I’d been warned that Architecture In Helsinki aren’t always very good live. Given the incredibly upbeat and sometimes almost ramshackle style of their music, I wasn’t surprised. So it was very pleasing to find that, last Saturday at least, ehy were *great* live. Bursting with energy, switching instruments with dizzying speed and whipping the crowd up into a frenzy, they were everything that I could have hoped for for a night of carefree fun. Their sound veers all over the place; sometimes providing a reminder of The Flaming Lips, sometimes sounding almost like Belle & Sebastian before briefly descending into moments of pure bubblegum pop. I’ve certainly listened to their second album, In Case We Die, with renewed enthusiasm since going to the gig and I’ll be trying to get my hands on their first disc at the soonest opportunity.

I should also briefly say that the support, The Semifinalists, were also great (though we only caught about half of their set) and I bought their album as soon as I got home. On first listen it seems like a good purchase.

To continue my brief recap of recent events… Amy had the great idea of getting away for a weekend (I think a few of us have been feeling a bit down in the mouth over the past months for one reason or another) and so Amy, Paul, Dave and myself headed off to Bristol and Bath for a weekend. It proved to be a great idea and, though we were only away for one night, I certainly felt remarkably refreshed when I returned to work on the Monday.

Of course, the whole trip was an excellent excuse for Dave and Paul to play with their cameras (well, mostly Dave’s cameras). Meanwhile, the best I could manage was this shot of (part of) Clifton Suspension Bridge.

I can definitely recommend the trips along the river through the floating harbour at Bristol (complete with sarcastic commentary about practically every eating establishment along the way, sample quote: “you have to queue half an hour for a stale panini; it’s just embarrasing”) and, indeed, I’d never realised quite how pretty Bristol is in my previous brief visits. Bath was also glorious in the unexpected sun and we had a lovely lazy Sunday afternoon wandering around and playing a bit of pool in a lovely cafe bar. More towns to add to the list of places I wouldn’t mind living!

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of going to Nicko & Joe’s Bad Film Club, a night where a bad film is shown and dutifully mocked by all in attendance. The special guest for the night was Stewart Lee who had picked out Who Dares Wins, the 1982 SAS-related caper, as his bad film. And, wow, it really is a *bad* film.

The audience is encouraged to heckle the film during the screening (something that my friend Levin took particular pleasure in) and Nicko, Joe and Stewart provided an almost-constant scathing commentary over the top. It was clear that they (particularly Stewart) had spent quite a bit of time researching the film and coming up with some funny lines but it was also impressive how they worked off the audience. The whole thing worked really well and provided an excellent evening of entertainment: I’d heartily recommend attending any future meetings of the club.

So, if you’ve followed the plot (and why would you) you might be wondering what happened after my boss got back from holiday at the end of April. Were there hearty back-slaps all round and a reduction in workload back to a normal level? Well, yes and no. Whilst things are now rather more normal, my boss will be leaving the company in a month or so which opens up a whole fresh carton of uncertainty. For now I’m just dealing with what I need to do and not worrying about the future too much (my new not very good motto is “I can only do what I can do”). I’m staying in the nice hotel this week, which helps.

That actually reminds me that I was idly thinking earlier of what I consider makes a hotel good (for business trips at least). Score one point for each of the following:

1. Is peaceful (either set in the middle of nowhere or has double glazing)
2. Provides room service (eating out every night takes up too much time)
3. Has free internet access (very cheap access scores half a point)
4. Generally has facilities open most of the time (e.g. I can check out early, I’m not constrained to a one-hour window for breakfast)
5. TV actually properly tuned in to channels with the picture the right shape

The most any hotel I’ve stayed at on business has scored is 3/5 based on the above. The hotel that I’m staying in most of the time currently scores zero (it’s convenient for the office though). Of course, I’m taking for granted the basics such as cleanliness and a certain level of facilities (though I stayed at a place last year without a shower which was just, well, bizarre). I continue to be shocked at how much some places charge for so little.

So, a short interval in proceedings whilst I spend every waking minute playing with my DS Lite. I have to say, I am very impressed. Having not owned a console since the Megadrive (I’d like to say because I never saw anything that came close to being as good but, well, it’s just because I don’t have time to play games) I’m astonished that they’ve managed to make something so tiny and yet so… utterly playable.

I really must applaud the speed with which Play Asia got it to me. My order was processed one day, then turned up the following morning (despite having come from Hong Kong). Great service! And it even came with some stickers and cream soda candy. I’d definitely recommend them for all your import needs.

I’ve been pleased to find that there’s a Mr. Chips shop in Northallerton that sells a good selection of new and second-hand DS games. That, combined with some casual browsing of Amazon and Play, has led to me acquiring seven games in a short few weeks.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike is probably my favourite at the moment (it’s all I’ve been playing since I bought it, certainly). It brings back very fond memories of playing Battle Isle 2 on the PC but isn’t nearly as frustrating. It works really, really well with the stylus and the idea of CO powers is pretty cute.

Tetris DS has been very popular with my friends. They seem to favour the touch variant (where you rotate and slide pieces with the stylus to try and diminish a huge stack of tetriminos [yes, apparently a word] and release some balloons) whereas I’ve been enjoying Push Tetris (clear lines to move the mass towards your opponent in a sort of Tetris tug-of-war) against the CPU.

Sonic Rush seems a little harder than the average Sonic game but makes good use of both screens. Project Rub is a very unusual game but I like the style of its presentation a lot. Meteos hasn’t quite sucked me into its fast-paced puzzle stylings in quite the same way as Columns or Tetris but I sense it’s not far off doing so. I’ve only had a quick couple of goes on Rainbow Islands Revolution and found it rock hard: controlling your character and drawing rainbows with the stylus seems a bit unintuitive. And Mario Kart DS is great but I’m waiting to find someone to play against for the true racing thrill.

So, tell me, what have you been doing?