Bored.

Well, I have an hour and a half until I can leave work, and I'm so bored the only thing I can think of doing is making another post here. Admittedly, that may be the reason most of my posts are written at work anyway, but today I am especially bored.

I'm about out of interesting things to talk about that have happened recently or are about to happen, and I've given up arseing about with Linux on the netbook (which I haven’t got with me today anyway), so I guess I'll fall back on a brief explanation of my name. Skallagrim was a fairly common Norse name (like John or Dave in modern English), but was also the name of a famous mythological Berserker. The Berserkers were Viking warriors, chosen for their size and physical strength, who were renowned for fighting in an uncontrollable, trance-like frenzy of rage, which is where the modern word "berserk" comes from. They were also known for wearing animal pelts, particularly those of wolves and bears, and for engaging in many of the activities with which Vikings are now popularly associated - Pillaging, looting, killing indiscriminately and generally being fucking awesome. Some sources suggest their fearlessness and fits of rage were brought on through the use of psychotropic substances found in plants or funguses, whereas others claim their behavior was due to their being temporarily possessed by the spirit of a wolf or bear (hence their dress code). Skallagrim on the other hand, was supposed to have the ability to completely transform into a wolf when entering the Berserkergang, which y’know is pretty cool, so that's why I chose it.

Well now it's time to lock up and go home. Here's some relevant folk metal, no video though I'm afraid.

Tattoos

I've been thinking about getting a few tattoos for a while now, trouble is they're so fucking expensive. Everything else I have no problems with - pain, blood, sitting still for hours on end - but the costs seem insane to me. Of course it depends entirely on where you go, where one place quoted me £140 another quoted £60, so I am currently searching for somewhere with a good enough price/quality and cleanliness ratio.

My current favorite ideas are:

A set of Norse Runes, probably as a band round my upper arm. This is a quote from Havamal, a book of practical and metaphysical advice supposedly writted by Odin himself, reading "He doesn't flee from fire who leaps over it". This is the original text in Old Icelandic converted to the elder futhark runic alphabet by yours truely (I hope fairly accurrately), not an English translation. I was thinking I might get this in Norway or Sweden in the Summer, for added Nordic Authenticity.


This is another of my long-standing favorites. I'll probably have it changed slightly to fit a half sleeve, with the extending bit on the right going out over my collar bone to the middle of my chest. I came accross the design on DeviantArt a while ago and emailed the guy who made it to see if he minded me using it, but he never replied. As you can see, it doesn't mean anything but it does look cool.






And finally I was thinking about getting this on the back of my calf. It's the Municipal Waste logo =D

Urgh...

Went out Saturday night for someone’s birthday celebrations, and I'm still feeling a little hung over today. If I never see another Tequila Slammer it'll be too soon. It was quite an epic evening really, definitely worth the hangover, and that didn't even kick in until yesterday evening. I was fine most of Sunday, I even went for lunch at my Cousin's and was cheery and sociable, it wasn't until i got home that The Beast of the Previous Nights Many Poisons reared its ugly head. Strangely enough, I didn't throw up until about 1am this morning and haven’t slept much since then which probably explains why I feel like shit now. I guess this is what they call a "Ninja Hangover" - One that appears with deadly intent when you least expect it, just when you think you're safe.

Not much else to report. Killshot is a pretty good film, I love Mickey Rourke. Prodigy's new album is also rather good. Not my usual taste but everyone loves The Prodigy and they're excellent live.

My brother, who has until recently been working in Dubai, got made redundant a few days ago due to this "economic readjustment", as they call it over there. It's a shame, I went and visited last winter and Dubai is an amazing place. It's pretty much a huge city built entirely over the last 10-15 years that just rose up out of the desert when the UAE found out they had oil, so everything is new and makes for a bizarre mixture of modern western and traditional Arab culture. On the plus side, the firm he was working for has to give him 3 months pay in lieu of notice and cover the costs for his flight back to Australia, where he was working before moving to Dubai. He has a house in Aus still and can probably find work there without too much trouble knowing him, so this isn't even close to being a bad hit for him. Even better, he'll be going back to Aus via the UK, so I get to hang out with him and my Nephew for a while in May. I'd better book some time off.

I like this picture, it makes Dubai look like something from Blade Runner and the tall building in the background looks a bit like The Citadel from Half Life 2.

Relaxing

Well... It's Saturday. A day for sitting about doing shit all, except for typing up a blog post obviously. Got some films to watch too I guess.

I did go out last night in the end, as is always the way. It was actually a pretty good night; the ex was in a pretty good mood so I didn't get cried on or bitched at, and I met a girl. Now, i mostly hate women and I’ve been distancing myself from them for a while because i can't stand the puerile bullshit that spews forth from their mouths, but this one was actually pretty cool. Usually when i get talking to a girl, 10 minutes into the conversation i start wondering why I’m bothering and make excuses for my escape, but that didn't happen. Might have something to do with the fact that she lost her mum a few months ago, is currently living off job seekers allowance and has had a string of sub-standard boyfriends - I love a girl with baggage. That and she danced topless with me. Always a winner. Well I got her number and she's just added me on Facebook, I'll probably send her a text or something on Monday.

I did look briefly into the cracking WEP from windows guide, but you need to use WildPackets drivers for your wireless adapter and, looking on their website i don't think mines supported. I have an AR5007 chipset, and while they have drivers for AR5005, 6 and 8, AR5007 seems to be missing. I have a Belkin USB adapter somewhere, but it's only 54g and i don't hold out much hope of it being supported if this Atheros one isn't.

Well that's all I can think of to write for now. It's just gone 2pm and I’m writing this from my bed (on my netbook =D), I'll probably stay here for a bit longer then go get some lunch and watch a film. Either Killshot or Yes Man.

Lastly, have some crazy Finnish techno-metal. It's ok, this video makes no sense to me either. All I know is that it appears to portray a world where all men wear gimp suits and all women wear underwear with the American flag on

Another Friday

Hello imaginary internet friends, here I am with another useless post. Today I have nothing in particular to do. Work is always quiet on a Friday and my boss is away so I can get away with doing even less work than usual, and all I'm doing is idly talking to this girl I met a while ago.

Last night I installed VMware on my Netbook, created an Ubuntu Linux VM and set about trying to get everything installed you need to crack WEP and WPA encrypted wifi. Trouble is, I'm a complete Linux n00b and being extremely tired I was lacking the patience needed to learn to work the fucker. I did manage to get Aircrack-ng installed (along with airodump and airdecap etc that comes with it), as well as Kismet before giving up for the evening though. Next up is trying to get Ubuntu to talk to the wireless adapter as, so far as I can tell, all it's doing at the moment is connecting to the host machine with a VMware virtual Ethernet connection, and I can't find any wireless devices in Network Management. Under devices in VMware Player the only thing that might be it is a Broadcom something-or-other, and when I disconnect that from the host and connect it to the VM, the wireless doesn't disappear from Windows and a Bluetooth icon appears in Ubuntu, so I guess it's just the Bluetooth adapter.

Having googled about, I don't think the wireless adapter is supported under Ubuntu, and if it is possible to get it working its way beyond my meager expertise (especially on a virtual machine). I managed to find some Linux drivers, which I think I've installed but after a reboot it's still not detecting any wireless devices. I give up for now, maybe I'll install SUSE instead and try with that, or make a dual boot with Ubuntu on to see if it's just VMware fucking it up.

On the plus side, I got it on my home network and connected up to my server without a hitch and transferred a load of stuff onto it. MAME works pretty well, and I can't see any problems with video playback. Haven’t tried any HD video, but I never download any of that anyway. I really need to get a new wireless router with IEEE 802.11g though, as the signal on my current one is pretty shit. Trying to stream an episode of Free Agents (which is hilarious btw) to the netbook was impossible, and a straight file transfer of the episode was going to take about 40 minutes. I also installed some desktop themes, Rocket Dock, changed the windows login screen and put a car vinyl of a skull on it, 'cos it looks cool. Plus it hides the Samsung logo - not that I have anything against Samsung, but the logo makes it look like any other Samsung netbook out there, and having a big skull over it adds a touch of individuality.

Not sure if I'll go out tonight. I just found a guide for cracking WEP encryption from Windows instead of Linux so I might indulge my nerdier side and stay in to try that out on my own network (followed by my neighbors obviously).

Festivals!

I just checked the lineup for the Bloodstock Open Air festival in August, and it seems to get more and more brutal every time I look. Bloodstocks usually a pretty low key affair, but at this rate they might actually start selling out Catton Hall. Glad I got my ticket already.

Highlights (for me anyway) so far include:
Arch Enemy
Carcass
Municipal Waste
Saxon
Battlelore
Million Dollar Reload
Apocalyptica
Enslaved
Kreator
The Haunted
Amon Amarth
Gwar
Satyricon
Equilibrium
Moonspell
Turisas

If you look at the complete lineup, you'll see the above list is most of the bands there. There are literally no bands I don't want to see. I fucking love bloodstock. It's also Turisas' only UK show this year, so there's no way I could miss it even if the rest of the lineup was shite.

Download is also looking pretty damn amazing, although looking at the current lineup they should just call it Monsters Of Rock and have done with it. Motley Crue, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, ZZ Top... The crème de la crème of classic rock will be in attendance and it's gonna be brilliant, but there are some modern bands to balance the scale too. Korn, Devildriver, Killswitch Engage, Down, Opeth, Meshuggah, Clutch, Five Finger Death Punch to name a few. Also, amusingly, the massively underrated Anvil. They've been playing top-notch heavy metal since the heyday of Iron Maiden, but for some reason never met with any descent measure of success. Things look set to change this year though with festival appearances, a headlining tour (I think) and a documentary of their failed 2007 European tour in the cinemas that actually seems to be getting some pretty good reviews. I'm surprised to see Architects on the bill, I thought they were going downhill. I saw them a bunch of times supporting Sikth (awesome but now defunct prog metal band) and they were always nice and heavy and put on a good show, but then they got a new vocalist in skinny jeans and a white top 5 sizes to small for him and started using strobe lights and glow sticks at their gigs. That sounds like a depressing recipe for mainstream success, but they also got a whole lot shitter and just dropped off the radar.

Don't even get me started on Wacken. There are so many good bands playing, and they've only announced a fraction of the full lineup. Particularly looking forward to Korpiklaani, who I missed in London just before Christmas, and having just come from Finland and Denmark I'll be well into the heavy-drinking forest clan folkmetal spirit. Announce Finntroll too and I'll be in heaven.

In other news, my Netbook just arrived and I’m suitably impressed with it so far. Samsung's preinstalled software is surprisingly good with diagnostic, backup and power management utilities and a 90 day subscription to McAffee Security Centre. Of course when that runs out i'll just install AVG, but it's the thought that counts. Tonight I'll dump a load of music and films onto it, and try out some MAME ROMs to see how they handle. If I can play Metal Slug on this thing my flights will breeze by.

I had to go meet up with my ex last night. She just split up with her boyfriend and needed someone to cry on, and as usual this duty fell to me. What's hilarious is why they split. He spends way too much time playing Xbox and World of Warcraft, and she was feeling neglected (high maintenance girl), so she told him to choose between her or playing less WoW. He chose WoW.

Oh, and just to fill you in on her and my history; I had this girlfriend in college (Girl1), and she was amazing. We stayed together for the best part of two years, long after we both left college, and then, predictably, she dumped me. A few months of extreme depression later, I meet a new girl (Girl2, the ex that was crying on me last night) and I attain a vague semblance of happiness again. The sex is great. We went out a lot, me and Girl2, and one time we ran into Girl1. Knowing who she was, Girl2 made a point of making out with me quite vigorously in front of Girl1. A few chance meetings with Girl1 later, and we start talking again. We get along, then on MSN, she admits she still has feelings for me, and links me to her blog (you'll like it better than mine, it has her sexual fantasies about me). So I do something very very stupid, and break up with Girl2 to get back with Girl1. Happy days with the exception of Girl2 you'd think, I'm back with the girl of my dreams, but unfortunately things are never that simple. Me and Girl1 see each other for a while unofficially, then she goes to Uni and I cease to exist. I'm still screwing Girl2, and she's getting increasingly emotional about things, to the point where I can't stand to be around her. I know, I'm a bastard. Times a great healer though, I go to Dubai for a short while, we don't see each other for a bit, she gets a new boyfriend and we've been the best of friends ever since.

The Land of the Midnight Sun

I think for today’s post I'll outline my current plans for Finland, the first leg of the Epic Viking Tour (EVT from here on out). This is extremely subject to change, and nothing ever goes to plan on the day anyway, so don't quote me on this.

I start in Helsinki. It'll be Heathers (a friend of mine who's coming with me) birthday the day after we arrive, so we'll have time to settle into Eurohostel, where we'll be staying, and get some sleep before unleashing chaos on Helsinki’s nightlife to celebrate. I've read some very good things about Helsinki after dark; Lots of rock clubs and music venues, and free open-air concerts on Sundays. And of course, being Finland’s biggest and most prosperous city there are plenty of sights to see during the day.

After a few days there, we move on up to Hameenlinna, a small town more or less half way between Helsinki and Tampere. Here we will camp at Aulanko campsite, on the edge of Aulanko national park. Aside from being a good opportunity to take in some of Finland’s beautiful forests and lakes and relax between big cities, Hameenlinna is a particular point of interest for me - It happens to be the home town of one of my favorite bands, Turisas. In their DVD "A Finnish Summer with Turisas" they visit a lake near Hameenlinna (it's within walking distance of the campsite) called Katumajarvi. In the middle ages, invaders came from the South to force Christianity on the locals, and being simple forest-dwelling folk they eventually had to accept. Then, after the Christians had left, the villagers all went into this lake (which was presumably of some local spiritual significance) to symbolically wash off their false baptism and promptly returned to their Norse-pagan ways. Fortunately I was never baptized, but I plan to follow their example by taking a dip in the lake anyway, and perhaps combine this with another great tradition - the Finnish Sauna. Not many people realize that 'Sauna' is a Finnish word, where it is such a part of daily life that there are enough in the country to accommodate Finland’s entire population with only two in each Sauna. Traditionally, after a spell sweating it out in the sauna, you run out and go for a roll in the snow or a swim in the nearest lake, and seeing as it'll be summer and there won't be much snow around, the lake is the obvious choice. Hameenlinna also has a medieval castle to visit if we have time.

After a night or two in Hameenlinna (depending on what time of day we arrive/what time of day we can leave) we'll move on to Tampere, which is very similar to Helsinki, if slightly more industrial. We'll probably only spend one night here, and a day sightseeing before hooking ourselves up with a night train through Parkano to Vaasa. Alternatively, depending on how much time we've spent already and what we feel like, we might take a detour via Jyvaskyla to see some more of the inland countryside, but camping in Hameenlinna will probably have satisfied that desire.

Vaasa is another of Finland’s larger cities, on the Western coast. Here we can stretch our legs after the long train journey and sample the local food, before getting a ferry to Umea, Sweden, thus ending the Finnish section of the EVT.

As you can see from the map, we're not seeing all that much of Finland comparatively, but inland and up north the sights are mostly the same as what we'll see in Hameenlinna and Aulanko national park. We are also stuck with the constraints of the trains, which don't run much in the northern end of Finland, and our rail pass only lasts 21 days so we have to move fairly quickly from place to place.

And now for something completely different. Someone linked me to this last night.

Mondays

In the words of Saint Bob, I don't like Mondays. My reasoning is obvious; I have a whole week of work stretching out into the infinite distance ahead of me, and I'm still hung over from the weekend. Brighton Uni was pretty cool, although I'm not sure whether I want to be doing Digital Media (what I've applied for) or Digital Media Development. They're basically the same course, but DM leans slightly more towards creative and marketing theory aspects, whereas DMD focuses more on the technical side, more advanced programming etc. Either way, it's apparently easy to swap during the first few semesters so I'll see how it goes.

Pretty good night at the Dungeon after Brighton. The Dungeon is a local club, full of metal and industrial types. Ironically, in the interests of saving money I decided I was going to try and not drink that night and deliberately only took enough money to get me home in the small hours of the morning (£3 - night bus is a blessing from Odin himself), but then ended up getting even more drunk than I did last week when I had money with me. This was mostly due to various people taking pity on me and buying me a diverse range of beverages, from Magners to Wet Pussys (a house shooter, no idea what's in it but I'd stay away from any woman who's genitalia tastes like that). The biggest contributor was probably my ex-girlfriend, who bought me four or five different drinks. Of course I was then subject to her sobbing on my shoulder later on in the night, as is her habit, but I considered that a small price to pay for the units of alcohol now playing havoc with my liver.

I've changed my mind about the netbook thing, I reckon I'll go with the Samsung NC10. It's basically the same as the Asus, but looks a little nicer and has longer battery life. It's still freakin’ expensive though, but I reckon I'll dip into my Uni fund to pay for it as I’m sure it'll be useful for lectures and the like.

Also, I did get the new Amon Amarth album, and it is awesome. Still not as fast and visceral as Avenger, but sounds a lot more like the Gothenburg vein of melodic death metal which is also cool. Here's the video of a song off the album, featuring fighting Vikings and bad special effects!

Guardians Of Asgaard ft. LG Petrov

One more!

One more post today before I turn in. I'm getting up obscenely early tomorrow to go to an open day at Brighton Uni. From where I am that's about two hours on the train, and I hate getting up on a Saturday, AND my mp3 player's fucked at the moment so I can't listen to any music on the way. Bummer.

On the plus side, I'll go out and get drunk afterwards. This is probably the first Friday night I havn't been out drinking in months, so I'm about ready for a good piss-up, although it's not actually too bad. It's just like any other night of the week, but without the crushing knowledge that I have work tomorrow. Anyway, as I'm going out tomorrow night and I'll probably sleep all day Sunday then head for my local tavern, next post will most likely be from work on Monday. Not that I'm pretentious enough to assume anybody has actually read anything I've written here over the last few days, but I seem to enjoy writing it and will probably continue regardless. Good night oblivious internet peoples!

Todays music selection

I listen to a shit load of music, so here are a few snippets of what I've been listening to lately.

I just got hold of a leak of Mastodons new album, Crack the Skye. Haven’t listened to it very much yet, but it's sounding like they've gotten a lot more proggy and a lot less heavy. Leviathan and Blood Mountain were fucking intense, but compared to them this sounds like something by Dream Theater. On the other hand, I'm hearing a lot of complicated guitar fiddlery, which is always welcome, especially from a band as freaky and unpredictable as Mastodon. I've seen them live three or four times, the last time being with Slayer just before Christmas at the Unholy Alliance 3. They didn't seem to have lost their edge at all, but then again they didn't play any new songs either. SPLIT YOUR LUNGS WITH BLOOD AND THUNDER!


Gama Bomb's latest album, Citizen Brain, is everything I love about thrash. Songs about Robocop, zombies and hitting people with hammers never cease to entertain me, especially when they're played with such speed and tongue-in-cheek ferocity by a bunch of Irish maniacs. Gama Bomb are probably my favorite band from the new wave of thrash, second only to Municipal Waste perhaps. And, it turns out; they also put on an equally incendiary live show. They tore London a new one supporting Exodus and Overkill in February, it's just a shame I missed Torture Squad on before them.


Stabwound, from Necrophagists (I think it's pronounced Necro-fay-jist) album Epitaph, came on while my mp3 player was on random a few weeks ago, and I've been listening to that one song over and over ever since. It's so brutally technical in a way that only a classically-influenced death metal band from the land that brought us the likes of Ludwig van Beethoven (A bit of the old ultra-violence, my brothers?) and Johan Sebastian Bach, could achieve. Another particularly excellent song is Fermented Offal Discharge from their other album, Onset of Putrefaction.


Their new album's out already, but for some reason I don't have it yet. Instead I’ve been listening to a lot of Amon Amarths old stuff, and I reckon their album The Avenger is best. Amon Amarth used to play grind core under the name Scum, and only really found their current melodic sound in the mid 90s, hitting peak with this album in 1999 before slowing things down a bit for their latter releases. Compared to those, this album is a much more raw beast, faster and heavier than Fate of Norns and With Odin On Our Side which seemed to take a deeper and almost melancholy turn (as amazing as they are). Viking warriordom seems to be in great demand at the moment, so maybe the new album will regain some of that berserker ferocity; I'll probably pick it up at the weekend.


Also, I’ve been listening to Amorphis, Bloodbath, Vader, Cannibal Corpse, Turisas, Turmion Katilot, 3 Inches of Blood, Korpiklaani, Fintroll, Primordial, Equilibrium, Immortal, Municipal Waste, Exodus, Testament, Saxon, Destruction, Kreator, Suffocation, Zyklon, Lamb of God, Skyclad, Athiest, Dismember, Desecration... And many more, a lot of which are regular listening staples.


And finally, here's a clip of Exodus. You can't really see, but I'm the guy who crowd-surfs over the barrier at 0:57. The bouncer with the retard hair who pulls me over threatened to throw me out if I did it again. I did it again 20 seconds later.

Netbooks...

Today I’ve been looking at netbooks. I don't own a laptop and I've decided I’ll probably want one while I’m away in the summer for internetting, dumping all the photos off my camera onto and watching movies while I’m on the train/plane. Trouble is, I'd have to lug it about with me and I really want to be travelling light, so the logical option would be to go for a teeny tiny netbook. Other than size, my other main limitation is price. Finance for the big trip is tight as it is, so there’s no way I can afford to spend more than £200 on a netbook. This wouldn't be so hard to achieve, but a lot of cheaper ones only have 8" screens and 8-16GB SSDs for storage. For what I want to use it for, I need one with an actual hard drive way bigger than the SSD models. Ideally I'd want an Asus Eee PC 1000H, with it's 10" screen, 160gb HDD and Atom N270 CPU, but they're fucking expensive so right now I’m ebaying for either a second hand one of those, or a cheaper Siemens Amilo Mini (8.9" screen, 60gb HDD, other specs more or less the same). The Amilo's reviews aren’t brilliant and the keyboard seems a little dodgy, but i like the design (kinda retro?) and, most importantly, it’s cheaper than Asus or Dell or Acer. I must choose my electronic companion for the coming storm wisely...

First Post... Continued

Right, I mentioned I was working full time at the moment and that I had some adventures planned, so I thought I'd elaborate a little on both.

I work for a small ISP, we mostly serve businesses with Internet and VPN solutions as well as the usual web hosting and email service malarkey and loads of other random crap. I'm 1st/2Nd line technical support, so when something breaks and a customer phones in, I pretty much do everything from answer the phone to fix the bastard. Oh, and i hate my job.

That's work covered, now for the adventure! On the 5Th of June 2009 I will be leaving work for the last time to embark on a summer filled with festivals, traveling and anarchy. First up is the Download festival at the legendary Castle Donnington, then soon after that I'll be flying out to Helsinki, Suomi Finland. From there I start an epic Viking pilgrimage through Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, traveling mostly by train, finishing in North Germany for Wacken Open Air, the largest metal festival in Europe. After the heavy metal onslaught that is Wacken I'll be heading back to English shores for Bloodstock Open Air, a smaller and lesser known but equally brutal metal festival.

When it's all over, after two months of rampaging through Europe in a sonic frenzy of hair and steel, I'll have the best part of a month to catch my breath, so I'll probably need to find some local part-time work to keep myself liquored up. Then I'll be off to university. I have a place at Brighton Uni, studying Digital Media, which covers pretty much everything I do in my spare time (while sober at least) so, combined with standard student antics, should make for an entertaining three years.

I've been working 9 to 5 since I left college almost two years ago, and I've really come to hate it. A lot has happened since then and I've generally become a lot less happy with life due to various reasons; women, terminal illnesses in the family, etc, etc. I'm sick of the monotony of the weekly routine I'm subject to. Monday to Friday i get up, go to work, come home, sit about, sleep, repeat. At the weekends I drink myself under the table by night and sleep by day. I guess it's the same for 90% of the modern world, but I refuse to accept that this is all there is to life. I figured, if you hate something, change it. So I'm shaking things up a bit, quitting my job and going in a completely different direction. Despite everything I'll be doing in the coming months, the thing I'm looking forward to the most is getting out of gainful employment and no longer being a wage slave.

Bring on the Summer. Bring on the sun, booze, bitches, blood and BATTLE METAL!!!

First post!

So, after registering the blog and spending the last few hours fucking about with it to make the layout look nice, I’m finally ready to make the first post.

My name is Skallagrimm. I'm 20, I work full time for the time being, I like computers, Vikings and Norse mythology/tradition, dark humor, quaffing ale, feasting, defiling maidens, and heavy fucking metal. Among other things.

I can't think of much else to post right now, but i have many interesting adventures planned for the near future which i intend to report back on, and I’m sure random interests and musings will be plentiful. I leave you with this music video of a band i saw a few months ago supporting Kreator, they were fucking amazing.