Music that has been stuck in my head - A tale of two tunes.

This morning's tune is from Detroit Grand Pubahs, and is dedicated to my workmate Pauline. Unfortunately, Sony won't let me embed the full clip, so here's a bodgy one that someone else uploaded:


The full clip can be found here, and is very much worth the watch, if only for the midget cowboy and his fake beard.

The second tune is from a couple of weekends ago - I blame Rage in the morning...

This one also suffers from Sony not liking to share all its music on youtube - I can't even see the original video on youtube because it's blocked in AU. I shake my fist at you Sony.

If you can seek out the original, I like it for the Kightrider-esque bike. Plus the chicks on bikes are hawt - makes me want to go for a ride.

Guitar Hero Metallica

So I clocked GH: Metallica in hard over the weekend - I was a little disappointed by how easy the final track (The thing that should not be) was, but the excellent pain of completing One on hard more than made up for it.

What it really did though, was remind me how much I love Metallica! I've had a real craving to listen to them the last two days as a result, but I don't have any of their albums (I had a bit of a boycott against them after they made Napster cancel my account years ago in the whole Napster v Metallica thingy). I think this is something I might have to rectify at some stage.

The one track that has really been spinning round and round in my head, due to a combination of the weekend's gaming and the frenetic pace of work at the moment is Battery - what an awesome song!

I look like an idiot listening to this stuff at work, because I can't quite stop my head from bouncing a little to it. Speaking of work, it's been getting pretty challenging recently, but I've actually been really enjoying the uptick in pace - makes me feel like I'm squeezing everything out of the day

I would also like to share this excellent video that came to me via Glennboi and the H dog.

More awesome than a double rainbow...

I am Iron Man

Good news and bad news (both unrelated to the house).

The bad first - my headphones went walkabout from work during a moving day last Friday. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth - they were a fairly nice pair, bought for around $80 from the Akihabara shop while in transit in Tokyo. They were getting on a bit, but still had good sound and I had some sentimental attachment to them.

Now the good news, I got to go out and buy some new Sennheiser canalphones (CX300 - II)! They sound great and have excellent sound isolation, which is a mandatory requirement for open plan office living. Some more good news - we got newer (second hand) computers as a result of the moving day, with new shiny (for me at least) Windows 7. And I netted a window seat again, with an excellent view of the plaza outside the front of my work.

I'm using the new headphones to listen to Black Sabbath. Here's a video of Metallica covering Black Sabbath's Iron Man, I think at Black Sabbath's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or something. Anyway, it's a good cover. Yeah.


There are other things to blog about, but I need some more time to think about them before I put them up. Which makes them sound more ominous than they are, it's more just that I don't have time at the moment!

Friday video art

Another lunch time browsing find, this is a result of the "lets colour" project. And it's awesome.

Via Gizmodo.

Hopefully that's some colour to get you through your day. Quite frankly, I cannot wait for mine to be over, thank feck it's Friday.

PS: Pulled the trigger on a home loan application yesterday morning. I was pretty sure we weren't going to bother with a broker and just go to the bank, but we took a last attempt at a broker a colleague of Dana's recommended. Long story short, he was excellent, and I think we got a really good deal on the loan. I cant wait until the pre-settlement inspection on Monday!

Bleep'n'skweep music

I've been listening to Ratat's LP3 and LP4 today while trying to get my head around a particularly convoluted piece of work, and it has helped me no end. The mixture of weird ambient sounds, bleeps and skweeps has been just the ticket. It helps that there are no lyrics to distract either. Here are two of their latest album, LP4:

Check out cartoon anti-drug video some joker posted with the second track - made me chuckle a little.

The music reminds me of one of my favourite scenes from Spaceballs

They don't make comedy as good as that any more...

We've seen a drop in all three measures of workforce engagement

Hello! Fancy seeing you here - it's been a while, and I bet you thought I'd forgotten all about you.

This is simply not the case - I've just been swamped at work and have been going through a massive reading phase recently. I've been averaging around 3 books a week since about mid-August. I blame this on the staycation and also Dana ordering a lot of books off the internets. I'm starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of books at home though, will need seek out other pursuits. Or buy more books...

The work side of it is a little bit interesting. By rights, working in a policy area that both sides of Parliament are swearing blue that they won't be active in, it should be really quiet and cruisey in the caretaker period. But unfortunately, this has not been the case, due to a couple of things. The first is that the time frames for the issue that I'm working on are really tight, and there's not that much room to stop and do nothing. In addition, the time frame is being set by Fair Work Australia, the federal industrial tribunal, which doesn't take that much notice of elections.

The second is that we had a re-structure, and my direct supervisor took a voluntary redundancy. As she wasn't replaced, I've had to take a few extra duties.

None of this is really that exciting to you, I'm sure. Suffice to say, I had a whole heap of work to do and now, I'm in post election limbo, with much less to do. It's actually pretty demoralising not knowing who I'm going to be working for, and not being able to get working on it. Don't get me wrong, we've done a lot of prep for either way, but there's not much more that I can do without actually having a Government.

The funny thing is, everyone else where I work reached this point weeks ago. A friend summarised it with a lol public servants:

Hopefully it will all be over soon, but to be honest, for the sake of the next three years, I think I'd rather just have them go back to the polls and someone get a full majority. You think this whole independents horse holding the power thing is bad now, wait until there's some essential bill that Parliament can't pass because Bob Katter's a nut bar in a cowboy hat. It'll be double dissolution before you can say "how's ya father" and we'll be right back where we are now.

Another six weeks of annoyance vs. three years (and probably less) of stagnation in the Parliament? Shit choices either way really. Although I guess if you go in for politics generally and it means the other side (which ever that is to you) doesn't get their way for another three years, there might be some consolation there.

Bleugh.

In other news, I'm going to Foreshore in November with Dana and kindred spirits Karla and Esa. It costs a mint, but I'm looking forward to a few bevvies in the sun in a nice location and some tuuuuunes. I'm also looking forward to laughing at Tiesto.

"OHAI2U RAVERS, I ARE NUMBER 1 DJ LOL!!!1!1"

To balance out the Tiesto, here's some Noisia and Phace. I've been listening to Phace and Misanthrop's 'From Deep Space' this afternoon, and it's keeping me positive.

The sample 20 seconds in to this till about a minute always makes me smile. Also making me smile in that particular clip are all the ravers caught making made nightclub faces. Somebody make some noise (or some such) for the DJ!

To round it all out, here's an absolutely awesome clip that was on Giz a little while back of some stop motion animation. I also dig the soundtrack. Hey Daver, this one's for you (no play dough though).

Taking care in caretaker

Now that the election has been called and Parliament has been dissolved, Canberra enters a special time called "caretaker" in which the public services continues day to day functions, but can no longer have ministerial or cabinet approval on more substantial issues. This means that policy directions, stakeholder consultation and major projects are all basically put on pause while the country works out who the Government is going to be for the next couple of years.

For a policy area like the one I work in, this means that things get very, very quiet for a while. This has already started, and the feeling on the floor is rather frivolous and festive.

The problem for me, is that because I'm on a temporary task force at the moment dealing with a very specific issue, and I've also just lost the only other member of my team to the restructure, I still have a metric butt load of work to do. I'm finding it really challenging not to get caught up in the relaxed mood of everyone around me when I still have a lot to do!

To this end, sound isolating canal phones and the music on YouTube are my best friends.

Here's what I'm listening to right now:

A little warning on that, the visuals are a bit whack. Plus, you know, it's dubstep so it won't appeal to all tastes.

The upshot of this for blog readers? The frequency of posts will probably bump up a little bit in the near future. We're also getting closer and closer to completion on the house, so there will probably be lots of things around that to blog about.

For example, the real estate agent has advised that she will be sending out an email about the estimated completion date today or tomorrow, which I'm really looking forward to. Hopefully this will inform the timing of any more furniture purchases!

Now, time to eat some lunch, and then make annoying phone calls that I don't want to make.

Now it’s time for a little braggadocio, while I swing my arms like Ralph Macchio.

Home sick today, which is very lame. On the bright side, we did get to have a look inside the house yesterday, after all the builders (and sunlight) had left for the day. The more time wears on, the more obvious it is where you can get into the site without jumping the fence. I almost feel like they aren't trying to keep things secure any more, there's a huge gap in one section of the fence.

Mind you, it does make life a little easier for nosey future home owners.

Anyway, there were a few interesting things to see on the site. As mentioned the other day, part of the internal driveway has been put in.

Unfortunately, this is not in our area of the site at all. Still, it's good to see progress around the place.

However, there has been some things happening around our end of the site, namely a kitchen and some painting!

Here is the kitchen in question! Note Dana sizing it up with a professional eye. The bench tops are a pale ceaser stone and the splash back is a white tile. Interestingly, it looks like the telephone line comes into the kitchen, which actually makes it a bit of a weird spot in terms of router positioning. I might look into getting a second outlet put in when we get the phone line installed, just so we don't have to have the router on the kitchen counter. 

I'm also pretty happy with the bench space and cupboard space - it's heaps more than what we have at the moment!

There's also been some painting going on - no idea if the final coat has been done yet, but it's all a lot whiter than it was before. There's also tiles in the bathrooms and the laundry now!

The skylight's mentioned the other day have been installed on the roof, but haven't quite yet made their way down into the interior.

To round out the post, here's a clip from nerdcore pioneer, MC Frontalot. The visuals aren't much, but the music's better. I did have to look a few words up in the dictionary though. To help you out, braggadocio means empty swagger, or that style of rap where the MC talks up how awesome they are.

Edit: I swapped in a better clip - the recording in the previous one sounded a bit poo. This one is from the intro to the doco "Nerdcore Rising".

ELO rule

I was reminded at the pub the other night how much I love ELO. You should love them too.

Yeah.

The Presets - If I Кnow You (Tania & Jori Version)

I started writing a full post on house progress last night, but it was defeated by TV and red wine.

Instead I present you with a track from a CD that someone lent me at work (MoS Uncovered 2) which is "chilled" remixes of the popular house that MoS like to push, interspersed with older tunes that someone who is clearly not me considers classic. Predictably, a lot of it was shit, but I really liked this track, maybe because I'm a sucker for the Presets.

Excellent music for a rough morning at work.

To follow on the "best of chill out remix '96" theme, here's another track I enjoyed - the Stakka and Skynet remix of Morcheeba's "The Sea", a prime example of what happens when dark side drum and bass producers go soft:

PS: Happy days, Blogger.com has reinstated the spellchecker! We will all benefit...

Eat them up yum yum

Today's tune to get you through the morning is "Pacman (Power-Pill Remix)" by Power-Pill (aka Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin). There's a couple of different uploads of this tune on youtube, but only the one below features a mish mash of Tron clips.

Ahhhhh yeah. Makes me want to go and watch the original Tron again. To help get you in that same nostalgic mind set, here's a blurry 1982 trailer of the original Tron:

For extra laughs, here's the description on the youtube post:

FrankSchenk6 — February 07, 2008 — Kevin Flynn is a former employee of the software corporation ENCOM, now running a arcade. Flynn has been trying to hack into ENCOM's mainframe computer to find evidence that ENCOM's senior executive Ed Dillinger stole four video games he created. But Dillinger's supercomputer "Master Control Program" foils Flynn's efforts and dictates and controls most of the computer systems. One night, Flynn's former girlfriend Lora and her boyfriend, ace computer programmer Alan Bradley helps Flynn break into ENCOM to shut down the MCP with Alan's security program "TRON". But MCP uses Lora's matter transmission program and converts Flynn into data and sends him into the computer. Flynn finds himself in a electronic world ruled by the MCP and his evil chief henchman Sark, where computer programs are the alter-egos of their creators and are forced to compete in gladiatorial games. With help from Tron, a heroic and fearless security program and his lover, Yori, Flynn sets out destroy the MCP and help Tron liberate the system from the MCP's control, by destroying the MCP is Flynn's only way of returning to the real world.

Gold! I have to admit though, I didn't realise this movie was quite as old as all that. If it came out in 1982, it's older than I am, which makes my nostalgia for it a little misplaced. Whatever, it's still awesome.

So awesome that Disney are remaking it in 3D. 3D!!1!1!11one!!1eleven

Stereo sound, straight to your earholes!

The trailer actually looks pretty good, despite the reliance on the 3D gimmick. Unfortunately embedding is disabled on the clip, so you'll just have to follow this link here to watch it. I recommend it. I really hope it ends up being good.

Edit: I'm totally going to make that pacman track my ringtone!

Digitized fart sounds

ZOMFG second post in one day!

Toooo much reading complicated things is doing my head in this afternoon. Then this track came on from a repository of drum and bass singles and VIPs I keep on hand for emergencies: "Move VIP" by Trace and Rymetyme.

I know what you're thinking, it sounds like digitized fart sounds. I don't care, it was just what the doctor ordered this afternoon, and I want to share it with you all.

That is all.

PS: if you followed a link thinking this would be about the house, scroll on to the next post. This is just an afternoon mind dump about music that I like.

PPS: We all know it's true that the best thing Goldie ever did was "Innercity Life". Starring in Snatch was a close second. I'm yet to see anything else particularly good come out of him. Some dudes on fb just (inadvertently) reminded me of this, and I thought that should be said.

Edit: The same dudes just reminded me that he was a bad guy in a Bond movie. I won't make the call that he was a really awesome one, but I would at least put it above nothing particularly good.

Ah yes, aint that fresh - everybody wants to get down like that

Good news house progress followers - the unit in our complex that went back on the market (for a substantially increased price - see previous posts) is now under offer! Hopefully this means it's selling for the ticket price on the site of $455k. This is pretty excellent for us, because ours is a slightly nicer place (on paper at least) and is a substantial increase in value from a year ago when it was first on offer.

I was fairly certain that the unit would sell for a fair bit more (given Canberra's crazy property market), but I worried that $455k was above what the market would pay.

In other news, there were some fairly fast paced changes at work last week that saw me start a new job on Monday morning, after finding out about it on Thursday. Its a position I had expressed interest in, so I see it as a positive move, but it's work that I've never done before, so I'm currently feeling a little out of my depth. This isn't aided by the fact that I don't actually have a director as yet (she hopefully will start next Monday) and that it is the first time I've moved to a completely new job since I joined the public service.

It does fulfill a personal goal I've had to be part of a "taskforce". Now all that's left is become a member of thinktank.

I'll leave you with a song that was stuck in my head and prompted me to listen to some hip hop today (and then go back to dark, dirty drum and bass).

I heart Hot Chip...

... or at least the two albums of theirs that I've got (The Warning and Made in the Dark). I just saw a clip on youtube of theirs that I was not impressed with at all. Sometimes it feels like a small betrayal when a band I really like releases an album that I don't like, but I guess I can't hold it against someone if they don't want to make the same tracks over and over.

Anyway, enough of that mindless drivel. Here's a link to a clip of theirs I really do like - Over and Over. Unfortunately, the emedding has been disabled (curses!). I'm using it to relax my mind before netball tonight, with the possibility of another ignominious defeat.

Friends and accquaintances on twitter and facebook may have noticed that these posts and my google reader shared items are now being pushed regularly to facebook and twitter with twitterfeed. It's something I'm trying out at the moment. Please let me know if it's annoying, otherwise you're likely to keep seeing it. It does rather help having it automated, and it makes me feel like I'm not neglecting facebook when I'm sharing all the interesting things I read on google reader instead. Why should I worry about neglecting fb? That I cannot tell you, but still I do.

Rather than bore you with the details of my rather mundane week, I shall instead share a rather groovy video I saw on Gizmodo.

ENVISION : Step into the sensory box from SUPERBIEN on Vimeo.

In other news, I've spent some time with a measuring tape and ordered a custom shirt from http://www.indochino.com.au/. I'm interested to see how it pans out. The cost was around US$99, which isn't too far off what I pay for a nice cotton business shirt at the moment (less on sale). I'm going to write it up for the office newsletter as well, which I may well repost up here at some stage.

Now...off to netball!

Frash Metal Friday...

It hasn't been quite as busy today, but I'm feeling pretty brain dead regardless. This has made the banter of the next section over more of an annoyance than usual, so I've had my headphones in all day trying to avoid them.

The best part of this is that I spent most of the arvo listening to the best of Black Sabbath. I went through a huge stage of listening to Sabbath a lot last year, but remarkably, have never really got particularly sick of it. That's a bit of strange thing for me, because I often tire of music quickly - I can never stand to have a CD sit in a player for more than one play through at a time. I always thought that was pretty normal (why would you want to listen to the same tracks again if you've just heard them?!), but Dana feels differently. If she had her way, the CD in the car player would never change.

Anyway, this brings me to my favourite track of the afternoon's listening: Turn Up the Night. When this started playing it was one of those rare unplanned moments where the music fits your mood and situation perfectly and you can't help by smile. This time round, it was the completion of a tricky document I had been working on that did it for me.

Here it is:

Now for something completely different: Big L - Ebonics. A1++ wordplay, would trade again.

Ahhh yeah. Knock off can't come round soon enough.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain perform Shaft

Words fail me.

Props to the man like Mark Bothe for forwarding this on to me.

Edit: They also cover Teen Spirit, rather amusing.

TGIF!!

Words don't really express how happy I am that it's Friday, it's 15 minutes to work drinks and knock off. I'm going to let Kool and the Gang take a run at it instead....

There's extra reasons for it to be good, like poker tonight, good news for a mate, busy times at work and.....*drum roll please*.....

Promotion! That's right, the job I'm acting in and did a terrible interview for in March is finally now official confirmed to be mine. It feels more satisfying that exciting, but it's bloody good to get it sorted.

Pusherman

I've had this song stuck in my head all morning. Curtis Mayfield knows what it's about.

Tuuuuune

Today's Tune of the Day is Raiden - Infection (E-Sassin rmx). Sci-Fi tech drum and bass at it's finest.

The perfect antidote to annoying work and loud workplace neighbours.

Week 26 (and bleep bleep music)

I was thinking that I should stop calling these weekly updates and just call them house updates or something, but that would require going back and re-tagging all the previous weekly update posts, which I'm not going to do.

Anyway, I finally made it up to the site with a camera and took a few more pictures. Unfortunately, they're not that great because there was someone working on the site, which precluded jumping the fence and getting a better view. Much as I found this annoying at the time, I can't really complain that people are working on the site on the weekend - the more work done more often on the site the better!

I did manage to snap some through the fence, and what you'll notice straight away, is that in addition to all sorts of brick walls, there's a roof!

Booya! The astute among you may also notice the pallet of roof tiles in the foreground. As you'll see in the next shot, despite there being guttering etc, the roof does not yet have tiles.

You can see Dana's bike in the foreground here. I'm happy to report this is the second time she's made the ride up to the site. There may be hope for her becoming a cyclist yet...

I've included a shot of some other units around the site that are a bit further along to give an idea of the colour of the roof tiles.

Now we play the waiting game once more. To help tide you over, here's a version of Pink Floyd's Money from Dark Side of the Moon in an 8-bit format. Ahhh, the nostalgia...

Edit: Also: Master of Puppets in 8-bit. This has amused and entertained me for well over a minute now.