Friday I went to see Coldplay at the O2 in London with my sister. We had to go ridiculously early to avoid the rush hour traffic, so we got to spend an hour in the O2, which is cold, incidentally. Although we did buy a t-shirt each and a program book thing between us. I just got out the plastic rather than consider that the t-shirt was ten times the price I'd usually pay for a t-shirt. But at least they did them in small.

We discovered, when we were bored and joined the queue waiting for the doors to open, that there's a list of things you're not allowed to take into the O2. One of the things on the list is a flagpole. So beware, if you go to the O2, make sure to leave your flagpole at home.

Once we got in we found our seats easily, since they were in the same place as the other week for the tennis, just not so far back. The first band on was The Low Suns who were all right, but not terribly inspiring. After an interval that was just long enough to eat lunch, we had Emeli Sande, who was some generic female singer with an uninspiring tune and lyrics you couldn't hear. So while she was on I beat my sister's high score in Fruit Ninja on her iPhone by a lot and we played some Cat Physics - there's only so much you can do in the dark.

Then we had about 45 minutes before Coldplay went on, so we went out into the cold to stand up for a while, since we'd then be sitting for a while again. When we came back we found two people in our seats. It turned out that they'd decided that P meant F and we turfed them out.

By this point the standing area was nearly completely full, with only some space at the back near the bar. If we'd been down there we'd definitely have had a worse view than where we were sitting. My sister pointed out that as we're short it only takes someone of average height to stand in front of you. And from the back of the stand area we'd have been further away than where we were sitting too. The most bizarre thing was that the song that was playing before they came on was rap!

So then they came on and we discovered that the wristbands flashed. Presumably they were radio controlled. It was quite something to see all these flashing colours in the dark. They only had them turned on for three songs, I think just the three from their latest album.

When they played Yellow, the lights were all yellow (as in the photo) and they released massive balloons from the ceiling. There were some small glittery things as well, but given that they drift down during the tennis, that might not have been on purpose. Eventually the balloons got popped by the people in black standing around the stage.

They had another song where coloured bits came up from the floor and covered the walkway they had going out into the crowd from the stage. It turned out that the area at the end of the walkway was hollow and had people under it... and a piano! The piano came up from below and they did a song down there.

The two people in front of us spent most of the time filming it rather than watching. I didn't take many photos, partly because they don't come out very well in the dark and mostly because I was too busy watching.

There was a point where people were standing up and because it was near the end I could only stand if I was holding onto something because I felt so precarious up there. So I went to the toilet instead - I could hear perfectly out there and it was very surreal to have my wristband flash in the toilets!

Overall it was really good and I'd definitely go to another one. Although I think I'd probably wear an ear plug - I couldn't hear in my right ear on Friday night. When I got home at 1.15am it was buzzing. It's still ringing, but it's down to the level I get when I'm really dizzy, since I'm still tired and dizzy it could at least be partly that.

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But at least there's only 11 days of work left. Well, 10 and a half for me as tomorrow I am off to see Coldplay. Annoyingly we have to be there two hours before it starts to avoid the rush hour, as it's on the wrong side of London. And by the time it finishes we'll be on the last train and I'll get home at 1.15am! Which is why all I have planned this weekend is to catch up on some of the stuff on my PVR because that's definitely all I'll be capable of. I know I will enjoy it, despite the fact that I got dizzy last time I was in the O2 and the last time I was up that late at night I couldn't stand up without falling over...

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The strange part is that we're sitting in the same area as we always have done (three lots of tennis and one gymnastics). I don't know what you have to do to get tickets round the other side.

As much as it seems strange to be sitting down to see them (and pay more than for standing!), given the length of time, all the people and the lights, I won't be able to stand for that long. It's bad enough where we're sitting which looks a long way down when you're standing up and it tends to be dark, so I have to hold onto my sister getting to and from our seats.

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Since then I've been using Spotify, mostly to play albums that I have on CD but can't be bothered to get up and get... But for Christmas I asked my sister for copies of some of her CDs because I know she has some I want, since I heard The Killers at Reading (on the TV, I didn't actually go).

But I tried some others - Jango and Deezer and blip.fm. The first two I did bookmark in case they were useful when I couldn't find a track. The latter I didn't. But today I had an email from it to say someone had friended me on it. How they found me I don't know. So I went in, created a picture and then thought I'd play some music. At which point it all fell down because I can't work out how to do it. The FAQ is more concerned with blipping, which I don't want to do, I just want it to play stuff. It says it's all about creating your own radio station, so I thought I'd give it my loved list from last.fm and Pandora, if I can find where I saved the screencap. But I literally can't work out how to do it. Which doesn't really say much for it, other than I'll stick to last.fm and Spotify - and they don't use up a tab in Firefox.

And my body's still in GMT - I was so tired this morning but awake now, even though I've been used to going to bed at 10pm.

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So my question is, does anyone know of an mp3 player that's at least 2Gb in size (although 1Gb would probably do) that will play tracks in filename order? I think ipods do it, but I don't really want to spend £100 and I'd far rather copy files in Explorer, rather than having to download iTunes and fiddle about with that.

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Last weekend
Last weekend I went on the (nearly) annual trip to a windmill in Somerset with some friends from uni. I enjoyed relaxing so much that I spent the two days afterwards that I'd taken off work relaxing. After the project that lost me the will to live on a daily basis (which still isn't finished), I really needed the time off not to think about it. It was also nice to see friends that live all over the country that I used to live a few minutes away from. And I played Risk for the first time, and we won.

Spring cleaning
I spring cleaned the bathroom back before I had my tooth out, then never quite got to the rest. I managed to get the kitchen done before going to the windmill, planned to do some more when I got back, but that just didn't happen. So yesterday I did the hall and the bedroom and today I did the lounge. I did spend a lot of time sneezing, but it was worth it because now I have so much space. And a full recycling box.

The most interesting thing I discovered slipped down between some wood in the hall cupboard (where I keep empty boxes for things that need to go in them every time I move). It is a custody record from September 2006. Annoyingly, it doesn't say why they were arrested, just Other (non-PACE). But that's still quite an exciting find.

Doctor Who Proms
This morning's spring cleaning was to the Doctor Who Proms on Radio 3, which I quite enjoyed. Especially Jupiter from the Planets. I'm quite tempted to ask my grandmother for a CD of the Suite for Christmas. I went and watched the specially recorded scene on the internet, but then I had to go back and listen to it on Listen Again to hear the audience reactions and the description by the presenter of what happened. And hear the beginning of Justina Robson talking about Doctor Who, which was quite funny, especially her description of what the Daleks might do once they'd destroyed the whole universe.

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At some point I will wake up enough to post about having my tooth out and tennis, but today should have about eight hours of good tennis followed by Glastonbury and Doctor Who might have to wait till tomorrow morning when there's nothing else on.

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While I was away I read the BBC Doctor Who book Wolfsbane, which was the last one (of three) that exists with Sarah and Harry in. And there was a very interesting bit about Harry's feelings for Sarah in it on page 137 that I copied it out:

But ingrained so deep that it was not merely a belief but part of him, he knew that women were the fair sex, to be protected and placed on a pedestal.

[...]

If someone were designing Harry Sullivan's perfect woman, they would pick a charming young lady, a bit, but not too helpless, who hung on to his every word. She would be pretty, a bit fluffy, but not silly; a sweet little woman.

But sometimes designers get it wrong.

Harry was half in love with Sarah Jane Smith, and he didn't even know it.

Or perhaps he did know it, but had pushed the idea so far to the back of his mind that it no longer registered. They had a close and special friendship, but ultimately he was like the faithful family friend, and even more ultimately than that, he knew she found him a bit irritating.

But she was his ideal. And she'd spoilt him, because he judged everyone else against her without realising it.

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I posted the latest chapter of Doctor Who: The Soap Opera, Chapter 6: The Truth, where I don't torture Sarah at all. But am making up for it in other stuff I'm writing.

My dad introduced me to Pandora where you tell it what music you like and it finds other things it thinks you will. I told it various artists and it came up with a Garbage song, and I'd forgotten to tell them I liked Garbage, so that impressed me.

I'm less impressed by the book I'm currently reading, which is 12 in the Star Trek New Frontiers series. I haven't read any since about book 4 and I think it's gone downhill since then, as I'm not interested in any of the plots in it. But what got me last night was the science being completely and utterly ridiculous. Basically, they've just found out that back in Kirk's era a god and a human reproduced and had a daughter. She had a daughter, who had a daughter, who had a son. None of the daughters showed any signs of godhood but the son did. The explanation was that the difference was that he had a Y chromosome (fine so far) and the godhood gene is on that. Er, no. You get your Y chromosome from your father, so the son can only be a god if his father was descended from one, not his mother. They could have made it work like colour blindness, where the godhood gene was on the mothers' X chromosomes but was cancelled out by the fathers' X chromosomes, but that bits missing on the Y (where the brain is, according to my A level biology teacher).

That's all fairly basic biology as well, like GCSE level stuff, so no-one should be getting it wrong in a published book. It's slightly more excusable in fan fic. I read something recently that was set now and had someone in this country paying with pound notes. And another where someone British was described as African American. (although it always comes up at work when we do an American questionnaire and ask ethnic origin, if you can be African American, [anything else] American why can't you just be American?)

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On Friday I cut my nails (a sad pre-requisite) and got my guitar out for the first time in a couple of months, I think. This was on the basis that no-one was in to hear how much worse I'd got for not practising, plus I wanted to try and calm down a bit before my driving lesson. The latter worked and after a bit I wasn't too bad. I'm forcing myself to get back into a routine of practising straight after dinner and tonight I was back up to where I was before.

I had a conversation with dad about this at the weekend. I keep thinking that driving should really not be that hard because so many people can do it - and some of them really are complete idiots (most of whom I seem to meet when trying to cross the road). But on the other hand an awful lot of people seem to be able to play the guitar and that's hard. Dad did point out that they've had many years of practise - and if they can't play you don't get to hear them in public. In all fairness, a greater percentage of the population can drive than can play the guitar.

It didn't help that I discovered that I can't play and sing at the same time. Not being able to talk and play at the same time I'm fine with because I could never do that while playing the organ and I learnt that for ten years. But the singing thing is a problem because I can't get enough space to breathe probably. And if I hold the guitar further away from my chest I can't get my hand round enough. I much prefer playing tunes anyway.

I posted the latest part of my longest fic I've written ever last night: Dream a Little Dream part 2

And a meme that I've seen in at least two places this evening:
Just go to the random generator of the Quotations Page here and select the five you like best. And don't cheat by reloading it again and again.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
Woody Allen (1935 - ) [the only one of the 10 to make me laugh]

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus (55 AD - 135 AD) [this seems appropriate at the moment for reasons only a few people know - for some reason I have got precious about telling people]

We strain to renew our capacity for wonder, to shock ourselves into astonishment once again.
Shana Alexander [this just seemed so true when I read it]

The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is.
John Lancaster Spalding [so true]

In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.
Pliny the Elder (23 AD - 79 AD) [well-known and sod's law-true]

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It turned out to be really good - and everyone was saying so afterwards. It was funny, of course, and it was sort of about the (possibly apocryphal) lives of the great composers. There were six actors who variously played the composers and people related to them - or screaming fangirls in a couple of cases. They also played a lot of their music, which was really impressive. One girl, at one point, was playing Brahms on the electric piano while holding a conversation with Schumann. They all walked around playing as well, which was really impressive for the one who was a cellist!

Sylvester McCoy was dressed up almost clown-like. He basically narrated it, occasionally played a composer and occasionally played an instrument (well, the cymbals very enthusiastically, and the spoons, mostly on the audience). And he heckled people.

I was sat at the front - and there wasn't a stage just an area where they performed, so I definitely had a good view, and a fair bit of attention from Sylvester McCoy, probably because I was also on my own and look younger than I am.

During the interval one of the kids there wanted to have a go on the keyboard, so the main actor helped it, and revealed the secret of the beginning of the Eastenders theme tune they were using.

It was funny, insane and brilliant. I'm just not quite sure what to believe now! It's on until 20th May, and when I went it was only half full, so if you get the chance, definitely go.

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I discovered, through a comment my mum made on the Diary Free forum, that Coldplay were doing a concert on Radio 2 tonight, so I'm currently listening to that. It's good, that goes without saying.

I've had this tiny ficlet in my head since this morning, so I finally got round to writing it down. And I did literally write it, which is why my thumb now hurts. Which means I'm going to have to watch the second half of Poirot without cross stitching, if I want to use my thumb next week.

I'm going to London tomorrow though for sausages, chocolate spread, possibly some gluten free matzo. And a look at some other free from food in a nice big Tescos, and a health food shop. And back in time for Doctor Who night (although night's a bit strong considering it's three hours, one hour of which is an episode of Nine and the other is a documentary they've already shown twice).

I am going to miss the Davis Cup tennis, though. I was looking forward to watching a nice bit of doubles today (although given the result, nice might not be the best description) but the BBC in their infinite wisdowm decided not to show it. Doubtless, because the Grand National is more important. And football, needless to say. I am not impressed.

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Anyway, Remix authors were revealed last night. So I can now say that I wrote Dear Jack (The Elizabethan Remix), which is a remix of From Pegasus, With Love by Soleta. The original was for the SGA Flashfiction Documentation challenge, and is a series of emails, and is quite funny. I took Elizabeth's point of view, filled in the gaps and made it slightly angsty.

My first thought on seeing my assignment was, 'excellent, a Sheppard/McKay writer'. From Pegasus, With Love is Sheppard/McKay. But Elizabeth didn't know there was anything going on, so mine ended up being the more hinted at pairing of Liz/Ronon. And there's a teeny tiny Teyla/Ronon hint in there that probably no-one will notice.

It means I am now more than halfway through my writing goal for the year:

15,362 / 20,000 (76.8%)

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Today when I got home, though, my recorder came in the post. It's a bit of a guilty secret at the moment. I get quite frustrated sometimes playing the guitar when I can't do things that would be so easy on the organ. But since I don't have space/money for one of those, I thought I'd get myself the tenor recorder I had when I was little (and broke, twice). I bought it off ebay, and not only is it exactly the same but my hands really haven't grown that much - it's still quite a stretch.

I've forgotten the fingering for the sharps and flats since I last played, and there are a few notes I can't quite get every time, so I'm going to need to practice it. Not least because maybe then my right hand wouldn't hurt so much.

Slightly worryingly, my Five Things fic is now on v4.1 I didn't mean to detour into decimal points, it just didn't seem like enough of a change to make it v5. I am very bad and must go and eat chocolate and work on Melli's LJ design before watching Atlantis.

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Payrise! Well, technically promotion but the only difference is the nice big payrise. Which needless to say, I've already spent. Dad had me addicted to QuizCall this weekend, so now I have bought a Freeview TV card, which is the size of a pen drive. So as of this weekend I will have three TVs....

I've read Thud! It was good, I enjoyed it. Specially Vimes's Gooseberry.

I've got Friday off, so am going to see Wallace and Gromit. I know it must be good because The Guardian likes it (they don't like anything).

Mum made me some muffins that are very nice and extremely chocolatey. We had chocolate mousse every night for pudding when I was home. Mum's chocolate mousse is 100 times nicer than any other I have ever tasted. She also made flapjacks but we all forgot that I should be taking them home. And even though they were a bit chewy they were nicer than ones you get in shops as well. She also made me bread, which isn't so good as it's white. And gluten-free, so dry and falls apart.

I've found a version of Hexic at MSN Games, although it's not as good as the Tablet PC version.

Captain Jack is getting his own TV show although it's on BBC3. It might be available on the internet afterwards though, like Confidential was, and The Thick of It will be for the second half of the first series/second series.

Very funny wikipedia take-off: Uncyclopedia. I particularly like the section on the religion of various particles (protons are catholic because they have mass) and various random things, like the links off the marriage article to slavery.

Bad

Broke a string on my guitar. Got it fixed fine at the shop. Went to lesson and the teacher pointed out it was the wrong type of string. So I'm taking it back again tomorrow. On the plus side, I now have an electronic tuner which makes tuning 5000% easier.

I've set off the RSI in my thumb again with my cross stitching, so that's out. It gets worse throughout the day after I've been using it - it is quite hard not to use your right thumb, specially given that it doesn't hurt until I've been using it a bit, so I tend to forget. On the plus side, I really should put my Australia photos in an album. On the minus side that does involve writing, which also involves my right thumb. On the plus side, I've just realised I could type the descriptions. How stupid am I?

Just travelling home Friday, back again Sunday, and walking round Bournemouth has completely worn me out. I'm still a bit tired from it.

My chocolate spread has vanilla on it. But I will see if my local health food shop will order me some Plamil Well, their chocolate is good, so I figure their chocolate spread ought to be good too. If not, there are other ones I can try.

Ugly

Which is really just a way of saying this could go either way. I've discovered spirits have a tendency to be made from wheat grain. The thought of having one drink and spending the rest of the evening doesn't really fill me with joy so my only options seem to be brandy (yuk) or wine (ditto). On the plus side, I'm a cheap date. And will be driving everyone once I have a car so I can remind them what they did the previous night. And increasingly, drink just seems to make me tired.

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Had my first guitar lesson - it's really frustrating not being able to play it but I'm enjoying it all the same

Got my WP blog up and running! The only reason I have to go to LJ now is to post comments

Actually slept

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Apart from forgetting to turn my alarm off Friday morning and being woken up by it Saturday morning and failing to get back to sleep, I've had a good weekend. I just about managed to get up and get dressed before the tennis started on Saturday. The Andy Murray match wore me out but on the whole it was the most interesting match of the day. But hopefully once we're into the second week the matches will get closer and more exciting.

I completely failed to stay up till the end of Glastonbury on either night, so ended up taping it. I am enjoying it though - there's all sorts of music I'm finding I like by people I'd never previously heard of. Or thought I'd heard of anyway. And lots of Coldplay, who were excellent.

I've also discovered ebay. I'm used to looking on amazon new and used for cheaper books (which often aren't when you take into account that you pay p&p on those but not on the main site (because I always make sure to spend £19)) but I could never get my head round the bidding. I've worked it out now but I'm still trying to work out whether it's worth selling some of my stuff I want to get rid of. I might just give up and charity it, if I could just pick a charity shop (we have quite a lot round here).

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A couple of follow-ups to the Crimson Room:

The Blue Room

The Viridian Room (although the aim of this one isn't to get out)

If you're stuck the walkthroughs to the above are at http://www.thonky.com/viridian/ and http://flippedcracker.net/archives/2004/10/25/blue-chamber-walkthrough/ respectively.

I was having a surf at Think Geek and it would be worrying that the t-shirt saying:

roses are #FF0000
violets are #0000FF
all my base
are belong to you

made me laugh, except that the hex codes were in colour.

Wimbledon starts on Monday! Looking forward to it. Then there's Glastonbury next weekend, the last Doctor Who for a bit on Saturday and Coldplay are on Later, later tonight. I would be worried that dad likes Coldplay except that he's like me with music (or more probably, I'm like him) in that we both like anything good, no matter when it came from or who. Well, up to a point anyway.

And on the subject of Doctor Who. I've now seen a few Sylvester McCoy's, listened to a Big Finish CD and read a book. And I can't think of a single one where I got to the end of it and actually understood what was going on. Somewhere along the line I seem to miss something important, I think.

Come to think of it, I had the same problem with Shada (although that was partly because I was confused due to the plot not being what I expected) and Scream of the Shalka. I'm understanding the new stuff but then it's shorter and less complicated.

If it's as hot as they say tomorrow I might melt, as we're in the local carnival. I'm playing Death. I even had a home-made scythe, which I'm quite proud of.

I might not watch The Bill from next week. I came home on Sunday and decided to watch The Last Detective. I had no idea what was going on, no idea who'd dunnit but I still enjoyed it. I couldn't help comparing it to The Bill on Wednesday, which I really didn't enjoy at all. There really hasn't been anything worth watching on this week's episodes and the trailer for the next one hasn't really made me want to watch them. If it's a choice between tennis and The Bill, well, it might depend on how pissed off I am at the commentators by then as Radio 5 finish coverage at 7pm, so we're forced to listen to the likes of John MacEnroe and Viginia Wade for an hour and a half.

I also have until Monday lunchtime (so, tomorrow would be a good time) to pick my Fantasy Wimbledon team. Last year's was easy because they just provided a list of four and you picked one, then another four, and so on until you had 8 men and 8 women. This time you have to spend �100k - and Federer is �50k!

And I think that's been a bit rambly. If you can follow this, welcome to my brain!

Permalink | No comments | Categories: Links, Music, Sport, TV: Doctor Who (Classic), Links, Music, The Bill, Wimbledon

I had a bit of a mare yesterday morning. I downloaded the updated version of Abilon on Friday night, installed it and everything was fine. Come Saturday morning it had lost all my feeds. I eventually managed to find where they were but ended up having to uninstall it, reinstall it, then manually add them all back in again.

There was a big folk festival going on in Wallingford this weekend. I think it's only the third year it's been on and the first time I've been here for it. Which turned out to be bad because the house was invaded by my landlady's friends, which included two annoying little kids.

It pretty much started up on Friday, so I saw it all walking home from work, so I didn't really feel the need to go. I was asked to usher for a concert tonight at the theatre/cinema, so I went early and did the whole thing in ten minutes. Well, all the stalls.

The concert was Irish music, mainly. The first band were good, I wasn't so keen on the other two as they consisted mainly of guitar players. Although that could have had something to do with the keyboard player in the first band being a complete guinness. If only I could remember his name...

It was all very nice and relaxing, which means that now I really need to go to bed. I even managed to get over the part where I wanted to be up there playing. I generally can't go to concerts without itching to play. Or fancying one of the musicians, if they're young enough.

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Have been busy today and updated website. A bit anyway. I got the book for Once More, With Feeling, which had the sheet music inside. But it was really hard to play because I can't remember my chords. I went back to my old music books where they at least wrote them out, but it was still hard though. My bass clef reading was never that good to begin with. I found reading treble clef hard till I realised I was thinking about it too much. I wish I had the opportunity to practise more - I wish I'd done that right back at the start of uni. Why do I play an instrument that's expensive and not portable?

I happened to look at Friends Reunited, which I don't do very often and I found Marian had written something in there, just 6 days ago! We've only seen each other once since school, so now I have her e-mail address, maybe we'll be able to keep in touch better this time.

I wrote a drabble for the Weekly Farscape Drabble. I'm suddenly finding Chiana more interesting than I first thought.

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