The brand new John Mayer Trio album “Try!”, that I previously mentioned is now out in stores. I (of course) have my copy and thought I’d spread the word to anyone who’s been waiting for JM3 releases.
Monthly Archive for November, 2005
This past month I seemed to have been driving non stop. I have pretty much covered all of Victoria in the last week alone, travelling to: Greensborough, Bacchus Marsh, Ballarat, Dromana and most recently Mount Sterling and Bonnie Doon.
My most recent long trip was Dean and Deb’s wedding up at Craig’s Hut on Mount Sterling. Mel and I drove the heart out of my poor little (gear filled) Carolla for about 4 hours but due to our choice in directions, we didn’t make it all the way up to the ceremony in time. I could really use a GPS Dean! 
We decided to use the time to set up my gear for the reception in Bonnie Doon, as I was playing some acoustic covers and DJ-ing for them that night. All went really well and it was great to see them FINALLY tie the knot. CONGRATULATIONS GUYS!
We went home a better way and actuall managed to cut an hour and a half off the trip! Oh well, we will know for next time. I have a function to attend this Friday in Richmond and I’m “back at Bacchus” this Saturday for another gig. So the driving ain’t over yet!
I once again had the pleasure of not only watching Tommy Emmanuel perform on stage, but (thanks to Richard) got to see him backstage as well.
After getting home last Tuesday from my daily labours I got a call from my brother Richard talking about Tommy’s new Custom Maton. I responded with, “Is Tommy in town?”. There was a performance that night at 8pm. I looked at my clock and it was about 6:15pm – Ballarat is around 2 and a half hours away. After a little bit of um-ing and ahh- ing I flew into my Carolla and headed west. It turn out that Tommy was playing from 9pm and I managed to make it to the venue at around 8:30 (2 and 1/4 hours, not bad for a grandma driver like me!).
Richard took me backstage and showed me the guitar he previously mentioned. It had to be one of the most beautiful Matons in existence! Lovely images of the southern cross and kangaroos across the neck and headstock.
Tommy entered and we chatted for a short time, before he practiced for the show. Watching him backstage was amazing – everyone in the room went dead quiet.
The show was also being filmed for DVD, so hopefully my brother will feature in a few scenes and you might catch the two of us in the audience if it’s released. The man just gets better and better!! No wonder the US call him the “11 Fingered Beast from Down Under!”
Unlike James who chooses to waste his money on his first of 2 expensive GPS units, I picked up a new PSP for gaming and movie entertainment when I’m out and about (gigs etc). It plays music, movies, browses the web over wifi and has awesome graphics for games.
One of the reasons I got my PSP was to play GTA: Liberty City Stories and I am still waiting on it’s release. The store catalogues all say it should be out now, some places are advertising a release sometime this weekend and staff are telling me it now may be December. I think no one actually has a clue. Apparently there was a bug in the game that was to do with a personal playlist of songs you can have behind the game as you play it.
Oh well, for now I am loving playing BURNOUT: Legends and SPIDERMAN 2, plus whatever I hire. I also have a free copy of SPIDERMAN 2 the movie coming to me since I registered online with Sony.
After much persuasion, Mel eventually let me sign up to the new City of Villains online game. It is a similar concept and design to City of Heroes, but now you get to be naughty 
.
It ties in with the original game beauifully. I downloaded all the City of Heroes updates and was happy to find out that it included all the City of Villains files too (no long waits for additional downloads). Now my character creation screen gives me the choice of Hero or Villain when I create someone new. It is a brilliant concept and everything is well thought out. Heroes go up in security level while vilains go up in threat level. Heros earn “$influence” and Villians earn “$infamy” – plus many more cleverly named opposites.
The difference with this game is you fight heroes AND other villains. You basically are your own side and you take on anyone (or anything) thats in your way on your path to true EVIL!
(Insert EVIL LAUGH here – Muah ha ha!!)
I was wondering if it would happen, and it did. Although, I thought the Dukes of Hazzard would appear together in the new movie that just came out, what with all the new publicity, but it happened the other way. John Schneider, who plays Johnathan Kent on the Superman based TV series Smallville, was reunited with his “Goo ol’ Boy” Tom Wopat. The two were formerly known as Bo and Luke, but in this series Tom played an old friend of Johnathan’s – who just happened to drive a Charger. Just like the good ol’ days.
Another well known face on Smallville is James Masters – formerly “Spike” on the series’ Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel. The previous episode he was in was based around vampire like villains in Smallville, and his character told Clark Kent (with a smirk) “There’s no such thing as Vampires”.
I wonder who else is appearing where, and whether they to are doing those “wink at the camera” type storylines. With “The Hoff” making a big come back, the world seems to be TV crazy at the moment. My theory is it was the music that made the 70’s and TV that made the 80s.
I turned my router on and off, I reset my network devices, checked they were all plugged in correctly and at full speed. I was just about to call my ISP when I noticed my little bandwidth meter at 106% of my 20gb download limit.
For the first time since we joined, our download speeds were throttled back to semaphore pace by our ISP. It was interesting to see how slow the internet used to be, downloading at 5.8k a second (yuk!). How did we cope? It also made life difficult getting the updates for my “new gadget” (oooh a secret! are you all intrigued? I will post on it later on).
Never mind, we’re back up to full speed again today. I must remember to get all my stuff from work next time .
Day 1 – GIG: I had to work. I did a dinner gig in Noble Park for 3 hours, which went by quite quickly thanks to my family who came along to watch. It was one of my rare local performances.
Day 2 – Mike and Justine’s: Mel had a girlie thing at M&Js – they were looking at girlie makeup (or something). I came for the visit and kept Mike company doing our regular geek stuff (TV episode swapping). We played with Michaels Boules for a while (like a Bowls game) before getting Pizza/Pasta for dinner. Later that night we had another round of poker. It ended up with too many smarties being eaten and sore stomachs all round.
Next Day – WORK: No one there, nothing to do.
Day 3 – RECORDING: Mum came around and I made good on my promise to do a professional recording of her singing. It was a fun day and the job was made easy due to Mum’s performance experience and great singing voice. She ended up with a great gift for her sister.
Mel and I both won $28 on the cup! But we spent $30 to get there – oh well
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