Thursday, October 25, 2007
Who Knew
According to the BBC today, Simply Red have announced theyre splitting up...Was anyone actually aware they were still together?
Misc update
So a few things have happenned since I last updated...Got the new Radiohead album as mentioned below. loving it! Probably the best thing they've done since Kid A. As you might know, I really disliked Hail to the Thief when it came out and have been pushed back to reassess it and realise that I was completely wrong!
Since I last posted, We've been to see Manu Chao. Thanks to the Academy plastering big warnings about no bags all over their tickets we decided not to risk taking a camera meaning that all the pics we took were on my phone. Not exactly the best quality gig pictures we've ever taken but theres some good ones. fairly annoying to see that there were plenty people there both with bags and proper cameras. Overall a great gig but live he sounds so completely different to his records...his records are generally so chilled out but live everything seems to turn into a trashy rock song half way through. Sounds great when you're there but not so good on his live CD as just listening to the studio versions.
Went to see Control as well. I don't think it justified the hype but overall I enjoyed it. The performance of Ian Curtis shows him as self obsessed and kinda unlikable. Pretty much how I had always imagined he actually would have been. To be honest, the only one from the band who came off well from the whole thing was Bernard since he came across as really nice but the rest of the band seemed like complete dicks.
Also had a moment of prime surrealism when we won tix to go and see 'Once' at the GFT. Really sweet wee film (although I'm glad I had never heard of it when I went to see it since it seems to be everywhere now and looks like it might become quite big) but the 2 main stars made an appearance afterwards to play some of the music live. Is one of the strangest sensations to watch someone on screen for 90 minutes then turn round and realise they are standing literally 2 feet away from you...made me think of that scene from father ted about dreams/reality.
A few gigs coming up befroe the end of the year...Andrew Bird, Loney Dear & Beirut are all bought and we're still swaying about Mum and Patrick Wolf...
Since I last posted, We've been to see Manu Chao. Thanks to the Academy plastering big warnings about no bags all over their tickets we decided not to risk taking a camera meaning that all the pics we took were on my phone. Not exactly the best quality gig pictures we've ever taken but theres some good ones. fairly annoying to see that there were plenty people there both with bags and proper cameras. Overall a great gig but live he sounds so completely different to his records...his records are generally so chilled out but live everything seems to turn into a trashy rock song half way through. Sounds great when you're there but not so good on his live CD as just listening to the studio versions.
Went to see Control as well. I don't think it justified the hype but overall I enjoyed it. The performance of Ian Curtis shows him as self obsessed and kinda unlikable. Pretty much how I had always imagined he actually would have been. To be honest, the only one from the band who came off well from the whole thing was Bernard since he came across as really nice but the rest of the band seemed like complete dicks.
Also had a moment of prime surrealism when we won tix to go and see 'Once' at the GFT. Really sweet wee film (although I'm glad I had never heard of it when I went to see it since it seems to be everywhere now and looks like it might become quite big) but the 2 main stars made an appearance afterwards to play some of the music live. Is one of the strangest sensations to watch someone on screen for 90 minutes then turn round and realise they are standing literally 2 feet away from you...made me think of that scene from father ted about dreams/reality.
A few gigs coming up befroe the end of the year...Andrew Bird, Loney Dear & Beirut are all bought and we're still swaying about Mum and Patrick Wolf...
Monday, October 08, 2007
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
Brian Wilson
So much for keeping the blog updated!
Anyway, The photo's are up from Brian Wilson. We were seated way up in the rafters so weren't too close to the stage, which is reflected in the pictures. Brian and the band themselves were incredible. Sounding exactly like it sounded on record which is something even the original beach boys never managed.
The new 30 minute musical piece he played sounded interesting but so far, I haven't read anywhere regarding a release of a proper studio recording. Hopefully that will be out in time for christmas!
Anyway, The photo's are up from Brian Wilson. We were seated way up in the rafters so weren't too close to the stage, which is reflected in the pictures. Brian and the band themselves were incredible. Sounding exactly like it sounded on record which is something even the original beach boys never managed.
The new 30 minute musical piece he played sounded interesting but so far, I haven't read anywhere regarding a release of a proper studio recording. Hopefully that will be out in time for christmas!
Sunday, June 24, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Loney, Dear
I've just added a new post to my Lastfm blog which can be found here.
Heres some videos
I Am John
Saturday Waits
That is all
Heres some videos
I Am John
Saturday Waits
That is all
Friday, June 15, 2007
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!
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!
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Slight Return
Wow, its been almost 2 whole years since I last posted here! I decided to return to the blog since a lot more of my friends have an online presence than they did 2 years ago and I want somewhere I can pull everything together. Am still toying with the idea of actually registering paradasos.com and just sticking everything on there then pointing all my various web profiles back there. we shall see...Also, I still dont have a whole lot of a great deal to say about my life that I would want to share on a blog so it remains to be seen whether I will actually post anything more than I did last time...
Saturday, June 04, 2005
PostSecret
Heard about PostSecret a few days back and just stumbled across it.
If you have a secret, you write it on a home made postcard (the artier the better) and mail it to this websites publishers by snailmail. They then scan it in and publish on the web for the whole world to see!
If you have a secret, you write it on a home made postcard (the artier the better) and mail it to this websites publishers by snailmail. They then scan it in and publish on the web for the whole world to see!
Layout
Incidentally, the current layout of the blog is a pure 'off the shelf' number just to get it up and running. Hopefully, I'll customise it a bit more and design my own layout soon
Side Bar
Playing around with Flickr and Blogger I discovered I could add this cool wee flash animated link button of all my photos...If you cant see it, it means that, as I suspect, It's completely draining my allocated bandwidth for the month on Flickr...I'm tempted to pay for full membership but we'll see
Photo's are up
OK, Change of plan...I've decided to use Flickr for all my photo posts. I'll start with my Germany Holiday from earlier this year and will work through from there.
I've picked out my Fave pics from day 1 in Berlin and they are now available to view here
The photo's are a combination of those taken by me and by Sydne.
I've picked out my Fave pics from day 1 in Berlin and they are now available to view here
The photo's are a combination of those taken by me and by Sydne.
Hallooo
The intention here is mainly for somewhere to show my photo's and record random thoughts...havent yet decided if I'll use Flickr for image hosting or not...I'll see how much this place lets me upload first
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