For about eight months.
Hint: It’s me.
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http://www.earacheshop.com/store/earacheextremetalracing.html
This is just going to be awful, isn’t it? Intrigued what the touted Guitar Hero Functionality might be in the forthcoming version, but…
Extreme Metal Racing? “Choose from 10 Evil Earache racing teams like Deicide, Morbid Angel, The Berzerker, Akercocke or Municipal Waste (driving the actual dumpster truck immortalised on their album cover is a blast!)Hurl your band’s vehicle around an assortment of ghoulish racetracks as well as the pulverising deathmatch arena”
Oh god.
I’m still here, promise.
Coming up in the next few days:
- Nokia N-Gage overview
- Microsoft XBox 360 overview
- A year’s supply of mayonnaise
- Flippancy
Brilliant!
Quiet around these parts really. In Leicester a piece of road has melted and the Sun are convinced that in the current heat, estimated at 35 degrees centigrade, people are going to get cooked alive on the London Underground.
As a comparison I spent a day out in Lincolnshire fixing computers, where the only cloud in the sky was far to my left, and it was randomly purple. This was at 13:10. The secret is aircon.
Derick and I have a little project that we’ve started running recently - you can view it here, Leek and Potatoes. We’ve both decided to adopt a football team to support as neither of us really follow a local team… you can read up about our EXCITING and ZANY exploits there.
Also, bought a Nokia N-Gage but I’ve been too busy playing FIFA 2005 on it to post any impressions. A sneak peak - “It isn’t actually all that bad”.
So, I got older this week - the perfect excuse to take some time out and have a break. Louise was whisking me away somewhere in England and I only found out on the day of departure that we were bound for Brighton - a childhood favourite of mine.
Unfortunately I was a div and forgot my camera, but anyhow. It’s changed a lot since I was last there about eight years ago - gone from the seafront are many of the quaint little traditional seaside junk shops that you expect from anywhere with a beach; in their place, rows upon rows of bars. The last time I went there was one whole bar on the seafront, now it’s packed with the things.
Of course, the last few years Brighton’s proximity to London has pretty much guaranteed a constant influx of Londoners and as a result, the city itself has changed somewhat, and property prices have unfortunately gone through the roof (which is a shame as I’d really like to move there… no such luck). On the other hand it is nice to feel that Brighton has grown up alongside me as it’s certainly more of an interesting place nowadays for those who can take or leave quaint seafronts… The Lanes have retained most of their tiny coffee shops and jewellers - and the inexplicable vintage armoury which will sell you a musket for a few hundred quid if you were that way inclined.
Either way, it’s still just as lovely a place as I remember - while we only went for a night we were never out of things to do (which also saw me venturing into a bar, gasp. The lovely Suga Qube), played the most epic games of Air Hockey ever and ran out of time to eat at all the places we wanted to.
One of the places we were slightly less keen on eating at served Shark Fin Soup and Stir-Fried Ostrich.
Really regretting forgetting my camera now. Sob.
I was driving along the Roman Roads of Lincolnshire today, when a thought suddenly struck me.
If only Mark and Lard were still on the air, then I would be able to spend a lot more time listening to them nowadays!
At this point my train of thought was halted as the grille from the back of a fridge fell of the back of the lorry in front of me and started to approach at blistering speeds.
It’s not something you see every day. I’m quite glad.
This has fallen. Mainly due to laziness, and it hates me as a result; I come back and everything is now randomly displaying in bold type. STOP IT.
Regardless, things went a bit mental and something had to give. This was it - I’m sure you’re not really bothered.
Coming soon - more tales of webhosts, favourite pans and things I’ve purchased and whether they’re any good or not! Excitement.
Wasting Sunday after a day in Manchester seeing Dirk and Christine and perusing the record shops. It’s been a while since I bought any records so I had a bit of a blowout - partly aided by the £1 bargain clearout section in Vinyl Exchange.
So, Lift Yr Skinny Fists by GY!BE and Geogaddi by Boards of Canda for real prices, and some bargains…
Kill Memory Crash - When the Blood Turns Black; bought becuase it has an arty cover and an interesting name. I was expecting awful noisy heavy metal but instead, they’re eighties throwback electronica…
‘This is EBM1 that sounds just the way we want to remember it2′
They remind me of Attrition, but without the gothic overtones and warbling. An alright start I guess.
Comatone - One Into One Out; bought for the pretty cover and the fact that the first two tracks are called ‘Pick Up Those Disks’ and ‘Fat My Suck One’. The most promising of starts - Pick Up Those Disks is very reminiscent of Fat-Cat issue glitching but after that it all goes a bit mad. Skipping through the tracks you’d be forgiven for wondering if somebody else wrote ‘Disks’ and then gave someone a Casio for the rest of the album, but thankfully they do get started after a short while, something you quickly get used to. Unfortunately the rest of the album doesn’t match up to the opening track, but that’s not to denounce the album itself; more to suggest just how good the first track is.
Meets Guitar - Self-titled; Bought as the guy on the front looks strangely reminiscent of a friend and after failing to find the David Grubbs CD I was looking for, I wanted something guitarry. Yes, I had money to BURN. A pound.
Thankfully this is actually rather nice - a quiet and vaguely folky meandering collection of things that are lovely. Not as good as David Grubbs but definitely filling the space left by the David Grubbs Void.
Beef Terminal - Anger Do Not Enter; bought due to the band being called ‘Beef Terminal’. Twelve instrumental promising starts which rapidly become tedious. Take a theme and work with it for three minutes, rinse and repeat. Very much like a second-rate half-baked Fonn, and probably the biggest disappointment as on hearing each intro I was expecting something wonderful, and it failed to deliver every time.
Everything is Fine - Ghosts are Knocking on Walls; I can’t remember why I bought this but I really should have looked closer. Tracks called ‘Over the road’, ‘Today is the day’, The day is done’ and ‘Long night’? Yes! It’s tedious man and guitar noodlings.
So. Get Comatone and Meets Guitar, toy with Kill Memory Crash and avoid the others.
Also in a fit of impulse-purchasing, ‘Mount Age’ by Sinner DC. Worth it for track 10, Wintertown, alone. An absolute masterpiece in electronica.
1: Definition: Electronic Body Music
2: quote source: allmusic
I’ve read of a few wonderful spam e-mails recently… have a gander at these.
Rockwaldo received a message with this charming opening gambit:
Hell0 sir,
I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog
Russ got this e-mail from Sherrie Byrne:
Hi, Spastic
Find a date in your town today for life or just for the night!
I got one a few days ago, entitled ‘your brother recommends’…
Dearest brother, any problems during the intercourse? Try viagra!
Yeah, cheers bro.
This means I need a haircut with a fair degree of urgency. Bum.
I’ve just picked up Singstar Rocks! from Tesco Extra (in Grimsby of all places) with the microphones for a measly £19.97. Now I’m putting off playing it because I’m well aware I can’t sing for toffee.
The microphones appear to be decent enough too though, and have standard 3.5mm jacks - can’t argue with that for under twenty quid.
I’m back on the Halo again.
The playlists have been updated - a few irritating gametypes have been removed and a new bastard-hard playlist has been implemented, ‘Rumble Hardcore’ - basically a FFA BR start to please the MLG-wannabe nerds. I’ve played five or six games of it so far - not a single one has been a quiet game, there’s always been some idiot moaning about how they’re getting spawnkilled, or - gasp - shot with guns.
A while back I was doing a CD-a-week thing, what with spending a lot of time on the road in my job - listening to the same CDs over and over got a bit tedious so I upped my buying. Unfortunately I ran out of money, but still pick the odd thing up - and after hearing good things about Graham Coxon’s output after ‘The Sky is too High’, from which I loved the off-key bonkers feel, I took a peek around HMV and found ‘Happiness in Magazines’ for a fiver in their sale.
I could list countless albums and bands that have failed to live up to what I’ve wanted to hear from them. Unfortunately it’s just one of those things though - the feelings you get from the first time you hear a new album from your favourite band which is better than you’d expected (cf ‘()’ by Sigur Rós), or the first time you close the last chapter of an amazing story - the fact that things may never be quite as good again.
After ‘()’, Sigur Rós released Takk - a poppier effort, focusing more on songs rather than the gorgeous, meandering noises they’d been slowly refining for so long. One of the tracks from Takk has since become known as ‘the music from Planet Earth’ after being used on an advert for the show.
Machine Head released three quality albums at the start of their career - refining their style throughout. Their fourth, ‘Supercharger’, was absolutely shocking.
VAST released a debut album out of nowhere, encompassing quiet, industrial psuedo-goth sounds and a real feeling of mystery. Their second album, ‘Music for People’ focussed more on poppier aspects; from then on things just went pearshaped. The original magic was gone, for me at least.
Which brings us back to Mr Coxon. He’s learned to sing and according to the sticker on the front of the album, is ‘found back to the sparkling form which produced Coffee & TV’.
I suppose you could say they were right, but… some of us liked the change.
Have still been playing Guitar Hero these last few days. It’s still kicking me all over the place most of the time but I’ve managed to finish about half of Expert mode in lieu of having The Fear of the last section on Hard after getting chucked off stage during Cowboys From Hell three times in a row during the completely ludicrous solo.
Am hoping that playing Expert for a bit will hone my skills like a finely-tuned… thing, and will be able to blitz the last bits on Hard without even thinking about it. Not likely though!
Also managed to unlock the Grim Reaper, who now adorns my Expert career. There’s something deliciously wrong about making him play songs by The Donnas. Somewhat akin to a homosexual Action Man.
The new Lardpony album, ‘This is Lardcore’, arrived over the weekend and already Louise is trying to steal the free badges that came with it. The album itself is lovely - to begin with it’s a spot worrying as it launches into a semi-serious guitar-based instrumental which is about as polar an opposite as it gets when you’re expecting twee ditties.
All becomes well after the second track, however - the main riff is played on a recorder, which sets the precedent for an absolutely gorgeous album, a 50/50 mix of deviant love songs and witty tales of days spent down the pub.
For an album that’s been in the works for many years now - I first heard Post-Apocalyptic Love Song three years ago - you really can’t ask any more. Smiles all around.
Louise and I took a trip to Alton Towers today. It was nice, despite being rained on while standing in queues, a couple of the rides having technical problems and the chocolate volcano (advertised as a real selling point) barely having enough power to chuck out its complement of Cadbury’s Heroes far enough to reach the crowd.
Also, a duck, after gaining the attentions of a few people and hearing the cries of “aww little ducky”, proceeded to do a massive watery turd right next to my foot.
Wolverhampton, today.
“Oh, I really love your… [now here I’m expecting ‘hair’ as that’s the usual topic that people comment on…] accent.” [?!]
“Mm?”
“You sound like you’re from Bristol”
I’m hurt.
In other news, new camera battery arrived at last and more photos added to gallery and nifty popup code. Tried sticking it all through the W3C validator but Wordpress amends my tags slightly when I input them and it’s resulting in a couple of errors on the main page and nine on the gallery. I can live with that.
Tempted to put a page made in MS Word through W3C though, just to see what it makes of it…
There’s a new link up above which means I’ve actually done something with my time for once! Click it and then click any thumbnail to bring up a decent-sized version with a tiny bit of back-history.
I’m well aware there’s only four pictures there at the moment - I’ll be adding more soon once I’ve trawled Picasa a bit more.
In slightly less tedious thoughts, isn’t it great when you finally do things that you’ve been meaning to do for countless amounts of time? Like buying a PSTwo, though that was more put off due to a lack of funds.
Last year I sold my mobile phone - a Nokia 6100, and bar the external beepy loudspeaker failing on it once it was the best phone I’ve ever owned by a long shot. I bought an 1100 to replace it and while it’s been decent, I’ve been living with a flipping monochrome- no, worse - black and green display for ages, and work have also supplied me with one too so I’m forever getting confused as to which one is which.
A couple of days ago I finally bought another 6100 from eBay, which should be arriving any time now. Of course, this is being funded by the sale of my upgrade - the same as last year, there really isn’t anything that tickles my fancy available considering I don’t spend much money with O2 and they won’t offer me anything even remotely interesting.
The other thing? After a year and a half of it refusing to hold a charge, I’ve finally ordered a new battery for my camera. This coincides nicely with the photo gallery thing I’ve always been meaning to do… but perhaps I’ll put that off for a couple more years yet. At least I’ve got the space and the bandwitdh to do so at last…
Which reminds me - as a quick aside, CaTS hosting have so far been excellent, as has Wordpress (the Blogging system I’m using). The only problem I’ve really had was the somewhat sparse upgrade instructions for Tarski, the theme I’m using. After a bit of fiddling it all works nicely though, so I’m dead chuffed.
And it’s sunny outside! What is this curious sensation! Pokey.
I’ve registered ’strawdonkey.net’ and paid for some hosting to go with it. And you know what? I think I’ve put the wrong e-mail address in for both of them.
Bugger.
To see how this works. So far so good.
For those that are interested, I initially chose Textpattern to be my CMS/blogtool of choice, but after spending half an hour installing it and a further two trying to install my chosen theme with little success for no apparent reason, I bit the bullet and tried a different package instead.
The initial reccomendation of Textpattern was from my friend Matt, who also suggested Greymatter and Wordpress. Greymatter didn’t strike me as particularly appealing and Wordpress claimed to be easy to install and configure… and so far so good. There’s been the odd problem with changing CSS through WP’s web-based utility, which could well be a CHMOD issue (even though when setting the CHMOD to writable, WP still tells me “if this file was writable, you could edit it”) but I’m perfectly happy to muck around with all that offline and do the old upload/refresh trick.
Well, so far so… ‘alright’. Best not hedge my bets just yet.