New website - again!

It seems only days since I announced the new website - and it probably was. It's a work in progress and that was draft one!

I've now made the even newer version life, which sports the new Octagon colours (of cream and rusty red, in case you're not reading this somewhere that supports the colours) and there's a few new features on there such as a site search, updates via Twitter and some lyrics. These will all be expanded over the coming weeks and days!

In the past I've been using tools such as FrontPage, Dreamweaver and iWeb to create the site, but this one is coded directly into HTML and CSS. It's a pretty steep learning curve and means I'm probably getting a fair few things wrong along the way, but ultimately gives me a lot more power over the features I'm able to incorporate into the site. The downside of that is that things may not always work to plan! So let me know if anything appears to be going wrong and I'll do my best to try to address it!

As ever, feel free to leave a message on the blog, message boards, or by emailing mailinglist@dayve.co.uk.

Waterboarding

This is pretty scary stuff from Amnesty International. Find out more at www.unsubscribe-me.org

Octagon, Oxjam and the website

It's a busy couple of weeks!

Oxjam

The Oxjam Music Festival is taking place this month with the aim of raising money for Oxfam through music related events. I've been involved in a few things including playing live in the Oxfam shops in Sandbach and Crewe, organising special offers on the music and video in the Crewe Oxfam shop, and creating a music quiz for sale in those shops, at Oxjam events and online at oxjam.dayve.co.uk. I'm also looking at producing a CD featuring local acts for sale online, at gigs and in the local Oxfam shops, as well as a larger Oxjam event to help publicise it. You can find out more about what else is happening for Oxjam at www.oxfam.org.uk/oxjam and donate money to my Oxjam events at www.justgiving.com/dayvedeanoxjam or by using the widget:

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

I will be performing my Octagon '08 show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August.

Although I've visited and worked at the festival before, this will be my first time actually performing at the festival and it's pretty exciting!

I'll be performing at:

Acoustic Music Centre @ St Bride's
10 Orwell Terrace
Edinburgh
EH11 2DY

The venue's website is at www.acousticmusiccentre.co.uk and you will be able to buy tickets from there or www.edfringe.com from (I think) 9 June.

It looks as though I'll be performing 18 dates. You can check them out on the gig guide at www.dayve.co.uk or www.myspace.com/dayvedean (or various other gig listings sites).

If you're going to be in Edinburgh for the festival, I hope to see you there!

Octagon

I've been at The Loft in Liverpool again today, mastering Octagon. Which means it is now pretty much in the can!

Although we didn't really change much today, we did a bit of mixing on the vocals of I Don't Want To Be That Man Anymore and I Could Be Happy With You (nice short song titles, huh?!) and also created a radio/single edit of Starting Line.

Still no release date for the album, but it's likely to be before August.

Website things

Okay, so it's not a major something in the grand scale of things, but I've been fighting with the eBlah and Blogger admin centres today, messing around with the HTML and CSS to rebrand the forums and blog into the new Octagon colours.

I'm in the process of changing over the whole website to this - and I'm fully aware that this pretty much means 1 page plus the forum and blog at the moment! - and there's several new pages so nearly ready to go it's almost painful! With any luck it will all turn live within the next few days. It's all live on the server at the moment, so feel free to have a guess at some of the page names...! You might have noticed my MySpace and YouTube profiles sporting the new look too :-)

I'm sorting through some photos from previous photo shoots at the moment and will be meeting with a photographer tomorrow to have a chat about having some more done. I'll be getting these up online pretty soon.

Video

Finally, I can't remember whether I've already blogged about this, but (mainly because I can't be bothered to go back and check, but it's also worth mentioning again!) I now have video online in various places, the main ones being YouTube and on iTunes with my video podcast.

For starters, I've uploaded some live videos of Follow, Waters and Still Life. I'll be adding to these with videos of gigs and anything else I feel like getting my new hi definition camcorder out to. It's got to pay its way somehow!

You can find my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/dayvedean and subscribe to the podcasts through iTunes here.