The Smashing Pumpkins

I was sifting through some music I'd found on an old harddrive on Friday and stumbled across some Smashing Pumpkins tracks. They've really made some fantastic music.

I can remember being into the whole Nirvana and Pearl Jam thing when I was at school (around 91, 92), not the scene particularly but the music definately. Sure, I had a check-shirt, but I wasn't into guitar and I didn't hate my parents. Anyway, I think like a lot of people I hadn't really gotten wind of the Pumpkins back then (even though they had an album out, Gish, by that point) and I continued to unfortunately overlook them for a number of years. Around 95, 96 a friend of mine picked up Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and I gave it a listen. The attraction of the heavy guitars and ferocious vocals pulled me in, but I don't think I gave it much listening time as I was going through a Neil Young Zuma, Freedom, Weld kind of phase at the time.

When I hit University, and musical interests became a common topic of conversations/distraction, their name would pop up and I'd be able to convey my meagre knowledge of some of their music and at least know enough to know that around 96, 97 and on the back of their epic double album Melon Collie, their popularity was at a high. So I revisited that album, became hugely drawn to it, and with it came the usual process of buying up the back catalouge and soaking myself in it until I was drenched! Siamese Dreams effected me the most at the time, and had a big influence for me personally with regards to the music I was experimenting with. You see, around 97 I guess, I'd finally picked up the guitar. I'd always been into guitar driven music and now I craved being able to replicate my favourites - and in turn make something of my own. There's alot to be said for coming up with a chord sequence, or a melody, or even a noise that YOU made and that you like the sound of. It's writing to your own taste, and you can get more whenever you like. I don't pretend to be profecient or even intermediate some many years later, but I still get a kick out of it, and I still enjoy it bashing away the best I can.

Pumpkins were'nt the only band I liked the sound of around that time, with my love for Nirvana, Perl Jam, Metallica, Neil Young, and Foo Fighters all playing their part for my musical soul, but the Smashing Pumkins had so much energy in their music - so many layers - that I was quickly a huge fan.

Back to finding some Pumpkins tracks on a lost harddrive. There weren't many of them (I had the albums on CD anyway, right), but as I flicked through I remembered a dear favourite of mine, the track "Hummer" on Siamese Dreams. It's much easier to find music online than it ever has been, and in particular when I want to check out a track quick without the rigimors of finding them on sneaky sites and downloading copies that turn out to be a completely differnt band or porn, I fired up YouTube and did a quick search. Obviously loads of results, and to my delight there were a handsome amount of music videos and live performances. I poured over them for hours, happening on some rare footage and some documentaries to boot. The guitar came out, the tablature for Hummer was sought, and although I'd get no-where near replicating it in full or even well, I managed enough of the intro chords to fill me with that same enthausiasm I had for them over 10 years ago.

And once again I find the drive to work all that more acceptable, as Gish resolves around and around in my CD player, with Adore having never left the glove box, and when I finally locate my lost copy of Siamese Dreams I'm sure it will once again become a permanent resident until I've attacked my ear drums with it so much that I start thinking in rich swirls of melon collie and wallowing in fuzz soaked waves of guitar...

Blogging blasts from the past

As explained in a previous post, at one point or another I was quite into World of Warcraft. Well, today I found out just how much...

You see, I do remember doing a little blogging on the subject a while back ( 2007/08) - but those links were long forgotten and with them all record of that period of time... but I found them! And there were many posts!!

I had no idea that I'd written so much, and seeing as this blog is for me to flex the occasional creative writing muscle I've consolidated all those old posts into this blog under the very clever sub category World of Warcraft so that all evidence of what I've written past and present are here in historical format. I must admit, I did enjoy re-reading some of that old stuff - some of it lasting well and sounding very much like me... and some utter twoddle. But for the main part, a very enjoyable revisit. Check them out if the subject matter of WoW and hunters interests you, or the scrutiny of people's past works gives you a kick also.

I may well do the same for a raft of posts I started and never finished on our honeymoon in Kenya experiences. Watch this space.

What I'm listening too

I have to drive an hour to work via two pretty much full time stacked motorways, and then an hour back home - which has on occasion spanned as long as 3 hours if there is an accident. I'm sure this is not uncommon for a number of people.

Doing at least two hours in a car each day gives me ample opportunity to listen to music, and the CD player is rarely off during my commute.

This week in the passenger seat and raring to go, and by way of a top 5, have been:

1. Drive-by Truckers - The Dirty South
2. Patterson Hood - Murdering Oscar
3. Drive-by Truckers - Brighter than Creations Dark
4. Joe Bonamassa - Ballad of John Henry
5. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

Stand out tracks across the albums; Where the Devil Don't Go (Dirty South), Murdering Oscar (title track), Funkier than a Mosquitos tweeter (Balld of John Henry), and That man I shot (Brighter than Creations Dark).

Sometimes it's a pleasure to have a long commute :-)

World of Warcraft owned me...

I was never a hardcore gamer. Not even when I was a kid. I loved video games and everything about them, but I rarely had a next gen console, and I was never chasing graphic card evolution when it came to PC's. But I played a bit of everything, from Street Fighter II to MMO's and World of Warcraft become my prefered gaming passtime for a reasonable period.

At university my housemates and coursemates where all into the same kind of games, and at that time First Person Shooter (FPS), Real Time Strategy (RTS), and Role Playing Games (RPG) were in their element. We played and created custom maps for Duke Nukem and later Unreal Tournament, peppered each other with tanks in C&C Red Alert and Total Annialation, and spend hours pouring over stats in Diablo and Baldurs Gate.

Oh man Baldurs Gate. What a game. It was single player game so detailed and beautifully storied that it was often the reason for a missed class or drinking binge. Diablo on the other hand was an excuse to drag our respective machines round to each others houses and connect them up so that we could battle the elements together. This soon became the case for every game that allowed mutliplayer and we continued the process of lugging computer gear miles and miles long after we left University.

By this time we were into whatever lastest version of UT it was at the time, Quake 3 Arena, and the latest incarnation of Diablo - but soon Massively Multiplater Online Games (MMO) started to loom onto the horizon. Initially dismissing them as forums for nerds with far too much time on there hands I was encouraged over time to sign up to a game a group of my friends were playing called EVE online. This changed my perspective on video games forever. EVE was, and will likely always be, the most thought provoking, involving, strategic, and satisfying game I have ever played. It dominated our lives and our discussions for a very long time. I struggled with the time commitment it asked of you, and still shared some perspective from outsiders that it was a soul dominating environment that asked too much and ultimately in the grand scheme of things gave nothing - but still it was a huge draw for all of us and we formed a Corporation in game that we lovingly ran, developed, and enjoyed.

In the end EVE turned out to be incompatible with girlfriends, and bit by bit I pulled myself away from the scene.  Still starving for a game pastime I persued a new incarnation of the Warcraft universe, an MMO called World of Warcraft. WoW advertised itself as "any game-time commitment" friendly, in that if you weren't there you weren't losing out. In fact the longer you were gone, the more experience points (XP) you would build up so that when you did return the things you slay we more valuable and consequently you were easily able to catch up. A fine design, and exactly what I was looking for! EVE had been a punishing Player Vs Player (PvP) world in which absence could result in lost teritory and income, whereas WoW promised the same game experience whether you were online all day or for an hour.
EVE had been heavily sociable, and with my friends still persistant in that game and almost none in WoW I headed back to EVE online for a time to enjoy it from the angle of playing the bad guy, as many of my friends had also chosen. For a while this was a "time friendly" way to enjoy the game - it mainly involved logging on, heading out into the cosmos to find someone with either money, materials, or simply easy targets, and dispatching them for their precious cargo or another notch on the killboard. It was satisfying and profitable.  But the cracks started to show again, and I found it harder and harder to manage a new girlfriend and the late night rampaging through the game - and once again I put it down to persue other interests. It was the right thing to do, but had the ill effect or losing some Real Life (RL) contact with my buddies - which was highly regrettable.

With gaming still in my blood, once again WoW become the prefered option and I feaverishly got back into it. I wasn't terribly interested in running dungeons or grouping and the single player aspect tickled my every fancy. More and more friends dropped in to try the game and those that stayed organised a guild and it was a highly enjoyable period.

Online games had long been a bone of contention with my partner however, and my penchant for saying "just 5 more minutes" and being online for 2 more hours was growing thin with her. I'd now seen alot of the game, actively participating in guild activities, running more and more dungeons, and taking a liking to more group activity based challenges. I very much did not want to stop playing, but it had gotten to a point where I was allocated a night I could play (Tuesdays) and (a) if I missed the opportunity it would really grate me, and (b) I was totally unable to hold myself too it, often slipping online Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays.

There are worse crimes obviously, but my home life was starting to suffer a little from it and I gave it up on the basis that the Xbox I received for my 30th birthday would be able to sustain my gaming wimms, and perhaps I could finally break the additction of WoW crack. And that's the way it worked..... up until now :-)

I still read the odd snippet about WoW and now and again I get those pangs that make you want to break your online silence and once again ride forth through Azeroth. Obviously the soon to be arrival of a baby is highly incompatible with this thought process and the mear mention of the game may well send my wife into hysterics.... but, every now and again I think about installing it and taking a peek to see what new features are cool and whether anyone I use to play with is still around.

I mustn't! I won't! But still, none the less, World of Warcraft owns me....

iLove it

I'm starting to obsess over the iPhone.

Many many months ago when it was released I thought it was an attractive bit of kit and like everyone else I wanted one, but the price was ridiculous and so it wasn't to be. Not too off-put I carried on with my normal life and my normal phone.

Present day, they have become affordable (I guess) and finally within the realms of possible ownership - but now I'm torn over whether to pull the trigger or not! See, now that's it been a little while the competition have started releasing comparable devices with a host of similar or in some cases superior features. So effectively rendering my previous no-brainer decision a now potential reflex decision with drastic gadget related consequences!!

Well... ok, so maybe it's not quite that bad. In fact, surely having comparable devices to investigate makes the whole experience a bit more fun and a lot more valuable to us the consumer. Right? Wrong. Now there's too much choice! I'm not precious about phones at all but in this instance, when realistically I'll have to shell out of some dosh to get one, I need to consider my needs carefully. I also realise that whatever I buy will be obsolete in 6 months making the 24 month contracts seem like unbrakeable chains of telecomunitive restraint.

So with all this in mind and a little research later I've gotten it down to a few phones I'm interested in. The iPhone, the HTC Hero, and the Palm Pre. All attractive, all innovative, all feature heavy, and all realistically obtainable.

Now if you thought this was going to be a break down of pro's and cons you were wrong. I've gone over that enough in my head and in almost every area each has a case for why it's superior. No, what I'm talking about is money, plain and simple.

I'm with Orange who rather nicely carry the HTC Hero. With a £5 increase in monthly payments I could lay my hands on one for FREE! Put that in the plus column if you must. The iPhone on the other hand is not only on a different network but would also see and increase of £10 on top of what I currently pay monthly to (a) get the 3G version for FREE or (b) stick on £90 for the new and shiny 3Gs version. Yum yum. I've absolutely no quarms about changing provider if it gets me the device I want, and you can even carry your numnber so that is a moot point. But the facts stand:

- HTC for a meagre £5 increase per month
- iPhone for an extra £10 a month and potentially £90 initial expense.

Lets break down the iPhone options. 3G or 3Gs. I've pumped questions into google along the lines of "is there really any point getting a 3Gs over a 3G version" and all I ever get back is "depends". The 3Gs certainly is faster, every resource I've plucked through agrees with that, but is that really important to me? No. The 3Gs is capable of recording relatively low quality video which, with a baby on the way, could provide not only hours of fun but a good way for me to share little triumphs over the net for my family to revel in. Awww. That's a plus. Other features like being able to voice dial people sounds useful for car journeys and for being flash at any opportunity but ultimately they don't interest me enough to be a must. Just find contact, dial 'em, right. So I'm not moved by that stuff. But the video, I'll admit, I'd get a kick out of that.

Is that feature worth £90 to me and an inflated monthly payment....

The other extenuating factor is my wife also wants an iPhone. Should I advise her to get the 3G one for FREE and then allow me to drop £90 on my one? Hardly seems fair. So are we now talking about £180 for a couple of phones and £20 more per month on phone contracts? For 2 years!!!

Ok this is where I normally start to get hazey and pass out. We're not talking unsurmountable quantities of money here, but I can think of hundreds (well... a couple) of things that kind of money could be put towards.

And that's when the HTC Hero slips into view once more, sporting a low cut dress, and ridiculous looking chin. There is however no denying that it's an attractive prospect, and I hear good things about if from a friend of mine who regales me with it's possibilities but laments its current sluggishness. (soon to perhaps be altered in a patch?)

I know a great number of people with iPhones and I occasionally snatch them from their now touch screen happy dexterous hands and navigate it's menus with that "not trying to be intrusive to your private data but I must inspect every aspect of it" sense of purpose. I know it's the prefered device. I know getting the 3Gs over the 3G means I get increased speed in applications and a onboard movie maker to exploit my childs daily triumphs with and share with everyone I know for no other reason that its so damn cute! But...

...the HTC keeps making eye contact and it's availability and comparable cheapness is very VERY endearing.

Site themes

I will readily admit that site themes torment me! I can't write until I'm comfy with the look and feel of the site and safe in the knowledge that the presentation is there. Which is pathetic! I've read a number of sites, blogs, articles, and the content mattered a whole lot more than the layout. But this is my little spot on the web and I'm a sucker for a nice bit of design.

I will find one I like!

edit: I settled on a default one anyway! It's not too exciting but it's neat and its kicked of my need to write again :-)

What we're not watching...

You remember the post "What we are watching"? Well the first film on the list was Quantum of Solace. It is still at our house!!! The concept of this Blockbuster post it/receive it business is to get through your list as quickly as possible to take full advantage of the price you pay and get your moneys worth. Now, on a couple of occasions they have not had it available and sent us another DVD from our list (whatever they were they were forgettable because.... er, I can't remember what they were) so it's not quite as bad as it looks, but still - We suck terribly at getting the DVD's back, and we normally watch them the evening they arrive. *sigh*

That's it, I'm starting a list:

1. Must get better at sending DVD's back.

Right, home, put DVD in packing, send off... whatever it takes.