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I've been an Associate Client-side Developer at MRM Worldwide for one year now. Proper agency stuff and everything! Hurrah! Accordingly if I were to go back to temping now I could earn three times what I did a year and a half ago! :-) Yay for progress.

In other news Simon is at ETech and I'm well jealous. Also I've began the painstaking endeavour of reassembling all my old blog posts from their various homes across the web, as I think it's remiss that only about one fifth of my blog history are on this site. It's going to take bloody ages but it'll be worth it.

In the redesign next month (after FOWD) I might even put in a way for people to look at old posts!

A little while back I found the mother lode of all internet cat picture chains. I don't know why I didn't link it then, but I'll make up for it now. Don't take this link lightly; this is 2500+ pics of cats on one page, all in amusing or cute poses and most with comedy catchphrases. Barginous. My only advise is that you not try and look at them all in one sitting.

Yeah it's filler. Deal!

I skipped the 8/7 review of Brett Anderson because the whole experience was too weird. I must have listened to Coming Up hundreds of times growing up… The dude's a total showman and his new stuff is pretty alright, but tbh he just can't hit those high notes anymore. But then some people I know might think that was a good thing. Worth seeing.

I skipped the preview of Angus Deayton's new panel show Would I lie to you as I've no idea when or where it's actually coming to tele, or even what it's going to be called when it gets there (it used to be called Pants On Fire).

I also skipped whining about how everyone and their mom went to SxSWi and ever since every other blog post has been talking about it, or talking about other blog posts talking about it.

But hey! As fillers go it's total quality! Click it, it's grrreat.

Last on the live music crusade where the decade-old band The Shins, at the Astoria again. They're promoting their recent album Wincing the Night Away, which is pretty solid and has been a great success for them. But to be honest - and I don't know if I'm majorly missing something here - next to the manic genius of the previous two albums it just seems way too mellow; almost dull by comparison. Old Skool ftw man! Thankfully they obliged my unspoken wishes, mixing the three albums into a completely storming set.

There were mad shouty fans, the lead singer had that perma-worried look on his face, and the band looked like they could have been the cast in an american sitcom… but gig anecdotes are beginning to make me gag so I'll cut it short.

Supporting were Voxtrot (nervous but great voice, jumpy-jumpy and very good) and Polytechnic (none of the above). <- Those are Myspace links so you can listen to a couple of their songs with minimal effort.

REGINA! (Spektor, not spector) She's a bit mental! She had the same quirky "I'm slightly ker-azy!" thing going as Imogen Heap did (though with less tea), and she also produced most things with just her voice and keyboards! That's as far as the analogy goes though; where Immo had technological jiggery-pokery and layering shenanigans, Regina had a grand piano and an amazing voice; scary range, a nice warble, all that stuff. But what made her vocals "special" was her occasional interjection of guttural, glottal, plosive percussive sounds throughout. Also you certainly wouldn't find Immo wellying a chair with a stick or singing about the couple next door "fucking to [her] song".

I've said it about everyone but she had some really amazing songs. Honest! <3 Samson and Us, for instance. Like everyone else she also had some blatant filler but hey. And strangely it all kind of fell apart when she got up from her piano at the end of the encore and tried to do what she called "country". It would have been a much better gig if she had finished a song or two earlier and ended on a high.

Oh yeah, support acts: Well there were three, we missed the first, the second were SUPER generic, indie NME darlings though I'm sure they are, and the third were a fun, mad, Swedish band called Love Is All who were a shoutier and more chaotic version of the Sugar Cubes.

In other news whichever Astoria staff member was behind the bar pouring barrels of empty bottles into one another in the middle of the best songs needs to be fired. Seriously.