(no subject)

[miko2]

Music: I've been on one of my heavy metal music kicks lately, which is probably quite obvious if you follow my Live Journal. Aside from downloading a lot of music from eMusic (I get 30 downloads a month for the $9.99 monthly fee, so I might as well use them), I've also downloaded free music from multiple places and ordered a handful of cds... spending far more money than I ought to, although that's nothing really new, I did this last Winter/Spring too, and also in the Spring/Summer of 2006. ^_^

Things that I've ordered recently: from Ebay I've ordered Taiwanese symphonic goth metal band Seraphim, Hungarian folk metal band Echo of Dalriada, and Indian symphonic black metal band Acrid Stench. I also ordered a couple of cheap cds from Amazon... eh, Chthonic, I think, which is a Taiwanese symphonic goth/death metal band, and goth metal band The Dreamside. Oh, and I finally ordered the "new" Feel So Bad cd which has technically been out for over a year.

All this in addition to the free cds I ordered when I signed up for the BMG music service. And yeah, I did buy a bunch of used cds off my boss just two weeks ago. And... I just ordered a used copy of a cd by My Dying Bride. I'm pathetic.

Gaming: I haven't really felt too much like gaming lately. Ali and Nara are playing City of Heroes now, but during the week they're on too late for me to hook up with them. I've also been logging into Second Life a bit -- not every night, but a few nights a week anyway, just to say hi to friends and stuff.

I was invited into the closed beta of the next issue of a certain game I play (which technically I've agreed not to talk about), so I checked it out a bit. I'm not really big on beta testing though, and I'm not so excited about new stuff that I can't possibly wait for it to go live. I feel kind of honoured though, a lot of people that would have liked to get into the closed beta didn't, and so I feel like I should check things out at least a little bit, so I've logged in each night for an hour or so and filed a couple of bug reports on stuff I've come across.

Tonight I downloaded some software and tested it out. It's a voice morphing program called MorphVox Pro by Screaming Bee. There are other such products out there but I'd never tried one out before. Actually, I've never even used voice chat in any of the games I play before, but Second Life and WoW (which I don't play) have both recently added voice chat. I expect all online games will have it at some point. Jeff helped me get my microphone headset working last week, so I can voice chat in SL now if I want to, only none of my friends bother with it so I don't know if it really matters. It's not like most of them don't know I'm a guy IRL, or care.

Anyway the MorphVox Pro program is pretty slick. The voices tend to sound a little fake to me, but other than that it can make your voice sound like just about anything. There are a lot of demonic/robotic voice options available from their web site, and in particular a series of "furry" voices (no, it doesn't make you bark or meow -- although one of the voices that comes with the demo is a dog translator that turns your words into barking). Overall, it seems like a cool toy for online gamers who like to roleplay.

Writing: Eh. Haven't worked on any stories but I did write up a bit I thought up about spacer music and posted it to the Tai-Pan Editorial mailing list. I also wrote about 1/3 or so of an article on "The Zen of Procrastination" but I figured I should put off finishing it for a while, just to keep my procrastination street cred or something I guess. Actually I'm hoping to finish it by the weekend. ^_^

Drawing: I've drawn nothing in the last month.

Exercise: Eh. I haven't walked since Monday. I should do some exercise tonight at least, so I don't go three days straight without some kind of exercise.

Food: I've done pretty good about making lunches for work. I forgot today, but then, I'd also forgotten we were having a potluck today. So I went to the store and got a veggie tray. That worked out. ^_^

Stupid Gift Certificate Thingy: I've determined that I can log in to the company's web site and track my progress towards earning my $500.00 gift certificate, so that's good news. I suspect I will have to fulfill one more of their top-level obligations to do it. My cds from BMG and my dvds from Columbia arrived today. For dvds I have Groundhog Day, City of Lost Children, Madagascar, and a few anime titles -- Steam Boy, Ghost In The Shell 2, Spiral. For cds I picked up 2 Dream Theater cds, one Megadeth, Best of Susan Vega, a Tori Amos I didn't have, 12 Girls Band (Chinese folk/pop band, I've known about them for a few years now), and a Sarah MacLaughlin cd.