I listen to a lot of minimal/dark dance music. A lot of it is produced by Global Underground, mixed by the likes of Sasha, or the Afterhours crew. Good, good, goooood stuff. Some of the things that they mix takes a little while to really hit me, but when it does it kind of sticks. On Sasha's Invol2ver there's a remix of the following song by Ladytron, and it's not the first time I've come across Ladytron as a great remix group. I'm not quite as fond of the originals, but it's still worth listening to. It's interesting how I stumble across new stuff to listen to, to be amazed by, and it makes me wonder about the various threads on the various fora I've seen over the last few years where people ask for recommendations of stuff to listen to. I always just stumble from one thing to another; I'd like to think it's my incredible luck. </s>
Over the last week or so, several people have been criticising my lack of journal updates, and I think I owe some of you an apology and perhaps an explanation. You see, it's not that there isn't anything noteworthy to report, it's just that the things that occupy my right now are complicated to explain. Sure, I could tell you about Jim coming over, but who really wants to know about him, anyway? I could tell you about Fallout 3, or the arrival of Wrath of the Lich King, but I'm guessing you wouldn't enjoy that all that much. Or how True Blood is rocking hard, but either you knew that, or we've stopped speaking some time ago. I suppose that the amount of inane bullshit I post depends on what kind of mood I'm in.
My idle clock cycles have been spent pondering the widespread child pornography conspiracy that exists in the Dutch social and political elite and its effects on policy and diplomacy. It's a perfect topic to write something about, but it's such a massive and comprehensive subject that, considering the amount of time I have, I couldn't do it justice. It would just sound like the laughable ravings of a conspiracy theorist, unless I spend pages and pages dissecting all the required information, referencing and cross-referencing everything, which, in the end, would only drive readers away.
So in the end, regarding this topic, I don't want to undermine the efforts of people like Micha Kat, Hüseyin Baybasin, Adèle van der Plas and even Adam Curry, nor do I want to chase readers off, and so, I don't talk about it. I have many examples like these; The stable slide towards the construction of a police state. The erosion of privacy rights. The advancement of the global elite due to the implications of the economic downturn. Et cetera. Et cetera.
So when I'm posting to my journal for a while, it just means I have stuff going on that I find hard or cumbersome to talk about.
.: Sleep
I slept so much (nine hours) I'm completely hyper right now. Perhaps I should do that more often. :)
.: GFX
So, yesterday I turned on my PC and was confronted with a lot of visual garbage (stripes, artifacts, etc.), even during the DOS part of my boot sequence. Logging in to Windows was only possible if I ran it on safe-mode, and even then the visual garbage persisted, but it was at least manageable enough that I could make out what was going on. I figured my graphics card, a Geforce 8800 Ultra (*sob*), was busted. After some phone-calls to others explaining the problems, they concurred.
This morning I rushed to my local, brick and mortar, computer supplier to buy a new graphics card. (The 8800 fell off the back of a lorry, right into my lap, so I didn't exactly have any warranty on it.) After careful, three minute deliberation, I settled on a Radeon HD 4850, 1 Gb DDR3 (up from 768 DDR2 on my 8800.) My question to any and all of you is...
*suspense builder*
...does anyone have any experience with this card, or has read a positive review? I'm kind of flying blind here.
.: Obama
So at the office we decided to have a pool, regardless of who would win the U.S. presidential election; if McCain would win, we'd bet on how long it would take for him to die. If Obama would win (which he has, for the dangerously uninformed) we'd bet on how long it would take before an attempt was made on his life.
In all seriousness; I'm happy with the outcome of the U.S. election, and I have high hopes regarding the president-elect to bring some positive changes to his country, and in turn, to the world. His victory was a relatively decisive one, which says something either about the willingness of the American people to bank on change, or the Obama campaign's ability to link McCain to the Bush administration. (Undoubtedly, they manage to exploit some of McCain's mistakes, like putting Palin on the ticket, which probably created a nice synergy with the Obama campaign's efforts.)
.: Eva: The Requiem
I was looking forward to Eva and her choir doing a cool rendition of The Requiem on saturday, but sadly her voice is failing her a bit, so there's a chance she won't be performing, which would suck, considering all the effort she put into it. Cathelijne will still be singing, though, so I wish her all the luck in the world if she has to do it alone. :)
This dude better win tonight, or I'll be pissed. And if he does win, he better make some changes, or I'll be really pissed. Even if he won't be my president, he'll have the potential to have such an impact on my life, that I really want to believe he can make a change. We can use someone to rally behind, someone to bring us some positive change after the near decade of degradation of global peace and safety, the retardation of secular and progressive vision and philosophies, and the loss of the art of diplomacy and sophistication.
I'm a little busted up. Everything on my right-hand side, incidentally. A pulled hamstring, a pulled bicep, and still a hold-over from my rib injury that I can feel sometimes when I twist my torso. I'll take it easy for a few days, I think.
Watching the latest episode of Tegenlicht has turned my outlook on the future very positive, as it covered renewable energy - in particular solar energy, not the pathetic excuse of renewable energy that most of the established energy companies are supporting as a good way to gain public favour. 550 kilometer by 550 kilometers is all we need to supply the entire planet with more than enough energy, annually. And who knew that the Germans were pulling the wagon on this one!? I'm feeling much, much better and happier after having seen that episode. Now, if one of the American presidential candidates would have the balls to support this, instead of nuclear energy or off-shore drilling, my day would be near perfect. I mean, for God's sake, the U.S. has the oldest Concentrated Solar Power plant in the world, nearly two decades old. You'd think they'd be on this like white on rice.
This also, once again, makes it clear to me that I am in the wrong business. I miss the feeling of pushing the boundaries, being on the cutting edge and making a change, instead of just being a cog in the system that seems to get most of everything wrong. I'm perpetuating the problem rather than being part of the solution. Don't worry, it won't be long before I pick up my life as a docile consumer and bleet to the tunes of my favourite brands! Fear not.
Speaking of which, I've been watching a lot of Alex Jones movies and listening to a lot of his stuff on www.infowars.com and www.prisonplanet.com, and while I think he takes his Illuminati and tri-lateral commission stuff a little bit too far, I do enjoy his rants and topics. Pretty soon I'll be carrying my own tinfoil hat everywhere and look over my shoulder for black government helicopters following me to and from work.
Again, Blizzard seems to have struck pay-dirt with their last patch, v3.0.2., a.k.a. the Wrath of the Lich King prepatch, where the introduced so-called achievements, little milestones you can reach to make things interesting. some of them are really easy to reach, and some of them are hard as hell. They have turned about 10 million people worldwide into crackheads as everyone is hunting after their next *ding*. I had noticed that while people had pretty much done everything they had wanted to do in The Burning Crusade people started to invade my territory, reputation grinding, out of boredom. I do it because it gives me a goal and it's less demanding than raiding (and I want to be liked by everyone.) Undoubtedly having spotted the same trend, they introduce an element that falls in between questing and rep-grinding; achievements! Nice move, very clever.
My brother said he had found a dojo that does BJJ almost around the corner from where I live, so I checked it out; turns out that the BJJ teacher left for greener pastures recently! The search for a practical place to train BJJ continues!
It's a f'ing shoutbox, fer chrissakes! DV8 [2008-11-17 14:44:19]
Dorian Grey, even. Stupid lack of edits here. Big Jim [2008-11-15 08:23:15]
Not me! Dorain Grey an't got nothing on me! Big Jim [2008-11-15 08:22:16]
It's almost that time for you yes...time to gain a gray hair (or two) :) Glorfindel_II [2008-11-14 21:16:06]
You remembered, thanks! (You were talking about my birthday, right?) Big Jim [2008-11-14 21:00:09]
It's almost time... Glorfindel_II [2008-11-14 20:30:43]
About three years, I'm guessing. :) DV8 [2008-11-13 16:15:09]
Having some money to spare is useful....but having over 100,000 gold....just think of the hours you have to spend playing to rake in that amount O_O Glorfindel_II [2008-11-13 15:29:18]
I took out a large chunk for various things, so the amount is about halved. It's not really in order to build up massive reserves, but rather in order to help eachother buy stuff. DV8 [2008-11-12 22:55:53]
You joined in on the bankage? Splendid, if we work together we can rake in a lot of cash. Tiny DV8 [2008-11-12 22:31:24]
So are 'we' planning to see if that limit can be reached? (Not that I'm raking in a lot, but the loot dropped is steadily growing) Glorfindel_II [2008-11-12 20:02:22]
Oh shit, I thought it was a 0 less. :P Tiny DV8 [2008-11-12 14:14:51]
)
Watching the latest episode of