No no this isn’t a lame reference to a previous post on the excellent movie Eagle vs Shark.

Anyone that knows me knows my family has had pet dogs since I was born (the latest new canine Shove is Daisy).

Anyone that knows me well will know I’m a fan of our primate friends.

Its the PRC’s attempt at breaking the number of people you can fit into a mini record?

Last Friday night I was lucky enough to get a free ticket and my name on the guest list (thanks Tony!) to see The Mars Volta. It was a good night, I got to see parts of the Brixton Academy new to me even though I’ve been there a fair number of times in the last decade. However, the gig itself was decidedly odd…

Films (movies to any Americans reading) in which nothing dramatic or world changing happens but this nothing happens in a hilarious and often believably poignant and awkward way are increasing in popularity.Napolean Dynamite, Superbad and most recently (for me) Eagle versus Shark for example.

This post has no interesting content for anyone other than myself. I shall endeavor to re-read it from as many different computers as possible to improve my wordpress stats though….

I recently heard of the yellow bird project , a nice simple idea which allows the people running the company to make money for charity whilst interacting with and supporting the musicians they like.

T-shirts designed by Wolfmother, Clap your hands say yeah and The Shins are available along with many more.

If you, like me, like quasi-unique T-shirts, music and doing your bit for charity I’d recommend you check them out.

I’ll be purchasing Wolfmother’s design to help release gnomes from the shackles of human opression (and make some money for the Teenage Cancer Trust on the side)

Attribution to the Pythons for the title.

I need to finally come out. I’m a big fan of Stephen Fry’s work.

Mostly this is due to watching epiode after episode of QI and it making me feel as though it makes me cleverer.

However I recently stumbled upon his blog here and found he too is a big fat geek. If you like words, technology or just, you know, fun I’d recommend reading it.

No, this isn’t an article advocating a more protectionaist policy regarding imports of goods from the PRC…

A friend pointed me to this article recently which gives a good explanation of one of the more infamous Chinese mistranslations.

(Spoiler : it boils down to the chinese symbol for ‘dry’ also meaning ‘fuck’ in certain contexts. contexts not well understood by translation software…)

The article is a nice crossroads between my interests of the Chinese language, profanity and technology. The content is a bit dry but some of the other translations might raise a smile.

Here is some info on spending money in china, capitalism, funny names and Donald Trump.

Capitalism first then Obesity Democracy

To a foreigner ( lǎo wài ) lots of things in China are odd. So they’re Communist right? Well… sort of. Yes theres a one party system, yes there is no real voting (other than for the one party) and yes the government regularly tramples on the rights and freedoms of their citizens. But the country as a whole is starting to look increasingly capitalist.

Last night I saw the Foo Fighters at the O2 arena and as venues go it was as good as you can expect from any huge stadium gig, easy access in and out, mildly overpriced drinks and food but still a decent view even from the nosebleed seats we found ourselves in.

The Foos were, of course, great. I say ‘of course’ because having seen them 3 times in the last nine years every time I have they’ve been different, sounded excellent and entertained the crowd immensely. If you could buy stock in bands (hmm… would that be a new business model… since record labels are going the way of the dodo?) an investment in the Foos 12 years ago would have been worth it.

In an attempt to be overly analytical I think their gig success (other than obvious musical talent) comes from;