Archive for January 2007

Got to love the new Apple ads featuring Mitchell and Webb (although I’d still rather see another series of Peep Show).

What an inspired way to beat the Christmas holiday boredom: create the battle for Helms Deep out of Gummy Bears.

the evil army of Saruman’s creation has broken through the wall and is streaming in for the sweet sweet sugary kill.

A truly epic creation.

I think this is the first time I’ve actually typed an entry from the comfort of my bed; I’m not doing so because it’s late (although it is), but because it’s bloody freezing here. The builders arrived here on Monday to begin some rather major work on the place, and as a result there’s currently no heating or hot water. There’s no kitchen either, and what’s left of the bathroom is lying in a skip. But most importantly, I still have broadband!

It’s actually quite cosy - one of my cats likes to sleep on my bed, which is as good as having a hot water bottle, even if she invariably somehow manages to take up most of the room, leaving me to fit in around her. Oh dear, I’m suddenly reminded of the TV commercial that’s on at the moment in which a woman says (using what must be some terribly filthy euphamism), “I can’t get up without my furry alarm clock”; perhaps I just can’t go to bed without my furry hot water bottle. Besides the cat, the iBook on my lap generates a reasonable amount of heat too (I know, we’re not meant to, but having watched An Inconvenient Truth a few days ago, I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever want kids anyway).

By the way, today marks the the fifth anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees at Guantánamo Bay. There are still 385 prisoners there (including ten British residents), not to mention the other 13,600 ghost prisoners being held/tortured in secret US detention centres around the world. As Clive Stafford Smith says, today represents the anniversary of too many shameful acts..

Thought I’d better post something here in case Microsoft has any laptops left to give away as bribes review machines.

I had such good intentions for the Christmas holiday, including finishing the new design for this site. In the end I had a thoroughly lazy, unproductive time, and only managed to catch up on a few of the things on my to-do list. Definitely felt like a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ week - to be honest I think I really needed a break from worky stuff. Still, now I see that Celebrity Big Brother has started on Channel 4, I’d say there’s a good chance I’ll get that new design in place shortly.

I suppose I should write a belated-but-still obligatory World of Badger review of 2006. <scratches head /> I guess the highlight of my year would have to be the Sultan’s Elephant in London back in May. What else? Album of the year? Um, I have to admit that, as a result of converting a lot of my CD collection to MP3s, I spent a large part of 2006 getting back into a lot of albums from the late 80s to mid-90s. That said, there were some really good albums released in the last 12 months, and my favourites would include:

• Yo La Tengo - ‘I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass’ (surely album title of the year if nothing else)
• Peeping Tom - ‘Peeping Tom’
• Thome Yorke - ‘The Eraser’
• Joanna Newsom - ‘Ys’
• Sonic Youth - ‘Rather Ripped’

(I would have linked to Spillers Records in Cardiff, the oldest record shop in the world, which is threated with closure by developer scumbags, but I can’t link directly to the albums on their site, so I’ve used Boomkat - another independent music shop - rather than Amazon. Spillers is a great little shop, and I used to get all my albums and gig tickets there when I lived in Wales; please sign the petition to save it.)

OK, admittedly not the most comprehensive review of 2006, but it’s the best I could come up with at this late hour.