PETA have released a very good clone of Cooking Mama, attacking the game for it’s lack of veggie options and the cruel trade in Turkeys… Worth a look, I think most will think twice after this.

Thursday night, good time for a school night gig (why not recover on a Friday at work?). Jen picked up tickets for this gig which was meant to be in May, when I was on the other side of the planet. It was postponed until August, and then once again until this November date after Matt the lead hurt his knee. By this time the band have had two records out and are almost, kind of, a bit, known.

Arriving at Tuts for 8pm, we noticed they had two support acts and weren’t due on stage till 10:45, woah late one ahead. Skipping the first support band, we caught some of the second support band, not a clue what they were called - seemed alright though.

Cage came on and played a good gig, I saw the lead singer on Buzzcocks a few weeks ago, he annoyed me, came across as a whinny little American kid and really grated.. I wasn’t expecting to like him on stage and as suspected, didn’t. Though to give him fair dues, he really made an effort to entertain, swinging on the speakers, running around the crowd and more importantly sounding good live.

No photos from the gig, still not got a camera yet (sorely missing one!) and mobile phone cameras are terrible in low light conditions. I took the above picture from Flickr.

This is looking very good indeed, nice use of Muse for the background music.

The gig season starts now, Winter is always good for gigs in Glasgow. Probably not beating last years four in five days, but so far the lineup is good!

Saturday was a first for me, a visit to The Classic Grand on Jamaica street. The venue seemed nice, an art deco theme throughout and handy location started things on a good note. Support from a Georgie band, not a clue what they were called but rather entertaining show.

EchoFela came on to a packed crowd of, about 30. I’d be curious how many more people would have walked in if the gig was tuts, Classic Grand is still rather unknown - need some more bigger names to play the venue and put it on the radar. Having only sampled a few of their tracks on their website, I wasn’t sure what to expect. They sound rather good live, almost the same as their recordings on the website, a good sign indeed, well worth a listen.

Unfortunately, after taking my camera around the world a few times, I managed to loose it last week in Cumbernauld, sigh, so no photos of this gig.

A handy website that I’ve bookmarked, if you find a website that’s just not working, fire the URL in to this site and see if the rest of the world has been effected.

http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com

So for the USA it’s election day, for the rest of us we can only sit back, watch and hope they don’t fuck it up (again). Kinda wish I was in America today, I was there back in 2003 for some of the pre-election stuff and really got interested in what was going on, today will have a good buzz I’m sure, especially as Starbucks are giving out free coffee’s to all voters.

A story that made me chuckle is the Proposed renaming of a sewage-treatment plant after George W. Bush, touche.

And to finish, a Barack Roll:

Update: And another from Eddie’s superb Delerious standup..

Quirky site for a Friday, www.omnomnomnom.com, totally bizarre…

The theme seems to be, draw eyes on a picture and, erm, well, post it with the words om nom nom nom.

So, a mix of laziness and curiosity, I left my stubble growing for two and a half weeks. After about a week the beard started to take shape, the comments increased and the endurance test continued!

First up, two and a half weeks in:

As expected, it doesn’t quite grow evenly or cover up the sides of the face, kinda mish mash of hair - got quite itchy this weekend and really started to pester me.

And now shaving fun, I forgot to stop for a picture with a gotea but went for the tache! This is the second year I’ve skipped on Tacheback, but was curious how it would look, odd to say the least. Next year this shall be Septembers look for sure:

And now it’s gone, cold face, bit tender but back to normal…

This is rather good, David Perry game developer of Shiny fame (Earthworm Jim) gives a talk on “Will videogames become better than life?”. I really enjoyed the student film on video games, especially the part about the control scheme.

That’s one thing that puts me off a game, complex control schemes. The Xbox 360 can be bad for this, using all 10 buttons, both sticks and the D-Pad is taking it a bit far. The Wii for all it’s good merits can also be just as bad, shake here, turn here - I shouldn’t have to sit though a long tutorial or god forbid find the game manual to figure it out, it should be intuitive and after a short while be second nature.

On with the video:

On a nightshift tonight, waiting around and browsing the deep dark corners of the internet. I came across this gem of a video, just love the randomness of it all, bunch of strangers willing to dance in front of a camera for no real reason. The music is superb as well, shall be tracking that down.

It’s also worth looking though his www.wherethehellismatt.com website and the lectures on his youtube channel, his presenting style reminds me of Dave Gorman.

Lots of places in there I’ve not been to yet, been thinking about where I want to go next - so much of the world I’ve not had a chance to get to, after some chat about various places this week - I think I need to get something booked.