Guten tag fellow SGers Now with Pics!

Been back from the Metal Odyssey for a little while now, regular life has returned... BUT luckily for me, and my dear readers, I took plenty of photos! So instead of making this blog a wall of text, I'm going to let the photos do the talking. Enjoy (might want to walk off for a minute or so, there's a fair few photos as it turns out haha)

And that's pretty much it in an extremely watered down nutshell

Here's some of the more interesting music I heard on the Odyssey

Biomechanical - Cannibalised
Hate - Immum Coeli (Everlasting World)
Gorilla Monsoon - Damage King
Cathedral - Corpsecycle
Malevolent Creation - Kill Zone


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I'm buying a car tomorrow


After 5+ years of faithful and reliable service, I'm finally moving the old gal into another learners hands so she can teach them as much as she taught me


I'm going to Brisbane on the weekend of the 10th of October, so if you're going to be in that town then hit me up and we can go somewhere for beers or whatever


Stay metal SG /m/

This one goes out to fellow Perthatorian Katmandu, go say hi to her!

Hello all I'm still alive! Well, my body is shot to pieces and held together with a morning beer and duct tape, but aside from that I'm going splendidly.

I'll make a picture and video blog once I get back, not enough time bother putting it all in words!

Returning to regular programming soon


PS. Thats ok Felice, I just had a talk with Marcus then headed back to my camp and saw some things that can not be unseen haha. Can't believe that Swedish chick didn't put out!!

Hello Essgeehrs!!

Just a little update from your main mans' Metal Odyssey tour of Europe

To pick up from where I left off (Slovenian women are hot... HOT BILLY, SUPER HOT), I stayed in Ljublana while I was in Slovenia. The train ride there was amazing. It was through alot of Austria so there was mountains and green for as long as the eyes could see. Plus I met some cool German metal heads (are there any other kind?) who gave me lots of beer We found this really awesome theme bar called the Skeleton Bar. In it there were all these dancing skeletons behind glass, skeleton bats whizzing around our heads etc, and it was just a really great place to sit down and have drinks. Haha oh man and the drinks! 6EUR got you 800ml (800ML) of your cocktail. Needless to say Skeleton Jizz was my poision of choice and it destroyed me.


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After that we went to Tolmin for Metal Camp and I just say, move over Party San, I now have a new favourite festival! There was a river right next to the camp site so when you woke up hungover and stinking of sweat, you just grabbed and towel and went for a dip! The water was run-off from the mountains so it was fucking COLD, but thats probably what made it so awesome. Sinking beer with friends in a freezing lake while chatting up foreign women while listening to metal, that is what festivals should be like haha.

Haha oh man, and speaking of picking up women... Out of all the chicks I talked to that I maybe, juuuust maybe had a chance with (oh how I will sorely miss those Finnish sisters...) I ended up picking up what was definitively the biggest whore of the festival. I have pics to prove it but I can't upload at the moment... Hell my mate has a video of what happened, I'll be sure to link when its available I still had a great time, but in hindsight I don't know how she sleeps at night haha.

MESHUGGAH!!!! Holy fucking shit Meshuggah. Never have I milled so much and so hard for a band. I didn't get too much footage of them because my neck and my hair just took over and that was the end of it. I got instantly intoxicated with the sound they were creating and it was one of the greatest live music experiences of my life

But even they really paled in comparison with what happened in Behemoth.

It'd already been raining a decent amount for the past few hours. I was only wearing a hoodie, but it was managing to keep the rain out for the time being because I love this band and I wasn't gonna let a bit of water get in the way. As their set starts, the rain slowly gets harder, and the wind behind me slowwwly gets stronger. But the songs just keep getting more and more awesome, they're playing a "Terrys favourite Behemoth" setlist. Then they hit it, Conquer All. And Mother Nature cracks the fuckn SHITS. The weather effects triple-fold in intenisty. The rain is getting whipped onto the stage and I'm in a milling fucking frenzy.
The speakers start to short out, the band feedback shorts out, Nerguls guitar fucks up, but they keep playing and I keep thrashing. The rain is coming down like a tsunami but we're all still there, all still DESTROYING ALL!!!!

When the song ends the band leaves a completely annhilated stage. I look to my chick friend, my only friend who stayed with me, and we hug. We embrace for what feels like hours because we both realise what we'd just experienced. What we're not likely to experience again.


FUCKING

METAL

NIRVANA

/m/



I've got alot more to say (Venice is beautiful ) but I'm all out of time. I'll dedicate a new song next blog


Stay metal

Slovenian women are hot... REALLY REALLY REALLY hot. Cant go anywhere without tripping over them

Hello friends

Times are good. Times are great in fact. I've just started my holidays and I'm liking how things are progressing.

Big props to nymphetalona and drktrnq for chilling out with me today! Sure, Supanova wasn't all that great, but atleast we found a surprisingly sexually charged Gumbi comic! That alone was worth the price of admission I reckon.


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METAL ODYSSEY 2008

Planning... is complete. The T's are crossed, the I's are dotted (unless they're upper case of course) and I depart very early Monday morning



This, this will be something to remember


This is all I'll be coming with me. I love stuff like this


"Take only photos, leave only footprints"


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I'd like to introduce the newest member of my family

Haven't yet come up with a name for the little fella so I'm open for suggestions.


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I haven't acquired any fancy new pieces of tech this time (besides RAM, computer runs awesome now!) so I thought I'd show you where I work

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Tonight, I leave you with some Agalloch. Feel free to leave it on loop while you do other things, it makes impressive background music




Stay metal, stay safe, and I shall return *bows*

/m/


Edit: Hot damn I'm turning into an Agalloch fan Move over Prog metal, I think ambient doom is moving on in.

Hello friends

Things, as per usual, have been pretty damn busy since my last blog so lets start at the fun stuff!


Last night I formed the biggest crush EVAR I got her a Wacken ticket when I posted on online that I was purchasing bulk and was looking to save on postage. She said she worked at Empire Toys and I thought that was pretty cool (for non-Perthatorians, so feel free to skip nymphetalona hehe, Empire Toys is the go-to place for Graphic novels, comics, geeky stuff to have around your room ) but I didn't really know much else about her.

She randomly bumped into me at the gig last night because she was the photographer and shes really cute in a geek/bookwormish way *swoon* We end up talking about things form alternate endings to I Am Legend to Easter eggs in Aliens Vs Predator 2 to how zombies can be a real threat with the growth of nanotechnology.

In a sense, I was having the best conversation with a chick in my LIFE The more kooky and abstract the discussion manner got, the more we both got into it.

Then, inevitably, I met the boyfriend I've met him before and he's a pretty cool guy, but, goddamnit. Sucks haha.

I got her number though and we're going to swap photos of our book collections so we can pick and choose what we'd want to read and do a bit of a swap, so I'm look'n forward to that


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METAL ODYSSEY 2008

*maniacal laughter* It is almost complete!! Just a few more places to book, sort a few train timetables, and that's about it. I've got all my fest tickets.

Here's a quick snapshot of where I'll be traveling, if you're interested



Going clockwise from Frankfurt am Main. I think the most interesting part outside of the metal for me will be going to see CERN at Geneva. For those who aren't sure who they are, by the time I arrive there they should have fired up the Large Hadron Collider. It's essentially built to find out how mass exists ie: Could be one of the greatest discoveries in human kinds' history. I hope the whole city is electric with expectation and excitement when I get there!

Of course I'll also be meeting the lovely Felice, as I've mentioned prior DOA here we come!

I won't bore ya with any more details, but just letting you all know I'm getting VERY excited! Under a month and a half 'til departure! /m/


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OK geek toy time

After an enormous craving for Tetris, I finally got round to buying a DS!



I'm having a little trouble getting the WiFi set up at the moment so I don't have my friendcode handy, but as soon as I get it sorted I'll edit this and put it in. I must warn you, I'm fairly good The stages >15 in Marathon mode are kind of lame though, the Tetriminos don't even fall they just appear at the bottom and the game becomes a case of making your top rows as compatible as possible and just dealing with the pieces thrown at you instead of building. I guess that's why they implemented 'dancing', so it just wouldn't build a massive stack in the blink of an eye haha.

I've been hearing about the R4 card lately so I'll be sourcing one of those too. $60 for a DS game? Yer riteeee


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That's enough for now I think There's still a lot going on that I haven't touched on, but I shall blog about it some other time.

A slightly more doomy song for you this evening, been digging through my musical archives and I unearthed this gem recently. This one goes out to nymphetalona for helping me with DS related issues Gonna whoop ya on Tetris lady!


Katatonia - Rainroom


/m/

OK proper blog this time

Had an absolute blast at my housewarming party. They should really call them housecleaning parties because thats all I've done for hours haha! Place is just about looking a million bucks (except outside... Daz can handle that one ). Broke my damn mop though, cheap piece of shit.

Memorable moments

• Giving Sam and Bec moustaches with corpse paint. And Bec for just wearing a soul patch most of the night haha.
• Setting my pinata on fire before beating it to death
• Having the police rock up in the morning because a passerby spotted a bullet belt on the front lawn
• Meet a whole heap of metallers that I only knew online, but now know in person!

According to my calender, my trip to Brisbane is also coming up soon. I've already teed up some drinking time with Sanity667, but I might push the trip back to coincide with a Brisbanites meet. Probably teetering towards the latter, I'm sure I'll see Dillinger some other time We'll see how it goes anyway.

Thats pretty much it, nothing much to report A whole stack of new CDs has come in over the past few days so I'm off to go give 'em a listen and get intimate with my bathroom

/m/

ZARG!

Yesterday, I did something I swore I would never do again. I'd been burned twice before...

But, I relented I tried others, yearning for change; to not repeat the mistakes of the past. I'm not strong enough. I just... I just didn't have anywhere else to turn. Lord forgive me!

I bought a 2nd Gen Mini back in the day, and that thing had the worst battery life in any piece of electronics I've ever owned. I'd be recharging the damn thing through the day! My next one was a 4th Gen Video and it wasn't too bad itself, but the interface with itunes was just terrible and not intuitive at all. Never did figure out how to put videos on a video iPod Plus the battery life, again, was pretty woeful and not even close to advertised limits.

After the video died I went to find a good alternative, and the best I could find (imported from the US, iPods have a monopoly here!) was a Creative Zen. Interface was terrible, way too many menus, but to put on songs it was a simple drag-&-drop! Hurrah! The battery life was awesome and it even automatically converted videos to fit its screen perfectly.


Then it just died Refused to switch on, reset or react to USB. Bricked after ~5 months of use. So, to Creative, I say;

Not to the delicious Black Douglas btw, the Zen


But it appears that with the 5th Gen Classic they've really done their homework finally. I've had no issues with itunes or transferring files. The iPod itself is very weighty and has a solid feel. The click-wheel means the interface is always going to be a market-leader. Now I can check out the album cover of ever song I have on there too, which I think is a great addition.

If my lengthy MP3 player experience has taught me anything, its that the iPod is successful not only because they've built a superb MP3 player with dozens of easy-to-use things to do with it from pod-casts to video streaming, but everyone else is a good 2 generations behind them. Pick up the slack and make the market competitive everyone else!!


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I finally got my hands on a PAL version of this DVD!

Its a very insightful and informative doco on the history and culture of metal I'm showing it to my folks tomorrow night to try in vain for them to understand that this is not a phase, but a WAY OF LIFE!!! Highly recommend it to metallers and non-metallers alike


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And lastly, I've gotta show you my latest geek fascination. What's a TeeMan blog without one, right?

The glorious Logitech G25 on my custom mount! 6-speed H-pattern gearbox, clutch, tiptronic, 900 degrees of rotation and with force feedback like you wouldn't believe. Expensive, but I'll be getting my moneys worth
I got it a few days ago coinciding with the release of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. Now this game looks STUPIDLY FANTASTIC. Check out these screens that I took with my dodgy camera;

Unbelievable.


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I'm also organising a Mexicana partaeyyy I'll throw up pictures when I have it. Here's my super-awesome MS Paint invite (with a few omissions obviously, because this is the Internet haha). I will be making a METAL PINTA






Bloodbath - Eaten
Brutal, bludgeoning and savage are three words that come to mind with these guys!


Stay metal kiddos /m/

Hello hello how is everyone? While I'm waiting for rice to cook I thought I'd get round to letting you all know about my new place! And yes, as you can see by my rice cooker reference, I've slipped back into a domestic role rather well! (that's peanut butter satay, incase you can't smell it )

Here are a few choice pics!


Living room spread is coming along nicely (its alot neater since this picture was taken haha)


Plenty of space from drunken bums to pass out that aren't my bed.


Has around 7000 games Lots of pearls hidden in a sea of mucus haha. Played a game called 'Cadillacs and Dinosaurs' today and yes, I got to run down a triceratops in a Caddy


Mmm. Spacious.



My humble abode



Behold! KEG FRIDGE

We had people over after a gig on the weekend and it was pretty cool Met alot of people who I'd just to just say hi and the usual stuff at a gig, but i actually got to talking to them this time, so new friends are always a welcome addition to my new lifestyle. I'm glad my room mate and our mate down the road are into games as well, Jez came round last night with his gamecube and we played Mario Kart for an hour or two, still so much fun!

I'm still thinking what I should do with this holiday. I did have things planned for when I booked it off a few months ago, but they've been deferred 'til May. I think I'll get a bit sick of hanging around the house for 2 weeks so I'm open for suggestions people! Impromptu holidays to places in Australia only valid before the easter long weekend because all the cheap flights have dried up!


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Before I sign off, I must give this a mention. Its a small text-based conversation-simulator I'm helping to create called Crane Operator. The synopsis of it is that a homicidal, yet gentlemanly and kind Crane Operator needs to lure unsuspecting Pedestrians onto his hook so he's able to kill them by dropping them to the ground, all by using verbal judo to make it seem unreasonable for the Pedestrian to not go on the hook.

Just visit here to have a quick game, it only lasts a minute Let me know your thoughts and if you feel so inclined, add your own responses!

To better explain the concept, heres an example conversation

Surely I am not the only one on SG who does not find this extremely hilarious


Stay metal kiddos, hope everyone has had the goddamn good sense to buy this album /m/