Nothin' but Trouble...

My first pilgrimage of the year last Monday. A trip down to the holy city of Wolverhampton to see the legendary Trouble at the Civic Hall. Well, the Civic Hall bar actually. Curse all you trend pandering, false metal felating bastards that would let such an iconic band be forced to resort to changing down venue from the Wulfrun Hall to the bloody bar of the big venue next door. Grrr. Anyways, said venue wasn't all that small, actually, being sized halfway between, say, the ABC 1 and the ABC 2 in Glasgow. Not exactly packed out, either, but then again Doom metal never was big box office (apart from, well, you know who). You're into it for the love of the damn thing.

None of that matters anyway. The band themselves were simply magnificent. Tighter than a constipated gadfly, heavier than four dozen buffalo stampeding on your cranium, louder than the coming apocalypse, yada yada yada. Have I really been waiting nearly twenty years to see them live? Brrrrrr. They ran the full gamut of their material, all the way back to the oldest, slowest, most funereal stuff right through the Jimi / Zep styled era of the mid nineties and then on to some new material which sounded super heavy in the old fashion - not that anyone will be buying it, sadly. I had heard that they will be on the same bill as Heaven and Hell on at least one festival line-up in Europe this summer. Probably in a land where the mullet is the official national tonsorial style - just a shame I can't afford the requisite hair weave.

Have to say that I really like Wolves the town. The lovely folk from the Midlands are generally pretty damn cool IME and you always get a nice bit of conversation with them, especially when they find they are talking to a Scot. Funnily enough, the town centre, to me, actually looks a lot like, erm, Hamilton... without the omnipresent shell suited, semi-human garbage polluting the shared psychic head space, obviously. Lots of great buildings with some beautiful architecture, especially the art gallery and St Peters church. Just, y'know, old-fashioned nice. I like old-fashioned nice. Defo worth a visit, I'd say.

Paradise Deferred (Redux)

Bah, this game programming lark is a royal pain in the cojones. I've been trying to motivate myself to finish that godawful sideways scrolling shoot 'em up that I've been rattling on about for, oh, months now but I have been seriously struggling... sadly, the "can't be arsed" factor is hideously enormous, exacerbated by the huge number of fiddly little bastard details that always need to be attended to before making real progress. I've actually somehow got a fair old bit of the infrastructure well in place but there always seems to be something else that needs properly designed, and it's always something that hadn't been previously accounted for... and, frankly, after spending most of my 9-5 workday ploughing through acres of ill-considered, back-of-the-fag-packet designed shit intricately planned, well-architectured, high quality code, I'm not always in the best frame of mind to spend the evenings or weekends peeing away my precious drinking time doing similar into the wee small hours. Not when there's a third series of Deadwood to be watched...

Aha, I hear you cry, the big sh**bag is making his excuses and baling out already - what a complete Colin Hunt. Well, naw, that ain't the case... not at all. The sideways scrolling job will get finished at some point, maybe even this summer... but my new years resolution was really based around just getting a game written in Python with a view to subsequently getting it running on Linux as well as Windows... and then going on and seeing about getting it running in an OLPC development environment. Well, that project is still very much on, only I've retrospectively decided to walk before running (er, actually after trying to run in the first place but bollocks to pedantry) and have started converting my old "classic" Columns rip-off to Python / PyGame from the original Delphi / DirectX version. A much less technically onerous endeavour as well as a pretty damn fun way to really get into the guts of the new language without fighting it quite so much at every bleedin' step (e.g. cursing stupid things like the lack of basic, multi-dimensional arrays in the standard Python library the other day - WTF ?!?). In fact, it's going to be a cool wee proggy to hang any graphical and musical doodlings from in the way that I'd originally intended the Delphi version to become. Well, I've started so I'll finish as old Magnus used to say. This thing will definitely get done. I've said so in public. So there :-P

In the meantime, here's a picture of one of the models for a putative end of level baddie from that wannabe R-Type / Gradius clone to keep y'all satisfied. It was going to be a picture of another (partially) furry German but the big man thought better of violating the old Blogger terms of service. Ho-hum.


Made with the help of -

The Byrds "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" - Oh, how old Uncle Mex loves the sound of some steel guitar on a Sunday morning. Glorious. Gram Parsons R.I.P.

A good Rogering...

Nipped down to London at the weekend to see Roger Waters at the Floydian spiritual home of Earls Court. What a fantastic concert venue, much better than any of the faceless, plastic, 10,000+ seat sized arenas that I've visited over the years... I'd forgotten just how splendid it was after seeing the other three amigos there back in '94 when I was a mere slip of a lad. What a super posh, ultra-exclusive area of the city as well, very pleasant indeed. Unlike the drunken crowd of scouse gits that inevitably sat in front of the big man during the show, singing along loudly at the most inappropriate moments, getting up every five minutes to get their beers in or go and take a piss, usual boorish nonsense from ignorant fuckwits - IME, there has always been that thin strata of the Floyd audience coming from the chav demographic... something to do with the drugs methinks. Anyway, they didn't quite manage to ruin the gig for the old fella - jolly(!) Roger saved the day by playing wall to wall (tee hee, see what I did there?) old stuff all the way for a good three hours (with a twenty minute break in the middle), including the whole of Dark Side in the second half, in order, from start to finish with old Nick Mason on the drum stool. Marvellous. Must give props to the twin guitars of Dave Kilminster and Snowy White channelling Gilmour with much aplomb. Good work fellas. Yes, a lovely night all round.

Now that's what I call commitment (vol. 4)

Stumbled across this picture (right) of the sainted wee Ron fronting the Sabs Heaven and Hell a few weeks back. Uncle Mex here could not help but notice that the leather lunged, pocket sized titan has invested himself in the blessed cause of fronting the greatest metal band in the known universe to such a heroically committed extent that his very DNA itself is transforming, as highlighted below in the close-up through the appearance of stigmata in the shape of the sacred Sabbath cross on the back of his hand (apparently that whole cross thing is also a traditional religious symbol of some significance as well - go figure!).


Anyhoo, I know damn well that the cheap "Volume 4" crack in the subject line would have worked better if the Oz was the current front man but the pun would not be denied - bollocks to the lot of you :-P

A nerf-herder in a nest of gundarks...

As I mentioned before, Kling Klang were playing the Sub Club as part of the annual (fantastic) TripTych festival and the big man here had a ticket. Splendid. And so they were. Not loud enough (never loud enough) but they still managed to dig out plenty of high octane, synth powered, sludgy riffage. Which I like, of course. The none-more-cool indie kids posed at the bar and looked generally disinterested as the big man tried hard to resist head banging along (jeez, I do miss the long hair - or, indeed hair full stop - at times like that). The band themselves were an odd looking bunch of scallies. The (excellent) drummer in particular looked like the ginger bastard offspring of Jarvis and Mark E. Smith. Hmmm. Much hirsuteness all round, too. Always did approve of a high beardy weirdy quotient in my favourite bands.

BTW, Paulo if you're lurking, I did get a few kind words about my bright yellow Marvel superheroes t-shirt... tho' sadly not from any of the aforementioned none-more-cool indie ladies present... :-(

Anyway, here are a few other recent observations from the past week...

• Staggered in after the gig, turned on the goggle box and fumbled my way over to Kerrap TV... only to be presented with the ungodly sight of the bleedin' Ordinary Boys gurning through their one and only hit for two insufferable minutes... Yeeeuchh... Just what the fuck is going on with that frigging channel /magazine / emo jizz rag these days ???

• So, tell me, just how long has Will Ferrell been playing HellBoy ??? (Yes, I am continuing to mine the comedy gold of the old Private Eye stylee look-a-like name/picture swap... cheers). Can't accuse this blog of not being environmentally friendly given they way I continually recycle old content...
  

• I have been really enjoying watching Goalissimo of a late evening to catch the ever entertaining South American fitba' among other things... however, it can get a little hairy with the player names after the odd late libation or two. For example, the other day I was 100% sure that Boca Juniors' star striker was actually named Fellatio - yes, naturally, he went down far too easily and his technique really sucked. Ho ho ho. And I was also pretty damn sure that Sao Paulo had a guy named Chewy playing up front for them... Yeah, laugh it up, fuzzball...

Whisky, chess, the good doctor... and even more Kerrap on the telly...

Hey-ho! Uncle Mex here has belatedly realised that he hasn't posted that much in April so here's an update of a few things that have been done, will be done and a few more things the old goat has learned this month... (balls, I'll have to quit this third person stuff, I'm getting a headache... )

• Visited my old mate iKon down in Motherwell who kindly showed me the sh sights of the old place. Naturally, by way of thanks, I handed the silver fox his a$$ on the chessboard (sorry old fella). What can I say ? Nice old man's pubs, some good whisky, a good laugh and a lovely day all round :-)
  

• Out on the lash a few times in Glesga this month with another old mate, Breza, and stumbled over a cracking wee metal club down in a basement at the top of Wellington Street. Still can't remember the name of it but I've always been very drunk every time I got to the place... bloody Glenmorangie. Anyhoo, I knew the place was a winner after seeing their giant Sabs poster on the wall, with Van Halen seemingly always on their jukebox and Anchorman seemingly always being looped on their telly... boy, do I love lamp!
  

• Speaking of which, just how long has Will Ferrell been the drummer for the Chili Peppers ???
  

• Going to see the mighty Kling Klang at the Sub Club this Friday - woo-hoo!
  

• I'm still digging the latest Doctor Who... though I still can't fathom how he could have spent the best part of two series making Bambi eyes at Joker-faced Rose and yet continue giving a rubber ear to wee Martha... frankly, she's fallen out of the gorgeous tree and hit every branch on the way down. Ahem. BTW, yes, she does seem to be molesting an eisbärbaby in that pic... either that or I'm having another one of those dreams again...
  

• Kerrang TV is so remorselessly fucking awful that it makes me want to gouge out both my ear drums with a shit encrusted baseball bat. It's like pouring hydrochloric acid down your third eye. I explicitly sat down one evening and watched it for an hour waiting for one, just one, honest to goodness metal video to put in an appearance... i.e., not their usual relentless diet of generic, whiny, pussy-whipped, kohl-eyed, pseudo-Goth emo My Chemical Valentine bilge. Of course, that lone metal video never came, not once. Occasionally, the channel did change gear every now and then, sometimes excreting a fetid slurry of whiny, pussy-whipped, spiky haired pseudo-punk Bowling for Blink 41 Day effluent instead. Cheers for that guys. Trend pandering bastards. Scuzz is a bit better - I have even spotted Slayer, Sepultura and some Megadeth in the wild on there... and at least the new stuff that they show is generally pretty heavy...

Righty-ho, that's me off for a lie down - I feel some old man back pain coming on :-(

Doctor Knobb's Journal

Howdy kiddywinks! Y'know, despite being a professional (smirk) code monkey for, oh, nearly ten years now (Jesus wept), this blog has been markedly lacking in the area of tech talk. I did (and still do) intend starting another blog for my idle musings on what's going on in the world of my favourite weekday dev tools and suchlike but, in the meantime, I thought that I should take this opportunity to do a wee bit to fill the gap on this blog. Oh, joy untold. Umkay, let's crack on...

Feeling a little demob happy at the prospect of my short Easter hols, I decided to crack open the copy of Delphi for PHP that has been sitting in my in tray for the past few days. One very quick, lightweight install later (no .NET dependency baggage) and I was working up a little database front-end application quicker than I can knock up a chip butty. The work flow is exactly like classic Delphi... design your forms, code your event handlers and press F9 - super quick and super simple. It comes bundled with Apache and an Interbase version so everything is in the box, good to go, for creating your own self contained little web app. And, by crackly, I really do like it! It's just so, well, Delphi...

I'm even warming to the clunky name - Borland confused the whole Delphi naming issue in the first place by renaming their version of the Object Pascal language as the Delphi language and now they've (or rather CodeGear have ) done a complete volte-face and seem to be now branding their whole symbiotic IDE / VCL development model as Delphi... and are consequently now back to referring to the language under its old flamin' moniker. Typical Borprise SNAFU, the big yin thought - people will get mixed up and wonder why this new "Delphi" has nothing to do with Pascal at all and wail about how idiotic the powers that be still are after all these ignominious years... However, now actually having used the PHP tool myself, it makes absolute bleedin' sense - it really feels just like "classic" Delphi... except that this one has PHP sitting underneath it and, of course, it now targets the web. Bloody great I say. Even better, the new PHP VCL that underpins the whole endeavour is essentially a managed open-source project, meaning it can (and should) take on a whole life of its own outwith CodeGear's efforts - definitely the way forward for the Gearheads in the face of the .NET onslaught, IMHO - keep away from the M$ woodchipper, it'll be the death of you guys...

Sadly, AFAICT, the Slashdot crowd haven't (yet) taken to it and have kicked it before even giving it a fair go but frankly they can go hoist themselves - IME, those tossers can be broadly characterized as a plague of relentlessly negative, fundamentally ignorant, dogma driven cock suckers so fuck them. Balls to the naysayers, it is a defo winner for the old school Delphi guy - if Kerrang reviewed development tools, this is a 5K job, no worries.


Anyway, away from the grindstone, I have been working on that Python game project that I mentioned previously. Honestly. It's just that, well, progress has been dog slow... bloody hard work it is, developing games, way above the actual coding process - the design, infrastructure, and support tools all take up as much time as anything else. Coding in a language you've never used before might also just slow things down a tad... :-) I will get something finished within the next month or so, we'll just have to see how it goes from there, stay tuned. BTW, I do love Python, it is so flippin' terse - though getting used to duck typing again is hard after coding mainly with Pascal all these years. Still, one does like a challenge now and again...

BTW, don't worry readers, it's back to prattling on about eisbärbabies next week, okay ???

Made with the help of -

Trouble "Psalm 9" - Bought the re-issues of their first couple of elpees the other day and they are marvellous examples of their eighties doom epoch... I'm going to see 'em at the blessed Wolves Civic at the end of May - yippee! Jeez, Sabbath Heaven & Hell and Trouble in the same year... you're spoiling us, Herr ambassador...

Before I go, my favourite quote of the week on my deities comes from the pages of Metal Hammer : "Part Dio, part Sabbath, all guaranteed to fucking rule" :-)))