Music, friends for the creation of.

A couple of my friends make music, me, I tend to just pretend to be able to play instruments.
Rich does his under Alpha Test Pilot, which I think I've linked to before, I certainly should have. Let's get some buzz going shall we?
In addition Julie, one of the guys from Blacks, has been gigging in the Cheltenham area for a while now and sounds pretty great. She's touring as Juey, with the ubiquitous Myspace page. I'd recommend anyone in the area have a listen online and if you like it then pop over and say hi. You could say that I sent you, but I'm not sure how that will really be received.
One thing I do know is that when I left Blacks we had a bit of a do and it ended up with Jon, myself, Julie, Kim, Rach and a slack handfull of others having a whale of a time. Was the best send off I could imagine.

If I've missed anyone else off the list of friends that make music please leave a note in the comments.

After too long a time, THEY"RE BACK!!!!!

The Prodigy's new single, The Omen, is out for download today.
I caught the video on channel 4 a few weeks back, thinking, "it's been a while since their last new stuff, can they still make me want to shout loudly and jump all over the shop?"
Oh yes.
Oh yeah gods yes.
You can catch the video at a few places, including the MTV Two Video chart, where we can all click to vote and get some gratuitous hard dance back in the video charts! Or the Prodigy official site, which is full of angry sounding shouty goodness.

Catch up entries 2

Second entry written about the 29/10/08

At the start of the year, actually at New Year's, I looked at what I wanted to do this year and of the four main ones (bike, drive, run and fun) I've amazed myself by completing one. Still got the first three left – to whit, get my bike licence, pass my advanced driving test and get fit enough to easily pass the Cranwell fitness requirements. The last, fun, partly covers not being single but is mainly about getting out a bit more and doing some stuff I wouldn't have thought of; not siting at home on my own every night. On both of these definitions I have succeeded. It's a bit odd that loosing three months down south has actually helped with parts of my aims. Not as much as I'd have hoped for fitness (my fault) but more than I'd have thought with the others. The bike test has been helped by the fact that the government have pushed back the implementation of the new test regime until early next year, so I've got a bit more time than I thought. For the AD side of things I'm going to have a serious look at the Kinloss group back up north, although I'm also going to get a different car as soon as possible. Not another new one, but something a bit bigger and with a bit more capability. After driving all the 4x4s down south I've realised that the bit more ability would have been great for the hills. It's not that my little Charade can't handle most conditions but I'm constantly driving it to almost the limit of it's range, and it does feel chuffing ridiculous when there's a whole row of big four wheel drives parked in the snow on Cairngorm and I'm struggling to get my snowboard into the city car that's hidden by the Landies either side. The fact I have to drop the passenger seat to fit it in is bad enough, although it was funny when I was happily driving out of the snow and the numpty in a big ol' Jeep was getting stuck. He just couldn't drive in snow, was revving the arse off the engine and getting absolutely no purchase. Don't get me wrong, I'm certain the car was able to handle the conditions but the driver definitely could not.
Anyway, I’m now on the way back from London and it’s been absolutely brilliant to see Tris again. I’d like to be able to see D’Abs and it'd be great to catch up with Rich, also getting across to the US to see Kev (actually I’d LOVE to be able to that one!) but time and money prevent those. Apart from that I’d have to say that once I’ve got to Andi and Sarah’s and stopped off with Tash and Chris, I’ll have seen pretty much all of my really close friends within two weeks.
I don’t know if I mentioned it in my recent posts (off line on the train so I can’t check) but a couple of days after I got back from the Falklands I hit a low point. I’ve hit these before, it’s a kind of after travel thing where you realise that the next day you’ll wake up and see the same thing you saw the day before. It’s not a new place and it’s not home. It’s something in between that isn’t so good as either and not as interesting as you’d like. At that point I was ready to call up my boss and ask for the 3 year tour of Gibraltar or a long tour down in the Falklands (preferable as Kate is down there!). Like I said, I’ve felt this way before but this was something different. I really just didn’t want to be in the UK at that point and while I think I know why it’s not something I can put into words. One of the reasons I didn’t was that I knew there was a good chance of seeing friends soon and so I held off. My family’s great but I know they’ll always be there for me, e-mail, phones and blueys aside, contact is easy with mum and dad and I think Matt understands.
As I said before, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to see anyone, let alone almost everyone, but I’m so glad I was able to. What I’d hoped for actually happened, I’ve found an anchor to these green Isles (as an aside, if you don’t believe the “green and pleasant land” description, travel to somewhere with a much lower rainfall total then look at the grass and the trees here when you get back. This country is SO beautiful I was almost struck dumb when I got back. The sheer intensity of the colours and the vibrancy of the life was breathtaking!). This anchor is my friends. If the guys weren’t back here, and as much as I love my family, I’d have to say that I don’t know if I’d stay here. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE this country. From the mountains of home to the rolling hills down south, from the vast emptiness of the Highlands to the crowded, noisy, smelly but ALIVE streets of London and Birmingham, from the snow covered north to the palm trees in the south, I love Great Britain. The thing is that I’ve seen a bit more of the world and I know that there are amazing things everywhere. The politics and the social situation in this country aren’t to my taste but I’d rather stay and try to help solve that rather than run away to New Zealand and with my friends here there’s no risk of me leaving any time soon.
So there we have it from the train back from London. I’ll write a bit more of this after Halloween and probably post it in a one shot deal.
By the way, I’m writing this on some of the new software I picked up in London. Still trying to source Leopard for the Mac but I’m working on the new version of Word for Mac and it’s rather sweet. Bit different to the NT version we use at work and pretty similar to the 03/04 Office suite. Might have another look once my pay comes in. I like open source software, and in the case of Office, NeoOffice (OpenOffice.Org for the Mac) is very compatible but I can’t deny that Microsoft (turn and spit) do make some decent software and with work going XP/2003 having a fully compatible system is likely to make things easier. Thing that’s been getting to me a bit recently are the adverts for Microsoft where people say “I’m a PC” where what they actually mean is “I run Microsoft, rather than Mac or Linux.” PC just means personal computer, so I’m working on a PC now, it’s just a Mac, rather than a Windows box.

Convergence

A lager advert on the TV has Violent Femmes as a sound-track, which made me pop onto iTunes and grab it, as it made me think about Grosse Point Blank, one of my 20 favourite films (come on! "I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork, how have you been?" Lines don't get much better). Riding back from Inverness today and the same tune came on my iPod, I think "must watch that film again soon" and lo and behold, right now on UKTV Gold, it's Grosse Point Blank.
*edit to add* just seen one of my favourite scenes on film. As a single guy I have a certain image to maintain as a climbing, boarding, kayaking, martial arts blokey bloke but the bit in the film with Robbie (at the reunion with Under Pressure in the background), it's just fantastic. If you've seen the film you'll know it. Just gets to me, you know. ;D */edit*
Score!
Tis a good day.

Also managed to get a few pictures of Scotland today as well, this is one of the better ones.

You know, I'm really lucky to live up here. I was faced with the dilemma of do I go snow-boarding, to the cinema, walking on the beach or walking on a snow covered mountain on my day off. Woosed out, went to the cinema, saw 21, not bad. Grosse Point Blank's better though. Mountains later, wine now.

Playing catch up..again

Sorry I've been lame at updating this thing, I'm rubbish.
And for Pippa, yeah, not sure why the instructions have gone all Danish...

So, what's been happening? Well, went down to see Swiral and EMB in Brum, also Dajousephine and Jules and Ulrich da dog. Was brilliant seeing them all again, and we went to a great rock pub in Birmingham. We need one of those up here ,there aren't any rock clubs up here as far as I can tell. I'm planning to get at least Matt, and preferably more of them, up here at some point in the near future, there's plenty of Scotland to share and I want to get friends up here. While I was down Matt gave me a memory stick, which was cool, and Sian filled it with mash up tunes, which was amazing. Was sat in a service station uploading from a laptop to the iPod then plugged it in and had the best trip north I've ever had. Motorways were pretty clear then the A9 was beautiful. Any slow traffic I came across moved out of the way, signaling nicely and the music was superb.

A couple of weeks later I popped down to see Tash and Chris. We're going to be going climbing in Inverness around New Year's with a few others and both Tash and myself wanted to make sure that we were good enough to supervise a friend.
Now the thing about climbing is that you can buy all the kit you want and go to a cliff and climb. There aren't any rules about who can and can't climb, it's your life, it's your responsibility. Indoors climbing is different, you're using someone elses place so legally they ask you to sign a bit of paper (or take a course) to show that you're good enough not to anything too silly. The course in Inverness has about 18 months of waiting list on it. I'm pretty happy that I can remember all of the stuff for wall climbing but it doesn't hurt to go back over things and get a refresher, especially as there's going to be a kid climbing with us after Christmas and with kids you don't take chances.
So Tash and myself went to the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena at Ratho.
Oh ye bloody hellfire.
I've seen big indor walls before, the Welsh International is big. Ratho is in another league. You walk in on the second floor and look through from the reception aera to windows going out onto the floor and think, "oh, that's big." Then you walk towards the window and realise it's not just big but you look UP and then you look DOWN! This place is huge! Pricey but massive. We had a great guy checking us over, running through the basics and suggested wrapping the ropes a couple of times at the top to add some more friction to stop Tash taking off when she's belaying me, always a problem. Almost worked as well, until we had an overhang, then she DID lift off, so Ewan (instructor) held her down and then we tied her to the wall for the next climbs. By this point my arms were pumped, the forearms solid and I managed most of a couple more climbs then just belayed Tash. It's quite depressing, she's less than half my weight, much shorter reach than me and is climbing over a grade higher than I am. Ahh well, she always was better than I was. Gives me something to work on.
Next day went swimming with Tash, found out I need to work on my stamina, but then I knew that anyway. Only really managed 32 lengths of a 25 m pool, need to get that better. Then later on had a go on Chris' bike, a lovely 600 ninja. As I've only got a CBT I was of course only riding on closed private areas, and not at all on any kind of by-pass, but even then it was great to get on a bike again. Makes me think I need to get my full license as soon as possible. But not that bike, the geometry is too short for me, would cripple me within two hours and I'm going to need something with more tourer than sports. Besides, the micky taking from the guys due to the ninjutsu training we did would be horrific, and perfectly justified. And it's green.

And that's pretty much me up to date, Tash is coming up next weekend, we're going to have a look at Inverness climbing, and possibly Aviemore as well; and I'm going to have a chat with a couple of car places, see if I can get a new (or different) car within my budget.

Reading - Greg Mandel series by Peter F Hamilton,
Listening to - Mash up mixes.
Watching - Long way down.

Weather music

I’ve been thinking about weather music, or, to put it another way, music that refers to the weather. Mainly as I’ve been thinking about putting together a playlist of met songs. With a bit of google and wikipedia, I’ve found some good ones. Note the "good" bit there, it’s relative, but there will be NO sodding "raining men!" B*Witched is in for the drunken memory of the drunken rendition in the mess.
Some examples, The Orb – "Little fluffy clouds," Guns ‘N Roses "November Rain," Berri "Sunshine after the rain," Metalica "Ride the Lightning!" Jimi Hendrix "Wind cries Mary," Dylan "Blowin’ in the wind," Feeder "seven days in the sun," Rolling Stones "Get off my cloud," Len "Steal my sunshine." B*Witched "Blame it on the weatherman," (the one they made me sing in the mess!) Eurythmics "Here comes the rain again," Garbage "Only happy when it rains," Zoe "Sunshine on a rainy day," RHCP "Snow (Hey Oh)," Doors "Riders on the storm," Soundgarden’s "Black hole Sun," Bill Withers "Ain’t no sunshine," Smashmouth "Walking on the sun," "Over the rainbow" – either the Eva Cassidy or the Israel Kamakawiwo’ole versions.
So here's the thing, I think I need more. Good ones, just because a song has a reference to the weather isn't good enough, it has to be a song you would choose to listen to normally.
Suggestions please.