April 2009 Archives

[Moozik: M83 - We Own The Sky]

Sometimes you have a peek at some photos and they just take your breath away. Of the many many gorgeous shots taken from the air by Jason Hawkes it's hard to pick a fave. Go have a gander right now, I'll wait...

I do like the shadows from the folk walking in Hyde Park actually.

If you're not subscribed to the Big Picture feed go do so now.

[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Peace]

Well, all moved and getting settled in. Photos to follow. I must say it was the least stressful move I've ever done. Ever. Something fun about moving into a new house with someone I suppose. A lot of things are still in boxes but slowly everything is making it to the correct room and unpacking things together is part of the fun. One thing is for sure, I'm going to like living here a lot more than the old house. Better area, bigger house, closer to pubs/restaurants/shops, closer to work. Exciting stuff. If only I could be as excited about my Cable.

You see, cable companies lie. Specifically Cox Cable. When I set up a service install for Monday between noon and three, I typically expect them to show up on Monday between the hours specified. Right? Common sense and all that you would think. Imagine my surprise as I pull up to the house on Sunday and learn that the tech came out at 8:30am and left a "we were here and you weren't so how much do you suck?" tag on my front door. So I call them and they can't send anyone back out until Saturday. Which means no internet access until the weekend :-( Which is a total pile of pants actually.

Well, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that there are in fact three wide open wireless networks flooding into our house. So when I say we have no internet access at home, that's not exactly true. And I wouldn't want to be known as a fibber. Now, if there was some method of connecting to one of these networks, I wouldn't have any idea how to do it. If some method existed of course. And I'm not saying that it does ;-)

[Moozik: Ultravox - Stranger Within]

I'm off work until next Wednesday and face a nice six day weekend. Where "nice" means running around in a total panic for the next couple of days doing all the things I've forgotten about before this weekend's move into our new house ;-)

Moving is both exciting and stressful at the best of times but I know this one in particular is going to be incredibly exciting. I *think* everything is all ready. Electricity will be on, gas will be on, water will be turned on, u-haul reserved. Bugger, no broadband ordered yet. Or cable TV. Must do that.

[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Nothing's Impossible]

Over the years, Coca Cola have offered a variety of flavours. Some were pulled from the shelves very quickly, and some have lasted a while. This morning I wondered which ones the new gas station by my house were offering. I was surprised to see Cherry so well represented.

Of those, my fave without a doubt is Cherry Zero. Yum. I really hope enough people are also as hopelessly addicted to it as I am. It's my all time favorite soft drink of, er, all time. Except for Ribena.

I think it would be cool if Coke offered some other new flavours as a test, just like Walker's Crisps did. We could all vote for the best tasting and then they'd keep it on the shelves for a bit.

What's your favorite flavor of coke and what flavor would you like to see them create?

Dear Coca Cola, if you'd like to throw a few dollars my way for advertising on your behalf, hey, I'm not above that. Just let me know. kthxbye.

[Moozik: Depeche Mode - In Chains]

Consider this a Depeche Mode public service announcement.

Rejoice kids. For today the new album is officially released in the US. Lucky buggers in Europe have already had a day's head start. And I'm not at all envious that my friend already received the box set on Saturday. No.

So go listen forthwith. I'll certainly be doing so as well as soon as my iTunes Pass download is complete.

Happy DM day!!

[Moozik: Moby - My Weakness]

D-, See Me After School

Somebody nicked the e? Ran out of e's? They is guud spella? Who knows?

Lazy Bastards Pt II

Oh look, it's my favorite pet peeve of parking. As always dear fellow shopper, would it have killed you to wheel it 6 extra ft to put it back? Yes? Well that's because you're a lazy bastard.

Canine Lookers

My dogs love going for a ride in the car. A quick mention of going buh-bye is enough to get them running for the front door and knocking everything out of their way.

Suck It Easy

I'm not entirely sure whether this truck sticker is asking, suggesting, or telling me something. You decide.

[Moozik: Hanzel Und Gretyl - Blut! Sex! Fire!]

I don't know about you but whenever I'm buying my guns I try to make sure I get a guitar as well.

Because that's how I roll.

When you're buying your guns, what do you like to pair them with?

[Moozik: Gary Numan - Pure]

Things have been super busy lately both on the home front and at work. You'll have noticed a distinct slowdown in how often I post here. Once this month is over I hope to rectify that and get my blogging focus back. Either that or I won't, time will tell. Still, I have found myself posting to Twitter with greater regularity. I guess I held off as long as I could and I'm now sucked in.

Two quick life updates of note.

Firstly my other half and I have decided to move in together. Exciting stuff. We've been house hunting for the past 3 weeks and found somewhere nice last week. I move at the end of the month and she'll move after that. Going to be super busy but I absolutely cannot wait. More to follow obviously as this month unfolds.

Secondly I've made the decision to apply for American Citizenship. I've been here so long that I'm practically an honorary yank anyway. The good thing of course is that I'll be keeping my British Passport and doing the whole dual nationality thing. Which will amuse me no end when I can breeze through passport control in England while others are stuck in the "foreigners" queue. More to follow on this as well.

[Moozik: K.T.S - Buran]

I upgraded to Movable Type 4.24, held my breath, and... it just worked. Good lord Six Apart, this is the second time I've upgraded and nothing broke. Makes me all nostalgic about the good old days spending hours fixing templates after each upgrade. Wait, no it doesn't.

For those of you not viewing these posts from a feed reader, you'll notice a new 'Asides' link in the navigation header menu. I'm trying out a side blog experiment built with the rather excellent Action Streams plugin.

[Moozik: Low Line Caller - Built On Gasoline]

I think it's most amusing how much we rely on technology for things these days. Things that we were quite happy doing ourselves back in the day now become tasks that only a Blackberry, an iPhone, or a GPS unit can do. Be it calculating tips in a pub or restaurant, to finding your way from A to B, we've suddenly forgotten that we survived well enough without gadgets when we were younger.

My other half and I were out house hunting (that will be a separate post) the other day and had a real estate agent along with us. True to form, I doubted the real estate agent's encyclopedic knowledge of Phoenix. I mean, how could she possibly know the area better than the iPhone's map/directions app? Just follow us I said. Ok she says.

Yeah, that was embarrassing. After an afternoon of amusing phone calls, u-turns, and generally having to admit that we were totally lost, I've come to the conclusion that the iPhone map/directions app is a big bucket of fail and shall never be used again.

Mind you, just to balance things out, I do love the iPhone's tip calculator app. I'm totally crap at figuring out tip amounts and generally over tip. Now I know exactly how much 15% is. In pubs & restaurants we use it all the time to come up with the most annoying tip amounts we can. Seeing the bartender looking puzzled at his tip for $4.78 is totally worth it.

[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Sacred (Live)]

• Distinct lack of letterboxes at your front door. Instead, newer neighbourhoods have an area at the end of your street to pickup your mail.

• Price of gas not too shabby at the moment. Apologies to those reading from England.

• But why oh why do they put the screen so far down. I'm crap at playing the line the answer up to the button game.

• Pickup trucks are popular. Every other house in my neighbourhood has at least one.

• Weird Alien/Monster thingies grow by your driveway.

[Moozik: The Horrorist - Born This Way]

I have to admit, I've been thoroughly underwhelmed by my little Depeche Mode iTunes Pass purchase so far. Two songs were instantly downloaded at time of purchase with the promise of the album when released and "more". More thus far has consisted of a remix of an album track and remix of one of the bonus tracks from the boxset.

Hopefully my $18.99 is going to prove to be money well spent and I'm just being a little impatient. What I am hoping for is that they pick the boxset bonus track Ghost as one of the downloads. For the little teaser they posted does sound rather good.

Earlier this week I finally finished my slog through the first of the South By Southwest torrents. Of the 519 tracks I ended up keeping 22. The find of the torrent turned out to be a band called Low Line Caller. The song Built On Gasoline is really quite good. An 80s new wavey kind of feel, atmospheric synths with some bass work to make Simon Gallup & Peter Hook proud.