Well, Christmas and New Years have come and gone and welcome the new year of 2008. Family and friends were good, plus the copious amounts of meats have satiated my ham-lust for at least another year. Unfortunately I have come down with a cold and sore throat on New Years Eve (go figure), so I have been chugging plenty of lozenges with cold and flu tablets to beat it.

Now, in recent news, I’ve decided to learn how to DJ with my styles in drum & bass, house and trance (and maybe a little hip-hop with Hilltop Hoods). With trance being my favourite genre, I’ve grabbed a couple of Pioneer CDJ 1000’s and I’m soon to grab a Allen & Heath Xone 92 mixer. I didn’t just rush out and buy expensive gear thinking I’ll be the next hot shit cause I saw Daft Punk or Cosmic Gate or Tydi. I did see those and they were great, but I’ve always been interested every time I’ve been at a party with a DJ… and my extended circle of friends contains 4 DJs who have been very helpful with advice and support. Unfortunately that mixer is $500 out of my price range at the moment. So while I wait for funds to accumulate, I’ve decided to check out FL Studio 7 and try my hand at simple producing to experience that side of it.

FL Studio is pretty fun, I’ve only got the demo, so limited saving at the moment, but still, you can create simple loops, grooves and patterns very easily after awhile and export them. I’ve also picked up a whole bunch of tracks by Armin Van Buuren, Tiesto, The Crystal Method, Cosmic Gate, Thrillseekers etc. that I’ve always loved in mixes and got the originals to mix myself. Also can’t wait till TyDi releases his album. Love a lot of his work, and he’s the same age as me.

So there’s a general update. I’ve got my Bioware submission and UT3 level on the backburner at the moment, while I focus on learning some more musical aspects of life. Still, I will get to them over these holidays. Also, I’m playing Mount & Blade at the moment, which is an incredibly awesome game with a great mod community already for it, and it hasn’t even released version 1.0 yet. I highly recommend anyone get the game and especially with the Last Days mod (Lord Of The Rings).