Long time, no post. Some eventful things have happened since last post, but overall things have been going along as normal.

Personal
The biggest thing happening has been Gwyneth’s shoulder operation. For some time now she’s been having a pain in her right shoulder, and eventually after a couple of doctor visits it was deemed that she’ll need a shoulder operation. So a month back into the theatre she went for the operation. Everything went well, but now it’s the long rehabilitation of the shoulder, these things don’t suddenly start working like normal again it seems. So, lots of exercises from the physio, but we’ll get there eventually. She can’t do any strenuous work with the arm, and can’t sleep on it, which is a bit of an inconvenience, but that’s the price one has to pay I guess! At least we’ve got to the point where she can bath instead of showering, so we don’t have to go to my parents place every night to use their shower.

Movies
In movie news, watched a bunch of movies which I haven’t reviews, click here for a quick overview and my ratings. Started watching the Harry Potter movies last night in preparation for the 6th movie to hit. Harry Potter’s one of those things that I just like…

There’s quite a few movies in the coming months to get excited about though. Eager to see the new Transformers movie first and foremost.

Music
Went through quite a few Nine Inch Nails marathons, I guess with them now on their last tour in quite some time, one needs to stock up on as much NIN as one can get. Been downloading a lot of the live shows they’ve been performing, this will probably be the closest I’ll get to them ever. But hey, can’t complain, 20 years of NIN is a long time. And I’m sure Trent Reznor wants to change the pace a bit, especially seeing that he’s now engaged to get married (that was a bit of a surprise!)

VNV Nation has a new album out, will have to get that. Placebo has a new album out, ditto. See Muse are recording their new album as well. Does look like 2009′s the year for new albums. Not that I’m complaining!

Over the weekend we went to the Doors to watch The Black Hotels and Die Heuwels Fantasties. The Black Hotels played a lot of new stuff, songs that aren’t on their latest album. This sucks, as I’ll have to wait till next year when they release a new album. I want it now! Die Heuwels Fantasties were surprisingly good. Afrikaans rock music has come a long way, that’s for sure.

Games
Been playing a lot games, as usual! I finished The Witcher, which was a great game, definitely one worth playing if you have a capable PC. Currently I’m playing Infamous on the PS3, and enjoying it a lot. It reminds me a bit of Crackdown, which is definitely not a bad thing.

So, there’s the state of the nation as it stands at the moment.

He’ll be missed.

Hamtoro

RIP 25 March 2009

Enter Zack Snyder. He did a steller remake of Dawn of the Dead, and then he brought Frank Miller’s 300 to the big screen in way that I didn’t think was possible. It managed to keep the essence of the novel, and brought the comic panels to life without it seeming corny or over the top.

When I read that he’s been put at the helm of The Watchmen, my optimism grew considerably. I have faith in him in bringin this graphic novel to the big screen in a faithful manner. And this weekend I’ll find out for myself just how well he managed that.

Who watches the Watchmen?

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I blame the sales that are happening all over the place. Take 2 recently had a massive sale across all platforms. So, I ordered three games – Tomb Raider Anniversary, Civilization Revolution and Naruto, all three for the Xbox. Then I picked up a second hand copy of Resistance 2 for the PS3. While perusing the different gaming fora, I was made aware of a massive sale that Incredible Connection’s got going as well. I finally tracked down an Incredible that actually had anything worthwhile yesterday, and there I picked up Too Human for the 360, Hellgate: London, Titan Quest, Dawn of War and Company of Heroes for the PC.

Many of these games I’ve been wanting to play for some time ,but wasn’t prepared to pay full-price for them. When they dropped below the point that I determine as reasonable though, it’s all fair game. So, that’s 9 new games added to my already overtaxed “To Be Played” queue. *sigh*

Right now my priority is Hellgate: London though. At least I could decide on that!

2.16.09: A note from Trent and a wave goodbye

Towards the beginning of my career in Nine Inch Nails, our biggest break came in the form of an invitation to perform a series of shows with Jane’s Addiction. These performances essentially created and defined the term “alternative” rock in the US, created an ongoing festival franchise that is still thriving (Lollapalooza), set the stage for Nirvana to shift popular taste a few months later, and were really fucking FUN to play and attend – truly the best times I’ve had. The shows were epic. So epic, they propelled NIN to the “next level” (whatever that means), but caused Jane’s to implode. The band broke up at the end of that tour.

Fast forward to the present. Corporate rock STILL sucks. A friend tells me they saw the original Jane’s lineup play a tiny show in LA that was unbelievable. I break out my Jane’s records and am amazed by how vital they sound. These guys were the real deal and in this current climate mostly dominated by poseurs and pussies it was refreshing to hear something that sounded dangerous, volatile, beautiful and SINCERE.
Emails were sent, phone calls were made, dinner was arranged, ideas were discussed and the next thing I know we’re in the studio experimenting. We laugh, we get to know each other, we cry, we yell, we almost quit, we record LOTS of guitar solos, we discuss, we actually begin to all communicate, we yell some more, we become FRIENDS, we laugh again and we do some great things. I get to see first hand why they broke up all those years ago but I also get the chance to see four distinct personalities that become an INCREDIBLE band when they’re in the same room.

In NIN world, 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of our first releases. I’ve been thinking for some time now it’s time to make NIN disappear for a while. Last year’s “Lights in the Sky” tour was something I’m quite proud of and seems like the culmination of what I could pull off in terms of an elaborate production. It was also quite difficult to pull off technically and physically night after night and left us all a bit dazed. After some thought, we decided to book a last run of shows across the globe this year. The approach to these shows is quite different from last year – much more raw, spontaneous and less scripted. Fun for us and a different way for you to see us and wave goodbye. I reached out to Jane’s to see if they’d want to join us across the US and we all felt it could be a great thing. Will it work? Will it resonate in the marketplace? Who knows. Are there big record label marketing dollars to convince you to attend? Nope.
Does it feel right to us and does it seem like it will be fun for us and you? Yes it does.
Look for tour dates soon and I hope to see you out there.

Trent

I’ve been a fan of Nine Inch Nails since about 92. Having huge breaks inbetween albums isn’t anything new, but as of late we’ve gotten used to regular releases, in the last four years or so we’ve had four new releases, before that the last release was in ’99. Trent has had to deal with a lot of crap, the gap from ’99 to ’05 was to sort out his addictions and get his life back on track. Since then he’s been working non-stop, it’s almost as if he’s traded an addiction to drugs for an addiction to work.

So, I’m sad that he’s deciding to take a break, but I can understand why. One can’t work non-stop and remain fully functional. I only hope that this time the break won’t be another 5 years! One of my wishes in life is to still see NIN perform live, and I hope that will still be a possibility, at least this break will give me time to start a serious “See NIN Live” fund!

Thanks Trent for the last 15 years of music you’ve given me, and here’s looking forward to what may come.

I had to hack the gamercard plugin I wrote though, it was causing way to much misalignment issues, all my fault. It’s fixed now, and everything’s good to go!

Since I’ve asked them to upgrade my website to PHP5, I’ve been getting a lot of Internal Server Errors, which I think might be related to memory usage. I should probably ask them if they can up my memory limit. If not, it might be time to look for another host, as it’s getting quite annoying actually.

]]> http://broken.co.za/blog/2009/01/25/another-version-of-the-truth/feed 0 http://broken.co.za/blog/2009/01/08/all-hail-reznor http://broken.co.za/blog/2009/01/08/all-hail-reznor#comments Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:19:03 +0000 Broken http://broken.co.za/blog/?p=244 On the NIN website, Trent Reznor has been promising a little present for the fans. And yesterday, he delivered!

Previously he announced that there would be no DVD release for the their Lights in the Sky tour, which kind of bummed me out, as from all accounts it was one of the best live shows, ever.

And yesterday he released the raw, unedited High Definition video of three of their shows to the internets. All 405 gigabytes of it. Now it’s up to the fans to make something decent from it, and they’ve already started: http://thisoneisonus.org/

Thanks Trent!