iGet

I'm off to what has become the traditional annual visit to the London MacExpo with Ms Victoria Sponge tomorrow. I have been looking forward to it for weeks. It really is a little bit of gadget heaven. I just love the fact that I can get to see and touch all those wonderful gadgets that you usually only get to read about. This is an especially good year because the lovely Mrs McMuffin has agreed that I really need to have a new iPod. It is only two years since I got the last one, but that is like a thousand years in gadget time. Mrs McMuffin never really get that, but at least, up to a point, she is willing to go along with it. Anyway, the big choice for me tomorrow is which one should I get. I must admit, although I would usually tell people to get the most storage space that they can afford, I think I am going to go for the 30Gb in virginal white. As much as I have loved having a 40Gb iPod, it isn't big enough to hold all of my music, so I rarely fill it. I suspect it will be the same with a new iPod, even though there are the movies to consider. The other thing is the colour. The black ones are beautiful, and I can see their attraction, but for me white just fits the stripped down design.

Well, I'm off to bed now. 'Night all.

firefly

If we have lent you the box set of this series, could you let us know, as it's driving Mr McMuffin mad that he can't remember and we'd like to watch it again. Thank you.

three things i have been thinking about

Flu pandemics. All I hear is moaning about whether the government are doing enough and it seems that we are more prepared for this possibility than any other country in the world. Surely this can't be true?

Kashmir and Pakistan. Help them.

Anti-D. If you are an expert in this area, please contact me as I have some tricky questions that seem beyond the scope of my midwife. I will pay you in cakes for your advice. Lots of cakes.

heartless bastards

Thought I'd share a new band with you. They're called Heartless Bastards and they make catchy rock music. Nothing earth shattering, just good sing-a-long tunes. Probably their biggest strength is their vocalist, Erika Wennerstrom, who has a very distinctive voice, and reminds me a little bit of Grace Slick. I did have an Alison Moyet moment with her. I had listened to the album a couple of times before trying to find out anything about them on the internet, and imagine my surprise to find that the singer is a woman. Being the sexist git that I am, I had just assumed the singer was a man with a bit of range. I really must stop doing that. Here's Onions from their debut album Stairs and Elevators for you to listen to.

PS Mrs McMuffin doesn't like them, so they must be good.

first day in my new job

The last couple of weeks have flown by. Today I started my new job. I have been at work since 8am and my shift doesn't finish until 8am tomorrow, although I am going home in a few minutes. It's been quite a busy day. The best bit was that I got to deliver a commode to someone's house. I've never done that before. No, I lie, the very best bit was getting my payslip, and realising that I have been paid a small fortune for not working. They run a two weeks in advance, two weeks in arrears system, which means that I get my month's wages before I even do any work.

I had hoped to use some of the quiet time at the office to catch up on some blogs, but they have done something odd to the connection, and they appear to have blocked all blogs. They have also blocked my access to Apple, so I can't pick up my email. Why would they do that? I have already complained about not having access to Apple. I wonder if I would be going to far to complain about not being able to read my favourite blogs during work time.

I also received another one of those communicating by email policy documents today. They just drive me to distraction. Why, oh, why do they employ absolute morons to write these things. These fools trot out the same old crap every single time. They all make the same sweeping statement that email is NOT secure. I know email is, for the most part, not very secure, but it is certainly a whole lot more secure than the telephone, faxing or even snail mail for that matter. This particular fool was no different. I am quite convinced that these people are all in their mid-forties and are trying to cover their lack of computer literacy by watching War Games over and over again. You know, that Matthew Broderick chappy nearly started a world war with his hacking skills. There are probably a whole generation of people in high places making decisions about technology about which they do not have a clue. It really is scary stuff.

gVisit

Has anyone seen the fantastic new free service being offered by gVisit? It does something clever with Google maps to create a map where visitors to your site are logged. This means that I can track visitors to this site down to the street that they live on! Once you put to one side just how creepy that is, it is very, very cool. The service is very simple to set up and it looks great. It's free, but if you make a donation, no matter how small - I gave them $1 - you can have your page upgraded to remove any adverts and increase the size of your log. Seems like a bargain to me.

I've added a link to our gVisit map at the foot of this page.

just thought i'd pop in and say hello

...as Mr McMuffin is doing such a good job of posting with some regularity, please pretend you haven't seen me as I don't want him to stop. There's not much to add to his accounts other than we failed to mention a lovely meal at the Carrot Cakes a couple of weeks ago, Skype has screwed up our phone (to be fair it's probably Mr McMuffin's doing, he just loves to make our phone inoperative) and we have also seen The Brothers Grimm and Broken Flowers this week. I only really enjoyed Broken Flowers and cursed my poor french for not being anywhere good enough to consider going to see one of the more interesting offerings at the various cinemas.

I'm still on a bit of a high from Paris, we were blessed with such gorgeous weather and had such a relaxing time despite the hundreds of miles we seemed to walk each day. After the experience at the Eiffel Tower, I made a big show of sticking out my belly and walking around the queue at the Musee D'Orsay. Unfortunately I just looked like an idiot as no one came running to transport us to the head of the queue, so we decided to leave and not bother with the pretty pictures. We didn't go to Versailles either (bigger queues), we just wandered all over the city centre looking at things and thoroughly enjoying the fact that our most difficult decision was where to eat. I would like to have more days like those.

more stats whoring

We've had a good year, so far. This is our second year of blogging. During the first year we had around 60,000 visitors, which I thought was pretty damn good, but this year we have had four times as many visitors, and the year isn't over yet. I'm not sure what accounts for the huge leap in visitors during the second quarter, but I imagine that it had something to do with being linked to a couple of big hitters, which was nice. I guess also that the drop in visitors in the third quarter had something to do with the fact that we stopped posting regularly for a while. I just love looking at our stats and working out where people come from. It's fascinating stuff.

Mrs McMuffin, of course, thinks I am just being rather vulgar.

serenity

We went to see Serenity last night. I was a big fan of the TV show, which was cancelled after only 14 episodes. Apparently, the media moguls saw the error of their ways when the show sold cartloads on its transfer to DVD, and now we have a big budget, big screen, version of the show. For those of you who don't know, the show is a kind of western/space opera kind of thing. Joss Wheedon, the creator of Buffy and Angel, has written and directed a great movie. It's has an intelligent script with a strong streak of dark humour running through it, and it makes for an exciting movie. The characters are believable and, for the most part, you care about what happens to them. The special effects and action scenes are excellent. In fact, there is a space battle which is probably better than the one in the last Star Wars film (I can't even remember what it was called, although I did enjoy it.) Go to see this film. It is certainly the best SF film that I have seen this year, and even Mrs McMuffin loved it.

some music

A few tracks for you to savour. This is what I am listening to at the moment.

1 Swagger / Calla / Collisions / 2005

Calla are a band from New York, who run/ran in the same circles as The Strokes, until they hit the big time, I imagine. They have a similar sounds, only darker. This is the only album I have heard, but apparently this is them trying to do commercial.

2 Iron Woman / Devin Davis / Lonely People of the World, Unite! / 2005

Apparently Devin Davis made this album in his bedroom over a couple of years. Yes, I know, another one. But, this one is good.

3 S.e.p. Ruined My Life / Matson Jones / Matson Jones / 2005

Girly band who seem to rock out using double basses and cellos. Nice sound.

4 A Letter To Dominique / Louis XIV/ The Best Little Secrets Are Kept / 2005

Another young band from the US plundering back catalogues. This time it's glam rock. It's hard being so old. I keep recognising the songs that they have borrowed. To their credit, though, they do it well and they play as if they mean it.

5 Desperate Songs / Wheatus / Too Soon Monsoon / 2005

Brenda Brown is probably one of the best pop writers around. Why is he, and his band, not more famous?

6 February's Quiet / Big Star / In Space / 2005

One of those bands that you keep hearing about. Apparently they made a couple of albums that kick-started the whole power pop thing back in the 70s and then broke up. Well, they're back together, and they sound as if the last 30 years didn't happen. Great stuff.

7 Feelgood By Numbers / The Go! Team / Thunder Lightning Strike / 2004

This band have been around for a while and make curiously filmic dance music.

8 Dead Man's Will / Iron And Wine & Calexico / In The Reins / 2005

What can I say? Iron and Wine make some lovely music. It's difficult to be sure what contribution Calexico made to this album, but it certainly has a fuller sound and more instruments are being played.

9 Turn the Lights On / John Cale / Black Acetate / 2005

I had no idea that John Cale sounded this good. He kind of passed me by. Great album.