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Festival of The Boot, Part One

Just back from watching (most of) the first instalment of The Festival of the Boot. ‘Twas glorious. The great thing about it is that no matter what, someone always has to lose. And there’s no better sight than thousands of redneck AFL fans whose team has just lost the grand final.

And by the thinnest of margins, one point. Seeing all those boneheads go from inebriated idiocy to the verge of inebriated tears in the time it takes to blow a foghorn brightens up my day more than you can imagine.

=)

Musical Conscience

The Australian Government asked a few Australian artists to head over to Iraq and play for our troops. Some said no.

That made our government mad.

Now I have no specific opinion on the rights or wrongs of the Iraq war, partly because I know how much I know (not much), and partly because, to my detriment, I struggle to care. But I found the list of artists who accepted the invitation to Iraq versus the list of artists who declined quite amusing. Lee Harding, Sophie Monk, Gretel Killeen, and Angry Anderson accepted the invitation, while Eskimo Joe, Augie March, Lior, and The Whitlams refused.

Apart from making me wonder what on earth Gretel Killeen was going to do that resembled entertainment - remember she would have been sans the Big Brother house, so surely would not have even been entertaining to those sorts of people - it made me chuckle at the obvious application of brain power in the artists lifestyles.

In other news, The Information coming from Sam’s Town, Hollywood, is making me quite excited.

And in still more news, The Killers. And Little Birdy. And Beck.

Are you excited? I am.

Single And Looking

And now for something completely unexpected. I bought multimedia, and I’m going to tell you all about it.

It’s going to be great.

Bob Evans’ Don’t You Think It’s Time single. Only three dollars, and two b-sides not on the album. Woo.

Eskimo Joe’s single, Sarah, which I bought simply because I cannot wait until next year to have their cover of the Pixies song Hey. I was pleasantly surprised to find a pretty good acoustic version of Black Fingernails, Red Wine on it as well. In case you didn’t know, I think Eskimo Joe are geniuses.

Little Birdy are a band that I don’t think of as a favourite, but I still manage to listen to them quite a bit more than I think I do. I think. The new single Come On Come On is awesome. It’s even better than any of their previous stuff. (If you and me ain’t trying, I can’t see the point, Come on, come on!)

The Grates’ Science Is Golden single, because it also has a b-side on it that wasn’t on the album. And if anyone’s going to shout at me, I’d want it to be Patience.

U2’s 1993 Zoo TV tour DVD. The greatest rock show ever, according to some, and I’m not going to contest that.

Regurgitator’s Jingles. So overdue it’s not funny.

And you know what’s cool? Stickers. Both the Science Is Golden single, and the Zoo TV tour DVD came with stickers. I’m not likely to actually do anything with the stickers, but you know, I appreciate the effort. And it’s a nice warm up for Beck’s new album, which comes with DIY artwork (and also sounds great, from what I’ve heard on the radio).

God Himself Did Make Ben Folds

A little while ago Ben Folds covered Such Great Heights for Triple J’s Like A Version segment. I guess because it happened down here on the right side of the planet, it took a while for the Internets to catch on. But hey.

It really matters not what you sort of music you like, anyone can appreciate Folds’ killer piano skills. He’s superhuman.

The things you can do with an electronic song, three drummers, a baby grand, and a bit of imagination.

MP3: Ben Folds, Such Great Heights. (Buy Triple J’s next Like A Version Compilation CD when it comes out next year. It’ll no doubt feature this track, plus a whole heap more great cover songs).

Trampled

I got Trampled, the remix album from Elefant Traks (the hip-hop record label owned by Sydney hip-hop crew The Herd).

It’s not at all what I expected, for a couple of reasons. First, I had no idea what a hip-hop track remixed by a hip-hop producer would sound like. Turns out it’s nothing like what I usually associate with the word ‘remix’. Secondly, the whole album is very sparse, which is not generally characteristic of Aussie hip-hop. Combine the two, and it’s almost as if the tracks have been un-remixed, stripped down instead of added to.

Anyway, it’s ultra-good. And it makes me think of summer, so I know it’s going to get a lot of listens during the next six months. Woop woop. The only thing better than summer, is summer with awesome summer music.

(In completely opposite news, Mr. Luna reminded me the other day of The Manic Street Preachers’ album Know Your Enemy, which is great, and I hadn’t listened to in way too long. So go over to his site and download the very wintry track So Why So Sad?).

Suburban President

Shaved the other day. First time in five months. People were stopping me on the street to tell me I looked like Abraham Lincoln. True that.

(Also, always shave your beard off before have a haircut, especially if you’re intending to be seen between the two events. No one wants to look like Matisyahu for very long).

More Standards, Hoorah

The other day Jeff Atwood used this here web site as an example in his very well-constructed argument against bickering between technology cultures.

Considering I have had a number of accusations directed my way in the last few weeks (not sure why, I can think of many friends who have more popular sites, why mine?), I should take a moment to reply.

Firstly. I have been accused a couple of times for deliberately making this web site hard to read in the Internet Explorer browser. I am afraid I am guilty of this, but it was inadvertent. ClearType, a setting that can be toggled in the Windows operating system, is turned off on my computer. This is the default on my Windows install, and I did not know about the setting at all until not too long ago. This however, in conjunction with the use of filter in my CSS, meant that all the text was rendered as an ugly blur. Filter is a non-standard attribute, and therefore not rendered in a standards compliant browser. I did not use any browser-sniffing or such to deliberately make things more painful for Internet Explorer users. I am not that heartless, Internet Explorer users are already in enough pain ;-).

I have at various times messed with all users of this site, not just Internet Explorer users. My tongue-in-cheek tone was obviously missed. This is just a personal site, it doesn’t have remotely interesting content, let alone useful make or break business content. When it comes to design for this site, I fall in the “can’t be arsed making it work in IE” group, not the “kill Microsoft products!” group.

Jeff sent me an email after making his post, quoting the message displayed at the top of this site (only visible to IE users).

IE struggles to support many common web standards. Compared to some other browsers, IE is not even trying

I don’t think you can support this statement. See here: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/08/22/712830.aspx

The link he provided is to Microsoft’s IEBlog, and the entry lists a number of changes being made in IE in regards to standards support. These changes are going to come with IE7.

On this point I disagree with Jeff. I do support my statement, and the article simply backs me up. My statement was that Compared to some other browsers, IE is not even trying. IE6 is now six years old. IE7 is still a beta release. The common web standards I am referring to, have been around, and supported by a number of other browsers, since before IE6 was released. Assuming IE7 is released in 2007, that is almost a decade (!!!) of failure to support standards by the browser that has the lions share of the market. Who would have thought that in 2006, the number one browser can only lay claim to almost supporting HTML 4.01? Forgive me for being slightly disappointed. Yes, compared to some other browsers, IE is not even trying.

IE7 looks more promising though, and I certainly hope that one day soon I will have to amend the note that appears at the top of this site. No one would disagree with the fact that conformance to standards is what moves a discipline forwards. A free-for-all is, well, a free-for-all. I am still sceptical about IE7 though, but I hope to be pleasantly surprised!

I do entirely agree with Jeff’s main point in his post, regarding gentle evangelism. And Jeff practises what he preaches - heated arguments will lead nowhere. To this end I was rather disappointed with Brian’s dig at me a couple of weeks ago. While calling for less zealotry he, no doubt in the heat of the moment, misinterpreted and accused, rather than calmly discussing. No hard feelings Brian, I understood where you were coming from, and your comments did prove useful!

Ahh, all manner of hilarity.

Speaking of browsers, when is IE7 scheduled for release? I don’t keep track of these things like I probably should. Anyone using the beta release? Does it / will it support CSS2?

Much care, sincerity, and not wanting to be slagged, to you, folks.

Mwa. I love you all. Now nobody punch me. Please. Sorted.

Birth Days

The type of day that eventuates on your birthday is your own doing.

You should always try to put on a good day for your birthday. Especially if you’re having a party outdoors, say, in the park.

If your birthday is rainy and cold, that is slack of you. Though it could be because there is just a low density of birthday boys or girls trying to put on a good day that day. Maybe you share a birthday with a lot of depressed, lazy, or otherwise incompetent people. Or maybe there’s just not many people who share your birthday who live in your area, and so all the sunshine is being pulled to Fiji, where it’s the birthday of a set of happy-go-lucky octuplets.