Trying out this blog thing to consolidate all of the social media craziness I've got my paws into. Hoping I can write stuff here then link it out to FB, Twitter, Google+ etc etc.
This weekend was pretty manic, my old mate Rene came over from Germany for the weekend, initially to attend #MixInLondon and get his Guiness Book of Records certificate, but that got moved and he came over anyway. A good chance to celebrate the fact that he starts a new job next week, working for the same team as me!
He was staying with another old gaming friend of mine and we all met up at Ministry of Sound just before midnight and had a great time rocking out to Prok & Fitch and the progressive drops in the main room. I got home at 05:00 and was in bed till 13:00, long day! :D
My Badger cub was suffering from a cold, but she came with me to walk the dog into town and get a coffee in the afternoon then we all got ready to help my neighbour with her 13 year old kids birthday party at a local hall.
I'd put my hand up to do a free DJ set for them and had spent most of the week putting together a playlist of various top 40 tracks that the young lady had written out on a sheet of A4 for me. Rene came along for moral support.
The prospect of playing commercial tunes was a daunting one at first but you get over it pretty quick, no need to be an elitist house music snob now is there. ;)
I designed the 3 hour playlist to start with the ~80BPM stuff and ordered the tracks to progress in speed until we were at 128/130BPM at the end... and that means we're in Badger territory! Whacked on some Electro and Progressive at the end and the kids really enjoyed it by all accounts. Good deed done for the month! :D
One young lady requested a track I'd never heard of, but she had it on her phone so I plugged it into my laptop, copied it down and played it. The kids went nuts, twerking and shaking their ass to this "Gas Pedal" track, was quite bizzare.
Badger Cub was feeling worse and had a bit of a lay down half way through the party, then when I started playing house she jumped up and had a boogie, that's my girl! :)
After that we packed up, got a very tired Badger cub to bed then me and the Mrs headed into Windsor to show Rene the castle and have another dance. We pre-warned Rene that most of the clubs are cheesy in comparison to MoS, and Windsor did not dissapoint on this.
We ended up in Indigo and the DJ was playing a mix of crowd pleasers, technically no issues and I secretly enjoyed listening to non-house stuff for a change, but when he did play something with 4 on the floor it made me realise how much I love and need that big bass drum to get me moving.
Sunday, got up at 09:00 and made breakfast for Rene and the Mrs, Badger cub was officially rocking a chest infection now so order of the day was rest for her. Ran Rene to Luton airport and had all the fun of aquaplaning at 80mph on the way home in the torrential rain. Did you know they charge you £2 to DROP SOMEONE OFF AT LUTON AIRPORT??? Bastards!!!
Didn't do any running or lifting over the weekend, most of my training was put on hold pending a physio session yesterday to check on the pain I've had for the last month or so in my left knee. That went well and was good news, just a little Patellar tendinitis caused by over pronation in my left foot, got another physio session tomorrow then should be good to run again on the weekend.
Did an arms set last night while blasting out my latest playlist using Traktor's Auto-Cruise feature, once you tag the tracks with load and fade out markers you can put sync on and tell it to fade over 62 seconds and get a feel for how it will sound, especially good for checking harmonics and sadly, sounds better than a lot of DJs sets even with the bass on both tracks going full pelt as the computer does the transition automatically. I think the key to DJ'ing is to add value to the standard auto-cruise mix, what's the point if a computer can do what you do?
The playlist I was listening to is for my brand new show on Insanity Radio this Saturday, 7pm to 9pm. Looking forward to that, should be fun. I looked into the various options for a radio show and this was the best as it is 100% legal, none of that pirate malarky, arrr! ;)
Along with training, goes the food. I'm finding the 40/40/20 cutting diet a lot more manageable these days and have brought it down to just over 1800kcals in a bid to help burn the last few pounds of fat off that I need to hit 12% Body Fat. Pretty much every day is like Monday with the only variation being the choice of meat for lunch/dinner (chicken/pork/beef/fish) and dressing (low fat cottage cheese/0% fat greek yogurt/extra light soft cheese + herbs/spices).
According to some web based calculators I would need shred about another 6 pounds of fat while maintaining as much muscle as possible before I can sign off on this three year effort to go from 14 stone fat man to something I can be proud of.
Having a week off cardio was quite nice really, some "broscience" I picked up suggested that it's not worth scheduling dedicated rest weeks, other than maybe a deload if fatigue feels high, as you get rest weeks from injury/illness anyway and that does seem to work out well. I used the extra time to get in some gaming and tried out League of Legends seeing as both my boys play it extensively, it's Free to Play and it can be quite a laugh, bit basic stuff really though.
This comment from the Sony Online Entertainment president regarding a possible Star Wars Galaxies style game in the works fills me with as much dread as it does hope. I spent 8 years playing SWG, I made a ton of great friends and got really immersed in the community, development and quality assurance of the game then had it all ripped out from under me, by people like John Smedley, so I would be reluctant to give them any more of my money again. On the other hand, I miss SWG a lot, all other games are pap in comparison, but it sounds like the privately developed emulator is doing the business so I will definately have to check that out.
Lastly, just heard that I have another gig at Soiree in Staines on the 22nd of Feb, already have a playlist sorted featuring remixes of classic house tracks that will be familiar to most people and given a modern twist. Will fine tune that in the weeks to come to get it sounding bang on, the more I tweak the cues on the tracks the more fun I can have with mashing them together to make live remixes.
That's all I got for now, glad to get that all out my head. If you read this far then, why???????
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