Phone and camera

So my new phone broke a couple of weeks ago now. Some of the buttons stopped working and then it turned itself off. It's been really hard to do anything about it, especially as it was my dad that bought it and not me. But in the end I took it to The Carphone Warehouse at Meadowhall yesterday, as they can send it off to Nokia for a repair under warranty, and it'll take 8-9 days they said.

It's been kinda liberating not having a phone, but mostly just annoying, having to use Facebook all the time to arrange stuff with people.

The main reason I'd actually gone to Meadowhall was to buy a new camera from Jessops, where my mate works. I'd been wanting to get a decent digital camera before I go to Japan, and upon recommendation I decided on the Nikon Coolpix S210. I'm just charging the battery up now and haven't had a chance to use it yet, but it's meant to be pretty good.

I think photos are becoming more and more important these days. Maybe it's because of things like Flickr and Facebook. People seem to want to take them all the time. They are a good idea though - you'll probably see a few more pictures on here from now on.

Reviews

My band, Spheres of Chaos got mentions in two Sheffield music magazines this month. The first is in COMA Magazine. They reviewed our new EP, Stratospheria, and as I don't have a scanner handy, I'll type up what they said:

"Bit annoyed that once again the only way to find out what's on this disc is to access the bands website. I refuse to do so and have no idea what these tracks are called, but it's great. Progressive rock has returned with a big bag of sugar poured over it. I feel like I'm listening to Camel for the first time with a bit of the better guitar bits from Pink Floyd etc etc etc. It's nice, it's really nice and a good selection to play when you can't be bothered with words and just want the waves to crash through you and the ground to melt between your toes."

I really like that. Especially the comparison to Pink Floyd! But maybe I should have written the track names on the disc I sent...

The second was in Sandman, and this was a review of a show we played at West Street Live a couple of months ago. It's only a few lines but it's still quite positive. If you live round here you can pick up a free copy (as you can with COMA), or there's an online PDF version. We're on page 27. I also sent a copy of our EP to Sandman, but they haven't reviewed it yet. Maybe next month?

Sport

I went to watch Sheffield Wednesday's last game of the season yesterday against Norwich City. We had to win to be sure of avoiding relegation, and we did, 4-1! That meant we actually ended up finishing 16th in the table, 6 places above the relegation zone. It was quite an exciting match, but the main thing was that we stayed up, although I hope we're finishing towards the other end of the table next season.

It's also the final of the World Snooker Championship tonight. I always enjoy watching this tournament, especially as it's held in Sheffield. I'd like to actually go to the Crucible one day and watch a match, but watching it on TV is good too. I don't fully understand the game, but the commentators always explain everything and make it interesting. Also, I like the fact that, compared to other sports, snooker doesn't tend to be overhyped or anything - it's just nice and relaxed.

I'd like to see Ronnie O'Sullivan win again, and I reckon he will as he's already winning by quite a way.

Pokémon Gold came in the post

After sending off my Pokémon Gold cart to Nintendo to get a new battery it came back in the post today. I had to wait more than the three weeks it was meant to take, but I got one of those plastic game cases with it, which is cool. And it's not like I have time to play games at the moment anyway. But only three more weeks and a couple of exams now, and then it's the summer holidays!

Depressing blog entry

Life is tough at the moment. This second year at uni has been a killer. I can't wait to get to Japan, where uni is much more laid-back apparently.

I spent all day yesterday writing an essay on Minamata Disease, and I'll be doing the same today. And it's the same every weekend - non-stop work.

The language side of things is OK, but I'm getting kinda sick of learning about Japanese history and society - it's just not what I'm interested in. At least there's only a few more weeks now before the summer holidays.

Housekeeping

The more observant of you may have noticed a few changes to the sidebar on the right recently. There's now a link to ジョーのブルーシート, which is a blog I've made for my Japanese language classes at uni. It's just a place to upload my weekly homeworks for others to read, and the teacher encourages everyone in our class to do it. If you don't read Japanese it's probably not that interesting, but if you do you might wanna take a look.

Also, I removed the Spottt thing that used to be there. It didn't really bring much traffic to the blog at all, and some of the images that were appearing didn't look too nice, so I took it down. But my hits have been increasing quite a lot recently - not quite sure why. I've found that every site I've created tends to constantly grow though, and last month's hits reached a record high. I think a lot of people come here through obscure Google searches, and it's quite interesting to look through my stats at the keyphrases. For example, if you search "sonic duvet cover" I'm currently second in the whole of Google, and third for "sumo wrestling cymbals"!

The Goonies

During a rare period of free time yesterday I managed to catch The Goonies, as it was showing on Five. And although of course I'd seen it before, I realised how much of a masterpiece in nearly every way this film is.

And how badass is this song? We need more music like this.