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So, this weekend was comparitively quiet! On Friday night we helped out at 21 as per usual. Then on Saturday we did a bit of shopping during the day, and just spent a bit of time relaxing! I have rediscovered OpenTTD (which, incidentally, is all Matthew’s fault!) so I’ve been spending hours designing railway networks. They’re not very complicated ones at this stage, but I am aiming to work in some cool junctions at some point… it will be like Clapham Junction!

Aaaanyway. On Saturday evening we stayed in, watched a bit of Futurama – generally didn’t do very much! Which is probably a good thing as the rest of June is quite busy for us. On Sunday we went to two services in the morning (shock! horror!) and then, a service in the evening as well (gasp)! Still, they all went pretty well – particularly Sunday@6. I felt like the music really clicked last night, and there were quite a few people there as well, which was good after a couple of quiet weeks.

So, there you have it! You may still be wondering about the title of my post. I should clarify: on Friday, I bought us tickets to go and see Muse at the O2 in November 🙂 It’s a hat-trick because by the end of this year we will have seen our three favourite bands live (Keane, in February, and Coldplay in September). Really looking forward to the next two – Keane were amazing in February, if the next two gigs are equally as good I will be happy.

Unfortunately, I could only get seated tickets for the Muse gig (at Keane we were standing – and pretty near the front too!), but I’m sure the music will be good either way. Roll on September and November – not something you hear me say often!

I mentioned over a year ago that I had started using Audacious as my media player. It was based on classic Winamp, wasn’t too bloated and generally did everything I wanted it to.

Unfortunately a while back I ran into an issue with it and playlist size: it seemed to choke on playlists above a certain size (around 2,000 songs – my playlist is just over that). In other words, it would be working fine but then when you loaded up Audacious the next time round, the playlist would be empty. Strange.

Anyway, I have since been using Rhythmbox to play my MP3s (and FLACs, and OGGs… but mostly MP3s). It’s a bit quirky (one strange feature is that there is no ‘stop’ button – only a play / pause button) but so far I have found it to be pretty reliable. I like the fact that it can watch your music collection folder and automatically import any new files it finds there.

It also has iPod support. I’ve found that it doesn’t seem to like copying files over to my iPod (well, dragging and dropping doesn’t seem to work anyway – maybe you’re supposed to do it some other way) so I use GtkPod for that. One thing it does do, though, is sync the iPod with last.fm. If you have last.fm configured in Rhythmbox, and you connect up your iPod, then it seems Rhythmbox will automatically upload the list of songs played since the last time to last.fm. That is actually pretty cool, as I’ve been thinking about doing that for ages!

It just does it silently, without any prompting. Nice.

Anyway, Rhythmbox gets a cautious “thumbs up” from me! So here concludes the review :p

Well, this weekend was a good one 🙂 All too short, but there you go. As it was half term last week, there was no 21 on Friday night. I used the time to do a bit more work on the talk I’m doing on 5th July, I actually managed to finish the first draft which I’m quite pleased about! Still plenty of work to be done though.

On Saturday morning we did a bit of shopping, and then in the afternoon we went to Colchester Beer Festival. It was a really good afternoon. We saw Tom, Alex, Dan, Alison and a few other people. Because it was such a lovely day we all sat out in the graveyard (Colchester Arts Centre is an old church), which was somehow appropriate. There was a really good atmosphere the whole time.

We left at around 6PM to head over to Wivenhoe for Anne-Marie’s birthday party. We had a really good evening just chatting with people – all the usual suspects were there!

Late on Saturday evening, Phil’s sister (Roz) came round to ours after a wedding in Cambridge. She stayed over and then came to church with us on Sunday morning. It was really nice to see her as we don’t often get the opportunity! We had lunch together in the garden as it was such a beautiful day. Afterwards we headed out to Sunday@6, followed by a mini-party for Suzi and Matt who are getting married in August.

So, it was quite a packed but nice weekend!

Anyway. In general blog news, I realise that I’ve not actually blogged anything other than my usual “the weekend” style posts recently. I’m sorry, and I shall endeavour to do better. But probably fail 😉

This bank holiday was rather pleasant! We did have a bit of rain on Monday, but apart from that the weather was beautiful. Anyway, what did we get up to?

Well. On Friday we helped out at 21. I did the talk, which seemed to go pretty well (although it’s quite difficult to gauge these things sometimes). These was some good discussion afterwards, anyway. On Saturday, Phil headed into London to meet up with one of her friends so I spent the day doing a bit of shopping and generally chilling out. In the afternoon I went over to Wivenhoe for Matthew and Ellie’s leaving BBQ. It was a really good afternoon, although it was quite sad as they are moving to the west country – so we won’t be able to see them much from now on 🙁

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, then came back for lunch, then didn’t do much in the afternoon, then went to Sunday@6! So a usual Sunday for us.

On Bank Holiday Monday, Laura (one of the apprentices from church) came round and we watched lots of random comedy things – namely, all of “Look Around You” series 1, “Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra” and a few other things.

After all that we wandered over to the university and showed Laura the paternoster lift in the library. Bizarrely, it broke down while we were on it! It’s the only time that’s ever happened to me or Phil, strange that it should happen on Laura’s first time. Unlucky! Still, we managed to get out with the help of a few strong rugby playing types.

Anyway, that was a really nice day 🙂 In the evening we just stayed in and watched a DVD, rounded off a nice relaxing weekend for us. So there you have it!

This weekend was Andy C and Rica’s wedding in Trier, Germany. On Friday night, we came back pretty soon after helping out at 21 so that we could get to bed – we had a 3AM start on Saturday! We got the bus to Stansted, and then flew out to Frankfurt Hahn airport. From there we could get the bus to Trier.

We stayed at the NH Hotel. The room they gave us was huge! We arrived a bit early but fortunately they let us check-in anyway. Shortly afterwards, Ian arrived and we spent an hour wandering around Trier with him. It was good to see him again, I think quite possibly the first time we’d seen him since the wedding last year!

Anyway. The wedding itself was held at the Evangelische Kirche in Saarburg, about 40 minutes’ drive away from Trier. It was a really nice service – it was led by the minister of Andy C and Rica’s church in Luxembourg. Although it had to be done in English and German (someone was translating for most of the day!), it still worked and I think everyone really enjoyed it.

Afterwards, we headed to the Robert-Schuman-Haus in Trier for the reception. It was the first time we’d been to a German wedding reception, so it was a new experience for both of us! It stretched out over most of the evening and into the following morning. Unfortunately, Phil and I had been up for about 23 straight hours by 1AM and so had to head off! But it was a really lovely evening and we had a great time.

Aaaanyway, speaking of being tired – I’m off to bed. Night!

Last night we met up with Anne-Marie, Sarah, Matthew and Laura to go and see “Star Trek” – the ‘reboot’ of the franchise directed by J.J. Abrams. It was fantastic! Exactly what a Star Trek film should be like – it didn’t take itself too seriously but there were dramatic moments, it had plenty of humour and action and was generally well-written and directed. Laura hadn’t seen any Star Trek before and she liked it, so it must have been good! So that’s definitely a recommendation 😉

Oh, and – in case you’re wondering – they do manage to get most of the original series cliches into the film. “Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor not a physicist” got a laugh from all of us. Unfortunately they didn’t get Scotty’s “Ye cannae change the laws of physics!” into it, but he did have one or two good ones. All the cast did a great job – I wasn’t sure how Simon Pegg would do Scotty but it turned out to be great. Zach Quinto made a perfect Spock.

Anyway. In other news, I think I mentioned Spotify last week. Basically, I’ve bought a couple of albums after hearing them on Spotify. The first one is the Fleet Foxes self-titled debut album. It’s amazing – very well crafted folk style songs, lots of vocal harmonies… lush. Perfect for late evenings when you have a few people round for a cup of tea just after watching a film at the cinema (for example).

The other album is “Neon Bible” by Arcade Fire. I kept hearing them mentioned on the XKCD forums so I decided to give them a try. Haven’t got into this album so much yet, it’s a bit more indie, but it does have some great songs. My favourite at the moment is probably “Keep the Car Running”. The songs do have some interesting themes related to Christianity, apparently one or two of them were raised as mormons so they have an interest in faith.

So, there you have it!

This weekend was pretty busy, but actually rather nice. On Friday night we helped out at 21. I was doing the talk (which was on “Reading the Bible”). It seemed to go pretty well, so that’s all good.

On Saturday we went to see “We Will Rock You” at the Dominion Theatre in London. My workplace were offering cheap (subsidised) tickets, as well as transport, so we got decent seats much cheaper than they would have been otherwise! We joined a few of my other colleagues on the coach down to London. Anyway, the show was really good – I didn’t quite know what to expect but with the music of Queen you can’t really go wrong! And they really did justice to it – it was amazing to hear the songs live! So I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who likes the music of Queen (even if you don’t generally like musicals!)

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then had my parents round for lunch. Then we went out to the third Sunday@6 service, which went well. I was playing last night, I think the music is really coming together. Although I’m sure we have a way to go we’re getting there and sounding good already!

Then afterwards we came back home and watched “Vantage Point”. I didn’t quite know what to expect but it was really good – seemed to me to be very well written. Quite a clever storyline. And I was able to follow it for the most part, although I was a bit confused about 2/3 of the way through. (Not uncommon for me though).

So there you have it. Next weekend will be fairly busy as well as we are travelling over to Germany for a wedding. In some ways I’m dreading it (the travelling), but it will be nice to see Andy C and Rica get married! And, that’s enough of me rambling on now.

I mentioned a while back that I was on the lookout for a new iPod. I was specifically thinking about an iPod Touch, but on reflection I don’t think I would use it much. What I wanted instead was an iPod with plenty of space to store all my music, and maybe even some space to use as a backup for my computer.

So what I went for instead was a 120GB iPod Classic. It arrived yesterday, so I spent a while yesterday evening setting it all up. I like what Apple have done with the iPod UI! They’ve added a few things like Cover Flow, and have generally added in some more eye-candy. Seems to be a real improvement on the old version.

I gave it a quick test last night – I bought some new earphones to go with it (Sennheiser, nice ones) and it sounded good. I’ve also bought a car adapter, so this should hopefully put an end to me taking CDs every day.

So in general, I’m happy! All that remains for me to do now is to sell on my old broken iPod. I’m sure there will be someone on eBay who wants to buy and repair it!

This weekend was a good one, not just because it was slightly longer than usual! On Friday night we went to 21 to help out as per usual. Then on Saturday morning, we headed out to Flatford to meet up with Alex, Elisa, Dan and Alison.

We had a picnic in a nearby field, and then hired out a couple of boats and had an hour rowing on the river. You can see some photos of that on my Flickr account.

Afterwards we wandered over to Dedham and had a cream tea at the tea rooms there (can’t remember what they were called, just down the street from the Sun Inn). Tip: if you go there for a cream tea, one between two is enough unless you are exceptionally hungry: the scones are HUGE!

Anyway. That was a rather pleasant way to spend the afternoon 🙂 On Sunday, we went to church in the morning, and then in the afternoon headed out to Snape Maltings to hear the University of Essex Choir performing Verdi’s Requiem.

It was beautiful! Although I’d heard it on CD beforehand, it was nothing compared to the live performance. The choir was bolstered by some of the Royal Choral Society, and delivered a tremendous performance – particularly the famous ‘Dies Irae, Dies Illa’.

On Monday afternoon we walked the Wivenhoe Trail over to Anne-Marie’s, where we spent the afternoon watching “Takin’ Over the Asylum”. It was the first series that David Tennant did (his big break), and it was very good! Well written and directed. It was a bit like a Scottish version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” – except that it wasn’t depressing. Quite moving actually. And very funny in places!

So there you go, that was our bank holiday weekend. Back at work today, ah well – at least it’s only a four day week!

A few days ago I downloaded and installed Spotify (it runs really well in Linux under Wine).

I’ve only been using it for a few days and already I love it. If you haven’t heard about it, the basic concept is that it’s a bit of software which you install, and then you can login to the Spotify servers using it and listen to music. The key difference between it and other music services is that – all the music is streamed, never downloaded to your computer. And it’s not the RealAudio kind of streaming either (i.e., spends most of the time “buffering”) – it’s virtually instantaneous. As in, it’s as if it’s all on your computer.

It’s also free to use – it’s advertising supported. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, there are a few audio ads every now and then but in general the advertising is pretty unobtrusive. They also provide a subscription model where you can pay a certain amount per month for no ads. They also have a huge selection of music – the only artists I couldn’t find on there were quite ‘niche’ market (i.e. drum & bass, EDM – that sort of thing). Oh, and there are no Beatles songs on there – which isn’t surprising as there are no Beatles songs on iTunes (some legal issues, not quite sure what).

There are a few downsides to Spotify, though: 1. In order to get that instantaneous quality, the bitrate isn’t massive. This does mean that the sound quality wouldn’t be as high as if you were listening to a CD or high-quality MP3s – but to my ears it’s not really noticeable; 2. You have to be at your computer to listen to it (don’t know if you have use it over a Smartphone, but unfortunately I don’t have one).

Anyway, I think it’s an absolutely fantastic idea: although I do like having my own music, and listening to it in the car or wherever – it’s probably the best thing currently available for discovering bands you might like. In the past 24 hours I’ve listened to about four different bands I’d wanted to check out, ordered two new CDs, and generally had a whale of a time. I often would say with downloading music illegally that it was a good way of previewing music – try before you buy kind of scheme. Well this is the ultimate “try before you buy” kind of scheme: you can listen to an album as many times as you like, for free. You can discover similar artists and instantaneously have access to their entire back catalogue.

I don’t think I will use Spotify much to listen to music on a day to day basis, but in terms of finding bands I might enjoy – definitely. I’ve just ordered two albums (on CD – by Arcade Fire and the Fleet Foxes) on the strength of hearing them on Spotify. The downside is, it will undoubtedly bankrupt me (indirectly, of course) – hearing albums I like, then buying them. Damn you, Spotify.

So there you have it: it’s useful for some things, but be careful that it doesn’t bankrupt you 😉