Why I wish I still in perth....

Reason #482

Taken from Xpress

Saturday December 24

ROSEMOUNT
Little Birdy
The Panda Band
Halogen
New Rules For Boats
Birds Of Tokyo
Fighting For Alaska
Kill Teen Angst
The Ghost Hotel
Melange
The Painkillers
The Fault
Celladore

DAMN!!!! Little Birdy by themselves make that worthwhile, but throw in Birds of Tokyo, Fighting For Alaska & Halogen, and that is a fscking EXCELLENT lineup.

I am living in Seattle, a city which is suposed to be the 'home' of alternative music, and I have not seen ANYWHERE here that would rival that sort of lineup.

What makes it worse... the 'alternative' radio station over here (which is complete joke), is giving away as a prize a trip to the Sydney Big Day Out. Thats right, the festival has become so big, we're shipping in people from overseas to go to it.

Punk Photos.....

I found this link via BoingBoing. It's some photo's of punk musicians in london from 1976-1984. It's quite amazing to see the photos of the clash performing live.

A year in review.....

I did this last year, and it seemed kinda cool, so I figured I would do it again this year.

• Countries Visited : 2 currently, 3 by the new year (australia, us, canada).


• Jobs held : 2 (both very different, both extremely fun), hopefully I won't be moving again anytime soon.


• Cars Purchased : 1 zoom-zoom-zoom. :-)


• Favourite Movie : Sin City/Serenity/Harry Potter/Batman/Hitchhickers Guide - some really good movies this year


• Least Favourite Movie : Constantine/Mr & Mrs Smith/Aeon Flux - I had such high hopes for the first one :-(


• Favourite Book : Matthew Reilly - Seven Ancient Wonders, and 'The Game' by Neil Strauss wasn't bad either.


• Favourite CD : Wow, hard one... Rammstein - Rosenrot, Magic Dirt - Snow White, The Avenues - Slow Moving (technically this was 2004), Dresden Dolls - Dresden Dolls, probably something i've missed from this list.


• Favourite New Comic Book : Y - The Last Man


• Favourite New Toy : See above - re car.


• Best Live Gig :Fscking hard choice (though my number of live shows has been down this year). Jebediah at the Rosemount, Slipknot at the BDO, GeniTorturers at Phenix

Okay, thats about all I can think of to list. Have a great new year all, i'm off to spend some time with those wacky canadians.

[ Maximo Park - Apply Some Pressure ]

Pretty good kinda chirstmas. Hung out with Tarong & Alex from work. Cooked some Lamb, drank some beer, watched Serenity. What more could ya possibly want.

Finished reading all of the Harry Potter books this weekend. Initially I refused to read this series, because I had some problems with them. Not the content so much as the fact that people were claiming they were a mirical cure to get kids to read. I'm going to ignore this fact for now, and just focus on what I thought of the books themselves.

They were a good story, however, nothing special. They reminded me strongly of the Famous Five/Secret Seven/Hardy Boys (not for content, but for type of story) that I read as a child. After about book three they move away from this mould to something darker that I started to enjoy more ('The Half Blood Prince' was my favourite of the 6).

In other book news, my brother got a copy of 'Seven Ancient Wonders' by Matthew Reilly for christmas. Too make this an even BETTER present (I was stoked by the book itself). He stood in line outside a book store to get the copy autographed for me :-)

The story itself is pretty damn good. It's a move away from the Scarecrow trilogy, but still with the fast paced action that I love soo much. Plus, it also (IMHO) takes the piss outta Dan Brown, which is always a good thing.

Anyway, hope ya'all had a good weekend.

[ Triple J ]

Fell over on a tredmill going 8mph... yeah, i'm a klutz, but I now have no skin on my arm, and it hurts like a motherf**ker.

Custom M&M's... How cool is that... Of course the obligitory "Help, trapped!" would be required... any suggestions for what to print ?

"It's not the size of the night out, oh no, it's the size of the pills."

Pretty good weekend.

Work christmas party on friday night. Wasn't bad, wasn't great either. It really had the feel of my high school year 12 ball. Some convention centre ballroom, people in suits who really didn't want to be in suits, food & some really bad music. It, however, was interesting too see some of my co-workers outside of work, and I did end up having a fairly good time.

Saturday I finished unpacking my stuff. Also went downtown and saw the christmas decorations, and went to the comic store (damn hellblazer is late).

Today the weather was pretty damn nice (~7 degrees and lots of sunshine), so after skating lessons I headed out to green lake to do a lap around the lake. Flying around the lake with Jebediah playing on the mini-disk, was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

Not much planned for christmas, going to get together with my office mate Tarong, and have a cooked lunch. New Years however I am planning on heading up to Vancouver to spend some time with Dan & Estelle. Should be a good weekend.

"A groan of tedium escapes me, startling the fearfull, is this a test, it has to be, otherwise I can't go on"

I got my american drivers license the other day. Only having gotten my australian license a few years ago, I am still fairly familiar with the australian testing process (well the west-australian at least). The american test was remarkably easy in comparison. The entire test took about 10 minutes, I had 3 major manouvers. I had to parallel-park, reverse around a corner & stop on a hill. In addition I also had to know my hand signals, and show that I had decent reaction time.

Overall you can loose 20 points before you fail the test. I completely stuffed up my reversing around the corner (I was told to look over my shoulder rather than use my mirrors, which threw me off), by turning to late, and I ended up out in the middle of the road. For this, I lost 2 points. So one major manover blown, and I loose 2 points ? What the hell do you have to do in order to loose all 20 ?

While I hated the australian system while I was being subjected to it, I do believe that it made me a better driver, and it ensures we have better drivers on the road.

Though, both systems do not prepare you for driving on ice, which is an 'interesting' experience. Coming up to a traffic light, doing about half the posted speed limit, your foot is flat to the floor, ABS is chugging away, and the car just won't stop. Not fun :-(

Oh yeah, I know my blog is causing weird stuff to happen on the planet. Damned if I know what is causing it. I'll look into it over the weekend.

[ Tool - The Patient ]

Damn, my stuff showed up on tuesday. Somehow this has made everything swing into focus. I'm actually living here now. I'm not going to be going home for a while. I don't know if I can handle this.

I mean, I love being here, I love doing what I am doing, but I still miss not being in Perth. I want to go out to the Rosemount, and see a local band play, I want to walk along the beach (I want it to be warm enough for me to walk along the beach), I want to see my friends and my family.

This might just be a manifestation of the time of year, mixed with lack of sleep and feeling sick, but even christmas which is the time of year I love, seems somehow tarnished if I'm not going to be at home with my family.

Ahhh crap, now I'm rambling. Photo's of a furnished appartment will come later.

[ Now Listening to: Karnivool - Shutterspeed ]

To make hole in table. Get and AMD Duron, Overclock to 4GHz, Remove Heatsink, Vola, hole in table.

Right, everyone say it with me... w-a-n-k-e-r-s.

Thar she SNOWS!

Okay, so it finally snowed. For most people this is kinda a 'meh' situation. However for me, someone who grew up where 10 degree's celcius is 'cold', this was a big fricken deal.

Anyway, there are some pictures on my flickr feed that I took out in the courtyard between the buildings while the snow was still comming down.

I'm going for a driving lesson today (need to get my washington license, so I am taking one lesson to find out what the test will entail). There is still about 1.5" of snow on the road. This is gonna be fun. Karma really does seem to be having a lot of fun at my expense at the moment.