Gregor Smith

Author: Greg

  • 25 Lines

    Inspired by Gordon, I’ve got a little quiz for you… It’s simple enough, 25 lyrics, guess the song and artist, Ohh and it’s not always the first line of the song, some were a little to obvious for that.

    1. From Atlanta, Georgia, to Moss Side, Manchester
      Daybreak by Stone Roses* – Aloysius Munn
    2. Jesus loves you, but I don’t
      I Don’t by Danielle Peck
    3. She likes the black one, he likes the the posh one, cute ones are usually gay
      Destiny Calling by James – stu
    4. If I was your girl believe me, I’d turn on the Rolling Stones, we could groove along and feel much better
      Damn, I Wish I Was You Lover by Sophie B. Hawkins
    5. Been stuck in airports, terrorised
      Handle With Care by The Travelling Wilburys
    6. Steven A. Douglas was a great debater, but Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator
      Decatur by Sufjan Stevens
    7. Goddamn you half-Japanese girls, do it to me every time
      El Scorcho by Weeker
    8. All my people right here, right now
      D’ya Know What I Mean by Oasis – stu
    9. Got my sneakers velcroed, snap my bookbag on, goodbye little zipcode, how can I go wrong?
      Change The World by Nellie McKay
    10. I’m bound to thank you for it
      Kind And Generous by Natalie Merchant
    11. And someone is calling my name from the back of the restaurant
      Smile Like You Mean It by The Killers – ian d
    12. At puberty I was sworn to secrecy by the international brotherhood of lying fickle males
      In Love by Fear Of Pop
    13. Ever heard a glock go click like a camera?
      Cock The Hammer by Cypress Hill
    14. Ohhh, 1940 to 1992
      Gravedigger by Dave Matthews
    15. And when you said I scared you, well I guess you scared me too
      Joey by Concrete Blonde
    16. There’s a whole lot of singing that’s never gonna be heard, disappearing everyday without so much as a word
      Top Of The World by Dixie Chicks
    17. He says his body’s too old for working, I say his body’s too young to look like his
      Fast Car by Tracy Chapman
    18. I’m high as a kite, I just might stop to check you out
      Blister In The Sun by Violent Femmes
    19. If you want to fly Mulholland Drive
      Electrolite by REM
    20. Well she seemed alright by dawns early light
      Independance Day by Martina McBride
    21. Who am I, what and why, cause all I have left is my memories of yesterday
      Sour Times by Portishead
    22. Born in the north and sworn to entertain ya, cause I’m down for the state of Pennsylvania
      All Around The World by Red Hot Chili Peppers
    23. That destructo ray’s a played out gag, and the cape and the pants suit, lookin like a straight out… Dag!
      Space Ho’s by Danger Doom
    24. Tin roof, rusted!
      Love Shack by The B-52’s – Connie
    25. Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!
      Killing In The Name Of by Rage Against The Machine – stu

    A nice mix, I’ll give y’all til Monday night to figure out what is what, and no cheating via Google, that takes the fun away.

    * = Though I was told it’s not Moss Side but Longsight, anyone know for sure?

    EDIT (17/07/06 10:49pm): Times up, and I’m a little disappointed by the turn out, was it that difficult?

  • Danica Patrick Making a Move to NASCAR?

    Danica Patrick making a move to NASCAR? First Juan Pablo Montoya announces he’s leaving Formula 1 for NASCAR next year, now possibly Danica too… Who next? Since when was NASCAR so fashionable?

  • Forget the Headbutt…

    This is how I’ll remember Zinedine Zidane’s career. The sublime volley from the 2002 Champions League final in Glasgow. You can’t teach that kind of skill…

  • France 1 – 1 Italy

    What an exciting game, what an exciting month for that matter… I must admit I wanted France to win, but Italy deserved it with their performances throughout the competition, they were as cold as ice the whole time, as demonstrated in the final 2 minutes of their semi final against Germany.

    Italy celebrate winning the 2006 FIFA World Cup

    But what about Zinedine Zidane? Hero with the opening goal then villian with an evil headbutt (see here also) (or if you’re interested in video footage), it’ll be interesting to hear the story behind that. Shame to end a career like that.

    Anyways, a thoroughly excellent world cup, I’m sure I’ll have more to write on this later…

  • Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore

    Why blog post frequency does not matter anymore. My main “excuse” is time, or lack of it… In between work and sleep, I only get a few hours a day to spent with my family.

  • Bittersweet Irony

    Me and my big mouth cost me a whole dollar today, don’t you just hate that when it happens?

    Imagine the scenario, I’m driving Robyn and me to her parents house today when I take a wide route past a cyclist, “don’t run over Lance,” says Robyn, “he dumped Sheryl,” I reply, “but you [she points to my livestrong bracelet] support him, how long have you had that thing anyways?” “About 18 or so months,” I say, “still going strong even though Sally bit a small chunk out of it, look I can still stretch it like so…”

    TWANG!!!!!

    The damn thing snaps and nearly takes my eye out in the process, me and my big mouth.

    So… In memory of:

    Not So Strong Anymore

    Of course, being the caring person I am I went and bought a replacement, mainly because my wrist felt naked.

  • Buena Vista

    It took a week, but I’ve finally got my Vista beta install to finally co-operate and play nice with my peripherals, but it wasn’t easy. And overall, I’m rather impressed, it has nice touches, it has bad touches, it’s better than XP, but alas, as it’s a beta it’s just not stable enough…

    My problem revolved around the TV card and USB drivers… First the TV card wouldnt install, no big loss really, but after a few days of use a driver update comes in for the TV card, I promptly install it, fire up the built in Media Center on Vista and boom, we got TV. Which is better than I had before, I’ve had bad, bad experiences with Windows XP Media Center Edition so I was using a 3rd party DVR software, so this was perfect. Until I switched it off that night…

    Turning on the machine the next day was a painful beta version wake up call, the USB drivers weren’t working. Normally this isn’t so much a problem, but I have so much running off the 6 or so USB Ports (cable modem, mouse, secondary hard drive, memory stick reader, iPod and 2 printers) so I was pretty much stuck. Luckily I had an old PS/2 mouse I could pull out and regain control of my otherwise useless computer. Even after uninstalling and reinstalling USB drivers, after a reboot they just wouldn’t stick, so I was facing the prospect of a reformat and reinstallation of Windows XP, never a happy time…

    But after multiple USB driver install they finally appear to be sticking, the networked printers are still bothersome, the iPod won’t update automatically so I’ll reformat and reinstall XP anyways, but I’m not in as big a rush as I was around Sunday/Monday time.

    I must note that this machine, while only 2 years old, is rated as a 1 on the Windows Vista System Performance Rating, mainly due to not having a proper graphics card, just the onboard one, so I don’t get the aero glass styings or anything funky like that, but it still runs pretty fast otherwise, I’m never going to use this for gaming anyways.

    Overall I have hope for Vista, after the delays, ridicule and various setbacks over the years. Time will tell…

  • Unboomed

    Amanda Congdon officially leaves Rocketboom. Booooo, that’s one less podcast subscription to worry about now.

  • Another Actual Conversation

    I need to keep this for posterity really… First, the back story. Robyn’s parents are moving house, so for the last few days she has been going through a crapload of videos, cataloging them to decide which to trash and which to keep, she’s just found a video with Ben Folds Five stuff on it…

    Robyn says:
    sweet! I’ve got Beck on this one too!
    Beck was on the same Sessions at West 54th as BF5.
    AW FUCK!
    I stopped recording!
    Gregor Smith says:
    LMAO
    Robyn says:
    It was just getting good with Devil’s Haricut!
    Gregor Smith says:
    sorry, but that was funny
    Robyn says:
    I had such bad taste in music back then!!!
    Gregor Smith says:
    you have a good taste in music now?
    Robyn says:
    I seriously bet I didn’t know who he was at the time
    I mean, he wasn’t as big as he is now
    Gregor Smith says:
    he was big in 94 after loser came out, infact that was probably his peak in popularity
    Robyn says:
    LOL
    well, you’re prolly right
    I was just a loser for not taping it
    Gregor Smith says:
    awwwww
    my wee lovable loser
    Robyn says:
    I’m really angry at myself.
    I’m angry at the me in 2001… is that possible?!?!
    Gregor Smith says:
    in a paradoxial way, yes
    you need to get all butterfly effect on your ass
    Robyn says:
    LOL
    you know what really pisses me off about these video tapes?
    Gregor Smith says:
    apart from them being video tapes?
    Robyn says:
    well, yeah LOL
    apart from that
    like this one, I only recorded the actual parts of the program that had BF5 (because, I mean seriously, why would I want to watch the rest of the Keenen Ivory Wayans Show)
    so I have like Ben Folds 5 clips from like 4 shows
    total lasting maybe 20 minutes
    then I have their Sessions at West 54th, which I later got the proper tape of
    (and which I can buy [or rent from Netflix] the DVD)
    so I’m keeping this big honkin’ tape for like 20 minutes of content

    Just another day in the life…

  • The Rundown

    So now begins the infamous recap of our whistle stop tour of the UK, I have no idea what to even write as we saw and done so much (sometime too much) in the short space of time… I’ll start as most do in the beginning.

    Jetlag is a bitch, it really really is, we left Atlanta at around 8pm on Friday evening and landed in Edinburgh at around 9am (local time) the next morning, it wasn’t a particularly nice journey and Atlanta was just so hot and sticky it made me feel gross before even getting on the plane, so we were both pretty miserable by the time we got off it. I managed to get some sleep, but I’d be rudely woken by pockets of turbulance so it prolly amounted to an hour, if that. Once landed it was weird to go through UK immigration saying I was only visiting… We met my mum after successfully smuggling 1,000 Marlboro lights through customs for her (we were only allowed to bring in 200) and went back to her house in Grangemouth.

    Saturday was a washout, Red Bull couldn’t even keep Robyn awake, but she did manage to visit my grandma (my mum’s mum) for the first time. I think we both ended up crashing out around 7pm.

    Flickr: Linlithgow PalaceThe next day wasn’t as bad as Saturday, but we were still feeling out of time, a quick visit to nearby Linlithgow Palace gave Robyn her first taste of old Scotland before my brother, sister-in-law, neice and dad came over to my mums house for dinner. This was the first time we had seen my dad or my brother since the wedding, and it was also Robyn’s first opportunity to be an aunt with my neice who I hadn’t seen in over 2 years. After the dinner and after some playing around in the garden it was time for some embarrasment as Robyn asked to see baby pictures…

    No sooner had we arrived and we were off again, we decided that visiting London would be a good idea so we took the GNER East Coast line down (while enjoying the free WiFi) in which was a really enjoyable journey before arriving at platform 9¾ in King’s Cross, I shit you not… And after checking in to our hotel we walked along the road to Harrods which was crawling with tourists, this would become a running theme…

    Flickr: Picadilly CircusA quick stop at Picadilly Circus was next before heading to Waterloo to meet up with Phil and take a flight on the London Eye which is actually an amazing way to see London, we tried to time it so we could see the sunset while going round but unfortunatley no one was queuing and sitting by the Thames is a cold place to be that time of night, it was still cool though, and even though I’m afraid of height, I had no problem in the capsule, prabably because it moves so slow you dont feel like you’re moving at all. Anyways, it offers a great vantage point over central London and views of the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Telecom Tower (to name a few) are breathtaking. After a late dinner we said our goodnights to Phil and went back to our hotel for a goods night sleep…

    Except the following day was the Summer solstice and the sun rose promtly at 4:30am and we didn’t have our curtains shut from the night before. Gah! Just GAH! Though, Robyn was got good when she awoke to look out the now closed curtains at around 8am. After breakfast we went to the British Museum to see the roof they put over the Great Court a few years back, the reading room as well as the Rosetta Stone.

    We had arranged to go to Madame Tussauds with Phil but he couldn’t make it, but he didn’t miss much anyways as the place was so crowded we saw next to nothing and just got pushed along with the crowds, which kinda sucked, but I did get a picture of Robyn schmoozing with Hugh Grant, “lynndie-ing” Saddam amongst others… To round off our whirlwind 2 days in London we took one of those open top bus tours to see everything we missed like Tower Bridge while seeing more of the London Eye and Houses of Parliament.

    Flickr: Loch NessThen came the Sleeper train to Inverness where we spent a day around Drumnadrochit and Loch Ness taking in Urquhart Castle and Culloden battlefield… Robyn also got close to a Highland Cow, though she wanted to hug one (don’t ask me why). Soon enough we were back on a train to Edinburgh before driving through to Glasgow to see my dad then brother and sister-in-law as well as other family members. And driving was pretty weird, but I got used to it pretty quickly, and hey! I didn’t crash or kill us though there were a few hairy moments.

    We did some shopping in Glasgow in a packed Buchanan Street and took in a few sights like George Square and the Gallery of Modern Art, there was no cone on the head of the Duke of Wellington statue for some reason but overall the experience reminded me of why I hated Glasgow on a saturday afternoon… The remainder of the time was just relaxing, Robyn went to Edinburgh with my mum and I met up with an old friend and went to Loch Lomond before heading back to Atlanta, the flight home wasn’t any better than the flight there thanks to screaming children… But we did see a few cool things out the airplane window, like the Forth Bridges, Scottish Islands and the north tip of Long Island, NY (Manhatten would have been a good picture, but it was on the other side of the plane), I also saw Boston all the way to the tip of Cape Cod, but didn’t have the camera out at the time as it was back in the overhead compartment.

    So that was that, our much anticipated tour of the UK, at least next time we dont need to do the London/Inverness thing, and we’ll prolly be gone for longer than 11 days.

    United Kingdom – June 2006 (Set)

    Originally uploaded by FLC.

  • Drop Kick

    Drop Kick. A surprisingly addictive football game that’s hard as hell, it’s like the Frank Lampard World Cup simulator. Here’s a larger version.

  • Spider-Man 3 Teaser Trailer

    Spider-Man 3 Teaser Trailer. A year off, but yes! YES! HELLS YES! OH HELL TO THE YES!!!!

  • Running on Coffee Fumes

    I think I got around 3 hours sleep last night, I was forever waking up and failing to get back to sleep, at 6am I finally gave up… So today at work was certainly a struggle, made only possible by the 6 (SIX!) mugs of coffee I drank. Needless to say I’m peeing like a racehorse now.

    On a funny(ish) note, I was finally blackballed from the Atlanta Metroblog today for not posting, actually, I was apparently blackballed a while ago without notice but continued to be on the mailing list, weird huh? Infact, had I not asked the supreme overlords why I couldn’t log in today I’d still be on the mailing list. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted, pity I’ve been busy as hell the last few months and unable to post in order to continue my Metroblogger status, now I’ll have to go to the APWBWGTTD meetings as a lonely plain ol’ blogger.

  • Home Again

    Today has been a completely tiring day, waking up at the equivalent of 2am, flying for over 8 hours and then coming home to do some quick tidying up as the three cats had tracked litter all over the condo…

    It would be considered a fun day except for two families who thought it would be a good idea to have a baby and a toddler sit on an aircraft for over 8 hours. Let me just say, after today, I’d be all for a ban on children on transatlantic flights…

    And for those keeping score in the spam count-a-rama

    Spam Counter

    14,711 spam and 8 moderated (also spam). I wonder why I even bother.

    Now it’s time to put this 22 hour day to bed as I have to wake up for work tomorrow morning, the mass uploading of the hundreds and hundreds of pictures we took must wait til tomorrow also, but at least I’ve started the downloads of the Doctor Who episodes I’ve missed…

  • Where Parties Don’t Stop Til’ 8 in the Morning

    Flickr: Where Parties Don't Stop Til' 8 in the Morning