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Jun 26

We’re all off to Hesfes 2008!

Posted on Thursday, June 26, 2008 in Culture, Family, Travel

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Tomorrow we head off to Hesfes 2008 for the week. We went to Hesfest last year and had a great time, for a while it looked like we weren’t going to be able to go this year, but lady luck was on our side and Steph got a new job which meant she could book the time off, and we could all go!

Hesfes is great family orientated event, short for the ‘Home Educators Seaside Festival’ it involves hundreds of Home Educators camping on a huge campsite, with lots of workshops and activities, along with live music and seminars on all aspects of home ed. As someone who was home educated along with both of my brothers (the younger of whom is also coming), it’s a great oppurunity to catch up with some like-minded people, many of whom have a similar outlook on life. Our clans constsits of my parents, my younger brother Al, Steph, The Blonde Kid, and Me – there’ll also be lots of other people we know on site.

Despite going to school The Blonde Kid had a brilliant time last year and made lots of friends, so much so that he was already talking about coming this year during the car journey home! We also came to an arrangement with the new school he started at last September that they will mark him as ‘educated off site’ (as opposed to an ‘unauthorised absence’) when we chose to take him out of school during term time for Home Ed events, which is great.

Steph and I will be blogging in varous forms whilst we’re away (after all geeks take their techology on holiday with them!), so should you want to, you can track our activities below…

- See out photos on the joint Hesfes Moblog here (includes some of last year’s photos).

- Follow our Twitter updates tagged ‘#hesfes08′ here.

Check back for updates and 1000s of photos from Steph on our return!

(If you’re twittering from Hesfes, follow the user @hashtags and include #hesfes08 in your tweets and they’ll appear here.)

#hesfes08

Jun 25

My Twitter Updates for 2008-06-25

Posted on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 in Twitter

  • really enjoying the new Sigur Ros album and pleased to see they’ll be playing in Wolves on 4th Nov! T-minus 2 days to #hesfes08! #
Jun 22

Best Of You

Posted on Sunday, June 22, 2008 in Film/TV, Me, Music, Reviews

June has been a busy month. A fortnight ago I went to see the Foo Fighters at Wembley Stadium in London. It was the 11th time I’ve see the Foos in 13 years, and as ever they didn’t disappoint.
I’m not generally a fan of stadium shows as I don’t think many bands can’t actually put on a show worthy of that size audience, but there’s no doubt that the Foo Fighters can. Dave Grohl will go down as one of the greatest rock frontmen of all time, and rightly so.

The gig was great from start to finish with The Futureheads and Supergrass in support, before the Foos took to the stage playing ‘in the round’ with the stage in the middle of the pitch surrounded by thousands of rabid fans. The stage rotated 360 degrees so that everyone in the stadium got to see the band front-on, even those sitting behind the stage.

Everything was perfect – the band, the set-list, the stage, the lights, the special guests (Jimmy Page & John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin!) the crowd, and even the fireworks at the end.

I was really glad we went, as judging by Dave’s comments the band were in agreement that it was the highlight of their career, and I had a great day spent with some of my favourite people.

Where the Foo Fighters will go from here I’m not sure, but if they broke up tomorrow, I think I would be ok with that. On Tuesday we’re going to re-live the show at our local cinema where the soon to be released DVD of the show is being screened in high-definition with 5.1 surround sound. It’s not quite as good as being at the gig again, but it’s the next best thing!

Jun 1

BBC iPlayer: This one goes up to 11!

Posted on Sunday, June 1, 2008 in Film/TV, Humour, Music

demolition1

I was happily watching footage of a block of flats in Glasgow being demolished on the BBC News website when I decided to turn the volume of the embedded BBC iPlayer up, and to my joy discovered that the top volume on the iPlayer is indeed ‘number 11′. Spinal Tap fans the world over will be rejoicing, I’m sure!

Speaking of which, the National Geographic channel is airing a new documentary about Stonehenge and recently asked Spinal Tap guitarist Nigel Tufnel his thoughts on the subject, check out his responses.