Daft Punk's Daft World

With Daft Punk making a very brief, blink-and-you'll-miss-them appearance in the latest Adidas Star Wars viral video promotion and Tron Legacy popping up here and there to stoke the fires of anticipation I've since come across what seems to be the best fan based Daft Punk blog. They've posted an official looking image to say Daft Punk confirming the tune called Fragile is a fake Tron soundtrack but further reading has revealed some tasty artwork combining them and Star Wars. The one below is my favourite:

There's dozens of Tron artwork as well so I'll be keeping a close eye on this French site. Using Google's Translate service you can view the English text version of Daft Punk's Daft World.

Sunday sunset

The above sight rounded off quite an easy going weekend. Friday night we went to Audio for their charity night. Not a bad night though, disappointedly, I missed a dance-floor punch-up and the DJs were ok. It seemed like a 30 minute slot schedule until the last hour when they played one on, one off descending into despair with donk and really old 90's 'dance' music. Time to go.

We dragged ourselves out of bed to look at some double-glazing showroom. We'd been visited by two salesmen in the week with Everest quoting stupid money and a local guy giving us an honest opinion. The showroom visit was a waste of time and after a bit of TV recovery we returned to stripping the horrid lime green paintwork from the upstairs woodwork. The evening was a mixture of watching Spaced series 1 repeats on Dave (is it fair to say Series 2 is never watched again as much as the first?) and downloading some demos and games on the PS3. The demo of Mini-Ninjas was cute at first but made itself a bit too complicated than necessary. Ghostbusters came across well but the gameplay was a nightmare. An interesting 'game' was .detuned which was more like a strange art-meets-music experience. We set it up to play an imported Richie Hawtin album for an eerie experience. Boredom set in after 15 minutes.

With a rare glimpse of sunshine we headed out to the seafront and marched over to the Marina for a Sunday roast, well Italian...with Paul and Sarah. We timed our return walk just right as the sunset dropped into place behind the pier. More photos on my Flickr page.

Some French House classics

For the benefit of Sukey who had discovered Alan Braxe etc.

Snow 2: Vengence is a dish served cold

Just as we thought a thaw was on its way, the weather strikes back! Working from home today because of the snow. Brighton transport in a shambles again, roads deep with 3 more inches and our recycling rubbish hasn't been collected for about 6 weeks.

After the peacefulness of no students last week, they're back and they're eager to get into uni clogging up the buses and trains, with bus stops over-spilling and trains being a sardine's canned nightmare. Tried cycling into work yesterday and although the main roads are passable, the cycle paths are like riding through a ploughed field. Maybe the article below will help.

Kerry couldn't drive to Sailsbury today so also working from home. Above is the result of a lunchtime.

The next blog entry expected will be about windows - both the Microsoft and double-glazed kind. Hopefully the installation will go ok and we won't get subjected to selling technique similar to water-torture.

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• Tips on how to cycle in snow (guardian.co.uk)

Lego Harry Potter game

Proper trailer



Bonus video below:

Board of the snow yet?

So, that was an interesting week. I wish I was feeling better to appreciate it more to make snowmen and other things. A snotty cold I'd picked up couldn't be shaken off so grumpiness was at maximum. Cabin fever also increased as the week progressed particularly with Kerry as I was (un)lucky to be able to get into work. Lucky as it was warmer than home!

Caught up with a lot of TV recorded over the break as well as some good DVDs borrowed. Can recommend The Wrestler and Step Brothers. Forgot to mention we saw Avatar 3D between Christmas and NYE which was excellent, though a little too long.

Tried to move the car from its frozen position on our road Saturday but failed which scuppered my plan to go snowboarding at Stanmer Park. Saturday night was a catch up with good friends at the Globe then a carry-on at Sukey's. Sunday was more successful with the car as temperatures seem to be rising. I found our old shower duckboard and re-constructed it as a sledge. Packed the snowboard and sledge picking up Julian along the way and hit the Stanmer Piste! Here's the best video of the day:

Feedly - the best RSS reader yet?

My latest web tool discovery and best mate is Feedly. All thanks to my employer's director who'd been nagging me for a better RSS Feed Reader other than Google Reader and Netvibes. Even if you're not that familiar with RSS or you're just a bit lazy, you can add sources by just pasting in the web address. It integrates all the news, blogs and other sites' feeds into a magazine-style format. It also integrates with your Twitter account and Facebook if you want to share an interesting link.

The set up and menu are a little confusing at first and Feedly has to be a browser add-on meaning you can only view it on your own PC. Also, no Internet Explorer option either so Firefox or Chrome only. Feedly will also recommend other blogs that match your interest and I've since discovered some great content.

Have found some handy videos on YouTube. The video below is possibly the best to explain Feedly. Otherwise you try this one for better quality images.http://www.flickr.com/photos/gingerdjrob/4266079644/

So that was Christmas and 2009

My holiday break started with a bump on the Wednesday before Christmas. The combined icy conditions and previous evening's rain turned the roads into highly polished glass. Without checking the university website, I stupidly cycled into work coming off worse from a) cracking my arse after slipping off my bike and b) wasting my time after discovering the university had closed due to the conditions. The catch-up drink at the Eagle pub on Gloucester Road cheered me up with my Elf t-shirt going down well. Christmas Eve was a restrained one with the core (K n K and P n S) though never got to play our new Buzz game on the PS3.

Another missed opportunity was watching the Christmas Day swimmers down at the pier. After unwrapping the presents we ran out of time and scrambled into action for a last minute tidy up for my dad's arrival at 1pm. As well as unwrapping his present to us (see picture), I kept him entertained (and sent him to sleep) with a recording of Channel 4's Queen in 3D until Kerry had served our amazing seasonal feast. The rest of the day was a more relaxed affair, though we didn't quite appreciate my dad's choice of DVD, Jeremy Clarkson's The Duel. We ended the evening watching an old Only Fools and Horses episode where Delboy sells bottled water from the Peckham Spring. Hardly worth mentioning in the blog you'd think until we discovered that the allotment used in filming was in fact two streets away behind our house in Brighton. See Moulescoomb Estate Allotments, Natal Road Flickr photo. Brighton featured quite a bit in this episode with the The Grand Hotel on King's Road, the Old Shoreham Road recycling depot and a farm shop in Hedfield which is only a few miles away in the countryside.

We didn't escape the house until after Boxing Day with no buses running. Instead we started the excellent Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on the PS3 and caught up with the many hours of TV recordings eating chocolate, sausage rolls and nuts until bursting point. We met up with the Brighton regulars with some Brighton Pier attractions (Haunted House is pathetic, a zombie sneezing hardly qualifies as scary though the bumper cars made up for the excitement), a hearty meal at Cafe Rouge and a serious booze binge back at Kev and Karol's with Ibizian Nick and bro turning up later.

As well as Mr. Christ's birthday to celebrate, it was Hyperrealandsupercool blogger, Mr.Wilde's this week of which (for the benefit of everyone else) he avoided the train strikes in favour of some seaside fun until after the New Year. Another boozing session after a Wagamama meal which may have gone on too long for some as New Year's Eve saw a few early causalties.

NYE
Joining Emma and James was old chum Giles who later transformed himself into a Norman Cook double sporting an Hawaiian shirt on our last night of 2009 at Paul and Sarah's. We had planned to do Life with the Go-Bang disco crew but with the so-cold-it-hurts temperatures and Kev's laptop playing up I was forced to DJ earlier. It seems that VirtualDJ likes to synchronise with other laptops to f*ck up too as the left hand deck timecode went nuts. After a tune or two I had to abandon one side of vinyl control in favour of mouse clicking but this didn't prove a problem as I played one of the best sets yet.

With the party running out of energy by 6:30am I decided to go home just as the Life clubbers/gatecrashers turned up without an invite. Apparently, headliner Idjut Boys did the worse, unprofessional set ever with a shambles of a set. Plus after 2am, a lot of people went home leaving just the hardcore of regulars. I hope Pual and Sarah got some well deserved rest after this.

Happy New Year everybody!