As my current work placement (for my gap year) is drawing to a close - as it will on June 27th, I have to plan and sort out a fair few things for the fairly near future. Over the past few months I’ve been debating to and fro about whether to do something different and crazy over the Summer and not just work around here and do the usual not particularly much. In the past week I’ve come to the conclusion that I really should do something ‘different and crazy’ and have thus booked flights to Canada. I’ll be spending a good 70 days in Alberta throughout July, August and September before I get back at the end of September and go to Cambridge! I haven’t got a huge amount planned as to what I’m going to get up to, but I’ve got a few ideas and I’ll see what I can make of them before I go away on the 9th of July!

Need to sort a few things out first however! I’ll literally have like 10 days maximum at home before I go off to Cambridge, so I’ll really need to think about getting EVERYTHING ready for University before I go - which means a hella lot of student bank accounts, loans and other such things which I haven’t thought of yet, but I’ll know I’ll have to do! Pretty crazy stuff!

Probably mentioned it before, but I’ll need to get a laptop for University. I have this huge suspicion there’s gonna be a nice new Macbook on June 9th. SO deff going to wait till then - and even then I think that I’ll be waiting until I get back till I get one. In a way I see a point in getting one before I go, but I somehow can’t see me affording it! In anycase, I have debated between getting a MacBook Pro or not, but the huge difference in price kinda does put me off, and the size I think might be an issue too! However I do plan on getting the almost highest spec MacBook and then pimping out the RAM (with that amazingly cheap Crucial RAM) and HD (Samsung have a gloriusly cool 9.5mm high 2.5? SATA 500Gb coming out this Summer) myself for added coolness at a reasonable price!

I’d also like to get another camera that I can actually carry around easily and take decent pictures with. As I’ve said before, I do have a EOS 350d which is excellent, but too large for social use, so I want to get the smallest and cheapest Ixus available to carry around and use whenever I want! I still do have a working Kodak DX6340, but it’s not that great, and is rather too bulky - so not really worth a shout! Originally thinking that I was going to get the Ixus 70 which looks superb, small and thankfully the cheapest Ixus model, I have now realised/seen that a Ixus 75 exists! Oh, on a sidenote, I’m not really going to bother myself with getting anything other than a Canon. It might a bad thing not to look at any other manufacturers, but Canon totally rule and you can’t beat the prices in their outlet store - so I’ll just stay with them thankyou very very much! Anyway, I did happen to try out an Ixus 75, which I think is considerably better than the 70. Then only real differences are that the 75 has a larger 3? screen and no viewfinder and the 70 has a 2.5? screen and a viewfinder, and also, the 75 is very slightly bigger and heavier (like 10g max!) but not enough to let me choose otherwise! I would normally have chosen the one with the viewfinder, but honestly, I don’t think I could be assed using such a small inaccurate viewfinder such as the ones found on cameras that size. The batteries these days have also got a fair bit better than 5 years ago and using a viewfinder won’t kill the battery in c. 5 mins. A small other thing I noticed about the 75 as opposed to the 70 is that due to there being less space on the back of the camera - as a result of the larger screen, they have had to get rid of the stupid (in my opinion) slider that toggles between play, record and movie modes and have now added a button to review images instead! This is much much better and allows you to just half press down the shutter button after reviewing the images to go back to record mode instead of fiddling with the stupid slider and then having to press the shutter button to take a photo. I’m happy! The price difference is theoretically only £10 or so on eBay, I just have to wait for the prices to drop a wee bit so they’re down at the £80ish mark again insteadof the horrific £103 or so that one went for on the weekend! Can’t believe that an idiot actually bid that amount considering the same eBay store is offering the very same camera on buy it now for £89! Fool!

Anyway, enough of my fashionably random rant for now…!

I heard a while back that Gmail had begin offering IMAP with some of its accounts, and not really knowing what all this IMAP banter was about, I decided to check my account settings to see if it had indeed been enabled. Sadly, at that point (maybe a few months ago) it had not, and I had to wait - or actually forget about it.

Gmail is generally awesome on it’s own, just as a webmail client. It beats hotmail/live and yahoo and whatever else is thrown at it hands down with its general simplicity, keyboard shortcuts, space and pretty much anything else (it even has a mark as read button - Hotmail did not!). Then I was lucky enough to discover that Gmail had POP! Wow! That was such a relief, an ISP independant free email service that offered POP. It was amazing enough to replace my current default email address (which at that time was at virgin.net!). POP was absolutely peachy for so long, and in fact it still would be had I not discovered that IMAP was actually working on my account. On updating my iPhone to 1.1.4, the Gmail automatically interfaced with the IMAP side of Gmail, and not the POP side, which I thought was very odd initially. Partly because I had no experience with IMAP before and also partly due to the fact that my Gmail mailboxes were set up in a special way so that all of the read mail on my Mac would move to the All Mail folder, thus the inbox would only contain the old messages from before I changed this setting! As soon as my iPhone’s mail was up and running, it started to retrieve all these old messages and these folders too (Starred, All Mail, etc.) and I was a bit ‘wtf?’. But I eventually caught on to the fact that it was IMAP, and subsequently changed the settings on Mail to use Gmail as IMAP and disable the POP account, so that all my new mail was done thru IMAP.

This was initially such a revolution. Previously when I read my mail from either my phone or my Mac, it would still appear on the other as unread, so if I perchance, went a while without checking one or the other, then when I did check it, it would have lots and lots of new messages! Not really a great thing! Now with IMAP, all the messages are pretty much synchronized so that if I read one in one place, it’ll appear in the other place still, but read! Isn’t that incredible! I still haven’t got over it clearly, and to think I’ve been missing this for what, 22 years!.

Anyway, the point hat I’m getting at is that now I’m all clued in with IMAP, the POP accounts I have and use sometimes, such as my mohoyt.com one, still dump all of their messages in my mailbox even though I’ve read like all of them! It’s really quite irratating! But I’m over it!

Though I’ve still to post some reviews regarding earlier gigs that I attended including the Mars Volta and PUSA, I thought that I’d quickly try and post a Matchbox 20 review while it was still fairly fresh in my mind.

Matchbox 20 have been around for quite a few years now, originally starting as Tabitha’s Secret and then gaining more members and becoming Matchbox 20 - releasing More Than You Think You Are, Yourself or Somebody Like You, Mad Season and Exile On Mainstream (but not necessarily in that order). As with some of these bands that come from the States with a fairly rock vibe, maybe with an acoustic kind of sound at one point or another, they never really seem to get too popular over here! You never really hear much radioplay from them, even though they’ve just had a new album out with some pretty solid singles, you just don’t hear much. Maybe the British crowd doesn’t do this kind of music or it could be some kind of niche. I don’t know, but whatever, I was surprised they were doing a stadium tour here. They had played Wembley a few nights before coming to Glasgow, and well that’s a pretty big arena (though I read somewhere that they might be better in a smaller place) so they obviously must have some following over here. I was fairly close to the front for the whole gig (standing in the second row) and got a pretty good view of everything except the size of the crowd. There were a lot of people there, I could hear them for the most part, but I just couldn’t see how far back the dense crowds went (I swear the SECC floor isn’t completely flat!), so my opinions of popularity at this concert will have to be withheld temporarily.

Anyway, back to the music and so on. The support band were a 5 piece rock (and apparently indie) group from Nottingham called Headway. Their music reminded me quite a lot of Snow Patrol to be honest, and in their second song I could totally hear some Radiohead influences too. Not a particularly indie sound though, but I think that’s probably a good thing! They had long curly hair and wore tight jeans (NB - the lead singer/guitarist exhibited jeans with a level of tightness that I had never before seen! Go him!) - so were definitely keeping up with the Indie front there! They played a fairly short set - maybe 30/40 mins or so, and overall I thought it was pretty enjoyable - they didn’t get too good a reception at first, but the crowd got going by the third song or so and they seemed to enjoy themselves from then onwards. As I learnt, from both being told by the frontman of Headway, and through being given a flyer, they do have an EP out on iTunes and on Myspace, which I might go check out if I get a chance…

After a half hour wait or so while the roadies cleared the stage and set up all of the new stuff, Matchbox 20 came on! They had some interesting dialog being played overhead as they came in, with the huge video screens behind them showing a chair and then a door (not too sure of any significance there), the members of the band ran on to the stage (minus Rob Thomas at this point (of course)) and started playing their newest single ‘How Far We’ve Come’. Rob Thomas did eventually join the rest of the band onstage to start the song, and it was a good start at that! Throughout the night, they played a barrage of their famous songs mixed in with some of their not so famous ones, with the majority of songs coming from their two recent (proper albums), More Than You Think You Are and Mad Season (I don’t think Exile On Mainstream should really be counted as an album as it contains at most 6 new songs and then some other of their ‘best of’ from previous albums - it should really just be an EP with a few bonus cuts on it!). Thinking about it - they probably played most of the songs on the Exile On Mainstream album, as the tour was called Exile In The UK, so doing such a thing would make sense, but as I haven’t bothered listening to the old songs on Exile, I’m not sure. They did play a nice selection of hits though, including 3am (one of the original Tabitha’s Secret songs), Unwell, Bright Lights and Rest Stop. If they could have played any more, then I would have hoped for Mad Season and Bent The Burn (both from Mad Season coincidentally), but otherwise I enjoyed it.

Correction: They did sing Bent last night, the song that I wanted to hear was The Burn! Oops!

There were a few things I did note while at the concert, which I really think I should add instead of writing a song by song commentary of the concert (which I imagine anyone could do (even if they weren’t there!). Anyway, firstly, some of them were wearing pretty silly jackets and heavy coats at the start of the concert. I just thought it was worth mentioning as it begs the question, why? It’s not as if Scotland was that cold yesterday, and they were inside anyway. But then again if it was part of the stage presence/routine kind of thing, they why weren’t all of the band wearing them? The bassist, the drummer and the keyboardist/backup guitarist didn’t look like they were complying completely, so I’m not really sure what was going on there! Secondly, Rob Thomas sweats ALOT! Dude, this guy was sweating before he even came out on to the stage I imagine - and he was wearing a jacket! When he took off the jacket originally, I thought, ‘oh, that’s an interesting t shirt pattern he’s got there’, I then realised that it was just sweat! Wow! I don’t mind or anything - it’s just I was surprised - he went through a t shirt pretty quickly there. But at the end of the day he sang pretty damn well, so it didn’t really matter if he was damp dripping.

Third point. No offense to Paul or anything, but I’m sure he made himself redundant in some songs by changing from Drums to guitar. He tries to look busy with his oversized Gibson/Epiphone hollow body monstrosity, but I’m not sure that taking him out of the song would make too much difference. In some places he was singing, and playing piano (which was mixed up waaay too much may I add) which was great, but in other places, I think he was just playing/holding a guitar for the sake of it. His official role now is rythym guitarist, so one could argue that he’s doing what he should be, but I think he could slip in the odd solo now and then, maybe even trade solos with Kyle Cook? That’s if he can play more than just chords… He also had a habit of running across the stage from one side to another, strumming away, which just occured to me as being pretty odd and unnecessary (if he was soloing then it would have been more than okay), and oh, last thing, he could have removed his jacket - everyone else had done so by the end - or maybe he really was cold!

Fourth point. The crowd there were surprisingly varied. They attracted an odd group of people, old and young alike, which while was not surprising, was intriguing!

Fifth point. Though the roadies may suck, don’t give them a hard time about it! Yeah, we were told not to mention this, but the organ stopped working at some point into the gig. At first they did a pretty good job, with Rob freestyling some lyrics, but they had to just go back to it at the end! Must have been some cable unplugged somewhere, but that’s not good at the best of times. They also had this whole wireless chat going on, with everyone using wireless mikes and guitars… This inevitably made it easier to change instruments and also to walk about - which they did do a fair amount - it led to quite a few situations where they were about to start a song and one of the guitars didn’t work (not a coincidence or anything, but it was always Doucette’s that it seemed to happen to - I think they’re telling him something!). At times I felt a bit bad for the roadies and techies as the band were giving them shit at points when their stuff wasn’t working, but then again, if the roadies and techies are paid to make it all work, then surely it should be okay to get angry at them if it doesn’t, so fair enough that they were given some stick!

Sixth point. I’m not sure at what point this happened in Matchbox 20’s lifespan, probably around the time when Rob Thomas went off to do his solo album and Smooth for Santana, but at times it felt like it was ‘Rob Thomas and band’ as opposed to Matchbox 20. He always seemed to be the main focus of the group (except from Kyle Cook occasionally) and they could have just have easily been a backing band, which is rather sad, seeing as Matchbox 20 spawned all of their careers, so it would be nasty for him to just take over and become the more important figure!

Overall though, despite mentioning a few qualms and things about the gig, I really enjoyed myself, and enjoyed the songs that they played! In the future I would prefer if they played a smaller venue, but they did well in the SECC.

Oh, and photos to follow! Photos have now been added!

I’d finally thought I should mention something about what is going on and all that so here it is…

I had an awesome time in Europe with my friends for 18 days, which really was pretty awesome. We started in Edinburgh, getting a coach (the megabus to be specific) to Newcastle for the single reason that flights to Paris from Newcastle were cheaper. We celebrated the start of our journey with a bottle of Piper Heidsieck by the Tyne! We then flew to Paris, met up with the 7th member of our party and some other friends from back home in Edinburgh! We were staying in a pretty nice area of Paris, very close to the Arc de Triomphe and Champs d’Elysees, just off Avenue Hoche to be exact. This meant we were close to loads of interesting things, which were tapped in the week we were there… Aswell as visiting the classic sites of Paris, The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame and so on, we also found some great places to go, and some small brilliant restaurants, such as an amazing €34 a head place with some awesome food and a ~€8 a head place with great steak which is underground!

After our 5 days or so in Paris, we got a flight from Paris to Nice, out next location! The apartment we had was very cheap and very central, but wasn’t quite as nice as the one in Paris. Its ‘5 bedrooms’ turned out to being 3 bedrooms, and 2 of them having 2 floors. Nonetheless, it was about as central as you get, being above 2 bars on the Rue de la Prefecture! Just along from a brilliant ice cream shop (Crema de Gelato) and only a few minutes from the beach. Most of our time in Nice was spent on the beach (which was pebble covered!) and exploring the sites… We had a day trip to Monaco and to the Casinos and general grandeur of Monte Carlo one day which was pretty cool! Another day we went along the coast by bus for around 10 minutes to get to Villefranche, a town with a smaller more secluded beach which was less pebble covered, and more just gravel… Overall though, Nice was brilliant and I’d love to back just to experience the whole ‘chilled-out’ atmosphere again!

After Nice, we got a train and headed to Marseilles to get a plane to Madrid (the flights were again cheaper!). We didn’t get out into Marseilles much as we were just waiting around much of the afternoon. We eventually got into Madrid at about 11pm, and made our way (in the glorious subway) to a friend’s house where we were staying for the 4 days we were in Madrid. In Madrid I especially loved the Cervezceria’s where the beer is amazing (Mahou, the local beer is so good I brought back 8 cans) and the olives are stunning and all of the rubbish is thrown on the floor (which is a great idea)! We had some brilliant Tapas there, including Pig’s Ears which were a bit funky… Overall though Madrid is an amazing city, although very hot (40C) but with refreshing thunderstorms, but surprisingly (or should I say refreshingly again) cheap!

From Madrid we flew to East Midlands Airport (Cheap flights, yay!) and then I left the rest of the group to go down to Somerset for a few days to see family… Our Eurotrip was an amazing idea, and is totally worth doing, especially if you’ve just finished school and want to have loads of fun!

I got back yesterday night from from trip around Europe (Paris, Nice, Madrid) with friends, then a brief visit down South to Somerset to see Family. Its been absolutely brilliant, and I’ve got lots of photos, but for the moment, I only have time to mention this just so anyone reading the blog will realise that I am not in fact dead.

Enjoy…

Well they make sweet guitars, but electronics now, this is odd.

Well its almost a happy new year as today is the last day of 2006, but it really isn’t 2007 yet because well its not the 1st of Jan!

Christmas and the general new year period happens to be a really good time of the year for good films on tv. I’ve recently warched some really funny programs and films on the old tellybox.

The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2006 was on at least a few times, but is incredibly funny, especially with David Walliams, Russel Brand, Jonathan Ross and Rob Brydon. Worth a watch as its on again

As usual, Never Mind The Buzzcocks Christmas special was on, which hilariously as usual was very entertaining viewing, just like the regular series. You may even be able to find it on the old net somewhere…

Another few films that I have recently seen which have been exceptionally well made include:-

The Pianist, a Roman Polanski film about a Polish pianist surviving through the Holocaust in Warsaw despite his Jewish background and Nazi occupation of the country. Very moving but brilliantly made… You can currently pick it up for around £3 at HMV.

City Of God, a Brazilian film about the hoods and gangs in Rio. Absolutely fascinating and very well worth seeing… It was on TV recently, but can be bought at various places for arounf £5.

Man, I love cheap DVDs and CDs!

Well as I may have mentioned in earlier posts I did change the front page or the entry page, to my site. I’m using the nice same Java-script colour changing or rotating code as before except I’ve slowed it down… to make it slightly less headache inducing :-). Otherwise the only difference is that there is a recent posts section which you may even be reading from now! This concept had been planned for a while now, its just that now has been the only time where I have been bothered to integrate it into the site, it took a fair amount you know!

Anyway, I should be back soon with a new addition to the Browser Wars article.

Just noticed that while editing my site a bit, the new Photoshop Icon could quite easily be the symbol for an element in the periodic table. I know it isn’t, but there is Pt which is platinum and Pb which is lead. So why not Ps?

By changing my site I meant altering the style sheet slightly so it didn’t look so awful in single post view and making the header rotate between various images, mainly art from Radiohead or Stanley Donwood.

Well I really shold be continuing a trend I started a week and 3 days ago by continuing the “Browser Wars” articles about which browser is better, but I found something even better!

www.potionfactory.com

This is an independant Mac developer team of two switchers that makes really really nice perfectionist apps like Tangerine, a bpm/tempo analyser for iTunes that makes tempos based on the beat and intensity of the song. Although this idea has been used before, I’ve never seen it displayed in such a great way, the attention to detail with the album covers different lengths to represent the song lengths which pop up when you roll your mouse over them are intricate to say the least. Their site is equally great, so I highly recommend you check them out. They really should be nominated for an Apple Design Award!