Tag Archives: metal

Yeah yeah

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Posted by Tim on August 21, 2008 – 4:57 pm
Filed under Blogroll, General Stuff

It’s been a little while and I forgot to make with the words. I really don’t have much to say. I’ve been trying to keep myself busy by picking up PHP again. I’m also just trying to sharpen my photoshop and design skillz. I’m about to start building a wordpress theme for the entire site. A unifying theory if you will, maybe I’ll try to incorporate that idea into the theme.

Lets see, I started my turn as DM with our D&D group. First game could have gone better but I’m getting used to keeping track of all kinds of stuff during combat agai, and I’m playing the healer so I have to keep up. But it is a bit of a pain to stop, focus on my character, then go back to running the combat.

We’re planning on doing some vocal tests this weekend to see if I can hack it as some kind of singer. I think I still need to work on it, but I could say that about a lot of things. I have no idea what is in store for me for this and I have to say that even though it’s only going to be Carl and I working on this, I’m a bit intimidated.

Quiet

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Posted by Tim on July 18, 2008 – 12:16 pm
Filed under Blogroll, General Stuff

All things quiet here. The job hunt continues and apparently I’m an idiot. I don’t know why I never thought of it beforehand but Craigslist had quite a few people looking for designers. I’m kind of angry at myself for missing that, but it did net me 4 or 5 leads so I can’t be too angry. Hopefully someone calls back, as this is getting kind of ridiculous.

I pretty much finished my site. There are still a few things I want to do, like make some buttons on my web design page. I think I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and implement a larger body graphic on that page anyways. I don’t think it’s working out as well as I thought it would. I’ve given it some time and it still feels wrong having it all broken up like that. I’ll get right on that.

D&D is still going well and I continue to enjoy the hell out of 4e. It really makes things fast. My fighter got himself a slick new sword, so when we leveled I had to switch out my hammer focus feat for heavy blades. More straight damage and more attack, I think it works out better for my pusher-bot. I can’t really move the field around if I’m not hitting enemies.

I mentioned before that me and a few others were working on writing a campaign setting. I set up a Wiki style site for it here. I can’t really put it up and talk about it too much. The main writer is scared of our secrets being stolen. I don’t even think anyone would stumble on it anyways, but whatever. It’s not much to look at right now. It’s just supposed to be simple so that we can get our design document in order. I can’t wait until we get to the later stages of the production, I’m looking forward to writing some short fantasy fiction. I’ve already started one story, I’ll post that as soon as it becomes more than a couple pages.

I’m desperately trying to think of something on the topic of music to write about, my friends are telling me that I just need to start a blog about Metal. I’ve thought about it, not a lot though. I just don’t really have access to the contacts it would take to display anything really cool. But I guess everyone has to start somewhere.

A lot of big shows coming up. Huge shows that will kick so much ass, it’s not even a question about seeing them when they come to San Diego. Unfortunately none of them are coming here. It’s depressing sometimes being a metalhead in San Diego. We do get some good bands that roll through, but once a band reaches a certain threshold they don’t come down here. I don’t know if it’s a venue problem or an audience problem. From the last few shows I’ve been at it doesn’t look at all like there would be a problem getting people in the seats. However, it just occurred to me that it might be because of the prices. TicketBastard is renowned for being over priced, they use a “Parking Fee” to jack up the prices (look for it on your receipt). Some might think, “Well they provide a service by helping pay for the parking services”. And if they did that it would be cool. But they don’t. Every place I’ve been to that uses ticketmaster doesn’t have their own lot. Some of them don’t have a lot anywhere nearby. So I’m paying ticketbastard to park on the street 2 blocks away? That is complete bullshit. I don’t know how that’s at all legal. It seems like that’s a promise of a service that they never fulfill and that they never intended to.

Anyways, big concerts that are going to be nearby:

  • Blackest of the Black (Danzig, Dimmu Borgir, Skeletonwitch, some others)

    • I haven’t seen Danzig, but I have seen Dimmu and Skeletonwitch. Both put on really great shows.

  • Opeth, High on Fire, Baroness

    • I’ve never gotten to see any of these bands live. I really want to see Opeth, I’ve listened to them for years but never gotten around to a show. High on Fire I would really like to see, and Baroness is something I’ve just started listening to. One of the guys in Baroness is a really good graphic artist and does cover art for a lot of other bands. Stunning work.

  • Clutch, The Sword, and Graveyard

    • I keep missing Clutch, something always comes up. I really want to see this show, I hear a lot of talk about The Sword and I’ve liked what I’ve heard. Graveyard is an unknown, but they have a cool name.

I think that’s all the good stuff that I’m trying to get out to see. Luckily most of those shows are in the fall so I have some time.

Wow, I didn’t think this post would get so long. I’m gonna wrap it up (B).

Still Here

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Posted by Tim on July 8, 2008 – 10:28 pm
Filed under Blogroll, General Stuff

Oops, two weeks. Time flies. I think I was a little unwilling to communicate after the whole wedding thing. He got his new orders in, but apparently he had to fight pretty hard to get somewhere other then Greece. I guess you can’t take spouses there. So now it’s Italy. Good for them I suppose, I hope that she can find something to keep herself going every day. I don’t see her as the domesticated home maker, but she will be surrounded by plenty of art and history so hopefully that will keep her inspired.

Got rid of a huge chunk of my gaming books today. Must have been 30 books or so. $55 store credit. Hmm, I know I didn’t want to keep them around anymore (they take up a lot of space) but for some reason I thought it might be more than that. I’m probably trying to attach an emotional value to them as well. I don’t really regret trading them in (picked up the 4E DMG and some minitures, woo!) but yeah, nostalgia is a bitch.

Our 4E game is going well, I picked up a magic shield last week and a magic sword this week. Rolling in the lewt, I believe I am nearing “Phat” levels. I might give the shield to our Warlord just to distribute things a bit more evenly. The sword is pretty neat though, so you’d have to pry it from my cold dead fingers. Or y’know, get me a shinier one. D&D should really just be called Death & Shinies.

No awesome fights yet, I’m sure one is coming up though. Last week we fought some kind of Jelly and a Blue Slime. Those were some hard fights, but they were fun. The first fight against the Jelly we were down two players, they were running late and attending a funeral, respectively. So it was a pretty big change missing the area damage from our Wizard and the straight damage a Ranger can deal. We got through it though, and without any character incapacitation I might add

A couple of us are working on our own game, a new setting. Well kind of new. We first played this setting about 8 years ago using the D10 system from White Wolf. I had a website up that was where we were supposed to be discussing things, but there was some huge database error with Drupal and I just made the decision to delete it. It wasn’t really being used anyways. So I’m going to put another one up soon using WordPress. So look for that one to show up at some point, we want to try to market the setting and build a community around it. We’ll see though, if it even goes anywhere it’ll probably just be a drop in the bucket.

Speaking of new sites, I’m about to launch a new site, sdbarhopper.com. The plan is to rate bars around San Diego. I didn’t see one specifically for San Diego and it’s something I think I could be good at. Plus that’s an awesome domain I managed to pick up, memorable. I was going to launch it last weekend but things got too hectic, so I’m pushing it back to next week. I also lost a bit of confidence in it when I told a couple friends about it and got the “Uh huh, that’s great.” response. The polite, I-hope-you-don’t-turn-this-into-an-epic-fail-but-you-probably-will response. Some times I really do hate these people. Regardless, I will move forward. I plan to rate Toronado San Diego first, since we’re both new. Except it’s had some more time to decorate. Quick thought about it, it’s fucking loud. After Toronado, a regular bar, maybe MacGregor’s. I need to make stickers and other crap to put up to drive some traffic. But that’s in the future.

Holy shit, look how far I got without talking about music. I’ve been almost entirely captivated by two bands the past couple of weeks, Goatsnake and The Hidden Hand. Both of them are kind bluesy throw backs, but with that Stoner Metal tinge to them. Goatsnake especially. One of the guitarists in it is from SUNN 0))), so it’s really really fucking heavy. I liked the Blues beforehand, but damn, I don’t think it’s ever sounded like this.

Cult of Luna released their new album today. I need to get it at some point, I don’t have the cash right now though. It would be really nice if that damn stimulus check I was promised would show up. The thing that pisses me off the most about that is that it should have been deposited about, oh, 3 months ago I think. Anyways the new album sounds like an interesting concept, they found some journal from a mental patient in the place the were rehearsing. Could be overwrought, could be awesome. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt since they kick quite a bit of ass.

I just noticed I swear a lot when I talk about music. Chalk it up to passion.

Site almost done, I finally figured out how I want to actually display my work. Hopefully that will get done tomorrow. I don’t see it taking that long, I do so hate talking about my work though. I don’t know why, maybe because I don’t think I’m very complicated and think it should be fairly obvious what I was doing.

Damn, I am long winded. Probably why I only try to do a few posts a week

Snakes, why does it have to be snakes

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Posted by Tim on June 17, 2008 – 11:52 am
Filed under Blogroll, General Stuff

Living on the edge of a canyon is interesting. Get all kinds of wildlife coming up to the back fence. And every year we have to relocate a rattlesnake back into the wild. Yesterday I saw my first one of the year. Sucker must have been 3 feet long. I’m not scared of snakes, but I do have a healthy respect for them, so I decided that I didn’t want to try to wrangle this one into a trashcan and move it. My father however did relocate on while I was in LA over the weekend.

On the unwanted visitors note, some pest control guy just stopped by going house to house looking for customers. I swear the guy must have planted it, because he asks me to open my screen and look over the door at this huge Black Widow just chilling out. If he didn’t plant it he just has the best timing ever.

Onto lootable creature things. Last night we had our D&D game. As I mentioned we’ve moved to 4E, which I’m really digging so far. The name of the game now seems to be Options Based Tactical Combat (OBTC). OBTC works by giving everyone a ton of options, it’s rare to see anyone just swing their weapon. I think this really works well for everyone, it sucks being a first level Wizard and having nothing to do because you only have 4 or 5 spells. Magic Missile is a regular attack for them now, and it does sort of scale with level. My fighter has a wide array attacks, I can go for an attack that gives me a bonus to hit that forgoes my strength damage, I can hit an enemy and shift him to a square adjacent to me and hopefully set him up for a flank, or if he has a friend next to him I can hit him and deal my strength damage to the ally. And those are just my base powers, once per fight I can hit a guy and let an ally who is also adjacent to the enemy shift twice and hopefully take up a flanking position. My daily attack also lets me heal myself and my new daily utility power (we leveled up last night, hell yeah) lets me gain a bunch of temporary hit points.

I know I talk a lot about the combat, but that’s because it’s such a huge deal. The game has become very tactical, you have to pay attention to how to use your options so that you can hopefully open up your allies options as well. This creates a well-oiled machine of monster killing. We haven’t gotten much into using skills in social situations, but I think that really has more to do with our DM’s. Usually if you want to try to talk someone into doing something you role play it, so we don’t make that many rolls outside of combat. And I think that’s more of something that happens on a group by group basis.

So yeah, highly enjoying 4E. And I think that if you like D&D you should check it out, and not listen to the haters on the internet. Most of them haven’t even played the game and don’t really know what they are talking about (people not knowing what they are talking about on the internet? that’s a surprise). I know when I first heard about the new edition and even up until we started playing with it I was worried that it was just going to be another 3.5 money grab. I definitely don’t think it is now, a lot of care went into this to try to make sure that no one is sitting around waiting for the fighter to get through his 11 attacks so they can throw a meteor swarm.

Peeling myself away from gaming: I found my photoshop! Site will hopefully be completed in the next few days! Woo, no more curiously hanging text in the other pages. Images of stuff I’ve done! Uh, another contact form! Some other stuff! I also fixed the database issue I was having with the ethics gradient forum. I think they’re kind of pissed at me at the moment. I didn’t know it was down until after I came back from my trip, okay! You’d think they’d be happy that I was changing passwords and trying to make things more secure.

And on to music now. I’ve mentioned before that I listen to some weird, experimental, extreme music. Some of that you can see in my last.fm widget on the right. Well a friend of mine who is obsessed with Japan keeps trying to get me to listen to Japanese rock and video game sound tracks. Most of the time, I just don’t care. There’s some bands that I like from Japan like Sigh, Boris, Gallhammer, and Acid Mothers Temple, but this is just way outside of what he’s trying to give me. So I’ve started fucking with him. First I gave him the last Boris album to listen to, my hope was that he would stop trying to give me music. That failed because when he returned the album he then asked if I wanted the sound track for Guilty Gear X or something. Denied. So what I’ve started to do is just give him more of my music. Usually just cd’s I have at hand. Stuff like SUNN 0))) and Lugubrum and Wolves in the Throne Room. I’m not sure if he likes the music all that much but it gives me someone else to talk about music with.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a scholar of Heavy Metal, it’s one of those things that I just love and try to learn everything I can about. It used to be a pretty narrow field I was interested in, mainly Black Metal, but it recently branched out into Doom, Stoner and Sludge metal. Maybe branched out isn’t a good term, I can’t think of a good term offhand. Anyways, I’m not sure where I was going with that. Probably just giving myself a pat on the back. But it’s really nice having someone who will listen to something I give them then want to talk about it and ask questions about the sound, and why a band did a particular thing. Most of my other friends that have similar tastes will listen to my lectures but don’t ask questions and such. I guess I should try returning the favor sometime. Oops, rambling.

I think on that note I’m going to sign off. Don’t really have anything else to talk about fro now.

Work

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Posted by Tim on June 16, 2008 – 11:13 am
Filed under Blogroll, General Stuff

Finally got a new look for my personal site up. I kept putting it off, it’s actually the 4th version of the site, I was working on the third version about a year ago but I was really unhappy with where it was trying to go so I ditched it. I’m still not completely happy with this one. Oh well, it’s new and has a bit more color. I’m still kicking my self for not making sure I knew where all my programs were before leveled my hard drive a week ago. So it will stay in an unfinished state until I can find photoshop. Or find an open source program that can open and edit photoshop files. Where’s the OpenOffice photoshop damn it. This comes at a great time as well, trying to shop my resume around and my portfolio site is unfinished. Great, looks professional.

The observatory in the image is the Kek telescope in Hawaii, astronomy and physics has kind of become a hobby recently. Although I could honestly never deal with all the maths involved to become anything more than a window gazer.

Decided not to go to the Lair of the Minotaur show at the Jumping Turtle. I was done spending money for the weekend, tapped myself out. Hope it was good. I hate the trip up to the Turtle, but I’ve had a lot of fun at the last couple of shows I saw there. Rotting Christ was just insane, so much energy. I think we’re a little metal starved down here, so when we finally get some big names people go apeshit at the show. The Zoroaster show was a little bit of a letdown only because it was embarassing how few people stayed for the entire show. Half the audience left after the first two local bands. Support the fucking scene and stay for the whole show you turds. Otherwise it was totally awesome.

Speaking of local shows, Boris is gonna be here next week. Fucking sweet. I got their new album a couple weeks ago. I don’t know how they do what they do. Is there any other band that is so flexible with their sound? Is there any style they won’t adopt and crush? Hmm, maybe hip-hop. Maybe. Anyways I hope for an awesome show. The original ticket was Boris, Torche, and Wolves in the Throne Room. Wolves being one of my favorite new bands after stumbling across them at the SUNN 0)) / Earth show last year. I immediately bought their first album once their set was done, and later on I bought their new album, Two Hunters (which ranks as one of my favorite albums of last year). I don’t know why they dropped off the bill, I was really bummed about that but at least the show should still be good.

I said many years ago and in my post yesterday (how about that, 2 posts in 2 days! Holy shit!) that I was going to try to write more fiction. I really do mean to. It seems to be something that’s kind of spontaneous for me, and always seems to work out well if I just do it. Some things I’ve noticed about my writing is that I don’t like character names, and I like ambiguity. I wish I could find a couple of the other stories I wrote in school, my writing is about the only thing I make that I’m always happy with. I enjoy the window like properties that it breeds. So yeah, I think I feel something coming on, hopefully in the next day or two the time will be right.

Back to music. My buddy Carl and I are hopefully going to start a band. I’ve been playing bass for a few months now and it’s got me wanting to do something musically. I wouldn’t dare try to play bass for this though, I think it’s just going to remain a hobby until I can get more time and maybe my own recording equipment. But for our project, we seem to be in at least the same chapter, maybe not the same page, but close. One of his friends is a drummer also, so we’ve got nearly a full outfit. Carl plans to take care of the guitars and to do all the programming, which is why my bass skills will not be needed. I’m slightly worried that if this does somehow get off the ground that I might be over ruled in the way it sounds because I’m the only one of the group that is not a serious musician.

Um, so that’s about all I’ve got right now. D&D tonight, we’ve switched over to 4th edition. So far I’m really liking it. I never feel like I’m out of options, unless I’m unconscious. Maybe tomorrow I’ll give a quick rundown of the game.