The top ten Daniels, according to Google Australia (which shows pages from worldwide, but skews slightly in favour of Aussies):

1. The biblical Daniel.

2. The accompanying Book of Daniel.

3. Daniel Boulud’s Restaurant Daniel in New York City.

4. The Daniel Morcombe Foundation, working for protection of children from abduction.

5. Daniel Measurement and Control of gasses and liquids.

6. Craig. Daniel Craig.

7. Harry Potter’s Daniel Ratdcliffe

8. waferbaby.com … whatever that is — it’s being rebuilt. Someone’s blog, apparently.

9. Daniel Boud, who appears to be a photographer. Or if he isn’t, he should be — the pics on his site are excellent.

10. 16th century mathmetician Daniel Bernoulli

And me? Turns out I’m number 11. W00t!

And where do I sit in the world ranking of Daniels? (According to the Google Rank Checker, I’m down at 819th on Google.com)

Any interesting finds searching for your name?

Keating! — the musical. It was great. Very funny script, great cast, great band. Really good. I’m still chuckling over the election night coverage bit. Highly recommended, but if you’re pondering catching it, get a move on: apparently it’s only on for another fortnight.

PS. Interestingly, we (in our late-30s) were among the youngest there. No shortage of oldsters present — some of whom seemed to have problems climbing the steep steps of the Comedy Theatre’s balcony. It was almost enough to make us feel guilty for having seats in the balcony entrance row.

Damn. Superparma.com is no more. And they built the site in such a way that it seems to be impossible to get at anything except the splash page via archive.org, so the ratings they compiled may be lost forever.

Groan. WarGames 2: The Dead Code now in pre-production, and aimed at direct-to-DVD.

OK. I was talking last week about not renewing with the RACV. As it happens my renewal form just arrived, and my membership runs out in a few weeks, so I’ll start shopping. Ultratune is looking pretty good (thanks Peter).

Ah, emails. Do we all know the danger of hitting Reply All instead of Reply? Will Joanna Purdy be the next Claire Swire? Or maybe this one won’t snowball. (I’m too polite to forward it around.)

PS. Sorry, a server glitch (well, actually an upgrade I forgot was happening) has (hopefully temporarily) lost a couple of comments on this post.

Even before the ABC switched over to the ABC1 branding to help emphasise ABC2, I had started shopping for a digital Set Top Box to get the new channels. I’ve been able to sample them through the TV tuner in the computer, but of course watching on the big screen* from the couch is always more comfortable.

Originally the plan had been to buy a plain ol’ standard definition STB, until the new High Definition second channels of the 7 and 10 networks had started up. Now it would appear to make sense to buy an HD unit instead, getting me a total of 3 extra fully-fledged channels: ABC2, 10HD and SBS Digital (though given the latter is wall-to-wall foreign language world news, my chances of understanding any of it is minimal). Plus 7HD, which has a few bits and bobs of different programming.

The question now is, should I jump in and buy an HD STB, or buy a box that also does recording to a hard drive? Indeed, what about a dual-tuner unit so I can record two channels at once (occasionally useful during media storms when I wish to stoke my ego). Those Topfield boxes are meant to be pretty good — though it looks like only the high-end (expensive) model includes an HD tuner.

Or should I go completely over-the-top and wait for the Australian launch of TiVo, rumoured to be coming up before the Olympics in August? Monthly fees attached though, so not free.

Decisions, decisions.

Not that I watch a lot of TV, but on the occasions I do flick it on, it’d be nice to have more options.

*OK, my TV is just a 68cm 4:3 CRT model, but to me it’s still big. I don’t want any bigger.

Stupidest commercial of the moment: that Fisher and Paykel washing machine advert with the woman continually bending down/standing up to empty washing out of a frontloading machine, and bemoaning “Surely there must be an easier way?”

Pah, some adverts just make me want to throw a brick at the TV, and shout at the screen. (I used to have a sponge brick for such purposes.)

Yes there is an easier way, you stupid idiot: put your basket on the ground in front of the machine, not on the top.

At The Prince Of Wales, St Kilda, Wednesday night.

Emily Ulman was okay. Support to the support. Polite clapping. Justine bemoaned that she rarely gets out to see live music, but twice recently she’d got Emily. It’s like rarely flying, then taking an overseas trip and getting the same movie twice. No matter how good it is, it would have been nice to have more variety.

Mick Thomas and the Sure Thing — Mick’s a genius. Superb. Why can’t all support acts be this good? Some new songs (You Remind Me was especially good — and new to me, at least), some old Weddoes favourites (such as Monday’s Experts, the ever-emotional-for-parents Father’s Day, For a Short Time), and a version of Our Sunshine (co-written by Mick with Paul Kelly) with a bit of a Spanish flavour. I must get me some more Mick Thomas CDs.

And then Billy Bragg came on at about 10:30, brandishing a cup of tea. Gigs can be made or broken by the crowd. He got a great reaction, and gave back in spades. Plenty of political chatter, some quite inspiring, urging people to get up and take action. The Yarra Song got a play, as did a bunch of oldies and some songs from the upcoming album.

A choice for the crowd between a Dylan and a Carpenters song… and the vote was for the latter. Later a version of Pinball Wizard done as Johnny Cash to the tune of Folsom Prison Blues, very funny stuff.

One… two… three encores — he just kept going, with both he and the crowd getting more enthusiastic as he went. By the time things wrapped up with a chorus-crowd-sung A New England just before 1am we were thoroughly satisfied.

It was also the first pub gig I’d been to since the smoking ban came in. Woo hoo, such a pleasant change to not have to automatically wash all your clothes and hair to get rid of the stink. Though two annoying smelly-breathed smokers did the thing where they come through the crowd behind others carrying drinks, then stop dead to claim a space where there wasn’t really one to claim, a little too close for comfort. Grrr. So I made sure to stand with my elbows pointing in their direction. After a while they went away.

But that didn’t detract from a great night.

And my plan for getting home worked a treat, too: the second-last tram (they go until 1:30am from there) to Caulfield, then the car, so I was falling into bed about 1:30, just wishing it wasn’t a school night.

Update: Billy Bragg’s blog about this concert

(With apologies to Bargearse.)

I’m alone in the house, blasting Billy Bragg on the stereo while cleaning up. Part of preparation for the concert on January 30th.

Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards… my God I love that song. Does it speak to everybody in community activism like this?

• For those who haven’t seen it (I hadn’t), here’s the original video clip for the song.

Tank Park Salute, though, saddens me. Ah, the power of good music.