Ryan Adams was great. Though I’m not the biggest fan of his latest album, he still put on a great show and played a lot of personal favourites from previous albums. Well worth it.

I’m not going to Kings of Leon and just to save my sanity for that decision, I’ve convinced myself that they won’t play as many of their awesome songs from Aha Shake Heartbreak (which I still love and play constantly) and will instead perform more from their later albums which are nice, but not as awesome.

Meanwhile what I’m really looking forward to is The Kills in March. I just love this duo and their album Midnight Boom was one of my favourites of last year. Should definitely check it or… fuck, anything of theirs.

So onto the interesting stuff of the internet…

Is the Roman Pantheon a colossal sundial?

During the six months of winter, the light of the noon sun traces a path across the inside of the domed roof. During summer, with the sun higher in the sky, the shaft shines onto the lower walls and floor. At the two equinoxes, in March and September, the sunlight coming in through the hole strikes the junction between the roof and wall, above the Pantheon’s grand northern doorway (see diagram). A grille above the door allows a sliver of light through to the front courtyard – the only moment in the year that it sees sunlight if its main doors are closed (see diagram). [full article]

Alien world is slimmest and fastest known

Astronomers have found an extrasolar planet with the smallest diameter yet measured – it is no more than twice as wide as Earth. The rocky body is also the fastest known, whipping around its star in less than a day. [full article]

Giant Titanoboa snake ruled the earth after the dinosaurs

It weighed 1.25 tonnes and with a length of 45 feet or more it would have been able to take on and eat pretty much any other animal it came across.

The newly discovered type of snake, named Titanoboa in honour of its immense size, was for 10 million years the largest land predator on earth.

At least 28 individual specimens have been uncovered in Colombia and, with all of them being around 40 feet long, researchers said it is likely the species could have reached much further than 45 feet. [full article]

Bill Gates Unleashes Mosquito Swarm

TED, the annual gathering of the most pretentious people from the fields of technology, entertainment, and design, just got punk’d. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitos into the crowd.

Ending malaria is a particular passion of Gates’s, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions fighting the disease. But he apparently didn’t feel like TED attendees were taking the threat seriously. “Not only poor people should experience this,” Gates said as he let the bugs loose on his audience. [full article]

The Mercury Prize award is on tonight, well, in the UK at least. I wonder if i can be viewable online. But either way, lots of good acts should be on and quite a few albums nominated I’m pretty keen to win. But probably want it for Radiohead cause I’m a biased ammoral fan like that. Though these guys called Portico Quartet are pretty cool too…

Made a last minute decision on Friday night to go to a kind of triple birthday party in Auckland. Had loads of booze and fun and got to hang out with some totally awesome people as always.

One thing I forgot though was to pick up a copy of the international film festival booklet while I was up there. Every year now for… I dunno… seven? eight years now, I’ve kept one and it’s great. For now I’m just going through the website which is a little more tedious process, but already I’m seeing a lot of films I’m so keen to see.

Top of them would probably be the redux of Wong Kar Wai’s Ashes of Time, which no doubt will kick ass with the big screen of sexy Christopher Doyle cinematography and the hotness of Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung and Leslie Cheung. Oh and Brigitte Lin and Carina Lau. Fuck it, it’s just more sexy Chungking Express times awesome on the big screen. I can’t wait.

Others of note so far are Stephen Chow’s new CJ7, Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind, Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django and the amazing ensemble awesome of To Each His Own Cinema. Others of interest are the Evangelion redux, awesomeness of The Adventures of Robin Hood, Patti Smith doco, new Vincent Ward film, King of Kong doco and Anita O’Day doco. Come to think of it, I’ve got a lot of docos in mind this year, something different, but the full planning can be made once I get one of those damn programs.

Well, in the meantime here’s the mentalness of a reporter arrested for the murders he’s actually been reporting on here.

And a musician named Tywanna Jo Baskette whom I’m growing more and more fonder of her music as I listen to it here.

Started out Friday with very little sleep, worked, rested, filmed a charity auction (with beer) and then played poker (with burbon), slept for two hours and then with a hangover in hand worked for just over eleven, then hung out with more people (more burbon and then rum), but not for too long as hangover was still hovering above my tired body at that point. Eventually slept for many many hours and woke up this afternoon not feeling very filmmaker like much to my disappointment (sorry Ross). Will have to reschedule Spit-Takes for another day (not too far away). Today was also friend Zoe’s birthday, where eating and drinking wine out of a jar (classy) took place and now I sit content to not be doing much.

Have started using tags for this website and have been attempting to tag previous posts, but there have now been over 100 made and that makes for a lot of clicking and tagging… ah well.

For coolness, here are a series of photos taken at just the right angle with just the right object, creating some of the coolest illusions around. Click on the sample photo for more.

And on my recent occasional visit to the Mountain Goats site where I wait with bated breath for their next New Zealand tour, I’ve noticed their website has had a new design. Do I mention how much I love the Mountain Goats enough here? Do you love the Mountain Goats? If you don’t, that makes you a communist. Forever I’ll have Rob to thank for introducing me to them on a fateful drive to Wellington, thus allowing me to pass the Mountain Goats love to a good portion of Hamilton. I wonder if he still reads this site… if you do… sup.

Here’s “No Children” live…

A slightly new and hardly noticeable update of this site’s design…

Added a slightly different layout to most other pages around and changed some of the fonts, as I discovered the one I used previously isn’t usual part of most windows or mac font packs and this one is as close to how I originally had it. Also note there now a total of about 50 header images up for your viewing/refreshing pleasure.

Film subsections are going to be the next upload and hopefully, finally, new artworks after that.

Currently reading Neil Gaiman’s collection of short stories Fragile Things which is really, really good and should be read by anyone and everyone.

Also, one must check out the latest Hot Fuzz trailer, cut alongside Robert Roderiguez, it’s great and can be viewed here or just download it here.

And links from Robbie, this is the coolest greatest music video to have come out for a long time, if not ever. Download it!

And awesome midi music remixes to be heard here.