Embedded vids

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Yes! With the help from the coolplayer author, I’ve managed to rid myself from Youtube. Now I can embed videos directly from the gallery. It seems it is just enough to put the video’s download link within the coolplayer tags and the plugin does the rest. Unfortunately the only way for me to get that link is to use mplayer’s embedded “Get url” option to get it and even then I must edit the final link and replace the garbage in the end and the file type (ex .mp4)

I’m not certain if Andor used another way to get the necessary link, but I don’t want bother him too much with questions. I’ll look around and see what I can find. For now, since I know the format of the link, I can just change the ID of the file and enter the correct extension and I’m done.

PonytailYou can see examples in my previous blogposts, let me know if you see any problems

Now all I need is some way to put the coolplayer vids on the side as floating, similar to aligned pictures like the one on the left. That would be just awesome.

Underground gigs

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I’m starting to like the Metal scene in Frankfurt more and more. Yesterday I met with Maubi to go to a little gig of a few underground bands at Die Halle that was organised by FFM-Rock. Initially we though the price must have been 6-8 €, judging from previous experience. I even though that for 5 bands it might go as high as 10.

I did not expect it to be just 5 FUCKING EUROS! Five!! That is, 1€ per band. And the beers were at 2€ each! Two!! I don’t have enough exclamation marks for this shit!!!
The bastards at the Harley bar in Thessaloni charged us 15€ for 2 bands and the beer was something like 4€ or 5€! Bastards!

Moving on

Smiling MaubiInitially we met with [tag]Maubi[/tag] at the underground station at 20:15 where he informed me that two others would join us. I do not remember their names now bur needless to say, they were familiar faces from the Final Destination.

We got on the train where they proceeded to speak mostly in German. To pay them back I started filming them 😛 I even managed to finally get a pic of Maubi for my called ID.

[coolplayer width=”352″ height=”288″ autoplay=”1″ loop=”0″ charset=”utf-8″ download=”1″ mediatype=””]
http://www.dbzer0.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=594&g2_serialNumber=2&.mp4[/coolplayer]

We arrived at the concert hall, (die halle heh) at about 2:15 and as I expected, they knew everyone around.

[coolplayer]http://www.dbzer0.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=600&g2_serialNumber=2&.mp4 [/coolplayer]

The place was a regular bar and there must have been about three dozen customers. As you could probably listen in the previous video they were doing the sound check when we entered.

ChiabolaThe First band that was playing were Chiabola. I did not think to take a video of the band at that point so you’ll have to be happy with this picture only 🙂

What surpised me about them was that only one member of the band had long hair, something usually common in Nu metal bands. Their music however was quite good, reminding me a bit of Paradise Lost in their newer albums. They only played 3 or 4 songs if I remember correctly.

Force Trankill in action

The next band, Force Trankill, was the one that had Maubi’s two guitarists from his other band, Everfest. They were playing progressive rock, and without wanting to sound biased I must admit that they were the ones I like the most. Of course, this is not to say that the other bands were not good, Force Trankillquite the contrary. I was amazed at the quality of the bands I saw for just 5 euros!

The singer was probably one of the reasons why this band sounded so goo. This is the same singer that I saw in a previous [tag]gig[/tag] I went to. Maubi told me that band was his other project at which point I started wondering if everyone around here two pet bands as a pastime.

Another FriendI believe I have to also mention that the whole environment was really cool. Although I hand’t really spoken to many people by that point, everybody seemed friendly and a girl regular even promised to help me get a flyer of the gig.

The area in front of the stage was not packet and I had enough space to move around and take photographs and videos. That is not to say that people where not head banging and stuff.

Crystal Crow SingerNext on the stage were Crystal Crow, of which the singer I had noticed outside just because he was wearing a bandanna exactly like mine, as well as a leather trench coat, like me. When he went on the stage, I just knew he had stolen my idea (if I ever became the frontman to a band that is 🙂 )

Crystal Crow in actionI must say that they were pretty good. The singer could grab both the high and the low notes and used a guttural voice similar to old school Sentenced. Their songs were a bit melancholic and dark-themed as well which was a good change from the rest.

I think this might be a band worth looking into in the future. I’ve been meaning to find another darkware metal band as a replacement for the now disbanded Sentenced.

Liquid Horizon The next band on the line was Liquid Horizon, a clearly progressive act with quite a melodic undertone. The singer, as you’ll be able to see from the vids, was also the Guitarist which imho is a no-easy fit when you’re playing prog.

I took two videos of these dudes mainly because I run out of space on my mobile phone and had to move some files around.

Big Chief DrummerFun fact. During one of the songs, due to the beat that sounded similar to native american rythms, the drummer put on a feather headress for the whole song. Nice touch 🙂

[coolplayer]


[/coolplayer]

At this point, our other friends had already left because they were tired, leaving just me an Maubi. Fortunately I had already started talking with various people around the place, including the owner who even bought me a drink. During my conversation with the owner, I asked him directly, how could he manage when he was charging such low prices for entry and drinks. He explained to me that it was quite difficult in the start, where he almost closed down, but now that people have learned the place and more gigs are happening.

You know it actually makes sense. Bands don’t come to play here for the money and as such don’t expect a high income (perhaps 10 euros). This in turn allows the owner to charge low entrance and drinks which brings more people to the scene. These people then promote the bands using word of mouth (like I am doing currently) and even buy the bands’ own merchandise. In the end everyone wins, unlike Greece where everyone was losing.

ScenesAnyway, now the next band was on the stage, going by the simple name: Scenes. We had already been told by enthusiastic people around there that they were the best of the lot and as they started doing the soundcheck I could see that the singer would make a good performance.

Scenes in actionI was not dissapointed. The singer was quite the frontman and their music was quite enjoyable really. Although it was not not the band I liked that night – and there were a few people headbanging on the front row, which goes to show that I was probably in the minority – I must admit that for an underground band their music was quite impressive. They reminded me quite a lot of Queensrÿche.

Unfortunately at this point it was time for me and Maubi to head out as well in order to catch the least train so we couldn’t really see the whole gig. We said our goodbyes, I received my flyer as promised and I vowed to return for more 🙂

Ahem, just one more time…5 FUCKING EUROS!!!1!one!

New staff goodness

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So I’ve finally received my two new Staffs from Firetoys and I’m really really giddy about it :). I ordered them last Friday night, they were posted on Monday morning and they arrived on Thursday morning. Now that is quick! Unfortunately we hit a snag when they didn’t find me at my place and left me a notice. Trying to call them back, to my dismay I discovered that they did not have anyone who could speak english and there was no way to communicate. Fortunately for me, my dear colleague Cyrus did me the favor of calling them for me and after a short discussion they arranged to leave them at the shop next to my place. Next day when I returned from work, they were already there. Oh Joy of Joys!

I ordered two staffs from the shop this time. Initially I didn’t want to shop from firetoys again since the last time I got one of their products, it broke within a month and I’m not really happy with the replacement I received since it has bent and twisted to a bad enough level to make it diffuclt to use.
However the initial choice I had in mind, te POOKaToys, has closed down their shop for some reason and the Home of Poi has a very small selection of staffs and no Glostaffs. The other sites I checked either were more expensive or had a small collection as well.

 

My New Contact FirestaffThe first item I ordered was a contact [tag]Firestaff[/tag] with two wicks. Specifically I ordered this model because I wanted something sturdy and good for practicing contact moves.

The staff itself is the heaviest I’ve ever used and it is also amazingly sturdy. I can simple throuw it in the air and see it vibrating as it goes. This makes it a bit difficult for throws but on the other hand, during the training I did today I discovered just how much of a difference having a good staff does.

Where before I had trouble performing a simple Steve roll, just in one hour today I almost performed a perfect Halo-360, which was pretty amazing for me. The extra inertia of the staff, along with the fact that it doesn’t tangle in my hair anymore (as the silicone grip used to do) makes contact moves amazingly easier than before.

[coolplayer]http://www.dbzer0.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=591&g2_serialNumber=3&.mp4[/coolplayer]

I practiced for two hours and I think I have finally began to make progress. I still have to practice with the new weight, balance and longer shaft but that should be the easiest part.

The other staff I ordered was finally thr GloStaff (Glow Staff) that I always wanted. Yes, I’ve got very carnal reasons for wanting such a staff 😉

This one one is the smaller sized one I’ve used (just 140cm) as well as the lightest. The shaft is very thick which makes it difficult to do finger spins and the weight makes it a bit unstable for contact moves. I believe I can counterbalance those with a lot of practice. It still looks absolutely amazing in the dark!

[coolplayer]http://www.dbzer0.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=618&g2_serialNumber=3&.mp4[/coolplayer]

 

 

Χέστηκα πάνω μου

Db0

Καθώς ανέβαζα ένα συμπιεσμένο αρχείο με φωτογραφιες για να κάνω την δουλειά μου γρήγορα, η gallery έφαγε ένα κόλλημα και στην επόμενη ανανέωση τα είχε παίξει! Storage Error στην μάπα!

Περιτό να ‘πω ότι έκλασα μέντες για μια στιγμή αλλα ευτυχώς το μήνυμα είναι σχετικά γνωστό οπότε η λύση ήταν έυκολη (αν και μιας και δεν δουλέβει απ’ευθείας πάλι είχα φοβίες)

Αυτά παθαίνεις όταν δεν έχεις κάνει Backup…

Gallery

Db0

I made a huge upgrade on the way the gallery is working. Specifically I just installed gallery which is a much better piece of software than a simple plugin can be (although I must say that the plugin served me quite faithfully until now). The best part is that it supports videos as well while the organization (using keywords and albums) is vastly superior.

So I’ve spent the last two days configuring and uploading stuff on the gallery but I still have a long way to go to finish with it. I also installed the WPG2 wordpress plugin to allow me to integrate the gallery to my site but unfortunately it may be a bit more challenging than I expected, seeing as the theme I’m using is quite heavily modified compared to the basic one.

Nevertheless, progress is being made, and you can find the initial gallery here

Right now I’m still trying to find out why Firefox refuses to play mp4 and avi files. On the mp4 files it just asks for the quicktime plugin and on the avi file it gives out a no video error (even though Konqueror does not seem to have any problem playing it). It can play flv files quite easily but my problem is converting those mp4 files to flvs in the first place. mencoder seems to eat out the sound and I have no idea how to use ffmpeg (nor the time to learn).
I would however appreciate anyone who can try to see the videos on the gallery and tell me what works for him and what doesn’t.
In my humble opinion, the flash ones are the best since they have the best interface and play everywhere. However the conversion tools of Dreamhost and YouTube seems to drop the quality quite a lot compared to the original version.

Now that I mentioned Dreamhost. I just cannot be happy enough that I made this choice of provider. The automated tools have made my life SO much easier and the Bandwidth and Storage limits provided are just amazing. I literally installed Gallery2 within 20 minutes, fully configured.

Anyway, enough talk for now. Time to get back to configuring.

FUCK!

Db02 Comments

I just updated my wordpress site and I just fucked all my theme setting up. Not only that but by mistake I refreshed the upgrade screen in dreamhost and I seem to have overwritten the backup directory.

FUCK FUCK FUCK!

🙁

Oh well, time to change theme I guess. Ignore any glitches until I get things up to date

Update: Phew. I managed to restore everything. However this small encounter had made me look at other themes out there. Maybe it is indeed time for a change. I’ve grown bored of the small middle columnt anyway. So much space wasted.

Fireplay in Frankfurt

Db0

New video of me playing with fire in Frankfurt

[coolplayer]http://www.dbzer0.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=82&.mp4[/coolplayer]

This is after I went for a PingPong match with Cyrus and Alan (yes I won again 😛 ) and as night fell, I saw some fires close to me, so I went there and found a group of Czechs. They were more than happy to let me play with them since, after all, they were making money out of it.

When Cyrus gives me the pictures from his camera, I’ll upload them as well.

Keep it True VII

Db03 Comments

So I’m back from the 7th Keep It True festival where I went with my new friend, Arnoc and two of his friends, Alisa (or is that with a “c”?) and Eugene (I hope that is the correct spelling).

We were supposed to meet in front of a supermarket on Saturday morning, so when I got off the Train, there was a girl in front of me that looked like part-goth, part-metalhead (patched jean shirt and stuff) and I thought it peculiar that she got off at the same stop as me, and going the same direction as me, and going to the same supermarket as me, and shit! she’s waiting for someone as well! So, in order not to make things any more awkward, I went to her and the guy she was talking with and asked them if they were waiting for Arnoc. Not surprisingly, they were.

01.Supermarket.jpgArnoc arrived, and after getting some supplies (aka beer, alcohol-free) we were on our way. I must say that his friends were very good. Even though they barely knew me, they were very friendly
Arnoc must feel very unfortunate that even though he was the only one who wanted to drink beer, he was the designated driver, even though the rest of us stayed sober. No one else could drive 😉
We arrived at the festival 2 hours or so later after driving through some very interesting landscapes and taking care not to ride over any frogs (no seriously, we saw a sign). You could easily tell when you’ve reached the festival since there was a full parking lot, where the predominant figure was a black clad, long haired male. For some reason, patched jeans were quite common as well. It seems to be like a metal-cred thing. Your jean overcoat says who and how tough you are 😛

So we parked and soon were on our way to see the inside. And I found an excuse to use my mobile’s video camera as well

[youtube]QTzm6W3vkuA[/youtube]
02. Alisa1.jpg Yes, that is me talking in the background. Please do not comment on my accent. And yes, that is the soundtrack from Conan the Barbarian playing in the background of the festival. That’s how True they are keeping it. The girl in the end of the vid is Alisa.
The festival was housed in a basketball court and half the field was shops while the rest was reserved for people to watch the bands.

[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXCWzHycPvo [/coolplayer]

Panoramic view
Bullet There were quite a number of shops selling merchandise but I was a bit disappointed that only a few were selling anything other than albums and t-shirts. I was looking forward to cool stuff. I was also a bit surprised on how many people were still buying vinyls (or buying at all). Some of the prices on the “rare” items were insane.
Alisa brushing We did some shopping (I got a hat chain) and on the process I met a Greek (clad in a Greek flag for some reason) that came all the way from Athens for the festival. Talk about having money to throw away…Eugene (smoking as always)
Half an hour later we went back to the car to leave the stuff and drink some more (warm now) beer and I took the chance to take more pics.
Twisted Tower Then we moved back to watch Twisted Tower (I hope I remember the name right).
Arnoc and Alisa were next to me on the front line but according to them, the band’s lineup was inexplicably changed so the band live pretty much sucked.
Me in the first lineOf course, I said hello to the camera every time one of the video crew filming the festival turned to the crowd.
Even though, the other’s weren’t impressed by the new lineup, they did find something interesting to headbang to.
[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu4F-soLTSw[/coolplayer]

For me, on the other hand, they reminded too much of Helloween in the Keeper days, although the others say that this is just because the singer was crap and couldn’t reach the high notes.

When the band finished, unfortunately the food queue was huge, so we ended up eating chips and ice creams to hold us until we left. PiledriverWe returned just in time to see Piledriver which was what Eugene was waiting for. My first impression of the band was “Oh, not another band in masks” (Although Arnoc later told me that they were one of the first to do so.) my second impression was “Here’s a band where everyone is fat”. No seriously. It’s like they did it on purpose. The worst part is that the singer was waring leather straps instead of a shirt which just multiplied the effect of “spillage”…ugh

Eugene (smoking again)

After that, nobody was really interested in seeing other bands, so we agreed to head out. We made a brief stop at McDonalds (the first time I’ve been there in years) where I got an expensive salad. Then I fell asleep in the car and finally reached Frankfurt at about 9pm.

All in all this trip got a bit more expensive than I expected (50 euros) but the experience was great. Next time I’ll be more prepared however (which just means I’ll listen to at least a few of the bands playing so that I can enjoy some part of the festival.)

Arnoc and crew were an excellent company. Even though they could speak in two different languages I could not understand, they were considerate enough to speak in english now and then.

Arnoc

And yes, this is just sweet talk because I know Arnoc is going to be reading this post (to steal my videos) and I want to be able to use…err…join him in the next festival he’s going 😛

Grow a beard you wuss!

Crimes of Atheism

Db07 Comments

Reading the comments on this story, I saw several people demonizing atheism, on the basis that people who declared themselves atheists – like many communist leaders – did so many atrocities. As examples of this, they usually mention Mao, Stalin and Hitler among others.

I will ignore the obvious error of Hitler being atheist, since Fascism and Nazism were not only movements with Religious roots but had also strong backing by the Church, even after their failure.
Here I will sidetrack a little to say this: Even if you compare Stalin’s and Mao’s to religious leaders like (this time correctly) Hitler, Mussolini, King Justinian and even Bush, you will see that were the first did what they did for the benefit of their country (albeit at a high cost of human lives within the same country they were benefiting) with tangible results (USSR become a superpower and China is on the same track right now), the later did their atrocities for no other specific reason than to follow demented (religious) ideals and/or satisfy their own (or, as in the case of Bush, the people that move their strings) lust for power.
But of course they base their whole argument on the opinions that have been spoon fed to them (Communism demonization) and hope the emotional baggage is enough to make a point.

Back on topic now. These people seem to ignore that with this kind of argument (“atheism is bad because Stalin was bad”) they open a whole new avenue of attack against religion.
I usually do not open this subject because I have come to realize that you should not attack an idea itself based on the actions that self-labeled “upholders” of that idea take. When I make an argument about a religion. I do not begin by enumerating all the bad things leaders of that religion has taken. All proponents will do to defend against this, is to just say that they (the religious leaders) were never true believers but liars instead.
However when that said proponent is the first to accuse atheism (of all things) of being one of the causes for, say, Stalin’s atrocities, I cannot help but wonder on how hypocritical that is coming from the mouth of a religious person.

Crusades, Inquisition, War, Fascism, Genocides, Destroyed woman rights ,Destroyed Human rights, Racism, War, Perpetuation of Epidemics, Anti-Knowledge, Terrorism, Abuse, Hatred and War-fucking-WAR!

These are the fruits of religion, if we take as examples the religious leaders of history.

Trust me Christian, you do not want to open this can of worms.

And just think, for every bad representative of atheism you can think of, it has hundreds of good examples. Scientists like Einstein, Philosophers like Marx, Spiritualists like Buddha and much more. Tell me how many good things religion has done? (And don’t bring examples like Mother Teresa or I will laugh bitterly)

Furthermore, just because a person is an atheist, it does not have anything to do with the way he acts in life. Unlike religion which tries to set moral guidelines (and such good guidelines they are), being an atheist is just that, the absence of belief in one or more supernatural beings and nothing more. It is not a religion as some would try to convince you (There is not Church of Atheism and no two atheists believe the same thing) and as such, it does not have a moral guideline that comes packaged.

However, as funny as it seems, as a rule, atheists tend to be quite more altruistic (or “good”) than most religious people, any way you look at it. The only immoral thing about an atheist is that he doesn’t follow the demented morality of other religions. He will not beat his wife because she was raped, he will not become a builder because he happened to be born as one and he will not sacrifice a human because “his god requires it”.

To paraphrase: Every religious person is immoral to the eyes of every other religion. An Atheist is just immoral for one more religion than everyone else.

If nothing else, he may actually take the best ideas from every religion and if after adequate criticism they stand up to his morality and further his way of life, he will absorb them, discarding any theological garbage.
I ask you, would a devout religious person do the same?

EDIT: Fixed Mother Teresa and Beating links