There are not many bands these days that can belt out 25 songs with such pace as Bon Jovi did on Friday night. Throw in the fact that they have been around for over 26 years, have released 11 official albums, two compilation albums and 1 live album, and have sold over 120 million records, then you start to see what an incredible feat they have achieved?

This was the second Bon Jovi concert we’ve been too in the past 5 years, the other one being in Hyde Park a few years ago.

The opening act was very disappointing to say the least (The last republic), apparently hand picked by Kerrang! Radio. We don’t listen to Kerrang! Radio because they are crap and their choice of band was proof of that!  At the Hyde Park concert ‘LIVE’ were the opening act, and they were absolutely awesome, playing loads of classic songs that they have become famous for. We have all their albums so that was very special.

We went to the Bon Jovi concert on Friday night with Mike and Kerry of  Wrightaboutnow.com who are also massive Bon Jovi fans. We had seats in row Q of block 106, which were directly in line with the stage but raised over the crowd. The position and location was perfect for seeing all the action and worth the 16500 pennies in my opinion. The O2 is a truly amazing venue for concerts.

The opening scene showed the band walking in a tunnel, similar to the cover of their latest album The Circle. The build up was immense before they lifted the electronic screens and Jon was standing there with his arms in the air singing “Happy Now”.

The two opening songs came from their latest album “The Circle”, before they launched into “You give love a bad name” and “Born to be my baby” from the Slippery when wet & New Jersey album. There was a really good mix  of music from their various albums. It must be quite tricky being Jon and deciding which song they will sing considering they have hundreds to choose from.

There were quite a few songs from the New Jersey album as this was one of their most popular albums with so many classic sing a long anthems, “Bad medicine” was awesome and part way through the tempo eased and Jon and one of the guitarist broke into a rendition of “Pretty Woman”.  Afterwards Richie Sambora sang “Lay your hands on me” by himself and then him and Jon sang the classic “I’ll be there for you”, which had the crowd going nuts and singing the chorus over and over again.

Then Jon called David and Tico onto the mini platform and they sang a few songs from “These Days” and “100 000 000 fans can’t be wrong” with only acoustic guitars, and an accordion. Tico has some sort of a box he was hitting and also had what looked like a rattler. They showed they can sing without the heavy equipment, but any die hard fan would have known that already.

I am not sure if the fancy electronic screens were theirs or part the O2 Arena, but they were cleverly used throughout the concert. There were platforms that moved up and down and the screens could be broken up into different segments and moved independently of each other adding to the atmosphere.

Below is the song list they managed to get through with ease.

1. Happy Now (The Circle)
2. We Weren’t Born to Follow (The Circle)
3. You give love a bad name (Slippery when wet)
4. Born to be my Baby (New Jersey)
5. Radio Saved My Life Tonight (100 000 000 fans can’t be wrong)
6. Lost Highway (Lost Highway)
7. When We Were Beautiful (The Circle)
8. Raise Your Hands (Slippery when wet)
9. We’ve Got it Goin On (Lost Highway)
10. Sleep When I’m Dead (Keep the faith)
11. Bad Medicine /Pretty Woman (Slippery when wet) / (Roy Orbison).
12. Lay Your Hands On Me (Richie Vocals) (New Jersey)
13. Open All Night (Bounce)
14. Diamond Ring (These days)
15. I’ll Be There For You (New Jersey)
16. Something For The Pain (These days)
17. Someday I’ll be Saturday Night (100 000 000 fans can’t be wrong)
18. Let it Rock  (Slippery when wet)
19. It’s My Life (Crush)
20. Working for the Working Man (The Circle)
21. Who Says You Can’t Go Home (Bounce)
22. Keep The Faith (Keep the faith)
23. Have A Nice Day (Have a nice day)
24. Wanted Dead or Alive (Slippery when wet)
25. Living On A Prayer (Slippery when wet)

One particular moment I will remember well was at the beginning of the song “Wanted dead or alive”. Jon started talking about watching the football world cup and then he asked the crowd if there were any cowboys in the house? Richie and Jon then started playing the intro of the song and the crowd sang the entire intro of the song. It was a goose bump moment hearing everyone sing in unison and seeing a beautiful sun rise sillhouetting the band from behind the stage.

It was an awesome night. I’ve uploaded a few photographs into our gallery. Videos and photographs taken with our Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7. Videos shot in High Definition AVCHD lite format. Videos owned by Lookatbowen.com

Newzbin is no more after losing a battle with the courts. They have now been put into administration because they couldn’t pay their debts. I always said the subscription to the site was too low. It was ridiculously low (as in £2 for 8 weeks worth of downloads).

Word is that they owe the Motion Picture Association (MPA) £230,000 just in interim costs, and that’s without a full costs ruling or a decision on damages. Apparently they also owe a software development house over £500k.

Newzbin is one of the original Usenet indexing sites and the creator of the immensely-popular .NZB format, which opened up simplified Usenet downloading to the masses.

While the major BitTorrent sites were in Hollywood’s spotlights as the major source of copyright infringement, Usenet sites such as Newzbin remained untouched.

This changed, however, when the MPA, the MPAA’s big brother, sent a threatening letter to the site’s operators in 2008.

This letter was followed by an official announcement of a lawsuit against the Usenet indexer early 2009. The case eventually went to the High Court in February of this year where Newzbin was found liable for copyright infringement.

Let’s hope a clone site can open in it’s place soon else websites such a Giganews and Grabit will suffer as a result.

It has only been three days since I ordered the Mede8er from Digital Era and  when I got home today, there it was on the table alongside my repaired Xbox 360.

So this post will be an “unboxing” since it seems to be “the thing to do” these days for gadgets. There will be no video, as I am not vain enough to hear my own voice, so you are only getting a few photos.

Box contents:

• Carry bag (nice touch),
• Full colour manual,
• Euro Adapter plug, power plug with fuse (wow),
• Batteries, Remote Control,
• Screws and vibration sponges,
• Stereo RCA cables (video, audio),
• HDMI cable (nice),
• Composite video cable,
• USB cable, extender cable for USB hard disks or USB keys,
• Mede8er with removable under cover, SATA power supply cable, SATA data cable.
• Western Digital 2.0TB SATA II Hard Disk (not included but displayed).

The box is fairly colourful with a lot of it’s features scattered on the front, back and sides. (a lot more visual than most commercial devices would show on their boxes). There are also colour photos of various screens, the remote control and the mede8er case. There are six languages listing the features as well, so it’s aimed at quite a broad international community. With the box open I can see two sections. The media player itself is wrapped in plastic and is surrounded by a protective sponge thingy and there is a half sized box containing all the cabling, remote control and manual as described above. I would give the packaging 10/10 as it perfect.

I’ve taken a few more photos of the box contents. They can be found in my photo gallery or by clicking on the image below.

Related Posts:

• Mede8er – Made in South Africa
  

We have used our Sony Playstation 3 perhaps four or five times to watch hired Blue Ray disks from Blockbusters. It’s time this PS3 moved in with someone who is going to use it in the way it was meant to be used (games / movies  / online browsing / facebook / twitter / social entertainment console).

We have an XBOX which we use all the time so that is the only reason why I am selling the PS3.

Note: This is not the slim version of PS3.

Specifications:

This the the 40GB version that comes with a built in Blue Ray disc drive for high definition gaming, movies and entertainment. It’s got true 1080p HD support. The box includes the motion sensitive SIXAXIS wireless controller. The built-in hard drive means there is plenty of space for movies, music, games and downloads. There is also a Gigabit network port and full broadband connectivity for easy access to the Playstation Network and online entertainment. It’s WIFI certified (B, G), can support up to seven Bluetooth devices, has USB ports on the front, which support USB Keys, USB Hard disks etc. It outputs Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital, DTS Digital Surround, has an HDMI port and can read DVD Video/Rom. Finally it is a region 2 player with PAL support. The box weighs 6.5kg with everything packaged inside.

I am also throwing in a Bluetooth remote control + my only two games (Grand Turismo 5 Prologue and Formula 1 Championship Edition).

If you are interested, you can contact me via email on lookatbowen@gmail.com. I can also be found on Twitter under the name @lookatbowen and on Facebook if you are lucky enough to be in my circle of friends. Of course you can leave a comment below with your name and email address and I will get back to you. All comments are moderated as it is.

Name your price – I will tell you YES or NO!

Wow! did you watch the cricket match between England and Sri Lanka on Sky Sports HD? A total different team that has been losing to Australia recently. What is going on?

There were terrific odds on England winning because everyone thought they would lose and even the online betting headlines had the wrong idea.

Heroes of England: Morgan not out on 62, Collingwood 46, Shah on 44.

I can’t wait for the match between England and South Africa.

Sorry guys, I lost the car in Turn 17,” says Romain Grosjean. Yes, we saw that. Disbelieving looks in the Renault paddock that scream “seriously, that corner??

Roman Grosjean crashed his renault in the exact spot Nelson Piquet Jnr crashed last year.

I guess he wanted to show Renault that he could crash there without instruction from the team.  That section of the wall must have a renault magnet inside it attracting their cars.

What the hell has Jack being up to all this time? It seems like ages that he was saving the world.  Well the wait is almost over.

To help offset the strike-induced delay, 24 will return tomorrow night, November 23, 2008 with a two-hour prequel (titled 24: Redemption?) that will take place almost a year after season six and will “set up the story that launches season seven”.

Filmed on location in Cape Town, South Africa, and Los Angeles, 24: REDEMPTION stars Emmy Award winner Kiefer Sutherland along with new cast members Cherry Jones, Robert Carlyle, Gil Bellows and Academy Award winner Jon Voight.

After sacrificing everything for his country, Jack Bauer (Sutherland) is wanted by the U.S. government and now stands to lose the only thing he has left: his freedom. Working as a missionary in Africa, Bauer is called upon to stop a ruthless warlord from drafting innocent children into his murderous militia. First, Bauer must confront his own torturous past and face an impossible decision that will change his life forever.

Of course, don’t expect to see this show in the UK anytime soon, so best you download it off your favorite download site.

According to their web site it’s completely new, and it’s never been done before… Huh!, what’s never been done before? – "mariposaHD is the world’s first High Definition TV show distributed directly on the Internet.  It is made by four ordinary guys, with consumer-grade equipment, in our living room.  It’s TV, 21st century-style".

Wow!, sounds interesting, especially since it makes use of HD technology and according to the web site it’s FREE (words I like to hear). They make use of P2P distribution, so basically you can use programs such as Zudeo (Powered by Azureus) or BitTorrent to download the episodes. The episodes are 1 GB in size, so a lot bigger than your average AVI or DIVX, but then they are not in HD quality.

You can also find the episodes at Dovetail. They are a browser-based media distribution platform that utilizes peer-to-peer transfers and streaming video previews.  Dovetail distribute in full 720p High Definition resolution. (Not bad for a web site).
P.S. Dovetail doesn’t support Mozilla Firefox – Hopefully they will get into the 21st Centuary soon.

I’ll comment about the show in a week or two after I’ve downloaded a few and watched them.