Day at the pub
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Just us discussing blogging, politics and a whole load of random bollocks. This is apparently what classes as regular conversation for Kalmar.
This was a band meeting as well. I remember us as having acheived a lot as well!
Friday, February 22, 2008
Gaming Heaven!!
gaming heaven
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Just a little vid of me enjoying probably my favourite toy in the house; Our Nintendo Wii. If you look real close, you'll be able to see that the game I'm playing is Resident Evil 4. You may also have to forgive my hand signed francais....
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Just a little vid of me enjoying probably my favourite toy in the house; Our Nintendo Wii. If you look real close, you'll be able to see that the game I'm playing is Resident Evil 4. You may also have to forgive my hand signed francais....
Paying with a 'tip'
paying with a tip
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Just a silly little video of us paying for beverages with small change... like the poor and broke band that we are!
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Just a silly little video of us paying for beverages with small change... like the poor and broke band that we are!
B.O.P.S.
Here it is as promised, a song by Kalmar, live for everyone to enjoy:-
The Battle of Sekigahara Plain
Enjoy....
battle of sekigahara plain a video by kalmar
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The Battle of Sekigahara Plain
Enjoy....
battle of sekigahara plain a video by kalmar
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Blasphemy? pfft....
I had seen this picture on my Stumble travels before and had been hoping to find it again at some point.
Yes indeed, atheism is extremely strong at the moment. It seems a new atheist website or group is being formed every day... and more power to them. If you don't believe in God or in any form of deity, then you should be just as free to be a practicing atheist as you should be free to practice your religious beliefs.
Atheists while being fairly unkind about the beliefs of devout religious groups at least accept that those who 'get' religion are free to do so. That said, they don't believe that that means religion is afforded some sort of special protection from criticism or satirical targeting.
I had thought that this would be the last post on religion etc for a while, but I'd read a while back that MySpace had deleted the Atheist and Agnostic alliance, which was just a MySpace group.... this had a something of a cultural impact though, because this group was massive; It was the largest collection of organised atheists in the world; It had its own wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist_and_Agnostic_Group. There cannot have been any way for MySpace to think that they could do this and not kick up a massive furore. Which it did.
The group has been restored, however, the 35,000 odd users are now no longer part of it and will have to sign up to it again. There was content lost that will never be recovered.
I just find it amusing that people call atheists intolerant.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Mikes post...Today was a great day, albeit tiring.
I spent most of the day wandering around town with my girlfriend, who needed to buy some presents for a friends 21st birthday. We found some great items at the disney store, which is always fun to bimble around!
Charlotte then got a little stuck for gifts, so I suggested we order a special 'cookie' cake with 'Happy 21st' written on it.
An hour and a half later and there it was, looking yummy, full of milk chocolate cookie, with a vanilla covering!
All in all, walking around town for 3hours is great, except when you are shopping for someone else, mainly my partner and her friend. Guys, you know what i'm on about. But having M.E. and doing that much walking meant major burnout for me personally, which is not good considering I have a full day and evening of band related activities.
Yes, tomorrow we are recording some of our tracks live on video for uploading right here. Then in the evening having a band night out to show our faces in certain 'key' venues. The planning for the day has been arranged by our Drummer coran, so lets hope he hasn't got too much chaos planned. Either way, its an early night for me!
Last rehearsal, we played a song I had written in my head and it was all down within 15mins!
I guess when you really gel as a band, it's a whole lot easier for everything to go right. I know it won't all be plain sailing. There will be times when 1of us feels like they're burnt out, but i'm optimistic about that. Living with that kind of feeling everyday, one has to be, so you get used to working through, or around it. Even with major burnout, I still managed to pen ideas for a new song, which is reward enough, for working through the tiredness.
On a final note, I bought A lovelly pink - yes pink - address book for the band. It says 'Gold Digga' on the front, which I thought was an appropriate reminder of one of our goals!
I thought I would leave with a picture of the Hoff, I mean everyone remembers Baywatch right? Dare I mention Pamela Anderson? I never saw those pics she did for Playboy. However, I thought it fitting to leave with this picture because - just like the saying goes - 'i'll be ready'!
Until next time.....
New Stargate Film......
The brand new Stargate film(The Ark Of Truth) has been confirmed. Even if you are not a Stargate fan you should fined this interesting, because to my recollection the creators of the show said that they were not going to make anymore of the series because of funding. That the tv channal Sci Fi wasn't giving them the funding they needed for the show anymore.
To see the trailer go here:-
I have seen the trailer and i am not going to spoil it for anyone but the main plot is about.............you guessed it 'The Ori'. It is after they killed the Adria but the ori followers are still alive and after the team. It looks really good and unfortunately they only have showing times in the US. Over here i have been told it is coming straight to DVD.
Well there you go like i said even if you don't like Stargate it's always something good to know!!!!
Bye for now.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Blog Changes and polar opposites
Yes, there have been changes to the blog indeed! You may have noticed the addition of video... which certainly means yes, we've worked out the HTML problem (we needed a couple of things that Blogger couldn't neccesarily provide, so coding it was tough, but thanks to Mike, not impossible).
Be prepared for some Kalmar based shenanigans from the practice room! We're going to be doing a whole days filming on Friday, so who knows, that may even mean a full track to post.
Plus, there's a possibility of gig March 13th: Keep your eyes peeled!
On my Stumble related questing, I have found this;
http://honeyandlance.com/
Have you ever seen the original Odd Couple? Walther Matthau and Jack Lemmon are hilarious in this as two polar opposites. People with opposing views are often comedy gold, especially when they argue (I mean, you only have to watch a fundie xtian argue with a hardcore atheist to see that).
The two authors of the blog are Honey and Lance. Lance is a smooth talking multiple women seducing cad and bounder but who seems to have his head screwed on his shoulders right when offering advice; Honey follows the more conventional dating to find the right person model of seeking a significant other (and it's only one other) and also has her head screwed on straight.
It's quite clear they don't like each other, and it makes for very entertaining reading.
And from our dear friends at http://www.explosm.net
Be prepared for some Kalmar based shenanigans from the practice room! We're going to be doing a whole days filming on Friday, so who knows, that may even mean a full track to post.
Plus, there's a possibility of gig March 13th: Keep your eyes peeled!
On my Stumble related questing, I have found this;
http://honeyandlance.com/
Have you ever seen the original Odd Couple? Walther Matthau and Jack Lemmon are hilarious in this as two polar opposites. People with opposing views are often comedy gold, especially when they argue (I mean, you only have to watch a fundie xtian argue with a hardcore atheist to see that).
The two authors of the blog are Honey and Lance. Lance is a smooth talking multiple women seducing cad and bounder but who seems to have his head screwed on his shoulders right when offering advice; Honey follows the more conventional dating to find the right person model of seeking a significant other (and it's only one other) and also has her head screwed on straight.
It's quite clear they don't like each other, and it makes for very entertaining reading.
And from our dear friends at http://www.explosm.net
Monday, February 18, 2008
A few things I've learned about life so far. (aged 24)
Inspired by an amazing blog post from http://zenhabits.net/ , I have decided to make this another one of those highly amusing blog posts that you come across in various stumble travels. They make you laugh, they make you think, you may even comment on them, but will you remember them? Probably not.
So why am I doing this?
Because it's a blogging tradition. And I know that to get noticed in the blogosphere you're supposed to buck the trend, but I like this tradition. So here goes.... a few things I've learned about life so far! (aged 24)
1: Morning is less of a time, and more of a concept.
This is actually one that the rest of my house mates are trying to change my thinking about, but the only way that that is going to happen is if I quit my job. I work such crazy hours (in general, I am never home before 5 am. If I am, it's been a good night), so I go to bed in the morning, and wake up mid to late afternoon. For me, it is not officially morning until I've gone to bed and woken up again, regardless of the time.
I don't think that I'm alone in this.
2: Time is so easy to waste.
There ar
e a million and one things that I should be doing, even right now. It's one of my two or three nights off work. I should take advantage of it and go to bed early. I know I won't. I'll be either stumbling around on the internet, or I'll be giving myself cramp in my arm by playing the Wii again for God knows how long. Or maybe I'll get a phone call and decide to piss thirty quid up against the wall by going out and drinking.
And the thing is, today's been quite productive already. We had a band practice earlier, wrote another new song, and we even managed to film some of the practice and meeting (Next week, the footage will be up on the blog: We have a few software gremlins to iron out, and after that we'll be fine). We've probably secured our first gig (a headlining slot, but more details as they come!), and we've set the agenda for the next week. Check us out, we've been uber organised.
And because we've been so organised and productive, it is ironically leaving me more free time. Any projects I have to do are ongoing (like the blog), I have some phone calls to make, and I have to change the layout of the blog. The calls are to friends, so that'll be easy and fun (even if it is for gigs), the blog, though time consuming is also fun, and ties into stumbling, which is easily one of my favourite things, and the layout can be redone in a couple of hours with help from Mike (there's some HTML crap we need to do apparently).
So what am I going to do with all of my free time? I dunno. But two options involve a screen, and one involves drinking a lot. Neither involve an early night.
3: Money is so easy to waste.
I own seventy pairs of trainers. Fact.
How did I manage such a gargantuan number? Oh sure, I've only thrown away about seven pairs of trainers in my life. And yeah, I am nostalgic about them. I can look at trainers an
d remember what I was doing that season I was wearing them (I wear shoes to death, it usually take a season).
That said, since I moved to Cardiff, and found TK Maxx, I reckon I buy three or so pairs a month.
I'm also addicted to T shirts too. I have thirty or so T shirts. I contrast this figure with the number of shirts I own. (Five; and they're all for work).
This is all crap that I won't have in maybe a few years time. But if there's a sale on, how am I supposed to resist?
4: Hangovers get worse the older you get.
When I was younger, even despite being the lightweight of the group of peers that were my drinking buddies, I could still put away a frightening amount of alcohol. Of course, back then, drinking was a means to an end, and that end was the end of sobriety. We had no pride in what we were
drinking. If it got is wasted, we drank it.
The hangovers then were horrific, granted… the difference between now and then is that back then, all that I’d need to recover from that hangover was a lot of food, a little bit more time in bed, and about four hours out of direct sunlight.
Now, the hangovers I get are deceptive. I wake up feeling fine, to the point where I fool myself into thinking that maybe I’ll even go for a walk. So I swing my legs out of bed, and head to the kitchen. By the time I can see the tiles, I realise I have disturbed the carefull crafted equilibrium that my body had been constructing for me to aid my recovery. In disturbing that process I have made things much worse.
There are lines in front of my eyes. My whole body aches. My tongue not only feels foul, but it’s sore. I have no coordination between any of my limbs, and thus stumble into furniture with rapidity and ease. I fight off waves of nausea that threaten to turn into projectile vomiting. And the worst part is the thudding sub migraine headache that is jackhammering through my head, with a layer of sickly acidity just underneath it.
This is all bad enough, but as you get older, your ability to metabolise alcohol hit its peak and then started degrading again. My liver has all but said “sod this, I’m off. I don’t get paid enough for this.” As a result, a hangover that six years ago would have lasted four hours now lasts three days. That’s nine times as long.
5: Getting dumped gets easier... and more frequent.
I don't think that I'm a particularly difficult guy to go out with. I may not be the most attr
active guy in the world, but I'm not the ugliest (that award still apparently goes to "Beaky" Stevens of Milton Keynes, a man whose grotesqueness is so legendary that I have heard of him in Cardiff). I don't think that I'm all that riddled with personality problems, I earn enough to take a lady out with enough regularity as to ensure that the "we never go anywhere," argument never happens. I'm an ok dresser, my politics are fairly liberal live and let live, I'm maybe a touch opinionated, maybe quick tempered, but I think overall, I'm fairly easy to date.
That said, I get ditched quite easily.
My latest ex promised me the world. One of the most serious (and I mean serious: There were raised voices and items thrown: Cushions) arguments we had was about whether or not the dogs would sleep indoors or outdoors. Apparently, this was just how things were meant to be, and we were going to remain together no matter what.
Then she moved back to Cork.
I'm not bitter. She couldn't find a job in South Wales, found one back there, tried the long distance thing, and it didn't work. Oh well, it happens, and yeah, I was gutted, but I'm ok. I'm in a new relationship, and Sarah's amazing. I feel a bit mean, because I kept her waiting while I got myself Ok'd and ready to date again, and was waiting while I was still doing the long distance thing.
What I don't understand is how I went from being the guy she couldn't live without to the guy she needed to leave behind. And how that happened in the space of a month.
The last really tough breakup I had was when I was eighteen. She was all kinds of wrong for me, and still I kept going back. She broke up with me three days after my birthday at a train station. (funnily enough, my last ex dumped me at the same train station. I'm beginning to hate trains...) and I cried and listened to the greyest songs I owned. I did stupid things like start fucking around with other women hoping she could somehow psychically feel me doing it. I wasted hundreds of pounds getting blitzed on anything strongly alcoholic. I cried a lot. I wrote ream after ream of awful poetry, and hundreds of songs about being alone and unloved. And suddenly, after half a year of this shit, I was Ok.
I was single for a grand total of a month before getting with Sarah. Of course, I grieved, and I cried, and I listened to sad music, but maybe because I was doing long distance and learning to live like a single man anyway, and maybe because this didn't end horrendously like the breakup I had at eighteen, I had finished mourning after the first week. The second week was comforting. And the third week was beginning to party again. By the fourth week, it was New Years Eve, and that's when Sarah and I got it together. It means we have no excuse for forgetting our anniversary.
Maybe I had a decent breakup. Or maybe being dumped just isn't such a drag anymore. Because it's happened a lot.
Well, there you have it. Like an intricately woven tapestry, I have knitted myself into the grand tradition of blog posts with lists about life in general. I hope you enjoyed it. Tomorrow will hopefully be slightly more worldly stuff, grand political satire, biting discourse on the banalities of the net, or fuming about music or gaming. Hell, it may even be about the band.
Whatever it is, I'll see you all tomorrow!
So why am I doing this?
Because it's a blogging tradition. And I know that to get noticed in the blogosphere you're supposed to buck the trend, but I like this tradition. So here goes.... a few things I've learned about life so far! (aged 24)
1: Morning is less of a time, and more of a concept.
This is actually one that the rest of my house mates are trying to change my thinking about, but the only way that that is going to happen is if I quit my job. I work such crazy hours (in general, I am never home before 5 am. If I am, it's been a good night), so I go to bed in the morning, and wake up mid to late afternoon. For me, it is not officially morning until I've gone to bed and woken up again, regardless of the time.
I don't think that I'm alone in this.
2: Time is so easy to waste.
There ar
e a million and one things that I should be doing, even right now. It's one of my two or three nights off work. I should take advantage of it and go to bed early. I know I won't. I'll be either stumbling around on the internet, or I'll be giving myself cramp in my arm by playing the Wii again for God knows how long. Or maybe I'll get a phone call and decide to piss thirty quid up against the wall by going out and drinking.And the thing is, today's been quite productive already. We had a band practice earlier, wrote another new song, and we even managed to film some of the practice and meeting (Next week, the footage will be up on the blog: We have a few software gremlins to iron out, and after that we'll be fine). We've probably secured our first gig (a headlining slot, but more details as they come!), and we've set the agenda for the next week. Check us out, we've been uber organised.
And because we've been so organised and productive, it is ironically leaving me more free time. Any projects I have to do are ongoing (like the blog), I have some phone calls to make, and I have to change the layout of the blog. The calls are to friends, so that'll be easy and fun (even if it is for gigs), the blog, though time consuming is also fun, and ties into stumbling, which is easily one of my favourite things, and the layout can be redone in a couple of hours with help from Mike (there's some HTML crap we need to do apparently).
So what am I going to do with all of my free time? I dunno. But two options involve a screen, and one involves drinking a lot. Neither involve an early night.
3: Money is so easy to waste.
I own seventy pairs of trainers. Fact.
How did I manage such a gargantuan number? Oh sure, I've only thrown away about seven pairs of trainers in my life. And yeah, I am nostalgic about them. I can look at trainers an
d remember what I was doing that season I was wearing them (I wear shoes to death, it usually take a season).That said, since I moved to Cardiff, and found TK Maxx, I reckon I buy three or so pairs a month.
I'm also addicted to T shirts too. I have thirty or so T shirts. I contrast this figure with the number of shirts I own. (Five; and they're all for work).
This is all crap that I won't have in maybe a few years time. But if there's a sale on, how am I supposed to resist?
4: Hangovers get worse the older you get.
When I was younger, even despite being the lightweight of the group of peers that were my drinking buddies, I could still put away a frightening amount of alcohol. Of course, back then, drinking was a means to an end, and that end was the end of sobriety. We had no pride in what we were
drinking. If it got is wasted, we drank it.The hangovers then were horrific, granted… the difference between now and then is that back then, all that I’d need to recover from that hangover was a lot of food, a little bit more time in bed, and about four hours out of direct sunlight.
Now, the hangovers I get are deceptive. I wake up feeling fine, to the point where I fool myself into thinking that maybe I’ll even go for a walk. So I swing my legs out of bed, and head to the kitchen. By the time I can see the tiles, I realise I have disturbed the carefull crafted equilibrium that my body had been constructing for me to aid my recovery. In disturbing that process I have made things much worse.
There are lines in front of my eyes. My whole body aches. My tongue not only feels foul, but it’s sore. I have no coordination between any of my limbs, and thus stumble into furniture with rapidity and ease. I fight off waves of nausea that threaten to turn into projectile vomiting. And the worst part is the thudding sub migraine headache that is jackhammering through my head, with a layer of sickly acidity just underneath it.
This is all bad enough, but as you get older, your ability to metabolise alcohol hit its peak and then started degrading again. My liver has all but said “sod this, I’m off. I don’t get paid enough for this.” As a result, a hangover that six years ago would have lasted four hours now lasts three days. That’s nine times as long.
5: Getting dumped gets easier... and more frequent.
I don't think that I'm a particularly difficult guy to go out with. I may not be the most attr
active guy in the world, but I'm not the ugliest (that award still apparently goes to "Beaky" Stevens of Milton Keynes, a man whose grotesqueness is so legendary that I have heard of him in Cardiff). I don't think that I'm all that riddled with personality problems, I earn enough to take a lady out with enough regularity as to ensure that the "we never go anywhere," argument never happens. I'm an ok dresser, my politics are fairly liberal live and let live, I'm maybe a touch opinionated, maybe quick tempered, but I think overall, I'm fairly easy to date.That said, I get ditched quite easily.
My latest ex promised me the world. One of the most serious (and I mean serious: There were raised voices and items thrown: Cushions) arguments we had was about whether or not the dogs would sleep indoors or outdoors. Apparently, this was just how things were meant to be, and we were going to remain together no matter what.
Then she moved back to Cork.
I'm not bitter. She couldn't find a job in South Wales, found one back there, tried the long distance thing, and it didn't work. Oh well, it happens, and yeah, I was gutted, but I'm ok. I'm in a new relationship, and Sarah's amazing. I feel a bit mean, because I kept her waiting while I got myself Ok'd and ready to date again, and was waiting while I was still doing the long distance thing.
What I don't understand is how I went from being the guy she couldn't live without to the guy she needed to leave behind. And how that happened in the space of a month.
The last really tough breakup I had was when I was eighteen. She was all kinds of wrong for me, and still I kept going back. She broke up with me three days after my birthday at a train station. (funnily enough, my last ex dumped me at the same train station. I'm beginning to hate trains...) and I cried and listened to the greyest songs I owned. I did stupid things like start fucking around with other women hoping she could somehow psychically feel me doing it. I wasted hundreds of pounds getting blitzed on anything strongly alcoholic. I cried a lot. I wrote ream after ream of awful poetry, and hundreds of songs about being alone and unloved. And suddenly, after half a year of this shit, I was Ok.
I was single for a grand total of a month before getting with Sarah. Of course, I grieved, and I cried, and I listened to sad music, but maybe because I was doing long distance and learning to live like a single man anyway, and maybe because this didn't end horrendously like the breakup I had at eighteen, I had finished mourning after the first week. The second week was comforting. And the third week was beginning to party again. By the fourth week, it was New Years Eve, and that's when Sarah and I got it together. It means we have no excuse for forgetting our anniversary.
Maybe I had a decent breakup. Or maybe being dumped just isn't such a drag anymore. Because it's happened a lot.
Well, there you have it. Like an intricately woven tapestry, I have knitted myself into the grand tradition of blog posts with lists about life in general. I hope you enjoyed it. Tomorrow will hopefully be slightly more worldly stuff, grand political satire, biting discourse on the banalities of the net, or fuming about music or gaming. Hell, it may even be about the band.
Whatever it is, I'll see you all tomorrow!
Sunday, February 17, 2008
The city of Kalmar.....
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Kalmar is a city in Smaland in the south-east of Sweden, situated by the Baltic sea. It has 35.170 people(2005), and is the seat of Kalmar Municipality with a total of 61.321 people(2006). It is also the capitol of Kalmar county, which comprises 12 Municipality's with a total of 233.776 people(2006)
(Seal of Kalmar 13th century)
From the 13th to the 17th centuries, Kalmar was one of Sweden's most important cities, between 1602 and 1913 it was the episcopal see of Kalmar Diocese with a bishop, and a Kalmar cathedral from 1702 is still a fine example of classicist architecture. It became a fortified city with the still mighty Kalmar castle as the center. After the Treaty of Roskilde 1658 Kalmar's importance diminished, until the industry sector was initiated in the 19th century.
Geographically Kalmar is the main route to the island of Oland thanks to the Oland bridge.
In 1611-1613, it suffered in the Kalmar War, which began with a Danish siege of Kalmar castle. 1611 is mentioned as the darkest year of Kalmar history. But by no means the only dark year, much blood has been shed in the vicinity of the castle. The last was during the Scanian War in the 1670's, leading it's siege to a total of 22-yet, the castle was never taken.
TODAY.
In more recent time's, Kalmar has been an industrial city with Kalmar Mekaniska Verkstad making steam engines and large machinery, it has a university with over 9,000 studants(University of Kalmar) and a research facility for Talina Sonera.
Well there you go, just in case you wanted to know where the name came from!!!
Have a good one............Coran
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmar
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