1. Reply to this post and I’ll assign you a letter.
2. List (and upload, if you feel like it) five songs that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

ggreig gave me the letter “W”, well he gave me “Z” first but with only eight Z-tracks in my iTunes that would have been somewhat limited so we mutually agreed to go with the second choice.

• Weekend Without Makeup – The Long Blondes
• What Do I Get? – Buzzcocks
• We Almost Got It Together – Tanita Tikaram
• We’re Going To Be Friends – The White Stripes
• When I Grow Up – Garbage

Argh! That was hard. I had a long list of about 25 and a short list of ten but getting it down to five took all evening.

On Friday a bunch of us from work went to the new-ish oriental buffet, Tuli on Tooley Street. It’s underneath the railway arches and has made great use of the space – it’s light and airy and feels modern. The food was decidedly average – exactly what you’d expect from an all-you-can-eat chinese buffet – and didn’t really seem to live up to the image that they were trying to present. Maybe the teppanyaki or sushi options would be more interesting if we ever went back as a smaller group and/or in the evening.

Saturday was the Crystal Palace Overground Festival and Lettice and I braved the drizzle to take a look. Spread out round all three sides of the triangle were stalls selling exactly what you’d expect from the good people of Crystal Palace – cupcakes, handmade greetings cards and antiques. There was also music and kids’ activities going on. With the events spread out both geographically and temporally, coupled with the poor weather, it all seemed a bit difficult to get into the spirit of things. Maybe if it’s sunny next year we’ll make the slightly longer trip up from Croydon.

And then round to miss_newham‘s for the annual Eurovision party. Alcohol, scorecards, yelling at the telly, and some truly dreadful music. I seemed to be the only person who liked the Albanian entry; the winner of our voting was Greece, which matched the winner of the UK phone vote so we must have been in tune with the national psyche. Not sure why the UK bothers entering – everyone hates us and we always enter rubbish songs. Ben Dalby’s Doctor Can would have been a better entry and some sexy nurses would surely have garnered a few votes.

There’s a new art gallery in West Norwood – The Portico Gallery is very close to us and full of a wide variety of pieces in varied styles and media. I’m rubbish at writing about art (“and everything else,” yells the audience) so there’s not much more to say except that that’s where we were on Sunday afternoon.

And today? Nothing much at all.

• Had my photo used in a (gay) mockup of a what our Valentine’s Day homepage could look like.
• Had lots of fun combining Ajax, JSON, RSS, JSP and jQuery in various combinations.
• Moved the breadcrumb trail from just inside the main content area to just before it … in many, many templates.
• Wondered whether any of the ARIA landmark roles was suitable for a block that contained a breadcrumb trail, a print button and an RSS feed button. contentinfo or nothing seem to be the options.
• Told my boss that I needed to refactor all the JavasScript (that I had written in the first place) on the whole site.
• Wasn’t ill enough to go home to bed, maybe tomorrow. (Damn this really quite good immune system!)
• Boggled at the photos of Ben Dalby in a straight jacket!
• Spent most of Survivors thinking about the benefits of CGI vs something actually decent looking when it came to collapsing buildings.

Tanita Tikaram recommends Marina and the Diamonds‘ I am Not a Robot

I decided to use WordPress and to lightly modify an existing theme rather than create my own. I still have a lot of content to migrate but so far the results are looking good. What do you think?

I win. No seriously, I win this game because I have had a theme tune written for me. Well, technically it was written for my blog, oh okay, it was inspired by the name of my blog. What? This isn’t a contest and I can’t win? Oh. Sorry.

According to my mother my first musical experience was dancing (or being danced, as I was baby at the time) round the room to T Rex. Was I too young to be influenced by this? Or did it somehow generate an interest in dinosaurs rather than glam rock? Lucky escape.

Adam and the Ants – Stand and Deliver

I was torn between a classic Ants track or something from his later albums. In the end memories of Saturday morning’s spent watching this video on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop won the day (but if you’ve only heard his old material check out the 1995 album “Wonderful”).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPgHbt0ODr4

Drill Queen – Born Depressed

Justin is an information architect with whom I worked on several projects; he also played guitar for Drill Queen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRrq6zp2_M8

Traveling Wilburys – Tweeter and the Monkey Man

Just about the only bits of vinyl from my dad’s music collection that I copied to tape, and one of the few bands that Lettice and I both love. It looks like the record label have been at YouTube so we’re lucky to find this animation:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2cb4t_tweeter-and-the-monkey-man_creation

Moxy Früvous - My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors

Moxy Früvous were a cool, funny, somewhat cheesey Canadian band who I was introduced to via two friends at university. If you saw the groaning bookshelves in our flat you’d know why this song always makes me smile.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9F_XHb81N0

Cerys Matthews – Oxygen

I can’t sing. I really can’t sing. Neither can my brother, though as churchgoer he makes up with gusto for what he lacks in aptitude. Clearly we got our singing genes from the English or Swedish parts of our family not the Welsh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPqaPHTlhdg

Pulp – Mis-shapes

The end of the summer of 1995. On the news it’s Blur vs Oasis. But, before Blair, there was a much better third way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7rxAeF1wmQ

Aziza Mustafa Zadeh – Ay Dilber
Stiff Little Fingers – Tin Soldiers

Hands up who wanted (or even expected) to hear some Azerbaijani Jazz today? Well, you’re out of luck as I can’t find it anywhere on the web. So have some classic punk instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl5V26oXHUI

Tanita Tikaram – And I Think Of You

The reason I’m here. Sort of. I created my first home page in 1995 (personal home pages, remember them? Like Facebook profiles but you had to do all the work yourself) and wanted to do a bit more. So looking around the nascent web for the various artists I liked I spotted that Tanita didn’t have any fan pages dedicated to her. The resulting site helped to get me my first job at a web design agency.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9bphQpCLNA

Book

Assuming I’m going to be here for a while then I want something fairly long. An old favourite or something I’ve never gotten around to? I think I’ll go for the latter and take Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography to remind myself of home.

Luxury Item

A brewing kit. Let’s see which of the fruit on the island makes the best booze.

People on facebook and twitter said that they wanted to see the quiz, so here goes.

Remember that this was set in June 1997 – Tony Blair has just won a landslide victory, Katrina and the Waves had just won the Eurovision song contest, Deep Blue had just beaten Gary Kasparov, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa were still alive, Google was being born and Wikipedia didn’t exist.

Music

1. What is Ludwig von Köchel’s claim to fame?
2. Which instrument did jazz musician Bix Biederbecke play?
3. “Killing Me Softly”, covered by The Fugees, was written about whom?
4. Which actress has recently released a single entitled “Extremis”?
5. What is the combined age of The Spice Girls?

Literature

6. What hobby did Sherlock Holmes take up when he retired?
7. What is the name of G.K. Chesterton’s clerical sleuth?
8. Whose 1991 novel tells the story of a man who lives his life backwards?
9. Which poet’s works include “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and “The Courtship of Miles Standish”?
10. Captain Absolute, Sir Lucius O’Trigger and Bob Acres are the title characters in which play?

Television and Cinema

11. In which cult TV series would you encounter the saying “Be seeing you” complete with accompanying salute?
12. What’s the name of the man who in 1980 was voted worst director of all time and was played by Johnny Depp in a 1995 film?
13. Which 1985 film was directed by Steven Spielberg and featured Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey?
14. Name the two actors who played Scott Robinson in Neighbours?
15. What is the name of Postman Pat’s cat?

Science

16. Which of the following is not a measure of radiation: Gray, Weber, Sievert, Curie, Bequerel?
17. How is the drug in everyday use Acetaminophen better known?
18. Which internal organ do most snakes lack?
19. Which computing pioneer was tried and convicted because of his homosexuality?
20. Which chemical element is named after a Norse god?

History

21. Leonidas led which side at the battle of Thermopylae
22. Which English king was imprisoned in Durenstein castle by Leopold of Austria?
23. The “Defenestration of Prague” started which war?
24. How old was Queen Victoria at the time of her ascension to the throne?
25. Where in 1946 would you have found British, French and Japanese troops fighting on the same side?

Geography

26. Which African country takes its name from some ancient ruins?
27. What is the biblically inspired name of the islands in the South Pacific discovered in 1568 by the Alvaro de Mendana de Neyra?
28. Which country is jointly ruled by the President of France and the Bishop of Urgel?
29. St Mary’s, St Martin’s and Tresco are members of which island group?
30. Which is the smallest of the United States?

Current Affairs – Remember, it’s 1997

31. How many women are there in the new cabinet?
32. How is Daniel Hooper better known?
33. A great-nephew of which socialist hero was revealed as a “Tory Boy” during the election campaign?
34. What is the quorum for the House of Commons?
35. Why are Deborah Parry and Lucille McLauchlan in big trouble?

Sport

36. Who, last year, won a fourth consecutive Olympic gold in a track and field event?
37. Who were the last nation to win football’s world cup in their own country?
38. Harold Larwood and Douglas Jardine were involved in which cricketing controversy?
39. Which four tournaments make up tennis’s Grand Slam?
40. What is the official name of rugby’s British Lions?

Trivia

41. Thomas Watson who in 1943 said, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” was chairman of which company?
42. In 1975, Elizabeth Seton, became the first American to do what?
43. Who said of the press barons, “Power without responsibility, the privilege of the harlot throughout the ages.”?
44. What were P.G. Wodehouse’s first names?
45. Which day of the week will the next century begin on?

Oxford

46. In which year was OUSU formed?
47. Who first said that Balliol students had “the tranquil air of the effortlessly superior”?
48. Which is the tallest college?
49. Baillie College occasionally featured in which BBC TV series?
50. Inspector Morse attended which college as an undergraduate? (Two possible answers as books and TV differ.)