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Recently on Absolute Radio they’ve been playing some really good new music. One of the songs they’ve been playing is called “Close to Midnight” by The Airborne Toxic Event. I liked it so much that I went out and bought the album, which arrived just over a week ago. I’ve had the chance to listen to it a couple of times now.

The album is basically in the Indie style, although some songs (such as the aforementioned Close to Midnight) contain soaring strings and are a bit more pop-friendly.

In general I was impressed by the album. Some of the songs are more memorable than others, and the lead singer can be a bit ‘shouty’ at times, but they’ve written some really solid tunes. Close to Midnight is my favourite of the album, but the first two tunes (Wishing Well and Papillon) I really like as well. Although of course all is subject to change as I listen to the album more ;)

No, not my Grandma. The book.

You can have a browse inside it here – some of the pictures are genius! :)

Two things which made me think “EPIC WIN” (It’s kind of the opposite of “EPIC FAIL”, not sure whether it’s valid but still).

Firstly, Video Game Music Themes (sheet music). Check out the Mario themes – I’ve been playing the overworld theme from Mario 1 on the NES! I remember that from years ago, it’s burned into my memory. The only thing is, whenever I play it I feel like I should be doing sound effects on top of it. Sounds pretty good on piano too – although it’s quite difficult to play because, well, it’s not really designed for humans.

Secondly, the Random Band Name Generator. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but it is also brilliant. A few of my favourites: “Carol LaZonga and the Jerusalem Replicants”, “The Metaphysical Jugglers”, and “The Fish Coalition”. One day I will start a band, and name it “The Fish Coalition”. Oh yes.

Don’t ask me why, but this cartoon made me laugh like a Hyena on laughing gas. (Yeah, crap metaphor, but what you gonna do?).

(Note: the cartoon doesn’t display properly with the current blog design, it gets truncated, so you’ll have to click the link above to see the full version)

I’ve mentioned Pushing Daisies on here a few times before. Although I didn’t like the series all that much to start with, it really grew on me (like a fungus).

Anyway, I found this (from James Henry, one of the writers on Green Wing) really funny.

It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

I be likin’ some of them FAQs, like this one, arrrrrr:

Q. When is Talk Like A Pirate Day 2006 (2007, 2008, etc.)?

A. International Talk Like a Pirate Day isn’t one o’ those governmentally sanctioned holidays that shifts around to create a convenient three-day weekend. No, the date is ALWAYS Sept. 19 (Cap’n Slappy’s ex-wife’s birthday.) Now, occasionally Sept. 19 falls on a Sunday, and we recognize that may not meet everyone’s desire for an excuse to party. While a lot of fun can be had ce;ebrating TLADP in a church setting (The choir will now sing, “How Great Thou Aaarrrrt!”) we’re suggesting that those of a more secular bent consider celebrating Talk Like A Pirate Weekend.

Now I be off to practice singing in the choir, Arrrrrr….

(This talking like a pirate business doesn’t seem to involve much variety, does it? Ah well…)

Zeth once said that GNU was “a good joke in 1984 but a crap name.” I agree, it’s not the most inspired of names – but nevertheless it seems to have stuck.

Still, this time I think whoever picks names for projects has outdone themselves. I found out (from Stephen Fry’s Blog) about “gNewSense“. I believe this is supposed to be pronounced, ‘New Sense’. Great – that sounds absolutely nothing like nuisance, does it?!!!

Also I don’t think I’ll be downloading gNuiSance, sorry, gNewSense any time soon. Creating an operating system which is completely ‘free’ is a laudable aim – whether it be as usable as the current Ubuntu distribution (which it is based on) is another matter. We will see!

I happened to be searching Google Maps for churches near Colchester today (I’m not looking for a new church, just wanted to check how the Fordham site was doing :-) and came across something rather bizarre.

Google Map search for Churches near Colchester

As you can see, Google seems to think “Places of Worship” fall under the same category as… “Bus Station”. So, next time you’re at a Bus Station, just remember that you should be reverent, for you are walking on holy ground. Or something.

The other thing I should mention is Simon’s blog feed. Now, for a long time now Simon has had his blog behind a password protected area – including the RSS feed. Unfortunately, Google Reader does not like feeds which use authentication, so it just bails. I got around this by setting up a little PHP script which did the work for me. Unfortunately this means I have to host the PHP file on this server, not a massiv problem but I’d rather not have to do it.

Anyway, I’ve found a way you can subscribe to authenticated feeds in Google Reader without creating any scripts to do it for you: simply use FreeMyFeed. It very cunningly stores the username and password (encrypted) in the feed URL so that no authentication data is actually stored on FreeMyFeed.com. Pretty clever, huh?

The upshot of this is that I will be removing Simon’s blog feed from this site. From now on, please use FreeMyFeed.

You get some really bizarre things in the news. Such as this, for example. Apparently people have been using the internet to hire contract killers… one woman even put up an ad on Craigslist. How stupid can they be?

Anyway, if you fancy earning a bit of cash on the side at weekends, why not try being a hitman (or hitwoman, if you’re going to be like that)?

By the way, there’s something else I wanted to mention – Flight of the Conchords. If you haven’t seen any of their stuff, you really must. They are a a folk comedy duo from New Zealand, and are absolutely hilarious. We were introduced to them by Alex with the song The Humans are Dead. It’s utterly briilliant. However, you may also want to have a listen to “Jenny”, “Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros”, “Issues”, and various others you might find on Youtube.

For those of you not in the know (which included me up until a couple of days ago), a ‘Macro’ is apparently a new word for images which have got text superimposed on them – usually for humurous effect. So, basically captions, except written on the image.

Apparently there are a lot of these with Doctor Who – see Anne-Marie’s post here for a few good ones.

I decided to have a go, because… well, I just can’t resist a bandwagon.

Can’t wait for the next episode :-)