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Hmmmm

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Ya'know, I'm entirely capable of making a REALLY awesome looking blog. My CSS results have proven as much. So then WHY is mine still...bleh?

Who knows. I'm seriously gonna commit some time to that sometime soon...some time sometime....lawl.

Well THIS can't be good...

Thursday, July 27, 2006

So I'm getting ready to go to sleep, walkin' to my door to turn my life off, and BAM...I kick the broken vase on my floor. At first it's that "Ow ow ow, I just kicked something" feeling, but then I went to check what it was. When I saw I KNEW it'd be a miracle is I made it out unscathed...BUT I didn't.

I had a cut on my foot...a BIG cut. To be more precise, I'd say that the right side of the tip of my toe is completely MIA. Had it been a STRAIGHT CUT I'd say I need stitches...but in all honestly there's really nothing TO stitch to anything...just a missing chunk.

I searched the house for bandages of any type but I came up empty handed. I ended up shoving a wad of toilet paper between my toes. Two toilet paper wads later I decided I should probably wake my mom up and ask her what to do. She said to look for an ace bandage and strap the toilet paper to my toe, and then keep it elevated. WELL I looked...but I didn't find...but I did find something else: Shoe laces.

So you might've guessed what I did next. I'm now sitting here with my left foot up on my desk with a wad of toilet paper tied to my toe via a pretty long shoe lace. Not yet sure how I'm gonna sleep with this...or how I'm gonna cover it after it stops bleeding...oh well. Funtimes!! >_<

Blog woes

Saturday, July 22, 2006

I really need to take the time to make a better blog theme than this...I'm workin' on it...really, but I just happen to suck for now.

iTunes Music Store? Not that cool...

Sunday, May 28, 2006

So, there’s a specific band that I’m quite a fan of. After seeing this band live in concert last night, I decided to see if I couldn’t find any more songs by them. Their Wikipedia page told me that they had recently re-released their CD (which I already own), now with a bonus disc that includes 5 extra tracks. In addition to this I learned through BestBuy.com that this particular band as had a single song a Christmas mix CD.

I had searched Soulseek for the re-release CD before, and it did me no good at all, but I REALLY wanted these song. I decided to what seemed like the next most logical step would be: pay for them, but I didn’t want to re-buy an entire CD that I already OWNED nor did I want to buy an entire Christmas CD for 1 song. That’s when I decided I’d sign up for iTunes Music Store. I make enough money to get buy, I had no particular problem paying $6 for these songs, and that’s pretty much what I figured iTunes was for: “When you don’t feel like paying $15 for a CD when all you want is 3 songs.”

So I sign-up for iTunes, put in my credit card info, and I’m off to shop! The iTunes interface is a bit of a bloat, but I managed to get around at a reasonable speed (at least reasonable for me…maybe I’m just used to sluggish-ness.) I searched for the band in question, and I found that iTunes had at least 6 or so albums by them. Awesome, right? Negative. A lot of these albums were copies of the 1 album, and the rest were singles. One thing iTunes DIDN’T have? The re-release album. So much for buying those 5 bonus tracks, maybe I’ll have better luck with the Christmas album. I search for the Christmas album and BAM, there it is! Fricken finally something is going right. I ready my $0.99 for spending, click to browse the album and…the track isn’t there. Apparently the album was an “incomplete album” which basically meant the 1 song that I wanted wasn’t on the iTunes version of the album. Joy.

Later on in the day I decided to check Soulseek again, this time with more specific search fields. After a few hours of search I was actually able to find the songs this time. ALL of them. Most of them downloaded right away too, because I pay that $5 a month for download privileges to skip to the beginning of other peoples’ upload queues.

In the end the money I spent on piracy went a lot further than the money I tried to spend to legitimately own the songs. Kind of makes me thing we have a ways to go before this whole “online music distribution” thing is good enough for me to want to use.

Top 20 artists...

Saturday, May 06, 2006

So yea, I'm still (quasi-)obsessing over Last.FM, and today I was checking out my top 20 artists of all time. While I was looking at it...I realized I'm completely fricken random...

20. Jimi Hendrix (We all know who he is). This is more or less because of 1 or 2 songs...granted I like the guys stuff a lot, I don't think I like him as much as my list lets off.

19. Grayskul (Underground hip-hop). They're on the same label as Atmosphere. I first heard them on the label sampler that came with "You Can't Image How Much Fun We're Having." The majority of their plays are probably almost defintiely Prom Quiz (the song from the sampler), but there other stuff is awesome, too.

18. From Software (Electronic/Game Music). From Software is basically anything from the Armored Core soundtracks. If you've [somehow] never played (or heard of) Armored Core, it's a game where you basically...battle customized Mechs...and it has a lot of awesome techno muziks. Good stuff.

17. Hikaru Nanase (Anime). I really have no idea what this is from, and I'm kinda too lazy to search. It's from an anime from what I venture...not sure what genre though...

16. Merino (Remixer original, indie electronic/rock). Merino is AWESOME. One of the members of the band is a mixer from VGMix (which is how I heard of them), and they have some awesome stuff. They sound kind of like Death Cab for Cutie or The Postal Service...except they're not really emo...they just sing about...random things usually. I actually like Postal Service and Death Cab because they sound like Merino (because I've known about Merino forever now).

15. Joe Hisaishi (Symphonic/Movie soundtrack). Composer for Howl's Moving Castle & Princess Mononoke. AWESOME symphoic stuff...f'real.

14. Wada Kaoru & Hayashi Eitetsu (Traditional Japanese/Anime soundtrack). It's not REALLY traditional Japanese, but it's music done in the style of traditional Japanese for the Samurai 7 soundtrack.

13. Tech N9ne (dnb-ish/hip-hop). Tech N9ne is awesome. Way different style of rap from the mainstream. I don't think I'll ever hear him on the radio...but that's fine by me.

12. Klaus Badelt (Symphonic/Movie soundtrack). Composer of Equalibrium and the first (the Curse of the Black Pearl, not Dead Man's Chest) Pirates of the Caribbean Movie. He's probably more here because of the latter than the former, but both soundtracks rock all kinds of ass.

11. Shael Riley (Remixer/nerdcore/electronic/awesome). Shael Riley is all kinds of awesome. All kinds of hilarious. All kinds of talented. He's probably the remixer who deservers to be famous the most. SHAEL 4 JUDGE.

10. Spekkosaurus (Remixer/Piano arrangement). Spekko is probably one of the awesomest piano players I've ever had the privelage of listening to. Some of his arrangements like "Trial in Concert" are absolutely mind blowing, but he's more on this list because of his cross-cover of "The House of the Rising Sun" by the Animals & "The Force" from the original Star Wars soundtrack.

09. Black Eyed Peas (Mainstream-ish rap-r&b/underground hip-hop). I list them as BOTH underground and mainstream because...they used to be pretty cool underground...and I still like their NEW STUFF too, it's definitely not the same. I listen to both though...I ain't hatin' on the change.

08. The New Amsterdams (Emoooooo). The New Amsterdams is a side projects by 1 of the former members of the Get Up Kids (the singer, basically). It has some awesome acoustis and other things going on, plus that trademark Get Up Kids sound.

07. System of a Down (c'mon now). I really don't think I need to explain this one....

06. Ultima Online: The Second Age (Game soundtrack). Man UO had some awesome music...I miss that game so much...

05. Skindred (DnB-ish/ragga-rock). Skindred is awesome. Skindred probably the first rock band I even BEGAN to get into thanks to Sandy...and it's opened a doorway to a flood of other new things. I really can't wait for them to release a new CD and I REALLY WANNA SEE THEM LIVE, DAMNIT.

04. Her Space Holiday (emo/orchestral/electronic). Her Space Holiday is...a kind of weird fusion of electro, orchestral, and really really really really REALLY REALLY emo lyrics. It's awesome stuff (at least the Young Machines CD), but it's definitely not for everyone...

03. Tal Bachman (pop being pop). "She's so highhhhhhhhh, high above me. She's so lovely." Yea...I listen to that song a lot.

02. Nobuo Uemastsu (Game soundtrack). The composer of the Final Fantasy soundtracks, DUH.

01. Atmopshere (underground hip-hop). Atmosphere is well...Atmosphere. I have all there stuff and listen to them all the time, so this is hardly suprising.

SO all over the place...geez. I can say that a lot of tracks that I've played didn't even get SENT to Last.FM, so look for big changes over the next few monthes. Namely more underground hip-hop & indie rock, plus a lot of Coheed & Rage Against the Machine. IT'S THE SOUND OF THE REVOLUTION, MAN.

Oops?

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

A recent conversation we had a Steve's house the other day (is it redundant to say it's recent and that it was the other day? Oh well) made me realize something: I've been so pre-occupied with download all kinds of underground/indie music, that I've near COMPLETELY forgotten to download already established artists (outside of rap artists that I already listened to.) I realized I had virtually NO Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine, Foo Fighters, hell I don't even have Prodigy's Fat of the Land. What the crap is wrong with me?! Well, either way I'm looking toward correcting all that night. I'd forgotten how much I loved Rage Against the Machine, and now I'll actually get a chance to hear all their songs. Should be awesome.

In addition to all this "re-discovering music", I manage to find myself something [somewhat] new while reading up on Wikipedia. A look at Rage Against the Machine's page led me to looking at Limp Bizkit's Wikipedia page (they're still making music...disgusting), and from there I decided to read up on Skindred's wikipedia page. It was there that I found out that BEFORE Skindred, 3 of the founding members of the band, including the lead singer, were in ANOTHER band called Dub War. They released 3 or 4 Cds as Dub War before forming Skindred. Now I've LOVED Skindred since Sandy made me get their CD for her, and I've been eagerly awaiting a new Cd so I could get more Skindred-esque music. Dub War CDs are apparently incredibly hard to find on Soulseek, so I decided to head over to Amazon to see how much their CDs ran for. I was lucky enough to find 1 of their Cds for $1.87, NEW. 4 and a half star rating? MINE. Other CDs of theirs go for as high as $35. Ehh. I was eventually able to find a few of their tracks on Soulseek, and so far I'm thoroughly pleased with what I've heard so far. Yay, I love getting mail.

Additionally: Skindred's wiki says they're awesome live, and they're coming down May 27th! Sandy says she doesn't wanna go because she's already seen them, but I haven't and must. Maybe if I pay for her she'll go with me.

LASTLY: Boondocks merch ON SALE SOON AT HotTopic. I'm all over that.

Last.FM stuffz

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

So, the other day Last.FM finally got their submissions server back up and running (and pretty much lost everything I submitted while it was down), and today they finally updated the Weekly Artists thing. Now you have to remember that 2 weeks ago I didn't even know who Coheed & Cambria were, and this is what my chat looks like for last week (with a ton of stuff missing, too):