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posts for november 2007.

tomorrow, our institute will have a party to celebrate the move into the new building. for that, i produced a few cakes:

today, i attended fish‘s concert in the z-7. fish was one of the founding members of marillion, a british prog band which happens to be two years older than me, but left them in 1988, after marillion released the clutching at straws album in 1987. in the beginning of fish‘s gig, an intro video was shown, displaying all the 20 years from 1987 to 2007 with a famous scene from that year, with a subtitle relating it to fish in some humouros way. except 2000, when a picture of george w. showed up with the subtitle “what the fuck?!”, and 2004, when another picture of george w. showed up with “again? you assholes!” ;-)
well. the concert was really great; fish was in a great mood and told funny stories between the songs. i basically only knew the albums 13th star and clutching at straws before, but they played a couple of songs from these two, or at least i thought i recognized a few…
i originally planned to buy 13th star at the merchandize booth, but they only had a special edition there which had a way too high price for me… well. besides that, i was pretty tired and exhausted, had problems keeping standing, but survived till the end, had to run for the train, which almost killed me (running uphill while it’s freezing and when you’re exhausted and pretty dehydrated is not a good idea), but i caught the train and even managed to walk the way from the main station to my place in zürich (without running though). and now it’s time to grab some sleep.
good night.

i just watched william shakespeare‘s romeo and juliet, or, more precisely, baz luhrmann‘s 1996 interpretation romeo + juliet (imdb). i must admit that i only knew few crumbs of the story, but have never read it nor saw it as a play or movie before. (though i’ve been in verona at the house which is claimed to have been capulet’s, seeing there a bronze statue of juliet.)
i think there’s no need to spend many words on the story. there’s love, there’s hate, there’s death. tragedy. love and death, going hand in hand once more.
the movie transports the old tale into the new world. guns instead of swords. cars instead of horses. even though, the dialogue has not been touched: besides a few omissions, it’s shakespeare‘s original one. that made me turn on the subtitles after the first few words, fearing to miss something important, even though i stopped looking at them after a short time. it’s the most successful adaption of an old tale which i’ve seen so far; i usually tend to dislike or at least being annoyed by such modernizations.
while listening, i noticed that the soundtrack includes garbage‘s #1 crush, a song i like a lot. another familar tune showed up, with the ending credits, namely radiohead‘s exit music (for a film). it’s time to listen to them again…
to sum it up: it’s beautiful. absolutely. touched me, deeply.
good night.

today, i made a small excursion onto the ütliberg. again, it was very foggy, though it wasn’t really raining as last time. this time i took a lot more photos than last time, and also some panoramas. maybe i’m done with sorting out the stuff tomorrow, in which case i’ll upload some. for the moment, here’s a photo of myself:

mellipossu posted some videos from last sunday’s concert by insomnium, swallow the sun and amorphis:

thanks a lot for the videos!

my project took a step forward during the last week: i added an rss feed, a category system and a comment system. so everything i planned is done. i guess that i’ll stop programming now and continue to produce more content. well, if i get some good ideas, that is. or at least more realizable ideas…

(well, a third one this weekend.) today, the finnish acts amorphis, swallow the sun and insomnium were playing in the z-7. the last weeks, i was anxiously waiting for this concert, as swallow the sun is one of my most favorite bands at the moment, as amorphis is also pretty good and i’ve been told that so is insomnium.
well. after arriving and seeing nobody i knew, insomnium started to play. they’re doing melodic death metal, and i really liked them. during their gig, i spotted a couple i’ve already met on arena‘s and threshold’s concerts. it’s always nice not to be alone on a concert :)
then, after a short break, swallow the sun‘s gig started. the one i really looked forward to. starting with the first three minutes of gloom, beauty and despair as an intro, they started with a great tour through their whole discography. the complete playlist:

  1. intro (first three minutes of gloom, beauty and despair);
  2. hope;
  3. descending winters;
  4. don’t fall asleep (horror, pt. 2);
  5. out of this gloomy light (live recording);
  6. the ship;
  7. these hours of despair (live recording);
  8. deadly nightshade;
  9. swallow (horror, pt. 1).

unfortunately, there was no encore. (i hope i’ll see swallow the sun as the headliner once…) to the sounds of the twin peaks score, the stage was rebuild for amorphis (last concert, they used twin peaks music as the intro). well. then amorphis played, the headliner for this evening, and also delivered a great show.
finally, everything was over, we walked back to the train station, arrived in zürich, and from there i had to walk home alone. well, same as yesterday, so i’m pretty much used to it :) now i’m looking forward to see how my neck’ll be feeling like, after so much headbanging… but it was definitely worth it!

yesterday i was visiting the helsinki klub in zürich with some friends, where a concert of the alternative/punk rockers boob from berne was taking place. there were a lot of people dancing to the music, and all of us had a great time. they also gave a longer encore, featuring two hip-hop/rap songs, which was, even though i usually don’t like that kind of music too much, pretty fun!
apparently boob has already played in the helsinki two weeks ago; two of my friends have already seen them there, while i had to stay at home suffering a terrible headache…

a few days ago, the finnish prog-metal project crimson lotus released a new single, called miseria. it’s awesome. it’s really too bad that they’re too busy to produce more stuff…

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i was on another concert today. a classic one. but no classic/metal crossover as before, but a “real” classic one. the orchester accento musicale zürich played joseph haydn‘s cello concert in c major and georges bizet‘s symphony in c major, together with cellist patrick demenga for haydn’s symphony. i really enjoyed it.