11:59AM - A bit of PrE-LO boogying music

A live performance of "Down By The Bay" one my faves song by The Move ( behind ).

Just before The Move fully transformed into ELO (both bands were running at the time) where the core members of the band had joined and before Roy Wood (on bass here) decided to leave. Though in this case ELO's future keyboardist Richard Tandy is on guitar and Bill Hunt (future member of Wizzard and uncle of The Wonder Stuff's lead singer Miles Hunt) is on piano.

10:12AM

some familiar faces in these music videos directed by Edgar Wright (Spaced) ( behind here )

9:44AM - Trailers From Hell

Quite an interesting site dedicated to trailers for movies (mostly B movies) with commentaries by film directors:

http://www.trailersfromhell.com/index.php

7:26PM - "Then suddenly like a fly in a cup of tea...

..I'm stirred and no longer free to fly away."



Cheesy lyrics but I love The Damned's album Phantasmagoria and I'm over the moon to finally have a remastered version of it. Album hasn't been available to buy brand new on CD in years so it's great that it's finally available again albeit as a Japanese import.

It comes with replicas of the original vinyl album outer and inner sleeves and the label is used to make it look like a miniature version of the special edition white vinyl album plus it has a fold out lyrics sheet (in Japanese and English)

Favourite track is "Sanctum Sanctorum" which has a lovely atmospheric intro.

Their follow-up album "Anything" is also available and like "Phantasmagoria" has been unavailable on CD for years (apart from people asking £lots for a secondhand copy of it). Can't wait to get that either.

4:21PM - Happy Birthday to

hippo22

11:46AM - Mitch Benn

Just noticed that he's started his own podcast on his website at http://www.mitchbenn.com/

Feed at: http://www.mitchbenn.com/podcasts/rss/

Rather enjoyed his first one.

9:48AM - I've noticed quite a few people complaining...

...about the John Simm's The Master in recent episodes as being comedic, OTT etc and they're correct - however, apart from Survival, Anthony Ainley's The Master was nothing but a pantomime villain so nothing new there :)

Roger Delgado is the one true The Master.

11:27AM - Jim Langmead

Thought i'd post this for the benefit of ex-#speccy and #zx people on my friends list.

As some may or may not be aware Jim went into hospital in June with problems arising from Crohn's Disease.

Daren got in touch with him in August (see http://www.rzxarchive.co.uk/jim.html)

He'd posted in World Of Spectrum forums briefly in October but said that he was limited by the expensive nature of in-hospital net access and the clumsiness of the keypad.

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showpost.php?p=151809&postcount=14

The last time we heard from him was at Christmas.

Daren yesterday found out the sad news that Jim had passed away in April at the age of 32.

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=16393

r.i.p Jim :-(


10th July 1974 - 11th April 2007

edit: since posting this - additional information came via his mum posted on a forum

http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?showtopic=160422

9:39AM - It was a hot afternoon and they were swarming around...

...but the next day they had disappeared once more.

Not the flying ants, of course, but all the hordes of people proudly wearing the t-shirt of "their team" Liverpool FC wandering all over town.

11:29AM - Happy Birthday

nicholaw

!

7:38PM - Duke Special

Saw him support Divine Comedy last year.

A recent concert of his is available here:

http://www.fabchannel.com/duke_special

(requires flash - rather fond of track 4 of this)

10:36AM - Happy Birthday to

the_ladylark

1:36PM - Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday da_pol!

1:25PM - X Box 360 and streaming media

During time off I've moved over my iTunes share to my server that's been mostly switched off until now. Which means my PC doesn't have iTunes running if Tiff wants to play music on her desktop pc up in the computer room or her laptop in addition if Tiff wants to play.

With Windows Media Player 11, my Xbox 360 was able to access music and video in WMP 11's libary - unfortunately this is limited to WMA and WMV formats.

However, there's a way around this - disable WMP's sharing and install TVersity and K Lite Codec Pack (remembering to select AAC for install as this is off by default for some reason)

http://tversity.com/download/
http://www.codecguide.com/

TVersity allows you to build a library and it transcodes on-the-fly from non-WMA/WMV formats to WMA/WMV which the Xbox 360 can understand.

Of course there are limitations with regard to the speed of the PCs cpu and the network connection - as I'm connected wirelessly I have to reduce the video size & quality a little - but it still works pretty well.

10:54AM - Happy St Skeletor's Day

http://mattl.co.uk/skeletor/

2:07PM - Similar to the last game...

..but based on Starcraft

http://www.armorgames.com/games/starcraft_popup.html

7:22PM - Annoyingly addictive flash game

http://novelconcepts.co.uk/FlashElementTD/

2:36PM - Post Christmas Post

Well Christmas was mostly good.

We (myself, wife & her mom) started the morning with a cup of tea (or coffee in the case of mother-in-law) and pain au chocolat[1] before opening our presents

This year's xmas loot included:

• Meatloaf - Bat Out Of Hell III CD


• Babylon 5 - Season One DVD box set


• QI - Series One DVD box set


• The Mitchell & Webb Situation DVD


• The IT Crowd DVD


• Blackadder DVD box set


• Doctor Who: Series Two DVD box set


• Peep Show: Series One, Two & Three DVD box set
  
• King Kong DVD


• X-Men III: The Last Stand


• Futurama: Season One boxset

We were collected by my cousin David and driven to my parents' house (10 minutes drive away) in his rather nice BBC supplied company car (a Chrysler - some variation on the 300 model).

Unfortunately my father wasn't able to spend Christmas with us this year as he had to go into work at the last minute to cover for someone whose wife had, without any warning, died a couple of days before.

As family tradition dictates myself, my brother and my cousin disappeared to the nearest pub for 90 minutes while my mum slaved over a hot ceramic hob. Sensing that starters were being served, we returned from the pub about 14:45 and joined everyone else at the dining table.

After recovering from a huge dinner we did the usual flop onto the nearest comfy chair and chatted.

Father returned home just as the rest of us were tucking into some pudding and drove us home just in time for Doctor Who, which we all enjoyed. We then watched the pilot episode of QI (which looked very cheaply made) followed by the first episode before retiring to bed (where Tiff & I watched an episode of The Mitchell & Webb Situation - which was originally aired on UKPlay in 2001 iirc)

Boxing Day was an exceptionally lazy day with much DVD watching.

Wednesday - back to work ho-hum (ditto for today)


[1] which isn't a form of stomach ache after consuming too much Green & Blacks)

4:29PM - Crappy Cahoot

As a nice christmas present just got an email from Cahoot saying that the interest on our flexible loan is going up from 9.1% to 9.4% tomorrow and 2 weeks later up to 14.9% - i.e. an increase in interest by 63.7%!

11:37AM - Dumb Phishers

( Spot the mistake )