Clever photography + Flash

Now this is clever. It’s a little site that crosses Matrix-style photography, Flash and the kind of air-writing that you can make with sparklers. Wonder how the heck they shot it… And the music its set to is giving me the urge to make some chillout tunes.

Fun at the expense of nutbag Christians

Heh, check the third photo down. Nice work.

Watch me listen

Andrew pointed me in the direction of Audioscrobbler, so now you can grok my scrobble – err – see what I’ve been listening to here. If you spot some embarrassing disco cheese in there, it’s for Casa reasons, not by personal taste, honest!

A couple of days in the Cotswolds

Kyla and I took a sort holiday over in Gloucestershire, mainly based in Chipping Campden. We’re working our way around the country based on the Good Pub guide, and can heartily recommend the Volunteer Inn in CC: six different beers on hand pump, and reasonably priced tasty pub grub. Of course, everyone else is using the same information source, so we bumped into two friends from Cambridge whilst in the Volunteer, and noticed in the guest book at one of the places we stayed (the Kings Head Inn, Bledington) that three people on the top page mentioned the Good Pub Guide. Locals wanting to keep their pub a quiet tourist-free zone must do their utmost to put off the GPG’s reviewers.

The culture of life

Funny cartoon about the culture of life / Terri Schiavo broo-ha-ha, amongst other things.

Glassy-eyed, no cognitive ability, persistant vegetative state. Poor Terri Schiavo – the unwitting personification of the Christian right. Except she’s not a disgusting hypocrite.

Mmm pie

This needs no editorial: BBC NEWS | Pork-loving couple say ‘pie do’.

Hot, and not

I like this: Nifty Corners. It’s a method of generating curved corners on boxes without recourse to images. Does rely on javascript though, and there are some browser issues (like the whole of IE5.x on PC!)
I don’t like this: Yahoo actually does acquire Flickr. Think Hotmail pre- and post-MSN, and indeed Geocities pre- and post-Yahoo. There goes the neighbourhood.

Stryngs

I went to a gig on Thursday (but only bothered to upload the photos today, hence the delay in posting). It was a night of acoustic-folky type music held at the Man on the Moon, and marked the first time I’d ever been in that establishment. Surprisingly expensive bar, I think it was about £2.80 a pint, but I guess they have to pay for their arctic air con somehow. Kicking off the evening was Anton Barbeau, whose melodies and surreal lyrics reminded me of late Crowded House, particuarly his song “Banana”. He was very confident on stage, and his songs were frequently interrupted by rambling stories about girlfriend stealing bassists and his other inspirations. Facing the Sun were up next, who came across like a band of sixth-formers, despite being much older. Their songs weren’t really to my taste, e.g. they kicked off with an ode to Carol Vorderman, but one of them played a cello, which added a nice sound and was particuarly well used on a song called Freeo. Stryngs finished off the evening, their hyperlyrical folk music performed by an obviously talented foursome (does that make them a stryng quartet?) The lyrics are complex and could easily be missed on first listening, but I just sat back and enjoyed the performance. It’s not a genre of music that I listen to often, though their set finisher, a cover of Dreamland by Joni Mitchell, an artist they cite as a big influence, could change that. This song kicked a whole lot of arse, starting from a simple guitar riff and building up to finish a full-on aural assault, Derek making his kit sound like a whole samba band and Chris belting out Jaco’s bassline. Fantastic stuff.

NAMM Oddities 2005

This is a site covering some of the weird shit people make for NAMM, a biannual musical equipment trade show; I love the look of the Kellet metal-plated strats, though I bet they cost a fortune!

Bassing with Alex

My current bass-playing gig is with Alex Harris, a singer song-writery chap who I played with last October at the Livingroom. The main reason that I’m bringing this up is that he’s managed to get his profile on the front page of the BBC’s Cambridgeshire bands page. We’ve yet to rehearse this year but will be kicking off soon; we’re still on the lookout for a lead guitarist (any interested parties should drop Alex or I a line!)