Okay, so something was really bugging me today. Dan Wilson from Semisonic used to be in the band Trip Shakespeare, and I couldn't work out where I had heard of them. Turns out that Matt Wilson (from Trip Shakespeare) was the support for Tim Finn when he played Chicago last June.

It's a small world...

I've read Neil Finn's Once Removed tour photo-diary, and it is a beautiful book. But this has to be the most frank and amusing tour diary to date; that of Jake from Semisonic. Describing just one day in a tour, it is honest, hilarious, and well worth a read. I've already plugged their new album "All About Chemistry" - it's a really great CD, and hasn't left my CD player since Mike sent it to me over a fortnight ago. Although probably more "indie" than pop, it has a lovely number of twists and turns, with Ben Folds-esque touches in "Chemistry", and the beautifully catchy "Sunshine and Chocolate" sure to get you singing along. Get it!

Glad I'm not a pig or sheep or cow (or farmer) right now. This stinks. :(

I saw a great thing walking through the park this morning. A crisp, very cold day - dog walkers, children on bikes, guys playing rollerhockey - and a kid on a scooter being towed at great speed by a large poodle !! By 'scooter', I mean one of those little fold-up metal things that are all the rage in the UK right now; the ones that take kids' fingers off if the bolt goes.... Anyway, I thought it was a great idea - and the poodle seemed to love it!

Our weather is behaving really oddly - yesterday, within the space of 4 hours, we had snow, sleet, hail, driving rain, brilliant warm sunshine, howling gale, lightning and thunder. Talk about Four Seasons In One Day! (speaking of CH, I heard "Instinct" in the shoe shop this morning, had to sit down I was so shocked!!). Daniel tells me it's snowing up in Wales right now - blizzard style. America's weather is pretty screwed too right now - they had real problems putting the Shuttle down earlier in the week. Damned Greenhouse effect.

I say that, but in reality we're in a huge weather cycle that lasts thousands of years, and are just in a "warmer" period right now. Give it a few more thousand years and it'll all ice over again. Yes, so the weather is being adversely affected by humans right now, but I shouldn't get all antsy about the UK weather being all over the place; it's been pretty stable compared to most places on the planet. Despite the whole country grinding to a halt as soon as it rains more than 5 minutes (for a country obsessed with rain that's a shock!!), it is more agreeable than many other places on earth. It just doesn't have its share of the scenery to go with it... ;)

Can you tell I studied environmental geography at Uni?!!

Oh Yes. OhyesohyesOHYES! Via Lukelog, go make your own boyband! Get your own back on all those Popstar programs! Oh YES!

I haven't been writing much - still laid up with the lurgy - it's all getting very boring now, and I've seen 2 repeats of the same show on the Comedy Channel already! I did manage to sit at the computer long enough to write my friend Peter a new page, however. Check out HUSSY ;) Of all the online diaries out here, his is the one I look forward to with almost child-like glee, and read without fail every fortnight. Running since 1996, it's a unique porthole into the music industry and how everyday life fits around it.

I've had a night off from the computer today; yes, I know I'm on it now but I've spent the first evening in a while out in the garden, chilling with my little sis, and hanging out with my mum. And I've had a lovely time :)

It's London, it's February... so it's frog-bonking time. We have about 3 ponds in our garden, and they're at it in every available space. Here's a snapshot of the pond, taken at 9pm tonight.. (green alien glow is from night-vision on the camera)....



It's going to be a bumper haul of frogspawn this year! Went on a newt-rescue mission this evening too; if the newts (a type of salamander rather than a clueless american politician!) are left in the fish-pond, the fish eat the newt-eggs and we get no newtlets... A moral dilemma, as ecologically speaking I should get rid of the fish, but as he's a pet from Uni (his name is Cliff) and he's been rather prolific in the baby-fish-making stakes, I can't bear to get rid of him....

Oh, and we saw our first toad going into the pond to mate, too!

Who needs television when you've got nature putting on a better show outside than 999 satellite channels combined?

I've been silent, I know. Trying to get Fame Is off the ground; there are a few Netscape issues but with 2 flavours of Netscape out there, both as bad as each other, I have almost given up. It's legible and navigable, and if it doesn't look quite as nice as in IE, tough. Roll in browser industry standards (in my dreams!!). Microsoft may be an evil capitalist superpower, but at least their browser behaves properly and consistantly with CSS etc. I know there's the argument about "nice code", but right now all I care is that it's legible and informative. Oh, and my site stats told me that only 1% of visitors to the site used Netscape. I rest my case.

Not much else going on - bought my tickets for Neil Finn's European tour, not getting enough sleep, and wishing the weather were better...

I do love working with the web, but sometimes it is SO frustrating. A perfectly lovely page, even looking great in Netscape, but as soon as I whack a Frame Zero round it - yuk! No logical reason WHY the table would go screwy, but heck - it has. So, another redesign. Whoop-de-do.

I think I'll just go read my book and listen to Semisonic's new album (with that great song "Chemistry"). Oh, and I love that new Shaggy song "It Wasn't Me" - not sure it's quite PC but it's a brilliant piece of pop music in its 'purest' form - entertaining, tuneful, slightly amusing and catchy as hell!

Weekends need to be longer, haven't done HALF of what I wanted to do or in fact needed to do. It's a toss-up between doing chores and having a rest, and there aren't enough hours in the day to do both convincingly well.

Revamped www.fameis.com but the re-direct seems to screw up the tables (???!!) and I haven't finished yet; went to see Harry Hill (nutter), did some work :(, read some of the newspaper, listened to music, and didn't get enough sleep!

Sounds like a normal weekend to me...

Finally finished my Stortrooper... now go make your own!



Found that Blogger has lost about 2 weeks of my archives - damn. I guess I screwed up :(

If anyone can help me locate about 10 extra hours between now and 5pm, please do let me know. I seem to have lost them somewhere and need them back urgently.

Documentation sucks, is incredibly time consuming, and amazingly tedious.

An unmissable page, this. Via Lukelog by way of notsosoft, here are 68 translations of the phrase "Oh my God! There's an axe in my head".

Sadly, this translation is probably useful in very many countries right now.

You can now see how I'm feeling day to day; the little face in the navigation bar is now updated whenever I feel like it.... (I'm not THAT much of a moody b*gger though).

After a conversation with my mate Jackie, I was having my "valentines day" think-fest last night.... about the old "When Harry Met Sally" theorem - that men and women can't be 'just friends'.

Personally I think men and women CAN be platonic friends... (though if they're gorgeous, it will ease matters if they're gay!)... but not everyone agrees, and I sometimes waver in my convictions. Not because I like the person "like that", but because of the evident social pressures... "he tarzan, you jane" kinda thing. Both Jackie and I seem to get fall-out from being friends with blokes, with everyone else thinking there's something else going on. It sucks!

It's frustrating on an intellectual level, as trying to have an interesting, rational and educated conversation with a bloke is hard enough sometimes, without thinking there may be a chance they want to get into your knickers(!). But I have to say I don't think this is always the case. I have plenty of male friends who I CAN have a good conversation with, without the thought even crossing their mind. At least I don't think it has...

I had a really good male friend for several years, precisely BECAUSE I seemed to be the only girl on campus NOT to kiss him! (he wasn't my type!). No, we're no longer friends, due to the fact his girlfriend couldn't believe (after 3 years, in which time I got them together!) that there was nothing between us, and put the pressure on him to stop seeing me. I am pretty gutted about that, actually - he was almost a brother to me, and I miss him like mad.

I did fall in the "WHMS" trap once though; having elevated my ex from a friend to 'more than that' and back again, it took so long to get our excellent friendship back online again that I learnt my lesson; there is no going back except in exceptional circumstances, and you can lose them forever if you step over the line... first, make sure you're certain.

So I have a load of male friends still; some straight, some gay - but I find them easier to talk to than girls a lot of the time, and I don't have the urge to jump into bed with them, either (though some I could be tempted by!). Maybe it's our lovely British education system; segregation at many points in life isn't the best idea socially, even if it may be so academically.

Anyway... enough about what I think.. what do YOU think? I have added a discussion tool to this diary - click the [Discuss] link at the bottom of each post to add your thoughts. Please do - it will be interesting to see a global perspective of this conundrum....

Went to see "Traffic" tonight, a great (Steven Soderbergh) film. It's very different from the usual run-of-the-mill films in the cinema, you actuall have to think in order to keep a track on all the characters and their complex interactions; but it's worth exercising those brain cells for. Shot partly as "normal" film and part sepia-tint (processed or shot? not sure), it is a snapshot story of the war against drug trafficking between the USA and Mexico... the government, the cartels, and the personal relationships involved. Heavy-ish, sobering, but very interesting and thought-provoking. A convincing cast - Michael Douglas, Dennis Quaid, and Catherine Zeta-Jones star.. but the star character (imho) was the mexican policeman - Javier Rodriguez - played by Benicio Del Toro. Not lighthearted fare by any means, but well worth seeing.

Not sure what Rodney thought, though..

Otherwise, my day started off pretty okay - anonymous valentine cards = 1 (no idea who from, either!). Then I solved a 1-day coding problem in an hour - always good! Life improved further at 4.30pm, when I got a call that Neil Finn tour dates had been announced and put on sale. Always a good thing... :0)

Okay so I haven't drunk any coffee in WEEKS.

This isn't easy...

I didn't do either.

"Do I Stay or Do I Go Now"

Dilemma :

Do I go home and watch the Simpsons on Sky

or

Do I stay @ work with my ADSL connection, and watch the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission?

Some people are SUCH f*ckwits, it amazes me they get so far in life.

Well they worked; CDs are fine (4 wasted CDs and 2 restarts later). Only 12 hours and 39 minutes - but it was worth it ;)

Next time I'll send them to a mate to do, tho'.

I think I have made an earth-shattering discovery. A real, working, amazing time machine.

It's called a computer.

I just looked at my watch, and realised that I have been sat in front of this radiation-box for about 10 hours now and didn't even *realise*. God, I haven't done that since I was at university - the first week - and discovered telnet, Nilex, and... well, unlimited free internet access ;)

I work with computers - it's my job - but during the week I move around a lot, there are phones to answer, people to call, paper (!) to read, milk to buy... I am probably never sitting still for more than 45 minutes.

But it's the weekend. And it's raining. So what do I do?

Decide I'll figure out how to get stuff from my MD to my CDR. "Easy peasy" I hear you say. But I don't have one of those great digital setups like my mates - I have my trusty analog cable and my mic-in socket (yes, I KNOW!).

Am half way thru the process; it has taken me 1 hour to download the software, another hour to plug everything in (running around the house for various cables), and the rest of the time to copy the MD onto the computer - now I am painstakingly chopping up the tracks.

I know there's an easier way, I just didn't know til I had done all that already.

No, don't laugh... :p

I just hope the end product is worth it.

I *do* know that I've had plenty of interesting conversations, talked to new people, and didn't spend any money.

Oh, and did the laundry.

It ain't all bad ;)

Bard Humbug Quiz

This is an amusing little quiz, checking out your knowledge of computers and Shakespeare. I got 8/10. How did you do?

This lurgy seems to be hitting London pretty hard.... just been round to visit my friend Sarah with some flowers; both she and her parents have been knocked out by it. That's the problem with living in such a confined space such as a capital city; not enough clean and germ free air for everyone...

I lived out in the countryside for one year when I was 18, in the middle of nowhere; it was such a lovely change, the air was so pure and you could be miles from anyone else. I've always lived in the city otherwise; big, bustling cities (London, Tokyo, Jakarta, Edinburgh & Liverpool).... ok so Edinburgh isn't BIG, but there are plenty of tourists to make up the population in the summer... Liverpool is a cool city to live in; great nightlife, friendly people, and so close to the stunning scenery of North Wales and the Lake District. London feels very constrictive; it takes you ages to get out into the country, and even then it's tame, walled rural fields. Sussex is London's saving grace; a little oasis of quiet, green, ancient woods, sea and tiny lanes leading to crooked churches, just an hour down the road.... however much I travel, it's still somewhere I want to come back to. "Green and pleasant land" indeed.

And then there's New Zealand, but I won't get into that topic today.

Oops, sorry... begining to sound like a travel guide there ;)

I had a good time last night... went to see a preview of Miss Congeniality last night - courtesy of Rodney. Starring Sandra Bullock, William Shatner (!) and Michael Caine, I was expecting some feel-good american schmultz. It was.... apart from the schmultz. The brief storyline; a threat to kill a Miss America pageant winner has the FBI putting Sandra Bulluck ('butch' FBI agent) undercover as Ms New Jersey. An entertaining, witty movie - not intellectually challenging by any means, nor artistically brilliant - nevertheless very good. A sunday afternoon movie... and boy, does Ms Bullock have a fun role to play ;) Two negative points that stretch credibility, though; firstly, Ms Bullock is meant to be an "ugly" FBI agent. Uhuh, not believable (despite much hair back-combing!). Secondly, the friendliness of the pageant girls in the contest.. having read "Miss Wyoming" by Douglas Copland and talking to REAL americans; the pageant queens are all backstabbing ******* to each other in real life! But it's nice to see the Americans taking the mickey out themselves in a movie for a change...

Oh well, back to Oracle National Language Support documentation. *YAWN*.

I just sat and wrote out a few songs on the phone tune composer provided by iobox.com. And then it lost them. That's only 1 hour wasted then...

Yeah, I have sounded a bit negative this week - the post-gig blues have hit hard this week, and the next planned concert is in March (Andy White). "How will you cope?" I hear you ask. Well, I have enough CDs to listen to, and plenty of work to be getting on with, a few sites to write....

.... but you're right, it just isn't the same.

I wonder if live music IS addictive? Would be a very interesting study.. :)

What would one use for a placebo though??

Other stuff... interesting new website for the new digital-only Channel 4 spinoff; www.e4.com - nicely put together, good ideas, but a bit low on content. And as fancy as these lovely flash and layered sites are, it makes them a right b*gger to search and/or bookmark. So only 5/10. Still, it's meant to only be a beta version.

Still, it's not as bad as VH1's site. Or their email reply service.... Or www.101cd.com - purposefully not linked as they are pretty appalling really. Slow order, no communication - eventually after 2 months I rang them and gave them a hard time - so they gave me a £5 discount on an item they don't have. I guess it's a start!! I do love online shopping, but there are so many sharks out there....

My most favourite online store in the world has to be Netcd, a small, non-fancy New Zealand online CD seller. No fancy-schmanzy graphics, no big advertising, but cheap CDs, a BRILLIANT service and one of the fastest delivery times I have ever experienced. They're 12,000 miles away from me and deliver faster than Amazon. What other online CD store owner would email me PERSONALLY to see if I wanted a christmas card printed out to go with a gift CD sent to the US? Also, being a NZ/Australian music lover, I can get all the stuff one can't find over here.

Why is it that today, staying at home, seeing no-one but my 2 cats and my mum, that I have a *perfect* hair day? Exactly how it *should* look; straight, streaked and not a hair out of place.

But on sunday. Sunday, where there are many, MANY photos being taken (I am usually behind the camera rather than in front), it does it's "AHA! Let's go REALLY curly" trick, and *BOING* - my hair looks just awful and does this stupid ringlet fluffy number.

Don't laugh.

Call it vanity but really, out of the 365 days a year that are wide open for a bad hair day, WHY SUNDAY??!!

Dammit.

(Reason for rant: I just got sent some pictures from sunday, by a friend. The one of Neil is great!)

At last - a positive Neil Finn review in an english paper. It doesn't happen too often (sadly) - usually receiving poor press from NME (and yesterday's Times), someone who actually took the time to listen and learn, rather than knocking something "not cool". Okay, so he got the name of one of the audience-participants wrong (it's Mickie, not Danny); but thank goodness for an open-minded journalist. Sure, everyone is allowed their opinions, and don't have to like what he does. But the number of music reviews (about anyone, not just NF) which slam the artist for the hell of it are too prevalent and downright boring; sure, if they are rubbish then tell it like it is, but be sure to back up your criticism with fact...

I'm bored again (can you tell?!). Daytime tv sucks big time. Yeah, home again; I don't do "being sick" very well (low boredom threshold); the bedroom ceiling is not very interesting, lucozade is gross, and even changing the pans under the leaks in the roof was more interesting than Sky TV.

Was meant to go for birthday drinks with a friend tonight, too :( In the end I got her some "aromatherapy treatment" time with a friend of mine...who treats holistically, at home, and is brilliant at what she does..... reflexology, massage, the lot. Sarah really liked the present, which was good :)

Oh god, it's raining..... time to empty the baking tins in the attic again..

Well, what an amazing day :) I can't keep my eyes open for much longer but boy-o-boy, it's gonna take me a while to come down from whatever cloud I am floating on. Seeing my friends up on stage performing with Neil Finn, hearing him live/solo for the first time, all the people that made it for a pre-gig drink/jam session - it's a bit of an overload and I probably can't write about it yet. Highlight of the day? Walking back from the shop halfway through the evening, "bumping" into Neil before sound-check, him signing my photo and saying "aha, jen - i sang a song for you on my webcast"....

Bless!

Rodney also prompted me (in a roundabout and indirect way) to check out this site, the Knowhere Guide - a user's guide to Britain. I guess (seeing from the international audience this site seems to attract) it's probably a good idea, especially since Doug sent me a lovely virtual-chicken-soup mail saying he had to use Effingpot to translate "lurgy".

Getting back to the point, the Knowhere guide lists some pretty weird information for places in the UK. Another deep insight into the British Psyche, perhaps??

I'm off back to my trashy magazines.

And I STILL haven't tidied my room OR made the guest bed up.

And the guest arrives tomorrow.

And I haven't taped them what I had intended to tape them.

Oops.

Oh, Rodney just said "hope you're feeling better by sunday". I'll be okay; and Simon said that even if I WERE clinically dead (the only way I'd miss the gig), he'd drag my body bag down to the venue and prop it up anyway. Isn't that lovely !!

*Ahem*.

No, I'm not worried by my friends in the least.

Much.

I am sure that you don't need to know this, but I was off sick again today. Actually, that's not technically correct; I went to work, I did a load of debugging, I spoke to a client, I made his site work again, and THEN decided to go home.... it all got a bit too much. It was around 12 by then, so I guess that's only 1/2 a day, really.

Stocking up on lucozade and yogurt in the shop on the way home, I rifled through the magazine rack for some really trashy stuff to read. The Evening Standard wasn't in yet, but the lovely guy behind the counter sneaked me the magazine section for free (I think the lucozade, yoghurt and trashy mags gave the "i'm not well" game away!). Aren't people so nice !! Cheered me up...

I didn't end up reading the trashy mag, and I didn't tidy my room (Mary Poppins, I need you !). I spent most of the afternoon either asleep on the sofa, or semi-asleep on the sofa watching old Crowded House concerts (the best way of cheering up!), or semi-asleep on the sofa on the phone to my boss debugging code I couldn't see. That wasn't so bad, as I know the application inside out (I built it), but how a database "insert" statement can work one minute and not the next was quite beyond me at that point in time. Or at all, in fact.... I swear these computers have leapt forward in evolutionary terms, without us noticing. They change stuff sneakily, and then sit there chuckling and smirking to themselves as we knock our heads against the screen in frustration.

I just read that 45 people visited here yesterday (yes Rodney, Netstats ARE addictive!). I can only apologise that the last couple of entries have been so mediocre - and downright boring. You'll be glad to hear that a friend from Belgium is visiting tomorrow, I'm having my hair done (not in that order), going out, and then on sunday it's the BIG GIG. I at least hope to have loads of interesting music-related stuff to tell you on Monday evening... :)

A music-related blog entry. That'll be a change.............. ;)

I just installed this late last night.. NedStat Statistics for Jen-X. It makes for amusing reading :)

I've been off sick with the lurgy today - initially I thought it was food poisoning, but no one else was sick. And apparently there is a bug going round. Dammit. Very unconstructive day, with sleep, a book, some old Split Enz videos, and 2 gorgeous cats to keep me company....

So much to get done, and no time to do it. Oh, how I wish Mary Poppins could come do something to my room - I don't know where to start... I need somebody with patience who wouldn't mind putting my CDs back in alphabetical order. Sad, I know, but it's the only way I find any of them... and I'm starting to lose track :)