My favourite band is Belle and Sebastian (if you’ve not heard them then go and buy all their albums and EPs now!). I’ve been listening to them for years but over the last couple of albums they seem to have become much more popular (i.e. most people I mention them to know who they are).

Anyway, I’ve wanted to see them live for as long as I’ve known about them but they never seemed to play anywhere near me. Fortunately they played in Manchester last night and I bought tickets the second they were on sale! Of course, instead of bringing one of my perfectly good digital cameras I forgot and only had my phone.

They were fantastic and well worth the wait. I particularly enjoyed their stage banter and the fact that Stuart forgot the words to one of the songs from their new album (which isn’t released yet although thanks to the interweb I’ve had a copy for a while – fear not though, I always buy their CDs when they come out). They didn’t seem to be following a script and it was kind of like having them come round your house and jam away in front of you. Class.

Oh, and as usual my celebrity-spotting brother went to the toilet and when he came back he walked past the band just as they were about to go on. I don’t know how he does it!

I’ve always loved photography and have wanted to create the sort of pictures you see in National Geographic magazine for a long time. My father’s been into photography for longer than I’ve been around and he’s taken some amazing pictures. And then my friend Ade started taking some stunning photos as you can see here. It was about time I got in on the act myself…

So after a lot of thinking about it I decided to shell out on a proper digital SLR:

I’ve spent the first few days just taking random pictures of things lying around the desk, like my Rubik’s Cube:

Anyway, I plan on spending a lot of my weekend finding more things to take pictures of – my good lady is already sick of me taking photos of her! You see, if she’d let me get a cat I could take pictures of it and leave her alone. Sadly she doesn’t quite see things that way… Ah well, one step at a time!

I’ve driven past Malham Cove (pictured) many times since I moved down to Yorkshire and intended going up there for quite some time – but until yesterday had been too lazy to do so.

So a few friends, my good lady and I went for a wander up there on a rare sunny January day in Yorkshire. As usual I wore my shoes that are slightly too short and lacerate my heels. One of these days I’ll either wear my old army boots or just buy a new pair – it took months for my heels to heal in New Zealand when I ran down a mountain in them – idiot.

It turns out that as well as some nice cliffwork, there’s a large limestone causeway at the top of Malham Cove – as modelled by Ben – which provides some entertaining slippery footing when wet (which I imagine it almost always is).

I guess it was a good tester of how much my ankle has healed since I sprained it that I could bound around hopping from rock to rock without going over it, being air-lifted home and having some bearded mountain men talking on the local news about what an ill-prepared muppet I was and how other people should learn from my mistakes!

There was even a pretty waterfall there and strangely I wasn’t tempted to dive in and swim around – maybe if it was in a tropical rain-forest I might have but this is Yorkshire.

Anyway, if you want to have a see all the photos I took, have a look at the Flickr set. Oh, and watch out for the camp photos of me!

Oh, I almost forgot, no walking trip is complete without a cheesy team photo and to satisfy that criteria I present to you this one:

I’ve been busy over the last month or so improving my wallpaper switching utility paying particular attention to adding more Flickr functionality. I’ve fixed a few bugs (including some problems with corporate firewalls), added lots more ways to get cool photos from Flickr, added proper multi-monitor support, improved the way pictures are resized, added an option to save all photos downloaded from Flickr to a folder and done a whole load of other cool things too. You can read the full release notes here if you wish.

If it were me, I’d just go and download John’s Background Switcher 2.1 now, you owe it to your computer to decorate it with amazing pictures!

I went snowboarding the other night at Xscape in Castleford. It’s got one of these indoor runs that’s made of real snow. It’s a couple of hundred metres long – which obviously doesn’t compare to a 2km piste – but is enough to remind you why snowboarding is so much fun. I hadn’t strapped myself onto my board in almost a year but it never ceases to amaze me how as soon as I do it all comes flooding back…

While I’m not going on a proper boarding holiday this year I may be forced to do a long weekend trip somewhere cold. Exactly one year ago I was in Tignes where I took the following photo:

Wish I was there and not in miserable Yorkshire! Roll on Spring…

As you know I love music and am constantly listening to one album or another. So I thought I’d put together a list of my favourites from last year with a recommendation that if you don’t own them already to go out and buy them! Click on the pictures to go to their pages on Amazon.

	Warnings and Promises by Idlewild Indie rock at its best and Scottish too! This is Idlewild’s fourth album and one I’ve played constantly since I bought it. Comparisons to REM are a bit unfair if you ask me, but if I was in a band this is the sort of music I’d want to make. And if you’re interested in where I’m going with growing my hair then look no further than Roddy, the lead singer…
	Silent Alarm by Bloc Party I heard ‘So Here We Are’ first which is a pretty mellow almost acoustic song and decided to get their album. I listened to it and found it a bit more heavy than I was expecting so put it away. Luckily I came back to it and realised what an amazing album it is. Every song tells a different story and has its own sound, fantastic.
	Eye To The Telescope by K T Tunstall Much more mellow than my usual stuff but I guess this one balances it all out. I didn’t just buy it because I went to school with her (which I did) but because the songs are from the heart and easy to relate to (I certainly know why she writes about the sea so much, I miss living on the coast too). Quality.
	A Certain Trigger by Maximo Park I saw them play in a small venue in Scarborough and I went from liking them to loving them. Their energy on stage was amazing and a lot of that intensity is to be found on the CD too. A breath of fresh air and it’ll put a smile on your face if you’re having a bad day!
	We Have Sound by Tom Vek Another recommendation from my brother (who pretty much recommends all the music I listen to). I heard the album a couple of times then saw him play in Leeds and he was superb. Very talented and I’m still unable to think of anybody who sounds quite like him – unique and brilliant.
	Funeral by The Arcade Fire I dismissed them at first as my friend hated them so much that I felt compelled to see all their negatives. I thought the singer’s voice was a bit weak and it was heavy weather listening to the album all the way through. But I started listening to them again after hearing them on MTV and liking what I heard and I’m glad I did. I now truly believe that it’s an amazing album and they’re a very talented bunch of people. Well worth persevering with. (Sorry Richard).
	The Back Room by Editors Reminiscent of Interpol – one of my favourite bands – this is Editors debut album and a fantastic one it is too. Dark lyrics, strong guitar work and very catchy, right up there with Bloc Party – another essential album to own!

I’ll add some more if I think of any but these are the ones I’ve been playing the most.

About a year ago I got a suggestion to make my Background Switcher application properly support multiple monitor configurations, just like UltraMon does. I had a look, thought it would be a bit tricky, prioritised it in my defect tracking software as ‘Priority 7 – When Hell Freezes Over’ and forgot about it.

I’ve recently started using a multiple monitor setup at work and am reminded how great it is to be able to have some windows on the left screen and some on the right. But it showed me that I really needed to get my finger out and get my background switcher to support it so I could do cool things like split a picture across both screens. As you can see below, I managed to do it:

Ah, the satisfaction! It turned out to be fairly straightforward and if I’d bothered to look into it properly I’d have done it ages ago! (Sorry Carl). So as of version 2.1 my background switcher will fully support multiple monitors. There are a long list of new features I’ve added and I have around half a dozen things I still want to do before I release it to the world but I should be done in a couple of weeks so stay tuned… It may be a bit geeky but it’s fun!

Update: John’s Background Switcher with multiple-monitor support is available for download!

I play football every Wednesday after work and I make sure I leave a little bit early so I can arrive 20 minutes before kick-off and get a really good warm-up. I always play better after a good warm-up and it helps reduce my chances of picking up yet another injury to add to the list.

Unfortunately I never seem to arrive early any more.

The drive from work home takes around 40-45 minutes on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday no matter what time I leave at (the football pitch is a further 10 minutes away). But Wednesday throws up something new every week. Today it was an accident in an innocuous section of 30mph road. Of course it involved 20 minutes of crawling at 2mph in a queue of traffic to find out that the road ahead was closed and I’d have to take a surprisingly long detour. I wouldn’t mind but the week before my Christmas holiday some work men decided to put up some traffic lights for one day only that caused several miles of tail backs. The week before it was another accident. And so on.

Those living in a big city won’t be surprised by this sort of thing but I live in the countryside! It shouldn’t be like this. And it definitely shouldn’t happen on a Wednesday – the only day I actually need to be somewhere at a specific time. Next week I’m allowing 90 minutes to get there. And if I’m still late I think I will scream!

To success! (I always drink to success).