Hacker’s Delight. There’s a copy of this at work, at it’s just the most useful, fascinating, clever, clever, clever collection of algorithms and bit-munging techniques I’ve ever come across. It’s like porn, except in binary.

P.S. This isn’t a hint

My ears have almost stopped ringing now, so I reckon you probably deserve a review.

Turisas: There’s only three things you need to know.

1. They have a sword
2. As well as the expected crunching guitars, throbbing bass and pounding drums, they have an accordian and a violin
3. They played a cover of “Rasputin” by Boney M

In short, they were completely, utterly awesome and the most fun band I’ve seen in ages.

Lordi were exactly what you’d expect: silly, over-the-top costumes, theatrical stage antics, and lots of cheesy horror/monster themed hard-rock. This was not a headbanging thrashfest: rather, it was the kind of rock gig you could happily take your kids to. But it was enormously fun, very professional, and the set was very impressive: in some ways it in fact reminded me of a West End musical, albeit a Finnish one with the entire cast dressed in rubber monster suits and set in a graveyard.

There were only two disappointing things: firstly, because of the low ceiling in the Academy, there were no pyrotechnics; and secondly, it was apparent that a large portion of the audience were only really there to hear Hard Rock Hallelujah: the reaction to a lot of the set was quite muted, despite the best efforts of some of the crowd. In some ways I kind of wish they’d played Hard Rock Hallelujah as their opener so those people could hear it and go home, and leave the rest of us to enjoy the rest of the set.

So, Eurovision proved kind of a two-edged sword for the Finnish rockers: on the one hand, it got them massive publicity and a sell-out tour in 2,000+ capacity venues all around Europe. On the other, it got them an audience who wouldn’t normally go to a rock gig and who were much harder work than an audience really ought to be. Either way, though, I thought they were awesome and definitely a gig well worth having gone to.

Turisas: [film1] [film2] [film3]

Lordi: [film1 (skip to about 1/3 of the way in)] [film2] [pic1] [pic2] [pic3] [pic4] [pic5] [pic6] [pic7] [pic8] [pic9] [pic10] [pic11] [pic12]