Beat The System!

It's December tomorrow and that means Mrs-MaFt will soon be demanding I get the step-ladders out and risk life and limb balancing on them with Mini-MaFt running underneath me getting the Christmas Decorations up.

The Mother-in-Law has been sorting through their lights and all that lot over the last few days and found that most of them don't work - most of which they only bought last year. However, they bought them at the wrong time.

It got me thinking that if you don't mind having your decorations put up a week or so late every other year then you can beat the warranty system and show the big light companies that "you're the man". Well, here's my great money saving idea:

December 20th 2006: buy new Christmas lights with 12-month warranty. Put them up, get drunk and enjoy Christmas.

December 10th 2007: put your decorations up a bit earlier and if they don't work then they are still within their 12-month warranty period and you get them replaced. If they do work, then great, you've not lost out on anything!

For the following years: if you need new decorations then get them as late as possible to ensure you have some time left in your warranty to get them replaced the following year if things go wrong.

Dead simple isn't it? I have far too much time to think...

MaFt

Punk Rock 101

"It's stupid, contagious
To be broke and famous
Can someone please save us from punk rock 101
My Dickies, your sweat bands
My spiked hair, your new Vans
Let's throw up our rock hands for punk rock 101"
'Punk Rock 101' - Bowling For Soup

I had a message via MySpazz yesterday saying how the Punk Workshop I was running sounded like a great idea and this guy was going to try get some of his friends to come along.

Now, hopefully, it was a simple typo that was supposed to read 'Punk Worship' and the poor lad wasn't actually expecting a workshop on how to be punk...

In case I am actually mistaken and he WAS wanting a punk workshop then below is my quick guide on how to be punk depending on your age:


Young Punk:

• ensure your wardrobe consists solely of: atticus, lowlife, vans or black clothing
• deny you are 'emo'
• slag Green Day off for 'selling out' after releasing [insert any Green Day album title here]
• listen only to the latest 'cool' bands
• claim loudly that [insert last week's 'cool' band here] have sold out because they got radio airplay
• only go to see your mates bands and download their cd instead of supporting them
• have a MySpace page with your friends made up of bands you've never seen and your school chums
• explain to everyone that being 'punk' is about not following fashions and thinking for yourself then go around dressing the same as everyone else...
  

Old Punk:

• hate new punk rock groups for at least one of the following reasons: they have good quality recordings, they're in it for the money, they're too young, it's just not '77
• wear an old, tatty leather jacket with some dodgy 70's bands Tipp-Ex-ed onto it
• go on constantly about '77-'79
• show how much you 'hate the system' by working 9-5, 5 days a week, for a multi-national company that exploits cheap labour in China
• explain to everyone you meet that 'punk' is about not following rules or a fashion but then dress the same as every other punk and slag off various groups for not fitting the punk rules that, according to your own beliefs, don't exist anyway...
  
• never shut up about the time you saw [insert any 70's punk band here] at [insert any small pub name here]

OK, so that was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but some people annoy me! Having said that there are 2 'types' of punk person that I respect:

• 1) The young punk who'll go to see old bands and respects the fact that this is where their current 'new' bands got a lot of their inspiration from
• 2) The old punk who accepts that times change and will go to see and support the new punk bands

That's all for now, I feel I may have babbled! Anyway, it's not 'punk' to moan about stuff that's not government (old punk) or fashion (young punk) related...

MaFt

The Separation of Work & Home

It may seem kinda weird but since I've been working on a PC all day long at home I hardly ever seem to have any inclination to use my own PC! While this in itself is no big deal it just means that loads of stuff I need to do keeps getting put off - like the pile of camcorder video's I need to edit and burn to disc, websites I need to make etc etc.

I suppose it's like when I made drugs for a living at Nektar I never wanted to come home and make drugs. Now I work on a computer all day I hardly want to use one in my spare time. But, hey, at least I can make all the drugs I want to now!

MaFt

Damn...

MySpace Quizzes

Bugger...

MaFt

The Greatest Band In The World!

On Saturday night I, once again, witnessed the greatest band in the world playing live.

Scru', Jim and me headed over to Leeds Uni to catch the Rancid gig. Absolutely fantastic stuff! About 30 songs covering all their albums over the last 15 years as well as a couple of Operation Ivy songs thrown in for good measure. You can't beat the best punk band in the world coming back for their encore branding acoustic guitars - how weird it seemed but it sounded awesome.


Rancid

A good night was had by all. And a sober night too, flippin' £2.70 for a can of Carling...

MaFt

Just Warning You...

I've just switched to Blogger Beta where I can now add labels for each post that I make. So, I'm starting to go through all the posts to add the relevant labels to each one. However, if you subscribe to my RSS Feed then you may find that it suddenly seems to repost everything all of a sudden... This is because the posts have to be re-uploaded to add the labels and the feed thinks it's new...

So, sorry if you see lots of posts, but you have been warned!

MaFt

Top 10

According to MediaMonkey these are my top 10 most listened to songs:

Welcome to The Black Parade- My Chemical Romance
Since U Been Gone - Kelly Clarkson
The Darkest Places - MxPx
Blessed Be Your Name (live) - Punk Worship Band
Stars - Dude Fish
Punk Rock Princess - Something Corporate
You're Beautiful- James Blunt
The Story - MxPx
Friendly Fire - 3Dbs Down
Divide, Devoid, Devine - Chucky No Stars

What a mixture eh?! Wonder how different that list will be on my laptop... That's for another day!

MaFt

Izzit Cos I Is Black?

Well, the blog has gone all black n orange! My two favourite colours. Well, not my favourite colours, more my favourite colour scheme! More changes to come, this is just the start for now!

I'm finally gonna get around to updating my site - well, that's a massive over-statement, the plan is actually to just change the main page to make it either a link to the blog (regularly updated) or the main site (badly updated) - at some point I'll actually update the site a bit but since Mini-MaFt has been born I've not had much chance to write any songs so it's a bit pointless so far! Still, it'll get done.

I recorded the vocals for OPEN YOUR EYES last night which sound pretty good. Just a few more finishing touches and we should be able to get some samples up and get them off to the printers too.

Right, break over, back to work!

MaFt

All Up In Smoke

We had a bunch of people round last night for some fireworks. What started off as me, Mrs-MaFt and Mini-MaFt quickly ended up being both our families and a whole bunch of other people too! Still, I'm not complaining - it was fun and Sister-In-Law-H's neighbour made a fantastic corned beef and potato pie.

We'd bought some fireworks from Tesco - just kiddy ones so no big bangs or anything and so had Sister-In-Law-H. I got a text at about 5pm from Brother-T saying 'Got shit loads of big fireworks and rockets see you later'. Well, they were big and there were lots of them, however, they were just bigger versions of the kiddy one's we had bought! Brother-T was gutted that he'd spent forty quids on 'pretty-pretties' of which only two banged. The rockets were good though!

So, it just goes to show that just cos you pay more and they're bigger that that doesn't mean they're gonna be any better! The big-ass fireworks required us to be 25m away from them as opposed to the 5m ones we'd bought originally. So, even though they were bigger they looked the same cos they were 5 times farther away...

MaFt

Almost Recorded

Yo, spent most of the day in the crèche at church recording both the drums and guitars for the Punk Worship CD. We rn out of time for getting the vocals done so I'll be getting those done during the week either on my 8-track or down at Ro's... No doubt you'll be kept updated!

Anyway, I'm off to catch up on Torchwood.

MaFt

Enough To Drive You Mental!

Yesterday, wherever I drove I seemed to get stuck behind either a learner doing 20mph in a 40 zone or a bus that wanted to pull up every 100m at some imaginary bus stop. Why people don't give me priority on the road I have no idea...

Hopefully today will be better as there's no school traffic to get caught up in!

MaFt

Busy-ness

Had a pretty busy week last week! Monday we headed over to Blackpool to see the lights - I'm sure they get slacker each year... I remember the North end used to have loads of big displays at the roadside but there's only about 10 or so now. Maybe it's cos I'm getting older and everything seems much bigger and more fascinating when you're younger! Mini-MaFt enjoyed himself even though it was flipping freezing!

Tuesday was Niece-C's birthday party so that took up the best part of the evening then the day after was her actual birthday - so, again, another afternoon taken out! Working from home is great as it meant I could finish early in the afternoon then just make up the hours later in the evening!

I'm also enjoying Firefox 2 - particularly the in-line spell checker so as I type here it underlines spelling errors! Great stuff!

Then, my free time this week has been spent sorting out the stuff for recording the CD on Saturday and getting music sorted out for PW2... Busy busy busy!


OPEN YOUR EYES

Ta-ra for now, I have to get back to work ;)

MaFt

OPEN YOUR EYES

www.PunkWorship.co.uk will be recording a mini-album on November 4th with the aim of providing fundage for future PW events. And also to add a kick-ass CD to your collection!

It will feature 4 or 5 new recordings (more details later), a live track from Punk Worship earlier in the year; technology permitting, it should also have some special magic enhanced CD content including a video. There might also be a little extra there too....

So, why am I telling you this? Well, we figured that if a handful of people pre-ordered the CD at a special reduced cost of £5 (plus 50p postage) this would help us with the initial funding for getting the CD's duplicated and the artwork printed. Normal price will be £6 (plus postage) and all profits (around £2.50 at full price) will go towards future PW events which, at present, cost us around £300 (hire/purchase of equipment, admin costs etc etc)

I'll post details in the near future about how you can pre-order OPEN YOUR EYES either by cheque or through PayPal - keep checking www.PunkWorship.co.uk too as well as your inbox - what? you mean you're not signed up to the mailing list?! DO IT NOW: PW Mailing List


Open Your Eyes

MaFt

Lo-Fi.. Why??!

Today as I was walking around town for a bit I noticed more and more people walking round with music blasting out from their phones. Well, I say blasting, it's hardly loud - just more of an annoyance.

Back in the day the kids had ghetto blasters perched on their shoulders - they looked like complete tits but at least you could make out what music they were listening to. These phones may be alright as music players when you have headphones attached but through a crappy little speaker it's just pointless.

Maybe I just don't understand, you know, with not being part of the MySpace Generation - I never really got into MySpace and I doubt I'll ever get into listening to music in poor quality either...


Much cooler than hanging a phone around your neck...

MaFt

Finally started working!

Right, I've spent the best part of the day on my new job. Working on behalf of www.PocketGPSWorld.com. I've still got some bits to get used to and learn but I seem to be getting the hang of it so far. The good thing is I'm working from home so can listen to music all day long too! So, if you visit the site during the day you're actually likely to see what I'm listening to (on the left) as opposed to it saying "Nothing".

Also, Grandma died at 7am on Saturday morning. We expecpected it but it's like she was waiting until everyone had seen her before she 'let go'. Mrs-MaFt says that sort of thing hapens a lot - she's a nurse and deals wth death quite a lot. Well, she's not in pain anymore.

And, finally, we had our first practise for PW2 on Saturday morning too. We got through a bunch of songs that we did previously but have made a start on some new songs, including som eChristmas carols too! They sound great :)

Anyway, back to work!

MaFt

Feel Better For That

Well, I've got to admit I feel a lot calmer now I've actually seen Grandma. It was a long drive to get down there but was worth it. She was very drugged up on pain killers but we managed to get a few grins from her and an almost 'hello'. Thing is, I didn't want to leave - it was like an admission that that was it I suppose. I'dhave happily sat there all day holding her hand but to actually leave was both weird and pretty upsetting.

Still, she's had a long life, had her husband taken as a POW during World War 2 then lost him at a fairly young age (around 50 or so, I think), battled with three lots of cancer but remained optimistic for most of her life.

Not wanting to make this blog too morbid (what with the death of Tinkle the other week!) I'll talk about something happier tomorrow! PW2 is on it's way!

MaFt

Grandma, We Love You!

Well, I was going to be starting the new job today but we're now having to drive down to Reading. Grandma is essentially on her death bed so work has been cancelled and re-arranged for Friday.

It aint gonna be nice going to see someone and saying 'bye' when you know you'll never see them again. With her living so far away it's been hard getting to see her, but at least she got to see Mini-MaFt last Christmas and didn't stop talking about him for a week!

The chorus of that world famous Space Monkey Three song goes:

"Death comes around to all of us sometime,
At least in Heaven, there'll always be sunshine"

Take your suncream Grandma, and I'll see you soon.

Love Maff

Jobness

Thought I'd give you motley lot an update! I got a job! Starting from tomorrow I'll be working from home playing on the internet all day, every day! I'll givemore info tomorrow after I've read through the confidentiality agreement as to what I can or can't say about it!

Ta-ra for now

MaFt

Tinkle: August 2001 - September 2006

There was a stuck on a lamp post near our house yesterday saying:



We'd not seen her since Tuesday night andshe fits the description... Bit gutted really cos she was the first thing we got when we got home after our honeymoon so she was a part of the family from day 8. I know she's only a cat but it's still sad.

Here's a few pictures in memorium:





Rest in Peace, puss.

MaFt

Still Here!

I've had a few things going wrong this last week or so and now it's time for my excuses as to why I've not posted for 8 days!

First up my wireless router that I picked up for nothing melted. Yes, melted. Dunno what happened but it stopped working and a circlular bit of melted plastic appeared in the outer casing... I opened the router up and one of the capacitors had erupted it's innards all over. Fun! It took a few days to get a decent signal from my older wireless kit. Think I'm gonna save up and get a decent wireless router soon.

Then, the cd player in Mrs-MaFt's car decided it didn't want to grip the cd's anymore. So, after stealing some torque screw-drivers from Brother-T I had the thing opened and tried to fix it but to no avail. Seems that when it couldn't grip a cd it assumed that it assumed that slot was empty so when you added another one (it holds 6) it tried to forde it into the same slot thus knackering the whole thing... Also, the tinymechanical bits that grip th cd didn't appear to want to work anymore. Hunting round I found out that Ford wanted £250 for one!! Get stuffed! Ended up getting a 1cd version off eBay for £80 including postage.

It doesn't help that Ford make their stereo's too big and with non-standard connections so the best bet was to get a Ford one. Also, the dash in Mrs-MaFt's car is all silver so we wanted a silver one to replace it with. Most are black or grey so it was 'fun' trying to find the right one!

So, there'smy excuses! I'm off down to Northampton tomorrow for an interview so I'm gonna get an early night!

See ya

MaFt