Le Weekend (mini linkfest)

So, other than Urbis, what else did we get up to over the weekend? Well, Saturday involved a trip into the city centre, avoiding the fans of the England vs. Wales match, and instead looking round at a whole range of places including Green and Benz (and no getting any ideas about why we were there!) and Pyramid Glass, and then a meal in the evening at Beluga, which is still one of my favourite places in Manchester. They’ve just launched a new menu, and it’s just as good as the old one, although a couple of my preferences have now disappeared. But £60 for two people, including wine, strikes me as pretty good all round. Utterly recommended.

Sunday involved an exceptionally lazy morning, and then a trip out to Ladybower Dam and the Derwent Valley (the link goes to last year’s photos of the same area) in the afternoon along with a late lunch at the Yorkshire Bridge before going off to the gig in the evening.

And that’s how to do a weekend…

Cowboy Junkies, Manchester Academy

In a word. “Wow”. An utterly superb gig. I haven’t seen them in about fifteen years – and scarily they celebrate their 20th anniversary next year – so it was a bit of a priority to get tickets when they went on sale. And well worth the effort, it has to be said.

Support came from Vic Chesnutt, who I hadn’t previously heard anything by. That situation will soon be rectified – I haven’t laughed so hard at lyrics in a long time, and anyone who can get away with describing a frozen lake as “so cold that even the ducks are avoiding it” is fine in my book.

The only real downside of this concert was that the lighting was exceptionally dim, and so photographs were a problem. Out of the 50-odd that I took, about 5 were actually useable, which is a bit of a disappointment, but there we go. I’ll add on a couple to this once I’ve sorted them out a bit.

The Cowboy Junkies themselves though were superb, and just about flawless. It was good to see that they didn’t just focus on the latest album but instead played stuff from just about every one they’d done (with the exception of “Black Eyed Man”, which always was a piece of shit) right back to “Whites Off Earth Now!”, the first album they recorded. Definite value for money. All told, they played for about ninety minutes – and after nineteen years of recording, obviously they weren’t going to play everyone’s favourite track, but they made a pretty good attempt at doing so. Now I just hope I get to see them again far sooner – I’m already looking forward to it!

Oops

Of course, it’s fixed now, but the big “Go Live” switch on of the new content-managed website over the weekend was – to be frank – a bit disastrous. A small matter of the web server failing to connect to the database was the main problem. And of course with a content managed website it’s – um – all on the database. So, bit of a clang there then.

Other than that, it kind of went OK. There’s still stuff from “testing” that’s visible on the live site which isn’t really something you want happening. And the style-sheet was pigged on a basic problem, as a certain person *cough*Stinky hadn’t remembered to make sure the page background colour was defined – thus the site looked shite if you’d got a background colour set to anything except white.

But it’s all fixed now, and beginning to look pretty good. About bloody time!

All Quiet

It’s a peaceful weekend chez Lyle – the calm before the storm of the rest of the month. Tonight is the Cowboy Junkies gig, and I’m hoping I can get some good photos from it too – it’s at Academy 3, so a nice small space. We’ll see.

Other than that, it’s a far nicer weekend than had been expected weather-wise, and yesterday involved a large wander around the city centre, and my first (and last) visit to the inside of Urbis. The design of the building is fantastic, and as regular readers know, I love it to bits. I just wish I could say the same for the contents. Thank chuff it’s free to get in…

Global Vote 2004

(via ChasingDaisy)

Even if you are not a US citizen, the November 2 presidential election will have a huge impact on your life. The very idea of democracy requires that you should have a say in choosing who determines your destiny. This site therefore allows non-Americans to vote in the 2004 US presidential election.

GLOBALVOTE2004.ORG is totally neutral. You may vote for any candidate. Your vote will be kept secret. And you may only vote once.We will count the votes 48 hours before the election and submit the result to the US media. Just letting US citizens know how the world has voted could influence what looks like a tight race.

Go on, add your vote to the global “Die, George, Die!” appeal.

Testing Times

Just under a month ago, I booked for a driving theory test. At the time the website was shite, needing Internet Explorer, and about 4 pop-up windows. And all it said at the time was “Pearson Test Centre, Oldham”. Not the most helpful. But hey, it’s OK, because “confirmation will be sent out by post”. Will it fuckerslike.

So, I call them today (yes, I should’ve done it a couple of days ago, but it’s been manic) to ask where the frig the centre is, assuming it’s in the town centre somewhere. Um, no, it’s on (they say) Whitney Court. Which, according to Streetmap doesn’t even exist. Anywhere in the UK. Not the most helpful.

So, because I’ve no confirmation of the test, and no clue how to get there (the expression “Just by the station” doesn’t help much in this case, as Oldham doesn’t have a station.) I ask to move it to another date – not an unreasonable request, I’d have thought.

Oh no, that’s most unreasonable. It’s not their problem that they haven’t sent out confirmation, and it’s not their fault that the location doesn’t exist according to any other sources. This is all my fault, I should apparently know where to go, via some form of telepathic connection with the test centre. They’re not prepared to move the date, nor to refund the charge. So far as I can tell, this comes down to the company being utterly shite. So it’s going to be a fight… Joy.

Now to be named “Lucky”

I didn’t see this yesterday, but there’s a little story on the BBC about a deer that got hit by a car, and survived. The driver thought he’d only hit a stone (unlikely, even a muntjac deer is likely to have rather more size/weight than a stone, but OK) and carried on to work. At which point his colleagues pointed to the deer that was still wedged – alive and only with cuts and bruises – in the front of his car. There’s a photo included in the story, so look and be amazed.