anthegenia

I found out last night that Natalie Shneider (I knew her best from the band Eleven and from her work with various artists particularly Chris Cornell) died a few months back from cancer. She was one of my vocalist idols and I was completely caught off guard by the news she actually passed away.

It was mostly because Jon and I were listening to some CDs we've not heard in a while from our collection. One of the ones I picked up was Eleven's Howling Book and I was all "hmm, let's see if they have a new album??" only to find out the sad news.

Then I got the idea for a cover album (well, more like EP, maybe 5-6 songs) that Jon and I could try to put together, as one of Anthegenia Records' first projects. We really want to get at least enough gear together to start on it next year.

Well the move got pushed forward again, but it's a good thing, because we're not even done getting the place clean before heading out.

I feel kind of bad, because I told everyone I'd be moving today, but then plans changed. We still have some junk lying around, the walls are dirty, etc. so there's still work to be done. (Edited for clarity :P) But I COULD be around, since Jon is doing most of the heavy work due to me being a worthless loser. I even got on PSU yesterday cause I really, really wanted to try Max Attack G part 2 while we took a break from stuff. Just a couple hours, but still. :/

I feel my life is a waste unless I'm around for people or doing things for people. Maybe people need me around and I'm just flaking out. Like, am I going to come back online at the new place and realize people are upset at me because I could've been around on Fri or part of Sat but I wasn't?

The other thing on my mind right now is about Kalli.

Okay, Wednesday is officially my "I am not playing any RP" day this week. Nothing. I've already dropped one game and I have another one in mind to do the same with soon. I'm not going to deal with it till Thurs though.

Just trying to clean up my free time a bit. Even though it makes me look like a total flake, or a bad RPer, or whatever, it's better I admit early that I want out than to keep on with it for weeks and weeks. Sometimes I just go through these periods where I'm bored, or lonely, or whatever, and end up joining every RP I find, then realize "hey wait. I didn't keep my limits in mind." Got to curb my impulsiveness. :/

The only other thing I want to post at the moment is this: Jon's Wardragon 40k music! He composed a song playing live synths, basically a theme song for the game and for the Unity, the flagship of the Unified Forces of Creation.

I'm really proud of it, and of my husband. :D

These are the days, the end complete
A world still turning to the sound of the suffering
You are the jury, we are the saints

Our minds divide, the past repeats
A war still brewing in the hearts of those we once bled
I am the knowing...the living dead
-- Coheed and Cambria, "The End Complete"

I have been thinking lately about Anthegenia, Sophia and Lonan.

The whole concept of Anthegenia was born from the B&B RP, which I consider one of my biggest screwups as an ST. :x Actually, I'm a screwup as an ST in general, because my anxiety fucks me up SO badly. I've looked at how I run when I'm not anxious and I think it's actually ok, even good. But when I am, every post is a struggle. :/

I'm a bit bummed right now because the Drupal 6 version of the Views module isn't done yet. Apparently the module creator is having trouble porting... a bit of a code-block, if you would. Which is fine but it kinda leaves me unable to do what I wanted with the Anthegenia site until it's done. :(

Maybe I'll give that Panels module a try though... and I may be able to make do with just CCK (content construction kit) with Anthegenia for now. Too bad I suck so hard at making pretty layouts, though :P We've pondered asking Charles to do some graphics for us, but a lot is on the back burner right now anyway until Jon and I get some funding for better instruments, recording equipment etc.

And my life continues to move like molasses... :P

I spent another day poking at the Anthegenia site, which I've mostly been doing to familiarize myself with Drupal 6. It's not all that pretty or fancy and I haven't really started organizing all the sections (heh, the usual story, it seems like I have SO many unfinished sites/ideas, after getting burned out on just getting the *layout* right. Stupid CSS!) But it's there.

Right now I am concerning myself over Drupal optimization. I installed the devel module just recently and am boggling at how many DB queries my little site makes. I think I am really going to have to push myself into doing the tag reorganization I want to do, to minimize some of the horrific strain on the database the tagcloud creates. It'll be time consuming but I think I'll thank myself for doing it before Drupal 6 comes around.

Hrm. Yet another security update... and I just updated Drupal 2 weeks ago. Ah well, at least I'm getting a hang of the updating. In fact I could probably automate it, except that I'm paranoid about automating. Funny that I can be actually nervous that scripting will screw things up, when human error screws things up LOTS more.

I suppose my paranoia stems from the fact that humans write the scripts. So they can STILL be wrong! Heh! But one day I will be stronger in the scripting side of the force, like Kraken. :O

I feel like messing with Drupal 6 RC2, now. I'm setting up to install it on the Anthegenia subdomain. Hmm, speaking of domains, Anthegenia (com/net/org? not sure yet) is one I'd really like to buy, since it's becoming central to my and Jon's creative endeavors (I know that sounded pretentious, but I couldn't think of another blanket word than "endeavors" :P) I suppose I could afford to pay for another domain... hell, I still have sim-chan and it's paid till 2009 o.o But I should probably hold onto my money for now.

(Before I start this post I'd like to say thank you to: Lumi, Eni, Raccoon, Kraken, Selina, Grey, Col, Manu and my sister, for listening to me rant and/or showing your concern in your own way. It helps a lot. ^_^)

I think that I am done being angsty now. I hope. But I am tired of feeling helpless and not being able to enjoy everything about life that IS worth living for. At one point I just overloaded on stress (yesterday afternoon-ish) and decided I was tired of it. :P Besides, I was enjoying the RP and chatting with my friends! And why shouldn't I? D:

Lately, I've been testing out Drupal 5.0 for the Anthegenia Records website I'm making. Since there really aren't any good themes out there for Drupal 5.0 yet, it looks quite ugly so far. >.> But I think I could still do the backend pretty well... I already know components I want the site to have:

1) News/blog type posts about new music Jon and I are listening to, updates on our original music projects, concerts we've been to and so on. These will be posted only by us, but commentable by authenticated users.

2) A forum for people interested in the music we create and/or the music we're interested in. All users with valid accounts will be able to participate in these. I haven't tried Drupal's forum module yet, but if it's anything like the rest of Drupal it should have tons of options for moderating the forum without me worrying it'll be overrun by trolls.