This time yesterday I was at The Forum. My ears are still buzzing after the gig. Motörhead, Rose Tattoo and Airbourne were on the bill.

I’d never heard of Airbourne before, they weren’t even on the ticket, but they were pretty good. Certainly loud and enthusiastic. And they’re local boys, too, so it’s good to see a local band on the bill with such big names.

I first heard of Rose Tattoo on a local radio station Gold 104 about a year ago, when I used to drive to work. I quite liked the tracks that they played on the radio, but never saw fit to actually buy one of their albums. In fact I’d never even looked them up on the web. Only now do I see that the lead singer is Angry Anderson, responsible for that wedding music in Neighbours all those years ago! Rock and roll.

Motörhead were who I’d paid to see, though. I’ve been a fan of theirs for years but had never seen them live until last night. It was amazing to see Lemmy thrashing out chords on his trusty Rickenbacker bass. I’d heard that Motörhead were the loudest band in the World and wow were they loud! Certainly the loudest rock band I have ever seen.

The highlight of the gig for me was Lemmy’s dedication of Rosalie to one of the greatest bass players to walk this Earth. Yes, they did play Ace of Spades and yes it was amazing, but Rosalie was just that little bit different.

Even more different, and unexpected was the song before that… Whorehouse Blues: an acoustic number, for those of you not familiar with Motörhead’s back catalogue. Even that was loud. It was funny to see Lemmy with a cigarette in one hand and a mouth organ in the other!

I suspect the tinnitus will die down just in time for me to go to Phillip Island on Sunday to see the Moto GP!

According to http://www.grandprix.com.au, there are (only) 220 days to go until the we can hear the sound of Formula 1 cars screaming around Albert Park Lake (a short stroll away from here) once more. And this year the V8 supercars are back. I, for one, am very excited about that!

This season, despite the controversies (not least this weekend’s debacle in the Maclaren pit), has been very exciting to watch and I expect that the rivalries will be even more fierce next season. I should certainly like to be there for my third(!) Melbourne Grand Prix.

I had heard that Bahrain was going to be the first race of the season, but according to the official website, The Australian Grand Prix will kick off proceedings on 16 March, so we will get to see the new cars first again!

Anyway, the point of this post is that there was a note in our PO Box from the organisers of the Grand Prix telling us that we could get the same tickets as we had last year at a reduced price if we book before the end of this month. I’m sure my father-in-law would vouch that the Four Corner Grandstand option worked out very nicely for us in 2007. I don’t really want to go by myself, so I thought I’d see if any of you guys fancied joining me. I can’t offer free tickets, but I can offer free accommodation on a first-come-first-served basis!

One of my favourite sections of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue is the Uxbridge English Dictionary, where contestants suggest new meanings for old words.

Not having the book I can’t tell you if the definition I came up with this morning has already been done, but nevertheless I thought I’d share it with the pajLog audience (that’s you, folks!).

Understandable (adjective): a shower spraying water that is neither too hot nor too cold.

You may have heard or read about the terrible incident that happened this morning in Melbourne City Centre. The fact that I’m writing this means that I’m alive and well, Thank God.

I was running late for work this morning as I had a couple of things that I needed to do, so I caught the tram from outside our door. This tram would normally drop me at almost exactly the point where this morning’s shootings took place. Shortly after the tram had left the stop, we were told that we would have to take an alternative route, due to an incident, believed to be a shooting on William Street. I got off at Flinders Street Station and walked along Flinders Street. There was a huge police presence near the Immigration Museum. I continued as I usually do across William St without joining the spectators and took the little lane past the coffee shops to the rear entrance to The Rialto.

A uniformed police officer stopped me from entering the building. He told me I wouldn’t be allowed in this morning unless I was "bullet-proof". He was remarkably jovial. It was then I turned and saw the blue tarpaulin at the corner of Flinders Lane and William Street, where one of the victims lay. As I walked away from the policeman my friend B rang me to see if I was okay. He told me what he had heard on the news and that the gunman was still on the lose. The reality hit me and I felt pretty nauseous. I still do as I type this.

I called K to tell her that I was okay. She hadn’t heard the news and so wasn’t worried at this point! I then followed her advice and made my way home. As I left the area by the Rialto, I saw how people were no longer allowed where I had been. I really was that close to the scene of the crime.

The air was abuzz with helicopters as I walked home, glad that I hadn’t been early for work and that the sequence of traffic lights had not caused me to walk along William Street this morning, as I occasionally do if the pedestrian lights are against me at William Street. I also felt a really deep sadness for those that had been shot. I don’t think I have ever felt so saddened for ‘strangers’ before. We witness so much evil on the television that we become desensitized to it all, I suppose, but this morning was very, very real.

With all the helicopters still buzzing away over the city as I type this, I am guessing that police are yet to catch the gunman. I hope they catch him soon so that no more lives (including his own, too many people have died this morning) are lost. And so that I can go back into work.

Update: the building has been re-opened and I’m back at work.

Wow!

We’re just in from seeing Roger Waters perform The Dark Side of the Moon Live in an arena that hosted the Australian Open finals last weekend and will contain very different waters next month.

I don’t know what to say about the gig. It was fantastic: gave the album at least one new dimension. There were several moments when the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, not least during Brain Damage. And I had shivers down my spine during Comfortably Numb. I also had bass envy, but that’s another story. The show was awesome and you should go and see it when it comes within 500 miles of you. K particularly enjoyed the flying pig at the end of the first set!

Must get some sleep now, the 6 nations rugby starts late tomorrow night and there’s talk of going to see one Eric Clapton on Sunday. Two legends in one weekend!

Most of yesterday was spent setting up (virtual) Linux servers, at work. This reminded me that some time ago I published a list of applications that I couldn’t live without on a PC. My list for Linux / Unix is much shorter:

1. Vim (of course)
2. Zsh
3. GNU Screen
4. w3m
5. Mutt

That’s about it.

Tuesdays are bass days and I had my third lesson last night. Now that I’m starting to learn more about music in general, I quite fancy getting another instrument (probably a keyboard) so that I can play around with it and find out how it all works. I’m finding scales a lot more interesting than I thought I would.

I recently signed up for a Ringo account so that I could see some of a cousin’s holiday snaps (and very nice they are, too). Ringo offer a facility (as so many websites do, these days) to see who else in my address-book has an account. It turns out that lots of people did (am I the last person on the planet to hear of this site?). Being a nosey bugger, I pressed the buttons needed to ask my friends if I could see their photos (and they mine) and had lots of (positive) responses back within minutes (presumably because you are all nosey buggers and wanted to see my photos). Amusingly, none of my friends who were on Ringo before me have uploaded any photographs whatsoever, which is fair enough because neither have I (except the standard profile one)! I think I shall be sticking with Flickr for the foreseeable future.

Yesterday I mentioned how nice it is to be awoken by rays of golden sunshine, particularly when shortly afterwards you realise that you don’t have to go to work!

This morning I was awake before the alarm clock went off (despite staying up until the small hours of the morning to watch the Chinese Grand Prix). The alarm in question is a clock radio, which we have tuned to ABC Classic FM as I rate by woken up by radio commercials below being woken up by dogs barking. Usually, we find ourselves being eased into the working day by a soothing symphony, but this morning’s wake-up call was a little stranger…

I thought I was hearing things as sounds of a male voice choir filled the bedroom; the words were familiar, but the sound was not. Realisation dawned after a few seconds that what I was listening to was a rendition of the classic Australian hymn, Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport.

This may not be as good a start to the day as discovering that you have an entire day off work, but Rolf Harris never fails to entertain me, so I rate that as a good start to the day.

I’m a big fan of Rolf’s and have been ever since I was a small boy and he was cheerfully drawing cartoon characters on the television with huge, thick marker pens while whistling or humming a tune. I remember seeing his face on the box of the stylophone my parents gave me and thinking wow, that can’t be the same guy. Rolf was also part of a Learn to Swim campaign when I was small. Even them I remember wondering if there was any end to this bloke’s talents when I heard that as a small boy he was the Australian junior backstroke champion. Out of all of the entertainers in the World, Rolf is the only one who I can think of who has entertained me all the way through my life, including the time I saw him perform live.

My favourite Rolf memory (so far) is that he was kind enough to autograph a boomerang that James sent him, which we then gave to Kris as a present, hoping that he would return from his travels to Australia (isn’t it odd that now he and his wife-to-be are living in London and K and I are over here in Melbourne?). I’d like to buy Rolf a beer for that (Rolf, if you’re reading, do pop in and see me next time you’re Down Under)!

After some years of development, Bram Moolenaar has released version seven of Vim. I’ve been beta-testing it for a while now and recommend upgrading to the new version as soon as you can!

I’ve updated my Primitive colour-scheme (should anyone want to use it). I need to do some work on my .vimrc script (which started off life as gjvc’s .vimrc) to iron out a couple of niggles, but you’re more than welcome to use it.

If you like using Vim (or if you just want to help out the kids in Uganda), you can sponsor Vim. Now that Bram’s got himself a job, all of the money goes to charity!

It has been a good day. Not only did I get to watch a very exciting grand prix from just inside turn five (and without having to get up at ludicrous o’clock), but I got to meet a racing legend.

Sir Jack Brabham O.B.E. was in the paddock signing autographs next to his Brabham racing car. Somebody brought him a little chocolate cake as today he celebrates his eightieth birthday, so we all sang Happy Birthday to him as he blew out the candles.

If he wished for his countryman to win his home grand prix, he would have been disappointed, alas. I don’t think that would spoil the race for those of you who are yet to see it. I shall not say too much more on the subject for that reason.

If you have seen the race, or if you don’t care but would like to see some pictures of fast cars, they are now available from my Flickr account. Enjoy!

It’s a good day, I can tell you, when you hear The legendary Murray Walker being interviewed on Australian radio and talking about his "very good friends" Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill winning World Championships!

Sadly, I cannot hear the F1 action from my office, it’s about 14km from Albert Park. K assures me that she can hear "fast cars" from her office. Life is unfair.

On the upside, I get to stroll down to Albert Park on Sunday to watch the race. The official website seems to be under a lot of strain at the moment, so I cannot get on and look up the program of events this lunchtime. Hey-ho, I’m sure it will be excellent, whatever.

On an unrelated note, I’m now running v7.0 (Beta) of Vim, which has some very natty spell-checking. This may or may not improve the quality of my blog entries and emails.