And more cuteness (of sorts). Last night I got around to adding the first Man of the Moment for 2004. I decided to pick Phixx cutie Andrew Kinlochan in celebration of another gay pop idol. Phixx will release their second single towards the end of February so, hopefully, there will be some more information to post about them then.

Dermot O’Leary is still proving popular because of this recent appearances on Channel 4 and I am surprised Josh Harnett, Ben Affleck and Colin Farrell get so little attention.

On this day…

2004: Too Cute

Do you ever start to write entries for your blog but do not ever get round to publishing them? Today, I have just uncovered an entry I was going to publish when I put the first page up for the Man of the Moment project but for some reason I never got round to it. I have activated it today but left it in the place it was originally intended.

Similarly, I was about to start writing the Man of the Moment FAQ section but had a feeling I had written it already. And it was true but I have never hit ‘publish’ so I have updated it to be a little more reflective of the current situation.

One evening I must get around to digging out other unpublished content.

What this does to the site, I do not know. Should I leave it where it was originally written or should I move it? If you go back to the entries for July 2002 they are now not wholly reflective of the content that was presented to the world then.

On this day…

2006: links for 2006-01-12
2005: Garden State
2005: links for 2005-01-12
2004: Make Me Write
2003: Entitlement Cards

There is another silly reality TV show on Channel 4 at the moment – Shattered. I am not following it except to know that Dermot O’Leary is presenting it and that always means activity on the Dermot pages at Man of the Moment section picks up. So, a warm welcome to Listen to Musak to all the Dermot fans who are dropping by.

While on the subject of Man of the Moment, Mark Owen’s entry remains top of the tree for comments. That’s a weak link to point to an article over at Manchester Online about Mark and his Music. There’s an interesting comment suggesting Mark’s under-rated album, Green Man, is being critically re-appraised right now – which is excellent for it is a fantastic album.

On this day…

2006: Brokeback Mountain
2006: Gotta Go Back In Time
2005: 2004 In 100 Pictures
2004: Oops, She Did It
2003: Jeremy Vine
2003: Poison Find
2003: A Blog?

If I can be allowed to be more self-centred – or inward looking – than usual, I have found the process of re-reading the year’s worth of entries to be very interesting. Not only have I surprised myself with some of the pieces that I have written but, when viewing them all together, it seems that the site is a lot more coherent than I imagined. There are some key groupings of themes which have emerged – it’s clear I have a fascination with transport – and there are considerably fewer trivial pieces.

Many of the words I have written are, of course, about my life and might be considered to be trivial to some but I feel I have gained an insight into myself with some of the longer pieces. And it is those longer pieces which have most startled me on the re-reading: I must make a conscious effort to write more discussion works. Perhaps I should open the comments on the main body of the site to stimulate further thinking.

Of all the other sites I have read across the year, I still come back to my old faithfuls. So, this is the point where I should wish Tom, Jase, Jason, Bart, Meg, Phil, Eric, Chris, Bravo, Nick and Luke a very Happy New Year. Oh, and those are just the top listed ones in my bloglines subscriptions.

Bloglines is to be nominated my tool of the year for 2003, it’s made the whole business of reading other sites so much easier (if only Blogger users would provide nice RSS feeds). Of course I shouldn’t forget Six Apart who, via Movable Type, make all this possible.

Writing Listen to Musak is one of the few creative outlets I really have and I am happy to have it as a hobby – it seems more useful than making a model of St Paul’s Cathedral from matchsticks.

Best wishes for 2004 to all who come across this page.

On this day…

2006: Resolution
2005: The Incredibles
2005: Shaun Of The Dead
2004: Honoured for HTML
2004: Unexpected Movie Gems
2003: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
2003: Mirror Picture

Well, I have finally managed to read all the entries from the year and I have reached December – the month for Christmas preparations and planning. Instead of planning for the big day, I was (again) talking about spam in my in-box or spending the week before Christmas in the United States instead of buying gifts for friends and family.

I spent Christmas Day in London and then went to visit family in the north. Returning home allowed me to return to one of my key topics of the year, transportation.

I ended the year lamenting the blogs that are disappearing. I am sure 2004 will bring new reading pleasures and, hopefully, I provide some pleasure for some people.

The full December archive can be found here.

On this day…

2006: Here We Go
2005: 2004 In Review
2005: Bruce Almighty
2004: Love Actually
2004: Review of 2003: November
2002: Why Do You Do It?

November was the second busiest month in terms of entries across Listen to Musak and the month in which the second of the soaps I remember from my childhood, Brookside, ended. I also seemed to be continuing my quest for the perfect ‘phone/pda combination

I visited one of my favourite areas of London to see The Weather Project at the Tate, a fascinating experience and one that showed me that there really is art that interests me. And once again I was back in Finland which caused me to contemplate flying for the second time in the year and also, for a short time, back in Oslo. Interestingly for a period when I did a considerable amount of site-writing, I concluded that I was quite time poor.

Of course being November there were fireworks and, for the first time in my life, I learned the origins of Guy Fawkes can be traced back to Elizabeth I. Elizabeth II, meanwhile, was playing host to the US President and I learned more about state visits.

The full November archive can be found here.

On this day…

2006: Here We Go
2005: 2004 In Review
2005: Bruce Almighty
2004: Love Actually
2004: Review of 2003: December
2002: Why Do You Do It?

September seems to have been a quiet month for me and there wasn’t a great deal on the site – only 14 entries for the entire month. Still, some things didn’t change. Again, there was some nonsense about gay marruage and some shocking news about a gay teenager who comitted suicide when the police threatened to expose him to his parents. In travels, I was back in Helsinki but, I think the highlight, was the trip to see the inside of Bush House. September’s highlighted sites included Dooce and Toweroad.

The full September archive can be found here.

October was another quiet month in the life of Listen To Musak but I said a little more than in September, but it was an important month in may personal life. I spent some time on holiday in Cornwall – which was fantastic but I didn’t really get to write about it a great deal. I did note the rather silly Marriage Protection Week and came back to one of my favourite topics, London Transport, although this time I was much nicer about my fellow commuters. It seems that at around this time I suffered writer’s block but not Stephen Gately – who I applauded for using his website to set the record straight about an incident outsde The Ivy.

October was also the month I started my ‘phone/pda search, which right now, remains an unresolved quest. We also met the Gay Team and I didn’t even get any trick or treaters at my door for Halloween.

The full October archive can be found here.

On this day…

2005: Dress Code
2004: Amélie & The Italian Job
2003: Review of 2003: July and August
2003: Review of 2003: May and June
2002: The Lord of The Rings
2002: Would Pepys Blog?
2002: Year in Review

Did we ever, truly, determine if the documents were sexed up or find those WMD?

In July I came back to my transportation topic from earlier in the year. Even now, six months on, little has changed. Online, Netscape died and we learned about Jason’s donut man.

I went to Paris – which was hot, sweaty and absolutely brilliant and travelled north which was great too; bought Marks Owen’s come back single and discovered I was part of a great consumer demographic. I also went to the great party in Hyde Park for that demographic! Of course, some people tried to pretend we aren’t people. In July we also learned that “The consequences of our current retreat from marriage is not a flourishing libertarian social order, but a gigantic expansion of state power and a vast increase in social disorder and human suffering”. Well, I still think that’s garbage now, just as much as I did in July.

The full July archive can be found here.

August began with a trip down memory lane when I discussed the first single I ever bought while learning that ringtones makes millions for the record industry. It was also the month when I started to buy music online via digital downloads.

The weather remained hot, which made a trip to Great Yarmouth for a stag party all the better (even the lap dancing club was interesting). The weather also allowed me to sit in the garden in the sunshine listening to the sounds of London radio.

Clause 28 was finally abolished but I only caught up with the news in August.

The full August archive can be found here.

On this day…

2005: Dress Code
2004: Amélie & The Italian Job
2003: Review of 2003: September and October
2003: Review of 2003: May and June
2002: The Lord of The Rings
2002: Would Pepys Blog?
2002: Year in Review

More good weather and a visit to Rye began the month that brought us more Big Brother and more flights in small planes (including a short holiday to Norway and a trip to a very sunny Helsinki).

I wrote about Greg Dyke and the BBC – about impartiality and the war in Iraq – which is an interesting in the light of events that came later and Lord Hutton’s investigation.

In the light of the war on terrorism, one of the reasons behind the attacks in Iraq, I read more about plans for UK ID cards.

Dr Kildare came out and I made the first entry in the gay marriages category when the Archbishop of Canterbury disappointed many and, the first of two soap operas of my childhood ended when Crossroads shut the doors for a second time (this time it was all a dream). The other was to be Brookside in November.

The full May archive can be found here.

In many ways, May and June were very similar – hot weather and Big Brother (in the guise of Dermot O’Leary and Federico).

I started to go through the motions of registering with the Government Gateway to file my tax return (a process that I would only get round to finishing in December). June was also the month I showed my bottom to a crowd of passing tourists for charity and was in the crowd for the Shrewsbury carnival.

Gay men got married in Canada; the church tried for a gay bishop; the Royal Mail closed it’s underground railway in London and Listen to Musak got the first user comments.

The full June archive can be found here.

On this day…

2005: Dress Code
2004: Amélie & The Italian Job
2003: Review of 2003: September and October
2003: Review of 2003: July and August
2002: The Lord of The Rings
2002: Would Pepys Blog?
2002: Year in Review

I started April ranting about trackbacks again, and I still haven’t properly implemented them on my site. April saw me visit Fortnum and Mason at the start of, what was to become, a heatwave (which makes for the best views from my house). I made the first of my visits to AFC Wimbledon and today I can still recall standing on the stands in the heat.

Listen to Musak’s design changed in April and I also made the first of many entries about SkyPlus as well as another about the state of digital music. And April was the month when Craigslist made it to London.

The full April archive can be found here.

On this day…

2004: House Of Flying Daggers
2003: Review of 2003: March
2003: Review of 2003: February
2003: Review of 2003: January
2003: Listen To Musak in Review