Tag Archives: Rock Band

Wrap Up Warm

Leave a reply

Well October’s here, and as you might imagine, that makes me a happy chap. Just last night in fact I enjoyed a lovely Pumpkin Ale after a Senior training session at the academy, an ale courtesy of Badger Brewery which is without a doubt my favourite brewery. I’m sure I must have mentioned on here before that I’m a fan of decent beers and ales, and now you know my favourite brewery, you know, should you be looking for gift ideas… (I’m also rather partial to a couple of local breweries such as Skinners and The Wooden Hand Brewery).

The senior lesson last night went well on the whole, I like the concentration and pedantry of the training is those sessions. We had a go at teaching a two and a half minute segment of an imaginary white belt class which was very hard, and flew by in what felt like thirty seconds, and then spent the rest of the time working on forms. I was pleasantly surprised at myself for how much of Bassai I remembered, and I think I’ve got the last 10-15 moves memorised now which was always the problem before. I did have a bit of a moment during Pyung Ahn Sa Dan where I totally lost myself and found myself staring gormlessly at the wall, but other than that I’m pleased with how training is going right now. I still have a lot of pain in my hip/thigh, which I keep promising myself I’ll try to sort out with a trip to the doctor, but always fail to do. Luckily I’ve found the stretches which seem to help it now, and ways to get into other stretches which caused me a lot of discomfort before.

We had some point-stop sparring training on Sunday which I was keen to get into, as it feels like certain things are starting to come together nicely. The main thing I’ve been drumming into myself and trying to improve is the speed and distance of my opening step and attack during a blitz, and I’m not sure how much of it is in my head but I feel like I’ve put close to a foot on the distance I can open up from and sped my front hand up considerably. I still have some areas which always seem to need work, like covering my head better in close, but overall I’m happy with everything.

These evenings which are drawing in are getting me in the mood to invest in a decent new game to amuse myself with when it’s just too harsh outside to go and do anything. The problem is I don’t have a clue what to get. Now there are some titles I’m looking forward to eagerly, such as Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 (both of which happily work with the Rock Band instruments – yeah!), but I fancy something more traditional for some reason. Last year I think I was spoiled with Mario Galaxy which was just beautiful and so much fun, but what for this year? I always talk myself into getting an RPG, even though I know full well that I’ll never finish it. I seem to get bored of them before the game is anywhere near finishing, so maybe a good action-adventure, or even a platformer perhaps. I’ve been playing the Pure demo a lot, I could see me getting into that, but I’m not sure how long for. Hmmm we’ll see.

Better Late Than Never

Leave a reply

Well what do you know, the sun’s shining! It’s a shame it’s taken until September to see it, but it’s nice to see it all the same. A nice sunny Autumn would be just the ticket in my opinion, there’s nothing as nice as getting wrapped up and going for a stomp through the leaves in the woods when it gets like that. The only danger of doing that with a particularly ‘rusty’ dog is that it’s easy to lose him in the leaves!

I’m the mayor of Achesville this week, after a particularly good kickboxing session on Wednesday night after the TSD class. I lost count of just how many various sit-ups we did continuously, and the same goes for the pushups. I felt quite inadequate during those, as my partner for the exercises was an absolute machine and just blasted them out at a crazy speed, each one well done. There was a great vibe for the whole evening and I think it’s fair to say everyone worked hard. I wonder if anyone else is still feeling as sore as me…

I had a bit of a bargain mission this lunchtime in town, heading to the Gul shop first for a look and picking myself up a nice warm winter coat for 20 quid down from 80! Ideal, as I desperately need one and I’d been budgeting for about £80. Then I headed into <generic sports superstore> and picked up a nice big drinks bottle for training, another bargain at less than two quid. It started to lash down so I headed into Game for some shelter and noticed that Rock Band is released on PS3 and Wii today, so a friend of mine who works in the shop brought in his own copy to demonstrate. It took every ounce of self-control to not pick up the guitar and blast out ten minutes of Green Grass & High Tides on Hard like the archetypal posing idiot, but manage I did and walked out with my dignity intact ;) .

The weekend is here good folks, no work for two days for the lucky ones among us, bliss. :)

¡Adios Muchachos!

1 Reply

That’s right, as of tomorrow it’s a week of solemnity and quiet for the blog (which, let’s face it, isn’t winning any awards for being updated at the moment), and a week of rest, relaxation and fun in sunny Spain for me. I think everything’s sorted out, at least I hope it is. My mental checklist for the really important stuff has been like this for the last week:

  • Passport
  • Currency
  • Travel Insurance
  • Car hire

All of which I can happily say are covered, complete and present. Now all that remains is the small stuff like packing(!). There’s also a whole heap of other bits and pieces to remember I have stashed away somewhere just behind my consciousness which includes:

  • Frisbee (very important!)
  • International roaming for phone
  • Phone
  • Phone charger
  • iPod
  • Books
  • Copious amounts of sunscreen
  • Hat
  • Sunglasses
  • Camera

Some of that would probably be covered in most peoples’ idea of packing, but my idea of packing is usually much more simple and non-descript. The great news to me is that one of the friends I’m going with has secured three inflatables for the pool – a ring, shark and crocodile! We fly at 7.30 in the evening which is great as it gives me the rest of the day to pack whatever I forget to pack tonight. Tonight’s going to be busy enough as it is I think, there’s TSD, then some packing and then straight out to a local Rock night with my training friends. I’ve not had a decent Rock night in ages now and it’ll be a great way to start my two weeks off.

In other randomness, I managed to break the Bass pedal for Rock Band last night. During a particularly heated rendition of Train Kept Rollin’ by Aerosmith my foot was thumping away and the next thing I knew there was no pedal under it. It snapped clean just above the hinge at the base of the pedal. Being the enterprising sort of chap I am though, and armed with a roll of duct tape, I was able to get it working again. It’s not ideal, but I called EA last night expecting an hour on hold, miles of red tape and an agonising wait for a replacement and the hassle of sending the broken one back. Boy was I in for a surprise! The phone was answered within 30 seconds, they took my address details and told me that a replacement would be with me within a week, and that I don’t need to return the old one… you could have knocked me down with a feather – kudos EA for some awesome customer service there. Luckily the pedal broke after the mission I gave myself that evening, to tame the beast that is Vasoline by Stone Temple Pilots on Hard. That song has taunted me with its lack of high-score and lack of being completed for a few weeks now, so I was determined to break it. When you fail a song in Rock Band it tells you how far through you got, and thanks to the off-beat bass drumming in that song it’s always been a pretty low number in the past. Nevertheless I was determined last night to up that percentage little-by-little, just as I remember doing the first time I beat Bark At The Moon on Guitar Hero. Still the game mocked me, showing my feeble progress with each and every failure – 29%, 32%, 32%, 32%, 35%, 32% – you get the picture. Then, as if being suddenly injected with some kind of rhythm serum, I was no longer feeble and the pain-in-the-ass chorus section all fell into line and Wham! (no, not that Wham), I completed the song on the very next attempt. The feeling of success and achievement when you crack a song like that is enormous. Ok, so I’m a further two cities into my Hard career now and completely stuck again for the time being, but still, my bass drumming was to Vasoline as the horn was to the walls of Jericho – down it came!

The next time this gets updated I should be golden brown, thoroughly chilled out and ready to get stuck back into stuff. So with that in mind I expect I’ll see you here in a week, sun-burned, knackered and ready for another holiday ;) .