Khal Weir

So its finally going to be 2010, from now on we get to say ‘twenty-x’ instead of the clumsy ‘two thousand and x’. Already it feels like the future is now; surely hovercars and jetpacks will follow. This year, I lost over 20kg, took up mountain biking again, started growing my own chilli peppers and got into cooking and baking. I’ve been learning Codeignitor, Wordpress, jQuery and continued to learn Django.  I saw two of my all time favourite bands live and had awesome holidays in Germany and New York. Anyway, so this is my lazy blogger year end post of stuff I’ve liked over the past 12 months.

Albums

Theres been a some great new music this year

Fever Ray - s/t listen on Spotify
One half of The Knife returns with a fantastic album that I just can’t stop listening to.

Muse - The Resistance listen on Spotify
Ok, so I admit its kinda cheesy, but I think this album is great.

The Dead Weather - Horehound listen on Spotify
An awesome debut from the supergroup formed by members of The White Stripes, The Kills and QoTSA;  this is my album of the year. I saw them live in Edinburgh and was blown away, Alison has an amazing stage presence and Jack White just kills on drums or guitar.

Them Crooked Vultures - s/t listen on Spotify
Another debut from a supergroup; Josh Homme (QoTSA, Kyuss, Eagles of Death Metal), Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) and John Paul Jones (Led Zepplin). I had to pay a silly amount of money on eBay to secure tickets to the Edinburgh show, but it was worth it, these guys rock!

Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
Just under an hour of awesome, lo-fi instrumental noise (imagine Exit Planet Dust era Chemical Brothers combined with Mogwai); great for coding and working out to.

Movies

There were some really terrible movies this year, with the exception of

Where The Wild Things Are
A beautiful adaption of the much loved children’s book, I’m tempted to go see it again already. Everything in the film is fantastically designed and takes inspiration from the source material; I loved this film.

The Hurt Locker
A superbly shot film about a bomb disposal unit in Iraq, directed by Kathy Bigelow.

District 9
I loved this, I was really into it’s documentary style beginning; although it gradually devolved into something more generic later on. For me, its between Where the Wild Things Are and this for the film of the year.

Moon
I caught this at Edinburgh Film Festival and have been looking forward to seeing it again since.  Moon is a dark, moody SciFi film directed by David Bowie’s son starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey with a great soundtrack by Clint Mansell.

Drag Me to Hell
Sam Raimi returns to horror and kicks ass, the train wreck that was Spider-man 3 is almost forgotten.

Avatar
OK, so I love SciFi movies, and this is just Dances with Wolves in space, but it sure is pretty and the 3D is really well done.

Software

Spotify
With a premium account, I have almost all the music I could ever want, on my desktop or phone, legally - whats not to like?

Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 (XBOX 360)
Its the Call of Duty you know and love, but totally Bayified.

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1 (XBOX 360)
The best 80 points you’ll spend on XBOX Live Marketplace.

Tech

Apple Magic Mouse
I’ve always thought the Mighty Mouse was one of Apple’s weakest designs, its awkward to use the side buttons and the scrolling nipple gets clogged up and stops working. The Magic Mouse is comfortable, works really well and has replaced my Logitech MX 1000 at work.

Nike+ Sportband
I recently started a running program and bought new pair of Nike+ compatible trainers; I’m still using an iPhone 3G which doesn’t have Nike+ built in so bought the Sportband instead. I really like the simplicity of it, press to start a run, press to end, plug into computer, watch the animated man run across the screen to show how much you suck at running.