First bit of news for the month is that new band Institute have finished work on their debut album. Featuring ex-Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale, it’s expected to be pretty decent and the first track, “Bullet-Proof Skin”, seems to indicate that (albeit only a portion of the track has emerged).

This month saw the finals of the Emergenza UK new band competition. Although I saw relatively little, what I did see was disappointing; a lot of derivative, talentless bands, doing nothing very interesting at all. The exception was Edinburgh’s Amplifico who burst their way through in terms of both style, energy and performance. Pretty songs and a catchy chorus do a good band make. Ones to watch.

Epitaph released the tenth annual Punk-O-Rama compilation CD at the start of the month. While it features far fewer exclusive tracks than in previous years, the quality remains high and the bonus DVD is, well, a bonus. It’s also in the mid-price sampler range, so should be fairly cheap.

Both Idlewild and The Mars Volta released new singles this month; “El Capitan” and “L’via L’viaquez” respectively. Neither is worth getting. While the album the Mars Volta track is taken from is excellent, “The Bible and The Breathalyzer”is a typical piece of Mars Volta editing room trash put out as a B-side. The guys have serious talent, but they don’t make much of an effort for singles.

That’s all I know about this month, haven’t been paying a great deal of attention to music.

Consistency. One of the cornerstones of design. Things do as you expect them to. Simple. If you see something act one way, you expect and identical item to act the same way. It’s not unreasonable.

Internet Explorer though, it has other ideas.

You see, when I open up a new window I expect it to act the same regardless of how it is opened. Clicking the IE icon in my Quick Launch bar should be the same as using Ctrl + N. Sadly, it’s not so. The latter of these methods opens up another window in the context of the currently in-use IE process. This means that, rightly, all cookies and such are propagated through that have been set during the current browser session.

However, if you click the IE Quick Launch (or any other shortcut to the executable) to start new windows, then it launches an entirely separate process. In this context, no cookies and other information are propagated through. The up and downsides of this behaviour is that you have to be bloody careful if you’re testing out a webapp in different accounts; you might not get the login behaviour you expect.

You may have noticed a distinct lack of posts for the last few weeks. As mentioned previously, I’ve been in London. As part of that trip, taken with some very nice people, a list was produced. Not just any list mind, a quote list.

Now, be warned: that’s probably not safe for work. Also, I take no responsibility for any of the content. It’s something I said I’d host for those who wanted to remember the best banter. Ass now covered (but not in Hellman’s) from a future employer perspective? Hopefully. Enjoy, assuming it makes sense to anyone out of context.

Apologies for the lack of noise being put out by Solitude. It has been an incredibly busy fortnight. Been doing stuff most every day and night for that time period and I’m now royally knackered. This was going to be a post of random stuff that I’d noticed or heard in that time period, but since I forgot most of the good, it’s a quick catch-up for the people I haven’t spoken to in a bit.

• First of all, I started my graduate job last week. It’s pretty good and should prove to be a challenge, though things haven’t gotten into full swing. The hours certainly beat the amount of time spent in the lab last year.
• Spent Friday night in Stirling for a birthday party. On my way back on Saturday, the weather was boiling hot so First Scotrail were kindly giving passengers free bottles of water. Nice. Noticed the platform was full of G8 protestors (dreadlocks, bongos, banners the works). They all seem quite pleased with the generosity of the railways. Someone, however, had a sense of humour. The bottles, you see, had a competition on them: “Win a 5-star holiday in… Gleneagles!”. Well played, Scotrail, well played.
• Sin City is as good the second time around.
• Pub quiz team names are getting ridiculously offensive; a trend I both encourage, admire and actively participate in.
• Band practices without any singers tend to go horribly wrong.
• If you’re lucky enough to have my mobile number and aren’t getting replies, it’s because I semi-broke my phone in an incident involving red bull, Biffy Clyro and a drunken friend. It should be sorted soon and the number will remain unchanged so don’t be put off. This is just a slight warning.

I’m off to London on Sunday for nearly a fortnight (courtesy of my employers) so updates may well be light again. I’ll try and post a bit over the next few days, but still a bit busy.

UPDATE: I’ve got a new phone with the same number. It’s just a temporary phone for the next few weeks. Because of some insane offers, I effectively got it for £10.

A fairly disappointing month for music, all in all. Lot of garbage albums appearing where people had hoped for more.

Funeral For A Friend released the follow-up to their debut album, “Casually Dressed and Deep In Conversation”. The more modestly titled “Hours” is mediocre, at best. It’s not that any songs are particularly bad, it’s just that absolutely nothing stands out. You can listen to the full thing and not notice a single track transition.

Uber band the Foo Fighters also released a new album. Split into 2 CDs, this was supposed to take them back to their rockier roots (CD1) and let them keep some of the mellowness of recent years (CD2). Sadly, it didn’t really work out. CD2 is mellow… and bland… and largely uninspired. CD1 is better, but doesn’t feature an anthem of “Monkey Wrench” calibre. The “Sulk” rip-off (see the Radiohead discography) that is track one is good, but the rest of CD1 is filled with the same stuff the Foos have been putting out for the last few years (including one song that sounds a lot like “Breakout” with different words). Not that it’s necessary bad, it’s just not very good.

Coldplay and Oasis also put out albums. The former is as terrible as the rest of their output, the latter the same Oasis tribute band efforts that Noel has been doing for the last 3 albums.

What has been good this month? Well, Reuben released the second single, “A Kick In The Mouth”, from their forthcoming second album. While not quite as good as first single, “Blamethrower”, it’s still a damn fine song.

After their split a number of years ago At The Drive-In finally have a retrospective album. Even if you have their entire back catalogue (all of which is excellent, occasionally seminal) “This Station Is Non-Operational” is worth if for the B-Sides, rarities and (unmarked) different versions of old songs. With the exception of the “Relationship Of Command” era tracks, most of the songs sound, at the least, cleaned up. Well worth a buy. Plus the release of this has meant that the “One Armed Scissor” video has been appearing on MTV2; a very good thing.