Photo Challenge! - "Cruising"

I've always had an interest in photography, so for my birthday in March, my wife along with a few members of our family chipped in to buy me a decent camera. After buying a book on photography and practicing a bit, she's decided I need a challenge. So, every now and then she thinks up a different style of photo that I should take.

Quite a while back, she suggested I take a photo that shows motion. Although it is long overdue, I finally managed. Yesterday, as it was such a nice day, I took a walk through town at around lunch time and snapped a few photos, amongst which I got this one entitled "Cruising" (Click to enlarge the photo).

I managed to take a few other nice ones, which I'll add soon.

My next photo challenge is to create an interesting landscape/cityscape photo. It should be fun. :)

Blogging like it's going on Twitter

Hi!

Yes, I'm still here.

I've decided as of today to update my blog more frequently, but with shorter posts and hopefully more photos.

I have a decent camera now, so I therefore have no excuse not to take cool photos and share them with the world.

My blog is basically going to be like a Twitter account. Short, to-the-point, and hopefully interesting.

Thanks for your patience during my 6+ months of inactivity.

For your patience, and as part of my promise, here's a photo I took a while back of a rainbow on Table Mountain from my apartment window. No editing done on it as of yet. :)

Anti-Social

I like social networks... to some extent. I have a facebook page and I use Twitter regularly. I've even gone as far as linking the accounts so I don't have to post the same messages twice. However, there are some things that I either don't like, or I just don't understand. Here are a few:


Facebook Groups - I.e. Forcing me into a non-consensual online relationship.

Pretty much everything on Facebook requires your permission. "Do you want to accept this random person you've never met as your friend?" "Are you sure you want us to e-mail you every time that one friend with a trigger-happy-itchy-mouse-clicker-finger hits the "like" button on every one of your 1000 photos?" etc. etc.

Then,why, for the love of Leisure Suit Larry, can your friends add you to a group without your permission?!

If I was truly interested in voting for Suzie Whatshername as Miss SmallTownInTheMiddleOfTheDesert 2011, I'd join the group willingly. But since I have no interest whatsoever in doing that, especially since I have no clue who that is, I don't want to join your group and have my inbox flooded with notifications! If you're reading this and are my friend on Facebook, don't add me to your group. If you think I might be interested, e-mail me the link and I'll check it out myself. Otherwise, we can't be friends anymore... :p

Why don't you follow me?

Please don't ask me this on Twitter. I only follow people that I've had the pleasure of hanging out with several times, or people who can entertain me with news, funny stories, etc. I follow a few celebs and musicians too, because it saves me the money of having to buy magazines to find out what's happening in the showbiz world. If I don't know you personally, and you don't fit the above criteria, I'm not going to follow you, no matter how many DM's you send me asking to. I don't expect you to follow me either, by the way; but thanks for doing so. It's nice to know that someone finds me interesting, because I'm really quite average.

I just LOL'd at this.

I seldom Laugh Out Loud  at anything I read on social networks, and if I do, I tend to write "Haha!", because that is generally the sound coming out of my mouth. I get annoyed when people constantly write things like "LOL" and "WTF", when it is clear that they're not actually doing or saying it. Get real, people. You have at least 140 characters; be creative! You can do better than using WTF for every other post.

This especially applies to randomly using FFS and FTW out of context. Eg. "What a bad day. FFS". How many people actually speak this way? If you do, you sound like an A-hole and should read more books.

Troll

The term "troll" is often used to describe people with extremely limited IQ's plaguing message boards with nonsensical and utterly rude comments that actually have no relation to the content displayed on the site. Trolls make use of a primitive form of English, only developed in the past few years. It severely lacks vowels
and words are often shortened to such an extent that they could mean up to 15 different full-length words.

I am happy to accept the use of "U" instead of "you" and "2" instead of "two", "to" or "too" (Yes, kids; these are all different words with different meanings. Stay in school and eat your vegetables), but when your facebook status eventually looks like an Eastern European language written upside-down and regurgitated by a cat with an upset stomach, you should really consider reading through your high school English textbooks, or just jumping in a lake with concrete boots. Either way, don't be a troll.


I'm sure I sound very cynical, which I am, but I think this could be quite an entertaining post. I'm going to post the link to this blog on Facebook and Twitter too, just for LOLz!

Peace!

Backstage passes

Continuing in showing off my collection of partially focused cellphone photography, I snapped a few pics of some backstage passes I've collected from various shows I've played or been involved in somehow. Check it out!

 

 

Hard Rock Cafe - Cape Town - 1999

I was only 11 when this show happened, but I got this backstage pass when I went to the soundcheck with my uncle, whose band headlined the event. It was the New Year's Eve/Millennium Party and it was also my first visit to the Hard Rock Cafe. 

 

 

 

Lanners Landing - Klapmuts - 2002 or 2003

One of the most intense shows I've been to. This took place before I joined 12th Avenue. I was working as a roadie/lighting technician (underage labour) for the band at the time. The crowd was so crazy that someone picked up a monitor from the front of the stage and passed it around the crowd!

 

 

 

 

 

Southern Exposure Festival - Observatory - 2003

 My first (unofficial) show with 12th Avenue. Their drummer at the time had hurt his hand and I filled in for him.

"Crazy" EP Launch - Mercury Live - Cape Town - 2005

Our first EP launch was a major DIY effort. We had these passes made for the band and crew and spent the entire night before the show inserting the CD sleeves into the cases, as we printed the first set of discs ourselves.

"Crazy" Tour - 2006

My second tour with 12th Avenue, which included my first trip up the Garden Route.

RAMFest - Rawsonville - 2007

We played the opening night of the inaugural RAMFest outdoor festival. It rained really hard for most of the night, but stopped when we hit the stage, and we got the funniest stares ever from the late night staff at the local KFC. I suppose we asked for it showing up in our stage clothes...

"Rock N Roll Circus" Tour - 2007

Much of this tour is a blur to me. I do, however, remember falling asleep for a few seconds on stage in Durban, due to pure exhaustion,  as well as Mark and I having to ice our feet after walking on hot tarmac to the beach.

Seether SA Tour - 2008

Nights 1 & 2 of Seether's "Homecoming" tour. Good times!

Seether SA Tour - 2008

The venue for the Durban show didn't have enough space for dressing rooms for the support acts, so Shaun from Seether was cool enough to share their room (and their food) with everyone. 

Seether SA Tour - 2008

Final night of the Seether tour. What a party!

FIFA World Cup FanFest - 2010

 We were selected to play four shows at the various Cape Town FIFA FanFests. We met some fun football fanatics (alliteration...nice) at those shows.

Random Festival - 2010 or 2011

I don't actually remember what show this is from, but I thought it was cool that the promoter made custom passes for each band.

Photo fun!

Since I haven't had (and still don't have) much to say lately, I thought I'd share a few interesting photos that I found when browsing through the pictures folder on my phone.

Enjoy!

Venue marquee from tour earlier this year. All cool venues have marquee signage.

My view during soundcheck. This show was set up in a warehouse. Very underground...

Static electricity! Bzzzt!

Awesome Halloween Cake

My mediocre attempt at making a smiley in my coffee.

Having sponsors is awesome.

I promise I'll actually write something soon. :)

This took me all day...sort of.

I've had this window open all day on my pc and have only decided to start typing now. It's been a busy day, and I am very hungry. My awesome lunch was just not enough to sustain me and now I require something more. At least I don't have to fend for myself tonight. My parents are feeding me tonight (Good behaviour rewards... hehe!), so the kitchen and surrounding areas will be clean for another day until I release my next wave of messy cooking terror.

After what is sure to be an epic dinner, I have rehearsal with 3/4 of 12th Avenue. Mark Haze is up in Johannesburg, as he has made it to the Idols SA TOP 15! Well done, brother. We're behind you all the way. :) I'll post links to all of Mark's Idols videos whenever a new one is uploaded. Check my blog's archives for his first three performances in the competition so far.

While Mark's away, we're busy working on a few new songs. There's nothing super solid down just yet, but we've got some cool ideas. Bjorn, in particular, has been doing quite a bit of writing and has some really nice musical cards up his sleeve. :)

In other news, Nicole and I are embracing the nomadic existence again, and are housesitting for her brother, who is living it up in London for a few weeks. Craig, if you're reading this...t-shirts from Camden Town. That's all I have to say. :p Also, we're helping out as leaders at Youth Alpha at our church, which I think is going to be a very awesome experience. That starts this weekend. Hold thumbs that I don't influence any kids badly. I'm a good person. I just shout at people when I drive, that's all. :)

And...I think that's about it. No more news. Tune into CNN if you want anything more. :) Oh, but if you do want to make me very happy, then please please pleeeeeeeeease be the fantastic people that you are and "Like" my band, 12th Avenue, as well as my brother/singer/dude who's helping to make me famous by dominating in Idols SA, Mark Haze, on Facebook. It'll really mean a lot to me if you do this. I might just share my chocolate with you...Okay, I won't, but that's beside the point. Just do it!! :)

The cuisine of the road

I love food. I have a fast metabolism and therefore I'm constantly eating. If it's not a sandwich or a bowl of cereal, it's a chocolate bar or a packet of potato chips. I'm known for not saying no to a second helping if I still have space for it, and I almost never say no to dessert.

Being on the road with my band often leads to a change in eating habits, and most of the time means a change of menu. On our last tour, we were blessed enough to have a temporary home away from home that provided amazing cooked meals for us, but this isn't always the case.

Two-minute noodles: The world's most versatile and affordable touring food. Dry, cooked, plain or spiced. It never gets old. Okay, maybe after a solid few weeks of eating it twice a day.

I remember my first ever tour, back in 2005. I was only 17 and didn't have much money to spend on anything really. My mom packed a cooler box full of food and a big flask of coffee for the band to share (Thanks, Mom), which we finished before the end of day one. So the next 2 weeks were not going to be easy. I actually remember on the first night, we stopped at one of SA's famous Engen 1-Stop Wimpy restaurants, where I, being the cheapskate I am, brought my foil wrapped homemade hotdogs into the restaurant and ate them there. (Don't worry, I ordered a coffee. Well, only because we'd finished ours already.)

The band's basic diet for the rest of this tour (because all of us were pretty much at the same level of poor at this stage and decided it would be better to pool our limited resources) consisted of two-minute noodles and peanut butter sandwiches. We bought powdered milk for cereal and accepted any free meal we could get our hands on. We even went as far as having Mark and Bjorn do an impromptu acoustic performance in a shopping centre parking lot. It got shut down after about 10 minutes, but we made about R25. :)

Thankfully, things got a bit better on later tours. We eventually moved up to roadside pies, which I can assure you are the single greatest health hazard to a band, and now we actually eat real food. Hooray!

Bjorn and I had a brief facebook conversation around hunger this morning, which got me to write this post. In a nutshell, I was hungry and craving a second breakfast. This made me think about the various meals that I end up enjoying on tour. So after that incredibly long introduction, here they are!

Breakfast - Cereal. Normally Coco Pops.
Second Breakfast - A couple hours later. Maybe a sandwich, fruit or on a good day, chocolate.
Brunch - Quick snack an hour before lunch.
Lunch - I'm not explaining lunch, seriously...
Mid-afternoon snack - Similar to second breakfast.
Late-afternoon snack - Cookies or similar. Mmm...
Supper - Om nom nom...
Evening snack - If at home, cookies or similar. If out, N/A.
Post show feast - If playing locally, normally N/A. If on tour, whatever's still open at 4am or leftovers from supper.

And there you have it! Now you know my secret to my on-stage energy! hehe! :p Looking back at this, I'm surprised that I am actually able to eat so much. I'm just going to say I'm a gifted individual. :)

Still alive....

I have literally 5 minutes to blog here, so I'll keep it short.

I'm still alive, even though it's been over a week since my last post.

I would've blogged tonight, but Nix won tickets to an awesome Jazz Big Band show in Cape Town tonight, so we are going to that. I'm really excited. Haven't been to that sort of show in a loooooooong time.

12th Avenue have an acoustic show on Friday at Berties Moorings in Gordon's Bay. I hope everyone that reads it comes, because it's the last show of our current tour.

On  29 June at Paul Bothner Music, Plumstead, we're hosting a workshop around recording for their Drum Month. This means that most of the talk revolves around drumming on a record. This means that I have to do most of the talking. Wish me luck...

Okay, that's my 5 minutes up. Adios!

Friday Fun!

This has to be one of the funniest flash games I've seen in a long time. Enjoy!

http://armorgames.com/play/11498/reimagine-the-game

Who knew that faceless people and pop-culture parodies could be this much fun?

A few things you didn't know about me

It's been too long since I last blogged and for that I apologise. If it's any consolation, I've decided as my next blog post, I'll divulge a bit of information that most people probably wouldn't know about me. It's probably not even that interesting, but whatever. If you got this far, you most likely have nothing to do and you'll read the rest anyway! :p


Fact 1: I have a birthmark under my toe. Don't ask me which one. I'm not prepared to take my shoes off right now to check, as it is cold, but I think it's the 3rd toe on my left foot.

Fact 2: Another foot one (don't ask). I always put my left shoe on first. Maybe it's a result of doing the Hokey Pokey in preschool.

Fact 3: I am Scoleciphobic (I have a fear of worms). Those legless buggers freak me out for some reason. Caterpillars are not so bad, since they have legs, but if it squirms...no thanks!

Fact 4: I taught myself how to play drums when I was 11. My grandpa and brother discovered my talent when I sat down behind a kit in a music store and started playing a beat.

Fact 5: I have never smoked a cigarette.

Fact 6: I literally got goosebumps when I saw John Bonham (Led Zeppelin)'s drum kit on display at the Hard Rock Cafe in London.

Fact 7: I once fell asleep for a few seconds behind the drums at a show in Durban a few years back. It was the second last show of an enormous summer tour and we were on stage at about midnight. I drifted off in the middle of song out of pure exhaustion. I felt really bad at the time, but I laugh really hard at the story now.

Fact 8: When typing messages on my cellphone, I have a terrible habit of accidentally typing "o" instead of "i". I'm just waiting for me to type "I'm just coming around to fetch a few thongs" instead of "things"! - Can you spell awkward typo?

Fact 9: I once ordered bottomless coffee at Mugg & Bean and drank 9 mugs of coffee in a couple of hours. I felt so sick that I drank a litre of water, which made me feel worse.

Fact 10: I have 6 less teeth than the average person. All 4 of my wisdom teeth were extracted, along with 2 other teeth when I was 13, as my jaw was too small for all those chompers. And yes, I had braces for 2 years and somewhat resembled the evil robots from Terminator. :)


So there you have it, a few things that I'm guessing you didn't know about me, but now you know.

One of the strangest things to see on a train

I took this photo a few months back and have shared it with a few friends. I decided it's finally time to unleash it upon the internet! It's a little out of focus, but if you look carefully you can make it out.

Finger licking good...well, not exactly.

 
Yes friends, those are indeed chicken bones the floor. Where was this taken? The alley behind the local KFC? A traditional healer's backyard? No, this photo was taken inside one of Cape Town's mind-numbingly awesome Metrorail trains. I know I get hungry when traveling, but whoever devoured this culinary delight must've had some appetite.

This is among one of the many wonders that you can experience on the Metrorail system. I've yet to snap a pic of the shirtless, tattooed ex-prisoner that I once saw. Although, thinking about it now, I don't think he'd appreciated that very much. :)

Don't forget - 12th Avenue live in Durbanville this Saturday! - 30 April, 9pm, at Blizzard (Wellington Rd.) with Silent Side and Save the Ears for Breakfast! See you there!

7 Random Thoughts in 7 Days - Saturday and Sunday...um... :)

Soooo...about writing a random thought for each day of the week. For some people, Saturday and Sunday count as a single day, as Saturday is spent awake and Sunday is spent sleeping/recovering from Saturday. So to honour that principle, or in other words, use it as an excuse for not writing on Saturday, here are my random thoughts for each day!

Saturday: I went river rafting today for friends of mine's combined birthday party, which was an amazing experience. The only non-amazing parts were getting "attacked by a tree" due to my awesome raft steering skills, and getting a totally stylish slip-slop tan on my feet. My girlfriend wrote a bit more about it on her blog, which includes a few fun pics. Check it out HERE.

Sunday: Today I discovered that my mind-blowingly awesome slip-slop tan, is actually a slip-slop burn. I guess that's what happens when you apply sunblock while still wearing your shoes, thereby forgetting to put some on your feet.

7 Random Thoughts in 7 Days - Friday

I just had the most awesome chicken pasta. Just thought I'd let you know. :)

In other news, my band, 12th Avenue (who I should be blogging about, but choose to entertain you with random thoughts instead), have been in studio. Last night, we worked on the drum mix, which I think sounds awesome. New record gets released 01 April 2011. More info on our website. Here's a hint - the band's name is a link. Click it!

7 Random Thoughts in 7 Days - Thursday

I'm so glad that the characters from The Simpsons never age, otherwise they would have all turned out like the Olsen Twins and Macaulay Culkin...

Putting the "fun" into Dysfunctional!

7 Random Thoughts in 7 Days - Wednesday

As a kid, I used to love watching the Charlie Brown TV Specials that normally aired during Christmas holidays. I still love reading the Peanuts comic strip. However, probably my favourite thing about the comic, apart from Snoopy being the world's most awesome dog, is the sound that Charlie Brown makes when Lucy pulls the football away as he's about to kick it. The only way I can describe it, for those who don't know, is the sound you'd hear if Louis Armstrong was gargling after brushing his teeth. I actually make the same sound quite often to express disbelief or disgust. It's quite entertaining... :)

7 Random Thoughts in 7 Days - Tuesday

Whenever I walk around in Cape Town, I get asked for money. I don't know why, since I don't look rich and I never carry my wallet around anyway.

Anyway, probably for every 10 people that ask, at least 2 greet me with a "fist bump" (See picture below). This inspired me to entertain you today with an epic fist bump captured on my trip to London in 2009 (See other picture). Enjoy!

Regular fist bump

EPIC FIST BUMP!

7 Random Thoughts in 7 Days - Monday

Last week, I challenged myself to write a random thought for each day of the week, starting today. I hereby consider this challenge to be accepted!

Random thought: I often wish that I could reach into the TV and slap people. Mostly politicians, trust-fund babies, and annoying characters like the entire cast of Twilight. 

More randomness tomorrow! :)

A quick rant...

I know it's been a long time since my last update, but I haven't really been able to blog lately. Most of PC time has been spent on e-mail and updating the band's Twitter (www.twitter.com/12thavenueband). I had to take on extra Twitter duties while Mark was away. Yes, our band takes shifts on our social media sites. I'm not telling who's on when. That's for you to figure out. 

I'm busy with a blog update right now, but this thought just crossed my mind while reading something online. So, to entertain you, I have a quick rant!

I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but people really cannot spell these days! Seriously, how hard is it to differentiate between "where" and "were"? Oh, and if you have to fit your entire day's thoughts into 140 characters, at least make it easy to understand. I don't carry my Dictionary of Troll everywhere I go!

Okay, I feel better now... :)

Back to my actual blog - an update is on the way in the next couple of days. Stay tuned!