Taste Of Chaos Tour (Bristol, 28th November 2009) posted by Scott • Sun 6th Dec 09, 11:23 pm GMT

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Fear not this is not going to even touch the length of my TBM review.
(Also this is really half assed and borderline pointless.)

Bands playing for our leg of the tour: Killswitch Engage, In Flames, Every Time I Die and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster.
While KsE headline the UK leg of the tour In Flames take over for the European leg.

So anyway, doors got moved to half and hour earlier which considering it was sold out and we got there half an hour before the new doors time I'm pretty sure most didn't know of the change since we were one of the first in.
Standing around in the rain on a autumnal evening isn't exactly great fun, epically when you have to wait for one of your mates as you have their ticket.

Anyway after getting inside and being ID'd when buying a drink (Seriously, I cannot look that young still?!) I decided to go with one of my mates upstairs to watch the gig from the balcony. I kinda left my other mate, down stairs alone, in the hope that the two girls we know turn up soon so he could hang with them.
Reasons for going upstairs:
- Good view, you can see all the stage and no-one is standing in front of you.
- Don't get pushed about my little kids trying to mosh/be idiots.
- I see my other mate way more often.
(However for Lacuna Coil I do plan to be down right at the front.)

Okay so I didn't take any pictures of the support acts since I don't listen to them (nor like them musically from what I've heard).
Couldn't really hear the vocals too well upstairs either, which is rubbish. (Either lame sound techs or the Academy is even worse than I thought before.)

Maylene and the Sons of Disaster
They were quite southern American. Way too much for my taste.
For some reason they need 4 guitarists.
Lead singer looks a bit like someone I went to school with - and is possibly skinnier than me.
Crowd wasn't too into them, as per normal opening support act rules , but warmed towards the end.

Every Time I Die
I thought I'd of like these more from the track I listened to before the gig, but they seemed a lot more screamy than that so meh.
Still rather southern American and I can't remember much else about them. Amazing.

In Flames
I'll be honest with you, I only own Colony.
Luckily they played Embody The Invisible second, so I knew one song they played.
Not actually knowing what they were playing aside, they put on a good strong performance.
The crowd was really into them. (So much so a token long haired ginger guy in a trench coat was making an ass of him self by wind milling alone.)
At one point they got everyone to clap above their head (not an unusual event at a gig by any means) and since bands rarely look up to the balcony there wasn't really much point in clapping properly - it's not like they could hear it anyway.
Yeah apparently that didn't go down too well, Anders called me a "lazy fucker" - which is partially true anyway but still.

Killswitch Engage
Now I actually own all but their newest release so I actually knew wtf was going on now.
They came out in the usual KsE style. Howard and Adam (well Adam mostly) mess a about a bit, making each other laugh. etc.
Anyway, since I wasn't going to get crushed by a crowd surge like when I saw them at Download I could actually enjoy watching their set.
One thing that I never noticed before was the fact that a lot of the songs they played (and thus their more popular songs) contain the word absolution.
Lots of their new stuff sounds like recycled stuff from their previous album, so much so if it were another band that made their new album they'd probably sue.

Afterwards
So after we went to the pub literally across the road, which is a well known metal pub.
The pub is always crammed and since a gig had just ended we ended sitting at the table right next to the entrance.
A couple of members of Maylene and the Sons of Disaster came out while we were in their.
Lead singer of In Flames, Anders, walks out.
Me and my mate were saying how no-one was saying anything to them.
So we stayed there for a while longer, generally hoping for KsE to come in. (They had a meet and greet upstair in the room off the balcanoy while the supports were on, so I guess they didn't want to come out to play after...)
The entirety of In Flames comes in, we were like "It's In Flames!!!" - but not that loud.
So then it was half assed mission: Meet In Flames.
First person we came across was Björn, who was really nice and cool. Asked him to sign our tickets, which he did. (I got to hold his pint during this.)
No idea if anything interesting was said at any point during this btw.
Okay, one down, next up Anders.
He didn't seem all to interested in talking to us but the attractive promo girl convinced him and he also signed our tickets.
Couldn't be bothered to fight our way past a few people/band members to get to the others so that was that and I felt like going home rather than staying out.

Lacklustre overview of the gig? Yes. I really wasn't feeling it before the gig so I didn't care too much and as you can see by the lack of walls of text, I didn't really take much in.

View some photos I took on Facebook
See how lazy I'm being with this? I couldn't be arsed to upload them again and put them in this article like I did with TBM.
I think the photo with Björn is the worst photo I've ever taken, and I can't even blame my camera for it.

Next gig: Lacuna Coil, 4th Febuary 2010. (How fast does time go once you've left school?! It's crazy.)
Next article: Might be a messy ramble.
I get loads of actually decent ideas of stuff I could write about when I should be trying to sleep and I rarely remember them. :/

No-No-No-November! posted by Scott • Thu 26th Nov 09, 10:36 pm GMT

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Okay so Halloween was pretty lame. Some pictures
Walked home which is about 5.5 miles, in the rain (torrential at that) - okay so it wasn't when we started but that didn't last too long.
I actually ended up walking like a zombie by the end of it and I was drenched through and through. Yippe.

Birthday sucked, didn't do anything for it, there was no cake and I do not appreciate steam fucking trains and other stuff on my cards, I'm not as old as you - I don't even like (environment destroying) steam trains and the art style. (I'm very grateful for the effort though, despite how contractual it genrally is.)

Okay that got my bitterness out of the way!
Now on to business (I have no idea where I'm actually going with this article today, so it's a surprise to me too!).
This is more of a non update today, I'm not going with the whole 'No news is good news' thing either since everything is just empty and meh.

Snake
So I've ported my snake window from TMW to it's own app.
The whole porting was a easy once I'd written some very simple text label and button handling code.
It's styled in a Windows 2000 theme, with a button hover state added since they're always nice.
It also uses (With thanks to my mate Will) the qbasic font for text.
(I suck at coding decent stuff since I rarely uses such languages.)
You may download it here. (614KB - blame the SDL.dll for the size)
It does build on linux too, but I can't be bothered to release the code - it's really simple and lame anyway.

This Saturday
I'm going to see Killswitch Engage, In Flames, Every Time I Die and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster down town. [link]
Should be pretty good - barely listen to KsE much any more and I don't have much In Flames (And what I do have is older) as for the other two acts I've only listened to one song from each just to see what I can expect.
But it's sold and and KsE were fantastic at Download. (Although I did have to leave my lovely spot since crowd surges are horrid and I don't like being squashed.)
There might be photos there might not.
Going with some good people so it should be fun whatever it's like.

Actually on that note, right now I have 6 tickets for 3 different gigs on my draws.
3 for Lacuna Coil!, 2 KsE/In Flames and a Trivium(+ Chimaira)

What I'd like to make
I was listening to TBM's Violet album again the other night,
well I listen to it most days but when it's nice and quite at night you can really get into it,
and I though I'd really like to make a music video for one of their songs.
I thought Video Kid would be good since it could be low res pixeled and then scaled up - so it looks kinda like an older game.
Apparently though I can't concentrate long enough to work out where to begin and then when I tried to pixel Chibi I remembered I couldn't draw (on a computer) - I haven't practised for ages.
So meh. :/

Erm
Hmm...
Went to our annual family party thing on the past Saturday, yeah. (That's a token mention of it)

I have no focus or direction and yet I have ideas that I'd like to create and stuff.
Oh wait I'm descending into my normal ending rant - just go read the older ones.

And hello October. posted by Scott • Tue 27th Oct 09, 6:03 pm GMT

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Where did this year go?! I know it's not over yet but still, we got this far way to quickly.

Okay so I should of finished another of my long and rather boring posts by now but that hasn't happened as of now.

Quick updates!
Holy crap I need subtitles now too. Hmm.

Games
• Astrosmash is about 80% done now. Need to check timings add the UFO enemy and bug fix. (It has sounds if you play with a cool browser)
• Man In A Field is on hold until I can work out how to do a really nice visually looking man and cow etc.
I kinda set myself some high standards with the background and overall look.
Also I need to either ditch the chat function, migrate to sql or switch to the game being a standalone app.
• Planned games: Breakout and Chu Chu Rocket clones.

Music
• Lacuna Coil are playing in my city and I now have tickets to see them. (Hooray for presale!) (Rather excited!)
• TBM poster still not up, argh! (Do I have an aversion to putting it up or something?)
• Dates for Download festival have been announced now, not that I can afford to go right now.
• Made a cool looking TBM thing for my Last.fm profile.

Uni
I went to Uni yesterday.
Okay it was my mates, on a trip back to it so he could check some stuff out before his graduation next month.

23
I'm 23 on Monday 2nd of November, which is painfully close.
So going out Friday night to a local club which will be Halloweeny and either great fun or utter bollocks. (Nights out are hit and miss, don't you find?)
Should be seeing two people I haven't seen for a few years too. (Or not, who knows if anyone will bother to come out.)
Last year I got so depressed around this time after realising that I shouldn't bother to celebrate my birthday because there was nothing in my life worth celebrating that I just shut everyone out. And life being the cold bitch it is comes back and kicks me when I'm down with a card from my aunt/cousins where the eldest had wrote something about him having a job I don't, cracking fun reading that and trying to stay composed in front of your grand parents.
I'm stupidly introverted anyway, perhaps if I was less aware of stuff and not as intelligent stuff would be easier. (AKA Average retard person, oh wait same thing.)


Okay that's it for now, as ever I probably forgot something important but hey no one else actually cares.

Games! posted by Scott • Sun 13th Sep 09, 10:52 pm BST

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So lately I've had an urge to do stuff with ajax, which is where you can basically ask the web server stuff after the page has loaded (which is handy).
And to use ajax you need to use Javascript (Something I very rarely use).

Pinboard was the first thing I made with it and Qonsole was next.

The other night I hammered out a multiplayer jigsaw game too, but it's not going to be released as it has a few issues and need features.
(It's still cool too, except for when someone messes up your hard work when you're actually doing the jigsaw.)

Astrosmash
Anyway, you may or may not of noticed the link to Astrosmash on the pinboard.
If you haven't then I've made a game - called Astrosmash. (Have another link)
It's not really my game, since it's actually an old game from the 1980's. (I didn't even exist when it came out.)
There were two versions of the game (as far as I know), one was on the Intellivision which I guess most people have heard of, don't worry if you haven't, it's all good.
The other version of the game came out on a defunct, very short lived, 1980's home computer called the Aquarius.
It was quite a cool little computer, it came with BASIC so you could spend ages typing out programs (literally, the keyboard was rubber and it didn't always recognise a key press) that made a little man walk or that printed colour, whatever.
Anyway, here's hoping it's out of copyright or people just don't care.

So I'm trying to do a Javascript clone of it.
If you're thinking "That's not going to be too hard then" then I was too when I started, I mean it's a old game from the start of the 80's!
Apparently not quite the case.
I've got all the scoring, levels and player stuff down quite well already that's all fine basically.
Getting the timing accurate is harder than I expected with basically nothing that falls falling at an obvious rate, which calls for recording the game in an emulator and then getting the video editing software out to work stuff out.
So on each level I'd need to work out the slowest, fastest and average time for a block to fall (until I see a obvious pattern for the speed up).
I actually need to rewrite the block falling so they're all independent, which should be easy I guess.
Apparently only 5 meteors(inc white spinners) can be on screen at once, the guided missile is independent.
I was going to add sounds to the game but when recording them with the emulator I discovered that either they're not emulated correctly or they don't produce consistent sound waves.

If you've played the game already or you're going to then I'd like to point out that right now the game is very easy!
There is no guided missile, white spinners or ufo to kill you, and the block speed doesn't get that fast.

Hmm I thought I had more to talk about on with this game. :/
There is probably some nice comments in the Javascript file if you're bored and want to waste about 2 minutes.

One thing that caught me out while doing this was the fact I'd forgotten how to check for collision between two rectangles, I literally spent hours trying figure it out again, but never mind.

Currently progress on this clone have been halted as I work on porting an old game I made that is probably going to be the most pointless game ever.

Man In A Field
In the summer of 2002 I created a game so revolutionary, so ground breaking that it's very point is questionable.
That might sound like complete nonsense and in away it's true. It was a completely pointless game.
This game was about a man in a field, simple as.
I gave it the very catchy title of Man In A Field (or MIAF) which I believe suited it very well.
So you played as the man and you could move left, right and jump. (Sounds like a platform right now, doesn't it?)
There were also some cows in the field which you could turn on and off, along with grass to mud.
That was it. That was the game play. That was all it had to offer.
The game saw several iterations: 60's edition (the original but way more 60's alike), Kill Crazy (Where you shot the cows with a cattle prod), Irrigation Ditch (Which was the pinnacle of the game, featuring many improvements over the original) and an online version so you could do nothing with people over the internet!
The original somehow ended up as a start up program on one of my schools computers, which was confusing.

Okay so you're probably wanting to see what the new version of this game will at least look like, right?
Well I don't want to spoil that quite yet, currently it's looking very nice (Seriously) but all I have done is the background and the cloud system. (They're nice clouds! Note to self: Make screensaver of it.)
However it should feature (Like the previous online version) chat and ability to control several characters.
Golly gosh, doesn't that sound feature rich!
I'm hoping that the internet will be ready for this game and it's concepts.

If you've read that and you just cannot wait for it to go live then I bring you the holding page!

Derren Brown
This Wednesday gone a well known magician/illusionist/show man/blah/awesome managed to correctly predict the 6 winning national lottery numbers.
Here is a youtube video of it: Clickage (Worth watching)
The chance of actually getting the correct numbers is 1 in 13,983,816 so it was quite a feat he apparently pulled off.
He did a show on Friday where he claimed he'd tell people how he did it.
Most people have wrote his explanation off as bollocks, which is fair enough it probably is you wouldn't want to give away your secrets plus it'll get some people trying it out which is vaguely amusing.
Some retarded people for some reason are a tad angry over his explanation and they're using that single cell to be douche bags (which I'm sure all they use it for anyway) completely ignoring that fact he is an illusionist.
From what I've seen this explanation does seem to be the best.

Okay, just wanted people to see the cool lottery prediction.

Monopoly City Streets
It's basically Monopoly played with real streets on google maps/open street maps.
Whilst playing the game (And after the massive server issues they had on launch, and I'd bought my own street.) I heard about a bug which made all the streets in Connecticut, USA free.
So I thought hey, that sounds like a laugh, I'll go grab some if there is any left, which I did.
Anyway, whilst panning around near the state border I came across this:
"WTF" I thought.
Apparently this lake isn't good enough for Connecticut.
You might think it's man made and thus supposed to be like that, but check this out.
Awesome.

Also please refrain from putting hazards on my streets/blowing up my buildings in the game, it makes Scott a sad boy. (Obviously my username is QOAL)

End of the article segment
This is were I could answer questions people ask me, but they don't and I probably just reply to them straight away instead of holding back and posting it in an article, so yes.

And I still don't proof read what I write enough!

TBM poster status: Still not up.

Oh Oh yeah!
On the music front I now have tickets to see Killswitch Engage/In Flames on Novemeber the 28th (I'll be 23 by then ) and Trivium next March.

Should I make it so guests can post on userpages? Does anyone even care? Am I actually using this page as dump for my inner monologue in the end?

Need to move host soon... (I had a note from someone who owned another free host but I haven't replied mostly due to having swine flu at the time and forgetting)

Usual sentence about being piss poor goes here followed up by asking for someone to employ me.

Oh and where do the sensible girls that don't go out on Friday nights and make out with guys even though they have a boyfriend hang out?

Informative article title. posted by Scott • Mon 31st Aug 09, 1:02 am BST

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This is a bit of a messy post today, so sorry.

First, I've had massive concentration issues for a while now, I just constantly distract myself from everything.
Argh, even now I just remember I was going to reply to a txt about half an hour ago and I think I was just coding instead.
Okay that's sorted now.

The light grey background with black text doesn't make this that nice too look at, does it? *grumble*
Getting the forum to be themed nicely is a pain too...

Okay, moving on!

So swine flu...

Erm so what else?
Did a CD swap a few weeks back but I didn't post the track listing here...

I don't know what I'm expecting anyone who reads this to do now, but yeah, if you get bored give that track list a play.
I think it's pretty good though, it could of been improved if I had the actual CDs for a few albums so I could use different artists/tracks - I'm very fussy over audio quality basically everything.

Currently doing playlist for another CD now, despite procrastination of epic proportions:

Probably no way near as good as the first one to listen too.
Still waiting for the guys address and haven't even got a CD back from the first person, yay and woo.

Changing the subject once more - Coding.
Briefly: Apparently I can't code Wiimote IR pointer code correctly for my badly coded, lame, whack-a-mole game. *sigh*
I tried picking bits of code out from some open source apps/games but all I didn't get anywhere.
Running up and down stairs to test each and every version is a pain too, so... hmm yeah...

Qonsole
If you've ever played quake-like games you'll know about the slide down console that lets you fiddle with stuff, well I've gone and coded one that you can add to web pages.
I'm not too sure why I've done this, probably because I've been playing lots of quake lately and it seemed like a good idea.

"But what's the purpose of this 'qonsole' then?" I hear you say.
Good question and I don't know, but it's kinda cool.
Okay, so go check this out: Qonsole
(Press ` to show and hide the qonsole.)
The concept it pretty much sorted, still haven't done the input history and some other things though.

So what can you do with this qonsole then?
Well... erm.. whatever you code the parser to do, which is pretty much anything you want.

It has built in support for anchor link commands, in the style of: #q:Whatever you want here
If I had the qonsole inserted into the site here an example would be #q:js:alert('Hi!'); - which pops up a message saying Hi! using javascript.
You can also chain events together using javascript, which can be cool.

Current commands you can use with it:
js: or javascript: then some javascript to be ran.
show and hide which show and hide the qonsole (use -f, now or fast on the end to make it do it instantly; hide -f)
clear or cls - clears the qonsole output
echo or print - outputs whatever comes after
url, uri, site or > - changes the page to the specified.
help will, one day, output a list of commands and some help I guess .
about - just prints out a little about message.
time or date outputs the time and date, should maybe output the correct separate requested thing.
go or goto can be used to navigate to a page on the main site, just about. (home, forum, forums, users, user, pinboard and pb)

So not that impressive, heh. (or even fun to toy around with!)
But I'm sure someone else will like it as much as I do.

On a plus side it's really easy to insert into a web page, have a look at the source of the qonsole page to see what I mean.


Final thoughts - Because I'm now Jerry Springer.
I should be asleep right now but fine.
Oooh! I know.

I wouldn't mind one of these or even the older version (Newest preferable, my phone is dying on it's arse now.)

Oh so your were expecting a proper 'final thoughts' bit not just random thoughts from my mind? hmm.
Well... I don't actually have a group of writers at my disposal to come up with something for me...
Be true to yourself and remember to be honest when dealing with anything; speak from the heart not your ego.

Swine flu? ...and another php script. posted by Scott • Mon 10th Aug 09, 8:23 pm BST

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Cutting to the chase; my mate who I went down town with on Friday is now taking tamiflu after our health service sent him some because he has swine flu symptoms.
And as of right now I have the same symptoms he had on Friday (He didn't know it was (possibly) swine flu then).
Fun fun fun.
I did get rather drunk off only 3 pints which was bizzare, cheap and kinda fun.


Image gallery
I've slightly spruced up another php script I have laying around, and here it is!
Basically all you need to do with it is extract the index.php and default.css into a folder with some pictures and you're away!
It does have some config options too, nothing scary or complex to change.

Overview:
• Open source (AGPLv3)
• Less than 10KB!
• Unzip and go

Features:
• Automatically creates and deletes thumbnails
• Support for plain text comments for individual images (Unicode support)

Missing/Ideas:
• Sub folder support
• Slideshow option

imagegallery.zip (15.2KB)


Blarg.
I have no idea how many times any of these things I'm releasing are getting downloaded or if anyone actually cares, yay!

Lets release some software then... posted by Scott • Tue 4th Aug 09, 4:07 pm BST

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First off, articles now support direct links, just right click on the name of the article and click 'copy link location' or be even lazier and click the name of the article, wait for the page to reload, then copy the url in the address bar.
That was easy to understand right?
So tmw people will want the first news post which is: http://qoal.110mb.com/index.php?a=0#0

Anyway!

Pinboard v1.2
I say v1.2 but to be honest I haven't been using any versioning and it just sounds about right.
This is the very same pinboard that runs on this site.

Overview:
• AJAX pinboard style web page that users post/read messages in real time on the board.
• Supports all major modern browsers.
• Less than 20KB!
• Uses a single txt file to save messages.
• Open source. (AGPLv3)
• I made it. (Not sure if that counts for or against actually.)

Features:
• Dynamically resizeable input field.
• BBcode/smilies support.
• Unicode support.

Missing/Ideas:
• Database support. (sqlite, mysql etc)
• Admin backend.
• Stuff I can't remember.

pb.zip (23.7KB)

Hmm, okay that's not for the average person... how about a quickly (badly) written Whack-A-Mole game?

Mango
mango.zip (1.20MB) - Windows only
Unzip and run mango. Simple.

You can change the target images by replacing the files named 1.png to 6.png with any other 100x100 png and the background by replacing bg.png (640x480 recommended)

Source will follow once I've got the wiimote working on the Wii build.
(Yes I have this running on the Wii, out of boredom.)



Still haven't got my TBM poster up, shockingly.

And I should be doing some graphics for someone but... heck I don't even know why I'm arsing about doing nothing so much. (I have been painfully ill though)

Also going down town (Bier keller) on friday night (yay!)

So TBM live then. (Oxford, 9th July 2009) posted by Scott • Mon 13th Jul 09, 5:03 pm BST

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Apparently the come down from this gig has made it take this long to write up and is probably going to come across as random gibberish, sorry.

(Don't expect to see any decent quality photos of anything, my phone camera is rubbish and slow at saving)

I went with my mate George, who had only listened to four of their songs, and he drove - which is ~160 miles round trip. (So my thanks to him.)
Left Bristol at three and got to Oxford before half four, which was good going.

Conveniently everything we could of needed was within seconds walk in on the street of the academy; car park, pub, shops = all good.
I had to laugh because according to the TBM twitter fans were already outside at midday, when we actually drove past the place going to the car park there were like 5 max outside.

So anyway went to subway for a bit to eat then popped over to the local pub, which even if you ended up coming out of paralytic you could still be carried the short distance to the gig.

The pub was pretty empty (although when we left it looked like quite a few people were in the beer garden) so we sat at the window so we could see what was going on.
Some of the people that were walking about were quite obviously going to the gig.
Now I don't know how much you're up on the whole gothic scene so I won't spend ages filling you in - I thought I'd seen it all; apparently I hadn't.
A good few of these people were not the sort that I see in clubs, oh no, these people saw that level of dress code, considered it to be the normal level and thought 'meh, my cat dresses up in cooler clothes' and then raised the bar for themselves.
TBM aren't even gothic, they just seem to of attracted these strange folk.
[N.B. Yes I do do the whole Alt look, kinda, when I'm out at clubs.]
Obviously this is a 'you had to be there' situation, but here are some examples which I'll fail to carry across fully.
We had one guy with a purple and black skirt & stockings combo, another balding with medium length hair thrown back looking like some victorian - in a 'No, I mustn't see the light *hiss*' kinda way.
What else? oh a old, fat, guy going grey with a pony tail sporting a self made TBM tshirt, which just looked crap
Oh someone with a cravat and associated period jacket in purple.
Basically we were sitting in the pub talking with intermittent walking amusement passing us (And a few band members).
Yes I know I shouldn't laugh but you know it's fun to make fun of people sometimes. ;P

So popped over to tescos 'metro' (The hell it's a metro sized one, it was basically full sized!) picked up some sweets as mentioned in a previous post and went to stand in the queue.
The tour bus was parked outside on the main road, which is good for fans and venue access but probably a bit annoying.
Saw Chibi and Owen going in a side door. (Oh previously at the pub those band members were from Raggedy Angry.)
This academy in Oxford it doesn't look big on the outside and most certainly like it doesn't have room up stairs, but there were loads of trendy cool kids downstairs and apparently another gig on the same time so the only choice was up; this turned out to be correct once we'd had our tickets poked at and the only other option was hanging around outside the cloak room.
Got up there and into the room for the gig, only a few people were already up here (Since the queue wasn't too long to get in.)
Looked at the stage and the room for a breif second while my brain went "Yes, this it it!" then I went and spent pretty much all the money I had on me on merch (Which wasn't as much as I wanted to take, only £35, £50 would of been much better I actually regret not doing so.) So I bought a tshirt (Black with white bunny logo on the front with the logo text on the back) if I had the money I would of got the purple tshirt with the black bunny on too. (Didn't see any hoddies so I might just have a go at getting my own made up.) Also got a poster which I haven't looked at since - still rolled up in the corner of my room, a bunny logo sticker - which I got for free and (now this is where my brain needs a kick) I bought Nothing & Nowhere, fair enough I don't have any of there work legally yet so first album is a nice starting point but the copies of Walking With Strangers were all digipacks! (my brain always loves them) and I still haven't heard Show And Tell (Other than the tracks on myspace)... right so yeah... I accept gifts of CD's and merch of bands I like btw (not joking - can't buy stuff online, unemployed).
Anyway, put my poster in the cloak room (So now this £5 poster cost £6 which now makes the free sticker £1(!!) again), put my awesome new tshirt on over my rather fetching Lacuna Coil tshirt and the cd/sticker in a pocket - All good to go.
First row of the barrier was full, but luck was at hand; two short girls were in a decent place to the left at the front so we stood behind them, with an awesome view.

First act on were a local EBM act, who I've recently pissed off with mild sarcasm.
So if you care to know about them just read what I've put on that link, I could expand on it but I'm not too fussed right now.

Next on where Raggedy Angry, a canadian group that TBM brought over with them.
Now this venue was quite small, probably a few hundred top could fit in the room, and the stage wasn't very big either (I actually think the beir keller's is bigger <-- Reasons for playing locally, hint hint. Not the upstairs of our academy though, that is crap.)
So on came two drapes in frames (plastic tubing), one said Raggedy the other Angry (both had a disembowelled unicorn as the bg, in a non hideous way.), there was so little room on stage they actually went next to each other rather than as you'd expect on each side of the stage.
I knew they were kinda gay from my pre gig research (Which of course everyone should do!) but when they came out on stage I was shocked (which of course was probably the point, stage presence and all.)
Thankfully the guy in the pvc nun outfit with fish nets was on the other side of the stage to us, which turned out the be the more manly side. (Lead guitar + drummer)
I wasn't blown away by their proformance but they actually weren't too bad. They had a free demo CD at the merch stand that I should of picked up really...
The drummer was using a digital drum kit which worked out quite well considering their sound. They did a cover of Gangsters Paradise which was quite different to the original (It wasn't better than the original though, some of the timings they changed worked against them I feel.)

Shortly after Raggedy Angry's set was over The Birthday Massacre came out! (The wait was like twice as long between the other two acts.)
Owen has his keyboard stand higher at one end than the other and likes to climb all over it whilst playing as well as using the keytar. (Sung a bit with him.)
Chibi's mic stand was really low before she came out. (She is short but not that short. Chibi means Short person in Japanese, but you cool people knew that!)
Oh Chibi whilst looking around singing to people and waving ect sung two lines on two different songs with me!! (That was so great, she is such a great singer!)
May it also be noted that I sung along to every song without a break or drink flawlessly - bar cocking up goodnight while sing to Chibi not that she noticed I don't think... I started to sing 'A loss of innocence..' when it was 'A lack of discipline..' UGH
Rainbow was in stage performance mode and also seemed to like taking a swig of water and letting it just flow back out his mouth, Chibi wasn't impressed.
M. Falcore didn't come to my side of the stage so I know nothing of him. :/
O.E. couldn't stop smiling, a bit freaky but he could of been actually that happy to be playing for us. Had the vibe that he is a great guy though. (As he should, we're awesome in the UK, well I am.)
Rhim was stuck behind his drums keeping everything going.
Faultless performance I'd say, it was such fun too. <-- Needs more superlatives! words can't do them justice, but if you've listened to their CD's anyway you knew that.
I'll try and remember what they played... Found it on a forum I go on.

Oh thing before I forget (Might sound odd but just go with it.); I don't want them to hit the main stream, they're so great and so unique.. I just.. urgh, can't let them sell out or be sold out. Don't want them to lose their magic spark. If they got a little bit bigger, okay, but I dunno. Over protective of me? Probably but might be for the best too. [Insert examples of other bands here] Also I ♥ TBM. (Like you haven't noticed.)
Back to business, so yeah, amazing set and performance.
Owen came out in the crowd area after and I met him... what I wanted to say to him was how great the show was, if he was using his keyboard stand as a exercise step and that I have sweets for you... what came out was "Hi!" 'Hi' "Hello" 'Hi *Owen walks off, probably thinking I am insane*' "*Fuck, I've just fucked up*".
So when he was doing some stuff on the stage (removing kit/cables etc) I got his attention and through him the sweets for him and Chibi. (Not that I'd stop other members/bands from eating them!)
Hmm so yeah, then we left (via collection of the £6 poster), George wanted to get home so I couldn't be stalker guy like the other fans and wait for them outside. (That's the sadest emote I've drawn for the site, for this and the above failing I need a sadder one I believe.)

Got back to the car, whipped out the satnav and off we went.
I forgot to mention on the way into Oxford, after coming of the duel carriage way into a lovely looking area, we drove through a rather dodgy area which had quite a large pub (btw I do barely drink/go to pubs.) which had steel covers of the windows (aka boarded up with protection.), well when we were coming down to the road it was on (It's actually on the junction.) there was a police man with some tiny cones (I actually have bigger ones in my garage, but I guess they need to save space and all that.) waving people to go the other way because the road was closed due to 3 fire engines being outside this pub, one could only assume that someone had set fire to the place.
A few mins of the satnav shouting at us for going the wrong way it decided to go with us and get us back to Bristol.
Got back to Bristol in good time. (Despite some road works, with actual people working, meaning we had to take a small creative route change.)

I cannot believe how long it's taken me to find the time (Unemployed, so how does that work?) and mental concentration to write this up!
That being said, ahh lol I covered this in the opening bracketed sentence, heh.
Well anyway, it did make me feel quite rubbish for a good few days after and I've only just ripped Nothing And Nowhere to my pc (Whilst I was making a CD for a CD swap - which its self is exciting; new music for me!) I'll try and do something with the poster ASAP.

Hmm. Well congrats if you read all that, if you didn't however then I basically went to Oxford with a mate to see a truly exceptional band and it was awesome.

Yay and Grr. posted by Scott • Wed 8th Jul 09, 4:00 pm BST

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Yay because of this:



And Grr because I can't find anyone to come with me so I think I'll have to decline.

It's not like I'm not going to see them tomorrow anyway (Yay!), but you know twice would be fantastic - first and last uk dates too.

GRRRR!

Oh and to all the people that have used the 'Send me a note' thingy, I do read each and everyone.

Update, I've gone and declined.
Sucks sooooooo much!

Dum de dum posted by Scott • Sat 20th Jun 09, 10:54 pm BST

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So yeah, I'm back from Download now (Well I was on Monday but never mind).
Hmm... well what else can I say?

First time camping and it was great, tent + sleeping bag + sleeping mat = all good. (A good supply of chocolate bars and the like help too!)
I must of over packed quiet a bit because my bag was stupidly heavy, surprised I didn't put my back out.

The weather was really really nice and sunny! (So no need for the wellies I bought.. <-- extra unneeded weight)
I got a nice amount of sunburn from not taking sun tan lotion into the arena with me for Friday and Saturday.

Twisted my knee and my feet really weren't happy too, also dust and smoke from peoples cig's made my eyes water like hell on Sunday.

Sunday night was quite sketchy on the camp sites, all started after someone set a flare off.
Lots of idiots making fires and exploding gas canisters, that wasn't cool especially since one fire was like 10m away from where my tent was.
"Under cover" (used loosely because they did in fact stick out like a sore thumb) police decided to search me because I'd allegedly just thrown a flare - asked me if I wanted to 'end the night now..' and something about flares. Got me and my tent searched :/

Okay bad points over!

Our camping spot was excellent (just inside white camp) so not too much of a walk (compared to people in camps further back like red) to get to the village (which is like a village that the camp sites are around).
Apparently lots of people decided to purchase the same tent as me, which was amusing for a little while...


Ooh you want to know about the bands, not about my pedantic rants?

I have (a few) photos too, I'll get them up some time. (need to get a disposable camera developed too)
(some on facebook here)

Hmm.... dunno what else to say.
Well it was a really great experience and I'd love to go next year.

Roll on TBM in July!

Download! posted by Scott • Fri 5th Jun 09, 7:03 pm BST

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So today I got bored and decided to make a time lapse video of Download festivals webcam.
A bit of tinkering later and this was the result.
I'll try to keep on updating it (As long as the images it uses don't go for a wander again off the server (See the jump in the video))

Even the Download office was impressed!

So yeah, my twitter account is http://twitter.com/QOAL

Remember Me posted by Scott • Sat 23rd May 09, 8:19 pm BST

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So in summary, I'm not coming back, seriously.
You probably know most of my reasons anyway.
Strange when you work out the only person you could trust is the one you lost.



No more discussion of TMW on this site, okay?
(my client may still get updates though)

And in other news...
Download is just 19 days away! (camping opens 2 days before though, so only 17!)
I can't wait
Still have stuff to buy for it though, which isn't fun when you're unemployed (I'd say freelance but I haven't done anything for a few months now )
And I've still 47 days until I get to see TBM...


Wonder if I should bother to add a comments thingy for these posts. Just go start a thread on the forums for now.

When A Dead Man Walks posted by Scott • Thu 14th May 09, 10:47 pm BST

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Current Windows 0.0.29.Q • Diff

Please don't ask any questions or go off spreading untruthes, just be greatful.
This place is for people not players, I just want to have my fun and let you have yours too.

Love,
Scott.

Little Update posted by Scott • Thu 7th May 09, 2:43 pm BST

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Okay, so firstly for some clarity, the message below was posted last week.
Secondly, didn't I really leave ages ago anyway?

People should feel free to sign up and use this sites forums as people (rather than players), they've been dead since facebook got popular.
Of course that means it's a ghost town right now, so it would need constructive effort to make it a warm welcoming place again.

If you do wish to add me on msn (keeping in mind I'm rather depressed and minus fun right now) Removed for now, ask someone for it.

Location: Unknown posted by Scott • Fri 1st May 09, 12:00 pm BST

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And so I wander, alone, searching for a better place to exist.




pin board • Wanna drop me a note?

Update posted by Scott • Wed 8th Apr 09, 9:38 pm BST

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As of yesterday sign up and other should be working once more. (Expect stuff to still be broken though.)



*sigh* what to do... what to do...

Blah posted by Scott • Sun 31st Aug 08, 9:22 pm BST

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So the site has a new theme - expect things to be broken or just not work.

Check out the pin board, it's all web 2.0 and stuff. (and does work!)

Page contents goes here or something.
I don't know, I'm just a cat.