Posts

news bits

news bits

harvey norman sucks

ok, so i already knew they sucked, but Hardly Normal had the fridge we wanted at a good price. so, we bought it there. TWO WEEKS AGO.... and STILL NO FUCKING FRIDGE. i probably wouldn't mind if they at least knew where it was... but they don't. it might be in adelaide. it might be in brisbane. it might be in transit..... they have no idea.

to cap it off, i tried to load their website (primarily to link to it in this rant) and lo, its cookie routine barfs because it can't set a cookie in Opera. site won't load. totally locked out.

*grumble*grumble*lamers*grumble*want new fridge*grumble*

news bits

news bits

sometimes i hate brisbane

Southeast Coast Weather Forecast:

Friday     ... Hot. Possible shower or storm.   MIN  24   MAX  35
Saturday   ... Fine and very hot                MIN  25   MAX  41
Sunday     ... Fine and very hot                MIN  25   MAX  41

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I think this weekend will be spent at shopping centres; problem there being that thousands of other people will do the same and the aircon won't cope anyway.

Update: see also UQ Weather - Current Values and Daily Highs/Lows which includes a Heat Index calculation... being a combination of temperature and humidity, which is how hot it actually feels.

i'm happy, hope you're happy too

Scan of my David Bowie ticket - Reality Tour, Brisbane gig 17th Feb 2004

Fucking awesome. BTW, yes, row AB does mean the second row. From the front. Yes, I really did pay that much money and FUCK YES it was worth it... and I'm not even a huge Bowie fan :) Of course it helps to be able to so close you can pick up every nuance of gesture and expression; plus Bowie has a piercing gaze which makes everyone up front feel like they've made eye contact.

Some rockers disintegrate with age; others, like Bowie, just get better. Bowie worked the audience in a manner that can only be described as energetic and playful. He knows he can make the crowd do anything and he's not afraid of playing with that :) Plus the band were truly awesome - all amazing musicians in their own right; and they all got to shine in this gig. Bowie hadn't been here for 17 years.... what the hell set do you play? The answer was 2 hours and 15 minutes of old stuff, new stuff, instrumental, obscure tracks, massive hits and audience-involved songs.

A sparing but gorgeous stage set was perfectly chosen for the show - simple video screens, a pair of raised catwalks and some hanging white tree branches at the sides. The lighting played off it all really well. The sound was clear; no overdriven speakers here - just massive banks belting out perfectly mixed songs.

I'm surely biased by being so close to the stage; but even so this was an amazing gig. It was a great chance to see the benefit of experience; to watch a rock legend do his thing. The attention to detail was in evidence everywhere - from the way Bowie would work each song, down to his guitar picks being printed with the tour details on one side and "David" on the other (my guess is that each guitarist would have had their own picks done up with their own names as well).

Setlist from bowieNet.news (I'm impressed they've got that posted already):

01 Rebel Rebel 
02 New Killer Star 
03 Reality 
04 Fame 
05 Cactus 
06 All The Young Dudes 
07 China Girl 
08 A New Career In A New Town 
09 The Loneliest Guy 
10 The Man Who Sold The World 
11 Hallo Spaceboy 
12 Sunday 
13 Under Pressure 
14 Life On Mars? 
15 Looking For Water 
16 Be My Wife 
17 Days 
18 White Light, White Heat 
19 Ashes To Ashes 
20 I'm Afraid Of Americans 
21 "Heroes" 

(Encore) 
22 Always Crashing In The Same Car 
23 Five Years 
24 Suffragette City 
25 Ziggy Stardust

Highlights:

  • Starting the show with Rebel Rebel. Yeah.
  • Under Pressure - Hollywood (the bassist) sang Freddy Mercury's part and damn near stole the show.
  • Super extended version of Sunday. The comment was made afterwards that they should have put that version on the album instead of the shorter version.
  • Hallo Spaceboy and I'm Afraid Of Americans. Pure, unadulterated rock'n'roll absolutely went off.
  • Bowie: "....there's a great band reforming, called The Pixies..." (big roar from the crowd) "Good for you, Brisbane... you really know your stuff!" [or words to that effect - can't remember the exact wording] I like that, despite the expectation Brisbane people wouldn't know who The Pixies are :)
  • Ending the encore with Ziggy Stardust; and ending Ziggy Stardust with Bowie standing in front of a huge video screen with simple black and white letters spelling out BOWIE. It came off as glorious without being (too) egotistical.

...and if you think I'm going on a bit, I'll put you in touch with the fanatical fans I went with :)

Labels:

news bits

happy hallmark day

yep, it's the day of the Psychotic Armed Cherub; discharging what's most likely an unlicensed weapon into unsuspecting couples who were minding their own friggin business.

so guys, did we all feel pressured to spend lots of money on our girlfriends? personally i resent the implication that i'm a prick the rest of the year and never do anything nice for my partner.

so, let's all celebrate hallmark love day by not spending money on overpriced crap (you think a dozen red roses costs that much any other day of the year? well, nearly, but not quite...). singles; rejoice in your freedom from this shit. guys (or girls) with girls; buy flowers for her in a few weeks, for no particular reason. girls (or guys) with guys; pick up that sexy new lingerie and surprise him next weekend.

oh, and anyone who only gets treated nicely on this one day - it's time to evaluate your relationship.

i probably wouldn't get so riled if there were equivalent days for guys and singles.

news bits

/. & thereg

news bits

news bits

the blogger of two evils

compared with blogger (even with the LoFi interface that Opera users are still forced to use), so far livejournal has proved to be really fucking irritating to work with. the web interface lacks coherence and has some really odd default settings (why condense the profiles page, for instance?); and the style system is mystifying. my guess is that you need a paid account to run a customised lj with an external stylesheet; if you aren't willing to cough up then you have to persist with the fairly iffy code lj produces. get what you pay for, just like anything else.

to be fair; if i wasn't a professional web developer i probably wouldn't be so bothered; since lj's web interface allows you to modify settings without needing to know how to do it manually. with blogger i have near total control and that's a good thing for me since i do know what i'm doing. frankly all blogger would have to do is add comments and feed management (ie. lj's Friends feature) and they'd reproduce lj. communities are just an extension of feed management; as far as i can tell.

all that said; i've only had an lj for a couple of days and i've only spent one short session playing around with it. these are just my first impressions.

news bits

i've joined the dark side. friend me.

OK, livejournal users. I've finally signed up for an lj - but don't get too excited. This is purely so I can read friends-only posts and comment properly. If I could just post with the same username as the lj feed of this blog, I'd do so. But so far I haven't been able to figure that out. So, despite this being a bit of a pain; please add the lj user dash_aitch in addition to cheshrkat. That way you can read my stuff and I can read your stuff.

i support the bbc

I believe in the BBC - click here to find out why.

I live in Australia yet the BBC's effect on my life has been significant. It has allowed the creation of most of my favourite Britcom (not to mention Science Fiction) and provides an excellent source of news. The world needs the BBC.

news bits

news bits