zemo.co.uk

In the studio..

Well my band is currently in the studio over the next few months to come up with new tracks, we are currently using studio time to just create tracks and write material, but we plan to start recording songs next month. Our website is complete and all promotion is ready for when we release our material… Watch this space!

Stop the use of Rock songs on the X Factor..

Well I am currently thinking about sorting out a new campaign against the X-Factor using Rock music and against allowing auditionee’s from singing Rock songs on the show. The recent RATM campaign just shows that not only are people fed-up with the current music industry, they also see past the fact that music is presented from short term sales – personally I think they should change the charts from single sales to ‘Ticket Sales’…

The main thing I personally hate about the whole show is; it is supposed to be a POP show where someone is manufactured and used for short term sales with 80% of their profit taken. The whole point of Rock music is longevity and musicianship. Recently people who watch the X Factor went against what they were beforehand for – in the sense that as soon as a Rock band was up against the show suddenly Rock music and musicians were ‘stupid’ to X Factor fans… but they seem to ignore the fact that 1) Rock Music is the biggest selling Genre in the WORLD 2) Every other auditionee sings a Rock song. If people that watch the X Factor are so against Rock music – WHY do auditionees sing Rock songs?… They sing them because Rock songs never die – why do you think that is?.. Because people like ‘me’ who go out and buy tickets to see these bands, also it brings it back to Rock music having the biggest following anyway.

When the campaign is going I plan to contact as many Rock publishers and producers as possible to make a Legal stance against the X Factor from using Rock music on the show. If they want to go against what created the Music Industry in the first place then they should ONLY allow POP Songs to be auditioned.. Simple as that!

Bowling league..

Hey well I thought that it was about time that I actually posted something on my website for once, I have not added anything for ages! Well to start off with on the bowling league front it is not going so great!! I am losing interest in bowling really, especially bowling here as the lanes are a complete joke. My hook ball is near enough completely smashed from the lanes here, another massive gauge out of the ball 2 weeks ago. Tuesday nights seem to be ok, but then some of the people that play on Tuesdays are to put it bluntly assholes, well 3 or 4 people anyway. Thursday singles is pretty pointless to be honest this year, there are only 11 people in the league and for the past 3 months there have only been about 8 people turning up. Good thing is tho, they have a new mechanic who actually wants to help out unlike the last kid that just wanted to sit around the back doing nothing and oiling the league lanes wrong on purpose. Over all it looks like I might quit bowling all together next season, I have other interests and would sooner have a gym membership which would work out better – I can go when I want and it will work out cheaper.

RATM ARE XMAS #1

Posted at 6:30pm

Below are the leaked sales figures and chart standing for XMAS 2009:

1 KILLING IN THE NAME RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE 502672
2 THE CLIMB JOE MCELDERRY 450838
3 BAD ROMANCE LADY GAGA 61677
4 THE OFFICIAL BBC CHILDREN IN NEED MEDLEY PETER KAY’S ANIMATED ALL STAR 52605
5 STARSTRUKK 3OH3 FT KATY PERRY 40742
6 YOU KNOW ME ROBBIE WILLIAMS 38435
7 3 WORDS CHERYL COLE 36232
8 RUSSIAN ROULETTE RIHANNA 34094
9 DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’ JOURNEY 33337
10 MEET ME HALFWAY BLACK EYED PEAS 32517
11 TIK TOK KESHA 26571
12 YOU ARE NOT ALONE X FACTOR FINALISTS 2009 24404
13 DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING ALICIA KEYS 23415
14 DECEMBER SONG (I DREAMED OF CHRISTMAS) GEORGE MICHAEL 22243
15 LET THE BASS KICK IN MIAMI GIRL CHUCKIE & LMFAO 21556
16 MORNING AFTER DARK TIMBALAND/NELLY FURTADO/SOSHY 19687
17 FIGHT FOR THIS LOVE CHERYL COLE 18859
18 FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK POGUES FT KIRSTY MACCOLL 18457
19 WHATCHA SAY JASON DERULO 18278
20 LOOK FOR ME CHIPMUNK FT TALAY RILEY 17775

RATM For XMAS #1

Well I have been in support of the Campaign to get RATM to #1 spot at Christmas, I have wrote my views on the subject in a separate page on this site, please view the page as it gives a greater understanding as to why we are doing this whole campaign.

Buckethead = Not technical

Well a funny story really, started off with me placing a message on a Joe Satriani video saying how he is my favorite Guitarist. Some kid posts to tell me that Satriani is nowhere near as good as buckethead (yes I did fall off my chair in fits of laughter). I then went on to check out some videos of buckethead playing live, and my god it’s no wonder why he wears a bucket on his head. His playing is so not technical, every video I watched he was just doing major scale runs as fast as he could, on another video half the song he didn’t even pluck the strings, he just used a switch on his guitar which mutes the guitar for a second. What’s the big deal with this guy? I went onto the Gibson website and he has a signature Guitar out watched the video linked from the site and laughed so much… 4 finger tapping LOL which sounded like a spectrum computer loading, all his music is noise. All his live videos I have seen he’s not playing in tune, and his string bending is completely laughable!

Windows 7 Ultimate

Hey well, as most people know Windows 7 was release about two weeks ago now, I had the disk for it laying around the day after release so thought that it was about time that I installed it and checked it out! I have used Windows 7 before a bit so knew that it was good. I finally got around to installing it 2 days ago, I have the version ‘Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit’, I am finding it a lot more stable and a lot better than Vista. I have been using Vista Ultimate basically since release and I have had a few problems with it.

For Windows 7 there are a lot of tweaks that you can do on it, I know most people don’t bother with them but being a Computer nut since the age of 13 I have always loved to tweak windows. There are a number of optional security tweaks and service tweaks, the main tweaks that I like to use are:

1 Don't show Balloontips anymore (for me balloon tips are pointless and annoying!!)
2 Enable fast shutdown (self explanatory)
3 Clear pagefile at shutdown
4 Deactivate scripting host (this is a important tweak for me as a lot of malware and viruses use scripts which without this option can run)
5 Don't show last logged-on user name (this is a good tweak as on the logon screen nothing is shown, no users)
6 Don't autostart CD's (another thing that I personally hate is when CD's automatically play when your in the middle of doing something)
7 Do not generate Lan Manager Hashes (Lan Manager stores password hashes for backwards comparability with Windows 95/98, so if you don't have any Windows 95/98 computers in your Network it is advised to turn this off!)
8 Increase MaxConnectionsperServer to 10 (well this is another pretty major tweak)
9 Do Not autosuggest webforms and passwords anymore (this tweak is pretty good for security espcially if other people use your computer every so often, it also annoys me when webforms are autosuggested)
10 Disable ActiveX Controls (well as a developer I have to have ActiveX controls on for some of the things that I develop, but basically ActiveX is used by a lot of virus writers online, although you have to agree before ActiveX runs through Internet Explorer it can do anything; ActiveX is as powerful as a Computer Application and can do anything on your computer if allowed, that's why I see having ActiveX enabled as being a very bad security flaw - especially with new users).
12 Disable error-report service (pretty self explanatory)
13 Disable task-scheduler service (well as I don't have any scheduled events within Windows I disable to service for a bit of extra memory)
14 Disable ctfmon.exe (if you only plan to use one language setting then having ctfmon.exe running is pretty pointless!)
15 Disable UAC (UAC was added in Windows Vista - basically it's that annoying system box that comes up every time you try to do something - I find it extremely annoying - but it has it's good points if you have new users using your system)

Emphasis!

Hey, well over the past few months I have put a bit more time into playing the Guitar and getting my playing up to scratch so to speak, I have been going through a load of theory and scales (which I already had good knowledge of). Currently starting up a band as I feel it’s a whole lot easier to work with other musicians than on own (playing to a metronome is pretty boring!). We are keeping everything quiet at the moment and are going to fully setup a website and everything and all publicity before announcing the band to everyone, I have links with Advance Promotions so hopefully we will see you soon on the scene at the Orange Box etc..

We know what styles we are going for and are sticking to 2 Genres ONLY, there seem to be a lot of ‘tribute bands’ around this area now who play loads of different genres of music, which being a proper fan of Metal / Rock and Live Music for the past 12 years or so I find to be a joke. If I see a band trying to cover every type of music – I know what they are in it for and what they are trying to do – so do most promotion companies. We don’t want to be sell-outs, we are all musicians and play for the thrill of playing and Music itself; whatever happens, happens. We are in the process of writing at the moment.

Bowling

Well I haven’t posted anything for ages so though it was about time that I posted something. The bowling leagues are now 11 weeks in and the lanes are in one word… rubbish! Speaking to a lot of people from the league who are saying that they are either just going to bowl in 1 league next season or not bother with Yeovil at all. The lanes have been dire for the past 3 years down here, there should only be 40ft of oil and a 20ft back end BEFORE the pins, here there is about 4ft back end and they wonder why the league players are forever complaining, it’s almost like the lanes have a dry patch at 50ft down then a oily patch then a dry patch, so as soon as anyone’s hook ball hits the second patch of oil the balls wondering what the hells going on and skids which only normally happens with carry down after about 9 games. I am thinking about quitting the singles league all together and maybe even all leagues here in Yeovil as I’ve tried to put up with it for the past 3 years and nothing has ever been sorted with the lanes here, as a paying customer – of which I am spending £20 a week to bowl here (spent about £2,500 over the past 3 years) I think I could put that money to better use and better things for enjoyment.

I asked a expert from America (who’s had a Pro Bowling shop for 30 years) on his view on what is happening with the lanes here and he said the following:

What you describe could be the ball rolling out, over flaring, hitting some carry down (less likely) or some combination of the three.

Singles Bowling…

Well last night was the singles league second game of the season, didn’t go too great as I now see what people mean about handicaps!!! The person I had to play had a 60 handicap (from sandbagging the first week), not only that they managed to hit a 155 average but bowling off of a 125 average handicap, which meant to have any chance of winning on handicap I needed to bowl a score 60 more than them in every game!! With a average of 155 they should of been bowling off a 36 handicap… Then because I won on Scratch 7-1 they had the cheek to moan! I don’t mind if a person with a higher handicap than me bowls scratch better then it’s fair enough but to moan when they have a 60 handicap yet bowl 30 above their handicap average is just stupid! I think I’m going to have to play for scratch this season.