So people constantly send me links to music and email me tracks that I am going to absolutely ‘lurrve’ (yes, spelt that way) and despite the fact that I am flattered that they took the effort for the most part my general reaction is Meh!

Maybe I’m getting old, maybe I just don’t get the music that those crazy kids are listening to these days but yesterday that changed. I was IM’ed a track that saved my frakkin’ lame-ass weekend and has been on single repeat on the iPod and the MacBook for most of last night and all of today. The big THX rated sub-woofer that sits at my feet has never been happier (Note to self: Stop anthropomorphising objects. They hate it!)

Despite its distinctly French sound it is actually by a German duo called Sirirusmo and Dana and it is called Gummiband, which means rubberband in some language according to the Google.

The first comment on the Youtube page on which I heard this song went something like ‘If this song went on for 12 hours I would never have a bad day ever again.’

I totally agree. If this track doesn’t make you want to get up and shake your ass then you are dead inside.

Be good, avoid assholes.

Steal the MP3 from the internets here.

Music

Jack Johnson’s new album To The Sea was just released and its more of the same mellow sounds, he doesn’t cover much new ground here and these tracks could just as easily have been off pretty much any of his previous albums. Some would call this album middle-of-the-road and non-offensive derisively and they would have a point. If you are looking for artistic progression you’re going to have to keep looking, there’s none of that here. This track in particular, ‘My Little Girl’ is indicative of most of the album, simple if jaded lyrics and all.

But it isn’t all bad and I’m just happy to have new driving music that helps keep thoughts of vehicular homicide at bay. Honestly.

Get the MP3 Here and enjoy!

I also got sort of suckered into going to watch the new action film starring Angelina Jolie, SALT and here are some things I would rather do than watch that film again.

1> Be kicked really hard in my nuts by every single person in the cinema hall that night.

2> Be slapped really hard in the face by every single person in the cinema hall that night.

3> Listen to an entire Black Eyed Peas song.

4> Listen to Bono spew bullshit about starving kids in Africa for the duration of a Black Eyed Peas song.

You get the idea…

Be good, eat fruit, avoid assholes.

Films, Music, Random

The first part of this post can be found here.

With the hardware part of my new/old desktop tower running I went to Ubuntu.com and downloaded the disc image for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. Once the 700ish MB download was done was I proceeded to try and burn the disc image to a 1 GB USB drive I had lying around and this is where I ran into my first problem. I tried about 5 different ways to do this on a Mac without any success and finally I gave up and read the instructions on the Ubuntu site that said that this was not a ‘recommended’ method of installation. Windows apparently, was needed to create the USB installer. So a few days later I got hold of a Windows laptop and created a bootable USB drive from the image.

At this point I should clarify that in all fairness my inability to create a bootable disc from the image was due the fact that I use Mac OS X and there is apparently NO way to do this on a Mac except for some weird terminal commands that did not work for me. Also, I could have easily avoided the trouble I had with the disc image by just burning it to a CD but if you read the first part of this post you will have noticed I had a CD-Writer that I doubted was still working. Long story short, it wasn’t and I didn’t want to buy another drive for what I thought would be a one time use only. Read more…

Rants, Tech

That’s right all you free software loving losers and nerds. Send your hate mail to the address on the right. Also, if you don’t like reading about tech you should probably skip this post coz I’m about to get my geek on here.

So recently two things happened. Ubuntu launched, to much fanfare, the latest version of their operating system 10.04 LTS (Horny Heron or whatever lame-ass name the freetards gave it though in all fairness, Apple’s Snow Leopard moniker is hardly better) and I sold the Mac Mini, for three reasons;

1> I gave up the idea of ever buying a television and using the Mac Mini as an HTPC, there is just not enough content available to warrant my ever spending money on an LCD television. TV is dead to me. (The irony? I work in the television and film industry)

2> I needed/wanted a tower again, I want to buy cheaper, faster, higher capacity desktop drives and components to use in a system, no more pricey laptop components on a desktop system just because it is the size of a frakkin’ lunch box thankyouverymuch. The Mac Mini just wasn’t cutting it anymore as a file server and a back-up computer to the MacBook Pro and the other systems in the house.

And finally 3>Due to a recent unemployment (HIRE ME!) I had some free time on my hands and wanted to build a desktop computer again, something I had not done in almost half a decade and used to enjoy very much.

So, I sold the Mac Mini to an Iphone app developer on Craig’s List (I also dealt with a scammer who wanted to send the payment to me from the United Kingdom and have me ship the computer to and-I-kid-you-not, NIGERIA. I responded with a cordial, business-like BLOW ME!)

I then gathered the bits of computer hardware scattered around the house like pieces of flotsam and jetsam, mostly hardware abandoned by my brother when he got his first Mac last year (A white Macbook) and this is what I came up with

Read more…

Rants, Tech

This is one of them. Its a track called Swing, off Zero 7′s new album, Yeah Ghost. Even though the album is sort of all over the map in terms of style and not even half as brilliant as their previous effort (2006′s  ‘The Garden’ which featured José González and Sia from Sia & Sophie) it still has a few single-worthy tracks like this one and ‘Medicine Man’. It may not be a great album but at least there’s some jewels in there.

So, when the heat, the dust, the frakkin power-point presentations in the year 2010, the script-writers that throw hissy-fits and the less-than-ideal working environment get to me I turn up the iPod, listen to the steel drums and the AIR like vocals in this track and do deep breathing. Try it, I haven’t gone apeshit.

Yet.

As always,the MP3 is here.

Get lots of fluids, watch out for assholes.

PS: DIE POWER-POINT, DIE! WHY WONT YOU DIE!

Music

So summer is here again. How do I know? Because I am constantly tired and sleepy and grouchy. Why am I like this? Oh I’ll tell you why.

Because I live in the backwater of a third world country run by politicians who are corrupt sons-of-bitches who will not make any infrastructure investments unless they bear fruit within the time frame that these douchebags will stay in office i.e. a couple of years, five at best. What they will do is spend crores and crores of tax payer money on destroying forests and constructing huge, hagiolatry parks with ugly ass statues of themselves.

The huge statue of this particular stoop-shouldered ugly-ass bitch now stands covered in blue tarp because our toothless and frankly quite gutless Supreme court finally found its testicles and succeeded in putting a leash on her and making her stop the construction. So the park, the huge Dalit monument and the statues themselves just stand there, in limbo, an eyesore, a criminal waste of time, effort, money and a reminder of the pointless destruction of literally thousands of trees, a pretty jogging track, a park for kids and valuable and scarce green cover that the area could ill afford to lose.

So, coming back to the upshot of all this. Every year the onset of summer is heralded by rolling power cuts for hours and hours. Last summer just to fuck with us, the powers that be (UPSEB) thought that it would be insanely funny to regularly cut the power at 7 AM each morning!

This summer the wankers at UPSEB have gone back to their tried and tested modus operandi of cutting the power at about 1 AM each night, just the time that you have really gotten into some deep sleep. So, by about 2 or 3 AM your backup power source (the inverter) has run out of juice and died in a plaintive high pitched eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! wail that signifies ‘Low Battery’. But this wailing does not wake you up, oh no! You have already been tossing and turning for half an hour in bed covered with sweat and mosquito bites as the steadily decreasing voltage from the inverter has made your ceiling fan’s blades whirl around slower and slower and made the gaang! gaaaanng! gaaaaaaaaaaang! gaaaaaaaaaaaaanngggg! sound successively more and more irritating until the blades have just given up on trying to stir up the molasses of warm, humid air in your room and have crawled to a halt with a aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan! sound to inform you that they really are trying to move but just like Star Trek “They don’t have the powerrrrrrrr!”

So, you have gotten out of bed and turned off the fan but the inverter dies anyway and after lying in bed and listening to it for what seems like an hour you finally go “Fuck this shit!” and toss off what little of the covers you haven’t already kicked off and go and try to start the generator. So you perform the little routine that you can do in your sleep now.

Move the fuel switch from ‘off’ to ‘start’ position.

Turn the choke on.

Grab the pull cord and heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeavvve!

Nothing.

Repeat about 15 times until you have got your heart rate up and have a good, steady stream of curse words going under you breath.

Catch your breath. Stop wheezing.

Repeat about 10 more times.

Slap your forehead and check the kerosene tank. Full.

Check the Petrol tank. Empty.

(Let me clarify here that the world renowned engine boffins from Honda Motor Company in their infinite wisdom designed this petrol tank to hold at least a few litres of fuel. Good for a month of starts at least. But they also designed it in a way that let all petrol in it evaporate within a few hours of the tank being filled.)

The result is that I now have to go get a torch, find the Coke bottle full of petrol we keep somewhere, fill the tank just enough to get the generator started this time while taking care not to drop too much of it on myself so that if the shit does hit the fan I don’t scream and burn for too long.

Done.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeavve another few times.

Result!

The generator coughs and splutters to life and covers me with sooty black smoke full of unburnt hydrocarbons.

Turn the choke off.

Switch the fuel tap from ‘Petrol’ to ‘Kerosene’ while trying to inhale as few carcinogens as possible.

(This generator starts on petrol but runs on kerosene for reasons that I am too stupid or lazy to comprehend, especially at 4 AM)

We have power.

I walk back to my room closing all the doors between me and the generator to muffle the godawful racket.

Switch the fan back on.

Peel the moist sheets off the bed. Mosquitos on the wall. Swat the blood-fattened little bastards, fall into bed and try to relax and get some sleep.

Almost as soon as I finally fall asleep the alarm rings to signify the all-too-soon arrival of a new day.

Mother.                                  Fucker.

Random, Rants

A couple of people have complained that all I have been posting for a while now are crappy music video links so here goes one last post before what I promise will be a full, angry letter to the internets type post about things that are eating my lunch, with the usual generous portions of cursing and vitriol.

In the meantime, enjoy this Scottish Anthem ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’ by The Proclaimers from their 1988 album Sunshine Over Leith. I cannot explain how much fun it is to break into the chorus of this song at the top of your voice, in public, preferably in a heavy, butchered Scottish accent with an equally talentless friend harmonising with you. Joy!

You can then relax in the smug satisfaction of having disrespected another proud and historically rich culture by reducing it to a catchy song sung a cappella in a bad accent.

Scotland. CHECK!

Get the MP3 for your iPod here and sing it aloud with the voices in your head.

Be well, eat fruit and watch out for assholes!

Music, Random

One of the better tracks off Gorillaz’ latest album, Plastic Beach, out a few days back. On the whole the album is a lot more whimsical and subdued than their previous releases and nowhere near as catchy at first but it does grow on you. The tracks with Damon Albarn (from Blur) on them are much better than the various other collaborations featured on the album. (including Snoop Dogg)

Other great tracks on the album are Glitter Freeze and the title track, Plastic Beach.

As always, get the MP3 here.

Music

Before someone bravely went forth past the barriers of good (or is that bad) taste and made a cover of The Knack’s biggest hit, My Sharona cut to some footage of Toyotas crashing into each other. It could have been done much better, the lead singer specially but it should still make you laugh despite yourself. If you haven’t heard about the world-wide recall of Toyotas due to accidents (some fatal) caused by faulty accelerator pedals then you ought to spend less time reading the internets and get out more. BTW: Get the MP3 of The Knack’s brilliant original here.

Music, Random

In 2003, British Jazz outfit The Cinematic Orchestra reworked this absolutely awesome track from their previous album Everyday as a score to Russian film-maker Dziga Vertov’s groundbreaking silent documentary film of the same name from 1929.

Get the MP3 here.

Also, since we are stealing from the internets and shit (and because Samreth is your friend) go get the entire ‘Man with a Movie Camera’ album here. You can thank me later.

Be well. Eat fruit and stretch.

Films, Music