And so to the second astounding tale of the day... This is another band that I had been aware of for a while but had not really checked out, despite having heard rave reviews of this their first album. Then I heard the song "Eriatarka". The power of the song left me thirsting for more and so the only option was to pick up the album from whence such majesty came. As with the Pain Of Salvation album "Remedy Lane" reviewed in my previous post, I was not disappointed. The Mars Volta make fo...

It's not every day that you encounter an album that really blows your mind. As it happens, I've just had one of those days when you find two albums that blow your mind. This is the first of them. I had been aware of this Swedish progressive rock outfit fronted by Daniel Gildenlow and his impressive vocal, lyrical and guitar playing talent for some time. In fact, I downloaded a couple of free MP3s by the band from the very useful and informative ProgArchives.com in order to hear what they...

The news here is not so good as it was yesterday. The first thought of I and my colleagues on hearing the news from London today was: "Bloody hell, I knew the French would be hacked off at losing the Olympics but this is going a bit far." I know, I know, not politically correct by any means and terribly offensive to our friends across the channel. So, my heartfelt apologies. However, people do seem to have a rather perverse defence mechanism which looks for some humour or distraction in th...

I guess congratulations are due to the people of London and those responsible for securing the right to host the Olympic games in 2012. It's good that they have managed to pull of this coup especially as Paris looked like the favourite for so long. However, I take issue with one of their selling points - that this will be a benefit to the whole of the UK. I'm not sure where the benefit to the rest of the nation lies either in the proposed regeneration of part of London or in the fact that ...

I know I won't be the first to say it, but Bono, Sir Bob Geldof, Midge Ure, and all the other organisers and performers who made the Live8 shows this weekend such a success deserve serious respect! Though I only saw the event on tv, it came across as a resounding success and can only help to spread the message about cancellation of debt and making poverty history. I hope the leaders of the G8 countries have been listening. Apart from the message, it was great to see so many artists perform...

It never ceases to amaze me the conclusions that people draw from statistics. For instance, I heard on tv today about how nobody is reading books written by women any more. The reasoning behind this claim is that in a survey, 4 out of every 5 men interviewed said that the last book they read was by a man. Mmmm. What about the last but one book they read? Or the book before that? Maybe the 10 books previous to the last read by these men were written by women. Wouldn't that give a differe...

It never ceases to amaze me the conclusions that people draw from statistics. For instance, I heard on tv today about how nobody is reading books written by women any more. The reasoning behind this claim is that in a survey, 4 out of every 5 men interviewed said that the last book they read was by a man. Mmmm. What about the last but one book they read? Or the book before that? Maybe the 10 books previous to the last read by these men were written by women. Wouldn't that give a differe...

Well, what can you say? The new release by giants of progressive metal Dream Theater hit the streets today and it hit them running. Or perhaps charging! I have followed these guys ever since I bought a copy of When Dream And Day Unite just because I read a review in which Mike Portnoy was hailed as the new Neil Peart. To me, this was a hell of an accolade as he along with Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee comprise one of the greatest bands of our time (at least as far as I am concerned) in the combi...

One of life's great religions is Football (and I mean Soccer). And just like every other religion, it comes in various flavours. My particular flavour is Celtic FC, one half of Glasgow's Old Firm. Yesterday afternoon, Sunday - even Football encompasses this day - Celtic were within 3 minutes of winning the Scottish Premier League. They just needed to beat Motherwell and had dominated them throughout the game, maintaining a 1-0 lead despite chances to see them reach a lead of 5 or 6-0. But ...

As well as Cowboys and Indians, we also played marbles a lot as kids. We played at home and we played at school even though the teachers always threatened to take the marbles away - something about them being dangerous. Anyway, back in Primary school (P4 - which made me about 9), we were all settling back into class after lunch. Apart from one boy - I think his name was Peter - who was busy playing with his marbles. He kept throwing one in the air and catching it in his mouth before spitti...

As well as Cowboys and Indians, we also played marbles a lot as kids. We played at home and we played at school even though the teachers always threatened to take the marbles away - something about them being dangerous. Anyway, back in Primary school (P4 - which made me about 9), we were all settling back into class after lunch. Apart from one boy - I think his name was Peter - who was busy playing with his marbles. He kept throwing one in the air and catching it in his mouth before spitti...

As I add to this blog, I hope to give some insight into my background and life. Some items will be humourous, others less so. But whatever you may read, I'd advise you to keep some salt on hand as you will ceratinly need to use the odd pinch or two. Anyway, this is apparently a true story... On the street where I grew up, there were three families living in a row of three houses. My family lived in the first house (mum, dad, 2 boys and 2 girls, white with a Chruch of Scotland background). ...

As I add to this blog, I hope to give some insight into my background and life. Some items will be humourous, others less so. But whatever you may read, I'd advise you to keep some salt on hand as you will ceratinly need to use the odd pinch or two. Anyway, this is apparently a true story... On the street where I grew up, there were three families living in a row of three houses. My family lived in the first house (mum, dad, 2 boys and 2 girls, white with a Chruch of Scotland background). ...

So, in my first entry, we established that I am an Atheist. I figured I might as well add some icing to that particular cake and say a bit more about myself and where I come from. Well, I live in the Western Isles, a chain of islands of the west coast of Scotland that is sometimes referred to as the Outer Hebrides. The main islands in this chain are Lewis and Harris (actually two parts - North and South - of the same island), North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra. If you look on a ma...

I ran into this quiz on QuizFarm.com and was not surprised by the following result. I thought it might be an interesting entry to start this blog with. You scored as atheism . You are... an atheist, though you probably already knew this. Also, you probably have several people praying daily for your soul.Instead of simply being "nonreligious," atheists strongly believe in the lack of existence of a higher being, or God. atheism 79% Islam 54%...