ahhhh way to cute

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

seriously I would

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

The Australian Treasurer handed down the budget last night and in the usual "what did I get" response that followed I noticed something rather interesting. When ever someone from an older generation is talking to Gen Y about money and it's during good times they say "we wanted the best for your children" usuall proud as well in a way that makes them think that we should think to be grateful to them for in most cases probably very little. However when it's no longer boom times and things are heading up the creek we hear this one "toughen up, you've had it too easy, in my day..." I usually switch off at this point.

I just find it rather odd that we should be grateful for apparently living like greek gods at one momment and then told to toughen up by the same people who were meant to be responsible for preparing us for life. I think this may be a good indication that someone screwed up on the last part.

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

Growing up I was a huge Nine Inch Nails fan. Broken, the Downward Spiral and the Fragile were on constant rotation and their lyrics influenced everything that I have ever written both on paper and musically. I suppose the mix of slightly gothic and depressed, one person against the world industrial metal suited me perfectly being in a school of mostly new money rich kids addicted to Britney style pop and what ever punk band was doing the rounds on triple J (the only real alternative radio station in Australia). I remember taking tracks like wish and happiness in slavery and turning them into spoken word pieces for class. Which was great cause the sight of an angry 6 foot teenager with long hair, black clothes, spike collars and an immunity to anything remotely morbid scared the crap out of everyone including the teachers. It wasn't the best time of my life. I hated the school I was in, I hated the people that were there and I was still in a hell of a lot of pain from leaving Jakarta behind, in hindsight and having talked to trained professionals I was probably suffering some sort of post traumatic stress and even today I have trouble with the images I can't get out of my mind. In the end I moved schools and also of moved away from NIN to the Smashing Pumpkins and Something for Kate. I found some sort of happiness surrounded in the hell that was the boarding house I was in and NIN never seemed appropriate. To this day I don't think I have listened to the Downward Spiral or the Fragile in full since, it's just too depressing.

So snap forward to this week and I was looking for something new so I went and downloaded ghosts and the slip.

I don't think I have ever listened to an album from start to finish ever. I tend to focus on a few tracks and just expand from there. Well the first track I played was called Discipline. I can't stop listening to this track, other than the fact that it's absolutely brilliant it was like a punch in the face.

A lot of people won't know this but I'm an addict. From the end of 2004 through to about mid 2005 I developed a pretty serious addiction to Ecstasy, Cocaine and Speed. When I came down I often turned to alcohol to try and sleep and numb the cravings for more. The result of that was a dependency on alcohol, I was often drinking a full bottle of Jack Daniels in only a few days doing 5 to 10 shots a night. To this day I still can't drink responsibly. I have given in to the fact that I will always crave alcohol in the same way I will always crave the feeling that taking an ecstasy tablet or a line of speed will give me. My problem is that I always want more, it's not about one its about how many can I have. I can't just have one. While I still have a beer or two on some nights I always want more.

So as of today I have been clean off coke and speed for 4 years. It took me a lot longer to work out I didn't need the ecstasy and most days I still get the feeling that I want to take a pill or two. I went cold turkey off the whole lot, changed most of my friends, basically got fired from my old job for being an idiot and got away from the dealers I knew, most of them are now either in Jail or quite before they got busted.

I cleaned up and I got better. It took me a while to accept that I was an addict. It's not something that just goes off like a switch. I realized what I wanted I couldn't have and the result on me it was having. I realized the effect it was having on the people around me and I realized it had to stop. I'm not sure if it was the alcohol or a massive dosage of good TV but going cold turkey was a lot easier than I thought it would be. The fact that I was only addicted for a short amount of time (6 to for others.

So what does this have to do with a Nine Inch Nails song? Well take a look at the lyrics below.

I need your discipline
I need your help
I need your discipline
You know once I start I cannot help myself

I came to the realization this week that I may never be free of my addiction. I am always going to want just one more, and one more after that. I think I am stronger than I was back then but it's still going to haunt me for a long time to come.

If none of this makes sense to you then that's understandable. Most people don't get it and have never experienced what addiction is. It isn't an easy concept to get your head around and a lot of addicts don't even know they are addicted. I was lucky compared to a lot of others and while I caused a lot of people a lot of pain I think I have done my best to make up for it. I give money each month to charity to help others in my position and would be willing to help anyone who needs help getting through their own addictions.

so if you have read this far, thank you and I hope you gleaned something from the chaos.

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

This has got to be one of my favorite songs of all time. It's uber simple, catchy as hell and has the most infectious groove I have ever heard.

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/04/05/nk.questions/index.html

I love this line

According to North Korea's official media, not only did the country successfully send a communications satellite into orbit, but "it is sending to the Earth the melodies of the immortal revolutionary paeans 'Song of General Kim Il Sung' and 'Song of General Kim Jong Il.'"

That’s the best thing they could think to do with a satellite? I think the nuke would have been a much more productive waste of a rocket

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

http://www.cracked.com/article_17165_6-reasons-north-korea-funniest-evil...

If I get kidnapped for posting this you know where I am. I love the last bit.

"Ironically, the reported story of Shin and Choi would have made a fucking unbelievable film. They were kidnapped, tried to escape, failed, were placed in solitary for years, thought the other to be dead, discovered the other was alive after being brought to the most Idi Amin-esque dinner party ever, were then forced to make films and then fell back in love, before finally making a dramatic escape (including a taxi chase!) in Vienna. "

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/12/2514849.htm

German gunman a 'keen shoot-em-up gamer'

That was the headline I noticed at 11:43 on Thursday the 12th of March on the front page of the ABC news front page.

This is the entire section that was in reference to the head line.

A teenage German gunman who killed 15 people before turning his father's Beretta pistol on himself was a keen player of so-called shoot-em-up style computer games, police said.

Police chief Ralf Michelfelder, at Waiblingen near Winnenden where the massacre took place, said investigators would give more details on 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer's possible motives later.

"We seized his computer yesterday evening and analysed it... On it are games that are typical for someone carrying out a mass shooting," Mr Michelfelder said.

In the coming weeks and months were probably going to hear the usual blame game that essentially revolves around the games and entertainment industries being responsible for these deaths. What is agitating to me is that headlines like these don't help anyone, they just promote a blame game between politicians and the entertainment industry.
So taking the above into account the three paragraphs above with an entirely less than specific quote about "shoot em up style computer games" and that apparently, these games are common among people that carry out mass shootings is just bad journalism designed to grab eye balls rather than deliver real substance in a time when substance is needed more than cheap flare.

One of the only common things in the aftermath of events such as these seems to be people delivering quotes such as these

I find this interesting as to me it seems the only thing to be common among people that carry out mass shootings is access to guns. I think if you did a study of the contents of 17 year old computers the 2 things you would find that every one of those computers had in common was Porn and violent video games.

I couldn't possibly list the various violent video games I have played since the age of 9. I'm pretty sure it started with Doom and at this point ends with either Grand Theft Auto 4 or Rainbox Six Vegas 2 but all I can say is I and a lot of other people have been exposed to these games and probably the same games that Tim Kretschmer played as well. The question people should be asking is what made him different from every other 17 year old porn and shoot-em up enthusiast ie. a normal 17 year old boy out there in the world today.

However he found it difficult to fit in at school and had few friends.

"He was simply not accepted by anyone and just sat all day in front of his computer," a school colleague identified at Mario told German television station N24.

Hey there is something that seems to come up a lot when these events happen too, remember that Korean guy in Virgina tech? He was also described the same way and due to a law which said all he had to do was wait 30 days to get the guns he needed off he went too.

Did anyone actually try and talk to this kid the entire time he was at school? Did anyone ask why no one liked him?

There are so many tragic factors involved in events like this. Everyone is going to try and blame someone from the parents to the school to video games to access to guns. So far in this post I've managed to blame all of them. It's entirely human to do so, it's our default human reaction when something like this happens. I don't think there is a country in the world who hasn't been touched by an event such as this on their home soil. In the US it was Columbine, in Australia it was Port Arthur and for Germany it's yesterdays school shooting.

So before we point the fingers at video games and start marginalizing every 17 year old with a copy of Call Of Duty we might want to look at what actually seems to be a common factor, access to guns and alienation from society.

At the end of the day we are going to blame everyone and it's going to be painful. But if we can all manage to step back and look at these events objectively with the whole of our society in mind hopefully we can find some answers that will actually help real people and prevent tragedies like this from ever happening again.

To the ABC I say you should know better than to stoop to the same level as ACA and TT. Just once (and I'm not saying I want these events to happen but as long as there are guns and alienated teenagers they will) I want a banner headline to read "German Gunman a 'alienated individual'

Also sorry if anyone found this offensive but I think it's important to look at the bigger issues in our society that we should be tackling rather than the ones politicians know they can score easy points on.

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

Amongst other things today I discovered a rather interesting man by the name of Bear McCreary, one of the song writers behind the Battlestar Galactica score.

As far as TV shows go I have never heard a score as complex as the one for BSG. There are just so many different elements from Classical European to Arabic and Indian music and even Japanese drumming.

One of the coolest ideas though has been to use Bob Dylan's all across the watch tower as a major plot link between a number of characters.

The way the track just builds and builds right up until the end is just amazing to hear and was perfect for the episode it came from.

One of the thing's that I really really like about Bear McCreary though is his blog. He explains so many of his ideas about his song writing here and why he did things in certain ways to suit the story and the episode.

Any way if your a Battlestar fan check it out, if your not then your seriously missing out

http://www.bearmccreary.com/blog/

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

Ok so my home state is still largely on fire. To top it off I just sent 5 people down there on a tour to 75 odd schools for work and haven't heard from anyone since Friday so tomorrow could be fun.

Record Labels are fun!

So I have pretty much decided to go down that path that is the record label. I'm signed to a label called Elektrax Progressive which is based in Sydney Australia and minus the fact that I am pretty sure I haven't sold anything or at least sold that much I'm doing ok. of course now I am trying to get onto a bigger label. Why would I want to do this when every big name artist on the face of the planet is ditching their label and going the other way as fast as they can? Well cause the thing they don't tell you is you need a support network. Now it's fine if you NIN or Radio Head and have the biggest and most devoted fan bases on the face of the planet and lets face it Reznor and York are probably two of the most flawed human beings of on the face of the planet your probably not going to get very far.

So while I hate the whole label system I am going to give my reasoning why labels are actually useful.

1. They are a measure of success

Getting your track on Itunes are half a dozen other online download stores is getting easier. Services like track it down are doing great things for indi artists and I have to say I like what they do. What tune core doesn't provide is a crap filter. I really hate to think how many 16 years olds there are out there who produce something in Garage band, think it's a hit and then try to sell it.

One of the things I have learnt recently is that I was probably no where near where I needed to be technically when I got signed. My early releases were horrible. they were bad. they really really sucked. I may think the same about my current work in a 6 months time but for now I am going to say it's a hell of a lot better. What the label has done for me is filter out the crap from the gold. Simon my A&R rep sends stuff back when it's not good enough and a lot of the time this is needed. Artists have a tendency to see dollar signs light up once they think something is finished. 999,999 out o 1,000,000 times this is not the case.

2. They give you a network

One of the thing my label has which is really quite handy is a mailing list for all it's artists to communicate. We bounce ideas off each other a lot, we share each others work and we help promote each other. I got handed this I didn't have to build it up though a social networking site. I know when I am onto something good and when I'm not.

The other handy thing is that it gives me a remix network. The benefit of this is that it allows me to share my fans (not that I have any) with other artists and vice versa. My fans become your fans, your fans become my fans and off we go. I'm just wondering at this point how cool it would be if epic fu did a remix of digg nation? Zadi and Steve hosting diggnation while Kevin and Alex host epic fu.

either way I think you get the point.

I'm not saying that you can't do well on your own but those that have are far and few in the context of the size of the amount of content out there. Also what works for me may not work for you.

Onto my other frustration

I started Project 2357 with the idea of creating a video website, the economic model failed and off I came crashing down from high atop the thing up high. the bump on my head hurts. Graduating, burying relatives and taking the first holiday in 3 years didn't help either. The holiday was nice though.

So any way I have started up again. trying something new. Though just not sure. I have built a system for people to post what ever on now I am just sitting back and seeing what people post.

so on that note I am cross posting this over and seeing what happens.

I'll stop typing now cause I know TubeJay will put up a comment the size of my Strategy final from uni last year.

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

Unless you were living under a rock and forget this

then you probably know who Stephen Colbert is. The following is a time warp some would rather forget the rest will ROFL at like mad.

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

The rest might be crap, and yeh for heath but damn this was good.

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/gallery/022309dana_farber...

These guys are spray painting the iron beams of a new cancer clinic with the names of sick children in the hospital next door. Pure win

Originally published at Project 2357. You can comment here or there.

Some crazy canadians decided to do a low budget film based in the half life universe and it is pure win so check it out.