The Bedroom Orchestra

Any one reading this who as spent time in Leeds city centre will probably be reading this and thinking yeah I know this guy and he is awsome, but for those of you not lucky enough to live/visit Leeds regular then look up this guy on You Tube. He’s called Tristan Mackay but also goes by The Bedroom Orchestra, playing the streets of Leeds ever week he can usually be found hanging out near W H Smith at the bottom of Langs Lane. Using a clever mix of vocals and instruments previously recorded by him he manages to sound like he has an orchestra accompanying him even though he is on his own. If you are ever in Leeds I would seriously suggest checking him out.

Hopefully this guy can make it big, he certainly has the talent to! I particularly like his cover of Hallelujah

Posted by Andy Posted in: Miscellaneous No Comments » May 2008

How to use the Nanny State to your advantage

There’s been a lot of hype over the last few years about the Nanny State, and that Big Brother is watching. It’s true, more and more CCTV cameras are being installed, we are becoming used to being captured on film constantly (in the UK an average person is captured on CCTV over 300 times per day). As mentioned on ArsGeek a British band called The Get Out Clause have found a novel way of using this to their advantage. It can cost a hell of a lot of money to produce a music video, way beyond the reach of most up and coming bands. So to get round this, the band got themselves filmed on around 80 CCTV cameras and then requested copies of the footage under the Data Protection Act, then using some relatively inexpensive video editing tools they splided it together to produce a good video. That what you can do when you put your mind to it

No they just need to get someone to build them a decent website (landing pages are so 1990’s!)

Posted by Andy Posted in: Miscellaneous No Comments » May 2008

MTV Spoofs

Every year come come time for the MTV movie awards, they tend to release an advert or two that are a spoof of at least one movie. Most of them can be found on YouTube. My personal favourite is the Jack Black/Sarah Michelle Gellar spoof of Lord of The Rings a few years back.

A lot of the other ones can be found easily enough but here are some links to my other favourites:

Lisa Kudrow Star Wars Paradoy - Kudos for the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon reference.

Sean William Scott and Justin Timberlake Matrix Paradoy - Special mention to the Will Ferral appearance “Ero, concordingly, visa vi. You know what I have no idea what I’m saying”

Jack Black and Sarah Michelle Gellar Spiderman Paradoy - Ok I’ll admit I’m a big fan of Jack Black.

Posted by Andy Posted in: Miscellaneous No Comments » May 2008

New Bird in the wild

My favourite email application have released an alpha of their latest version, Thunderbird 3. I’ve used Thunderbird for a few years now, one of the softwares that I deal with as part of my day job runs on an Access database back end and as we sometimes email the databases around we cant use Outlook as Outlook 2003 decides that you arent allowed to open it in case it is a virus (you know that makes sense for Microsoft to restrict one of their own file types). So myself along with most of my colleagues have moved away from Outlook to use Thunderbird.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Andy Posted in: Miscellaneous No Comments » May 2008

Getting Blacklisted for Employment

I don’t usually have a problem with people in authority recording more information about me, I’m not scared that giving them a copy of my DNA could lead to a problem. I would happily carry an ID card with me everywhere I went if needed (although I’m not completely for the idea of having to pay a stupendous amount but thats another story). I’m an innocent person, I have nothing to hide, after all its not like the information can be falsied by some one holding a grudge against me. Also, despite some recent blunders the data is usually pretty secure so it’s not as if there is much chance of someone getting hold of my DNA (and at this point in time what good would it do them there are no clones yet!*). I don’t even have a problem with having my background checked out by a prospective employer, I was going to be a teacher once upon a time so I have had a CRB check run on me. What I do have a problem with is a database were information can be submitted about an individual by an employer with no evidence to back it up. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Andy Posted in: Miscellaneous No Comments » May 2008

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