Review: Bright Eyes at Leeds O2 Academy
If Conor Oberst can be summed up in one word, it must be prolific. The Nebraska songwriter has released 22 albums under various names already, and he’s only 31! Last night’s performance opened with a set by Jenny & Johnny, the latest project of Rilo Kiley singer Jenny Lewis who is a long-time collaborator of Oberst’s1. As if to flaunt the inbredness of the US music scene, their drummer was Jason Boesel, perhaps best known now as a key member of Oberst’s project The Mystic Valley Band. Jenny & Johnny started out as a sort of electrified country outfit but by the end were cranking out some very original indie-rock tunes that definitely made me want to check out their album. Bright Eyes came on about 8.45 and played for a full 2...
Too many stairs
Here’s a question that I’ve been meaning to ask my readers: How many flights of stairs is too many stairs? In my last building I lived on the fourth floor1 and I always tried to take the stairs as much as possible but would go up in the lift if I had heavy bags or I was sufficiently tired and/or drunk. Now I live on the third floor I am much more inclined to climb them even if I’m tired. I think five, or maybe six, would be the limit at which point the lift would win except when I’m feeling extra-healthy. Let’s take a quick straw poll. Are any of my readers conscious of their stair-climbing limits? Please share them in the comments!2 In Europe this means four floors above the ground floor. [↩]Twitterers: Please may I request...
The spectre of Section 28
You may have heard today that a school has successfully destroyed plans for a new opera, Beached, written by Lee Hall of Billy Elliot fame. Their claim is that the lead character being clearly homosexual is “inappropriate” for the 300 primary-age children taking part in the performance, and organizers Opera North have supported the school in this decision. Regular readers of my blog (hello!) will probably agree with me that this is, of course, an obnoxious bigoted viewpoint that the school is perpetuating, but it got me thinking about the legality and, in particular, the ghost of Section 28. Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 was a piece of Conservative-era legislation created in response to a bit of Daily Mail hatred about a book called...
Now wash your hands
We were all taught way back in primary school that after using the lavatory, we should wash our hands. This is not a matter of personal hygiene, it’s a matter of the hygiene of everyone who has used that particular toilet and with whom you have shared germs. Remember, a lot of nasty illnesses are accompanied by irregular bowel movements, so it stands to reason that shared toilets are going to be covered in nasties. Now, with that in mind, why is it that whatever shared toilet facilities I find myself in, whether in a dingy bar, a posh restaurant or even an office building, it seems to be fewer than 50% of men that actually wash their hands before leaving the room and spreading whatever they’ve caught to everything and everyone they touch? Is this a...
iTerm invisible cursor
I’m a big fan of the popular Mac OS X terminal application iTerm, but for the first year or so of using it I was irked by a serious problem: my cursor was invisible! [Figure 1] I scoured high and low on the web and found other people reporting this problem but no one offering a solution. I finally found the answer by accident a few months back and thought it was important to get it on the web somewhere so people can find it! If you want to see your cursor in iTerm, for reasons completely unknown to me, you need to set its colours in reverse (that is, set the text colour to the background and the background colour to the foreground)! [Figure 2] That’s all I wanted to say. I’ve never had any problems since. Happy iTerming! Update: My good friend...
Leeds-based non-binary nerd and sewist. I won't break my streak on Duolingo for anyone. 
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