I spent an hour, last night, writing about my trip out today, with Miles. I hit 'post', and went to bed. This morning, it seems, the Blogger pixies have decided to completely delete the post, even within my browser's cache.

I'll rewrite it, offline, and post tonight.

If anyone reading this has a LiveJournal code, please send it to me using the email link on the right of this page. I'd be really interested in switching blogging systems. Blogger is mostly reliable, but every so often it decides to spaz out, and screw up my archive pages, or just plain loose stuff I've recently written.

Thanks to a bass playing friend of mine, for passing on the lastest 'bass player' joke:

Q: How do you get a pro bass-player to get off your front doorstep?

A: Pay for the pizza.

Miles and I are on the bed, blogging. His input, so far, has consisted mostly of grinning, and getting me to hold his paw.

It's been a long, tiresome day. I seem to have spent most of it driving.

SWMBO rang me, asking about network cards for her laptop. I said I'd find a good price for her. I did. $18 for a PCMCIA card thanks to Pricewatch - the best source of low prices on computer systems, components or peripherals.

However, on checking out the laptop, I discovered that the mains power socket had broken off, inside the computer. It'd been left on the floor with the mains cable in it, and that had no doubt been kicked or caught up in other cables in that room. Great. I don't have a soldering iron in the US.

I had lunch with a friend from the station, however, this was cut very short by a phone call to tell me the burglar alarm was going off at my house. Sooo... I had to drop my friend off at the station, drive home, check the animals were OK, then drive back to the station. I got a lot done at the station, and in the process, drank a lot of coffee.

I found that ICQ now has a non-download version of ICQ called ICQ2Go. It's a java applet, which means you can ICQ on any machine you're using. I found my friend Tim was online (in the UK) and we spent a long time chatting as I worked.

Whilst I was at the station, I finally met Rodney Franks' intern, a British lass called Kate. She was doing a show on her own this evening. Rodney and I got talking about my considering a career change to broadcasting, and he offered to teach me how to 'drive the board'. The board in question controls the broadcast in the . That includes CD players, MiniDisc players, microphones, satellite feeds, and a who bunch of other stuff. Even if I never change career, it'd be nice to learn about.

After 'work', I had to grab the laptop, drive down to Galileo (in the rush hour), pick up my friend Endre, drive him home, and look at fixing the laptop. Guess what? I'd left the broken piece back at my house. Sooooo off we go again, back up to Chez Max, where we then spent two hours, doing a 10 minute job.

It turned out that despite appearances, we couldn't solder the power socket on the motherboard from the top. It had to be soldered from underneath. Deep joy. So, we opened up the laptop case, and had to completely dismantle the whole laptop, down to removing the motherboard! This involved removing every single component of the laptop, and about 4.2 million screws

Endre and I are now experts at dismantling and reassembling laptops - the most notoriously unserviceable of computers. At the end of it, the darn thing worked, and we only had one screw left over!.

from the Nervous Nellie Dept.

I was just checking my folder of blog writings that are 'works in progress', and found a piece that's a rant about some tossers with an online petition.

I wrote this piece nearly a month and a half ago, and still am hesitating posting it. I was so angry when I wrote it, and some of it has elements that could be construed as being anti-American.

If you know me, or perhaps have just read all my online writing, you'll know that I'm not anti-American, and have a great respect for a lot of US culture. Being the intelligent readers you are, you'll be able to read between the lines and know that it's just me venting, and not actual bigotry on my part.

In fact, the article is as much of an attack at Hollywood sticking it's big fat oar in, and distorting the reporting of history, as it is critical of the US people.

I've just been re-reading the piece, several times, and still don't feel the urge to cut any of it out.

So, folks, this is where you come in. What do you think I should do?

a) Publish and be damned?
b) Try and calm it down?
c) Sit on it for another six weeks?
d) Go out and drink enough Guinness that I forget ever writing it?

As they say on Car Talk, "Answers on a postcard, or on the back of a brand new Apple PowerMac G4 with dual 1GHz processors and a 22" flat panel cinema display, to the usual address".

Of course it might be quicker to just leave a comment.

Last Friday night I saw Etta James in concert, at The Paramount Theater.

I was there on the KUVO guest list. Our seats were up in "The Gods", but even they were expensive - for those paying. During the interval, however, we got seats on the lower level, right next to the sound desk, thanks to Nanci - who I work for at the station. I won't go into actual prices, as we weren't paying, but it was way more than I've ever paid for a concert ticket.

The support act, was actually half of Etta's band. They rocked! For starters, they opened with one of my favourite tunes, Green Onions, by Booker T. and the M.G.'s. They were lead jointly by a guitarist - Bobby Murray, and an organist called Dave Matthews (no, not the pop star of that name). On drums and electric bass were Etta's two sons. They did nearly all instrumental pieces, and gave a mixture of jazz and blues.

The organist looked, from the lofty heights of The Gods, like Christopher Lloyd as Vile Judge Doom, in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. He wore a similar hat, with a very pale face, and his manic facial contortions, and body movements, all added to the resemblance. That said, the lad sure could play, even if, sometimes it was with his feet or head.

This ensemble was then added to by another guitarist and a three-man horn section, for the main event.

Etta came on to a standing ovation, which was ironic, because she wasn't standing herself. She entered stage right, driving one of those scooter-cum-wheelchair contraptions, with the headlight on, beaming through the darkness, into the audience. She then hobbled onto a chair, in which she sat, for the remainder of her performance.

That said, she gave a very powerful performance, both in her voice, and her stage presence. She opened with the raunchy, 'Come to Mama', the execution of which involved a lot of gestures that left us in no doubt that it wasn't an instruction aimed at her kids. She also performed her well-known hits, 'At Last', and 'I Just Want To Make Love To You' (which the less cultured of you will remember from the 'Diet Coke Break' adverts of the 1990's).

In all, she did an hour and a quarter, before calling for her scooter. She drove off into the darkness to a standing ovation, but made no attempt at an encore, despite the audience wanting one. This was understandable, given the effort she had to make to get on and off stage.

I think, given her age and infirmity, she did well, to do the 75 minutes - especially when you consider how much power and energy she put into each song. Not only that, but she sang them all, sitting down, which as we all know, makes singing well harder.

Much as I'm not a big blues fan, I had a good time. A fair amount of foot-tapping, and at one crazy stage, dancing, on my part went on. Etta gave a great performance, as did her band.

Trouble In the Trenches
Part way through the gig, shouting could be heard from the left-hand section of the stalls*. We looked over to see a full-scale row going on. Apparently, someone had been talking during the gig, and another party had taken offence, as it was ruining their experience of the music. Music, they'd paid nearly $50 to see**. The next thing we know, both parties (about six or seven people) got up and 'took it outside'. We were all waiting for the punches to start flying, but there was no such excitement, at least not in the auditorium.

There Was This One Time? ... At Blues Camp? ....
I had my own audience problem. There were two girls, two rows behind me, with no one in the row between us, who kept talking. Given I'm not the biggest Etta fan, it wasn't the end of the world for me, and to be honest, they didn't talk incessantly. But my problem, or rather amusement at them, was more about what they were saying.

Exchanges like, "Isn't Etta awesome?", "Yeah, she totally rocks!" just seemed a bit weird. If we'd been at a Britney Spears mime.. err.. I mean concert, it would have seemed appropriate phraseology, but this is the Blues for God's sake!

I can just picture these bimbos at the second coming of Jesus. "That Messiah? He's like totally bitchin' y'know?", "Oh yeah... Like when he like walks on water? ... that's like so awesome?" The extraneous question marks are there to represent the valley-girl upspeak that these two girls had. You know what I mean... where everything they say, even absolute statements, is made to sound like a question.

Furthermore, I understand people, at music gigs, whooping and hollering, especially when you're listening to the between-song comments by a blues and soul legend like Etta. What I don't appreciate, is people doing it right behind me, thus perforating my eardrums. This didn't happen so much at the Etta gig but was worse when I was taken to see Ben Folds a while back.

However, what amused me with the two valley-girl wannabe blues fans, was that one of them kept whooping in the wrong place. It was as if the sister of Don 'no-soul' Simmonds was behind me. She'd whoop when Etta was in the middle of a sentence, before she'd made her point, for fuck's sake! It was almost as if, she'd sat in her Highlands Ranch pre-formed beige fortress, and read about what one does at a blues gig, made a list of what she was expected to do, but didn't note the finer details of when to whoop, and when to holler.

As if that wasn't cringing enough, both of these two would occasionally comment, "You go girl!" to things Etta had said. However, as with the whooping and hollering, they'd not read the full instructions on timing and appropriateness. I was really tempted to turn round and say, "you girls are just so white.", but I resisted. I mean, I'm white too. I just don't ever pretend to be anything else.

It occurred to me that I could demonstrate to them, how to join in, whilst still being true to one's ethnicity, but shouting, "I say! Jolly good show, old girl! What!", didn't really seem to fit the mood.

Perhaps I'll save that for Britney.

* The 'stalls' is a British term for the lower level of theatre seating, usually on the same level as the stage. It is not a reference to urinals, although if you've ever been to a Motorhead gig, you could be forgiven for that confusion. I don't know what the equivalent American term is.

**OK, I know I said I'd not mention the cost I'd avoided by being on the guest list, but what the heck... it was in the context of explaining how insensed these people were at others talking during the gig. v

It's Sunday night, and we could all do with a giggle. Props to Mike Daisey for it.

I've just discovered that neither of my Macintoshes are checking the webmaster email account for this site. Doh!

I'd like to give a BIG apology if you've emailed me and I've not seemed to respond. I think I've now caught up, but I'm real sorry folks!

I'm also going to revamp the links section, to have a section for fellow bloggers, to whom I really should link.

I also worked at the radio station today. At 4.30, however, I left my desk, and wandered into the KUVO performance . I was one of eight people watching a live performance of a local five-piece of superb jazz musicians. This was played live, and broadcast live, to Colorado, Wyoming, and the whole world (via the web).

The group consisted of three contemporaries, all about late-twenties/early thirties, playing sax, trumpet and bass, and joined by veteran Denver jazz pianist, Purnell Steen, and a last-minute replacement drummer, who did a first-class job of drumming with them, having never met them, and never rehearsed with them.

OK, I'll come clean here. I can't remember all their names. OK? I generally like to give you all the facts, with links to bios etc, but I didn't catch all the names! The saxophonist was called Brad, the trumpeter, Derek or Darren, and I didn't catch the bassists name. I'll get the names tomorrow, and retro fit them here!

Anyway, these guys rocked! I've not seen live jazz for a little while now, and I was blown away with the power and skill they all exerted. They played four tunes, only one of which I recognised, but all were good. Between tunes, they chatted with the afternoon DJ, Rodney Franks, and it was all good. They finished their set, and were asked to give us two minutes more, to take us upto the 5pm news. They did an entire fifth number. It, like the others, totally rocked!

After each number, the eight of us, tried our best to clap, whoop and holler enough, to sound like a good audience. At the end of it, I almost felt like going out and taking up the trumpet!

It's been a tad warm this week. I was worked at the station again yesterday. If only because they have air-conditioning and my truck's overhead display was telling me it was 106 fahrenheit while I drove there.

The previous night had been really unbearable. Normally, no matter how hot it is during the day, it cools down by 10 or 11pm. Well, I'm a night owl, but even when I hit the sheets at 3am that night, it was still unbearably hot upstairs, despite the window fan being on all night. We got through last summer without AC, but this year looks like being a whole lot hotter.

In the previous house, in nice-but-deadly-dull Littleton, we had gas-forced-air heating, so there were ducts throughout the house. Therefore, it was relatively easy to get central Air-conditioning installed. After a particularly hot Memorial Day, I ordered central AC. Unfortunately, because there weren't enough return air vents, we couldn't have the 3.5 ton system the house needed, and had to make do with a 3.0 ton system, which because it was under-powered for the size of house we had, had to work overtime to keep the house cool.

All this meant that our electricity bill went from about $80-100 a month, to $240! And to think I used to pay about £20 a month in the UK. Consequently, we've resisted getting AC again.

That said, last night I caved in and bought an air-conditioning unit for the bedroom. It was a bargain at $118! I fitted it this morning in about 5-10 minutes, and it works, coolling the bedroom perfectly. It should add only $10-20 a month to the electricity bill. Unlike central AC, it's not running 24/7, just when we want it, and it's only trying to cool one room.

Of course, having bought it, it rained all night last night, and is a lot cooler tonight than it has been for the past weeks! Bloody typical! Still, this is Colorado, so we're in for more blistering heat until mid-September.

No big post today. I'm working on something offline. Actually, it's kinda spiralled into two, lengthy articles.

In other news... I tracked down a shop selling 'British' goods. It was reccomended by a friend of a friend. I am now in posession of some of the most expensive Chocolate Digestive biscuits I've ever owned.

Update
The shop is called (rather cornily), The English Teacup. It's located at 1930 S Havana, Aurora.. Tel: (303) 751-3032.

I hope I'm not jinxing myself here, but I might be going on-air sometime in the near future. I was at the radio station again today, and met a really nice guy, who's going to be hosting one of the Sunday night shows for a few weeks.

We got to talking, and I kinda suggested he has me on the show, as some sort of sidekick-wannabe. It was probably the least-pushy bit of assertiveness I've ever tried. Much as I can be assertive, I'm really cautious about not pissing off anyone at the station, as they're such a nice crowd, and I enjoy being there.

I'm going to talk to this guy tomorrow, and try and firm up arrangements. He was saying how much he liked English accents, so hopefully that'll mean I get to speak on-air.

One of my favourite filmmakers, Kevin Smith, has launched his own movie website, Movie Poopshoot.com. If you've seen Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, you be familiar with the site name. In the film it was a fictional website. Now, it's a real one.

from the Talking Heads Dept.

I've had contact from a number of readers, outside Colorado, asking just how bad the wildfires are, and how likely my house is, to get burnt down.

Well, the one that Denver is most concerned about ( the one heading towards Denver) - the Hayman fire, is now 47% contained, which is a lot better than just 5% contained, as it was last week. Also, they've found the person who started the fire.

The person who started this fire is, get this... a forest ranger!. She's now in court, and in a whole heap o' trouble. Apparently, she started the fire by burning a letter from her ex-husband. If only he'd just emailed.

I discovered today, whilst picking up a 'market fresh' sandwich, that Arby's now offers free high-speed internet access for its customers 'eating in'.

I think this is a superb idea. They probably have to have the service for the transmission of data to Head Office, so why not share it with customers? This is exactly the sort of forward thinking measure that'll make geeks like me, favour eating at their place over a competitor. It's a win-win situation!

Bravo Arby's!

Disappointingly, I'm not one of the Robots of Death. :(

I am...

Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?

from the Clarkson Dept.

Site News
A big Hi! to some of the new readers I seem to have gained recently. This is despite the fact that I've not written anything particularly funny lately, and I went off on a bit of a rant the other day. If you're new to this blog, go look through the archives, there's humour (or humor if you like) in there somewhere!

Secondly, I downloaded Mozilla for Mac OS X, and am using it right now! It's a nice solid browser, sans all the wanky Netscape clunkiness of recent years. I'm still using MS's IE 5 for Mac OS X. It's a good browser, but a little slower than others when rendering pages.

The Careers Section
I was at the radio station again today. They were still suggesting that I apply for the job they have going there. I'm just not sure about this. I'm getting no responses about software development jobs, and a number of friends have suggested I go for this job, as a stop-gap measure.

If my fairy-godmother is reading this, could she please come tell me what to do? Stay in Denver? Try for jobs in Canada? Try for jobs in Ireland/Britain? Run away and join the circus?

The Motoring Section
Following the success of their New Beetle (SWMBO has one), It appears that Volkswagon are going to start making a New Microbus.

Now, that picture is only a concept drawing, so I just hope they get the New Beetle design team on board before they finalise it. I say that, because frankly (Mr Shankly), the New Microbus shown, is a tad dull. Where are a the beautiful curves as seen on the New Beetle and the old Microbus? Come on guys, Sort yourselves out!

The same website has an even more exciting picture. It's of a new Bently Coupé. Veeeerrrry nice! I can see that appearing in a forthcoming Bond film.

Talking of which, the cinemas here are starting to show the 'teaser' trailer for a new Bond film, Die Another Day. It'll be out in November of this year. Bond is back to driving an Aston Martin. It struck me that if he'd waited, he could have had the Bently.

Miles is actually watching The Screensavers with me. Not just in the room, but sat on the sofa with me, staring at the geeks on my favourite tech show.

They have popsters They Might Be Giants on the show. They're talking about their use of tech and the web. The band has six websites!

These include tmbg.com and theymightbegiants.com. Links to, and a description of, the other sites are available through the second link in this posting

Check out tmbg.com, as it's a really nice use of Flash animation. By really nice, I also mean, not overwhelming, and quick-loading.

OK, so I've finally got around to adding a comment facility to this blog. If all goes well, you should be able to click on the comments link below each posting, and leave your comments, good or bad, in the window that pops up.

FYI, I'm using the YACCS system, for which I've added a link, in my links section.

I'd like to thank Andy from Worldwide Rant for letting me know about the YACCS comment system.

The system is so popular, that at the moment, they're only allowing 100 new users to sign up, in every 24 hour period. This means that every 6 hours, they allow 25 new accounts to sign up. So... I had to sit here, waiting for the stroke of midnight (EST), for my chance to get an account. Still, that's only 10pm MST.

So, anyway, I'm going to press now, and if my HTML editing hasn't let me down, we should have a comment system!

from the "You ain't from round here, boy" Dept.

They say that when they've got nothing else to talk about, the British talk about the weather. However, given Colorado's extreme weather, and lately, almost biblical weather, it hardly surprising it comes up in conversation.

Those wild fires are still on the march. They're spreading at 500 acres an hour, towards Denver. I've owned slower cars than that.

Apparently, at least one, if not all, of the fires was started by some moron deciding to have a campfire. Quite why anyone needs to light fires, when the temperature is well into the 90's, is beyond me. Haven't these people heard of taking sandwiches with them? It's probably a case of, to paraphrase that advert for pre-cooked meat, "A meal's not a meal unless it's got enough red meat and fat in it, to give a rhinosaurus a coronry."

Mind you, these are probably the same 'survivalist' types who drone on and on about their right to bear arms. Well, it they want to wear t-shirts, that's their business. OK, OK, so that would be 'bare' arms. The joke works when it's spoken.

To be serious, the second amendment states, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.".

OK, so these redneck fuckwits are part of a "well regulated militia" are they? I doubt it very much. For one thing, they'd have to shave their mullets off, and perhaps even wash, if they were in the military.

Of course they'll also claim they need their guns for hunting. Fine, but why the armor-piercing bullets? Since when did deer start wearing Kevlar?

Isn't it time these people got the fuck over it, and just went down to Safeway's meat department? Guess what guys? It's the 21st Century! You don't have to catch your own dinner. Hell, you can even order it by phone from your armchair.

Perhaps this constant need to prove their machismo is due to some deep insecurity on their part? A need to prove they're still valid as men. Well, a lot of us feel insecure from time to time. It's just that the the most of us don't set fire to half of the fucking state in the process!

OK, so maybe this hasn't been my most coherent posting. It's probably because I'm on edge over whether or not I'll get lung cancer, just from breathing in, when I go outside.

from the Old Testament Weather Dept.

It's The End Of The World As We Know It
It's been hot all week. Hot and dry. Hot, dry, sunny, and well... frankly, just too damn hot.

And now, on Sunday, the weather looks like it's getting biblical on our asses.

It's supposed to be hot and sunny. It's not. It's hot and the sky is brown. This is not normal. There's smoke everywhere. Downtown this afternoon, we had what looked like snowflakes falling on us, but was actually ash.

Yes, just like after a nuclear explosion, the sky was blackening, and we had ash raining down on us. I don't know about you, but I'm worried. What's next? A plague of frogs?

In case you're not a Colorado resident, let me explain. In the summer months (May-September) there are often forest fires. Despite frequent warnings to not light campfires, or drop lit cigarette butts, some Colorado retards manage, every year, to set off wild fires, which due to the dryness of the Colorado landscape, spread like... err... well, wildfire.

Thanks to the Republican Party's massive favouritism towards the oil companies of the US, polution - and thus global warming - is at an all-time high. This means it's hotter, and drier than ever, and so wild fires are more likely. This summer looks to be the hottest one in Colorado, that I've experienced.

Right now, it's 10.42pm, and it's 82 degrees fahrenheit! That's 28 centigrade. It's been dark for over two hours, and it's still 82F! That's outdoors. You can imagine how bloody hot it is in my bedroom, which is in the roof of my non-Air-Conditioned house!

The last few days have seen highs of about 95F (35C). According to The Weather Channel, next week will see highs only in the mid eighties. Deep joy. Only slightly too hot.

Here's Johnnie!
Comedy Central showed Being John Malkovich earlier this evening. I expected the weirdest movie imagineable, but in truth, I've seen weirder. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it. I was fun. Quirky, but fun.

John Cusack's performance was nothing special. He's certainly done a lot better (Grosse Point Blank, and High Fidelity for examples). He played Craig Schwartz, a puppeteer forced to get a 'regular' job, as a filing clerk, on the 7 1/2th floor of an office building. The entire floor has rooms that are about five feet high, meaning that everyone who works there has to walk around with their heads bent to one side. It's at this office, that he discovers a portal, into John Malkovich. By descending down the pipe-like portal, he ends up inside Malkovich, and over time, learns to control his body. When he leaves, he lands on a grassy bank by the New Jersey turnpike. Like I said, it's a weird movie.

Cameron Diaz on the other hand, gave one of the best performances I've ever seen her do. I've seen her in a few things recently, where she's pretty much sucked, so this was a nice change. For one thing, instead of playing her usual cute-but-dumb blonde part, she played Cusak's dowdy, brunette, monkey-obsessed, wife. This is the first time I've seen her in a film not playing the sex object. In fact, she even ends up falling for the female sex object in the movie, played by Catherine Keener, and uses Malkovich's body to have sex with her. Sound weird? Well, yes... but that's the point.

John Malkovich played himself, but he also played himself, as controlled by both Cusack, and Diaz's characters. At one point, he goes down the portal to himself, with - as you'd expect - very surreal results.

All in all, it's an odd movie, but enjoyable.

This afternoon, I saw About A Boy. A film made from the Nick "High-Fidelity" Hornby novel of the same name.

Unlike High Fidelity, they didn't Americanize it when turning it into a film. It was set in Britain, and had a very good cast. If you read the blurb about the film, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a "chick flick", but it's a Hornby novel, and so it wasn't.

Hugh Grant is the main character, but he's actually very good in it, and wasn't irritating :-O He plays Will, a rich layabout, who's happy doing nothing with his life, and dating as many women as possible. Will drives an Audi TT, and has all the very best (and trendiest) gadgets and appliances (most of which he doesn't know how to use), in his trés chic London bachelor pad.

Toni Collette was the vegetarian depressive hippy mother of the 'boy', and gave her usual excellent performance. She spends most of the time looking like she's just left the protests at Greenham Common and/or crying her eyes out. Her character was brilliantly flawed, dressing her son in all these Traidcraft 'fair trade' knitted jackets and scarves, and then walking him to his North London school, completely unaware of how much he was laughed at, and bullied.

Nicholas Hoult ruled the movie, as the bullied-at-school 12 year-old, who becomes friends with Will, and forces him to examine the emptiness of his life. I hope this young lad goes on to have a successful career, he deserves it.

Rachel Weiss (potential new love of my life grrrrr woof!) played the main love interest of Will, but was sadly under used, I think.

The rest of the cast was comprised of a whole bunch of well-known British TV actors. Among them, Janine Duvitski is looking old these days.

The main character spent a lot of time watching daytime TV, specifically, Countdown with Richard Whitely. Being British, I spent that time, as the only person in the packed Denver cinema laughing, every time I heard Whitely's dulcet tones. I don't know what they all thought of me.

I've hardly ever felt homesick for Britain in the nearly three years I've lived in the US, but this film tugged at my heartstrings. Perhaps it was all those shots of Hugh going round Sainsbury's? Perhaps it was shots of old houses? Perhaps it was just nostalgia, who knows?

The film had an excellent soundtrack by Badly Drawn Boy. I'm thinking of buying it.

Favourite quote: Hugh refers to the mother as, "Miss Granola Suicide".

OK, so finally I've got time to write and tell you about a meeting I had on Monday night.

As I mentioned on 30th May, in a piece titled, "World Wide Rant", I'd been contacted by a bloke, called Andy, who was part of a Yahoo group for Colorado bloggers. Englishman In Denver now links to Andy's collabartive blog, World Wide Rant and they, in turn, link back to us.

The next day, I was contacted by another chap, who is the moderator for the group, inviting me to a meeting, held last Monday, at My Brother's Bar.

Attendance was limited to six bloggers, but that was just as well, as there wasn't a whole lot of room. A few others had to cancel at the last minute.

It was nice to meet fellow bloggers over a few pints of Guinness and some of the bar's imfamous burgers. I didn't have a clue what the conversation would be about, but to be honest, I was going just to get out and meet new folk.

Over the course of the evening, the conversation ranged from some technical aspects of blogging, to things we'd all recently written, to just swapping stories. I thought everyone had a good time, although I now understand that some folk were a little disappointed Oh well, I think we did well, considering one of those who didn't show was the guy supposedly organising the whole thing!

Personally, I treated it, as I've said, as a chance to meet new folk, and drink some Guinness. I can't think of a better use for an evening!

I Am So Not Like Him
Of course, as I was a tad nervous, I sub-consciously turned into Chandler from Friends, using humour to pull a veil over shyness. A lot of people do this, the difference is, I'm prepared to admit it.

The Chandler thing was first pointed out to me by a friend back in Britain. Mind you, the same friend said I also reminded her of Clive Anderson (only with more hair!) when I was nervously chatting.

So...
I had a good time. I'd like to apologise to the rest of the bloggers, if I talked too much.

One of the outcomes for me, was finding out about Site Meter, which is a free service providing statistics about website.usage. This blog is now 'sitemetered', meaning that I can not only see how many people are viewing it (not many this week, but I've not written much either), but where they've come from, what site have referred them to me and a whole lot more!

Thanks to Andy from World Wide Rant for the info on Site Meter.

from the Drug-Induced Freakout Dept.

Just in case you were ever stupid enough to think there's not all that much weird shit on the web, I bring you this audio-visual oddity.

It's based on/is a spoof of, this equally weird Japanese clip.

I'm not easily confused, but this stuff makes Memento look like Ally McBeal.

from the Light Side of the Dept

OK, so on Saturday, I finally went and saw Star Wars Episode II - Attack of the Clones.

You can check the story out, using the link above.

I went with a friend, who at the end of it, said he didn't think much of the acting. I suggested that this was not the fault of the actors, but perhaps they could only do so much with the script they were given.

To be honest, I was annoyed at his expecting the movie to be the next Waiting For Godot. It's science-fiction for God's sake! It's not there to be studied like fucking Shakespear, it's just there to be enjoyed, as a visual spectacle with a story. Perhaps I should have gone with one of my more geeky friends.

As for the film, I enjoyed it. It was much much much better than Episode I. It looks like George Lucas has got over showing off what ILM can do, and got on with using their facilities to add to the story.

It's set 10 years after Episode I, and young Anakin has grown up to look like white trash in a robe. I think it's the single long thin hair braid, combined with the short spiky hair on top, that does it. He's still in the shadow of Obi Wan Kenobe (played by the excellent Ewan McGregor, doing a very good 'young Alec Guinness').

Amidala (Natalie Portman) is now just a Senator, having served her 'two terms as Queen' (which is odd, but what the heck, this is another galaxy, far, far, away). She now no longer wears the almost geisha girl like make-up, and looks lovelier and lovelier throughout the movie. That said, she doesn't really get to act much. Carrie Fisher had far more to do, and far more chance to put in a performance of actual acting, than they let Natalie do - which is a shame, as the girl can act, if only they'd let her.

The CG (computer graphics) in the movie is refined over that in Episode I, and used to much better effect. Best of all, the much hated (and frankly racist stereotype) Jar-Jar Binks is a very minor player. His 'personality' - which was regarded as mocking Jamaicans - together with those of the scheming trade federation characters - which was regarded as mocking Japanese businessmen - was much toned down. I guess they paid attention to the criticisms, but couldn't remove the characters completely.

At the end of the day, it's another jolly romp in a galaxy far far away. There's a bunch of shiny spacecraft, and hover-bikes and so on, for those of us who like that sort of thing, and a good measure of weird creatures, one of whom runs a 1950's American-style diner (go figure).

Anakin shows more and more signs of being someone who'd turn to the dark side, if the money was right. Samuel L Jackson plays the first black Jedi we've seen (unless you count Darth Vader as "the blackest brother in the universe"). I think we'll see a lot more of his character in the next installment. Perhaps he was added in an attempt to counter the allegations of racism for Episode I? Perhaps that's why Episode II also has Jimmy Smits as the first latino Jedi?

Or is that just my cynicism shining through from the dark side?

Whilst republishing my resumé on ComputerJobs.com, I noticed the following amusing sidebar:

Question of the Day
My job is like an AC/DC song...

a) Back in Black
b) Money Talks
c) Highway to Hell
d) Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Instead of the a-d, there were radio-buttons, and a push-button so you could vote.