Falling a bit behind…

Thanks to the complete and utter uselessness of some of the ‘essential’ gadgets I took away with me to Glastonbury this year, the blogging has fallen somewhat short!
I shall endeavour to catch up forthwith…

– Glastonbury, from the ground up –

In the meantime…

If gadgets are your thing – take a look at this post that I wrote for Mobile Industry Review last Wednesday, (in the car, en route to the festival to be precise), outlining just a few of the technological wonders that I was packing in my rucksack…

When Saturday Comes

Morning all, it’s 930am down here in ‘sunny’ Glastonbury. I’m yet to venture outside the tent but I’m assured it’s actually ‘not that bad’… But hey! You can’t come to Glastonbury and moan about the weather! It’s all part of the fun 🙂

So, here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve seen so far:

  • Vampire Weekend
  • The Tings Tings
  • Lupe Fiasco
  • Fun Lovin’ Criminals
  • Xavier Rudd
  • Kings of Leon

In that order..

Vampire weekend were fun. First dance of the day that was. The Ting Tings took AGES to setup and started half hour late so we only stayed a little while as we wanted to get back for Lupe Fiasco (political as hell but good with it). The Fun Lovin’ Criminals were damn cool, as expected and as for Xavier Rudd?
Well let’s just say I was pleasantly surprised…
And I WILL be buying his album when I get back.

Then, at long last, it was time for Kings of Leon…

They. Were. Amazing.

Similarly to Arcade Fire last year, these guys have completely made my festival..
Rock.

Vampire Weekend, (NOT The Wombats)

Greetings from Glastonbury!

We’ve just been to see the awesome Vampire Weekend (although for some reason I refer to them as The Wombats in the second video below), and They were actually very good!

Then onto dancing at ‘Guilty Pleasures’ – 70s tunes – and later?

Fratellis, Editors and THE KINGS OF LEON!

Yay for Vampire Weekend!


I love Glastonbury 🙂

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International Essex Diva

Today I missed The Tuttle

Today is Friday.

Every Friday there is a little thing that happens in London, just round the corner from Soho (here we go again), above The Coach & Horses Pub on Greek Street
Over there look ———————->

It’s official name of this thing is The Social Media Cafe, but – to it’s regulars – it’s fondly referred to as The Tuttle Club.

It’s a lovely place. Everyone is welcome. People come, people go, and the great thing is everyone is so, for want of a better descriptor, nice .
🙂

It’s great – You turn up, have coffee and occasional croissants, chat to like-minded folk, meet interesting people and generally have a bloody good time.

Lloyd Davis, Chief Proprietor and all round nice chap, set the place up as a prototype with a genuine vision to one day soon have a proper space, coffee an’ all, set up and running like a Cafe should. For us geeks innit.

So far it, in my opinion, has been a resounding success. I went along and met OH so many folk that I had been chatting to over Twitter/Seesmic and also a whole bunch of new people too. All of them lovely. I loved it so much that I took my friends along.

I even managed to get SpinVox along one day to sponsor the coffees et al in exchange for a discussion about The Future of Voice (but you can read about that elsewhere)

Anywhoo – The thing is, I’ve been a regular at the SMC now for a good 6-8 weeks – would that be fair to say? Has it been that long? Probably. Time goes so fast these days. Yes. Well. Today I had to miss it and miss it I did.
I’m pretty sure it looked something like this:

Lots of folk chatting around – having a good time – learning from each other – making contacts – developing new ideas� – sharing stories – catching up etc…all of that kind of thing – Top stuff.

Don’t get me wrong – it was good that I spent today in the office. Can’t go into it. I’m just happy I was there.

On the flip side however I really missed the hustle and bustle of my friends at the Coach & Horses.

Boo.

I’ll be back next week, that’s for certain.

And hopefully that will stop Lloyd looking so glum –>

Hehehe…

In the meanwhile however? What else has been going on? Well – I’m still making inroads to getting off my backside and moving this here blog you’re reading.
Got some lovely folk to help me out with the techie stuff. Just waiting for the go ahead and I can start the big move.

Everso excited.

What else?

I think I’ve managed to get through the last list that I wrote – oop, no. Tell a lie.
Still need to cover – SF, T-Shirts , 6mths with SpinVox aaaaaaaaand The BBC. Balls.

Ok – Parking all that for now. First, something MUCH more exciting…

This Sunday I’m taking part in a Blogger Cook-off aka Food 2.0 aka Nom Nom Nom.

Can’t wait.

More to follow very soon – but I did a post about it over here along with a fun slide show, (just go for the pictures)…

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Bye for now…

PS – My friend Roger got an Xbox 360, for free and I am NOT a Happy Bunny.

Adventures in Soho Part 2: The Sarah Marshall Chronicles

You may remember, back when I had Less than 24hrs in San Francisco, that everywhere I looked I kept being reminded of The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Not that I kept seeing Sarah Connor-themed posters… Oh no.
(could’ve made an interesting new angle for the next Terminator mind)

The ones that haunted my vision were for someone called ‘Sarah Marshall’.
This, out of context, made no sense to me…

However – all was to be revealed when I returned to the UK when a reasonably new (and good) friend of mine, Mike Sizemore, (blogger, vlogger and all round jammy film reviewer), invited me along to a top secret blogger screening of Judd Apatow’s latest film, ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’.

Having never seen or heard of the film before, aside from the aforementioned US poster campaign, I was quite pleased that Mike had thought of me and the invite was even more attractive as a) I managed to swing a ‘plus one’ and b) it was as the Soho Screening Rooms (which sounded suspiciously seedy if you ask me).

To whet my appetite even further, Mike even included a link to the latest Forgetting Sarah Marshall trailer…

DO NOT WATCH THIS YET

Ok. Judd Apatow is someone I’ve only just got to know. Having steered clear of Knocked Up (it didn’t look like my kind of film) I recently rented out – (check me, old school) – Superbad.
Which is easily one of the best films I’ve seen this year.

I watched the trailer, laughed a little… wasn’t sure… saw a couple of guys from Superbad… saw Russell Brand… realised it was a free screening.. and made my mind up.
One quick call to the girlfriend later and I had an evening of free entertainment in Soho, with blogger buddies AND I get to impress the Girl.

Who cares what the film is like right? Wrong.

Hand on heart I went into the cinema descended into the depths of said screening rooms not really expecting much. ‘Expecting much’ is not something I do often. Not expected anything is the best way to a) avoid disappointment and b) be pleasantly surprised. Fortunately, this time round, the evening fell firmly into category ‘b’.

Y’see I had this horrid COCK SHOT feeling that the trailer had given away all the funny bits and, for a little while, I thought COCK SHOT I was right. But, I am happy to report that COCK SHOT there’s still quite a lot of amusement to be had throughout the rest of the film.

That aside, COCK SHOT, for maximum enjoyment, I would recommend avoiding the trailer for this film as much as possible because as much as it does entice you into watching the film itself; it also gives away its fair share of funnies… I found myself knowing which joke was next as I’d watched the trailer several times and kinda knew which bit came when y’know? Please – don’t let this put you off – this film IS very, very funny.

Something that took me that took me completely by surprise was that beardy man over there on the right ————————————————>

He was actually very good in this film.

Although I can’t say I’m surprised.

Russell Brand is one of those comedians who I tell everyone I can’t stand and yet find myself often watching him on the tellybox and chuckling away at his dickensian wiles as he meanders his way around our fair language like a blind man on a bicycle…

I want to hate him, but I can’t.

Git.

And as I said, in this he is cast perfectly.

Git.

I don’t do film reviews often – although coincidentally enough, the last one I reviewed was a comedy also (albeit an unintentional one) – so for me actually sit down and bother to write this up means it’s actually worth seeing.

I laughed that hard I nearly wet myself.

No really. Forgetting Sarah Marshall has the some what strange honour of being the first EVER film that I was able to leave the room for. EVERY film I see I always make sure I go before I sit down.
I hate those people that pay £8-£10 to go and see the latest blockbuster and end up missing a massive chunk of plot because they forgot to have a number one before they went in.

I mean REALLY. It’s like 2 hours people!
You’ve just paid to watch the damn film – so sit down and watch it!

*sigh*

Anywhoo – I won’t be doing that again in a hurry, on the way back I was blinded by the light from the projector and ended up tripping on the step, stumbling up the stairs and then hitting a fellow blogger in the chops (sorry Annie!).

I digress.

This film is funny. See it.

Finally – Props to my mate Scott who saw this outside Hammersmith Tube Station last week…

It seems the hate campaign is spreading…

The iPhone aka The iBone

Before I hit you up with Part 2 of my Adventures in Soho, a brief comedic interlude:

That up there ^ is my friend’s iPhone, last week after his dog had got hold of it. Ouch.
Cue much laughter, finger pointing and merriment at his expense.
The iPhone’s screen is strong. But it seems it isn’t that strong…

‘Dave’ is a bit upset about this (I’ve changed his name to save him further embarrassment)

*giggle*

Anyway – after snapping that pic I asked ‘Dave’ if I could blog it, “Sure..” he said, “…and I’ll update you too.”

“Update?”

“Yep. Get this…”

Turns out, after the aforementioned mauling, Dave tried to claim on his home contents insurance. Note: ‘Tried’.
He has since discovered that he can’t actually claim ‘accidental damage’ as the dog did it deliberately.

(clearly a Nokia fan then)

After that Dave tried to claim it on his business insurance. Still no dice. Thing is, this policy doesn’t cover ‘phones‘.
It covers PDAs. Dave is trying to claim the iPhone is a PDA –

“…which it is!” Dave tells me…

However, the insurance company have never had a claim for an iPhone before…
(they don’t even know how to spell it look)

…and what with it having the word ‘Phone’ in its name, Dave’s hitting another brick wall.

Double Ouch.

Insurance companies can be tough little beggars at the best of times (trust me – I know) but are they in the right in this instance?

Is the iPhone a PDA? Or is it a Phone?

‘Dave’ sold his dog over the weekend.. and I am really, REALLY not kidding.
He was that upset.

So much for man’s best friend…