When we moved to Moseley, now chum Ken risked a severe thrill power overload by taking on my 2000AD pile. I realised that, since I continued to buy 2000AD, I would, eventually, finished up with another enormous pile I'd need to get find a new home for. The obvious solution was to head this off at the pass by handing the accumulated comics over to Ken at regular intervals. Conveniently, Tharg now wraps up all the ongoing stories in mid-December, in preparation for kicking it all off again with a Radio-Times-style-Christmas'n'New-Year bumper issue. As a result around this time of year, I bundle up the year's comics and hand them over to Ken.

That wrapping up, passing over, and big fat issue has come to mark the end of the year and start of the whole "festive" period for me. It might be slightly foolish that a magazine's publishing schedule plays such an apparently significant role, but hey! these are secular times we live in, no matter what those god-botherers tell you. These blooming Christians are always trying to spoil Christmas for the rest of us. Anyway, there it is and it has many of the attributes we associate with Chrimbo. It prompts me to reflect on the year gone by and look forward to the year ahead. It gives Ken and I a reason to get together and enjoy each other's company. Ken has the pleasure of fun-filled prezzie, while I get the warm glowy feeling of a good prezzie given. Tradition perpetuated via the vehicle of the Britain's, nay, the Galaxy's greatest comic. Hurrah!

Merry Christmas chums, and Splundig vur Thrigg.

Clearly I'm in recovery now as, while delayed again by Daniel's swimming, I arrived while the support band was still on. I don't know who they were, they didn't say, and I didn't bother to find out as they were entirely unremarkable, playing straightforward goth-rock of the type favoured by The Sisters of Mercy. Based on the singer's accent, I think they were German. That, and they couldn't help slipping in a couple of Scorpions' riffs.

I'm clearly going through a bit of a gimmick phase at the moment. Apocalyptica, as you might guess from the name, are a heavy rock band. A heavy rock band consisting of, you might not guess, four cellos and drums. Like The Ukulele Orchestra and Modified Toy Orchestra, they are simultaneously deadly serious musicians and fully aware of and able to exploit the inherent silliness of their proposition. They can really rock, loud and heavy, as on their own Harmageddon or when they cover Sepultura's Refuse/Resist. They're also terrific fun, blasting out a ridiculously fast version of In the Hall of the Mountain King, or conducting Enter Sandman as a big audience singalong.

As someone who long ago acknowledged that I dance like a Dad at a wedding (because ... you can fill in the rest), I had a terrific time. Everyone seemed to be having a great time, even the overenthusiastic lad who charged the stage while the roadies were setting up and so got himself chucked out before the band even came on. The band, particularly, really had a good time. They seemed thrilled by the turn out - while the place was by no means packed, the gig had originally been booked in the somewhat smaller Academy 2 - twice as many here as when they played their home town of Helsinki. In fairness to Helsinki, I feel I should note that it's only half the size of Birmingham. (Damn, I just can't help myself sometimes.) Touchingly, I thought, they all shook hands with each other at the end of the gig, before applauding the crowd. Finally, perhaps to remind us of their classical training, they stood in line and bowed. Rock!

And that's Post-GDFAF. I managed three outings during GDFAF fortnight, and then four in the shadow. That's the kind of result you wanted, isn't it Pete? Russ?

They're not a light entertainment act that does a bit of punk,
they're a punk band that does a bit of light entertainment.

While I'd been aware of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain for some time, I might not have gone to see them had they not popped up recently on top kiddies' TV program, The Slammer. Two things sold me on them. First, the chap at the end, Dave, rocking out despite playing an instrument only slightly larger than the toy guitars sellotaped to the front of children's magazines. Second, they've got those kids completely hooked. Me too.

Lots of other people as well, it seems, because The Town Hall was fair heaving when the Bean and I took our seats. The Orchestra's stock-in-trade is, of course, familiar songs rearranged for eight ukuleles and voice. Sometimes they're deliberately comedic, as in their version of the theme from Shaft which is introduced in a round about way as an old American folk song collected in the Appalachian Mountains. Sometimes the comedy arises merely from the audacity of arrangement, Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody played as a slow waltz, or a gentle sing-a-long Anarchy in the UK. They somehow manage make that song even more English - everyone wants to smash the state, but let's not make too much of a fuss. Musical comedy demands perhaps a higher level of musicianship and commitment to the performance, which may explain why their Teenage Dirtbag pricked tears to my eyes. It's as transformative a cover as Johnny Cash's Hurt, and I found it quite remarkable.

On a little logistical note, the performance was in two halves with an interval. The Town Hall coped with the everybody rushing out for a drink without too much difficulty. Certainly I was able to get what I wanted without having to queue, and top marks also for allowing drinks back into the auditorium. Both the Bean and I were delighted that the little tubs of ice cream were again on sale during the interval. Other venues really should take note of that.

It's a modern world, so you can hear and watch the Orchestra on the miracle of the internet.

The JezUK Christmas tour wrapped up today when I got back to the attic at lunchtime. I presented a revised version of the talk I'd given at the ACCU Conference. I'd been a little unhappy with the original talk afterwards. While I thought the opening section was good, I'd been overly laboured in the middle stretch and built my point too slowly, before rapidly accelerating away like a mad thing towards the finish. The points I was making were sound, but I didn't put them over very well. This time round I expanded the opening section very slightly, but almost completely rewrote the second half using some much stronger examples (one of which is due to m'collegue Thomas Guest), and it worked much better. I enjoyed myself, and the chaps (and they were all chaps, alas) who came along appeared to enjoy it too.

If you're of a programming persuasion, you should give strong consideration to doing a presentation at something like this. You've definitely got something to say, even if you don't think you have. All you have to do is say it. Describe what you do. Tell people something that you know. You'll benefit from the telling, and your audience will benefit from the listening. Go and look at my slides - I haven't discovered some amazing new piece of computer science, all I'm doing is putting an everyday for-loop into (what is for most people) a slightly different context. Just because what you're doing doesn't seem remarkable to you doesn't mean it isn't of interest to others. It is. Even if you tell people something they already know, that's still to the good. Books like Design Patterns and Refactoring, for instance, sell by the wheelbarrowful precisely because they tell people things they already know.

There are currently four ACCU groups in the UK, but there are also Python groups, Perl mongers, LUGS, universities, general programming-type get-togethers and so on and so on in various cities, your own place of employment or client might want to have you. It's not hard to find an audience. All you have to do is do it.

Well since you ask, Russ ...

A couple of weeks before the GDFAFortnight, I wrote down fourteen fantasy gigs, just for funning, together with my guess about how likely such an occurrence might be. They were

• Bob Mould performing all of Beaster. Chances of seeing Bob are good to definite, but playing this set nil to zero. At his last gig in Birmingham someone called for Beaster. He laughed, shook his head and explained "I'm not angry any more".
• Kate Bush doing whatever the hell she liked. Nil. She toured once, in 1979, so I can't see her changing her mind on my account.
• Screaming Trees, in mid-size venue in the winter. Nil, no matter what my venue preference. Chances of seeing headman Mark Lanegan are probably pretty good, though.
• Maddy Prior. Good, if you want to hear carols and such. I'd prefer some of your actual folk.
• Rob Zombie, doing his earlier work. Middling to poor. Last album wasn't up to a great deal, I didn't think, and he's off making films anyway.
• Pantera. Nil, what with the band being broken up and Dimebag Darryl being shot on stage by a nutter.
• WKDN, supported by Prime. Absolutely nil. Two bands I used to see a lot when I was at university. The Housemartin's weren't entirely joking with that "fourth best band in Hull" line. WKDN did a kind of drunken-blues-rock and I never saw them do the same set twice. They toured as support for the Beautiful South once I think, which must have perplexed the audience a very great deal. I believe most of WKDN are now dead, which is a shame.
• Ministry with RevCo. Nil because Uncle Al Jorgenson doesn't tour any more. Saw Ministry do a fantastic, punishing, relentless gig about a year ago, and I'd love to do it again.
• Swans, just to see what it was like. Nil, although Jarboe and Michael Gira both still tour.
• Enablers, because they're top and I've seen them about this time of year for the last two years. Fair to good.
• BOM and His Magic Drumstick at The Jug. Reasonable. I've recently seen him in the park writing and playing.
• Flaming Lips. Top fun. Fair to good.
• Kyuss, playing for hours in the desert. Nil, although I understand there are still many deserts.
• Shellac, because Steve Albini is a Lord. ATP shipped them over in the summer for one gig. One gig? What the hell were they thinking?

That was what I fancied on the 23 September. What a lot of nils. If you asked me to do the same now, I'd come up with a different list.

This must be how people become drug addicts. I was forcibly late for the last gig I went to, but this evening I cheerily and voluntarily turned up late, thus allowing my first born nipper to go swimming. He's only seven, but he can probably swim rings around you. Anyway, I rolled up at the Academy having completely missed whoever the support band was, assuming there even was one. Perhaps next time I won't even stay for the headliners. *Sniff* I can handle it.

Josh Homme featured twice on the fantasy GDFAF list I drew up back in September, once as a member of desert-rock pioneers Kyuss and once (although I didn't realise at the time) as a member of Seattle proto-grungers Screaming Trees. Consequently, when Queens of the Stone Age appeared on the Academy listings, it seemed silly not to go.

Live, Queens of the Stone Age are more than they are on record, a great deal more. They have a richer, denser sound, more powerful, more hypnotic, more transporting. When you closed your eyes you were taken somewhere else entirely, something my chum Russ would no doubt approve of. I get the feeling that Homme only stops between songs because otherwise the audience would get confused about when to clap. Nearly every song had an extended intro, a bit of a diversion in the middle, and an extended coda. A couple of tracks featured so many false finishes that even Dusty Rhodes would blush. Left to his own devices, I'm sure Homme would go out and play for an hour, maybe two, straight through, take his applause, and then stride manfully off stage. And you know what? That would be brilliant.

This is post-GDFAF, by the way, because I found out about it while researching for or actually going to one of my GDFAF outings. As I left, I pondered once again the eternal gig-goer's questions - is one's listening enjoyment enhanced by holding a cameraphone in the air for several minutes at a time; what are those chaps who bring their girlfriends thinking when it's plain before the band even takes the stage that they don't want to be there; and why in the name of all that's right and proper do people pay good money to see a band and then spend the entire time conducting conversations by bellowing at each other?