Glastonbury 2008 Review

I knew this one was going to be a special festival, but I didn't realise how special. After pitching our tent and wandering around I had already fallen in love with the place. The atmosphere was totally chilled, the views are beautiful and there's live music and entertainment everywhere you walk - it's more like a group of mini-theme parks than a festival.

Bailey's camp, our home: a fair walk from the main stages but plenty of space and quiet enough to sleep at night!


Our tent, expertly built by our very own Phil

It absolutely pissed it down on Thursday night and throughout Friday, so we got our fair share of the mud:

It was a good opportunity to show off our fetching rain gear...

But then the sun came out and Saturday and Sunday were beautiful:

We found a beautiful spot at the top of a hill that looked across the whole festival site:

The acoustic tent was another favourite....chilling out in the sun at the top of the site with a cider and guitar music was awesome:

And the bands weren't bad either! Here's my pick of the weekend (my photos were crap so I've knicked some from the BBC)

The Subways
I saw these guys at Reading a couple of years ago, liked their sound and bought the album, which has turned out to be a personal favourite. Despite having a shitty lunchtime spot on the Pyramid stage, they absolutely rocked it with some old classics and new material off their upcoming album. I hope to see these guys higher up the line-up in future.

Kings of Leon
I have to confess I didn't know a lot of their stuff before the gig, but I couldn't help being taken in by Caleb Followill's unique sound - that guy has got one hell of a voice! I think they got a bit of stick for being inexperienced in delivering to such a big crowd, but really it should come down to the music - I think they should get big respect for belting out 90 minutes of awesome tunes.

The Raconteurs
In my opinion, the best band of the weekend - they've got to get a headliner spot at next year's event. Jack White. Guitar. Nuff said.

And what about Jay-Z?!
To be honest, I loved his set. Fair play to the guy, he knew he was controversial, he knew some people wouldn't like him and he took the piss out of the whole situation by coming on stage to Wonderwall and replying Noel Gallagher's comments by singing '99 problems but a bitch ain't one' - in your face Mr Gallagher!

In total we went to see 25 bands (* = my highlights):
Kate Nash
The Subways*
KT Tunstall
Young Knives
The Gossip
Foals
Editors*
We Are Scientists*
The Fratellis
Kings of Leon*
Thea Gilmore
The Wombats
The Raconteurs*
Elbow*
Amy Winehouse
Jay-Z*
Athena
Newton Faulkner*
Jack Penate
Scouting for Girls
Mark Ronson*
The Pigeon Detectives
The Zutons
The Verve*

Bloody hell, what a long essay! If you've followed me to the end, give yourself a pat on the back and go get a beer!

Glastonbury: 12 hours to go

12 hours until I set off for my first adventure at Glastonbury. I am fantastically excited right now...

Been shopping with Phil to stock up with essentials for the weekend. To me this means cider and pot noodles, but Phil is much more sensible and has bought fruit, veg and other 'proper' foodstuffs for us to eat. He also owns a tent, stove and other essentials...it's a good job he's coming otherwise I would be huddling in my sleeping bag under the stars gnawing on an 'unspecified meat' burger purchased from a suspect fast food van.

Have checked the route for tomorrow (yes, I have been trusted with getting us there in one piece) and now given up packing - I'll finish up tomorrow in a mad rush and probably forget to pack something as essential as pants....oh well!

Must get a decent night's sleep as this may be the last for a while....

23 years old - eek!

Just a quick post to say how much I enjoyed my birthday this year - mixing 3 groups of friends could have been disastrous, but it all went swimmingly!

The day started off by meeting up with my bezzie-mates from back home, Gem and Nikki, and going for a dip at the Bath Spa - it was absolute heaven.

People came round for drinks at my house and Phil bought the most AMAZING cake I've ever tasted in my life...double chocolate with chocolate goo in the middle!


Met up with everyone else in the evening for drinks in Spoons:

Emma and SP...
James, Lucy and Phil...
Me and my wee friend Emma..
Then it was on to O'Neils for some boogying:


It was very hot and sweaty in there!
Next day, I took my Mansfield friends to see the delights of Bath, which included riding some pigs....
Visiting the Royal Crescent:
And,of course, eating a 99 by the kid's playground:
What a FANTASTIC weekend, the best Birthday I have had in a good few years!

Why I love living in Bath

Bath has been my hometown for about 5 years now, but I'm still amazed at how beautiful it is.

Here's a few shots taken when my folks came to visit, we were so lucky with the weather.

Royal Crescent: Where all the posh people live.














Holborn Museum...sometimes I think I love my job too much!



















Great Pultney Street (Where they shoot street scenes for period dramas)














A random street which I thought looked really pretty!

YouTubing Award-Winning Animation to the Masses

Had a very interesting and exciting meeting with the guys from Google/You Tube today.

Our company will shortly be launching a YouTube channel which is very exciting. Being a uber-geek fan anyway, it's brilliant to think that you will soon be able to see most of Aard's vids in one area. It's even more exciting that I will be helping to run the site and build up a community.

There's around 100 clips in total to be launched, so one of the next jobs is to decide what we launch with and how frequently and how many vids we should release in future weeks/months. There's also a really fancy tool which creates a 'fingerprint' of any copyrighted material you upload and then trawls through the rest of the site flagging up any other videos which may be infringing your copyright. You can then choose whether they should be taken off.....or even better.....you can tell Google to whack an ad on the page and earn money from the advertising! Genius.

The guys also brought up an interesting point about adding all of Aard's commercials to the list as well, which I think would be a very smart move. Not only would it bulk-up the content, it would keep people interacting with the brand longer, and may also bring in new customers in future. The final idea is to generate some new, fly-on-the-wall style stuff, which I think would be the most popular content of the lot. From my experience people LOVE to see anything behind the scenes, anything they wouldn't get by watching the TV or reading a book, something that is more personal. Filming it in a fairly amateur way would give it a much more personal feel, plus we could do it on a shoe-strong budget and whack-up new videos every few weeks, which is the most important drive behind the site: new, regular content.

I'm still skeptical about the commercials and behind the scenes vids as there's a lot of red tape to get through first, but hopefully we can open people's eyes so they see how effective this strategy could be. Watch this space.

I am English, therefore I LOVE tea

I luuurve the tea.....

Since I've started working properly (ie I'm not a lazy student anymore) I've started drinking more tea. I thought it was just a boredom thing, ie. I'd go and make a cuppa instead of sitting at my desk, but now I actually think I'm addicted.

I couldn't function today without having a cup and I think by the end of the day I had had 5 or 6 - not good. Think I'll have to check on the ol' blood pressure and go to the gym a bit more to avoid developing the body of a typical coffee drinker.....

Found this picture on someone's blog and thought it was quite cool :-) The ironic thing? The graffiti is on a wall in Berlin. Pah.

Twitter - A Cynic's Perspective

My ramblings for today...

I've recently been introduced to the world of Twitter (yes, I know I'm 2 years late compared to the rest of the population) but I'm still confused as to whether I like it or not.

I love Facebook. And I love to update my status on a fairly regular basis to let people know what I'm up to and to see whether I can write something that makes people laugh. For this reason I can see why Twitter is popular - people like to know what their friends and family are doing and how they are feeling. I find that reading someone's status on Facebook is a useful way of seeing how often they are online, what they consider to be most important piece of news in their life at the moment, and often how funny they are :-D

At the same time I take a step back and think 'isn't this all getting a little self-indulgent?'. At least on Facebook updating your status is only a small part of the reason you are on the site. It remains on your profile for people to see if they actively choose to seek out your page and find out what you're up to. On the other hand, Tweets are written to be broadcast - the entire purpose of the site is to tell the online world what you are doing.

I'm all for shouting about yourself if you've got something interesting or humorous to say, but tweets like 'good morning twitterers' or 'eating soup' just seem pointless to me. What makes it worse is when people post personal comments in the search for acceptance or reassurance - often from complete strangers who are following their Tweets. I have kids on our forums at work who do a better job of getting straight to the point - 'post things you like about me on this thread otherwise I am leaving this forum forever'. lol.

I have a work colleague who updates her Twitter at least 3-4 times a day, every day without fail. Fair enough, it's primarily for work purposes and I have to admit that having regular updates visible makes a website look good - but isn't it a little sad that you become tied to your laptop and conditioned into making quirky little comments about your life on the hour, every hour? And if Twitter wasn't controlling your life enough while you are at your desk, they even let you Tweet from your mobile. There's no escape from telling the world about yourself. Me, me, me....

The argument against this, of course, is that this is what blogging is all about - posting thoughts and ideas to the web and 'getting yourself heard'. I would respond by saying there is a fine line between wanting to share intersting information with peers and seeking acceptance through self-indulgent blogging.

I'll give Twitter a trial-run, but I'm not convinced just yet.

Foo Fighters at Wembley - FOOking Awesome!

Foo Fighters, Wembley Stadium, 6th June 2008

After forking out a stupid amount of money back in November for tickets to potentially one of the greatest gigs of our lives, the wait was finally over for me and my gig-buddy Phil.

Seetickets really made us sweat by not delivering the tickets until the very last minute - I had to pick them up on the morning of the gig. However, once that was sorted we fuelled up with a Wetherspoons breakfast and made our way to the coach station. After a bit of a cock-up with bus tickets (mainly involving us sprinting in between coach stations looking for the right bus) we were on our way to London.

Even though we've been there before, I couldn't help but stand and stare open-mouthed at the size of the new Wembley Stadium - it's bloody huge!

After finding and using the most important facilities - toilets, tshirt stand and beer - we were ready to see some music:

Warm Ups
The sound quality was pretty poor for these guys - probably because of the stadium set up. The stage was situated in the middle of the arena so that the crowd could view from all angles.

Lots of speakers at different angles + not enough people in the stadium for the supporting acts = way too many echoes.





Didn't even catch the name of the first group, although from doing some net-based research I've found out they were called Against Me. Why they don't put the band name on the drum set and shout out their name as much as possible is beyond me, after all, isn't the aim of being a support act to get your name out there and seel some cds?

Second act was Supergrass - love these guys. Have seem them at numerous gigs and festivals and they always put on a great show. Played loads of new material I hadn't heard before, as well as classice like Caught by the Fuzz - and very surprisingly, Alright!

The Main Attraction
A mind-blowing 21-song set, with Dave Grohl on top form. Being in the crowd was mental - 2.5 hours of beer-throwing, moshing and screaming at the tops of our voices.



Check out the set list:

Pretender
Times Like These
No Way Back
Cheer Up Boys
Learn To Fly
This Is A Call
Long Road To Ruin
Breakout
Stacked Actors
Skin + Bones
Marigold
My Hero
Cold Day
But Honestly
Everlong
Monkey Wrench
All My Life

Big Me
DOA
Generator
Best Of You

Best.night.ever. Nuff said.

Cat-sitting

Cats. I bloody love them, always have, but I have to agree they are completely manipulative.


Take the one in this post for example - Tillie, I am looking after for a friend at the moment. She looks cute, yeah? Not at 2 in the morning when she's scratching on the door to get into your bedroom. Then at 4am. Then at 6am. I could go on...

I've given in and decided to let her in my room at night. Bizarrely, having a cat walking all over me in the middle of the night doesn't wake me up half as often as hearing her scratching at the door!

Don't get me wrong though, it's fantastic stress-relief after a hard day's work to have her sit on my lap and purr, plus she goes mental over cable ties, so scattering them across the floor provides her (and me!) with hours of entertainment!

Sleeping, eating, and playing - I think I could handle being a cat.