Author: Padraig Fahy

  • [The JukeBox] #99 – Oingo Boingo – Who Do You Want To Be?

    [The JukeBox] #99 – Oingo Boingo – Who Do You Want To Be?

    Recently the remake of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 was announced and I was reminiscing about the other games in the series and the music that was included.

    The Tony Hawk series has been known to showcase a lot of great music across it’s 10 main line games.

    For this JukeBox, we head back to 2005 and the time where my main device for playing games with the original ‘Phat’ Nintendo DS and I bought myself a copy of Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land. On PlayStation 2, Xbox, Gamecube and PC, it was titled American Wasteland, but changed for Nintendo DS and the Game Boy Advance.

    It was still the first year of the original Nintendo DS’ life so a lot of new titles were making use of the touch screen. This game used it to perform certain tricks that earned you more points, but you never needed to use them, the entire game can be played via the D-Pad and face buttons.

    The TL;DR of American Sk8land is that you are tasked to help Tony Hawk fund the purchasing of an old skatepark and to help Mindy start a comic book based on skating. It is your job to go around California, complete jobs and earn money. These ‘jobs’ would involve you skating, performing tricks, collecting items or helping to retrieve things out of reach.

    The game comes packed with various punk rock tunes from some bands that you may know such as Green Day and Dead Kennedys. On the Game Boy Advance version, they had Filthy/Gorgeous by Scissor Sisters.

    Being the Nintendo DS, the music was compressed. Sounds great in the video below but coming out of a mono speaker was a different experience.

    Video should start at 3:41.

    But the song that I really liked in this game was Oingo Boingo’s Who Do You Want To Be?

    It mixes punk rock with a bit of Ska, it’s repeating lyrics makes it easy to learn so you can sing along with it by the end of the song.

    From Wiki, Oingo Boingo is a new wave band formed in 1979 created from the street theatre group The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo

    Who Do You Want To Be? was the first track on Oingo Boingo’s 3rd studio album ‘Good for Your Soul’ which released in 1983.

    The version that is in Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land / Wasteland is their re-recording that they did in their 1988 “Alive” album.

    YouTube – Live version

    YouTube – Alive version

    Spotify

    Lyrics

    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Do you want to be just like someone on TV?

    Oh boredom is so terrible
    It’s like a dread disease
    Nothing could be worse than
    When there’s nothing on TV
    I’d rather be a cowboy
    Than to stare blank at the walls
    I’ve been reborn so many times
    I can’t remember them all and I say

    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Do you want to be just like someone on TV?
    Just like somebody on TV

    I think I’ll be a teddy boy
    I think I’ll be a hunk
    I think I’ll be a tough guy
    And I think I’ll be a punk
    I might just be a fashion star
    All dressed in frilly rags
    Or perhaps I’ll cross the other side
    And walk around in drag

    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Do you want to be just like someone on TV?
    Just like somebody on TV

    Oh yeah

    Do you like live just like a rock
    In the middle of the sea?
    Do you want to suffer by yourself
    In a pool of blissful misery?
    Do you feel like a saint in artist’s clothes
    With a rosary in your hand?
    Do you want to be crazy like Van Gogh?
    Like a stranger in a strange strange land?
    Would you rather push the buttons
    And be feared by all humanity?
    Or perhaps you’d like to be a bum
    Do you wanna be stupid, just like me?

    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Do you want to be just like someone on TV?
    Just like somebody on TV

    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be today?

    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be?

  • Blog Questions Challenge

    Blog Questions Challenge

    About 3 weeks ago, Kevin tagged me on his blog and on Mastodon about this blog challenge. I would have done it at the time, except I was about to get on a plane to New York City for a wee holiday with my mother and then when I came back, I had a small detox from the internet due to the craziness of the world and forgot all about it.

    Better later than never!!

    I am tagging Michele!

    Why did you start blogging in the first place?

    In the late 00s, with the rise of Twitter, there were a handful of people that I was following from Wiffy (An old Nintendo-centric forum that was run by fellow Monaghan man Barry), and I wanted to start posting about the video games that I was playing which turned into random posts about how to make your Windows Vista look like Windows 7 (those were the days), alongside using it as a personal diary.

    I look back at my 17-year-old posts and I cringe at the grammar, the sentence structure and the overall ‘content’ that I was publishing. It wasn’t until August 2009 that I bought my first domain, padraigfahy.com, and created a new blog, with thanks to Daniel for hosting it. That iteration of the blog is long gone. If you dig through here, you might be able to find some old posts from way back.

    I always wanted to write. I was never good at it at school, but I knew that is something that I enjoyed doing. At one point, I was considering whether to become either a reviewer or a journalist before I settled on working in the IT industry.

    What platform are you using to manage your blog, and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?

    I use WordPress. I have been using WordPress for the majority of the lifespan of this blog. There were a couple of times that I switched to Ghost and back. I tried my hand using Gemini for a while, but I was doubling all my work and I just didn’t have the time for it.

    While Ghost, Write.as and other software is good, I always find myself coming back to WordPress as I am able to have a finer degree of control over my website as to what I want. With WordPress, I can use a plugin to add a shop or change the look/feel of the editor, but with Ghost, you can’t add a shop nor change the editor.

    How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

    I use the WordPress dashboard on the website. And I use the Gutenberg editor 🫣

    When do you feel most inspired to write?

    Not necessarily when I am ‘inspired’ but more when I think “Oh shit, I am paying for a server that I am not using every day and I should probably post something to make it worthwhile”

    Sometimes, I will get into a groove and post multiple times in a week, and sometimes I will not post for a couple of months.

    Depending on what the topic is and whether I am in a groove or not, I could spend 5 minutes or 5 hours on a post.

    Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

    I publish immediately. I think I have scheduled posts some of the birthday posts (33) but I wouldn’t do that often.

    What are you generally interested in writing about?

    I like to write about wrestling (even though it may only be predictions) but I would like to write more long form wrestling content, discussing storylines, the industry or even looking back at old shows.

    Music is also something that I like writing about. I have always been different from most of my friends, family and colleagues, as I mainly listen to Japanese music. I use The JukeBox as a way to share some of the music that I enjoy with others who I believe would enjoy it too.

    Technology is an area that I like writing about, but for some weird reason, I don’t post about it as often.

    Who are you writing for?

    Me, the Google crawler bot and that one particular person that will inevitably stumble upon this blog either via the live link or via the Wayback Machine about my sick Lightning Farron skin in Minecraft that I posted 13 years ago.

    The real answer is myself. I treat it as a personal diary, but without talking about my personal life.

    (Sidenote: I was going to post it in the previous question, but I don’t talk about my personal life as much on here or on social media as most people wouldn’t care and for security. We may have overshared about our personal lives back in 2009 on Twitter, but we cannot do that now)

    What’s your favourite post on your blog?

    I think it will have to be my Getting Started with Mastodon ‘guide’. I am proud of the work that I have put into that.
    It’s those types of posts that I would like to do more of.

    Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

    I moved back from Ghost to WordPress in September and at the time, I replicated the look and feel of the Ghost blog but since then I have made changes to the site. I don’t plan on changing away to something else, and I don’t plan to add anything soon.

    Thanks again to Kevin for tagging me and to MacDara for sharing this trend.

  • [The JukeBox] #98 – Casiopea – Time Limit

    [The JukeBox] #98 – Casiopea – Time Limit

    I previously covered the history of Casiopea almost 2 years ago in #82 highlighting Galactic Funk, but this time, I’m highlighting their first track of their very first album.

    Their self-titled album, released in May 1979 was released 2 years after their on-stage debut.

    Oricon didn’t create an albums charts until 1987, so we do not know how well the album did.

    The song would be re-released on their 1982 live album, Mint Jams.

    Official Cover of Casiopea’s self-titled album
    Early promotion/pressing of Casiopea’s self-titled album.

    YouTube

    Spotify

  • Spotify 2025 Playlist is live!

    Spotify 2025 Playlist is live!

    Quick post to say that my 2025 Spotify Playlist has been created. There is nothing on there right now, but you can follow it and check on it throughout the year for new music that I add to it:

    I have a list of all the yearly Spotify playlists that I have created since 2017 over on the Spotify Playlists page.

  • New & Updated Websites

    New & Updated Websites

    In my quest to expand my personal brand (Read: Just register domains that are padraig.<tld>) for 2025, I have decided to update some of my websites.

    • Introducing: https://padraig.social
      • This is replacing my solo.to page and has all my social links.
    • Updated: https://pf.ie
      • This has finally been moved from a bespoke HTML website to WordPress.

    With the exception of crakila.com (which is built on HTML) and 39.ie which is running Discourse, all of my active websites are running on WordPress.

  • Gaming News – 21st December 2024

    Gaming News – 21st December 2024

    • Paramount has announced that the Sonic 4 movie in 2027
    • Nintendo has reportedly fixed the stick drift in the Switch 2.
    • GSC has released its first major patch for Stalker 2 with over 1800 fixes. Patch Notes
    • The Game Awards had 154 million global livestreams, making it the most watched show.
    • Microsoft is working on a new cross-platform UI for Xbox.
    • 3 days ago, Marvel Rivals hit 20 million players.
    • Killzone 2 skins and banners are coming to Helldivers 2 on Monday.
    • Microsoft has announced that there won’t have console exclusives going forward and will be time-exclusive.
    • Jo Wyatt will not be voicing Ciri in The Witcher 4. She has been replaced by Ciara Berkeley. Ciara is from Dublin, who achieved a 2:1 in English Literature in Trinity College. She recently appeared in an ad for Yuno Energy.
    • SEGA is reportedly working on a new subscription platform for their games, according to SEGA president Shuji Utsumi.