I remember ABBA. Judith Wilson used to live along the road from us when I was a kid and when I was over at hers one day when she brought out an ABBA record. I’d never heard of them at that point and don’t really remember if she played the record or just looked at it (come on, it was 20 years ago!). But they clearly didn’t make an impression as I never made a point of listening to them again.

Sure, they were on the TV loads over the years, at discos, weddings, films and so on – it’s impossible to escape from them even now. I just didn’t pay much attention. So last year when I was doing some redecorating I picked up the ABBA Gold CD from my girlfriend’s collection (it was closest to hand), put it on and was hooked. I never realised what a great band they were! And even more surprising was that I already knew all the words and could sing along immediately. I instantly understood why someone once wrote a PhD on the music of ABBA (I saw a program on the BBC about it years ago).

I’ve been working hard on the next version of John’s Background Switcher (which is in beta, contact me if you want to join in the testing) and fired up Media Player. I wasn’t sure what to listen to so just picked the first on the list – which was 2 Unlimited. Since that was terrible, I chose the next which was of course ABBA – and once again I’m reminded how good they are! Excellent coding music borne out by some of the work I’ve spent the weekend doing – including the much requested anti-pants filter. One of my colleagues was doing a PowerPoint presentation and my background switcher had decided to select a photo of a pair of pants on a moor as his wallpaper, much to his embarrassment! So as of the next version you can put in a list of tags and no photos containing any of those tags will be chosen – so no more photos of random children on your desktop!

Now, if I could just get ABBA to reform and record some new material – I know all their songs already…