If you’re in the area you might be interested to know that I’m playing at the Newhampton Arts Centre in Wolverhampton on the 30th of November. Three bands will be playing a 45 minute jam band set each. I’ll post further details when I know more. We’re supposed to get full info sometime this week. I’ll update this post, so check back here for specific times, etc. Hope you can make it!

In other news, I used the library today! Shocking, I know. I’ve reserved a book on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, to use as a source for my upcoming analysis paper, due mid-December. I’ve also borrowed sheet music, so I can start analysing.

EDIT: A Facebook event has been created for the gig, here. It’s scheduled to start at 7:30 pm, but I don’t know exactly when I’ll be playing yet. It’ll so be worth it to come see everyone else, though, so you might as well come watch the whole show, and we apparently have a special guest band as well, called Bespoke. So, if you’re anywhere near here, come see!

So, to summarise:

Improvisation Night @ The Newhampton Arts Centre

Dunkley Street
Wolverhampton

30th of November, 7:30 pm

There is another gig as well, the night before, so the 29th, with the three other bands participating in the Iimprovisation module at the uni, if people are interested. I’ll probably be in the audience that night.

Hope to see you all on the 30th!

Once again, I’m writing to ask anyone who can to help support Christopher Salmon’s CGI animation project, The Price. I would like to emphasise that this is NOT some sort of pyramid scheme; if they reach their goal sum, the movie WILL be made, and if they don’t you won’t lose any money to it. I can also mention that Neil Gaiman is personally involved in the project as well, and has mentioned it several times on his blog and Twitter.

You can visit ThePrice-Movie.Com to read more about it, and Kickstarter to pledge money. Really, what have you got to lose? Even $10 can be the contribution that makes the movie possible, and if you’d like to pledge more, they’ll give you awesome gifts (if you want them), from a digital download of the movie, to a blu-ray and dvd combo pack with signed posters, to the title of associate producer and (if you’re super-rich) a VIP seat at the premiere next to Neil Gaiman. Yes, I too wish that I had that kind of money… Still, every little helps, and if we pull together this movie will be made and we will be able to enjoy it. As far as I’m concerned, just knowing that I’ve helped contribute to making someone’s dream come true would be enough for me, but that hasn’t stopped me from opting for a limited edition DVD box-set…

If you’d like, you can download a press release here. It’s a PDF. On the website there’s also a production blog where you can follow day-to-day developments on the project.

I really, really hope some of you will consider it. Don’t wait too long to make up your minds, though; there’s only 15 days to go. Donations close on the 1st of December, and if the target goal of $150,000 hasn’t been reached by then, we will have no movie, and that would be sad.

So go! What have you got to lose?

You can also follow the project on Facebook and Twitter.

Once upon a time, four little children named Emma, Remy, Maia and Abi decided to take a taxi home after a lovely night out with their friend Renee.

They sat and they sat, and talked about trivial things, and then little Abi, who knew the way home, looked around and said, “We’ve been on this motorway for an awfully long time!”

And sure enough, it suddenly became apparent that they were now on the M5.

“Well, this isn’t the way home!” said little Abi. “Perhaps he’s kidnapping us and taking us to Cornwall…”

The others agreed that they did not want to go to Cornwall, so they asked the driver if he knew the way home to Walsall.

He did not.

So Emma, Remy and Maia agreed that Abi should navigate, as she knew the way home, but little Maia said that she should not take over the wheel, because good little children do not drive when they have downed a glitter bomb in one.

After a long, long time the taxi reached the West Bromwich roundabout, where it turned around and went back up to Junction 8, onto the M6, down to Perry Barr and Junction 7, and from there to the A34.

All the children all agreed that this was an awfully long way to go, and they were very, very tired, but finally the taxi reached Walsall.

Though the driver did not agree to little Abi’s attempts to barter down the price they had agreed on upon the start of their journey, they all returned home safe and sound.

The End

I just pledged some money to backing this project on Kickstarter:

If you’ve got some money to spare, please consider pledging some to help fund this inspiring project. The money obviously won’t go anywhere unless they reach their goal by the deadline, but if enough people come together for this there will be plenty of rewards in store. Every little helps!

So…. When I post the first chapter of the novel I’m working on here, it’s cause I really, really want to know what you think. So, you know, leave a comment or something. I know people have been here… My site stats are telling me as much. So, pretty please? A tiny comment so I’ll know if anyone cares to read it? I’m not just writing this for fun, you know…

In other news, I no longer have a guitarist for my performance project, cause Espen’s gone back to Norway (didn’t even say goodbye, the bastard ), permanently. So I might have to change my repertoire a bit, depending on how good a guitarist I can get hold of. Met with Steve Cooper today, who had a couple of second years in mind who might do. I hope one of them will be up for it, or both, even. Two guitarists might make up for my lack of keyboardist… I need to send some e-mails about that, I really should have a keyboardist anyway.

So, lots going on. And I’m ill again. Woot(!)

So it’s been about a week since the survey was last taken, so I figure it’s time to share with you guys some of the things I’ve found out.

The majority of my readers appear to be male. 45%, to be exact. 40% are female, 10% are robots and 5% are multiform, should we trust these results.

It would seem that roughly 70% of my readers are people who actually know me. Or, 70% of the readers who took my survey do, at least. Interestingly, not one of the people who have said they don’t know me in real life are female. I’m not sure whether this means that female readers who don’t know me just didn’t want to take the survey, of if I simply have no female readers who don’t know me in real life.

The mean age of all my readers is roughly 24 years old. (This is not counting the robot who said it’s age was 9775, simply because if I had I would have got a very unrealistic mean age for my human readers. All in the name of statistics.)

55% of my readers are Norwegian. 15% are from the UK. 10% are American. There is a 5% representation of extraterrestrials and 15% have answered that they come from a country on Earth not listed.

My readers are mostly students (55%). Those who are not are office drones (5%), paranormal investigators (10%), musicians, artists or other creative professions (10%), librarians, scientists and engineers.

85% of my readers say they like to read. Music, films, computers, art and comics/cartoons also scored high. Fitness and sport both scored 5%, proving that my readers are mostly geeks. The readers’ own additions to the hobby list included silliness, Warhammer 40k, paranormal stuff, Pundit Kitchen, photography and “being a strange online presence” (you know who you are).

Surprisingly for me, what my readers seem to like best is the straight forward blog posts. This is also what people want more of (is my life really so interesting that roughly 78% of you felt the need to reply “general blogging about life”?). This surprises me because, as a general rule, I grow easily bored of people’s general blogging about life (that’s not to say I don’t find other people’s lives interesting, but I find it easier to relate to when they’re telling me about it face to face), and prefer blogs with some kind of theme, which is why I have tried to centre this blog around the arts, with music in focus. But the readers have spoken. If it’s whining you want, it’s whining you’ll get!

About 61% want me to post more recordings, 45% want me to review music or concerts, and 39% would like me to write more fiction. Most of you seem to be bored with my song lyrics, as only 22% were interested in more on that front. Sucks to be the rest of you guys, cause I ain’t quitting!

Two people had never visited my website before. Thanks for taking the survey anyway, and I hope you come back!

Lastly, I’m curious as to which old classmate from Møllergata primary school responded to the survey and apparently reads my blog? Leave a comment or drop me an e-mail; we should have coffee!

Didn’t take the survey and feel like you want to? No problem! The survey is still up and active. I won’t make another statistics post unless I get a lot of new replies, but it’s fun for me to know what kind of people read my blog, so if you haven’t taken it yet, Click here to take the survey now!

Forgive me, Internet, for I have sinned. It’s been over a week since my last blog post.

The reason is that I’m not doing so well. I try not to get too personal here, because I think there are enough blogs out there that do that, and I intended for this website to showcase my work, not to be my own personal whinge-fest, but at this point I figure why not…

Like most people in the world, I have bipolar tendencies. For me, this means that every once in a while, sometimes at close intervals and sometimes once every other year, I get depressed. There’s not necessarily a reason for it, though it’s not hard to take a guess at what triggered it this time. I’m homesick, I miss my boyfriend and all my friends back home, and while I do have good friends here too, it’s just not the same when I’m confronted every day on Facebook with pictures from parties I couldn’t go to and nights out I couldn’t attend.

It’s not even necessarily that I want to go to all these parties and things… After all, I’m sort of a recluse sometimes. But it would be nice if I could choose to do so. I want to be at home with the people I love, and I don’t want to leave again.

That’s how I feel right now. That’s not necessarily how I’ll feel next week. Like I said, I have good friends here, and as soon as I get out of this funk I’m in I’ll be happy to be here again, I’m sure. It’s just that right now I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to write an analysis of For Once in My Life, I don’t want to worry about my dissertation in May, I don’t want to cook for one, I don’t want to sit in the kitchen with the others and I don’t want to be alone in my room. I want to go home and be with Morten and not worry about anything.

I have had fun… If I make myself do stuff with my friends I do have fun, but afterward I just sink into myself again. I had a great time out on Saturday, for instance, with Emma and Renee and her friends from jitsu. Just look how much fun I had:

Literally so much fun it’s almost criminal! We had a great time in Wolverhampton, drinking and chatting and everything. I came out of my shell, met new people and fully enjoyed myself. But when it was all over and I got home it was all the same again… I hate it when that happens… I wish I could be happy all the time, and that it would last.

So, basically, I’ve had a shitty week for no real reason, and this one isn’t looking much better, the bright spot being that I’m going home on Wednesday. It’s only for a few days, I’ll be back here Sunday, but it might be enough for now that I don’t go completely insane. The next time I blog, it’ll be more cheerful, I promise. Happy Monday!

EDIT:

2nd November, 03:15

Just had a nice chat on MSN with Morten. I’ve watched QI and listened to Placebo all night. Feeling a little better at the moment. Here’s to hoping it’ll last so I’ll get something done on my analysis tomorrow.

So, by now, one day later, a grand total of 10 people have taken my awesome survey. Very disappointing! You should definitely do it if you haven’t.

Click here to take the survey!

So, I know that I have a lot more readers than I seem to… I know this because the control panel for my domain tells me so. It tells me that I’ve had over 300 unique visitors this month. That means that only one of those visitors was me. So, I wanna know who the rest of you are. Those of you who don’t comment, but who still view an average of three pages per visit.

For that purpose I made this survey!

So, just click the link and tell me who you are. Have we met, or are you a random person off the Internet? How did you find my blog? Do we have a lot in common? The survey is anonymous, of course.

Click here to take the survey!

Sooo… Not a lot of blogging lately. In truth, I’ve been a bit busy. No I haven’t, I’ve been lazy. But the point is I haven’t blogged.

So, let’s see… Last Monday my group for the Improv thing finally worked out what songs off the list we’re doing. Thursday I handed in my proposal for The Professional Project. I’ve decided to do a prog concert, with a few cover songs and some of my own. I think it’ll be good, I just need to sort out my band. Still don’t have a keyboard player…

On Friday, Morten arrived. Yay! I had an absolutely wonderful weekend with him, but everything comes at a cost. In this case it was the brand new Norwegian Rhinovirus he brought with him. Yay! I am now a sniveling wreck. Two rounds of fresher’s flu in my hall, and I don’t get so much as a sniffle. Morten brings over a Norwegian virus, and the next day I’m feeling the effects of it.

Morten’s gone back to Norway now, but I think we both had a great time. I hope he had a great time… Certainly seemed like it, though sleeping two people in an 80 cm bed is a bit of an experience.

Gonna try to get some sleep now, as it’s almost four in the morning. Might have more interesting things to talk about later…