U2 have been doing their thing all over the BBC for the last couple of days. Someone commented somewhere that the BBC was acting like their own personal publicity machine, which would be really cool if if only it were true. Anyway, they just signed a big contract with Live Nation to handle their concerts and merchandising for the next twelve years. This morning I went to take a look and see if there had been any more details about the tour released yet, but alas there was nothing. I did find some other groups of interest playing in Munich though, but fuck me were they expensive. Tickets for Madonna range from €70 up to €195! Eagles are coming in June, priced at €110.50 or €127.75.  Springsteen prices range from €79.40 to €96.65. Compare that to Bell X1, whose tickets are €15.16, or Simply Red for €48.05.  Its a fucking crime. If it were just me then I’d be hard pushed to justify spending €80 on a single event, but it isn’t just me.  There are two of us, which drives the prices sky high.  Oh this is interesting… I would never actually have complained about these sorts of prices when we were living in London.  That city was substantially more expensive, and I had a well paying job.  Here though my awareness of the price of expensive things is heightened probably because everything is cheaper and I don’t have a regular job.

Anyway, we went on a walking trip yesterday.  We started in Starnberg, walked through the Maisinger Gorge to Maising and the lake, then on to Aschering. We were supposed to walk through about 2km of forest west of Aschering and then turn north, but there was a navigational malfunction and we ended up heading south to Machtlfing and then on to Erling and up to Andechs.  All in all we covered about 20km. I have to say, walking through snow is incredibly difficult.  When it comes up to your knees you discover just how hard water is to walk through.  I haven’t had any exercise in the last three weeks, and am dreadfully out of shape (even more so than usual) so I found everything beyond Machtlfing fucking hard.  Every step to Erling was hell, and even the thought of getting some good food and a few beers at Andechs wasn’t much consolation.  Still, we made it, and there’ll be more too.  I badly need to get in shape, as does Anna, so this is a good start.  Click the picture to see the route we took, the red line is where we walked, the yellow where we should have gone.

Dave recently posted that he was shocked at me going to see Coldplay in concert.  I’ve left that hanging for a few days while stewing over the correct response.  The truth is actually very simple, and really shouldn’t need to be said.  I went to see them in concert because I like their music.  There.  Happy now?  It is of course a bit more complicated than that, but the core of it is that I enjoy their music and wanted to see them play live.  I haven’t been to a large concert in a long time, and to be honest I know I’ve missed out on some incredible moments.  I had also never been to the Olympiahalle in Munich and wanted to see it.

I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan as you know, and have been for a very very long time.  It goes back to Niamh I think, an old friend from Dublin who turned me on to them first.  I think at the time I was pretty into Jean-Michael Jarre, which gives you an understanding of the root of my tastes.  I’ve always been more into rock than pop, though that’s a generalisation as opposed to a rule.  I have seen Michael Jackson in concert and it ranks up there as one of the best concerts I have ever seen. Likewise U2, who blew my mind with their Zoo Tour.  Music is a selfish thing: It touches you in ways that it can’t and won’t ever touch other people.  Coldplay’s music pushes the same buttons in me that the Floyd and U2 push, and that shouldn’t be too hard for anyone to see.  They’re simply a great rock band who have released some brilliant music.  How could I not go to see them in concert?

Chris Martin seems to be a polarising character in the world of music.  I have to say that I really don’t have an opinion on him either way.  I don’t tend to pay that much attention to what bands do when they’re not performing (excepting Bono and St. Bob perhaps).  In concert he came across as someone who was humbled by the adoration of the crowd on the floor.  I don’t know how real or fake that was, though if I had to bet, I’d say that it was a slight enhancement of what may actually be a natural shyness.  How could you not find it appealing to have the frontman of a group be incredulous at your response to their performance.  Whatever it was, and whether he pulled it off or not, is something that only someone who has been to many of his concerts can say.  Nicely enough, the entire concert was taped for Absolute Radio (formerly Virgin) and can be view online here. To quote him after the show, “I think the concert was the least shit Coldplay concert at the moment that you could have possibly ever seen.  Do you see what I mean?”.

I’ve missed the concert scene for so long that this getting tickets for them was a “now or never” kind of thing.  I’m glad I did too, as otherwise I would have missed out on a great gig.  When I last saw U2, they screwed up my concert-going experience for the rest of my life.  They played “Running to Stand Still” and ran it into “Where The Streets Have No Name” and it was perhaps the best thing I have ever heard live.  Actually there’s no perhaps… it was the best thing I have ever seen live.  While Coldplay didn’t come close to that, in part because I had a fucker of a cold and in part because their show was a little smaller, they were pretty close.  If I was feeling better I would have left my seat and moved towards the front, but I wasn’t.  I would have preferred to be right in the middle of the crowd, as opposed to sitting beside someone who really didn’t seem to want to be there. I just wasn’t feeling up to it though.

So ultimately it comes down to this: Why Coldplay?  Well, why the fuck not?

The lights go out and I can’t be saved at dave bushe dot net

If it seems like I haven’t posted anything here in a very long time, then that’d be a fair assessment.  There’s no real excuse, just a bunch of little things have gotten in the way.  So, instead of a single theme for this post, there’s going to be a bunch of them.  The biggest news at the moment, apart from the financial crisis in the US is of course the death of Rick Wright.  If you don’t know who that is, then shame on you.  Rick Wright was the keyboardist for Pink Floyd, and responsible in a very large part for their unique sound.  He died on Tuesday after a brief fight with cancer.  There have been many things said about his untimely death around the world and the web, and I don’t feel eloquent enough to add anything new.  Suffice to say that his musical brilliance will be missed dearly.

I had to re-install Windows on my laptop last week.  Vista was getting a little slow as a result of all the crap I had installed on it. So I backed up the last of the bits and formatted it a couple of days ago.  Everything is all back up now, though I still need to install some minor apps.  I posted a few weeks ago about my search for a new password(s) and I think I have a viable solution.  There’s an open source app called KeyPass Password Safe that manages passwords, and also has a fairly comprehensive password generator built into it.  It allows me to generate very random passwords with as many characters as I like, in addition to specifying the characters that can be used.  So, I could generate one with upper and lower case letters, and then another which is the same but with added symbols or extended ANSI characters. They’d look like dkBaQ3iDwAlAKnmqV5Df, or 0h-y_PiWVaeKn3H3LTkO or even 5^Zl-uexa*\]YaD:jKFJ)"U%F.Y(7+bE$nxs<zN".  This makes it very useful for web stuff, as there are so many different combinations of what can and can’t be used on different sites.  Portability is something I’m still working though.  For now, I have the app installed on two PCs and simply synchronise the databases if I make a change.  However, there’s an option to synchronise over the web which might be a good idea.  The program will also run from a USB key, so it is portable.  Nicely enough, there source is completely open, so the trust issues inherent to software like this don’t exist should you decide to crack open the code.   Although it is a Windows program, there’s a Mac port, and if you have Mono installed it seems to mostly work on Linux.

There are a bunch of new builds of the Windows Live apps were released today into open beta testing.  I haven’t done much with them so far, but it should be noted that the latest build of Windows Live Writer doesn’t work with BlogEngine.Net.  I’ve mailed someone about it and been told that there’s a hot fix in the pipeline for BL.E users.  Very unfortunately the crash occurs when trying to detect the style of the blog, so you never actually get a chance to get in and create a post with it.  I’ll update more when my contact in Microsoft gets back to me. I had some nice screenshots to go along with this post, but of course I can’t actually use Windows Live Writer to compose in so they had to be removed.  The alternative would be to hand-resize the images and then manually upload them.  Damn this program makes blogging too damn easy.

My sister arrives here in a couple of days.  We had a friend from London over to stay last weekend too, so everything is a little chaotic at the moment.   Emma is going to be here for the beginning of the Oktoberfest, though I'm still not sure if we can get in anywhere.  We may have to take her there during the day and sit outside the tents if things keep on going as they are right now.  It seems that you have to book tickets for Oktoberfest well over a year in advence. To add a whole bunch of interestingness to the mix I have an interview tomorrow (now today) for a job that appears to be perfect.  Its a combination of web development, product management and internal marketing all rolled into one package called “Senior Web Architect”, and the more I think about it, the more I want it.  It has all of the functions I’m looking for in an “ideal” job – though of course I have no idea how the paper description would actually relate to the real job.  I guess I’ll find out tomorrow eh?

In nine years of blogging, I seem to have only mentioned The Pink Floyd about four times. I have no idea why this is, as they have been one of my (if not the) favourite bands for far longer than the lifetime of DaveWhite.Net.  I never got to see them play, to my great distress. In fact, I had the opportunity to see them on two occasions, but circumstances played against me. 

The first time was for the Division Bell tour in 1994.  There was a Rocky Horror Picture Show convention on in London that we (as cast members of the Irish Rocky) were supposed to go to.  I had quit my job about two weeks before that so I didn't go because I thought it would be a waste of money.  Little did I know that Pink Floyd played their famous Earl's Court gigs that weekend and that there were tickets for us to go to see them.  Those concerts were later immortalised on the P•U•L•S•E album. I found out about it on the Monday when someone came back and told me that the concerts were the best thing they had ever seen.  Typical.  The second time was for the Live 8 gig.  The problem with that one was that Anna came home from a trip to the US early, sick, and in need of care.  That trumps a concert in my eyes.

I have seen David Gilmour play in concert at the Royal Albert Hall for his On An Island tour, and that was awesome.  The particular night we were there was the one where David Bowie sang Arnold Layne and Comfortably Numb, and ranks up there with the best concerts I have ever seen.  I do have the DVDs, but I haven't ever looked at them to see if we can be seen, being usually too concerned with what was happening on the stage.  I think we (Trev, Dennis, Seamus, Duncan, me) should be pretty visible, as we were in a box centred on the left wall.  I must check that out sometime.

I have all of Pink Floyd's albums, and have downloaded some bootlegs and variations I haven't found in physical format.  Most of the albums are in CD format, but I think there's actually a couple of vinyl albums back in Ireland, that I'll have to dig out at some point.  They are all of course digitised and on my MP3 player, and taking up a lot of room as I have them ripped at a high bit rate.  Again, at some point in the future I'm going to make lossless rips of them (and possibly my U2 collection, actually probably most of our CDs, but that's a project for a later time) and to hell with the size implications.  Disks are cheap now days, right? One that I don't have (yet) is the new boxed set Oh By The Way that they just released.  Each of the CDs on it are miniature versions of the original albums and presented inside sleeves that look like the album slip covers.  I also have a couple of their VHS videos - Live at Pompeii and a recorded-from-TV Earls Court concert.

I have also seen the Australian Pink Floyd many many times.  They are perhaps one of the best tribute bands in the world, and have been around for a long time now.  Stumbling across their updated web site yesterday prompted me to write this post, though I can't remember the impetus for looking at their site in the first place.  It might have been something somebody on Twitter mentioned, but it eludes me now. Anyway, your chances of seeing them in concert are far better than seeing the originals, and while nothing will ever match the real thing, they're pretty damn good.  We've also seen them in the Albert Hall, where they performed the 30th anniversary tour of Dark Side of the Moon, which was pretty special.  Oh, I remember now what made me think of them.  There was a track that I was looking for online which is their version of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which had a sequence of sound before it (effects like the Skippy theme, Neighbours theme etc building into a slight crescendo and then fading rapidly to leave you with the familiar G minor opening sequence. It was in fact a rare moment that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up when I first heard it.  I couldn't find it online, although some of the effects are audible on some sequences of the embedded songs on their site.

I guess its pretty safe to assume that they are my favourite band.  As a general rule I listen to anything from metal to classical, but I have some staples in my taste.  Rock and Roll, a la Pink Floyd, U2 and Bruce Springsteen being my most listened to genre. Those are the bands that I used to go asleep to when I was younger, and the ones that I now have on my MP3 player and routinely play.

All I can say is... holy shit! I had no idea. I grew up with this song and if you had asked me I would have told you for sure it was about Dublin. Hell, the lyrics even match. I presumed that the Gas Works wall where I met my love were down around Pearce Street area where the old Gasometer was. (Aside, did you know my grandfather used to work on it?).

So, it turns out that Dirty Old Town isn't about Dublin at all.  Thanks Dave, you just shattered a long held belief there for me.  Its about Salford, which is in Lancashire! It was written by a guy called Ewan McColl (father of Kirsty McColl) in 1949 as a filler for a scene change in his play Landscape with Chimneys. Bizarre and unexpected.  Anyway, linky below.

Linkage : Dirty Old Town.

In start contrast to yesterday, the first song on my MP3 player was some shit by Sophie Ellis-Baxtor.

The song playing on my music player right now is Billy Jean, that wonderful melody by Michael Jackson. Remember the video to that? The one before that was Queen's We Will Rock You. While I booted up my laptop U2's One started. What a brilliant mix to bring me down from the constant concentration of German class.  
This was the first one in a week, and I'm trashed after it. I think I'm ahead of the curve though, in that I knew everything we did today with the exception for some vocabulary. There are three of us this time, and a teacher whose accent is a little hard to understand. Just like the last course however, she doesn't stick completely to the rules and some of the more difficult words are explained in English. I don't know if I mentioned already, but the course is being run by Berlitz in their school just off Marienplz (Marien Platz).  
The Berlitz method of teaching is to completely immerse you in the language and use repetition as a learning device. Typically the teacher says something and we repeat it, and then she asks the corresponding question and we answer. Then we ask the questions to each other and get the same answers, or slight variations of. So far though, I haven't seen that method adhered to completely, and that's just fine by me. I think I have improved quite a lot in the last four weeks, and the next four will be even better. I believe that this course actually covers all of the different aspects of German grammar and leaves you with a full (albeit narrow from a vocabulary perspective) understanding of the language. Jesus, the music just changed to Wham's Careless Whispers. Good thing sound doesn't leak from these headphones, otherwise I imagine I'd be getting strange looks. Anyway, we're getting close to Ismaning now so I'm going to suspend my laptop and post this at home.

Last night we went to see Rodrigo y Gabriela again.  This was my third time seeing them, and they were awesome.  It was a small venue too, which was nice.  We were standing so close to them, that we could have reached over and touched their guitars.  Like I said... Awesome!

What the hell do the lyrics for all of the Pink Floyd songs mean anyway?  I've never been a student of allegory, metaphor or simile, but it occurred to me this morning that I actually don't have a fucking clue what their songs mean, and I've been listening to them for about twenty years.  The irony of "For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals.  Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagation.  We learned to talk", delivered by Stephen Hawkings (who can't talk) isn't lost on me.  Nor is the fact that I'm asking this question.  Google and I have a date later it would seem.

I finally made up my mind about the music player I wanted to buy.  The winner was the Creative Zen Touch player, after a lot of consideration.  Several factors made me buy this one over an iPod, apart from my loathing of Apple, which I might have put aside was there sufficient technical reason.  It does WMA, which means I can use a music service other than iTunes (though iTunes does that U2 that I've been lusting after).  The sound quality is apparently better, though I have only second hand information on that so far.  I hooked up my headphones to an iPod and my player, and played the same song recorded at different bit rates, and the Apple sounded shit.  However, the iPod was ripped at 128k and mine was at 196k, so the additional depth could easily be explained by that.  More on that when I have a chance to make a more formal comparison.  For what its worth, the headphones with the Creative offering are shit, but then I have a set of Bose QC2, so everything sounds shit in comparison.  Finally, the battery life of the Zen Touch is rated at 24 hours, though C|Net have apparently clocked it at 27 hours.  Twenty seven hours of continuous music playback on one charge is fucking awesome.
Shiva, or Exodus as it is now called, was released this week.  Its the latest expansion patch for Eve, and so far it rocks.