Bit late to be writing this, as both gigs where a while back.

I've never heard to Simple Kid but Dan suggested the gig, bought the tickets and then found that he couldn't go. Which was a pity because it was a great gig. Simple Kid looks like a hippie Bjorn Borg. He writes catch songs with driving drums underneath; he's actually a pretty good guitarist as well, playing some fine solos. The obvious comparison is Beck, but you need to throw in a slice of Glen Tilbrook and Jimmy Page as well. His show is solo, with a laptop playing backing tracks, images, and sometimes lyrics. Strange set up, but it worked well. He has a great sense of humour as well, which really made the night.

Groove Armada on the other hand, I've written about before. They were great live, excellent music, funky light show. If I were to make on criticism, it was that the didn't turn it into much of a live experience. Even one "hello, Newcastle, let me hear you!" would have been good.

The crowd was a bit brusque. to be honest, and it was full sardine time inside the venue. It's good for music to be a shared experience, but this was a little too much. So a good gig, but sort of a once a year experience.

Decided to register for facebook today to see what it's all about. Did not get off to a good start as it would not accept my name as "legitimate". Ended up registering as "John Smith".

Entertaining. Wake up people. Lots of people have lots of different names. Blacklisting on words does not make sense.

I've just been engaged in an enormous rant about the Access Grid. This is video conferencing software that I've been using for over 5 years now. It's dreadful. I live for the day that we can dump it, especially now that skype and teamspeak have outdated it. We shall see...

My coffee machine is broken. I have alternative facilities somewhere, but I can't seem to find them. What am I to do?

I am to buy a new one, that is what I am to do.

Google calendar — or rather google mail — seems to have broken for me. Instead of giving me an "add to calendar" button when an event comes in, it blithely tells me "sign up for calendar". Well, I already am! And events gets shown randomly translated into a US timezone.

This is really, really bad! I've come to rely on an electronic calendar, and without it I am in real trouble.

Last night was James Burton at the Cluny. It was one of those "last chance to see" experiences, as he's getting on a bit now. So I was not sure what to expect.

The support band were dreadful — acoustic, electric and double bass. The bass player slapped his fingerboard a lot, with the resultant dull thud being all you could hear. The other two were more tuneful, but didn't appear to listen to each other. Rock-and-roll has to be in time or it's nothing but awful.

The second band were much better. Tight, together and with a sense of performance. By this stage, though, I was getting a bit nervous. Where was James Burton? Well, eventually he came on. Not that the flames on the telecaster work that well now to be honest, but James himself is still a strong player. Flash when he needs to be, tasteful when not. Above all, he is a side-man — he is not there to attact attention, but to support the song, to reinforce the rest of the band and to entertain the audience, which he did all evening. The support should take notice.

Of course, I paid a price. I got home at 11:30 — I've been up since 5 and am in an airport. I feel terrible. I guess it all boils down to what Gerry said — most of the audience didn't have to get up to go to work the next day, having retired some years before.

On my way home today, I noticed that one of my local metro stations has sprouted rubbish bins on the main platform. This is a bit strange, as I haven't seen them for a long time — I wonder if there is any realtion to the North Ireland power sharing agreement. They seemed quite out of place — being just bag and hoop bins, although I noticed some proper Newcastle Council bins lying next to the track outside. A hopeful sign.

When I got home I decided to sharpen my knifes as they had all got blunt. I've been meaning to try this for years, but I pre-oiled them with olive oil — I never fancied having the synthetic lubricants that I use on my bike on my kitchen equipment. It worked rather well, and made the process rather pleasant smelling — it takes the metal shavings away from the stone afterwards. One thing I couldn't work out is that the oil soaked into the stone. I guess Silcon Carbide is permeable to oil in a way that it is not to water, but to see a heavy stone soaking up a liquid seemed impossible.

I looked up wikipedia for an explanation; one was forthcoming, but I did learn that pure SiC is transparent; it only looks black because of Iron impurities. Now how useless is it to know that?

Noticed today that azureus, also called zudeo has now become Vuze. I noticed this because a new version has appeared. After an hour or so, I worked out how to switch of the silly interface.

One of the ironies of the situation is that the BBC content is currently not available in the UK, just in the US. Strange. I could have sworn that I paid for this stuff first time around.

I was a little bit saddened to find the kerfuffle over an encryption key for HD-DVD being reported as a 21st Century Rebellion.

Don't get me wrong, here, I find the idea that industry should have the right to control how we watch films distasteful; I think it will limit what we can do with the digital content that we choose to buy; I think that it will result in horrible user interfaces, with limited choices; I think it will result in far more control being placed in the hands of a few people than is healthy.

But in the past, rebellion meant slaves struggling for the freedom, workers struggling for the profit of their own work, minorities struggling for civil liberties. It's a bit sad when this it becomes posting a number on a website like digg.com. Lets face it, if anyone gets sued, it will be the admins of digg, not the people posting. This is hardly standing up to be counted, now is it?

At least some of my chums had the guts to put it up on their own websites. Still not exactly Tom Paine but at least it's a start.