Monday night we joined the stream of people lining up outside the St James theatre to see Sigur Ros.

I'd picked up their '()' album about 18 months ago and had just recently picked up their latest album 'Takk' which they were touring globally.

Luckily Karen saw that they were playing live back in January so we picked up tickets and organised roadtrip to see them. They were obscure and Icelandic so I figured no one would be going to the gig.

How wrong I was - we joined a queue of several hundred people waiting to get in. The venue turned out to be standing room only front of stage but the seated positions were only a third full (tix were twice the price). Being an old fart with a healthy dose of tinnitus already I figured we'd go with the seated option. As it was the seats were designed for midgets and the legroom was atrocious making for a slightly uncomfortable gigging experiance.

Opening for SR was Amiina - this quartet played a kind of funky playground instrumental thing. If you didn't see them on stage you would think you'd walked in on a music performance by a group of 8 year olds banging away on xylophones, bells, water-glasses, bowed saw and occassional violin/cello with PowerBook accompaniment. Actually a much groovier sound than you'd expect considering the instruments involved (kind of Tortoise-esque). Amiina also provide the backing strings for SR. You can listen to a track off their AnimaminA EP called Hemipode. I think I'll be ordering this EP shortly.

Sigur Ros started and finished with an apocalyptic intro and finale backlit behind a huge gauze curtain onto which a suitably visually stunning lightshow was projected from various sources in the theatre. Very cool and the intro set the tone for the entire concert - pristine sound, volume was perfect and the songs themselves were performed beautifully. About the only complaint would be that the vocalist could be a little samey and it would have been nicer if the songs dynamics were left to do their thing sans vocals.

Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended - if you ever get a chance to see them play definitely go. One of the best concerts I've seen in years.

A much better review of them live is at Popmatters.

Sigur Ros have a healthy appreciation for sharing music - you can download a number of tracks from their site here. They also host an FTP site of fan-made audio/video recordings too.

Now I need to get my hands on their Agaetis Byrjun album . . .

Great post on the evils of Social Pressure over at Gaping Void. I'd blow it up and print it out to stick on my wall but its sure to offend someone :-)

Rob points to a WebOS article over at zdnet in his blog with some pertinant comments. ArsTechnica points to the same article and links to another web based OS project that actually covers the basics rather nicely - Is there a WebOS in your future.

Some annoying suprises in Microsofts Vista OS - Endless Security Warnings. I guess they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. Warning the end-user of suspicious activity is always a balancing act between annoyance and security.

Wonderful architectural concept - library built from discarded aircraft bodies.

Interesting - Perils of publishing.

I could only answer 50% of these questions without having to think to hard about the answer - Scientists offer 10 basic questions to test your knowledge.

Geek heaven - A tour of Microsofts Mac Business Unit.

I used to spend an inordinate amount of time playing the first old Mac game on this page over the rudimentary PhoneNet network - Spectre. And then it was superceded by my Bolo addiction ;-)

Rob Janoff - Invented the Apple Logo.

Can't see this being acceptable for anything but the geekiest small companies - BYOL - Bring Your Own Laptop. Maintaining standards is hard enough without having to support unknown hardware/software too.

Interesting - How a manager treats a waiter gives a true indication of what they're like as a person.

Interesting - Microsofts web servers move to 64-bit.

A review over at ArsTechica for Silent Hill - The Movie. Almost sounds reasonable. The first two games were fantastic for creating a creepy atmosphere - like almost every game to movie translation its never going to be as good as the original but at least they've made a decent effort.

Post on the dire state of Mac OS X Backup Software. Does have a recommendation for a product which would appear to do the job quite well though - SuperDuper.

William Yeagerinvented the multi-protocol router back in 1980.

Handy - OpenBSD Tips.

The first release candidate for the fancy new Windows shell/scripting environment is available - Windows PowerShell RC1. Its development name was 'Monad' and the first Microsoft product to use it extensively will be Exchange 12 (eg it won't be in Vista).

Interesting - Datacenter Do's & Don'ts. Related - Xen in Action. Both articles found via OSNews .

As a followup to the previous article I've also posted Eds Evening Standard obituary which is a wonderful and poignant piece of writing that goes some way towards describing what a cool guy he was.

My close friends and I had known Ed since starting high-school back in Form Three (1983) through the end of University and into work after that. He was a one of lifes genuine nice guys. Even though its been a long time since his death whenever Anzac day rolls around you can't help but feel theres an Ed-sized-hole in your life and wouldn't it be great if he were still around.

I actually wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now if it wasn't for Ed offering me the chance to cover for him at the College of Education when he started to undergo Chemo. What turned into a couple of months went on for a couple of years and a career in IT while Ed continued to undergo various treatments.

If there were more Ed Fahys in the world it would be a better place all round.