Eleonor Collins

Last week I was blown away by the electrifying performance of Sydney rockers, Wolfmother! They'd recently landed back in the land of Oz to do a couple of shows before they head back overseas to the US and Europe. The sold out concert last Thursday, the 20th of July at The Hordern Pavillion in Sydney opened with two support acts; The Tucker B's (Australia) and Dungen (Sweden). The high theatrical-like drama and energy from the Tucker B's was definately kooky and strange, yet easily fantastical at the same time. Their unique stage presence and belching songs was surreal and impressionable. I then almost lost myself in the psychedelic sounds from Dungen, a band from Sweden. The beautiful sounds that came from the combination of the flute and band instruments were reminiscent of the free love and spirit of the 70s. The headline performance by Wolfmother was awesome and they looked real good too! :) The Sydney trio really know how to rock the socks off everyone and I was glad ...

A few blog posts back I mentioned a competition that I entered called 'Junior Lucky Bastard'. Today I checked out the 55dsl website and foudn out they'd decided on two winners. Unfortunately I wasn't one but nevertheless, 55dsl made some two very good choices. The winners were Jeremy Angelier (top choice) and Rob Jung (hilariously funny try hard :)). I'll be keeping a look out for the hilarious antics they get up to. Check out their applications .

Yesterday night I was dazzled by the spectacular performance of Coldplay live at the Sydney Entertainment Centre! Their show was filled with amazing music accompanied by wonderful surprises, amazing lazer shows and big screen motion graphics; it was more than enough to "ignite your bones". (Coldplay-Fix You) The support act was from Youth Group (Perth, Australia). I hadn't heard much of their music so I was looking forward to hearing them live for the first time. Youth Group performed brilliantly and their songs are beautiful; the ambience created by the nostalgic-like sounds were magical at times. Coldplay then kicked off their concert performed Square One from their latest album X & Y which simultaneously featured a huge count down digital ticker on the large screen on stage . The excitement was generated immediately and everyone knew we were going to be in for a great concert! They played all my favourite tracks, including ones from their second album Rush of Bl...

Yesterday night I watched the spell-bounding live performance by Puppetry Master David Strassman at the Blacktown Workers Club. It was incredible to watch Strassman have conversations with Chucky, Ted E. Bare and other characters simultaneously! At times he had three-four way conversations!! Amazing! Even in one part where Strassman stuffed up, Chucky was quick to exclaim "You just F*@!ed up your line!" which had Strassman laughing for a while with the audience laughing even harder. Chucky was very naughty as usual; swearing a lot and picking on people in the audience, so Strassman punished him by putting him in the gay pink naughty chair to which Chucky rebelled against but was put there anyway. Strassman told Chucky that he could easily be replaced. At this point in the show he picked out a man and woman from the audience to help him out on stage. To the audience's surprise he turned them into puppets by placing a mask over their mouths. This mask had a moving mou...

What's that?! :) Yep, I want to be one of the Lucky Bastards who is offered the chance to travel the world in 55 days and get paid doing it! Early this morning, I submitted my video for the ultimate experience. The video is a short black and white, 'Charlie Chaplin-styled', documentary of my trip to the USA to visit mum (late in 2004). This is the first video project I have made and I stayed up till the wee hours of the morning to complete it, so I'm hoping that it's a winner! I have some stiff competition though. For those of you who want to watch it, you can find the video here . You'll need to download the file in order to view it properly. Any comments about the video are greatly appreciated!

On Saturday the 3rd of June I watched one of my favourite bands perform for a recording at Foxtel for CD:Live, End Of Fashion from Perth, Australia. I knew about this all thanks to the band posting up a bulletin on myspace.com, for the chance to win exclusive tickets to the performance! I brought my cousin Cecile who is also into the band along for the show. With all the cuts and retakes that television is filled with, End of Fashion did manage to keep their cool and performed brilliantly playing two songs; their latest single release 'The Game' and their first release 'Oh Yeah'. It was their catchy tunes and high energy performance which kept us buzzing with excitement. It was hard to believe I was one of about 40 people to watch them perform and be interviewed only an arms-length away from them, it was very surreal. Before their interview which was on a massive pink u-shaped couch, I had a small chat to Rodney (back up vocalist and guitarist) after he asked if any...

On Saturday May 13th, Daniel and I checked out the gig by the Perth boys Eskimo Joe at the Annandale Hotel. Having never seen them live or even knowing much of their other songs aside from the ones that have received the most airplay ("From the Sea" and their latest "Black Fingernails, Red Wine") we were hoping for some great tunes and yes they did deliver! :) I remember the first song I ever heard of Eskimo Joe was when I was back in year 11 (wow that's almost seven years ago!) and I heard "Turn Up Your Stereo". I really took a liking to that song and if I was to hear that song now (instead of back then) and compare it to the songs made recently, I would never have thought it was from the same band. Eskimo Joe have certainly come a long way since then! Eskimo Joe's support acts were the Offcuts and Red Jezebel (Perth). Their live performance was also quite engaging and I especially liked the unusual but lovely mix of country/alternative/rock and...

I've expanded my blogging-ness to mySpace.com, although I really just signed up to myspace so I could check out musician/band images and talk directly to them via the messaging board. The only down-side to this site is that you have to do a free register before you can check out anyone's pictures or message them directly and you always have to login to your account in order to do this (a bit of a hassle). So Blogger still kicks ass when it comes to viewing and sharing. Myspace address is http://www.myspace.com/eleonortapia

I've just set up a new blog where I will be publishing the latest on design and e-learning. Read about the exciting new web resource in Quality In Learning and Teaching-QILT from the University of Western Sydney, produced by the Educational Development Centre (EDC) here!

  Nickelback banner outside The Superdome   Chad on stage with a massive tv screen in the middle of the stage, which was one of three   The total band on stage   Close-up of The Chad in action On Saturday the 29th of April, Daniel and I were rocked by Nickelback in concert at the Sydney Superdome!...although much to our disappointment, the fans around us were like zombies in front of a tv at home who couldn't be bothered getting off their asses the whole time! The concert was awesome and certainly wasn't a reflection of what was happening around us in terms of the unlively "older" fans. It had everything I had come to love from their first concert back in 2004 for their Long Road tour; pyrotechnics, fireworks, explosions and lots of it! The band's ability to entertain the crowd was incredible. Not only did they shoot out freebies to the audience via small hand-held canons but they also did their famous "beer-o'clock" segment! This is where the band ...

On Thursday the 27th of April my boyfriend Daniel and I had a massive night of heavy metal at the Sydney Superdome! This was my first taste of REALLY heavy metal music live in concert and I loved it! The line up for the evening featured four Heavy Metal bands from the USA (with all three support bands never having played in Australia before); 10 Years , Hatebreed , Disturbed , followed by the main performers, Korn . As you would expect the night included plenty of shouting, jumping, moshing, and crowd surfing,(especially in the mosh pit that went off on the general admission floor! It looked quite violent in the heavier songs). By the end of the night my neck was sore and Daniel had lost his voice from all the singing/shouting along to his favourite tracks from Disturbed and Korn. The only real let down for the evening (besides the fact I couldn't bring my digital camera in with me) was that the sound for Korn wasn't right; the lead singer couldn't be heard over the drownin...

Great news everyone! FBI now streams online. Go to the FBI website here . FBI play a diverse range of ecclectic music from instrumental/dance, electro, funk, indy/rock from Australia and abroad. Check out their site for more info.

Just a quick note to say that I'm featured on the frontpage at Noise today! Please support me and vote for my work at this link . I am number 28 and my work is called Retro Tie Series. A monthly prize of $1000 is given to the top voted work. You can vote once a day. There's 20 days left. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Just a quick note to say that I'll be the featured artist on the Noise website entry page tomorrow the 11th of April! The work featured is something which I made back in Second year uni so it isn't really polished but it's awesome to be even featured on the site! Vote for my work so I can win $$ :) Thanks! Visit the Noise website to view. Noise is a website that features work from artists who are 25yrs or less who produce work in any of these categories: art, illustration, design, photography, motion graphics, animation, writing or music. I'm going to upload more recent work to Noise over the next few weeks and enter some of the competitions that are currently running as well.

Friday the 7th of April was a very exciting day for me, because at approximately 4:25pm I gave a live speal on Australian national radio about my dramatic morning in purchasing the hotly contested Arctic Monkeys tickets. I wrote into Triple J's Great Day/Crap day segment with Robbie Buck's Topshelf radio. (This is where you request a song for a great day and a song for a crap day). A lady from the station called me on my mobile at about 3:15pm and said she'd call me back between 4:45 and 5:15pm. I told family and some friends they could catch me on the radio at this time but Triple J ended up calling me at 4:20pm and only two people I told heard me on the radio, along with the rest of Australia who was tuning in at this time. I spoke to Robbie Buck which was pretty cool and it was just like speaking to someone I knew over the phone. It was a great experience even though they couldn't play my song requests in the end, they played Mardy Bum from The Arctic Monkeys inste...

On the 25th of January I threw myself into The Franz Ferdinand concert at The Enmore Theatre and boy was it HOT! The concert kicked off with support group, Cut Copy who warmed us up with their enthusiasm and energetic dance beats till Franz Ferdinand made their appearance. Franz Ferdinand, my favourite band who come from Glasgow, Scotland, captured the crowd with their awesome tunes and catchy beats. My friend Ebony and I were very fortunate to witness them up close, literally only 3m away from the gorgeous band, especially the sexy steely-eyed, lead singer Alex! Aaaah it was bliss!! Lovely Scottish boys! :) They played all their hit songs including their number one song from last years Triple Js Hottest 100, Take Me Out. It was beautiful watching them perform and hear the audience singing along to all their lyrics. Being swept up by everyone around us jumping along to the beats, was also another thrilling experience, quite funny at some points too! We had such a great time danci...

It's been quite some time since my last blog post. In this time I have been quite busy and with one point I was working three jobs. But now it's back to two casual jobs so I have a bit more time on my hands. Well in the last two weeks I have watched two incredible movies which were not the sort that I would normally buy tickets to. I actually won passes to watch both movies and I'm so glad I did! The first movie I saw was a documentary called Inside Deep Throat on the hugely contraversial movie of the 1970s, Deep Throat. I pretty much knew what it was going to be about however I haven't watched the original 1970s movie. In this documentary there were interviews that were held with the original actors, director, media and famous adult film workers. They gave accounts of how the film had influenced them personally and what it was like at the time of it's release. I found it quite fascinating that a movie of this nature would be shown at that time and how it cr...

I've just recently got my sole trader ABN number and I am now also doing freelance work at David Wheeler's Graphic Designs in St Peters every Friday as an artwork assembler and finisher. Having worked in the educational environment for about a year now I've had to get used to commercial work once again. Having not done much commercial experience up till this point, it has been hard for me to get back into the production line of churning out work at a fast pace. However it's something which I'm sure I'll get used to as the days go along. So far so good at St Peters (although I wish it wasn't that far) and David is happy with the work up to this point even though I've only been there for three days work so far. I work from the illustrations and layouts that he does in pencil and I turn it into the finished artwork ready for printing. I am quite amazed how efficiently he works and it's like I'm spoon fed! He hands me the designs or layouts which ...

Today I'm recovering over my dental surgery that happened yesterday morning at The Dental Surgery in The Pacific Medical Centre in Blacktown at 9:30am. I had to get two of my wisdom teeth removed on my right side as it was creating a huge ulser and there was no room for the wisdom teeth. I had been putting up with the ulser and pain all weekend. I was extremely nervous sitting in the chair. I had never been to this surgeon (Dr Lipworth) before so that added to my nervousness even though he has been practicing for 18 years. Lucky my dad was there for moral support. The most painful part of it all was the three needles he used at the start of the procedure. They hurt so bad that I let out a cry at one point. The Dr then started with the procedure with the dental nurse at the ready. I never thought being awake whilst two people operated on my mouth could be so scary! Hell I was shaking with fright the whole time even though I couldn't feel a thing after the needles. If any ...

I'd like to announce that I'm a proud winner of a Bondi Tsunami prize pack which I entered about a month ago!!! I'm so happy to be one of the lucky 30 winners. I had to answer ten questions about the movie and fax my entry back to them and keep my fingers crossed. Can't wait to get the prize in the mail! :) To view the winners (including me) you can go here