Wait, wait, wait! Before you record label advocates, cd/vinyl collectors and anti-theft people grab your pitchforks and torches, hear me out.

I myself am an avid collector of CDs and Vinyls; I almost exclusively wear band tshirts; my room is covered in band posters; I go to many gigs… and in the eyes of the law and record companies I am part of a massive problem. Piracy. Arrr!

Let me explain my view on how I think piracy is a good thing though. For me, it allows me to try before I buy. I know most people don’t do this, but for me I see torrenting or mediafiring an album as a way to listen to an album and then if it sounds awesome and the cover art looks nice, I’ll buy the album on either CD or Vinyl or both. I’m aware that I’m not the majority though.

So what about those who don’t follow this method then? Well it’s simple really, geniuses. If people like a band or album they might buy a tshirt or go see them live, and guess what? That £20 ticket or £15 tshirt is far more in the pockets of the artists (and not greedy record labels, assuming they don’t take a massive cut) than a £5-£10 album which the record labels take most of the money from.

But Alex, think of the record label and their employees, if not for them these bands would never be where they are now! Nope. Correct me if I’m wrong but in most cases that’s bullshit. Record Labels are good at promoting and exposing you or your band and providing you with good producers and studios.

But it’s not exactly hard to set up a decent home studio and self-release. If you’re any good I’m pretty sure you’ll get somewhere. It’s only generic mediocre bands that need help being brought into public eye.

It’s time either artists told record labels to shove it or for the record labels to shut the fuck up whining and just adapt to consumer behaviour, like every other industry has to. You’re nothing special in this world.

Wake up! People want to listen to music for free. Music in its purest form should be free. A product should be sold. A product is a physical item: a CD, Vinyl, Clothing, Posters, etc.

A gig is also something worth paying for because it’s an experience, and before you argue “So’s listening to an album”, it’s an experience far greater than that. I mean you can appreciate so much more than just the music. It’s the visual aspect and the PHYSICAL aspect of it all.

Perhaps to some I’m being a pretentious fuck; I’m not in a band or a musician either so perhaps I can only relate to one side, but the way I see it, it’s not the fault of the people that this ‘problem’ exists and it’s high-time that the industry adapts. This argument has been said too many times. I feel almost bad reiterating it.

Oh and on a tailing note, the film industry has no room to say shit after Avengers pulled in $200 MILLION in its opening WEEKEND even with piracy ‘rampant’. If you complain because your movie made no money then it’s because you were shit at marketing it or because it genuinely is shit and wasn’t worth going to the cinema for.

I managed to get to the second row in the club, which I credit to being able to join my girlfriend and her sister who’d (for whatever reasons they have) been waiting in the queue for three hours.

There were four bands playing all together: With One Last Breath, Crossfaith, Bury Tomorrow and of course Of Mice & Men.

The first band up was With One Last Breath, and honestly I don’t have much to say about them. They were a typical genericore band and bored me half to death. Every one of their songs sounded the exact same and they didn’t have much discernible ‘talent’ to make up for it. That said they were tight and good warm up for the little teenyboppers in the audience that simply listen to this kind of music because “OMG he’s so coooooooooootttttttttt; look at his floppy hair!!”

No. Fuck off and die.

The second band was Crossfaith, whom at first puzzled us, as a group of five Japanese men (although the drummer had us confused for quite some bit) wandered on stage and started setting up their equipment which included a proper electronic programming set up. Quite frankly I thought they were going to be auto-tuned electro-metalcore pants. Boy was I wrong.

Their music was very original, heavy and polished; They had great crowd interaction frequently going crowdsurfing and telling us to get our “fucking hands in the air”, in an almost humorously thick Japanese accent. Frankly a brilliant band and something for Japan to be proud of.

Their rendition of The Prodigy’s Omen was what proper set off the night for me. They’re also the bastards who got that room starting to become so warm and humid.

The next band was Bury Tomorrow, and I would have enjoyed them had one human giraffe not placed himself in front of me, blocking my view and refusing to move throughout their entire set; even having the audacity to elbow me in the head a couple of times too. What a cunt. Thankfully he fucked off after their last song and allowed me into my original place in the venue. He must have been a megafan of Bury Tomorrow, but it doesn’t excuse ruining that part of the show for me.

For what I heard (and didn’t see) Bury Tomorrow, were again a fairly standard metalcore band, and weren’t anything new, but they were talented and had good crowd interaction and made us laugh a couple of times.

“There’s nothing sexier than having a wank with the door unlocked at your nans house and shouting ‘Nan, I’m having a wank!’” The lead singer yelled, and we laughed on cue. I still don’t get it, he was probably drunk, but it was still amusing.

By this time I was knackered, and so was every one else. We were all dripping with sweat, and fighting over water bottles that were handed out (no seriously we were hitting each other). The roof of the venue was genuinely raining on us as vapour clinged to it.

The next band up I probably don’t need to introduce. If you weren’t reading properly before then they’re called Of Mice & Men – Frankly the only metalcore band I have any particular affinity to; the only one I actually feel can write a decent song.

This gig came only months after the departure of their Bassist and Clean Singer (a pretty big part of the band), Shayley, and their lead screamer, Austin, was announced to take the vocal reigns.

There’s not much I can say about them really, I was pretty dosey from lack of energy and water, but what I can remember, they were awesome. Just awesome. Brilliant music, tight timing, great crowd interaction. Just… yeah. Wow.

Austin really held his own on the cleans, although he struggled with pitch and sustaining them, and thus the crowd helped a lot, there were plenty of moments he was pretty good. I’m sure with a bit more practice and training he’ll have them nailed as well as Shayley.

I think it’d be better to see it actually. Here’s the video from their first song:

I’m really excited to hear their new album which is coming out soon too! Hopefully it’ll help showcase Austins clean vocals, as he has potential. I just hope they don’t go in the way of AttackAttack! and start raping the autotune and electronics too much.

I’m not saying that works for everyone, but it serves testament that as long as you get off your arse and do something for yourself, rather than being spoon-fed like a spastic, then you can still achieve good things.

But I’ve been divulging from the point I was going to make. This article is not about the general education system and my gripes with it. It is mainly about how I feel about the pressure put on students, especially from my experience with GCSEs.

Let’s be frank – GCSEs seem to be a fairly defining point in your life. They decide what college you go to; what courses you do at that college; from that college, your grades decide your uni; uni decides your job; your job decides if you have a nice house, tv, car and wife… apparently.

I disagree.

While I don’t think you should slack off and not give a shit about your exams, I do think you should stop worrying and think about your options logically.

Personally I had a LOT of pressure put on me for my GCSEs from teachers in particular, essentially telling me I would fail at everything in life if I didn’t pass. I was frankly shitting my pants about it, and I’ve noticed the same happening to people taking their GCSEs now. That pisses me off.

To be honest, I don’t know why I was worrying. I barely listened in class (I was notorious for falling asleep) and I did minimal revision (ie: basically none, bar looking at an english book for half an hour) and still managed to pass all my GCSEs, except RE because I didn’t care about that and wrote sarcastic answers for the entire exam.

I think the main thing I want to get across is that teachers and schools make this point because if you fail, they’re seen as failing, and if they’re a failure – especially with the recession – they could lose funding and thus have to take a pay cut; not get a pay rise; or worse, actually lose their jobs (if they were shit enough).

But the issue with all that pressure is it’s unneeded, and unfairly shifts the pressure on teachers to the students. Ironic considering my teachers would always say “I’ve passed my GCSEs, I don’t need to worry; you do.”

I think the more relaxed you are going into an exam, as long as you’re not arrogant, then you’ll do fine.

Even then, when you take a look at your options after completing GCSEs, it’s pretty obvious that they don’t mean much. Maths and English you definitely need to get a C, but other than that, you can study at a college regardless of grades. You may not do what courses you wanted, but there’s always an alternative. Even if you were to fail everything, you could easily go to college studying a Level 1 BTEC and redo your Maths and English while at college.

Anyway I’ve got bored of writing and rambled on enough. I’m still not sure what this post was exactly about, but to anyone doing their exams – in particular GCSEs – stop fretting, grow some balls and just get them over and done with and if you fail everything, you can still become a dustbin man! Hey, don’t knock it! The average salary for that is apparently £41,306 p/a^[1].

In all seriousness though, just do the best you feel comfortable with and chill the fuck out.

After much anticipation and waiting I had to cave in and sneakily got my hands on the duo’s joint self-titled musical effort, Storm Corrosion from a shady website renowned for it’s disregard to copyright…

Anxiously I waited for the download to reach 100%; hastily dropping the tracks from my Downloads into my iTunes; and allowing the album to begin playing.

… Hmm.

Honestly, on first listen I wasn’t sure what to make of this album, and unless you’re a major experimental music buff, I doubt you will too. It was weird, challenging, and honestly I wanted to wander off somewhere or listen to something else at some points. I just didn’t really ‘get’ this album.

However remembering I had a similar experience with many other albums, I challenged myself to listen right through to the end. Ultimately however, I won’t lie and say I really enjoyed the album. I was left a little puzzled and disappointed, although that said there were some pleasant tracks that caught my attention.

‘Storm Corrosion’ was calm and sweet, musically intriguing and eire, yet not demanding to the listener.

‘Happy’, whether deliberately or not, did what it said on the tin and made you feel quite cheerful, warm and fuzzy with the sound of an acoustic ambience along with layered soft vocals.

However it was ‘Ljudet Innan’ that was my real first-impressions favourite; it was surreal yet beautiful – especially hearing Åkerfeldt hit those sweet high falsetto notes at the beginning. Truly bizarre, yet fantastically awesome after hearing him roar like an animal on most of his musical projects, save for a few.

On first impressions, I won’t lie – Storm Corrosion was bizarre and honestly not something I thought I’d particularly listen to much again. There were bits I enjoyed, yet overall it was a disappointing listen.

But…

… Come my second/third listen and something actually clicked! I guess I was right when I told myself it wouldn’t be an ‘instant gratification’ type of album; it was definitely something that would require a few plays through to truly appreciate.

Upon that second and third listen the melodies definitely began to stand out and sink in more, and I began to discover the sounds I’d missed on my first spin. The album seemed to become something beautiful, yet actually slightly sinister; quiet, yet suprisingly bold. It really could be described as the music equivelant of a mythological siren.

What originally felt like boring elevator music, quickly took on a new life; all the tracks seemed to stand out now.

While it’s still definitely not going to get your head nodding, Storm Corrosion may well have your head swaying to its sweet and beautiful melodies. The album is perfect to appreciate during a quiet evening, sprawled out on your bed or sofa after a hard day at work.

Overall I’d say this album is a nice divulgence from the heavy and heavyish sounding Opeth and Porcupine Tree respectively. It’s probably a musical venture best aimed at Avant-Garde, Jazz, Classical and Experimental listeners more than perhaps the Rock and Metal fan bases of Opeth and Porcupine Tree.

That been said, I’m giving this album a score of

Although at first the album does not present itself to be anything particularly special or enjoyable, after a few spins – like any timeless album – you really start to get a feel for the music, which manifests itself into something intriguing and alluring. I will certainly be buying this album when it’s released, and hopefully you’ll enjoy it enough to do so too.

I look forward to seeing if Storm Corrosion ends up as a one-time side-project or whether both Wilson and Åkerfeldt take it further and onto new horizons.

What this uploader would do is:

• Allow use of WordPress’ built in media-uploader
• Allow user input (if the image is on an external domain)
• Have a simple Remove button to quickly remove an image.
• Reload the page on completed upload.
• Display a default logo image if no image was specified or an incorrect URL was inserted.

After a lot of trial and error, I finally coded up an uploader that does all this pretty well. Now as a bit of a disclaimer, I’m no expert on PHP, and I pretty much blagged my way through coding it. A lot of the code is borrowed and repurposed from numerous places.

I’m also aware that this may not be the best way to do it; there are many ways to use the Settings API as I understand. Nonetheless it does work pretty well for me.

To give credit where credit is due I based my final code on the following tutorials:

• Jeffrey Way’s Tutorial for WordPress Theme Options – His method was the most clear and easily memorable for me.
• Webmaster Source’s code snippets – Which provided an excellent base for me to integrate the Media-Library.
• Frold on the WordPress Support Forums – Who provided a fix for the snags I ran into with the above tutorial.
• PHP.net, jQuery and WordPress‘ extensive documentation.

Hopefully you’ll find it useful. I’m not offering any official warranty or support for this, if you have any issues with it, drop me an email by all means, and I’ll help where I can, but it’s not going to be maintained and updated really.

No – of course you didn’t. No one reads this blog! Nonetheless I felt the urge to update what readers this blog does have on what’s going on in my life at the moment.

First things first. BIG NEWS! Somehow I’ve landed a full-time job and as a result dropped out of college. That’s right! I’m now a Junior Designer at a small company called Alive. I’ve been there for just over two months now, and it’s pretty good!

lready I’ve learned mountains there and I’m sure I will continue doing so. It’s also taught me a lot about adult life, certainly in the sense of learning to budget myself and paying bills and stuff like that.

I suppose my only wish is that I could get my teeth stuck into something more self-directed and substantial, but it’s easy to forget after working freelance that I’m not my own boss anymore and it’s weird adjusting to that. Not to mention I’m straight out of school and although I have a portfolio of work, I’ve yet to really prove my abilities.

Leading on from that I’m hoping to get one or more personal projects on the go. Nothing too strenuous, but just something to call my own and have a bit of fun with. I’m still unsure as to whether to make a simple little blog or something or whether to break into something new, like ecommerce and start designing and selling my own products.

I’ve always had a strong interest in product design, so I’d love to be able to make my own product and sell it on. Even if it’s not necessarily for profit.

I’ve got a shit ton of ideas on the table, but my next step is figuring out a plan on how to do it. I also need funding for those ideas. Probably going to invest my own money to make a prototype and then use Kickstarter to actually fund production… Maybe.

As I’ve learned I’m great at starting an idea, but not so great at following it through…

1. What is your name? NaNaNa – My Chemical Romance

2. Where were you born? Little Lion Man – Mumford and Sons

3. What do your friends think of you? CrushCrushCrush – Paramore

4. What do your enemies think of you? Requiem – Opeth

5. Where would you most like to be right now? Your Bore – Seether

6. What do you avoid if possible? That Girl’s a Trick – This Providence

7. What is the main reason you were born? Cellar Door – Escape the Fate

8. Where will you be in 24 hours? Onto the Next One – Escape the Fate

9. Where will you be in 24 years? A Wish – Gregory and the Hawk

10. What couldn’t you live without? The Drapery Falls – Opeth

11. Name a song that you want to play at your wedding? Blood Sugar Sex Magik – Red Hot Chili Peppers

12. What will you name your first child? Hero of War – Rise Against

13. How will you die? Scars – Papa Roach

14. What’s your biggest regret? Crawling – Linkin Park

15. Who do you admire? Ride the Lightening – Metallica

16. What do people assume when they first look at me? Creep – Radiohead

17. What is some good advice for me? Central – John Frusciante

18. What will be a big challenge in life for me? Don’t Believe – Seether

19. What is my sexual preference? Truth – Seether

20. What do you say when life gets tough? The Zephyr Song – Red Hot Chili Peppers

21. What is the story of your life? Heroes of Our Time – Dragonforce

Today – as some may, or may not know – I started my work experience at a place called UseIt Computers, where I will be working nine-to-five for 5 days. For those who may not be familiar to the idea: basically it’s UK secondary schools’ method of preparing students for future employment through a quick trail of a real-life work environment. It’s also something to put on your Resumé/CV if you want too.

As I mentioned before I have been assigned work at UseIt Computers, which is a small computer consultancy, sale and repair shop in Rishton. My main role appears to be more in the workshop diagnosing and repairing damaged computers, rather than than working front-of-house and dealing with customers. I’m actually quite chuffed with this really, since I’m not much of a ‘people-person’. I get quite anxious and awkward around people I don’t know or have never met.

Interestingly the placement wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for at first. I was hoping more for a placement in a design or photography studio, although now in retrospect I’m glad it’s at least something related to what I enjoy, because I’m sure some people haven’t received that privilege — plus it’s probably more beneficial for me, since computer repair is something I’m okay at, but by no means ‘savvy’. So it’s actually adding to my overall knowledge, rather than reinforcing a lot of things I already know.

Onto the First-Hand Experience:

I arrived 10 minutes early. Not deliberately, but because only that time arrangement worked to be dropped off by my parents on their way to work; the bus would be too awkward. I expected that they’d open a few minutes beforehand anyway, although I was a little wrong with that estimate. They actually ended up opening up at 9:05am. On the bright side, I used that time to have a cigarette. They all smoke, so I wasn’t fussed about what they’d think if they even knew.

I was more concerned by my first thoughts when I first saw the dresscode of most employees. “Oh crap, I’ve come too casual…” was essentially what went through my head. I was told to wear ‘Smart-Casual Wear’, which for me consisted of a bright shirt and slim jeans – maybe not a great choice in hindsight. Although I eventually felt more relaxed with my dress when Steve and Mark turned up in even more casual wear than me, although Mark had just got back from a stag-do in Blackpool and wore a suit for the rest of the week. To be honest, from there it all began to become less tense, and actually became a very laid back environment as I begun to overcome my nerves.

My first task given was to read through the health and safety rubbish, which was unsurprisingly boring. I read some bits carefully, but most of it was skim read. Basically I know not to mess with electronics stupidly.

My second task was to diagnose a 5-7 year old laptop that wouldn’t turn on. After trying a new powerpack and cable and replacing the RAM it was decided to just leave it till tomorrow and move onto something else. Sounded good to me.

After that Steve decided to walk me through building a PC from scratch: something which I’ve been interested in, but being a loyal Apple fanboy, never really had the chance of doing. It took a bit of fiddling since they seem to get a lot of broken parts from who Pete described as a ‘dodgy bloke’. In the end it turned out to be a poor SATA connection. After replacing that installation of everything else was a breeze. I just had to tidy up the cables inside on which I totally OCD’d on, much to the amusement of the staff.

Yes I took a picture: I give you the first computer I've built.

For the last couple of hours I spend my time trying to fix a laptop with a dodgy trackpad and a funky 3G dongle. After a full factory reset, without any change I concluded it was a hardware issue and that the trackpad had been permanently damaged. Probably by excessive pressure applied to the center of it, as the edges appeared to still be acceptably responsive. After that I was instructed to install Vista SP2 onto it to see if we could at least get the dongle working. I didn’t get round to getting it all done before the end of my shift, I just managed to install SP2 successfully. I’ll see tomorrow if I need to finish that off or whether someone did what I noted down as todos.

Anyhow, in conclusion, I’m quite happy with the placement; the guys there seem pretty cool and I’m definitely learning something from it.

To better explain my point, let’s cut straight to it. It’s just a font. That’s all it is, and unless you’re a complete self-admitting typophile, then the militant attitudes to using the ‘wrong’ font should not be that present in your mind. And if it is I’d like to think it’d be much more polite to do the British thing, and just ‘tut’ at it rather than marching up and saying “Why the hell are you using Comic Sans!?”.

I’m not saying Comic Sans is a good font and should be used often. It’s not and there are much better alternatives, but hey, It’s certainly not as bad as people make it out to be. At least it’s not as bad as this sadistic crime against typography:

At least Comic Sans is kinda legible, right?

It seems ironic, that the font was never even meant to be used by end-users. Comic Sans was created to be a quick way to make comic book looking speech bubbles in Microsoft Office. Unfortunately, Microsoft – in their ultimate design wisdom – decided to place the font into the main font library of Windows.

From this point it spread through the world like a disease. I think the main reason design conscious people despise it so much, is because it’s so terribly overused, and yeah, cause it isn’t exactly sexy. I suppose the main difference between Comic Sans and the above example, Jokerman, is that you see Comic Sans everywhere – even on legal documents! You only see Jokerman on a 6 year olds Word Art poster, thankfully.

So my conclusion is to just let it be. To be honest, I personally don’t mind Comic Sans being used for simple documents; the same applies to on-screen publications. It’s just when it’s used in larger sizes that I find it to be rather garish.