Test post on Blogger-droid

So I'm searching for an app to use for my Blogger posts from my phone, which I intend to be using at least a little bit more, if anything else for drafting. Here's a bit of a review.

The layout is nice. The fact that I don't have to worry about tagging codes for bold and italics and the like is VERY nice. I had no idea that so many apps required you to do that kind of stuff. So far, this is my favorite Blogger app, certainly better than the official one. I'd like that one more if the post wasn't full of HTML code barf all over the place.

Inserting images (because I do that so much) is easy enough. But it's nice to know it is simple if I ever do choose to add pictures. Speaking of which, here's Rebecca:

I'm not sure how the placement of these images will turn out, and the quality of that picture is crap and a half since we're in the back seat of a car on the Jersey Turnpike en route to New York at the moment, which happens to be nighttime. How's that for a run-on sentence?

It doesn't seem like you can pull previous tags into the post, which is unfortunate as hell. A lot of the time I forget exactly what I have already set up, so being able to grab old labels is a huge thing for me. It might be a possible deal breaker, as a matter of fact.

Overall, this has been the best Blogger app I've played around with. It isn't quite as elegantly designed as Google's official app, but the posting interface of this simply crushes Google. The one major drawback, as I already mentioned, was the lack of ability to select prior labels. I really hope I can find a workaround, 'cause I like this app a lot otherwise.

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.2

You>Me

I don't get myself completely sometimes/all the time. I have been feeling so much inner turmoil the past week and a half/two weeks, especially yesterday and today. My down side of my bipolar disorder kicked in after a mixed state and it has been really rough, and more than ever, I'm forgoing myself and my own well-being to see what I can do to help everybody else.


I'm constantly asking if I can help my friends. Or listen to them vent. Or they just start talking and I end up listening/giving them advice for the next hour and a half. Which is fine! I love doing this and it is eventually what I want to do with my life anyway. But I'm doing this as I'm withering away more and more and I don't seem to mind. I see depressed posts on a friend's twitter, for example, and I'll brush aside my own feelings of despair that I've been essentially ignoring for weeks to see what I can do. I hole myself up in my bedroom and put on a fake smile when I do have to go out. Another one of my friends is having other problems with an ex (among other things) and I offer to help, expecting nothing back.


Even earlier today, there was a complete stranger struggling to drag a cardboard box behind her. She dropped it several times and was very clearly having a difficult time. I was doing nothing but killing time and feeling angsty so I offered to help her and she refused.


I forget what else I was planning on talking about but basically I'm depressed but I could care less about myself and only seem to want to help others. It's more satisfying, anyway.

Spheres of Influence

I wrote these lyrics when I first really met one of my best friends, Valerie. She used to love using this star projector and the night we met (at a party) we were talking a lot and she decided to bust it out once it began dying down. We were lying down and I was inspired greatly by it; I wrote this entire set of lyrics in one sitting on my smartphone. Based on yesterday's events, it seems exceedingly pertinent to the situation. Anyway, check it out, this is "Spheres of Influence."

Colliding, burning spheres of influence

Wandering about the vast unforgiving quadrants of space

And time

Moving about in cold, uncalculating trajectories

The random nature of the universe breaking apart the monotony of everyday life-

Or so it is called

The fabric of existence

Torn away from its path

Painting an unpredictable, immaculate image on the canvasses of our minds

Twisting what little truth there is present-

Wringing it out of the collective knowledge

Weaving baskets of wonderment of human straws

Shaping the willing minds of doomed generations

Empowering those with the thirst for education

Yearning for the desire-

The desire to learn.

I have already posted this to Facebook before, by the way. It just REALLY meshed with me right now. This has been enough blogging for one night, though. Time for bed!

A Step in the Right Direction

My life was changed today.


Yesterday, some guy in a Metal band named Justin Foley posted a response to the University of Melbourne's claim that Metalheads tend to have higher rates of depression on Metal Sucks. Today, the professor that published the original article, Dr. Katrina McFerran, posted a response to it. and I feel its response to him has changed my life. Let me first give you a bit of background (I'll try and keep it as short as possible).

I'm (obviously) a Metalhead, and I have been since roughly middle school. I have also struggled with depression for about as long as I can remember, with the past several years in particular being the worst. Since I was a little kid, I've always just imagined I was going to be working with animals without giving anything else much of a thought up until I started seeing my therapist a couple years ago (long story short, she has really inspired me to get into psychology), and now I'm changing majors. By the way, I'm a senior at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, USA.

I have been seeing various therapists throughout my life and I've been with the first (and only) one I've ever liked for about two and a half years. Because of her input and my own personal interest in psychology, I know that a huge part of overcoming depression is simply being aware of what's going on. However, that just didn't really mean anything to me before, and thusly I have remained depressed fairly consistently. 

Fast forward to today. I am currently taking elementary statistics and wasn't much of a fan of it until today, when we began discussing hypothesis testing. Prior to that I didn't see any real point to stats, but then all of a sudden we're writing sentences in class! That seemed odd to me, but for the first time in class for a while, I really understood what was going on for a change, which felt nice.

Once I returned home from classes today the first thing I did, as per usual, was hop on my computer and get on Metal Sucks. However, the response to Justin was the first post on there at the time. I read the first little bit that Metal Sucks usually posts of any given article, and instantly it resonated with me a lot more. I delved deeper. While I was reading the response, it seemed different than the standard post on MS; something in it really struck a (power) chord with me (pardon the pun). There was more substance to it than normal (not that I'm trying to bash on MS, but it felt more academic in a way). I could see how to apply the statistics I learned today to psychological testing and I found that absolutely thrilling.

As I read on, it seemed more and more clear that changing my major is the right path for me, and also it looks like I may be deciding on pursing applied statistics as a minor), which gives me an actual direction for really the first time ever. Then something happened. I smiled. And I felt genuinely happy for the first time in months. To slightly alter an Arch Enemy lyric: "Behind the Smile, I feel something." It got to the point where (I feel silly for admitting this, but this is a huge deal for me) I cried tears of joy. This is the first big break and sight out of my depression I'd seen in years, despite all my hard work trying to escape it.

I feel, and have felt, that while I love music and Heavy Metal - listening to and playing music is my greatest passion in the world - I agree that it can definitely lead to depression. The musical aspects of it are phenomenal, and music certainly can play a role in healing as many people are aware, but the psychological portions (hearing particularly violent lyrics, for example) I'm sure can have a negative effect on the psyche. All these events today allowed me to see that and it blew my mind, especially the huge coincidence that they happened on the exact same day.

Check out the response if you can, please. I can't wait to read the actual peer-reviewed article. And by the way, I've been listening to mostly non-Metal today.

Introductory Post!

Well well well....looks like I've got yet ANOTHER blog on my hands. I guess the seventeen LiveJournals, two DeadJournals, and whatever the hell else I've had JUST wasn't enough for me. Blogger to the rescue it is, I presume.


There will be some changes in my blogging habits, though. Less will there be random spouts about  whatever the hell I did on any given day; I care only slightly more about that than my (as of now) zero readers do. And given that, I don't even give a shit if I even gather any readers at all...this blog is mostly just to catalog my ever-morphing listening and playing habits.


If I gain readers, that's spectacular, but this is really really just for me. I've always liked reading music blogs and always envisioned myself as somewhat of an amateur music critic. So here goes...