Back in the day (also known as 1996), I was just a 16-year-old computer geek looking for fellow Radiohead fans to be geeky with. Of course, there weren’t many at high school, so I had to be a nerd and go online to find kindred Radiohead spirits. I happened upon a chat room in a site called Polyethylene, named for a song from Radiohead’s Airbag/How Am I Driving? EP.

So I became friends with some fellow RH fans, meeting about five of them over the next few years. We, being nerds, knew each other through our Poly handles (mine was “nikki”, very original). I still know a few of them, keeping in touch mainly on Facebook. As such, the new social networking age has arrived and Radiohead’s usually on top of stuff like that. Now a whole new generation can make friends with other RH fans – the band has started its own networking site, called waste-central.com. There you can upload a snapshot of yourself, a video you captured at the last RH show and a few personal details about yourself, among other things. You can even befriend Thom. How special. I uploaded a video from the Cleveland show, which was, of course, amazing. (The band played all of In Rainbows, with a few from Amnesiac and highlights from OK Computer. The show sadly lacked The Bends, except for Street Spirit.)

Anywho, to celebrate the upcoming Toronto gig (seven days, seven days!), here’s Radiohead’s latest video, House of Cards, which was created with 3D plotting technologies instead of lights or cameras. You can even make your own!

Did I mention that Radiohead is the best band in the world? If you don’t already have tickets to the Vancouver show on August 19th, good luck with the scalpers!