A couple of weeks ago, as  the world was gripped with Swine Flu fever (forgive the pun!), a great game emerged on Twitter. Feeling somewhat disillusioned with the mainstream media's attempt at convincing us we were "all going to die", a bunch of twitter users began various games based around a swine flu theme.

My favourite game to emerge was the 'swine flu bands' game, where you had to come up with as many musician/band names that played on words related to swine flu as possible, and tag them with the Twitter hashtag #swineflubands - these could then be viewed on Twitter Search.

I got rather carried away one afternoon and came up with a bunch, whilst laughing my socks off at some of the names that other Twitter users had come up with.

Check out the  #swineflubands I came up with here,  and everybody else's here.

(Pic: 'Swine Flew' album cover by One Bad Pig, originally released in 1990, well before swine '09!)

The Astoria in London is one of the capital's most loved music venues, and unfortunately it's being pulled down next week in order to build a new Crossrail train system. Whilst being a bit of a dump (it's the kind of place you can't stand still in for too long without becoming stuck to the floor) it's a really great, dirty rock 'n' roll venue, and there aren't enough venues like it left these days - mainly thanks to the increasing corporate sponsorship/stranglehold of venues.

I've been to several stand-out gigs at the Astoria, gigs that have really stuck in mind as being some of my favourites ever. These gigs were usually to see bands that can fill much bigger venues play small, low-key shows. I remember seeing the Foo Fighters (supported by Ash) playing 24 hours after seeing them headlining the Leeds Festival - I travelled over half the length of the country to see them at the Astoria - one night they were playing to 60,000 people, the next 2,000! I was lucky enough to see the Foos play there again a couple of years later and will never forget them playing  'Aurora' - it was awe-inspiring.

I also saw Audioslave's first UK gig which was at the Astoria - they were never the band they could have been on record, but live they were something else - the energy of Rage Against The Machine, with the vocal power of Chris Cornell was outstanding! Then again a few years later I saw Chris Cornell perform solo - another great gig with many highlights from his career, including several Soundgarden numbers.

And in 2006 I attended what was (and still is) the best gig I've ever been to. After not touring the UK for 6 years (and me never having seen them) I saw Pearl Jam perform the first show of their 'self-titled' album world tour at the Astoria, and by a bizarre twist of fate met all of the band afterwards. That gig has to be one of the loudest I've been to - maybe it was just my emotions running away with me, but you could feel the balcony swaying up and down that night as they played 'Alive' in the encore. This one stands out as my most vivid Astoria memory and I'd like to think that dark, dank, old building brought me a little bit of luck that night. So long, Astoria! Gone, but never forgotten!

We're back after 2 fabulous weeks of sun, sea, and sand in Tunisia. Back to home sweet home, with the rain, wind, and cold. Oh well. Hundreds of photos and videos are set to follow, but for now check out Andrew Dubber's "If music was sport" post, it's pretty interesting/amusing!

We went on a little trip to London last weekend to do some of the touristy stuff we never get around to when visiting for gigs. I'll post more photos soon, but for now check out Steph, The Blonde Kid and the in-laws surveying the Dome from East India Docks in Canary Wharf. UPDATE: More photos can be seen here.

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

PollThePeople.com is a site set up by Glenn Cooper (head of Digital at Island Records UK) and his wife Kirsty, after an argument they had. The site encourages users to add lists of their 'top 5' albums, films, and books.

The site plays on people's desire to list / tell everyone else their favourite things, and includes social elements that let you find similar lists, browse other user's lists, and invite your email contacts to view your lists.

Being a music geek, it took me no time to get signed up and post my top 5 albums. Although I did have to wrestle with myself over 5th place - it always causes me trouble. You see, picking number 5 always brings with it an amount of guilt, because there's more than one album worthy of such a position. Luckily you can log-in and change/update your lists whenever you feel like it, so such decisions don't have to be set in stone!

I've not added my top 5 films or books yet, mainly because I don't tend to watch films more than a couple of times (it's just not the same as listening to an album over and over), and I don't read enough/regularly to compile a list of favourites, but maybe I'll do this in the future.

The site also includes celebrity top 5 lists (including Nick Horby who coined the top 5 phrase in 'High Fidelity') and a 'suggest a future poll' section where you suggest your own poll, or vote for one of the most popular suggestions.

There's also a neat little widget that lets you post your top 5 lists on your blog, website, myspace profile etc. This site is a must for list makers, so check it out now.

My Top 5 Albums @ PollThePeople.com (in no particular order):

1	Outlandos d'Amour (The Police)
why?	"So Lonely", "Roxanne" and "Can't Stand Losing You" - name me another debut album that has 3 songs to rival those! Great lo-fi production too. My favourite Police album by far.
2	Yield (Pearl Jam)
why?	The perfect mix of Pearl Jam's many styles, great production and most definitely the finest drumming of Jack Irons' career. Highlights include "Given To Fly", "Faithful" and "In Hiding", but every track is great. Picking a favourite Pearl Jam album is like picking your favourite child...you just shouldn't do it!
3	Third Eye Blind (Third Eye Blind)
why?	Without a doubt one of the best debut albums of all time. Great songs, great playing, great production. Most people remember them only for "Semi-charmed Life", but this album has a whole lot more - they never stood a chance of topping it. Perfect. Stand out tracks include "Graduate", "The Background", "How's It Going To Be" and "Motorcycle Drive By" (not to be confused with "Motorcycle Emptiness" by the Manics!)
4	There Is Nothing Left to Lose (Foo Fighters)
why?	The only Foo Fighters album recorded as a three-piece and the first recorded in Dave Grohl's home studio, and boy it shows. Really warm production, the first album Taylor Hawkins ever recorded (until then he'd only played as a live session drummer) and the drumming is outstanding. I love the sound of this record - and once again the range of songs make it another perfect album. Narrowly beats "The Colour & The Shape" as my favourite Foos record. Every track is a highlight on this album.
5	The Used (The Used)
why?	Another band who created a brilliant debut album, and could never top it. Despite the slick production, I love the raw energy on this record, it really sounds like a hungry young band at their best. This was my favourite album of 2002/2003 and still remains in my top 5 several years later. Highlights include "The Taste Of Ink" and "Blue & Yellow". It's a shame they've gone downhill so rapidly since.

Recognition is always nice, and working for myself whilst I am often thanked by the people I work with/for, it's not as if I get an annual review or 'employee of the month' award, so I was very chuffed with myself when I stumbled upon an article about 'QDOS', a system that measures an individual’s 'digital status' in the UK. According to a recent QDOS report 9 out of 10 of the most digitally prolific personalities in the UK are musicians, and whilst you'd be forgiven for assuming someone such as Bono would be number one, you'd also be wrong! According to QDOS, the number one most digitally prolific person in the UK is non other than Imogen Heap! (Tony Blair and Gordon Brown came in at numbers 12 and 25 respectively).

A QDOS score is comprised of four main components – popularity, impact, activity and individuality. Each component is scored separately and these are combined to form a total QDOS score. Popularity measures the number of people one engages with online and the size of their personal network, impact is based on the number of people who listen/read/view/comment when an individual blogs/posts online, activity comprises the total of one’s digital activity including shopping, blogging, banking, chatting etc, and individuality is how unique one is in the digital world based on their name, age and lifestyle.

So as Imogen's webmaster and gate-keeper of all things online, I am patting myself on the back for a job well done! Although, I'm not the only person that deserves recognition here - there's Imogen herself for always being up for trying something new, Mark Wood (Imogen's manager) for letting us try things and always supporting us, and Tiffany 'the axemaiden' Le, our 'myspace housekeeper' who does a superb job managing Imogen's MySpace profile and it's 300,000+ friends. Having spent the last 5 or 6 years working with Imogen and it's great to see our efforts being recognised - I'm looking forward to retaining our 'title' in 2008! Read the full article here.

According to this Guardian Unlimited article the UK Government may actually be about to get serious about ticket touting (scalping for you US people) and put laws in place to stop it. I certainly hope that something is done about this problem sooner rather than later. The touting issue is something that as a regular concert goer I feel very strongly about, and I feel it has been allowed to get completely out of control in recent years, particularly with the rise of online auction sites such as eBay, which despite all their claims of innocence are making the situation much worse whilst raking in millions of pounds in the process. There are those who insist that they should be entitled to re-sell something they have bought at whatever price they want, just as they can with other items, however in this instance it has been proven that this isn't a case of a few people re-selling tickets because they can't attend an event - it has become a multi-million pound industry run by criminal gangs, endorsed by supposedly honourable organisations (such as eBay), and the only people losing out are the fans who want to see the acts (or sporting teams) they follow. I don't think the proposed 'protected events' idea which would mean that for certain events ticket re-selling would be banned goes far enough. Why should this ban only apply to events of so-called 'national importance'? Surely it is just as important that a consumer isn't ripped-off when trying to buy tickets for a concert by an unknown band as it is for example an England International football game, or a major tribute concert? What we need is a complete ban on ticket touting, it should be made illegal to re-sell a ticket for any event unless it is sold for face value through a government run website. Such a website would mean that all sellers, re-sellers and buyers would have to register their contact details and could therefore be held accountable if they tried to re-sell above face value. This kind of system would mean an end to ticket touting, something that everyone other than those profiting from it want to see. Have you ever been the victim of a ticket tout? Ripped-off on eBay? Do you regularly buy tickets from touts or online re-sellers? Would you like to see touting banned? Or maybe you think re-selling should be allowed to continue un-monitored? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

I've just posted some photos of Christmas so far - our second Christmas starts tonight as Jordan is back and expecting a visit from Santa, then tomorrow we have 16 people coming round for food...should be fun! Have a great New Year's Eve everyone! Check out my photos on my moblog here.

And so another Christmas Eve is upon us! Steph is (as usual) working a stupidly long shift at work, you have to feel sorry for her...she left before 7am this morning and probably won't be back until 7pm. Jordan is off to his Dad's later today and coming back just before New Year's Eve so we are without him for Christmas, something Steph really hates. We're planning on having two Christmases, one tomorrow and another on New Year's Day when Jordan returns. In a way he's lucky because he gets two Christmases, which when you're 8 years old means twice the presents, twice the fuss and attention, and generally being spoiled twice! Last night he got a bit upset that he wouldn't be with his Mom over Christmas, so having to alternate between two separated parents does have it's downsides, although he's pretty well adjusted and doesn't really know any different, so it doesn't really bother him very much from what I can see. Tonight Steph and I plan on staying at home together, we may have a few family members visit but it's going to be a pretty low key affair, which will be nice. I'm going to make a concerted effort to turn all the technology off and just sit and chat whilst sipping mulled wine, and maybe watch some crap TV while we're at it. Tomorrow morning we're seeing Steph's family; her folks, grandparents, sister, brother to exchange presents, then later in the day we'lll head over to my folk's house for Christmas Dinner and more present exchanging etc. My brother is staying with my folks at the moment as he's recovering from a recent operation (not the best Christmas present) and I've not see him since he had the op on the 17th, so we'll have chance to check out his scar! And check he's ok! On Boxing Day we'll no doubt have a quiet and lazy day until the evening when we go around to Mike & Nicky's to see the rest of the family; cousins, aunts, and uncles etc. Then it's back to the daily grind for Steph unfortunately. She'll be back to work and I'll have no work and no child to look after...I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with myself, but hopefully I'll be out and about visiting people instead of being stuck in front of the computer! Steph has 3 days off over New Year so she'll get a bit of a break then. We still haven't got any definite plans for New Year's Eve, we'll have Jordan back so it will no doubt be something local and it's going to have to be pretty low key as we're expecting 15 family members at ours for food on New Year's Day (Jordan's Christmas Day) so that's going to be rather hectic! I can't wait!