Just reading on BoingBoing about how the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) reportedly started sending letters to YouTube users demanding that they take down videos of kids singing along and dancing to their favorite songs. I mean, FFS, are these guys actually on the planet Earth?! If it wasn’t so messed up, it’d actually be funny. It seems that the RIAA want to control every facet of how a normal person uses music.
This is brilliant. 😆
Wow. First and foremost this was one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. Robbie William’s played to a sell out crowd at Croke Park last Friday and I took the day off work to make sure we made the most of it. The day began by getting the train in to Croke Park and going for a quick pint before heading down to the grounds. It was Aishlinn’s idea to see if we could get pit passes and luckily enough we did get a few of the remaining ones while queuing up. 🙂 About an hour after that they opened the inner gates and let people get their places either for standing on the pitch or sitting in the stands. The 85,000 tickets that had gone on sale in January were sold out within 20 minutes so a great atmosphere was almost guaranteed. After getting a bit of food we headed in to the pit area and were chuffed to find it almost on top of the stage. We sat around for a while and enjoyed the support act, The Beautiful South, who were on from 7 to 8. 
Then the stage crew began to setup for Robbie and to be honest there was a lengthy delay in waiting from 8 until 8.45 for him to come on stage.
However, when he did come on stage the place went mental. I firmly believe he is the best solo entertainer in the world at the moment and belted out all of the classic tracks he’s known for such as a karaoke styled “Strong”, “Rock DJ”, “No Regrets”, and “Feel”. The stage was kitted out with flames and fireworks and they were put to good use during both “Let Me Entertain You” and the opener “Radio”. The only hitch during a flawless performance was during the aforementioned “Let Me Entertain You” which opened the encore. 
Robbie climbed to the top of the stage and got into a cradled harness that would have lowered him down to the stage. Things didn’t go to plan though and he had to make his way down another way. After that incident, he made a big deal of saying he is going to do a free gig in Dublin to make up for the mistake. He even went so far as to put a camera on his manager who hastily gave a thumbs-up to the request. This was the first date on a world tour and you visibly see that he was almost overcome with emotion during some of the songs.
All in all it was a great gig and one that’ll live in the memory for a long time to come. 😀 All of the photos I took (77 of ’em) are uploaded to the photos section so make sure to check them out.
I’ve mentioned Meebo before but I thought it warranted another specific mention as I use it everyday. Basically, meebo is a way to connect to any of the major instant messaging clients including Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, ICQ, Jabber, GTalk or MSN Messenger. I can’t install Messenger on my Windows workstation so I needed a way to connect in with the new hosting guys via IM.
Along came meebo to assist as it doesn’t require any installation and all you need is an account with any one of the major systems mentioned above. It’s one of the cleaniest web applications I’ve used plus they’ve just added the facility for group chats which shows genuine innovation in the area. You can also sign up to a meebo account so you can log into more than one service (ie. MSN and Yahoo!) at the same time, save preferences and also log conversations if you want. All in all, it’s a quality tool and I’d recommend using it.