Mutterings of a Bedhead

Sound By The Pound

2009-06-30T01:45:00.002+10:00

Just a short update.

On the weekend I submitted my entry for the Triple J hottest 100 of all time thingy. This is my list:
The Clash - White Riot
Rancid - Time Bomb
The Saints - (i'm) Stranded
The Victims - Television Addict
The Specials - Ghost Town
Operation Ivy - Sound System
Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Radio Radio
Billy Bragg - A New England
The Skatalites - Christine Keeler
Desmond Dekker & The Aces - Israelites

All of them I feel have been significant in my life in some form. It took me a few hours to whittle it down to that tiny list!

Throwdown audio mixing an video editing has begun. I've started with San Salvador because it seems that their audio tracks came out the best. Seven Steady's were okay and the other stages were pretty bad, but at least it was something. It's a pity the cameras didn't work so well. At one stage with San Salvadors set, we only had two cameras filming them out of the 4 we had set up. Oh well.

Speaking of San Salvador, here is a video for you all that I found the other week. It's of them playing in Panania in Nov 2007 at Youthquake. I think this might be one of Ben's last shows with the band before he moved to Brisbane. Anyway, just watch it and enjoy it:

Dreamworld

2009-06-22T01:42:00.002+10:00

Disclaimer: This entry was written when I was still upset, but I decided to type it anyway because I felt the need to get all this out of my system. I'm not good at articulating myself at the best of times, so please bear with this.

Okay, so Hometown Throwdown has been and gone. I had a lot of fun on the night, the bands played well, the people who were there had an excellent time and the follow up night ran really smoothly. There was lots of support and lots of people helped out doing small jobs that just helped pull the night together. Thanks to all of you, I really freaking appreciate it. Not even kidding on that one. Major props go out to Mike from San Salvador for coming all the way to Sydney with the biggest flu ever to play.

Despite all that, what I wanted to achieve didn't happen.

Why? Maybe you're thinking I have too higher expectations, but here is my explanation. I hope you understand my reasons. This is complete, utter and blunt honesty here.

The reason I love putting on such an event in the first place is because I get to involve two of my favourite things: church and audio/music. Bringing the two together under one roof and making them good with the skills I have gives me the biggest thrill. So much so that for the past 2 months I've literally been living and breathing the entire show, planning it all in my head with meticulous detail so as on the night once the first band is playing the entire night runs itself and runs like magic. From handing out flyers to people on the street, to putting them up in shops, getting them handed out in schools, spending the entire day looking up and emailing every Anglican & Baptist (I only got through A and B in the White Pages) church in Sydney about the gig, I've been doing a lot of hard work.
Why so much? Because I'm sick of so many things I see going on that this is my way of bring able to help make a difference to so many of them.
Some of those things are:
- Bad church events. The number of tacky and badly organised church events that go on in every church around the place, not just in Sydney but everywhere, just makes me feel so embarrassed to encourage people to go to them.
- Stereotypes. You know what I mean. Most people I talk to who aren't Christians think that church is a boring place where you go on Sundays because you have to because a guy up the front is telling you you're an evil person. They also think that we hate gay people and just want their money.
- Bad bands. There are so many bad Christian bands out there. Not even kidding.

So, what do I want to achieve, considering the feelings I have towards those items above (and many others)?

Well, what I want to do is be able to share my passion for being a Christian with other people, particularly those who aren't Christians, by showing them that what really goes on in church doesn't have to be what they expect it to be.
I want to show them that it is a place full of good people with many many great skills who just want to show love to them and each other. They don't hate people just because they're different, no matter whether it be because of their orientation, race, culture, background or anything else. It's a place where things are peaceful, fun and where it's attendees are striving for a bigger and better world.
I want to show them the power of God's love by demonstrating to them a friendly, unified, selfless and giving community of people who only want the best from everyone.
I want a church to be a place that people WANT to go to.

Some people would argue that Saturday night's event was just that. But I would argue otherwise.

Now, we got 240 people through the door. Pretty much everyone would say that was awesome. My main issue with this is the number of people that DIDN'T come.

Before it happened, I've been spending every minute of my spare time telling everyone I can about the show, getting people excited about it and trying to get them to come along. Through that process a large number of people said they would come who didn't show up. Most of those people aren't Christians, but a lot of them are.
The problem I have with this is how am I meant to break down barriers in peoples minds, help push good church events and show people what God's love can really be like if the people that really need to see and hear it don't show up?
I put on a show that was extremely lightweight on the Christian content to even try and get people to even turn up, with the option of hearing it the next night after having a great time the night before and being more comfortable with the idea, but they still didn't come.

Pretty much all the people that were at the show were from other churches, not from the general public. How am I to reach the general public, have them come along and achieve the goals I want, when after spending every waking moment putting all my effort in to try and make an event (a really kick ass event, to be honest) that even a small number of them could show up to and have a good time, and they don't?

I know the show was great and I know it ran really well. I know the bands were great and I know everyone that was there had a good time. The problem is that I just can't get my mind off all the people that didn't come, especially those who told me they would and didn't.

I may feel a whole lot different about this in a week or two when I've spoken to more people about it, but currently, the night after it happened I don't feel very satisfied.

I know I can put on a really good show with really good bands and very honest and open intentions, but what use is it if the people who need to hear it, don't?

Diabolic Scheme

2009-05-30T01:52:00.004+10:00

Well well, what do we have here?

Another chapter in Owen's life. Sweet

I've been quite busy lately, not getting much sleep and just generally exhausted, but that's life!

I've been working, staying back late (i.e. till 5am) to mix a song for Pat Maloney that didn't come out sounding very good at all (i.e. not exactly my best work) so that was kinda lame, but the recordings my students are doing have been coming along very nicely and are sounding great. I think I might steal a couple to mix for a bit of fun once they're finished being recorded. I'm quite proud of all of them, especially those who had some of their work deleted and have had to re-record it again.

I'm organising a show and you need to come along as it's going to be ace! Check out the flyer and gasp at it's awesomeness:

It's going to be a brilliant night with so many good bands playing and all for only $10! Make sure you go to http://www.myspace.com/hometownthrowdown or if you're a Facebook type of person go to http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=79596933119 and let me know you're going to come along.

What my weekend hopes to bring me:
- Playing football in the mud
- Photocopying and cutting up thousands of flyers
- Doing some trivia
- Watching Everton beat Chelsea in the FA Cup final
- Going to the Belgian Beer Cafe with Esther for tasty lunch and wishing I owned one of the Tintin posters they have on their walls
- Buying a few CD's I've been wanting to get
- Hanging out with peeps at church
- Organising more stuff for Throwdown and just generally being excited by it

Yay!

Radio Radio

2009-05-14T14:14:00.005+10:00

The fun and exciting times of Owen, back again for your internet boredom breaking interests!

Last week I got to hang out with Dan Jones on his radio show over at 2SSR. While I didn't do too much in the way of talking, I did get to play a few tunes and had an enjoyable time playing with all the old equipment the station has (gotta love community radio, ha). If you'd like to hear ramblings instead of reading some head on over to http://www.danjoneslive.com/main/archives/347 and have a listen. Unfortunately the music can't be put on the online podcast due to copyright issues, but you can hear me and Dan's mate Josh make jokes about Dan no problems. The song names are still there and there is a small sample of them there, so feel free to check them out of your own accord sometime.
Photos from the trip? Check them out here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=93938&id=544876388&l=711eafff5b.

Dylan Moran was a great highlight of the past few weeks as well. He made me laugh so hard my stomach was hurting hours afterwards!

Remember in the last blog I mentioned that I went to Steamfest with Dad? Well I made a video of it! Have a look at it here: http://www.facebook.com/v/80170146388

That's it for the moment.

North To The Ocean, Harder Than The Sun

2009-04-23T13:45:00.003+10:00

Hello World.

The past few weeks have been pretty full, but very fun and eventful!

I moved out of home for a few weeks, staying with my friend Jez. I didn't see him very often because of our work hours but when we hung out it was good times. The freedom of not having to tell family members everything I was doing was pretty nice!
While there I went and saw Soul Riot play and got to hang out with those guys too, so that was pretty fun. Check out a video of them I filmed of their song Animal:

Soul Riot - Animal

Dad and I went to this thing called Steamfest and had an awesome time chasing trains around all weekend. For photos of those shenanigans, follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=89972&id=544876388

Yesterday was my Graduation! I was very pleased to receive my certificate and got to wear a fancy getup and everything. For photos of that, follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=89963&id=544876388

But yes, things have been pretty alright lately!

Function Is The Key

2009-03-16T23:20:00.002+11:00

Just a few short things.

First things first, I've changed the template of my blog. I'm not THAT happy with it but it'll say like this until I can find a better one.

My work hours have changed again, so if you want me to do stuff with you it will be hard. I now work on Monday, Thursday and Friday nights till midnight. A little annoying but that's the way it is.

When I was in Melbourne I bought one of these little friends:

I finally found a place online to buy film for it too (thanks ebay!) so I'll hopefully be taking photos with it soon.
The button on the top that opens the shutter doesn't work, but when the camera flicks open the shutter opens and closes. A little annoying but I'll deal with it. The camera only cost me $5, which is 1/2 the cost of a roll of film for it. The film is 110 film and comes in a cartridge. Pretty fun.

I've been working my way through my Monty Python DVD's quite steadily and have been enjoying them very much. I've also had my first kick around to get ready for another season of Football. It turns out that once again I'm less fit than the old guys. Pretty embarrassing but I'm sure that after a trial game or two I can come good again.

Nothing too ground breaking for this entry, just a quick update for the sake of it.

Oh yeah, if you haven't done beforehand, please check out this album:

Hello To Wasted Hours

2009-03-10T00:58:00.004+11:00

3 easy steps to forgetting your worries and having a blast:

1. Grab your favourite Less Than Jake album
2. Play at a reasonable volume (i.e. loud)
3. Sing every single line at the top of your lungs

Success!

(s)He's Lost Control

2009-02-17T23:10:00.006+11:00

Bad week? Yep.

To but it bluntly, early last week I had a friend overdose on drugs, become brain dead as a result die, all within 24 hours. Pretty much the worst ever. He lived in the USA, so I couldn't do much except sit at work pretending not to feel so bad.
The same day I found all that out I got my student feedback forms and noticed that most students didn't like me. Most of it really was my fault. I haven't been as attentive as usual and my brain has been all over the place lately, resulting in me not sitting in with my students as much as I should have. I'm attempting to fix this and get my brain centered.
That morning I also realised I left my wallet at home when I was almost at work on the train. This meant my weekly ticket was at home. I was freaking out because I had to get through the ticket barriers and past the ticket inspectors that had been there all week. Luckily the ticket inspectors weren't there that day and I snuck through the wheelchair exit.

The rest of the week I didn't get much sleep. The weekend was okay because I got to go have some Bulmers and listen to great ska/reggae/punk tunes at a pub and eat some good food, but the funeral of my friend was on at the same time so I was also forcing myself not to think about it too much.

Yesterday I did some mixing at The Gaelic Club, a place I haven't mixed in a long time. They had a new console so it took me a bit to get my head around the routing of it and how it worked. The mixes were good from about 1/2 way through but before that it was pretty rubbish. It was good getting to learn a new and complicated console but also a little stressful as it was a JMC event and all the higher ups were there listening/performing.

Today was a bit lame. I got a nice sleep in, but after sitting around for ages I thought I'd go to the beach for a swim. I drove all the 35 mins it takes to get there to find all the beaches shut because of rough surf. Annoying.
Headed for home and a few mins down the road I heard a "thumthumthumthumthum" noise coming from my front left tyre. I had run over a screw and it was stuck in the tyre. managed to change the tyre and have taken it to the mechanic to see if he can plug it and save me buying a new tyre. He took one look at the screw and didn't look too optimistic. Lame. I pick it up tomorrow and hope that it is fixed.

OKAY I PROMISE NO MORE RANTING ABOUT BAD THINGS IN THIS ALREADY LENGTH BLOG ENTRY.

So, now that all the bad stuff it out of the way, I should mention I'm heading to Melbourne this weekend with Esther, so if you're a Melbourneite and would like to hand out, message/email/sms/call me and we'll sort something out. Esther and I plan on relaxing and taking time out from Sydney so seeing our Melbourne friends would be great times.

This week things I aim to do:
- Wake up
- Be more on my game
- Not be as pessimistic
- Be way more confident and not doubt my skills and talents
- Realise that it's a new week and the past week's events are exactly that, past events

Lets see how I go!

I leave you with something to ponder, and maybe even a way for you to respond to this blog entry so I know if anyone actually reads it.

Which song is better?

Chuck Berry - Johnny B Goode (1958):

OR

The Kinks - All Day & All Of The Night (1964):

?

No They Never Miss A Beat

2009-01-28T00:31:00.003+11:00

Wow, I know I say this quite a bit, but I need to update this more.

So, since November huh? A lot has happened, most of which has kept me busy.

I worked right up until Christmas. I was at JMC Mon-Fri and then doing live gigs every weekend, so I was very busy! Things have slowed down now, there are no live gigs (happens at this time of year) and I'm only at JMC 3 days a week until March when the main intake starts up again and we have a lot of students again. The students I have at the moment are doing what's called an "unsupervised recording" where they go off and do it on their own. Make life a bit more relaxing for me, but also a bit boring. I might start ducking in on them all a bit more often to keep them going, take a listen to their tracks and give them some tips. As one student yearned last week, "COME ON, IMPART KNOWLEDGE ON ME!"

After Christmas I was away on beach mission. Having no internet for two weeks was glorious. We had a great turnout of people to our activities and they all seemed to enjoy it. It was good for me in that I got to go to the beach every day (I did miss 2 days unfortunately) and hang out with a bunch of mates. I also produced a video with some of the guys on mission as an exercise at getting used to the new ProTools 8 that came out a week before Christmas. The whole song was written, recorded and filmed in 4 hours. Pretty crazy and dodgy but really quite fun. Check it out here:

After coming back from mission I've been going to the beach an average of 2-3 times a week and can't wait to go back again. Might not make it again till the weekend (or maybe Friday morning before work again, we'll see) as I have work on.

Esther and I have bought tickets to go overseas again. We're heading back to the USA to go to Sarah and Justin's wedding. Hopefully some of the Dutchies will be able to make it too and we can have a cool UK reunion thing. Should be good fun. It's only for 3 weeks but it'll be nice to go overseas again. We're going to try and get to Canada too, at least then we can get a new country under our belts.

I've got a huge urge to do some recording, preferentially of a band that use both live and electronic instruments. If you know of anyone, send me an email.
Also, you know of any bands that want a live recording done, PLEASE get them to email me at structurefire@gmail.com. I'm more than happy to do some live recording, it'll be great fun for all involved and all the band needs to do is play a concert. They don't need to spend days in a studio or anything. Let me know.

That's enough for now. I've got this musical bug stuck in my brain that I think is forming new ideas about doing recordings and styles of music. Might talk about that another day when I shouldn't be about to go to bed, ha.

Night night.

Terminal Rock

2008-11-06T14:43:00.002+11:00

I feel I should write something here, especially as I dislike checking my friends blogs and there is nothing new in quite a long time.

I've just been working (and enjoying it quite a lot) on weekdays and lately there have been quite a few things for me to do on weekends (weddings, 21st birthdays, farewells, get togethers etc) when not working.

Today I noticed a good reason why my posture is so bad, so I'm hoping to do stretches and exercises to fix it. I'm not going to bore you with the details of particular muscles in my back and legs and why I know they're the reason, but if you see me sometime please ask me if I've done my stretches that day to remind me to do them. I really want to stand upright. Not only is it good for my overall heath, but my confidence as well.

Oh yeah, here is a sweet sport that Ben posted on his blog that I thought I would share with you too as I think it looks pretty rad. It's called "Slamball" and involves a combination of basketball and trampolines!

Check it:

I should also tell you about this old punk band I found out about called The Chosen Few. They were a band from Melbourne who were around in 1978. I ordered their CD and it turns out they're pretty awesome. You should check them out, but they're very hard to find.

This weekend I'm flying down to Narranderra with Esther and her family for an engagement party for her cousin Michelle and her fiance Rowan. Should be a good trip.

That's about it really, hopefully that quenches your blog reading appetites for a short while.

Revelations

2008-09-18T03:22:00.003+10:00

So tonight I had an interesting night.

I had work, but after work I went and hung out with one of my best friends, John. He's getting married on Sunday, so I really wanted to just hang out with him before it all happens.
In the end we did what we usually do, sit around and play records. This time though, because John had just moved house, he'd found all these random old 7" records that we used to listen to. We sat back, discussing why we liked them, why we didn't like any of the newer stuff by those bands, what made them change, the concerts we'd been to involving those bands and all the kinds of random things you talk about.
Because I'd been so busy, I hadn't thought about the fact that this would be the last real time John and I could just sit around doing this before there would be someone else in his life/house who would be around when we wanted to hang out. I got pretty sad when I left to go home. Either I was good at holding back tears or John pretended not to notice.
It's always a weird feeling for me when things like this change. I dunno about John, but for me sitting around just listening to records and having someone else who actually likes them too had been a pretty important thing for me that I've really enjoyed doing. It makes me feel normal knowing that yes there is someone out there that listens to the same music as I do, as opposed to everyone else out there who just doesn't get it, making me feel kind of alienated as "that guy that listens to weird music".
It's not like I'll never see the guy ever again, hopefully now that he's got a house closer to me I'll be able to see him more often, but it's just that things will be different, a state that I really don't handle so well.
I'm excited that he's found someone to spend the rest of his life with, but I'm also shocked at how quickly the wedding has come about and how little I know his wife-to-be. I've only met her in real life 3 times, including the 10 mins I saw her tonight. It feels kinda strange knowing that one of your best friends is getting married to someone you don't really know. I'm sure she's a great gal and I'm looking forward to getting to know her.

I just had a thought. You people out there reading this probably know them and I'll probably see you on Sunday at the wedding. Please come and say hello to me, I probably haven't seen you in a long time.

Upon leaving John's house, he told me to watch out on the drive home (it was 12:30am) because there were lots of deer about. I drove around the first corner and there was this MASSIVE deer with huge antlers standing right in the middle of the road. It was crazy awesome. It also made me drive quite slow for the rest of the trip :p

On the way back, I was keeping a lookout for wildlife, driving nice and slow. I saw: 2x wallabies, 1x wombat, 1x deer. As I was driving, I was also looking around at just the scenery of the Royal National Park (as you need to drive through it to get to his house) and just noticed how peaceful it was in the nightime. It was quiet, animals were out and about, the moon was shining down and the trees were blowing softly in the wind. I thanked the Lord for making such a beautiful place, straight after which I felt compelled to pull over and stop at the park in Audley. I got out and wandered down to the river, sat on a bench and listened.

That's it. Just listened.

It took a while, but after a minute of sitting still and quiet, I started to notice things. You could hear the river slowly sloshing about. That was it. For the minute.

As I sat longer, more things started popping out, slowly at first but ended in a torrent of noise. Ducks up the river quacking, fish in the water, something in the trees behind me (on closer inspection I found some Koalas!), nuts falling off trees, bats flying overhead etc. It was amazing! I thanked the Lord again, and in return he showed me something.

It was only just then, sitting by the river in the dark without any other people around that He really showed me an example of his timing compared to my fragile quick lifespan. He showed me the growth of the land, how without people it still moved and lived. It's perfect balance.
I thought about Genesis and how everything in His creation was perfect, including humans, before 'the fall'. At that same moment, He showed me that without humans around, the world could still operate because He had made it perfect. He showed me how slowly compared to my measily schedule ridden life the world grows and changes. Despite how slowly the world moves, it is just a blip on the scope for Him. Why should I demand things to happen NOW? Why should I expect Him to jump down and do everything I want Him to in such a tiny moment in the short space of time that is my life?

I shouldn't. I should do as He says and wait, be patient, pray, and one day He may if He feels like it should be so.

I thanked Him for everything he just showed me, and he let me sit there outside for a while. Even though it was cold, I did not feel it.

I walked around a bit, followed my ears and found the Koalas (there were two of them) and after a while I asked the Lord to let me know when He thinks I should leave. Straight after saying that He sent me a kangaroo OUT OF NOWHERE that almost ran into me, scared the life out of me, chased me back to my car and disappeared as quick as it arrived. Thanks!

The trip home was spent driving slow (by this time it was 2:15am) and just looking around at God's creation, admiring it, and seeing how we'd flattened it to put roads and houses on.

Workers Wage

2008-07-26T20:22:00.002+10:00

Reading my last update is kinda funny. There's me talking about how I don't need to go back to JMC ever again and I had to find a job etc. Well, plans have changed!

In the end, I'm back at JMC and I didn't need to look for a job. Why?

24 hours after posting that entry I got a message over Facebook asking if I wanted to work at JMC as a Studio Assistant! Of course I said yes and now I have a regular job there in the studios teaching kids how to record things as well as do any repairs and maintenance. I get to play with all the sweet gear they have as well. It's only 3 days a week at the moment but it's a great start to my career.

So yeah, champion!

Apart from that, not too much has happened. It looks like I won't be going down to Melbourne for Joel and Lisel's housewarming as I have the 4pm-midnight shift on Fridays and 8am-4pm shift on Monday, not leaving much time to go flying around the country on weekends.

Jobs are fun :)

Snap Happy

2008-07-14T00:18:00.005+10:00

As usual, I'm posting on here real late at night. I should probably not do these things and try and sleep, but oh well!

So college is over. I got that presentation done and everything handed in, so I never have to go back to JMC again. Which is kinda sad I reckon because I liked going there and getting to use all the sweet gear and being able to pick the brains of my tutors and lecturers and things.

Time to move on! Easier said than done, but hey, life is like that.

I'm spending the next few weeks making up a portfolio of recordings and such, hopefully it'll be enough to get me a job somewhere. Whenever it is I get around to making a resume, I think on paper I can make myself look pretty awesome thanks to all the live sound and stagehand stuff I've done, so I'm not worried about that.

Oh yeah, as I'm now free of college, invite me out places! I can go! Woo! This week I'm going to head over to Hugh's place to play Super Smash Brothers on his Wii, so that'll be awesome times.

Oh yeah, I have this camera:

I have recently discovered that using it is pretty fun, so if you see me carrying a camera around a lot in the near future, that'll probably be it.

I was going to type a whole lot more, but I was distracted just now by all the mess in my room. There is now a large pile of rubbish and recycling in the corner of my room. I feel liberated.

Can't sleep... boogers will eat me

2008-06-18T01:52:00.002+10:00

I'm awake because I'm sick with a cold. I spent all day in bed trying to get better, but because of that I'm wide awake now.

In other news, as it's after midnight, apparently it is my birthday. 23 years old. Good on me.

A friend made this for me:

Pretty funny huh.

Well, another update on me:

I got those assignments all handed in ON TIME somehow. I'm pretty pleased with myself over that one. I just need to present my essay to the class and hand in my minor project work this Friday and I'm done. For good. I'll have a degree. Crazy.

It's pretty scary finishing up. It means many things. One is I'll need to get a full time job. Two is I can't hide behind the "it's okay cause I'm a student" moniker any more. Three is I won't get to be taught all this amazing stuff and it be okay for me to royally stuff up because I'm there to make mistakes and learn from them. Five is I won't be able to watch The Young Ones any more and be allowed to relate to them as I do. Six is that I have no direction because I won't have anyone to tell me what's next, I'll need to find it for myself.

Lets hope I can summon up the courage to start emailing people about proper jobs. It would be nice to have more money than enough to pay for fuel and train fares. I'm an audio engineer who can't even afford to buy CD's to listen to. It's pretty sad.
What sucks the most is that IF I get a job somewhere, the chances of it being something I really really want to do (audio recordings, studio or live) are so slim it's nuts.

Aaaanyway, enough of that nonsense.

Throwdown went really well. I was hoping for 300 people, but in the end we only got 250. Heaps of people who said they were going to come didn't come. The bands played great and everyone who came to watch had a great time. It was good to see the SS peeps again, I do enjoy their company. It would be good to hang out with them for more than a few hours though.
One person I know told me that 'considering the state of the scene, 250 people is a great number', so that cheered me up a bit.

On Monday I spent the whole day capturing video and audio off the recording devices. In the end I was only able to record Reverend X and Playjerise. What I got came out pretty good for Playjerise, so lets hope that I can mix it okay. Reverend X's set didn't come out that good, but I might be able to save it. I think I'll take it in to college before they stop me using the facilities and try mixing it there. The video isn't crash hot for either band (two handycams on tripods) but it's better than no video, that's for sure. Thanks to those people that lent me the cameras.
Oh yeah, if you're a myspace person, there are photos of all the bands playing at the show at www.myspace.com/hometownthrowdown

Apart from the Throwdown recording, I've also got a recording I did with Soul Riot to mix. I'd get into mixing it now as I'm keen to do it, but this cold is messing with my ears something horrid. Compared to normal everything sounds a bit muffled. It'll pass a day after the cold does and I can get into it.
I've also got at least two more recordings I need to do for Dr Buff and Reverend X to do, so I've got a bit of mixing and recording coming up. Depending on how the Dr Buff one comes out, I might have a paid recording lined up, so that's some good news.

I'm going to go and climb back in to bed. Hopefully I'll be a bit better in the morning and can enjoy doing nothing on my birthday and not have a headache and runny nose. You know, I should go down the road tomorrow and buy some tasty beer to have at home to celebrate. Yes, that would be good :)

It's Not Over Yet

2008-06-05T00:19:00.005+10:00

So another blog to let you all know what is going on in my life. I know at least one person enjoys reading them (thanks mez/marlei), so here it goes.

College. That's pretty much my life right now. I have three assignments to hand in next week, so I need to get them all done. As of now, one is due in 7 days, two in 8.

The one due in 7 days is about sourcing and putting sounds to a 6 minute montage of scenes from The Animatrix. Seems simple? Well yeah, but when you actually give it a go, it's pretty hard. First things first, you need to watch the video and make a list of what sounds you want to put where. This takes an hour or three. Next part is finding those sounds. I've been spending the last week trying to find appropriate sounds and I've only got approx 1/2 of them sourced. After that, you need to place them all in the movie at the right points and line them up with the picture. This doesn't take too long, as you have the sounds and know where you want them. When I say not too long, I mean it takes a few hours to do. Hardest part is making them fit with the scene and mixing them to appropriate sound levels. This takes aaaaages. The video goes for 6 mins. I go through it 5 times and that's 30 mins. You need to go through it hundreds of times to make sure everything is perfect, especially for such a long piece. Lets assume all that is done.
Now, the next hardest part is exporting all the sound and making it into a DVD. First you need to export the audio, then render the video into the right format for a DVD, then time align them, make up DVD menu's and blah blah blah.
Whinge whinge moan moan, I have a lot of work to do.

8 days away I need to hand in an essay (which is super boring and hopefully the last one I'll ever have to do in my life) and final mixes of 6 bands that I recorded live so they can be put to video and also made into a DVD. This time I don't have to author the DVD myself, some DTV people will do that, but I will be handing in stereo mixes of each band AND 5.1 surround sound mixes. I've been progressing through these quite well. Tomorrow I have to re-record some vocals for one of the bands, but after that I should be able to get them finished pretty quickly.

Now, you might be thinking "hmn.. that sounds like a lot of fun compared to sitting in an office doing what I do". Yes, the mixing bands in stereo and 5.1 is great fun, but essays have always been my weak point for maximum damage, and I'm not terribly keen on doing sound-to-picture work unless it's mixing a band for DVD. Also, I don't have much time to get all this done.

On a brighter note, Throwdown is on in 8 days, which is excellent. I'm going to be busier than an ant when the rains are coming up until then, but so far things seem to be fitting together nicely. No bands have pulled out, we're going to have two stages, two good PA systems, advertising is being handed out (despite the photocopier breaking), we have some youth groups coming along etc etc and so forth. We're even setting up a coffee stall.
Only thing now is really for us to have the event and hope that people come. I'm assured that a few people will come, but I will be disappointed if we have less than 300 people. Always am, always will be. It seems to be my mental benchmark for how successful it has been. If you're reading this and are in the area, please come! Details are here: http://www.myspace.com/hometownthrowdown

Oh yeah, it's my birthday this month on the 18th, that same week my car rego is due and I finish college forever the week after that. Please buy me lots of presents of cash payments and cheques in my name so I can pay for my car service, pink slip and rego and still be able to enjoy my birthday somewhatish. Why it all costs as much as it does, I really don't know. Stupid ageist insurance companies/RTA.

Oh yeah, The stupid Klaxons make me want to go back to England again. All this rain and their music is making me miss the place quite a lot. It probably doesn't help that I'm wearing my Pogues shirt from when I saw them and Billy Bragg play in Manchester.

Aaaaaanyway. I should go to bed.

Night!

Goodnight Goodnight

2008-05-14T23:42:00.003+10:00

Bored much? Yes please.

I've been pretty busy of late. It's great when I'm busy, always having something to do, but as soon as I stop doing things, like now, I get SO bored.

Right now I can't sleep, I've got the songs I've been re-recording the vocals on today playing over and over and over in my head. I'm playing other music to try and flush it out. I was planning to get up at 4am to watch the UEFA Cup final between Zenit St Petersburg and Rangers. Looks like that won't be happening as it's now midnight and I have a full day of being awake in class to do tomorrow.

I've been a very tired person lately. I think all this soccer playing/college going/being up late I do is really catching up with me. I'm constantly tired, my knees and ankles ache and it takes a second or two for me to think. My days off from college are spent lying around in bed simply so I can recover. 7 more hours till I need to be awake to catch the train to do it all over again and I can't sleep. Great.

Yesterday I went on a tour of the Rode microphone factory. Good fun that was. Getting to see the process of making the mics from design to assembly to testing to distribution. They have these sweet machines that machine the metal parts for the mics that are weapons grade. The government checks the machines every few weeks to make sure they haven't made any weapons with it. These machines cannot be sold in The Middle East, China or Korea. Pretty nutty. Also, the factory floor is full of Asian and Indian workers. It looks a bit sus.
Still, all in all a good trip. It really opened my eyes to what's inside the things and gave me a bit more of a feel for ways to use them.

Last night I was going to start overdubbing vocals, but the vocalist didn't show up. A bit annoying but it meant I got to have a play with using Auto Tune. Pretty fun. You can make everyone sound like Cher at the touch of a button (literally, it's the basic function of the plugin).

Today was spent back in the studio redoing the vocals for two bands. Ended up powering through 4 vocalists in 3 hours. A mean feat by any standards. That said, it left me with the songs stuck in my head, and me sitting here typing a meaningless blog. Sorry I don't make poems or try and make them sound mystical. That's just not me.

I finish college in a month and a bit. I'm so freaked out by that.

I'm going to climb back into bed, the songs may have stopped, lets see what happens.

High Fives and Stage Dives

2008-04-28T12:02:00.004+10:00

A new blog entry! It's been quite a while since I did this.

This time, unlike most times when I complain about things, I'm actually very excited and have lots of news for everyone.

The latest thing to be excited about is that Throwdown is happening again and last night Luke and I conformed the lineup. Always a good thing to do, especially when we have such good bands! The next one will feature:
San Salvador - http://www.myspace.com/sansalvadormusic
Playjerise - http://www.myspace.com/playjerise
Dr Buff - http://www.myspace.com/drbuff
Red Letter Project - http://www.myspace.com/redletterproject
Reverend X - http://www.myspace.com/whoisreverendx

Luke and I have some sweet ideas about the way it's all going to work on the night, and I'm going to try and record it (mostly for my own personal recording stuff). Not just audio either, I'm going to try and video it too, so if you have a video camera and will let me use it, please let me know!

Another thing to be excited about is the recording I did this past week. For college I need to do a major project. For mine, it involved doing live recordings of the 3rd year performance students. We went down to The Metro theatre, the bands set up onstage and played, I recorded all the audio and the DTV students filmed it all to make live video clips for each band. It all went really well, but I'm going to have to re-record most of the vocals for the bands as the microphones we were given weren't very good (I was promised good vocal mics and didn't get them!).

On Wednesday I got to see Henry Rollins tell stories from on the road and rant about different things. It was brilliant. He spoke for 3 hours non stop and had some amazing stories to tell about music (such as singing for The Ruts with support from The Damned and the day he first met Iggy Pop) and also from countries that he's visited. So jealous of the woman I overhead in the lobby after the show mentioning that she was going to the next nights show as well.

Everyone seem to be having or going to have babies right now. Scotty and Corrine had their baby, James William, the other week. I finally saw the little guy on Saturday, and he's tiny, but pretty awesome.
That same day I found out that Paul and Katie Gatt are expecting, and yesterday I found out that Brian and Cathie Hall are also expecting! Who's next?! They all seem to be beach mission related people.... so married beach mission couples, watch out (or hurry up)!

This week Esther is in Melbourne having fun going to design conferences and buying sweet cameras (I want the camera!), so that's leaving me to get assignments and things done. This week I need to finalise what my setup would be for a 5.1 Surround recording of an orchestra would be, and I also need to analyse the sound of 5 mins of a movie. I'm going to head down to the video stop to hire some movies. I HAVE to hire and watch movies for college assignments, what a hard life!

I am going to miss college quite a bit once I'm finished....

I have some paid work this week for once, so that is nice. It's a gig I usually do for Greg over at Asquith doing sound for people who sing cover songs to old people. It's not the greatest gig in the world music wise, but it's easy and you get a free hot lunch (inc dessert!) to go with it, so in the end it's a pretty good deal.

Oh yeah, I had a great weekend. Shayne was back in Sydney (great to see you again!) and had a belated 21st birthday party. It was over at Chipping Norton Lakes, lots of people I haven't seen in a while were there, we played sweet games of soccer, ultimate frizbee and hackemback, ate cake and just had a good time hanging out.
The second half of the party meant going to Bar Ace in the city (schooners of Old for $3.20!) for some drinks and hanging outs with more people. After Bar Ace everyone decided they were going to this club called Bungalow 8. It's a loud dance party type place that I really don't like, but upon refusal of entry due to it's horribly tight dress code I wasn't too worried. Hugh and Brendan couldn't get in either and on the way there I spied a pub that was quiet and had Premier League Football on a big screen, so we just went there! It was awesome because I got to see Manchester United lose in the last 5 mins of their match against Chelsea and also the first half of the West Ham vs Newcastle match where West Ham got up 2-0, but just before half time Newcastle got it back to 2-2. We were kicked out of the pub as it was closing, but it was no matter as the match didn't end up having any more goals, and Shayne and the others were heading to The Rocks for 2:30am pancakes!
Ended up getting home at 5:30am. Awesome.

Well, I'd best be off down to the video store to get these movies, I'm not sure what ones to get to choose from, I'm just going to go and see what they have.
Hope you all have a great week!

This is the topic of conversation...

2007-11-16T18:59:00.000+11:00

Here's a tip for you kids: Next time you're meant to be adding people to your 'band' myspace page, triple check that you're actually signed into the band account, NOT your personal one. Way to waste 2 hours and confuse a lot of people Owen.

Holiday is happening soon. Just over two weeks and I leave! Woo!

Last two days was JMC Showcase stuff. I was meant to be doing FOH sound, but instead I was shoved on Monitors for the night (sound on stage, the stuff that the performers hear for the uninitiated). The upside of doing Monitors is that because you're tucked away on the side of stage out of sight to the public, you can easily curl up on the floor for a sleep when you've got nothing to do. Downside is that you've got to deal with performers being whingy and doing things they shouldn't: for example, pointing the microphone directly at a speaker then wondering why it keeps feeding back.
In the end, it wasn't too bad because we had 6 practices to get everything right, but it was bad because we had 6 practices (going through everything so much is very boring for sound guys) and I'd gotten all the levels fine after the first band had done their song for the first time.
It was good to work with fellow JMC types to see what skills each group of people had, to see what skills people lacked, how I could improve my game a bit, and to see Trainers in their prime (i.e. in the bar after the show).
It was also good for me to have something 'responsible' to do. Because I was doing monitors, it was my job to direct a couple of 2nd year students in helping me out (I don't need help, so most of the time I was telling them to chill out) and to also keep the performers happy by making each one of them feel like they're the centre of the show. It was good in that it gave me something to do.

Back onto the topic of this sweet holiday I'm going on and that you're not (unless your name is Esther), flights around Europe have been booked, tickets to see The Slackers have been booked, tickets to see The Pogues & Billy Bragg have been booked, tickets to see Arsenal have been booked (!!!), tickets to go on the Eurostar have been booked (!!!), and the only things left are accomodation in continental europe and our Eurail train pass. Oh, and I need to pay for this all. I owe someone a lot of money right now. They'll get it soon.

Next week I can finally get my full licence! Yay! This means I can drive at 110km/h legally and also not be patronised by other drivers for driving better than them while carrying a 'P' plate. This week after I get that, I'm going to go and get an International Drivers Licence (only $50 from the NRMA, you can even get one on your L's), and then get an International Student Card. Pretty exciting stuff from my end, its okay to he jealous, I know you are.

Ok, now on to the annual blog entry rant:
Why are bands that I like releasing albums that I don't like?
This week I have two prime examples: The Hives and Hot Hot Heat (both of whom Esther is seeing live this week, so darn jealous).
I got The Hives album in my CD player, hit play, and this weird noise came out. It sounded like a rock band, but was it The Hives? There was a rock n roll sound, but apart from the distinctive vocals, it really didn't sound like a Hives album. After a couple of tracks, what's this? Pianos? RnB? What? Turns out Pharrell Williams (one of my most loathed musicians) co-wrote and produced two songs on the album. Really not cool guys.
And Hot Hot Heat? What happened to their fun indie rock n roll? They've turned into a Stadium Rock band. You know what I mean, minimalist guitars and drums with whiney vocals sung over the top that only sounds good mixed in a stadium. The only song I can really say I like is '5 times out of 100', which is a re-recording of an old song!

Annoyance aside, hooray for holidays and all that. Also, I just noticed I really like brackets.

- Owen

sick of it all

2007-11-03T15:09:00.000+11:00

so i'm sick today. hooray! its one of those "i feel like i'm going to be sick everywhere but i'm not so i'll just curl up and try to sleep" type things. it's really annoying.

this past month has been mega busy with college. i've handed in all but two assessments (inc the major ones) so i'm almost finished up for the year. i've got a restoration project due on monday, where we need to restore a wax cylinder recording and try and remove as much of the crackling as possible, and my final soundscape recordings for the semester on friday. i can't wait to hand all of these in as they're weighing on my mind quite heavily.

i'll be arriving overseas in 1 months time. i'm very excited by that prospect, but 1 month is a really long time when you're excited about something. esther and i trying to work out where we will be and when, so its really fun just going through and doing that. it also looks like we'll make it to germany too.

hometown throwdown is coming back! we're going to start it off as a smaller event and try and build them up again. its on the 30th nov and features three bands: Dr Buff, Airship Colour Majestic, The Understatement. it'll be pretty cheap, i think $8 or something, so it'll be a good night. i'm going to try and record the entire thing multitrack into protools and set up some video cameras to film it. in the end we'll have a sweet dvd. i might even be able to mix it for 5.1 surround sound at college, but we'll have to see. i'm pretty excited by throwdown being back, and all the recording process that'll get done too. it won't get done until i get back from my holiday (i leave 36 hours after its on), but once its done it'll be great.

royal crown revue are touring in 3 weeks. because they're touring at the gaelic club i not only get in for free, but i might even get to do monitors for them. fingers crossed is me!

oh yeah, once i work out how to compress the doco i made for college, i'll upload it to youtube for you all to look at and tell me how good i am at things.

if you're doing things in the next month, please invite me along. the lack of not going anywhere with anyone to anything is making me feel kinda lonely to be honest.

thats enough for one day, speak to you next time.

too much paranoias

2007-10-03T20:20:00.000+10:00

argh

right now i'm having one of them.

i don't like it, i wish they would stop.

why does it happen? i kinda know, but don't fully understand it

what can i do about it? i don't know yet

i like to call them 'brain explosions'. basically it's an anxiety attack of sorts.

for no reason whatsoever my brain will go "hey owen, BLAH" and make me think something horrible, then get me worked up about it, make me have some sort of freakish daydream about it, make me think i'm physically in the situation, then dump me back in the real world to deal with it.

right now my brain is telling me i hate someone. i don't really hate them and they haven't done anything wrong to deserve it. my brain is telling me they did something, which actually didn't happen. my brain put me in the room that this thing that didn't happen happened in for me to see and has now thrown me back in front of my computer screen again.
worst thing is, i KNOW that none of it is true, but now i'm left with this horrible feeling of pain and hate for no reason at all. hate is a strong word, but thats what it does.

sometimes things will trigger this off, sometimes nothing will trigger it off. most of the time that something will trigger this off, the situation isn't actually happening and there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything, yet i still have these problems.

sometimes when it happens and i'm sitting at my computer, it makes me want to break the computer. again, i don't know why because i like my computer a lot, but it's just what i happen to be sitting/doing at the time.

confused? don't worry, i am too. i am also trying to fix it.

EDIT: turns out what my brain was telling me was partly true. i'd say that this one was approx 75% correct. when i spoke to the person involved they said it was "freaky" how accurate i was. unfortunately this is the case whenever this happens. a gift? it can be, because when the outcome is good it's wonderful, but when the outcome is bad, it's really not fun

earthquake and fire

2007-09-23T15:10:00.000+10:00

this blog entry is dedicated to David Fuentes, Hepcat bass player who died this week. he was only 36 years old.

i got an email from esther telling me about a whole bunch if goings on in manchester. if she doesn't respond to emails and things for the next few days, her computer is a bit broken so she needs to use the library computers. who says macs never have any problems?

in the email she said that she saw Death Proof. SO not talking to her right now :p

this week has been a bit nicer in that i've had stuff that wasn't assignments to do. monday at college was kinda boring though. our usual lecturer mark was away (nine inch nails played the night before, he would have been there) so we had a guy come and read through some photocopied sheets of paper. boring.

having no parents around has been kinda good most of the time cause i can do things in my own time. i'm alive, have clean clothes hanging on the clothesline drying and am fully fed, so no problems there. it's pretty boring just sitting around the house by myself though, so if you're a person also looking for someone to hang out with this week, give me a call.

i worked at the Something For Kate show this week with johnny. i'm not really a fan of theirs, so my highlight of that was spending time in john's hotel room checking out the view from the 62nd floor of the World Square building. pretty good that was. pity i didn't have a camera with me.

after hanging out with john the result was that i'll now be stage managing The Metro stage at Blackstump next weekend. i'm very much looking forward to the challenge. it'll be hectic and hard work, but it'll also be great fun. don't worry, i've done stage managing before so i'll be able to do it quite well (sound pompous much?). if i'm not running around like a crazy fool at the stage, please come and say hello to me as i won't get too much time to explore the site and be a social butterfly.

this week i plan to get started on both dvd's for college and my live sound assessment. i've also got a soundscape based on Luigi Russolo due on friday, so i'll be pretty busy this week.

oh yeah, Arsenal kick ass.
last weekend they beat Tottenham 3-1, they beat Sevilla 3-0 and Derby 5-0. while Derby are a bad team, Tottenham and Sevilla put up pretty good fights and both games were really good. they should have beaten Derby by a lot more, but after going two goals up and it was clear they were going to win they relaxed and didn't play so hard.

i have clothes to bring in, some lunch to eat, and then some church band practice to get to, so i'll leave this entry at that.

bye!

update on me

2007-09-10T15:18:00.000+10:00

well, it's been awhile since i posted a new blog. time for a new one i guess.
please note i've bought the name of the blog into line with the URL as i now have a more appropriate use for the old name. you'll find out what that is sometime!

big news this week is Esther left to go over to England yesterday. i think she's about 2 hours away from touchdown in Manchester if my maths are correct (but hey, i've never been good at maths).

so yeah, now that she's not around i've got lots of free time to fill in. i've got lots of college work to do, but i need time away from that. who's up for hanging out and tearing up the town? let me know!

that college work. this week i've got 2 essays to do and also a soundscape that i've been putting off doing to record and mix.
my first essay is on a 'sound artist'. basically they're people that use the medium of sound as their art, instead of paint and canvas. they're NOT musicians.
the second essay is basically an essay version of a script. i need to research a music producer (i'm going to do Lee 'Scratch' Perry) and write an essay on them, which will become the basis for a script. that script we will then use to narrate a 10 min doco that we will need to make from scratch (hehe) and must be on a playable DVD.
the soundscape i'm doing needs to be in the theme of either: Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism and something else i can't remember right now. basically it involves finding out what sound art in those styles sound like, then try and record and mix our own piece. it's interesting, thats for sure.

oh yeah, for college i need bands to record. if you're in a band and want a free recording in a professional studio, let me know. you won't be allowed to sell the recording, but it'll make a really good sounding demo. leave me a comment/send me a message/give me a call if you're interested. i want to start recording next week.

also, are you in a band thats playing at blackstump? if so, i' more than willing to do sound for you. everyone always complains about the sound at blackstump (i get particularly frustrated by the lack of quality mixes) and i'm putting myself out there this year to do sound for you and make you sound good. again, comment/message/phone me for more details.

i think thats about it for one blog, i'm off to rock out to Less Than Jake and pretend i'm 16 again (no matter what that Last FM thingy says, i think it's broken)

Webcam fun!

2007-08-24T17:57:00.000+10:00

i bought a webcam today. esther is going overseas and her computer has a webcam in it, so i got one so we could talk over skype/msn/whatever. it only takes tiny photos, but thats ok cause it was the cheapest one i could find.

it's has some weird effects for the pictures. some are below.

here is me in flowers:

tickling a monkey in the jungle:

on your tv, reading your news:

on your computer, hacking your interwebz:

no! don't kill me!

the paper says it so it must be true:

bbrrrr, so cold!

anyone for a kiss? mwah!

EDIT: after taking those photos i found the "change resolution" setting, so i can make bigger photos :)

News Of The World

2007-08-04T20:47:00.000+10:00

duuuuuuudes, whats up?

well, since i last posted, i'm back at JMC Academy and LOVING it. compared to doing maths and physics, it is BLISS. so good being able to mix songs and just play with freaking sweet equipment.

bad thing? i've got a billion assignments to do.

mondays i have 'history of recording'. for that subject i need to make a 10 min DVD about an audio engineer, including pictures, video, audio and narraton! also have an essay to hand in for that.

thursdays i have 'live sound' (dead easy subject) where we are given some briefs (no NOT underpants) and need to make up the P.A. requirements for it, including manpower and costings. it's gonna be pretty complicated.

fridays i have 'audio aesthetics' where we discuss things such as aesthetics, philosophy and alternative audio. the philosophy stuff is great fun (we discussed 'what is good music?' this week) but we need to listen to all these highly pretentious audio clips. next week i think we're listening to a recording a guy made called "silence". reminds me of dudes that paint a canvas white and sell it for billions of dollars. argh.
anyway, for this subject, each week we need to take a recording device called a Zoom H4 and go out into the world, recording sounds along with that weeks theme, then make them into a 'soundscape'. interesting, but also boring. like i said, pretentious.
that subject needs an essay too.

for my prac class, we need to record 3 songs (each of a different style) and then take 10 mins of a movie and redo all the sound for it in 5.1 surround sound! crazy!

lots of work to do!

this week i got to do sound at The Gaelic Theatre and the in house guy (who also happens to be my 'live sound' teacher at college was really impressed with my work. hopefully i'll be doing a lot more work for him!

here's something really cool. we got a rabbit today!

dad went outside to get the newspaper this morning and there it was, so we got it and put in our bird aviary. funny thing is the last bird we had in the aviary died today and now we have a new rabbit to replace it. highly cool.
i've named it 'Warren' :)

it'a bit spooked (it was in the gutter outside, so i think the cars scared it) bit it's starting to warm to us.

click here
and
also click here

so yeah, things are a bit hectic right now for me, but also fun. lets hope they stay that way!

check it out:

latest goings on?

2007-07-20T01:10:00.000+10:00

hey all

i haven't been posting so much lately as there's been lots of stuff going on but it seems i've got some stuff to type about.

on the weekend Esther and i went to this camp called the 'School Of Discipleship' that was run by the Uniting Church down in Canberra. it was an interesting weekend, thats for sure.
essentially, the days went: talk, food, small group, food, something else, food.
the talks were a bit weird, and i didn't really like them. the guy giving the talks seemed to focus too much on theologians and didn't reference the bible very much at all (which i didn't like) and i also disagreed with lots of things he said. the good thing about that was when it came to the small groups where we discussed the talks, we had a whole bunch to talk about. for most of the small groups, i just sat back and had a good listen to what people thought of the talk, and after a while i'd pipe up, say what i thought (which was usually very different to everyone else), which spurred the conversation on to a different path.
they focused a lot on Social Justice (which i thought was great) but (to me) they seemed to place more emphasis on justice for people in this life rather than salvation for the next, which also bothered me.
i also found out that the uniting guys LOVE the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. i could imagine some of them having posters of him plotting to kill Hitler on their bedroom walls (i can be very imaginative sometimes). i went to a talk to hear more about him, but unfortunately the guy giving the talk was told he was meant to be talking about something else so didn't have stuff prepared which was a bit annoying.
one great elective i went to was called 'Project Green Church' and was run by Maroubra Uniting Church. basically what they've done is made their church environmentally friendly in really simple and practical ways. it has inspired me to hopefully get some stuff like that going back at Panania.
there was also lots of wildlife. kangaroo's everywhere, and i almost ran over a wombat in my car.
good parts about the weekend: i got to hear alternative views on the bible i hadn't thought about
bad parts: i was quite lost most of the time because all the uniting traditions were new and confusing to me and the talks moved very fast

i also have some exciting news. esther made it in to Manchester Metropolitan Uni! that means she's going to go there in early september (boo, i'm gonna miss her) and i'll go over and visit in december (yay!) and then we're going to travel around for a couple of months on a sweet holiday before we both come home! yes!
today we booked flights and are now VERY excited about it all.
current dates (for once i'm over there):
manchester 3rd-15th dec
london 15th dec-3rd jan
brussels/amsterdam/luxembourg 3rd-12th jan
dublin 12th-19th jan
london again 19th-23rd jan
new york 23rd-29th jan
salt lake city 29th jan-5th feb
san francisco 5th-9th feb
home again: 11th feb

so yeah, looks like i'm going to be getting another job so i can afford it all!

i'm getting sleepy now and i know i was going to mention something else, but i've forgotten cause of sleepy. night!

wow

2007-07-10T23:18:00.000+10:00

so, it's been one heck of a week.

last thursday some stuff happened to some friends of mine, which has really sent some shockwaves through me and the rest of my friends.

i'm not sure what to say about it, but it wasn't good.

anyway, if i'm feeling a bit weird over the next few weeks and say a few bizarre things, please understand that it's going to take me awhile to deal with this. it wasn't something i wanted to ever have to deal with, but it's happened and so i need to sort things out. i haven't done anything wrong, like i said it's happened to some friends of mine, but it still affects me and many others pretty deeply.

anyway, some prayers and understanding for my friends and me would be appreciated.

there was also some upsetting news about another friend (one of my best friends) which will hopefully have a happy ending. that needs some prayer too. i hope he's going to be okay. i'm scared about it.

saturday i went to the Live Earth concert. it was pretty fun. thanks to Richard Bow for taking me along. i got to see quite a few bands, and enjoyed it very much. highlights were Crowded House (of course), John Butler Trio, and Ghostwriters. Wolfmother bored me to tears. seriously.

sunday was a sporty kinda day.
Esther and i headed off to see the Swans beat Freo at the SCG. it was very very cold, but i was happy because we won.
that night, church was pretty sombre (as everyone was dealing with what was mentioned above) but it was really nice.
after church it was off to Alex's house to watch Oman va Australia and the score was a 1 all draw (O-man! tee hee). i got to see Alex's train sets (two of them!) and be VERY jealous of him and his dad.
next it was to my house to watch the Formula One. in poll position was Hamilton (1st) and Raikkonen (2nd) with Alonso (3rd) and Massa (4th) close behind. Massa stalled his car so he had to start at the back (sucker). the rest of the race was excitig, cause Hamilton led the first third, Alonso the 2nd third and Raikkonen the final third and went on to win. nice to see him get another win! Alonso came 2nd with Hamilton in 3rd.

today i got to hang out with one of my best friends (different to the one mentioned earlier), John, down in Gerroa. it was good because we haven't hung out in forever. we sat around playing each other cd's we've bought and we watched the movie The Good German (it was a good movie).
it was nice to sit around and talk about todays newspaper headlines with him.

anyway, i'm gonna go listen to new cd's i bought.
bye.

is it okay if i get nerdy for a bit?

2007-06-25T00:33:00.000+10:00

ok, nerd, release!

i'm very excited, and i don't know why i didn't do this before.

i have a model train set in the shed in our backyard (my pop built the entire thing, from the concrete slab all the way to the shed and set itself) and i haven't used it for a couple of years (which is crazy).

the other day i thought "wow, i should really fix it up", and so i have been!

on wednesday i opened the shed to find that the shed was GROSS. as i hadn't touched it for a long time, dad has been storing the lawnmower, wippersnippers and whatever in the shed. dad isn't the best at putting things away and cleaning things (apart from his beloved car) so stuff was everywhere and everything was covered in spiderwebs. there was leaves and grass all through it. the plastic cover over the train set had water all over it from the rain (shed's leak you know).

i pulled EVERYTHING out of the shed and hung up the plastic to dry, then swept out the shed. i got some surface spray an sprayed all the corners down (inside and out) to kill all the spiders and bugs. they were falling from all the cracks as they died for an hour. i then had to sweep them all up!

i set to work on the track itself. the track needs to be clean because you need a good connection between the track and the train wheels for the electrical circuit to work.
it was black. i grabbed my old track cleaner (it's like a rubber thats tough and abrasive) of which i had a small 20c size peice left. cleaning the track wasn't working so well. i had to pack up everything by this point, but i had caught the fever! this thing could be cleaned!

thursday i tried cleaning the track again. i used metho and the track cleaner, but after 3 hours i'd done only 1/3 of the track. i vowed to buy a new track cleaner, and the 10yr old one didn't cut it anymore.
i pulled out an old diesel to try and see if it would work on the track (old faithful as i like to call it. it runs on clean and dirty track) and it wouldn't budge on the clean track. i took one look at it's wheels. caked on dirt. i realised then that this was gonna be a big job.

friday i bought a new track cleaner and dragged esther though hobbyco, the best store in the world.

saturday i set to work again. the new track cleaner was amazing!! i got the entire set done in an hour. the rails were the colour of silver! i raced inside and gabbed 3830 and my 42 class diesel (with heritage rail cars for 3830 and indian pacific cars for the 42 class) and after cleaning their wheels got to have my first play in ages!! it was the best!

esther took a bit of a look cause i dragged her out there, but i don't think she liked them at all. i was a bit dissappointed cause it was a lot of hard work. oh well.

the next few days seem to have rain forecast, so i think it'll be "sit inside and clean and organise your trains, owen" week. a few of them need new rubbers on the wheels because they've perished and some need a new paint job, so it's going to be an interesting trip as i clean and organise them all. i think i'll make a database of each train and carriages so i know exactly what i've got, then match them up according to country and use.

i might take some photos too! who knows!

oh, revesby station had it's new 'lift towers' put in this weekend. they look pretty awesome. that palce is gonna look totally different once it's finished. the culverts over river road seem to be coming along nicely too.

i've also been looking up trains in england for when i go over there (as i love the english steam trains). he national rail museum is in york, which is only an hour and a 1/2 train ride from where i'll be, so i've got to go there. they have 4472, which is my favourite steam train housed there, so i'll be glad to see it again (they bought it out here in 1988 and i got to go on it then. that was the best ever).
hopefully i can find a bunch of other great locomotives while i'm there and get to ride on a few also.

so yeah, i'm totally excited about trains right now.

weird

2007-06-17T02:02:00.000+10:00

weird.

monday is my birthday and i'm turning 22.

for some reason thats a bit strange.

i'm going through a time of change, and it's very very annoying. right now i'm doing some things that'll (while are very scary) help me out. i'm also still at college, but also wanting to work. i want to earn money, move out of home and get on with my life.

people say "you're still young, just live it up", but i sure don't feel that way.

everything thats good for me takes a long time to happen. it makes me more thankful for it once i have it, which is great, but i want to start moving on.

many people say to me quite often that moving out of home will do me the world of good. they're probably right though.
the reason i haven't moved out is i'm not in the position to do so, monetary wise.

i can't remember if i mentioned it in my last blog, but i cleaned my room. it's quite amazing how much floor space i have now, and how i still only step on those 3 parts of the floor where i could only step before thanks to habit.

turning point

2007-06-14T21:14:00.000+10:00

so today i did some stuff i needed to do and called some people that needed calling. i even cleaned up my room a bit and vaccumed it.

yesterday i threw out all my old uni stuff. it was very freeing.

my floor is now almost 100% empty. it's amazing.

as i finished cleaning just then a song i haven't listened to in a VERY long time. bought back lots of memories. these guys wrote a lot of very bad tunes, but there were a few really quote good ones in amongst them all which very much made up for it. this one sounds very appropriate for how i've been feeling of late. forget the verses, it's the chorus thats important:

The O.C. Supertones - Jury Duty

v1
5 am on tuesday
Why am I up so early
Drive out to santa ana 'cause I've got jury duty
No breakfast short tempered
And I cut my head shaving
Ten miles out I hit traffic
Some days just aren't worth saving

You know I haven't had the best of days
But I want to stop and thank you anyway

v2
At the courthouse I waited
And waited then I waited
At lunchtime my car stalled out
I couldn't get it started
Had a book by c.s. lewis
I finished the last page and
Slept on my desk for three hours
Just like my high school days

You know I haven't had the best of days
But I want to stop and thank you anyway

chorus
Cause every single moment whether sleeping or awake
Is your creation
And what you've made is good
I don't always thank you for the rough days and
The hard times in my life
Even though I should

v3
Got home and decided I'd be in a bad mood
My shy and quiet wife said she didn't like my attitude
Got a call from my mother
Forgot my sister's birthday
I'm a lousy older brother safe to say I've had a bad day

You know I haven't had the best of days
But I want to stop and thank you anyway

chorus
Cause every single moment whether sleeping or awake
Is your creation
And what you've made is good
I don't always thank you for the rough days and
The hard times in my life
Even though I should
x3

where they wander

2007-06-05T19:22:00.000+10:00

so today i went a wandering

i took a film camera and a digital camera with me as i went wandering around the city today. i filled my ipod with some good reggae and headed out. here are some of the results (the batteries in the digital camera ran out after a while Sad).

EDIT: YES I KNOW THE PICTURES DON'T FIT!

me waiting for the train:

sydney harbour bridge:

opera house (requested by pedantry):

me chilling on the opera house steps like all the cool kids do:

a traffic light (requested by geo):

"the woman in the red dress.....":

sydney tower:

again:

tasty lunch!:

who says australians aren't racist?:

this little girl was challenging an old asian guy to chess. she was pretty good:

the park. the batteries died after taking this photo Sad:

oh, i also got a passport photo done today for college:

BEST!

2007-06-01T14:12:00.000+10:00

ok, so i went to that meeting at JMC (or the Jupiter Mining Corporation as i like to call them, 10 points if you know what thats from) today about doing 3rd year stuff and jumping straight on in to second semester.

i was pretty nervous about it all, as the woman who i was dealing with is a very serious lady.and really full on.

i sat in the hallway waiting for her, when my old 2rd year lecturer Greg Simmons saw me and so we ended up having a great chat. he teaches some 3rd year stuff, and was able to tell me all about it, understood my situation and told me not to sweat it. he said there should be no problems with doing it, told me some things to tell them which would convince them and even offered to "go in to bat" for me if they arrived before he needed to get to class. he ended up needing to leave, but it was exactly the cheering up i needed.

eventually someone came out to get me who was also going to be in the meeting, and it was my 1st year lecturer, Glen! he was pleased to see me too!

basically the meeting consisted of me, the manager woman and glen. the woman was very serious about stuff, but because glen knew me he was all like "nah man, you'll fit right in and love it, no sweat".

so basically, I'M IN! hooray!

it turns out they've updated everything since i was there last too.
they converted the massive old Euphonix analogue beast into a smaller digital Yamaha unit that contains 92 tracks and is hooked up to a ProTools HD system (kills my home system for sure).

the best thing though?
ALL THE WORK IS NOW COMPLETELY RELEVANT

they've restructured the entire course!

i get to record bands again! i get to try my hand at mixing movies in 5.1 surround sound! i get to have a go at recording sound effects!

heck yes! this is seriously the best thing EVER. you cannot understand how excited by all of this i am.

i had to do some crappy stuff before, but thanks to what what does it mean?

i'll have used (for any gearheads out there):
-ProTools HD (92 channels, yes please)
-Euphonix Analogue desk with 2 inch analogue tape
-all the best outboard effects (mostly fully analogue tube components with a bit of digital)

and everyone else will only have used one or the other! i'm extremely lucky to have this chance and boy and i happy!!

:)

does it really matter anyway?

2007-05-29T20:00:00.000+10:00

first, this blog is dedicated to mark collins. he doesn't have to read these but read's half and gives up.
---------------------------

okay, today i'm grumpy.

so i wanna change what i'm doing at JMC from the hard stuff to the easy stuff. i was told over the phone "yeah, just come and fill in the forms". i went in there on thursday keen to fill out some forms and be on my way.

the people were then like "yeah, we're not sure if you can do that" and got some woman who's the manager of the place to come out and talk to me about it. they ended up giving me the forms and taking my phone number and saying they'd call me back.

today they finally rang me back. they said "well, we've got new gear that you haven't used and we don't want to put you through without using that gear". at first you might think "yeah, sounds fair enough", when when you realise that in 3rd year you don't actually touch any of the gear and i've already got my advanced diploma saying "yes you passed 2nd year so now you can do 3rd year" it's really crap. now i have to go in on friday to have an interview with them all. i'm going to take my advanced diploma with me, and also point out that some students would have gone though without using the new gear too.
oh yeah, they want me to take 'private tuition' to have time using the new gear. i think they just want more of my money.

why does this have to be so much trouble! i can do sound stuff, just give me a smegging degree already!

and whats this rubbish about Thomas The Tank Engine i've been hearing?

turns out in america (their attention spans SUCK) they had to add this bit on the end of each show where these people live in a jukebox and play songs! i've bee trying to find a clip of this abomination all afternoon.

to all those people who i owe cd's/dvd's to, i'll mail them out asap.

i bought tickets to see this at the Sydney Film Festival today:

i'm amazingly excited, though i think they gave me bad seats.

i've finally got some work this week. tomorrow and thursday. i'm VERY happy about that. bad thing? my rego is due, which means: rego, car inspection and 3rd party insurance. all this while i'm meant to be saving for a holiday! i can't win!

get another job people would say, but i'm trying to hold off until i get this JMC stuff sorted out. also, if you can think of good ideas for a job that pays ok and after 6 months if i quit it's not big deal? i don't care how boring it is anymore, i just need a job.

in summary, i'm not having a good day, and welcome to my blog for anyone that read this for the first time. it' not very interesting i know.

massive edit:
ok, thanks to info from Mike, i've tracked down the american version of Thomas The Tank Engine.
be prepared and make sure you're sitting down, cause you're about to see some of the worst television ever made, and you'll be screaming for the original british version again.

and here's a clip with those guys in the jukebox i heard about:

way to ruin my childhood memories America. this time you've gone too far.

we're gonna take this city by storm

2007-05-21T01:05:00.000+10:00

so i'm starting to get a bit worried about out nations police powers.

ever since 9/11 (argh, it should be 11/9, you know it) there have been news laws bought in for counter terrorism forces to arrest anyone they want because they're a suspected terrorist, even when there is no evidence for it.

now, they've just bought in new laws to stop people protesting.

Crackdown On Nasty Summit Protesters

basically they allow the police to arrest you if they think you're "suspicious". that could mean you're standing in the city during APEC holding a sign saying 'Bush Go Home' and be arrested with no bail.

did you know that everywhere Bush goes, there's gonna be a helicopter with signal jamming devices in it following him everywhere?
what that means is that if you're on your mobile phone and Bush is nearby, so long phone call. oh, that also means no more 000 if you need it either. i have a suspicion they'll simply use it over the city over the protesters, but hey, we'll see.

in other news, David Hicks is back in town (finally). nice t see him back, but he should have been back to serve his sentence after being charged 5 yrs ago. pity neither thing happened. "Honour Bound to Defend Freedom" huh . way to be hypocritical.

oh yeah, i'm also pretty keen for this:
Rudd Stand on Whaling is Piracy says Turnbull

enough of this crap, what did you do on the weekend owen?

funny you should ask.

saturday i didn't do much, i washed my car and bummed around a bit, but that night i saw Sick Of It All at Manning Bar in the city. it was a brilliant show, totally wort the money.
after that it was off to watch Chelsea beat Manchester United in probably the most boring F.A. Cup final i've ever seen. argh.
it was still fun cheering for own goals and that the umpires would win.

sunday was AFL day. my day consisted of:
wake up
drive to esther's house
pick up her pass
meet megan at SCG
watch footy
go to after match
see esther for 1/2 hour
go to church
go to YAM
type blog entry

the swans played pretty well in the beginning, holding off port adelaide for awhile and getting a nice early start which set them up for the win.
megan was laughing for most of the match because she is a fremantle supporter so she just laughed at all the dumb things players did.

had a nice walk home from the SCG with esther's dad. it was a bit weird (he can be a bit of a formidable guy sometimes) at first but it was alright in the end.

poor esther. not only did she miss seeing the swans win to lose a soccer game 3-1, but she's getting a throat infection when she has 3 assignments due this week and a singing concert to perform at. you'd think that just not doing the singing concert would be a good idea, but thanks to her nanna coming all the way up from narrandera to see her perform she's in a bit of a weird position.
the thing that sucks for me is that i'd LOVE to help her out in some way, but i'm not magic (though she probably wishes i was) and can't make throat infections or assignments go away. kind of makes me feel helpless. argh.

oh yeah, my uni work.
so i've tried looking around to see who can help me with electrostatics and maths, but EVERYONE is busy. Hugh can help me out with electrostatics, but only on saturday morning. thats a whole week or not doing much at all. BORING. also, hows that for suck: me sitting around with nothing much to do while esther is sitting under a pile of work with a throat infection. if i was her i'd be pretty angry/annoyed with me right now.

i get to call JMC tomorrow to see whats happening with my course.
basically i'm going to change from what i'm doing, but i need to see if i can jump straight into second semester in july and do first semester in march (meaning i'd be finished in 13 months time) or if i have to wait till march to start (finish in 18 months time).

if i need to wait, i'll need to find a job in the meantime. anyone offering me one?

actually, i'll need one on weekdays anyway because this course i'm changing to is on every friday from 9am-4pm and some thursday nights.

i'm getting tired now and my train of thought is quickly being derailed, so i'll leave you with this:
http://www.postsecret.blogspot.com
bookmark it, read it every sunday afternoon, make yourself feel normal. it works for me.

a moment has left the building

2007-05-17T18:43:00.000+10:00

ok, so i decided to head on over to 'http://www.hometownthrowdown.com' for old times sake just to see if the website was still chugging along and whether the forum had been devoured by spam and bots yet.

there was nothing

it seems the hosting and domain name have expired and it's gone.

it got me thinking about all the shows we put on and all the people who enjoyed the shows. i think its been a year and a 1/2 since the last show, but people still ask whether another one is going to happen anytime soon.

i hopped on google to see what it had to say, and it turns out that when you type in 'hometown throwdown' it comes up the link to hometownthrowdown.com as the number one result.

when we started putting the shows on, John and I called them Hometown Throwdown's as a reference to The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, who we both love and were still around and touring like crazy. all the search engines used to be full of the Bosstones when you typed those words in to search engines, but since then both the Bosstones, and us have moved on, and now our humble site is there at number one.

it's a pity the shows don't happen anymore. i used to love seeing all these people turn up and have a great time listening to bands, hanging out, skating on the ramps and just having a good old time without alcohol or drugs involved in any way.

most people who we'd try and tell about the shows (people from school for example) weren't interested and didn't want to go, but the ones that did come along had a great time.

it was so much hard work though, and when less than 300 people turned up i was disappointed, but when we managed to pull 500 people it made it very worth it.

since starting to put on the shows, i've learnt many things. audio production, event management, advertising, lighting and staging setups, OH&S laws/risk management etc

hopefully i can find a way to use these skills i've acquired over the years to do something else worthwhile. not only use them to get paid and support myself, but to do something socially practical and ethical, and above all have a whole bunch of fun.

to all of you that like to ask:
-will Hometown Throwdown's ever come back? who knows.
-will i be doing something sometime in the future? yep. just you wait and see.
-will it be anytime soon? maybe not, but when it does happen it'll be brilliant.

fun fun fun

2007-05-14T02:30:00.000+10:00

ahh, what a great night

tonight i went to church and played some sweet tunes. i decided to go to the band practice so that i could practice playing guitar along with other people and have songs to play to. i ended up playing during the service and had HEAPS of fun. it was great! that was the first time i'd played in front of more than 1 person before, so while i stuffed up heaps, i still had lots of fun. i was turned down pretty quiet anyway :p

after that i went to gloria jeans with people from church and had tasty overpriced hot chocolate. after scooping the froth off i only had 3/4 of my drink left, so i'm debating wether to bother buying drinks from there again, just cause i really can't afford things like that. i probably still will though as i can't resist chocolate.

back it then was to the west's house to watch the Formula 1, play some poker and then watch Sheffield United vs Wigan. Raikkonen went out early in the race unfortunatly (some engine problem). Lewis Hamilton came 2nd, which means he's coming first in the championship! quite an acheivement for the rookie of the pack.
the football was very exciting. basically it was a playoff to see who would get relegated down to the lower division and who would stay in the premier leauge. both teams just happened to play each other in the deciding round, which mean both teams really wanted to win. it was brilliant as both teams pushed hard. a few players were knocked out (the united goalie punched and headbutted a wigan player while attempting to punch the ball out and also heskey went down and swallowed his tounge after someone looked at him funny) the final score? United 1 - Wigan 2. poor United got relegated.

Ben Mostyn asked me to go to his bucks party on saturday, which sounds like brilliant fun (go-karts at marrickville) but it's like $35 and i really don't have $35. i'm also seeing Sick Of It All on saturday night with little Ben (not engaged Ben) which is gonna be amazingly awesome as i really like that band and Ben hasn't been to a concert like that before.
oh, also F.A. Cup is on (as it is every year the saturday i'm busy) so who knows where i'll be watching that (either esther's house, church, my house or alex's house). it's Chelsea vs Man U so i'm gonna boo both teams just as hard as each other. for once i'm hoping a show will finish before 11:30pm so i can drive home quick to watch the match at midnight.

well, now it's off to bed because i have another exciting day tomorrow (not)

an explanation...

2007-05-08T16:36:00.001+10:00

today i've been trying so flipping hard to work out what on earth these text books are telling me!

i've got this maths module to do for uni and i can't work it out.

so far it's been on quadratics, which i didn't understand at first, but mananged to scrape through that bit. now it's moved on to differentiation.

i don't understand it. i just simply don't get it.

i failed this subject last year at this point because i didn't get it then either, and i'm getting so frustrated at it all that when i even look at the smegging textbook or workbook it just looks like scribbles on a page.

i try and read stuff, but i just don't understand what it's trying to tell me. the worst part is it's not like i can just skip on over to the next bit, because you need to know the beginning of that bit to do it

i don't know what to do. maths just isn't my thing....

it all feels so darn hopeless!

i just wanna pass and be happy that i can do it and move on, but no, it's stuck in my face like a big fat loser sign. just sitting there staring at me while it's picking its nose and scratching its bum. going apsolutely nowhere and getting increasingly more annoying as the days tick by.

i missed out on handing in last weeks assignment (only 2%) but thats not what i'm worried about. what i'm worried about is that i need to know the stuff that was in the assignment so i can do the next assignment, which is due tomorrow. if i don't know how to do that then i don't know how to do the next assignment. if i don't know how to do all them, then i don't know how to do most of my exam at the end of semester.

then what?

big fat stinking loser of the century.

uni fees wasted. time wasted. all of it wasted.

ARGH

shut up maths

2007-05-08T16:36:00.000+10:00

i just wrote a song called 'Shut Up Maths'. add gang vocals where appropriate. enjoy:

shut up maths,
shut up maths,
shut up maths i hope you die. (x2)

derivatives can go jump in the lake
along with functions too,
go jump in the lake now all of you
i don't know what to do

shut up maths,
shut up maths,
shut up maths i hope you die. (x2)

why do i have to do all this
why is it all so hard?
i just wanna record sweet bands
and sit on my behind

shut up maths,
shut up maths,
shut up maths i hope you die. (x2)

*solo*

shut up maths,
shut up maths,
shut up maths i hope you die. (x2)

cleaning

2007-05-01T16:34:00.000+10:00

ok, so tonight i decided to clean up my room a bit

why?

cause maths sucks and i'd rather clean my room than do maths.

anyway..
so i found a place for that CD rack i've been meaning to put up (ontop of one of my speakers), put it together and put all the CD's and DVD's that have been floating around my room in it. it didn't make much difference to the state of my room.

i decided to throw out all the spare pieces of paper and stuff. usually this is the killer, i'll put it all in the recycling and my room will be tidy. that STILL didn't make much difference.

thats when i worked out what is killing my room. UNI WORK.

i have three piles of uni books. i have another pile dedicated to letters the uni send me. i have a pile of important papers i need to keep somewhere for tax and banking. i have a huge plastic tub thing that my parents bought me (meaning well of course) so that i could put stuff in it, but under my bed is full and it won't fit.

after moving things around a bit, i discovered i made a BIGGER mess. great.

i can't wait till i can move out. that way i can fit all my crap somewhere. i have a small room as it is, and when you're trying to fit uni work, billions of CD's and some audio gear in my room amongst my bed, cupboard, drawers, desk and stereo, there is NO room.

don't get me wrong though, i'm not complaining that i have lots of things, cause lets face it, i'm pretty lucky to have all the awesome things i have, i just need space for them all to squeeze somewhere.

oh, if you read this and know some friends who are in a band and want a recording, i'm pretty strapped for cash, so please pass my details on. i want to work, i really do.

thanks to having a very sore back, i've been going to the physio, and it's been slowly getting better. the physio has been stretching my neck and back muscles about every few days, and while it's painful, oh boy do i feel good afterwards. i've got one more session on wednesday morning, and hopefully that'll be the last.

if you like music doco's, be sure to watch "Some Kind Of Monster" on SBS at 10:10pm this saturday night for a doco about the making of the latest Metallica album. i'm not a fan of their music, but it's a behind the scenes look at the band, the recording process and the interpersonal relationships in the band. should be good

also, check out this doco called 'American Hardcore', which is about the origins of hardcore music. it's pretty good and part 1 can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0LHomP0SNE
the other parts are linked to on that page.

thats about it. nothing too interesting.

Anzac Day

2007-04-25T14:04:00.001+10:00

so today is anzac day

it's a day or rememberance for those aussie/nz people who've lost their lives in war

many ex-soldiers and family members will participate in services and marches all over the country.

it's a time for saying 'look how bad wars are, lets not do this again'

john howard will be on tv tonight during the news talking about how anzac day is a 'sad day' and something that 'all australians will be touched by' or something to that effect.

meanwhile, john howard ups australian military funding and sends more troops to iraq......

so i'm back

2007-04-20T00:29:00.000+10:00

well, what have i been doing?

i was in Armidale for awhile on a Uni Residential School. i think i might even pass this time! yay!

i'm home now, and pretty happy about that.

i'm a bit annoyed there is no milk. it's been a week since i had a drink of milk. i'm craving it so bad.

oh, and here are some photos i just took:

so the story is i found a fisheye lens in amongst an old analog video camera who's batteries are stuffed! yay!

it doesn't hook directly onto the camera, so you need to hold it in front of the camera while you take the photo, but it still works pretty awesomely!

this it for now. i should update this more with interesting things

Sleep?

2007-04-04T03:17:00.000+10:00

well, the answer is no, i can't

anyway, just letting you all know what i'm up to/have been doing/discovered and blah.

i've been procrastinating from Uni work as per usual. Simultaneous Equations were never my strong point. I've got to hand it in tomorrow. Boo.

Last week i saw Dropkick Murphy's play at the UNSW Roundhouse. They played really well, but i suck because i forgot my earplugs and the ringing is only just going away. so bad for my ears. yuck. i was a bit disappointed with their lead singer, he kinda just stood there. one of their guitarists jumped off the stage and into the pit, so he earned my highest respects. esther made it onstage at the end and got to dance around so she was pretty darn happy about that. there were a LOT of songs they didn't play which was kinda dissappointing, but considering the amount of songs they're written it was bound to happen.

this saturday i'm seeing Flogging Molly and Gogol Bordello play in their double headline show. with esther's love for Flogging Molly and my joy about seeing Gogol Bordello, we're going to be going nuts.

Uni work has been pretty hard. i've been learning and understanding more than the first time around, but i'm not too confident about it all. we'll see what happens, cause i'm trying as hard as i can to pass. if i fail, i'm going to try and go back to JMC, but i don't want to fail as i haven't talked to them about it and it's not 100% certain that i will be able to go back (even though i don't know why they wouldn't let me). also, i really don't want to miss out on fridays and saturdays for almost 1 year.

music i've been listening to a lot lately:
Beastie Boys hardcore days (before they turned hip hop)
Billy Bragg - Back To Basics

discovered recently:
Bullet Treatment (feat lead singer of the bronx)

i discovered today that Tim Armstrong's new solo album 'A Poets Life' is now going to be released as a CD, rather than released online for free. this sounds bad, but once you learn it's going to be only $19 and come with a DVD that will have a video clip for EACH SONG then you realise it's not all that bad after all!

have a look at his new video "Into Action":

on thursday it looks as though esther and i will get to go to the movies for the first time in ages. i've got to see more movies this year than last. i think i only saw 18 movies last year. gotta beat that. we're going to go see Hot Fuzz. it looks pretty funny. i'm just hoping that other people in the cinema don't suck. if you have hot food, sit next to us or smell, seriously go home and don't bother watching the movie. hire it out once it's on DVD or something. just don't bother me.

i like to go to the movies in the middle of the day during the week. the cinema is practially empty and i get the whole row to myself. it also means i can concentrate on the movie (cause i usually see doco's) and not have to worry about people eating hungry jacks and talking about something other than the movie, if at all.

my guitar playing is getting better, but only slightly. i'm no good at it, but it's way fun. i'm very determined to be good. i've been listening to a lot of hardcore lately (minor threat, sick of it all, early beastie boys, suicide machines etc) and i'd love to be able to play/write/record songs. it gets me going, you know?

oh yeah, new Aggrolites album in june. so friggin excited.

also, how much does it suck trying to be romantic?
i'm no good at thinking of ideas for anything. it was ether's 21st the other week, but we've both been either sick or busy so i haven't had time to take her out somewhere and trying to decide what to do is driving me insane. i know she's gonna read this, but oh well. i'll find something!

i wish i has something of substance to tell you all, but alas i don't.

Instead, have some dodgy video clips

i know i'm going out of style, 10000 miles from you

2007-03-20T20:38:00.000+11:00

word up

so i'm bored. whats new. huh

last night i went to Richards house to get some physics tutoring from him, and after that i'm getting pretty annoyed.
there is SO MUCH involved in each question that i can't believe they make us learn so much. seriously. richard is bamboozled because he designs different mechanical and other engineering devices, and he doesn't even know this stuff/need to use it. argh

the maths is pretty darn confusing too. i'm afraid that thursday hangout with esther in the morning will just turn into her trying to explain it to me, and me getting grumpy for not understanding and blah

i'm still trying really hard though, it's just that it's hard to do work when you're stuck, or just get so annoyed that you don't want to do it

poo

also, i've rediscovered how good Mustard Plug are

shut the blog up

2007-03-17T02:48:00.000+11:00

hey all, welcome to another installment of self absorbed blogging

i'll just give you a quick run down of whats been going on in the owen camp lately, than explain more in depth whats going on

i've got no money, i've seen some good bands play, i've missed some good bands playing, my brain has been playing tricks on me, and i've decided to do some more travelling.

okay, the no money situation:
basically, i was on top of things and was starting to save up a bit of money, which was brilliant (as i'm very bad at it, damn you jb-hifi). i had my wisdom teeth out, and mailed off the forms to medicare to get the discounts i deserved from my health fund and booked my car in for it's 100,000km service. the service was meant to only cost approx $200, and wisdom teeth claimed and made much cheaper.
i got a call from the mechanic to say "hey owen, your car is in brilliant condition, except for the fact that it needs CV joint replacements, the drive shaft repaired, new spark plugs and to have the automatic fluid flushed". i was like, "oh great, so i need to get the CV joints and drive shaft fixed else my car might crash and i'd die, so how much is this all gonna cost me?" his reply was "$680". crap! i didn't have quite that much money to pay him, so i needed to pay with the credit card, and he was like "oh, there a credit card charge, so it'll be $715". bugger again.
also, it turns out medicare lost the most expensive reciept (the surgeons bill) and took forever to refund me some money for the aneithsetist that they're both demanding i pay up, so i had to go to medicare and complain to them, so they recon they'll sort it out, but i'm not so sure.
i have work tomorrow, but it'll go towards my phone bill and pay off enough of the mechanic bill so i can pay it all off with the amount of money in my account. my final balance will total $0

oh well, at least i won't die in a car crash. well i could, but it won't be cause of any mechanical fault of my car, as now all that needs to be replaced since i got it is the transmission, brakes and suspension (which got checked and are fine). i hope they stay fine for a long time...

seen some good bands play:
in the past month i've seen Damien Rice, The Bronx and The Evens. these were some of the best shows i've ever seen. Damien Rice was brilliant at guitar and storytelling (and has a wonderful backup singer who looks as good as she sings), The Bronx still put on the most rock n roll shows i've ever seen (someone reviewed it in the drum media and commented on how they'll be telling grandchildren about the show i saw) and keep amazing me each time i see them, and The Evens were so brilliant in their two-peice-drums-and-guitar-and-vocals way and Ian MacKaye is the nicest musician i've met (i shook his hand for real) that i was the biggest fanboy ever.
(i swear since Ian shook my hand, that that hand has all of a sudden gotten much better at guitar, while the other one is slow on the uptake)
i'm going to see Dropkick Murphy's play in two weeks and then Flogging Molly & Gogol Bordello in their double headlining tour. these shows are another reason i have no money, but it's worth it to see them play. (i've also already bought the tickets, so i don't need to find money to buy more tickets)

missed some good bands play:
my friends in Sounds Like Chicken play their final gig tomorrow down in melbourne. i'll be missing it as i need to work so i'm not completely broke. i was going to go down and do a live recording of the show, but after their tour to adelaide cost more than they expected, they didn't have enough money to even cover my fuel costs of driving down, so they got another dude who lives down there to do it. it's a pity, cause i really wanted to go, but i can't even afford $20 to squeeze in an overcrowded car to go down. besides, i've got work on now to try and have no debt

my brain has been playing tricks on me:
well, i think i have some sort of anxiety thing, because my brain keeps making me get worked up over nothing. for example i'll just be sitting here and my brain will tell me something like "hey owen, you know that time esther said she couldn't hang out cause she was busy? WELL SHE WASN'T, SHE HATES YOU" and i'll be all like "but she really was busy, she was at uni and even showed me the work that she did there" but my brain will go "I DON'T CARE, SHE HATES YOU" and then i'll get all confused and worked up over it cause she doesn't hate me, and she really was busy, but my brain tells me the opposite. so annoying. Olga recons i should see a doctor, but that scares me a bit. she knows about these things though cause she was studying to become a doctor but got sick while studying (thats another story).

i've decided to do more travelling:
Esther has applied to go overseas to study in London for a few months. i'm going to miss her HUGELY (seriously massively) but i really want her to go, cause she'll have the best time ever andlearn so much stuff. we don't know if she's going to get it or not, we have to wait and see.
but anyway, if she goes, i'm going to go over and visit her when she's finishing up, and if she doesn't go, we'll just go on a holiday anyway because we would have been saving up to go anyway! anyway anyway anyway
we were looking at a map of europe, and we're currently thinking (subject to huge changes cause we talked about it for only 15mins or so): London, fly to Amsterdam, then catch the train to Brussels, then to Paris, then back to London. after that fly to somewhere on the east coast of the USA (New York or Washington or something), then over to Salt Lake City to visit Olga and her husband Alex because Olga is one of my best friends and she's having a baby in October, then on to either Los Angeles or San Francisco, then home again.
i've been scouting out 'round the world' tickets and they'll cost approx $2600 cause we're still students. add on another $1500 for other travel costs, and it'll cost about $4000ish. that, plus spending money for when i'm there (so i can eat/see arsenal play) and i'm going to the saving every penny i make ever. something tells me i might need a part time job in the meantime. anyone hiring?
i'm not going to need to pay too much in accomodation, as Esther's cousins will be living in London so we can stay with them, and i'll stay at Olga's house too. i think we'll be staying in a lot of backpacker hostels, but it'll be GREAT FUN i know it :)

so yeah, coming up for me is more pain with uni (maths and physics are seriously killing me, i HATE them) and not spending any money, so if i come to your house and eat as much food as i can or borrow as many DVD's/CD's as i can, please take pity on me as i won't have eaten much while being out and i can't afford to buy my own CD's and DVD's

k thanks

oh, tonight i saw the Swannies play against Port in a practice match. they lost by 4 points or something, but i think they'll need to pick it up (literally) if they're going to beat West Coast in round 1.

High Anxiety

2007-03-10T03:03:00.000+11:00

this song pretty much sums up how i'm feeling right now. i hate it when things that are out of my control get on my back. i wish they'd go away so i can sleep...

[Chorus:]
Well it's the high anxiety
(I'm a victim of society)
high anxiety
(I'm a victim of society)
high anxiety
it's my high anxiety getting to the best of me.

[Verse1]
Sometimes I feel like I'm gonna explode,
and when I'm approaching total overload,
I know that when I'm having a panic attack,
to duck and cover cuz I can feel it coming.

[Chorus]

[Verse2]
This time I feel like I'm gonna die,
cold sweat the fear is paralyzing,
you know I wish that this was over and done,
heart pounds I can feel it escalating.

[Chorus]

[Bridge x2]
I don't know why,
sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night,
I don't know why,
I gasp for breath I'm really feeling like I'm on the brink of death.

[Verse3]
I wish I could get this crisis under control,
then I could feel some kind of closure.
I feel this could go on and on without end,
I guess I'll just have to ride it out cuz

[Chorus 2x]

..addiction

2007-03-08T04:16:00.000+11:00

yeah, i'm addicted to the internet

it's 4:20am, i should have been in bed 5 hours ago

eep...

..read the news the other day, about a boy they threw away..

2007-03-01T15:55:00.000+11:00

so last night i saw The Bronx play

*best show*

seriously kicked total ass.

so many good things happened at that show that i can't explain them all.

tonight i'm seeing The Evens play at Glebe Town Hall and am pretty darn excited

whoopee, another massive blog

..it's not hard to fall, when you float like a cannonball..

2007-02-24T02:08:00.000+11:00

i want to go overseas.

i want to see the world.

i want to experience everything our Lord has made.

i want to travel.

i want to see new things.

i want to meet new and interesting people.

i want to do things i'll never forget.

i want to make memories so wonderful that the note of one song or the glimpse of one photo or the sniff of one scent take me right back to that irreplaceable moment.

i want the world to be my oyster.

i want to swim in every ocean.

i want to climb every mountain.

i want to sit in every forest and breathe.

i want to gasp at every tall city.

i want to fall asleep to the sound of rain every night.

i want to meet someone from every single culture and country, and talk to them.

i want to rest in the bungalows, roam every resort, relax on every ship deck, recuperate in every snowy little town.

i want to pack up my bags and take them places dreams are made of.

i want to live out of a suitcase, backpack or bag.

i want to curl up with a pillow on every long distance train while it passes through the countryside quietly in the night.

i want to be by myself, with one person, with a few friends and everyone all at the same time.

i want to photograph every interesting thing i see.

i want to ride every rollercoaster.

i want to fish in every lake.

i want to eat the worlds best foods.

i want to get dirty while watching an elephant tend to it's baby in the shade of a tree.

i want to see every rock band, in every venue, in every corner of the room.

i want to give everything i have to the poor people on the street.

i want salvation for every person ever who have and will exist.

i want to sleep in every day and stay up every night.

i want to throw away my phone and call everyone i know.

i want to be the best i can in everything i do.

i want to be free.

but despite all of this:

i want a family.

i want to have a house in the suburbs, city, country, outback, hills, valleys or on an island.

i want to raise some kids.

i want a good income.

i want to sit and do nothing.

i want to study interesting thing.

i want to make some place my home.

i want to settle down somewhere.

i want to be able to afford everything i need.

i want to run a successful and ethical business.

i want to work for myself and i want to work for someone else.

i want to buy the best things for my future children so they are happy.

i want to teach them to be responsible.

i want to have a loving wife who treats me well, but is tough and keeps me in line.

i want to be safe and secure.

i want to go through with all of these things, but i don't know how.

no time for sitting around

2007-02-20T01:32:00.000+11:00

well, i've worked out this week is gonna be very busy:

tomorrow:
do some mixing
pick up Damien Rice tickets
see big ships in Sydney Harbour

wed:
go to o-week stuff with esther
do more mixing
do more maths
start physics

thurs:
more maths
more mixing
more physics
see Damien Rice at night

fri:
make sure maths is finished and mail it off
hopefully have finished mixing by now
hopefully would have understood and done at least one physics question

oh dear...

you act as if you just don't care, you look as if you're going somewhere...

2007-02-16T22:34:00.000+11:00

ok, so there is nobody online right now, just me, my computer, and everyone else having a life or something.

ok, checked my emails, myspace, forums, comics, news, weather, bank balance... what is left to do?

there's nothing on tv (well, i WAS going to watch the Bourne Identity but forgot it was on) for awhile till JTV is on, but i've already gone and sneak peaked a look at tonight's Hack which looks to be the only part that interests me on tonights show. those young liberals sure annoy me a lot. matter of fact, all liberals annoy me. if you're from overseas and reading this (i doubt it as this is the first day) the australian liberal party is the 'right' party, and the australian labor party is the 'left'. weird huh.

right now i'm just sitting here listening to 'The Police' and imagining what they'll be like when i see them play live. it'll be great, even though large scale concerts have been ruined for me for the rest of my life. i'll feel like i'm being ripped off, after paying $90 to sit in the back row, but i guess it's not often i want to see bands at large concerts. it'll be weird being herded into the stalls instead of just walking around wherever i want like i usually do. bizzare.

i got my wisdom teeth out last week (7th feb) and all day today the stitches have decided to come out. it's VERY gross. i've never had stitches of any kind before, so having some and having them in my mouth is kinda grossing me out. i feel sick every time a new bit comes out or i accidentally swallow some. yuck!
the good thing about it all is that it means i'm getting better. i can't wait to eat things like hamburgers again, where you just bite in and eat, rather than cut it all up small and chew with your front few teeth for an ice age or two.

i've gotta get a life, but instead i got a blog.

all stitched up

2007-02-16T18:25:00.000+11:00

well, today i didn't do very much. basically i went to the newsagent and bought exercise books for uni.

i've got to get stuck in to doing this work. i've already failed it once, and i'm extreemly afraid i'll fail it horribly again. this time i've got some textbooks from esther i'll hopefully use and get knowledge from, and maybe i'll start my physics stuff a bit earlier this go around!

who knows.

stuck in the blog

2007-02-16T18:16:00.000+11:00

hey, i made a blog

lets see if i post in it much......