Here’s what #1 son took to nursery today. It’s a lovely firefighting hovercraft.
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
or
Heavy dance music with sick lyrics and poor singing
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
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.
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!
Rip Off
So, while watching the Paralympics last night there was an advert for a weekly magazine that gives you the parts and instructions to build a toy warship. I can’t remember which one it was. I didn’t even see the “introductory” price offer. What staggers me most is the total price you would have to pay to finish the model.
£5.99 times 135 issues and you get a grand total of £808.65
Now even in these financial times I reckon you could buy a real warship for that price!
Cool Glacier
Here’s a very cool glacier photo. I stole the link from Phil Plait. His text from his RSS feed follows:
“This is so cool – photographer André vd Hoeven visited the Pasterze glacier in Austria and took quite a few pictures of it. Quite a few. He then stitched them together to make this astonishing 10,000 x 8600 pixel version that you can pan and scan and zoom:[You may need to refresh the page if you don’t see the pannable and scannable image directly above this sentence.]The scale’s a bit hard to grasp. So do this: go to the bottom left corner, where you can see a little splash of blue. That’s where the glaciers is breaking up, exposing cleaner ice. Zoom way in on that spot using the control buttons on the bottom right of the picture. See the people standing there near the open water? That’ll give you a sense of scale. Keep your eye on them, and then zoom back out.”
Glacier:
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!
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.
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!