My Shame...

This post needs a soundtrack:

The Angels of Light - Shame

OK, onwards to my dirty, shameful confession:

After years of moaning about iPods being essentially wrong I have succumbed and I'm now the owner of an 80GB iPod. After drowning my old mp3 player I've been trying to get through the last couple of weeks with a 1GB memory card and my phone and frankly it's not working. I'm constantly having to shuffle mp3s to and from my phone, and the battery life is crap.

So why an iPod? Well, I have about 55GB of music on my hard drive, I buy over 100 CDs a year and download almost as many, I need capacity! As far as I can see there isn't anyone else making mp3 players with anywhere near my storage requirements.

Good points so far:

• Syncing with iTunes went very smoothly
• It does look lovely
• It is very loud, which is useful as I seem to be half deaf.
• The 'On-The-Go' play list thing is a good idea.
• Sounds better than my phone

Bad points:

• I have a feeling deleting content will be a pain
• The EQ setting is a complete waste of space, none of them are any good.
• Sound quality is nowhere near as good as my old mp3 player.
• Whilst the 'On-The-Go' play list is inherently a good thing, why can't you add things to it from the Now Playing screen? (this could just be ignorance on my part)
• You can only change the volume on the Now Playing screen as far as I can work out.
• Very easy to skip over the item you wanted to select with the wheel thing.

Da Da Daaaaaaaaa!

Instructions:

1. Get a glass of milk or some other drink that is not completely clear.
2. Take mouthful of your chosen liquid - do not swallow!
3. Make sure sound is turned up on your PC
4. Click on the above embed flash movie a couple of times to get it going.
5. Laugh so hard that liquid squirts from your nose.
6. Clean up mess.

My Foot

Apparently I have Pes Cavus - the exact opposite of flat feet. Another deformity for the collection.

Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown

I went to the third night of Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown festival last night, bit of a surreal sight witnessing Mr Cocker introducing two pretty extreme metal acts - but then again I applaud his openminded attitude.

The first band to play was Chrome Hoof - Christ, where do you start with them... Some pictures maybe?

This picture should give you a fair indication of the band; think of a really tight, highly talented funk band who have been listening, and appreciating, a fair amount of death metal. Or maybe imagine Slipknot if they finally got in touch with their female side and let a bit of glitter into their lives:

This is there 12ft metal goat effigy, it was a bit more impressive than this picture implies:

And here is one of their dancer's, I'm amazed she got through the set without collapsing - the thought that must have been running through every hot-blooded male mind (and maybe one or two broadminded female ones) in the audience was: "I bet she goes like the clappers"

Other highlights: the bit where the two dancers murdered the string section, the bit where the guitarists got out the BC Richs and the bass player donned a Spartan helmet to run through some quality metal, and maybe the bit where the strange bloke in the comedy Scottish wig who came on to sweep the stage mid-song.

A band to watch I think, they will appeal to people who like bands like The Go! Team, or maybe !!! but who yearn for a touch of metal in their lives.

Anyway, onwards to Sunn O)))

This was their stage set-up:

The usual wall of amplifiers, a Moog and then a few instruments which I haven't seen them use. They had someone on Rhodes piano, which added a really odd jazzy feel to some of the music; they also had someone who spent the first half of the set tapping on a guitar with a violin bow, and the second half of the set they had him playing on what looked like a traditional pair of DJ decks, I think he may have been playing them at 0.5 RPM though.

The main focal point though was their vocalist Attila Csihar:

Admittedly if you are going to stand on a smoke filled stage directly above green spooky lights whilst wearing robes and what may or may not have been a fake blond wig, you are going to end up being the centre of attention.

For the second half of the set he came back on wearing a sack, as you do:

I'll be brutally honest, tonight Sunn O))) probably dragged there drone metal thing on a bit too long, when a show ends with the entire band lying down on the stage you get the impression that maybe everyone is getting a bit tired and should go home and get some sleep.

Not to say it was bad, the fact that it was a seated venue gave you that extra interaction with the music as you felt the bass in a very real and physical way! And I quite liked some of Attila's invocating, its just that the set could have done with being about half an hour shorter.

So that's my opinion of the night, I've got a few more pictures here if you want.

My Next Phone

The Sony Ericsson W960

Touch Screen... check!
Wi-fi... check!
Smartphone... check!
Bluetooth stereo... check!
Decent amount of memory... check!
Will make the owner more attractive to women... I see no reason why not!

And let's be perfectly clear on this, I saw it first - if anyone I know gets one of these before I do they will be hunted down and punished.

Oh yeah!

Ha!

Well you're wrong there Grasshopper! I don't live with my Mum, and my Dad's dead.

/trails off into quiet contemplation...

This is from Great Lakes Avengers a rather silly comic book from a couple of years ago written by the same chap who wrote some of the She-Hulk books I got obsessed with a few weeks ago. It has the same sort of approach to Marvel canon which I liked about She-Hulk - I for one can't think of many other Marvel Super Hero teams with a character like Squirrel Girl.

More moaning...

...and as much fun as reading comic books can be my weekend should consist of other activities.

Right, that's enough - no more moaning!

The power of moaning

Maybe I should moan more about stuff on my website, it took no more than a day after writing a post about how much work was sucking to be told that I was moving project and my work laptop was repaired with a shiny new screen. Not only that I've got an appointment for a biomechanical and gait assessment (I believe treadmills will be involved, I've been told to bring shorts) so maybe, just maybe, I'll get my foot sorted out.

So now that I've discovered the mystical power of my website I think I'll get a few other things off my chest:

• My credit card bill never goes down no matter how much I pay off every month.
  
• I could really do with some female company, I think maybe there is such a thing as too much porn.
• And for the love of Mario, can someone please put this picture on a t-shirt:

I think that is enough to start with.

By the way if anyone wants to see some pictures from Chen's birthday at Bedouin click here. Now!

Work sucks! Let's listen to grindcore!

This post is dedicated to anyone not having much fun at work: being given dull, uninspiring work that seems to eat into your free time and being ignored when anything interesting comes up, the screen on your fancy vista-based work laptop packing up - that sort of thing, not that I'm citing any personal experience in such matters - oh no!

However, maybe you find yourself in such a situation; if so, I find that one way to blast away such issues is with some good old digital grindcore. And who would be a prime example of such aural delights I hear you cry! Well, one such band would be Agoraphobic Nosebleed - one guitarist, a drum machine (since human drummers are just that little bit too slow), and from what I understand three vocalists. I've selected a few tunes for your enjoyment.

I think the following three songs can be found on their website, they have been chosen purely on the basis that they have the word 'fuck' in the title...

Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Die And Get The Fuck Out of The Way
Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Fuck your Soccer Mom
Agoraphobic Nosebleed - The Big Fuck You

The following two are from the CD re-release of PCP Torpedo, 10 songs in 6 minutes - concise doesn't even come close to describing it.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Azido Phencyclidine Electrophoresis/Thanksgiving Day
Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Thinning the Herd

This re-release came with a second CD of remixes, some of which are barely listenable, let's listen to what DJ Speedranch can do:

DJ Speedranch - Thanksgiving Day (Creed Are Twats and Nickleback Look Like Mike Bolton)

...

Spiderman 3

I went to see Spiderman 3 last night...

It's too long, has too many touchy feely moments, they could easily lose at least one of the villains, Spiderman DOES NOT EVER! team up with The Green Goblin, and I swear I thought all the super villians/heroes were going to have some sort of gay love-in at the end what with all the crying and hugging going on.

However, the fights were cool, I liked Venom's makeup effects, and the silly bit in the middle where Spidey develops an emo haircut and an attitude problem was quite good fun.

Overall I enjoyed it, isn't life just full of contradictions?

R.I.P. iRiver 320: December 2004 - June 2007

Well, it had a good innings, two and a half years for any electronic gadget is a long time, especially for one owned by someone as fickle as me.

The iRiver H320 was my main mp3 player, compared to more recent devices it was big, bulky and incredibly geeky (open source firm ware was available for it, and pretty much the only music player I know that could play .OGG files), but it sounded great, didn't need any propriety software on your PC to move files across and as for the size 'problem', well I could cope with it. It's about the same size as a packet of 20 cigarettes, which isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things

Trouble is it wasn't waterproof, not in the least bit... :-|

So I'm now on the lookout for a new mp3 player, I have a horrible feeling I'll end up getting an iPod. Even though I'm completely opposed to tying in my music with iTunes, there doesn't seem to be any companies out there that our making hard drive based mp3 players that can cope with a reasonable portion of my collection.

To mark it's passing I thought I'd post a few tunes; I tend to get through new albums on an almost daily basis, however there are a few songs that I always find myself heading back to, what follows is a small selection of such tunes - just click on the titles to seriously damage my bandwidth.

Will You Smile Again For Me - ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of the Dead
A song with a few contradictions: it's big, epic and sounds vaguely celebratory, but it has some quite depressing lyrics ('you miss read your fate line, long ago ran out of time' - that sort of thing). I listen to this song pretty much at least once a day...

Angels of Light - New York Girls
A really beautiful song, but which probably has some distinctly sinister undertones if I chose to listen to the lyrics properly. I instead choose ignorance and allow myself to drift along with the song.

Basteroid - Sonnenbrilliant
I have no idea where this came from, it just seemed to appear in my music collection one day. I guess it's techno, I'm not sure, I've given up on dance music classifications.

Godflesh - For Those About to Rock
The idea of someone as serious as Godflesh covering a song as frivolous as this seems like a disaster waiting to happen, but somehow it works - the only problem is the fade out at the end, I'm not a big fan of those, but to be honest I've listened to this song hundreds of times and I still can't think of a decent way to end it.

Jesu - Sundown
This song comes from a stupidly limited 12", or you can find it on the Japanese version of the last Jesu album: Conqueror. It's really really long, it takes a good 5 minutes for the vocals to kick in, prior to that it kind of gets stuck in its own riff - however, patience is a virtue and the last half of the song contains some of the most wonderful, blissed out sounds that you will ever hear. I tend to listen to this at the gym, but I imagine taking plenty of good quality drugs would help the listening experience in a similar way. The trick is to get yourself into a state of mind were you can zone out any conscious thoughts.

Nine Inch Nails - Zero Sum
I really should do a post about Nine Inch Nails and especially the new album, it will have to wait until another day. This is the last song on Trent Reznor's concept album about the end of the world: Year Zero. If you look (or rather, listen) past the industrial-esque beats and the whispered ramblings, like the best NIN songs it just boils down to piano, I just love the way that an album about the social/physical/spiritual (delete as applicable) end of the world can end with a few simple chords, plus it was a great chorus.

Swans - Blind
Arguably overproduced, and not from the 'coolest' Swans album, but I love this song. I've seen Michael Gira bring a venue to stunned silence with this one, it's probably the line about 'the lonely fool' that does it for me...

The Knife - Heartbeats (onemusic session)
Do you remember the Sony advert with the bouncing balls going down a street in San Fransisco? If you do you may already know this song, however this is the way it is meant to sound. Ideally you need a music system with some decent bass response to appreciate it, and try not to think about 'Top Gun' while you listen to it - I probably shouldn't have said that.

The Passions - I'm in love with a German film star (long mix)
The soundtrack to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City made me realize that I have a sneaking admiration of 80's pop music, there are many gems that unfortunately passed me by due to an uncompromising stance on heavy metal during my youth. This is one such gem.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
This was the number one song in my last.fm play list for quite some time, I think that says all that needs to be said.