My contract with Rogers for my cell phone expired after a long 3 years this past Friday. I’d been with them for 6 or 7 years, and I wanted a change so I thought I’d go with Telus for my next 3 year stint.

I’ve had a very mixed opinion of Telus’ service since starting with them unfortunately. In most areas I’ve been to, their coverage is actually better than what Rogers gave me, but the HUGE downside is that I have virtually no coverage at all at my house, which is where I use my mobile the majority of the time. I’ve been unable to make any calls that last longer than 20 seconds or so before getting dropped. I’m going to call up their technical support line tomorrow and see what’s going on, as I’m really unhappy that I can’t get voice service when I’m at home.

in terms of the phone itself, I’m actually pretty pleased with my choice. I picked up an LG KEYBO, which is slightly smaller than my old phone, and has the nice bonus of having a QWERTY keyboard, simplifying my texting habits considerably. In addition, it came with a 1GB MicroSD card, which makes transferring pictures to my computer nice and easy. The camera in the phone is 2.0 megapixels, which isn’t great, but is roughly comparable to my full size digital camera which is now several years old.

Pictures Below (Click to enlarge):

If any of you have experience as a Telus customer, or feel like sharing your thoughts on the new phone, or even mobile phones in general, please leave me a comment!

Things have been fairly hectic in my life over the last month or so. My dad had a severe heart attack near the end of July and is very lucky to still be alive. Shortly after, he underwent a Triple Bypass operation to correct the blockages in several of the main arteries to his heart. He’s back home now and is doing well, and is on the road to recovery. Needless to say it was a really scary experience and I’m very glad he’s alright.

In other news, my new job at the John Labatt Centre is going well so far. I’ve only had a few shifts, but with the London Knights starting their pre-season hockey next week, my work schedule will be steady soon.

I’m also starting back at school soon (September 2 I believe), and am really starting to look forward to going back. I have a pretty good schedule aside from one 8:00 AM morning per week, and it’ll be great to get back in the studio and record. I’m going to bring a friend of mine from OIART (Another recording school) in to compare notes with what we’ve learned.

Anyway, more to come in the coming weeks I guess.

So I went for a job interview today for a warehouse position at the John Labatt Centre. I got the job and I’ll be starting in early August, doing restocks at the snack bars and beer carts, and various other jobs. I’m looking forward to it, and I think it’ll be a huge step up from being a grocery store cashier (my last shift is tomorrow, yay!).

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Installed the latest version of Ubuntu using the awesome Wubi installer. I was able to install the OS without playing with partitions or anything - it installs just like a windows program, and then you can restart and boot right into Ubuntu. Very cool!

There have been a couple small annoyances so far. I had to jump through a few hoops to get compiz working (fancy desktop effects), and the desktop wallpaper selector window has an irritating bug which prevents mouse clicks from registering, forcing me to choose wallpapers with my keyboard. Apart from those two things however, this is definitely the smoothest release of Ubuntu so far. I’ll report back in a week or so once I have a chance to use it a little more and see if my opinion still stands.

Here’s how my Ubuntu desktop looks after some fairly hefty customization (click for full size):

Please take a look and let me know what you think!

I’ve been busy this week doing training for my new job as a cashier at Real Canadian Superstore. Obviously it’s not my first choice of work, but the student job market in London is pretty dismal right now. I applied to 20-30 different places, followed up and whatnot, and only got one call for an interview. Nobody seems to be hiring right now.

In any case, the job is actually more difficult than I was expecting. We have to memorize a bunch of produce codes to try to improve our order processing time, and my back and legs are absolutely aching by the time I’m finished my shifts (either 5 or 8 hours). If nothing else, I’m at least happy to have a job again and to have some money coming in…

So today marks the 10th anniversary of the death of X Japan’s guitarist, Hide.  Despite the fact that I didn’t discover X Japan until last year, the band has still had a huge impact on me; I know that the next time I play live with my band, I’ll be trying to put just as much energy into my performance as Hide and the other members of X Japan did.

I’ve also developed a keen appreciation of the visual aspect of musical performance in my time as an X Japan fan. The connection that the visual aspect of performance creates with the audience is extremely important and extremely powerful. By creating memorable visuals to accompany the music, there is somewhat of a sensory immersion into the performance, and the experience will stick with people for a long time.

Anyway, Hide and X Japan have had a huge impact on me musically, and today I’m listening to nothing but X Japan to commemorate the anniversary of Hide’s death.

Here’s a video I thought was quite relevant to the subject: X Japan performs “Forever Love” at Hide’s funeral.

Rest in peace Hide.

I rerecorded an old song of mine over the weekend. Thought I’d post it here and see if I could get people’s feedback!

Here’s the song - tell me what you think in the comments!

So my first year in Music Industry Arts is winding down now. I only have a week of classes left and then a week of exams and then I have 4 months off for the summer. The year was pretty good, although there was a much heavier workload than I expected. I found myself at the school until ungodly hours of the night several times during the semester, but overall it’s been a pretty cool program so far.

I’ve learned a ton about music production and engineering, as well as the physics of sound and how they affect recordings. The console, which was incredibly intimidating at first has now become second nature to use (barring a few complicated patch setups), and I’m comfortable using the outboard gear now as well. I feel like I’ve learned a ton about what it takes to make a high quality recording and I’m hoping next year will be even cooler than this one.

If you have any questions about MIA, recording or music production, please leave me a comment!

Experimenting with some new themes right now, liking this current one so far. What do you think?