Simon Rumble’s blog

Last night was Guy Fawkes Night, where the Brits celebrate an attempt to blow up the government by burning Catholics in effigy and blowing shit up.

Anyway, being Australian and thus deprived of the joy of blowing shit up since my childhood, I bought some crackers. Here's a tip: don't bother buying one of those mixed boxes. Just stick with the rockets. The other things suck.

The point of this post, however, was one of the crackers in my mixed box. Fireworks are nearly all made in China, and these were no exception. The hilarious thing is that one of them, a disappointing and boring fountain-type thing, was named Yellow Peril. Where do they come up with these named, and what do the workers in the Chinese factories think of the naming?!?!?

The NME famously described Ladytron as "...a teasing glimpse of how Britney Spears might have sounded, had she been born in the GDR and a heroin addict." Their latest album, Witching Hour, gets them back on track for that laudable ideal, after the last album, Light & Magic, kind of missed the point, getting a little to involved in the wholeelectro thing.

Witching Hour is pure pop with something new for their sound, grinding guitars. Each track has a catchy chorus matched to subversive, very knowing lyrics. "Sugar" seems to be taking the same tack as an older track, "Seventeen", exploring somewhat ponderous teen ideas--something for the dirty old man in all of us--with something new for Ladytron, guitarish noise. "Destroy Everything You Touch" has stadium rock pads and a grinding bassline behind its seriously catchy effected vocals.

All in all, probably their best album yet. Debut album 604 certainly gave us a fresh and exciting new sound, but Witching Hour is vastly more polished.

A while ago I bought a broken Toshiba 3110CT laptop for parts for the functioning one. I needed one bit and buying a laptop with a broken screen was a lot cheaper than the part from Toshiba.

Anyway, the laptop itself is otherwise fine and I was thinking of using it to record telly using my snazzy new DVB-t thingy. I hadn't bothered powering it on in the past, but now I discover it has a BIOS password set. Toshiba laptops seem to be pretty secure in this regard, no little CMOS switch or battery backup to wipe the CMOS.

So I've been hunting around on the net to find a solution. For this model there seems to be two possible solutions. Option 1 uses a floppy, though I suspect this is for older models. I'll try making the disk at work tomorrow and see. Option 2 involved paying stupid amounts of money to snakes like these for some magic USB key thingy. Bah!

Anyone got any better ideas?

Went to Mass tonight. Won't Mum be happy? Well, maybe not that kinda Mass :)

Was a huge turnout, following the porcine types' threats last month. Also an unseasonably warm night (17 degrees by my bike computer's probably inaccurate estimation) and a samba band. Fantastic fun. I had to duck off early, so only got about an hour or so of devotion in.

Photos here.

Got back from 9 days' holiday in Ireland spent with Holly and Mum. What a fantastic trip! Essentially we saw all of the northern half of Ireland. Loads of neolithic passage tombs: Ireland appears to have some of the best in the world. Also enjoyed the black cab tour around the Catholic and Protestant areas of Belfast.

Off to work now, so more later including pictures.

Channel 4 launched their new "adult entertainment" channel, More 4 last night. It was pretty good, all things considered. The Daily Show was great, and the comedy about David Blunkett was pretty funny (though it portrayed him as much more naive than I think he really is).

Thing is, I'm sure E4 launched with the same fanfare. Now whenever you switch it on, they're playing one thing: Friends. Does E4 even show anything else?

Just bought a new toy, the Freecom DVB-t USB Stick. It's a tiny, USB digital TV receiver. Worked brilliantly at work yesterday (sixth floor, Windows 2000) so now to try and get it going at home (ground floor, Linux). Nice piece of kit, and finally this kind of thing is becoming reasonably priced!

I bought this because, while there's plenty of good stuff on British TV, the schedulers all seem to be smoking crack. At the prime times, when I'm likely to be watching telly, they run terrible reality and lifestyle programmes. Movies all seem to kick off after 10pm, meaning you're up after midnight to watch it. And the best stuff, targetting at the yoof market, is all on Friday and Saturday nights; times, one would think, when the yoof are all out and about, no?

So with this piece of kit, I'll be able to record it and watch it at leisure. Homechoice does timeshifting of some programmes, but it's mostly soaps and crap. Worst of all, they timeshift BBC TV news (lousy and very dumbed-down) but not Channel 4 (excellent and informative, with the wonderful Jon Snow). So I'll be timeshifting that.

Just sat down to watch The Rutles (three quid at Virgin). I can't imagine a less funny "comedy". What a waste of space!

Now we all know that John Cleese has been incredbly unfunny since he went through therapy. But was Eric Idle ever funny?

Anyone wants to waste 76 minutes, you're welcome to this DVD. Otherwise it'll be turned into a frisbee.

Just saw Blair on the news singing the Labour anthem, The Red Flag. He really didn't seem to have his heart in it. Hilarious!

Very scary story from yesterday's Grauniad about a geek who was stopped and searched by coppers in a tube station for... carrying a laptop and wearing a jacket. This errorism bollocks is getting really silly.

And, of course, the fact that this guy was a suspect, his fingerprints and his DNA will remain with the coppers forever. Great! Wouldn't be surprised if he suddenly starts getting singled out for "special" treatment when travelling to other countries.