Governator

So, we now have Governor Schwarzenegger. Great. I’m not sure how I feel about it – I wonder whether we’ll see him now standing in the next Presidential elections. Even then, I don’t think it can be any worse to have an actor in the White House, now they’ve had a horse’s arse for a few years.

Kindness of Strangers

Ah, there’s always one thing I forget to change address on. Luckily, that’s what mail redirections are for. Many thanks to Gordon for the surprise package of Gaiman and McKean’s “Signal to Noise“. Utterly unexpected, and hugely appreciated.

Moose!

Yes, the new moose (unofficially already named Scrooge – and yes, he’s a reindeer instead of a moose, but he’s receiving identity counselling now) did get purchased yesterday. It was just irresistable. The batteries have been removed (I can’t stick too many renditions of Rudolph the red-nosed bastard reindeer) so I’m happier now. I still want him to be reprogrammed with “Bah Humbug” or similar, but we’ll see.

Pictures of the complete collection are available here – and yes, I do need to get out more.

*fanfare*100,000

As predicted, the 100,000th page impression happened on Sunday (and yes, I forgot to do the logfile upload on Monday) – not bad for less than 14 months.

Broadband/wireless Gubbins.

OK, if you’re not into techie stuff, just look away now. There’s a slightly funny observation about Ian Duncan-Smith on the next post down, so just skip this one.

There, that’s the non-geeks sorted. For anyone else who’s interested (this means you, Gordon), the new ADSL modem and wireless networking gubbins are now all in place. The router is a job by Netgear, and the wireless gear is all by Belkin – wireless laptop card, PCI card for the main PC, and ethernet/wireless switch with 4 Ethernet ports. It’s 802.11g (the 54Mbps version) and works nicely, even when I’m also using the digital cordless phone.

As it is, the Netgear router does most of the firewall duties, as well as the IP address translation. Should anyone try hacking through it, both PC and laptop also have their own personal firewalls, and the wireless point between them has encryption built in and working too. I’m never going to say it’ll never be hacked or anything, but if it is then the little darlings will have had to work for their fun. The wireless gear’s lovely – I’ve halved the number of cables drifting around the floor, which is always a good thing. There’s no ethernet cable hanging around – the ADSL routes straight to the wireless network, which then connects with both PC and laptop. I’m much happier – and the hazard of tripping over stuff at night is much lessened.

Perfection

Sometimes I can say no more than what’s been given me. It would just ruin it. The Guardian managed one today…

Kosheen – Manchester Academy

Ooops. What with everything else that was happening yesterday, wireless network, bookcases etc. (of which more later) I completely forgot to do a quick write-up of Kosheen’s concert in Manchester on Saturday. Mea culpa. So…

Looking at the stage-set, we could see something wasn’t normal. Then it clicked – the drum riser was encased in what appeared to be a soundproof box, similar to in a recording studio. Ok… Might be interesting.

The support act hadn’t been advertised anywhere, and I’d never heard of them anyway when it was revealed that they were called Lockdown Project. However, they’re now definite additions to the “keep an eye open for” list – they were bloody good. My first feeling about them was that they were very much what the Streets should have been. “Urban” style, with a healthy dollop of ska-style sound, and acoustic guitar – very different to what I’d expected, and well worth seeing.

Kosheen, on the other hand, I’m still undecided about. They played pretty much everything they’ve recorded, and it was fantastic to see it done with a proper drummer instead of a bastard drum-machine. Regardless of what anyone says, live drums are an immense improvement on automated shite. But there was still something missing. Yes, it was a good concert, and they were excellent on stage – but somewhere in the middle I found most of the music kind of merged into one sound, tracks becoming virtually indistinguishable from each other. I’ve liked both albums they’ve released, and it was good to hear the crowd-pleasers and so on being performed – but somewhere along the line there’s just needs to be some variety.

Oh, and that soundproof box? Turned out it wasn’t soundproof – but needed to be drumstick proof. More than slightly manic – particularly when he was needing to do some serious work in order to keep up with a drum-machine generated original – and yet he managed fine each time. However, it looked like there was some experience of drumsticks making a connection with other members of the band, hence the protection. Bless.