I found out on Thursday that the promoter at The Voodoo Lounge will be leaving at the end of this month which means that when I get back from the US I will have to immediately start job hunting. I had always intended to start looking for a day job after I returned from the US as I need to be earning more to follow my dreams of building a life with Erin and Conner. This happening has just forced the issue really so I may have to take any bullshit job to be able to make my relationship with Erin work. I have even considered moving to the US on a student VISA which apparently allows me to work to support myself while studying. There will be work at The Voodoo Lounge for me to do but what I will be earning will be just about enough to cover my costs. Which means that I won’t have any sort of life and certainly won’t have any scope to save towards my next visit to the US. I don’t blame the promoter for leaving at all, she hasn’t had any support from the club management at all and there are certain influential people within the local music scene that have been criticising The Voodoo Lounge at every opportunity. The net result is that Plymouth will be a poorer place for live music as the Voodoo Lounge is the only venue that puts on new and interesting acts breaking up the monotony of metal/punk (White Rabbit) and covers/tributes (The Hub). There maybe the odd live gig put on in The Voodoo Lounge now if myself or Phil can be bothered to make the effort but other than that live music is dead at The Voodoo Lounge after the end of this month! It’s such a shame that there is a lack of support from the owners as The Voodoo Lounge has so much potential if the promoter, myself and the manager were allowed to have a free reign over the venue. The owners live in Spain so really have no clue of who our clientele are and what is best for our core customers, which seems crazy to me! But what do I know? I am only a lowly sound technician!
I wouldn’t like to live in China, no wonder that there are so many Chinese here in the UK right now. I have been reading about the Chinese version of the Skype software that I use to talk to Erin entitled Tom-Skype. Apparently certain key words that include “democracy”, “communism” and “Tibet” are being censored and information about the user being stored on one of eight servers in China which includes lots of personally identifiable information. Even worse apparently the data is insecure as well according to Canadian research group Citizen Lab. The group managed to access all sorts of information including username, IP address and even phone numbers as well as the message sent. These messages never reach their recipient but instead get uploaded to one of eight servers located in China. And that information is easily available as the encryption keys are stored on said servers along with the data. Their servers have already proved themselves to be insecure as peer to peer software has been stored on said servers. Full article (PDF). [ you’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read the full article, click here to get it. ]
