Category: Annoyances

  • MySpace, One Way In – No Way Out

    MySpace is a strange one. From a musician’s point of view, if you want a profile there it’s easy out. Go to the MySpace music site, register yourself as an artist and away you go. (Note that you have to be on the MySpace music site to do it, or you’ll wind up with a personal profile instead).

    If you register a new account with MySpace, you’ve now got the choice to remove it within 14 days. I set myself up with a music profile at the weekend in an attempt to encourage myself to demo some material (only demos going to MySpace at present as I’m not getting into serious recording until time and money allows it). I set the profile up, I’ve no intention of removing it.

    Two profiles though that I want to remove include one for the Sound System Podcast and one for the One Take Sesssions, both of which are pretty redundant as there’s a main KilkennyMusic.com myspace which is handling gig bookings, comments, music submissions etc. Having the one profile to govern all KKM activites saves time, energy and draws the traffic to the one spot. So why am I pulling my hair out?

    Well, the ‘cancel account’ option available in the account settings simply doesn’t work. Two weeks now I’ve been trying to remove both accounts and no joy.

    MySpace – if you’re watching, that’ll be the accounts at myspace.com/soundsystempodcast and myspace.com/onetakesessions – support mails have been sent and to no avail. You try to cancel your account and they say no problem, email is on the way to confirm. No chance. Ok I thought, maybe a problem with the email address, I’ll change my address and get the cancellation emails sent there. No chance. You have to confirm your change of email address and surprise surprise, no confirmation email.

    But – BUT! An account I held at MySpace (registered to a forgotten email address) rose from the dead just before the weekend, MySpace reminding me to log in or they’ll delete the account as it’s been six or seven months since it was used and I’m holding up what could be a valuable username. They’re happy to cancel accounts themselves but when you ask for it yourself all you get is a headache.

    It’s like socks in a washing machine….

    Gripe aside, my new profile is there to let me demo some material before starting the recording process in 2008. The tracks are available to download for free, do with what you please (barring re-recording them or releasing them as your own, that’d just be wrong) as they’re likely to be replaced as frequently as possible with updated versions, the MySpace profile allowing me to document the progress of certain tracks in a recording environment.

    The address is http://myspace.com/kenmcguiremusic

  • 40 Euro Flight Costs 322 Euro – Some sale!

    So Aer Lingus are having a sale, cheap seats if you book before June 1st to fly between October and December. I figure it would be a nice time to get a four day break away so I chalk in the first Sunday in October and the seat is a fiver. I need a return date so go for the Thursday, low and behold the seat is a fiver – sorted.

    The fare is one way, so you pay a fiver out and a fiver back. Four of us went in April, so I figure four seats would be grand – 4 * (5*2) = 40.

    Total cost of the flight? €322. To the penny. Taxes and charges per person are 64.59 making your flight €74.59 before you leave the airport. Then you’ve got a “handling fee”, presumably the way Ticketmaster have handling fee – PER TICKET – of six bucks, so now you’re on €80.59 before you add bags. If each person brings a bag out and back we’re nearing the 400 quid mark.

    Not exactly a fiver now is it? Didn’t get around to clicking that ‘confirm’ button in the end.

  • Quoted In The Irish Times

    Got a few text messages this morning, from my Grannie no less (spell it with an ‘ie’ to keep that hip factor) who found a Ken McGuire quoted in the Irish Times yesterday in Conor Pope’s column which looked at the new seat charges being implemented by Aer Lingus.

    My comment in full, which was on the original blog post here, was

    Thats a bit of a pain. They’re standing there in the airport (were Saturday in Dublin and today in Amsterdam) actively encouraging you to change seats. As it was, the seats I had booked for the flight home didn’t seem to be available and we were seated towards the rear of the plane.

    The baggage charge is a joke. It won’t be long before you’re able to buy clothes in your destination city and post them home when you’re leaving for less than the charge on the bags…

    But charging for a window seat? Gimme a break…

    The comment itself was posted a few hours after I landed back from Amsterdam last Tuesday night. Its been a while since I flew out of Dublin, or flew in general – my trip to Toronto being my first flight in around a decade – had always done the ferry / camper / ferry / car thing. There are the airport are these most handy self check-in kiosks, a quick scan of your passport and your flight number is called up along with all your details, seating, baggage etc.

    On the way out it was a breeze, the seats we reserved online were there, seated exactly where they should be (two aisle seats, two center seats), but on the way home when we checked in at the KLM desk, this wasn’t the case. We had intentionally reserved the seats to the front of the plane (preference of the more regular fliers in the group) but yet going to check in we were seated a further 20 rows back with one person split from the group – nothing at all what we had booked and confirmed online (with a seating confirmation email which followed).

    Whats the point in booking your seats on a plane if you can’t get the seats you booked in the first place, and now, if you want to change your seat you’re going to have to pay for it? After losing the seat you booked and confirmed in the first place?

    Pah.

  • Pain In The MySpace

    Honestly, I’ve been trying to register an account on MySpace for someone for the last hour with an email address, trying varying rotations of their home country, language selection, password and their idiotic captcha (which doesn’t offer plaintext or audio support) and EVERY time I’m left with

    We’re sorry. Based on the information you have submitted to us, you are ineligible to register on MySpace.com.

    You’d think they were just trying to stop people signing up. Too many members…

    Update: over 3 hours since I’ve started, I’ve been able to register. MySpace registration downtime? No alerts within the site itself from what I could see…

  • Proposed O2 Unavailability

    In case you missed it, O2.ie will ‘unavailable from 7:40pm Saturday 17th until Sunday afternoon’. Anyone want to place a wager on when that Sunday actually is? I’m down for a score on Easter Sunday….

  • Bebo Now A Political Playground?

    Notice to politicians… call to my front door, try flag me down in the street or have a word with me at a gig but keep comments like these off my Bebo page, blog, MySpace…. you get where its going.

    Bebo Politics

    If this is going to be the “in thing” now in the run up to the elections I’m gonna be mighty pissed off….

  • Newspaper Annoyances

    The press release came from KilkennyMusic.com. It was sent via my email address, ken [at] kilkennymusic DOT com. The name in the header of the email said Ken McGuire – KilkennyMusic.com. The signature of my email had KilkennyMusic.com all over it. The end of the release stated ‘For full details, visit www.kilkennymusic.com’.

    So why do they print it as ‘www.kilkenny.com.ie’ ? The whole organisation is called ‘KilkennyMusic.com’ – nothing more, nothing less (except for the cliqueish types who like to refer to it as KKM, me included – I do like the pet name). Surely its not that hard to copy and paste details or at least CHECK your final article against the details that have been sent to you. Or has someone been really sneaky and launched another level to the .ie domains without telling me, then gone and hijacked everything I do musically and move it to this new secret website?

    When the newspaper contacts YOU looking for the information, rather than the other way around, you think they’d want to get it right when putting it into print don’t you think?

    Small gripe but its late and I’m annoyed…