Freddie

We went out last night. It was really good catching up with the guys, and it's wierd typing this since they all read/write here. So, I'll skip the report, since we were all there. I'm sure Dom can do it more justice anyway.
Only conspicuous absence was Danny boy. (DJ, etc. aren't expected). So Dan has some explaining to do.
Here's to Fredrik Butler, may all his days be long and happy *chink*.

Footnote - I hope Dom doesn't feel cheap and used. Waking in the morning and remembering the things you've done is always hard, but you just put it down to too much drink and the party atmosphere.

Wish you were here

It's tedious, sitting around, trying to figure out which sites to visit which will kill time without being entirely unprofessional. Given the plethora of web tracking tools, keeping your head below the parapet is another constant consideration. I figure that finding a nice long page of information is the way to go, maybe a big wiki entry or something.
I don't have work to do. I'm either really good at this, or there really is nothing to do. It's difficult to deny the urge to pull out the laptop and play a round on my new golf game.
Anyway, I have a few pastimes that you may be able to help with, or at least kill some of your own time with, if you're in a similar position (i.e. work in I.T.)
1 - Electric Guitar - I need something to start out with, but will be decent enough to use for a while if I enjoy it
2 - Acoustic Strings - Too many out there to count, and want to try a few
3 - Missed TV - I've downloaded the first series of 24, the whole of CSI and series 1 of desperate houswives (for the girl). Anything else I should be focussing on?
4 - Holidays - Something unusual, or something worth doing at the weekend in Scotland
5 - Streaming movies over wireless. New laptop does it...almost but why does it still stall? I'd have thought 2MB/s would be the requirement, so wireless (56MB/s?) shouldn't have a problem

Traffic News

I've been playing around on GMaps since it was released a while back. It's nice, it's got some features I really like.
It was updated a couple of weeks ago to include satellite images, although the level of detail is a bit strange.
The latest thing though, is the publishing of APIs that allow geeks to use the maps to overlay all sorts of information.
Clicking on the title of this post will take you to what I think is the best example of a UK based one that I've found. It shows speed cameras, weather reports, local news and a bundle of other things I don't really understand.
I like it when technology and innovation amaze me, it breaks through my cynical tendencies and makes me smile.

Dag 498: Det kallt är av

It has been a little quiet round here as I have been back in my normal home for the last 2 weeks and I don't get much chance to get on the computer there.

I still haven't done a posting about my trip to see Kent in Stockholm, which is now many weekends ago, but I still intend to do it. One of my excuses is that I have been trying to load all my photos from that trip onto my newly purchased .mac web space which I will then link to within the posting. Getting the photos on there was easy, it was when I decided I wanted to rename them that the problems started. With .mac you get a thing called an iDisk. This appears as a volume on your desktop and when you copy files onto it they will be automatically synced up to the iDisk you have on the web. This means you can do things to your local iDisk when you are not hooked up and next time you hook up it will get resynced. So the first problem was that I renamed all of the photos on my local iDisk whcih then got copied onto the web iDisk, ok so far, but then the original photos on the web iDisk got synced back to my powerbook so I now had to copies of the photos on both the web and my laptop. After various bits of messing around I deced to delet my iDisk and start again.

So now I had my iDisk complete with 1 set pf photos with proper names, rather than the numbers my camera had automatically given them. My next step was to create my .mac photo album to which I would be able to link from my soon coming kent concert weekend blog entry. This was easy enough to do, apert from the fact that the photos were sorted alphabetically so they were no longer in cronological order (which they had been on my first trial as the generated number were sequential). This is fixable though as the .mac website allows you to drag the photos around into the order you want. The problem is it is very slow and after dragging a random number of photos into the correct order you suddenly find that the descriptions that go with the photos have suddenly moved out by one place.

So if i can't swap the order of the photos without this happening I need to get the photos in the correct order to start with. So it was back to my local iDisk to rename the files to have a number at the beginning. So once I had done this (and deleted the iDisk again because I had ended up with 2 copies of the photos again and then recreated one with numbers at the start of the filenames) I recreated the online photo album. Unfortunately the sorting of photos was not exactly as I had thought so it went 1 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 20 21 etc...

Now it was nearly right, there were 9 photos in the wrong place. I tried moving these really slowly but, again, ended up with the descriptions getting out of sync. So I renamed the ones with a single digit to have a zero in front of them, which would solve the sorting issue, but of course I ended up with duplicates again.

At this point I ended up taking 2 weeks of work and have just returned today. I currently have an empty iDisk and I will try doing the whole procedure again in the near future. I will then do my blog entry for my weekend in Stockholm (if I still remember what happened by then).

After reading Al's eloquant and moving post I had a look at the stats to see if it had caused our ratings to soar through the roof and found that the share of languages on the computers that connect to this site are as follows:
English: 86.75%
Swedish: 10.84%
Russian: 1.2%
German: 1.2%

This is pretty pleasing to me as it means that as well as gaining a good international reputation for delivery both interesting and hard hitting blog enries, we are also finding that 10.84% of end users have there language set to Swedish. I wonder how many of those percentage points are attributable to that fact that my powerbook has it's language set to Swedish?

To our Swedish fans I would like to say "Tack", to our German fans I would like to say "Danke" and to our Russian fans I would like to say "My tap doesn't work". (ok that bit doesn't work that well on paper, but it is funny because one of the few things I can say in Russian is "my tap doesn't work" - the problem is that I don't know how to write it down. It sounds a bit like "my er cram nerra bootiette". I can also say "where is the map" in Russian. In fact I don't know how to say thankyou in Russian, but thanks anyway for making up 1.2% of our viewing figures.

Until next time, as always, dos vidanya.

The Heat Is On

Well well, it's quiet in here.

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
Best.Opening.Line.Ever.
I was reading the latest one of this series of books (exercise for the reader) at the weekend. I was thinking about how the story has emerged and was trying to decide whether the plot had just disappeared up the writer's arse, or whether it was literary genius that I was just too intellectually immature to 'get'. As always, my mind decided it'd had enough of that pretentious nonsense and went off at a tangent. I tried to catch it, honest I did, but it was just too fast.
As always, the thoughts were linked, slowly but determinedly toward where the subconscious wanted the almost-conscious mind to be. I kind of like it when that happens, it feels like the mental equivalent of gravity, all the planets and stars being the thoughts, ideas and emotions swirling around in the immense darkness of our mental universes until the inevitable black hole appears to pull in the nearest ones.
Well, in this particular case, the black hole was pulling in the star that was 1982, with the planets that were my 11th birthday, the vast, alien world that was the move from the highlands of Scotland to the slumlands of Glasgow and the newly discovered world of adult books. Not those kind of adult books you filthy minded minx, the other ones.
My grandparent's (nana and gaga, would you believe) house was full of books. A strange collection of novels from god knows when, combined with large encyclopaedia-like tomes that contained all the wisdom of Victorian Britain about raising and entertaining children. Not in the self-help way that books are these days, more in a "books about children, for children" kind of a way. Obviously written by people with no idea of what children were. There were pages about origami, kite flying, counting raindrops and other such pure and innocent pursuits. I remember the melancholic way I used to read these, already allowing the little descriptions of innocent, happy pastimes supplant the memories of life up North. My recollections of playing in the street at midnight with my friends taking on a shade of brown and my cheap 70's clothing morphing into a Victorian schoolboy's uniform of shorts and blazer, with a little peaked cap. My idealistic memories were doubtlessly fed by the current environment of endless filth, the streets covered in empty crisp packets and cigarette ends, the kids with their dried in, snottery beaks running around and swearing before the inevitable fight broke out between a couple of the sorrowful latch-keys.
I started school after the summer. My parents must have felt sorry for us, or maybe just wanted us out of the way, because they'd shipped of the youngest (which included me) to nana's for most of the 7 week summer. I'd spent that time in the 5 house village of Kentallen, with loch linnhe across the road from the house and endless bracken-covered hills at the back. After a couple of months in Glasgow, it was a welcome release to come back 'home' and feel the sun, and run up the hills with the dogs and not have to worry about the big kids in the street picking on the new kid because of his weird accent and permanently startled look on his face. Reality, however, had to return.
The first day of school, and I was all dressed up with my brown satchel strapped in securely over both shoulders. The uniforms from my old school - which had been a little village one with two classrooms, one for primary 1-4 and one for primary 5-7 - weren't suitable attire for the new school, so I'd been dressed up in black trousers and white shirt in lieu of finding out the proper dress code. I should have sensed the difference immediately as I was being walked to school by mum. All the other kids were strolling down the road alone, some a lot younger than me, dressed in jeans and trainers, with their Nike and Adidas sports bags casually hanging from one shoulder. I was, however, still in startled rabbit mode, and took in none of this and all of this at the same time.
I was introduced to my classmates after registration, where we'd all stood in the sports hall and recited the Lord's Prayer. I stood at the front of the class as instructed by Miss Brown, or White or Turquoise or something, as she told the slack-jawed, uninterested throng of thirty other weans my name and that I was new here, which I'm sure they'd never have guessed if she hadn't mentioned it. I took my red, burning face to my new desk and sat down, hoping against hope that I was done, that I could just disappear into the quiet corners and be forgotten. The teacher was asking about something to do with something. I must have listened at the time, because when she asked me a question about it, I answered. I only did because that was what you did when teachers asked you questions. You did your best to answer in the hope that they didn't tell your mum you were misbehaving the next time she dropped in for a cup of tea on the way to the bus stop. I got the answer right. "Hey, we've got the Brain of Britain here!" exclaimed the helpful teacher, and moved on to a random selection of hard-nosed pupils. My face burned again, not sure whether I'd done well or badly, but sure that the attention was unwelcome and wanting to be left alone.
The fire alarm went. That meant it was 10.30am. That meant the washless throng moved out to the concrete playground for 15 minutes, when another alarm would go off and we'd troop back to the classroom. Just another little difference then, no more head teacher coming out with her church bell in hand, smiling and telling the kids is was 'time to come back in and learn children'.
I stood in the playground, trying to be invisible, as one of my classmates came over, trailed by 3 or 4 more of them. "So, where the fuck are you fucking from then?" he asked. "North Connell" I said meekly. "Where the fuck is that?" asked my new friend. "Up North." I replied. He turned to his friends - "Brain of fucking Britain is from fucking up North.", and turned back to me. "Do you want a square go?” I tried to translate this and failed. "What's that?" I asked politely. One of his friends interjected, "Just fucking deck him Jimmy!” The others joined in with a rhythmic "Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight" chant. The nearest other kids came over to the crowd and joined in. I stood, surrounded, with tears threatening to fall and a bladder desperate to unleash a torrent of hot piss into my new trousers. The boy swung at me, I saw the fist through blurry eyes and swayed a bit so it just glanced across my temple. The rage came upon me and I unleashed a torrent of blows, obviously using my brown leather satchel as my weapon of choice. He fell to the ground after the first couple of shots, as I continued to rain satchel laden terror upon him until a teacher ran over and dragged me away to the headmistress' office. "I hope you're not going to be trouble" she said "We already have enough of that". I answered that I wasn't and I was sorry and she guided me back to class. I sat back at my desk and continued learning, thankful that I had black trousers on, which didn't show the damp patch very well. And anyway, I'd only leaked a little bit, and my pants would have soaked most of that up.
So I started reading books, becoming the hero for a while as I immersed myself in these new worlds. And I read that opening line "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.", and was hooked. I wanted to be both men. I wanted to run away, but 'flee' just sounded much faster and more honourable. And I wanted to be the gunslinger, standing firm with no emotion in my eyes as I watched the fear in the face of those that had forgotten their father. As always, some middle ground was eventually found. I gave James a few bloody noses and we became friends. I tumbled around with a few other kids and won and lost. I found there were acceptable limits when I picked up the hammer in woodwork to subdue a particularly annoying boy and was sent home for a couple of days on 'suspension'. I never hit him, just scared him a bit. And I peeked over the changing room curtains when Debbie was changing for the end of (primary 7) year school play at which I was receiving the school Dux medal, and saw her rapidly developing breasts. I don't know where the medal is these days, or where Debbie is for that matter, but I know which one is my favourite planet in the Universe of my mind.

Dag 474: Know who you are at every age

Does anybody really know who they are?

I certainly don't feel that I know who I am and I think I have known this since I was a teenager. If you like a certain type of music and (for example Goth or Punk) then you could say there is a lifestyle that goes with that (including a way to dress) and that should mean that you have a pretty good idea of what you are and what you believe in.

If you look at the list of concerts I went to in a previous post you will see that it is not limited to one style of music. I would certainly admit to being a punk in my youth; I had a fairly large punk record collection and my clothes included an orange mohair jumper and some black pvc trousers with studded belt (all purchased from X Clothes in Leeds along with various other similar items). I also had an orange corduroy jacket that I sprayed the names of various punk bands on (clash, x-ray spex, sex pistols etc) and I can even remember going for a haircut and saying I wanted a spiky punk hair cut and being told that pure punk haircuts were not in anymore and I should let them cut it in a way that would allow my hair to look normal most of the time, but I could spike it up when needed. I agreed but knew the hairdresser were only saying that because he was scared that if he gave me what I wanted he would be facing the wrath of my parents (I was about 13 or 14 at the time). The first band I was in (cloud 9) was also a punk band.

However, I also liked Genesis (who I think were one of the arch enemies of most punks) and also quite fancied myself as a bit of a hippy (again not usually considered the best of buddies with punks).

This feeling of not really knowing who I am has persisted ever since and rears its ugly head at regular times. I often find it hard to make decisions and need to seek opinions from other people. If I really knew who I was I wouldn't need to do this as I woudl just know what to choose. There are certain things that I know I like, so when a choice presents itself if one of the options is related to one of the things I like I will usually go with that one, even if there is evidence that another choice might be better. For example, I am pretty fond of Scotland so will always choose Scottish beef over any other kind. If I am shopping for clothes and have seen a few tops, but am not sure which to get I will see if any of them have a connection with something like. If one is made in Sweden, that is the one I choose (even if it does fit quite right or does really suite me). Or, if there is no better link, I may choose one that is yellow or blue.

Another side effect of not knowing who I am is the fact that I have become quite interested in personality tests in the hope that they might give me some additional insight into the mattter. A year or so ago I did a myers-briggs test and it came out as ISFP. I felt pretty good at the end of it because the blurb did seem to be a pretty good match. I then did a search for ISFP on the internet and saw that the ISFP type is often referred to as a Composer, which pleased me as I used to spend most of my free time writing and recording music.

This morning Daniel sent me a link to a personality test and filling it in was, with me, the work of a moment. I then noticed that the site contained a whole raft of other personality tests so I started clicking away and was in personality test heaven.

I still have a feeling that I don't really know who I really am though.

I'm not really mad am I?

Dag 472: Keep your silence to yourself

I am currently living in a downstairs flat that used to be a house. Therefore there is a bloke living in the upstairs flat above me. His favourate pastime is moving furniture around. I have lived there about 2 and a bit months and every evening that he is in he moves furniture around while I am watching TV. Each morning he must decide that he isn't happy with the places he moved the furniture too the night before because I hear him moving it all back again. There must be something wrong with me, because in all the time I have lived there I haven't moved a single piece of furniture around. I bet I would make a really good upstairs neighbour.

After listing all the concerts I have ever been to on my previous post (and I have thought of some more groups that ar missing, so I will be updating it agin soon) I decided to dig out some of my albums by those groups and go on a bit of a nostalgia trip. I had a copy of Real Life by Magazine that I picked up a couple of years back as I saw it cheap somewhere, but I never got round to playing it because I keep listening to Swedish music all the time. So I put this on and was amazed at how current it still sounded. Once it finished I put it straighth back on for a second airing and decided I needed more magazine stuff as a priority. As well as originally owning this album on LP I also had Secondhand Daylight, whcih I remember also liking very much at the time so I logged on to iTunes to see if I could purchase it there, but they only had Real Life and a couple of compilations, so I looked on amazon instead, but Secondhand Daylight had far too long a lead time so I ordered a 3 cd box set called (Maybe it's right to be nervous now) which is also basically a compilation, but the final cd contains some John Peel sessions that I remember I taped from the radio first time round. I used to be much less blinkered in those days and would listen to John Peel everynight and start recording every song he played. If I didn't like the song by half way through I would press stop and rewind to the end of the previous song and get ready to start recording the next one. I had loads of these tapes and I discovered loads of good bands that way. I wish I still had those tapes now.

I also gave some of my Cocteau Twins cds a replay - I had forgotten just how much I used to like them too. I remember being really impressed that Nicola managed to get the vicar to put on a cocteau twins cd in the church before here wedding. That was the wedding where everyone was seated and the vicar said "Let us pray". Everybody bowed their head apart from Andreas (Catherine's then boyfried - now husband) who stood up. I found that I couldn't stop myself laughing uncontrollably for the whole remainder of the service - but having said that I often get uncontrollable fits of the giggles in church, its probably a guilt thing or something.

I will forget myself......

Dag 465: I just can't get you out of my head

Following on from a great weekend in Stockholm which included a top of the range Kent concert (about which I will write more later) I managed to go and see Tori Amos last night thanks to DJ just happening to mention that his wife was going to the consert on Monday lunchtime. I had no idea that she was doing a tour, although I had bought The Beekeeper with the money I got for my old volvo 1800ES a month or so ago, but had only listened to the first few songs, so I got straight onto the interweb, and after establishing that there were tickets left I then tried to russle up a group of hangers on to accompany me there. After failing to do this I booked a single ticket for myself.

I bought my first Tory Amos album (Little Earthquakes) on cassette back in the early nineties when I used to spend all my time writing and recording songs and she was one of my inspirations (although my piano playing can't even be mentioned in the same sentence as hers - if it could I would probably be famous for my music rather than my blog). Anyway I liked her music more and more as her subsequent albums came out and once I had got my hands on From the Choirgirl hotel, I never played any other cd for about a year. This was around the late 90s and then I started getting into Swedish music in 2000, such as Eva Dahlgren, Marie fredriksson and Kent so Tori did get sidelined a little, but I did order a Tori Amos t-shirt off the web while I was working in Sweden. The t-shirt bore the legend "when pianos try to be guitars" which is a line from Northern Lad, one of my favourate Tori Amos tracks.

So I went to the concert on my own wearing my Kent tour t-shirt so I could look more cool than all the traditionalists who had turned up in their Tori Amos t-shirts. I have to confess to not knowing all the songs, but she did play Northern Lad, which was fantastic and a number of other of her bast songs. It was a shame she didn't do any songs from the studio part of To Venus and Back, but it was still a great concert and I had waited many many years to get to see here play live.

The complete set list was as follows:
Tuesday, June 7, 2005
Glasgow, U.K. - Clyde Auditorium (The Armadillo)

Original Sinsuality | Father Lucifer | Cars and Guitars | Northern Lad | Jamaica Inn | Cooling | Bells for Her

Tori's Piano Bar: Nothing Ever Happens (Del Amitri) | Turn (Travis)

Ruby Through the Looking-Glass | Marianne | Mother Revolution | Yes, Anastasia | The Beekeeper

E n c o r e 1 : Silent All These Years | Merman

E n c o r e 2 : Twinkle | Toast | Hey Jupiter

I have a list in my head of groups I want to see and this list has diminished considerably over the last few years as its not very oftern that somebody gets added to it. Tori Amos was one of the key members of this list, so I thought I had better round this off with a list off all the groups I can remember going to see (in approximate reverse order). This is quite a long list so you may want to make a cup of tea and this point.

Editor's note: I have just decided to update this and include locations and dates where known - I will return to this each time a get a bit more info for it. Please let me know if you have any of the missing information.

Editor's note 10/06/2005: I think I have got about as far as I can get with the dates/venues on this list. If you happen to come accross this and you can help me with any missing/incorrect info please add a comment - thanks.

Editor's note 12/12/2007: My master gig list has expanded again and is now being managed on last.fm and can be seen here.

Tori Amos - Glasgow, SECC - 07/06/2005
Kent - Stockholm - 28/05/2005
Kings of Convenience - Edinburgh, Queens Hall - 12/10/2004
Call and Response - Edinburgh, Queens Hall - 12/10/2004
Kings of Convenience - Glasgow, The Arches - 23/06/2004
Kraftwerk - London, Brixton Academy - 20/03/2003
Roxette - Brussels, Vorst National - 22/10/2001
Björk - Brussels, Cirque royal - 26/09/2001
Sting - Stockholm, Skansen - 09/06/2001
Capercaillie - Scotland, Huntley - 4th - 6th August 2000
Yes - Sheffield, City Hall - 10/02/2000
Karen Matheson - Glasgow, Celtic Connections Gaelic concert
Dougie MacLean - Darlington, The Arts Centre - 1999?
Robin Williamson - Halifax, Square chapel - 28/11/1998
Capercaillie - York, Barbican Centre - 21/09/1997
Clannad - Harrogate, Conference centre -
Everything but the girl - Harrogate, Conference centre -
Cocteau Twins - Leeds, Town and Country Club - 10/02/1994
Emerson lake and Palmer - Newcastle, City Hall - 26/11/1992
Genesis - Leeds, Roundhay Park - 31/07/1992
Cocteau Twins - Sheffield, City Hall - 28/10/1990
Notting Hillbillies - York, Opera House - 29/04/1990
Peter Hammill - Leeds, Irish Centre - 21/02/1990
Donovan - Manchester
Rick Wakeman - York, Opera House - 1989?
Yes (ABWH) - Houston, summit - 28/08/1989
Peter Hammill - Leeds, Irish Centre - 19/04/1989
Here and now - Leeds, polytechnic
Bruce Springsteen - Leeds, Roundhay Park - 07/07/1985
Associates - Manchester, Hacienda
The Psychadelic Furs - Manchester, Apollo - 24/05/1984
Blancmange - Leeds, University - 18/05/1984
Hawkwind - Bradford, University - 01/03/1984
Peter Gabriel - London, Crystal Palace - 09/07/1983
The Undertones - London, Crystal Palace - 09/07/1983
God Squad - Harrogate, Cairn Hotel
Simple Minds - Leeds, University - 27/11/1982
China Crisis - Leeds, University - 27/11/1982
Yazoo - Leeds, university - 06/11/1982
Hawkwind - Bradford, St Georges Hall - 24/10/1982
John Martyn - Leeds, university - 09/10/1982
Genesis (6 of the best) - Milton keynes, bowl - 02/10/1982
John Martyn - Milton keynes, bowl - 02/10/1982
Talk Talk - Milton keynes, bowl - 02/10/1982
Rolling Stones - Leeds, Roundhay Park - 25/07/1982
New Order - Leeds, Tiffany's - 09/03/1982
Caberet Valtaire - London, ICA - 30/12/1980
TG - Manchester, Rafters - 04/12/1980
Killing Joke - London, Trafalgar square - 26/10/1980
U2 - Leeds, Futurama - 13/09/1980
Soft Cell - Leeds, Futurama - 13/09/1980
Echo and the bunnymen - Leeds, Futurama - 13/09/1980
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Leeds, Futurama - 13/09/1980
The League of Gentlemen - Leeds, Futurama - 13/09/1980
I'm so hollow - Leeds, Futurama - 13/09/1980
Altered images - Leeds, Futurama - 13/09/1980
Bauhaus - Leeds, Fan Club - 21/08/1980
TG - Leeds, Fan Club - 24/02/1980
Steve Hackett - Bradford, St Georges Hall - 29/10/1979
Peter gabriel - Bath, Pavillion - 23/08/1979
Random Hold - Bath, Pavillion - 23/08/1979
Steve Hackett - Sheffield, City Hall - 22/06/1979
Magazine -Leeds, University - 05/05/1979
Human League - Leeds, University - 05/05/1979
Simple Minds - Leeds, University - 05/05/1979
Peter Gabriel - London, Hammersmith odeon - 22/12/1978
Penetration - Leeds, Polytechnic?
John Cooper Clark - Leeds, Polytechnic?
The Rezillos - Leeds, Fan Club?
Human League - Sheffield and Wakefield
Orange Juice - Leeds?
Joseph K - Leeds?
Vice Versa (before they changed their name to ABC) - Leeds, Warehouse?
The Buzzcocks - Sheffield, City Hall
999 - Leeds, Fan Club -
Wire - Harrogate, PGs - 29/04/1978
x-ray spex - Harrogate, PGs - 22/04/1978
The Boomtown rats - Leeds, University - 11/12/1977

I may have also seen: Roy Harper, Thompson twins and Rema Rema, but I can't quite remember...


Doesn't that bring back memories?

If you have been to any concerts with me that are not on this list, remind me and I'll add them on.

Dag 452: Gruppbokning

With less than 24 hours to go, here is the latest news from Scotland:

The current weather prospect is:
friday - 17° full sun
saturday - 15° light rain
sunday - 18° sunny intervals

First drink (or two) in Stockholm will be in the Ice Bar at 18:45 (it was the only free slot, but we will hopefully make it in time).

Things I have to remember:
bring passport (currently in my inside jacket pocket)
bring kent ticklets (they are currently in my laptop bag, but I won't be taking that so I must remember to take them out)
check with Adrian whether he thinks I should use the internet check in facility and check in this afternoon (you can do it 22 hours before the flight - do you want a window or an isle?)
bring my printouts of flight bookings and hotel booking ref numbers etc.
if there is anything else I need to remember I can't remember what it is to put it on this list, which means I may still not remember it tomorrow - so we are stuffed!

Also a lot of these Stockholm bars seem to like you to dress up a bit in order to get in and I haven't got any particularly decent clothes with me. I was going to buy some on Saturday, but that won't help me for Friday night.

Dag 451: this night wounds time

In just two short days time Adrian and I will be heading off to Stockholm to see Kent and do some other stuff that will result in a fun weekend for all concerned.

I have been monitoring the weather situation and as per usual the forecast changes several times a day. The current prognosis is:
Friday 27th - 19° and full sun (this morning it said 16° and full sun)
Saturday 28th - 19° and sunny intervals (this morning it said 16° and full sun)
Sunday 29th - 20° and light rain (this morning it said 23° and full sun)

So friday looks like having the best weather at the moment, but as we don't arrive until around 17:30 we won't be able to take full advantage of it. I am hoping that when I look again later this afternoon it may have improved again. But I guess it will all be different when I look again tomorrow.

I have been trying to cram up on my Swedish by listening to only Swedish music and watching Swedish DVDs over the last few days. I watched the original Norwegian version of Insomnia (which isn't as quite as strange as it sounds because it features 2 Swedish detectives so there is a fair amount of Swedish being spoken in it) and last night I watched the first 2 hours of Den 5:e Kvinnan so I've got the remaining 2 hours left for tonight. It doesn't have english subtitles so I've been watching it with Swedish subtitles to help me link up the sounds being heard to what is written down but they don't leave the subtitles up long enough to read them. So if the person responsible for those subtitles is reading this, please make them stay on the screen a bit longer for the next one you do.

On thursday night I shall probably watch Sprängaren again as its not only good, but resonably easy to follow what is being said and they keep the subtitles on the screen for long enough.

I am really looking forward to the plane touching down at Arlanda and my first steps on Swedish ground, it always gives me a goose pimply/hairs standing up on the back of the neck type feeling.

So Adrian, where do you fancy having our first drink on friday evening? Shall we go to the coolest bar on Stockholm (I will probably need to book a 45 minute slot) or maybe one of the highest bars in Stockholm or one of the apartment loftest type bars?

Adrian and Dom: going out in Stockholm whatever the weather.

Shelving, a beginner's guide

I'm home again. Not that I was away too far, but was skipping around catching up with West coast people, and praying quite a lot.
For some strange reason, I expected to have a flurry of free time due to finishing somewhat prematurely my last contract. This didn't happen. I also expected to feel an elevated sense of wellbeing due to escaping the clutches of corporate America, umm, UK. This somewhat happened.
It's very strange, no matter how long I do this contracting thing, I think I'll always feel a bit strange when one ends. I always go through the same doubts over whether I'll ever work again, should I just take the first job that comes along, even if it's bar work? This usually lasts for a week or two, then the blissful realization that I don't need to get dressed in the morning kicks in and I smile.
I've been putting up shelves. I bought some power tools, as I felt I was sufficiently mature enough to use a jigsaw without losing too many fingers. So far, so good with that one. I also got an angle grinder, as I felt it was my duty as a man to have a least one power tool which I had no idea what it was for.
I've also discovered the pleasure of Cash & Carry shopping. My mum goes to these places for a little shop business to pick up stuff to sell. Now, I always thought these places meant buying things by the hundred, which isn't true. She wanted to go to one, and I said I'd take her. This was obviously a ruse to get on her good side and a hint of self flagellation by suffering a shop. Once we got in though, I was like a kid in a candy store, and not even the good candy, the one I like. All the tat you see in markets starts it's (retail) life here. You pick up those toy guns that shoot little balls for a couple of quid, and they sell for a tenner at the market. This allows you to easily buy 20 and hand them out to all the kids in the street while starting a sweep with the neighbours over the number of permanent injuries that will occur within a set period of time.
Anyway, I now have a compass in my car and can tell you at any given time which direction I'm going (£2.50).
So, not much else happening - was at a first communion on Sunday, am off to Ireland this weekend, then another communion next weekend. One would imagine that I am being turned to the dark side of the force with all these goings on, but I can assure you that my reaction to certain religious events on Sunday afternoon would prove that all the bluebells are still blue.

Dag 443: Jag förstår inte!

Äntligen min post i svenska - till och med det är mycket felaktigt svenska.

Adrian och jag kommer att vara i Stockholm på fredag 27 maj för att se en kent konsert. Konserten är på lördag så på fredag kväll vill vi gå ut och slå runt.

För två år sedan reste Adrian och jag till Sverige för att se en Sting konsert på Skansen. Vi hade en bra tid och hade jag min första massage - det var på Sturbadet.

Den här är inte så enkelt. Jag behöver mer träning.

Förlåt för min svenska.
Jag är snart tillbaka i engelska.

Dag 439: The list's the thing

So, I've singularly failed to come up with a post in Swedish so I'll do my next one in Swedish and this one can be in English.

Lots of things have happened so here is a summary:
I am currently doing shifts, which I am not enjoying at all. Al has left us so we had a leaving do in the Candy Bar, Edinburgh. This was my last night out thanks to the fact that I have been on constant late or early shifts every day since then. Did I mention that I don't like doing shifts?

I managed to get one of my synths hooked up to my computer and recorded a couple of test tracks to get back into the swing of things, but I haven't been able to do any more recording since as I have been working on shifts - which I don't like doing. I wonder how many musicians have had their musical careers ruined by having to work on shifts? Probably 1.

The cough that I have had for the last 4 weeks finally seems to have gone away which hopefully means I will be 100% fit and well for my trip to Stockholm in 2 weeks time. I'm sure it was related to my having to work on shifts.

I bought a Talk now Swedish language cd to do a bit of brushing up and so far I have got 550 points and not a single question wrong. The program is really well put together, but it is also really easy. I need to try and find an intermediate type version, but there probably isn't much time to sort this out before I go. 550 points is actually pretty good when you take into account the fact that I've had to work on shifts everyday since Al left.

As far as my movie watching goes - I haven't had time to watch any because of all the shifts I've had to work.

When I go to Sweden on 27th may I need to buy the following items, which I hope I will be able to do without wasting too much of Adrian's valuable time:
1 copy of the white noise DVD - release date 27/05/2005
1 copy of any Kurt Wallander DVDs that have been released since my last visit
1 Beck DVD (to add to my collection, I get one more each trip)
1 Pippi Långstrump DVD (purely for Swedish practice)
1 pair of Nudie jeans
1 black Nudie long sleeved top + several t-shirts
some socks and pants
3 bottles of gla shampo (enough to last me until my next trip)
I may also by a new mobile phone while I am there

While we are on the subject of listing things on desks, here is the current contents of mine:
1 Apple PowerBook (which I am currently writing this on)
1 Compaq Evo desktop (which I can't write this on because the site is blocked by websense)
1 desk phone with a toy (space fox) from a kinder egg stuck to the ear-piece
1 p800 mobile phone
1 p800 spare keyboard flap with corner tag broken off (and 2 bits of white plastic from fibre optics cable stick into 2 holes in it)
1 penny coin in a red metal clip
1 paper clip stuck in a piece of blutack which has the red petals from a fake poppy stuck round it
3 floppy disks (2 containing midi files and the other labelled kintail)
1 pizza express napkin
2 starbucks napkins
3 plain white napkin
1 superman coffee mat (brought back from America by Al)
1 pair of cheap headphones
1 copy of Solaris operating Environment Boot Camp (hardly used)
1 notebook bought from NK in Stockholm
1 price tag for above book marked Bookbinders Design SEK 195
1 grey sweatshirt sporting the words "alpha chi omega" which I don't really like
1 plastic fork
2 plastic knives
1 pot of tipp-ex
1 pad of post-it notes (yellow)
1 sachet of malt viniger
1 sachet of tomato ketchup
1 Paul Smith wallet bought in Stockholm (I wanted to buy a Swedish wallet, but due to various pressures, which I won't go into now, I was forced into buying this instead)
a huge amount of printed out pages with such things as how to stop and start callidus on them
1 sun microsystems mouse mat which states "the network is the computer" - so I guess I don't actually need my computer any more, I can just do everything I need using the network
3 blank cds
1 pack of chewing gum from marks & expensive
3 little paper umbrellas
1 plastic spooky castle (complete with ghost and working doors - from a kinder egg)
1 fake moustach
1 brass hook type thing that you use to tie up the chord from some blinds or curtains - this is stuck to the side of my monitor with blu tack

I would also like a poster containing the words "Ye be warned! Pirates be operatin' in this area, yarr." to be taken into consideration.

Vi ses nästa gång!

No shitting in the toilet

So, early morning alarm call. Roughly 6am, to get the 0750 flight from
EDI (Note the technical travel speak). Quick taxi to airport, no queue
at check in, all is well with the world. Then the announcement came.
"Due to technical problems, flight globespan xyz will be delayed for
an hour". No big deal, let's go get breakfast. 12 hours later flight
globespan xyz finally left the ground, 0200 we get to the apartment in
Majorca (Puerto Pollensa), which is nice.
Apparently you can claim something from your insurance company for
this, but I haven't really looked into that yet.
Anyway, awake the next morning and open the curtains for a look, it'll
be nice to see the sunshine after a long Scottish winter. It was
pissing down. No, I mean it, real rain hammering from the bleak, dark
skies and bouncing off the pavement below. "Better pop out for milk
and water and stuff then", I think cheerfully. The town (village?) is
pretty small, and a lovely place. Nice harbour and waterfront and
little squares and thing of that ilk. We're a little out of the
centre, with an apartment facing the beach. Three bedrooms, living
area, dining area, kitchen, couple of bathrooms and a balcony both
back and front. This is great, but a lot of heating when the weather
is poor. So, we grab a car for 3 days, only 60 euros to tour the
island and enjoy the horn beeping drivers that prove their masculinity
by showing how they can be aggressive with a couple of tons underneath
them.
The sun came out on Wednesday. I liked that. We went to the beach, and
I dug a really deep hole for the wee man, who fought a bit, but
eventually I managed to drag him out to see it. Four hours well spent
then.
Obviously I got my back burnt. It hurt. Now it itches. A lot.
So, back to the airport on Friday. Flight was delayed.
Saw a sign on the wall though - apparently the EU say that if you're
delayed for 5 hours you should get a bonus payment and the people from
the flying company need to come to your house and shower you with rose
petals. Or something. I was tired.

Dag 411: min svenskt har inte blivit bättre

Its now about a year since my last Swedish lesson and every day in every way I feel I am forgetting more and more. If anybody out there wants to write to me in (simple) Swedish it would be most welcome and I will reply to the best of my current ability - which isn't saying much. That way I may be able to start crawling back up the slope of Swedish knowledge that I am steadily sliding down. Maybe I should try doing my next post entirely in Swedish.

Next month I will be visiting Sweden again and (as always) this time I want to try and get by using as little english as possible.

Once upon a time my posts seemed to revolve around a single theme or story and often contained a number of in jokes that no one other than me would even notice were there, but lately my posts seem to be more of a list of disparate statements.

Here comes my latest list of disparate statements:

Last weekend I collected my new Smart car. It is red and silver and I very much enjoyed driving it from Yorkshire up to Edinburgh last monday. I have fitted my Blaupunkt Stockholm cd player that I bought about a year ago, but never got around to fitting in my old Volvo. I have also installed an ICE iPod thingy that allows me to listen to my iPod in the car, but as the cd player is such an old model it doesn't fully integrate so I don't get the title of the current track being displayed on the blaupunkt display. Next I will be getting some better speakers.

About 12 years ago I had a fairly basic home recording studio setup and used to spend most of my time writing and recording songs. Ocassionaly I would add some singing to the songs, but only when the house was empty and I would never let anybody hear the songs with me singing on apart from the fact that I once sent a tape with 4 of my songs with singing to a magazine called Home and Studio recording. The tape was eventually reviewed and I was pretty pleased with what was said, although it wasn't exactly a glowing review. The last pieces of music I recorded was about 8 years ago and I still have a copy of those last two (instrumental) tracks on my iPod, but most of my recorded output is currently lost. Recently I have been regrettingb the fatc that I haven't played any music for such a long time so when I drove my Smart car up last Monday I brought my old Korg Prophesy with me and this week I ordered enough stuff to be able to start some simple recording onto my apple powerbook. If it goes ok I will bring a few more bits of kit up here and expand my setup. Things have moved on alot since I was last doing this sort of stuff. I can remember when Yamaha brought out the first sub £10,000 cd recorder and recording to hard disk was unheard of back then. I'll let you know how it goes.

Yesterday Evening on my way home from work I spent one hour in HMV trying to decide how to spend some of the money I got from selling my old Volvo, which I no longer needed because I had bought a Smart car. I picked up various DVDs and CDs, but kept putting them back. I had a wallet full of money and could have bought a whole stash of stuff, but I kept thinking if I spent all the money then I wouldn't have any left. In the end I bought the new cd by Tori Amos and the Smiley's People DVD, and thats all. I could have spent about 5 times as much as I did, but for some reason I didn't. The other ground breaking think that happened in that HMV shop was that I bought the first non scandinavian cd I had bought for a very long time (at least 2 years).

Dag 396: Why I hate stage musicals and other assorted ramblings

Tonight will be my last in my current house. I am nowhere near ready to move out and although I have found somewhere pretty nice to move into I have no motivation to actually get round to moving in or fill in the forms or any of that other crap. After last weekend I decided that I wanted to get a flat in Edinburgh and get rid of my (t)rusty volvo 1800es and buy a Smart car instead. I found a suitable flat in the grassmarket and I was going to tell my agency that I was cancelling my move into the flat I had paid them a deposit on the week before. I was just about to ring the agency when they rang me asking me what time I wanted to meet my new landlady to get the keys off her on Friday. I immediately felt bad for being about to back out of renting her flat so I arranged a time and that was that. So I'm not moving to Edinburgh, but I still think I will get a Smart car.

Adrian recently mentioned that he had an anaphylactic reaction to stage musicals and so do I. They are one of the few things that I really hate in this world. I also hate many other types of stage drama - especially really dramatic and pretentious crap. In fact the only types of play that I like are murders/whodunnits and comedies. Everything else stinks. Some of you may have been reading this post with some feeling of growing excitement that you are actually going to find out once and for all why I hate stage musicals etc with such a vengeance, but I am afraid that your hopes are being utterly dashed. The heading is completely misleading as I don't actually know why I hate them so much. I have thought about it long and hard, but I can't really come up with a reason. I'm sure Adrian and I will be discussing this at some point on our up and coming trip to the land of the midnight sun, and if I come up with any conclusions you can be rest assured that you will be reading about it here first.

While we are on the subject of things that I hate, I also hate living in this country (and by that I mean the UK not Scotland) and would actually like to move to Sweden. In fact my ideal life would be having nothing whatsoever to do with drama and living in Sweden and having a left hand drive smart car. I would also like to be able to put my new Kent poster (that came free with my ltd edition copy of Du och Jag Döden) up in my own house!!!

I got one of those new two screen gameboys at the beginnning of last week and I have so far got 50 stars in Super Marios, which I think is pretty good going.

Yesterday Al came along with me to help me sort out a few things to do with moving house and I decided to jet wash my car for the first time (I have owned it for just under a year). The first roundabout we went round on the way back to work caused about a gallon of water to deposit itself on his legs and feet so I would like to offically apologise to him on the internet - to make it special.

If you get one of those things on a spring that you push down and it pops up at some random time later and stick it to the phone handle of one of our office phones with blue tack, when the things pops up the phone light comes on briefly.

Dag 378: Life in the slow lane

Last evening I watched The Missing. Reading the back cover it sounded like the ideal film for me to watch for the mood I was in at the time. It involved somebody who was seeing a therapist after her son was killed in a plane crash, but the therapist says she has invented the son and he never existed. I knew the film had a twist in it and when it was revealed it certainly was not what I expected. I won't spoil it by saying what it was, but the film did go down hill a bit when the twist was revealed (although it was still ok). There were two points in the film where I literally jumped out of my chair, which gives it a few bonus points.

As mentioned previously, I am being kicked out of my Scottish residense on 1st April as my land lady is returning from Australia and wants her house back. I have been torn between getting another place close to work or getting somewhere in Edinburgh. I am not the best person at making my mind up about things, but I started looking at flats near to work last week (in person) while looking for flats in Edinburgh on the internet. I saw a place near work last Friday that was really nice, but I also found a flat in the Grassmarket area of Edinburgh (so it was pretty central) and came with a private parking place which made it even better. I had the weekend to think it over. I decided I wanted the flat in Edinburgh, but Monday came and I thought about how if I took the flat in Edinburgh I would need to arrange to go and see it one night after work and it would mean driving all the way in and then I'd need to get a move on to get it all sorted by 1st April and moving my stuff might have needed more than 1 trip and so I ended up taking the flat near work out of sheer laziness. It is really nice inside and has nice views out over parkland at the back, but I can't help feeling a little disappointed that I was too lazy to go for the one in Edinburgh. Maybe when my new land lady comes back from her trip abroad (there seem to be a lot of Scottish ladies going on trips abroad just now) I will still be working on this same project and maybe I will have got my act together enough to make the effort to finally move into Edinburgh. Or maybe things will go even better and I will finally get to make my dream of moving to Sweden a reality instead.

Day 376: you and me death

When I arrived back at my normal home last Friday night the new Kent cd "Du och jag döden" was waiting for me. The first visual impression is that it is pretty black - the Max 500 cd that arrived a week or so earlier was black (like an old playstation disk) with black label and in a black sleeve, so I had kind of expected the trheme to carry on. This cd was also black like a playstation disk. The case was made of dark smoked perspex so you could just see the cover through it, which was also on black paper. The front cover picture is a skeleton playing cards with an ugly bloke, but on close inspection you notice that it isn't a bloke and she is a little odd looking (I hope it isn't based on a real life person - if so I hope I haven't caused any offence, and I'm sure you look good in real life). The pictures inside the booklet are also of this skeleton and girl - they are computer generated and the skeleton has quite a puppet like appearence, probably due to the fact that it has very long and very thin arm and leg bones. The girl has a big nose.

I didn't get chance to listen to it until Saturday morning on my way into town. The first track opens with a really great instrumetal section with some intresting drum interjections that got me liking it straight away. The whole cd has a real air of quality to the sound, production and arrangement. It has been a fair gap between Vapen & Ammunition and this one, but it is obvious that on listening to it it is going to be compared with it. V&A seemed, to me, to have some quite differring, but equally good songs that one could get into pretty much on first hearing. The songs on Du och jag döden seemed not to have the same instant catch to them, and each song seemed similar to the previous one. But I could tell that with more an more listening they would grow on me and probably reveal more depth than one tends to get from songs that hit you more on the first listen (as happens when listing to Peter Hammill). I do tend to feel that the more it takes to get into some music the more rewarding and long term the listening pleasure is (apart from stuff which is just plain crap of course).

I am currently on about my 7th listening and I am beginning to remember the songs more and as expected each one no longer sounds at all sumilar to the others (though there does seem to be more of a consistent style than the songs on V&A). Until now V&A was pretty much the best cd I had heard, but I di think the new one is going to at least match that. I'm really looking forward to hearing some of these songs at the concert in Stockholm at the end of May.

day 371: lost and found

Last wednesday night I went to Asda to do a bit of shopping and buy a DVD. My choice came down to Stigmata or The Green Mile (which were both available for just over £6 each). I had never seen either of them, but Al kept telling me I should watch The Green Mile as it is one of his favourite films. I have often nearly bought it, but always been put off by the fact it is set in prison and it may have some depressing bits in it. By this reasoning it may seem obvious that the best choice would be to by Stigmata, but I hadn't read any reviews of it and no one had ever recommended it so it could turn have turned out to be rubbish. The answer was at hand though, because Al was on call that night so I felt fully justified in ringing him up and making him earn his on call money by giving me a bit of film advice. He, of course, said I should buy The Green Mile, but I wasn't ringingv him to ask whcih film I should buy I was ringing to ask him if Stigmata was any good. If the answer was yes, I would buy that, but if the answer was no I would buy The Green Mile. The answer was a grudging yes, so Stigmata was what I bought. I was in a real mood for watching a film about a priest investigating stuff, so I really enjoyed the film.

We ended the week off last week by finally managing to upload our (mine and Als) pictures onto hot or goat (het eller get) and have eagerly been checking each day to see if the photos have been accepted, but they still haven't appeared in the line up yet. They say they will appear 1 working day after uploading them, so I'm not sure what we have done wrong - maybe the person who checks the pictures is on holiday or maybe he just feels inadaquate when confronted with our pictures. I should add that I no longer just have a picture of me with a monkey on my shoulder as Al took about 200 pictures of me on our night out in Edinburgh last Thursday night and the last one looked kind of ok so that is the one I posted up.

I have been reading up about psychiatry and the mind and all that sort of stuff lately. If you invite a friend round for dinner at 19:30 and by 20:30 they still haven't turned up you could feel one af a number of ways and how you feel may make you take a certain course of action. here are 4 examples:
The friend is now 1 hour late:
1. You feel very worried and this may make you call some hospital A&E departments to see if they have been admitted.
2. You feel annoyed with them and this may make you act cold and unfriendly when they do arrive.
3. You maye feel completely indifferent to the fact that they are late so you behave exactly as you would if they had been on time.
4. The fact that they were late allowed you to spend more time tidying up and preparing everything so you are actually more relaxed and in a better mood when they arrive.

So from this you can see that it is not the thing that happens that makes you feel how you do, it is what you think that the thing that happens means.

La Rossa extends her hands.............

Day 357: the tide of smiles turning

It is, yet again, some time since I wrote something, so here is the update (in no particular order):

1. When I access www.blogger.com on my Apple Mac I get loads of Japanese text for some reason, but once I have logged in it goes back to English. Does anyone else suffer from this?
2. I am being kicked out of my Scottish accomodation on 1st April, due to the return of my landlady from Australia, so I need to find some new accomodation before then. I don't seem to be able to motivate myself very much on this though. I guess I will feel a bit more motivated as April 1st draws closer.
3. I have managed to book flights for myself and Adrian for our up and coming visit to Sweden to watch a Kent concert. I am very much looking forward to it. I need to find some hotel accomodation and also think of some good stuff for us to do while we are there.
4. My copy of Max 500 arrived at the end of last week, so I have been playing that over and over again and am very impressed with it. I am already looking forward to getting the album when it is released later this month. In fact I have just pre-ordered it from www.cdon.com (I can't be bothered to put links in just now - but I may come back and sort it out later).
5. I saw a film called The Clearing last week with Robert Redford. It seemed to have some sort of twist in it and I realised I had got the twist about half way through and looked forward to finding out I was right at the end, but when the end came no twist seemed to be revealed. It is possible that it was revealed, but I missed it due to be just about falling asleep by that point so I will probably need to watch it again just to check. Apart from that I enjoyed it, but not as much as The Village.
6. When I finish work tonight I will buy a portion of chicken fried rice from the chinese takeaway in Mid calder and when I get home I will eat it out of a warmed up metal bowl while watching an episode of Jonathan Creek and enjoying a glass of Absolut Vodka and Sprite with 2 ice cubes. I have done this every week, on the 1 night I work late, for a very long time now and feel I may be getting a bit set in my ways.
7. I once read that each of us is a different person (or personality) depending on who we are with at the time. I have remembered this for most of my life so I guess, at least for me, that it must be true.
8. I find it fascinating to look at the stats for this site and see what searches people have entered that have led them to this site. Recently there have been a lot of searches on "Critical Mass", and we often get them from search strings including "Kiss DVD players". We have also had links from the following:
- Cremola Foam
- The plastic bits on the end of shoe laces
- Shirley Clamp smoking
and
- Wet f*nnies
Most of the funny ones have skipped my memory, but I'll see if Al can remember any more tomorrow and add them here if he does.
9. Al and I have tried to put our pictues up in Hot or Goat (there is a link at the right hand side), but we haven't managed to get our pictures a suitable size to get them accepted yet. Once we get our acts into gear we will post it here. Of course Al is bound to get more votes than me, but its only because he has hundreds of photos of himself to choose from, and I only seem to have 1 of me and its got my previous glasses and there is a monkey on my shoulder.