In Rainbows

Just went online and ordered the new Radiohead album...had only intended to order the download for now but, since they cant say exactly when it will be issued, I just imagined coming home from a crap day at work a few months from now and unexpectedly finding a huge parcel from Radiohead. Yup, ordered the box! I love that they're big enough now to just put out a big fuck you to the whole recording industry. One of the biggest bands in the world releasing their albums independently and selling direct to the fans online. And this only 2 months after Prince gave away his new album with the Mail on Sunday! (the one and only time I will EVER buy the Mail!).
I also love the fact that no one knew they had a new album out. They just announced 10 days before the release date and, since they recorded it in their own studios, there's no lowl-paid studiohands with access to the tapes so there's no chance of a leak onto the torrent sites or newsgroups. And it would appear they didnt even send out review copies, so while I'm sitting here waiting for the email that gives me the link to download the album later today, so's the guy from the NME and from Rolling Stone or whereever. No favouritism. The whole world waiting to hear it all at the same time! It's almost like a return to the old days when the whole country gathered round their TV's to hear the beatles unveil 'All you need is love'.
Just hope I get the email in time so I can d/l it and whack it onto my ipod before I have to leave for work...

Radiohead mentally scar a whole generation of kiddies at the smash hits poll winners party

Para(dasos)noia

Ok, Here's a weird one...but first some background (which, on re-reading is over long but stick with me).

As I explain at the top, the name Paradasos is basically a literal translation of the meaning of the name 'Fraser' into Greek. The short version of the long story stems from the 'His Dark Materials' books and the fact that everyone had a personal Daemon with a grand, classical sounding name. I decided Paradasos would be my Daemon name.

Unlike the many variations of my full name I had chosen for usernames at various points, Paradasos had the advantage that I seemed to be the only one online (ignoring the Italian Restaurant in Alaska) and over a period of time, it stuck.

I once became aware that one of our Flickr pictures had been used to illustrate someone elses blog post. That's covered by the Creative Commons Licence we assigned the pictures and I'm more than happy for this sort of thing to happen, but it made me curious if anyone else had done the same. So I googled 'Paradasos'. And amongst all the expected entries, was a site about Kilted Pride which collected pictures of men in kilts. There was a piss-take picture we took ages ago of each of us wearing my kilt and doing a mock highland fling. Someone had posted this picture on the board and a few people had made light hearted comments underneath. It was funny and I knew I was potentially opening myself up to ridicule by posting that picture on a public photosite anyway so, again, this didnt bother me.

Cut forward 6 months and I became aware of Google Alerts. Basically, you can set a search term you are interested in and Google will send you an email either as soon as it finds a new result, or once a week send you a roundup. Just because I was interested if anyone else was using our pictures, (and to feed my egotistical side!) I decided to sign up for a weekly email for 'Paradasos' search results.

Again, mainly what you would expect. Various posts I've made around the place, more mention of the alaskan restaurant and a German White Stripes message board posting our Flickr pictures from the Raconteurs gig.

Still with me?...this is where it gets weird.

There was a result in the weekly Google Alerts email this week which was a search results page from a web-dating site, confirming that there was no results for 'Paradasos'. This means someone searched for 'Paradasos' on the dating site. Everyone that knows me personally, knows I'm engaged so they're unlikely to go searching for me on a dating site. Meaning that, if the search was in any way connected to myself (and about 98% of all google results for the word are), it had to be someone I don't know personally.

It could be pure coincidence, but it seems possible that some random stranger has seen my profile somewhere, and decided to see if I was registered on their dating site of choice.

I know a lot of people are creeped out by lack of privacy online, but I cant help but think that having a random stranger checking me out online is less creepy than the fact that I immediately knew they'd done it.

Me...but online

I'm kinda addicted at the moment to the idea of having a whole other life online. I stop short of checking out of reality and signing up for Second Life or WoW, but in the last week have updated profiles for Lastfm, Twitter, Bebo, Facebook, Flickr and the dreaded myspace. Don't know why I bother when the only site that any of my friends use online is bebo but I just prefer a few of the others. I also have a macabre fascination with the stories i've seen where people die but their myspace page becoming a living memorial to them. More and more I'm using stuff like Google Docs, Calendar, backpack, basecamp and my internet enabled phone.

I already have my entire, 16000 song music collection with me 24 hours a day on my ipod, so it makes sense to have access to my entire photo collection, important documents and anything else pretty much wherever I am.

I'm going to make an attempt to stick with the blog this time and update it at least once a week. More than anything else, should be a good place to stick those stupid ideas that pop into my head from time to time that amuse no one but me, which shouldnt really matter since no one but me is likely to read this anyway!