And again

I had yet another bit of palava in the last weekend. On Friday, I was just doing my usual business with my PC, when all of a sudden the screen went black, yet the machine was still on. I thought the CRT monitor had blown again, as it was only going into standby mode. Luckily my dad's mate came over later that evening, and he had a look before telling me that the graphics card had blown.

The next day, my dad took it over to his mate's house for a further look, and sadly, the PC was rendered unusable, so I had to go without it for most of the weekend. Not only that, the folks were away for the weekend too, so I had my sister come to "look after me". She ordered us all some pizza and I just spent the evening up in my room playing Paper Mario on the Gamecube.

Yesterday evening though, I was given this new PC that I'm using right now. It's not as good in terms of physical specs as my old one [lack of SD port, half the hard disk space I had], but overall it's a better PC than I thought it'd be. It's also a good thing I have my external hard drive where I keep most of my files, so all isn't lost... It also came with a flatscreen monitor which has a whole lot of USB ports in.

So what am I doing now? Well, I've got to see if we can get a new line of ink cartridges for my printer which seems to have buggered for some reason.

Oh, and have you heard the new songs by Nightwish yet? Now, although my favourite album by the band is most definitely Oceanborn, I'm really excited for this upcoming album, which is one of many things I'm looking forward to in September. I like the new singer's voice [seriously, I would had absolutely fumed if they had chosen Lady Angelica as once rumoured], and the music is sounding as great as ever, so what's to complain about it?

One week without my internets

Man what a palava that last week was. I've been without home Internet for an entire week and I had to pay £1 a pop on one of those computers in McDonalds. They're awful - they have no mouse so you have to literally poke the touchscreen just to get it to scroll, and the metal "keyboard" is a surefire way to break one's fingers. You can't even cut and paste or print, save or basically do anything apart from going on the Internet.

Thankfully, I got my broken modem plug replaced today thanks to someone from Virgin Media who came round and put a new digibox into the kitchen. Oh I missed real internet so much!

Anyway, while I was away I did loads of different things. I finally got to see my sister's flat after a trip to Ikea, I've had an interview at a PDSA charity shop and got a trial to start, and I turned to the golden age of 20. I had a lovely birthday on Wednesday...

Me, mum, my sisters and Carla's boyfriend all went to London for shopping and stuff. I wanted to look in Forbidden Planet first, which took us about an hour just to find and I didn't even buy anything from there. Then we took a bus over to Harrods to meet Dean the boyfriend's sister, and that's where I bought a Mr Krabs plush in the toy department, along with pissing about with display toys.

Lastly I had a good look in Virgin Megastores and HMV for a bunch of CDs I wanted, but only came out with two - Lesiem's Auracle and Enya's Day Without Rain, which made good use of the gift voucher Danielle got me. I also opened up to a new SpongeBob bag and socks, a Once Upon the Forest DVD [used to love that film as a kid], and a nice new 160GB external harddrive. Cool eh?

As for art, well at first I didn't do much, felt rather uninspired. But yesterday I bought some new dip pens and nibs and an A6 sketchbook [for whenever I go out]. I wasn't too happy with the former at first and I ended up breaking the feeder on one of them, but I soon got used to one of them. So far the one I like best is slightly better than my 4-year-old calligraphy one.

I also finished a commission while I was away, which will be on DeviantART shortly.

A new hope maybe...?

The other day, my sister came home and stayed for the night. The next morning, she gave me the suggestion that I try apply for some local voluntary positions in places like libraries and chairty shops. So I joined a site called Do It, and sent my profile there to a few jobs.

The next day, I got a letter from the PDSA. It came with a guide to what voluntary jobs are on offer, and an enrolment form which I've yet to fully complete [just need two references]. I really hope I get this, for so many reasons - the PDSA charity shop I want to work in is only down the road, so that's a great opportunity to get a good morning walk more often; I need the work experience, and most importantly, to get out of this house! I can't stand doing nothing but be trapped in here.

Of course I can't keep all my hopes up, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I've also got another commission! Thankfully I won't have to ship this one, as it's going to be CG'd. When I went to ship my last commission I had to pay £6 for a recorded delivery! I must remind myself to update my commission info at DeviantART.

One more thing, I'm into a new band! They're called Lesiem, and by god it's amazing stuff! Can't seem to find the Mystic Spirit Voices album in the local mall yet though, but I might be lucky in London. Who knows, I might be able to bag hard copies of Lunatica and Delain albums while I'm at it. Oh, and I wanna get Within Temptation's new album as well.

It's the music that we choose

Suppose you're like me and you'd rather listen to your music privately rather than blast it so that the whole town can hear. That happens to be something my dad does often. But it's at it's worst when the song bears these lyrics...

"Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?
Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?

Don'tcha..."

That was just the worst song of the year 2005.

The sad truth is that there hasn't been a decent song in the charts in the past year. Not one. The worst example of these shit records is the number of dance records that one might call 'funky house'.

The exact start of such so-called music isn't known, but one of the pioneers of this is Eric Prydz and the song 'Call on Me'. This was a number one hit over in the UK back in 2004, staying at the top for abour 5 weeks. Now, the song just consisted of the line 'Call on me' going over and over again, but that wasn't why the song sold so much. It was because the music video was of sexy girls doing aerobics in skimpy leotards. A real mothfoamer for perverts who only bought the CD just so they can watch the x-rated full video.

The fact that this song contained samples from an 80's record started a huge fad in the dance scene. One by one a song from the 80's and even 90's was victimised - from Roxette to Jermaine Stuart to the New Radicals - and thanks to that, I stopped tuning into PureDance radio and stopped buying Clubland.

So why did I listen to dance music in the first place?

Once upon a time, I was well into the music from the early 90's. The stuff that would always top the charts, like 'Mr Vain', 'I'm a Dreamer' and the like, and as the years went by, we actually did like stuff like Steps, B*Witched and 5ive. This was a time when mainstream chart music was actually good.

But there was one song that made my love for trance music hit the roof - DJ Sakin's 'Protect your Mind' from 1999. But my, this song had samples from Braveheart! What made this any different from Eric Prydz? It was the MELODIC part of it. The song from Braveheart was beautiful, and this song combined that with the mesmorising 'n-tiss' percussion.

As the years went buy, I carried on liking mainstream. Until the day when I got attracted to Scooter and 'the Logical Song'. Again, that contained a sample, and also a guy screaming random shit in the interlude. The only difference was that I had an adolescent crush on that guy. As a result, I was a HUGE fan of trance.

There had been some classics in the mainstream such as 'Pretty Green Eyes'. That song, unlike most other trance tracks, was ORIGINAL, as were some others by Ultrabeat. Songs like that should have been at number 1, unlike DJ Sammy who got his surprise number 1 with his version of the Bryan Adams track 'Heaven' (which was quite good though).

In 2003 I bought a number of CDs of Scooter - the 'Push the Beat For This Jam' album and 'the Stadium Techno Experience', and well as a few CD singles. I loved them both to death, in fact, when I bought Push the Beat I wouldn't have it off my stereo for months! I even had the DVD for my 16th birthday!

However, song by song Scooter got weaker, but there was one song that I loved - 'Jigga Jigga'. This song had a haunting verse of female vocals, which was just beautiful. And that, in my opinion, was where Scooter ended for me.

In 2005, I decided to get into stronger, faster trance. I remember picking up a compilation called 'the Ultimate Happy Hardcore album', which was of 6 CDs. Only the first three had some really good songs on it, the rest was bloody scary. Then I bought the Clubland X-Treme Hardcore album, which was bloody brilliant. I'm still waiting to see if Clubland could release another hardcore album.

Stuff like this made me glad that it's there, because in the mainstream then were TONS of this shit funky house and hip-hop. I was getting really sick of these having samples and covering 80's classic!

Then came the godsend that was my broadband. With that, I downloaded Limewire, with which I could download most songs that I desired. I downloaded lots of stuff that I wouldn't normally be able to buy, like the Waka Laka song, and lots of songs that I heard in flash movies. But then, one day, I decided to give Nightwish a try. Lots of songs came up there. Although this was all goth rock and metal, it was when I heard this line from the song 'Sleeping Sun' I was intrigued...

"The sun is sleeping quietly, once upon a century..."

I wanted more. In the space of a few months, I gathered lots of Nightwish music, as well as that of Within Temptation, another goth rock band with a female lead singer. Some were really scary, while others were beautiful. Each of Nightwish's 6 albums had at least one song that I really liked, for how melodic and wonderfully sung it was. Metal music with an operatic female voice. This was nothing like I've heard before.

Within Temptation are similar, but less operatic than Nightwish. But when I got to check them out, I was gagging for their Mother Earth album, and when I did, I was dreadfully excited by my find. The first song of theirs I got hold of was 'Memories', which didn't sound too bad, but I was yet to hear better. In the end, I found that this band was a LOT better than Evanescence.

These artists really knew how to make the music I really liked - music that is rich with melody. I love all that frilly classical stuff, I love woodwind music, I love orchestral, acoustic the lot! In todays mainstream I heard too little of it, and too much of this 'I wanna make hot love to you' shit.

If you haven't heard any songs by Nightwish and Within Temptation, I suggest you do so. Of Nightwish, I recommend the Oceanborn album, which...well, there's just something about that album that I really like about it as opposed to the other albums. Of Within Temptation, I'd go for Mother Earth. Some of the songs there are dull for those whole really love their heavy metal, but for people like me they're brilliant.

Thank you so much Limewire.