Thursday, November 21, 2013

Finding time to blog

One of the things keeping me out of EVE - my best creation to date :)

Hello! Yes I'm alive. I've just been so busy with all sorts of stuff and projects that I barely have time left to update my blog anymore, and when I do have time I just chill out and become a massive couch potato. Needless to say lots of things have happened since the last post so it'd be hard to tell everything in detail; hell sometimes I have trouble remembering what day we are! Let's do a paragraph-by-paragraph recap and let's see where it goes.

EVE Online

Though I am still in the same corp, there has been a change of alliance after some nifty drama. Thankfully our old alliance mates now make for some juicy targets. The downside of the alliance switch is that we have gone through a lot of moves in a very short time and with a few people (myself included) becoming very busy activity has dwindled. Hopefully the coming holidays and the new expansion will set this to rights and we shall gleefully blow shit up soon. The times where I do get to log on are usually fun though, and this corp is the best corp I've been a member of in my soon-to-be 6 year career. I don't see myself moving out of this corp unless we keep moving every other week, but we have been promised that our current HQ should remain the same for a bit as we are pretty close to a lot of fun places. I haven't experienced the new expansion a lot; the new SOE ships are still pretty exhorbitantly priced and my interceptors are out in Null-sec. I did get to fly a Wolf to a system next door this morning and I could see the warp speed difference. I like a lot!

TrackMania

Speaking of speed, I've been falling deeper and deeper into this community of high-speed eSports, not only as a driver but lately as a map maker, which is a total first for me. I'm aiming to build competition-style Tech tracks but I still have a lot to learn before I reach the level of the tracks seen in TmT, ESL and ESWC competitions. As a driver it's the style of map I prefer to drive; I don't find any fun in the super-fast Full Speed tracks where a very subtle slow-down in a particular part of a track can mean that some jumps or sections are impossible to pass. I've been idling in the Twitch channel of one Acer|Frostbeule, one of the best players in the game and I must admit, these are very laid-back guys. On a side note, the current and newly-crowned World Champion is a Quebecer; Dignitas|Carl Jr, je te salue!

Drums/Drumline

I thought I'd be taking a break after the CFL season, but the drumline has my soul apparently! No seriously, when word came out that the Rockline would be participating in another fundraiser Metal Show of Pure Awesome after skipping this year's edition, I couldn't pass it up. So in mid-January we'll be starting the long process of rehearsing the 6 tunes from the 2012 show and learning 5 more. I should still be on the bass line but there's a chance I may move to the snare line if the line is not populated enough. Unlike this summer where there's wasn't a lot of time for actual teaching, this time there will be so come mid-October 2014 when the show arrives I would be more than capable of playing even the trickiest parts.

In another musical subject I am also starting a band with some old friends. I haven't played in a band setting in way too long and I just can't wait to see my drum kit set up again. But there will be an adaption period even here; to get our music machine going we chose a bunch of covers to practice and two of them require double bass drums, or at the very least a double bass pedal. So I went out and bought one! Coming from the John Bonham School of  Single Pedal Speed Freaks, I will have to relearn and start playing the bass drum as i would with my hands, doing rudiments and stuff. Things will get interesting!

Now, does anyone wonder why I sleep so well and why it takes me 4 coffees to wake up? :)

Fly busy... it's less boring that way!

o7 

My paintjob of choice for my Trackmania car
My next tool of the drumming trade :)

No comments: