Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology.

Well, we have:

• One wobble board - I've got to practice using this until I can stand on it one foot without falling over. I can't stand on my right foot normally, let alone on an unsteady surface, so I'll be very pleased with myself if I can get to this stage
  
• Two orthopedic insoles - they are kind of like normal ones except with a molded bit where the arch of your foot is and two blocks under the ankle that make it feel like you are wearing high heels... not that I've ever tried such a thing *ahem*
• Three pilates bands - just three big sheets of rubber really, probably quite good fun if you are into 'that sort of thing'.
  

I'd prefer to be prescribed some sort of bionic foot or a peg leg, but these are what the doctor ordered. The idea is to strengthen my bad foot so the muscles in it stop complaining and waking me up at 4am every sodding morning!

Pop Music?

I finished The Darkness by the way. Good game, it had some clever ideas which set it aside from regular first person shooters. There were little things like that fact if you looked down you could see your character's feet and the way the loading screens were hidden by having short monologues from our boy Jackie - I liked those touches.

Then there are the other ideas like being able to eat the still beating hearts of your enemies (which did not once get boring) and the way that guns in this game took a back seat to events; in the first person shooter genre that is quite a brave thing to do - I had way too much fun sneaking up on people using The Creeping Darkness.

Plus getting Mike Patton to provide the voice of The Darkness was an inspired bit of casting.

Anyway, this is all getting away from the original intention of this post.

Let's have some music! And dare I say it: some quite nice music - which in my book verges on pop. People will disagree with me here; this song is pretty much instrumental and full of glitchy electronic effects and comes from a Berlin techno producer who goes by the name of Apparat.

But, it has an undeniable melodic quality, it is a reasonable length (just pushes over the four minute mark), and most importantly can be listened to many times over without getting dull.

Apparat - Limelight

I'd recommend getting the whole album if you feel like you are becoming maybe just a bit too metal (and not in a good way).

Romance through violent computer games

One of the many many games I'm obsessed/playing at the moment is The Darkness, a charming little number based on a (not too bad at all) comic about a mafia hit man possessed by a demonic avenging spirit called, well guess what: The Darkness.

However just because it's an incredibly violent game doesn't mean there isn't room for a bit of L'Amour! May I draw your attention to the second achievement I've acquired in the list below (ignore the last one, actually ignore the last three).

Yes! It's now official, my non existent love life is officially being catered for by my Xbox.

Oh crap...

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.