Simon Rumble’s blog

After a throwaway comment made by Steve about this band and tv show, I thought I'd download it and check it out. It's absolutely brilliant! Holly and I have watched the first couple of episodes and it's truly hilarious.

Flight of the Conchords follows a Kiwi band trying to make it in New York. Their fanbase (that is, Mel, a married woman who seems to be creepily devoted to the band) never seems to grow and their gigs are generally rather pathetic affairs such as trade shows and aquariums. When they happen at all.

The humour is very subtle, with lots of self-deprecating digs at the Kiwi accent and insecurity about New Zealand's bigger, brasher neighbour. It's quite unlike most American sitcoms, but then that's probably because it's conceived by people who aren't American. The kind of people who know that irony isn't when it rains on your wedding day.

So check it out. It's running on BBC4 in the UK, and given it came out this year will probably be running on Australian free-to-air sometime before 2020. Somewhat sooner from your favourite torrent site.

I'm doing the Scott 24 Hour mountain bike race this weekend with some mates. To mountain bike at night, you need decent lighting. The proper lighting kit is massively expensive and could easily be more expensive than my bike, so I needed a plan B.

So I bought an LED headlamp and very bright LED torch. The headlamp, fortunately, fits under my helmet. The torch is plenty bright, but I needed to work out a way to mount it. We had a few spare bike light mounting things floating around, so I combined two of them and fortunately they're able to screw together. So one goes around the handlebars, one goes around the torch. Quite neat really.

I'll test this setup out tonight on the way home, with the bumpy and dark backstreets of Erskineville being the test ground. My main worry is whether it'll be steady enough, as there is some movement in the joint. If so, I'm thinking some little bits of rubber acting as braking washers.

The other problem is the torch takes CR123A batteries -- those short, squat things that you put in cameras. These batteries are bloody expensive -- $12 each at Dick Smith! They're Lithium chemistry, which means they hold a fair whack of power, but I really have little idea what my burn time will be like, so I'll probably have to buy another set of these batteries and hope that'll be enough. Longer term I think I'll look at attaching some kind of big rechargeable battery pack.

John Hunt is a Coward. I like it!

One of the gadget freaks with too much spare money at work bought an cracked an iPhone to work in Australia. I just had a little play with it and have to say it's mighty impressive. Simple things like the automatic rotation when you rotate the device, the gesture multi touch user interface are very impressive. Just goes to show that Apple are very good at focussing on making the UI good.

Quite impressive. Most importantly, it'll give all the other providers a solid kick up the arse. Given I won't be buying any Apple products after being stung years ago, I'm keen to see how Nokia respond.

Those of you from Gen X will be as shocked as I was when I discovered that many Gen Yers haven't even seen the best of John Hughes' filmic output. How you could think of yourself as a well-rounded individual without having seen Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Weird Science and Ferris Bueller's Day Off is beyong me!

Well today's Savage Chickens has the solution! The Society for the Preservation of Molly Ringwald.

All of a sudden we've gone from bundling up with a blanket in the lounge room to full-blown Summer. 29 degrees over the weekend and 32 forecast for tomorrow!

Just in time for a visit from Beth, who arrived on Sunday. We took her to Bronte for a swim, though the beach was eerily flat--flattest I've ever seen it. Here's Holly and Beth enjoying a Gaytime. After a quick swim, with a still quite chilly water temperature, we walked across to Bondi and back.

Last night we had a bunch of people around for a BBQ too, and the weather couldn't have been more appropriate. Steaming hot, but cooling down in the early evening. Lots of fun and just for Beth we threw some "shrimps" on the barbie. (For the record, they're called prawns in Australia.)

Australia has four popular "football" codes, most of which involve more hand than feet, but the most popular nationally is Aussie Rules. It's a very strange game for anyone who hasn't seen it before, but it's massively popular. This Saturday is the Grand Final of the biggest Aussie Rules competition, AFL.

A political group loosely modelled on MoveOn.org in the US has been working hard in Australia for the last year or two to get and keep progressive issues on the political agenda. Their latest project is to air a brilliant spoof of the government's "climate clever" taxpayer-funded propaganda ads.

Importantly, the ad has high production values, is clever and amusing, while still very clearly making the point. It's not affiliated with any political party, which is important for my support and differentiates it from MoveOn. Interestingly, the local TV companies have had no problem accepting and running the ads, so far. In the US, the equivalent sporting event regularly rejects non-mainstream advocacy ads.

GetUp! are still accepting donations for this campaign, to try and get the ads as widely on Australian TV as possible. Get in there and donate!

At the very least, watch the spoof ad. If you've watched Austrlian commercial television at all in the last month, chances are you've seen the ad they're spoofing. It's quite incredible at the moment -- the government is shamelessly using taxpayer money to carpet bomb the electorate with advertising. Every single ad break has a government ad.

NSW has retarded liquor licensing laws. You can drink all day and all night in venues that don't serve food, but you can't order a glass of wine to drink with your meal in most restaurants. Contrast with cities in civilized parts of the world where you can drink in groovy little bars, all restaurants. It's just nicer! What's more, you can buy booze alongside your groceries, rather than having to go into another shop.

Why is this? Well a quick search shows that between 1998 and 2006, registered clubs and hotels gave $3,141,754 to the ruling junta in NSW, the ALP, and $1,171,062 to the nominal opposition. Money well spent when you consider the enormous profits being made by the liquor retail monopolies!

A campaign is gradually forming to fix this. Raise the Bar invites you to send your MP a drink to let them know you'd also like small, funky bars rather than pokie-infested beer barns.

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Ben invited me over to have lunch with him at the Google Sydney offices today. Nice place to work it would seem: stunning water views, make-your-own pizzas, free food and drink, a day a week to work on anything you like. Wow! Mind you, I had to sign an NDA just to visit!

While I was there, I ran into Gordon. He's enjoying the job there too.

Thanks for the lunch Ben. I'd offer to reciprocate but lunch around Forest Lodge is shite.

I've started going to the gym to get me fit enough for this bike race I'm doing in a few weeks. My music is all a bit cerebral. I used to listen almost exclusively to techno, but these days I only really dance to it.

So does anyone have any suggestions for upbeat, cheesy techno to walk/step/ride nowhere to? Ideally mixed so I don't get bored -- this is to be the soundtrack to pain and suffering, so you don't wanna get bored, you want it to take your mind off it.

As it is, I'm trawling for old-skool Goa Trance compilations.

Update: Jeremy Kerr suggests his mate Tigger's mixes but also reminds me that Digitally Imported have a heap of techno streams and I could just record an hour or so to play back while in extreme pain. Great idea, plus my ISP streams them for free. Thanks Jeremy.