Good music TV night and Thurs night music

Last night was Thursday night music and feeling all adventurous I went prog-hard. Opened with Steve Hackett's classic Spectral Mornings (buy here from Steve), followed by Peter Gabriel's Scratch My Back (the new album of covers, although this album is so good it shouldn't be tarred with the term covers album) and ended with IQ's Frequency. This is one my favourite albums of last year, and sums up everything that's great about IQ.

Tonight I was aiming to watch some movies, there's a bit of a backlog. But I made the mistake of looking at the BBC4 schedule.
Documentary on Schubert (one of my favourite composers) 90 mins
Heavy Metal Britannia - exploring, well, British heavy metal - narrated by Nigel Planer - 90mins, and if it's half as good as the Synth Britannia, it'll be a winner.
Heavy Metal Britannia at the BBC - bands from the doco in live performances at the BBC (yeah, you might be gathering their titling is quite straightforward).

It's the first time in awhile I've sat down at watched TV for longer than an hour, but it does remind that sometimes TV here gets it right.

Let's not sully this by mentioning 6music eh? Dicks (the BBC, not 6music).

B

TV programs

Ahhh the Wire, it really is perfection - just started watching Season 5, Smackers - I can drop the discs over whenever you like...

I've also been watching Lie To Me. Seems to me to have been thought up along the following lines:

hey guys, we need something to compete with House. What's a new situation for a grumpy, socially difficult guy to be in? something vaguely sciencey. ohhh how about facial recognition. Do it !!

So yeah premise isn't too bad, they use micro-expressions to assess how people actually feel about questions- rather than the answers they give. Problem is, it's sooo heavy-handed. The directors have decided every micro-expression needs to be shown to the viewer *many* times, then explained, while showing it again. FFS.
Storylines aren't too bad, but the directing is poor. recommendation: it's mindless background fluff

me x

Dollhouse

Mildly pishd posht.

I like Dollhouse, I like how it's developing. And it's got Alan Tudyk. I like how joss keeps re-using his actors. Respect.

And what a great character Tudyk has :)

back to the rose. I sense whisky in my future, along with a crap movie. Fast n Furious may be an option, or Call of Cthulu for classic crap. Oh decisions. Better drink more.

b

It's been a good week

The feckin' rollout has finished. I actually have time to do my job, which has meant that my team now has a leader (ok, me), and I'm beginning to implement my plans I've had on hold for the last few months. The newbies in the team appear to be working out well, which I thought they would. Both fit nicely in the team personality-wise and are picking up the quirkiness of the environment well.
Aside from that, Marillion and some Swedish prog-metal were played at the music quiz last night. Karl did say that I now had no reason to turn up, which is true.
The other plus side, Scot mentioned that Island Bay New World had a special on St Peter's Grapefruit beer as it was due to expire. So I picked up six bottles at $4 each. Just had one, I really love that beer. Clean, crisp, slightly bitter. Superb. As is the whisky, which is purely medicinal to clear up a sore throat - SMWS Springbank and some Dun Bheagan 8yo Talisker (cheap and yet very nice - not very complex tho).

Catching up on TV at the moment, Breaking Bad S2, QI DVDs, Dollhouse, House. Nice evening :)

me xx

Best of NZ and the US

Work is hell at the moment. There's far too much crap going down preventing me from actually doing what should be. But I can cope with that. Eventually. Should be interesting to see how things fall, I'm safe where I am, but I do hope some people ain't.

So it's the little things I look forward to. Coming home after a nice long walk, listening to good music, nice cold shower (it's horribly muggy at the moment). Then dinner; paua on green tea noodles with soy/lemon sauce with kiwifruit, washed down by nice tap water, and Puhoi Berry yoghurt for dessert. This was a very nice dinner.
I even have some for lunch, I had forgotten I've got a lunch with my boss and an HR friend. Oh well, should be a nice lunch.

Currently watching the last episode of The wire S4. Believe the hype. As everyone else has said, this show is perfect. In depth, long stories, great acting and brilliant script.

Last week S2H and went to see Ryan Adams and the Cardinals at the State Opera House. Which sucks as a venue (see Wilco review last year). But the crowd were into it and over all it was a relaxed chilled gig. The Cardinals are very very tight band, and RA almost fades into the background. Whcih certainly helps for atmosphere. Great set list playing some of my favourites. RA was an amusing wee lad and the interplay between him the band, and the audience certainly helped the gig. I enjoyed this a lot. And I'm really pleased to have seen him live, he is a very talented lad.

B

Telstra, Networking, TV

I have minions. Generally I like them, today I'm loving one of them. We were chatting about crap TV reception, which I've got, and he asked was I on cable modem. I am, I'm on Telstra. He mentioned if I put a TV splitter in, took the cable coming in as the input, then ran the TV and the cable modem off the splitter, I'd get great TV reception and keep the networking.
He was right.
Things were complicated as my router decided to blow up the other day, actually it was just the power supply, so I replaced that too.

I now have crystal clear TV reception for all channels, this means, hallelujah, I can get back to watching the Daily show on TV (rahter that online), and more importantly, The Steel Mill. Aaaahhhh. bliss. I've done an auto-tune to check stuff, so now I just have to manually redo them but it's all good.

And now, I'm going to watch the next Oz and James, the new QI and relax with some wine or beer.

Enjoy the long weekend!!!