I once was an indiepopper. Today, on the train to work, I found myself listening to Leonard Cohen. I blame The Guardian, whose edition of Saturday contained a booklet with some of the man’s lyrics. Had I bought Friday’s paper instead, I would have been listening to the Arctic Monkeys. Except that I wouldn’t. Here are some random, and predominantly indiepop-y, bits and pieces that I thought were too good to keep for myself.

In its almost 20 years of existence, Slumberland Records have released records by Black Tambourine, Rocketship, Stereolab, The Aislers Set, The Saturday People and a great many more. They could have released a few death metal records, and I’d still love them. Thankfully, they haven’t. The label is doing a series of split 7″s under the moniker Searching for the Now. Bands that have featured on the first four releases include The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Bye! and The Happy Couple, while future releases will include Pants Yell!, Eux Autres, Soda Fountain Rag and Pipas, among many others. For people whose record player is hidden in a wardrobe, or who are going through a not-quite-indiepop phase or who are just too lazy to keep up with new releases (like me, in all three cases), every eight singles will be compiled on a CD. And there are mp3s of the songs to be downloaded from the label’s website too.

Four years ago, I attended the fifteenth anniversary party for Hamburg’s Marsh-Marigold label, home of all great German bands that aren’t called The Bartlebees. It was a superb night, with many great performances, so it is a bit of a shame that now, a little over four years later, I won’t be able to attend the label’s 20th anniversary. (Running a label makes time go by really fast.) The party, to be held in Hamburg from 18 to 20 July incidentally is also the 40th birthday party for label boss Oliver Goetzl.

Much smaller, in name, fame, age and release format, is London’s WeePOP!, whose first anniversary party I missed earlier this month, but who have some new releases —by bands like the Just Joans and One Happy Island— which is worth a mention anyway.

Speaking of birthday parties, my own birthday not-quite-party will be the day before Indietracks and to honour that fact (the festival, not my birthday), the Make Do and Mend label have released a compilation with 45 (!) songs by as many performing bands.

The estuary. Especially when seen from the train during spring mornings, when the sun is in the West and shines its light to reveal the true beauty of the Exe’s east bank and the hills beyond. Also: little egrets.

Exmouth shops. The town might be the second biggest settlement in Devon proper, but it has still a fair amount of ‘village shops’, the presence of which can not be annulled by the likes of Somerfield, Boots and Woolworths. I get all melancholic when I think about my weekly round of shops, getting bacon from the butcher, salmon from the fish monger and what not from the health food shop.

Apart from those, I can not wait for us to move. There is a point when ones possessions become so manyin comparison to the dimensions of a flat that keeping it tidy becomes almost impossible. We had reached that point a while ago. Having a home ‘office’ in the corner of the living room, although a big improvement from spending four nights a week away from home, is far from ideal either.

Fortunately, three weeks are not very long. Given what needs to be done, they actually are rather short. And then we will be based in Exeter. I have not seen many places in England, but I doubt there are many I like as much as I like Exeter. And no matter whether it’s for the pop Pop!, for the football, for the city or just for us, you should come round and visit.

This Sunday, we’ve been mostly fighting against a computer virus. In a weak moment of carelessness, we had invited it onto our laptop and it did not want to get away from there. It was the first time I had seen a virus in the wild; until now the only ones I had come across were those I was allowed to play with during a workshop. Therefore, it wasn’t too bad an experience, especially since I’ve been working for a company which, to put it cynically, exists solely because there is an ever-growing number of people writing those damn things. Up to now it had been a bit like working at a hospital, without even knowing what a headache felt like.

The virus itself was a rather annoying one, changing several settings and trying to lure us into ‘fixing’ the computer, which, that much I know, would have done a lot more harm. Still, it took several hours and two anti-virus programs to have the trojan… mysteriously disappear from our computer.

But it all could have been worse. The Gpcode virus, which has been discovered recently, is capable of encrypting files using 1024-bit RSA encryption. It is not too often that my past and my current jobs meet and I have to admit I’m following the developments on this virus with more than average interest.

RSA, which uses nothing but second year undergraduate mathematics, is a popular and potentially strong way to encrypt files and is used, for instance, when you are using online banking. All you need to use RSA is a public key (that you are supposed to share with the rest of the world) and a related private key (that you keep private). In one of its applications, someone can send you a message, encrypt it with your public key, and therefore be sure that only you, being the sole possessor of your private key, can decrypt and read the message.

What the Gpcode virus does, is exactly that: it encrypts your files using public key of the virus writer; hence only this person, or group of people, who keep their private key secret can decrypt your files and restore them to their original state. Which, in fact, they are happily willing to do for you. If you pay them a ransom, that is. Ransomware has been seen for quite a while now, but virus writers generally used pretty weak encryption and just hoped you would be scared enough to pay them a ransom. This time, they seem to have been capable of encrypting files a lot more seriously.

Researchers have guessed that it takes 15 million computers a year of computations to crack the encryption, which means computing the private key from the public key. If that doesn’t sound bad enough to you, how about my guess that it will take Gpcode’s writers a few hours to change their code, so that the cracking can start all over again?

Yes, that is Mick Jagger on the poster. No, he is not coming tonight. Though he might decide to show up, after all it will be free, no tickets are to be bought and there’s always plenty of space at the Phoenix. Mick might then even request a song or two or hear one being played by his own band (not by me, though, my playlist will contain only under-50s — I’ll play France Gall another time). Which is just to show how broadly we take this whole ‘Pop’ thing, at Exeter goes Pop! Doors open, as usual, at 8pm and music won’t stop until 11pm. See you there