So much happening! :/

OK, I know I haven't updated in a LONG LONG time! But I've been really busy with work (A-levels mainly) so I really haven't had the time recently! I have so much to write about, and so much to say, but I can't say it even now cause I'm supposed to be going away over the weekend and I need to pack! :/ Anyhow, just so that you know that I'm not entirely dead, and HOPEFULLY (fingers crossed) I'll get time to update over half term (e.g. Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning next week), so watch this space! When I say I have a lot to write about, I MEAN it! :P :P

Until then
...


~lemon. =]

Oh Yeah! *sings*

Meet Ugli! Actually a SHE carrot, the latest addition to the fun and games of this life in the world! :P Oh, and you can see Idgi, the carrot loving spider in the top left too! =] ...

She's got a lot ahead of her yet! But being an emo carrot, life is HARD... I try to help, but in the end, Idgi is the only person, creature even, that is really able to help, kinda a problem cause he has a craving for tasty carrots! =] Anyway, Ugli soon turned to crime after becoming emo and failing to get a permanent job! :/ I got this poster off the police - goodness knows what they'd say if they knew I was harboring criminals! I even had to lock all the vegetable knives away cause Ugli kept trying to SHARPEN herself with them! Bloomin masochist!... =P xD hehehe...

=]

This post is gonna have to be kept short as I'm having to use a computer that is not my own! - and it's SOOO slow, I can't even see the text as I write it!! Suffice to say, I've been having a lot of fun! I went to see Children Of Bodom on Saturday which was REALLY good fun!! =P I managed to miss the first support band (Kuias) cause the queue was SOO long, but I got a 'limited edition' (of 666! :P) picture disc which I got signed too in the signing session beforehand! :) It's quite interesting - when I got it home, I found the word 'UNITY' scratched on both sides in-between the grooves at the very center of the disc! I dunno whether that means I have the very first one, or whether it's there for some other reason! But it's still quite cool! :) :) - and it's definitely in SOMEBODY'S handwriting, not just a machine cut thing! =]

The second support band (Moonsorrow) were not that great to be honest. They had it mixed absolutely perfectly and sounded just like a CD being played, albeit a very repetitive one - and with absolutely no LIVE element! :/ But that was all made up for by Children Of Bodom themselves when they came on! They started off a bit wavering I thought, probably due to having drunk too much during the signing session! =P - but after they'd been playing for a while they got better and got the crowd all nicely worked up, mosh pits abound! :)

There was also a VERY LARGE (and also very stretched! :P) CIRCLE PIT near the end of the end of the gig! (probably my first PROPER circle pit!) So after running around and around for a bit, it finished and I had to queue for ages before I could go home as I left some of my stuff in the cloakroom! - In fact, I had to borrow*cough*/TAKE some money off of the security guard at the beginning, cause I managed to become completely broke before I even got there! :/ (and they'd put the price up since I last went to the Astoria! :P) They also confiscated everybody's wristbands and made them leave them out the front at the ticket office thingy - and they also insisted on me taking off my (completely HARMLESS, and not even spiky!) belt which was kinda annoying as it was holding my trousers up DUH! :/ Still, it was a GREAT, and I met a lot of FUN metal people (as you always do at gigs and the likes! :) who I talked to throughout! =] =]

Other than that, I've been missing my college lessons again (which is VERY BAD - gulp!) - and trying to help CERTAIN PEOPLE with their problems and worries AGAIN! =] ...(YOU'RE GREAT! Don't knock it! =] *uber-hugz* - I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it! :)...

...Oh, and getting weird mood swings myself, so it's quite mutual! =P...

I've also got to do TWO talks for some youth events organized by some people from my church - which I have yet to prepare! (actually 'thoughts', but still very scary as it's the first time I've done anything like this I think! :)

As for the party I mentioned last time I posted, it was good fun too! I ended up going as BLACK in the end as it turned out you could go as any ONE of the letters OR a combination! :) - and me of course, being ME, went with the simple, natural choice! :P hehehe...

Anyway, gotta go now as I've already spent FAR too long trying to type this up on this slow beast! (something like 3 hrs so far :/) Besides, I need some food after all this typing! (and tea xD hehehe...)

Until next time!... =]
~lemon. =P

Kept busy at college!...

Just as I said, been kept bloomin busy at college, got ditched by my classical guitar teacher (tis alright, I want to play electric guitar anyway!), and discovered (again) how boring my life actually is at college - after being on holiday again :( ...

I also have an INCREDIBLY large HOLE in my pocket after I hacked my phone and erm... kinda broke it! :/ - right after I'd gone shopping with my sister just three days or so earlier and spent a load of money then! xD Still, it was getting old and I needed a new one anyway (the old one was about 10 years old! :P) I got a Samsung E740 from Tesco in the end seeing as it was on the same network as my old Sagem MW3020, meaning I could just grab my old SIM card and keep my number and address book without fiddling around! Plus, I like T-Mobile, cause the texts are really darn cheap at just 3p, (on the 'Text Appeal' price plan) and I worked out it was virtually the same number of texts for the money as the deals by O2 and without the hassle of HAVING to top-up by a certain amount each month! :P

Anyway, the new phone has built in camera and memory card, etc, as well as a lot of other things that 10 year old phones weren't blessed with! :P *thinks of endless hours of crazy face pulling and photo enhancing* hehehe... It also has a couple of dumb things such as stupid sound effects, (which I turned off) virtually no signal receiving strength, and comes with an awful set of supplied headphones (as mobile phones usually do!) that have rubber 'ear-wax collectors' in place of comfy attachments and look a bit like mini hair-dryers inserted in your ear! :/ lol It also has a Lithium-Ion battery, which has some advantages, but also means that it will probably be totally unusable in a couple of years because it will have permanently lost all of its capacity! :/ ...

I just spent a while trying to help somebody on msn with some relationship issues! A bundle of laughs of course! :P ... Not helped by the fact that I think they're cute, cool, interesting, etc... and would probably/certainly :P have asked them out long ago had they not had a boyfriend - even though they live miles away! :P ... so anyway, after the blasted relationship turmoil, and me TRYING to give GOOD ADVICE, (i.e. unbiased either way) I'm listening to some 'gentle' music in the form of ... melodic death metal ... hehehe... to get back into the normal and INCREDIBLY BORING swing of college life that I've come to know SO well! xD

My band seem to have kicked me at long last - though they don't quite know how to get rid of me nicely lol (they told me they wanted me on keyboards - I declined!) *idiots :P* ... anyway, I can't say I'll sorely miss them - I want to start my own committed and serious band instead and actually make some proper money! *likely - cough!*

Other than that, and the college coursework and stuff, I gotta see what's happening when, and get onto it ... I'm pretty bored stuck at home and I've no gigs to go to till March! There's a 'party' on Friday that involves me going as something beginning with the (stupidly obscure) initials of the person involved! (they're from my church) It all looks set to be a pretty boring restaurant trip without the choice of decent restaurant like you'd normally get if you went alone or with a mate, plus there'll probably be a load of really slimy indie/yer average Christian music played that will get on my nerves! Oh well ... what to dress up as even? lol It's gotta be something beginning with a W.O.B from what I gather ... Hmm:

'Worms Only Break-dance?' ...
'Well Oiled Bee-stings' ...
'Whirr, Oink, Bleat...' lol

Maybe I'll go with 'Whack! OOOUCHH... Blergh!'
or 'Would Oranges Burp?'

Hmm... 'Wasn't (that) Org...an-playing.. Brilliant?' *did I say something with sexual connotations? ... I think not! cough! :P ... hehehe*

Ah well ... How about 'Wales (is) Only Bad' :P hehehe ... well it must be ... that's where all the BAD people come from right? :P And then there's that unsolved *cough, Murder, cough* mystery in Bridgend, but that all gets put down to the 5x normal suicide rates in Wales when compared to the normal people in the rest of Britain! :P ...To many emos that's what it is! =P hehehe...

I shall fail to recount details of the rather twisted dreams I had last night (sshh you!) ... Believe me when I say that you'd rather not know the whole story! :P hehehe...

Well anyway, I REALLY DO need that cup of tea now that never got made... lol So for all you crazy moshers out there (and evil emo beings :P) who read my blog, take care and GB! :)
~tKn! (lemon) :D

A little review...

I heard "The Open Door" by Evanescence for the first time the other day and thought I'd write a little review type thing here on my blog. This is my first music review ever, so if it sounds stupid, go away and DIE!

Yes, I know the album has been out for over a year now, but in the absence of any NEW albums by any bands I listen to (most of them are scheduled for around March this year), and considering I just felt like reviewing something suddenly, I'm going to write about it anyway...

No review would be complete without a bit of artwork, so first thing is the band logo and cover:



As you can see, the cover of this album is even more gothic in style than previous ones, and definitely captures the element of romanticism present in the style of music and even the lyrics themselves!

The track list is as follows:

1. Sweet Sacrifice
2. Call Me When You're Sober
3. Weight of the World
4. Lithium
5. Cloud Nine
6. Snow White Queen
7. Lacrymosa
8. Like You
9. Lose Control
10. The Only One
11. Your Star
12. All That I'm Living For
13. Good Enough

The whole album is heavier than previous albums, although not in the technical use of the term, but the songs have been filled-out with more distorted guitar sounds than in previous albums. Notably, Weight of the World and Your Star include heavier guitar riffs, as well as most of the other songs. In the first song, Sweet Sacrifce, Amy Lee (the lead singer) sings about the same abusive relationship that was referenced to so much on their previous studio album "Fallen", released in 2003. The second song, also singing about relationship issues, has a more complicated background, one that inspired the lead singer's ex-boyfriend, Shaun Morgan, to respond with:

"It saddens me that our whole relationship was reduced to that. That, you know, almost three years we spent together comes down to 'Oh, woe is me, you don't care about me.' I'm disappointed that that's all that really mattered. I'm kind of irritated that our dirty laundry had to be aired, you know, all over the world. I wouldn't do that to somebody."

Which I thought was quite funny! (cause I'm mean - *Muahahaha*...)


Weight of the World, means exactly what is says, and sounds surprisingly positive during the verses. This seems to be a trend of all of the songs on the album and is illustrative of the dual chord nature (minor then major or vice versa, usually alternating between just two chords) of the music which has been adopted by Evanescence after bands from the symphonic metal and prog rock genres. Lithium is far more melancholy, named after the mood stabilizing drug, though Amy Lee claims it's meaning is not literal as she has never taken the drug herself. Then comes the rather gothic sounding Cloud Nine, one of my personal favourite tracks, though not that popular in ranking when compared with the other tracks on the album! But then again, I'm not a 'popular' tracks sort of person so I suppose this is to be expected! :P

After a brief mention of Snow White Queen, and the intro, which uses some 'trashy' drum sounds and other special effects, remeniscient of older songs, we come to Lacrymosa, named after the Lacrimosa sequence from Mozart's Requiem which is used as a backing to the song throughout. The latin word 'Lacrimosa' literally means 'Tearful' or 'Mournful', and is derived from the word 'lacrima', (also latin) the same word that the english word 'lacrimation' (the medical word for producing tears), and the spanish word 'lagrima', are derived from. Like You is slower and features a prominent piano (or keyboard) accompaniment. Some of the notes are actually slightly out of tune, which helps to give the song a sad feel and mood... :P

The song Lose Control is another dual chordal composition, with heavy guitar at some points utilizing whammy bar portamentos, and a slur between the 2nd and 1st notes of the scale throughout the backing vocals during the verse. (actually the subdominant and mediant in the key of B major, this is because the whole song is based on the Phrygian mode starting on on D#/E♭, which is what gives the song its exotic sound!) After the song The Only One, another heavier song, and Your Star, already mentioned, comes the song All That I'm Living For. This song has an acoustic guitar as part of the backing in some of the verses, and there are a lot of cymbals in the drum part during the chorus. As a result, the song ends on a decisive 'crash'!

The last song is called Good Enough, and is also the fourth single to come from this album. It is a slow ballad type song, with a string backing that gives it a nice relaxed feel! It has a long piano intro, and it is quite jazzy in style, especially some of the lower notes in the vocals, which also serve the purpose of outlining the large range of Amy Lee's voice. All in all, the last song rounds off the entire album nicely.

I suppose now, as I've finished talking about the songs, I'd better give the album a rating too... It's hard to say, but I reckon, out of 10, I'd give it 8, maybe even 9 - so pretty darn good! (I'm not usually very generous in my ratings!) :P

So that's that! Perhaps I will review some other albums later, by other bands, when they come out that is! Now back to the coffee (or tea) and msn!... :)

---
PS: *beth is hawt* (hehehe... xD)

WAHEY!!

I've just got back from Maidenhead this weekend! (yet another youth event organised by my church) It was GREAT!! I met a cute/evil little emo girl/guy/being there who I think might even be more evil than I am :) :) ... -you know who you are!- Still, it was great fun, even apart from that! ;) *nasty grin* (Actually, I might/would have asked her/it out, but it already had a boyfriend ... plus it lives in whales, and I don't like the smell! :P - so for now, I'll just resort to stalking and sending anthrax in the mail! hehehe)

I'm gonna have to keep practicing the guitar if I want to be a guitarist - I saw one of my mates at college sweep picking today - like a tornado - I'm gonna have to work on that bit! lol

So anyway! I haven't been keeping up to date with my computing projects, as I've mainly been busy with exams, evil emo beings, college and other non-computery things of the world, and beyond! ;) I've also been reading 'Soul Music' by Terry Pratchet (part of the discworld series) which is one heck of a good book, and very funny!! I'd highly recommend to anyone with a sense of humour!! 10/10

Of course, we can't all have a sense of humour, so for all those unfortunate people who haven't inherited one from somewhere, (either their parents were faulty, or perhaps something else stole it ;) I'd recommend reading a good book on how to hand-paint bathroom tiles instead.

I went to see Bullet For My Valentine at the Brighton Dome last Wednesday, which was awesome! And a brilliant venue! (I'd never been there before despite living just 20 minutes away!) Because of the shape of the dome, you get a more or less an unrestricted view of what's happening on stage, and they put the stalls down/remove them so you can mosh in the middle and whatnot! (In fact, the massive mosh pit was probably the reason most people went to see BFMV!) They also don't seem to have any harsh rules towards crowd surfing either, so while half the crowd was moshing, the other half were bravely being moved around on top. As you can imagine, some people were unsucessful in their struggles to get as far as the stage and instead were dropped somewhere along the way into a ring of fists lol!! We did wall of death somewhere near the end of the gig too which was amazing - although I didn't get close enough to the real fun for my liking as I was some way over to the side to begin with - hmphf!

Of course, Brighton being Brighton, the place was filled with uber-cute emo/metal girls (and not-so-cute metal/metal girls) - though I resisted the temptation/missed the chance to chat any of them up! I nearly watched a couple of them get run over by a double decker bus aterwards, but the bus managed to swerve just far enough to avoid them -unfortunately- *evil laugh* ... Was a pretty close shave though and as you can imagine, I was quite sad to miss the fun! :( they got away by about three centimetres)

As for the rest of the time this month, I've been living a completely boring and normal-ish life (and because my dinner is now ready and I'm STARVING) I'm going to finish here and disappear from the world of computers for another month! (unless I go online to get tickets for the download music festival - which I might if I can afford them at some point!)

I might also post again if I'm intensely bored for some/any reason! but right now, I need to go and overdose on caffeine!! ;) ...

~lemon.

-----
"Silly is you in a natural state, and serious is something you have to do until you can get silly again."
- Mike Myers

OK... so another long wait!

I'm beginning to wonder whether it was actually a good idea at all to put up this blog!? I mean, its useful when I want to write some stuff or I'm bored, but right now, my life is not that empty and I'm finding it hard to keep updating it! I also decided that I want to become a guitarist, so I shouldn't actually be on my computer at all, but should be practicing in my spare time! This is the main reason why I'm posting this now! (I've only recently decided, so I thought I'd post on my blog and get practicing for a while! chances are that I'll get bored and come online sometime so I should still be able to update as frequently as I do now!)

Well, anyway, I said "shouldn't" - that doesn't mean haven't! ;) I've been fiddling around with some code to allow python controlled particles in the 3D (modelling, animating, etc) application, blender. Yes, this is back to where I started learning python, but this time I'm back, it's in C!! So far, all I have to show for it is a little button next to the 'Particle Physics' panel that allows you to choose a text file! It scans all the text files for the text '#BPYBOIDBRAIN' or similar as the first line so unless it has this, it won't show up in the menu. Oh yeah, but I forgot to mention, blender has a new particles system! It's been rewritten completely for the next release (it's in SVN at the moment) so that's the reason for the 'BOIDBRAIN' bit. The new system supports running particles in parallel, which means, amongst a whole LOT of other AMAZING things, (check out the -unfinished atm- docs at: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Particles_Rewrite_Doc ;) it also supports boids! Only, the boids it supports are controlled by a simple set of 'rules' which can be given different priorities. This is where my idea comes in! What if boids are allowed to store the rules and priorities per particle? What if they can be modified by a 'brain' as the simulation progresses, making different behaviours per particle and circumstances possible? What if this is all accomplished within a VERY SIMPLE python script? What if the scripting interface and capabilities are also available to other physics types such as 'None', making true scriptable particles possible? What if?

Well, so far, the capabilities are confined to the 'boids' physics type only, although once it is complete, the only thing lacking from the other types will be a UI button (cause I couldn't find the space for it in the panel! ;) - easy enough to add in about 5 minutes! Actually, at the moment, all it will do is load a script and run certain functions within the script at (supposedly) the right times. (though I haven't tested this properly yet and it has some problems) The Blender module can be imported however so some basic functionality is available! TODO is to get the properties stored per particle (ID properties maybe?) and devise an API that's suitable for the job! The rest should be simple!

OK, going back to the problem with me using the computer too much, I'm probably gonna have a hard time finishing this little project anytime soon! (wish I had an extra week off from college but hey, I don't, and that's life!) SO I might have to leave it in its current state for a while! No problem though really!

The only other thing plaguing me with problems at the moment is that it's January exam time, so that means computer's off-limits for sure! Anyhow, once I get them over with, and I get my twenty minute piano recital and Music Tech coursework out the way with (gulp), I should be able to spend slightly more time on it! (although I've still got the guitar thing to worry about! - and that's assuming I'm still single lol or the time will just be filled... ;)

Anyhow, I'm gonna have a hard time persuading my music teachers at college that I want to be a guitarist rather than a pianist! (at the moment, I'm all set to go to music school or somewhere, although I took a gap year for that very reason...) It's back into term time on Monday and as much as I enjoy the company of the people at college, it's also a real pain because I thought I had another week, so my room's in a tip, my piano playing sounds like a very bad cough, my Music Tech coursework is about two months behind, and I haven't done a scrap of revision for my maths exams! (gulp - again!) Most of the revision will have to be done over the weekend, add to this the fact that I haven't had a bath in ages and that I wanna dye my hair blue (actually blue-black) before I go back, and the fact that I'm supposed to be hosting an event todo with the youth at my church at my house on Friday night that will also mean I'm out during the day, (although I might have gotten away with this one as I haven't heard that anybody's gonna arrive yet anyway!) and the fact that I'm up at some stupid time (3:40 am) right now, writing on my blog, (I'll probably publish it tomorrow morning!) and I think I've got my work cut out!!

With that in mind, and as I haven't had a decent nights sleep in days, I think I'm gonna finish here! I'll leave you with a screeny of my project as usual, just to water your taste buds, as it doesn't do anything else right now:

BOO!!...

You thought I was dead and gone didn't you? You thought I'd forgotten all about my blog right? You thought that I was SO busy with GIRLS, I'd forgotten to keep you all updated on my otherwise SAD and BORING life! HAHAHA... The day!!... So if I wasn't too busy with girls, what have I been doing? To be honest, I'm not 100% sure... Losing my mind probably comes in to it somewhere though! (and hence my memory you see :/... ;) Mostly, I've been actually doing my college homework for once, and staying ridiculously late at college every day so I can socialize with people! (see - so I might not have just been kidding around about the girls... :) Anyway, whatever I've been doing, it hasn't left much time for computers - not a bad thing, it just means that as a by-product, I've now got ABSOLUTELY NO interesting news to put up on this MOSTLY COMPUTING blog! NONE WHATSOEVER! So anyway, I've been listening to some pretty random (and I'd love/hate to see the FACES of my 'friends' at college if they knew the half of it all) music!! hehehe... ('The Laugh' - an infamous thing in my posts and emails, even in real life, signalling the beginning of the degeneration of the material presented herein, gradually approaching the state of deranged insanity and demented humour in it's purest and most complete form...)

Anyhoo - I've been listening to (amongst other things) dark wave and goth music - just out of interest... So I'm maybe not quite my usually perky self (that stuff is so depressing sounding and intensely boring, I nearly died just listening to it! That, and a couple of stories I was sent by a mate at college that didn't exactly help either... And as I've not been doing much (and as I'm beginning to feel that random feeling coming back on... hehehe...) I'm wanting to rant... OK - let's start with the basics:

1) There are so few 'proper' goths that they just aren't the musicians that other genres boast.
2) They can't sing in tune AT ALL!!! >:
3) They can't play in tune AT ALL!!! :P
4) They all sound like ABSOLUTE ****!!!

I'm pretty sure it would sound ALRIGHT if there was as much competition as in other genres, but the SAD TRUTH is that there's NOT, and that it all sounds **** as a consequence! Now for point number (5):

They just AREN'T HEAVY ENOUGH!! No matter what - they JUST AREN'T!! And the crossover between goth and metal just sounds like it was thrown together by a pair of old cranks in a tin pot garage, trying to replace the engine in a beaten up old morris minor with one from a 60's lawnmower!!

So basically - I've decided I want to try and make some goth-metal that actually sounds HALF DECENT!! Basically by throwing out the 60's lawnmower completely and reinventing the wheel as they say (actually only the enigine in this case). Goth is so 60's sounding - and it hasn't changed much since then - unlike other genres, which have 'fleshed out' in terms of sound quality and musical asthetics. I feel that it's time for a revamp of the genre in combination with newer, more modern sounds and textures. I call it: Project REVAMP-GOTH!! (or 'Regoth' for short!) I've decided I need to find a team of dedicated band members (I'm not in a band already so...) who are up for a bit of experimentation with the basic principals behind the genre and who fancy a challenge in combining this with METAL!!! Whether this will ever come to anything (my great idea's usually come to nothing more than being scrawled down on a piece of rotting paper and filed away until illegible) I don't know, but it would be a bit of fun, and there's definitely quite a wide, open, arena at present!

I'm dreaming of DEATH-GOTH... or METH... or maybe even METHGOTH lol!! :P

Anyhoo - that's the RANT out of the way - actually I've stopped feeling random again now (which is TOTALLY unlike me!!) so I'm guessing it either wore off because I was ranting, or because I am insanely TIRED!! Whichever the case, I'm going to bed now as I have to be up for college tomorrow morning!! At least you know I'm still alive, and you can rest assured once more that I still haven't found a girlfriend... ah well... I was discussing it with somebody at college recently... WHY exactly do I want a girlfriend to waste my time and money on anyway? To be honest, I don't!! But then again, if the right persons came along (or it turns out that the right -person- is interested in me - unlikely but!!...) then I might consider it... but I'm certainly not going out of my way to get one!!! I'm quite content with just waiting for people to either be interested in me, or to piss off somewhere else, such as uni, so I can forget all about them anyway! I usually have a problem in that the wrong people are always attracted to me, and the right people are always wrong if you see what I mean!! Here's a bit of a motto that I picked up from a best mate: WHO HONESTLY CARES - it's their loss, not mine!!!

hehehe...
~lemon. :)