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Yesterday I had the good fortune to join the masses in Sandton to cheer on Bafana Bafana. Usually I’m not big on these kinds of events, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and one would be a fool to pass it up. I joined my colleagues in walking to the Southern Sun hotel where the bus would emerge from. Walking there you could not help but be swept up in the spirit of it all, vuvezelas sounding off everywhere and people dressed in Bafana Bafana colours as far as the eye can see. It truly was a great experience, and I’m glad I got to experience it.

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Oh boy, it’s been almost half-a-year since last I bothered updating this blog. It’s shocking really!

You know how it goes. You kind of lapse into a non-update period, and then it all seems like too much effort to update and explain yourself. That’s where I was. Can’t say I feel awfully guilty, although I probably should.

So, what’s been happening on my end? Not really an awful lot. Watched a bunch of movies,  played a lot of games, and finally managed to start and finish LOST. That in itself is quite an achievement I would say!

Looking to the future. Friday the FIFA World Cup starts. I’m sure it’ll be lovely, but I’m not a sports person as such. I hope South Africa manage to showcase everything that’s great about this country though.

In August we’re going to the UK and France for our vacation. Everything’s in place except for our Visas, but we’ll be getting those sorted soon. Then it’s just a matter of waiting it out. Can’t come soon enough, that’s for sure.

Work-wise… I moved to Sandton, still doing the same work, just in another place. Traffic’s much worse, but one gets used to it. However, with the launch of the Gautrain, I might finally be able to use public transport to come to work. Will give it a bash and see how it goes.

And that’s pretty much all I have for now. I might go into detail on some things as time goes on, we’ll see.

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I’ve been lazy, and have neglected my blog. Bad boy! Here’s an update though.

Title	Date	Rating
Movies
Sherlock Holmes	16/01/2010
Natural Born Killers	17/01/2010
The Lovely Bones	21/02/2010
Jurassic Park III	26/02/2010
District 9	27/02/2010
Alice in Wonderland (3D)	07/03/2010
Inglorious Basterds (Blu-ray)	07/03/2010
The Invention of Lying	14/03/2010
Surrogates	27/03/2010
Gamer	28/03/2010
The Hangover	28/03/2010
Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs	04/04/2010
Zombieland	04/04/2010
Labyrinth (Blu-ray)	25/04/2010
Iron Man 2	01/05/2010
1408	02/05/2010
9	06/06/2010
TV
LOST Complete Series	30/05/2010
Games
Darksiders	19/01/2010
Bayonetta	24/01/2010
Mass Effect 2	11/02/2010
Bioshock 2	20/02/2010
Heavy Rain	28/02/2010
F.E.A.R. 2 – Project Origin	14/03/2010
God of War III	22/03/2010
Battlefield Bad Company 2	27/03/2010
Splinter Cell: Conviction	02/05/2010
Alan Wake	06/06/2010

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The start of a new year is always a good time to look back and see how things went. In particular, I looked over my Last.FM profile to see what was most listened to last year. Here is my top ten albums and top ten artists, according to Last.FM. I excluded two NIN bootleg albums, as they were collections of all songs performed during certain periods, and therefore one listen-through was enough to put it in the top ten, and I don’t quite think that’s fair. Without further ado, here’s the lists:

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Local music at least made a decent showing on my listening chart, which I feel good about. It’ll be interesting to see what 2010 holds in terms of new music discovery!

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Back in August it was announced that The Killers would come to South Africa. I’ve been a fan since first hearing “All these Things That I’ve Done” all those years ago in a club. It’s hard not to fall in love with the song, the catchy chorus “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier” gets stuck in your head, and makes itself at home for an extended stay.

Every time there’s a music festival in South Africa, I held thumbs that one of the announced bands would end up being The Killers. And every time I ended up disappointed on that wish, although we did have some stellar performances by some of my other favourite bands, so that didn’t turn into a huge bummer.

So imagine my joy when I saw the announcement that they are heading to our shores. This started the initial wait for tickets to go on sale, and then the agonising wait of months for December 4 to arrive. Eventually the weeks passed, and the big day arrived.

We arrived early at the venue, first to catch a early dinner, and then to join the Golden Circle queue. We were fortunate enough to be the third group in the queue, which pretty much meant we would be getting standing space at the rail

After a 3-odd hour wait in the queue, the doors opened and the mad rush for standing space commenced. Luck was on my side, and I managed to secure a rail position, right in front where Brandon Flowers would be performing. My biggest complaint of the whole evening would be that getting the rail position meant that we couldn’t see the whole stage, but this is hardly anything to complain about. It did mean that most of my photos I managed to snap focussed on the lead singer and the bassist though.

The support band for The Killers were Zebra & Giraffe. I’ve seen them once at Joburg Burning II, and enjoyed them. Being in the presence of such a big international act must be quite intimidating though, but they managed to pull of a decent performance given the circumstances. They’re a talented bunch of guys, and with the right exposure they could go far.

And then the time arrived for The Killers to come on. Their arrival was signalled by the sound of wind coming through the speakers, and then they were there. The crowd went crazy and the band played on. The performed all their biggest hits, and had the crowd eating out of their hands. By the time they played their mega-hit Human the crowd was in a frenzy! I can’t recall the setlist, I was swept away in the musical performance, and it all merges into one huge happy memory of the evening. Favourite moment that pops into memory was the crowd singing “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier”, bringing me full-circle in my love for The Killers. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

This has definitely been one of the best shows I’ve witnessed this year, and is currently fighting Muse’s performance at Coke Fest for best act of the decade. It’s going to take something special to top that!

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This is pretty neat: Actors Reprise Their Iconic Roles, Without Costumes.

Click the link for more!

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Shees, where was this when I was at varsity!

Wolfram|Alpha Blog : Step-by-Step Math.

Have you ever given up working on a math problem because you couldn’t figure out the next step? Wolfram|Alpha can guide you step by step through the process of solving many mathematical problems, from solving a simple quadratic equation to taking the integral of a complex function.

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