I’ve got soul …

I’ve just got back from the NME Awards tour at the Brighton Dome.
Fantastic line up; Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Futureheads and The
Killers. I was a little bit worried that I might bump into Dawn, but
thankfully I managed to get there early and got a place right at the
front and didn’t move. Was probably a bad idea to drink alcohol
before hand, but I wasn’t moving and my bladder managed to survive
thousands of screaming fans squashing me against the barrier. Did
mean that I didn’t have to spend the evening worrying if she was
alone or not.

I’ve not heard much by Kaiser Chiefs, but they seemed pretty good.
I’m not sure if I’d buy their album, but I might go see them again
soon with some friends. I recognised a couple of their songs, but I
can’t think where I’ve heard them. I can’t put into words how I feel
about Bloc Party. They are definitely one of my favourite bands and I
can’t wait to get their album on the 14th. Tonight was the third time
I’ve seen Bloc Party. The Futureheads is another band that I hadn’t
heard much of before the gig, but I appear to recognise a few more
that I thought. I did think I wouldn’t bother getting their album
until I heard their new single. Definately worth buying the album
for. And then we had The Killers. I can’t get enough of the Killers.
If you haven’t listened to the album, you really should. You’ll be
hooked after a few listens. Again this is the third time I’ve seen them and
definately the best time.

I’m definately looking forward to see the same line up again on
Friday in Cambridge with Nikki. Appologies to Charlie, Em and
especially Lisa, who would appear to ever so slightly jealous. This
time I’ll take my camera so you can see.

Tax Office Blues

This morning I phoned my tax office to tell them that I no longer
have a company car and to get my tax code changed. I’m currently
paying 120GBP tax on a benefit I don’t have. It turns out they didn’t
know I was working for my last company. They never submitted the P45
I gave them, telling the tax office I had started working for them in
late April. They never submitted a P11D tellling the tax office I
had a company car and they never submitted a P46 telling them I left
in mid November.

This leaves me wondering if the company never told the tax office I
was working for them, did they actually pay my tax or National
Insurance? Did they pay my student loan? If not, what happened to the
money and what will happen to me in April when the tax office sorts
the end of year stuff out?

Oh and does anyone know where I can find the CO2 emissions
on a Vauxhall Vectra LS?

Redundancy

I found out today that one of the sales guys at my old job has been
made redundant after him being there for about 9 months. He started
shortly before I did, so I’m glad that I got out as quickly as I
could, even if it meant they declined to give a reference.

Interestly it appears they still haven’t sorted out the contract
situation with everyone else in the company, so it is possible that
someone else will leave them in the shit by giving them a week’s
notice.

Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite

One thing I’ve missed about living in a city is having an art house
cinema nearby. When I was at university I was less than 100 yards
from the Hyde Park
Picturehouse. So I was quite pleased when this
weekend I had chance to see two films at my new local arthouse, The
Duke Of York. I was watching the local news on Friday evening when
they had their “What’s On” section at 18:50 and mentioned that
Napoleon Dynamite
was opening at the Duke
Of York. I checked the
showing times only to discover it started at 18:45. I did notice,
however, that the next day they were showing Garden State before
Napoleon Dynamite.

Garden State

Garden State is the first film written and directed by Zach Braff (he of J.D.
in Scrubs fame). It tells the story of Andrew “Large” Largeman (Braff), a reasonably successful actor
in L.A. who returns to his roots in New Jersey when his mother dies.
Large takes this chance to take a break from the lithium pills he’s
taken since he was ten. While he’s at home he catches up with old
friends and meets Sam (Natalie Portman).

Garden State is a visually beautiful film and highly stylish, but you
get the feeling Braff is trying too hard on occasions, with moments
like the slow motion in the hotel lobby or the lingering shots of
Large’s hands on the girl’s thigh during the game of spin-the-bottle.
Natalie Portman redeems herself after the abysmal acting in Attack of
the Clones, but I still don’t think she was outstanding. The film was
funny and had a superb soundtrack. If you enjoyed Donnie
Darko, but want a film that is more amusing and makes more sense then
I think you you’ll enjoy this film.

Napoleon Dynamite

Napoleon Dynamite is an unfashionable kid, dealing with the double
heartache of being unpopular at school and living with his 32 year
old brother who cruises internet chatrooms for women and his uncle,
a failed american football player. When his new best friend, Pedro,
stands against the popular girl, Summer, for class president, they
have to work hard to win.

This is a strange film. Deeply funny at points, annoyingly
cringeworthy at others. The film seems set in the 80s yet there are
numerous references to the Internet. There were way too many
instances of boom in shot for it be by accident and that just annoyed
me. It didn’t add anything to the film. I never felt massively
connected with the main character and I think I cared more about
Pedro than I did for Napoleon. Despite these faults I enjoyed the
film. I laughed so much at points to make up for the films
shortcomings. I would definiately recommend it, although I suspect I
prefered Garden State.

Aaaaarrrggghhhhh

Who ever though that putting the default key for “exit without saving folder”
next to the key for “change folder” in mutt was a good idea deserves to
discover how goatse was produced. Personally.

/me goes to disable the exit keybinding

Update:For those interested in fixing it, put the
following in your ~/.muttrc. 

bind pager x noop
bind index x noop

Livejournal Sucks. No really it does.

I’d like to apologise for those people reading my blog via Livejournal. I did a bit of
reorganisation last night, but made sure that both PyBlosxom (used on
my website) and Planet (used on Planet Debian) didn’t consider
them to be new posts. Sadly it appears that livejournal wasn’t so
clever and managed to mark them as new and spammed people’s friends
page.

Sorry. I won’t do it again in a hurry.

mutt -f =debian-devel -e "push Dhot-babe<enter>"

I gave up reading the hot-babe thread shortly after it descended into
discussing the crusades. To me, the whole discussion has failed to
mention the more interesting question of whether the package is
useful and if we want Debian to be full of silly pointless packages.
I know traditionally if someone was willing to maintain a package and
it was DFSG-free then it accepted into the archive. But now sarge
doesn’t even fit on a DVD anymore we have to start asking ourselves
“Just how many media players/irc clients/load meters/menstrual
calendars do we need in Debian?” Maybe it is time someone went
through the archive, looking at the orphaned, unmaintained and
trivial packages and ask “Do we really need this package?”

Argh, my eye

Monday evening I managed to scratch my right eye taking out a contact
lens just before I went to sleep. I’ve scratched my eye before and
didn’t think anything of it. Just went to sleep thinking it’ll be
fine in the morning.

It wasn’t. It still hurt as much as the night before. Had a shower
and it wasn’t feeling too bad, but had the occasional twinges. Put in
a contact lens in my left eye and headed to work and was in
discomfort all morning so at lunch time I decided to find an optician
I could visit, just to put my mind at rest I wasn’t going to end up
blind or something. Annoyingly my optician is 120 miles away, near my
parents, in Milton Keynes, and the nearest branch is a 20 minutes
train ride away.

First I tried Boots, only to be told that
they don’t do emergency appointments and I would need a full eye
test, but they couldn’t fit me in today anyway. Next was Specsavers,
who basically told me they wouldn’t even think about looking at me
unless I became a customer. Finally I went next door to Eyesite who
said I’d probably need a full eyesight test but they could fit me in
early afternoon and would cost me