The gig on Saturday was fun. Bit like busking, only around 40 people there, most of them off playing games, a few people watching us. Very different to playing in a pub full of drunks and fans. The only real fan was Heath's dad. The rest were Walken virgins. Just acoustic, good opportunity to practice back up vocals while being able to hear myself. Daniel hired an acoustic bass guitar for the gig. Will probably hire it for the Brucedrums gig in St. Kilda on Saturday although will be plugged in acoustic so a bit of a waste of time. Just asking for feedback problems...

Went well. Minidisc worked... but microphone was off. So we have half an hour of nothing. I think we played Blur, Blue Sky, Glory, Away, Free Ride, Open Wounds, Lovers' Lane and covers of R.E.M.'s "Driver 8" with a bit of "Imitation of Life" in there and Pooderfunger's "DAF". We got to provide the music for musical chairs for the kids too. THAT rocked.

Yarra Bend is lovely. I plan to drive out there again soon for a walk. A little bit of the country in the middle of the city.

Update: Looks like it did record. Cool ;p We definitely played, in order: Blur, Blue Sky, Away, Free Ride, Lovers Lane, Mosquito, DAF (Powderfinger), Open Wounds, Driver 8 (REM), Glory

Another article on why following Apple's example into selling music online will probably send you broke [The Register]. Maybe the worst thing about Apple's iTunes is that it was mistakenly convinced the record companies that selling DRM enabled music online works.

The suggestion is official now, archive.org is happy and requesting to host the MP3.com archive [The Register]:

"Our approach is to provide unlimited bandwidth forever for free," he told us today. "There's no amount of material that frightens us. MP3.com's collection is five terabytes. No sweat. We've been adding forty terabytes a month." Kahle added that the archive.org had plenty of bandwidth too.

mmmm bandwidth...

Interview with Jack Black at The Age. "School Of Rock" was OK. I'd have loved it if I'd never seen Tenacious D before and I was a young teenager. As it was I spent half the movie wanting Kyle to walk in and slap Jack in the face. Highly recommended for musically able children. Excellent to see a movie that forces the whole crowd to stay for the full credits. The massive sigh from the cleaning-robot-children as we all walked out was priceless.

Aerial photo of Melbourne from The Age's My Melbourne section.

cv.org's FTP site has been taken down recently due to bandwidth costs. It's back up now thanks to donations but it won't keep it up forever. If you've ever used the site, give 'em $20 for your efforts.

If the footpath artists in Melbourne were anywhere near this good I'd hand over my cash. Illusion of depth 3D footpath art [via BoingBoing.net].

This review of the latest Fantomas album by a fan at alt.music.mr-bungle disturbs me:

dont sweat it...its crap... it should not have bin put out as fantomas... it should have bin a patton solo project, because you cant and dont even hear the other members... its a waste of such great talent...[...] also there is maybe 5 min of vocals (total) on the entire cd. no guitar no drums no bass no nothing...

BTW, there is no word I hate more than [sic]. It's so bloody arrogant.

I don't know how much of this is true. It's probably brilliant...

This time last year I was planning a trip to London with a stop off in the UK (didn't end up doing it, much too expensive). I'd forgotten about that. I've moved on to other thoughts...

I noticed Primal Fear in our bookself a few weeks ago. Katie bought it ages ago for $2 when it was an unknown pulp book pre-movie. She was one of the few who could watch the movie when it came out in 1996 and complain that it didn't do the book justice. The only thing it did was remind me that I have seen Ed Norton in something before Fight Club. I actually started reading it before I remembered it had been made into a movie. It's annoying getting 100 pages into a book and remembering the ending. It's particularly annoying when the book relies so much on it's big shock horror ending (which by the way, gives itself away completely in the first two pages... but maybe that's only obvious when you know the end). Bah. Can't say I'd recommend it. I'm just too lazy to go to the library.