Posts by Dave Patrick
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
So much for all the "polling" that featured so heavily in TV media showing Shane Jones comfortably second over Grant Robinson
-
Apparently, calling the Cunliffe for Leader twitter account "idiotic" means you're endorsing Cunliffe
-
Without the AIG the All Black jersey would have been a shoo-in. With it..? I've gone for the French. No-logo FTW
-
Hard News: The GCSB Bill: eleventh-hour arguments, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
...and is it too late to save 'decimated' as well !?
Way too late for that now - The Oxford Dictionary has this to say:
"decimate: verb [with object]
1 kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of:
drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something):
2 (historical) kill one in every ten of (a group of people, originally a mutinous Roman legion) as a punishment for the whole groupOrigin:
late Middle English: from Latin decimat- 'taken as a tenth', from the verb decimare, from decimus 'tenth'. In Middle English the term decimation denoted the levying of a tithe, and later the tax imposed by Cromwell on the Royalists (1655)Historically, the meaning of the word decimate is ‘kill one in every ten of (a group of people)’. This sense has been more or less totally superseded by the later, more general sense ‘kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of’, as in the virus has decimated the population. Some traditionalists argue that this is incorrect, but it is clear that it is now part of standard English."
-
I should probably check my copy - it's probably sat unplayed for a good 10 years or more, but last time I played it, it cleaned up OK. Was always a mission getting them out of the plastic sleeves though.......
-
I want proper collars!!
-
I'm not sure why that page is being served up across https when Ian tried to access it - when I access it, it's a straight http page, not a secure page.... and when I access it via https, the certificate is fine
-
The Trick Mammoth stuff is really nice!
-
I used to laugh at and mock metal when I was young - the blinkered outlook of a punk / new wave / alternative fan. That all changed later in life, and I've spent the last 10 years discovering some great, great music via the less well-traveled sub-genres of metal. Straight "heavy" metal (Dio, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin - yes I know there's arguments for and against them being "metal", Rainbow, Iron Maiden, Budgie, et al) I still find tedious, and I'm not really a great fan of the stop-start "100 riffs per song, vocalist sounds like a water buffalo with a bad cold" brand of death metal.
But give me a dirty, badly produced black metal band like Watain, Megiddo or Ildjarn, and I'm all over that - atmospheric black metal like early Blut Aus Nord and Westering, stuff like Anaal Nathrakh, melodic death metal like early In Flames and Autumn Leaves, drone like Nadja or our very own Black Boned Angel, noise metal like WOLD, "viking" metal like Amon Amarth and Bathory, even a bit of power metal (if you ever get the chance, read the liner notes to Lost Horizon's Awakening The World, they're hilarious).
Sure, Mayhem were pretty screwed up, and Varg Vikernes (the man behind Burzum) is a convicted murderer, but outside of those, the Scandinavian scene can be likened to Manchester in the early 80s - a hotbed of creativity, with bands like Darkthrone, Burzum, Bathory and In Flames inventing their own versions of "metal".
And I love Beastwars :D
-
I love record shops, and I love owning a physical artifact - I don't own any music in digital-only format, although I will probably make an exception for the L.E.D.'s latest, because they're not going to publish it in a physical format. I dread the day when everything is digital, and I can no longer buy a CD or a record. But then I'm an old luddite who always owned a turntable, and was gutted when CDs replaced vinyl all those years ago.
I should, however, qualify my love of record shops with the statement that they have to be "proper" record shops - Real Groovy in Auckland, Galaxy and Pennylane in Christchurch, where you have a chance of finding something non-mainstream, and maybe talking to someone who shares your love of certain genres, and who isn't just trying to push "units". I had a complete and utter love affair with the Sounds record shop that used to be at the foot of Queen Street in Auckland, because the guy who ran it cared about music, and about his regulars - I bought lots of records from him because when I walked in, he'd say "You should listen to this" and I would and I'd love it.
I don't share this love for the Warehouse, or whatever the mall stores have rebranded as this week (Marbeck's? really? - they're nothing like how I remember Marbeck's in Queen's Arcade). But a real record shop, a proper record shop, I can spend hours in, just browsing, and invariably buying. I also buy a lot from overseas (yay New Zealand dollar!), but it's always physical goods.
Oh, music :) Australian black metal / ambient act Germ, who I just found out about today.
