Prodigy rocked, Doncaster Dome – less than impressive venue. Didn’t spooil it though – ears were ringing for 20 odd hours after the gig! The mix of age ranges present a stark reminder of how long the Prodigy have been doing the rounds – folks older than me (yes, really!) often sporting t-shirts from tours I was too young for, but also loads of young’uns enamoured with their current (excellent) material.
A video (recorded by somebody else) that gives a hint of proceedings.. probably burned more calories moshing and being swept all around the place than I would’ve done playing football, which is what I’d ordinarily be doing on a Thursday night.
You’re always likely to be a bit biased when you read a book written by a friend, but this one was doubly-intriguing being about Albert Ball – a World War 1 pilot from Nottingham who I remember my granny waxing lyrical about when we saw his statue in the grounds of Nottingham Castle when I was a child. A riveting, moving and emotional read. I’d recommend it!
Link to buy is just here, review I submitted to the publisher below:
To try to put yourself in the midst of events occurring less than 100 years ago is hard, Mark’s book effortlessly slides you into a terrifying world where death and loss are foisted upon people. Without time to prepare, they deal with it and bear suffering us modern-world softened people can only imagine.
As a proud son of Nottingham I’m well aware of Albert Ball, but this intricately researched story along with insightful and imaginative filling in of the details leaves you feeling like you knew him, his family and – of course – his sweetheart. The story is charming, harrowing, horrifying and ultimately haunting.
What makes this book particularly brilliant is the evokative way in which it is able to place you at the scene, in the cockpit, in the trenches, digging for victory in Blighty – all without labouring the details. It gives you enough to let your imagination colour an often bleak surrounding.
I think there is great value in people understanding better what our forebears went through in order to secure and protect our freedom, and that our our Allies – without being at all preachy this is the best example of this I’ve found.
Albert Ball’s dad, Albert Ball Snr, moved heaven and Earth to ensure his son was remembered in Nottingham in statue form, and in France where he died and was buried. This memorial pays great tribute to that laudable aim, too.
You could do a lot worse than spend a few days reading this!
"MAKE POVERTY HISTORY! CHEAPER DRUGS NOW!".. oh, it's not him is it?
…. with a right stinker of a hangover. A well earned one, though!
Music overload for me, infrequent gig-goer that I am. Fresh from an exciting road trip to see ZZ Top in London I was treated this week to untypical Londoners Alabama 3 perform in my home town at the quintessentially splendid Rock City (without the sticky floors these days, which in many ways is a bit sad).
They were awesome. Much like with the bearded Bluesmen from earlier in the month, I was really only fleetingly familiar with their material largely thanks to Rich I think – that will change though, these guys were ace. A shambolic collection of people, a shambolic collection of music styles – it should be rubbish, but it’s fooking awesome. If you get a chance to see them perform, please do yourself a favour and do so.
Enigmatic and strangely charismatic frontman D. Wayne and the unfeasibly deep-voiced Larry Love orchestrate a great show. Even if the former does have an alarming resemblence to Frank Gallagher of ‘Shameless’ fame. It was quality, I’ll be keeping an eye out on their future tour dates.
After that we hotfooted it to Tilt, which back in the day was the original site of The Cookie Club, to see Moules and Wiggins play some Blues which was also great; despite the fug of alcohol and ears ringing – it was a great opportunity to relax and chill over a few beers! So if you fancy a bit of Blues action, pop down to Tilt on a Thursday evening and check them out – you won’t regret it!
Hmm yeah, this blogging thing isn’t really proving to be a massively compelling pasttime is it? So what have I been up to since the start of September when I stopped briefly by to post some badly re-written lyrics?
Well, quite a bit I guess. Lots of watching Forest – who are doing rather well at the moment, which is always a bonus to my general sense of wellbeing! We celebrated Rich‘s 30th birthday with a couple of surprise events which was all rather successful – yet strangely hard to organise. I’m hoping he steers clear of any plans for my 40th as I can’t be arsed with organising stuff like that again!
Rich and I also made a discovery that going to see ZZ Top was much more than the novelty we hoped it would be – they genuinely rocked. We popped down to London via car then Tube and took in a tour of Wembley Stadium before wandering over to the Wembley Arena to see the gig. First up were Steel Panther, below is a sample of what was on offer from the shamelessly cheesy metallers…
This is lead guitarist ‘Satchell’ executing the most spectacularly indulgent guitar solo I’ve ever seen, sadly the clip ends before he gets behind the drumkit and starts pedalling away along with the various well known riffs he was cycling through. Strangely compelling though.
As for the main act, they were just bloody brilliant. Starting with Bluesy numbers that made their name back in the seventies, they progressed through to the more familiar mid-eighties tracks that Rich and I were familiar with from Dad’s old LP’s. The aged rockers certainly still know how to rock – indeed, it was ace to discover latterly than guitarist Billy Gibbons travelled to the gig on the Tube! (Sadly not the same line as Rich and I).
Here’s a sample of ZZ Top in action that night, covering a classic Hendrix track:
Perhaps does them a disservice by linking a cover version since they have such a plethora of their own material that was completely awesome too, so in that spirit I shall add a final video link to one of their own very famous songs.
So that was Wednesday last week, after hotfooting it immediately up to Nottingham after the gig the following day – as we were both off work – Cat and I headed on off to Leicestershire to the terribly-websiteded Tropical Birdland. It’s a fun place with loads of ace parrots, many of which are free to roam at will and interact with visitors. One particular Cockatoo took a shine to me before starting to savage my head randomly.
Leacock don’t know what he’s done
His hair looks daft stuck in that bun
He can’t say, Teale can’t see, McEveley punches just like a gay
Leacock don’t know what he’s done
His hair looks daft stuck in that bun…
So this is how it feels to be Cloughie
Managing a bunch of scumbags
This is how it feels when they all run after a flag
Team bus leaving the City Ground
Savage tears, face pricked with hate,
Half-baked threats to a local lad
Who left him feeling quite irate,
So this is how it feels to be Cloughie
This is how it feels to be small
This is how it feels when your team wins nothing at all
Tyson’s led the flag parade
Now Derby launch a false crusade
They can’t watch, they can’t see, they won’t admit the hypocrisy
So this is how it feels to be Cloughie
This is how it feels to be sad
This is how it feels to be not as good as your Dad.
I’ve never encountered a stuck pixel before. Not talking about dead pixels here – which are, well, dead, but stuck ones. I noticed on my iPhone’s charge screen that one pixel was lit up green when it should’ve been black, from a bit of googling, green seems to be a common ‘stuck’ colour, but theoretically a pixel can be stuck in any colour.
It gets weirder.
Well, kinda. The fix does, anyway! My initial fear was an insurmountable hardware problem. But not so! If you suffer from the same problem, then point your iPhone or iPod Touch at:
First option to select is ‘Test for Stuck Pixels‘ – probably not necessary as presumably you wouldn’t be reading this unless you had the problem. However, you will be presented with a webpage in Safari with bands of solid colour that you can scroll up and down to make your rogue pixel (or pixels) visible against a contrasting background.
Once you’ve confirmed you have a case of stuck pixel, scroll back to the top and click the Home button.
The next option you need is ‘Repair iPhone LCD‘. This will launch a new Safari window, and will basically unleash a dazzling array of strobing colours onto your screen. Obviously if you are sensitive to strobing colours then you should probably get somebody who isn’t to do this for you!
On occasions I’ve left this page open (touching the screen periodically to keep it live) for five minutes and had the problem cleared, other times it has required longer – so basically leave it running as long as you can tolerate it! You should be able to see the offending pixels during parts of the colour cycle, and thus have a good idea about when it’s done the trick and unstuck the pixel.
I was pretty dubious that simply visiting a webpage could fix the problem, but whilst I’ve had some re-occuring (interestingly this has only started happening since the 3.0.1 update for me – although others have reported stuck pixels pretty much since the birth of the iPhone). So there you have it, bombarding your screen with gaudy colours can sort it!
If you’re like me and you fart about with things when you shouldn’t, then you may have upgraded your iPhone to the illicit Beta release of the 3.0 firmware. The one I installed was the ‘Gold Master’ version (7A341), and it worked like a charm. However, it occurred to me that iTunes might get the hump with me when it releases the proper version on the 17th, so I’d better downgrade.
You would think that is simple, wouldn’t you? Well, after a bit of hair-tearing out and no small amount of using Google, I seem to have managed it, so I thought I’d make a note on here for any other folks who are struggling as I was. Of course, after all this, iTunes might just upgrade over any Betas without any complaint, but we can’t be sure.
The process is quite simple, but quite fiddly. These are the steps I followed to downgrade my iPhone 3G. I don’t have a 2G or a Touch either 1 or 2G to test this on, so no promises that will work! You will need to have the 2.2.1 Firmware (this link is the 3G version), you might also need to have a copy of QuickPWN on standby.
Sorted? Okay, here are the relatively few steps you need to take:
1. Open up iTunes.
2. Get your phone in DFU mode – this ISN’T the same as when it displays a plug and an iTunes symbol – follow this guide if you’re not sure.
3. Hold down shift and click on the restore button, select the 2.2.1 Firmware file. This might just work, apparently – it didn’t for me (it goes on for a while before failing, and for me giving an error 1013). If you error, carry on.
4. Allow the phone to reboot.
5. Close iTunes.
6. Launch QuickPWN.exe, it will advise you to hold power and home for 15 seconds, then press power for 2 second – do this.
7. If you’ve done it right you’ll get the ‘slide for emergency’ message as well as the USB and iTunes graphic.
8. Open iTunes and it will activate. Woohoo!
Obviously you’re then free to re-jailbreak or whatever else 🙂
Nottingham’s pretty famous for corrupt officials, admittedly on a more nationalist scale we needed the probably fictional outlaw Robin Hood to rob from the rich to give to the poor, and it was quite a long time ago. In a more modern twist the City Council are still hell bent on robbing from their workers to pay for their tram.
I’ve moaned about it before, but I’ll moan about it again quite happily – with the aid of a bit of Photoshoppery. The Work Parking Levy – a scheme whereby Nottingham City council rather ingeniously taxes a swathe of population whose votes they don’t depend upon – is still very much on their agenda. They need to do it, apparently, to ease congestion on the city’s roads. And also (not the main reason, of course) to pay for phase two of the tram system.
Rather than have a lengthy rant:
If it worked – ie. people who working within City Council bounds stopped driving to work and opted instead for the inadequate public transport system – there’d be no income from it.
Clearly this is a fairly transparent cash raising exercise, to pay for a tram extension that doesn’t remotely help the majority of people who will be footing the bill for it.
If congestion easing was the aim, why target only workers? Has anybody else noticed how remarkably quiet the roads are during school holidays?
People who live in City Council boundaries are unlikely to have to drive to work if they also work there – or they will work outside of those boundaries so will be unaffected by WPL – so ingeniously, this will have a minimal impact upon the shysters who came up with this scheme in terms of the ballot box.
Of course, that doesn’t begin to factor in the impact this could have in attracting new businesses to locate in Nottingham, why people who work hard should be forced to contribute to a scheme which by definition won’t help them (as otherwise they wouldn’t be driving in the first place!). Do councillors get to claim outrageous expenses too? Maybe there should be an investigation in that to get rid of them since it seems to be a flavour of the month…
If you’re ever stuck for something to do, indeed, even if you’re not, then you should hotfoot it to deepest darkest Lincolnshire and visit The Parrot Zoo.
That’s what Cat, Rich and I did last weekend to spend a day doing a ‘parrot experience’ – basically shadowing Neil, one of the zoo keepers, and generally probably not being much use in helping feed the almost-two-thousand parrots resident at the zoo.
It was ace. Just as a regular visitor I would’ve love it, but to get in the aviaries with the birds was great, and having Macaws, African Greys, Amazons, Cockatoos, Senegals, Caiques and the slightly-more-familiar-to-us cockatiels clambering over us was brilliant!
So if you’re stuck for something to do this coming bank holiday, then that’s what you should do – well worth it, and you could always take in the splendour of Skegness afterwards!
You’re always likely to be a bit biased when you read a book written by a friend, but this one was doubly-intriguing being about Albert Ball – a World War 1 pilot from Nottingham who I remember my granny waxing lyrical about when we saw his statue in the grounds of Nottingham Castle when I was a child. A riveting, moving and emotional read. I’d recommend it!
Hmm yeah, this blogging thing isn’t really proving to be a massively compelling pasttime is it? So what have I been up to since the start of September when I stopped briefly by to post some badly re-written lyrics?
If you’re ever stuck for something to do, indeed, even if you’re not, then you should hotfoot it to deepest darkest Lincolnshire and visit 
Goddammit 
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