PigPog

I always preferred short stories when I was young. They suited my attention span better. I liked science fiction, and short stories were plentiful, mainly in old second hand books that could be found very cheaply – another bonus. Generally, the shorter the story, the more I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure how extreme I’d have gone.

The idea of microfiction (see the Wikipedia article) is to tell a story in a very short form – usually around 300 words.

Well, Allison at Slow Burn Productions has taken the idea to an even more extreme level. He’s mixed the idea of microfiction with Twitter, to come up with Twitter Fiction. Twitter is intended for very short updates to say what you’re doing at any time, and your Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters.

• Twitter Fiction’s timeline on Twitter – where all the fiction is listed.

At the time of writing, the idea has only just launched, and there’s only one piece of fiction there, so you need to write something before there’s much to read. The question is, are you creative enough to cram a story into 140 characters? I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge, but you can do it, can’t you?

• Twitter Fiction – see the latest fiction, and find out how to submit your own.

Elmore James was the son of sharecroppers and grew up in Mississippi. Unlike a lot of guitarists who acquire real guitars to use when they first start out, Elmore had to use homemade guitars like the ‘diddley bow,’ which was a piece of wire nailed to the porch! Elmore started playing when he was 10, and by 14 he was playing at local dances and in clubs. Other musicians he played with, especially Robert Johnson influenced him. Elmore loved Johnson’s slide technique, as well that of Robert Nighthawk, and later would use them on his own recordings.

He toured the South of the US with Sonny Boy Williamson (who had Jimmy Page play with him on several recordings in ‘68) and sometime in the 1940’s he began to use an electric guitar. He became famous for his use of distortion and sustain which influenced the sound of Chicago Blues when he eventually made his way there to play and record. Elmore recorded around 100 songs; his most famous recording was an interpretation of Robert Johnson’s “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” which he released as “Dust My Broom.” It reached nine on the R&B charts. He eventually moved to Chicago and played with his own band The Broomdusters. Elmore died in 1963 at just 41 due to a heart condition and asthma.

His raw, bluesy music heavily influenced the Blues sound of America, and eventually this music found it’s way into rock n roll. As Elmore was inspired by his musical surroundings in the Delta, so they in turn were picked up by blues artists in Chicago, and spread far and wide, eventually to the UK where Jimmy was inspired by him, and brought what he loved into rock n roll there. In the US, Elmore was a big influence on Little Richard, who once said that at the time he was starting out, only he and Elmore James were doing rock.

It wasn’t only Jimmy that picked up an influence from Elmore, Jimi Hendrix, The Allman Brothers, George Thorogood, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Fleetwood Mac – all used his songs and guitar methods. If you have never heard anything by him before, you really should check him out. You’ll be amazed at what you hear, and how familiar it sounds if you like any of the artists mentioned above. Although he is most talked about for his slide-guitar, his voice is absolutely incredible, all grainy and filled with emotion. You can pick up compilations of his best work at any good record store on or offline, and it’s all there for you. I’d make sure that any recording you choose has ‘The Sky is Crying’ and ‘Dust My Broom’ on it. I like The Best of The Fire Sessions, so if you want my suggestion you can start there. Rock as we know it was partly shaped by Mr James – enjoy!

Flickr have introduced a new feature – collections. You’ve always been able to gather your photos into sets, but as people commonly have thousands of photos in Flickr, that’s a bit limiting. You can now gather your sets into collections. A collection is just a ‘container’ for sets.

It can go deeper than that – a collection can also contain other collections – up to five levels deep. A set can be in more than one place, too, which could be helpful. You could have a Personal collection, and a Places collection, both of which contain a set of photos of your house, or you could have a People collection and an Events collection, both of which could contain your set of wedding photos.

There are even new ways of arranging your main photos page – the first page people usually see for you. You can replace the sets on the side with these new collections, or you can get rid of the sidebar entirely. And, if you prefer, you can swap the two (or three if you have no sidebar) columns of small images for a single column (two if you have no sidebar) of medium-sized images. People see less of your photos that way, but they might get a better chance to appreciate the ones they do see.

There’s the announcement from Flickr themselves over at the Flickr blog, or if you want to see what it all looks like, you can see my photostream page, or jump straight to my collections.

I don’t think it’s a huge deal – nothing massive has changed, just a new preference for the home page, and a way of putting sets in other sets. It does really change the way you can organise your photos, though. I’ve just spent some time shifting mine around, and letting them spread out a bit more. For people who upload lots of photos to Flickr (I only have 1,077 on there so far) it’s going to be a really useful change. I’ve seen people with twenty or thirty sets, and it becomes quite awkward to navigate around. Collections will help with that a lot.

All of these shy, retiring teenage boys grew up to become squee inducing rock gods. But do you know which rock gods they grew up to be?

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Yes, this is a boy. Give him 20 years or so. He’ll blossom out wonderfully.

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I’m sure this guy was in The IT Crowd. You wait until that hair grows.

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And this fella will just keep getting better, and better, and better…

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The phrase “huge great snarling man-beast” doesn’t apply here yet, but soon will.

I hope these pictures are some comfort to teen guitar players who are more keen on perfecting the pentatonic scale than figuring out how girls work. Keep on practicing and one day… the girls will come to you.

Answers soon!

Pictures found on hair-band.com.