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I just heard on the radio, FOPP have closed down! Britain's largest independent chain of music stores, after having trebled the number of shops in February it looks like they've suddenly gone tits-up. And now they're gone. All 107 of them Every one. It's a sad day. Hopefully something will rise from the ashes and the name will live on. Hopefully.

Minority Report type computers may be closer than I thought! Wootsauce. Now if they can only invent one that you can use sitting down, and without getting RSI, that would be good. Speaking of which, the bloody iPhone is out in a couple of days on the other side of the pond, and the gadget freaks are all a flutter. It won't be over here for a few months yet, but am I bothered? Hah! As if I could afford one anyway. Besides, I'd much rather have a big-assed table.

Back from Glastonbury, and with no injuries to speak of! No trench foot and no pneumonia. No bruises, blisters or broken bones! Nuffin! Nary a sniffle! On the other hand I'm not sure if my phone survived the pervasive wetness, and Simon broke his ridiculously expensive glasses, but they were both ancient relics anyway. So yay!

Yes it was a lot of mud but Micheal Eavis's measures against the flooding of 2005 seemed to have worked, as it wasn't The-Battle-of-the-Somme-revisited as was feared. What it was is a rollocking good time! Hurrah! I'll do some mini-reviews for each act I saw here, and some photos are up here with more to follow.

After a late-night trip around Tesco to pick up snack foods, alcohol and make-shift sanitation we're finally packed and ready for Glasto! All being well we should be on our way first thing at the ungodly hour of 6:30am, off to the west-country and the land of mud and music. I really don't know what I'll find to be honest; I'm trying to keep a open mind. It might be a nightmare or phenomenal. Or both. Woot!

I'm supposed to be packing for the muddy horror that is Glastonbury but instead I've been mucking around with Fireworks, Photoshop and Word making a bit of progress on a new design for here. I've also been playing a bit of (the magnificent) Knights of the Old Republic, watching some of (the disappointing) Curse of the Golden Flower and looking askance at Facebook. Which might well be taking over the world.

And now I think I'm coming down with a cold. Good. Bring on the mud.

I played World of Warcraft during American Beta in mid 2004, then again in European Beta, then I bought it on the morning of the day it came out (having gotten the time off work) and have been playing it on and off ever since. My exploits have taken me from anonymity to virtual notoriety and back again. I've played Hardcore, Casual, Raider, PvPer and theory-crafter. I know the "Feral Druid" backwards, forwards and sideways, the percentages and the optimal combinations of armour, very involved and in-depth knowledge that's totally non-transferable and completely pointless anywhere but in-game, and even then only to a minority class. I've constructed hideously complex spreadsheets on (among other things) where agility begins to give more DPS per point than strength, and what equipment will provide it. I literally have YEARS of experience of running around killing things in the form of a black panther with glowing eyes and pointy ears and OMG WHO CARES?



Sorta gotten bored of it now though. Le sigh. I had a demo of another MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) game called City of Heroes, but my 2-week trial-run ran out a couple of weeks ago while I wasn't looking; I only realised because they emailed me about it. If I want to play more I'll have to pay a subscription fee! I don't think I'll bother.

I've just received a very similar email about my 1-month trial run for Lord of the Rings Online (another MMO) which I'm a little more annoyed about because I actually paid for that game, I've hardly played it at all, and now I can't play it any more! Not that I had been, to be honest. I suppose I might buy a month of game time sometime in the future if I want to give it a second chance, but for the moment I'll definitely leave it. I've also got a trial-run for Guild Wars (Yeah, it's another MMO), but at only 10 hours long it hardly even counts.

Meanwhile my subscription for the infamous World of Warcraft runs out in three weeks, and I've hardly played it in months.

Admin rights on the company blog are always fun, and it gives me an opportunity to muck around with WordPress a bit. The catch is I'm moderately obligated to occasionally write something topical for it. Web 2.0 is always a good way to go, linking the "The Machine is Us" vid from a while ago == easy brownie points. Or it would have been easy if I hadn't felt the need to re-write the entry a dozen times, after all people might actually see it there!

Of course now I've faffed about with putting together a new site in Wordpress so much that they're finally updating Movable type, with open source goodness and everything! I'm still going to make the change though, as the bottom line is I need to know about PHP much more than I need to know about Perl.

Glastonbury minus 9 days. It will probably rain. Grump.

Monday is particularly Mondayish today, I'm all sleepy like, it's muggy and grim outside, and it's an inexplicable 31 degrees at my desk. To me AC is just something that happens to other people. Thankfully emergency deployment of coffee, pastries and "Mr Blue Sky" have averted disaster.
In other news, I got a totally top tip for loud gigs while seeing The Thermals yesterday: toilet paper in the ears! Insta-ear-plugs! GENIUS!!!

Will attempt to blog about the festival-tastic summer later. Stay tooned.

9 minutes of the Simpsons playing an warcraft-ish MMO. Mmm, zeitgeisty goodness.

Love XKCD

I'm sure every non-troglodyte has heard of the mystical iPhone with it's amazing power to bring breakfast in bed and cure cancer. There were rumors a couple of weeks ago that Microsoft were working on a competitor to said fabled iPhone (blessed be Steve Jobs), but it turned out to be an iTable! Huzzah! Well not really; they call it a Microsoft Surface, but it sure looks like an iTable to me.

In any case they're not stopping there. Just around the corner is iToaster! Ha, take that Apple! Well not necessarily; it's still mostly guesswork at the moment. But they are cooking up a kitchen client! And if Microsoft Kitchen doesn't put an LCD screen on the side of a toaster and have it tell you when your toast is burning then they're missing a trick.

Winnar

Things I want to see:
Thursday: Nothing much. Mostly setting up tents and wandering around I guess?
Friday: Bloc Party, The Fratellis, Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys, Modest Mouse, The Automatic, Bright Eyes, Super Furry Animals, The Coral, Rufus Wainwright, Arcade Fire, Bjork, AIM, The New Pornographers, Martha Wainwright, MIA, Spiritualized, Damien Rice, !!!, Four Tet.
Saturday: The Pipettes, The Guillemots, Lilly Allen, The Kooks, The Killers, The Switches, The Breaks, The Long Blondes, Biffy Cliro, CSS, Klaxons, Babyshambles, Maximo Park, Editors, Calvin Harris, Pigeon Detectives, Patrick Wolf, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, Ed Harcourt, Mika, Mr Scruff
Sunday:Dame Shirley Bassey, Manic Street Preachers, Kaiser Chiefs, Aqualung, The Noisettes, Rumble Strips, Young Knives, The Gossip, KT Tunstall, Dragonette

Add a fair amount of wandering about checking stuff out, chilling and chatting, not to mention seeing bands I've never heard of, and I'll be lucky to see a fraction of the above. Nightmare!