Personal – Page 76 – Fooyah

October 10 2012October 10 2012

Current Most Played

Here’s my list of top played songs from my iPhone. Actually the first 5 were all children’s songs so I haven’t kept those in the picture.

As you would expect Combichrist are at the top as are some other Aggrotech or hellectro bands. Some might question Boston’s Foreplay/Longtime but I reckon if you listen to it you’ll realise it’s a very good song. Black Betty by Ram Jam is one that gets my children dancing so, although I appreciate it is a good song, without them it probably wouldn’t be in the top.
It’d be very interesting to mine my mind for data about songs I have listened to in my lifetime as this list really only covers the last year since I rebuilt my iTunes library. AC/DC’s If You Want Blood and plenty of Iron Maiden and Megadeth would be in the list. Would there be some shocking surprises? Maybe some Prince!

October 9 2012June 22 2018

Excited

Very excited. I just bought my ticket for Download 2013. It’s a heavy metal festival held at Donington Park somewhere in the midlands. Now, I’m not a great fan of festivals and in all reality this will be my first, but, what a beauty it is going to be. I am going with my mate as it is his 40th birthday near to then and this seems to be the perfect way to celebrate.

First things first. I can’t go on the Friday as I have to work. So that means I am going to miss Slipknot. This is not a bad thing. I really am not bothered about seeing them. I will be travelling on the Saturday morning and then returning at a god-awful hour on the Sunday night / monday morning to head into work.

Headlining on the Saturday are IRON MAIDEN. This is good news as they were the first band I ever saw also the birthday boy was there for that one too. That was in 1988 and they were on the “7th Tour of a 7th Tour” tour. What makes this festival rather special is that they are going to be playing pretty much the same set as on that tour. It originally was filmed and released as the “Maiden England” video and I have a copy of that somewhere. Seeing Iron Maiden pretty much play the same set list as I saw 24/5 years ago is going to be brilliant. None of the new stuff will be played which is good as I’ve never really listened to anything recorded by them past about 1990!

On the Sunday the German industrial metal band RAMMSTEIN are going to be playing. This is also a good thing. I saw them a couple of years ago at Wembley Arena and they were brilliant. I am so looking forward to seeing them play again.

The headliners are making me sweat just thinking about it. I am very much looking forward to seeing the rest of the line up released. With a bit of luck Combichrist will be on there with, let’s say, Wolfsbane or the almighty for some real 80s throwback stuff.

October 8 2012October 8 2012

Seeking Aircraft

Here’s #1 running to the fence to see the aircraft at Headcorn Airfield. We watched a helicopter take off and skydivers safely return to the home planet. It was most pleasant.

I really like the sky in this picture. It’s a good contrast to the ground.

October 8 2012

What To Do In Paris?

Am in Paris! With time to kill. What to see?

Your heavy metal guide might help? I want to see Sacre Cour, Arc Defense, anything really. If Trust are playing I will die!

They’re not: I checked. And no good rock pubs either: I checked. Too chic for metal!

Ok so your choice is hotel porn or coffee and cigarettes on the Champs Alysee! Or both!

Hmm, like your thinking. But have checked out, and don’t smoke or drink coffee. Moulin Rouge?

Think Moulin Rouge is the only option. Mind you there must be some shit-hole nasty bar that plays rock. The French are a bit rebellious as well as chic.

Gave up, am now at the station an hour early!

Boo! Train station books and magazines it is then.

October 7 2012October 7 2012

Mapping My Run

Here’s a map of what has become my standard 5 mile (8 km) run. At the time of writing I am running this in the dark with my trusty head torch. It is about 3.5 miles of cross country running and 1.5 of road or pavement running. I really enjoy it.

Find more runs in Eccles, England

October 3 2012

Broken now Fixed

We woke up last Thursday to a broken window. Bit of a shock. None of us heard anything! Now, it is fixed. A bit like the NIN albums!

Broken

Fixed

The new window is currently the cleanest part if the house.

October 3 2012

Seeking Tractors

Here’s a picture of #1 looking for tractors in the field south of our grounds. Combine harvesters rate highest followed by pretty much anything else.

October 2 2012

Changing Appearance

I’ve just been editing my theme files of this website to remove the “leave a comment” link at the bottom of pages. I have no idea about php but I can see how it works from looking at the files stored on my server. A little bit of searching of the internet (world wide web really) and I found the sections to remove from my index.php file. I think this has meant that the website looks a little neater.

However, I do need to have another look and edit out the | symbol that appears at the end of each communication after the tags for that communication. One of the issues is that it is hard to see where these parts of the php file are when you already have deleted the “leave a comment” bit.

Anyway, it’s been about 14 months since I started this website and I am finally doing some tidying up. If they update the theme that I am using then I’ll have to do the whole editing thing again, BOO.

October 1 2012June 10 2020

Aggrotech or Hellectro

As I explain on the page called My Music in the About Me section, music is something special. If it moves you then enjoy it. Metal is my preferred form of music. Heavy guitars with bass and drums. Vocals not always necessary as it’s just another instrument to me. I don’t really dissect the lyrics but friends if mine do.
Anyway. Rammstein was my band of choice for quite a few years. I go in phases of trying new bands and then becoming a bit obsessed. When my #1 son was born I explained to WW that there were two bands I still wanted to see:

AC/DC
Rammstein

If these bands toured I would go and see them. Rammstein sound new and different and so I really liked listening to them and AC/DC are just ace, even if you include the 4 shit albums they made in the 80s and 90s! I guess they are a bit like Iron Maiden. Class bands who keep releasing new material but it’s not as good as the stuff they wrote when they were young and trying to make their place in the world.

I saw AC/DC at Wembley Stadium and also I saw Rammstein at Wembley Arena. AC/DC were, of course, brilliant. Rammstein was just awesome. The support band for the Rammstein gig was called Combichrist. They sounded really good. So, I bought an album, taking a guess at what one might be their best.

Today we are all demons – Combichrist

I loved it. It has no guitars but is very heavy dance music with sick lyrics and metal type vocals. I bought another album and found it was very good to run to.

What the F^^K is wrong with you people – Combichrist

Now it was time to start investigating this rather strange new music style. It turns out it is called Aggrotech which is an off-shoot of EBM. It all came out of the industrial sound and went wild in the Benelux countries. Who’d have thought it eh?

So now I am the proud owner of a number of titles in this genre. It’s good to run to and emotionally a little crazy. Lovely.

Aesthetic Perfection
Combichrist
Icon of Coil
Scandy
Suicide Commando

Some other bands I have downloaded recently are:

Front Line Assembly
KMFDM

Although these are a bit industrial they definitely don’t fit into an aggrotech shuffle as they have guitars and, trust me, that’s a shock when you are running to sick clubby music to get loud guitars making a din!

My definition of aggrotech is:

Heavy metal with keyboards instead of guitars

Heavy dance music with sick lyrics and poor singing

September 28 2012February 22 2020

Excellent Equipment

Recently I have bought some running equipment. See my previous posts about losing weight, getting fit and running. I have been so impressed with these items that I have decided to “big them up” on my website.

Firstly I needed some headphones and so after a little browsing of the Amazon website I settled on the Sennheiser MX 680i earphones. I already had a pair of Sennheiser earphones for work and so I value the brand. The earphones are splash-proof and have the iPhone integrated remote. They are great.

Now that the winter is closing in I need a torch that i can use while running. That means looking at Petzl but Silva also make head torches apparently, I thought they mainly made compasses and navigation equipment but you live and learn. I did some online research and settled on the Silva X Trail Plus. This has a 140 lumens main beam, wide angle LEDs and a rechargeable battery pack. I love it. I can run safely at night and see where I am going and the state of the terrain. Brilliant. The specification is a bit cheeky though. It claims the light is 100g and it is, but the head band, and battery pack are not included in that calculation. The battery is carried on a waistband so it’s not really a problem.

Check out my routes on this web page: http://t.co/npRiLuoZ

September 10 2012September 26 2012

Paralympics

On Saturday the 8th of September the Parish family went with the Whites to watch the Paralympic Road Cycling at Brands Hatch. It was a baking day and the racing was already underway when we got there. We weren’t allowed to take our drinks into the venue and we weren’t allowed to take in some dinner knives I had packed for cutting our bread but they did let us take our pop-up sunshade which was nice as the sun was scorching that day.

We set up camp on the bank overlooking Clearways and Clark Curve and could see the cyclists every 15 minutes or so as they completed another lap. The children didn’t really understand what was going on and the adults couldn’t really watch what was going on because they had to look after the children.

None of this mattered as the atmosphere was excellent and we all had a lovely time. The children did get slightly over-exposed to the sun though and I still feel guilty about that. #2 son has now walked on the gravel trap of Clark Curve and stood on the tarmac of the Brabham Straight which is very pleasing to know.

This is the view to the start line of Brands Hatch with the track set up for road cycling.

This is the view looking back towards Clearways with the track set up for the paralympics road cycling.

September 8 2012

Early Morning

Although being woken at 5:20 this morning was a bit harsh thanks to #2 we had a lovely time playing. I took this shot once #1 had woken and I saw the fog settled over the fields in the south of our grounds!

September 6 2012September 26 2012

Blood Brother

Many years ago, when I was a teenager, my best friend and I decided to commit our friendship to a new level. We decided to become blood brothers. Now, I don’t even know if people still do this or even if it happened in the past and is just an urban legend. A quick glance at Wikipedia says:

Blood brother can refer to one of two things: two males related by birth, or two or more men not related by birth who have sworn loyalty to each other. This is usually done in a ceremony, known as a blood oath, where the blood of each man is mingled together. The process usually provides a participant with a heightened symbolic sense of attachment with another participant.

Somehow we had some instructions about cutting our forearms and then clasping arms together so the blood mingles. We misread the instructions! Rather than a cut 5cm from the wrist we made a 5cm cut from the wrist. Our blood was mingled. That was in around 1988 and we remain the best of friends today. In fact he was my Best Man at my wedding and we still share the same music tastes and go to concerts together.

Brilliant!

September 3 2012

Charming

Here’s a picture of the first charm that WW got for her Pandora bracelet. It was a present from the children for her first day in her promoted job.

September 1 2012September 1 2012

Resting

My resting heart rate is between 52 and 58 beats per minute. According to Wikipedia this means I am an athlete (adjusted for my age). This is good.
I have spent much of the last 5 months running. I started with a 2 mile loop and not really being able to run all of it and now I can run 6 miles and not really think much of it. I do get some joint aches and pains if I run much more than 5 miles at a time but I think that’s to be expected.
Sometimes it takes me 2 miles just to feel warmed up! Crazy.
As an ex smoker and overweight person I am very happy with the outcome of my diet and training over the last 9 months. I have various health benefits which far outweighs the pain and starvation I have experienced!

September 1 2012

Glorious

Here’s a picture of the lovely sunset from a few nights ago. I was walking the dog. I only just got this shot as it was quite windy and the clouds were moving fast.

August 15 2012March 11 2014

GT5 Set-up

Here’s a picture of my Gran Turismo set up. There’s a big tv with home cinema 7.1 sound and my music playing using GT5’s jukebox function (shame it doesn’t run from a NAS drive though). Anyway, here’s my Logitech (their stuff is brilliant) Driving Force Pro wheel attached to the force feedback stabiliser (ironing board).

August 15 2012

Wow

WW and I went for a meal last night (14 August). It was the first time we had used a proper babysitter and left the kids at home, sleeping soundly.
We headed to Pizza Express in Maidstone as WW wanted a goats cheese something. She has been needing goats cheese for a while and supermarket bought stuff doesn’t make her taste buds flower!
I ordered whatever I wanted but was shocked when I came to enter this information into my food tracking app.

Il Padrino Pizza – 922 kCal
Chocolate Glory – 691 kCal
Glass of red wine – 191 kCal
Shared tomato and mozzarella salad – 243 kCal

My dinner came to 2047 kCal. This was quite a shock. Even with a 10km run in the morning I was way over what I consider my daily calorie allowance! Much more running going to happen over the next few weeks to normalise my intake!

August 15 2012June 22 2018

4 Meals In A Day

I accidentally ate four meals on Monday 13 August. WW and I took the boys to Mote Park in Maidstone and let them play in the playground. After we fed the ducks at the lake we went and ordered some food. My order was as follows:

Two sausages and chips and a sausage roll and chips please.

My intention was to buy chips with two sausages for #1 and the the sausage roll and chips was for #2. What I received was two plates of sausages and chips and an adult plate of sausage roll and chips. All in all far too much food for my children to eat! Obviously I just helped out and ate the adult plate of food. As it happens WW and I had already planned what to eat later in the day and so I had:

breakfast
lunch
accidental tea
dinner

This is a little extreme and when I looked at my calorie count for that day it was 3041 kCal. Even with a run I was over my daily target.