Depeche Mode's The Things You Said (acoustic cover)

Found this guitar track with vocals by Jamie Myerson on YouTube and was inspired once again to add backing vocals. I'm glad to say he liked it! :)

Original music by Martin Gore of Depeche Mode
Guitar and lead vocals by Jamie Myerson
Added backing vocals by: Aeryn Martin (myself)

Waiting On A Sign

Saw this guy with his guitar on Robson & Burrard in Vancouver, was in AWE, saw his name on his guitar case and repeated it in my head several times on my way home to make sure I would be able to look him up on YouTube. I did, found this video and that's that. :)

Here is Waiting on a Sign by Bodhi Jones, with added backing vocals by myself.

Eye Tutorial

I was in the mood! I needed to draw something, but didn't have much time to spare - as usual this year - so this is what I came up with. Hope it helps someone. :)

Season Premiere Dates

Wow, so everybody who knows me knows how much I like my television. Okay, when they see this they may realize they had no clue just HOW MUCH I like it! :D

I got started looking up when some of my favorite shoes are coming back and then realized I'm glad that some other shows are ending just in time! Woof!

THU, Sep 10
Vampire Diaries - new show. Don't know much about it but it has vampires in it... Good enough reason for me to give it a try. Okay, apparently a good vampire and a bad vampire, brothers, want the same (human) girl. There.

Supernatural - been watching this one since season 1 and love it! Apparently the show was planned to have 5 seasons so even though I wouldn't mind it running longer than that I hope they won't sell out to make it so. In any case, this should promise to be another great season with sibling banter and rock music!

Joining the THU lineup a week later, Sep 17
Bones - the last season's finale disappointed me greatly. PLEASE! Amnesia?? That's been done to DEATH! Are we in the 80s? Aaanyway, loved the show up to that point so I'll sure as hell tune in again.

Fringe - only just discovered this one, am catching up and am enjoying it! It's a fun little show, if certain aspects are a little repetitive. But the epic background "pattern" storyline has potential.

THURSDAYS will be CRAZY!!! :)

MON, Sep 21
Heroes - YAY! Admittedly these guys can do what they want I'll still tune in. They'd have to mess up BIG TIME for me to give up on this show.

THU Sep 24
Mentalist - fun show, ALSO on Thursdays!! If I find that I can't keep up though then this is the one that I tend to watch last.

FRI, Sep 25
Dollhouse - HOORAY! Glad we got another season! Joss Whedon blew me away with Buffy and Angel and apparently has a 5-year plan for these characters all worked out so I'll be along for the ride!

Smallville - Season 9... wow. There were plenty of moments when I thought about or actually did give up on this show. But the last couple of seasons have been strong again and I'm just itching to see Clark take off for the first time!!! Though apparently that won't happen any time soon. Can we morph this show into "Metropolis" some time? Glad to see Justin Hartley and other favorites back, and NOT certain other characters. Made the show so much better when they left!!

SUN, Sep 27
Dexter - YAAAAY! My favorite serial killer will be back!! This show is just ridiculously good!! Can't wait! Never a dull moment with this guy!

FRI, Oct 2
Stargate Universe - "New Battlestar Galactica?" I loved SG-1 and actually did think at some point that I'd love to get a darker version of that. They heard me. I wanted to be on that show so badly!!! With Robert Carlisle, Lou Diamond Philipps, Ming Na, Alaina Huffmann (aka Smallville's Black Canary and Painkiller Jane's Maureen Bowers. Never liked her in those roles but I think this one will suit her!)... and for being as much of a Stargate fan as me David Blue (as Eli Wallace) is already my fav! :)

FRI, Oct 9
Sanctuary - joins SG-U on the Friday evenings a week later. This is another show that I tend to watch only once I have seen everything else. I did enjoy the first season but... we'll see. I WANT to like this show so badly!

With Dollhouse and Smallville also on Fridays... FRIDAYS WILL BE CRAZY, TOO!!! (Unless somebody gives in and moves things... can this competition within the same genre be healthy?)

SAT, Nov 7
Legend of the Seeker - FUN! It's what I wanted XENA to be. I never liked the over the top silly... audience-is-in-on-the-joke stuff. This is darker and still fun. Wonder what they'll serve for a story line this season!

MON, Jan 17, 2010
24 - Last season was great again and this season will have Katee Sackhoff (BSG's Starbuck) which is reason enough for me to tune in cause she's cool! :)

Carpenters' Rainy Days & Mondays

I recently moved to a new flat-share in the West-End of Vancouver. So pretty! But noisy, too, so I haven't been able to record any new songs in a while. I hate background noise in my recordings...

But ever since my new acting course started I've just not been able to ignore the URGE to sing again! So I went and bought myself a microphone. Here is the latest of my covers!

Guitar track by Hiroshi Masuda (peacejoytown at youtube). Used with permission.

The Panther, by Rainer Maria Rilke

I was walking along for some... brunch and suddenly thought of that poem. No idea why. THAT poem. The one poem that, as a 12-year-old (or so), I chose to memorize. I was never one to do homework, let alone anything I didn't absolutely have to do. But this stuck. And even when I hadn't thought of it for many years I never forgot those words:

Der Panther von Rainer Maria Rilke
Im Tiergarten von Paris

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
so müd geworden, dass er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
Und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.

Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.

Nur manchmal hebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf -. Dann geht ein Blick hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannten Stille -
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.

I realised that I absolutely pity anyone who doesn't understand the true beauty of the original German words. I got back to my computer and just couldn't find a translation that I thought did the piece any justice so here is my attempt (I tried to stay close to the original):

The Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke
In the Zoological Garden of Paris

His gaze has, from the passing of the bars,
gotten so tired that nothing captures it anymore.
To him it is, as if there were a thousand bars
and behind a thousand bars no world.

The soft stride of smooth strong steps,
that spins round in the tiniest circle,
is like a dance of strength around a center,
in which, numbly, a great will stands.

Only sometimes the curtain of the pupil
rises silently. — Then an image enters,
goes through the limbs’ tense silence —
and in the heart ceases to exist.

PHP/MySQL lesson #X+1

I've been on holiday and one way for me to relax is working on my website. Yes. That's right. Programming is relaxing.

So I've been struggling with this image gallery of mine... Not very relaxing! I wanted to upload images into my database and found a script tutorial for that easily enough. Done. Voila!

Then I wanted to display many of the images from my database at the same time. On my webpage. How the hell does that work??? I know how to search for them but how do I display the blob?

I searched the web again and found script after script but none of them were working! I looked for errors in the code (oh and there were errors!), tried moving things around, nothing helped. The error messages just changed... I was getting error messages, seeing a blank page... the highlight was seeing blank squares that were supposed to be images!

Turns out the code was working just fine...

But nobody told me that the table with the images isn't supposed to carry any other information (like tags for example)! As soon as I removed all the non-essential columns in my images table the script started working. Hooray!

So ONLY include the columns: id, name, size, type and content (or data, as some tutorials preferred to call it). Nothing else!

Rant over. I hope some poor soul finds this and is saved some trouble...

PS: If I'm getting something wrong please tell me. I am one of those who don't mind not knowing how a script works as long as it works. I'd love to actually study this stuff but I have other priorities.

New Blog coming soon!

I'll be busy transferring posts from my previous blogs to this one but there is quite a few of them and I can't export/import them... so it'll take a couple of weeks I guess. Stick around! :)