FreddysHouse - Blogs - TdC

haldern pop time again

TdC — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 20:50:35 GMT

wow, so three days of music are once again in the past, and though I am sorry to see them go, I am tired out lol

so...who have I seen? here's a list in random order:

David Ford
Seabear
Beach House
Cymbals Eat Guitars
Chapel Club
I Blame Coco
Stornoway
Wendy McNeill
Fyfe Dangerfield
Post War Years
Esben and the Witch
Daniel Benjamin
Triggerfinger
Detroit Social Club
Philipp Poisel
Rox
Delphic
Mumford & Sons
Beirut
Fanfarlo
Frightened Rabbit
Blood Red Shoes
Efterklang
Sophie Hunger
The Tallest Man on Earth
Yeasayer
The National
everything everything
Helgi Jonsson
Villagers
Bear in Heaven
Sleepy Sun

fave band: currently Sleepy Sun, best gig: Mumford and Sons.

aaargh!!! uuurgh!!! nggggh!!!

TdC — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:48:54 GMT

ok erm well, just thought I'd quickly document this a)before I forget, and b)so the rest of the interpipes will know, but here it is:

I have a Sony Vaio Z21. it's a laptop sculpted of carbon beauty. if it vibrated I'd never leave the house again. anyway, it contains some music. because I value the length of my epeen and am as exhibitionistic (is that a word?) as can be, I like people to be able to view my incredible super awesome musical taste.

my computers contain lots of music, but since I acquired an (imo) very nice stereo, I want to play said music through an apparatus and speakers worthy of such a task -and at the same time flaunt my assets for all to see and admire-. so, the last.fm thingy was a must. for many days I searched in vain for an audio streamer proggy thing that had last.fm support. some have it, but only for music played on the local machine, which kind of defeats the point of an audio streamer and made me imagine that I'd come up with a desire for something that existed only in my own mind (which I tend to do now and again, no biggie) but I am not a programmer so I can't make one. bahs.

anyway, enter the laptop. it has an HDMI port. my hifi unit has several HDMI ports. my ps/3 is connected to said hifi unit via such a port and cable. a small thing, and easy, to remove the cable from the pissthree, and stick it into the vaio you'd think. and lots of swearing ensued.

so, after plugging the cable in there was no audio over HDMI. try as I might, nothing. oh, the lappy sees my NAD hifi, in fact, it can even output visuals through the NAD onto my HD tv, but no audio. I decide the culprit must be the Realtek HDMI audio driver in the lappy. Bloody Taiwanese faffers I cry, have you no inkling of my blood pressure and general well-being? I set about to destroy every vestige of the driver in my Vaio, and reboot.

sure enough, bloody windows 7 gamely puts the driver back causing even more swearing and general malheur, this time directed at idiots based in Redmond. Now to take out the knives, so I go into the hardware manager and delete the HDMI audio device, which windows promptly replaces -after a scan for new hardware- with the Microsoft HDMI driver. Sorted! Not sorted! still no F&^#*@G audio to grace my ickle earses with pretty sounds! FFSWTFBBQ!

well, after some serious usage of the search engine beginning with G, I discover the following: for some reason, the laptop/windows/driver/whatever, will not allow audio output over the HDMI jack if the internal speakers exist as a device. not even if you tell windows in EVERY POSSIBLE WAY that the HDMI is primary sound output. the driver doesn't care.

so, go into the properties of your audio, find the tab that shows you the entries of your onboard speakers and the HDMI audio device, select the speakers and switch the pull-down tab there to "disable", proceeding to get rid of every device *except* the HDMI audio device. then, after tears, swearing, wishing death on all Taiwanese, Americans, panda's, killer whales, dogs, wasps....wait, I hate most dogs and despise wasps anyway. got a bit carried away there. Ahem. anyway, after doing all that, suddenly I have sound coming through the NAD, out of my speakers, into my pear like ears, and listed on last.fm.

SORTED!

playing CSS is for people who speak often of stabbing from behind

TdC — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:24:47 GMT

on assorted nights I have been playing CS:S on the new KEA (aka bunch of bacon loving noobs/RAGElings/gun fondlers and dog groomers) server, eg CSS://81.19.216.11:27015

during this time I have learned the following things:

I suck badly at CS:S
it is important to always be better than Jupitus and MYstIC G
Jup's kid is waay better than his old man ;)
I suck badly at CS:S
shooting Throdgrain is strangely rewarding, even/especially if you're on the same side
people facing away from you does not mean they haven't seen you
I suck badly at CS:S
try not to die with a live 'nade in your hand
Jupitus is the only person on the server who uses voice
I suck badly at CS:S
don't hold down triggers/stand in doorways/miss doors or windows when throwing fb or nade
try to be on the same team as Cal, Throdders and especially echo3s if they're playing :)
I suck badly at CS:S
bind a macro to buying your fave kit or you'll never get it
there will always be a lag spike at the instant you jump and pop a 'nade at a small target, reload, turn, run round a corner or swap weapons, so never do any of that stuff
I suck badly at CS:S
when people are saving your hostages, try to shoot the people and not the hostages
getting facialed by someone about 1 second into a match doesn't mean you suck per s�, it just means your head got in the way of their bullet
I suck badly at CS:S

Here's some more!

flashbangs and grenades travel a curved trajectory. Missing a door with one makes Throdgrain laugh at you.
shooting beavykins after he has killed you about 20 times in a row is almost as good as sex.
I suck badly at CS:S

will post more when I learn more ;)

moozikes! Haldern-Pop festival 2009

TdC — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:13:13 GMT

some of you know that I occasionally write for a Dutch music blog called File Under: New Music Well, thursday, friday and saturday of last week I was at Haldern-Pop in Germany, which is a (more or less indie oriented) music festival true to it's small footprint with only about 5500 tickets.

Was pretty awesome, and I saw a lot of bands I didn't know yet, so here's a list of what I've seen:

Day One

Baddies (surprisingly good on stage)
Broken Records (awesome)
Wildbirds & Peacedrums (awesome voices and percussion)
Palm Springs (shite)
Wintersleep (awesome)

Day Two

Asaf Avidan and the Mojos (meh bit full of themselves)
Port O'Brien (awesome)
The Temper Trap (awesome)
Final Fantasy (45 mins of violins got on my nerves)
Noah and the Whale (surprisingly awesome)
Anna Ternheim (took me a while to realize why there were suddenly so may girls around me o0)
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (awesome party, think Flaming Lips)
Colin Munroe (meh)
Loney, Deer (double meh)
Athlete (TRIPLE meh)

Day Three

William Fitzsimmons (really awesome)
Grizzly Bear (meh)
Bon Iver (more awesomesauce)
Hjaltal�n (fun Icelandic band)
The Thermals (average punkpop)
Mumford & Sons (awesome -this guy is Laura Marling's partner if that tells you anything)
Little Boots (she's tiny and I want to take her home with me)
BLK JKS (super awesome post-reggae with an amazing drummer)
Health (AMAZING)

You can read my stuff if you can handle Dutch here: day 1, day 2, day 3 and even of you can't it's worth it for my mate Dennis' awesome pictures :)

mountainbiking and beer in sunny scotland

TdC — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:06:05 GMT

from which I am now sadly returned. it was awesome though. in fact I note I must have said the word awesome about 3000 times during the week :)

GLENTRESS

YouTube - Glentress Spooky Wood

YouTube - Magic Mushroom at Glentress

YouTube - Electric Blue at Glentress

^^red, red and blue routes there. Not me in the vids sadly, due to a forgotten camera, but besides that Spooky Wood is pretty cool. The start is somewhat sobering inasmuch as the landing plateau for the emergency trauma helicopter is there as well. kind of bringing home potential risks. well, to me at least. Sadly, the clips don't particularly show the roughness of it all, and they certainly don't show the lung-exploding climb to the top of the hill, of which my legs are still twitching.

Your trail is made of stones and earth, packed down on the blue trails and loose-ish on the >blue with bumps, jumps and other stuff both natural and man made. The loose gravelly nature of riding the red made me freak out as my rear tyre was a very euro Schwalbe Racing Ralph 2.0 and while it's a good (no punctures at GT or other places) and fast rolling tyre, it also imo is made for other things than big and little rocks. Going through the berms at speed was quite an...um...experience as I was struggling with some grip issues. Ofc it was the first time I'd ever done it so it also could have been my noobness :)

DRUMLANRIG

Rik's Bike Shed Services - Drumlanrig Country Park, wildlife trails, walks and beautiful countryside

YouTube - kaiser drumlanrig june 2009

Drumlanrig MTB trail June 2008 on Yahoo! Video

^^everything I could find quickly, and once again not me. I think it's the blue routes in the vids too, but Will and I did the red, and Will went on to also do some black (because he's a nutter you see). Trails are somewhat like the trails I know in NL, but much rougher and ofc steeper here and there. The general climbing in Scotland is far more sustained where in NL you'd be climbing for a bit, Scotland you'll be climbing for a while, and then some more :) Anyway the root and mudfest that was the first 4 km of the red route took us about an hour and a half, so that translates to under 3km/h haha o0 Very rootsy, usually nicely in the switchbacks or turns so you had to pay attention heh. we'd been quite worried about the weather on the ride down from Edinburgh, but it had cleared nicely once we arrived and after some technical issues swiftly resolved by the awesome Rik (who makes the trails round Drumlanrig Castle) we seriously enjoyed ourselves.

Scores:
flat tyres: 0
falling: 2 (tdc and Will)
smacking trees: 1 (tdc)
beer: lots
weather: very good (surprise, sunny Scotland :))

angels and demons

TdC — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:41:44 GMT

Hey, so I've been to see A&D yesterday after some serious arm twisting and even bribery by my mates. And a stream of winging and disparaging comments from me ofc. However I like going to the cinema, even if it is to see a movie that I will probably find meh, and they know this and make good use of it.

Anyways, the good thing about Dan Brown is that the films are mostly always better than the books even though you will still be able to see right though the plot through even the most mild application of the old head-custard. Ofc, if you're allergic to applying your mind to anything, or perhaps do not have a mind, you can always go and see National Treasure (s|1|2) and then you'll have seen both The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons at once more or less except with a lot less Tom Hanks and more Nicolas Cage. But I digress.

A&D does it's damnedest to tell you nothing at all, cobbling together some randoms like CERN, a vague (and mostly unexplained) threat and lots of significant looks combined with AWESOME!! ACTION!! DUDES!! except the action isn't so awesome, and most of the dudes look like pasty IT project managers and die like flies at the first available opportunity :/ Besides that, a distinct lack of putting out by the otherwise quite yummy leading lady....come to think of it...the only lady iirc finalizes the religious theme quite well.

Well, my fave char is the assassin, who behaves like a cross between an honourable ninja and Leon the...err...assassin and is completely awesome for a narcissistic psychopath except that he manages to die like a noob which kind of put me off turning gay for him so I concentrated my lustful feelings on the hot babe sitting three rows down from me with the amazing cleavage (why do certain dutch girls dress like complete sluts when going to the cinema on a sunday btw? this isn't the first time I've noticed this, ladies!).

So, of the three films I've seen in recent days, eg Star Trek, Wolverine: Origins and The DaVin...err Angels and Demons I rate ST highest, and A&D lowest though W:O really gave it a fight for last place.

London Calling three day music festival in Amsterdam

TdC — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:51:57 GMT

some of you may have noticed that I've been quiet for a few days, and you're quite correct: I've been covering a music festival called London Calling in Paradiso, Amsterdam for a Dutch music site called Fileunder:New Music. LC pretends to be a BritPop genre oriented festival, which showcases (mostly) unbroken bands who often are on their first foreign tour.

it was pretty hard work to get as many bands in as my friends and I did and boy at the end of the last day I was knackered! still I managed to get a lot of bands I'd never heard of under my belt, of which I now share some of my favorites with you guys:

Dananananaykroyd - awesome ADD-fueled madness
Flashguns - imo the next best pure britpop band
James Yuill - electro-folk-dance mix. think acoustic guitar and a macbook
Maps - if Low was electro, they'd be Maps
The XX - voiced like The National or Tindersticks, awesome shoegaze
The Joy Formidable - awesome three piece fun. Think The Subways.
Fight Like Apes - more madness, with great lyrics. so jealous of the bassplayer's hair as well :)
Marina and the Diamonds - Amanda Palmeresque punk opera again with super lyrics.

links to my articles, in Dutch so hard luck, but there are pretty pictures to go with them thanks to the photographer (and good friend) Dennis:
London Calling 2009 - Donderdag, achteraf | Artikel | File Under
London Calling 2009 - Vrijdag, achteraf | Artikel | File Under
London Calling 2009 - Zaterdag, achteraf | Artikel | File Under

losing some weight......slowly haha

TdC — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:25:50 GMT

well I've been hitting the bike of late and I thought I'd give you an update as to results.

weight, when I actually did weigh myself....95kg, waist is 112cm at the navel o0 overall goal is to lose 10 or 15kg

cardio stuffs:
01-04-2009 1hr 535Cal
08-04-2009 1hr 653Cal
16-04-2009 1hr 662Cal
21-04-2009 1hr 748Cal
26-04-2009 1hr 682Cal
04-05-2009 1hr 704Cal
09-05-2009 1hr 740Cal
11-05-2009 1hr 600Cal
12-05-2009 1,5hr 1266Cal
16-05-2009 2,5hr 2009Cal
22-05-2009 2hr 1500Cal
24-05-2009 4,5hr 2604Cal
31-05-2009 2,5hr 1840Cal
06-06-2009 70mins 938Cal

as of now that is. the current intent is to double the amount of training. we'll see how that fares for May.

bike redux

TdC — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:02:23 GMT

I am finished. God, what a headache at times.

-tubeless tyres cost me 10 years of my life
-accidentally stripping the threads in a brake calliper while faffing cost me another 10 years

but I'm done! Now to finally ride. Sweet, sweet riding :D

bike

TdC — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:08:27 GMT

*nearly* finished building my new mtb! awesome, I am so stoked to go riding I can feel it like a caffeine buzz haha!

it's...

an On-One 456 in blue aka steel sweetness in it's-a-boy! blue :)
full XT gubbins aka shimano fanboi but too cheap to get XTR
DT Swiss 130mm fork aka sweet lesbian teen sex in the shape of a front sus fork.
mavic/XT wheels aka I am a cheap **** err I mean upgrade path ftw!
NobbyNic/RacingRalph tyre combo made tubeless with Stan's kit aka ffs why won't it work die you cockbadger (till it suddenly works)
On-One/RaceFace/odi/X-Lite finishing bobbins aka bike nerd what what
SDG ti-fly saddle aka it was on sale :p

some ugly pics are here: On-One 456

boy-flick

TdC — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:27:41 GMT

Yesterday, after watching Watchmen, I was in my fave pub with a mate and at that moment I conceived the distilled awesome that is the Boy-Flick. Everyone knows what a chick-flick is right? That thing that teh wimmins -yes that means you- tend to make us blokes watch now and again to punish us for forgetting to do the dishes, cleaning out the cat along with the cat litter or accidentally leaving little Jimmy at school for three days.

Just to get you into the spirit of things....usually a chick-flick runs more or less thusly:

Jane Everygirl meets or is with some Man-Who-Is-Bad-In-Some-Way. You can tell the Man-Who-Is-Bad-In-Some-Way actually is the Man-Who-Is-Bad-In-Some-Way, because he is usually "better" (looking|jobwise|creative|interesting) than Jimmy Everyman who is the only other visible non-gay/family male in the movie. Friend Jimmy is always simply just slightly off in some way, but usually is nice/likable/funny/can sing/works with kids/temporarily out of work but has good prospects/blah. Anyway, stuff happens, someone may die, sex gets had, usually Ms Everygirl gets emotionally traumatized somehow, meets Jimmy a couple of times.

Jane is often a very hard worker, doing long hours but still magically finding the time to look pretty and go out on the piss with her Best Mate, who is often nice but less pretty than Jane, but doesn't seem to do anything other than be Home for Jane to have a Wee Cry with, or be available, pretty, with money, to go out on the piss with. Anyway, things are awkward with Jimmy, and the Man-Who-Is-Bad-In-Some-Way is being a shitcock -or- actually coming clean about his Years-Of-Deceit, lying about his heroin habit, theft, cheating, secretly being gay, living out of her pocket, or all of the above. People don't know what to do, then Jimmy has an epiphany, goes all out to prove his love for Jane and either dies/agrees to love her platonically/gets together with her and they live forever in a nice small house with a cat/child/flowergarden -or- something bad happens, movie ends, men wonder why the woman made them do this. Fin.

So...the boy-flick. Well. It was hard to reverse everything, mostly because I find chick-flicks terminally dull, but I'm not that keen on action-explosion-flames-fighting too, but I tried, I really did. And so, I recount the tale of the Film That Never Was, as dreamed up by myself and my friend after a few beers:

Johnny Everyman (preferably played by ME, or Hugh Jackman if you really must be difficult) moves into an apartment somewhere. Johnny is a Violin Maker who is temporarily out of work because he had saved up to go on a trip round the world in order to grow and mature as an individual. However before this happened, Johnny had to move house because his landlord is tired of the sound of woodworking and violin music coming from his old apartment and after the move Johnny was a bit tired so he decided to Wait A Bit And See What Happened.

In his spare time Johnny makes small wooden things, drinks beer, tinkers with his single speed mountain bike or climbs his favorite tree to read, and he has plenty of time because he is Waiting For Something To Happen. His neighbor across the hall is a Girl (played by Jessica Alba) who spends her days being a Barista, has a deep love of all things coffee, pizza, sleeping in the sun on her fatboy wearing next to nothing in full view of Johnny from his tree-reading-spot, and riding about town on her single speed roadbike. Besides this she never does anything but chat with Johnny, and eventually they Might Get It On.

However! The Girl reveals to Johnny that there is Another Person living in the building, for whom she has a crush and wants Johnny to know this because even though she may sleep with him just for fun, she also has feeling for this other person with who she also might sleep with. Then Johnny and the Girl Shag Like Bunnies and eat pizza afterwards. Some time passes, and one day the Another Person is introduced to Johnny entirely randomly at a party. Another Person is also a Girl (played by Lucy Liu) and Johnny falls in love with her and they also Shag Like Bunnies.

Johnny, while somewhat awestruck, feels bad about this development because he fears that this will affect his relationship with the Girl, so, without further ado, he goes to her apartment and tells her of his encounter with Another Person. To his surprise, the Girl is vastly amused by his bumbling and wants to Shag Like Bunnies. After this the Girl confesses to Johnny that she and Another Person actually are in a long term bisexual random shagging relationship, but want to Settle Down and Johnny was the Ideal Candidate. He has now been vetted by both and deemed worthy because he was Honest, wasn't Too Complicated and liked pizza. Johnny looks abashed, but perks up when Another Person -who was there all along- joins him and the Girl on the bed for some more Bunny Love. Then the Three Of Them travel the world without difficulties, eventually setting up a coffee, beer and pizza beach hut place on a remote beach somewhere warm and live happily together for the rest of their days.

Egad, I should move to Hollywood this very instant!

well well well

TdC — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:10:44 GMT

Woo well um where to begin? the year's nearly over, and I'm panicking mildly while trying to clean my house at half past 0 o'clock in the morning. My irrepressible mind is going flat out replaying everything that's happened to me this year in exquisite and sometimes painful detail. However, besides wincing every now and then in sympathy for my past self, I am feeling the thrill of the future looming just beyond tomorrow. And it is good.

I haven't felt that thrill for a while you know, and this time it's not even caffeine induced! Let me see... early on in this year I thought my little world was going to stop in it's tracks, and there was a brief moment where I didn't particularly care if it did. I got past that though, and since that time and somewhat to my amazement things have just been going up and up for me on a personal level with an absolute highlight being standing witness at my brother's wedding.

Ofc all the other good things that happened to me are not to be sniffed at either, but you see for most of the year I was covered in the gloom of my failed relationship and I thought everything was shite. How wrong I was! How positive I am now! It's almost scary! Really! Exclamation mark! Something, anything's going to happen, I don't know what, but it's going to be great!

Last sunday I did my thing, and it was awesome. My thing? I have a yearly ritual of trying to manage to do something that I've never done before. It can be anything, with the simple rule of it having to be something I've not tried yet. Since coming up with this ritual and in random order I've bungee jumped, played an electric bass guitar (I was shit, but who cares), been on a long loong looong holiday, tried to learn Spanish (and failed miserably, my heart wasn't in it hehe) and this year...

...this year I threw away my fear and had myself pulled through a forest by a dog sled team of three dogs on a wheeled sled. Awesomeness! It's almost like mountainbiking except the dogs go warp factor friggin' nine all the damn time and have but only the vaguest grasp of the difference between wails of fear and squeals of glee emitted by the frail human clinging for dear life to the end of the sled. Ofc I hasten to say that I was only scared most of the time, probably because the dogs' idea of cornering is vastly different to mine. So once I stopped trying to get them to stop and started to enjoy myself everything was great fun. I'm doing it again in january!

Anyway, I did it this year. I did. It's cool. Bring on 2009!

And to everyone I shan't be speaking to personally I wish you an amazing 2009 in advance!

Iceland!

TdC — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:37:54 GMT

'bout time I got around to posting some pics heh...

exploring around a waterfall en route to V�k...

Click to:

the waterfall itself...

Click to:

thingvallir pano. very impressive place. the gathering place of the chiefs to hear the law spoken, and one of the placed where you can actually see the rift between the euro and american continental plates (iirc)

Click to:

unsurfaced road 52. while you can't really tell from the pano, this road had us going up and down 15% climbs, and through some of the most desolate countryside I have ever experienced. it was awesome tbh, pretty bumpy and rough at times, but we did it in a 2WD Volkswagen Golf without any difficulties at all.

Click to:

more pics to follow when I can be arsed. have to see what my travel partner has as well

ickle ride

TdC — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:13:35 GMT

just to my mum's and back, to say goodbye before going on hols tomorrow. 903cals burnt, 847C/hr average. didn't bring the gps, so no idea of distance or speed.

dutch countryside route

TdC — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:56:13 GMT

awesomely pretty (if you like flat Dutch countryside, interspersed with trees, the odd church and some villages with odd names) on what will perhaps be the last day of good weather this year. purposely trying to keep my HR low(er) and thus managed to spend 71 mins in zone 4 and "only" 56 mins in zone 5. yes, fear my heart o0 had an hour of rest at my mums though where she forced me to drink yucky rooibos tea *spits*

date:28/09/2008
exercise duration: 03:55 (60 mins rest)
hr(max): 186(104%)
hr(avg): 134 (75%)
dist: 56.3 km
speed(max): 53.9 km/h (!!)
speed(avg): 19.3 km/h
cal(tot): 2494 (!!)
cal per h: 637