music

Clean.

Posted by

21

toffee and I just cleaned up our flat again, since our Finnish friends will be back in town tonight after they were sacked from the lettuce planting farm job they had. I know. We aren’t sure how you get sacked from planting lettuce, either.

I’ve just gotten the bath tub/shower looking nice and white so I’m scared that I’ll make it all dirty again when I have a shower as I have dirty feet from all my housemaid action. I should note down that tofu actually did the vacuuming. What a moment! ;)

Mantech Mike still hasn’t mentioned anything to me about this ASX job. He only did it on Thursday or something, though. I guess I’ll just have to wait it out a bit longer and see what happens.

This week I’ve boosted my MP3 stockpile by another 4 gigabytes or so. Research is fun! Unfortunately I’m the only person I’ve ever met that likes the music I get. That’s if meeting myself counts. Technically I haven’t. I’ve never met anyone that likes the music I get. That’s better.

One of my top level teeth (A grade only) has become a bit sensitive to cold. Even sucking in air causes a little bit of pain. I think I may have been brushing too hard and cut back the gum a little. My fault for buying a “hard” bristle toothbrush thinking that it’d wear down and become soft after a few brushes. Whoops. Sensodyne times may well be ahead.

Last night we had an epic victory in actionball, 48-35. I’m actually surprised the other team scored that many times. Our shooters (apart from me, of course) were on fire. Literally. They’re in the burn ward at the moment recovering. I think I got some of their skin stuck to my shoe. Maybe it was my skin, since I still get a blister each time I play. It’s worth enduring. Man, I have so much fun running around in my pink shirt. I want to play every day.

So, anyone else wondering how most of the kebab shops are going today in Cronulla? Poor buggers.

Tea.

Posted by

25

Behold a different icon for once!

I’m drinking what I think is my first Earl Grey. With milk. No sugar. Is that protocol?

Tea isn’t my thing, really. I’ve never really been into drinking it. Sometimes I have odd cravings/curiosities about it, like today, so I drink a cup. I have to use coffee mugs as I have no teacups in my cupboards.

My highlight for today is that I don’t have to go to court tomorrow due to there being a guilty plea. The lady on the phone said I may need to still do something next Tuesday, but that’s alright. Whatever.

My highlight for yesterday is that the man from Mantech contacted me with a new job at the Australian Stock Exchange. It’s some kind of helpdesk position but it is 24/7 with weekend shifts, too. It could be real hard work but really fun, or at least interesting. “Mantech Mike”, as I like to call him, will take care of it for me, he said. Hurrah!

It’s started to disturb me that it seems 90% of the listed IT jobs are based in North Sydney. What’s the deal with that? I wouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t such a bitch to get there from Newtown. If I get this ASX job it’s irrelevant, I know, seeing as it’s on Bridge street and all. Still, there’s clearly some conspiracy going on. I’ll crack it one day. When I care.

Tonight I’m meant to be going to a 20th at the Lowenbrau. I feel so old. Last weekend I went to a 21st so everything’s going backwards. Perhaps the world is letting me catch up for lost time. Or fate or destiny or some other guiding hand. Maybe it’s just because I have more younger friends these days. That could be it. Good thinking, old man Ollie.

The Electric Lady website is trickling along on the wheels of progression. I’ve been teaching myself PHP as I go. Most of what I’m doing is very basic but I suppose if you’re teaching yourself that’s how you start out. Jolly good.

I’ve just noticed I seem to have a weird habit of finishing my inane story paragraphs (ie, all of them) with some short sentence that almost looks like I’m talking to myself, or checking off each statement as I go. I don’t know if this revelation is important or not, even indicative. I don’t really enjoy reading over what I’ve written while I show this particular tendency, so I’m going to make a conscious effort to stop. Unless, of course, I realise that I have no other way to neatly finish off each paragraph.

See, that last one just feels like it’s hanging. I need my “full stop statement”.

Even that one seems cut off. Argh, this will be a challenge!

Just to show I’m not all class with my fancy pants Earl Grey, yesterday I finished off my last can of KB for lunch with some sickening Maggi noodles. I even whacked in a wee bit of sesame oil and soy sauce when I cookd them but I think the flavour sachet is what kills me every time. I’m going to throw the rest out if I can summon the courage/energy. I suppose I really should confess one more thing: I drank the KB out of a beer glass. Yes, I poured it out. That probably makes the whole event a little classier, unless it’s considered as a tacky action, seeing as it’s only KB.

I’m scared. I think my RSI-afflicted arms are going to haunt me forever. Pain is bad. :'( It hurts to use computers. How ironic. I think it’s irony. Let’s pretend.

By the way (I know none of you care, but I’ll mention it anyway), I made a last.fm account for myself. I left TISM playing overnight just to be stupid. I wanted to pump up their presence on the site. What a dedicated fan I am.

Flugabug.

Posted by

11

We have the flat back to ourselves now that Heli and Krista have gone down to Griffith for a few weeks. By the time their job is finished down there Ross will be back from Finland, so they’ll be able to go back to his place I assume. I’m still slowly working my way through the chocolate cake. I’ve already eaten too much chocolate for one day as I feel sickly. I think I’m addicted to the sensation of this sweet, sweet sorrow.

Today I’ve told myself I have to make the effort to go and find some kind of African-esque apparel for this “Out of Africa” theme 21st party on Saturday night. I really fucking hate finding costumes. I’m hoping I can find a pith helmet (yeah, right) and a yellow scarf or something so I can just wear that off-khaki yellow colour and look like an explorer. I might need a yellow scarf, too. Maybe I’ll just wear leopard print. I’m sure that’ll be a big hit. Hmm. Time to raid tofu’s underwear drawer.

Oh. I forgot. I’m meant to be working on this database for Electric Lady today, too. I also need to send out some emails that are about 4 weeks overdue. Maybe more than 4 weeks. Whoops. I’m over this whole idea of functioning. It’s too much work.

In what I think is a mature attempt at being pro-active, I arranged to work an extra shift at work each week as my hours had been slightly cut back and my funds have gradually decreased over the past couple of months. In a bid to stay in the black I decided to meet the problem early, rather than string it out until after Christmas and New Year and be flint. This little boy must be growing up! Either that or I was just happy to sell out. Whatever.

For those of you who were concerned: I shaved my neck. Yes, I know I left you all hanging for a while there but you have to admit that the anxiety build-up was well worth it, don’t you?

Oh yeah, you know it.

I thought I’d try making it look more square rather than following my jaw. Next time I’ll have a spirit level ready as it took way too long for my finnicky self to be satisfied/mildly confident that it was straight on both sides (not to mention the same thickness).

Fascinating, fascinating.

I’m quite proud I don’t have something hanging out of my nose in that picture. I forgot to check before I took it. Today is a good day.

I scribbled down the names of various artists on a sticky note at work last night. Musical artists, that is. I do that from time to time as I listen to the radio at work. Oh. The purpose? Why, to remind me to acquire their music of course! The hard part is walking downstairs to my bag to fetch the paper. It could be time to hire some help.

On Tuesday night the four of us present in the flat watched The Shining. It was about the fourth time I’ve seen it and I still can’t make sense out of half of it. Maybe it’ll take eight viewings. Better yet, someone explain it to me. Another question I have: how the hell can Shelly Duvall be so unattractive but at the same time appear kind of hot? I’m quite disturbed.

I can’t remember if I mentioned the handful of Queenslander 16 year old girls that randomly added me to MSN a few weeks ago. I use the terms “16 year old” and “girl” loosely. I’m beginning to suspect they’re multiple accounts belonging to the same person. That person being a rather strange man who wants to screenshot me showing my dick over a webcam.

Poo.

Posted by

15

I’ve been trying to work out a nifty way to export all of my 223 previous LJ entries in to a nice RSS format in order to have them all catalogued on my site. I could reformat the XML I’ve exported, but I’d still lose the URLs to the entries themselves. It’s a shame there’s no “historical RSS feeds” to flick back to and use.

In order to attempt this, I tried out ljArchive, a nice little application that can connect to LiveJournal’s servers and download your entire posting history and the comments that were made with it. Very handy if you just want to skim through your history. It even has some mathematical models and graphs that it can draw up if you’re in to those sorts of things. I certainly find it entertaining. For a program that didn’t do what I wanted it to do, I quite like it. I just discovered that it can export your journal in to a MIDI file, too! Now I can hear my journal played as notes. Useless, but sexy.

I just got back from Newcastle and saw Grant, my mystical elf cousin/uncle. I arrived at Lake Macquarie around 3pm and we went up around Civic to check out the developments around the waterfront. Very impressive. He’s just bought a terrace house a short walk from there in Cooks Hill. It’s a cute little place. We ended up watching the NRL final back at the shack with some Italian takeaway and had a few quiet drinks. We retired at around 10pm and I failed to get more than 1 hour of solid sleep at any one time, leading to my decision to sleep in until 9am instead of getting up at 6am like I’d originally intended.

This morning, at 9am, I got up and sat outside for a while after drinking the short black Grant made me at around 8am. I guess it took a while to hit me. It’s always pleasant just sitting out on the bench at the shack and doing nothing but enjoying the view of the lake. There’s something innately peaceful about the whole experience. How wannabe-artistic do I sound? Geez.

I zipped over to Caves Beach before heading off and had a dip. There was no surf at all and I was a little cold just standing around in the water so it wasn’t long until I showered off some of the salt and sand and got back in the car and made my way back down the highway and freeway to Hornsby. I wanted to beat the holiday traffic and left Swansea at 10am. I hit the Pacific Highway at Hornsby at 11am. Quite a good run.

On the way home I stopped in at Lou’s to give her a birthday card. I thought it was a rather appropriate one and felt impressed with myself for finding it. Self-congratulation is fun. It was nice being able to see her again and things seemed to go pretty well. The whole thing was reassuring, to say the least. Hopefully, if we manage to keep getting along like that I think things should be fine. I believe she’s drinking punch at the moment with her girlfriends. I could go for a fruity mix myself. I don’t believe I shall, though.

I’m spending the rest of the day preparing myself psychologically to sit down and completely dominate the work I have left for my project – tomorrow. I’ve always been a crammer and rather than fight against my nature I’m just going to ride with it then capitalise on my skills when the time is right. I feel so insightful.

Speaking of insight, it’s only been this last week that I’ve noticed a whole new side of music. I suppose I can now relate to a lot more themes in songs these days. Honestly, it feels kinda good. I’ve always been an experience junkie like that.

NIN.

Posted by

5

Saw Nine Inch Nails tonight at the Hordern with and Tommy/orchard. I thought it was tops. Trent played most of his old hits and the “people’s favourites”. I was most impressed. There was no encore, but there weren’t any popular songs left to play in an encore anyway, so no one seemed to look disappointed.

The warm up/support band was fucking horrendous. As fucking usual. What’s with support acts being completely shithouse? The only time I’ve seen support acts I like was when The Drugs played before TISM (but the act before them was bad) and when the Spazzys and Butterfingers (but the Spazzys were better) played before Machine Gun Fellatio. Every other concert I’ve been to has had not only forgettable, but painful support acts. These pricks tonight didn’t even say hello or goodbye. They didn’t say who they were either. I don’t think anyone even knew who they were, let alone care.

Afterwards we walked back to the flat by foot, after wandering around Moore Park trying to decide whether to bus or taxi our way back. Now my feet are sore after about 90 minutes worth of walking. At least we didn’t get the bus back. On the way there I got abused by some shit-eating bus driver for only having a $10 note to pay for my fare. I already felt bad because I know they find it irritating (which I think is pretty lame that they do, but I tried to play along like a good commuter). I even dug out 60 cents in change for the $1.60 fare, so that it was nice and rounded out for him. My efforts were in vain as he gave me a death stare while I apologised for not having anything smaller. “That’s what they all say,” he said. He went on to tell me I should have prepared earlier and had smaller change available. I told him I didn’t have time to go and get change because I was in a hurry, since I had a bus to catch and all. What a fucker. Scott noticed he didn’t have his license/registration displayed in the appropriate slot either, so I was tempted to make a complaint and nail the bastard well and good, but I can’t be stuffed.

Huw’s having his buck’s night tomorrow. I’m going to meet up with them after work. I’ll probably only be able to make it to have a beer or two and watch the rugby and then hit some karaoke den for a bit of vocal chord action. I’m scared.

Distracted.

Posted by

9

I love 4chan. I know a lot of people think it can be of poor taste, but that’s pretty much me in a nutshell. There are some safe-for-work forums on there but where’s the fun in that?

Anyway, I’ve been lurking on that site for quite a while now. It’s a great way to kill time. <3 /b/.

One thing that turned up that some of you might like to play with for all of 50 seconds: Sand Art. Try it out.

This one lasts about 10 seconds: Google Logo Maker.

I found this page linked once, too. I think it was from 4chan. I can’t remember now. It’s an entertaining (in my mind) browse: For Sale By Mental Patient. Strangely, I haven’t seen that page turn up anywhere else before. It’s worthy of at least some kind of cult following.

Lately I’ve been clocking up some hours playing the PC version of Final Fantasy VIII after (again) failing to get past disc one of Final Fantasy VII. I don’t mind FF7, but I don’t like most of the characters. This was the third time I’ve attempted to play through it (I still haven’t gotten past where I was up to the first time) and after I read through the complete plot/storyline on GameFAQs I didn’t think it was worth it. The “shocker” at the end of disc one and the ending itself would have just irritated and/or disappointed me if I’d injected 100+ hours in to playing through the whole game. Sure, you can finish it in under 40 but I’m one of those annoying people who has to get 100% of everything done (within reason), meaning I kill a lot of time doing stuff that isn’t really required. Maybe the FF7 “sequel” Advent Children will be cool. Bah, of course it will be. I know I’ll end up playing it, somehow.

So, having found out exactly what happens in FF7 and feeling tired of it anyway, I fired up FF8 after Scott started playing his PSX version on his PC with an emulator. The PC version of FF8 is good enough, although I really miss having the save state and frame skip functionality that you get from an emulator. I’m coping, though. It’s definitely a fun game. It has its own specific annoyances, but which game doesn’t, right? Right.

Sorry to bore everyone with all that gaming talk. God forbid.

What else is on the agenda? Let’s see.

I’m still plodding through Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. I’m enjoying it, but it’s just taking me forever. I think it’s about 1150 pages and I’m up to about 750, give or take a few dozen. I started reading it last semester during my 2 hour breaks on Fridays. Over the holidays I didn’t really touch it too much and now I don’t have any breaks at uni (since I’m barely there), so I’m reading it before I go to sleep and when I can’t be arsed playing any games.

Oh, yeah. I’ve decided I’m going to find some good old 70s funk music and throw a party. 70s porn-groove-funk style music. Something to get people shaking. It’s actually hard to find good porn music, as Scott and I found out last night. I’ve been going through hundreds of CD samples on various music sites trying to find appropriate tracks. If anyone knows anything catchy, let me know.

By the way, I finally got around to trying out Google Earth. It’s certainly better than Google Maps. It’s kind of useless, really, but I did title this entry as “distracted”.

Boring.

Posted by

4

I forgot to do this. I’ve been meaning to.

I’d just like to officially record the fact that Queens of the Stone Age are the most overrated and boring band I’ve ever heard.

Pics.

Posted by

5

Finally pulled all the pics off my shitty old camera’s memory card. See the cut. There’s an awesome one of my cat, if that helps you decide to bother looking.

Just changed my shifts around at work, so that I get the penalty rates counting over my whole shift. 17% pay increase baby. \o/

Well, that’s how it’s meant to work.

Tried out iTunes because I was prepared to pay to download Gary Numan’s Pleasure Principle album. Turns out that’s practically the only Gary Numan album that they don’t have. Soulseek is way too slow unless you want mainstream popular shit, so it looks like I’m up shit/Amazon/record store creek.

Some of those other legal MP3 download sites are dodgy. I especially love the ones that request your email first, then on the next page after you’ve submitted it your credit card number, etc. Gotta love having Hotmail for trying shit like that out. At least until the second step.

Still, they offered ~ US$0.25/song as opposed to iTunes’ US$0.99/song. Bigger library too. Meh.
Here’s my favourite:

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

That’s from home though, when I lived there. I miss him. :'(

Scott’s been asleep all night, until I did this:

He’s gonna get me back for that, I can feel it. Actually he looks a bit like Chris Taylor from The Chaser and triple j in that one.

Don’t you think?

Especially this one:

Here’s another unflattering one of me I think, with young Tomy. Hope his mum doesn’t see this or we’ll never be allowed to kidnap him again for an afternoon. Man my arms look like noodles now. :O I should start trying to pretend I do weights somewhat regularly again. Or something.

hehe.

KMFDM.

Posted by

2

Was good. The concert that is. Yay. I bought a t-shirt for $25. Not too bad a price. They even did two encores and stated that the Sydney show tonight was their final show in their world tour of 2004, which was nice. Unfortunately the t-shirt van coming in from Perth wrote itself off after it ran in to a kangaroo on the freeway or something, delaying the delivery of the KMFDM merch.

Anyway, I’m glad I went and thought it was fun.

CLGA was also fun. Especially without a PC. I don’t think I’ll even take a PC to a LAN again (or LARN if orphic  is hosting it). The social side always shines through with the people I hang around with anyway – no one bothers playing games except their competition rounds. Not bringing anything saves so much time, trouble, stress and money as it’s usually free or a lot cheaper to just be a spectator and not a competitor. Of course you can’t win any prizes that way, but meh.

Fuck I’m tired.

Porn.

Posted by

2

From The Age:

Playboy is taking a chance on silicon instead of silicone. The October issue of the men’s magazine features several video game characters posing in the nude – images created by the game companies through detailed computer illustration.

The video heroines are presented in various stages of undress.

The Native American vampire Tala, from the upcoming horror-shooter Darkwatch, is featured in a smaller image wearing only a feather in her hair, while an anonymous model from the Sims-style party game Playboy: The Mansion is shown with only a joystick.

Sounds juicy.

tofu is meant to be coming over today. I think I’m meant to roll out the welcome mat for him if his car makes the distance. Apparently he’s seeing Muse in concert later tonight. Jolly good.

Saw Dodgeball last night with . It’s pretty good. Reminds me a lot of Zoolander, in a way. Plenty of washed-up cameos as well means it must be good.

I’m unsure about whether to bother X-Boxing any more. The guy who changed his mind changed it back the other night but I haven’t contacted him. I don’t think I’ll bother – the impulse is gone. One of the other ones I was watching the bid for ended up at $320 after being only $172.50 for days. hehe.

Gotta give Emma her earring clip replacements at work tonight. Must remember. Hrmm.