Quick Update

So, as I mentioned in my last post, most of my spare time has been taken up by the wedding of a good friend of mine. It took up a lot of my time- to the point where I haven't seen anyone else other than her and her new husband when I haven't been working in my room. Now that everything's done and everyone's had a bit of time to recover (kinda, I had to make a birthday cake pretty much straight after the wedding) I'm hopeful I can start being more productive. Although maybe after Halloween.

I love Halloween.
Hopefully I'll have a costume for the festivities this year, but I've not had much time to plan. And I'm one of these people that always has grand ideas above my station. I'm looking forward to seeing what my friends come up with though. I might buy as many glosticks as I can attach to myself and go as a living acid trip. If I do, I promise photos.

My artistic plans for the future? More engraving. Probably a lot more engraving. Possibly some photography, I'm quite out of practice on that front. And if I sketch, I'll try to post it. Sketches are always kinda difficult because I don't have a scanner, and I'm not any good at digital art. So if I can get decent enough photographs, or the loan of someone's scanner, I'll put it up here asap.

See if I don't post anything for a while, please yell at me in the comments, strangely enough I'll appreciate it.
Thanks for reading!

Commissioned work

        I was asked earlier this year to create favours for a friend of mine's wedding. We talked about what I could do for her and what she'd ideally like and we decided on making glass candle holders with red candles inside and a swirled pattern that would be unique to each candle. Once all the favours where done, I was then asked if I could engrave the name of the couple, the date of the wedding and a pattern, similar to the favours, on the diameter of 3 mirrored plates.

      With the wedding being later this week, I'm allowed to share a photo of the finished project here. All in all there were 13 favours and 3 mirrored plates. I don't think the mirrored plates show the engraving too well, but whenever I got close to the camera all the camera focused on was it's reflection. Please let me know what you think, I'm always happy to hear feedback. Thanks guys.

So, everything I own is possessed...

My phone is resending texts that I sent over a week ago, while it was off.
My laptop is randomly changing windows when it feels like it.
A pair of socks fell to the floor from somewhere.
My bed is creaking strangely, and one of it's drawers opened slightly.
And my door, which you usually have to force open, is making the noise it makes when someone's trying to get in.

Or is it just that I'm noticing this all today, when really it's always like this.
Either way I'm turning my music up. Speaking of which, on twitter Josh Mattingly of Indie Statik drew attention to a wonderful site full of chiptunes. Pause, found at http://www.iimusic.net/, has a full catalogue of a mix of chiptune artists, ordered by release date, with most of the artist information pages linking to a Bandcamp page where you can preview the tracks. I'm loving this site, and I'm still finding new tunes and artists to love through it. My favourite at the moment is Alex Mauer's 'Koalie is Dead', eight wonderful tracks for a NES game that unfortunately never saw the light of day. I can, and have spent hours on this website, just browsing through their roster of artists, and I probably will keep going back to it. Check it out if you're even slightly interested in chiptunes or if you're just curious about what I'm on about, Alex Mauer is a good place to start, and I'd recommend Disasterpeace afterwards. Especially the album, 'Rise of the Obsidian Interstellar', it is fantastic.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think if you do check it out. Thanks for reading!

Faster Than Light

It's been a wee while since I was on here. Life is getting really busy at the moment, but I'm hoping when the next month is over I'll not be as busy or as lazy.

One thing that has been keeping me occupied has been the wait for a fantastic rogue like game called "Faster than Light". This game was up on Kickstarter and looks like it might turn out to be one of their first successes for games that have been funded in this way. The plot is basically, you are the captain of you spaceship and you are carrying important information that the space rebels cannot get their hands on. You must make your way into safe space territory and blow up as many space rebels as you can. This game is so much fun, you die a hell of a lot, but with any rogue like, that's just what happens. On your journey you pick up crew and upgrades and I believe you even unlock other ships (I'm not that far yet). Check out Total Biscuit's "WTF is FTL?" or buy the game and try it for yourself from here.

I am totally digging this game and if you are too, or if you think you will/won't check out the game, leave a wee comment below and let me know why. I'm on a bit of a space kick at the moment, so I'm sorry if my next few posts are too astrologically heavy. Thanks for reading -erin

Feelings and secrets

I've been feeling really bummed out about music lately, well when I say lately I kind of mean for the last ten or so months. I'm not sure what happened I just started getting gradually more and more disinterested in the music that I was listening to. Taking a break to listen to the stuff I grew up with didn't really help either, and it got to the point where all I'd listen to was Big Giant Circles. Which isn't a bad thing, but I used to listen to anything I could: Black Keys, Led Zepplin, Meshuggah, Mastodon, Big Giant Circles, Pelican, Zico Chain, Carnivores, Bach, Dresden Dolls, Reel Big Fish, the Adjusters, Reuben; pretty much anything I could find.
My musical feelings became numb, and I can't even remember if it shifted gradually or rather quickly. Hell, I don't even think it's fixed, but when walking home from the pub one night I remembered how music used to feel for one brief moment.
On a particular stretch of road, a few years ago when I was coming home from a gig on a cold April night, I had my mp3 player on and was listening to Hundred Reasons, trying not to sing along too loudly when 'The Perfect Gift' came on. Just as the song was telling me that I was, "So guillible in every way, You stupid fool.", I looked at the sky. Now, at my eye level it was a perfectly clear night, but just above my head was a descending blanket of snow, thick as clouds. It was unreal. And now that patch of road makes me think of that song, which makes me think of that night, and the world goes unreal for a few minutes.
So go listen to Hundred Reasons, they're the shit. And don't walk around dark roads at night, that's just stupid, I am stupid.

Also I have a question, I've been seeing a lot of 'My Secret' videos on YouTube lately, these videos are basically young women (although some guys have probably done it too), usually with bits of paper with some sort of narrative about their secrets and life story that they show to the camera while music is playing in the background. I'm curious, is this something you'd ever do? I know I write a blog where I'll be putting up a ton of personal stuff, my art (that I hope to get up someday) I feel is very personal, and I usually don't show it to people unless I'm 98% happy with it, or I really trust the other person and want their feedback. But I don't know if I could ever give away 'my secrets' in such a blatant manner. I wonder, am I overreacting to this, is it something any of you would ever do?
Thanks for reading - erin

Adventures in Hardcore Minecraft

The world I spawned in was very forgiving. Tons of trees and a good few cows left me confident I'd survive longer than an hour, plus this was one of the biggest islands I'd started on. I could do well here. Shelter was speedily put up along the coastline and I started a small farm. A few days passed and I felt I might actually prosper for once. The exploratory tunnels I'd dug yielded some iron and lots of coal in sprawling caves that I had broken into. I got iron tools and some armour, had started making cakes and bread and with my home facing the ocean I figured having a room that faced out into the ocean depths would be nice, and somewhat relaxing. Building it was somewhat stressful, with a few moments where I got close to drowning, but when it was done I had a wonderful view of all the monsters that crawled above me. I planned to split the ocean facing glass room into two levels, the bottom holding a brick lined lava pit that I hoped to surround with water, the upper would hold chests with everything I owned. I was looking forward to building it, but first I needed to mine.

I spent days in the depths of some mines, hoping to strike lucky when I happened upon some diamond. Knowing that diamond is often surrounded by lava I gingerly mined the area around the diamond, with a clear exit just in case, and sure enough there was lava. A massive pool I later found to join with a couple of others, keeping a flow of lava pretty consistent, bucketing the lava out of the pool was pointless. I blocked off as much as I possibly could and mined the diamonds I could. But as always, when it comes to diamonds, I get greedy. Strip mining in the area would prove to be nearly fatal. Stumbling along another pool I noticed some redstone across the way, and usually ores are quite close together, so I nimbly edged my way across the pool and made it to the blocks of red. It was while I was mining that I misstep and landed into the lava. Jumping out and running as fast as I could, I don't know why- I had no water and it did nothing to help, all I could do was I watch helplessly as my lifebar slowly depleted. I was dying.
At my final heart, the fire stopped. My food bar was too low for me to start healing naturally so I headed back to base to replenish and maybe sleep through a night. Diamond greed returning, I ventured back into the depths. My run ins with lava this time where not as damaging, it was just as frightening, especially when they were at face height. Returning to base with a modest stack of gems, I decided to dedicate my future to a life of farming.

 However I noticed I was too low on clay to make enough bricks for the lava pool I wanted in the bottom floor in my house. So my first point of order was to scout my island, and see what treasures there may be out there. All that I really found was a number of creepers and a few skeletons. Running out of options I went to the ocean in front of my house, knowing I'd seen some clay there. Wading into the ocean I took a deep breath and descended. Luck let me find a small deposit of clay not too far off the coast, so I started digging. I'd only broken two blocks when the first stab of pain hit me from a lack of air. I pushed myself towards the surface, each painful stab slowing me enough to keep me from the surface. My vision blurred red, and I was greeted into my afterlife with the words, "You cannot respawn in Hardcore mode. Delete world."

Walking home

Torrential rain soaked through me as I walked home, and on my mp3 player all that was playing was Maximalisms' A Terrible Battle and some Big Giant Circles.
Feeling fucking euphoric.

Got home and watched nothing but Jon Tron Show.
It's been a great day.

Real news soon, I hope. I'm a real lazy so and so, sorry.