It comes to my attention that Jonathan Coulton is putting his clogs back on and coming back to the UK in the autumn. His first show here was great fun; you should go out of your way to see him this time around! Tickets are on sale for a show at Shepherd's Bush Empire on October 30th, which is the city I'm most interested in going to. I'll buy some tickets in the next day or so, so if you want me to get you one (and thus sit with a mostly-known set of people) let me know!

(Oxford people might prefer to see him there two days later, but I'm moving out in 10 days. Sniff.)

I have a spare ticket for the Zodiac this Friday (19th October). Oceansize are good. You should come see them.

In other news, I'm thinking about going to see God is an Astronaut in London on the 30th. Anyone up for coming along? Also, Porc!

I'm still not sure whether to pretend to be a goth and go see The Birthday Massacre.

(or "Burger, Boris, Isis!")

So last night I saw Isis, Boris and Oxbow at Koko. ( Review! )

Also, beforehand we went to one of these ridiculous posh burger places. It was okay. Also, they had a wine list. I don't have much else to say about it.

The algorithm killed Jeeves. The whole information-revolution.org advertising campaign is ridiculous anyway. They were giving out free mice in Leicester Square last time I was there, and offering people the chance to enter their truck and use their search engine. Uhm, I'm really enticed. Particularly since the mice were shit. :-)

Hrm. I fed “65trucksoftreerobots” to wordplay, and it generated 64590 anagrams. I don't regard “64585. BTU COT O'ER TRESS FORK” as a reasonable answer.

Giggity giggity. Posting 15daysoftickets and then using eBay has gained me a ticket to 65daysofstatic on Monday. Happy face! Also, I seem to be going to Truck. Woo.

Does anyone want a ticket to see Porcupine Tree on Thursday 26th April (that's first week, for those of you who measure time in those terms) at the Forum in London? I bought it for designergall having told her that it was the 21st because I am a muppet. It's £17.50, or £20 if you like paying booking fees.

Finally, you should all go listen to Robot Goes Here. The album's excellent (and I seem to have bought it for about £1.50 thanks to my eMusic subscription). Imagine Atom And His Package, but with a singer who can even slightly sing, and more refined music. A certain Mr Taylor remarked that “this is quite new rave! This is VERY new rave!”. I'm not sure whether this is a good thing. I am, however, sure that laptop geek-punk songs about the environment and humans failing the Turing Test are good things.

Hello!

I have been fighting with http://www.tfl.gov.uk/ recently. I could not find bus timetables on it.

Handily, I discovered http://www.busmap.org/ which actually has the bus timetables. I hope this helps you as much as it helped me.

(or, I enjoy live music.)

Hello, dear friends and acquaintances. I like going to gigs. There are a number of gigs in the near future which I would like to attend; I like company! Let me know if you're going to any of these, or if you want me to get you a ticket when I get mine (thus avoiding a double dose of booking fees!).

• 65daysofstatic are playing at the Zodiac in Oxford on 16th April, and at Koko in Camden on 20th May. I fear that the latter is too close to exams, though. I would like to draw your attention to the video for Don't Go Down to Sorrow. I particularly enjoy the literal 5/4 switch.
• Explosions in the Sky are playing at the Astoria on 19th April.
• According to their myspace page, Kill Hannah are playing the Zodiac on 20th April. The Zodiac's listings disagrees! In any case, I can't make it. They are also playing at the Islington Academy on Saturday 21st.
• Porcupine Tree are playing at the Forum in London on 26th April. I have braved their myspace page, and have found a trackful of samples from the forthcoming album Fear of a Blank Planet. It sounds like it might be fun! It's coming out in April.

I think I am done now. I am sure that there are gigs I have missed.

I was on a tube earlier, as sometimes happens. A southbound Bakerloo line train, to be precise. Some Americans (they sounded like Texans to my (admittedly poorly trained) ears) got on at Embankment, and were horrified to discover that the train then stopped at Waterloo, rather than at Charing Cross, which was where they were going. Now, I know that the tube is confusing to those who haven't used it before, but... when I mentioned to them that this train was heading south (the clue being in the word “southbound”), one of them exclaimed, “Why didn't they say this thing has directions?!”.

Uhm.

They spent so long complaining about this that they failed to get off at Lambeth North (oh, non-Londoners might want a tube map), so they'd just have to stay on the train at Elephant and wait for it to go back the way it came. It took a few of them quite some time to understand this, too. They apparently thought that after Elephant the tube would magically appear at the other end of the line and go south again, rather than going north.

Uhm.