Even if not 100%, I'm already back from Tuska. It's been one of the best holidays in my life, and maybe also the shortest :P After 5 days of travelling to and back from Finland and around Helsinki in those 3 days, when we had time to see lots of people, costumes, and great music. Ouch, I'm still trying to land back in reality. We didn't have the chance to see all the concerts we wanted to (really sad to have missed most of Mercenary , Naildown , or Fintroll's concerts, but also extremely happy for having enjoyed the ones I could see. This year's artist list has been superb and they all were awesome with the public. I feel like I have to mention and thank (even if they're not likely to red this)the Dragonforce members for being so kind with us and for taking pictures with all of us... and also to Hansi Kürsch, Blind Guardian singer, for being always so nice!!! See you in Tuska 2008!!(Pictures to come). Keep tuned!!!
More...Wednesday, 4 July 2007
Friday, 15 June 2007
Countdown has started!!!
The Tuska Open Air Metal Festival in of Helsinki, Finland, has been celebrated since 1998 and it has grown larger and better organized every year. In 2006, the festival was almost sold out.....For this year, the amount of artist and the level are also interesting, his year's edition will be extremely interesting, featuring bands like Blind Guardian, Children of Bodom, D'espairsRay, DragonForce, Emperor, Finntroll, Katatonia, Mercenary, Moonsorrow, or W.A.S.P.
The concerts schedule has already been announced and it promises us 3 days of great music and non stopping concerts....Keep tuned!
Friday, 8 June 2007
Suiciding Bunnies
A friend of mine just sent me an email with drawings of bunnies trying to commit suicide.
Personally, I thought it was hilarious, even if some workmates called me crazy :P Each cartoon shows one or more white rabbits in their creative attempts to end their lives using a variety of items. Revolving doors, a toaster, a cricket ball, a boomerang, a hand-grenade, the shining sun, a magnifying glass, lots of smoking cigarettes and bowling balls are all featured as suicidal tools. Those cartoons are taken from a book, The Book of Bunny Suicides: Little Fluffy Rabbits Who Just Don't Want To Live Any More (2003) is a collection of mostly one-image black comedy cartoons drawn by author Andy Riley.
There are many cultural references, like for example a drawing in which some bunnies commit suicide using Darth Vader's sword. Here you can see some of them, but there are more waiting for you!Keep tuned!^^
Wednesday, 6 June 2007
Opening!!
The spanish translation of this blog has just been born...I'm proud to announce that from now on I'll try to keep both of you (english and spanish readers) happy and interested in the stuff I have to tell you. So keep tuned and remember to leave your mark (as a comment) in the Virtual Valley.
More...Monday, 4 June 2007
Meet the cute little dead girl
Who said comics are only for children? A couple years ago, looking at ebay for some new Tshirts I found a really cool one based on the drawings made by Roman Dirge. It made me curious and I started looking for information about that guy (R. Dirge) and his work. That's the way I met Lenore. The comic tells of the adventures of this girl, Lenore, and her variety of friends. As Roman tells us in the first issues, Lenore died from pneumonia the first time, and was embalmed and buried, but she came back for some reason...
The primary focus of the comic is dark humor, with many of the stories having amusing twist endings. 
Dirge reinvents children's songs, games, and nursery rhymes to something more macabre. While Lenore's actions often result in the death or injury to those around her, and in various forms of chaos, she is not a malicious character, and often thinks she is doing good.
It's surprising how such a talented comic maker hasn't been translated to other languages yet (at least, I don't think it's possible to find the Lenore Comics in Spanish), but anyway his work is well known in many countries.
So far there are 3 compilations from Dirge's Work: Noogies, Wedgies and Cooties. So if you're looking for a new friend, Lenore is your girl!Keep tuned ;)
Saturday, 2 June 2007
Can't get you out of my head...
Grrrrr....I know, its not a good way of starting a post, but I started being pissed off at the idea of being singing the same sonn for the last 24 hours. It usually doen's stay that long
, but this time it really seems sticked to my brains. The song is Mika's "Grace Kelly".
Pretty popular isn't it?Well, I first heard it on radio last thursday, while waiting for the dentist to let me in the room and finish my agony the soonest possible....it kinda got sticked in my head but I forgot it when I entered the "torture chamber" (apologies for you dentists, but I'm scared of you!)...afterwards, when I arrived home, I listened to it online and decided to get the song. Thet's it, now I'm doomed to sing it from now to eternity!!
the song is actually really nice, I like it, but I don't like the fact that, being totally addicted as I am, i don't listen to anything else!! Please recommend me some other song to sing!!All suggestions are welcome! And keep tuned ;)
Thursday, 31 May 2007
Ender's Game
Let’s talk about books. Everybody has a favorite book, or at least, one that would read once and once again. I’ve always loved to read, and one of my favorite books since I first read it is “Ender’s game”, by Orson Scott Card. Do you know it? It’s set in a future where mankind has barely survived two invasions by the "buggers", an insectoid alien race, the world's most talented children, including the extraordinary Ender Wiggin, are taken into "Battle School" at a very young age to supply commanders for the expected Third Invasion. If you want to know more about it, read the text in italics, if not, skip it!!!
**SPOILER**
Andrew Wiggin (Ender) is a brilliant six-year-old boy, born as a third child into a United States that only permits families of two children each, thus his very existence required permission from the government. Ender is the youngest in a family of 5, both his older brother and sister (Peter and Valentine) are very intelligent, but Peter is evidently cruel and sadistic, while Valentine's temperament is nurturing and sweet. He has been closely watched for years 
through a monitor on the back of his neck. As a Third, and as an exceptionally smart student, he invites scorn from the children surrounding him. At the end of the first school day after the removal of his monitor, the bullies of the school begin teasing and mildly attacking him for it. In response and to defend himself, Ender beats the ringleader, Stilson, until he could no longer get up, to end not just that fight, but all future fights with the bully and his gang.
The next morning, members of the International Fleet, or IF, arrive at Ender's home to offer him a place at the Battle School, a space station where children are trained for military command. Colonel Hyrum Graff, the leader of the Battle School, believes that Ender is the last hope for the survival of mankind against the alien Buggers. He reluctantly accepts.
Life at the Battle School isn’t easy for Ender. His caretaker, Colonel Graff, isolates him from the others, which forces him to face his problems alone and to become stronger from it, rather than relying on others for his strength. It also makes him work hard to make friends and stay ahead of his enemies.
Due to his extremely high aptitude for tactics and leadership and to the teachers' deadline to ready him for the coming war, Ender is advanced through his training much faster than the other students, and becoming the best of all of them.
Ender is promoted to command of his own army, years earlier than usual, setting him up for resentment from his peers and pushing his abilities to the limit (intentionally). Despite having only 3 weeks to train instead of the standard 3 months before their first battle, his army completely annihilates their first opponent with almost no casualties. After that, he never loses a battle, despite engagements that are (deliberately) weighted against them.
After some time, he is allowed to go home on a short leave. Not wanting to see his family, he is kept isolated from everyone at a small lake in the woods. The IF, worried that he is no longer motivated to continue his studies, employs his sister Valentine to motivate him.
After these three months, Ender returns and is promoted to Command School, almost six years early, to learn to combat the Buggers in space instead of being restricted to the more abstract training games. He is taught by Mazer Rackham, the genius behind the previous human success against the buggers. He will be augmented by a cadre of his best friends (and the best commanders) from Battle School; Ender assigns them to individual flights or squadrons of ships while he remains in overall charge.
Ender and his "dream team" begin to fight ever-more-challenging battles, in which his team must frequently fight with outmoded hardware, and the enemy frequently outnumbers them and quickly learns to adapt to Ender's tactics—even the ones that won yesterday's battle. Fatigued in mind and body, his team slowly succumbing to exhaustion, Ender begins to lose hope.
In Ender's final exam before graduating from Command School, he and his team find themselves in possession of a small fleet, approaching a planet that is literally swarming with Bugger ships, outnumbering his own force a thousand to one. Ender duplicates his final battle at Battle School and destroys the planet around which the Bugger fleet is orbiting (taking the surrounding fleet with it), demonstrating that he is far too ruthless to be trusted with command of an actual battle fleet.
When the simulation ends, Rackham and Graff tell Ender that he has not been playing a game, and had never played against Rackham, but instead has been commanding real ships across interstellar distances; this task was made possible via the ansible, a form of instantaneous communication making use of Philotic Energy. He has just commanded the fleet attacking the Buggers' home planet, and destroyed the entire race once and for all.
When Ender learns that he has been playing a game with real peoples' lives, he lapses into four days of exhausted depression, completely void of reality, dozing in and out. Feeling the full weight of the deaths he has caused, made heavier by his apparent love and respect of the Buggers, developed over his interaction with them, he refuses to respond to anyone for a time, until conflict breaks out at the command center. Immediately after the end of the Bugger War, war breaks out on Earth in a dispute about who gains control of Ender. The impact is clear: Ender cannot return to Earth because he would simply be used as a tool of the dominant government on Earth, eventually led by Ender's older brother, Peter Wiggin. Fearing for Ender, his sister blackmails Peter into leaving Ender in peace, allowing him to be sent out on one of the first colonization ships as the governor of the new colony on a former bugger planet.
**END OF THE SPOILER**
Orson Scott Card wrote it in 1985. The novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead were both awarded the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the only author (as of 2007) winner of both of science fiction's top prizes in consecutive years. Card continued the series with Xenocide, Children of the Mind, but they’re nothing comparable to Ender’s Game. Many generations have enjoyed the novel, and if you haven’t read it yet, try to find some free time to do it, because its really worth it! keep tuned!
