What's Doing

Spotted, on Snackspot, a reference to "Bob the Builder’s Cheesy Toolbag".

I really must raise the intellectual level of this blog above that of the average ten year old boy. Who fancies a little discussion of metaphysics and existentialism?

In my previous entry I promised some action this day. I also mentioned my record collection. As you may have gathered from previous not so subtle hints I’ve been reading Nick Hornby books recently. As you would know if you’ve read High Fidelity (one of my top ten books), making lists is a bit of an obsession with us blokes. The subject also came up on my recent rediscovering your masculinity weekend. So, without further ado, here are my current top five best albums of all time, ever.

• Chris Difford – I Didn’t Get Where I Am
• Ben Folds Five – Whatever and Ever Amen
• The Style Council – Cafe Bleu
• Neil Finn – One Nil
• Prefab Sprout – Andromeda Heights

Of course, this is all subject to change, probably by tomorrow morning if I know me.

What are your favourite tunes? Leave me some tips to improve my musical knowledge in the comments section. Or just a quick note to let me know how completely spot on I am. I don’t have a problem with fawning praise.

I’m at home sick. So rather than come up with anything witty I will re-direct you to Bunny Boilers.com. Arse spankingly funny, in a "there but for the grace of God go I" kind of way. [Courtesy of Ben Hammersley].

Normal service should be resumed tomorrow.

Please feel free to ignore this entry if all you want to hear about is the contents of my music collection.

The heroes : Waratahs 34 – Crusaders 31. Take that Templeton.
The zeroes : Manly 12 – Wests Tigers 38. Dear, oh dear oh dear.

Another week passes and whilst I am constantly in motion I don’t seem to have done anything "blog worthy". Well, almost. If you look in the other place you will notice that the nerd factor has ratcheted up to about 11, but you don’t care about that, do you?

So, I’ve decided to give this page a little shake down. If you cast your eyes to the left you will see that I have updated the list of links. Gone is the "recommended" section, if you can’t find Google, the BBC or the ABC by yourself then you are stuck in the last century. Probably the 1970’s.

Instead, I thought I would let you see what I’m reading. The first list is the web sites I try and look at every day. They are predominantly blogs, but that doesn’t make them bad websites. Take a look, you probably won’t like everything that I do (the world would be very dull if everyone was as marvellous as me) but you might find something you would never have looked at before.

The second list is, as it says, friends and family. All are there by merit – except Uncle Baldy who begged me to link to him. Although lets face it his content is the best so he didn’t exactly have to press his case. Note that there are only four entries in this list, and one of them is mine.

If you read this blog, work in one segment or other of the IT industry and don’t have a website to link to, shame on you. Knock one up now, send me the URL and it shall be added. It will make you a better person.

In non-nerdy related news, I popped in to see my sister yesterday (not likely to have a web site for a long time) and am glad to report that she and Mark are well. Sadly Mark’s choice of footwear isn’t. His London Irish slippers are proof, if proof is needed, that you can take memorabilia collection just too far. Next time I’m there I will take my camera and get a picture so that you too can share in his excessive devotion to the team in green.

Update. The online shop at London-Irish.com (which I was hoping to link to for extra comedy value) is so broken its not funny. I thought it was my choice of ghetto browser that was the problem, but it doesn’t come up in the great stan of browsers either. Bad, bad rugby club. Of course, anyone using Shopcreator deserves all of the (lack of) business they get. But I’ve gone full circle back to nerdy again so I’ll shut up.

I promised myself that I wouldn’t let events in the middle east sully this blog, as they are all over the rest of this here interweb.

But I couldn’t resist linking to this. It sums up the extraordinary ambiguity displayed by the "coalition of the invading" and neatly summarises my own current thinking, which is "Remind me again, why are we doing this?&quot. [courtesy of Textism]

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

I’ve been following the Six Nations coverage on the BBC for the last few weeks and loving every minute of it. However, the theme music they picked has been bugging me since the first commercial appeared a couple of months ago. I knew it was by Ben Folds Five but I couldn’t for the life of me remember which tune it was. Which was a crying shame for someone who, like me, claims to be a fan.

I blame my lack of decent sound reproducing equipment (which will be resolved soon, honest), but I finally figured it out tonight. If you’ve been watching the BBC and wondering what the music backing their six nations coverage, well, its track six from the last Ben Folds Five album – The Ballad of Rheinhold Messner. The song is called "Army" and I would like to quote to you from the first verse;

"Grew a moustache and a mullett, got a job at chick filet, stating artistic differences the band broke up today"

Buy the album now. You know you want to.

The wedding photos are here.

Words of warning for the international man of tax. This is what happens if you play dodgy music whilst driving your children about the country.

Luckily for me there are no swear words in Marillion tunes, just some very inappropriate guitar solos.

Well, I may be twelve thousand miles away, but its nice to see that the Manly Sea Eagles are maintaining their record of mighty performances in the NRL.

Losing to North Queensland is bad enough, next thing we know they will be struggling against schoolboy teams. The only reassurance I take from this latest episode is that old habits die hard. In particular the excuse for the loss, according to the match report I linked to at the beginning of this paragraph was, and I quote – "poor ball handling and discipline".

Ah, Brookie Oval, save a meat pie for me. Actually don’t because they are inedible and even Uncle Baldy would turn his nose up at one these days. If I was you I would stick to the hot dogs and the Tooheys New. Especially the Tooheys New.