Spring is just around the corner!

I like the spring. It’s like waking up from a long night, filled with loads of darkness, rain, snow and coldness. It’s like, well, a sunny spring morning, with the smell of dew and the songs of birds. Additionally, my own birthday is in March, so that’s another good thing about spring

Every year, I am filled with joy when walking to class, or work, on a bright and warm morning. And for some reason, my prime choice of music to listen to, falls to the very ‘unspringy’ genre of rap. For those who don’t know me very well, I am no fan of rap-music in particular. Sure there is the occasional song that I like, but mostly, I find it quite uninteresting to hear people talk (more so than actually singing) about their cars, their bling, their money, and the ho’s, or about how tough they are and how many people they’ve killed.

One rap group in particular that never seems to bore me, is Captain Dan and The Scurvy Crew. This, as the name suggests, is a group that makes novelty Pirate rap. And whether you like it or not, the life of a pirate is a perfect topic to rap about. It has the ubercool vehicles, the bling, the money, the roundthecorner Sallies and to be sailing the seven seas, you would have to be tough. The thing I find most puzzling however, is how, as I mentioned, do not particularly like the songs about the killing and the toughness, but additionally, I never really liked pirates either, but I do the songs by Captain Dan.

It is weird that the combination of two things I do not like, make something I do. Maybe, mathematics has gotten it wrong all along and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Whatever the reason, the time of year has come once more where I can bob along with the Yarr’s and Scurvy’s wearing a big grin on my way to work.

So, I was telling you earlier that I’m working on a Flash game for my MSc project. It turns out, Flash is luckily not that difficult to learn and I am happy to report that it is going splendidly. One thing that is important to me while programming/scripting is the music I listen to.

Usually when studying, or writing a paper, I listen to drum and bass. A little Aphrodite, some Black Sun Empire, throw in a couple of Bitplane songs, etc. However, after a couple of years, one starts to associate the music you listen to, with that which you are doing at the moment. So, whenever I hear Bitplane, I get into a studying mindset. Needless to say, this is something to avoid when kicking back with a beer on a Friday night…

Strangely, when programming, the drum and bass doesn’t work too well either. So, I was looking around to find some other music and I stumbled on the soundtrack of GTA IV, or more specifically, the CD containing the radio station ElectroChoc.

This, obviously fictional, radio station plays electro house, and I must say, the songs on there are awesome, especially the remix by SebastiAn, of Kavinsky’s song Testarossa. This song has that great 80′s feel, that is, you put it over Knightrider’s intro movie and it’s retro.

However, after a couple of repeats of the album, it starts to wear a little thin, so, I set out to find an actual web radio playing the same kind of music and I found a station called http://www.electrobeats.eu/index.php?lang=en (most of the website is in German though). This radio station plays a nice collection of electro house mixes and remixes.

Most of the songs I don’t know, and some of them are remixes of songs I do. However, at some point, a very familiar song came by, namely Dizzee Rascal & Armand Van Helden – Bonkers. Now, I do not know much of the Dutch hitlists, and I don’t know if anyone here has ever heard it, but, it was a great hit in the UK in the summer of 2009, when me and the missus where there on vacation. Also, bonkers is just a lovely word to say… Another song that caught my ear was by Frauenarzt & Manny Marc, called Das Geht Ab, which is great because I am a sucker for German music for some reason.

In any case, I expect to get a lot more music suggestions of this web radio, and if you like electro house at all, or are ever in need of new music to listen to while doing stuff that requires fairly easy-to-listen to music, I encourage you to turn on Electrobeats.

I’ve thought long and hard on what to write as a first post. There are so many topics that spring to mind that it’s hard to just pick one. Should I write something about one of the projects I’m working on, or should I post my experiences on a new recipe I tried out? I could write something about my recently picked up musings on photography, or maybe I should write a movie review. Perhaps I could share a cute anecdote about my cats, or start rambling about the weather.

Well, I’m not going to do any of that.

For my first post, I’ll keep things brief. So here it is: I’ll be making some massala chicken today, enjoy a nice evening with the missus and a friend, and I will be back later, to talk about my MSc project I recently started. Stay tuned