Thanks to Sven for this link. I never knew there was such a thing as live drum n bass!
Live Drum n Bass
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Category Archives: Music, Movies, Gaming
what i’ve been up to lately
Adelaide Marathon
This was a couple weeks ago, but I’ve been “a bit busy”, such is my favourite line at work these days. After talking to someone for a couple minutes and you feel like getting back to work, or just getting away from talkign to them, I say “anyway, gotta go, i’m a ‘bit busy’” – regardless of how NOT busy I am 
Anyway, my bro Mike and Dad entered the event too (10km run and 10km walk respectively) so that was great to have them come out and participate too. Mike had a rough time with blisters afterwards, and Dad had sore legs the next day I think, but both of them have just started getting back into running and walking, so soon it won’t be painful for them, rather it will be 100% enjoyable.
Anyway back to me, I got a new PB of 3hrs, 26mins (4 minutes faster than last years Melbourne Marathon). I was set for a 3hr 10min finish until the last few kilometres when everything cramped up and I was destroyed. At the finish line I got stuck because I had to dig my fingers into my quads or otherwise they wanted to snap into a cramp, so I couldn’t let go of my leg. It didn’t hurt or anything, just needed time to be massaged out. The volunteer helper people tried to push me through the finish area so I didn’t clog everything up, but I just had to tell them politely not to touch me. Later on, Morv gave me a really long massage that hurt lots and lots even though she was barely touching me (my fault for running 42km, not hers!) Even still after a 1 hour massage, I was completely ruined and could hardly move. I think this might have been from getting on the p**s with Tom V, Nick, Gary on the Friday night before.
Morvie & Tom 3 Month!!
Morv and I had our 3 Month on Friday! woot! She took me out to dinner at the Snake Charmer on Wednesday night. Definitely a big contester to the Raj on Taj Indian restaurant I normally go to. Delice! (That is delicious pronounced how Shaun Micallef would say it after having a sip of some random drink after sitting on a random chair at the start of one of his shows) Anyway, Thanks Morv it was a great night!!
City to Bay Fun Run
Best City to Bay I’ve ever done! Even though it was my worst time by 5 or so minutes, it was great to start at the back of the pack with Mike for the full run. After I ran with him for a few minutes, using my GPS watch to help him work out what a good 65min pace was, I left him to go hard and try to match my previous times. Unfortunately it succed hardcore having to push my way through everyone constantly for 12km, and apart from probably running an extra few hundred or so metres (from all the sideways movement), having to slow down and speed up constantly to get past people, I also p*ssed a few too many people off by bashing into them for my liking. In particular, there were 4 or 5 or so girls running SLOWLY abreast each other right at the finish line, and I swear I yelled very loudly “coming through” but they didn’t move, so unfortunately they felt the need to yell out “idiot” and “jerk”. Hopefully by next year if I build up some race cred I might be able to start with the elites or something. They start a minute before everyone else you see.
Afterwards, I met up with Mike and we took drinks back along the course for Nai and Morv which I think they appreciated. I feel sorry for Nai who had mega blisters from her shoes being too small. I know what it’s like to have bad blister problems and hopefully I can help her sort them out.
Indoor Soccer
I’ve started playing indoor soccer again in a team that Chris Soo started up. Our team name is “The team that very occasionally doesn’t lose!”. Quite appropriate, given we lots 16 neil today, and they lost 10-2 last week. This was my first game today, and heaps of people couldn’t make it so we got Morv to fill in to play as well She did an awesome job and is an indoor soccer superstar professional! I’m trying to convince her to just charge at the guys with the ball, and because she’s a girl they won’t tackle her so she’ll get the ball by default. But the team this weak was pretty gnarly looking, so it probably wasn’t a good first game to try these sorts of shenanigan tactics.
Work / Portland / Montreal, Canada
On Sunday I left to Portland with Ben from work. We tested soil for a wind farm for a couple days, which was definitely interesting. Unfortunately there wasn’t really much to do in Portland at this time of the year, so we got a little bored at nights. It’s a small town between Mt Gambier and Goolwa (Goolwa in Victoria, not the suburb of Adelaide). It comes alive in the holiday season over summer, with lots of tourists. Anyway, our stint in the field was very successful and we came home a few days early. I left my wallet at the airport on Wednesday which wasted most of Wed afternoon at work as I desperately rang everywhere looking for it. Got it back eventually, thanks to several very honest people, the key person being a worker Hudson’s Cafe at Adelaide Airport (ground level) that handed it in. Thank you so much you’re a champ!!
This coming Friday I’m going to Montreal, Canada, to attend a seminar on this software used for earthing of distribution systems. It will definitely be extremely intersting and I’m looking forward to it a lot. I enjoy numerical software, CAD, and FEA software, so this is exactly the kind of thing I should (hopefully!) be good at doing at work. It will no doubt take a few months to become reasonable at it, and intimidating for reasons I won’t publicly speak about, but I’m definitely glad to be doing this. I feel extremely fortunate to be given this opportunity.
Latest Beats
Roni Size. OMG he’s coming to Adelaide but I”m going to miss it as I’ll be in Canada!! ARRRGHHHHH!!!!! I missed out on the Red Hot Chili Peppers tickets, and now I’ll miss Roni Size. Just so you know, Roni Size, DieselBoy, and Klute are probably my three all time favourite DNB artists – which basically means my three all time favourite overall artists! So I’ve been listening to all my Roni Size music which I don’t seem to have listened to for over at least one year, and i’m loving it! I was getting a little tired of a lack of variety of DNB music I seem to have these days, but I’ve just got to learn to shuffle my CD’s in my big stacks of CD’s around a bit, and wipe and re-download new music to my mp3 player. Also, I think I need to go through and check that all my mp3-alised music is properly tagged so it can be searched for and sent to my mp3 player.
So my favourite album at the moment is definitely “in the mode” by Roni Size. There is this one track in particular “Centre of the Storm” which has the guy from Rage Against the Machine (Zack de la Rocha). It’s totally fierce, and should be awesome for running marathons to. It’d totally make me feel “pleasantly angry” which is exactly the kind of emotion I like to feel when running as it helps the release of lots of adrenalin. I was talking about types of music to someone at Morv’s friends 21st (Christina) last weekend for when you’re out running, and I really think it’s quite interesting to find out what people listen to. It can really help to just make you start to feel a little angry from the music you listen to, because it stops you thinking about the pain your legs go through. When I say I like to feel angry, I don’t really mean I”m going to go biff someone, I just mean it makes me not give a stuff about things. In particular, the pain of my legs.
Another Roni Size track I really like is “Lucky Pressure”. I would love to put these mp3′s up on my blog but I don’t think the record company would appreciate it. If anyone is reading this and would like to hear them, leave a comment and perhaps I’ll just put up 20 seconds of each track and provide a link to where to buy them from In fact I’ll just do it anyway! Here they are They’re deliberately in really bad quality to help prevent roni size from suing me :S
Lucky Pressure:
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Center of the Storm:
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Both these tracks are from In The Mode which you can buy for yourself and myself at this link, which is with Full Cycle Records. Unfortunately I don’t think he has a standalone website but let me know if you find one. Roni Size, I think you are a fool for not purchasing www.ronisize.com
Other wicked tracks are Brown Paper Bag, Play the Game, Dirty Beats, and OMG the list is endless! Best DNB artist, please buy me all these CD’s – in particular In The Mode
Other music I’ve been listening to a lot is a Cafe Del Mar album “La Caina Vue Mer”. It’s very relaxing and good for listening to just before bed, or whilst typing massive blog posts.
Lawn
Things on the lawn front are looking quite promising. I’ve done a little bit of back lawn transplantation to try and encourage the santa ana cooch to grow into the shaded areas of the lawn. I think it will be possible, but will be hard to keep through the winter. Weeds are extremely minimal after the extensive effort I spent last year. A bit of oxalis still which is under control, and a tom thumb type looking weed which I forget what it’s really called, still remains, but also under control using Paul Munn’s B6. All winter grass is dead from my mid-winter wintergrass poisoning. The very odd bit of kikuya keeps popping up every few months, but becoming a lot less frequent giving the huge dosages of Round Up I give it whenever it does, muahahhahaa. The only other weed is the bindii-eye which has popped up just a little bit, but nothing I haven’t been able to keep under control by hand and with B6. I guess this is the seeds of which was dropped last year before I got really stuck into my hand-removal regime. I should really take photos of our lawn now for completeness of my blog, but I don’t really want to until I’m totally happy with it.
This summer, absolutely MINIMAL water will be used on the lawn, and since we’re extending a veranda in to the yard this will further help to keep water down. I’m working hard to get the roots deep deep down, and the soil conditioned to absorb water as best it can, all before the summer kicks in.
lots of things happening = one giant blog entry
Lots of things have been happening in the last fortnight, and I won’t even try to put this into chronological order!
On Tuesday last week I got a phone call from ETSA Utilities, who rang to ask for my postal address so they can send my employment contract to me. This I guess means that I have the job with ETSA, which I haven’t mentioned in my blog yet since I didn’t want to be too preemptive about it. I nearly started working for ETSA in early 2005 although opted to try postgrad research instead, so I’m really looking forward to starting work with ETSA. Hopefully it comes in the post early this week, otherwise I’d best find out what happened to it.
On Thursday last week I started volunteer work via Greening Australia, with the Youth Conservation Corps. It was all good and interesting, and I enjoyed working with people I hadn’t met before. I even learnt a few things. However, I only lasted one day before I decided to quit, because of the setup of the program they were running. Because the program is sponsored by the Government for the purposes of giving young people skills to make them suitable for entering the work-force, most of the other volunteers were people that didn’t neccessarily care too much about the work they were doing. The program works such that the team I was assigned to is rostered certain tasks for the week. Since I was an added bonus to the team, all I did for them was to make their job less work, which reduced their individual workload from about 2 hours a day to about 1.5 hours a day, despite them actually “working” for 8 hours a day. I found it hard to believe that people could be doing volunteer work “for the environment” whilst dropping cigarette butts all over the place. In my opinion, the majority of the people that require volunteer work as a means of building up their CV are more likely to benefit from it if the Government pays these “volunteers” a small amount of money such that they can be disciplined for lack of team attitude and work ethics.
I did an extremely hilly 20.3km run on the way home from the job-site of this day of work I did with these people, and at the average pace I did it in after nailing such steeply ascending hills, I think I can say I’m fit to do the Adelaide August marathon this year in at least the 3:15 mark. (Previously I have been hoping to do it in sub 3 hours, but I have been sick on and off for about 6 weeks this year with a virusy type thing).
Sometime last week I cleaned and detailed my motorbike the best I ever have, and took heaps of photos of it. Click on the image below to see all of them.
A lot of my time in the last fortnight has been spent with the lovely Morv. She’s been on holidays which has been really fun but is back at work tomorrow 
We’ve been for a couple good hikes in Cleland, a DNB event with Technical Itch at the Colonel Light that Eddie organised, together with Darius & Sari, played a game called “pooker” which we’ve devised as a fair way of playing eight-ball together (not quite snooker, and not quite pool, rather more like eight-ball except I have to hit all the balls in in order and she doesn’t, since I’ve played about 1,000 times more pool than she has in her time it puts the game on a level playing-field) and just hung out together in general. The Technical Itch was awesome – I was expecting Tech. Itch to be heavy industrial type DNB but it wasn’t too bad, slightly progressive. We all had an awesome time, but all left by 2am as I think we’re getting old or something. Definitely have to go to some more DNB events in the near future. Morv took me to one of her friend of friends band that played at the Ales and Sails hotel (not somewhere I’d normally go!). The band was called the Lady Beatles – they were a group of chicks (quite young) that play Beatles songs, and their logo is of course a lady beatle! They were very impressive and very talented, it was just unfortunate that there were a few drunks in the pub that felt the need to dance in front of where we were sitting to watch the band. This would be fine if one of the 40 or so year old ladies had not decided to flash her tits, and shortly thereafter moon us. Thankfully I was able to use mind over matter combined with telekinesis to deflect the photons of light beaming from the said “moonie” such that I did not completely burn my retinas, and nor my sanity. I have not been having hallucenagenic nightmares since being mooned at point blank range by this drunk lady due to the quick action I took with the situation, and am trying to move on with my life. I haven’t even required professional counselling…yet.
I also still need to decide on a replacement light-fitting for my bedroom and would like to get some feedback of what you few readers there think of this one. Nai took me shopping for light-fittings and we found this one, which I’m intending on putting in alignment with my desk. So, what do you think? Please, leave a comment!
On another random note, one of my blog entries made it into the South Australian Rogaine Association June Newsletter!
What else have I been up to lately.. well the marking of assignments and stuff for uni is nearing complete. I finished all the “assignments” and just have to finish this marking 44 reports that are maximum of 2,000 words each, and then I’m done for good – can’t wait!! Speaking of which, I best get this done ASAP. It is so hard to motivate myself to mark assignments though. As my colleague Laura once said, it is “soul-destroying”.
selling my second mp3 player
Selling my Zen Touch on eBay, just in case anyone wants to purchase it outside of eBay give me an oi.
My sister and I have both just ordered a couple tiny Zen Neeon’s.
