Andrew Mobbs

Begging a favour:

Is there anybody with a car willing and able to give me a lift to Waterbeach and back one lunchtime? I need to get my hi-fi amp to Arcam, and they're only open 9-5 weekdays (and they mean 5pm, I managed to get there at 5:10pm last time I tried, and they were very shut).

Update:
Many thanks to beckyc for giving me a lift.

What good new (rather than nu) metal music is there around for adults at the moment?

The last couple of bands that I've found that I've liked and that are doing have been doing interesting stuff with the genre have been “Opeth” and “Ephel Duath”. A bit of a google around suggests it might be worth looking at “Solefald”, does anybody have any other suggestions?

It's true that arguably the most interesting thing to happen to metal in the last 10 years has been the hip-hop crossover. I just happen not to like a lot of that direction :-)

Heh. That was fun. I've just been to see John Woo's Hard Boiled. OK, so it still has no plot, but the sheer levels of choreographed violence from it is just overwhelmingly impressive, and it's such a relief not to have everything in CGI. If plotless action movies have to exist, they should be like this.

I do feel I'm missing a whole stylistic language of Hong Kong action movies; there seems to be a bunch of stereotypes, visual cues and idiom that comprise a semiotic whole that I only partially understand.