New discoveries #1

Because I've been away for a long time, I'd like to tell you a bit about some of the new discoveries I made in that time (cheating a bit, but I'll explain later) just to let you get an idea of what I've been watching, listening to etc. 

Music

I discovered quite a few artists over the last period, but I'd like to talk about three of them. Firstly there's a female singer from Italy. I got to know her through the Eurovision Song Contest last may and her name is ...

Update: I've been gone, but now I'm back

It's been quite a while since my last post - which was another post to apologize for being away, ironically enough. The truth is that I had a very busy year (which isn't a good excuse!) studying for my Masters degree, combined with extra courses and some personal circumstances. 

But now I'm planning on starting up again, with some refreshments in the lay-out, some new additions and added translations in Dutch (basically 'cause I am Dutch). I'll tell you a little more about the changes in this article.

My favourites: August, September and October

First of all, I have a little bit of explaining to do. The last post I did was about a month ago, so I have been away for quite a while. The reason for this absence had been the start of the new scholastic year for me. I started my Masters in translation at university and the amount of work kind of overwhelmed me so much that I couldn’t put myself to write for my blog. Now however, I’m settled a bit again, and I decided to start again this weekend and what better way to start then by telling you about my favourites of the last month(s).

Well, it’s almost the first of November and therefore the perfect time to make a favourites list. For a while now I’ve been using the music scrobbler from Last.fm to keep a record of the music I listen to. This program – easy to install! – keeps track of what you listen to on your computer – in the windows media player as well as in iTunes (you can even let it synchronize your iPod to scrobble the songs you listened to on there). On your online profile you then can see what artists you have listened to the most – over the last week, the last year or overall, but also (important!) over the last three months. This has given me the idea to, at the start of every new month, make a list of the 10 artists I’ve listened to the most over the previous 3 months – with a bit of extra info on the why?

These are the lists (artists and songs) of the months August, September and October.

Favourite sites

In this blogpost I’d like to talk to you about some internetpages and – let’s call them – applications, that are related to my love for music and movies. I’ll give a short description and why I like them so much!

Imdb.com

This is a very, very, very handy tool for everyone who watches a lot of movies and is a bit obsessed with finding out the answer to the question: Where have I seen that guy/girl before? The Internet Movie DataBase is – like the title says – a database with a lot of movies. You can search on movie title, actor, actress, director, composer etcetera. Almost everything I always want to know, you can find there. I usually use it to check what other movies an actor was in, or if they played a part in a television series I know, so I can place him or her. I love this site, just because it gives you all this general information and it’s easy to use. Just click on link after link and see where you’ll end up!

Link: http://www.imdb.com/

Studying and music: a good combination?

In this post I want to talk about something a bit in general: Listening to music while you’re studying. I always work better with music playing, but it all depends on a few factors that I’d like to tell you about.

Firstly I should tell you a little bit about my studies. The last couple of years I’ve studied Italian, which meant that a lot of the texts I had to prepare or assignments I had to do were in Italian. Basically, in all the courses I took there were three languages that were used in texts, during classes and for essays and stuff: Dutch, English and foremost Italian.

Review: Æon Flux – Karyn Kusama (2005)

A (relatively) short review this time. Not because there’s not much to say though! I wanna talk about a movie called Æon Flux, which was directed by Karyn Kusama. A short introduction: The movie was based on a series of animations made by Peter Chung that aired on MTV in the early nineties. It’s about this female assassin. The story of the film is based on that character.

The female assassin is played by Charlize Theron. The story takes place in a city in the future called Bregna. Apparently a long time ago there was a deadly virus which took out the whole population of planet earth, except those people who united in Bregna. This community has been living there under the authority of the Goodchild family for centuries, but there’s a rebel movement that wants to overthrow their regime.

Lyrics: Wouter Hamel - Ride that sunbeam

This is one of my favourite Wouter Hamel songs. The lyrics are very upbeat and if you're feeling a bit down it makes you feel a little better.... At least it makes ME feel better sometimes.


It speaks for itself!


Ride that sunbeam
If you're truly in love with him
follow your dream, ride that sunbeam
'till you find what you've missed
in you're bittersweet years
It's time to dry those tears

Life will happen the way that it should
let your feelings guide you
Don't settle for less
just aim for success
and love just might find you