A Glimmering Gloom EP Has Been Written!

It’s finished. The last song was written last night, (Sleeping Beauty), and I have to say I’m really really happy about how it’s going to sound. I can’t even compare it to my last release (A Fence Of Beaks, go buy it at Raw Records. NOW!) because it’s on a completely different level. The structure is still simple and basic, but that’s how I like it – beacuse it’s actually very complex in the lyrics and emotions and it balances out nicely. And then there is a few tracks that are much more complex in instrumentation (to keep Greenie happy) and in those songs the lyrics are more basic chants.

The track listing, as it now stands:

1. Investigation
2. High Crash Area
3. Sleeping Beauty
4. Can You Hear Me?
5. Victim Of A Miracle
6. Confession

And the tracks that didn’t make it:

1. Wellington Hobbit
2. Lullaby
3. Awake, Alone, Afraid
4. Complications
5. Well After All

Now it’s written, I have to start preparing for recordings starting February 5th. I hope to have the main guitars/vocals/piano down by the 19th, and then I can start adding the extras.

Low.

I’ve discovered its so easy to fall in and out of writing.  So much has happened since the last update, and yet, I have very little to say. Only fragments, easily stated facts that protrude no real emotion or feeling. Me and Rosie went to Parihaka. I performed infront of old friends and new friends, and showed an old enemy how far I’ve come. The radio is playing static because they had to shut it down. My music is no longer on the radio, and my dad’s Sunday afternoon is now free. I started re-writing my novel and then stopped. My NCEA results came back as I expected, passable, and it shows what little interest some of the subjects hold for me (In particular English, strange given my interest in using words, but somehow writing essays about how this author used this as a symbol for this without any sort of evidence from the author.) I’m still looking for a job, as I was snubbed (again), not even recieving a phone call in decline. I am composing, the last pieces of the next EP are falling into place and as soon as school starts recording will begin.

I am watching with interest the flowers of romance blooming between people, and in others, I see nothing but a continous worrying decline. It’s sad to see that when I arrive back at school so many people will have moved on, some I will never ever see again in this lifetime. Because of my recent snub at Mimic, I find myself unable to design anything. I have witnessed the destructive power of words, how one sentence can cause tears and hurt. But even in a sea of averageness and the plain, how dull my life seems to be currently, Ro lights up what could be even the most darkest of days. She is my everything right now. There is no doubt in my mind this year will be my most difficult yet. But I also know the reward will be equally as astronomical. I have found myself forced to make a goal, one that is so vitally important that anything other than success will mean a total failure:

I must get Grade 5 Theory, or pass a rediculously hard Level 3 paper, otherwise I will be unable to do a degree in Music Composition. I have no back-up, nothing to fall back on if my dream falls through, It’s just a straight plummet to the ground.

Thank God I have Ro.

Of Mice And Nerds

Most people who know me can generally agree, I am a nerd. I chat on IRC, I code websites, and for the past 3 years I’ve been a member of Kingdom Hearts Ultimania’s Forums. And for those not in the know, KH is the game that teamed Final Fantasy and Disney characters together. More worrying than my length of time as a member of the site, is the age of the game – it came out in 2002.

Thats right. I was into this when I was 11.

Eleven.

It is interesting to note I join KHU’s forums in 2005, a year that seemed to not be very good for a lot of people, myself included. I joined I guess as an escape from the world Iwas living in at the time. But even when 2005 faded and 2006 came, I still stayed. I was hooked. It provided me the social interaction I craved, intelligent discussions with people who were in a similar position to myself. It became less about the games as it did the comradity, the idea that there were people out there that would listen if I was feeling down, that I could open up to as they were so far away I was safe. As the year progressed I moved up the administration ranks, at the height of my power I was a Global Moderator, one step below Administrator (or for a more real-world ideal, I was just below CEO in a company).

Fast forward to March 2007. The winds of change were around, stirring up trouble. I decided to leave my current high school and go to one more open. At the same time, I decided to give myself a completely fresh start, and left KHU.  The saying “And the rest is history” doesn’t really cover what happened next. True, most people do know some of the story – I met Rosie and the gang, recorded an EP, and to complete the year I was named a Prefect for my school. The idea to change schools and leave KHU was the best thing that ever happened to me.

And then, as Exams were finished and I was left with boundless amounts of time to do whatever I pleased, I found myself typing in my browser http://khforums.com (now kh2.co.uk/forums). It seemed strange going back.  But now I’m a moderator again – in the Creativity Section (naturally). on the 21st it will be my 3rd anniversary as a member there. If the best thing that’s ever happened to me involved leaving, what has changed to make it okay to come back?

I’m no longer reliant on it.I spend minimal time on it, mainly just to post some Photoshop manipulations I’ve done, to critique other people’s, and to make sure no one is breaking the rules. Then I go off and do a merry jig with my real friends, who I can be open with and trust them.

It’s nice to know.

Who Cares When It Tastes Good?

I’m not one of those people who read nutritional labels to check if it has poisonous artificial sweetners, and the effects. However, following my post on my coffee consumption, I did take a quick look at the stats of some of the bottles and cans that littter my litter can. Somehow. So anyways, a rundown of the danger I’ve put myself in over the year or so:

Demon, 440mL a can. Max Recommended intake is 1 can daily.
Per 100mL there is:

• 192kJ of Energy
•  0.3863g of Protein
• Fat, both Total and Saturated, is simply listed as “less than 1g”
• 10.9g of Carbohydrates; 10.8g of which is sugars.
• Sodium, like Fat, is listed only as “less than 5mg”
• 32mg of Caffeine
• 7.8mg of Niacin
• 2.0mg of Vitamin B6
• 2.0ug of Vitamin B12
• 2.0mg of Pantothenic Acid
• 400mg of Taurine
• 235mg of Glucuronolactone
• 19mg of Inositol

Before I continue onwards with the listing, some things here confuse me – mainly the vagueness of Fat and Sodium. Why is it for these two they assure us they are at such a low level (less than a gram) that we need not worry about specifics, but they do inform us later on that there is exactly 2micrograms of Vitamin 12, or 0.000002 grams. Something smells off, and I wonder what the last 7 are, bar Taurine.

Niacin is actually Vitamin B3, and is plays a vital role in metabolism.
Vitamin B6, or Pyridoxal phosphate, is helpful for people with autism, but does little to people who are well.
Vitamin B12 is known to cause Diarrhea. D:
Pantothenic Acid is actually Vitamin B5, and has be known to help acne.
Glucuronolactone is a naturally occuring detoxicant, and it not only reduces fatigue but also provides a sense of well-being.
Inositol intake has shown promising results for people suffering from problems such as bulimia, panic disorder and bipolar depression (none of which I suffer).

Now, moving onto Redbull. 250mL bottle/can. Max Recommended intake is 2 cans/bottles a day.
Per 100mL there is:

•  192kJ of Energy
• ZERO grams of Protein and Fat (both total and saturated) WTF?
• 11.3g of Carbohydrate, 10.7g of which are sugars
• 800mg of Sodium
• 400mg of Taurine
• 240mg of Glucuronolactone
• 32mg of Caffeine
• 20mg of Inositol
• 8mg of Niacinamide (a nicer version of Niacin)
• 2mg of Pantothenic Acid
• 2mg of Vitamin B6
• 2ug of Vitamin B12

Okay, quick question Red Bull: if there is no Protein or Fats in this product, why the hell list them? At least in Demon they acknowledge they’re there.

Lastly, Black V. The bottle is 350mL, and the Max Recommended intake is a perplexing 1.5 Bottles daily.
100mL of the stuff gives you:

• 192kJ of Energy (who doesn’t these days)
• Again Zero grams of Protein and Fat.
• 10.4g of Carbs, 10.4g of which is sugars.
• 110mg of Sodium
• 120mg of V’s selling point and as the bottle informs me is it’s “Wooh-hoo”, Guarana Extract
• 31mg of Caffeine
• 0.49mg of Vitamin B2
• 2.9mg of B3
• 0.46mg of B6
• 0.57ug of B12
• 0.7mg of Pantothenic Acid
• 400mg of Taurine
• 25mg of Glucuronolactone
• 20mg of Inositol

There it is. With the exception of V which has Guarana, by looking at all these stats, give or take a few mg shifted around, it is essentially the same crap. The only difference really is in the flavourings, so if you have to drink these things find the cheapest one and forget all the others. So buy a case of Demon and a case of toilet paper.

If You’re DIYing, Then DIFF!

DIFF being “Do It For Free”. You are looking at my Recording Studio – Lucid Effect Productions to be exact. Being the stallion male I am, I have constructed it with the few tools I have. It is made up of the following components:

- Laptop, running Windows XP and the opensource recording software Audacity.
- Singstar Microphone.
- CD rack acting as Mic stand.
- Star Wars Episode : The Phantom Menace (Hard Cover Edition) acting as base to Mic stand.

The only issue is the mic is (predictably) low standard and doesn’t pick up much. But apart from that, it functions perfectly well Because of the mic crappiness I’m just going to do demos on this, unless some gets me a good mic and I can do EP stuff.

So get me a good mic and I am sweet.

Want Some Coffee With Your Sugar?

I’ve begun to notice something in my drinking habits, not of the alcoholic kind, but of the caffeinated kind. Before I elaborate on this I first need to fill you in with the back story.

I, like many of fellow man, first had caffeine from Coca-Cola. It was sugary, it fizzed and like the little 4 year-old I was I found this entertaining to max. As I grew older I grew to have a sort of addiction to it, it was my drink of choice, however it was very hard to get hold of as I couldn’t afford the $3 for a bottle. This however changed in Year 7 when I discovered that at the Woolworths across the street from FDMC was selling 1 Litre bottles of budget cola for $1. It wasn’t as fine and precise as the actual Coca-Cola but it filled in quite comfortably. Every lunchtime someone would have bought some at the Tuckshop or someone in the morning had one, always prepared to share a “Maori cup” of the stuff.

I have never been a fan of tea, but I think this previous exposure in my early years lead me to be a coffee-only person. I remember my first cup of coffee, a short black bought for me by a 49-year old retired policeman, Mike, who was with me and two others in Mcfarlenes trying to write our NaNoWriMo novels in November 2006. I fell in love instantly (With the coffee not Mike you douche), and from then on I would always have it black, moving eventually onto long black, with one sugar.

It’s also at this time I discovered energy drinks, and this is where the weird thing comes in – as I have progressed through the energy drinks, moving onto harder and stronger things (I started with Lift+, then went onto V, then V Black and now, Demon), my normal coffee consumption has moved onto weaker and weaker stuff. I found myself the other day having a Cinnamon Chai Latte. I suppose it’s just my body trying to balance out the consumption levels but I still think it’s weird.