I hadn't made a whiny DW-only post about LJ being down in quite a while, so here it is!

LJ, whyyyyyyyy? :(

Since I'm writing this entry anyway, let me tell you about my new/first smartphone. I ended up choosing for a Samsung Galaxy Mini, for which I got an excellent deal (100€, whaaat?). I haven't given it a name yet but I'm pretty smitten already. It has internet and my flist and my email and Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. Love!

That being said, I'm sure there are plenty of wonderful things I could be doing with it that I perhaps don't even know about. So, rec me your favorite smartphone apps, flist! Pretty please?

I'll give you a song in return: Greg Laswell - How The Day Sounds [YT preview].

Oh hai. I keep thinking I should update but never actually get around to writing out the posts. I'm putting an end to that right now.

1) Last Saturday, tanisafan and I saw Foster The People in concert and it was pretty swell. They only played for an hour and a bit -- somewhat inevitable with a band that has just released its first album in May of this year -- but the songs we got were wonderful and fun and excellent to dance to. All in all, an excellent Saturday night activity. Well worth braving Brussels' red light district to get to the venue!


2) After a short hiatus, this week I was finally able to bring my back my movie-going on Friday tradition for In Time. I'd intended to catch the 16.30h screening but then a case at work exploded and I ended up working on it until 19h (and taking the file home with me). When I finally left work, I was pretty exhausted and seriously considering postponing the movies for a week, but eventually said "fuck it", decided I deserved a movie outing, and took myself to the 19.30 showing.

A good decision, it turned out, cause In Time was perfect for de-stressing and kicking off my weekend. Just the right amount of plot, intrigue and action, and pretty pretty cast (&MattBomer;) to boot. The only thing it could have used less of is teal and orange.


3) ANDREW AND EMMA WENT TO SEE JESSE'S PLAY LAST NIGHT. *FLAILING TILL THE END OF TIMES*


4) In teevee news, I'm caught up all the episodes I missed when I was in Tenerife. Still loving on Fringe, Parks & Recreation, Community (six seasons and a movie!! >:|), Misfits, Chuck and Castle. On the other hand, Dexter, How I Met Your Mother and Gossip Girl are bumming me out, as is Grey's Anatomy (not for sucking, far from it, but from doing you know what; fuck you, Grey's!). I'm also watching Glee, Bones, The Office US and Private Practice, but don't have deep thoughts or intense feelings about them.


5) My trusted cell phone, an old Nokia 6555 that I've had for over three years, decided to pretty much stop being functional (I can't hear anything when I make a call, even if the person on the other end of the line can sometimes hear me). I've currently fallen back on my previous cell phone, an even older Nokia 3200 that works just fine, but I'm intensely hunting for a new phone. Possibly my first smartphone!

Therefore, talk to me about your (smart)phone, flist! What do you like/love/hate about it? What should I pay attention to when shopping for (smart)phones? I don't want an iPhone and, since I really don't call/text all that much, I can't imagine dropping more than 150-200€ (200-260$) for a new cell phone. That being said, if you have just the best phone rec ever, I could possibly bump up that budget.


6) And finally, a song that I love: SafetySuit - Find A Way [YT preview]! Alternative rock with wistful undertones. You know I'm gonna find a way to let you have your way with me.


I think this post got long enough so I'm going to wrap it up. Don't worry, though, I'll be back. (I already have a list of things I want/need to tell/show/ask you guys and it contains, but is not limited to, the following topics: a poll about new teevee that I should try out during the upcoming winter hiatus; pictures from Tenerife/Corfu; Amazon's ridiculous shipping restrictions when I just want a pair of headphones, seriously, how is this so difficult?? (will perhaps feature my begging for your help); tumblr and how I'm considering getting one.) Later!

Hello flist, I'm about about to bother you for tech advice.

What's the best way to update one's drivers?

I haven't done that before, but it might have to now. I recently installed W7's first service pack and my music/videos have occasionally been freezing since, down to the point where I have to hold down my laptop's power button in order to make the freezing go away.

I already uninstalled and reinstalled my K-Lite Codec pack. The problem did occur again, but to a lesser degree, i.e. the freezing only lasted a couple of seconds and I was able to turn down my sound/maintain laptop control during. But it remains a annoyance and I would like to get rid of it somehow.

Google tells me this might be a driver issue, hence my original question. (I also think/hope I might make this problem go away if I do a system restore, but then Windows will just keep bugging me with Windows Update pop-ups and I just got rid of those. Ugh.)

Any input would be greatly appreciated!!

THE GOOD
- We've been having wonderfully warm weather this week. 23-25C temperatures are pretty much what I need for my spring to be perfect. (And my summer too, actually. I don't like extremely hot summers.)
- Last night's HIMYM and Chuck were both excellent: HIMYM gave me Michael Trucco; Chuck had me howling towards the middle and sniffling towards the end.
- Game of Thrones. I'm unfamiliar with the books, but my flist was all a-flail about the HBO series so I decided to give it a go. Having now seen the first episode, I'm definitely intrigued. Brb adding Game of Thrones to my weekly download queue.
- Andrew Garfield is licking his fingers, your argument is INVALID.
- addandsubtract wrote a beyond lovely TSN ficlet in a not-yet-existent 'verse that I would love to see more of. ♥!


THE SLIGHTLY-ANNOYING-TO-BAD
- Apparently The Daiy Show and The Colbert Report are on hiatus this week. Don't Jon and Stephen know no-good things happen when they're off air?
- There's this one person on sgastoryfinders that's been getting on my nerves a lot lately. Grrrrr. (And yes, I still track sgastoryfinders. It's brought me much joy in the past and it's one of my only connections to SGA fandom these days.)
- I might be PMS'ing. Good times always guaranteed!
- Gossip Girl, why you gotta be so horrible to my OTP?
- I am behind on my TSN ficreading. :(
- The ~*~situation~*~ with my mom took a very weird turn for the worse this week. IDK, you guys... *pained sigh* Send good vibes?


THE MUSIC
- Via All Things Go I discovered the haunting 'High For This' by The Weeknd. Well worth a listen!


THE RANDOM
I have a teevee question. Now that most of my shows are nearing their summer hiatus, I have time to check out new series. Farscape will probably be on the agenda. I'm also considering trying out a comedy series, perhaps 30 Rock and/or Parks and Recreation. I know that some of you guys watch either or both series, so my question is: which of the two should I check out? Or at least check out first? Of course, other teevee recs are always appreciated too.

I have a stupid English question: which tense would one use for an uncertain statement?

Like, imagine I have received information but am not sure how reliable/trustworthy that information is. Still, I want to communicate it to a third party, while also indicating the uncertainty.

In French there's the "present conditional". In Dutch you have the "onvoltooid verleden toekomende tijd", which is a sort of simple past future tense according to wiktionary. Wiktionary also adds that it's a kind of conditional tense.

A concrete example. The uncertain/unconfirmed information I'm relaying is that:
a) a person is (currently) in prison
b) a person was arrested (in the past)

In Dutch I would say:
a) Hij zou in de gevangenis verblijven.
b) Hij zou gearresteerd zijn geweest.

In French it would look like this (I think):
a) Il serait (actuellement) en prison.
b) Il aurait été arrêté.

But I'm stuck on English. I've considered
a) He would (currently) be in prison
b) He would have been arrested.

Does that sound right?? (I don't think it does; it feels...off.) Or is there no specific tense and do I need to make use of 'allegedly' 'is suspected to be' etc. etc. I also know that there are conditional tenses in the English language, but an if-then statement is not going to work for this.

Any input would be appreciated! :x


(PS: THE NATIONAL WERE AMAZING AND I AM STILL HOARSE FROM BELTING OUT THEIR LYRICS (especially the 'Mr. November' ones, because I cannot pass up the chance to shout the word 'fuck' at the top of my lungs. /immature like whoa). Despite the strike of the Brussels public transportation, we got to the venue and home okay -- on the way there we took the train (the Belgian railways were luckily not partaking in the strike) and on the way back we took a cab to the main train station and caught our penultimate train to Antwerp. Wheee!)

Four bits of randomness:

1) Johnny Weir, goddam! Excellent photoshoot.

2) Kris Allen's X-mas Card, or should I say Zorro's X-mas Card, featuring Kris and Katy. Heh.

3) Via misspamela: Josh Groban covers Kanye's greatest tweets. It's just as brilliant as it sounds, if not even more so. ILU JOSH GROBAN, YOU MEGA-TALENTED DORK. Flist, feel free to share your favorite Kanye West tweets in the comments!

4) "Andrew Garfield bought Economics for Dummies for his character. Inspired by that move I bought C++ for Dummies. Andrew and I both read the introductions of our books and then put them down." Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield, I continue to be charmed by y'all! Additionally, let me say I'm quite fond of this picture (feeet!). And this one too, which I discovered via thisissirius' kick-ass Mark/Eduardo multimedia fic(let).


One semi-professional question:

How do you guys sign off on a formal/business letter (in English): 'With regards'? 'Sincerely'? 'With sincere regards'? Something else? I've mostly been using 'With regards', but I'm curious about what other variations I could throw into the mix.

Today is a grey, misty, quiet day and I don't feel like doing much. Have a grab bag of randomness:

1) White Collar got renewed for a third season. ZOMGYAY.

2) Kris Allen was briefly in Brussels on Tuesday! While Brussels is the city I work in, I doubt I was here when Kris landed; still, it's the closest I've ever been to Mr. Allen.

3) I had Ethiopian food for the first time in my life yesterday. I quite liked it, although the spices set my tongue on fire several times.

4) My copy of Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race arrived the day before yesterday! I cannot wait to start reading. (My first thought was to take the book with me on the train, but that thing is heavy, yo!) Does anyone know if an audiobook edition will be released, and more importantly whether it'll be read by Jon & co?

5) English/ESL-fail question. What is better/more correct: 'the letter, in which...' or 'the letter, wherein...'? I'm leaning towards the former, but I'm not entirely sure.

6) I don't have much to say about my week in teevee so far. Chuck was okay, Castle too; HIMYM made me cringe a bit; Glee had one of its better episodes; I still haven't seen Undercovers. And as for the ending of this week's Gossip Girl - I maybe, sorta, kinda called it?


Mumford & Sons tonight, whooooooo!

This is mostly a question for my Belgian peeps: do any of you want to come and see Mumford & Sons in concert with me? They are finally finally FINALLY coming to Belgium.

Tuesday April 27 2010, Ancienne Belgique, tickets are 20€.

MUMFORD & SONS, YOU GUYS!!!

1) Thank you to everyone who provided music player feedback!! After giving Winamp, foobar2000 and Mediamonkey a try, I've settled on Mediamonkey! They layout is pleasing, the tag editing works great and I love that little popup in my taskbar that announces every song (cause I usually play all my music at random). It took some serious effort to get Mediamonkey and last.fm to communicate, but after a change in W7 date-display my songs now finally show up in my last.fm profile.

I still plan on giving Songbird a try as soon as a W7-compatible version becomes available. But until then: whoooo Mediamonkey. Up yours, WMP12!


2) Last night, I started a new bedtime audiobook: Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. I'm at the very beginning, but I already feel a strange affinity for the Dude Who Can Sort Of Mind-Control People Via Suggestion (And Whose Name I Don't Remember). The fact that Neil Gaiman is doing the actual reading is also a very good thing.


3) I'm don't use twitter (I have one, but it's very very inactive), but I do love the twitter search. It really is the best place for instant reactions to news and other happenings. Tonight, 'other happenings' meant LJ timing out because apparently ontd_ai got deleted for a while. A twitter search for 'lj' and 'livejournal' promptly informed me that I wasn't the only one having issues. Last week I added a twitter search engine to my firefox search bar, and I admit using it quite often.


4) More tech questions! I swear I'm almost done with these. ( Your partitioning advice, I need it. )


5) And finally: music! The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition. If you saw (500) Days of Summer (<3!), you have definitely heard this song. It starts off sloooooow and then the beat takes over. The singer's voice is also very interesting: the first time I heard this track, I thought Mika had decided to make indie music. Definitely worth a download!

1) It snowed again and it's really freaking cold here. -7C/20F cold. Stop laughing, those of you with real winters! Belgium just really, really isn't suited for snow and extreme cold.


2) I have a new LJ layout! It's not extremely new, cause I've been using it on Dreamwidth for a few months, but it's LJ-new. The switch was brought on by my new laptop screen (and its new resolution): everything looks different, LJ icons appear kinda tiny and the colors are whack! The dark grey-pink combination of my previous layout looked truly horrendous and was beyond difficult to read -- a layout change was thus quite necessary. I also have a new ZQ header! \o/


3) I upgraded to Firefox 3.5. IMO, it's not that different from Firefox 2, save for the AwesomeBar which I'm kinda considering offing in favor of a FF2-ish version (long live add-ons!). I am slightly annoyed by the fact that the progress spinny thing in the upper right corner only activates when the current tab is loading, thereby preventing me from tracking the loading progress of my other tabs. And also by the fact that the go-button only occasionally shows up. At least I was able to get all-but-one of my add-ons to work.


4) I went to see 2012 yesterday. No one told me it was supposed to be a comedy! Or maybe it wasn't, but me and my friends still laughed inappropriately during about a dozen scenes. The apocalyptic destruction was very well done, though. Mmm, apoca-porn.


5) ( Windows 7 observations: )

Following that WMP12 rant, a poll:



6) Last night's Heroes was painfully bad. (But I must admit the Sylar-Lydia scene was hot; as long as you watch it on mute, that is.) Oh show, I wish I knew how to quit you.


7) I am sorry for being whiny. Everyone who read (some of) that deserves
a) some music: Death Cab for Cutie - Marching Bands of Manhattan. It's a few years old, but this song still give me happy goosebumps. And the lyrics are fantastic.
b) a funny YT-clip, via ontd_political: 2009s Best News Bloopers (Warning: autoplay. And some NSFW language.)

Good news: got windows installed and mostly updated.

Bad news: my screen resolution is all frakked up. It says it's still 1440x900, but everything is tiny and definitely not the way it was before. (See? before vs. after). I'm off to google some solutions.



ETA: To the Belgian folks on my flist: Green Day are coming to Antwerp! I'm gonna try to get tickets. Does anyone want to come along??

1) I DID NOT DIE FROM HEAT ON WERCHTER!

Instead, I had an amazing time listening to Bloc Party, The Killers, Arsenal and Coldplay (and a tiny bit of Lady Gaga) along with 70,000 other people. The festival terrain was actually very nice, temperature-wise and I'm even showing sings of a tan.

(note to twincy: I did miss Elbow, though. You may now virtually kick me.)

Here endeth the good news.


2) On the bad news front:
- I think I lost my cell phone at or around the terrain. I will have to sift through my bags once more, but it's not looking good. I'm more bummed that I thus couldn't meet with mrs_weatherby, who was also at Werchter. :(( :((

- My precious mp3 player Ziggy is well on his way to tech-death and there's nothing I can do to save him. A firmware update didn't help, and I can't even get him fixed because Creative has a 'replacement only, no repairs' policy. And I would have settled for a replacement, but my warranty ran out six months agon. :(( So, um MP3/VIDEO PLAYER RECS OF THE NON-IPOD VARIETY?


3) I shall now go take a shower because my hair is gross. Reading of the flist will begin afterwards. I'm curious as to what damage you guys may have done in 24 hours.



Oh, and happy 4th of July to my US friends!

PLEA TO ALL THE GRAPHICS-SAVVY PEOPLE ON MY FLIST (and I know there are quite a few): could someone magically remove the red text/quote from this picture? And maybe change the resolution to 1440x900? I want to use it as my wallpaper, but the text bugs me for some reason.



Aside from shameless begging, this post also contains
1) FIC RECS (ZQ/CP)
Different Names for the Same Thing -- Chris discovers ZQ has thing for pet names and is a delightful bastard about it. Pet names are so, so not my thing, but I still enjoyed the hell out of this story.

Give It Up -- ZQ shaves Chris' beard and I black out from the hotness and intimacy. I can't believe this is only PG-13.

Learn to Fly -- I'm not sure how to summarize this story: the one where Chris spends a few hours in jail? The one with the drunken make-outs and ensuing angst? The one with Chris' pink mouth? In any case, you should totally read it.

My Baby-Daddy's Not a Vulcan (He Just Plays One in the Movies) -- Yes, this is totally the CP mpreg fic. The author finally finished it and it's a complete guilty pleasure.


2) MEDIA RECS (ZQ/CP):
For the biggest collection of ZQ/CP interviews ever (with highlights!), go HERE (on pinto_fic) or HERE (on ontd_startrek). Both posts are flocked, but joining either of the comms is so worth it.


3) A MUSIC REC:
Plushgun - Without A Light. I love these guys so much! Their indie/electronica mixing skills are amazing. Oh, and if you're wondering where you might have heard this song before, it's from ZQ's OMGWTFBUKKAKE/MILK??!!1!? Tyler Shields portrait. (If you want more of their music -- which I heartily recommend -- click this link.)

1) AVG Free 8.5 has been draining tons of memory lately, so I'm considering making the switch to another (free) antivirus program. Hence: poll!





2) MUSICS!
a) the meme where someone on your flist give you a letter and you upload five songs. If you want a letter, too, say so in the comments and I'll fix you up. theantimodel gave me the letter 'P'. It was surprisingly difficult to find five P-songs I wanted to share with y'all.

Patrick Park - Something Pretty -- I think this song was used on The OC soundtrack. (Oh show, I miss your wonderful music!) Anyway, yes, I love the buildup here, and Patrick Park's voice is fantastic, especially when it goes a bit low.

The Peace Brothers - Frozen -- Cover of Madonna's song. A bouncy cover! Seriously, you guys, this is such a great rework. Do-do-do!

The Frames - People Get Ready -- Goose bump music!! I first heard this song in heresluck's amazing S1 Heroes vid (I miss you, season 1!). *time passes wherein I go to rewatch that vid* Anyway, yes, the song. I love the slowness at the beginning and buildup and how it emotionally explodes towards the end.

Snow Patrol - Please Just Take These Photos From My Hands -- I love Snow Patrol beyond words. One of my life missions is to see them play in concert, because I believe they would be amazing. This song is from their newest album, which is really, really good.

Bear McCreary - A Promise To Return -- From the BSG soundtrack. Bear McCreary's scores are always amazing, and I really love how this one in particular flows. The up and downs and the sadness and the bursts of happiness, or hope at least.


b) random music aka 60% of this set are songs from the last ep of Chuck.

Slow Club - Christmas TV -- Oh, this song really warms my heart! The quiet guitar, the boy-girl duet, the last two minutes especially. You pull me out the dark and now it's light. (from Chuck)

Blind Pilot - 3 Rounds And A Sound -- This one makes me feel mellow and nostalgic, but in a good way. I will never get tired of guys with amazing voices and their guitars. (from Chuck)

I Call Shotgun - Ride With Me -- Another cover, because this wouldn't be a me music post without at least two covers. Anyway, you guys, this is brilliant. Nelly's 'Ride With Me', but with an acoustic guitar!! One of my favorite covers ever.

The Thermals - Now We Can See -- To prove that I like other music besides guys with acoustic guitars, have this rocky-with-indie-elements song. Yeah! (from Chuck)

The Rescues - Break Me Out -- This one is also upbeat and cheery and great to dance to. (from Grey's Anatomy)



3) It may have appeared from my post yesterday that I was (slowly) but surely abandoning LJ for DW. That is not the case! I just wanted to point out that even if I read some people on both DW and LJ, I'm not going to defriend anyone on LJ. (I've edited the relevant paragraph here.)