Suffice to say that was somewhat of a letdown…

So much for their first London (or overseas at all) gig… they didn’t bother turning up, and by all accounts they didn’t bother telling any of the staff at the club that they weren’t gonna turn up either.

I shall wait to see what their next blog post says before i say what i really think (though i’m sure you can all guess).

On the plus side, there was one decent band there… “You Love Her Coz She’s Dead“… if i had to describe them, it’d be something like MOSAIC.WAV, but English, and with more bass. She was pretty energetic on stage even if the 15 or so people there (i.e. the entire crowd) didn’t really look that into it. Wouldn’t mind seeing them again sometime (preferably with a better sound system where you can hear her singing, and a crowd with more enthusiasm).

After god knows how long, i finally got around to updating the look of this site. New features as follows:

• New theme (should have been pretty obvious… if it all looks messed up hit ctrl-f5 to refresh your cache), theme has support for wordpress’s widgets (makes administering the sidebar far easier), and quite frankly looks shinier.
• New gallery system in the photo’s section – not using a plugin, using wordpress’s new built in galleries, much nicer, and the alignment isn’t messed up. Note that you can also add comments to galleries now.
• Lightbox on all image thumbnails – click thumbnail, get lightbox popup, very sleek, lol (see example below). Works in the photo’s section too.
• An actual logo instead of that naff scribble from before. Beautifully drawn by Taruto! Thankyou!!! After much thought (read: 5 minutes randomly babbling sounds) it was decided she’d be called “Poro-chan” (unless anyone has any better suggestions).

…it’s only taken me 2 months (even though all the work basically only totalled 3 days or so, lol). Glad it’s done though, the galleries look much nicer now.

As far as i’m aware there’s only 2 minor issues at the moment, and they both only affect internet explorer. The first of which wont get fixed anytime soon (if ever)… the grey/black bit on the navigation bar is 1 pixel out next to the part where the buttons end, no idea how to fix this in internet explorer without making it 1 pixel out in other browsers. The 2nd issue is that the buttons appear to be a slightly different shade of grey to the rest of the bar… might have an idea on how to fix it, we’ll see (note: since it all works perfect in Firefox and that’s what i use to view the interwebs then i’m not going to be too bothered about ever fixing it myself). If you really can’t live with an odd pixel then install a decent web browser, lol.

If anyone else notices any problems, let me know, it’s entirely possible i’ve missed glaring errors all over the place, lol.

Their official site added a link to a PV for the song “I don’t wanna go”:

http://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/asx2008/80pan/VICL-62836-06FB.asx?80PAN

The full song sounds quite a bit better than i was expecting, but still, they look somewhat lifeless when compared to their previous songs, what have they done with Maco and Tomomi’s individuality, they kinda just feel like generic clones there. >_<

As for the video itself… well… stick Video Killed The Radio Star over the top of the music, and millions would be convinced it was made in the same era, lol. Is that a good thing or a bad thing, hmm…

What happened to the cheery happy songs of old, what happened to the individuality, where did Maco’s rapping go, and most importantly of all (imo)… what happened to them looking like they were enjoying what they were singing, in fact, what ever happened to songs where their singing was the main focus instead of the backing music? T_T It almost feels like they’re just being forced to do whatever their manager tells them.

Where did they go?

Now they’re so very different to them on their original album, it almost feels sad watching that PV again. *sigh* maybe it’s just the PV, maybe they’ll be better live, maybe their manager will realise it was all a mistake, maybe Saya had the right idea in leaving, maybe………

80_pan are going to be performing as part of London Calling.

I wonder if i’ll be able to speak to them again, since i definitely have a few questions i’d like to ask about their current image, lol. ^_^

…yet another random food post, lol…

Finally after almost 4 years of having that ribeye steak recipe hanging around i got to make it myself! Picked up from the Japanese Food Festival in London back in 2004, “Ribeye Steak in wasabi sauce”.

Basically all it is ribeye steak + beansprouts, and the sauce consists of wasabi + soy sauce + hondashi (yes… that’s the thing in the tesco pot with the tuna picture taped over it… we needed a makeshift pot to hold it, lol) + garlic + water.

Mix all sauce stuff together after frying garlic, boil, fry beansprouts, then *VERY QUICKLY* fry the ribeye steak (after it has been seasoned of course), it was fried for literally 1 minute 30 seconds (15 seconds on each side at super hot temperatures, then 1minute on a low heat with the frying pan covered). Well-done steaks (and medium to be honest) are a crime against cows.

I love ribeye steaks, no need to tenderise, and they have that lovely juicy marbling, lol. ^_^

Other stuff… after accidentally leaving Naga-tan behind when moving, it has finally been brought to the new house, sadly for some reason it was moved away from the windowsill while it was waiting to return, so it doesn’t look as healthy as it should coming into summer. But i think an intensive course of plant feed and it having been moved into a bigger pot will fix that.

I think the habanero plant is looking a bit ropey now, probably better to just gather all the seeds from this summer and start again from a new plant, 2nd generation Habanero-tan, lol… or maybe some absurd crossbreed of the two. ^_^

More random stuff… having one of those speedometer things for my bike (note: this is a bicycle with pedals, not one with a motor, lol) is fun when going to/from work now. I knew i was going slightly fast in places, but it turns out i was doing 44.5km/h (27.65mph) in at least 3 sections, lol… almost breaking the road speed limit (except i’m on a bike path the entire time). In total it takes me 15 minutes to travel 3 miles when i’m not pushing that hard. Now if only there weren’t currently foot deep sections of water and other random potholes (and pedestrians for that matter) along the way, i reckon i can break 30mph when it gets dry again.