Brighton Sand Sculpture Thing....

Anyone that has bothered [has been bored enough] to visit my Flickr photostream would have noticed my pictures of the building of the sand sculpture exhibition/competition/people showing-off-how-clever-they-are thing that's been constructed near the Brighton Marina...

Well, someone has made and effort to go down there and take some great shots of what they were actually constructing...you can view the whole photoset here. Well done the sculptors and the photographer who captured all this. Saves me doing it (and making a pigs-ear of recording the whole event...)

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 11:04:28 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Something to make you laugh...

...cos God only knows sometimes we need to...

It's an oldie I know, but have just spent a good while reading through "Steve, Don't Eat It" and my it's so funny. Be sure to read it all and then on to the "Prison wine" entry, which is genius.

[via kottke.org]

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 9:23:04 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

A small addition...

Just a note to say that I've added Random Acts Of Reality to my links list on the left there. I know this hardly seems like something to make a big fuss about - adding links to a list normally isn't - but the thing is, unlike many other blogs you might come across, all that I normally have in my linkage section is pointers to a few friends/loved ones who have blogs, along with a few work-related type things (Digidesign etc). However in this case, I don't know Tom - the guy that writes ROAR - at all but his blog is always so interesting to read, even more so over the last day or so, that I recommend you pop along to read a paragraph or two if y ou get the chance.

That is all.

[Oh, and apologies if this site still looks odd on your system, there's still a few CSS issues to sort out...]

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 6:40:02 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Not much to say really about yesterday really...

Most sane people know what to think about yesterday's bombings in London.

Whilst I don't live there, people I love do - and were using the very transport links involved in the attacks just minutes before it all happened....I'm not talking about just 'a tube' and 'a bus' here, specifically it was that bus route and one of those tube stations. Eeeek.

This letter about sums it up for me, at the moment.

Had of enough the news on TV for the moment, well at least there's some golf on this weekend to distract me. Last BBC1 TOTP tonight I think as well, as if anyone cares....

[in tedious news, just for something to write:

I had my broadband connection upgraded yesterday, not a good day to be without a fast connection though really. OMG, I'd forgotten how painful dial-up is, but then of course most sites aren't designed around the dial-up user anymore (well done the Beeb's text-only news site which certainly is usable in this situation). The 'new' 2Mb 'service' didn't work all day [thankfully, they started the switch over about 11am which was enough time beforehand to be able to exhange emails and IMs with people in London I was worried about and wanted to hear from] - it turned out the reason for the lack of a connection my end was that BT had changed my user name but had slightly (OK, totally) forgotten to mention that to me. Oh, thanks. Mind you, I got a very nice BT helpdesk woman who really seemed to know her stuff when we stepped through all the router settings etc just to make sure everything else was in order. I've rarely had to phone the BT Broadband people, but from this experience they seem pretty on the ball.]

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 12:53:55 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Gosh...Eddie Izzard plays the piano too?

Well, it certainly looks like he can. He was on stage with Midge Ure at the Edinburgh Live8 gig tonight. I had to do a dirty thing, and text a friend of mine that knows Mr Izzard well to ask her to send on my "well done!" message to him....

I mean, come on, he's a totally funny/clever/great performer, AND he managed to pull this off too...

RESPECT! as the young people say. So I'm told.

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 1:42:49 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Oh, I forgot to mention...new single stuff...

Oh, yes, down to business...for a change...

"Don't Let The Man Get You Down" was 'released' this week. But not in the traditional sense, I suppose. The 12" vinyl version should be in a good record shop near you, and it's also available as a download here- so in a sense, it's not a "release" in the old skool CD-in-the-shops and where-will-it-get-in-the-charts? way. But, as everyone knows, things are a-changing in the record-buying world these days, so this is us kind of joining in, I suppose...

It's coupled with some remixes of "Masochistic Baby".....er....sorry "Mi Bebe Masoquista" [despite being the one that came up with the new title for that, I was thinking Adam & The Ants type things at the time - Planet Of The Apes anyone? - I still find myself calling it by it's original name...] The Xpress 2 remix has my fantastic "Huh!" vocal hi-jinx featured so many times, Haha. I'm so sorry....

OK, complete tangent: Has James Brown supposely given up all the drugs he was famous for taking for many years? Is that the official line? I only mention that because I'm watching Live 8 from Edinburgh on BBC3 as I type this, and he's being interviewed by Edith - the thing is he seems completely off his face. Of course, I am not suggesting anything at all. Oh no. It's just my perhaps-mistaken opinion. Just thought I'd mention that though....

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 12:55:26 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Olympics?

I've heard on BBC News24 so many times today "London has won the Olympics!"

Er....surely...we've won the vote/right to STAGE the Olympics? Unless I have really misunderstood what went on today!! If we've actually WON the bloody thing, 7 years in advance, then, WOOHOOO, that's my sort of sporting event!!

Still, despite a few reservations, sounds like generally a good thing all round, yes?

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 12:38:11 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Live8

No point going into too much detail really because tens of thousands of people (literally - live8 look here) are blogging it better than I can, but you know, it's generally been a really good thing. Will it change things? Dunno, let's hope so...

Despite what many are gonna say, I thought the opening song, a version of "Sgt Peppers" from Paul McCartney and U2 was special simply because it's never been done before. As in played live. Never ever. The Beatles never did it. They'd stopped playing live by then remember, so that in itself is a good enough reason for it to happen. Call me old before my time if you want, I don't care, but it's one of the tracks I used to listen to as a kid and think "I want to do that"....

Dido. Really don't like her music, though she is somewhat slightly pretty. Her version of "Seven Seconds" with Youssou N'Dour was great though, I've always been really moved by that song, and today's performance was no different. She's gone up a good few places in my book, although I'm still rather unlikely to go out and buy any of her records any time soon...

As much as I like Jonathon Ross and his humour, he's misjudging many bits of today. His comment about the aformentioned performance of "Seven Seconds" going on "too long" at the end was way off the mark, I think they could have gone on much longer and the crowd would have loved it. Actually, on that subject, there's been a bit of a timing issue with the whole thing today - everyone has been told to do really short sets (10-12 minutes or so) which is actually breaking the whole thing up in a bad way. They have a revolving stage, so the next band on can be set up 'behind' the stage ready to be swung round into place....but you know it takes more than 12 minutes to change a whole live setup - hence there's been lots of very long gaps today, not sure that actually planned it to be like this...

It's funny, there's been lots of acts on today that I don't especially like - U2, REM, Coldplay - but they all seem to have performed pretty well today. Good on them.

As I write this Joss Stone is giving it lots of welly. She's someone else I don't like the music of that much (but yes, OK, she's pretty too, so sue me) - but she's only 18 and up there doing it. Gosh.

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 8:24:11 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []