David Dallas' New Mixtape

Not much to post about this week, but this is awesome. If you happen to be Kiwi or Aussie and enjoy hip hop, then it's highly likely that you've heard of David Dallas, a.k.a Con Psy, front man of Frontline. He's got a new mixtape out that he's releasing a track a day over at his site, DavidDallas.co.nz. So check it out, it's pretty cool.

Knock, Knock

Who's there?
Dinosaur Comics
Dinosaur Comics who?
No, no, that's it. Just Dinosaur Comics.
Oh ok, come on in.
Thanks. I don't suppose I could trouble you for a glass of water?
Oh, of course. Would you like some iced tea instead? I just made a jug.
Oh that'd be delightful.
...
...

Oh, where were we? That's right, I was going to tell you about Dinosaur Comics. It's entirely possible that you've heard of it/them before, as it has/they have been around for a while now. Absolutely hilarious. It's the same art every for every comic, only the dialogue is changed. You may be thinking that it would get old fast, but it doesn't. The writing is so fabulous that it makes up for the lack of change in art. No, it doesn't just make up for it, it makes the lack of change in the art make sense. You just have to read a few of these to get the idea.

So, if you aren't hip to the world of web comics, then Dinosaur Comics is a great entry point.

For some more comedic web comics, check out Xkcd. Also funny, but can be slightly esoteric at times (just slightly).

For a slightly more serious web comic, yet also funny as well, Questionable Content is great. Great art, great writing, and a great story.

So yeah, those are just a few to get you started. I'm sure you'll become as addicted as I am. And if not, then I suppose you have more of a life than I do.

Gone Phishing

If you have an email address, you've probably had a few emails from scammers. If you believe you haven't, then I'm sorry to inform you that you won't be receiving any money from that Nigerian prince who decided to gift you his inheritance because he heard about your philanthropic nature.

And if you have an email address, then it's likely you've received an email or two from phishers. Phishers send you to phishing sites to get you to give them your personal information. They replicate other big sites, such as banks, ebay, paypal etc, ask you to enter your username and password, and do what they want with the information.

Slashdot had a post about an article over at Help Net Security that interviewed two security researchers who infiltrated the "secret underworld" of phishers and scammers. It's a really interesting read, so I suggest you check it out.

The Journey of a Blog Post

I've been on a bit of a blog kick lately, as in reading and writing about blogs and blogging. Anyway, I came across this post on boing boing that linked to a post from Wired about what happens to your post once you hit "publish". It's got a cool flash graphic that explains it all, and it's really quite interesting. Check it out.

What do I Expect from this Blog?

So another post inspired by Kim's post. This time it answers the meme question, and hopefully much quicker as I'm really tired right now, but I'm trying to keep up my goal of making a post a day for a month or so.

Okay, first off, lets get back to the beginning. Here is where the original meme started.

Terry, the originator of the meme, points out that the question itself, while similar on the surface to "Why do I blog?", is a bit different.

You might blog for many reasons, everything from personal expression to monetization. But if those are your reasons then how do you measure if you’ve met them? If on any given day only 2% of the blogosphere produces posts, what unmet expectations are causing the other 98% to sit dormant?

So with that in mind, I'll try to answer.

By keeping this blog, I expect my writing to improve. I think this may be a recent development, but I'm definitely aware that I'd like to be able to better convey my thoughts, whether that be succinctly or with more detail. So I expect by continuing to write, that this will improve.

I expect people to enjoy reading this blog. This relates partly to my previous post about why I blog. To entertain. Therefore it is my expectation that people should enjoy it. If they don't, then I'm failing to meet my expectations.

I expect to get comments. Again this relates back to my previous post. It was definitely a bad start to the day today (but it ended up being okay ;)). If I don't get comments, then no one's enjoying it enough to reply, and I'm failing my expectations.

I do expect this blog to take some time to get some readership. I've only JUST reopened it, so it'll take a while before anything to happen, IF anything happens :D

That's about it really. I don't expect to make any money from it. I don't expect to change peoples lives. I just expect this blog to give back what I put into it, I suppose.

Now, per the rules I'm supposed to choose 5 people to tag:

So here are the rules:

1. Answer the question, “What do you expect from your blog?” and try to be as specific as possible. Avoid warm-fuzzy answers unless that really is your thing. Link back to the blog who tagged you so your readers can check others’ answers.
2. Tag at least five bloggers with the same question.

I'll take Cmae, Meredith, Chris Maples, Marshy and... Urban Chick. If you don't feel like participating, then I completely understand. Or if you weren't tagged, and you want to do it anyway, then by all means go ahead. I did :D

Why Do I Blog?

I was inspired by Kim Ayres' post to copy him and write my own :D I'm not really participating in the meme, which asked "What do I expect from my blog?" Instead this follows more the spirit of Kim's post in that it tries to explain why I blog. This is mostly for my benefit, but we're all a little curious, aren't we?

I'm a little bit afraid to post this because I'd simply be rewording a lot of what Kim said. He mentioned that he blogs not because he has to write, but because he has to be read, to feel that he's made an impact on the world, to feel validated, and I really relate to a lot of that.

I started blogging on a forum a few years back because I wanted a place where I could be heard. I wanted a place that people wanted to come to, to read what I had written. And I guess today that's still the reason I blog. I suppose that's a reason a lot of people blog.

Kim also mentioned that he blogs to communicate. To pass on ideas and stuff. I can relate to that too. I don't have the need to educate, but I do feel a deep need to entertain. To make people smile, or laugh, or think, or just plain react. And I guess that relates to validation as well. If I can do that, then I've done something, I'm worthy, I'm a part of their experience.

I think that need to entertain motivates (or motivated) my music playing. I loved the sensation of playing in front of a crowd. You feed off their energy, and I suppose that's how I get with blogging as well. I LOVE the comments. It's possibly unhealthy how much stock I put into the comments. It's a bad start to the day waking up, checking the emails and there's no comments.

As far as a desire to write for writing's sake, I don't think I've ever written anything truly for or to myself. When I dabbled in poetry as a teen to express my angst, I always tried to share it. All my music was meant to be shared. My short stories were meant to be shared (of which, admittedly, there is only one). Pretty much everything I've ever done has been done with the knowledge that it'd be shared with someone.

But this is about why I blog, not why I do everything. So, back to the topic at hand. Aside from wanting to feel like I matter, I blog for the regular reasons. I'm highly opinionated. I love the way blogging can open up a miniature community. I love hearing from people who have gone or are going through similar things that I'm going through. And I love hearing from people who have had different experiences from me.

And of course, like Kim mentioned, I blog in the hopes that someone will discover me and offer me millions of dollars to keep on writing thoughts about nothing in particular :D

So that's why I blog. That's what I get out of it. And that's why I'll continue to do it. Oh, and I know this isn't exactly a meme, but if any one wants to answer that question who hasn't already, by all means feel free, just leave me a comment to let me know you did :D

Are You Ready For Some Football?!

So, as we all know, the Superbowl is coming up in about a week's time. The New England Patriots vs the New York Giants.

You've got Peyton's lil' bro vs Mr. Perfect, Tom Brady. The team everyone loves to hate and the team that... well... no one expected to even be here. Hell, I didn't. I don't hate the Giants, but really, have they played so well this year to be at the final dance? I don't think so. I honestly can't think of any reason they should be there. I can't think of any victories that were noteworthy. No blowouts. They've just plodded along, managing to squeeze into the playoffs.

Sure, the Steelers managed to do that as well, but that was destiny. It was Bettis's final year, and the Superbowl was in his hometown. They'd gotten close the year before, and Big Ben even promised Bettis that he'd get him there the next year. It was just meant to be. But the Giants? The only thing you've got is Eli trying to equal his brother's accomplishments and Tom Coughlin trying not to get fired. Last year would have been the better story as it was Tiki's last year, and everyone loves Tiki.

Nope, the story of this game is completely and entirely about the Perfect Patriots. I remember the game on Monday night, Patriots vs Ravens, where Don Shula, coach of the '72 Dolphins, was being harrassed by Tony Kornheiser to say that he hoped the Patriots didn't win. He was graceful at first, saying that he'd congratulate them if they did it, but quickly changed his tune as soon as it looked like the Ravens might actually do it (yep, that infamous game where Brian Billick lost his job :D).

Then there's "spygate", as the media are calling it. Ol' Billy Bob Belichick got caught peeking at his former protégé's defensive plays, and he gets slapped with a fine and whatever. Suddenly everyone is coming out of the woodworks saying that Billy cheated them out of some wins (Donovan McNabb springs to mind... "They stole our ring..."). So what does Billy do? He goes out and stomps on everyone's ass who said anything (it helps that is QB is literally a machine).

But forget about the team as a whole for a bit. You've got the most potent QB/WR combo since Montana and Rice. That's right, Brady and Moss are your new super heroes. Okay, so maybe that's a bit hasty, but one play, just one play, to me shows how completely dominant they are. The play where Brady and Moss broke Peyton's season pass TD record, and Rice's season receiving TD record. The play IMMEDIATELY after the same exact play failed. The play that defined how complete a duo they are.

Will the Pats go 19 - 0? That's the real question. And we'll find out, next Sunday.

It's All About the Music

As the title alludes, this post will be all about music. My music, in fact. This is like a "centralising" post. Er, that doesn't sound quite right. Just basically putting everything in one post, kind of thing. Plus 3 new (kind of) songs!

Okay, so the new stuff first!

This first song expresses my hip hop side. Everyone has their own views about hip hop and rap, so I won't get into that. I just like hip hop. And I've tried a few times to create beats, and raps, though I've usually been unsuccessful with both. I don't rap in this, so be thankful :D This is just a beat I made when I got inspired by the sample that you hear in the song. I was playing a flash game, and when you went into this place, it had this Jewish sounding song in the background. I recorded it, chopped it up, grabbed a drum loop, synced up the sample with the drums, and this is what came out. I remember it being really hard to get the sample to sync. I had no idea what the bpm was, and I have no sequencer or anything, so I had to get creative in chopping the sample to sync it up. Anyway, here it is (I call it Jewish Hip Hop :D):

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This next one is the original Lost Experience song. I mentioned before about an orangutan named Joop, and the song I wrote about him. Well this is it. The thing to remember about all the Lost Experience songs, they were written to be funny, in both a subtle and an obvious way. Kind of making fun of their genres, of things written before them that may sound similar. For example, this is a protest song about experiments done on a fictional animal. Cheesy talking at the end of the song :D Anyway, here it is, Hold On Joop:

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And this is the second Lost Experience song, and last of the new stuff. This is a love song to the protagonist, Rachel Blake. I believe at the time of Hold On Joop, we hadn't seen who our heroine was, but eventually she was revealed to be Jamie Silberhartz (who is a bit of a hottie), and a lot of guys developed geek crushes on Rachel. This was a tribute to that, and really to all geek crushes on fictional characters. This is one of my favourite songs as it contains one of my best solos (in my humble opinion ;)). It comes inbetween the second and third verses, and is pretty understated. It's just a short little thing, but whenever I hear it, it just makes me feel good that I wrote that. Cheesy talking at both the beginning and end of the song. Anyway, here it is, Song for Rachel:

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Fragmented Games. Posted in the previous post. Third Lost Experience song.

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Acoustical Niceness. Originally posted here.

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And then we have Something (with lead guitar) that I posted about here.

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Just Testing *update again*

*updated 25/01/08 7:33 pm* So I went ahead and changed the images anyway. I'm liking it. What do y'all think? */update*

*updated 25/01/08* Updated text colour, post title colour, link colour, and date & sidebar header colours. I didn't want to update the images yet just incase y'all think the new colours don't work. So, opinions? And thanks again for all the help! */update*

So this is just a test post in order to work out the colours. It's basically the same design as The Fat Lazy Guy's Log, only different colours. I still wanted to keep brown as a base, but I didn't want to do variations of it like the original. I wanted to add some colour, like I had with TFLGL, and I think I managed to do that with some respect. I actually did some research into colour palettes in regards to interior design, and they ended up coming into play with this, so that was good.

The primary reason for the test is to test the colour of the text against the background image. I wasn't sure how similar they were, and whether or not there was enough of a contrast in order for the text, when over the background image, to be visible.

This should be enough.