After the Asian tsunami disaster, 60,000+ people pack into the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff for a benefit concert, the line-up included legends such as Eric Clapton & Jools Holland. Also on the bill were Kelly Jones, Katherine Jenkins, Keane & The Manic Street Preachers. The event raised over £2million for the cause.
February 2005
Laura & I jetted out to New York city on the 15th of the month. We spent 7 days doing the tourist thing, Empire State building, Staten Island ferry, Wall Street, Madame Tussauds, Times Square etc. and a lot of shopping. The pictures from the trip can be seen on Flickr
April 2005
Election fever gripped the UK ahead of the May 5th general election. As expected, my constituency was held by Labour, but overall my party of choice, the Liberal Democrats, gained more votes than it ever has before, they also took from Labour seat of the constituency bordering my own, Cardiff Central.
May 2005
The Sony PS3 was announced on the 16th of the month at a press conference. Prototypes were then showcased at the E3 show in Los Angeles, May 17th to 20th. The system is due for a spring 2006 release, after that of the Xbox360 which was released in December amid controversy of low-stock.
June 2005
Laura & her family and I flew out to Mauritius on the 17th of June from Heathrow airport. Two weeks of relaxation was well received, though I cannot say much for the internet availability on the island which was pretty much non-existant. But then, I suppose, what do you expect from an island that is thousands of miles off the coast of the Africa in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
July 2005
The Noise & Confusion concert on 10th December at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff is announced and tickets go on sale. Unfortunately I oversleep and don’t get to buy my tickets until 45 minutes after they go on sale. Unfortunately by this time most are sold out and I end up overbuying in order to get the tickets that I want. I never did get rid of all of my extra tickets, one did go un-used.
August 2005
Google enters the IM market with ‘Google Talk’ to much hype around the blogosphere. Unfortunately the hype is short-lived and Google talk still has not really taken off, mostly due to the fact that it largely inferior to other IM clients and that MSN, Yahoo & AIM already have well established userbases.
September 2005
International Talk like a Pirate day fell on the 19th as it does every year and was celebrated around the office with the wearing of pirate hats and talking silly all day. Perhaps you should celebrate it next year?
Also, it was in September that hintofsarcasm.com was migrated to Wordpress from MovableType, a decision I think has greatly helped the site to develop.
October 2005
Cardiff celebrated its 100th anniversary of having city status, also it celebrated its 50th year of having Capital city status.
Street entertainers were prevalent all around the city centre including dancers, singers & musicians.
November 2005
New extended licenses for pubs, clubs, bars and other premises licensed to sell alcohol came into force on the 24th of this month amid much controversy from the right-wing.
As expected though, nothing much has come of it except for the fact that we are no longer restricted to 11pm closing times, thus releasing us from our shackles for the first time in decades.
December 2005
Richard Pryor sadly passed away on the 10th of this month aged 65.
He was an inspiration to many and an entertainer to many many more.
I’d like to die like my father died… My father died fucking. My father was 57 when he died. The woman was 18. My father came and went at the same time.
I wonder if Richard attained that? It would not surprise me at all if he did.
I hope you all have a great 2006. I’ll surely be blogging it!
I’d just like to quickly take this opportunity to thank all of my loyal readers for sticking with me this year, a year which has been filled with a lot of fun but also a lot of change.
I have posted more blog entries this year than any other since I started blogging, a true sign that my blog is coming of age.
I shall be posting a roundup of the year hopefully later on today, before we ring in the new year.
I’ll leave you for now with a video I made on 23rd December at Cardiff’s Winter Wonderland;
December 20, 2005 at 12:45 · Filed under Entertainment
Barely a week after the massive Oasis/Foo Fighters/Razorlight gig at the Millennium Stadium, rumours started to circulate about another huge concert in the Millennium Stadium.
The Western Mail reported on it, the stadium manager, Paul Sergeant commented on it and today it has been confirmed.
The Darkness, The Strokes & Super Furry Animals have all been confirmed at the gig to be held on Saturday 28th January.
The aim of the concert is to support a global campaign to tackle environmental change, with all proceeds from the concert going to the ‘One Earth Trust’
Concert goers and television viewers will see 20-40 minute performances from at least 10 major artists on the bill and in between sets worldwide celebrities and dignitaries will encourage the public to switch to renewable energy via video and films.
So, 20-40 minutes from at least 10 major artists? Sounds good to me!
Although the one downside to it, is that tickets will cost £40. Considerably higher than the last two major gigs put on at the stadium (£20 for Tsunami gig & £35 for Oasis/Foos).
December 20, 2005 at 11:40 · Filed under Comment, News
The Metropolitan Transit Authority has called a strike, effectively halting all bus and subway transit throughout New York and neighbouring areas (Queens, Brooklyn, etc.).
The whole system carries over 7million people a day, the city is going to be totally gridlocked.
People won’t be able to get to work, others wont be able to make appointments, tourists will find it hard getting around, it will be absolutely terrible. I could not imagine being unable to use the subway whilst I was there. Both Laura & I were totally dependent on it, the subway is the easiest and cheapest way to get around, as anyone who has been to New York, or any other city with a subway or metro system will know.
Tonight, Roger Toussaint and the TWU have taken the illegal and morally reprehensible action of ordering a citywide strike of our mass transit system.
So it sounds as though he isn’t so pleased about it.
Reuters also points out;
As dawn approached, police set up checkpoints as part of a plan to ban cars carrying fewer than four people from midtown Manhattan. The city has contingency plans such as strict car pool rules to help avoid gridlock.
Yep. Minimum 4 persons per car in Manhattan. That’s quite a bitch, but, nonetheless necessary.
Manhattan gets pretty gridlocked on a normal day, can you imagine what is going to happen on a day where 7million people have been forced onto the streets in cars and taxis? Yeesh.
As I write this, rush hour will be preparing to start in the big apple, it’s 6:30am.
Good luck to all you New Yorkers, have a great day regardless.
December 16, 2005 at 12:18 · Filed under Technology
The Tasty and a few other bloggers have been raving about a USB powered missile launcher which looked cool as hell.
Reading on in the post, it is only available here in the UK, exclusively to Marks and Spencer, so, naturally I had to rush down there and get one.
I installed it this morning in the office and have been pelting everyone in the IT department all morning since, everyone thinks it’s quite possibly the best thing that has ever come out of USB.
Software is included so it can be controlled, able to move left, right, up, down, as you would expect so that it can be aimed, it is actually quite versatile.
December 16, 2005 at 11:19 · Filed under Technology
Gmail has today announced a list of new features available in time for the christmas holidays including, Gmail Mobile.
Yep, an official Gmail over-wap application. Excellent.
I have been using Gmailwireless (based on Gmail-lite) for months now, and, although it does the job, it just isn’t as versatile as the real deal.
Also, gmail mobile brings over Googles fantastic document re-processing power, so that PDF & MSWord documents (amongst others) can be viewed as html documents in your mobile web browser. Pretty neat.
Also this feature has been added to standard Gmail, yay.
Oh yes, and, two words for you.
Auto Responder.
Yes, finally Google has listened to the cries from its users and added an ‘out-of-office/on-vacation’ style auto-reply system. When it is switched on, a reply is automatically sent to the email sender with a custom message, as you would expect.
December 15, 2005 at 16:26 · Filed under Technology
FosFor gadgets has come up with a countdown of the ‘10 weirdest USB drives’, in there, we find drives that look like shrimp, sushi, a duck, and, at number one, the Barbie doll USB drive.
Yank off Barbie’s head and voila, a place to store your particulars that you need on the move, ingenious.
(Click Play button to start video)
A poor quality, cameraphone video from Noise & Confusion on Saturday.
This is Razorlight during the song ‘Somewhere Else’.
I forgot to take my digital video camera so, this is the best you’re going to get unfortunately.
There are some really bad singers stood around me, but, overall the atmosphere of the whole gig was amazing.
With so many thousands of people there, I felt so small, but overwhelmed, I can only imagine how the artists felt, especially Razorlight who are fairly new to the scene, to have 60,000+ people singing the words to their songs, drowning out the singer himself.
Pictures from the Noise & Confusion gig will be uploaded soon.
With the news being dominated yesterday by the oil depot fire in Hertfordshire, news of the death of a comic great and one of my heroes, Richard Pryor was almost totally drowned out
Pryor had been suffering with multiple sclerosis for many years, the dibilatating illness forced him to retire from comedy almost completly which was a crying shame as I’m sure that many people have the same view of him as me.
His standup routines were some of the greatest ever performed by any artist and set the path for the many black comedians that came after him.
Chris Rock has recycled his material and cites Pryor as an inspiration, as does Eddie Murphy and Dave Chappelle, some of the best black comedians on the scene today.
Eddie Murphy has even gone as far as to say that Richard Pryor was the person that made him go into comedy, heres a snippet from the transcript of ‘RAW’;
When I was little, I wanted to be Richard so bad, I used to go out on-stage and talk and act and walk and do everything like Richard.
My mother would sit there and watch her 10-year-old son on-stage saying some outlandish shit.
Richard currently has two DVD’s out, and I can tell you, they are definitely worth getting, if you don’t already have them.
The first is ‘Richard Pryor - Live in Concert’; recorded in 1979, this is undoubtedly the most brilliant piece of comedy ever performed on stage. Richard demonstrates an ability to make even the most mundane topics, such as walking through the woods, pant-wettingly funny.
The second is ‘Richard Pryor - Live & Smokin’; recorded in 1971 is Richard at his most raw, the act is unfinished, a lot of the stuff is unrehearsed, it’s being performed in a small comedy club in New York city as opposed to the huge Terrace Theater in Long Beach, California that ‘Live in Concert’ was at. Here you can see some of Richards more controversial stuff, things that you really had to be quite brave, as a black man in 1971 to say. Absolutely amazing, it just goes to show what kind of man he really was.
We’ve waited so long, but, the day is finally here.
Noise & Confusion at the Millennium Stadium is on this afternoon.
Oasis, The Foo Fighters, Razorlight & The Coral, amazing lineup.
I can’t wait to see Dave Grohl perform tracks from the new Foo Fighters album, it really is one of their best yet.
Oasis, they’re ok. Kinda big headed, but, they have put out some good tracks.
Razorlight, one of this years hottest bands.
The Coral, fun and bouncy stuff, should be good to get the crowd going.
I will be sneaking my video camera in with me, so expect me to firewire some stuff when I get home tonight.
It is going to be a long one however, the gates opened at 12, midday but I’m expecting the big bands to start coming on at about 5 or 6pm.
Gmail has today announced a list of new features available in time for the christmas holidays including, Gmail Mobile.
With the news being dominated yesterday by the oil depot fire in Hertfordshire, news of the death of a comic great and one of my heroes, Richard Pryor was almost totally drowned out
