Longing for the day ...

Haaappy birthday ...

tooo meeeee ....

Had a great return to park-lvel football last night at Unitouch, where we stared the season with a 13-0 whitewash of "Chargers". They had plenty of speed and skill but no real structure or discipline. Next time perhaps.

Now I have a C grade mixed Grand Final on Wednesday at Puretouch and then the State Cup at Warwick on Sat 29 April. Fun, fun, fun ...

Enjoying being an old fart - just wishing I had more time for music ...

Beaten by the Kiwis

Didn't win a game against the Kiwis over the weekend - damn! Closest we came was a 5-all draw in the third game. In the final we just didn't fire up at the start and couldn't claw our way back from 2-0 down early on. Lost by 1 - 4-3.

Overall, we lost 3, won 2 and drew 1 for the tournament. That's not bad for a first go at international football. I was awarded the team ball for most consistent player, which was an honour first time out. Will have a better idea of what to expect next time.

But what an experience! Thoroughly enjoyable, totally tiring. I'm quite exhausted today but looking forwad to getting back on top of the study and music.

On, on, on ...

Commonwealth Games

Can't ignore the CGs, thugh I'm tempted to. Superb efforts all round and some great competition. It's a pity the media re obsessed with the medal count and Australia's position in it, because tere's some great stuff going on that doesn't involve Australians winning medals. It's also good to see Gus Gould giving a heads-up on the mental and human aspects of some of the performances - that makes a nice change to the usual.

Read the other day that the "Sydney - Melbourne rivalry" was to blame for Sydney viewers switching the games off. It's more like that Sydenysiders are less prepared to put up with the Crap coverage provided by Channel Nine. It's banal, asinine, parochial and boring. Too many talking heads and not enough athletes.

That said, congratulations to all the athletes - the winners and the rest - for a great exhibition of what world-class sport can be. Inspirational! It's been a pleasure to watch the little bits that I've been able to see.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Gonna spend most of today and tomorrow playing at Irish events in Brissie! Dicey Reilly's today, and tomorrow - the races! How Irish is that!

Bun' Ber E will be out there and in the the thick of it all. Receonnecting with our roots and generally gtting into the spirit ... or Guinness, as the case may be. :-)

Fun, fun, fun!!

CDs as a sales force

Interesting article on Slyck examining the prospects for the CD as a music sales medium. It's pretty thorough and goes over a recent report by NPD (pdf, 1.68MB) pretty well, concluding that, depsite the NPD finding, digital downloads will replace the CD as a sales force, mainly for reasons of convenience.

I'm not convinced by this, though it may be true for a large proportion of the market. I've already posted on the future of the CD as a production device, and I think this will cntinue to be the case, especially for artists whos sales figures will not make iTunes want to invest in single releases. Besides, some people still listen to Vinyl and others still have their old phonographs ... analogue is *such* a better representation.

But I think this examination is closer to realistic than the nonsense I cited earlier. It is at last focussed on the right aspect - sales - and includes some more interesting data.

Footy's back!

Ggreat to have the footy back on TV - all codes!

Disappointing start to the season for the Broncos but well done the Cowboys! Ouch!

The Broncos are champions. They'll be back!

The wages of stress

Just had a period of a couple of days in which stress got the better of me and not much has happened - cerainly nothing much musically. Got some issues with money (obviously), children, house maintenance, etc and it's got to me ...

Still, a good night's sleep (well, reasonable) and a day discussing things with Phil Graham has put me back on track.

It's a struggle but I'll get there ...

Propaganda, media and John Howard

Lyn Allison, I couldn't have said it better myself.

Very astute observations about the use of mediated propaganda to disguise reality ...