Thursday 1 November 2007

Friends of the Bride's New Video

Bobby just punted this one my way. Being the geeky sort I am I immediately noticed the 2.35:1 aspect ratio and the the HD logo. This is swish stuff. It's a good song too and also a great little video. I think if you play this embedded version you don't get HD but I'm presuming the link will be in there somewhere to go to the proper version? Oh yeah, there it is. :D



Friends of the Bride - So... You Think You Can Dance? from Scott Jaeger on Vimeo.

Wednesday 10 October 2007

I Think I Want Monothematic Albums Now

The new Radiohead album has been released and I have it in my virtual hands. It's not really what I expected mainly because I assumed 'The Eraser' was produced to allow Thom Yorke to do one sort of song and Radiohead to do another, but this sounds almost exactly the same to my ears, but with a bit more 'real' instrumentation.

I listened to Hail to the Thief last night in anticipation and I'd forgotten how a lot of it sounded and it wasn't that far from The Eraser in its own way, but while I'm enjoying a lot of 'In Rainbows' I've realised that I really like albums now that hit one style and pretty much grind it into your brain.

The first two tracks are fast and pounding and then (as in fact is true of most Radiohead albums) the third track is sort of slow and lazy and the second time I started it up I realised I really wasn't that bothered about any of the 'slowies'. Anyway, I'm slowly soaking it up and getting into it but it takes a bit of a gear change I think.

London Progressive Journal

So, the London Progressive Journal is starting to take shape. The site has been set up and the web address purchased. It will be a weekly online newspaper dealing with the news and current affairs from a left-wing slant. That's all I can say right now because I'm merely the webmonkey on this one.

Bad Days

Actually it hasn't been a bad week but I forgot to blog some stuff from last week so I'll do it now. I was hoping I could backdate stuff but I guess that would require MySQL access so I'll just do it all here.

Last Wednesday, as I got up to take my place on the train to Basildon for my one day a week in the office, I neglected to consider my suit jacket was folded over my arms and contained my mobile phone. This device decided to leap from its silky home, bounce once on the platform and dive gracefully into the gap between the edge of the platform and the wheels of the train.

I briefly considered whether I'd have to wait until the train left, reach down and grab it and then continue my journey on the next one, but luckily the driver walked by at that point on his way to the cab and, after he'd ascertained we could see the phone, got the litter grabber from a cleaner and retrieved my trusty device. It is now scratched to buggery but at least it's still in one piece.

Anyway, there you go.

Tuesday 18 September 2007

Criminal Dreams

Anyone who's made the mistake of reading my MySpace Blog will be familiar with my dreams and their strangeness. Where possible, I use them as an influence for lyrics but I don't think that'll happen for this one.

I was robbing a large convenience store in the middle of nowhere with my friend. For whatever reason, we didn't need weapons or anything, we just broke through behind the cool section while the staff were away. Then we had to impersonate the staff when the police came, but they saw through our disguise. I helped my friend get away but then had to do some major climbing to get away. I was always almost caught then I got over the obstacle or something. God knows how much I was thrashing around but I didn't wake my girlfriend so that's good.

A few days earlier I had a nastier dream where a friend attempted to get a gatecrasher out of our house party (in a house I don't know) and got hit hard over the head. He decided he'd be fine and wanted to walk home but then I got a call saying he'd collapsed and was in a coma. This wasn't fun clearly. I have odd dreams.

Monday 17 September 2007

Seeing a film in the company of a celebrity

Last night we dropped in to the Rich Mix cinema in Bethnal Green to see 3:10 to Yuma and found ourselves on the same row as a dapper-looking Ralph Fiennes. He signed an autograph for someone but we decided to stay a bit clear, even though our seats would have put us practically on top of him, had we adhered to the seating position.

This reminds me of my only other 'brush with fame', which was going to the Carnaveron Castle (now thankfully no more) to see brilliantly named Toxic Slut and then talking to a guy who I thought of as being like Mark Lamarr but not nearly as loud and irritating, and his girlfriend. We discussed Highgate cemetary for a few minutes before I took off. Subsequently I was informed that this was in fact Mark Lamarr and the blonde girl with him was Jo Guest. Ever boring, that's me.

Thursday 13 September 2007

And more site design

Three posts on one day and then that'll be it for a few months, most likely. This morning I took half and hour or so to fix up the mokita website so that both reflects the fact that we've split up or aren't gigging any more, and also removed the rogue gig info from December last year. It's not massively up to date (half the links are long dead in the links section) but it'll be okay to 'leave' for now.

I also keep looking at my TheoGB.com homesite and feeling unsatisfied. I only just did a new version of it but already I feel it totally failed to achieve what I wanted. I think I need a better system behind the scenes for administering it. Or maybe just rethink how to do it. There are a lot of 'old' pages on there that only really exist because my relatives and friends might still expect them to be viewable but I should have integrated them into it a bit better I think.

iShotTheDeputy.com Site Design

I am particularly happy with the new design for iShotTheDeputy.com that I put together. The old one used tables, which I was keen to try to get rid of. It's still not perfect as there are a few too many requests inside the Drupal CSS that break the page flow but I think I got rid of them all.

I put in a sort of motif around the letters a and b but in the Wingdings 2 font, where they form a couple of rather pleasing little curly graphics, which I have used to book end all the articles and the new logo. Aside from that I've been able to pair the message board down from four areas to just one single one, which is far more sensible. I'm actually fairly irritated that I never had it that way originally as it might have helped it to be more used and more useful.

The main issue now facing us is to put in more content but as my co-conspirator is without broadband there's little that can be done: my abilities with the political prose is sadly lacking.

Ground Rules

I used to write occasionally in the blog on my MySpace account but then The Phoenix said something to me that changed all that:
I like your blog Theo. You don't write in it often but every time you post something it's worth reading.

So naturally I retired from the world of MySpace Blogs undefeated. Really, it was too much responsibility.

I say this to set the bar low and explain that this blog won't be reaching those heights. If you're reading it then you should ask yourself the question 'why?', because I have no plans to use this for more than storing thoughts about my latest web design ideas and projects, and keeping track of various other things in my life. If I do decide to grace these 'pages' with an anecdote I'll do my best to flag it, unless it's horribly disappointing.