Currently listening to Biffy Clyro's new album, Puzzle, and I have to say it is definitely their best album yet. It's up there with 65daysofstatic for best album of the year so far. It's made a change from all the recent albums where it's taken repeated listenings to like the album. With the first listen I love this album. I am definitely going to have to see them live more often. I've only seen them twice and the gig a fortnight ago was possibly one of my best gigs ever.

After my last post on music players capable of Ogg Vorbis playback, I was recommended:

• Anything by Cowan (iAudio)
• iRiver t10
• iRiver iHP 120
• Samsung's YP-U2
• Kingston K-PEX

I can discount the iHP120 straight away as it's a HD based player and will be too large for what I want.

Update: I'm intentional avoiding any Apple products.

iRiver t10

iRiver T10

90GBP will get me a 2GB device. Several people have claimed it works as USB mass storage, although I've seen someone say American versions wouldn't work. iRiver have a firmware updater to convert it to UMS, so I might need to find a Windows installation. It has good battery life of around 45-50 hours from a single AA battery, which is good. It's got good reviews for its sound quality and its rugged construction might make it good in the gym.

Kingston K-PEX100

Kingston K-PEX100

A 2GB model will set me back around 65GBP. It's a touch larger, but thinner than the T10. Looks like a UMS device. It can be expanded with miniSD cards, which seems a nice feature. It only has a 17 hour battery time using the internal rechargable, which seems a bit low, considering my CD player will do 120 hours off two AA. Reviews have mentioned that the build quality is a little budget and a couple of firmware bugs, but hopefully these have been fixed now.

Samsung's YP-U2

Samsung YP-U2

Can only find a 1GB unit for 60GBP, although there is a 2GB unit available. Battery life is only 14 hours from the internal rechargable battery. It's smaller than the iRiver T10 and is a UMS device. I've seen reviews complain about the audio quality of this device. I think the lack of battery life and audio problems will rule this one out.

Cowon iAudio U3 and T2

I wasn't recommended any particular models, but the two I'm considering is the T2 and U3.

iAudio T2

The T2 is a necklace style player, which is rather unusual, but I can pick up a 2GB model for around 100GBP. Battery is around 12 hours using the internal rechargable battery. Looking at the reviews, the supplied headphones make up the actual necklace part and you have to remove that to use your own headphones, which is what I'll be doing, having just bought some Shure E2Cs. They also say the controls are a little confusing.

iAudio U3

This is the most expensive of the products I've looked at at 115GBP for the 2GB model. Battery life is around 20 hours. Reviews have been very positive. Not sure if it's worth the extra price though.

Update: Apparently the 2GB model can only be charged via USB, where as the 1GB model comes with a charger too, Also, I read in a review that it has doesn't do gapless playback, which is very annoying. Why don't players do gapless playback?

Summary

I think my top choice is the iRiver T10, although each of the others have their plus points. The K-PEX is expandable, the T2 is small and the U3 gets good reviews. I think I've discounted the Samsung. I will try and find each of the players in a local shop to have a play before I go out and buy one. If you have any comments on any of these players, or you have another product to recommend I'd be very interested.

Oh, and continuing my trend of discovering bands that have split up, I've been getting into At The Drive-In. :S

If you use Last.fm, you may have got around to using their events feature where you can search for events near you and mark yourself attending those events. I was manually entering the information into my google calendar, which was a pain.

Fortunately, being one of those hip, friendly web2.0 websites, Last.fm allows you to get your data out in all sorts of useful ways, including you event calendar as an iCal file. Google being useful, allow you to display external iCal files in your calendar. Can you see where I'm going with this? To get this up, log into you Google calendar, go to "Manage Calendars", then "Add Calendar", then "Public Calendar Address". Finally type in the url of your last.fm iCal file, which will be http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/dpash/events.ics, although obviously you need to change dpash to your particular last.fm username. Now, you only need to mark yourself attending a gig to have it show up in your Google calendar.

You can use something like this to get it into your Evolution calendar.

Dear Lazyweb,

I'm after recommendations of a portable music player, which is small and can play ogg vorbis files. I'm not sure I need something with a large capacity; 2GB should be fine. Basically want something I can use in the gym, so I don't have to listen to the god-awful dance music they keep playing on MTV Dance. Reasonable audio quality a bonus. Last.fm support would be amazing. I would be tempted by something that could run Rockbox, but I suspect they are going to be on the top end of the size scale.

Spent some time checking upcoming gigs and I've settled on And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead, The Killers, 65daysofstatic, and The Barfly's Great Escape mini-festival, 3 days of gigs over 20 venues. Trying to decide if I want to go to see Inspiral Carpets and Electric Six in the world's dirtiest club.

I logged into Last.fm this morning to look at my recommendations and among the more obscurer suggestions was Marmaduke Duke, who apparently are similar to Biffy Clyro, Hell Is For Heroes, Reuben and Million Dead, who are some of my favourite bands. So I decided to log into Amazon to look to see how much it was, and guess what was the music recommendation on the front page:

I think someone is trying to tell me something. I'm now looking for some samples to listen to.

In less that 12 hours, my favourite band, Million Dead, will be no more. They announced on the 12 September that they were splitting up at the end of the current tour. I managed to get two tickets to their penultimate gig at the Camden Underworld. Their last gig, tonight in Southampton, is sold out. The best way to describe them is socio-political punk rock. Similar in style to Hell Is For Heroes, Biffy Clyro or Reuben but with an anti-capitalist tilt.

Willy Wonka was a capitalist confidence trickster,
a poster boy for neo-liberalism, a full-stop on revolt.
And the BFG a propagandist for an unaccountable regime,
Orwell’s vision with a wrinkled face.

Here's to the most gorgeous girl in rock; Jules.

Thank you for your order MR PASHLEY

You have booked 4 weekend (age restrictions apply) tickets for 
READING FESTIVAL 2005 at
Richfield Avenue in Reading on 26TH-29TH 
AUGUST. Doors open at 11:30, show starts at 12:00

Your card will be charged £532.95
Please note - this charge will appear on your statement as EVENT TICKETS 

Who wants to touch me. I said who wants to fucking touch me.

Yey, I've just bought tickets to go see Biffy Clyro and Hell is for Heroes in Norwich with my friend Charlie next weekend. They are playing in London on the 25th which would have been much easier for me to get to than Norwich, but that is the night I will be getting drunk in a bar in Brussels for FOSDEM. Annoyingly the same night, The Duke of York's cinema in Brighton is showing The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and Rushmore. :(

I've just got back from the NME Awards tour at the Brighton Dome. Fantastic line up; Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Futureheads and The Killers. I was a little bit worried that I might bump into Dawn, but thankfully I managed to get there early and got a place right at the front and didn't move. Was probably a bad idea to drink alcohol before hand, but I wasn't moving and my bladder managed to survive thousands of screaming fans squashing me against the barrier. Did mean that I didn't have to spend the evening worrying if she was alone or not.

I've not heard much by Kaiser Chiefs, but they seemed pretty good. I'm not sure if I'd buy their album, but I might go see them again soon with some friends. I recognised a couple of their songs, but I can't think where I've heard them. I can't put into words how I feel about Bloc Party. They are definitely one of my favourite bands and I can't wait to get their album on the 14th. Tonight was the third time I've seen Bloc Party. The Futureheads is another band that I hadn't heard much of before the gig, but I appear to recognise a few more that I thought. I did think I wouldn't bother getting their album until I heard their new single. Definately worth buying the album for. And then we had The Killers. I can't get enough of the Killers. If you haven't listened to the album, you really should. You'll be hooked after a few listens. Again this is the third time I've seen them and definately the best time.

I'm definately looking forward to see the same line up again on Friday in Cambridge with Nikki. Appologies to Charlie, Em and especially Lisa, who would appear to ever so slightly jealous. This time I'll take my camera so you can see.

I decided to listen to my Keane album today on the way to work for the first time in probably 3 months. I realised that as I listened to it I couldn't work out which songs had been singles. I could put this down to either every song being a single or all the song sounding the same. Annoyingly I also found myself singing along to it. God knows how I'd managed to learn the words to the songs.

I can't say I particularly like this album. If you like Snow Patrol and Hope of the States, you'll probably like it. The album is pretty much inoffensive and I think that is my problem with it.

I managed to pick up a copy of The Lost Riots on Friday and I'm in love. This has to be one of the better albums I've bought recently. It has a touch of The Verve about it, possibly due to the use of strings on quite a few songs. Highly recommended.

The other CD I picked up was The Holiday Plan's EP. I caught this band up in Leeds, supporting Reuben, by chance, and having listened to the EP, they are as good as I remember them. They are taking part in some competition on MTV2 to win a recording contract. I hope they make it.

Talking of Reuben, I discovered the reason I couldn't find their albums was that it doesn't come out until tomorrow. The bloke in Virgin wouldn't let me have a copy even though he said they had plenty in stock :(.

Reuben was the other band I saw up in Leeds last month and managed to pop in Virgin at TCR on Monday to get a copy. I really like this album. They are sort of a heavier, but more playful, version of Hundred Reasons. The highlight of the album is the current single, Freddy Kreuger