any fuel...?

Remember a few weeks back i said this:

"Don't be surprised if the next post is me moaning about how EVERYTHING fell through and muttering something about home recording and exotic tunings (again)."

Well, a little later than predicted, but things are kindof collapsing.

Barring a big change of heart(s) Band 1 is finished. Band 0 will not extend past the one-off gig. Band 4 was never looking likely, mainly for financial reasons. Band 3 is looking strong, but doesn't involve yours truly. All my musical hopes rest on Band 2. And riding the coat-tails of Band 3.

There, a whole paragraph that essentially says nothing about anything but leaves you feeling vaguely disappointed. Man, enough about bands for the time being; unless anything progresses to a gig, or even just a myspace, i'll spare you.

In fact, improvements i intend to make to this blog in coming weeks -

1. More photos
2. More excel spreadsheets
3. Retrospectively going back and changing all the uppercase 'I's to lowercase
4. More rubbish blog ideas
5. More links? i dunno though, i don't want to be a link-whore, or offend anyone
6. A proper domain name - imagine it... "bollr.org" "bollr.cz" "bollr.sch.uk"
7. I might reverse the colours to make it white writing on black; just so if you've been reading it for a while, then suddenly look at a white wall, you'll see the face of Christ
8. "what i trod in today" - a new daily feature

I dunno, essentially i'm just putting off cleaning the bathroom

x x

kill yr icons

Icons - we've all seen them. Elvis is one. James Dean is one. Che Guevara is one. However, the icon on my mind at the moment stands a mere 16 pixels tall.

- yo!

Pretty enigmatic huh? She exudes cool, non? If she had a cigarette in her mouth I'd be on the phone to Rick Moranis straight away.

Err, no, it's a tiny picture, I made it in about 20 seconds by taking an image and resizing it to 16x16 pixels. Genius. Then i left it under my pillow and the favicon fairy did the rest.

According to favicon.com, a website dedicated to these tiny marvels,

"The Favicon allows the webmaster to further promote their site, and to create a more customized appearance within a visitor's browser. Often, the Favicon reflects the look and feel of the web site or the organization's logo."

which i greet with the same skepticism that i showed towards frames between 2002 and 2005. The best bit is that favicon.com decided that the symbol to best sum up their website was an ugly red 'F' - pretty inspired especially considering how they charge $75 minimum to design one for you!

As always, my flippancy is a thin veil to hide the fact I'll soon be spending whole nights, zoomed in at 2000%, trying to decide between two shades of marl.

every hill looks the same

Spent a very enjoyable evening going through a printed copy of the html code for this page, with a biro, in order to better understand it and to try and look impressive in front of my housemate. I then battled against our increasingly ropey internet connection to tidy up a few things.

Itching to get recording underway; i think we'll be able to tell quite quickly whether it's working or not. I've always been in love with bands who capture a feeling, Peeps into Fairyland for example - their second album would probably attract scorn from most producers but you can really hear that it was inspired by highland walks and mountains and cottages.

It's as if the surroundings and even the recording environment seep into the music; I want to record in as many different places as possible and hopefully capture something.

accept all happiness from me

I've been continuously tweaking this since I signed up and, worse still, i expect a full overhaul when Simon sees it. I've become slightly obsessive over fonts.

I'm back on the old Cubase at home and starting to rattle off rough demos - even though this whole band idea is still vague in some senses, we do have lots of cohesive ideas.

Simon performed in his solo acoustic guise last night; clever turns of phrase, emotive lyrics and well-crafted melodies are wasted on an open-mic audience. Later on, watching a bedwetting singer-songwriter type who seemed incapable of forming consonents, i felt very sad.