Month: January 2005

It’s been a long weekend, actually it’s been a long week. Thursday and Friday I wasn’t feeling too well at all and stayed at home. Played some CoH and generally did nothing. It was good. By Friday evening I was feeling much better which was good. Two people were staying over from Dublin for the weekend. So once they were collected off the bus it was out to dinner and a fairly quiet night.

Saturday started off with tourist stuff and that wasn’t so bad. Actually went up London Bridge and that was quite cool. The photos of it being built are very impressive and the machinery involved is quite astounding especially for something well over 100 years old. A walk down the river to Westminster and back up to Trafalgar square before into The Texas Embassy for lunch which was quite nice. A little more walking and some small shopping before heading to Clapham for a friend’s birthday party. Drinks till late.

Sunday was more tourist stuff starting and spending most of the afternoon in the British museum followed by more walking around and lots of book shopping. All fun and games.

Sunday evening I left the two of them to have dinner and continue to wander around doing tourist stuff while I went to see Planxty at the Barbican. Our seats were excellent, I hadn’t even been in there before and I was very impressed with the whole thing. Support was Luka Bloom whom I’m sure I have seen somewhere in recent times but I can’t think when, it could well have been the Fleadh actually. Anyway a small but excellent set from him including City of Chicago written by himself but made famous by Christy Moore. Straight after that with maybe a two minute break. Planxty and wow was it excellent. 2 hours of stories and music. Amazing gig, I’ve never seen an audience like that at the end. The entire place on their feet and staying right there until they came back on stage. Great set, great gig, great night.

So U2 tickets went on sale on Friday and I forgot as I was still in bed not feeling the best. Not too impressed with that. From what I hear the whole thing was a disaster and of course the ticket websites went down straight away. So I didn’t get any tickets.

Oh no, wait I did 🙂

I do have to travel to fucking Glasgow, but I’ve never been and it’s on a Tuesday so I’ll make a weekend out of it if I can’t trade em for London. And then this morning, I got Croke Park tickets.

IF anyone has London tickets and one to spare, I’d be very grateful I suspect that there will be quite a lot more going on sale and I’m hopeful for them.

Download seems to have been extended to 3 days and will include an indie day on the Friday with Feeder rumoured to headline and Ozzfest on the Saturday. I’m not sure I like either of these. An indie day isn’t going to fit in, and Ozzfest lineup has not been the best of late. It also means more time off work and a longer camp and stuff like that. Full details to come next week but it has dampened my enthusiasm a little bit. However some rumours suggest Garbage, Manson and Maiden will be there alongside Crue and VR which will be an excellent excellent lineup.

I’m really tired today. Tonight should be fairly quiet. Get home and play some CoH and then to bed early.

I don’t like The Delays. They played a work party a few months ago as an up and coming new band and I wasn’t impressed at all. Nothing I’ve heard since then really impressed me either. However the last couple of times I’ve been in HMV, they have been playing a track which I really like. Turns out it’s Long Time Coming by the aforementioned Delays. It’s not half bad at all. Not worth an album, but it’s worth a track later today.

It’s been a bad day. I had almost no sleep last night and I’ve not been able to keep any food down since late last night. I have no idea why. It seems to be limited to just an upset stomach but man was it nasty when I woke up from what little sleep I had this morning. So I wasn’t in work. I was hoping that the improvements in work and a couple of other things this year would generally make me feel better. I felt quite run down for a while at the end of last year and I was off work on a much more regular basis than I should have been. Not majorly and not a problem as far as I know anyway but annoying.

Hence the lack of me in the pub this evening. Apologies, Neil I shall bring that DVD for you next Thursday.

So I’ve done fuck all today. Some reading and some City of Heroes. The latter has inflicted me with another illness, alt-itis. The big winter event has made it a piece of piss to get a decent character. 20 levels which took me well over a week with my main probably closer to a month can be done in well minutes if you really put your mind to it. I had my main at 33 and a solid second character at 16. Level 14 is the big one, that’s when you get your travel power. My main is unchanged, but my solid second is now a 21 and another character which I created for fun and messed around with to about level 6 is also a 21. A brand new character is 15 and I’ve got two old 10’s that I want to push up to at least 14. It’s not that much fun getting them there but it knocks a big part of the level grind off and gets me to the fun stage with them all which is good. So some of that today was fun.

In other games news, I cancelled both Eve and EQ2 today. Just CoH for me for the time being.

I’d really like to get some sleep tonight, it’s a big weekend but so far it’s not looking so good. Yay 🙁

Man I was in a foul mood on Tuesday evening. I’m not sure why but I just suddenly felt off form and wanting to be elsewhere. It was strange and unlike me, especially considering the good company out.

The Killers. Yet another small semi-indie semi-rock band that NME champion. Yawn, right? Fuck no. It’s a fantastic little album. It’s not just good fun music but in places it’s straight from the heart and it goes straight to the heart. Mr Brightside has grown on me so much and once I actually listen to it…wow. It just speaks to me in a whole lot of places. It’s a great great album and you should own it.

Fuck it. I’m goingback to bed. Writig isn’t helpnig and I’m getting distracted surfing.

The new Chemical Brothers album is growing on me a whole lot. I didn’t like it at all on first listen but a couple more reveals some depth. Believe and Hold Tight London are excellent and the real standouts on it. It’s not like the last album, it’s whole lot less dancy and I don’t think it’s going to do anything like as well but it’s not bad.

It’s not been a good day so far. I’ve managed to go and delete the only copy I had of my personal calendar. Of course my work one is just fine. Not happy with that. I’m hoping I have some sort of recent version at home but not really holding my breath.

Not so sure on last night. A fun evening with various from around these parts and admiration of Stu’s new tattoo. I really have to sort out my design and go get it done. The place Stu went to certainly sounds like it’s worth checking out.

Alex is away for a few days so I’m on Hebe duty, which is all good. It’ll be nice to have a quiet evening tonight. The weekend’s going to be hectic. Added to everything else, I’m off to buy half the contents of the Apple Store for McGill. Should be fun. Hopefully the packages are small and carryable, otherwise I’ll be doing some dropoffs.

It should be a fun weekend but tiring. I decided to get the Dublin tickets so that’s Monday morning. Yay for getting paid in a couple of days and then juggling everything around to splash out on lots of extra tickets. Looks like the presale for the London shows was a complete disaster and ticketmaster has suffered pretty badly. I really hope they don’t have the same problem for Dublin. I won’t be going straight to them for my tickets on Friday morning anyway!

Reading stuff, lets see I read Coupland’s Shampoo Planet and Nicholl’s Starter for Ten over the past couple of days. Nice to have a couple of books to just bang on and on about loneliness. Decent reads tho, the latter slow to start ad to really kick off but the last 50 pages or so weren’t bad. Now I’m off on The Shadow of The Wind which isn’t bad so far…for an entire 30 pages on the tube this morning.

This morning, I have a dilemma.

Pre-sale tickets are out for U2 in Twickenham. I can get 4 and I can get them now. However as it turns out I can only get presales for one date out of the entire tour. Dublin pre-sales don’t start until Monday.

So do I wait or do I make sure I can get Dublin tickets for the night that I don’t even want to go because I want to be in Glastonbury just so I’m sure I get to see them at home.

Fuck. Twickenham is calling me because I can get them now and then I can know that I have my tickets and I’ll see them at least once. But at the same time I’m supremly confident that I can get tickets for it through the general release. It’s a big venue and I have one of the fastest internet connections in the country available to me to book with.

Fuck. The last time U2 played Dublin (Popmart ’97), I didn’t go because I was away at a wedding. I’ve never seen them in Dublin and Slane was a truly fantastic evening. This time promises to be so much more. Croke Park and everything that it comes with. Being allowed onto the pitch as opposed to heavy handedness of late after the GAA.

I’m annoyed that it’s only one night I can book for. Given that I paid to sign up to be able to get pre-sales, not a huge amount but not cheap either. It’s annoying. I guess I’ll have to make do with all the other benefits of that but fuck.

Jenny really was a friend of mine.

Thank fuck for credit cards. U2 ticket hit pre-sale tomorrow morning. Two nights in Twickenham for what should be massive gigs. Dublin has been confirmed. Croke Park for four nights running in what are the only Irish gigs of the tour. And yes, they are the same dates as Glastonbury. Tickets on general sale in staggered dates from this coming Friday.

Pre-sales start tomorrow morning. I’m in with them, I don’t know if I have any sort of limits on what I can buy with them (short of my plastic) but if there are, then I’ll be booking Dublin first and as many as I can get. Then Twickenham and again as many as I can get.

It’s a good thing that nothing I’ve heard line-up wise about Glastonbury is exiting me this year. I’ll get the Dublin tickets safe in the knowledge if I don’t go I’ll be easily able to pass them on. Will have to be for at least two nights to justify the travel and missing Glastonbury. Although I have just had the mad thought of going to Glastonbury and flying home the Monday afternoon to get to Croke Park that evening. I’d be completely shattered but it might be worth it. Hmm, now that’s well worth thinking about.

I can be back at the flat from the festival by around 12 I reckon if I’m up and out early early early. Then shower, drop stuff off and I can be at Heathrow by 3 or 4 and then straight from Dublin airport to the gig. Get my parents to collect my luggage. Tuesday I could then sleep.

I really like the sound of that and it is completely the best of both worlds. Complete madness but worth a whole lot of thinking about. Seeing them in Twickenham will be a great great day but seeing them in Dublin, in Croke Park of all places will be something else.

Anyway. Saturday night I missed V-Mas as I was off in lovely Hammersmith. I really hate Hammersmith and it’s horrible having to do the same journey I do to get to work on a Saturday, nevermind going to some of the same bars beforehand. Still it was a good cause, Velvet Revolver were playing in the Apollo. It was an excellent gig. They came on stage about an hour late with apologies as they “were off saving the world” but man it was an entrance. Great gig.

Sunday was quiet enough. I headed down to Camden with Tim for some shopping. A few comics, some books and some more blank dvds. Most of the afternoon and indeed evening was spent in CoH bagging some Winter Lords and other fun stuff. Very glad to report that I had respecs waiting on all my characters. So on my Katana/DA main I dropped a couple of attacks (I had too many anyway) and the DA cloaking thing and respeced in Kick (cause I had to), Tough and Weave giving me 4 defensive toggles. I have good defence. Did a lovely lovely level 39 mission last night with a Winter Lord hunting team and wasn’t sidekicked. I could hit, not well, but I could hit. Lots of nice XP from them but far more importantly 14k XP for the complete. I love it. So um yeah I’m back.

Took a break to head out with Alex to see Mean Streets at the NFT. Very enjoyable with the usual high standard of performances that Scorsese brings out. Alex nailed some of it on the head with a comparison to Bendis dialogue which I like so that was good too.

This week has gone from quiet enough to not so. Drinks tomorrow night in the Washington for Alex’s artist collection <:)> leading up to a couple of friends from Dublin staying the weekend which includes a birthday party which is going to run late on Saturday night and Planxty in the Barbican on Sunday. I’m really looking forward to that one. The usual Thursday in between then and whatever tourist stuff is gotten up to around all that. I may take a day off next week. I have some to use up and now I’m thinking about what I’m going to do with them. I was thinking Dublin for a bit but Paris has been calling for a long time now and it’s almost as cheap to go there for a midweek break. I would have to get a new camera before then so that adds things up a bit.

I’m using http://www.tadalist.com/ to track stuff. So far it’s for purchases and cinema trips. It’s not got half the functionality that I want but it’s new and shiny and on the web and so like a sheep I am following it. I could do it a whole lot better in an excel sheet but I don’t like excel and I’d have to load it and save it somewhere that I can access from home and work and I am inherently lazy. I’ll upgrade them into something better sometime when I can be bothered and really have the need to do so.

Lets see, oh yes. I finished off The Time Traveler’s Wife and it was stunning. One of the best books I’ve ever read. I wasn’t able to start another book for two days afterward and I feel like I’m betraying it by having started off on another one. No book has ever made me feel like that before.

A fairly nice long lunch today for a birthday and it’s going on 4pm already. I like days that suddenly disappear like that.

Jenny really was a friend of mine.

Thank fuck for credit cards. U2 ticket hit pre-sale tomorrow morning. Two nights in Twickenham for what should be massive gigs. Dublin has been confirmed. Croke Park for four nights running in what are the only Irish gigs of the tour. And yes, they are the same dates as Glastonbury. Tickets on general sale in staggered dates from this coming Friday.

Pre-sales start tomorrow morning. I’m in with them, I don’t know if I have any sort of limits on what I can buy with them (short of my plastic) but if there are, then I’ll be booking Dublin first and as many as I can get. Then Twickenham and again as many as I can get.

It’s a good thing that nothing I’ve heard line-up wise about Glastonbury is exiting me this year. I’ll get the Dublin tickets safe in the knowledge if I don’t go I’ll be easily able to pass them on. Will have to be for at least two nights to justify the travel and missing Glastonbury. Although I have just had the mad thought of going to Glastonbury and flying home the Monday afternoon to get to Croke Park that evening. I’d be completely shattered but it might be worth it. Hmm, now that’s well worth thinking about.

I can be back at the flat from the festival by around 12 I reckon if I’m up and out early early early. Then shower, drop stuff off and I can be at Heathrow by 3 or 4 and then straight from Dublin airport to the gig. Get my parents to collect my luggage. Tuesday I could then sleep.

I really like the sound of that and it is completely the best of both worlds. Complete madness but worth a whole lot of thinking about. Seeing them in Twickenham will be a great great day but seeing them in Dublin, in Croke Park of all places will be something else.

Anyway. Saturday night I missed V-Mas as I was off in lovely Hammersmith. I really hate Hammersmith and it’s horrible having to do the same journey I do to get to work on a Saturday, nevermind going to some of the same bars beforehand. Still it was a good cause, Velvet Revolver were playing in the Apollo. It was an excellent gig. They came on stage about an hour late with apologies as they “were off saving the world” but man it was an entrance. Great gig.

Sunday was quiet enough. I headed down to Camden with Tim for some shopping. A few comics, some books and some more blank dvds. Most of the afternoon and indeed evening was spent in CoH bagging some Winter Lords and other fun stuff. Very glad to report that I had respecs waiting on all my characters. So on my Katana/DA main I dropped a couple of attacks (I had too many anyway) and the DA cloaking thing and respeced in Kick (cause I had to), Tough and Weave giving me 4 defensive toggles. I have good defence. Did a lovely lovely level 39 mission last night with a Winter Lord hunting team and wasn’t sidekicked. I could hit, not well, but I could hit. Lots of nice XP from them but far more importantly 14k XP for the complete. I love it. So um yeah I’m back.

Took a break to head out with Alex to see Mean Streets at the NFT. Very enjoyable with the usual high standard of performances that Scorsese brings out. Alex nailed some of it on the head with a comparison to Bendis dialogue which I like so that was good too.

This week has gone from quiet enough to not so. Drinks tomorrow night in the Washington for Alex’s artist collection <:)> leading up to a couple of friends from Dublin staying the weekend which includes a birthday party which is going to run late on Saturday night and Planxty in the Barbican on Sunday. I’m really looking forward to that one. The usual Thursday in between then and whatever tourist stuff is gotten up to around all that. I may take a day off next week. I have some to use up and now I’m thinking about what I’m going to do with them. I was thinking Dublin for a bit but Paris has been calling for a long time now and it’s almost as cheap to go there for a midweek break. I would have to get a new camera before then so that adds things up a bit.

I’m using http://www.tadalist.com/ to track stuff. So far it’s for purchases and cinema trips. It’s not got half the functionality that I want but it’s new and shiny and on the web and so like a sheep I am following it. I could do it a whole lot better in an excel sheet but I don’t like excel and I’d have to load it and save it somewhere that I can access from home and work and I am inherently lazy. I’ll upgrade them into something better sometime when I can be bothered and really have the need to do so.

Lets see, oh yes. I finished off The Time Traveler’s Wife and it was stunning. One of the best books I’ve ever read. I wasn’t able to start another book for two days afterward and I feel like I’m betraying it by having started off on another one. No book has ever made me feel like that before.

A fairly nice long lunch today for a birthday and it’s going on 4pm already. I like days that suddenly disappear like that.

Last night, I went to see The Frames in Islington. It was a good gig. It wasn’t as good as the Bush Hall in December but it was still fun. The crowd wasn’t the best and the venue which I had enjoyed before seemed wrong. The A/C was going strong and aswell as it being noisy, I was cold for most of the evening. Very unusual for a gig with 1000+ people around. Decent set list, not sure Revelate was meant to be on it this time around again but without the computer to help out on the last couple of tracks it fitted nicely. Snippets from Redemption Song was good and their usual strong Pixies cover Where Is My Mind. I like the new stuff, I think it works better live than on the album. As their first global release, I’m not sure on it. Setlist cleaned up a little would have been a much better choice, it’s easily one of my favourite albums.I already had a ticket for the next gig in April and I’m looking forward to it.

My switch box issues are almost over, I have a new one and its working fine. I’ve had to go back to a shitty PS/2 keyboard and mouse which isn’t so bad except there is no scroll wheel on the mouse. I’m completely lost without it. I went to see IC and get another mouse and the only one they had to give me does not work. Not happy with this at all, and of course they are out at lunch. As soon as that away message comes down I’m going to go see them again.

Tonight I’m finally off to see Finding Neverland. I was in work late last night (hence no comments on the support act) and early this morning (bastard conference calls) so I have no compunction about leaving on time this evening for a beforehand.

I’m reading Popular Music by Mikael Niemi. Someone gave it a very good review recently and the blurbs for it didn’t sound so bad. I’m not sure I’m reading the same book everyone else did. Some of the descriptions of the musical events are pretty good but most of it seems overdrawn and in places trying to be a bit fear and loathing. I’m missing something here…

Back to music and back to Nick Cave as referenced a few days ago. So I picked up No More Shall We Part and I like it, at least I like most of it. Not enough to rush out and buy everything else he’s done but I’ll keep an eye out for more in the sales.