Jan08

BatFit Challenge two

by Loupieon January 8th, 2012at 6:18 pm
Posted In: BatFit, Woodhouse Players

The second challenge in BatFit 2012 is to dance for 20mins a day to VNV Nation. Now I don’t actually own anything by them so I have been instead using the bounciest artist I have, Ayria. When you actually try and do something like this you realise just how long twenty minutes is, that or just how ridiculously unfit I am. Still I have been enjoying myself, nit sure yet if it will become part of a regular exercise regime, but it’s a nice gentle start to doing something regularly.

No I am not going to post any pictures of me dancing up here. If you are that desperate to see me make a fool of myself you can come and see me in panto. Yes I know shameless plug, still Babes in the Wood is on over the next two weekends. Tickets and details are available here

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Jan08

Book one – Oh My Goth

by Loupieon January 8th, 2012at 6:10 pm
Posted In: Projects, 100+ Reading Challange, Projects

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The aim of the 100+ reading challenge is to read 100 or more books in a year. this is something I attempt every year but usually fail due to forgetting to keep track of them all. So this year I’m going to follow Skippy’s idea and blog each one.

 

So first up it made sense to read one of the three, now four, new books I got for Christmas.

Oh My Goth by Gena Showalter tells the story of teenage goth Jade Leigh who finds herself switching places, freaky friday style, with the most popular girl in school. With one slight twist, when Jade enters this virtual world she finds that everyone s now goth and those people who were her friends before are now dressed like Barbie.

I found it an amusing read. It made a nice light hearted start to the year and didn’t take me long to finish. One down ninety nine to go.

 

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Jan02

BatFit 2012

by Loupieon January 2nd, 2012at 10:51 pm
Posted In: BatFit

Ok, so the first of my challenges I am going to tell you about is BatFit 2012, mainly because I am already slightly behind as people who have been following her blog earlier started planning for this in December. Oh well, here goes nothing.

So firstly what is BatFit. Le Professeur Gothique has set up a challenge where we all set our own goals for health and well being for the year, such as loosing weight or gaining muscle. There will be weekly challenges to participate in and hopefully making this public will actually give me the kick I need to do something. Heres hoping anyway.

BatfitRight the first challenge;

“Go out and buy yourself a notebook, journal or sketch book — anything that you’ll write in constantly. If you can’t buy something then find an old half used notebook or make a file on your computer. This is going to be your health journal and will be the place where you keep your innermost thoughts, accomplishments and miscellanea associated with Bat Fit 2012
Once you buy, make or find your journal write your first entries:
1. Write your health goals for 2012. Be brutally honest, candid and realistic about what you want to achieve.
2. Once you’ve done that, your second entry will be for you to explore the meaning of good health. What does it mean to you? How does it relate to your goals? Be absolutely realistic.
In this journal you will keep a record of your progress and daily health activities. This includes your food intake, exercise output, moods, mental state, trips to the doctor, sickness, PMS, etc. Since I’m trying to lose weight and get fit, I am going to record my food intake and will slowly eliminate the “culprits” and habits that are causing my problem. I will also keep track of all of Bat Fit’s challenges in my own journal and my own results. We all have our own goals so your journal will look quite a bit different than mine.
However, we should all write this one entry EVERY NIGHT before bed:
3. Write no less than five things that you are grateful for, or that you’ve accomplished during the day and are proud of, or that you like about yourself.”
Right ok, finding a journal was not hard, I have loads of notebooks lying around that have various half written things in them it was just a case of deciding which one to use. I finally decided on my dragon one, which despite having the best of intentions for I haven’t written in since university. Bad me. The bigger challenge was finding a working pen.
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So with that achieved it was time to start the challenge properly. I know there will not be enough pages to last me the whole year, but that’s ok, I can always switch to another book later, but this will get me started. So first task. Write down my health goals. Firstly, I want to generally live a bit more healthily. I am of a slim build but that doesn’t mean I am healthy by a long stretch. I eat utter rubbish and that has to change. I could also do with undertaking more regular exercise, I am hopelessly unfit, and building some muscle, my current muscles are non-existent.
So the meaning of good health. To me it is all about being able to achieve everything you want to. I know full well that being slim does not automatically equal good health, on the other side of things being curvy is not an indication of bad health either. It’s about feeling good about yourself. Plus I am looking to the future, I know my stupidly fast metabolism won’t last for ever so I am going to start eating better now so I get into good habits for when I am older. Plus, just because I don’t seem to put on weight does not mean I’m doing myself any favours in the long run. Yes there will be bad days, there always will, but this way I hope to take more control over them. Well that’s the plan anyway.
Finally I am grateful for, and no I will not be posting this every day, I just thought I should for the first one;
  1. The nice weather earlier. Yes, it was still bitterly cold when the wind picked up but I arrived early to meet a friend today and so just sat outside reading and watching the world go by. It was actually pleasantly warm when the sun came out.
  2. The good friends I have around me. You know who you are and thank you.
  3. This is going to seem really silly but, the goth scene. Or more specifically the London goth scene. I don’t get out very often, something I am planning to change, but when I do I am always left feeling like I belong. I don’t know what I would do without that.
  4. Books. I love books, I just love being able to escape into another life for a bit, what better way is there to relax than to curl up with a good book.
  5. Finally, my parents for today providing advice, a chauffeur and dinner. What more could I ask for!

So that’s my plans we’ll see how long I can keep this up.

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Jan02

New Year

by Loupieon January 2nd, 2012at 9:40 am
Posted In: Projects, Random

Ok, this is a new year and I am determined to make the most of it. Expect a few posts over the next few days as I try my best to start all those goals I keep meaning to and never actually finish. Plus I do have some updates on my 101things and other projects that I would like to share.

So after a frankly miserable end to the last year. For those who don’t yet know I broke up with Skippy. This is not something I want to talk about on here but I thought you should know to keep things in context. I feel that this year will be better. I am going to set myself some goals and see how well I stick to them. i know I have failed slightly already by starting all of this on the 2nd and not the first but it’s a leap year this year so I get an extra day to make up for it.

As it currently stands my goals for 2012 are (and yes I know some of these are the same things I post every year)

  • 100+ reading challenge – read 100 books in a year
  • Project 52 – write at least one blog post a week
  • Crack on with my 101 list
  • Write some more London’s Dead posts
  • Actually go out so I see people more than once or twice a year
  • Have a crack at Le Professeur Gothique‘s BatFit 2012 challenge
  • Actually complete an entire month on 750words.com

I think that is everything for now but I will update you on all of these soon so watch this space.

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Dec24

Reliving my childhood

by Loupieon December 24th, 2011at 2:02 pm
Posted In: Random Geeky

One of the first computer games I was introduced to as a child was Nibbles. A Dos based snake game. Ok, it wasn’t the first one I remember playing. That was hangman on Spectrum, which my parents had programmed to contain the names of all the My Little Ponies.

Anyway, I have spent years trying to find an online version of Nibbles, no luck so far, other snake type games are just not the same. However I did find this site; DosGamesArchive which has a number of old Dos games that you can download, including Nibbles. The only problem with this is that my computer is too fast to run it, oh well. I will keep looking. Though while I was looking for Nibbles I did discover that they have another of my favourite childhood games; Secret Agent Man, commonly abbreviated to SAM. You play the role of a secret agent, number 006 1/2, and then fight your way past guards, robots and other obstacles to destroy the enemies radar. Skippy seems to think that this XKCD cartoon is appropriate at the moment;

 

Flash games

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Dec07

New project

by Loupieon December 7th, 2011at 9:23 am
Posted In: Doctor Who, Projects, Random Geeky

No prizes for guessing what this is supposed to be

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Dec05

Fish Fingers and Custard

by Loupieon December 5th, 2011at 8:22 pm
Posted In: Doctor Who

To anyone who knows me I think it is fairly obvious that I am quite a big Doctor Who fan. Following a very random discussion in the pub on Tuesday, note ideas had in the pub are rarely good. It was decided that something that really had to be tried was fish fingers and custard, as made famous by Matt Smith in his first episode, The Eleventh hour. If you haven’t seen it the clip is available on YouTube, just search fish fingers and custard.

Wednesday, when I had the day off due to industrial action at school, me and the friend who had suggested this took a trip to Tescos and tried them. Needless to say I was not overly impressed. Then again Tescos value fish fingers and cold custard are not great on their own never mind when combined together. When I went to the NaNoWriMo thank God it’s over party on Thursday and mentioned this there was general mutterings that the pub we were going to on Saturday had a fish finger sandwich on their menu as well as assorted desserts that came with custard. It was at this point I said something rather stupid. Didn’t I say that ideas had in the pub are rarely good. “I’ll try them again if you guys do.”

So with my fate now sealed it made sense to dress up and do this as properly as possible. I will happily admit that on the three times I have worn this outfit I have felt rather more mad than normal, which is not a bad thing. Sometimes I wish I had that level of insane energy all the time. Life would certainly be more interesting. Anyways I digress. Thy were a lot better this time round, probably the combination of handmade fish fingers and piping hot custard that did it, but was a lot nicer. And this time round we even managed to get photos to prove it. How many geek points do I get for this?

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Nov29

Task 54

by Loupieon November 29th, 2011at 7:37 am
Posted In: Projects, Day Zero

Right time to kick off on my Day Zero posts. Where better to start than task 54; Listen to at least one song by each band in Amy’s great big list of goth bands

For those who don’t know I have been following Amy’s blog, The Ultimate Goth Guide, for a while now and enjoy reading what she has to say. So when I thought that I should try some new music and not just keep listening to the same old stuff it made sense to start here. So Yesterday at work I listened to the following bands;

1919, according to Last.fm this band from Bradford started in 1980 ‘and set about recording heavy, melodic, intense dance music with no frills and pretentions.’ I managed to find a few of their tracks on YouTube after trying and failing on Spotify.

As such I listened to the following tracks; After the fall, Cry Wolf, Can this be Real, Caged, Dream, Repulsion, Alien, The Scream, Earth Song, Giant, Tear Down These Walls, Midas touch, and Control. My initial thoughts were that I liked them, though they are unlikely to become one of my favourite bands. They did however provide perfect background music for work. No one has questioned my strange musical tastes so far, other than to occasionally ask who an artist is so I think I have got away with it. Will certainly be adding them to my last.fm playlist and possibly buying an album in the future.

Band number two was 19ninetynine, who after much searching I found had changed their name to terrornation. They are described as ‘an instantly accessible fusion of dirty beats, haunting vocals and grinding guitars.’ Even knowing their new name I had a bit of trouble finding tracks by them but in the end managed to listen to; iThink, Snow white Eyes, and Vagabonds. It probably says enough to say that out of those my favourite was Vagabonds a cover of the New Model Army song. I did like them but doubt I will be listening to them much in the future.

Finally was 13 candles. ‘One of the most gifted of the Dark Romantic Gothic bands from Britain in the Last Century.’ Must say I agree, listened to quite a few of their tracks; Xenomorph, Siren, Listen for the Whispers, Lost Child, Flesh of the Nazarene, Carpathian Moonrise, Woman of Dark Desires, Stranger in my Own Home, Sapphire (Queen of Dusk), Disbelievers, Join me in Death, In the Name of Darkness, Death Awaits you, Prayer of Eternal Damnation, Ghosts, Alien, The Hunted, The Hunger Within, Killing for Culture, and Lifeless Passion. Easily the best out of the three band sI listened too. Will be looking for more of their stuff in the future.

In case you were wondering when I last checked there were 1045 bands on the list so I have a way to go yet.

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