The weird spring

As abruptly as it started, spring sure is on the weird side up here in Montreal. While on the 21st of March I was chillin' on a patio having a beer in shorts and T-shirt at 10PM, a few days later Mother Nature was back to freezing our barren and snowless landscape on a few occasions. It was wasn't until this week that we finally got some weather ressembling spring (summer even) but even then it didn't last long and after some blasting 40mph winds we're back to the freezing point. Well, at least it's better than last year where spring brought us rain, flooding, more rain, more flooding, more rain... you get the picture. So while my bike may be ready for some good rides, riding weather is iffy at best. I will have to literally harden the fuck up soon, bite the bullet and start using my bike more in the very near future. If I'm to travel hundreds of clicks I'm sure the weather will not be perfect all the time!

In the meantime what have I been up to lately? Well, with the drumline project well under way I've been getting my rudimental chops to levels I hadn't thought of attaining this quick. I guess practice does make perfect and now that I have more tools to practice with I spend much of my free time banging away on one of my practice pads, studying video tutorials and music scores, and listening to the seven Nightwish tunes that the drumline will play on at the October 20th show. One of my latest achievements in drumming is finally nailing down a classic snare exercise that's been around since the American civil war called "Three Camps", when drums and fifes were used as communication methods. It is a reveille, a wake-up call if you will, that's basically a triplet roll exercise which isn't too hard but I had never gotten around to actually playing it, even though I have heard it hundreds of times because of the drum corps background. I nailed it at slow speeds first to make sure I understood correctly what the sticks are supposed to do, and now I'm working on getting the speed up while staying as clean as possible. And of course to give myself a bit more challenge I play it both in matched grip and traditional grip. It fits on a single jpeg image so here's how it looks:

Accented notes are singles, the rest are doubles.

Also, my drumline instructor is giving me tips before the practices start and he's encouraged me to keep playing along the rudimental excercises he throws at the rest of the drumline. For now this is easy to do as we don't have instruments yet, but when we get 'em I'll have to keep to my practice pad and feel more than hear what my sticks are doing, unless someone doesn't show up and I can borrow a snare for the warm-up. Man would this make my day or what! :)

Now with all the drum stuff that's going on my gaming time has pretty much hit rock bottom, but I still keep an interest in a few games. The most prominent for me these days is Fallout 3. I love it so much that I'm really getting into the whole post-apocalyptic fiction genre, survivalism, Cold War history and all that jazz. I guess it puts me in the mood to get into survival mode as I prepare to travel the vast expanses of my province by bike. I've taken a big break from Skyrim not because I don't like it anymore, but because my computer doesn't like it anymore. I may have modded it a bit too much for my weakening box. I know it's getting short on memory and the video card is showing it's 4 years of age. I really need to think about upgrading if I want to play any newer games, like say Mechwarrior Online when it comes out! I do play a bit of Quake Live and Mech4Mercs once in a while but pretty much all my attention is on Fallout these days.

And this blog being this blog, how can I not mention this cybernetic drug called EVE Online. Before you ask, no I'm not resubbing just yet. Even though fun things are on the horizon like the Burn Jita event, Hulkageddon V, the Inferno expansion and DUST514 (I'm still wondering what the Montreal area code is doing in a game title XD), and even after I watched my own buddies and corpmates having a ball in Low-sec, I do not yet hear the call to undock Rifters, Thrashers, Taranii, Vagabonds or Absolutions. The busy summer I have ahead of me doesn't help, and there's still the slight problem of me hating the most important part of EVE with a passion, ISK making. I was watching Dr EyjoG's economic presentation at FanFest and somewhere in it he even pointed it out: in order to lose ships in PvP, you have to do your chores and make ISK to buy ships. "You have to do your chores..." I was screaming at my screen at this point; THIS IS WHY I UNSUBBED DOC !!! I don't play video games to do chores. Period. But on the flip side having a space dogfight in New Eden is a truly unique experience. *sigh* Well, if I want to help my real life buddies in a better way than just watching and giving the odd advice I will just have to bite the bullet and make ISK. I guess I can become a cheap ship specialist because losing T2 and Faction goodies is hard for a non-economically enclined player like me. Bah... we'll see what the future holds. One thing is absolutely certain, nothing will happen before the October show. By then we should also start hearing about the 2012-2013 winter expansion and see what that brings. And to anyone who would really want me to tackle, scout, or even FC, you can activate my account and I'll gladly do it for you :))

Fly, flam, ride... all that good shit!

o7

PS: To famous/infamous PvPer Garmon who is even now asking for real-world money for The PvP classes... just what the flying fuck dude?! I've already thanked you for giving me my first PvP death and teaching me this important lesson in a n00b's career. But with this sort of shenanigans I will just have to issue you a challenge if/when I come back. No worries, I will mail you. How about 1v1 Ruptures? You did kill me with a Ruppy that first time :)