Deftones

We went to see Deftones last night in Tempe. They were amazing. The difference between seeing one of your favourite bands and seeing a band you like is incredible. I knew every single song, so I didn't really care what they played. I rocked out to the whole gig. Whereas with bands I only sort of like, I'm constantly wondering what they'll play next, and if it will be a song I know or like, rather than just enjoying the music.
They played a surprising amount of songs from Adrenaline and White Pony, which was good, but a little unexpected. But it was cool. Bored and 7 Words work really well live. And my appreciation for the new album quadrupled, or something. The most I listen to it, the more I like it.
So yea. I'll totally go see them again if I get another chance.

Gravy makes such a difference

Dinner last night was amazing. I made bangers and mash and it was better than any I've had in a restaurant. They always try too hard, and add extra things into the mash or make their gravy overpowering. Mine was a perfect blend of buttery mash, salty-spicy sausages and sweet onion gravy. Delicious. I did do the restaurant thing of making a little mound of spuds and standing the sausages around it and pouring the gravy over the top. Nom nom nom.

I also made pumpkin pie yesterday. I was totally excited putting it into the oven, because the raw filling and raw base tasted amazing. What I didn't realise is that pie is not a straightforward thing to bake. So the edge of the crust got burned (badly enough to mean that it doesn't taste nice, but not so bad that you can't eat around it) and the filling didn't cook up properly. It was still quite liquid-y coming out. That didn't stop me nibbling at it while it was still warm, and I was less than enthusiastic about the taste. Somewhere along the way the sweet, rich flavours of the raw things had gone missing. So I put it in the fridge, but didn't forget about it. I had a small slice for breakfast (because even flavourless pie is better than dull cereal) and was pleasantly surprised. I think the flavours must have come back as it all rested together. And possibly pumpkin pie is better cold. So yea. I'm looking forward to eating the rest of it for breakfast over the weekend and next week, and desert and probably lunch, too. A whole pie is a lot to get through by yourself. I would invite friends over to help, but I don't think it's good enough. I don't want people thinking I'm a bad cook (because I'm not).

Did I mention we're off to see deftones in November? I'm so excited. I can't wait to go. I've wanted to see them since 1st year of college. And now it's happening.

I don't think I have any other news.

Today's question caught my eye

Is there any song you could listen to 20 times in a day without ever losing interest?

When I find a song I like, I'd easily listen to it 10 times that day. I think 13 is my record. I have to stop myself listening to it more than that, because I'm scared I will lose interest. I never do with the really good songs though. With the truly amazing ones, I can listen to them 30+ times in the first week and still love them. These are the songs that end up with 100+ playcounts on itunes (after a year or so).

There is one song, though, that I listened to about 80 times in 2 months - Another Take, by Cork band, Waiting Room. I've listened to it 132 times in total. And still, every time it comes on I get shivers. I love it.

And since I've not done it in a while - here's a run down of my top 10 most listened to songs. Number of listens in brackets.

Sail to the Moon (Brush the Cobwebs Out of the Sky) - Radiohead (155)
Rose - A Perfect Circle (145)
Son et Lumiere - The Mars Volta (135)
Another Take - Waiting Room (132)
Fingerbib - Aphex Twin (126)
Modern Romance - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (116)
Teenager - Deftones (115)
California Waiting - Kings of Leon (111)
Televators - The Mars Volta (106)
Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie - A Perfect Circle (104) (I honestly don't know how this song is in number 10)

pandora internet radio

there are definite benefits to living in america. access to stuff on the internet is one of the major ones. before pandora radio got blocked in ireland (around 2005, i think), i used listen to it a lot. it was one of the things i was looking forward to about getting here. and it hasn't disappointed.
pandora is very cool because it tags each song with things like 'electric rock instrumentation,' 'subtle use of paired vocal harmony,' 'repetitive melodic phrasing,' 'heavy syncopation,' and 'minor key tonality.' i have no idea what some of these mean (syncopation?) but it's cool, because it means that when i like a song it makes a note of that on my profile and uses the collected information from the songs i like to pick songs it thinks i will like in the future. it takes a little while to build up a proper profile of what you like, but once it does it is amazing.
it is choosing songs i have on my itunes, but the songs it chooses are my favorites from whatever album. for example, it just played a song by team sleep. the song was 'ever,' and that is my favourite team sleep song. and that wasn't a once off thing. it's done it with a perfect circle, muse, ian archer. and the songs i haven't heard before i generally like. it's great. and the awful thing is that you can't get it in ireland.

i bought a laptop today. it was a bit of hassle - getting the money through from ireland was a bit of a pain. first i had to reactivate my internet banking, then get all the details to transfer the money. transferring the money took 3 days, and today i finally got to order it. it's a dell xps 15 laptop. the 15 stands for 15", which should be a good size. it's an i5 processor, nvidia GT 420M 1GB gpu, 4gb ram, 500gb hd, backlit keyboard (which i'm a little excited about). it should be here by the 16th. yes, that is a terribly long wait, but at least i'll have it for christmas. and because it's coming up to christmas and dell want to encourage people to buy early or something, there was $50 off. so dell paid for the sales tax, excellent.
of course, once i get it i will be wiping the drive and reinstalling windows with just windows. i can't stand all the extra junk they put on new computers. i don't need an antivirus chosen for me, or any software to help me get online, or any other random program dell has decided i need. really, the xps systems are for advanced users, dell should know better.

washing randomness

i put two white sheets into the wash today. one came out light blue, the other came out a dull sort of purple. (yes, i do just chuck everything into the same wash regardless of colour, because the only non-coloureds we have are sheets, and it's not worth putting on a whole wash just for them.)
and i wouldn't even mind, but it's not like we don't have colour catcher sheets. and they do work. oh well. that's what i get for assuming / hoping stuff won't run. the blue sheet looks kinda good, though. it died very evenly. i even had to ask myself if we'd actually been sleeping on a blue sheet. but no, we hadn't. the other sheet is pretty evenly died (a little darker in the corners) but it's not a very nice colour. it can be the spare room's spare sheet.

so yea. they are now drying in the sitting room. they don't really fit on the clothes horse and now that lordkilljoy is gone away, i can put the clothes where ever i like.

i've been listening to deftones' new album, diamond eyes. i'm enjoying it. beauty school is my favourite so far, followed by the title track. it's very deftones. but i love their sound, so i'm good with that.

i went to see robin hood yesterday. it was an engaging 2 hour 20 minute diversion. but that's all it was, really. a fun thing to watch to pass the time.

afterwards, i went out to dalkey quarry, and ran up the hill to the top (there are stairs). it was good. the views from up there are spectacular - you can see way out into the irish sea on one side, and over dublin on the other.
then me, penelope_stone and liam went to nandos. yum. and then we went home and watched gladiator (skipping over all the boring bits). heh. i could call it a ridley scott afternoon.

video games live

over the last few weeks, whenever i looked at the calendar on the fridge i felt a tingle of excitement. video games live was coming up and i couldn't wait for it. so last night was the big night. we were off to the national concert hall, lordkilljoy in dr. who stylings of a suit and cons and me wearing my lolita dress.
the concert was brilliant, between the orchestra, the choir, the visuals from the games and the light show that went along with it. the music was great (even though i didn't really know any of it), the showmanship was entertaining (and totally over the top) and the venue was perfect.
we hung around after to get signatures and gush at jack wall.

saturday night was lainey316's birthday. we went to a lebanese restaurant and then on to a pub. the food was good - it's always nice to try something different. it was a good night, but i was a little too tired and full to really enjoy it. the others went mad dancing - i danced in my chair :)

in other news:
today, for the first time ever, i used rubber gloves to wash the dishes. and the reason? i didn't want to take my gloves off. it's been really cold all weekend - the kitchen got down to 9degrees yesterday afternoon.
i'm a bit worried about nymph. he's kind of stopped eating and i wonder is he a little too cold. but he doesn't look very skinny, so i think he's all right.

sp3

"It's nice to know that there will still be kittens in the singularity." such a cute quote.

i installed xp sp3 today - i don't really know why i waited so long. when sp2 came out i ordered it (on cd, because my 'net connection wasn't good enough to download it - shock) straight away. but sp3 has been out for ages and i just never bothered with it.
but for these few days i have to keep my 'net connection open and having it crash out every 20 minutes is just not on. so, in a bid to eradicate my connection woes, i updated to sp3. and so far it seems to be working out well.

i've listened to Exogenesis: Symphony Part 3 (Redemption) by Muse 21 times over the last week. i think there's subliminal messaging in the lyrics: let's start over again.

wacom are running a competition on dA with the theme: dreams. i'm very tempted to enter, because i have these amazing ideas in my head, but i just know that if i try to draw them they will fall apart. i can never draw what's in my head. something in my brain messes up the composition, or perhaps images in my head are in 5D or something and don't convert well to 2D.

in other news: i'm back playing fallout3, and listening to a lot of philip glass at the moment.

that is all.

catching up on the weekend

muse friday night were brilliant. we got there just after doors opened and managed to get into the pit (somewhat illegitimately). waited for ages for the support to come on, but there was no support. muse themselves were fantastic - from their stage layout, to lights, and obviously the music. they rocked out quite a bit, but did spare some time for their more mellow tracks. and i could actually see the band most of the time, thanks to a mosh pit that opened right in front of us. it did not impress the security guys, but i thought it the best thing ever.

went to see the men who stare at goats last night. i enjoyed it, laughed lots - some of it was so preposterous, but some of it seemed to hold a grain of truth.

writing's going well. i think i have figured out a way to make chapter 6 work, and this is a very good thing.

i finished uncharted2 on sunday. it was a lot of fun. just gave up in annoyance with the number of guys to kill once. well - one thing that did annoy me was that i carried one particular gun for the last few hours just so i could use it to kill the bad guy at the end, and then the fight started and they just gave me some random default weapons. just cause they wanted me to kill him their way, not my way.
then lordkilljoy had to go to work, so i got to play dragon age: origins for a bit. it's fun, but you really have to have your head on going into fights.

i think that's all my news.

muse

off to muse tonight and i am so excited. i've been listening to the resistance all week, trying to get to know the songs. but i was sabotaged by the last one on the album. i've listened to it in whole 14 times and in part probably over 20. it crescendos so well. i love it.

not really getting a lot of writing done this week. i'm about to hit that dreaded part of the book where i never really figured out how stuff can happen, so it's just happening with no good reason. trying to come up with good reasons, but it's hard not to just ignore it. i've skipped one scene already, and i have a feeling that i'll be half finishing more scenes next week. see, the problem is that the rest of the book hinges on this one little bottle neck, it it has to stand very firmly. right at the moment it's a stilt house on sand, where the stilts are made of twigs lashed together. and it's an earthquake zone too. yea...

i don't really have much other news.

there is a slim chance that getting online twice a day might help with Lj posting

I did a 10k cycle today. well, my bikecomputer tells me i did 11k, google maps tells me i did 11.6. either way, that's not too bad. it was a lovely cycle too - took 35 minutes. if i could just do that every morning, i think i would solve all my angst problems. because i have loads of energy today... or it could just be hormones.

i made an interesting lunch today. couscous with tuna, but the couscous was taking all the flavour out of the tuna (i think that's all couscous does - remove flavour) so i added some hot sauce and it was yummy. hot sauce (the stuff that goes on chicken wings) goes really well with fish.

i don't really have much else to say. there's a street performer's competition on in cork this weekend, so i think i'll head down for that.

ooh - in all the fun with london, i totally forgot to say that i'm going to muse in november. kinda excited about that. i saw them at glastonbury 05 and they were brilliant.

ok, back to writing now.

A silly sort of post

I've been listening to Koyaanisqatsi by Philip Glass a lot recently. I got it off davidnarby when I was down last weekend. I kinda like Glass anyway; liked what I've heard of him before - Passages with Ravi Shankar and a few random mixes. And now I've just noticed that Koyaanisqatsi is from 1982, and so am I. I have this funny thing that there's a connection between me and lots of things from that year. Because I like lots of things from that year.

lordkilljoy's gone off to Raw for the evening and I'm kind of at a loss as to what to do with myself. Generally I spend my days doing stuff and looking forward to when he comes home, but now he's been and gone and I don't quite know what to do in this situation. I guess it doesn't help that I'm feeling just the slightest bit apathetic at the moment. I have 10 pages of script that I need to get written, but I woosed out after 3 pages today. And the exciting climactic end to act 1 just finished and the start of act 2 is less than dramatic. Sometimes I wonder how I'm not completely emo. My writing is so angst-filled and immature.
I'm rolling my eyes at myself.

I also don't know what to get for dinner. I'm feeling lazy and uninspired. And we have nothing that you can just pour boiling water over or quickly heat up in a pan. And it's way too miserable to even think of going to the shop for something. Actually - I think it's stopped raining, but still.

I have a cat at the top of my Firefox. Hee, that sentence seems wierd when you take it out of internet context. Anyway - it's all thanks to Personas for Firefox from Mozilla labs.

I think I'll do a stir-fry for dinner.

Right, since I've decided at least that much, I'll go now.

p.s. I've been waiting for a good occasion to use this usericon for ages. I'm not confused, but I'm at a loss, so it's adequate.

ooh - gosh - how could I forget. I'm going to see The Princess Bride in the cinema on the 11th of May. It's going to be the coolest thing ever. I've been 100% in love with this film my whole life. I know the whole thing off my heart I've seen it so many times. It's going to be fantastic.

p.p.s i don't think i've ever used this mood before.

nanowrimo time

happy november everyone. it's nanowrimo month, woo! lordkilljoy is awesome. heh - writing with someone beside you is funny!
yea. this year i'm attempting the third instalment of my zan / kej / zachery trilogy. insanity, but i'll never write it if i don't do it as a nano novel.

it's very hard to write when /someone/ is warming their toes on you. right.

i have work in 25 minutes. but i have a bike now :) my bike to be precise. lordkilljoy brought it up from cork for me yesterday. i'm happy. i really like my bike. gosh i sound like some kind of 6 year old or something. yea. wrimo writing brings my quality control down to 0. woo for exceptionally bad writing.

we're going to MGMT tomorrow evening. that should be fun. i'm listening to them now one last time before the gig.

i have it in my head that i want some shokubutsu green tea shower gel. the only problem is that the closest place to get it is in malaysia. me and penelope_stone got some when we were there and it was lovely. so lovely that we took a picture of the bottle. but i don't have time to go rooting around on the internet for it.

i don't really have much other news. i played assassin's creed for halloween. so amazingly halloween themed activity! blah. i had fun playing though. it's a fun sort of game if you just want to run away from people a lot. i did kind of realize that taking guards down with a knife from a distance or assassinating them from behind really works well.

we made fried rice last night with bacon bits, chicken, sweetcorn and carrots. and eggs (i always forget the eggs). it was very yummy. yea.

i'll just go now.

it's lashing outside and i have to walk to work. all i can say is - thank god i have a good water proof coat. and water proof trail shoes. but i'll be wearing jeans down and changing into my work pants and shoes when i get there. i hope i don't get too wet.

not a whole lot else going on at the moment. jaarius, lordraath and the_kannon are coming up this weekend. that should be fun - and possibly a bit crazy.

the only reason i'm really updating is to see the new last.fm music link thing, but i can't see it here. oh, wait. i have to put in my username on my profile first.
awh - it dosn't look like it's working. oh well.

Rival Swords

I got up this morning at ten to eight, had a quick shower and got dressed and had breakfast. But as i was pouring my cereal into my bowl, i remembered that i had watched the intro cut-scene of Prince of Persia: Rival Swords on lordkilljoy's PSP last night. So i wandered into the sitting room, picked it up and played it as i ate breakfast. I continued playing after i'd finished breakfast. It's almost identical to Two Thrones, except that the sound-effects aren't nearly as good (they are quite bad, actually - no flow to them - like footsteps and weapon noises are just one sound repeated over and over) and it took me a while to get used to the controls.
But i seriously love this game, in any form. It's got to be my favourite game. I got to the first major cut-scene and i was like: yea, this game has such a great story. And then i stopped playing, because the day was moving on, and has moved on. i can't believe it's almost 11. hmmm.

lordkilljoy, lainey316, goblin_insane, claudia and i went to see pineapple express last night. It was so funny. lordkilljoy had described it as a stoner action movie and that's kind of exactly what it was. I've not laughed so much in ages...

mmm, i can't think of anything else to say. I really like this song. I heard it first back when i was working in CIT over the summmer. I heard it twice and had it stuck in my head for weeks.

(what a funny list of tags i have for this post... it's so... something)

A Warm Place

I was so sure i'd posted about this song before, but maybe not. I really love this song. It makes me think of the death of the world - a death through sterility and clean technology. A place where no one lives any more, everyone just is alive. And a harsh sun beats down on the concrete and glass, casting hard shadows, but harder light.

But behind all that there is still hope, a living heart beats somewhere in this world of broken dreams.

Yea, i love it. I love any artist that can get such imagery and emotion into a piece of music. It's why i like deftones - they can do the same thing, and bring up similar imagery / emotions, even though they are not at all like NIN.

yea...

anyway. i got over my earlier bout of snarky, snarly emotions. thank god! i hate when i get like that. i went shopping (of the grocery kind) with davidnarby. and by the time we were done i felt normal again. yeay :)

books, beaches and bad music

i finished ender's game last night. it felt very short - i read it in 2 days. it seems books these days take me at least 3 weeks to read and even at that i don't get them finished. ah well.
so - i enjoyed it, but i did feel that he slipped during the second half. it stopped being so much about ender's emotions and struggles and became a bit more general, more about the setting and the people around him. actually, i got the impression that card stopped showing us the story and started telling it to us. so the second half was more like a recap on events than events actually taking place. but i still thought it was excellent. i really empathized with ender. he reminds me of me a lot, and not just the hard time i had in school, but the way i fear that if i accept help off people i'll never be able to do anything for myself again. and obviously his loneliness and the way he holds himself away from people resonated - but perhaps not quite as strongly as it would have a few years ago. (what's this - is ria possibly coming out of her extreme enforced lonership?! shock, horror. yea, now i just have to get over a lifetime of avoiding people. sometimes it's hard.)

penelope_stone and i went to the beach today. her car only has a radio or a tape-player, so i got to bring some of my old mix tapes along. one was from 1997. woah - that's 11 years ago. seriously - i should be a DJ. i love making playlists and putting songs into an order where every song blends well with the next one and they coast along through different emotions. it's fun. anyway. we listened to one from 2000 (i think it was my last mix tape - i got iTunes after that, when i went to college). but god - there were some dodgy songs on there. a lot of good stuff that i still listen to, but some seriously bad chart music that i cringed to hear. penelope_stone was greatly amused by it all.

the beach was good - sunny, a bit warm and we bounced along the coast - jumping across the rocks and testing the grippyness of our trail shoes.

i applied for a job as a meteorological officer today. it seems like interesting work and you get to work outside. i would endure quite a lot to not be stuck in some dull office all day every week. so yea - i'm so hoping i get called for an interview. maybe i shouldn't though, because then i just get to be even more disappointed when they tell me i wasn't suitable.

so much for writing

this is bad. i've not done any writing in about a week (perhaps - not entirely sure how long it's been) and my novel has fallen off the recent documents list. this has never happened before. it's always been there. so i had to go open it manually and i couldn't exactly remember where it lives on my pc. i knew it was in my documents, after that it was a bit hazy. and considering that i have 18,583 files and 1,672 folders in my documents, being a bit hazy isn't exactly the best thing ever. but i found it ok - yeay for organization. i have a folder called writing and it was a little buried in there.
so yea - i'm finally getting back to my novel. it's procrastination for genre_challenge. heh - that excuse might actually work and everything.

i went to see the dark knight again last night. me, barry, adrian, dee, craig and john all went. so it was like a big d+d reunion, because john hasn't been around at one of the games in ages. anyway, the film was absolutely excellent the second time. everything pulled together in a graceful symmetry (that phrase just popped into my head). the other cool thing was that it didn't drag at all the second time.

i had a really wierd dream last night. it started off with me in hospital. i can't remember what was wrong with me, something serious or mental or something. anyway, it was daytime and we were having lunch. it was in a dingy, dark corridor just outside my room. there was a spread like a four year old's party - a colourful (but drab) tablecloth, plastic drinking things, paper napkins. it had this kind of sordid atmosphere but i enjoyed myself anyway, because it was more fun than being poked and prodded by doctors and nurses. so then the meal (don't actually remember any food) was done and there was some juice left to be drunk. a nurse filled a glass and dropped a fizzy tablet into it. me, thinking it was vitC, took it willingly and drank it all - because vitC is good for you. a few minutes later i couldn't hold my head up and i realized that it had been some sort of sleeping tablet thing.
skip some, and i'm out of hospital, walking home. but i missed the turn up a road and ended out in front of a big grassy area. a scruffy looking guy came up to me and i knew he was bad news. he took out a knife and told me i was to go see the cappa (this word comes from the lies of locke lamora - means leader of a group of thugs). so i went along, not wanting to risk my life. i met the cappa up the road a little and he was as charming a scallywag as you could imagine. i was honoured to meet him and i told him so. he wanted me to infiltrate somewhere for him (the hospital maybe?? can't remember). so we walked on a bit - out into the countryside and across some train tracks. i didn't know how to get home from here, but wasn't all that worried. the gang hadn't killed me, so that was good.
there was a lot more, but it had faded now. i think there was some bit in the city centre, involving the outside of a shop and me being unable to fulfil the task the cappa had set me. but i could be remembering an old dream...

not much else news - lordkilljoy got me into "time to pretend" by MGMT. it's good, but has a somewhat depressing vibe - nothing overt, just something underlying - like paranoia during a trip or revelling in the knowledge that nothing can be good forever, because everything dies and everything ends. but it's still a great song, possibly because of that, rather than in spite of it.

battles atlas part 2

lets make part 2 posts a theme, shall we?

a bit ago, i posted about my new obsession with battles and specifically the song, atlas.
today, me and davidnarby got to talking about music. i lent him some of the nine inch nails stuff that i like, and while i was at it, i decided to give him atlas. his reaction was to say "battles, that sounds familiar. i think i have one of their albums. math rock, isn't that what they call them?"
he's had mirrored since christmas. i can't believe it! there's me planning on spending my first pay-check (whenever that may be) supporting the band and buying their album. and here it was in the house all along. i really need to trawl through his music collection. i'll bet he has a tonne more albums like this one - ones that i've been interested in, but haven't got.

anyway. it's cool.

battles - atlas

i'm totally obsessed with atlas (by battles) at the moment. i listened to it about 10 times yesterday. i ripped it to iTunes and each time it ended, i pressed play again. it's just not long enough - i get to the end, and feel sad, and say: "awh, it ended." i like it so much because it's a happy bobby song - the kind i can dance around my bedroom to. ok - dance around my bedroom is possibly an exaggeration on the size of my room. but anyway. it's a good song. we'll see how long my infatuation with this one lasts!

i don't really have much other news. i'm almost finished in CIT. just getting the finishing touches on the animation. there is once bit that everyone has a problem with, but i just don't know how to fix it.

ooh - i got my first "sorry we don't want you to work for us" letter yesterday. it was from a publishers - they were unimpressed by my lack of anything even remotely resembling editing on my cv. but they said it really nicely :) then i ripped up the letter and threw it out.

right so, back to work for me. i'm procrastinating now, because i'm not sure what to do with this problematic scene.

new music

i did have some news this morning, but i've forgotten about it. half way through my day and i have 5 things on my list of things done. i have 2 huge things left though. i have to change an entire scene and then change the timing on every other scene in the animation (because it goes way too fast).

oh, yea. i remembered what i wanted to say. i created a playlist on last.fm called new music to listen to. it's a mix of: hope of the states, do make say think, a sliver mt. zion, set fire to flames, battles, jonny greenwood, guillemots and athlete (the last 2 only have 1 song each). i'm really liking all the music. of them all hope of the states is my least favourite, but they are still good. i'm really liking battles; they have a very cool sound (math rock, apparently). i had atlas stuck in my head all through lunch.

yea. i havn't much else to say. i'll go now.

ps - i made a new icon last night :)