Homefires (day one) June 11, 2007

Broken hearted at having missed one of the best ATPs in recent years, the Sandyford Two and Mrs H-to-be paid a visit to this year’s Homefires festival, and were very glad we did.

It’s billed as a festival of “quiet music”, so I was a little worried that there wasn’t going to be enough rawk to keep Mrs H-T-B happy. She largely enjoyed the day, and only misbehaved a little bit. (Sorry to the people sitting near us when that happened).

Her, and my, favourite act of the day was St Vincent. Catch her if you can, but don’t watch the YouTube video of this particular performance, because it doesn’t do her justice. At all.

I also got to meet two of my favourite pop stars: Four Tet and Nina Nastasia. I kept ending up being in the toilets at the same time as Four Tet (Kieran Hebdan) and eventually plucked up courage to talk to him. He was there with his mum and a few friends, and was just really friendly, and seemed to be enjoying the day. Nina was stood around after the show, and I just had to go and talk to her. Managed not to say anything too stupid, which I usually do in the presence of famous people (even slightly famous people). I bought her new album from her, and I was awestruck for days afterwards. Thanks Nina.

Her video does do her justice:

The Dirty Three’s ATP June 11, 2007

I was truly, truly gutted not to be at this event, having been to three All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP) festivals in the last few years. This one was perhaps the best line up I’ve seen. For you doubters, or for those of you that haven’t heard of ATP take a look at what happened when Nick Cave came on stage this year.

I heard great things about loads of my favourite acts like Nina Nastasia, Joanna Newsom, the Magnolia Electric Company, Spacemen 3/Spiritualised, Low… I was sad to hear that Cat Power’s set wasn’t up to much though.

Now that we know that the queuing problems have been resolved, the Sandyford Three will certainly be there for the Nightmare Before Christmas with Portisheed, as they say in my part of the world.

Curved corners are hard June 11, 2007

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve spent a couple of nights trying to get curved corners for some of the navigational elements for my website. I want to do this the proper way, using CSS, and it seems tough. But then, doing stuff with CSS for the first time always seems tough.

The webcredibles were helpful in this, but there approach isn’t going to work for my site. Gonna have to look at some forums, and try to find a simple way of doing it. I will get there, but any suggestions are welcome

Don’t eat Walker’s crisps June 11, 2007

Remember tazos? Yeah right, they were for kids. But then, in 1996 came the Walker’s Crisp’s Star Wars tazo collectors pack. Then, me and thousands of other males of a certain age who’d just left university and had a whole lot of time to eat crisps and collect things just like when we were nine, then, we took notice.

Before long, we’d all completed our Star Wars collectors packs with all 50 tazos. I was racing several of my friends to complete mine, and swindled at least one of my little brothers to get some of the really rare ones – C3P0, the Millennium Falcon – you know the stuff.

And by then, we were hooked on Walker’s Doritos. By then, it was probably already too late.

The warning signs came quite soon after that. The arrogance with which they (Walker’s) switched the colour of the bags of Salt and Vinegar and Cheese and Onion. I mean, come on, everyone knows that Salt and Vinegar are blue, and Cheese and Onion are green. (Everyone over 30, I guess?)

Then they quit the cloak and dagger stuff and came out as the evil crisp making factory owned by Pepsi that was going to take over the crisp world. Gone are Golden Wonder, gone are Smiths, gone are Tudor… now you shall all eat Walkers, and like them.

About four years ago, I walked into every crisp-selling shop on Clapham High Street and could not get a bag of non-Walker’s crisps. Many people in the office couldn’t comprehend my distress that afternoon.

And they deny that they’ve shrunk their crisps. I mean, even on Wikipedia it clearly says that Monster Munch haven’t shrunk. I bet a lawyer wrote that. They have shrunk, and it isn’t just because I have grown bigger, so don’t start with that.

And then come “Walker’s sensations”. This just enrages me. After years of churning out pathetic crisps, they bring out a range of “posh” crisps, charge us twice the price for them and expect us to be grateful. I tell you, if someone gave me a Walker’s Sensation, I would put it in the toilet.

The final irony. Last weekend, I checked the value of my Star Wars Tazo collector’s pack on e-bay – you know, the one that took me and my 2 flatmates two months and several hundred bags of Doritos to complete. Two pounds.

So go forth my friends, eat McCoys, eat Discos, eat Hula Hoops, and eat Seabrooks. Just eat some decent crisps, and free the world from this menace.

And for helping Walker’s take over the crisp world: I am deeply sorry.