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However I bought Meteos for the DS. Hyper-powered Tetris in some ways. Each move is tied to music notes though, each level has its own set/style of bricks and music. Beautifully linked-up design, rare you see sound tied into the gameplay itself that distinctly.

I think I have covered most of what I wish to say about my illness right there. Tied into my not smoking, it is not pleasant.

In much better news, I have published my first search plugin for Firefox on the official site. It isn’t a big deal, it is more the fact that it is my first piece of open source software, so I have a sense of community pride today. Go Flotsky!

Right, something I am going to work on is a playlist in iTunes of all the records that are sampled in Beat Dis, by Bomb the Bass.

According to here

The records in it are:
BEAT DIS (Extended Dis):
Theme from Dragnet
Theme From Shaft – Isaac Hayes
Theme from Thunderbirds
Christmas Rappin’ – Kurtis Blow.
Rock Steady – Aretha Franklin
Funky Drummer – James Brown
The Grunt – Fred Wesley And The J.B.’s
Theme from ‘The Good, The Bad And The Ugly’ – Ennio Morricone

I am sure there are others. I am going to come back to this soon and figure out.

Last week I was wondering why I didn’t yet have Google Talk working within gmail. In fact, I was missing a few features I had heard had been released. Now mrsfb has gmail also, and her’s had it all there. So I searched and searched (using google of course) until, hidden away on Google Groups, I found this little gem. Under settings, check which language you are using. If it is NOT set to US English, you won’t have the new features. So if you want them, change it. I thought this was just me, but apparently a few people I know have had the same problems.

Right, I had a cracking time last night. Went to the Barbican in London to see a couple of tv plays from the 70s.

Glitter starred Toyah Wilcox and Phil Daniels. Toyah looked very young, unsurprisingly, and had no lisp whatsoever. Strange little tale about a couple of kids breaking into a TV studio so they could pretend to perform on Top of the Pops. Turned out it was all in their imagination. They are found by a “cool” Noel Edmonds, looking frighteningly skinny. They accuse him of believing he is Jesus at one point. It all breaks down and gets a bit trippy after a while, and turns out to be all in young Toyah’s mind. What of course is lovely is that both Toyah and Phil Daniels did get to have chart topping records one way or another.

Jumping Bean Bag was a cautionary tale about the dangers of becoming too overtly sexual as a pop star. It started Dennis Lawson (the scottish x-wing fighter pilot) and David Dixon (Ford Prefect from the tv version of Hitchhikers) as members of a well-spoken glam rock band called Slag Bag. I think it had its tongue firmly in cheek (I don’t care if it was the 70s, nobody can say lines like “I don’t think this room can take the power of 5000 first-time orgasms”). Things take a turn for the worst when a fan dies at one of their concerts, overpowered by her orgasm. Stunning. What was also strange was that all the music was written for the show specially. Dennis Lawson was the drummer, and did a strange drum solo whilst singing that I can only say was rap. In 1975. Possibly the first recorded instance of rap music. Very odd.

However, the highlight of the evening was a short clip from the Russell Harty show, in I believe 1974. Harty introduced a new star, Brett Smiley, who performed his new track “Space Ace”. Resplendant in a shocking pink suit, Smiley appeared to be stoned out of his very young mind, and also unaware that when singing live, you had to hold the mic fairly near to your mouth. At least within a good couple of feet, to be safe. Whilst watching it your expectations changed very quickly from wondering if you were seeing some lost genius, to wondering if a huge crook was going to come into shot from the side to pull him off.

Harty then interviewed Smiley and his manager, former Rolling Stones svengali Andrew Loog Oldham. Who appeared equally bombed. I think Harty had been taken aback by quite how bad the performance was, and to his credit, unlike today when PR means he would never have had any guests above the quality of Su Pollard ever again, he started to give Oldham quite a hard time about, well, exactly what he was thinking hoping he could make this boy a star. He didn’t really have an answer.

If they had dubbed him, not let him speak to Harty, and made him stand still, he could have been a star. So near, and yet, so far! I still need to find out more about him though. What I have got thus far is that he recorded an album, Breathlessly Brett, which was lost for decades, and only released a year or two ago. There is also a book about him written by a woman that saw this aformentioned performance, and fell in love with him on the spot: Prettiest Star: Whatever Happened to Brett Smiley? by Nina Antonia. Going to have to get hold of both myself.
Few links of note about him:
Good quick biog from his current record company
An interview with Brett from 2003
An interview with Phil King about Junkshop Glam. He talks about Brett Smiley during this

I’m still struggling with the sleep thing, is getting hard now. I won’t go on about it too much, as I’ve noticed that I have complained enough for the google ads linked to this blog to be mainly about sleeping tablets. Wooo, thrill a minute.

As you may see, for a change I have been a busy blogging bunny over the weekend. I do particularly like those video plugins from google video, so easy to insert the code for them.

Just a quick note to say that mrsfb is starting a new blog soon, The Pru Review. She will be reviewing books wot she has read, and given the volume and quality of what she reads, will be well worth a look to get some suggestions for what to read next. Should be something there within the next day or so I reckon

Hooked on google video at the moment it seems. This is someone’s interpretation of the lyrics to a sort of emo song.

Warning – may contain swearing. I say may, I don’t speak any russian, so I have no idea if it does on not. I do like their tru gangsta tactic of hanging about it a kids playground like bigger kids.