UK Riots: A Sign of Things to Come?

Phone hacking - what's that? A story that I thought would have control over the headlines for weeks to come has been quickly snuffed and set aside as the UK was rudely thrust into the new age of the recession. Rupert Murdoch is probably breathing a massive sigh of relief. A protest over the shooting last Thursday of Mark Duggan by police officers in Tottenham quickly escalated into a violent frenzy on the streets of Tottenham on Sunday. Like wildfire, the riots spread across multiple boroughs of London the following night (Brixton, Croydon, Islington - the list goes on), and before long news was filtering to the watching world that cities including Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Liverpool and Manchester had become victims of mob rule as well.

Mastodon Album Art and Teaser + Opeth news!

It's got three jaws and eight ears - are you surprised?

Good news for Mastodon fans - the album art for the forthcoming album The Hunter has been revealed and it's just as head-fuckingly awesome as all of the other offerings over the past decade.

A Season Finishes...A Saga Begins

Ten weeks later, and it's all over. It's amazing to see how years of hype, speculation and excitement can take so long to culminate, only for the final product to arrive and be finished in a mere flicker of time. But boy, was it all worth it. HBO's adaptation of George R.R.Martin's epic Game of Thrones was, well...television gold.

Peak Oil

My father has long been interested in the topic of peak oil and I have grown up in the knowledge that our modern society comes with certain conditions that will, ultimately, mark its demise. Put simply, the peak oil crisis relates to the amount of non-renewable carbon-based fuel that is still available on Earth for manipulation, and at what point that the energy required to extract these diminishing supplies of fuel will surpass the energy that you would gain from using them once collected. The USA reached it's peak way back in the 1970's, and is now largely dependent upon oil-rich (for now, anyway) locations such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq to feed its ever-growing addiction. Once the oil supplies across the whole world surpass their peak levels (which is estimated to be around, well...now) the oil markets will face a period of schizophrenic uncertainty and eventual collapse, and along with it many of the benefits that oil conferred upon our civilization - be it motor fuel, fertilizers for growing crops and sustaining our population, materials for a plethora of different products, and for many homes and industries, their electricity supplies. The implications of this issue are vast, potentially traumatic and not to be taken lightly.

Mastodon Simplify the Formula

With news and speculation surrounding Opeth's forthcoming album, Christmas struck again this week with news of sludge/prog-metal behemoths Mastodon's new album, also due sometime this Autumn. The album has been christened The Hunter and in an interview with the Terrorizer website, the band hinted that this was a reference to the death of bandmember Brent Hinds' brother, himself a hunter, last year.

Heritage

Ever since I heard for myself their outstanding 2005 album Ghost Reveries, I have been a keen fanatic of Opeth's music. To the uninitiated, Opeth are primarily a progressive metal band, but the band cannot really be pinned down pinned down by simply one genre. Taking in all elements of classic rock, jazz, death metal and more, the Swede's songs are typically mammoth recordings, really demanding your full attention to appreciate the different elements that combine and conflict to marvellous effect. As my girlfriend helpfully pointed out to me, their logo is a perfect advertisement for this struggle of life and death - the 'O' of their name is transformed into a beautiful rose, but a second look reveals that it is infested with insects, spreading corruption and decay. At least, that's how we see it. But it is this fearless capacity to blend so many divergent styles of music that attracts so many different kinds of people to Opeth's music - people who would normally shy away from death metal altogether.

The Long Haul

A good fortnight ago now I endured what was quite possibly the most tense, nail-shredding interview in my short little life. As I may have mentioned, I have been looking at routes into teaching for some time, as well as doing some voluntary work experience at a nearby school. The work experience has been incredibly useful - for showing me what the job really entails, how hard and stressful it can be and also how rewarding it is to see your pupils learning and developing. Work experience is also a little extra padding to fluff up the CV, always useful in a crowded job market i.e. the rest of my working life. Anyway, I took my experience (still rather fledgling at this time) and applied for the GTP (Graduate Teacher Programme) at a centre called Education Management Direct in Grantham, Lincolnshire. The GTP differs from the standard PGCE as a training course in many ways, the fundamental difference being that you are in the employ of a particular school and you earn a wage as you train for your qualification there.

I was pleased to see that I had made it through the first hoop and was invited to an interview at EM Direct's Grantham headquarters. The interview itself was mentioned rather sketchily in the letter from the organisation so I really wasn't all too sure of how it was going to play out, but it was certainly as difficult as I was anticipating. More so, even. Anybody interested in applying for the GTP might be interested in reading how my interview unfolded.

Game of Thrones 1st Episode 'Winter is Coming' Review

Yesterday marked the UK premiere of HBO's highly anticipated Game of Thrones adaptation on Sky Atlantic. I sat down well in advance to catch it with my girlfriend, and fair to say, it kicked all kinds of ass. And taught me how I'd been pronouncing those names wrong all along.

Twitter and Spotify Reviews

In a blog post back in November I mentioned I had signed myself up to both Twitter and Spotify. It's been about 6 months now so I thought I'd give my feedback on my experiences with both here. Both are already well-established online fixtures so I am interested in recording my experiences and thoughts about them. 

To be honest, I was expecting to get along with both of them a lot more than I did.

5 Books I Couldn't Do Without

A good book is rich, entertaining, or even informative; A truly great book is all of these and also shapes the way you perceive yourself and the rest of the world. Great books shapes whole cultures, personalities and attitudes towards life itself.

I was never a very good reader as a child, preferring to keep my hands glued to a SNES, Playstation or N64 controller. The only masterpiece I ever knew back then was Mario Kart. But as I got older, towards my late teens, I began to appreciate the value of a truly classic read (although I do still frequent video games consoles more often than I probably should), and this simple enjoyment of reading the result of someones experiences and energy, pored in ink onto a few hundred small pages, is possibly what guided me towards completing a degree in English & History. The words within a magnificent book are skillfully tailored to paint a canvas so spectacular, you can't help yourself but be swept up into their mesmerising spell. So in no particular order, in homage to some of the very best books that I have been lucky to dip my mind into, I bring you 5 books that without, I wouldn't be the same person you see here today.

Rinse & Repeat: Libya and the Mistakes of History

Well it didn't take them long, but Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama have got themselves stuck into a nice, juicy war. It's headline-grabbing stuff and mainstream papers like The Sun are having a field day, pumping the public full of patriotism in support of our air strikes on Gaddafi and his forces as he continues to brutalise his own people and stifle the rebel movement. Colonel Gaddafi has been transformed into an international pariah (again) in the space of time it takes to fire a Patriot missile into Tripoli.

Time travel

Wow, it's been two months since I last logged on. It feels like I should say that it's felt as though the time has flown by, which it has. But looking back, it's impossible to see how.