It always amuses me what a huge difference a good live performance can make. It can even make you love the songs you might have felt quite indifferent about :)
I got tickets for Coldplay’s gig from ebay in July. So all these months have passed surprisingly ( actually that is scary) quickly, and here we are at the O2 Arena.

Never was a die-hard fan of Coldpay, but love quite few of their songs and always wanted to get to their live show. And it wasn’t a disappointment :)

Despite the fact that probably more than a half of the songs were from the previous albums, and these are the songs which yo heard millions of times on the radio, Coldplay’s performance and visual effects managed to ad something to them and made them sound just great. Funny enough, the sound was so much better then during the support acts :)

Clocks, Speed of Sound, In My Place, Fix You, and of course latest material. Viva La Vida is still haunting me… together with Violet Hill.
When it came to Yellow, it was probably the most entertaining part. The whole arena went yellow with tens of yellow balls of different sizes (some of them were reaaaally huge) being thrown at the audience. And everyone just went mental (not menthol ;) and very enthusiastic! Well, how little people need to feel happy, hehe. It was simple but awesome. And it was all yellow :)
Simon Pegg also made a short appearance to mess around with his mate Chris :) Good fun.

So yeah, the concert was great. The crowd was also very responsive (despite the fact it was Monday night) and sang along all the time. Looking back now I realize how good I felt being there. I almost feel like I start missing it already…
We had quite decent seats and I had my sony camera with me… (Shhhh, no photography allowed) But you know what, I probably shouldn’t have even been bothered with that. Why? Well check the blurriness bellow and you will understand. Shhhtupid compact…

I might be adding some video recorded at the concert shortly. If I feel like doing it :)

And just when you thought everything was gloomy and expensive in the world, and particularly in London, here come free hugs! For everyone. No need to explain. No need to pay. No commitment required. Just come and get it. And you can even come back for more ;)

Get more information about Free Hugs campaign, see the pictures from around the world, or maybe even join the movement! :)

Yep, this is exactly what you need to do in the times like these. Shop shop shop as much as you can. To keep the economy alive. The only problem here is… hmmm… you need to actually have money to spend without being afraid of loosing your job and etc. Vicious circle. Yeah, I know. Anyway, let’s stop this boring monologue, for there are much more competent people out there who can talk about the crisis, but rather check the poster below which hangs in a shop window on my way to work. I think it’s brilliant. Love it :)

Good news: London is getting cheaper! And the picture of the realtor’s window below is a proof of that. I guess £100.000 off is a good deal, isnt’t it? :) We’ll see, might be going shopping on the weekend, hehe.

Genre : SynthPop/Post punk

Such a nice album, such a good find :) Slow, surreal, glam and seductive, dreamy and sleepwalking. Love it. Go check band’s myspace page.

They are everywhere. And I started noticing them :) I don’t know their meaning. Yet. Well, maybe I shouldn’t or I might just get crazy trying to solve them.

Here’s the first one. Do you think aliens left it? What are they trying to tell us? Or me? I hope it’s not ‘A’ for Apocalypse :)

And now the second one, a bit more controversial, I guess :) This time I didn’t even want to decipher it. And don’t worry, I am not a psychiatrist, this is not an inkblot test, and you are not a sexual maniac. It is exactly what you think it is :)

If you think it is some sort of graffiti, think agan. I wouldn’t even be bothered to take pictures of street vandalism. This is something more subtle, something you can only see at certain time of a day and with only specific type of weather. I’ll give you a hint. You need sun :) I believe you got it by now. It’s a shadow from a bridge rail. And you will be even more surprised to learn that it is not some dodgy bridge in town suburbs, but the Westminster bridge, in the center of London, next to Big Ben and The Houses of Parliament.

So now I wonder who the designer of the Westminster bridge was, for I refuse to believe the it was a design mistake. After all, it’s a British design :)

Few days ago I finally registered my limited company. And I am very excited about that. Such a good feeling! :)

As a matter of fact, I should have done it quite a long time ago, like some of my more dexterous friends did when they were in the same situation, but I could not do it earlier because of one small, but very important thing: the name. I did not have one yet. I knew that choosing one wasn’t going to be easy, but who could expect it to be SUCH A pain! :) And the lack of decent and half-decent domain names also did not help.

I literally spent 2 months thinking and brainstorming, hehe. I ran through many many names and variations, but still could not choose the one. Even on my holiday, during not so frequent moments of lying on the beach I tried to come up with some good name, but still no results (I don’t know, actually I am not so good at brainstorming when I am on holiday, hehe).

But once I came back to London, the next morning while sitting on the tube, I had that ‘snappy’ moment. I was playing with the name in my mind during that day and decided to go with that. That night I registered the company. SKRINSHOT Ltd.

So now I am involved in all sort of formalities and paper work : getting an accountant, opening a bank account, registering for various services, etc. Quite busy, but enjoying it so far (I mean, this legal, ie boring part). Well, I am excited, for it feels like nursing a baby, and actually it is one, my new-born baby. And I am a proud father, ie Director of my company:)

Good luck to me. Extremely busy times ahead. And.. we are open for business! Pretty much 7 days a week :)

P.S. Here are some names I came up in the process (they might look a bit random, but each of them had a history; oh, who am I am kidding, some of them are random indeed) :

• - totally unkool
• - bad hair day (love this one, but it was already taken)
• - prosto (means ‘simple’ in Russian. Absolutely loved loved loved that one. But to be fair it sounded a bit like ‘prostate’, and though possibly catchy, but still not sure if I like the association :) Again, this name was also taken, even the domain in .co.uk belonged to some, surprise, surprise, Russian IT company)
• - zeppelin (my favorite dish of all time, but no one cooks them better than my mom)
• -stereotype b
• - uncommon sense (great name, but a bit complicated, and taken)
• - Bigfoot
• - less ordinary (naaah, sounds like I am trying too hard)
• - in constant use
• - whysoserious (well, too obvious reference)
• - smena 8m (childhood nostalgia)
• - freshly painted (too arty ;)
• - simplocity (well, not that simple, I guess)
• - creatively challenged (why not? I am still not a design genius :)