Korpiklaani Gig

I was absolutely mortified when I missed Korpiklaani at Bloodstock this year, thankfully tonight they played the Camden Underworld.

I've never been to the Underworld before, so I had no idea what I was in for, I've been to the Worlds End loads of times (The Worlds End is the pub above it), it was pretty tiny given the number of people there but we managed somehow to get ourselves right to the front.

I saw the funnest thing whilst waiting for the first band to come on... the guy beside me, who was extremely drunk, decided it'd be a good idea to roll a joint, so out comes a rizzla and a pouch of tobacco and the tiniest bit of resin i've ever seen. Now not being a smoker I've maximum respect for people that call roll their own, but this was lunacy. He made a good attempt to fill the paper with tobacco and resin, but made the fatal mistake of jumping up and down with the music, this ended up with the majority of the contents thrown on the floor, unperturbed he rolled up the paper (Which by now had something like 3 strands of tobacco in it). He then lit it and whompfh it disappeared in almost one puff :-)




The support band Kivimetsän Druidi, had one hell of a time setting up. After what seemed like ages of sound checks they started, only to find out the lead singers monitor wasn't working, and worse still neither was her microphone! It took the roadies a couple of songs to iron out the bugs (You could see the lead singer was absolutely gutted, but she carried on singing in the hope that we could hear). They were a pretty good band, but nothing special. The crowd liked them and a few mosh pits broke out... I even saw a few people in the crowd wearing the same style of makeup as the lead guitar so they obviously had their own fans there.

The crowd went absolutely mental the second the iconic antler microphone stand was brought out



The sudden surge of people clambering to get to the front ended up pushing me and Naomi right to the very front (Naomi was leaning over the stage). The concept of personal space evaporated and everyone was shoulder to shoulder (Or rather elbow to ribcage). When Korpiklaani finally came out the crowd went absolutely crazy and everyone pushed even harder to get to the front. In an effort to save herself from being crushed Naomi hopped onto the stage and sat next to a speaker. I however was not so fortunate and had a battle to stand up.

It's funny how a camaraderie amongst those that just want to watch the band (And protect their girlfriends being crushed) breaks out, I found myself teamed up with a man called Joe to provide a somewhat crude human shield/battering ram to keep the crowds at bay.



This all being said the gig was fantastic, the music was excellent and I felt the band played for the crowd, not just a wooden set like some other bands.



When Happy Little Boozer came on I thought we were gonners, but I found a rhythm and managed to jump and sway with the crowd like some giant mexican wave mosh pit!

Throughout the gig the singer Jonne had the odd beer and cigarette (Obviously no one told him about the new no smoking law, but no one cared) which he casually passed out amongst the crowd. Naomi sitting where she was ended up not only smoking his fag, but drinking his beer also. Everyone passed the can around, I got handed it twice and on the second go finished it (I still have the can in my pocket sitting here on the train!).

As always I picked up a tour shirt. And limped my way home... it was a fantastic gig, but I'll definitely feel the effects in the morning!

Too Many Post Its!

I just had to write about this, as to see it was to believe it, unfortunately you can't see it from the photos I took. But the lady in the middle of this photo must have a million post its marking the pages in her book.



What did make me laugh tho was the rather disturbed look the woman on the right gave both of us as I took the photo. Probably had something to do with us both laughing so much.

Funnyest Film Name Ever

Genius pure genius... Whoever thought of the name for this film should get an award!

Halloween Ghost Tour

A few years ago we all went on a Halloween ghost tour of Fort Amherst, so when I saw signs for it again this year I decided to ring around and get a group of us together like old times.

Me Naomi, Paul, Lisa, Lou and Paul were the only ones that could make it, but it was cool... unfortunately we were traveling back from Oxford so we only just managed to get there on time.

For anyone that's never been on one of these I highly recommend going on one. With this particular tour you all start off by walking through a pitch black tunnel (The only way through is to walk with one hand against the wall). All the way through actors jump out and grab your ankles and arms and frighten the crap out of you... it's always great to have my sister along on these because she screams so loudly!

After we get through this we go on the tour proper, where we go through themed rooms, the first one I remember us going through was a mock up of a ritual sacrifice... the "priest" walked amongst the group of us and picked out Lou (Must've known she was a good screamer), and proceeded to place a (What we assume) was a cow liver in her hand. Then swapped her for an actress that was previously added to our group (It'd have been far more effective an illusion if we wasn't all friends), who he then sacrificed... she screamed almost as loudly as Lou :-)

We then walked down a corridor and one of the 2 extra guys that we didn't know was grabbed and stuffed into a coffin... to his mates amusement, apparently thy played a little girl laughing to him whilst he was trapped.

The next stage was a meal where everyone was presented severed hands to eat... Paul wanted some tomato sauce to go with his :-)

Naomi was not so impressed with the next theme tho, as it was a "Childsplay" theme, several Gothic dressed dead "girls" and some rather scary clowns then grabbed Lou and put her in a giant Jack in the box (All with a strobe going off)... I'm glad they didn't grab Naomi, as I'd probably have had to carry her out.

Video Converting Done

I've just finished (At long last) converting some old videos to a format that blogger can use (Thankfully my new phone is compatable without conversion). Please check out the following blog entries which have now been updated with videos:

http://roamingjay.blogspot.com/2007/09/fishermen-dance.html

http://roamingjay.blogspot.com/2007/09/cutey-honey-video.html

De-Rigging

I've never appreciated the work that goes into rigging up a production until today. It's tradition for the cast to help the crew the day after the last performance... So i thought it would be good to go along with Naomi and help. So me and Brawny helped with the heavy lifting and re-assembled the stage over the orchestra pit... Not an easy task... Especially as the black covering was like a jigsaw with no picture on it. Job was done relatively quickly tho. Now have a strange urge to be a roadie :-)

Local Ghost

Not that I'm trying to turn this blog into a news clipping site, but i've been finding some funny stories on-line lately, this one struck a chord as it's so close to home:

http://www.wayodd.com/librarian-wants-haunted-toilet-exorcised/v/8355/

Librarian Wants Haunted Toilet Exorcised
October 26, 2007

A Kent librarian who claims a ghost has been flushing his library's toilet is seeking the help of an exorcist in having the unwanted spirit evicted. A 14-year librarian at the Gravesend Library, Gordon Jenns, 61, says the ghost flushes the toilet when he thinks everyone's gone home.
"It's happened three times in the past 11 years, always around seven o'clock on a Friday," said Jenns. "It's very off-putting."
"The first time it happened I thought someone had broken in the back door so I went with something very heavy in my hand to give them a warm welcome," he added. "I'm absolutely certain the toilet flushed itself. The door was locked and the cistern was still filling up when I went in."
Jenns who says he is ex-marine, claims he is not prone to any hallucinations.
"I'm guessing the poor fellow only wants to relieve himself."

Pimpy

Went to see The Scarlet Pimpernel tonight. It was a fantastic show... Put on with the same eloquence as a west end musical. I'm not just saying the because Naomi was in it either... She was brilliant... And strangely given her cold she had one of the most audible voices in the chorus. I put that down to me knowing her voice, not only her having a fantastic singing voice.

Reminded me of the days when i went to see my sister at the Miskin.

Dave TV

Recently a new channel has popped up on digital TV called "Dave". Now the name say's it all really... Well it is if you know my friend Dave... As quite frankly it could have been tailor made for him, with shows like
Red Dwarf, Bottom, 2 Pints of Larger, Top Gear and Whose Line is it Anyway.

Alternate names could have included "The Jamie and Naomi Channel"... But i think Dave has a nice ring to it.

Almost like losing a member of the family

For the last 21 years (Since I was 7 and my sister 4) we've had the same next door neighbours, I remember the day they moved in. Steven was just slightly older than me and Comrie was just slightly younger than my sister, as such we immediately had new playmates. Given they'd just moved in there was an abundance of cardboard boxes lying around, so being boys we constructed possibly the largest make shift fort you've ever seen... spanning an entire garden in cardboard tunnels and spires. It was the greatest thing I'd ever seen (As a 7 year old).

We've constructed bottle rockets and fired them over the two adjoining gardens. Had water fights, involving us kids and dads alike. And countless generations of Guinea Pigs have graced the years of us as neighbours.

For the last 21 years I've grown complacent with the presence of the loveliest neighbours one could ask for, every time I go out in the garden a warm hello and how are you has always awaited me. Sadly they're now moving... 18 years overdue as they were only supposed to stay in Kent for 3 years! They're moving back North again, and invitations were a plenty to come visit them. I'll actually take them up on it as I always like to travel the UK whenever I can get the chance.

My only hope is that they'll meet some neighbours that fell in love with them as much as we did.

Beannachd leat

Crayfish

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2567100.html

Found this article on escaping crayfish... Perhaps they made it to oxford to start a new life?

Defection to Orange

As you may have guessed I've taken out a new contract with Orange as my mobile providers. Which of course means I'm leaving O2... in a sad way I feel remorse for leaving O2 as they've been my mobile providers since I first got a mobile phone (Which was before they were called O2, they were CellNet back then). But It's for the best, my mobile bills have been escalating to the point of ridiculousness (£400 for one month is just plain madness!).

Let's hope I've not jumped from the frying pan and into the fire.

Orange Blogging

Not exactly the cure I'd hoped for, but at least I can blog from my new phone.

Still need to get the software re-flashed to a plain version, but I can live with it for now.

Retro Humour Graffiti

A friend of mine sent me these in an e-mail... graffiti artists with a sense of humour.

Consider yourself old if you get the references... like me :-)

No Blogging Thru Orange

I don't normally do massive rants, but I'm gonna make an exception for this as it's quite thoroughly been getting on my bits for the last few days.

I've been a customer of O2 for years now, but due to a few massive bills and a general rethink I've decided to switch to Orange. Now most of you would think this should be a relatively easy process... nah not for me. Through a combination of my own stupidity and Orange's idiotic policys I'm stuck in a bit of a limbo at the moment. All whilst paying 2 contracts :-( I shall explain:

As you can guess I use my phone to update this blog on a semi-regular basis (Wish I updated more often to be honest), this therefor makes my selection of mobile somewhat dependant on this feature (Sad I know). Now I've got a particular liking for Sony Ericsson phones, and a dislike for Nokia, so my choices of mobile upgrades are somewhat limited, The last phone I got was a W850 and quite frankly I love it, it's got the blogging feature built in, along with an in built Walkman, 3G and the design has a slide out keypad. The new model I wanted to upgrade to is a W910, a considerable improvement on the W850's size and with pretty much the same functionality... according to Sony Ericssons Website (And customer support).

I did my homework and discovered that the W910 (Thru using it at a Phones 4U shop) has the blogging feature in an identical place to the W850. So off i trundled to get the phone (Sadly Phones 4U couldn't supply it on Orange)... I was going to get it at Carphone Warehouse, but as per usual they were extremely understaffed and overcrowded... so I walked on to the Orange shop... where better to but it than the shop owned by the operator I thought... big mistake. In hindsight I should have gone to Carphone Warehouse.

Now everyone knows that each mobile provider pre-loads software to each phone to customize it for their network, I have no disagreement with this in principle... except when it removes functionality from the phone. Now I was pretty much the perfect customer, I knew what phone I wanted, the tariff, all the sales girl had to do was run it thru the till. I asked at the last minute tho... has the software been mucked about with... the answer was simple: "yes... but just to add this little short cut menu, which you can diasble", "excellent" I replied. What I should have said is, can I see... or even better... can you prove the blogging feature works. Because, much to my annoyance when I got home, I discovered that the feature had been replaced with the ability to upload photos to the orange website. Not what I wanted, not what Sony had said it does, nor what I'd seen it doing on a Vodaphone programmed version of the phone.

So I set out to find out how I could fix this... the only way is to have the phone re-flashed with generic GSM software (IE Not the Orange software, but the original un-modified Sony Ericsson software) or swap the phone for one already like this. I phoned Sony Ericsson and they told me that they were not allowed to program it with anything other than the network software it was shipped with. So off I went to return the phone to the Orange shop (As I'd been told that Carphone Warehouse sold it in the GSM generic state).

Now It was highlighted to me when I bought it that there was no 14 day returns policy on Orange Phones anymore, but I thought I' try my luck on the "miss-selling" aspect of a function being disabled on my phone. No dice, "you can't return it" says the manager. So Off I go to call Orange and find out what they say... now I've had conflicting messages, so I'm not sure what the truth is, but as I understood it all contracts have a 7 day "cooling off" period. Different Orange departments uphold and deny this, so I speak to a guy that says "you can return it to the shop... if you have a problem get them to call me", so off I go again, 2hrs I spent in the Orange shop, with the duty manager saying can't cancel the contract.

Only thing I can do is write to Orange's complaints department and tell them what has happened. Hopefully they'll listen and allow me to return the phone and buy it from Carphone Warehouse as a generic GSM version. However I doubt it.

I'll, update on this when I hear from them.

Irony of irony's that if I'd queued up in Carphone Warehouse I'd never be suffering with this problem... as I'd have been sold a generic GSM version. Not to mention that Carphone Warehouse operate a 14 day returns policy too.

I do however have several contingency plans... my best friend Matt works for Vodaphone, and hopefully they'll get the firmware flash for it sometime soon. 2nd is that I can at least blog via MMS and my old O2 contract.

Eye of Judgement

Went to the MCM EXPO in London today. Amongst the variety of things there what stuck out the most was a new game for the PS3 called Eye of Judgement. It's unique in the sense that it uses collectable cards like magic the gathering. Except that using a camera on the PS3 tm recognise the moves the battles are fought out in 3D using the PS3. It adds a nice element to the game... Besides the fact you can play by yourself and over the internet... Which negates the need to arrange face to face battles with friends. I imagine it'd appeal to gamers from both ends of the spectrum. It's something i think i might even consider myself. One thing that i'm yet tm work out how the system prevents (if indeed it does at all) is cheating... When you play a game like this the deck is shuffled to add an element of randomness (i say element because you choose what cards to have in the deck)... Yet what prevents a remote player from stacking the deck in their favour? Wonder if the Eye of Judgement sees all :-)

How Clean Is Your Keyboard?

Now I usually eat my sandwiches at work whilst working which is not a good habit because inevitably crumbs fall into your keyboard, but I make a habit of not eating whilst using my PC at home (Don't want to have to fork out to replace my own keyboard :-) especially as it's a nice back lit Saitek one). But my mum and my sister regularly smoke and eat over the keyboard downstairs. My sister has a skill for tipping diet coke over things and (Even once managed to drop a remote in a half pint glass full of it once without knocking the glass over... now that's a skill). The keyboard downstairs started to stick recently (Might even have been me spilling something on it ages ago) but blame aside it needed to be taken apart and cleaned (Which my dad did as I was away), but he took pictures to show me:



Here's the keyboard before he took they keys off... pretty clean looking huh?



Here's it with the keys off... now that's what you call gross!



And the shiny cleaned version... ah much better... give it a few weeks and someone will spill something on it. Suffice to say my mum now understands why I tell her off for eating drinking and smoking over it. Louise got it in the neck last night for leaving an ash tray next to it, next time hide the evidence Lou :-)

Updated for a change

Sorry about the lack of posts this month... there's actually been a few posts I'd have like to have made in real time but not been able too. So take a look back over the last couple of weeks (You'll have to click on older posts) as I've post dated a load of posts :-) Promise to be on time in future :-)

Barbie Paratrooper

Funny how some things just catch your eye, especially the unexpected. I mean footballs, tennis balls, Frisbees etc they all end up stuck on someones roof at some time or another, but a barbie? Must be one of those crack paratrooper barbies out on a secret mission. Or have I been watching Small Soldiers too much?

Crayfish?

Whilst sitting a the top of the waterfall this little fella crawled out for a look. I'm not sure what he is, but a Crayfish sounds the most plausible idea... to give you an idea of scale it's about 6" (15cm) long. We sat there and watched it for ages crawling along the weeds that were attached to the side of the waterfall... What it was doing we have no idea, but it was battling against a very strong current to crawl from the bottom of the waterfall to the top... didn't know Crayfish acted like Salmon :-)

Waterfall

This is the waterfall as seen from the top





And the "rapids" at the bottom



There's a small lake at the top that feeds the waterfall, apparently used to be part of an old mill.




There's something that compels everyone to stick their hands into water or out of a fast moving car... so dangled our feet into the water, big kids ain't we

Thought this photo looked really cool with the water moving so fast round the corner.

Ratty Moley Badger and Toad?

The river the waterfall is on is the "Windrush" which is a tributary to the Thames (I always find it humbling that something so big has such humble beginnings). Along the river there was a series of burrows obviously belonging to water voles or rats (Do Otters have burrows? Far too small for an Otter tho). Made me think of Wind in the Willows... don't think I'd suit a straw boater hat though.

Horses

Me and Naomi went for a scenic walk in Witney to see a waterfall that's near her house. We had to cross a meadow aptly called the "Water Meadow":



This horse seemed quite content wading through the mud to get to some sort of pond weed that obviously tastes better than grass, was quite funny watching it as it had to keep shifting it's weight to stop from sinking into the mud.

Suffice to say it was a little too muddy for us to cross, I think Naomi could have made it, but given I'm nearly 3 times heavier than her and my feet are definitely not 3 times bigger than hers my engineering brain showed me visions of sinking into the mud up to my waist!



Thankfully there was a bridge further along... horses seemed to know it was the safest way to cross too.

Lego Cars (I'm just a big kid really)

With all this spare time I've got at the moment I've been sorting through the crodge I've accumulated over the years. Every birthday and Christmas I get at least one bit of Lego from my dad to highlight I'm still his little boy (I think it's because he wants to play with it himself).

Amongst some stuff I hadn't looked at for years I found a assembled Lego Racer Kit



This is it before



And after assembly... took me 14 mins, I must be getting slow in my old age.

Bumper Car

Saw this on the M25... surely you'd notice your entire bumper was missing? Seriously though it's probably being resprayed, but is it legal to drive around like that? It'd rip you to pieces in an accident.

Lego Star Wars

Whoever came up with the idea of Lego Star Wars is a genius... The game itself is incredibly easy, but it's not tiresome... It's soo much fun. Especially when played in co-op mode :-)I guess it's easy because it's aimed at the younger market (Not big kids like me). But after a night on the beer there's nothing better :-) as you can see from the photo i've fallen for the merchandising trap too... Need to buy an x-wing now :-)

Addictions

Now I have an addictive personality, If someone shows me something I'm interested in I end up adding it to my list of hobbies and then I'm stuck with it forever (Which ain't all bad because I think it makes me an interesting person). But as far as computer games go I'm a total addict.

Which is why although I know I'll love it I cannot play World of Warcraft, as I'd end up being sucked into it and playing it so much i end on TV as one of those people that got so addicted to MMORPG that I forgot to eat and died of malnutrition (Yes I know it'll take a long time especially for me).

Naomi's introduced me to Animal Crossing on the DS... which if anyone has ever played it they'll know it's a game that can potentially take years of game play to complete. Now like some sort of crack addict I need a fix of AC every day or I start to get twitchy, Also I've been introduced to the Harry Potter series of books (I know, I don't know how I've managed to avoid them for so long either, I've not been hiding under a rock) which means I have even less spare time as I'm reading them all in secession (Currently my friend Johns 2 year old son Morgan is beating me so I have to read faster).

Anyway must go as I need to play Animal crossing... would read Harry Potter too but I've left it at home :-( (Rocks backwards and forwards).