photo by kelsana

Well, not ‘back’ because I’ve never been before.. but it’s a song.. blah..

A wee note to share with the world that I’m off to California (and Nevada and Arizona) for the best part of a month as of tomorrow so don’t expect any thing on this site. If you see stuff, it’s because I’ve been hacked. That’s bad.

Photos and whatnot upon return.

Here comes the sun..

The latest filum from Michael Moore is rather good and worth watching.. full of worrying, yet entertaining facts and stories. Worrying if you’re American, entertaining if you’re not. (I jest!) Either way, it’s required viewing. When I read things like 50 percent of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are due to medical expenses, it makes me glad to have the NHS. Good good good.

Edit:
I’m not sure that the above wordage really conveyed how this film made me feel.. and probably came off a bit jokey. I was thinking about it a bit more last night and really, how can a country like America not have a social healthcare system. It baffles me. Also baffles me when people complain about our NHS for waiting times etc, but when you think about what they actually do, it’s amazing. (And there’s always BUPA if you want to try it the American way.) Blah. I’m not sure I have any point; just watch the documentary when it comes out. The bit at the end in Cuba: awesome.

To celebrate summer and all that comes with it, why not freshen up your desktop with my latest free goody thing in my ‘goodies‘ section..

It’s a lush summer scene if ever I did see one

“just a lonely summer“

I wrote about this series way back when it was first on terrestrial TV.. and I got the accompanying book last Christmas.. and I still think it’s a superb series that everyone should see. And now you can!

9 out of the 11 episodes are available in their entirety on Google video and I wholeheartedly recommend every single one. They’re great. Go and watch!

(see the wikipedia page for a full episode list thing..)

Deserts | Jungles | Caves | Ice Worlds | Great Plains | From Pole To Pole | Shallow Seas | Mountains | Freshwater

(links shameless jacked from cpluv)

Just some videos which brightened up my morning in one way or another.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JCFUA-N2ps
KRS-One, Ice T, Fat Joe, Craig G and a ton of other people dropping science.. (Yeah, that’s right.. science)

http://www.wumovie.com/trail/09/wu.html
Trailer for a new documentary on the Wu-Tang Clan. Slightly worried about the production values of this but still, can I get a wuuuu-tang?!

http://sarahsilvermanonline.com/mtvintro.html
Sarah Silverman kicking off the MTV VMA’s this week. Jump to 3:37. Poor Paris Hilton.

After my previous post about my ’sitescore’ ranking of 18 (see here), the fine people at silktide took the site down for some fixes or something.. and now it’s returned.

Good news isn’t it(?) More good news is the fact that I’m on the front page, listed at #9 out of 5622 sites! Super stuff. (If you ignore the duplicate sites in the top 10, I’d be at number 7.. so that’s my official status surely? :)).

Just thought I’d share that quickly.

Caught them last night at the Southampton Guildhall and they were brilliant.

They’re my girlfriend’s favourite band so I was kinda dragged along to the gig. I think that they’re alright but I don’t generally get down with that type of music so there’s never been a massive attraction there. However, I’ve been listening to them a lot in the few weeks or so trying to make sure that I didn’t end up standing there last night wondering what was going on and by doing so, I have a newfound appreciation. Coupled with the gig itself, I reckon I now have enough appreciation to say that they were bloomin marvelous. And they were.

The support band (Kids In Glass Houses) were shit. No two ways about it. Really didn’t enjoy their 30 minutes or so. Blah. But then, no-one goes to a gig to see the support do they. (Except, I did. But that’s an anomaly). So yeah, the Manics were great. For almost two hours, they played stuff from their entire career (I can say that now, because of my self-inflicted history lesson :)), with so much vigour and quality that you couldn’t really help but enjoy it. That said, it did seem like a fairly quiet crowd.. I was only 2 people from the front and yet was extremely comfortable and uncrushed all night. Could that be partly due to the fact that the majority of the audience were in their early 40s(?) Testament to the band’s longevity I suppose..

Really good stuff. My only complaint was the fact that I had my camera confiscated because it looked too professional. Fucks sake. So I had to take photos on my phone. And they weren’t good. See the photo on this post for instance. Ah well.

I realise that this is a little old by now, but I’ve spent far too long playing with it and not enough time writing about it. Not that there’s much else I can write about it that you probably haven’t already read/discovered already. Briefly though, it’s a new feature of google maps which allows you to place ‘yourself’ (in the form of a little yellow avatar) onto a street and view a 360 panoramic photo of said street. You can zoom in and also move up and down the streets from within the panoramic too. It’s superbly cool.. Really really cool.

I’ve been a massive fan of google maps generally for ages now; I just think it’s brilliant. So fucking cool to be able to view the world like that. Hours of fun :). But this new streetmaps thing takes it to a whole new level. I’m in awe.

Alas, there’s only 5 cities (in America) covered so far but that’ll change soon enough. Luckily however, one of those cities in San Francisco, where I’ll be starting my Californian adventure from in a few weeks, so I’ve been strolling across the Golden Gate Bridge and all that in preparation. Funky.

Great great great. Go and play.

It’s not great is it(?)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6719805.stm