Hmmm. I just downloaded Windows Live Writer and am trying it out for the first time.  So far, it doesn’t look like anything special but to be fair I’ve looked at it for literally 20 seconds.

I just noticed the “preview” tab. That’s pretty cool. You can switch between editing the blog entry and what it’ll actually look like instantly. I know you can do that with the default web editor, but this is a little faster. 

Looks like it might not be able to do moods or “what I’m listening to” stuff. Seems pretty useless.

Has anyone else ever played the old Spiderman/Venom game Separation Anxiety?
Has anyone else every wondered why, in that game, Spiderman looks like a child molester?

What up with that?

A crazy random happenstance brought me to stumble upon this phenomenon earlier today...

The information superhighway formally known as the internet, brings us "thesixtyone.com".
It's freakin' sweet.  Do yourself a favour and just go check it out. Seriously. 

thesixtyone.com

The ultimate music-based video game doesn't exist yet, but if it did, it would be Orchestra Hero. That'd be badass.

P.S. Driving to classical music is the shit. If you haven't tried it before, give it a chance. It's awesome.

P.P.S. Lunchtime.

My Oma told me this the other night when I was at her house for dinner a while back: Jeden menschen recht getan, ist eine kunst die nemand man. Or at least I think that's how it went. 

This is old news to me already, but I was planning to write something about it and just hadn't gotten around to it. So on Friday night I went with a few friends to The Apollo (a nice, cozy bar/pub in Thunder Bay). It was the first time I had been there and I was pleasantly surprised. It had some impressive mood lighting (not wild or flashy, just well done) with a few couches and booths, a kitchen, and a (sadly) understocked bar. The understocked bar is the worst part, and, for me that's a good part to be a worst part as I don't really mind what I'm drinking. I mean, I'm at the bar in the first place for (#1) the music, (#2) the people, not the alcohol. So anyways, it's a nice place.

Then Jenny Omnichord started her set. She's got a very unique and "charming" (as Mike put it) style. And how badass is it that Jenny gets up on stage by herself with only an Omnichord on her lap? Super badass. It was great, she concluded with a cover of the Guess Who's "These Eyes" (also badass). Then it was Jill's turn to take the stage. She blew me away. Her set was everything I needed. It was inspiring and refreshing and it made me want to pick up my guitar again, with a purpose. I could go on about her for pages and pages, but I'll just say she probably has the best singing voice I have ever heard, her guitar playing and style were great, aaaaaaand she was pretty darn sexy up on stage playing her guitar.
     *blush* Yeah. I have a crush. It's no big deal... right? *blush*
The girls each did one duet with Mathias Kom (headman of The Burning Hell, also pretty sexy :P). These duets were excellent, Mathias' and Jenney's voice do quite well to give that "story telling" type feel to song. And Mathias with Jill kicked ass too because they both have very different, but amazing voices.

Then it was The Burning Hell up next. To my pleasant surprise (yes I used that phrase. twice.), THREE OF THE MEMBERS OF THE BURNING HELL WERE Mathias, Jenny and Jill!  ^.^ (They have about 11 members total, but only those three and the drummer were there).  Boy were they great together. They played songs like "Grave Situation" and "Everything you Believe is a Lie". Their material is also very different and awesome. *Anecdote: While they were playing they got three people up on stage (I was one of them ^.^ I stood beside Jill :P) and we were asked trivia questions (I think) and on the last one I had to get the audience to say how kickass Mathias' moustache is and I was going to win a t-shirt, but they couldn't find it, so I said I'd take Jill as my prize instead. She agreed.

After The Burning Hell, the D'ubervilles played. They were alright. Great musicians, but more of a mainstream sound. They still put on a good show, but in my opinion they were just shadowed by the other performers.

Anyways, after the show was badass too because my friend Ian and I (and Mike, Ian's drummer) were talking to Jenny, Mathias and Jill. I bought Jill's CD "anything but the truth", The Burning Hell CD "Happy Birthday", and Mathias a beer. Mathias gave me a t-shirt and a pin.  They were all wicked nice (oxymoronic? haha), and had some good stories. Afterwards we headed to Mike's house and I vaguely remember walking home. Ian led the way.
Aaaand that was my Friday night.

(Turns out both the CDs I bought are excellent.  "anything but the truth" is my favourite though.)

I never did get Jill. *pout*

I've been working on a new gif for the last few days (yeah... I was working slowly due to me just playing around with different photoshop features and not constantly working on it et cetera). And here's the finished product. It's a mammoth in size, coming out to about 400K and measures in at over 600 pixels in length and width.

Well... here it is, I give you Mr. Rob Cantor.

I have the feeling that the world isn't yet ready for my art. Oh well, it'll be appreciated by generation upon generation after my lifetime.

Enjoy.   : )

By: McKenna
Here and now we are less than we were nearly yesterday.
Death is a mystery to those left behind.
So we offer a chorus to those gone before us
and one in particular shines.

So I’ll say hello to the girls that you know
and they’ll laugh ’till they cry over stories of you.
At a table for one I’ll recall all you’ve done
and I’ll finish my Guinness for two.

Away, oh, away! A glass for one away.
Today, oh, today! The past is done today.

Well, they say when you lose any limb you could choose
that surely you feel it, but surely it’s gone.
In the same way, we know, up above we’ll be whole
and our grand misadventures go on.

Though I miss you like burning, I don’t wish your returning,
for you have gone on to joy evermore.
And I’ll follow you soon for a life is a tune
and together we’ll sing the encore.

Yeah? Well I wish I had bad hearing too, so I could buy cheap speakers and still be satisfied.

I wish I had a paid account so that I could take a poll: Do you think Pocky is sexy? Yes. No.

Thank you.

I just got back from watching the Thunder Bay symphony orchestra, the jeans 'n classics band along with the Lakehead University vocal ensamble perform QUEEN. It was amazing. I was skeptical going in because hey, nobody can replace Freddy. The main vocalist didn't even come close to replacing Mr. Mercury, but he made the songs enjoyable in his own way, if you know what I mean.

Anyways, one of my favourite bits was The Flash Gordon Theme Song. That's right. Flash Gordon WITH A FULL CHOIR. It was awesome. It was even better because I didn't see it coming. The solo in Bohemian Rhapsody was done by a trumpet player. She was incredible! A TRUMPET solo. I can't even describe, it was mind-blowing. They also played Radio Ga Ga, which is my favourite Queen song ^.^  <3<3<3<3, and encored with Fat Bottomed Girls.

It was the best thirteen dollars ever spent. Not the best thirteen dollars I've ever spent. The best thirteen dollars ever spent. ;)

It was inspiring. Now I'm off to go spend the night in the company of friends.

I don't know what it is about Thunder Bay, but I just can't sleep up here. I mean, I've been away from home before and never been an insomnia like this before. Maybe that's because I've always had squarked right there beside me, and now it's just me in my prison cell of a dorm room. So I sit. I sit and I think. I think that this is probably much like what an actual prison inmate feels like. Not much to do but to sit and think.

I'm thinking that I should really change my major. On the one hand I like my major because English is a very open subject, in that you're perfectly entitled to your own legitimate opinion. Period. I enjoy studying most literature. However, now that I'm taking history here, I'm really enjoying the course and where it's going. I think if I don't switch my major to history, I'd at least like to continue my studies in it to the point that I can use it as a second (or third in this case) "teachable" subject.

It seems the only thing that is sure at this point is that I'm sticking to my computer science no matter what. That comes as no surprise at all to people who know me. Go nerdy computer skills! Woot.

I suppose I could read Angels & Demons to cure my insomnia, but who would want to read Dan Brown at a time like this? And by "at a time like this" I mean ever. I suppose that's not fair to Mr. Brown because I've never read much of any of his writing. I should give him another chance.

Hmmmmmmmmm.... *sound of a book opening?*

So I made a new icon again. I hope you like it as much as I do. I wish it was a little more "neon sign-like", but I'm still satisfied. I also changed my layout/theme/whatever because the old one was pretty blah and I think this one fits my new icon better ^.^  I don't know why I'm in such a mood for ugly neon sign style stuff but I am. Who'da thought?

I'm kinda dreading my guitar class tomorrow, but it's only a half-hour and I know I'll be relieved once it's over with. It's classical guitar and I like, but I've been sick and haven't really found much time to practice lately. :S Oh well. I'll probably finish listening to this album and then hit the sack. Tally Hall, by the way, is an amazing band. They're not super popular (that I know of), yet. They have a wonderful style that is very different than most of the other bands out there now. They defined themselves as "a wonky rock band" in the past. They've got a demo CD and a few EPs that I don't think are available anymore, but now they have one album called Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. It's basically the demo CD recorded in a studio (the demo CD was recorded in the attic of one of the members). They're fabulous. Check them out. ^.^

www.tallyhall.com

That's all for tonight. G'night.

NOTE: This post is dedicated to the T.A. who said I couldn't use italics to show emphasis.     :P

Once again, I'm finding it next to impossible to get a good night's sleep at school. I don't know what it is, but sleep is one thing I just can't seem to do. It's very lonely in Thunder Bay at three o'clock in the morning. Everyone's asleep, save me, of course. I find myself trying to find something to occupy myself with so I wont be so lonely. I tried beating Halo on Legendary, but I'm not very good so I get frustrated after trying to snipe the same eight elites over and over and over and over. It's kinda funny, really*. I guess that's the whole reason I even play that game. At this time of night I always find myself wishing I was back in Toronto with squarked. I suppose when I'm finish writing this I'm going to watch an episode of firefly, maybe make myself a cup of tea and try to achieve the impossible, (no, not beat Legendary :P) sweet, merciful sleep.

I played Risk earlier with a few people and at least that was fun. I came to the game late, so I joined forces with Laura as her military advisor, and we brought Ukraine to power by dominating "Jer", Cody, and "Big Mike". What can I say, I'm a prodigy warlord. My next objective: To gather all the penguins in Antarctica and launch an invasion of my house so we can all go swimming in the creek. It will be a wiggletastic wigglefest. 

I wish I could actually do the ridiculous stuff I think up. Oh well, maybe if I fall asleep tonight I can at least dream about it.

* - the only sentence in which I didn't use italics. Maybe that T.A. was right after all. :P

This is the first supernatural avatar I've ever made. And yes, it's very plain. I used minimal effects on it (just to alter the colour a little). I liked it. I made a few others which were mediocre at best. One was a picture of Dean bleeding from the forehead talking to Sam from the last episode of season two with the caption "life's short". I liked that one the best, but visually it was appalling.

I learned someone I went to high school with committed suicide the other day. A brother of a friend actually. And even though it came as no real surprise to me, it still affected me in ways unforeseen. I suppose that's what inspired me to do the "life's short" avatar. In a way (maybe a sad, and even morbid way) I find myself thinking that if he ended his life, at least he wanted it that way. But then I get to thinking, maybe he didn't really want it that way. It's hard for me to tell. It's hard for anyone to tell I suppose. I think it affected me the way it did because not so long ago I felt quite suicidal myself. But I count myself lucky, because I wasn't too far off from it when I found something that made me truly happy. Something that made me want to live. Something that gave me a reason to live. Before then, if anyone told me there was something like that for me I would have told them to bugger off and go find someone else to preach to. I find myself wondering if this guy could have found something like this before it was too late, and if it would have changed his mind like it did mine.

-jive

So last night I was up 'till four am playing Warcraft 3 (no, not WORLD of Warcraft. That's the MMORPG. Warcraft 3 is a RTS). I'm pretty much exhausted from doing this constantly (a few times a week) and I suppose that this is what induced the craziest non-drug induced but seemingly drug induced dreams of my life. Today's word of the day: induced. So anyways, here I am, sleeping in my bed minding my own business when my mind goes off on some wild tangent of a dream. First it starts off as TF2 (Team Fortress 2), which is a clear indication I've been playing that game way too much. I have exact time here recorded on Steam.... 42.9 hours in the last two weeks. I'm a nerd, but holy crap that's a lot of TF2. Anyways, back to my dream... I don't remember much of the TF2 part it didn't last long anyway... basically everything was cartoon looking. And there were rocket ships. I think I was the red team, ha ha ha. So our rocket takes off (end TF2 part of the dream), and we start flying through some city. I don't know WHO was flying this thing, but they SUCKED. We were flying into all kinds of buildings. Then there was a massive building the size of Rhode Island and we were heading straight for it. Just when I thought we were royally screwed, the rocket flies INTO the window, and inside the building it's just a massive three dimensional matrix of windows that went on for all eternity. And here we are, navigating through this 3D-Window-Matrix. I have no idea where we were going. Then I woke up, said "What the fuck?", and went back to sleep. THE END.

Current mood: TOTORO ON CRACK.

I had nothing to do this morning (except to study for a midterm worth 50% of my grade), so I decided to make some avatars. My favourite of the bunch is my new default. I love Vincent. ^.^

I really have to look into getting into some Cowboy Bebop communities so I can get involved in some fan fic. It just always seems there's never enough time for anything. How cliché is that? But really, nobody ever has the time to do what they really want, they're all too preoccupied. Me included.
-jive