The last Pickle-Shaped Peanuts recording session

 

Austral Thylacine album review

 

Thylacine is the debut album by Austral, which according to their bandcamp page:

is a lively four-piece Australian Celtic band combining cracking uilleann pipe tunes, fiery fiddles, earthy didgeridoo sounds and energetic foot percussion.

My friend Connor Hoy, who I have known for now 11 years plays the uilleann pipes, flute, and whistle. I helped crowdfund the album’s production by contributing $250 in early 2020. I can’t remember how I found out about the project, and to be honest it wasn’t because he told me in person over a few drinks. I wish that was the case.

The album, except for the four cover songs, is entirely music and no lyrics. Because of this, and the tone of the music, I find it very peaceful to listen to even though it is often very fast paced. The songs are also quite short.

Throwdown Hoedown is the opening song and starts with sweeping pace of the violin, and then the whole band kicks in. The tune often changes and I suppose that’s because there aren’t any lyrics.

Thunderberg is a great song that sounds like an adventure. First I imagine a Lord of the Rings hike through mountains and hills, then through the wilderness in China, then the outback when you hear the didgeridoo. It’s very fast and has a great beat. The pace and tone drops later on, and then gets loud and slow. Its only downfall might be that it’s too long at 5 minutes 11 seconds.

Pound A Week Rise is the first cover song, a predominantly guitar-driven song. It tells the story of miners working hard to get a raise after moving to Adani with the promise of better pay, but finding that they’d been lied to. Angus Barbary sings, and his voice is brilliant. I sing this and Beeswing at work sometimes.

No Frills starts in a similar way to Throwdown Hoedown, but is perhaps a bit more repetitive. It is very fast, and when driving home from work it’s a fun song to listen to.

Edgy in Zurich is a nice change from the last three originals, with a slower, beat-heavy tune, except of course when the violin is playing. It is a bit repetitive.

Beeswing is another great cover song with Angus Barbary’s wonderful voice. It tells the story of a young man falling in love with a woman who cannot be tied down. As I said before, I like to sing this one while working. It is a bouncy sort of song, with all of the instruments played purposefully. But I don’t know, I’m not a musician.

Woodford Nights is a slow starting song. It is very delicate and slow, but then the violin starts and it slowly gets faster. The other instruments slowly join. Then it stops and kicks back in with the whole band playing at full speed.  Then it changes tune to be more adventure-esque with didgeridoo and low sounds. The next tune is a rushing sound like you’re running downhill. Then it starts to feel like it’s getting a bit long, but it’s at the 6 minute mark so go figure.

Thylacine is obviously the title song, and is a quiet tune with guitar. Then slowly the rest of the band joins. When I first heard it, I imagined the life story of the little Thylacine on the album art. Sometimes its life is good and sometimes bad, but overall good. The tune sometimes goes lower, and other times higher. It could be seen as being repetitive.

Bok Choy is a slow starting song, with a gentle tune of flute, guitar, and violin. Then the didgeridoo kicks in and the band gets into full pace, the beat starts hitting, so this would be another foot stamping hands clapping song to enjoy live in concert. It does start to feel a bit long, but again it could be because I’ve listened to it so much recently.

Billy Gray is a spoken word cover song with no music. Beth Knight sings, and while she has a great voice, I think that another attempt at recording it might have worked well if they had plenty of time. Sometimes it sounds like she doesn’t know what the next word is. Meanwhile, the story of Billy Gray is quite interesting. It’s the story of a woman being in love with the outlaw Billy Gray and his story.

Henry Bloods is the last song on the album, and additionally a cover song. It is slow, quiet, and I imagine scenery of isolation in the outback. The didgeridoo is more prominent, as are the uilleann pipes I believe.

 

Dream Widow album review

Dream Widow is apparently supposed to be a death metal project by Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters. It came out the day before Taylor Hawkins died, so while I downloaded it that day I didn’t listen until a few days later. It rocks!

Death metal isn’t my favourite metal genre. I’m a bit old school and prefer Motley Crue, Van Halen, Black Sabbath, and Ozzy Osbourne. I do have an Austrian death metal album downloaded, but mainly for the first song. I’ve listened to various Slipknot songs, but I don’t like them overall. I don’t know if Slipknot is supposed to be death metal.

I have listened to most of the album several times.

Choosing my favourite song wasn’t easy, as I like all of them, but undoubtedly Come All Ye Unfaithful is it. It has a great start, epic powerchords, and while death metal lyrics are not easy to hear most of the time, the rolling chorus and screaming main line of “COME!!! All Ye Unfaithful!” is great to me. Then at the end it finishes and there’s this empty corridor sound and then a creepy musical zip.

Cold is the song that I first heard when I read that Dream Widow was a thing on the Foo Fighters Twitter account. The teaser clip for the album plays the part where Dave sings “I don’t wanna wake up.” Thinking about that in the context of Taylor’s death weighed heavily on my early listens to the album. You can easily understand the lyrics, it has a strong start-stop beat, this zombie-like low voice, the rolling chorus of whatever thing is cold.

The Sweet Abyss is a fast-slow song with sharp creepy voices, with my favourite line “How has it come to this? Falling into the Sweet Abyss.” The verses are fast, and then the chorus slow.

Some of the songs feel repetitive and long, but that probably comes from listening to them too much. When you’re excited about listening to it, it’s too short.

March of the Insane is faster than The Sweet Abyss, has a great rolling heavy-sounding part that I love, and the song reminds me a lot of Black Sabbath, especially Children of the Grave with the high-sounding stop. Afterwards is a creepy breathing sound.

Angel With Severed Wings is fast, but maybe not as fast as March of the Insane. You can hear the lyrics better with that zombie-like voice, and when Dave sings the phrase that is the title of the song it coincides with him screaming it and that makes for an awesome sound.

The songs that I specifically choose to listen to are Cold and Come All Ye Unfaithful.

Becoming is a slow starting song with a slowly changing guitar riff and creepy voices that you can’t hear clearly. Then there’s this screaming and rapid strumming (or whatever you would call it). Then there’s a rolling hard beat of drums. Then the lyrics start. “Feel your wrath pulsing through. Life and death becoming you.” Then a heavy rapid strumming, then the song really starts with zombie-like singing. It’s probably one of those songs that grows on you. It is the second longest song, and I just noticed that the songs get longer as the album goes on, the only exception being Cold which is second in order.

Lacrimus dei Ebrius is an even slower starting song. It starts with white noise like a guitar has been left on the ground. It gets louder with occasional chords. Then the song starts and primarily features a back and forth from rapid riffs and beats to slow heavy power chords and beats. It also has this repetitive heavy rock beat that I love. Then the back and forth some more, some quiet acoustic guitar, and finishing with some back and forth again.

My least favourite song is Encino. It is very death metal with rapid chords, beats, and screaming. Then rising powerchords, beats, and screaming. It doesn’t do it for me, so good thing it is very short.

Overall, I loved the album and I don’t dislike any particular song. In the wake of Taylor Hawkins’ death and my multiple playthroughs of this album, I have wondered if there could be more Dream Widow albums. It is hard to say. Dave Grohl loves metal, and this band could be his outlet for it. Whether he imagines a future where Foo Fighters play Dream Widow without Taylor Hawkins, and imagines that future as being a positive experience would be the key influence in its future.

 

My 2022 YouTube plan and my thoughts on it.

For 2022 I decided to make a few changes to my 3 personal YouTube channels: Supercars Mabeanie, Mabeanie Games, and Mabeanie Talks. 

Supercars Mabeanie

The plan was to use my new Rode Podcaster microphone to make weekly (or at least semi-consistent) Supercars videos for the channel. This has worked fairly well. I have posted four videos so far. The videos are opinions based on research and data, the predictions video might be surprisingly different to other peoples predictions. What is proving difficult is coming up with video ideas. I don't spend enough time coming up with ideas or preparing them so that I can make a video. A lot of my ideas are loose concepts that need developing, so I can't just whip it up in a day. Nevertheless, I hope to make many more videos this year. It is disappointing that I can't manage to produce a new video every week.

Mabeanie Games

The plan was to combat some of the big issues with this channel by making less videos and turning Friday Night Funs into podcast-style videos with clips uploaded later. The problem is finding or spending time making the clips. It's hard to be sure what to do at this stage, but I typically go with what I feel like doing.

Mabeanie Talks

Yes, I have started doing vlogs on Mabeanie Talks. The plan was to make vlogs, but I didn't know how they would look until I started making them. The first two videos were a little uncomfortable to make because suddenly I was vlogging for the outside world to see rather than my own personal enjoyment. Content for this channel is easier to come up with and easy to edit compared to Supercars Mabeanie. At the moment the problem isn't coming up with ideas, but knowing where to put my efforts channel-wise. Talks' video for next week is already scheduled, so I'm not concerned about the next video yet. I don't want to schedule a video and then come up with another idea and have old videos scheduled for the future to the point where the video becomes obsolete because I don't feel the same about the subject when the video eventually comes out. It's almost a topic for Talks in itself. Sigh...

Overall, my channels are very close to what I've wanted them to be since I relaunched them in 2019 with their current names. Supercars Mabeanie is close to a drawing of a hypothetical screenshot that I made in 2018. Mabeanie Talks is what I've wanted my YouTube career to be since I started in 2010. Gaming videos is the only real difficulty at the moment.

Motorsport Manager - My 2023 season

Okay this season I remember as being good for some reason. I don't know if it's because we were competitive or because I felt comfortable with how I was playing the game. I started by having the livery be primarily black because the team's designated colour in the time sheets is black. In 2022 it was yellow because we're supposed to be the yellow team. So I started the style of having primarily black cars with a little yellow to reflect the time sheet colour and then the team colour. 

We started the season off the pace, just outside the top ten.

Round 2 was Munich and it was also wet, so we raced our way into the top ten.

Milan was very memorable, risking the 1 stop strategy with Nick Chu in the 13 lap race and pulling it off for a podium.🏆 Again, not qualifying higher than 10th.

We shocked with a 2nd and 3rd in qualifying at Ardennes. Then we went all out on dry tyres in the race, knowing that it was going to get wet, but pitted too early. Maybe the pace wasn't there, and Stef was bad on tyres again. Chu was best in 9th. Stef in 19th.

I don't know what happened at Munich 2, but after poor qualifying we raced our way into the top ten in a half-wet race.

Round 7 was Guildford, and after an okay intermediate qualifying with Stef starting 7th, we raced our way nicely into the top ten.

Then we went to Tondela again, where Stef shocked us all with an incredible start in the race, going from 12th to 3rd on the first lap and we managed to stay there for the rest of the race and score a podium.🏆 Chu didn't have the pace to get up the front with Stef, so he finished 11th.

After another race in Milan where we pushed into the top ten, I got to try out my reserve driver Kaori Aoto in Chu's car because he was incapacitated for a bit. I haven't forgotten that Black Sea race where she stuffed it up at turn 1 and I had to strategise her back to where she should have been. Last to 12th for her, Stef finished 9th because her tyre wear sucked.

Round 11 was Pheonix, where we qualified just outside the top ten and raced there too. Aori was okay and mixed it with Stef for the whole race, but wasn't as good as I thought she was. Her morale was falling rapidly too.

Aori's last chance to prove her worth was Doha, where Stef started on the front row and finished second too.🏆 Aori started back in 16th and I couldn't get her much further than 12th. The two races before, you could say that the cars weren't equal, but I gave Aori the best car possible for Doha.

Then Chu was back in the car for Cape Town, where we had a great qualifying with both cars in the top ten. Chu came 2nd and Stef fell down the order because her tyre life sucked. Then Chu was bumped up to 1st for both his and my first win after Santore was given a penalty for having an illegal part.🏆

Round 14 was Sydney, where for some reason the media thought Aori was going to race and so they thought that she would get pole position even though... Ugh. She just wasn't living up to her performances in practice. Chu and Stef qualified in the top ten, and Chu finished 3rd 🏆 while Stef had an issue at the end and had to pit, but stole the fastest lap anyway.

Beijing was strong for us. Chu qualified 3rd and Stef in the top ten too. We finished with both cars nicely in the top ten, but no trophy. Oh well. Nice race. I tend to go well at Beijing.

The final round was at Dubai and we just weren't on the pace. Stef qualified 7th, but that was the best that we had. Chu got our best race result in 9th, Stef 12th.

Chu was 10th in the championship, Stef 11th, and the team 5th.

I failed to resign Aori for the following season because her morale was shot. I wasn't going to sign her as a main driver, but her feedback was really good so I wanted her for practice sessions as a reserve.

Motorsport Manager - My 2022 season

Currently I am in the 2027 season, so 2022 was a long time ago in the game. This means that my understanding of that season is less about how I feel and more about what I think happened based on the screenshots that I took at the time.

First of all, I won manager of the season, so it must have been a good one.

We were really strong in pre-season testing, with Nick Chu 2nd and Cindi Stefanowski 10th. I still don't know how to capitalise on a strong pre-season test. It just gives you an idea of where your car's at heading into the new season, but at the end of the day your reliability is rubbish and you have to manage that. Looking at that screenshot, Stefanowski was really young when I joined the team. I don't normally sign really young drivers unless they're really talented, so 17 year old Stef was impressive at a young age.

We started the season well at Black Sea with both cars in the top ten and the team 5th in the standings. I've always managed to shine in wet qualifying and races. I think the AI suck at it. We had Kaori Aoto as the reserve driver, and she was always fast and good with feedback I think.

While I often shine in wet qualifying and races, sometimes I screw up the strategy and we have a miserable race. It doesn't help when your driver wrecks tyres too quickly, as must have happened in round 2 at Munich.

By the third round at Milan it's clear that 2022 was a grind. Barely in the top ten. I probably wasn't getting enough money to build new parts.

Tondela might have been the fourth round, and it was a shocker. Not in the top ten at any stage.

We bounced back massively with a double podium at Ardennes.🏆

I must have put new parts in the cars at Ardennes, because we continued our form with top ten capable cars at Munich 2. Aoto showed the world how good she can be by topping practice, as she tended to do on occasion. Moments like those got me excited about running her if one of the main drivers was injured or unwell.

Guildford was round 7, and Stefanowski beat Chu fair and square with 5th. I had to pit Chu at the end. His tyres were probably shot or I screwed up the fuel count. It was a wet race that started dry and got wet, then dried, then wet again. I probably ruined Chu's strategy with tyres, but Stefanowski had probably ruined her tyres and I didn't know it was going to get wet again.Stefanowski ahead of Chu in the drivers championship.

We returned to Tondela, struggled in qualifying, but got Chu to 6th while Stefanowski most likely ruined her tyres. Chu put himself within striking distance of Stef in the championship, which was disappointing. I always like to believe that my drivers are equally talented and that given the right opportunity they will get the same results, but sometimes Stef let me down. She was consistently behind Chu during the race, and I couldn't strategise her out of it because her tyres wore out too quickly.

Then we went back to Milan. We qualified on the edge of the ten, and raced forwards. Chu finished 5th while I had to pit Stef a few laps from the end. She should have been either immediately in front or behind Chu. Tyre life again.

Round 10 was the Black Sea again. It was mixed qualifying with Chu ahead in the ten and Stef down in 16th. That meant that unless Stef had stellar first stint or Chu had a shocker, they could be on the same strategy due to the gap between cars. We finished with both cars in the top ten, and Chu overtook Stef in the championship.

Round 11 was Pheonix. The standard layout of that track is always my Achilles heel. I don't know how to make it work. My engines are probably never good enough, and it's a power track so if you're not fast then you're gonna struggle. Just outside the top ten all weekend.

At Doha Stef showed how good she could be, keeping up with Chu and even beating him. We started outside the ten and got both cars in the back of the ten.

Then we went to Cape Town. Chu on the front row, Stef in the mid-pack. We simply didn't have great pace. Chu was up front until after his second stop. Then he couldn't get back. He finished 7th. Stef was in the top ten, but her tyres died in the last few laps and she fell backwards.

It looks like we were on for double top tens at Sydney, but Chu lost a wheel or wheelnut and had to make another pit stop. It was another wet-dry-wet race.

At the final race in Beijing, we were on the pace all race and got a double podium from top ten starts.🏆

 

Chu was 7th in the championship and Stef 9th. The team finished 4th. As I said before, I won manager of the season. Other teams must have had very mixed results, because 2022 wasn't my best year. Maybe because it was my first year starting with Archer.

My best FNF in ages!

 The Zuma part starts at 26:50.

I talk about when I first played Zuma on my late Grandad's computer, Ms. Pat and giving people as many chances as they need, and saving up for a house so that's why I'm not buying a new microphone or anything.

I'm proud of this episode and would love it if you could watch it and hear my stories and thoughts on life.