wafblog v3.0

This has not been a very good start to the year. I was coming home yesterday after the gym, and I don’t know what I did, but I snapped the frames of my glasses. So now the whole right arm has detached and obviously, I can’t wear them. This is rather annoying as I am quite attached to my glasses. Luckily, I had bought a new pair before I went to Europe, so I’m wearing them now. They weren’t meant for day-to-day wear though – I only intended to use them when dressing up. The lenses are thicker because they’re rimless frames, so the light refracts into the lens differently. Plus, the light reflects on the edges making them much more obvious to me. This pretty much means that my glasses are giving me a headache from wearing them for too long. I’ll be going to the optometrist tomorrow to see if they can be fixed (soldered) back together, but I kind of doubt it which means I’ll have to fork out like $300 for a new pair.

So, during my 10 days off I went to see the doctor because my eczema was unmanageable and I was having lots of trouble sleeping. He gave me prednisone, which I’d expected, and since taking it my skin seems to have calmed down a lot. I’m hoping that it’s broken the cycle and if I keep putting cream on it it’ll be ok. I’m going for a blood test on Sunday so hopefully that will shed some light onto what I’m allergic to so I can avoid it like crazy in the future. I’ve also cut a bunch of foods from my diet now, ones that are well-known allergens and I could have an intolerance too. It kind of sucks, but I suppose I don’t have much choice.

I’ve become somewhat addicted to this lemon-scented tea from Twinings. I drink it at work, and originally I was drinking like one a day. Then it became two a day… now it’s like three a day. It’s rather nice by itself, no need for sugar or milk so that’s cool. I’ve also taken to drinking camomile tea at night before bed. It is rather soothing and helps me to sleep so I’m quite impressed. Admittedly, it doesn’t taste that great, but tolerable enough.

Oh yes! In other news, I got tickets to the Big Day Out. Which is totally AWESOME. There’s no other word for it but AWESOME!!! After Homebake, I’m quite excited about seeing Eskimo Joe and The Butterfly Effect again. But the band I’m most stoked about seeing has got to be The Killers. Wooo. I’ve even listened to some of My Chemical Romance, but I don’t really like them on first listen. This time I’m going to remember a camera, and will definitely post up good photos afterwards :D

Started playing Tekken again, hoping I don’t get RSI this time. I’m getting better with Jin now, although he has this 10 hit combo which I don’t think anyone can pull off. It is kind of fun to customise your characters to play against the CPU. I did also try out Lemmings, but I think Mike enjoyed it more than I did. They are very very cute and hopefully I’ll get enough time to sit down and have a proper go at some of the more challenging levels. Must try to finish a game.

I was also looking on some of the PSP sites – seems they’ve released a custom firmware (3.02 OE-B) which allows you to loads PSX ISOs from the memory stick and play them on the PSP. So I can d/l the ISOs or buy some off the Sony site. I’m quite interested in investigating it, and M1ke e-mailed saying that he had got it working and it was pretty cool. To be honest, I’m not really sure what PSX games I’d want to play on the PSP considering the number of games I have at the moment that I haven’t played, but the possibility of having that entire library available to play – awesome.

We’ve also started playing Guild Wars again. Prophecies, not the expansion. Seems silly, but we never finished the game, and well – it did kind of get boring playing by myself all the time. The NPCs are complete idiots and never heal you properly so unless you’re heaps buff you’ll usually die. So yeah, playing about an hour a day is slow progress, but still fun. Not sure I could play for hours everyday anyways, but I do enjoy completing quests and getting items and things like that. Not sure what specialty I’ll make my necro yet. Most likely I’ll level the attributes for raising bone horrors and that sort of thing – I don’t like the curses much but maybe I haven’t got the good ones yet. I’ll be adding elementalist as my second profession so hopefully that’s a good combination. At the moment just waiting to get out of this ‘n00b’ part of the game.

So I had a draft again that I forgot to publish and have since done a bunch of other things so I don’t remember what I was going to write about. Oh wells. I really should stop doing that and just post stuff up as I write it. Sometimes though, it takes time to edit the post and make sure it makes sense and I’ve put in the stuff that I wanted.

Had a fairly busy weekend, although it’s nothing compared to how busy this week will be. The RAS Christmas Party was on Friday night. The new grads are invited as it gives us a chance to meet people in an informal setting, which is a great idea I think. It was fun, although I always feel a little out of place at those type of functions. I can never truly relax as I feel I’m being judged by people, which I probably am. You can never really let your hair down, and any ‘party’ is still work. You’re still networking and all that sort of thing. Still, it was enjoyable and I can’t complain about the free food or free booze :P I also got to catch up with Danny and Chez especially. They’re always fun to hang with (=

Went to Homebake on Saturday. It was the first time I’d ever been, so I was pretty excited and everything was like ‘awesome!’. The taxi driver kept mixing up the name, and he called it ‘The Big Bake’ which I thought was really neat. Mike and I got there a little late, so we had to wait in lines for ages… Manda wasn’t impressed ): But, we made it in time to see ‘Parkway Drive’ which was the first act we wanted to see anyways. Now, I’ve always been into moshing and the general ‘slam dancing’, but I’ve never ever seen a circle pit or the whole ‘rush’ thing. Apparently it’s popular with more heavy metal type bands. I suppose ‘Parkway Drive’ are heavy enough for it. So anyways, the four of us were standing there waiting for the band and as soon as they started, everyone took like 4 steps back. We didn’t know what was going on, but were soon aware of the ‘crazy’ people in front of us running around in a circle in a somewhat erratic manner and then falling over the people who were standing around. I don’t really see how the circle pit can be much fun as it looks like you’re more likely to be trampled to death than anything else, but each to their own I guess. Maybe it’s more fun when you’re completely tanked on alcohol. Luckily, this was the only show that had one of these.

‘Parkway Drive’ played well and it was definitely good to hear some heavy music (= We stuck around for ‘Little Birdy’, which I hadn’t heard of, but Manda had. They were pretty awesome too. A little bit popsy, but the songs were catchy and kind of cute. Between the time they finished and we went to get food, it had turned overcast and was soon pouring down with rain. That was a bit of a dampener, although it didn’t dent my enthusiasm any. Heard a little bit of Toni Collette’s band in that time, but not enough to get a real feel for them. Plus I was cold and drenched at the time, so wasn’t really paying much attention. We did go to see ‘Butterfly Effect’ and luckily the rain had let up by then. I’d heard a few songs by them, and I expected they would be a good live act… I was totally blown away by them though. There was no stupid circle rush this time, and you could just stand there and totally enjoy the music. There were some idiots wearing ‘anti emo crew’ t-shirts that were pushing and shoving us from behind, but even that couldn’t ruin the performance. In some ways, this was probably my favourite band on the day. They were THAT good, and so much more than I had expected. I don’t know if I’d listen to their songs a lot (on the train or whatever), but certainly it’s given me a new appreciation for them anyways and I wouldn’t mind hearing their album in full. We were all pretty beat by the time they finished, and with it raining so much we decided to heat out of the venue in search of a bathroom and possibly some shelter. We ended up sitting (and sleeping) in Travis’ car for an hour while we waited for the rain to subside. That kind of didn’t happen. But I don’t think anything was really going to deter us from seeing ‘Eskimo Joe’ and then ‘silverchair’. I’m not really a big ‘Eskimo Joe’ fan – the last (and first) song by them that I really liked was that sweater song, and they never play it anymore :P However, it turns out they play that ‘hello, hello’ song which I do like. And of course, I’ve heard Black Fingernails, Red Wine on the radio. There was another one that I recognised but I forget now. In any case, their music is easy to mosh to and generally likeable. Some of the slower stuff was a bit… hrm… but that might have been just because I wanted to mosh. Plus there was the fat dude in front of my who kept leaning back into me. I can’t really blame him thouigh, he was doing the same thing Mike was – protecting his girlfriend from crazy moshers. The rush at the end of the ‘Eskimo Joe’ set was pretty intense. The number of people trying to get out of the pit, combined with the number of people trying to get in meant that we were shoved around a lot and it was very rough. We ended up moving to the side to avoid the centre crush before ‘silverchair’ took to the stage. Unfortunately, being short is a great disadvantage in these sorts of events, as everyone else is bound to be taller than you thus blocking your view of the stage. I jumped up a few times to catch a glimpse of Daniel Johns and later on Mike lifted me up a couple of times so I could see the stage for a bit. I should say that, silverchair are the reason I went to Homebake this year, and they are also the reason I managed to get Manda to come along. I guess I had high expectations for them and I was a little disappointed. Mainly because they played a lot of their new stuff, and I’m more of an ‘old school’ fan. After hearing them play their new songs, I’m unlikely to buy their new album. Considering this is one of the bands that got me through high school (yeay for angst!)… but you know, sometimes bands change their sound and that’s just where the creative forces are taking them. We ended up leaving the mosh pit before the end of the set, but once out, were able to see much more of the stage from the side. I was very very glad they played ‘Freak’, and there’s an awesome feeling you get when there’s like 10,000 people singing along to the song at the same time as you. It really is quite undescribable.

All in all, I’m really glad I went and it was an awesome experience. I got to see the bands that I wanted to see, and you can’t compare to seeing a band live. However, I’m not sure I’d go again unless the line-up had some really great bands in it. The crowds that the festival attracts, along with the paranoia of having to make sure you’re not getting rolled and won’t be pushed/shoved/elbowed/crushed in the pit can detract from the general experience. I’m fairly sure I only survived unscathed because I had people around to protect me. There’d need to be some really great bands to make me brave that again.

So, of course, as soon as I say that I doubt there’ll ever be a chess game for the PSP, I’m digging around on GameSpot and find out that Konami are releasing “Chess Battle”. From what I can see, it literally is “Battle Chess” for the PSP, but all trumped up and 3D looking! So I’m definitely going to get it when it comes out (this month IIRC). I also saw that they’re releasing Lumines II sometime this month I think. So two new games for me to look out for and hopefully will be able to play soon. This causes a little bit of a conundrum as I counted yesterday and I’ve got 15 games. I think there’s about 5 I haven’t played (GTA: LCS, Lemmings, Tokobot, Gottlieb Pinball and Lego Star Wars II) And another 5 that I haven’t played properly at all (Frantix, Mercury, Loco Roco, Koolumn and Gripshift). I’ve played Lumines, Burnout Legends, SSX, DJ Max Portable and Tekken: Dark Resurrection like crazy at some stage though. But I haven’t finished any games yet. So I probably should not buy any more games until I’ve finished the ones I’ve got. Which could easily take me a year or something. I think my main problem is that I’ll play and play and then I’ll reach a stage where I’m not actually getting any better. Happens with me for most games really. Or I start to lose interest because the games become repetitive. So I’ll pull out something else and be content with that for a while. Maybe I’ll finish Tekken though, there’s so much replayability there. But, argh… Lumines II!!!! Apparently they’ve released Lumines for XBox 360. Although I’m more interested in the old XBox… but I don’t have a TV in my room so there’s no point thinking about that yet.

Anyways. I have new music! I got Badly Drawn Boy’s “Born In The U.K.” which I hope will be as good as the soundtrack to About A Boy. Also picked up The Scissor Sisters’ “Ta-Dah” which is an awesome name, plus the ‘I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ song is rather addictive in that can’t-get-it-out-of-my-head kind of way. I’m hoping Evanescence’s “The Open Door” will be good because as much as I like them, their songs all sound the same after a while and that becomes rather boring. Lastly I got The Killers’ new album “Sam’s Town” which I listened to on the way to work this morning. It sounds rather disappointing on first listen, but sometimes you need to give it a few goes before it grows on you. I’m hoping that will happen with this album, I’m just finding that none of the songs have grabbed me yet. Like, I remember when I first heard ‘Mr. Brightside’ I just instantly went “that’s awesome!!” and listened to it over and over. They sound different on this album - a little more mellow, a little less energy. If I don’t end up liking the album so much I guess I won’t be so disappointed I didn’t get tix to their concert or the BDO. Which reminds me, tickets for Homebake arrived yesterday! W00t. So excited!!!