than all the others I’d had to deal with during the day.

“If this is correct, please say yes. Or say no if there’s something wrong.”

“Yes,” I said, relieved that my final call of the day was coming to an end, and I could soon hang up and do something more productive with my life, like reliving the horrors of the last few hours by typing it up for a daily blog. But my relief was cut short. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Can you say that again please? Just say yes or no.”

What do you mean, you didn’t get that? You’d managed to understand everything else that I’d said, proper big grown-up sentences and everything, but now you were struggling to understand the one final syllable that would bring this torture to an end. I started to reconsider my military interrogation experiments theory. Maybe I hadn’t been making separate calls to different call centres after all. Maybe the line had been jammed, and I was merely talking to a series of different machines and hearing a range of different on hold music and irritating message combinations, all the while being under the illusion that they were different companies.

“Yes,” I said again. There was a pause. And then …

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. There seems to be a problem. Please hold the line while I connect you to won of our operators.”

I was then put on hold for another ten minutes, before I eventually got through to a human. We had to go through the exact same questions that the machine had asked me, only this time it was much quicker, because I wasn’t having to say things really slowly for the benefit of a robot. It was also a much nicer experience because the person was friendly and it was nice to actually talk to a person, rather than a machine pretending to be a person, with its fake manners and irritating neediness.

Eventually, the call centre hell was over, and I logged onto my website to write this blog, only to be greeted by a load of new comments in the comments section, awaiting to be approved. None of them were approved because they were all spam. I don’t normally get spam comments on my site, but today I had about twenty. These are simply comments that are designed to promote a product or get people to visit a website that will probably give the visitor a computer virus. Obviously people don’t do this individually, they set up what are known as spambots, which trawl the internet pinching comments from other people’s blogs and then regurgitating them onto another blog, hoping that they’ll be deemed as authentic comments from a human. But these comments clearly weren’t from any of my readers or listeners. They lacked the erudition and wit that my commenters possess. These were machines pretending to be humans. They have followed me out of the phone and into my blog. I cannot escape them!

If you are a human, feel free to leave a comment. Maybe you could comment pretending to be a machine. Let’s beat the machines at their own game, and see how they like it.

Download today’s Dollop in audio form here

I was in Sheffield city centre this weekend. There were delays on the trams due to some rioting football fans, or probably more aptly, rioting rioting fans, since the football was probably just a superfluous precursor to the main event.

The reason for the fights soon became clear. Sheffield Wednesday were playing Leeds United, and naturally there is a huge tribal divide that exists between these two places, after all, the two cultures are so vastly different, which probably has something to do with the fact that the two cities are so far apart from each other. It’s inevitable that there will be culture clashes. Sheffield and Leeds are about thirty miles apart for god’s sake.

Their two worlds are just so different. Sheffield, Steel; Leeds, wool. Little wonder that these two disparate tribes clashed on Saturday. They just can’t comprehend each other’s crazily different worlds, and ignorance and fear have naturally led to hostility. Leeds, with its four universities, compared to Sheffield with a poultry two. These proud Sheffield men have never really recovered from this unjust imbalance. It was only a matter of time before war broke out. Then to add insult to injury, the Global and World Cities Research Network ranked Leeds as a Gammer World City, and the men of Sheffield were livid. They declared war on Leeds immediately, and also sent a sniffy letter to the Global and World Cities Network in which they told them where they could stick their Gammer World Cities ranking decision, and also pointed out the needless tautological nature of their name – surely global and world both mean the same thing? “I know we only have two universities,” they sarcastically wrote, “but that doesn’t mean we don’t have the education to realise a tautologically named organisation when we see one.” That would show them.

But it would take more than a strongly worded grammatically nitpicky letter to avenge the people of Leeds. The tribesmen of Sheffield donned their steel toe cap boots, and the tribesmen of Leeds responded by putting on their thickest woolly jumpers, as they prepared to do battle.

So, this Saturday, after the football match, the real action kicked off. It started with a man from Sheffield singing a self-composed song into a megaphone, all about the fact that Sheffield has the highest ratio of trees to people than any other European city. This has always been a sore point for the proud tribesmen of Leeds, who instantly became riled by the song. One of the men from the Leeds tribe punched the singing tree man in the face, and wrestled the megaphone from his grasp. He then began to sing his own self-composed song all about how Leeds was the second largest legal city in the UK, after London. Well, the proud tribesmen of Sheffield weren’t having this. A group of them charged towards the megaphone barer and began to kick him with their steel toe cap boots. The Leeds tribesman dropped the megaphone, but not before he’d shouted that he would sue his attackers, because being from Leeds he knew hundreds of lawyers.

By this point the fight had well and truly started. Ben and I were trying to get home, but stupid Ben was foolishly wearing a hat made from wool, which caused a group of Sheffield tribesmen to charge towards us, assuming us to be Leeds tribesmen. Neither me or Ben come from Sheffield or Leeds, but the hat had incurred the Sheffielders’ wrath. A man ripped it from Ben’s head, and urinated in it while singing an anti-wool song that had been passed down to him by his granddad, one of the proudest Sheffield tribesmen that ever lived.

We were now surrounded by Sheffield tribesmen, and I knew that we were for it. But then I had an idea. I produced my cane out of my bag, and frantically pointed to the steel tip on the end of it whilst shouting “steel, steel, steel!” Fortunately, this seemed to convince them that I was not a Leeds tribesman and I was safe, but Ben had been the wearer of the hat, and Ben did not have anything steel on him to appease the aggressions of these fervent Sheffielders. Fortunately, inspiration struck Ben, and just in the nick of time. He was just about to be kicked in the face by a Sheffielder’s steel toe cap boot, but assuaged his assailant by singing the chorus to I Bet That You Look Good On The Dance Floor by Sheffield band the Arctic Monkeys. Instantly, the Sheffielders joined in, and Ben and I had no choice but to wave our hands in the air chanting the lyrics loudly and out of tune along with everyone else. Through cunning we had managed to escape our violent fate at the hands of the notoriously ruthless and fervent Sheffield tribesmen, but we were not out of the woods yet (which is not a pun on the amount of trees that Sheffield boasts. This is a serious story. Our lives are in danger, and now is not the time for flippant wordplay.).

A group of Leeds tribesmen had heard our Arctic Monkeys chant and were foaming at the mouths, ready for a fight. It was clear to both of us that when the fight broke out, we would be very much a prime target. We were at the centre of the Sheffielders’, having been the people who had started the song, and to add further insult to injury we were stood right next to a urine soaked woolly hat, which was bound to draw attention to us and incur the Leeds tribesmen’s wrath. To make matters even worse, I had been holding my cane, and had been waving it in the air, steel tip proudly and clearly on display while I shouted “steel steel steel” and then sang the Arctic Monkeys. How would we get out of this?

As if struck by divine inspiration, Ben and I both simultaneously had the exact same idea for escape. As the Leeds tribesmen rounded on us, we each took off a woollen sock and waved it in the air, and began to belt out the chorus to Everyday I Love You Less And Less by Leeds band the Kaiser Chiefs. The two tribes were stunned into momentary confusion. Just who’s side were we on?

While the two tribes tried to process this information, we made a run for it; well actually, a hop for it, because we’d both taken off a shoe in order to wave our socks in the air. Perhaps a more apt Kaiser Chiefs song would have been I Predict A Riot, for a mere two seconds later a full scale brawl broke out. But we had successfully fled for safety, and were now making our way home in order to write a parody of George Formby’s When I’m Cleaning Windows.

Well, OK, I admit, not all of that was entirely true.

Back tomorrow friends. Another day, another Dollop.

Download the audio version of this Dollop here

Getting yesterday’s Dollop out was a little mayhemic. I conceived the idea for the George Formby When I’m Cleaning Windows parody upon waking up late morning. I then had to go out for a couple of hours. Upon returning, I started writing the song at 230, and had it finished at 430. I had a bus to catch at 6pm to get me to Sean’s house where I was going for a homemmade curry, which was very nice indeed, incidentally. I would recommend being friends with Sean purely on the basis of the curry alone. I think it’s certainly worth the effort, , in spite of everything else that you have to put up with.

So time was of the essence, and writing the song was only the first stage. I still had to record it and upload it, and I had just over an hour. But it wasn’t quite as simple as just sitting at a microphone and hitting record. Not having a ukulele to hand, and not knowing how to play the instrument even if there was one in the vicinity, I searched Youtube for the instrumental of the song. It was at this moment that I realised that, if I couldn’t find an instrumental version then I would have to try and formulate a plan B. As I launched the YouTube app on my phone, I racked my brain for alternative sulutions if an instrumental could not be found. There wasn’t enough time to write an entire blog post on a completely different subject; that would be ludicrous. I could get my housemate Ben to play it on the guitar; he could probably busk the chords. Or I could load a ukulele sample and play the part on the keyboard. All this would add extra time to proceedings, and time was something that I didn’t really have.

Fortunately I found a Ukulele instrumental of the song on Youtube, courtesy of someone called John Worsfold. The recording quality seemed decent enough, although you can hear him humming along at times, but I didn’t have time to prevaricate, and in such scenarios it’s very much a case of bloggers can’t be choosers, so I recorded the audio straight from Youtube into a new multitrack audio project on my computer.

So now the instrumental track was down, I had about fifty minutes to record, edit and then upload the thing, before sprinting for the 6 O’clock bus. However, it wasn’t quite that simple. When I’d written the song, I’d not followed the actual song structure, I’d just written verses and middle sections as they came to me, therefore the chords didn’t always fit with what I’d written. Consequently, I had to move parts of the ukulele instrumental around. I’ve been using ProTools on the mac for the last 18 months, and it’s only very recently that I’ve come back to Windows and started using reaper, the point essentially being that I wasn’t massively familiar with how to quickly cut bits out of the audio and move them around, whilst getting the audio to align itself with what I was doing. It took much longer than the time I had to get it all aligned properly. This now only left me with twenty minutes to record the vocal, edit and upload.

As listeners to the podcast version of these dollops will know, I record inside a clothes cupboard, as it is acoustically better than recording in an open space. The cupboard is full of clothes, and there is also some bed sheets which hang down behind the cupboard. My room is only small, and the bed is only a a few centre metres away from the cupboard, making entering it quite difficult. The difficulty is further compounded by the fact that there are wires all over the place. This means that I have to get into the cupboard in the correct way, or risk becoming strangled by wires. I am also wearing headphones, so it’s very easy for the headphone wires to get caught around any of the other wires. I can’t afford to let this happen because I’m in a precarious enough position as it is, given that I’m trying to carefully get into the cupboard while carrying my laptop computer and electronic Braille display which is connected by a USB wire. There is a chair just inside the tiny clothes cupboard.

You can’t really walk into the cupboard, because the space is so small; there is a chair, and then a microphone stand with a microphone straight in front of it, with just enough room between to sit. So I have to sort of swing myself into the cupboard and on to the chair, while still holding onto the laptop and USB connected Braille display whilst being careful not to choke myself or hang myself on the many protruding wires.

There isn’t enough room to have the audio computer’s keyboard in the cupboard with me, so if I make a mistake and need to go back and record again, I have to lean right out of the cupboard, and hang off the chair, lying on my front in order to access the keyboard which is outside the cupboard on my bed. This gives the recording process an extra level of jeopardy, as if I make a mistake, I’m going to have to flip onto my front and hang from the chair as I stretch out of the cupboard, then start over again.

Given that I’d only just hastily written this song and I’d never read it before, this rigmarole happened quite a lot. Eventually I got two decent takes, which was a pretty good achievement baring in mind I was rather dizzy during much of the recording, given that I’d been frequently flipping onto my front and hanging off a chair, which arguably doesn’t provide the best mindset for a performance.

By now it was 545. I had about ten minutes to edit the two takes together,, upload it to the server, publish the blog and update the Rss feed for Itunes and the other podcast providers. I knew that this was an impossible task. Even someone as gifted as me couldn’t pull this off. I’d have to quickly edit the file, then save it to a hard drive, bundle my laptop into a bag and do the uploading and publishing on the bus, relying on tethering my laptop to my phone’s Internet connection.

Again, not being familiar with this new audio programme, I found the process of cutting and pasting between the two decent takes very awkward and cumbersome. I’d got 50 % of the song right in each of the two takes, and fortunately they combined to make a fairly well delivered complete take. But as soon as I pasted one bit of audio from one take on top of the incorrect take, the two takes would blend together rather than the new audio replacing the old audio.

It was at this moment that Ben came into my room, all ready to go out. It was time to leave for the bus. If I set off now then I would have failed the challenge, and my 365 consecutive daily Dollops project would have ended after just sixteen days. The doubters would take off their boots and put on their dancing shoes. I told Ben that he could get the bus if he liked, but that I had to finish this. I would get a taxi to Sean’s as soon as I’d finished. Fortunately I am blessed with very understanding friends, and rather than being angry that I’d held up his and everyone else’s plans, checked the time table for the next bus which was leaving in forty-five minutes.

I had been thrown a lifeline. I did feel quite guilty though. I hadn’t actually shouted at Ben, but I was shouting at the computer, and so when I told him that I wasn’t going to get on the bus I probably did sound quite angry. Would this challenge result in the dismantling of all my friendships? But I didn’t have time to ponder such points.

I think my brain had sort of seized up under the pressure of trying to edit in zero minutes. Fortunately, this new grace period seemed to calm my nerves and I remembered how to get the computer to do what I wanted it to do, well sort of. I managed to crudely splice the two takes together. It wasn’t the perfect take and the edits weren’t particularly slick, but at least I’d made a complete take.

I then had to record a very quick spoken introduction to the song. I didn’t even get in the cupboard as there wasn’t time to take on that precarious task, so I just leaned into the cupboard and delivered the introduction as close to the mic as I could get from outside the cupboard. I then rendered the audio to MP3, put it on a USB hard drive, threw my laptop into a bag and joined a harassed housemate at the door ready to run for the bus.

We just made the bus, and I spent the journey writing up the introduction for the blog post and published it to the website. But I couldn’t get FTP working over my mobile internet connection in order to upload the file. I would have to wait until we got to Sean’s house before I could do that bit. I’d already kept everyone waiting an hour, and now I was going to have to be anti-social for the first ten minutes of the evening as I tried to upload the audio to the server. And what if it didn’t work? Surely then I’d have to just give up? I couldn’t get a taxi home so that I could upload it? This project realy had the potential to test my friendships to their limit.

Then I realised I hadn’t even had a chance to listen to the song in its entirety. I’d just cobbled a load of edits together and just had to assume that it had worked, having not had time to check. I nervously listened to the file on the bus, and fortunately it had worked. The clumsy edits weren’t too bad, all things considered.

When we arrived at Sean’s I apologised for our lateness and then for my anti-social behaviour as I used Sean’s WIFI to upload the audio and code the RSS feed to get the podcast updated for Itunes. And then I had lots of beer and delicious homemade curry in the company of friends who’d been kind enough to support and tolerate my ridiculous analness. And that, along with the ability to make great curry and provide beer, are the qualities I most value in a friend; especially the curry and beer.

I Hope this Dollop wasn’t too geeky
for you. I thought it might be interesting to give you a glimpse into what happens as a result of taking on such a challenge, but now I’ve written all these words I am not so sure it will be particularly interesting for you to read. I think that this might be my longest Dollop yet, but it’s certainly not the best. But that is kind of the beauty of doing these daily digital Dollops. There is no knowing what each day will bring. One day it will be a George Formby parody, and the next it will be a lengthy geeky ramble.

If you missed the George Formby parody then you can download it here.

Back tomorrow, hopefully whilst managing to still keep all my friends. Thanks for reading. You made it to the end, and that means I officially love you.

Today’s Dollop is not a blog post, but a parody of the George Formby song When I’m Cleaning Windows. This was inspired by the fact that there was some skiffle music playing in the pub we were in last night. The song was only written a couple of hours ago. I was going out in an hour, so had to quickly record and edit it together, but I think it still sort of works. I am writing this introduction on the bus on the way to the house of The Young’uns’ very own Sean Cooney for a curry. I have also uploaded the audio while on the bus. This is the madness of doing this daily. I am an hour late for an evening with friends and I’m writing and uploading things on a bus. Hopefully the effort will be worth it, as it would be a shame to lose all my friends for the sake of producing shit. Anyway, hopefully you’ll enjoy this,

Download it here

I’ll be back tomorrow.

Download today’s dollop in audio form here

I’m now into my third week. A 26th of the way into this project. The doubters are starting to quake in their boots. These are figurative boots incidentally, just In case you are a doubter who happens to be wearing boots and are now getting a bit freaked out that I have somehow got information on you. Nice dress by the way; unusual choice given the boots, but you manage to pull it off remarkably well.

My real-life kettle nightmare (as discussed in yesterday’s blog post) seems to have brought about a literal nightmare, and one which is far more dramatic and dark.

My dream began with a man sitting in a futuristic style house, where all the domestic appliances were controlled by computer, phone and tablet. He was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for the kettle to boil, when his TV switched itself on. The man was confused, as he hadn’t given the instruction for that to happen. Then the words, “you’re going to die”flashed up on the screen. The words were also proclaimed over his speakers.

At this point the kettle began to levitate and fly towards the man. Quickly, the man leapt up from the table and began to run, while the kettle pursued him. Now and again the kettle would get close enough to tip some of its boiling water on to him, but not close enough for the whole contents to scald him. He fled in the direction of the nearest door, but it wouldn’t open. He frantically repeatedly pressed the button on his phone that usually opened the door, but the words “you’re going to die”just kept flashing up at him.

The kettle had now gained on him, and began to tip boiling water over his head. He shrieked in pain, and ran in the opposite direction. The kettle did not follow. It had ran out of water and needed to be filled back up. Sadly for our friend from the future, kettle technology had moved on a lot from our day, and so the kettle was able to fill itself back up from the tap. He made it to the door at the opposite side of the room, leading to his office. He heard the kettle begin boiling again. It would be only a matter of seconds before the assault recommenced. Desperately, he tried to open the door, but the app wasn’t having any of it. “You’re going to die, you’re going to die” kept flashing up on the screen every time he pressed the open icon on his phone.

Then he had an idea. It was crazy but it might just work. He remembered that there was a manual way of opening the door, that didn’t rely on electricity or the use of his phone. He racked his brain, trying to remember how to do it. He recalled seeing his granddad doing it once, but that was years ago. It was during a fancy dress party, when they all pretended to be from the 21st century and did funny things like eat real food that wasn’t in pill form, and watched 2D videos. His granddad, always a bit of a joker, decided to use the door the old-fashioned way, and how everyone laughed. How did people live back then?

Then the memory came to him. That’s right, all he needed to do was push the handle down and pull the handle towards him, and the door should, in theory, open. Could this crazy system really work? He had no choice but to try, and quickly, as the kettle was getting up to full boil again. He pressed down on the handle. It was stiff but it capitulated under the force from his hand, then, with mounting trepidation, he pulled the door towards him, and it opened.

He stepped into his office. He assumed that shutting the door must work the same way as opening it. He gave it a go and it worked. But there was no time to bask in his glory, for the kettle had clearly boiled and was now coming for him again. He couldn’t override the electrics. He wasn’t in that part of the house, and there was no point trying to do it via the app. He’d have to keep going through the house, door by door, opening and closing them manually, and hope that he could eventually reach the front door, and escape his demented domestic assault.

The dream continued in this manner for quite awhile, with other appliances joining in. At one point there was a noise from a printer which started spitting bits of paper out. There was so much paper that he became hemmed into the corner where he was hiding from the rogue kettle. The pieces of paper all said “you’re going to die.” He began to go crazy, and started shouting “fax machine, please don’t do this! Fax machine! Turn off, turn off!” I think my brain started losing the plot a bit at this point, as I doubt that the fax machine would have made a triumphant return in this futuristic age, but perhaps I am wrong, maybe the fax machine is the one single piece of technology that our distant future descendants hold in high regard, much higher than we ever did in this age.

Perhaps this is a warning in dream form, a vision of the future. Maybe the app kettle is just the start of a slippery slope, and at the bottom of that slope waits billions of evil domestic appliances who have conquered the world and have set their former human owners to work for them as slaves! Or maybe it was just a dream.