The Grax Domain

What if God was a Scientist?

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:00:00 +0100

Face Grax's Manga

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:30:00 +0100

Curse you Mitu for highlighting a little avatar making website where you can create manga style avatars at Face Your Manga. *shakes fist*

Curse me for wasting some time on said site and creating a couple of avatars. *shakes fist*

Curse Face Your Manga for not having a "no pupils or iris" eyes option, thus forcing me to rub out my eyes with image editing software. *shakes fist*

Curses!

Curses!

Curses!

*shakes fist*

iPhone 3G Review

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:15:00 +0100

Parenting thought: Be strict or they grow up stupid

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:30:00 +0100

I was visiting my mum last weekend for a family barbecue. There were also babies and kids there due to my brother and step sister having kids of their own. I made a comment to my brother regarding how hard it must be being strict to kids and laying down the rules for them. His reply was:

"You've got to be strict with kids. Otherwise they grow up stupid and they won't know why."

I thought about what he said and it made sense. It was a good quote I thought.

What are your thoughts on the subject? Discuss!

Reporting From The Temporary House

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:10:00 +0100

Moving to a temporary place

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:15:00 +0100

You never really comprehend how much crap you have in your home until you move out of it. That's something I've come to terms with now that I've moved into my temporary home.

I've been evicted out of my previous home I'm renting. In fact all my housemates have been evicted. The reason for this is because my landlord and lady wants to tart up the property for renting, only this time they want to live in it too. Well it would be silly to try and sell it now, what with the falling house prices and everything.

I needed a new place to stay and I do have friends that I will be staying with. The problem is they won'tbe coming back to Oxford until September for various reasons. So I needed a place for August. After looking at some various house renting websites I found a room that would do. It's a student house off Cowley Road. It's only available for a month because I'm "house covering" for someone that month while they do their thing. In other words Im paying and staying in their room for a month while they move on.

Being a typical student house it's... Small and shitty. But it's only for a month.

So after spending all week slowly packing up all my things and tidying up the place (well it was my housemates mum that did most of the work. We didn't ask her to, it was pure mother instincts!) it was time to move out. After filling a Vauxhall Big Van™ with half my stuff and lugging it all upstairs I realized that not everything was going to fit in my room. And that bungelows are awesome. So I filled the van up with the other half of my crap and drove it to my mums house, which is an hour and a half away.

It was 3:30pm and I'd reached my mums house. It was within a few minutes of arriving that mother panicked me when I told her that I had to return the van by 6:00pm. "Grax you'll never make it!" she wailed and rushed me to call up the van hire company to find out what time the van was due back.

Turns out the van didn't need to be back till the next morning. Everyone's blood pressure returned to normal.

Mum and I sat down to lunch and she did the typical mum thing of making sure I was well fed. "Do you want another roll Grax? Do you want a hot cross bun Grax? A cup of tea? I've made shepherds pie because I wasn't sure if you'd be hungry or not. Are you sure you don't want another roll Grax?"

Just imagine what it would be like if a guy was trying to seduce a woman...

"Would you like a shag? Do you want to give me a hand job? How about if I go down on you? I bought a twelve pack of condoms and a bottle of lube because I wasn't sure if you want to try anal. Are you sure you don't want a shag?"

Oy...

After lunch and unpacking she showed me the extension she and my step dad did to the house. It's quite an amazing job they did. You'd think it was aways a part of the house. This led on to the repeated lecture of me getting a mortgage to buy a house to rent out to other people even though I can't actually afford to do so. And I'd was a bit surprised by their reaction when I told that one of my good friends that I'm moving in with this September just finished university and doesn't have a job yet (partly because I wasn't that bothered about if she had a job or not).

I mean, I know mum and step dad love me and they mean well. It's just that it would be nice if they didn't sound so worryingly disappointed in me.

Don't worry, it's the last stretch of the story.

It came to 5:30 and I drove back home, feeling less than content. In fact the more I thought about it the more angry I got because I still needs to tidy my room, it was gonna be 7:00ish before I got back to Oxford, I thought I could have actually fitted everything in my room, the whole trip was starting to feel like a waste of time (although looking back in hindsight I know this not to be the case). I became more stressed out with the situation.

Getting back to the house I found out the landlord and lady had arrived and were staying the night. Panic packing ensued. Filling bin bags with crap I was keeping I threw them into the car and began work sweeping up the carpet of dust, toenails and bodyhair that was on my wooden floor. Finally I finished with my room, drove to my squatters hole, pile the last of my things into it my room and collapse into bed.

It was around midnight when I finally went to bed and peaceically passed out through exhaustion.

The whole thing was much more stressful than it should have been. Still, I'm here now surrounded by a wall of boxed stuff, hoping to find something for next month so I can do the whole moving again.

Is it September yet?

A response to T2 Risk Taking

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:40:00 +0100

Seems like my rant about T2Darlantan's Player Hater entry has caused quite a reaction. The first part has received dozens of comments, ranging from praises to hate-mail to even "WTF is with your eyes??" The second part has only received a handful of comments, which tells me that the majority of people didn't bother to watch part 2 of my rant (which is kinda important to watch as it rounds off my rant). It certainly seem to be case judging by some of the comments that have the vibe of "Don't you tell T2 how to live his life, fuck you!"

And if that wasn't enough T2Darlantan himself made a video response to my video response.

So there are lessons to be learnt from this exercise.

Don't split your videos into multiple parts; people will probably stop watching after the first part and ignore the rest
If you want lots of comments and subscribers on your YouTube account target a person that has a huge fan base, leave a video response to one of his entries and have him to respond back

T2 Risk Taking

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:58:00 +0100

I found some guy calling himself T2Darlantan on YouTube one day ranting about having fun (in relation to what other people think) and risk taking. Or something like that. You can see what T2 said at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbB7AlgJTTI.

I did this video blog to try and argue against his idea, that to have a fun and full life you need to take risks. Instead my video blog entry ended up being quite dull and not exactly supporting my argument.

Anyway you can watch the video here. Be warned, it's a two part ramble. If you can't see the videos below then you can watch part one here and watch part two here.

Run Twinkletoes Run!

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:10:00 +0100

If you can't watch the video above, you can read what I said below:

Hi there. My name's Grax and I have a friend that is going to be attempting something quite spectacuar in a few months time.

On Sunday 12th October 2008 my friend Mitu will be attempting the London Parks Half Marathon. And the reason she's doing this? She's doing it for The Right To Play.

Right To Play is a charity that uses the power of 'play' to improve health, build life skills, and foster peace for children and communities affected by war, poverty and disease. Using their specially designed sports and play programmes, and working in both the humanitarian and development contexts, Right To Play has projects in more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Now this is a sponsored run and Mitu would like everyone to give their donations towards this run. She has set herself a minimum target of £500 and I would like to do my part for her run.

So Mitu, a message for you, I've added my sponsor money to your run. And I hope it goes towards a good cause.

Now Mitu has also created a website for her to keep a video diary of her progress at www.runmiturun.com. Since she's created this website a couple months ago she a grand total of two video entries. Which is a shame really because I personally would like to see more or Mitu and see more of her video entries.

In fact, here's an idea Mitu. You can use it as an incentive to get more people to give more donations. How about this: for every £10 towards the £500 goal you recieve you'll release a new video blog. I mean it doesn't even have to be anything amazing. It can be something crap. Why it could even be something like....

"Hi everyone! Mitu here and I just got out of bed ready for my morning run! Except it's 7:15pm now and I... kinda... missed it.... Still, nevermind! I got my music player, I got my trainers, I got my Ready Brek, and I'm ready for action! It's gonna be awesome!!!"

Well... it's a thought.

If you would like to give your donation towards this sponsored run then you can. By going to www.justgiving.com/mitu. Alternatively if you would like to check out her progress you can take a look at Mitu's website at www.runmiturun.com. And hopefully by the time she sees this message she'll create some more video blogs for our amusement.

Please give as much as you can towards this sponsored run. Every penny can go a long way for the right to play.

Thank you.

Kieronononon Review

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:08:00 +0100

If you can't watch the video review above, you can read what I said below:

Sometimes you can get bored or frustrated with the common bands and genres in the mainstream music society. People turn to Internet Social Networks like MySpace to satisfy their needs for something totally random. Sometimes they get lucky and discover a band like Kieronononon.

Band members Orta, Float Star Point (pronounced (float*)(p->x) ) and Goat-Boy spewed out a new music genre for all to enjoy; Brutal Techno Punk.

Kierononon's brutal techno punk sound is an angry, aggressive sound, with a hint of odd humour. Now you might be forgiven to think that this a bunch of random noise because it's unlike anything you will ever hear in the mainstream charts, or even outside the mainstream charts. To me when I first heard Kierononon, it sounded like three guys with a couple of guitars and a drum synthesizer kit making random noise, and I didn't really give it the time of the day. But then I gave it a second chance and I listened to it again. And then somehow it fitted together and actually started to sound decent. Now I could see that it was three guys just messing about with a couple of guitars and a drums synthesizer producing and recording something decent.

Kierononon have improved with time and experience and this is evident in their newest album "Brutaltechnopunk". The sound quality is vastly improved compared to their earlier albums "More Interesting than nik Naks" and "More boring than Poison". It's as if one of the band members was fiddling about with the sound editing software, found some new settings, unticked the "suck ass" checkbox and cranked up the "bad ass" slider to max.

However the music is only part of the story. You see Kierononon at their best when they play live. I watched Kierononon perform live at a local pub in Leamington Spa. This was their final ever tour... just like the last tour... and the tour before that.... There's something about the thumping noise from the big speakers, the bass player Float twanging his strings and fiddling with knobs, the front man Orta screeching and mincing in front of everyone, the Goatboy being all.... Goatboy-ish that brought a smile to my face. You can tell that they're enjoying themselves on stage and that only helps to improve the music.There was a large crowd surrounding the stage area at the begining of the show. By the end of the show the number had shrunk to about half. But that's ok, Kierononon is only for awesome people.

When you first hear Kierononon you might get put off and decide to run from it like a mental patient running away from the doctors with their medication and their straight jackets. But this band is a grower. Give it a few more tries and it may broaden your mind to what can be done with music.

If you're not put off initially by the sounds of this brutal techno punk then that makes you pretty awesome.

To find out more on Kieronononon head to their MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/kieronononon or head to their record label's website at http://www.roxxor2.co.uk/.

Man someone should really write a wikipedia entry for this band.