Luck, like art, is and always be entirely subjective. One person’s good fortune is another’s downfall. Someone’s perception of their luck is completely different to someone else. Let us look at this idea using the following example:
My car has a dent in it. A nice round dent between the petrol (diesel) cap and the boot.
Your first instinct is the say “bad luck”, and that might be right as it’s certainly going to cost me to have it fixed. But you might also be tempted to say I’m lucky because I’m fine, I haven’t actually had an accident. I wasn’t in the car at the time, in fact I didn’t even notice the dent (being on the passenger side) until it was pointed out to me.
So it appears that between last Thursday when I filled up with black gold and Tuesday night when it was noticed, someone had an interaction with my car. Where interacted is some kind of push or bump, because there are no scratches, just a dent. During this time, the only places the car sat (without me inside) was at home (which I’ll discount as the scene) and two car parks, one in Bournemouth on Sunday night and the other at work on Tuesday.
Back to luck. You could say I’m lucky due to the fact that if I still had my old car, the same height would correspond with my rear lights, so I’d have a light cluster to pay for instead of dent repairs (although this may still end up cheaper). It is bad luck, however that whoever created said indentation didn’t feel like owning up (like a decent human being) and yes you would know it happened, the car is made of metal which makes a noise when hit. It’s is on the other hand lucky (for them at least) that I don’t know who it was (or actually where it happened).
So, in conclusion, two sides to every coin, but as this coin is coming out of my pocket, I’m still angry.
There’s no denying it, seaplanes are seriously cool and are the only type of air travel (other than airships) which I don’t mind seeing an increase in.
Everybody knows that when a band takes it’s first steps in the outside world, they play the smallest, darkest and dirtiest places known to man. Very few people realise that even when the band has three albums under their belts and have had your songs on the soundtrack to numerous tv shows and films, they can still end up playing there.
So it was that Turin Brakes played downstairs in the consortium last week. The original concept was good, an intimate gig in the opera house with about 400 people, good venue, nice acoustics, moved so they could refurbish the place. So instead, it was 400 people packed into a downstairs bar which doesn’t really have a stage. The result being that you couldn’t see anything, even when there weren’t tall people stood in front of you and that people would continually push past trying to get nearer the front when they could clearly see there was no space. Still, the band were superb, and if the quality of the new tracks are an indication, the next album should be really good, if yet another direction change from their early material. It was quite surprising that there was only one song from the last album, but the group singing of the classics made up for it.
Fast forward to last night and you hit the other end of the spectrum, Snow Patrol starting their winter tour at the BIC, in front of 10 times the number of fans and in a venue with both a stage and proper lights, where the new side balconies look a good bet for an excellent view if you ever fancy resting your legs (says the man who’s got an aching foot and standing tickets for the next few gigs). Again, the band were great, with Mr Lightbody (minus the messy hair) jumping around stage like a madman. Sadly he was let down by a sound crew that missed half the first song and by half the audience who showed little interest in the set. The couple stood beside me didn’t clap, cheer or sing once and then topped it off by ignoring the non smoking signs. I also don’t see the logic behind not playing Run as part of the encore. While I appreciate the band might want to move on from the song, it’s one of a handful of songs that everybody knows and it could have been better used, still I shouldn’t complain (but the Isle of Wight Festival set was better, sorry).
It just goes to show you that you never really know what to expect, don’t judge a gig by the venue, and don’t judge the atmosphere by the band, just expect the unexpected and remember to have no voice in the morning.
As you may have noticed, I’ve given this place another shake up. Continuing with the gradual development of the site, the basic design hasn’t changed, but the layout has been mixed around to give a different feel. This is officially Catch 4.5, also called Catch Panoramic.
The Panoramic name has been chosen to reflect the major change to the page design. Each page has been designed to have an image or photo just below the site header. Eventually the front page as well as every post, feature and archive will have one. Some will be the same, some will be unique. The site has been designed to search for the correct image to display, with posts either displaying an individual image or photo for that post, or falling back to display an image to the month, or for the year. At the moment, I’m going around filling in any gaps that I find so please be patient. Eventually all images within posts will be moved to the top of the page, but this is a time consuming process. A good example of how this should look is shown in this post from April.
If you’re looking for the menu, it’s now at the top of every page. This has been done to give the site a wider feel. Some of the pages also use the full width of the page, so it will take some work to make these pages look right as all the images are now too narrow! Those of you who use the links at the bottom of each page will notice that at the moment, these remain unchanged.
Overall, I didn’t want to be sat on this new design while I fine tuned everything only then to get bored when I revealed it, so I’ve taken the decision to reveal it now as a work in progress and let you all watch as it gets it’s finishing touches. So please take a look around, but don’t touch the wet paint or point out the holes, everything will be fixed (in time).
Microsoft’s Chris Capossela: “One of the biggest challenges… is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough,” so we have been using inferior software then!
When you live near the beach, you learn that it’s not just a place to go in the summer. It’s really nice to get down there on a cold winter day where the place takes on a different form. The fact there’s always a cafe nearby serving hot drinks is good too. This is the view from Studland of a shower over Poole and Bournemouth yesterday afternoon.
As a Saints fan, I’m used to watching my side loose, usually against all odds. Many people aren’t lucky enough to get such a life lesson from their football team. Sadly at the moment, the nation’s sportsmen seem to be taking it upon themselves to give the country in general such a lesson. The football team can’t seem to gel enough to put a few passes together, the cricket team can’t win any game that lasts less than a week and the rugby team are on a run of defeats not seen for 30 years. Yet a small, dedicated bunch of us still went all the way to Twickenham at the weekend on the off chance they felt like a change of heart.
When almost every train I got on either started late or broke down in some small way, I should have seen the signs. When we presented the Argentineans with penalties under the posts and a breakaway try, I still didn’t twig. When not once, but twice we were within 5 yards of the line and failed to score, was my spirit finally broken? No. Because rugby is a completely different kind of game to football. Yes, there is less singing, but it doesn’t mean the atmosphere is any worse. 74,000 people singing swing low sweet chariot together is a sound to behold, if only the team would respond to it. Even at the pub by the Thames in the evening, the fans were singing together as if we had won, many stood on benches and tables. It appears it’s not about the winning; it’s more about the drinking. There were no insults, there was no violence, opposing fans stood, sat and drank together. But it is an exclusive club. It’s rare that tickets for England internationals go on sale to the general public, which means the majority of us are left with the football.
So I’ve been to an England international at both football and rugby and neither result was a good one. But the later was far more enjoyable. I only hope that next time I spend 3 hours on the train travelling up to a game, we try a bit harder to win, after all it’s a nice feeling to have once in a while.
When apple announced the new matchbox sized iPod shuffle, part of me immediately wanted one. The part of me that usually stands in the way of such requests was obviously looking the other way at that point and I ended up ordering one. Clearly the universe noticed this lapse in concentration and did it’s very best to stop me getting the little silver music machine. First, Apple kept their October release date deliberately vague so as to not raise expectations and eventually released it at the start of November. Then, Amazon decided to keep putting the date back further and at my last look were steadfastly agreeing to release it on the 13th. So when I walking into Dixons Curry’s Digital at the weekend and saw some on the shelf, the Amazon order quickly went out the window and the gadget hating, money saving side of my mind started making plans for revenge.
While some people, for various reasons, will always hate it (for not having a screen or for having an Apple logo on the back) I hope everyone will agree that it is very small. Almost so small it’s scary. I’m so used to having a large white box attached to the end of my earphones that I can’t quite work out how all the music fits inside this, to the point that I’ve decided it must be magic, and evil magic at that.
Superstition aside, the standard control pad (identical to that of the mac remote) controls the standard play/stop/louder/quieter type functions, while two switches on the top (or is it the bottom) control on/off and switch between playing in order or at random. The charging and transferring of songs via the headphone socket is again something I can’t grasp, but as long as I don’t think about it I’ll be ok.
But there is one thing which I wish I did understand. Why, since version 7, has iTunes become an unusable, resource hogging beast? I never had any problems with previous versions, we got along happily and I’d plug my iPod in now and again to pick up a new album or two. Now each task is a chore. It’s become like an attention seeking child. I can’t rip a cd, or sync with my iPod while attempting to do anything else or the system will become unresponsive. To listen to music and browse in Firefox, I have to up the process priority of iTunes or it will crackle to a halt and I dare leave it alone long enough to go into standby mode because I know that the graphics will be so screwed when I come back that I won’t be able to find the close button! Apple, my patience is being tried, you’re lucky I’m tied in with my choice of mp3 player or I would have jumped ship by now. SORT IT OUT!
Is when you see your breath for the first time walking back from the football. It’s when the leaves on the trees finally give up on hanging on. It’s when you’re glad you’ve got the thick duvet on. It’s when the first thing you do when you open the front door is put the kettle on. It’s when you have to pray that the heater in your new car works properly!
It’s November 1st so it’s the day IE7 is forced upon the world. Is you site ready? Is mine?
