Friday, September 29, 2006

Bowling for Soup

Bowling for Soup - Band Review

Bowling for Soup have got to be one of my favourite bands of recent times. The name alone amused me when I first heard it and everything from that point on has been funny.

The first time I head of the band was on a DAB station where they were playing clips of songs they play and it included a clip of '1985' - only the lines "Since Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, way before Nirvana". Hearing that tiny clip of the song made me want more, so I downloaded it. The song itself is great but I just assumed it was another one hit wonder pop/punk song a-la Blink 182.

My rediscovery of the band came from the most unlikley place - a hayseed dixie concert. I was at the gig at Newcastle uni with Kyle and we were aware the band were playing at the uni in the next few weeks. I said I had only heard the one song and Kyle started singing a bit of 'Girl All the Bad Guys Want'. The song sounded quite good, even just the chorus from Kyle. So I again downloaded the song. Another classic.

At this point I was leaving for University. Once there I obtained a few of their albums - 'Drunk Enough to Dance' and 'A Hangover you Don't Deserve'. Now the titles alone were brilliant. I was left hoping that the albums did their name's justice. Sure enough they lived it up.

'A Hangover you Don't Deserve', BFS's most recent album is in my opinon their best work. Every track on it is catchy and whitty. I only wish I could write song's like this, they seem effortless but they really aren't.

The band has a new album due for release in November and a UK tour (aptly named "The Get Happy Tour") comming in February. I will be getting the album and going to a gig without a shadow of a doubt and I would encourage everyone else to do the same.

Their newest song, 'High School Never Ends', is on their website sounds like the album to come will be great.

Here is a video of them doing '1985' live



Trip to the toon

Today me and Caroline went to Newcastle for the day to see her friend Charlotte. Long story short we met kyle up there and went for a nice meal. All in all, a very good day.

I decided the best way to make sure that I actually post in the blog is to actually plan what I am going to cover. So in the next few weeks expect articles on:
  • Lost and a new TV show called "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"
  • My favourite bands and why I like them
  • How freshers week at stephenson goes
  • A video of my new house (hopefully online tomorrow)

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Apple and Testing

iTunes 7 has really annoyed me these last two days. First of all it
won't play my music properly. Then it goes and breaks my brother's iPod
nano which it fell to me to fix. It wasn't too much trouble, after it
initially wouldn't be regognised in itunes after an update I found that
the disc drive was corrupted. So I reformatted it and the problem was
solved. It still wasted some of my day due to poor testing by apple.

Apple have done the honorable thing and released a new patch to correct
some of the problems but I can't help think that it could have been
avoided by proper testing. The biggest flaw in my opinion is that a new
feature for the ipod shuffle doesn't work at all. It really doesnt
bother me that much but its a bit of a problem for apple.

On the topic of the Shuffle, my brother kindly donated mine to his to me
since he doesn't use it at all and the headphones are slightly worn. But
on the whole i like it. Its much more useful to me than an actual ipod
because every song on it is one that I like.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Return to blogging

Lately I have had a real desire to start blogging about several issues. The only problem is that my normal method of blogging is to use an extension for firefox called performancing. It allows you to publish your blogs from a split screen interface within the browser. This makes blogging really easy. The only problem is that it doesn't work with blogger properly which is just useless to me.

Anyway....Skype. This program has been out for a long time now but I've just started using it properly as it makes it much easier to talk to Caroline in her room which is 3 floors above mine and is simply too much walking.

Watch this space for more posts.....now available on facebook as well as http://squeeze-box.blogspot.com

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

New Anti DRM Move


It appears that Yahoo! are going to start selling an album in MP3 format. You will only be able to buy the full album for $9.99 but its in MP3 format. Its a good move in my opinon, a wise move on Yahoo!'s behalf as if they can get it to work they will have a head start with the alternative business model.