Grand Theft Auto IV

Not much to say here - you know what it's all about, you know you have to own it. I've had it since Friday and I just have to say it's way better than I could ever have hoped. Fantastic!

New music video for Blind Voyeurs

So, I figured it'd be good to submit something to Vimeo as I love that site and I thought why shouldn't I showcase some of my material!? This video is a short snippet of some of my live visuals for Blind Voyeurs gigs put to some music. The tune is called Chemical Burns.

New tune + New Visuals = New Music Video.



Blind Voyeurs - Chemical Burns (DEMO v1.02) from Steve Beck on Vimeo.

It's also on YouTube. If you've got a profile on there and want to fave it, comment it, rate it. Feel free

Digg: Free New Nine Inch Nails Song, "Discipline"

Found on Digg.com (for those interested)...

Trent Reznor is an amazing man, just put your email address in to get the download link and check your email to download Discipline, the new single

read more | digg story

UPDATE: I just downloaded it, listened to it, didn't really care for it much. It was NIN by numbers if you ask me. But you might like it. And as it's a free download that's also DRM free that's a bonus. It's better to download it for free and then decide whether you like it or not than to go buy it on CD in HMV, take it home, listen to it and THEN decide you don't like it.

Eye eye

I can't quite remember the last thing I was dreaming about this morning but I know that I was about to apologise to someone in my dream before my alarm went off and woke me up. That annoyed me. So I hit snooze, went back into slumber land for 5 minutes so I could apologise to this guy and finish off my dream. I have such a guilty conscience that I even have to make ammends with imaginary people!! What's that all about?!?

Anyway, then I finally woke up properly my right eye was all blurry. I must've been sleeping on it. It's happened before and it normally corrects itself. But now it's nearly 10:00am and I still can't see out of my right eye properly! It's freaking me out a bit!!!!

(Lisa's just texted me saying that she'll have to get me an eye patch!!! Yaaarrrr Jim lad!!!)

I'm on the Radio tonight

...with my band, Blind Voyeurs. Here's a Copy&Paste of our Myspace Blog post...

We'll be on Hope FM tonight between 7pm and 8pm (GMT). We'll be playing 4 tracks from the upcoming album and chatting with the hosts about stuff. Listen to the stream online here...

http://www.hopefm.com/

...or tune your analogue dial to 90.1 FM - but you'll need to be very local as their range is pretty short. If you listen in online be sure to have pop-ups enabled on your browser.

Hope you can tune in

Textual Intercourse 1 - IBS

A text conversation between me and Lisa....

Lisa: We have a weeks extension on our hard GIS map assignment
Me: That's good news baby. I'm having a really shit day. My brain's not working, eerything I'm doing is wrong, the coffee machine's broken ... I could go on but I won't. Wanna go to Boscombe at lunch, coming?
Lisa: Ok, I'm having a shite day now 2. have to ring mortgage company as they're being arseholes. Will get my shit 2gether & jump on a bus asap x

...2 mins...

Lisa: On the bus, dya fancy The Percy 4 lunch? I could do with an alcoholic beverage?

(at this point I should explain that 'The Percy' is a pub on the edge of Boscombe High Street)

Me: If it's not too busy yeah. Xx
Lisa: OK ill check it out, what dya want 2 drink if its quiet?
Me: I dunno. Pint of Fosters? I really shouldn't be having booze today. I was thinking more about going to either Costa or the other coffee shop down by MacDonalds xx
Lisa: Ok, actually I fancy a maccy ds now?
Me: Maccy D's = IBS in a bun

As I was typing that last text she rang. I explained what I was typing so we decided to meet at somewhere completely different for lunch so as to prevent potential tummy troubles. We met up and went to a nice little cafe opposite the Opera House (the name escapes me) and had Cappacino with Chicken, Pesto and Mozzerella panini.

It arrived. The side salad had a sweet vingarette. Ate everything. I realised I was gonna be late getting back to work so I left at 1:51 (it's a 10 min walk back)

On the way back I had IBS.

Dammit!

Music - recording, watching, listening

So, I've got my new mixing desk and some new mics. (Alesis Multimix16 USB2 and a couple of Shure mics) Tried them out last night and they work a treat. I wanted to record this song that's been in my head for the last couple of days but I felt too self aware with the window open - it was so fuckin hot yesterday! Can't wait to try recording some proper tracks live with the full band. Need some more mic stands though.

I watched Jools Holland last night. It was cool to see The Charlatans with some new stuff. Tim Burgesses hair was a bit weird though - not that that really matters. Was interesting to see Was Not Was still pushing 'Walk The Dinosaur'. And there was an awesome Japanese drum band called Yamato Drummers that totally blew my mind.

Priorities?

I had a dream last night that we got burgled. All I could think about was "Ooh look how much room we've got" - not "Fuck! Where's me stuff??"

Woke up to find the kitchen window wide open!

Don't cry over spilt coffee

So, yesterday was a bit of a nightmare in that it was raining and I had to get up to go to work. Some days I don't mind having to earn a living but this was one of those days that I knew was going to be a bad start to a weird week.
Today (Tuesday) I sprung out of bed in an attempt to apply the typical English tally-ho "pull yourself together" type attitude - I was even singing the theme tune to Dallas (I dunno where that came from?!)

It was all going well until I got to work to grab myself a coffee. My usual brew (number 35 - instant coffee, white with sugar) came out as a weak milky water!! Undeterred, I went for a cappacino. I couldn't see if it was like the other coffee as it was covered in froth - as cappacinos generally are. I tried to blow the froth out of the way but that didn't work. So I gave it a sip. Burnt my lip and spilt half of it on my clean white shirt from the reflex action! Muthafucka!

Well, at least I've got a half day today!

grabbing your attention!

grabbing your attention!, originally uploaded by SteveBeck.

I HATE mondays!!! I'm at work and I don't want to be!

GET .... ME ..... OUT .... OF ..... HERE!!

Stormy bus journey 1

Stormy bus journey 1, originally uploaded by SteveBeck.

It was chucking it down last night. Thunder and lightening too. But it wasn't cold - it felt more like a tropical storm!

This is Boscombe

On the bus

On the bus, originally uploaded by SteveBeck.

on the way to Lee's. He offered to make us a slap-up roast! It was fuckin HUGE!!!!!!!! I still feel fat today

Blind Voyeurs - Stoner Jam

Here's my first video from Vimeo. Wanted to test how long my videos can be cos YouTube is limited to 10 minutes. It appears that the only limit on Vimeo is by the size of the video file! Sweet.


Blind Voyeurs - Stoner Jam from Steve Beck on Vimeo.

Vimeo

Just discovered a nice video site called Vimeo. It's like YouTube but without all the pointless videos of some guy being kicking in the nuts! This one's more about art and small magical packets of peoples lives. The videos have a better compression and are a lot better quality than YouTube. There's even a HD section. I've signed up, gonna start making videos and put them on there. Here's some of the cool stuff that you can find on there...



Stairwell from Ted on Vimeo.


HV20 Canon LOCUSTS - The Eighth Plague from scope2000 on Vimeo.

Pitchfork.tv

Check it out! It's a new video site from pitchfork.com. They have videos of live gigs, interviews, exclusive videos etc of lots of really cool bands. It's currently one of my favourite sites. Bookmark it

The Apprentice

I watched The Apprentice last night. Just caught the end of it actually. It's a great programme to watch if you enjoy seeing smug naive toffs make fools of themselves. Take this clip from last night's episode for example...



The guy in the middle did well considering. He nominated himself as team leader but the toffs didn't listen to him, purely based on the fact that he's 'lower class' than them. What a couple of pricks! And how slimey is that Nicolas?!?! This series could well be compulsive viewing

Portal

Well, as you can imagine I've been busy with my lovely new console (PS3). Discovered a new gem called Portal. It's part of the Orange Box which has Half Life 2, Half Life Episodes 1 and 2, Team Fortress 2 and, of course, Portal. I bought it cos I'd heard a lot about Portal from the Totally Rad Show and really wanted to try it as it sounded interesting. Believe me it's MORE than interesting... it's fuckin AMAZING! I've not played a game that gripped me like that for a loooooong time.



For those of you that don't know what Portal is here's a excerpt from the wikipedia entry...

Portal is a single-player first-person action/puzzle video game developed by Valve. The game consists of a series of puzzles which must be solved by teleporting the player’s character and other simple objects using a single handheld device, with the goal of getting to an objective point.

It has a really dark sense of humour. If you have a next gen console I seriously recomend you BUY IT!! Here's one of my favourite levels - Level 9

Playstation 3 RULES!!!

I've just got myself a new PS3! It's such a good machine. Really user friendly. I'm not anti-Xbox360 though, just want to make myself clear on that, but I just found that the user interface on the PS3 has a better feel than the clunky and confusing Xbox360 ... and yes I have tried navigating the menus. Also, I was really un-impressed with Halo3. When I played it it just felt like Halo2 but with a slightly better shine! Xbox360 has an add-on to enable you to watch HD-DVD's, so I'd have to pay extra to watch films on a now defunct video format!!! PS3 has Blu-Ray built in! PS3 has wireless internet so I connected it up to my network, it automatically updated my system software for me - I can now watch DivX movies on my PS3. Basically, this machine ticks all my boxes and Xbox360 just didn't! Also, no Ring of Death for me!

2 bottles of wine and a highlighting kit!

So Thursday was pay-day for me! Finally after 2 weeks of being totally skint I had some cash so I did some food shopping at Somerfield - got a few groceries in... and some wine of course. They've got Linderman's on offer right now so I thought I'd give it a go - a bottle of white and a bottle of red.
On Friday we opened up the red to go with our pork loin steaks and it tasted so good Lisa popped down to Somerfield to get another bottle. After opening the second bottle I asked Lisa if she was ever going to use that hair highlighting kit that she bought about a month ago. She says "D'ya know what? I was just thinking about using that!!"
I said "Well, I wanted to get the ol' clippers out on my hair this weekend. But if there's any left over highlighter can we stick in my hair to see what it looks like. If lit comes out shit we can just shave me head!"

Now I used to be a bottle blonde a couple of years ago but thought I'd stop to let my my hair rest, so this was kind of like 'for old times sake' type-thing. I only wanted to put slight highlights in it but cos my hair's short (and we were pissed) we ended up covering all my hair. So now I'm blonde again. Completely freaked me out when I woke up the next morning. I'd forgotten all about it!

Don't feel neglected...

Dear Blog,

Please don't feel neglected. I know I haven't been around for a while but I still love you. I promise I'll make it up to you. I know it sounds like an excuse but I've been busy. And then there was a time when I was feeling ill. I got a new mobile phone and I thought I could post on you from there but it didn't seem to want to work like the old one. I promise I haven't been with other blogs or cheated on you. Sure, I've been seeing facebook, flickr and myspace but they mean nothing to me. They're more like friends. Yes, I know I've just started seeing Pownce but it's not a replacement. And besides they all link back to you. You're the original. You're the best. I promise I won't leave it this long til I see you again. I'll even give you a facelift in the next couple of weeks, how's that? You feel better? Good. Wipe away those tears, have a cup of tea and you'll soon feel a right as rain.

Steve