Friday, August 27, 2010

So I read.....

I rather like reading, in fact i might go as far to say as its my second favourite pass time (music being the first). Saying that though, my made of awesome librarian mum puts me to shame, she's like a reading machine.

I remember the book that got me reading, The Giggler Treatment. Its a fantastic kids book and ridiculously funny, to this day it still makes me laugh out loud. That was the book that started me reading on my own, but as I have said before, Harry Potter really brought out the love of books in me.

Since first reading, The Giggler Treatment and The Harry Potter Series, i have reread them, many, many,many times. And that for me is a sign of a truly amazing book, wanting to reread it, even memorizing pieces of text, because of the way they speak to you. I wish i could say that every book I've read has been like this, but it hasn't, i doubt anyone can say that every book they've read has been that good. I have of course picked up and struggled through books i haven't liked in the slightest. But all in all I know I've read far more good books then bad.

When i start reading a book, a lot of the time, and this happened more when i was younger, I would just put it down if it didn't grab me right off the bat. Like for instance, Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman. A friend of mine gave it to me as a present, and I just didn't have the patience to sit down and read it through. Mostly because of the long chapters. I found Northern Lights, at first, to be unreasonably long. I have of course read bigger books, but for me the length of the chapters can really drag a book out. So eventually after hearing how good it was from family members I started to read it properly, and wow. It was an amazing book. Long yes, but still amazing. It completely changed my perspective on books, in that now, even if the book had stupidly long chapters and felt very long, i would still give it a proper chance rather then dismiss it.

The reason I'm writing about books, is that I have just finished reading Catching Fire, which if you don't know is the second in the Hunger Games trilogy. It was mindblowingly awesome. But I'm not here to review it. After finishing it I realised that I hadn't been reading as much as i used to and it made me wonder why.

The first reason was obvious really. The internet. I love the internet but I'm sad to say that recently I've taken to reading things online rather then picking up a book. Like I will read a REALLY good fanfiction all the way through in one night, even if its stupidly long, in favour of picking up a book. And yes i know fanfiction isn't as good as most published work, but dammit i do love it. I'm not sure why I've taken to this habit, maybe its the amount of time I'm on the computer anyway. But in my opinion i think its because I can be reading it on an open browser on split screen and still be talking to friends, where as i find that more difficult to do with an actual factual physical book.

The second reason, is an odd one. My mom's a librarian. Now you would think that having a made of awesome librarian mom would be good for my reading habits. But no, this is because, my mom is in the library the whole time so I don't really have reason to go there when she's not. And thats not really very good. Sure every now and again she'll bring me something that looks awesome, but I'm not getting nearly as many books out as I used to.

I have no other real reason, other then laziness on my part. Which is something i plan to fix. I'm going to start reading more actual factual books, that is a promise. I have so many that I have bought shelved and not looked at again, but no more! Speaking of which, Mockingjay tomorrow, you have no idea how excited i am for this book!

Thursday, August 12, 2010

My-Bloody-Space

So several weeks ago i blogged about how i'm going to really try with this music thing and how i want to live my dream. And i do still want to. In fact I've even started busking! I have actually made money doing what i love. Its wonderful!

This new determination made me, on impulse, today decide to have a look at my old Myspace band page (and yes i know i have blogged about social networking before). So i logged on, and sure enough i remembered my password, which in itself was a mean feat for me.

Once i logged on, i realised it was all new and shiny and seemingly more user friendly. So i had a look at my profile. It was just as i'd left it, completely plain, well bar a few really rough recordings i'd uploaded. I decided the first thing i'd do was get a background image for, well no real reason in particular.

I got busy. I went into the edit profile and was about to get to work when i suddenly remembered, i know nothing of HTML or CSS. It was then i remembered why i stopped using Myspace, it was so bloody difficult. Lucky for me however, they had updated it! Basically this meant HTML noobs like me could use it without frying their brains. So i uploaded my background picture, which took like 3 hours, because the pictures i wanted to use weren't big enough and looked awful tiled.

Anyway when i FINALLY got that done and had chosen my colour scheme and all that jazz. I noticed that somehow, at some time,Myspace ( and yes i am blaming them) had managed to put all the information from the bio and what not into a html box. Which is all well and good, but felt rather silly to me.
Firstly because it meant the information was on there twice and secondly because the html box doesn't seem to understand the concept of the enter button.

So i went about my way and deleted it. Only to find that it was still there. This perplexed me. But i reckoned that it was because i hadn't saved or something of the sort. So i went back and did this numerous times, getting more and more frustrated, when i realised that on Myspace changes can take up to 24 hours to update. I felt very foolish.

I was about to decide to give up when i though "hmmm maybe i should upload a new song or two" so i did. Well i tried. My upload attempts failed. Now i would've put it down to my terrible internet had it not been for the fact that i have been able to upload all my songs to Facebook. So Myspace its all your fault. I hope your happy Tom!

Anyway thats my rant over. No real purpose to this blog other then to rant. I hope you don't mind.

Friday, August 6, 2010

There shall be music on the streets of Gorey! ....and Kilkenny

If you've read previous posts on this blog, or are a friend of mine you know that I'm a musician singer/songwritery person. I love music, right now in fact I'm listening to an awesome play list I made yesterday. Speaking of which if any sentences don't have any context in this blog, its because I'm typing what I'm listening to. This happens a bit to often for my liking.

Anyway, to the point. I was in Gorey. Wait that's not the point... I was in Gorey and....oh yeah, i went busking! It was rather awesome. I have some experience performing, I sometimes play a song or two with a band called the shuck dodgers and I have entered the school talent show twice. So really I'm still a novice.

Now I'm not going to say that it was the easiest thing in the world or that i was natural, because well because that's not entirely true. Its easy enough to pick up a guitar and get set up and its even easy enough to start playing. But once you start playing and people just walk straight by and don't eh.. contribute it gets a bit awkward, well for me at least.

Luckily the interest soon picked up, and i was making a bit of money, pretty much doing what i love! Making music. Once I actually got into it and started having a good time, it was really enjoyable and I would have to say the high light of my music...career to date. All in all for an hour and a half's work I made 30 euro which i consider to pretty good.

While I was busking a man with a rather complicated looking camera, came up and asked me if i wanted to be in the paper, of course i said yes. He got some information on me from my dad and asked me a few question, well 2 questions but I'm still counting it as a sort of interview! Its going to be in the south east time soon, I'll probably blog about it again when i get the newspaper.

So that was my first experience of busking! I'm going to Kilkenny tomorrow, and yes i am going to busk again while I'm down there and I can't wait!

Oh and i almost forgot i also get to see the genius that is Mick Flannery live! He is pretty much what i aspire to be as a musician so this is such a big thing to me! I may even get to meet him! And yes i am having a fangirl attack right now.

That's your lot for now folks
Until i blog again, goodbye.