Who are they? What do they? Any good they?

Apparently they’re supporting NIN on their tour and all I know is 2 boys, 2 girls, from Liverpool. And I’ve heard the name before.

Gordon’s asked a load of questions on his blog and, being ever a trivia and pub quiz lover, I sent him my answers before looking them up on Google/Wikipedia. They’re after the jump in case you want to have a go yourself.

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Move site to my reseller space
Install Wordpress 2.1
Import upgraded db
Install old themes
Create new theme
Import headCleaner() archives

So far, everything has gone fairly smoothly with the transition over to a new hosting site with the only loss so far being my blogroll. I’d forgotten that I’d adapted some code to output links as I wanted them and the new version of wordpress changes the table names that are referenced. So for a quick fix, I’ve removed the code entirely.

Welcome back to the funhouse!

Just been reminded about a post I was going to write after discovering Rullsenburg Rules via Troubled Diva. The other night on IrishTVChannel 6 I caught an old episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (”Earshot”, 3:18) and it reminded me how long it was since I’d watched any Buffy and how much I missed it.

It was always absolutely compulsive viewing for me although the high point was when Angel went bad in Season 2 after doing the jiggy jiggy with Buffy. (Did I spoil it for you? Tough - it was 10 years ago give or take! Keep up!) The scripts were always fantastic and even in the later series, there were some exceptional episodes. Why Joss Whedon didn’t win an Emmy for his writing on the series I’ll never know - he only ever got nominated for the fantastic episode “Hush” (the episode with little to no dialogue at all).

Buffy did go down hill from about season 5 onwards in my opinion. Season 6 was struggling to tread water and season 7 was entirely unmemorable. Still, when Buffy began to fade, its spinoff, Angel, just kept getting better. I get the impression that I’m in a minority but I do confess to preferring Angel over Buffy after Buffy Season 4. It was darker for the most part but it was also funnier and kept going strong all the way to the end. The final season, with the return of Spike and Angel Investigations in charge of Wolfram Hart, had some of the funniest and most gripping episodes, particularly Smile Time when Angel gets turned into a puppet. (I saw one of these on sale in Forbidden Planet the other day and was very tempted to get one.) Plus Illyria was hot.

I’d almost say that they don’t make ‘em like they used to but that wouldn’t really be true. BSG and 24* keep me going as well as a healthy dose of Scrubs. But I have a distinct feeling that I might dig out the dvds when I get home and indulge my nostalgia with a Buffython weekend.

*(Trivia time: while watching 24 series 5 the other week, I clocked a geeky bit of trivia when Audrey gave the false name of “Jane Espenson” who was one of the regular writers on Buffy. Probably not something to be proud of but I felt chuffed with myself for noticing.)

I recieved an email this morning telling me that my host is shutting down business and will cease trading from this coming Saturday. Although they’ve offered me a chance to move hosts to their new company, I see this as an oppurtunity to move the site to a domain that I control, having bought a resellers package last year (getchore cheap domain space ‘ere! Cheaper than cheap an’ i’m cuttin’ me own throat. Domain Space onna stick for everyone!)

The problem is that while I’m away from home, I have no access to my files or my ftp set up and I can’t access the control panel from behind the firewall in this office. Even if I could, I don’t have the passwords. Hopefully when I get home on Friday I’ll be able to at least make a backup of the database and files straight away and then attempt to get everything restored afterwards. It could also be an appropriate time to upgrade to Wordpress 2.1.

This is basically a simple way of saying this site may not be available for a couple of days next weekend: do not adjust your set.

The year for music keeps getting better. Following the purchase of a new Foetus album the other day (no link, find it yourselves you lazy gits!), the announcement of a new NIN album, another new Foetus album and acquisition of tickets to a NIN gig in March, I’ve just been informed that Neubauten are playing dates in Nottingham and London in April.

This is one happy Dragon.

There’s a guy works down the chip shop swears he’s Elvish!* (Another “zzzzz-inducing” WoW post featuring orgiastic naked elves**, trips to Outland and other mediocrity.)
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Received today:

Dear Dragon,

We have concluded our investigation into your case and have decided in your
favour.

We were able to recover [a sum close to but not quite the full amount], and this amount has been credited to
you. Please allow five business days for this adjustment to be posted.

If you are due any additional funds, we will make our best effort to
recover the balance from the seller.

Can’t ask for more than that really. Yes I’m out of pocket but only by the cost of a couple of rounds and a bowl of chips down the pub. It’s the price you pay for not being more careful.

Many thanks to Adrian for leaving an explanation in the comments. Cheers bud.

Having survived the slightly turbulent flight home and in deference to watching stupid, ugly people on television, I decided to install the WoW expansion and have a butchers at the new content. And blog about it too. After all, why not?

21:40 - Load disc 1 and start install
21:55 - Things progressing nicely
22:04 - Disc 4 fails, installation stops, swearing ensues
22:08 - Start copying discs to hard drive. 15 mins per disc? Wtf?
22:09 - Launch WoW, starts to download 2.05 update
22:12 - Try getting into WoW again.
22:13 - “Your account is registered for the expansion which requires newer files. Please install these files.”
22:15 - “Failed to copy disc 4. Cyclical redundancy doodah encountered.”
22:30 - Locate torrent of required file after discovering that disc 4 is fucked up for a lot of European users. But 12 hours to download? Damn!
22:38 - Pour another glass of wine. Try cleaning disc 4. 16 hours left on download. 16? Wtf?
23:17 - Finished perusing Zach Braff’s blog (Scrubs is teh funnae!), try one last time to copy disc 4 before going to bed. It works! Jaw hits ground.
23:43 - Out of wine, on the Baileys. Expansion installed? Check. Patches reapplied? Check. Terms of Service agreed to? Check. Time to go to bed? Quite probably! Sigh!

Two hours to get it installed - typical IT project all in all. More tomorrow.

Not the weather but the title of the new album by Foetus. Don’t know how I missed this (apart from the fact that I’m not any mailing list) but I’ve ordered it anyway. It’s mainly a collection of previously unreleased stuff and remixes either of tracks from Love or that he’s done for other people (like the mix of ShrunkenMan he did for The The which I have on the Interpretations EP somewhere).

What’s more, there’s a full remix album, called Vein, slated for a Spring release. If it’s to Love what Blow was to Flow then it will be very good indeed.

Oh, and there’s a new Nine Inch Nails album in the pipeline too, currently titled “Year One”.