A whole bunch of pinball nerds extremely excited.

Add A Comment Direct Link Tags: Pinball can be fun...

Date: Wednesday, September 01, 2010 22:20
User: GGBlog
Comment: What the ... ?

Election soon. Who do I vote for?

More importantly, how do I choose who I will vote for?

Do I vote for the leader? Do I vote for a party because I think they reflect my values? Do I vote for a particular policy? Do I vote against a particular policy?

I've found two good articles discussing this from a christian perspective - the first one is quite good for the non christian.

Having said that I really want to vote against the internet filter because it's such a waste of time.

So how do you choose who you will vote for?

Add A Comment Direct Link Tags: Voting

Date: Wednesday, August 25, 2010 22:43
User: Dave
Comment: You're in Victoria, so you can register an internet filter protest vote and vote for anyone independant of this. Simply vote however you want, except put Stephen Conroy #60 on the senate paper.

I hear it all the time:

"Australia's infrastructure can't handle more people so we shouldn't allow for more people".

NO. Here's an idea. FIX THE INFRASTRUCTURE.

Saying "Australia can only handle 20 million people" is coming dangerously close to
Hansonism

Add A Comment Direct Link Tags: population immigration

Date: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 22:29
User: GGBlog
Comment: What is also not being noted is that Australia's immigration is closely related to its need for skilled workers. This in turn is linked to the health and competitiveness of our economy. It would seem therefore that to vote against immigration is to vote against our own economic well being and stability.

Back from the NT. We went to Oenpelli for a week to do building maintenance. It was pretty hard yakka, especially with me getting bronchitis halfway through! Here it is on google maps.

The road sign on the right is what greeted us on the way in. A gunshotted federal government sign saying "road to recovery" - the road was a heavily rutted dirt track that needed a 4WD to drive on. I can see their frustration.

So we cleaned and painted the entire church hall, and also 2 rooms (an office and a storeroom). We definitely needed all nine of us there to do the work, it was a killer. Very high heat and all hands on deck. We ended up working 9-5 for five days and just barely got it all done. We had to drive in all of our supplies (food, sleeping gear, utensils) and it took about 6 months of planning to get it all organised. Even with a contact on the ground there was lots of meeting people and earning their trust.

However it wasn't just a fly-by-night operation. The plan is to go back every year and see what we can do to help. The best thing we can do is just say "what do you need doing that would take 10 people to do?" and then give it a go, instead of rocking up and saying "we're going to do this!".

Well that's the 5 minute version of the trip. To explain everything would take hours. Any questions click the "add a comment" link.

Add A Comment Direct Link Tags: nothern territory, NT

I did some music for James Rolfe's latest video "The Dragon in my Dreams". I did the intro theme, and the music for the main scene at 5:26. This one was definitely a challenge but possibly the most rewarding I've ever done.



and here's the credit:

Add A Comment Direct Link Tags: Some new music for a very popular video...

Date: Tuesday, June 22, 2010 19:27
User: GGBlog
Comment: Hey well done on being selected! Great effort. And your music adds the right mix between sentiment and purpose.

New timelapse video of us gardening set to music:

Add A Comment Direct Link Tags: gardening youtube video timelapse stop motion

Date: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 11:57
User: ransworld
Comment: Very nice. When I work in the garden, there never seems to be any progression. Maybe I should try a timelapse video!

Pain of Salvation decided to enter into the Eurovision song contest. What???

Anyway, here's what they did. It's a great song. Weird that the rest of the band didn't play.

While you're there, check out Daniel's incredible range.

Add A Comment Direct Link Tags: Eurovision pain of salvation

The North Korean official news service is always hilarious. A favourite over the past few days:

Foreign visitors to Pyongyang are unanimous in calling it a beautiful city with fresh air and good environment, a city in park.

Well, my friend who visited last month actually said:

Did you enjoy your visit to the DPRK? - Yes, absolutely. It was fantastic!

Would you recommend it to others? - To every person I meet.

Will you return? - When hell freezes over!

The photo on the right is some blissful NK'ers working in their heavenly city.

But the best one is their documentation of South Korean's human rights violations! Remember, this is the North talking about the South! Some pearlers:

The puppet group of traitors imported American beef seriously harming the health and life security of south Koreans and touching off outcries among them. This is the hideous human rights abuse of special mention.

I bet the north koreans would do anything for some American beef.

It is another hideous human rights abuse committed by the puppet group that it revived fascist dictatorship and turned south Korea into a tundra of human rights where democracy is cruelly violated.

This is the North, talking about the South.

The south Koreans' freedom of assembly, demonstration and association are ruthlessly violated and torture, violence and inhuman insults are rampant.

Like when thousands of South Koreans protested in public about the potential dodgyness of the american beef (great photos!), and the government offered to resign.

The group is getting frantic with the operations to lure and kidnap compatriots.

They must be talking about themselves. Surely they've just gotten confused? "Wait a minute... are we talking about the South or ourselves? Ourselves isn't it?"

Add A Comment Direct Link Tags: North Korean Humour..

Now that Mike has finished with his maniacal journey of recording 12 ep's in 12 months, I thought I'd write my retrospective. BTW, we have a gig in two weeks.

1 - I first found out about Toehider by reading on the OzProg Template Forum that Mike was releasing a solo EP. I had known about his previous band "Template" - who I once went to see at DV8... except that we found out that they were scheduled to go on at 3 AM ! And me and my mate turned up at 9:00pm.... and we both had to work the next day... so we left. And never saw a Template gig! But we were both pretty annoyed, so I emailed Mike saying "What the hell" and he apologised. So I figured he must be a cool guy.

2 - After reading on OzProg that Mike planned on touring in Jan/Feb with a new band, I sent him a message saying "WOW YOU ARE AWESOME CAN I BE IN YOUR BAND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE". Knowing that this probably made me seem like a freak with no credentials I learnt the hard parts in Jesuitmont and sent him a video of me playing it. Apparently it impressed him enough to schedule a meet up at a rehearsal room and where we worked out a few songs off the first original Toehider album. His vocals absolutely blew me away. Never have I met someone who can sing so well and always be in tune! (btw, this is my favourite picture of mike and I)

3 - Mike then found a bass player, Amy, who turned out to be the friend of a friend which was a wierd co-incidence.. but these things happen in Melbourne! As with all great bass players, they never get the praise they deserve.. but Amy is awesome! She's always positive and always knows her stuff and is a general joy to be around. Too many times she completely nails a difficult section and we just ignore the fact. Sorry Amy.

4 - Amy then found a drummer, some hack named Ricky Evansand. Ricky is actually the funniest person on the planet. Mike and I are constantly in stiches with Ricky - we have an ongoing joke about who is better friends with Mike, whenever I am at Mike's place I always take a photo of myself with Mike and send it to Ricky. He does the same thing. Ricky is also the most humble person in the world. Here is a picture of me being an idiot:



5 - When I first learnt "you're not the girl you said you were" Mike sent an mp3 of it to me with no vocals. I thought it was an instrumental. So I learnt it.. and then when we started rehearsing it he started singing! "What the hell????" Turns out it's an actual song.

6 - Our first gig was in Brisbane in front of a LOT of people! Our FIRST GIG. It was pretty awesome, but it involved about 20 hours of us sitting around not having anything to say to each other because we didn't know each other and PLUS we were nervous! But it turned out to be a great gig - and there were two people video'ing the gig and they immediately put it up onto youtube. Here's the now famous Jesuitmont from that show - yep, the first time we played it : )

7 - As we don't have a keyboardist, some of our songs use a backing track that has the keyboard parts on it. Now in order to play along to a backing track at a gig it's actually a complicated setup. After a few gigs I put together the rack mounted mixer and wrote my own mp3 player that would work well for Ricky (I'm a programmer by day). It's been working ok - except that using a laptop isn't the most reliable of things. One of these days we'll get one of those rack mountable mp3 player thingamybobs.

8 - When "Metaltarsus" came out, it didn't have "...but mostly metal" on it. Mike sent me the tune instrumentally and emailed me the lyrics saying "shame, I ran out of time to record this one".. after reading the words and almost DYING WITH LAUGHTER, I replied saying YOU HAVE TO RECORD THIS. I don't think it took much convincing for him to record it. Once he did, I emailed mike saying "if we don't play this song live I'm going to quit the band". Not much of a threat but it worked.

9 - Because I loved "But mostly metal" so much I put together a youtube videoclip consisting of lots of images thrown together. My lovely wife is the queen of terrible puns so she helped alot. It got onto the front page of metalsucks.com (best domain name ever) and suddenly we had 1600 views in one day! Mike rang me up going "What the hell... the traffic on the site has gone crazy, what have you done"? I was hoping that the video would go viral and suddenly have 3 million views, but alas, it wasn't to be. I guess satirical metal songs aren't everyone's cup of tea (idiots).



10 - I originally learnt everything on the 7 string, and the plan was to do everything on it. However it started hurting my wrist, so screw it, after a song or two I go back to the 6 string. What am I trying to prove?

11 - We've done a couple of interstate gigs which are great fun. When we played in Sydney we flew there and I told Mike a very very very rude joke at the top of my voice in front of lots of children without realising it. After the gig we ended up getting 1 hours sleep and going back to the airport. Here's me at 4am trying to pretend that I still enjoy everyone's company. Mike and Ricky were wide awake and happy. Amy and I weren't.



12 - At about our third gig Mike decided to purposely stuff up my guitar solo by pushing his dirty fingers all over my fretboard. So at the next gig I sabotaged his guitar solo by unplugging his lead and getting Amy to unplug his lead from his amp. Then he pushed me into the corner and rubbed his sweaty back all over me. Then we called it a truce before we killed each other.


As you can see, it's been an absolute joy. I love this band, and when it finished up (NEVER!!!!!) I can never play in another band again because they will all suck in comparison. So thanks to all the guys for being soo awesome.

Add A Comment Direct Link Tags: toehider music

That idiot from australian idol Andrew G is actually the coolest guy in the world.

Add A Comment Direct Link Tags: that guy from australian idol