The George Lite Zone

You’d have thought, that with Picasa being a Google product, the task of uploading a photo from a Picasa album to your blogger profile would be relatively straightforwards.

Well it’s not too onerous a task, but you need to know a few things to do it.

• First you need the image you want to use loaded into Picasa.

• Once you’ve done this, view the photo in Picasa and click on Link to this Photo.

• You’d have thought that you would copy the URL displayed under “Paste link in email or IM” and used this in your blogger profile, but alas no. Instead copy the HTML shown under “HTML to embed in website“.

• Paste it into notepad or some other suitable editor, then copy the URL shown between the quotes of the href.

• Now bring up the Blogger Dashboard and click on Edit Profile.

• Scroll down to Photograph and paste in the URL you copied earlier.

• Press Save Profile

Huzzah!!! You now have your chosen Picasa photo as your profile picture. I’m sure Google will get their act together sometime and make this process easier. In the meantime however the above instructions tide you over till that day comes.

Your Picasa picture may not be a Picasso, but you’d better pick a good one for your profile.

In the film “The Big Nothing”, nothing is as it seems. Scenes that look like they were shot in the States where actually filmed on the Isle of Man and in Canada. Bizarre.

As to the movie itself, this is a top draw black comedy. David Schwimmer plays an unemployed teacher who joins forces with a scammer (played by Simon Pegg) and his girlfriend (Alice Eve) in a blackmailing scheme.

Excellent performances by David Schwimmer and über geek Simon Pegg are surpassed by John Polito’s inspired Columboesque detective role.

I won’t mention any more of the plot, not wanting to give anything away, but it’s worth watching to hear the Rammstein track used on the soundtrack alone.

The pick of the extras is Simon Pegg’s “Pegcam” featurette. Shame it didn’t go on longer though.

8/10

Tonights wine factoid comes to you courtesy of the Beyerskloof vineyard in South Africa. No Micky Mouse wine this one.

Holy Moley their bottle of Pinotage certainly hit the spot. With a flavor redolent of Blackberries on a Summers day, this wine was as smooth as a baby’s bottom.

Groovy.

Here’s my first effort at adding video content to this blog and a step by step, rung by rung (apologies to Huey Lewis), description of what I did to do it.

• First I videoed Buffy using my phone
• I then copied the video to my PC and uploaded it to You Tube.
• I then copied the video’s Embeded HTML to the clipboard
• I then posted a new post on this , clicked on the Edit HTML tab and pasted in the HTML copied in the previous step.
• And finally Cyril, I added this text to the post to finish things off.

Give it a try. You too can be a multi-media megastar (or your cat can).

There’s nothing like a top music list to stir up a bit of controversy. In this case I stumbled on this list of the Top 25 Live Albums on IGN.COM

Gaping omissions for me are Hawkwind’s - Space Ritual, Motörhead’s - No Sleep Till Hammersmith and Thin Lizzie’s - Live and Dangerous.

If anyones got any other great live album suggestions that you think should have made the grade, feel free to post them.

TOP 25 Live Albums

1. 801 - Live (EG, 1976)
2. U2 - Under A Blood Red Sky (Island, 1983)
3. Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison (Columbia, 1968)
4. Neil Young - Live Rust (Reprise, 1979)
5. Boogie Down Productions - Live Hardcore Worldwide (Jive, 1991)
6. Nirvana - MTV Unplugged In New York (DGC, 1994)
7. The Talking Heads - The Name Of This Band Is The Talking Heads (Sire, 1982)
8. The Who - Live At Leeds (MCA, 1970)
9. James Brown - Live At The Apollo (Polydor, 1963)
10. Jane’s Addiction - Jane’s Addiction (Triple X, 1987)
11. [TIE] Peter Gabriel - Plays Live (Geffen, 1983) and Genesis - Seconds Out (Atlantic, 1977)
12. The Quintet (Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Bud Powell, Max Roach) - Jazz At Massey Hall (Debut Records, 1953)
13. The Rolling Stones - Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! The Rolling Stones In Concert (ABKCO, 1970)
14. The Band - The Last Waltz (Warner Bros, 1978)
15. Cheap Trick - At Budokan (Epic, 1979)
16. Kraftwerk - Minimum-Maximum (Astralwerks, 2005)
17. Blue Oyster Cult - Extraterrestrial Live (Columbia, 1982)
18. Rush - Exit Stage Left (Mercury, 1981)
19. Bob Marley & The Wailers - Live! (Tuff Gong, 1975)
20. Iron Maiden - Live After Death (Capitol, 1986)
21. Sting - Bring On The Night (A&M, 1986)
22. The Roots - The Roots Come Alive (MCA, 1999)
23. KISS - Alive (Casablanca, 1975)
24. The Grateful Dead - Live/Dead (Warner Bros., 1969)
25. Peter Frampton - Frampton Comes Alive (A&M Records, 1976)

Honorable Mentions

Isaac Hayes - Live at the Sahara Tahoe
Cypress Hill - Live at The Fillmore
Donny Hathaway - Live
Marillion - The Thieving Magpie
Rage Against The Machine - Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium
Gov’t Mule - The Deepest End
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Live Alive
Miles Davis - Live - Evil
Marillion - Real To Reel
Miles Davis - Live @ The Plugged Nickel
Al di Meola, John McLaughlin, & Paco de Lucia - Friday Night In San Francisco
Supertramp - Paris
Live Phish - 11/30/94
Pink Floyd - Ummagumma
Ween - Live @ Stubbs
Grateful Dead - Reckoning
Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall 1971
Matisyahu - Live at Stubbs
DMB - Live at Red Rocks
Bob Dylan -Bob Dylan Live 1966, “The Royal Albert Hall Concert”
Wilco - Kicking Television
John Cale - Sabotage
BB King - Live at the Regal
Dave Matthews Band - The Central Park Concert
Ozzy Osbourne - The Randy Rhoads Tribute
Yes - Yessongs
Stevie Ray Vaughn - Live at Carnegie Hall
Van Morrison - Too Late to Stop Us Now
Jimi Hendrix - Live at Fillmore East
The Allman Brothers - Live at Fillmore East
Led Zeppelin - The Song Remains the Same
The Clash - Live: From Here to Eternity
Johnny Cash - Live at San Quentin
Angra - Rebrith World Tour: Live in Sao Paulo
Iron Maiden - Death On the Road
Metallica - Binge and Purge
Pink Floyd - Pulse
Otis Eedding - Live at the Monterey Pop Festival
Frank Sinatra - At The Sands
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. - Summit: In Concert
Woodstock
Wattstax
Derek and the Dominoes - Live at the Filmore
The Band - Rock of Ages
Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense
Muddy Waters - Newport
Violent Femmes - Viva Wisconsin
Sam Cooke - Live in Harlem
Duke Ellington - Newport
Wes Montgomery - Smokin’ at the Half Note
Oscar Peterson Trio - Stratford Shakespeare Festival
Bill Evans - Sunday at the Village Vanguard

I’ve added a Nottingham Forest newsreel element to the bottom of this blog.

Hopefully it will be scrolling articles regarding our automatic promotion back to the Championship (that’s the 2nd division in old money) across your screens some time soon.

In an effort to streamline the George Lite Zone making it a bit lighter, I’ve created two new blogs. Greasy Truckers Party Food and Coded Languages.

Apart from being a play on the title of the cult ’70s album, that featured some classic Hawkwind, and a track from the 1981 Hawkwind Album Sonic Attack, there’s a pattern emerging here, these sites are intended to cater for any future culinary and technical blogging respectively.

By separating this out from the more general purpose George Lite Zone this allows for it to be a more focused information channel. Now people just interested in all things foodie can subscribe to Greasy Truckers and anyone wearing a beanie hat with a complete DVD collection of Star Trek can beam in to Coded Languages.

You can find these blogs and their stablemate Stroll On, in the new imaginatively titled section at the top of the blog “My Other Blogs“.

Along with “Greasy Truckers Party” the original Triple Album “Glastonbury Fayre” album has always had legendary status amongst Hawkwind fans. Back in the days before commercialism came to town you could enjoy bands like The Grateful Dead, Gong and Hawkwind for free, whilst indulging in exotic mind altering substances, like tea.

The track listing of the Glastonbury Fayre album reads: -

CD One
1. THE GRATEFUL DEAD: Dark Star
2. BRINSLEY SCHWARZ: Love Song
3. MIGHTY BABY: A Blanket In My Muesli
4. MARC BOLAN: Sunken Rags
5. PETE TOWNSHEND: Classified
6. DAVID BOWIE: Supermen
7. HAWKWIND: Silver Machine; Welcome to the Future
8. SKIN ALLEY: Sun Music

CD Two
1. DAEVID ALLEN AND GONG: Glad Stoned; Buried Fielding; Flash And Fresh; Fest Footprint In My Memory
2. THE PINK FAIRIES: Do It
3. THE PINK FAIRIES: Uncle Harry’s Last Freak-Out
4. THE EDGAR BROUGHTON BAND: Out Demons Out

Silver Machine on this album is the original version with Bob Calvert on vocals, these were replaced by Lemmy’s in the chart conquering single.

The Dead, the Wind and Gong, what’s not to like?

There are currently a batch of re-mastered and extras packed versions of classic albums doing the rounds at bargain prices at the moment.

40th Anniversary versions of the The Doors albums can be found in the shops for under a fiver. The new versions have been remixed and include bonus tracks to keep any Doorheads out there happy. While I think that some of the re-mixes sound inferior to the originals I remember, the new editions sound clearer than they ever have before and at the price are well worth getting hold of.

Pick of the bunch: “The Doors“, “L.A. Woman” (arguably one of the greatest albums of the Sixties) and “Morrison Hotel“.

Speaking of heads and moving on a decade, brings me to the re-vamped Talking Heads albums that have recently dropped in price. Again these have been re-mixed with added extra track goodliness tagged on, but the real icing on the cake is the inclusion of a DVD that has Dolby Digital 5.1 versions of the original albums. Now you can immerse yourself in Road to Nowhere coming at you from all around, while you’re making flippy floppy in your big suit. Fantastic.

Cream of the crop: “Fear of Music“, “More Songs About Buildings and Food“, “Remain in Light“, “Talking Heads: 77“.

For every generation, there is a Slayer.

In this case the slayer in question is a slayer of Butterflys. Say hello to Buffy, the butterfly slayer. She may not save the world on a regular basis but she sure does like her tummy rubbed.

Picture taken by ace photographer Calvin Ternent