The cycle continues

Well the monthly cycle of blog posting continues. Today being the 17th of the month, my previous venture into the blogging world was the 18th September. This incidentally is my first blog post as a 28 year old. I do not feel any older. I think the feeling of age and the meaning of birthdays disappears once you hit 25, only to hit you on the head like an acme anvil from the cartoons when you hit 40. So I can safely say I am enjoying my wilderness years, and will worry about the readily advance years and my eventual demise when I hit 40.
Wow, that is a grime statement to make, and an area I do not wish to procrastinate upon. I do have a horrendous fear of death and of running toward the light (what ever that means).
Musically, I am very disappointed with the new Oasis album, it is frankly a pile of shit. They are also playing Slane this year. Not too sure how good that trip to the Meath countryside will be. I would like to say however, I am a massive Oasis fan, and I always have been. I had hoped for a whole lot more from "Dig out your soul'. Alas, it was not to be.
I have the pleasure to announce I am the proud owner of an iPhone. I caved to the hype. Having said that, it is the most amazing piece of equipment I have ever used. In the few short days it has revolutionised my life. Not to be over dramatic.
Soon I can see myself reinventing this blog as I become more comfortable with expressing my views and opinions. I feel that I am beginning to find my 'voice'. I am quite ashamed to make that statement, and I realise that the earlier blog posts have focused extensively on how I struggle to express my views. This issue of lost voices came up this week. In my role as a tutor for psychology, one final year course is on life-span development, and it covers the topic of female development and how through the enforcement of patrirchial views, females are forced to silence their voices and conform to the society. Despite the blatent sexism that the theory is based in, equally sexist as masoginistic theories of male superiority, it is a good example of how I struggle with writing to this blog.

Singing off for now

The cycle of blog

What the fluck?

It seems I have some sort of menstrual like cycle. i felt like I aught to write in this here blog, and have noticed a pattern. I write to it once a month around this time each time. I don't know what it says about me or even my life. Also are we allowed to use foul language on these blogs?

If so I shall delete a certain L in the opening statement.

Life is good, I have taken on a lot of teaching in College, and for the most part enjoying it. It will be a fun semester. 

Music wise. i have no gigs on the horizon and have not purchased much in the line of new stuff.  Looking for any suggestions that may be up my street.

Anyway, this is a rather random and rambling stream of consciousness post. Not much of a central theme in sight. As i end each blog, I hope to be writing more on it.

Where has all the time gone?

I look at my blog page, and I notice it is roughly every 2 months that I write on it. It scares me to think that the last time I wrote was June, what scares me is I remember writing the post like it was only last week. None the less, I have been a busy bunny, writing up my research. In this time I have also done some pretty cool things; it was not all work.

My highlight of the 2 months since I last posted up, was my Tom Waits voyage of discovery. Prior to July 14th, a time known as BT (Before Tom), i was a fair weathered fan. I had the typical amazon.com best seller Tom Waits albums, the must haves. Any fair weathered fan will tell you these are Closing time, Rain dogs, and possibly swordfishtrombones. I did not care for the last two much, but appreciated Closing Time. So my girlfriend was a big TW fan, and was unable to go to the Dublin gigs, as she was away. We planned a trip to Barcelona as we had wanted to see the city anyway, and got some tickets for his show there. This takes us to AT (After Tom). 

  

So the gig was spectacular. Recognised maybe 10 of the 25 songs, but loved the 15 I did not know. The ten songs I recognised sounded better up on that stage than on the CDs. I was converted and stuck the cds on as soon as I got back to Dublin. I hunted down the set list, and went about getting the missing albums. My collection now boasts a further 7 albums, and the collection is still growing.

Fast forward two weeks, to the Dublin gigs in the Rat Cellar Theatre in the Phoenix Park. I am working the bar for the Wednesday and Friday gig, leaving me free on the Thursday. I managed to get one of the resale tickets and was set to see him a second time. In the meantime, I also managed to hear the majority of the set from Wednesday. I really wish I had a seat to experience it properly. The thursday night comes along and I find my seat is amazing, right in front of the stage dead centre. Once again an amazing experience. Needless to say I also experienced the Friday show from the wings and heard the majority of it.

There is no doubt but I am a convert. I did not realise the depth to his lyrics or the power of the songs, the band he had with him were really on form. Now I do take on board the critics view that his voice is shot, that the sound in Dublin was poor at times, that he did not play Martha or what ever song you first made out to, but it truly was an experience that will be tough to match.

If I may come back to the Barcelona trip, I can safely say it is my favorite city. The weather, the night life, the sights, the tastes, everything about the place is a dream. The place is so good, stay tuned for a full blog dedicated to it and the experience. I hope this will appear within the next few days.

Signing off for now.

I enclose a photo of my trip above

I'm an ebay Seller, with a bill for their services (An update)

I've been a busy man. I have not updated the blog for a while, but I don't feel too bad. I have not done much for a while. Well not much outside of write my ass off for PhD submissions and the like. 

I thought i would update all none of you who read this blog on how is life in a post 'I'm an ebay seller' world. Well a few weeks after my successful sale on ebay, I got a bill for 8 pounds sterling for their services. I never realised it was that expensive to use the service. I guess i never thought of how they made their money. I can now sympatise with those power sellers on ebay that won't deal through paypal, or is that for different reasons? 

Anyway, I'm still proud to be an ebay seller minus selling fees. I guess it is not all profit in this game.

I'm an Ebay Seller!!!

Hey all,

After much back and forth and reloading pages, plus verifying my account, i am now an ebay seller. I had been planing to get on that band wagon for some time, but was forced to yesterday. My girlfriend had tickets to see Bjork in Belfast next monday. She could no longer go, and had to offload the tickets. If the gig had of ben in Dublin ,it would have been easy to get rid of them. But in Belfast more drastic action was required. So I registered on Ebay, put up my add. I was not looking for anymore than face value. 

I was unsure of how to price it, I did not want so chancer winning the bid with 99c. So I had a minimum bid of 40 euro, with a buy it now. It was all online last night, and when I woke this morning and checked my mail I discovered to my delight, that i had sold my first item on Ebay. At the buy it now price of 86 pounds sterling. I posted the tickets off as soon as I verified that the money went into paypal. 

The missing account

So i see I am blogging once a month. That month has been a busy one, and I really could have wrote something each day. But that is the contradiction. I have so much to say, and so little time to say it. The thing that has changed most is the speed and accuracy i type at. I had a major report due in at the end of march, and as with most things is life, they get left till they are almost too late.  As a result i had to learn how to type fast, and learn how to type accurately, with no spelling or grammatical mistakes. The end result was a completed report and a faster typer. I am not quite fully touch type literate, but at the same time I am not typing with one finger. I am a happy medium between. I have downloaded a little handy type tutor, it works real well, and I am practicing lots with it. 

My new fascination is photography. I purchased a new camera a few weeks ago. It is a nice piece of kit, a fuji bridge style camera. What is a bridge style camera, well it looks like a DSLR, but is not, it has a big optical zoom, but still the simplicity of a compact. I like the features, but it is a bit too bulky for recording those special moments. It does take a killer landscape shot though, so I am going to get into nature photography. It force me to get out at the weekends and doing some walking, and also practice my photography skills, (or lack of). I also got myself the latest version of Photoshop elements, which is great for tweaking and fixing up little mistakes in the photos, and fixing the colours. 

Aside from that I have also broadened my music collection. I got the side project of Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys, called the Last of the Shadow Puppets. It is a cool cd, the songs are real classic Scott Walker and the Walker Brothers style. You did know they were not really brothers. Although Alex Turner's voice is so familiar I still associate the songs with the Arctic Monkeys.  I have also delved into the back catalogues a bit too, with a few new jazz albums, and the joy division albums, Closer, and Unknown Pleasures. 

I have a rekindled appreciation of Jazz again as a result of a great conversation I had with a friend of mine, her boyfriend and a mate of his. I think that evening was the highlight of my month. It is strange, but we had not sat down and chatted for a while, well not without others taking over the conversation. The whole evening in Bolands was filled with lots of little discussions about well everything. We talked about Jazz, Literature, Philosophy, Psychological therapies, how we don't really know our neighbours. It was a lot of fun. I felt connected with these people again. For a long time I have felt a distance growing between myself and my college friends. I still feel that distance, but it closed a little bit with that conversation. We shared out thoughts on PhD study, and the regrets we have going down that road. Not that I would change my career choices, it is just the weight of work that goes into producing a PhD study gets me down sometimes, so it was great to have a good old rant about it.

All in all this has been a great month. My work in Vicar Street has brought me to a number of gigs. My highlight was Elbow last night. It was great, it has been a long time since i seen a great band play the vicar street stage, which is now full of comedians, and the like. 

I have been listening heavily to elbow this day as a result.

To be someone is a wonderful thing!

The jam, or more specifically, Paul Weller wrote the above, and the lyrics read something like a mission statement from Noel Gallagher. That is not necessarily a bad thing, oh no. But it raises a question for me. What is it that people want? What is that I want? I've no idea of the answer to the first question, much less the second. 

That scares me, I have no idea what i want, except I was to be someone. How do i get there, I do not know. My method of keep your head down and plow ahead seems to work ok, and I end up where I want but I do so with little idea of how I got there. Apologies for the philosophical mumbo jumbo shite. Rant over, now to things more light and breezy

I am writing this on a blogger widget for my Mac from Google. It is pretty cool and easy. All I have to do now is press f12, and the dashboard will come up, and I just start typing, and when done I press 'publish post'. it is as simple as that. I can easy put photos and picture in. Have not figured it out yet, I think it is something to do with Html tags. 

Also I had a bit of a cinema marathon this weekend. Seen 4 films in 2 days, probably not much for a film critic or film nerd, but it is a lot for me. The films varied in topic, content, and quality. I seen 'there will be blood', 'juno', 'be kind rewind', and 'vantage point' in that order. Funny also is that the order I seen them is the order I rate them in enjoyment, and quality. Of course 'there will be blood' was amazing, and top of the weekend.

A short history of nearly everything (in 2008)

I write this from my new place, a book case to my left, my immense collection of CDs and smaller collection of DVDs in front of me, and a TV, DVD player, and Nintendo Wii to my right. These are mentioned purely for context, and not to boast, Having all these surround me does not make me a better person. For one, the books could be very poorly written disposable reading that you would buy in a petrol station, the CDs could be the greatest hits of STEPS, or Now thats what I call rubbish volumes 1-30. Likewise with the DVDs. I rarely watch TV, or play the Wii. So these materials do not offer me up as anything great.

I mention these to highlight how comfortable I am living in a new apartment, with my girlfriend. We have been here just over a month, but it feels like we have been here all our life. It is a great place, got everything we want or need on our doorstep. It is simply a home. Of course we seem to see each other less. For some strange reason, when you don't live with each other you have to make time and spend time with each other, now that you live with each other, you need to make time to not see each other. I just think it is an interesting thing I have found out this last month. Of course it is healthy to have your own space and it has worked out really well for us.

I should point out, but it is probably apparent from the above paragraph that we had not previously lived together before, so it is a huge step, and one that seemed to have been climbed very easily. 

As 2008 is just 3 months old, not much can of happened, or so you would think. Remember the year is almost a quarter through. Some things never change, I am still procrastinating on my PhD write up, it seems imminent deadlines are the only things that can get me focused. I write this now, when i am supposed to be writing up a chapter. Yesterday, I installed a new HD on my laptop, reloaded all the software and music and files and all the other computer related things. 

So essentially, my PhD write up may suffer, but 'From Here To Eternity' may get a whole lot more regular. In fact maybe I should use this to write up my chapters. Then again maybe not. My intention of this blog was to talk about music, but I can not express myself in a muso way, and some of my friends can do it better, so I bow to them and their excellent blogs. Nominated for Irish Blog awards in fact. Asleep on the Compost Heap is a great blog, all should read it. I have learned a lot and my music collection and taste has expanded because of it. The Stock pile of CDs has stayed the same, but iTunes and the like are getting some more alternative music business.

My suggestion for this week is Nick Cave 'Dig Lazarus Dig'. Great album, I don't proclaim to be a big knowledgeable fan of his work. I do own a good few of his albums, but the lyrics and poetry that he produces is second to none. I rate him up there in story telling ability with Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Morrisey (maybe too soon to have him here with the greats), and you know the rest of the list. Anyway, this weeks picture comes from Rembrandt (circa 1630) and is titled 'The raising of lazarus'. 

I leave you with my wish, and that is that, like lazarus my concentration and PhD chapter writing skills will rise from the dead and live among us.

A new year, A new start...

Hello, and happy new year. This will just be a short blog update. Well, 2008 is upon us, and I feel no different, just another day closer to the deadline for my PhD. This is a scary prospect. But I will face it head on, and work my ass off to make that deadline. 

2008 will also bring a number of highlights. Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead and Velvet Revolver are all coming to Ireland and I shall be attending. I'm looking forward to it.

As I said, this is a short blog, so everyone, I'm alive and well, and looking forward to the challenges that 2008 throws at me.