i was there. expect more photos soon…
ever seen such advertisements?
“start making money entering data online!
work from home at your own time. anyone from any where in the world can do this job. available worldwide.
easily make $250+ per day!
fill out simple web forms at home
sign up here >>>>”
sometimes, i really wonder what people got to do if they sign up. my guess is that they are signing up to work as little spam bees: sit at home, surf the web, spam peoples forums, guestbooks, blog comments, … with spam!
let’s face it. during its lifespan, spielwiese got 310 spam comments so far, and blackness got 34 spam comments. and none of them ever got published; i never let them pass through. one would think that they’d maybe give up after some time, but it seems they don’t want to. maybe because they get paid for entering the spam over and over again?
as spielwiese is based on wordpress, which is a rather common blog software, it’s not surprising that there exists programs which feed wordpress based blogs with spam. so maybe the spam for spielwiese is automatically generated. but the software for blackness is completely self-brewn, so either someone is entering the spam manually, or someone adjusted their program to post spam there, too. or someone wrote a program which puts spam in basically everything which looks like a comment form. i’d guess it’s the latter, or some poor fellow gets paid to do it.
anyway.
spam is freaking annoying, both email spam, guestbook spam, forum spam, blog spam, and hopefully once our governments unite and will really try to do something against it. but then, i’d guess that won’t happen during my life…
i just observed that my macbook starts to dismantle itself:
i mean, hey, it’s just little older than one year. what the heck?!
yesterday, i made a short trip to downtown calgary. the first time during my stay. after a quick walk through downtown, i decided to walk trough some parks. here are some impressions. enjoy!
this evening i experienced another concert, an instance of the progressive nation 2008 tour, featuring four bands all doing different kind of prog.
the opener was 3, a woodstock based prog/experimental rock band. they are really fantastic, and i have to get one of their albums—the ones at the concert were already sold out when i tried to get one. besides playing great music, they also had a great life performance. there were two bad things though, even though the band has nothing to do with them: first, lots of people decided its fun to smoke weed. i don’t care what people do to themself, but it’s pretty annoying to smell that all over the place without having the chance to go somewhere else. the second, way worse thing, was that some people decided to start a mosh pit. again, anyone might feel to do what he wants, but i hate it to get kicked and pushed around all the time without asking for it. in particular, a mosh pit might fit well to a metalcore band, but to a prog band?! geez…
well. the second band, between the buried and me, was a metalcore band—a prog metalcore band. i’ve never been a fan of metalcore, and this gig didn’t made that better. obviously, the situation in the front didn’t got any better, the mosh pit simply got larger…
then, after surviving this one, the main part of the evening began: opeth entered the stage. unfortunately, at the beginning, the accustics weren’t too great; for example, the keyboard was pretty quiet and sometimes hardly audible—even at parts where it basically was the only instrument playing. fortunately, this changed later. since the whole tour already played in calgary yesterday, they had a slightly different playlist today. yesterday, it apparently was master’s apprentice / baying of the hounds / in my time of need / wreath / heir apparent / the drapery falls. today, they apparently started with demon of the fall—which was a bit hard to grab, as the keys were too quiet and a certain mosh pit pretty annoying (though that got better later, maybe the kids got tired?). after that, they played baying of the hounds or beneath the mire—have to listen to them again, i think. the third song was to rid the disease, my favorite song from the proggy damnation album. after that, they played heir apparent—something from the new album, which really rocked, i’m really looking forward for it—and the drappery falls. then, mikael noticed that he screwed up the set list, i.e. that they had enough time to play one more song. they decided to play wreath from the deliverance album, which i’m really really happy about: so far, i’ve never heard that song life, and i really like it a lot. unfortunately, as it’s a really heavy song, it again got pretty uncomfortable in the front. i still managed to throw my hair around, in particular at the end of the song. then, it was over.
after that, i decided to buy something to drink; it was some banana smoothie. somehow it looks like my stomach didn’t like the idea too much, so i wasn’t feeling too good afterwards, as dream theater began to play. shortly after they began, i decided to sit down at the back of the hall. besides not feeling too good, the concert was nice. they started off with in the presence of enemies and also played a lot older stuff, for example from the scenes from a memory album, one of my favorites. after their first part, a funny video showing some super mario sequences with dream theater references put in was shown, with both dream theater music in gameboy style and real music. the encore began with some improvisation, first by jordan rudess on some cute electronic device, then accompanied by john petrucci, and later by the other band members, which turned into a pretty cool medley.
too bad it’s over.
if there wouldn’t have been some annoying people around, and if maybe between the buried and me wouldn’t have played and 3 and opeth played much longer, it would be definitely the best concert this year. it still is a very good one, but as it was it has tight competition, for example the symphony x show in hamburg. but then, in particular 3 rocked the house, and i have to take a closer look on them. the new opeth album also sounds very promising, at least the two songs i’ve heard so far: heir apparent today and the porcelain heart video. and, i just saw, roadrunner offers the lotus eater for download. have to check that out, too…
yesterday i made a trip to hamburg, to visit two friends and to attend a concert by eläkeläiset (meaning: the retirees), a humppa band from suomi. their concept is simple: they sit at a table, drinking beer and vodka, playing with their instruments, covering lots of pop, rock and metal songs, playing them in a faster humppa style, with different lyrics which are mainly in finnish. sounds strange, but they collected a pretty huge fan community in particular in germany (whyever). we really had lots of fun there, even though we weren’t drunk like most of the other people there (including the band).
on monday, before barbecuing, my friend and mine went out another time to fly with his quadcopter. this time, i brought my not so new anymore toy. here’s a small excerpt out of the tons of pictures i took:
its fascinating to see the quality of the pictures, compared to the ones from last time: almost no blurring (mainly because of faster shutter speed), way less noise (which, if happening, is not as disturbing as the resolution is way higher), better zoom, and so on…
fire, sometimes so beautiful. flames, licking upwards. sparks, flying around. the beginning of barbecue unfolds its beauty.
today’s weather was beautiful again, as it was yesterday, but today i wasn’t busy mowing the lawn, so i took the chance to cruise around a little with my bike. here are some of the photos i took.
i also drove by by a swimming lake nearby, which i’ve never managed to go to in the last few years.
not that it is time for bathing, at least not for me, i prefer little warmer water :-)
anyway. next time i should make a tour somewhere else, not always the same area.
