31st of Blaugust - Alphabet Free Sunday - And We're Done Here!

Last post everybody!

This was an insane thing to do and some posts were down to the wire but I managed to do it. One post a day for 31 days! Technically that was one post a day for 32 days as I did a prep one the day before Blaugust started.

Here is a summary of all the blog posts.

1. ASMR Videos. I thought I'd do something freaky first up. Had fun with that one.
2. Bronies! I thinks I also named myself as one in the process. Welcome to the Herd.
3. How I write my Chipmusic. No excuse to asking me how it's done.
4. Community. Really cool to know what's out there in Adelaide.
5. Dr. Mario. Great game. Even greater for taunting. Brings out the worst in everyone.
6. Eurovision! I'm an addict and cant stop going on about it.
7. Fanfiction. My slashfic was terrible but that was the whole point.
8. Grace - Jeff Buckley. An interesting album indeed.
9. Homestar Runner. Actually more about Strongbad to be honest.
10. Randomness. No structure to this one. Just ramblings.
11. Iron Chef. Awesome show with awesome cooking.
12. Jumanji. A fitting post to say goodbye to Robin Williams.
13. K'nex thing I put together. Really couldn't come up with anything for K.
14. Last Week Tonight. A show I'm really rocking right now.
15. Mahjong. A game I love to play. Still haven't got that Green hand yet.
16. Nineties. You know your'e from the nineties when you do one of these posts.
17. gdgd fairies. Why oh why did Sam have to show this to me. It's so cool!
18. Old Photos of Adelaide. I love these things and would want to find more to show.
19. Pizza. Terrible post that I had to backdate because I lost track of time.
20. Quiztime. Wednesday quiz is a Blaugust thing since Thom does them. BTW Thom won this one.
21. Retro Gaming Collection. I show you what consoles I own and my cool White Gameboy.
22. Sailor Moon Crystal. Getting in touch with my Anime roots by watching this reboot.
23. Trumpet. A small summary of Trumpet related things. Written in a hurry.
24. Weekly Beats. I did something like this before but music related. I tell you all about it.
25. Unboxing Videos. I think I'll make another one only this time with a box of cornflakes.
26. Vegemite. That wonderful black spread that originally didn't sell.
27. With Blackjack and Hookers. Made people worked up about this and for that I am not sorry.
28. Xfce. An interesting Linux desktop environment that I just installed for the hell of it.
29. Yet another Eurovision post. This was a cop out but a nice post none the less.
30. Zander from the past. All the awesomeness of me in photo form.
31. This one!

So what was post? I'm going to go with the Dr Mario Video I made because I forced Thom to do his own comeback video! Nice work Thom. Nice work!

Now I can let this blog fade away again as I forget all about it.

But coming up next: Dubsteptember!

Please note. I will not be doing Dubsteptember. Or Raptember either. I'm done!

30th of Blaugust - Z - Zander in the Past

At last I have come to Z and my alphabetical journey is soon to be over. This letter for me was quite obvious as everyone knows Z clearly stood for Zander. And so I thought I'd make it all about me. But I'd thought I'd do it in the form of a photographical journey from growing up. So I went through my parents photographs and lifted a few that I liked to show you.

1988 - Approx. Age 1

This is from my baby album and I think I'm almost one so I'll say this is from 1988. I'm just chilling with my hoes, I mean hose.

1989 - Age 2

Who doesn't love swings at this age and I remember this was set up in the back yard. Can't believe I'm in the same jumper from the previous photo. I can promise you I did have other clothes.

1990 - Age 3 

This ine I really like. I'm pretty sure this was taken from under the cubby house at my old home.

1992 - Age 5

I was lucky enough to be in the 1992 John Martins/State Bank Christmas Pageant. Nipper and Nimble weren't pink and baby blue back then. Instead they were Rad and Royal Blue. I was on nimble and surrounded by the ladies. I have footage of this on a VHS tape of the Chanel 7 broadcast which I might put up on YouTube one day.

1995 - Age 8

I was on a holiday in Perth when this was taken and I was absolutely marvelled at what was basically and Bus and Train interchange. I'd never seen one before even though they existed at Adelaide but not like this one. The Interchange was built directly above the train station which you accessed by escalator and lift.

1996 - Age 9

I threw this is just to show that I was a gamer as a kid and played the crap out of the SNES. I think this was immediately after getting Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest for Christmas.

1997 - Age 10

I was easily able to date this photo as out family was completely worked up over getting a puppy. Sasha was a Maltese Terrier and was only a two or three months old when we got her. She was always a loving pet and a welcome part of the family.

2005 - Age 18

Now we skip a bunch of years and make our way to when I was 18 and in year 12. This was when I was on a holiday in Hobart to see my sister who was staying there for a year as she was doing a one year medical internship. I just really like the photo.

2008 - Age 21

Finally some proof of something. When I say to people that I grew my hair out it made it to my shoulders people don't normally believe me. Well here I am in my third year of my Music Degree, with that incredibly long and curly hair. I finally decided to get a hair cut shorter around July because it became really hard to manage and got it cut progressively shorter and shorter again as I was doing my Teaching diploma until it was like it is now. Sometimes I consider growing it out again every once in a while. You should have seen what it used to look like when I got it straightened.

So that's me growing up through pictures. And nod I am all out of letters. Just one more Alphabet free post and Blaugust is done. The alphabetical journey's definitely been a lot of fun and given me some direction to keep things varied instead of just rambling on.

So be sure to see my final Blaugust post tomorrow everyone.

29th of Blaugust - Y - Yet Another Eurovision Post

Back to me finding an excuse to talk about Eurovision for not apparent reason. I hadn't been fully prepared and I was compiling this list anyway. So I thought I would put it out there as a Blaugust Post. I went through the train-wercks but there is actually some good stuff in there. I promise you.

This is my list of favorite songs that didn't win from 2014 back to 2000.

2014 ­ Sweden - Placed 3rd

 I liked this and really thought it could win. At one point it was even the bookie favorite. However the Austria was a deserving winner.

2013 ­ Ukraine - Placed 3rd

I thought this one was really cool and got stuck into me. However Denmark had a really great song and took the deserving title.

2012 ­ Cyprus - Placed 16th

This was theyear Sweden took it out with a very awesome song. However I found this one by Cyprus to be ultra catchy. Not exactly original lyrics, but catchy none the less.

2011 ­ Italy - Placed 2nd

This was the year Italy returned to Eurovision. They hadn't taken part since 1997 (and even that was by mistake). They came out with this great Jazz piece which came 2nd. I think it should have won as I didn't care much for the Azerbaijan song that won.

2010 ­ Ukraine - Placed 10th

I guess I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Ukraine at Eurovision. They're normally pretty consistently good and this was no exception. But Germany were awesome this year and took it out. BTW, this was also the year of Moldova and the Epic Sax Guy.

2009 ­ Iceland - Placed 2nd

Speaking of a song that was awesome, how awesome was this? Even though Norway was a clear winner setting a record to do it, I really have a soft spot for this one from Iceland. If only it was just in a different year.

2008 ­ Iceland - Placed 14th

But I liked this one from Iceland as well. So much more than the Russian entry that won. Russia winning Eurovision officially broke Terry Wogan causing him to throw a tantrum and quit.

2007 ­ Finland - Placed 17th

Having won the year before, Finland got to host the contest. And I quite liked their entry that year despite not really being into Emo music. But Serbia had a great ballad that took it out.

2006 ­ Sweden - Placed 5th

Who could forget Finland's winning song "Hard Rock Hallelujah" which is one of my favorite ever Eurovision songs? Nothing really came close that year. But this one by Sweden was quite a good entry. This singer had previously won for Sweden back in 1991 and tried to take it out again.

2005 ­ Malta - Placed 2nd

This year Greece won it with their number one song. But in second was this entry from Malta. She came back in 2009 to try and go one better.

2004 ­ Turkey - Placed 4th

Turkey had won the previous year and put in this cool Ska style piece to try and do the double. But Ukraine in only their second ever contest showed they were great at Eurovision by taking it out.

2003 ­ Belgium - Placed 2nd

This is weird but really cool. The language restriction had been removed in 1999 and Belgium pushed it by entering this song with a made up language. It came 2nd to Turkey which also had a song worthy of winning. But to be honest there wasn't much else that was any good. This was not a period in Eurovision which was known for it's quality.

2002 ­ Malta - Placed 2nd

But this one from Malta was pretty good. Came 2nd to Latvia with a song that was not that great to be honest.

2001 ­ Malta - Placed 9th

Once again I'm picking this song by Malta because it was the least worst that didn't win which was also the least worst of them all. But the one from Estonia that did win was at least catchy.

2000 ­ Sweden - Placed 7th

This was a song I really liked from a contest that was really good. If you want to see a good Eurovision with everything from good stagecraft to a good balance of good and terrible songs then the 2000 contest is my recommendation. Sweden had won the year before and put out this great price. Yet Denmark came out with a song that was a 100% guaranteed winner. 2000 also contained my favorite bad train wreck from my last Eurovision post (that horrible Israel one).

But some train wrecks can also be awesome! Like Germany from the same year. As I said, the 2000 Eurovision had it all.

Bonus Train Wreck - Germany 2000 - Placed 5th

28th of Blaugust - X - Xfce

Today I'm writing this on my old laptop because I wanted to use my Linux install. I hadn't done anything Linux related for Blaugust yet and so I wanted to find something. I settled on getting the Xfce window manager installed.

It didn't take much for me to do this as I was already running Ubuntu which uses Unity as the default window manager. My desktop looked like this.

So the easiest thing to do would be to install Xubuntu (the Xfce flavor of Ubuntu) on top. You could use symaptic or the dreaded Ubuntu Software centre to do this but I find the terminal to be way easier. So all it needed was one command.

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

By the way, Kagami is the name of the computer i'm on. I name them all after Anime characters. My Macbook is Mio (from K-On!), this old Dell laptop is Kagami (from Lucky Star), I have an older compaq laptop named Nagato (from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya), my mums old Lenovo she gave me is Asuka (from Neon Genesis Evangellion), there's an onld eeePC by the name of Ushio (from Clannad Afterstory) and a HP desktop called Haruhi (one guess where that's from).

Well anyway, my install was done so it was time for a reboot. Probably didn't need to but I did anyway. The install has replaced all Ubuntu themed stuff with Xubuntu themed stuff. There was even a different login screen. I had to select xubuntu from a dropdown list on the right to get into it. Here's what it looked like after logging in.

My wallpaper was gone! Not to worry though. Just one right click to select Desktop Settings and that was sorted in no time.

So there's the Xfce menu on top left you can select and use like the Windows 7 start menu to type the name of your program which is handy.

And all the programs that are open are shown up top.

Quite a handy little window manager to be honest. But would I use it? I doubt it. If I want a minimal window manager I tend to use Lxde.But normally I just stick with Unity. I've been considering doing an Arch Linux install on something lately and wouldn't mind going back to Gnome and giving that a try.