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Having seen a few people post theirs, I’m spurred on to post my favourite albums of 2009. In only managed to get an MP3 player capable of holding more than 50 songs in November so my list this year is fairly short.

I’m very tempted to post my top 10 of the 2000s but I fear that would end up in me spending several days listening to albums and making no decisions.

In no particular order but alphabetical:

Calories – Adventuring

I saw this band supporting Johnny Foreigner in Manchester and they totally blew me away. Their songs are pure indie-pop, but not the diluted type that seems to have been so popular. Their songs barely make 3 minutes but have melodies and riffs that last.

Frank Turner – Poetry of the Deed

Being a big Million Dead fan, I’ve followed Frank closely since going it alone. Probably one of my favourite live performers, he released his third album this year. The album is definitely more musically mature and polished but not in a way that loses any of his folksy charm, or punk-rock anger for that matter. A strong and logical progression of his music.

Memory Tapes – Seek Magic

This album seems like perfect come-down music, combining catchy beats, laid-back guitar and almost haunting vocals. Confusing, but still very good.

Passion Pit – Manners

I somehow managed to avoid Passion Pit for ages despite them being plastered all over the blogs everywhere you looked earlier this year, now I wish I hadn’t. This is sort of album I wanted Hot Chip to make; a genuinely good mix of rock and electro. Any band that can get the indie kids dancing this much has to be on to a winner.

Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

I still have no idea to describe or classify this album. Nor do I care – along with Manners – this album never fails to put a massive grin on my face wherever I am.

So I’ve had the G1 for a good few months now and it’s pretty awesome except for the well-publicised battery issues. Now, I’ve recently started commuting which involves a fair period on the train and tube. Since I started, it seemed to be even worse battery life but I thought I was just imaging it; the battery didn’t seem to last until I got home however, this definitely seemed shorter.

It turns out that for whatever reason, the G1 really sucks when it doesn’t have a signal; it seems to rape the battery when it loses a signal while it frantically polls to find a reception. I installed Locale (a must-have app anyway) and an airplane mode plug-in for it and turned on airplane mode for the times I was travelling. The results are amazing, it literally lasts about twice as long.

Now, it goes without saying that this shouldn’t be necessary, the iPhone doesn’t need dirty hacks to last the day, but the battery issues were well publicised before I bought it. I hope this helps someone with their battery woes.

If you (like me, and apparently scores of others) are having problem with o2 Broadband and it dropping connections, it’s down to its crappy DNS. I recommend changing the router’s DNS to something like OpenDNS or Google DNS (which the Howto uses) for the time being.

How to change o2 router’s DNS

Below is a post that I posted to the VLE of the school I am currently at. I don’t make any revolutionary claims here, I would imagine that all of the tools have at least been discussed, if not used, in schools already; this was just what I thought might be useful for this school.

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