Please Hold, Trying To Connect You…

I have a new phone, hurrah. Yes, a shiny nice new black and modern N95 8GB is mine and now I can finally send off my elderly N80 to see if I can get the speaker fixed whilst moving into the future.

Except, that, wait we’re in Britain so it’s not that simple! Being a conservative soul I’ve opted to port my number and thus not litter the planet with endless messages saying new number 077221… whatever. But this takes some time, a week thus far. It’s a good thing the N95 comes with wi-fi, as it is already seeing some use for me in letting me listen to podcasts with ease by downloading them while I sleep. However, it would be nice to use it as a phone.

Thanks to some googling, I’m now more than a little horrified at the messy reality behind number portability in the UK. Being somewhat naive and hopeful I thought all that happened was that my phone number changed in some large central directory from phone company A to phone company B. Alas, no. No, what happens is phone company A takes the call, says wait a minute and gets phone company B to pick up the line. So, by porting my number I’m increasing the chance of one of the networks failing and causing me not to get the call/text/whatever because i rely on both my original provider and my new provider functioning correctly and staying in business. Also, it wastes resources and means that my calls cost more to route, which I as a consumer ultimately pay for.

This is not ideal.

Thankfully, OfCom have identified this as a problem (chiefly fearing getting shouted at when a phone network goes bust and all the numbers die), and by Summer 2009 it might even be possible to change telephone company in as little as a two hours. The phone companies aren’t keen as it means spending money on some big servers and working our which number has which network. Meanwhile I’ll be carrying around two phones, waiting for one to die so that the other might live.

If you fancy reading up on this here’s a technical explanation of how ported numbers are routed and here’s OfCom’s take on the situation.

Music of 2007 – My emusic Top 10

emusic is doing it’s annual poll of users favourite albums of 2007.
I figured it might be nice to share my picks with y’all so here we are.

1 Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna Are You The Destroyer
Full of energy and earnest confessional lyrics, Kevin Barnes takes some outstandingly bleak and poor times and creates possibly the greatest manic album of all time. So many tracks to love, but I think it’s the balls behind having the full twelve minutes of The Past Is A Grotesque Animal sat in the middle of the album as the both it and the band emerge from a chrysalis as the greatest funk band ever. And it has duelling guitars.
2 Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Spoon + Horns = Supreme. That’s the formula for The Underdog and You Got Yr Cherry Bomb anyway. As ever with Spoon the album is a mix of styles with some really amazing experiments included such as The Ghost Of You Lingers which combines an apparent musical minimalism with their usual lyrical economy.
3 Napoleon IIIrd – In Debt To
Easily both the debut and British album of the year. Caught him first live supporting Fog and I simply can’t fault a lyric like Average is not the best you can do or We’ve got bored of the democratic scene and handed control to celebrities. And all with somewhat oddball instrumentation as well. And yes those lyrics do sound far better sung, naturally.
4 Jens Lekman -Night Falls Over Kortedala
Cor, apparently Jens is now cool with the likes of The Guardian finally lauding him as a minor genius. It’s a brave man who opens his album with a sample popularised by The Avalanches, and it is the continuing enchanting use of samples that makes the album and lets him segue between so many different styles. Also, Sipping On The Sweet Nectar makes me think he should just do an all disco album.
5 Misty s Big Adventure – Funny Times
Someone somewhere reviewed this and said you can’t make songs about requited love using a tuba. Aside from being quite definitively wrong, they need to go and listen to Devotchka and maybe some Mahler. Misty’s have produced a third album of amazing pop, which won’t be popular though they could play up their ska angle and become hip, maybe.
6 A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble – A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble
We all make mistakes every now and then, mine was to fail to and see A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble when they played five minutes walk from my house. Still, I saw them later in the year with Ungar at the helm of his cimbalom. I think Jeremy Barnes takes the folk gypsy music angle and runs with it far better than Beirut, perhaps due to less singing.
7 Super Furry Animals – Hey Venus
To be honest it felt almost like piracy to download SFA from emusic and I’m tempted to pick up the CD in due course. A complete return to form for the Welshmen here, and something that could almost be my favourite album of theirs.
8 They Might Be Giants – The Else
From the moment the Dust Brothers were announced as producing tracks on this album I was looking forward to it, because their remix of Snail Shell – Snail Dust is one of my favourite songs ever. The bass heavy mix was therefore no surprise and I think it’s a great album. And there’s some awesome songs like The Cap’m on here.
9 Peter Bjorn And John – Writer’s Block
Every so often I have a weak moment where I’m in a record store and just end up buying something cos I’ve heard it there, like this. I think Objects Of My Affection is much better than Young Folks though.
10 Beirut – The Flying Club Cup
More lovely Beirut stuff, it’s not as much of bolt from the blue as the first album, naturally. However I can’t get enough of some of his more croony songs like Nantes especially with the thin 70s organ sounds on it.