Bloc Party - Flux

Ex-neighbour and all round Irish-blog ledgebag UnaRocks posted the new Bloc Party vid for Flux, enjoy!

Antony Gormley Comes To The Dublin Docklands

This is the new Antony Gormley designed structure going up in the Dublin Docklands. You probably know Gormley from his iconic (but much hated at it's inception) Angel of the North in Gateshead in England. He also recently dotted 31 life size human figures around the South Bank in London. While I loved the Angel of the North this project really caught my eye as it really grabbed people's attention and the sight of human figures peering down from major buildings in London not only seemed to interest the public but also drew their eyes to some amazing architecture. As with the majority of his work the figure is based on moulds of his own body and will be composed of a mesh which according to Gormley will be “like a charcoal drawing against the sky, changing as your position changes in relation to it. Up close you will see through it, in the distance it will cohere into a bodily image.” Standing at 48 meters high it will be hard to ignore but will also be a welcome and iconic addition to the already thriving Docklands area. Construction hopefully starts in 2008 at a cost of 1.6 million Euro, makes the 4 mill spent on the Stiffy in the Liffey look ridiculous.

Sigur Rós - The Movie

Amazingly the worlds greatest dream-pop band ever (firstly dream-pop is their words and secondly The Clash are the greatest band in the world) Sigur Rós are releasing a movie called "Heima". The DVD follows them on last year's tour of Iceland. They always had that kinda epic movie quality to their music and one look at he trailer below shows that the scenes of their beautiful homeland Iceland perfectly compliment the music. The movie will be released along with an album with some new unreleased tracks. What's Vonlenska for moist with anticipation?



Interesting fact, according to wikipedia lead singer Jónsi is gay and blind in one eye... strange...
Oh and is it just me or does it sound like Jonsi is singing "urinal" a lot in the trailer?

New Spoon Video

Here's the new Spoon vid for their song "Don't You Evah". It has the coolest little dancing robot thingy in it called a keepon. Apparently these keepon things aren't for sale yet but as soon as they are there's one going on the Santa list! Damn Japanese have all the cool things!

Funniest dancing vid EVER

This is the funniest thing I have seen in ages, the lad worked in the Sony Center in the Blanch and does this dancing routine in the middle of work, the second guy who walks in is his boss! Doesn't even flinch!



Congratulations Sir, you are a leg end and have made my heroes list!!

Back From Lesotho

Right well I have returned from Lesotho. Pretty cool final week, there was a piss up in the Irish embassy (no ferrero roche = sad face), an escaped convict (murdered his wife, went for a slash and legged it, whereabouts unknown) and Joe motoring along in Ratabile's taxi (up to fifth gear, drove us most of the way and no discount on our fare!!).
The whole entire experience was absolutely amazing and I really wanna say thank you to anyone who is reading this who was part of that experience. I also want to encourage anyone reading this to support Camara with donations or even better with their time and effort. Although Ireland is an incredible charitable country with their money they are still very stingy with their time and a few hours here or there really makes a difference and I can definitely attest to the fact that you will meet some of the soundest people out there.
Once I get my mitts on all the photos from the trip I'll hopefully lash up a flickr page with the photos to bore/astound you all.

Oh and I'm now officially an over qualified barman so any jobs or spare cash gimme a buzz. In the meantime just call me for a boozing partner, nothing better to do!!

Khotso

Siloe High School

We're now in our third week and there are still no sign of Des and Dallan's bags and there's no response from them about me and Dee's stolen things. So I encourage you all to boycott British Airways or at least throw something at their offices or employees. Helen if your reading this, when you start being a pilot you're not allowed work for them ok?Right, rant aside we're doing well and moved onto our new school and accomodation. Tuesday was a national holiday for the King's birthday so all the people were hammered across the country. We moved into our new accomodation Mafateng Hotel in, oddly enough, Mafateng. The hotel is some cross between the amenities of a convent with the clientele of a brothel. There is a big spiral staircase leading up to our rooms which is like something out of Scarface just to add more confusion to the whole place. Our new school is Siloe High School, about twenty minutes away from where we are staying and a nice little place. After spending a week in two seperate groups we join back up into one big group again fo rthis school. The class are really friendly with plenty of characters. The principal is hilarious and really chatty and despite the class being a little bit latre she keeps us occupied until they all arrive. Des is not going to be around with us as much as previously as he is working on some HIV/AIDS awareness software for Camara and has to go visit clinics to interview people and do research. HIV is a massive problem over here in Lesotho with 30% of population infected, one of the highest rates in the world. As much as I love the work we are doing over here and think it's very worthwhile, we are quite buffered from issues such as HIV because we deal with teachers and slightly more well off people. But the problem really can't be ignored and it's great to see someone like Des actively trying to make a difference and educate people about something which is one of the biggest issues of our lifetime. The taxi bus drivers who we have hired for the week are the funniest lads I have ever seen. Barely a word of English between them but as soon as they heard we were Irish they lashed on a Westlife CD and blasted it every time we got in the van. We foolishly had a big singalong and dancing session to "when you're looking like that" and ever since they have it on a loop. The driver keeps on looking back over his shoulder to laugh at us arsing about the place and pays absolutely no attention to the road while his little sidekick just laughs his hole off. Sadly there is video evidence of us doing Westlife which will probably end up on YouTube at some stage and come back to haunt me.After three weeks of teaching we pretty much have the material and our classes down to a fine art. Everybody has their own little speciality subject and we really are working well as a group. Again I must say how lucky we were to get a group like we have, everyone really seems to gel well together and theres been no major fights to speak of. Again there are some stand out pupils who I take aside and teach basic web design. As our course is quite basic some people who already have a basis in Word, Excel, Paint and other applications can get quite frustrated going over stuff that they already know. That's why it is so good to be able to offer things like the web design to challenge them a bit and allow them to gain something from the course. Another one of our contacts over here, Simon, attended this course and as we had our graduation ceremony he gave a speech about SchoolNet and the work they do over here. A large group of the class made a decision afterwards to commit to meeting up and continuing the learning process together after we have left. Things like that are really what we are striving for over here. Giving these computers and these courses is pointless if peple don't take it upon themselves to keep learning and it's great to see them making a promise to do just that. So after saying our goodbyes to both teachers and taxi drivers and checking another school of the list we move on now to the capital Maseru and our final week in Lesotho.