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Here’s what they played:

• Drones (opening)
• Give it All

The rest are not in order, except the last one.

• Stained Glass and Marble
• Heaven Knows
• Like the Angel
• State of the Union
• Life Less Frightening
• Swing Life Away
• Chamber the Cartridge
• Injection
• Ready to Fall
• Behind Closed Doors
• The Good Left Undone
• Survive (short intro)
• Collapse
• Long Forgotten Sons
• Re-education
• Audience of One
• Hero of War
• Prayer of the Refugee

I might have missed one or two. I’ll update the order when someone who remembers posts the setlist online.

Been looking forward to this ever since Appeal to Reason came out last year. I’ve been listening to it over and over to make sure I know it in time for the gig, and they play mostly old stuff. The older stuff is, of course, better (Like the Angel was really great), so I wasn’t too bothered that I didn’t get to yell along to Entertainment (favourite from the new album, though Audience of One and Saviour come in at very close second and third).

Two things were really annoying though — just before they spun out Swing Life Away, McIlrath yells out some bullshit about some car crash victim named Steve who was recovering from a brain injury and who requested the song. It’s bullshit because they ALWAYS play Swing Life Away because all the fourteen- to seventeen-year-old girls love it to bits unnecessarily. So they weren’t really catering to his request. He should have asked for a better song… I would have. Maybe I should be in a car crash?

The other thing that annoyed me was that they ended on Prayer of the Refugee, which I refuse to believe is a good ending song on its own merits — it’s just because the newfags heard it on Guitar Hero and were all “hmm, maybe Rise Against are actually a decent band” and got into them through that.

But they were small prices to pay for having a setlist heavy in The Sufferer and the Witness, which reminds me of the best summer I ever had, ever, ever, ever. They should have fucking played Rumours though. Or Under the Knife. Not bloody Ready to Fall, which is about animal rights (arrghh!!) if the video’s anything to go by! But Injection was a really nice touch!

Hero of War was another one that they were definitely going to play, even though there are so many better songs. But the accoustic interlude of that and Swing Life Away (which followed) was nice because I could catch my breath! By this point I was two people from the front (which is my limit seeing as I’m just not aggressive and I was being injury-wary about the possibility of my finger being bent backwards (which would, according to medical professionals, shred the nerve that’s trying to regrow)) and getting the breath crushed out of me and the hydration sweated out of me.

I was pleasantly surprised by Behind Closed Doors. State of the Union was great as well, it has that really heavy opening which I love.

They weren’t too heavy on the chit-chat either. This is important because they have really shitty opinions of stuff and I could seriously not care less about them. Much more vocal were Anti-Flag (which top the list for best support act so far — yeah, better than Rodrigo Y Gabriela), who yelled about the lameness of racism and bankers. Chris Barker snuck on during Rise Against’s Life Less Frightening and sang along, which was so cool.

I could have gone with more from Appeal to Reason — the way things went this time, it sounded a bit too much like their Sufferer tour that I saw them on last time. I’d like to believe that they put careful thought into each and every setlist, but too many were the same as they were in May 2007, including the older ones (Heaven Knows definitely, and maybe Stained Glass and Marble too…). They’d better vary it up a bit for London next Friday if I can make it. If I can’t make it, they can play any old shit…

This is the most I’ve written about music, ever…

I am quite looking forward to receiving my charge sheet tomorrow. With it will come a magistrates’ court date, and that means I’ll have loads of information about what to expect in the coming weeks. I think we can all agree that being more informed is a good thing.

But what I am most looking forward to is when I get into real court. I’m going to put it in my Facebook status updates and loads of people I haven’t spoken to in ages will poke their noses in and ask what’s going on. And I’ll be really sour to them because they’re only making out as though they care because going to court is an exceptional thing. So, fuck them. I’m just going to practise snide, cutting remarks that’ll irk them by not explaining, and maybe they’ll feel a pang of guilt for not caring before or stupidity because I’ll make out that they ought to already know.

When I am on the inside, some months from now, I am going to get a ghost writer for the site so I can update everyone about what’s going on. I have a couple of people in mind; they know who they are. Presumably you are allowed to write stuff in prison, so I’ll have something to tell you guys.

This update is really disjoint, so sorry. I’m off out now — see you guys later.

W.

I have started to be a little more honest and open since Post 334. I admitted to being frightened on my blog, and I confessed to being upset on my walk home when the police caught me. Mainly the tears were frustration for my lost glasses. The point is, I have failed to be honest where it counts.

In my selfish attempts to reassure the more sensitive of you, I sugar-coated the whole ordeal slightly. So, I am making the following amendments:

• I am definitely going to prison
• I stabbed the “victim,” Elliot Bedworth, seven times
• The wounds were: one in the upper left arm, one slash across the left shoulder, a cluster of three puncture wounds on the far left of the back, two in the shin
• He knocked me over backwards and landed on top of me - I was using the knife with my right hand and hitting around his massive body
• The shin wounds probably happened as I was lashing out at him after he got up off me
• My memory is pretty hazy regarding the whole thing, and there are some things I don’t remember
• There were no witnesses or CCTV cameras
• For all of these reasons, and some more, legal matters at this point are not about getting me “off the hook” — they are about damage reduction

Because there are (or were) some bits that I couldn’t recall exactly, I only let myself tell the police “I don’t remember” — I won’t tell them anything that I’m not sure about. My only weapon here is the truth, and if I give that up then what’s the point in defending myself?

On Friday I will get my charge sheet. My solicitor basically said that it’s going to be GBH with intent. He also said that my chances of getting that reduced are small. Well, he didn’t say that, but it could be reasonably inferred.

Also, my time-frame estimate was really far off. Things would happen much sooner than I predicted. This could all be over and done with in a third of the time I thought I had left.

It’s coming, guys. Get ready.

Maybe I was a little trigger-happy with the Facebook Like Function earlier:

Facebook just rolled out a crappy “like” function for news feed items. But they forgot to implement it right, or in a way that its users could find really useful (is something that hasn’t been “liked” disliked, or simply overlooked?).

Just go to people’s profiles and “like” every story you can. It’ll piss them off by giving them loads of notifications and it will show that the stupid construct loses all meaning when you want to make sure that you’re not accidentally disliking stuff.

I would say that the best training you can have prior to switching to Windows Vista is a good knowledge of Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows XP.

2000 Advanced Server got me to grips with the Microsoft Management Console; a thing useless in itself but that comes with “snap-ins” — sets of settings and how they can be altered — which correspond, I am starting to think, with raw entries in the Windows Registry.

There is a directory full of these snap-ins in a start menu folder called “Administrative Tools” that can be turned on in your start menu properties. They come turned on by default in 2000 Advanced Server, and they can be turned on in 2000, XP and Vista. Some can also be accessed in other ways (right-clicking on “My Computer” and clicking “Manage” will bring up the “Computer Management” snap-in, for example).

Times when I’ve looked up how to make Vista Ultimate Edition less of a wimp and put some of that blunt Windows 2000 charm back into it — things like htting CtrlAltDel to log on, typing your username in instead of selecting it from a list (one thing you should never have to worry about, ladies and gentlemen, is what “display picture” the Adminstrator account has) and activating the built-in Administrator account — I’ve come across tutorials on the web that give you a guide on how to change the registry or run a shell command or (worst case) “download this .reg file and run it.” These tutorials might get the job done, but they’re stupid. That’s why I never used them. All the settings that you’ll need to change are found in the Administrative Tools snap-ins.

Note, however, that I’m not against hacking the registry when it’s necessary. I love finding and messing with the dirty, gritty Windows system settings to get something extraordinary done. But things like enabling user accounts or changing the logon screen just shouldn’t require so much work, especially when mentioning the Windows Registry to a user who doesn’t know what it’s all about is just paving the way to irreversible system instability.

Moving on, Windows Vista is not as bad as everyone makes out. The problems with it come when you install it on a laptop (because no laptop will ever be able to run Windows Vista well) or a computer that just isn’t ready for it. I believe that Microsoft should keep supporting and updating XP for those who are using low-end machines.

But install it on a system that is actually capable of running it and it becomes quite natural to use. Not a huge deal has changed since XP, really. The start menu is upside-down and doesn’t pop out properly, and the taskbars are a bit more shiny. Oh, and Windows Explorer now looks like IE8. That’s virtually it.

One thing I am having a difficult time making my mind up over is the new file structure for “My Documents.” Instead of one directory for all user files, there are now lots. Desktop, Downloads, Documents, Music and Pictures, to name a few.

Only some of these appear in the start menu by default. “Downloads” isn’t one of them. To add it, you have to add it as a normal shortcut, and it is placed somewhere else on the menu. That’s quite annoying. Adding your own directories isn’t particularly advantageous either. There’s no reason you should create a directory there instead of anywhere else on your hard drive, which makes us less inclined to use Microsoft’s directory structure. This is a customisation option that I’d like to see — the ability to specify your own often-used locations.

At least in XP, you had one root directory, and your pictures and downloads and music went in subdirectories from there. Now you’ve got many; it doesn’t make sense to have to click two times to get to some of them, and three times to get to others. It should be all or none, Microsoft.

Finally, I suppose I should mention something about the UAC. I like it. It’ll be good against stuff that tries to install itself to my registry without my consent, and it doesn’t get in the way nearly as much as it seems to do on other people’s (slower) Vista machines.

I’ve got the Windows 7 beta around here somewhere, I think I’ll try that one next.

The next step in human evolution, guys, is polydactlyism.

Make sure you find this kid and breed with him so we can have more fingers in the future.

As promised, here is a list of specs for you all to go “wow that looks cool” or “ah man, why’d you get that shitty thing?”

• Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition (Quad core, 3.0GHz)
• RAM: 8GB Dual-channel DDR2
• Graphics Card: ATi Radeon HD 4870 1024MB

That’s the essentials, I guess. I could give you the model of my motherboard or the capacity of my hard-drives but they’re much more boring.

Hope you all followed the excitement this morning/afternoon on Twitter — unless you were all too fucking distracted by the weather.

Tower Complete

This is the bomb site of my bedroom about three hours after the DHL man came and gave me three boxes. Blogging from the laptop right now as I’m still setting up software. Not even got to Office yet. Wow, Windows!