Housewarming party: my house, Sat 12th August, 3pm onwards. Contact details. Let me know if you’re coming and if you’ve got any special dietary requirements.
Neil Hopcroft
A digital misfit
SOLD OUT
…was the message that confronted me upon arrival in Camden for the Birthday Massacre/Screaming Banshee Aircrew gig on Thursday.
I found some of the usual suspects lurking around outside with long faces.
We resolved to go to the Dev where we would contemplate the possibility of buying tickets before arriving at the venue next time around. Meanwhile there was some frantic phoning around going on trying to find someone who had a way to get in.
“Drink up, we need to get to the venue *NOW*, we’re in”
And we were, once we’d negotiated our way past the doorstaff, who seemed determined that nobody should want to go to the gig, no matter whether they had tickets.
Downstairs it was all rather odd, since it didn’t seem considerably more crowded than I’ve seen it before, howcome this has sold out while others haven’t?
We missed DUST, but caught SBA, who seemed to be having a great time on stage, playing up to their new fanbase – the audience for BM are somewhat younger than I’m used to seeing at these nights – Jo was looking especially radiant and full of life.
It didn’t seem like it was worth fighting to the front of the crowd for the Birthday Massacre, there were a lot of very enthusiastic kids, so we stood at the back talking about Chomsky and Bruce Campbell.
“Thank you for coming to see us” – “Thank you for letting me in on your guest list” – I owe you a pint or three…
All your snakes are belong to us (warning, noisy)
Linkblast
Chaotic neutral, some people find sanity a little confining
Boom box (no boom included)
Computational linguists really get my goat (non worksafe words)
Wish I’d had one of these on the way back from Sallys party
Forest Pump and friends
Dog-cooking, tree-taking school-burner may lose job
PocketPC hardware emulator open-sourced…wonder if it could be made to run SymbianOS code?
I probably didn’t want to play “everything sounds like coldplay now” back to back with the 13 Candles, did I?
For the last week I have been a sweaty mess, but you were too, so its probably not a problem. Nice storm last night, which has made it a bit more tolerable today. I’m still hiding in my basement though.
So much to catch up on – purple_perils party for a start, with lots of sitting around in the sun and geeking. Not much to say that hasn’t been said elsewhere already.
Guilfest the next day was another hot-hot day, I felt somewhat sorry for the grass under the festival, thats going to take a while to recover. After more U-turns than I’ve done for a long time I finally found the right car park, heaven forbid that the one-dayers are seen mingling with the hard core weekenders.
StereoMCs were playing Connected as I arrived, which is as near perfect a soundtrack for entering a festival as I can think of, just the right kind of atmosphere. Being Surrey, everyone is fully equipped, with chairs and macintosh squares. No hope of getting close enough to see the band.
So I went for a wander around the site, finding all the stages and seeing what else was about. On my way around I caught a bit of Who Will Miss Mary? who were musically interesting without being particularly engaging. Then it was time to find a proper line-up and figure out who I wanted to see. I caught the end of Retrograde Inversion, who were bouncy funky rock, and somewhat overheated. Voodoo Vegas were disposable. Sparks would’ve been better if I could see the stage or knew the music. Above were pub rockers. The Wot Nots unusual with a strong fanbase (small but very focussed). The Stranglers were past their best. Kila warrant another look, folky but with lots of other influences, enthusiastic. Green on Red were more stadium rock than I’d expected. And finally, Billy Idol was Billy Idol, exactly what you’d expect, I left after a few of his songs, he’s good but tiredness was getting to me by then.
… And i just got a knork with my chips, but they’re too hot to eat so i’m waiting for them to cool a bit.
Wot nots fans. Imagine the beard and beergut for the full effect.
Just as the band came on stage a photographer with a huge nose leapt in front of me, peering awkwardly into his viewfinder.
Still, i’m not arguing with the surreal cross dressing punk description they were given.
Sparks at guilfest
To the guy in the little Peugeot who tried to road rage me on the M4 tonight…
…if you’re going to do that, first you need to learn to drive, then you need to learn what the limits of your car are.
The reason I slowed down in the first place was because there were some roadworks and I could see a lorry full of workmen had just stopped, there was a reason they’d coned off two lanes…they started getting out just as I was passing. So flashing me for slowing down wasn’t really particularly useful.
Then moving out into the middle lane to overtake me was a little premature considering that it takes me seconds to get back up to cruising speed while it takes you minutes.
And if you’re going to pull in front of me and slam on your brakes its a lot more effective if you pull in close and your brakes are better than mine, as it is I could predict exactly what you were going to do and had already moved into the next lane by the time you were slowing down, so I didn’t even have to bother with the brakes. All of which is a shame since it takes you such a long time to get back up to speed.
Oh, and the bright lights thing really doesn’t work, most modern cars have mirrors with some kind of antiglare mode.
Still, good luck with your insurance company – you’ll be needing it if you carry on driving like that.