Last night I was supposed to be seeing Pink at the Portman Road stadium in Ipswich. I didn’t see it.

Why? Because I couldn’t find the fucking stadium.

I’m normally pretty good on finding places, but must admit that in this case I’d figured there would be some signs to follow. After all, it’s a football stadium for fuck’s sake. Surely they need some signs for away fans to get there etc.?

Apparently not. I have to assume that Ipswich is truly embarassed about the stadium – they sure as shit don’t like to admit that they’ve got one.

Driving along the A14, I got to the first turn-off for Ipswich. There’s a sign there that says “Football Stadium” with an arrow pointing straight on (i.e. don’t take the turn-off). Fine. Second junction’s the same – “Straight on for Football Stadium“. After that, nothing. I got to the far side of Ipswich, no more signs. I turned round, coming back from Felixstowe direction to Ipswich, and there’s not one fucking sign. Not one.

All told I did that stretch three times, checking the exit roads, trying to see any damn signage whatsoever that pointed me in the direction of the stadium. Nothing except those two signs saying “straight on” from one direction.

So in the end I said fuck it, and drove home.

I assume Portman Stadium etc. won’t give a shit, as they’ve got their money for the gig already. But you can be damn fucking sure I won’t be going back there again.

I do feel like a right bell-end for not being able to find a sodding football stadium. But at the same time it’s not just me, others have said it’s a shit to find unless you actually know where it is. Personally, I’m not going to make the effort to try and find it again.

Over the weekend, we went to see Bon Jovi at the O2. It’s their greatest hits tour for the “Circle” album, and they’re at the O2 for 12 nights all told. Now I have to say, I’m not a massive fan of Bon Jovi. Herself is, Brother-in-Law is, so we all went.

The gig itself was really impressive. Bon Jovi’s performance was pretty storming, deifnitely one of the better big gigs I’ve seen – even for someone who’s not a massive fan. I only recognised or knew about a third of the tracks performed, but still, that’s fine.

What was more impressive (for me, anyway) was the stage set, which really was impressive. Right from the start it let you know it meant business, with a massive high-res screen coming down to obscure the view while Bon Jovi came onstage, and which then split into individual columns to travel round the stage.

There were a number of other really stunning technical bits, including some epic lighting, and that same matrix screen also showing that the columns could also split out into individual screens.

But the piece de resistance is the five mobile 6′ x 9′ screens at the back of the stage. They’re made (yes, I researched!) by ABB robots, who say the following :

ABB robots, accompanying Bon Jovi’s “The Circle” tour will be the first set of industrial robots to be a part of a concert tour. The visual intrigue of the show will be enhanced by the five ABB robots positioned toward the back of the stage, each with a 6’ x 9’ LED video panel attached to their articulated arm. The robots and screens will move to the rhythm and beat of the music while displaying real time video footage of the show and digital animations. At various intervals the five robot arms move into a formation where the LED panels become one continuous, five panel screen. The robots will accompany
the nearly two-year long tour, which features over 60 concerts in North America and Europe.

These screens/robots are simply amazing – they’re all articulated in all three axes, and move individually, in time with the music, as well as at one point becoming a staircase. It’s an exceptional demonstration of what can be done now with stage sets if you’ve enough money and creativity.

Stage sets, lighting and effects have always been one of my real geek-out subjects, and that geek in me was totally appeased by the Bon Jovi stageset.

Seeing things like this gig is one of the things that makes me think about What Might Have Been. If I’d stayed in school (and gone on to college, university, whatever) then I’d have gone on to do one of two things : Stage Lighting/Sound/Sets, or working with the Great Apes.

Stage stuff would’ve fulfilled my geeky needs bigtime, and I’d hae loved to do it. Working with Great Apes would’ve fulfilled other parts of me, and I’d have been equally happy doing either. In fact if I were to win a lottery or something, I’d go back to do one of those things. (Most likely the work with Apes, in honesty)

I don’t regret the path I’ve taken, not for one minute. But every so often I do think of the different paths available, the roads not taken. Last night was one of those times.

So last Thursday and Friday I was in London for the Webdirections @Media Conference. It was the first time I’d been in a couple of years (I last attended the 2007, I think – holiday for the ’08 one, and tubularity stopped me from attending the ’09 one) so it was interesting to see what had changed – and of course what had stayed the same.

Of course the big difference was that @Media is now run/organised/owner by WebDirections, rather than through Vivabit as it has been in previous years. I’d not heard of WebDirections before, but apparently they’ve done a number of similar conferences in Australia etc.

To me, it seemed that the focus of the conference had changed quite a bit this year (or maybe over the last couple of years, I don’t know – can’t really comment on the ones I didn’t/couldn’t attend) to be more about design and programming, rather than the accessibility and user experience themes of previous @Medias I’ve attended. And that’s a disappointment.

The focus this year was very much on Javascript (which used to be a real no-no) and about telling designers to not worry so much about making designs work in all browsers and versions. There was virtually no mention at all of accessibility, except in one session through the two days. For a conference where accessibility and so on were paramount at the start, that’s a pretty sad state of affairs.

The other thing I really noticed this year was how corporate some of it seemed. In previous ones there’s been sponsorship from big companies and so on, but this time it was more going down the “stands in the public areas” type of promotion. Again that could be something that’s happened more in the last couple of years that I’ve missed, so it’s not such an eye-opener for other more regular attendees.

It was a good conference though, don’t get me wrong – I’ve got a lot of stuff to take out of it, bits that I’ve learned, bits that will make sites I work on better in anumber of ways. I’ve enjoyed it – it’s just been interesting to see what’s changed.

So following on from yesterday’s discovery of a flat tyre, I booked in (and paid in advance) through eTyres.co.uk to get it fixed at home. eTyres offer their service at home, which is ideal when you’ve got a flat.

However, the motto of this entire story is that if you’re going to have a puncture and use eTyres, don’t do it on a weekend. Despite being able to book and order online, for some fuckforsaken reason they can’t organise things ’til the Monday morning. And at that point they’ve also got to deal with all the people who’ve booked on the Saturday.

I did try to change the tyre myself so I could get down to the local tyre place, but the wheelnuts were on so tight I couldn’t even move the sodding things. Insurance-wise I was going to be lowest of the low priority calls, and they couldn’t even give me a time expectation. So all told that left me pretty much at the mercy of eTyres.

Having made the booking online yesterday evening, they finally arrived at 5.30. Yep, a whole day. So much for the speed of booking via the internet etc. etc.

In the end they’ve done a decent job, and for a fairly decent price. Not as great as they make out in their marketing, but not bad.

But if you need a swift service that’ll actually get the job done, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend eTyres to anyone.

As has been mentioned before on here, I’m a bit of a fan of Peter Gabriel – not hardcore “all the way back to the 70s”, but I like far more of his stuff than I dislike, and I’ll usually go and see him live. Mind you, I’m gobsmacked that it’s now six years since I’d seen him live – although I did end up missing (OK, not going to) the concert a couple of years back at Blickling Hall in Norfolk.

Anyway, when I saw about tickets coming available for a concert at the O2, I was there. It was in promotion of the “Scratch My Back” album which hadn’t even been released at the time, but *shrug* I don’t worry about things like that.

The gig itself was always going to be slightly strange. Gabriel’s done away with the general band stuff, and instead gone with a total orchestra, stripping down the songs and then orchestrating them. It had been billed as being no support, an hour of the new album, an interval, then another session with older stuff. It didn’t work out quite like that – everything started late, there was then a short (three song) intro by Anna Lünd – who’s also doing a lot of the backing vocals in the rest of the show. At that point the lights went back up, an interval of about ten-fifteen minutes, and then into the Scratch My Back section of the show. A fifteen minute interval that stretched to nearly thirty, then back to the final “older stuff” section.

All that aside though, it was a really good gig. The visuals were really impressive, doing stuff I hadn’t seen before with multi-layered screens, and almost holographic at some points. The sound was fantastic, and the orchestra were stunning. Some of the songs were just fantastic – particularly his versions of Arcade Fire’s “My Body Is A Cage” and Magnetic Fields “Book of Love”. The entire album was done live, which is quite an achievement in itself.

The second section was more of the same, but orchestrated versions of older tracks, including the crowd favourites. There were a couple I wish he’d done as well, but I think that’s always the way when it’s a gig covering nearly forty years of music. But he played (among others) “Digging in the Dirt”, “Signal to Noise”, “Mercy Street”, “Darkness”. “In Your Eyes” and (of course) “Solsbury Hill”, which still managed to be as whimsical as ever.

I’d have loved to see Sledgehammer done in this gig, or Growing Up, but I guess they’d be hard to do in an orchestrated version.

All told, it was a pretty great gig – allbeit a very different one to most of the ones I see, and very different to the previous Peter Gabriel concerts. But still, fantastic to see.

After wanting to see it for a while, I finally went to see “Avatar” last night. I even managed to get to see the 3D version, which made it the first “Real3D” film I’ve seen.

In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting much from the film – most of the reviews I’d seen made far more of the technology and so on in the film than of the film itself – but I was pleasantly surprised.  Sure, it’s a bit too long, could do with losing about 20 minutes of trite shite, and has some deeply vile sickly-sweet bits for American audiences, but overall it’s pretty damn good.

In fact probably my biggest bugbear with it was the name of the wondrous material that was being mined on Pandora – “Unobtainium”. I mean, please. It’s not unobtainable – it’s fucking difficult to get, fine. Call it “fuckingdifficultium” or something. But “Unobtanium”? Sheesh – just make up something new, don’t try for sounding cool – and miss it by a mile. I do realise there’s a cultural history for calling things Unobtainium – but for a film that’s trying to be fresh and new, it just seems to be something that harks back to the 50s/60s, an in-joke that’s just not very funny.

So yes, there’s little bits that irritate – and the occasional bit of “Look! It’s 3D!” that grates – but in general it’s actually a pretty good film.

The director, James Cameron, has brought in a number of his standard themes – particularly Evil Big Company going ahead with plans at the expense of other less capitalistic influences (survival, global dynamics etc. etc.) – which makes it quite interesting in the current situation with global warming etc., and the awareness of “Going Green”, which is itself quite a major theme of the film.

As for the effects, and the way it’s filmed, I think it probably is one of the more radical developments in film/cinema history – I found myself thinking back to it, wondering how some of the stuff was done at all. In that context, it’s remarkable – in a similar way to when “The Matrix” came out, with effects no-one had really seen before. Avatar’s the same – it’s not quite “the next thing from colour”, but it’s pretty remarkable all the same.

All told, it’s a good film. Not a great one- although that’s really what it aspires to be – but pretty good all the same.