Music Update

I haven't been writing in this much, have I? Much of my time has been taken in responding to that meme that I posted - I had expected a couple of replies at best, but I wasn't prepared for the record number of responses that it generated. I also hadn't expected thinking up replies to be so difficult. Naturally, after completing it I resolved to respond to as many other people's as possible, making the process as difficult for them as it was for me.

Recently I've had a significant amount added to my music collection, thanks to getting three albums as late birthday presents from various members of my family. I haven't really listened to any of them in great detail, but they can be summarised as follows:

• Heavenly - Dust to Dust: The cast of the rejected French version of The Matrix, singing about vampires. It's fantastic, trust me. I'd actually forgotten all about this album, and I'm surprised that anyone remembered that I wanted it.
  
• Gamma Ray - Majestic: The band now seem to be coming around full circle and approaching the style that they started in - unusually structured political/religious music. They're now playing songs that could have been written when they started in 1980, but in their modern, more aggressive style. The title track is appallingly dreadful, but the rest of it works.
  
• Stratovarius - Stratovarius: Timo Tolkki and the group have now completed the process of disappearing completely up themselves and have put together a self-titled album as their eleventh release, presented in an embossed metal/wood-effect laminated case. This comes complete with a bonus photo booklet and "rockumentary" (cringe). The title is actually justified, because it seems to be an album about the band themselves. On listening to the first couple of songs I thought it would be as disastrous as Kotipelto's "Coldness", but fortunately it picks up later. I find it amusing, though, that you can tell exactly which songs Kotipelto wrote the lyrics for due to their complete lack of synchronisation with the actual rhythm of the music.

Portimo	Lucius

Lastly, I have an image to further the point made in my last entry - there seems to be a sinister similarity between a certain wizard and a certain drummer. Surely it can't just be me.

There was a programme on a minute ago about how heavy metal makes you kill people. It was quite frustrating, really.

Project Update

In a major breakthrough in my project, my system can now deal a game of Freecell at random, play it flawlessly itself while adhering to all the rules, and report a possible solution path back to the user.

Trouble is, if I put more than three cards into the pack then it takes all the memory in the world to actually do it. Tomorrow I think I'll work on making my code a bit more efficient, because the commonly accepted target of fifty-two cards is quite a long way off.