📌 Cool online reads:

• “I'm overcommitted by my boss.” 😵‍💫 – by Kate Sotsenko
• My issue with the two sides – Manu

📺 Videos I enjoyed:

• NIGHTWISH – Noise (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO): This is a cool music video of a song exploring our addiction to technology, screens, social media. I like this song, it’s a critique to our constant exposure to “endless noise” but is also a reminder that there is a rich world outside our devices.
• Nightwish – The Day Of... (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO): And another Nightwish recent music video with a song that is a bit different from their previous work. It’s a critique of the constant news and sensationalism that feels like every day is the end of the world.
• Epica “Consign To Oblivion” REACTION & ANALYSIS by Vocal Coach / Opera Singer: I love watching Elizabeth nerd out about voice technique, and she has done a couple videos about Epica songs.
• Vocal Coach/Opera Singer REACTION & ANALYSIS Epica + Floor Jansen “Sancta Terra”: Another one with Epica, and this is cool because it is Simone from Epica plus Nightwish’s vocalist Floor Jansen.

#weeknotes #music #heavymetal

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

📌 Cool online reads:

• Career Snakes & Ladders | Kev Quirk: I loved this post about career and identifying what’s truly important in life. This quote is perfect: “As a result of all this, I’ve realised that success isn’t just about upward motion. It’s about endurance, purpose, and perspective. It’s about being content in the work we do. Being challenged but not overworked. And most importantly, being in a position to spend time with loved ones.”
• Listening to Full Albums Again by Joel: he also wrote about listening to full albums! We share similar feelings.
• Music Monday by Nick Booth: I loved this idea of randomizing the act of choosing a full album to listen to, and the doing some reflection about it. I will try it.

📺 Videos I enjoyed:

I discovered a channel with an opera singer analyzing vocals in metal songs: The Charismatic Voice by Elizabeth Zharoff. I’m loving her enthusiastic approach, and I’ve been learning a bit about the art of singing. Oh, I found her channel because she has some cool videos with Nightwish music 🤗. And she interviewed Bruce Dickinson and Floor Jansen.

• Vocal Coach/Opera Singer FIRST TIME REACTION to Floor Jansen & Nightwish “Ghost Love Score”: this is the first I saw from The Charismatic Voice channel.
• This is THE Tea Time Interview with Bruce Dickinson! : This was so interesting! I’ve never seen such an intimate and fun conversation with Bruce Dickinson. He is such a character and his love for storytelling shows. It’s like listening to rock legend spin tales over coffee.
• The Floor Jansen Tea Time Interview You ALL Have Been Waiting For!!!! : A great interview with Nightwish’s vocalist. She talks about her music journey, her musical influences, being a woman in the metal scene, being a mother, the life on the road touring and just being human.
• THE CHARISMATIC VOICE – Wind Rose “Diggy Diggy Hole” (Reaction Video) | Napalm Records: Yes, she did a video with Dwarven Metal.
• 1.6 Million In Attendance! Metallica's “Enter Sandman” Vocal ANALYSIS of an INSANE live event! : This one is with the classic Metallica live performance in Monsters of Rock Moscow from 1991.
• Kirk Hammett Reflects On His Career In Metallica with Rick Beato: My partner discovered his channel, and we stumbled upon this gem of an interview with Metallica’s lead guitarist legend.

#weeknotes #music #heavymetal

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

Before that, I also went through the mp3 phase: Napster, LimeWire, Kazaa. I burned my own CDs, made personalized covers, and curated playlists long before streaming platforms existed.

I also had physical albums from my favorite bands such as Metallica, Iron Maiden, Queen, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, and Angra, to name a few. Finding CDs from European metal bands like Stratovarius, Blind Guardian, Grave Digger, or Nightwish in Brazil was not easy. So (ahem, illegally, I know) downloading mp3s was the only way to listen to some of them.

After the mp3 boom and the rise of streaming, something changed. I almost stopped listening to albums as complete works. I was missing that feeling of sitting down with a cohesive experience, where each song connects to the next and the order matters.

I have been listening to the same playlists on Deezer for years, with almost no changes. So, this year I decided to return to full albums. I started manually choosing what to play and listening in the order the artist intended, without shuffling or letting algorithms take over.

Streaming services do not make this easy anymore. Albums tend to be buried under playlists, mixes, and endless recommendations. It requires a bit more effort, that's for sure. But it's still possible!

I also use Deezer's option of showing the lyrics while I listen, which is cool.

🤘 And since rediscovering Nightwish, this experience has become even more enjoyable. Listening to their full albums from start to finish has made me genuinely happy. Their music reminds me of why I fell in love with albums in the first place: the storytelling, the emotion, and the sense of being transported somewhere else entirely.

Listening to an album from beginning to end feels like reconnecting with the artist, and also with the version of myself who used to sit with the CD booklet, reading lyrics and discovering hidden tracks.

Maybe that is what I was missing all along: the feeling that music is not just background noise or mood filler, but a complete experience meant to be lived from beginning to end. 😊

I found some pictures of my old CD’s. I don’t have them anymore; I sold them all before my move to Canada. I don’t regret not having them anymore, since I can still listen to them via streaming services.

#NoisyMusings #music #heavymetal

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

📌 Cool online reads:

• Safari and iOS 26: PSA and a rant – Manu: I felt seen in this rant. My work phone updated automatically, and I immediately hated the new design. Now I want to avoid my personal phone to get the update.
• More Nothing, Please – Musings from a Tangled Mind: let's all do a bit of nothing for a change!
• My online experiment so far | Welcome to BASIC: a call to take a break from the online world.
• Bye bye, em dash (—) 👋 | Tadaima.: Maybe I'm late to the party, this is just one of the articles online I've stumbled upon talking about the em dashes. I don't usually use them; they are not a big thing in Portuguese so for me they were mostly used to indicate dialogues in a fiction book (at least in books written in Portuguese).
• Social network nitpicks by Joel: I totally get why we are turning back to blogs or smaller communities. I’m right there with Joel.

📺 Videos I enjoyed:

This list will exclusively include stuff related to the band Nightwish, so get ready (or skip it)!

• How Nightwish Popularized Symphonic Metal!: a video in French talking about Nightwish's story going through all their phases.
• NIGHTWISH – The Phantom Of The Opera (OFFICIAL LIVE): I love this live performance with the original vocalist! Also, let’s be honest, metal is the best version for this catchy duet.
• Nightwish – Élan | A Classical Musician’s FIRST Listen and Reaction: to my surprise (and big coincidence) the Virgin Rock channel had a Nightwish weekend!
• Nightwish, Wish I Had An Angel – A Classical Musician’s FIRST Listen and Reaction
• NIGHTWISH – Ghost Love Score (OFFICIAL LIVE): this is one of my favorite songs and this live performance with Floor Jansen is epic.
• NIGHTWISH – The Poet And The Pendulum (OFFICIAL LIVE): another cool live performance.
• Nightwish ( Decades ) ==== Live in Buenos Aires [ Full Concert ]: a tour they've done to support the band's compilation album “Decades” released in 2019. It's a great overview of their discography with songs from all their previous albums up to “Endless Forms Most Beautiful”. Excellent!
• Making of an album – Playlist: this is a playlist with all the videos Nightwish released about the recording and release of their 2015 album “Endless Forms Most Beautiful”.

#weeknotes #music #heavymetal

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

📌 Cool online reads:

• I fixed my MacBook Air, and it was kind of a nightmare – 82MHz: I find fascinating when we take the time to fix things, excellent job Andreas!
• you can stick with it | ava's blog: I loved this reminder that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we just keep on using what’s working for us. We don’t need to be perfect or ultra optimized.
• On changing blogging platforms and tools by Joelchrono’s Blog: Then Joel also wrote his thoughts about changing platforms.
• The defense against slop and brainrot – by Paul Jun: I loved this essay with timeless habits that can help us nurture deep thinking, and creativity and physical health. Reading, writing, exercising, walking. Just keep with the basics. Avoid outsourcing our thinking to AI or shortcuts.
• Top 25 Games Of All Time by Joelchrono’s Blog: this was a fun read! Now I want to do write my own list too!
• All Systems Red by Joelchrono12’s Blog: Murderbot is trending right now because of the TV series, so it’s a great time to start reading the books! I love them all!
• Relax, Don’t Do It – Musings from a Tangled Mind: I loved the sense of humour in this post, for anybody who says that relaxing is easy.

📺 Videos I enjoyed:

• Metallica, Nothing Else Matters – A Classical Musician’s First Listen and Reaction
• How Can We See Into A Soldier’s Heart? By Music! By ONE, By METALLICA
• Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb – A Classical Musician’s First Listen and Reaction
• Haggard, Upon Fallen Autumn Leaves – A Classical Musician’s First Listen and Reaction
• The Brian May Interview with Rick Beato

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Post 99/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!

#100DaysToOffload #100Days #weeknotes #music #heavymetal

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

This weekend my local rock radio station, CHEZ 106, did a Metallica weekend special, and they played “Ride the Lightning” and the “Black Album” in full, which I loved!

I was trying to remember how old I was when I first heard about Metallica. It must have been in the early '90s. I remember copying Metallica songs onto cassette tapes to listen to them. It just struck me that when “Ride the Lightning” was released, I was only 5 years old! So, when I listened to this album for the first time it was more than a decade after its release. Yet, it felt quite recent and new at the time! When the album came out, Brazil was still under a military dictatorship and many things (including international music and some movies) weren’t accessible till later in the 90s.

Anyway, I later got all their CD’s and I had posters of the band on my teenager bedroom walls. Metallica is still one of my favorite bands of all time. I particularly enjoy their phase up until the Black Album, so I’m not 100% caught with their newer stuff.

I found pictures of my old CD I got in Brazil. I sold it (along with the other albums I had) to collectors before I moved to Canada.

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Post 26/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I've created a music playlist called “Folk Metal, Viking & Celtic” to group my new favorite discoveries.

I don't remember how exactly I discovered these bands, but it could have been by launching a track mix based on other bands I like (like these ones) and also from friends recommendations. All the songs I've listed here give me some sort of calmness but also this powerful energy boost, stirring something inside me, giving me literal goosebumps.

These are my new discoveries in Folk Music / Folk Metal :

• Heilung: an experimental folk music band based on texts and runic inscriptions from Germanic peoples of the Iron Age, and Viking Age. Their members are from Denmark, Norway, and Germany. It's different from anything I've listened before. I like the ambience of their music. It's atmospheric, raw, powerful and lyrical at the same time. Great song with a beautiful videoclip filmed at Les Menhirs de Monteneuf (France) : “Norupo” from the album “Futha”. Whenever this song starts playing I just have to stop what I'm doing and travel to this immemorial place of peace and calm.
• Skald: a French folk band that uses traditional instruments and their songs tell Nordic myths and legends in Old Norse. Beautiful vocals, epic feels, it's very calming. It connects me to something old and ethereal. I've heard they are coming to play in Canada in the fall this year! They've just released a new album called “Huldufólk”. The song I chose here is “Troll Kalla Mik”.
• Danheim: this started as one-man music project by the Danish producer Reidar Schæfer Olsen. It's Nordic folk ambient music, inspired by Norse mythology. I'm not into electronic music, but I like the nordic mood. His bio mentions that he recorded a song for final season of the “Vikings'“ TV show. Cool! A song I enjoy: “Aesir” from the album “Skapanir”.
• Wardruna: a Norwegian nordic folk band, using traditional and non-traditional musical instruments (such as sounds of trees, rocks, and torches). The mood is more melancholic. I find most of the songs have a sad tone and are very emotional. They are also long with powerful male vocals contrasting with female ones. This song has a strong rhythm that gives me a surge of energy: “Lyfjaberg”.
• Thuatha de Danann: this one was a surprise for me! it's a Brazilian Celtic metal band! They mix heavy metal with Celtic music influences. The songs I've listened to are all in English. I don't even think they have a webpage, they seem to be very underground. I love the vocal and instruments in the song “The Wheel” from the album “Trova Di Danú”.
• Arandu Arakuaa: another Brazilian metal band! It's heavy metal with lyrics in Tupi Guarani (an indigenous language in Brazil that is facing extinction). They mix the traditional heavy metal electric guitars, drums and contrabass with maracas, flutes and traditional acoustic guitars. I saw an article about them last year:  This Heavy Metal Band Is Hell-Bent on Saving an Endangered Language. I love the mixture of traditional rhythms with heavy guitars and contrasting vocals in this song: “Hêwaka Waktû“.

—

Post 02/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

🎈 Things I write about :

Sections:

🎨 #NoisyMusings: a little bit of everything 📂 #Productivity: organization, methods, apps, GTD 📚 #Books: everything book related

Some Topics:

#apps | #Nirvana (the app, not the band) | #Todoist | #GTD | #MSTodo | #notes | #journal | #journaling | #BookReview | #ReadingList | #Reading | #ReaderGoals | #BookWyrm | #TheStorygraph | #weeknotes | #podcast | #GTDnotes | #100DaysToOffload | #projects | #goals | #DnD

#internet | #socialmedia | #attentionresistance #minimalism | #digitalminimalism #outdoors | #Hiking | #winter | #iceskating |#skiing |#music | #heavymetal | #puzzle | #health | #tech | #linux

I have been listening to a lot more music recently.

I usually have my own playlists and rarely rely on AI generated lists based on my “taste”. I mostly listen to rock music, going from 60's/70's rock classics, heavy metal, a little bit of progressive and symphonic/melodic metal.

I saw a playlist on my music streaming service called “Swords & Sorcery” and gave it a try. I ended up discovering cool metal bands and songs and immediately created my own “Epic Metal” curated playlist. For some reason this playlist is now my “work mode” soundtrack: I listen to it when I need to do deep work and it puts me in the zone!

Some of my favourites discoveries were:

Discovered Bands:

• The HU: Mongolian heavy metal => loved the deep vocals (Mongolian throat singing) and traditional instrumentation translated to metal.
• Spellblast: Italian Folk/Power Metal => reminds me of Rhapsody of Fire, loved the vocals and folk influences.
• Wind Rose: another Italian Progressive/Power Metal/ Folk Metal band => it's more on the heavier side because of lots of guttural vocals but they have some songs I enjoyed. It's also a genre I never knew existed: Dwarf Metal!!
• Korpiklaani: Folk Metal from Finland => most of the songs are in Finnish and a nice combination of heavy guitars/vocals with folk rhythms.
• Glittertind: Viking/Folk Metal (early); Indie/Folk Rock (later) => they don't seem to be active anymore, but the early albums seem to focus on old Norwegian folksongs.

Favorite Songs (from the discovered bands or bands I already knew):

• Wind Rose – Diggy Diggy Hole
• Wind Rose – The Returning Race
• The HU – Yuve Yuve Yu
• The HU – Wolf Totem
• TYR – Regin Smidur (Faroese Metal!) => the vocalist Heri Joensen even has a video teaching Faroese with this song!
• Spellblast – Goblins' Song
• Ensiferum – Lai Lai Hei (Epic Folk Metal from Finland)
• Korpiklaani – Mettänpeiton Valtiaalle
• Glittertind – Rolandskvadet

#music #heavymetal

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.