Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

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How To Combat Piracy? Give Stuff Away.

January 4, 2009

I got pointed towards a website / application today called Spotify, a free streaming music service for all UK residents. I’ve tried others before (such as Pandora before it became US only, and Grooveshark while I’m at university), but I thought I might as well give it a try seeing as people were recommending it.

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I’m quite impressed, actually. It has a rather large collection of music licensed for use, and the interface (even though it’s a blatant iTunes rip-off) works a little better than most, making it easy to search for songs, queue them up, and make playlists. It’s had nearly all of the stuff I’ve searched for, and even has built-in last.fm support so I can scrobble my music. Good stuff.

As for it’s intended purpose… well, see the album above (HAARP by Muse)? I’ve been meaning to listen to that for a while now, and now I am… if I didn’t have access to something like this, I may have gotten it in other slightly dubious ways, but now I have no reason to. By working with record labels to offer their music free for streaming, it’s discouraging piracy and making the industry better… nice idea, I’ll keep using it and see how it turns out. If you want to try it, click here to create an account without the need for an invite.

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Somewhere In The Between

December 9, 2008

Four of us went up to see Streetlight Manifesto in Newcastle last night, and I’ve been looking forward to it for a while – The last time I saw them, they only played for 20 mins, and I didn’t know who they were the first time back in San Diego, so it’s great to finally see them perform a full headlining setlist. Dan Potthast was the first support, crazy guy with an acoustic guitar, pretty funny, and also came down into the crowd and sung a few songs unplugged. My second time seeing Random Hand, they’re pretty good but I’m not that big of a fan, to be honest. As for Streetlight themselves… superb. The crowd went crazy on the first song and stayed crazy all the way through… pretty dangerous, especially when the room (Academy 2) only holds 400 or so people.  There’s nothing more awesome that Keasbey Nights wedged in-between Point/Counterpoint for an epic song.

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Current gaming progression… Matt bought Banjo-Kazooie off the XBLA Marketplace the other day, so I decided to spoil it for him by sitting down and 100%ing it while he watched. Sorry, Matt. In any case, it only took 6 hours and 13 minutes which put me at #93 on the leaderboard at the time. Wooh, top 100! I also blasted through De Blob after finding out you didn’t actually get anything for completing the game 100%, as well as finishing off World of Goo, leaving my currently playing list over on Facebook rather empty… I may start Fallout 3 if I’m not too busy working on my GS1 assessment.

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"Boy, I Sure Hate Mummies, Yet Again!" *sigh*

August 15, 2008

So, the goal of updating my blog every day lasted long… but to be honest, can you really blame me? What’s the point in forcing myself to write a blog entry when there’s noting to write about (unless you really care about what I ate for lunch)? So I say, for the sake of creativity, fuck schedules! If I have something to write about, then I’ll write it; If not, too bad. At least, that’s my excuse.

I never really knew who Rodney Bingenheimer was (this is where you say “Rodney who?”), except for that he’s a DJ at KROQ doing the dead shift on a Sunday morning – Oh, and that according to the fantastic humour of Kevin Ryder and Bean Baxter (I honestly can’t tell whether that’s sarcasm or not), he’s a senile paedophile that talks funny and shits his pants from time to time. Well, seeing as I love the radio station dearly, I thought it best to check out the documentary ‘Mayor of the Sunset Strip’ about the life of Rodney, and my opinions of the man have changed completely. Despite his looks and shyness, the guy is a pure genius., giving musicians such as David Bowie, No Doubt, Blondie, Coldplay, Muse, Duran Duran, and many many more their first playtime on US radio and helped them break through to the American market. Plus, he owned a nightclub in the early 1970′s, and got to bang blonde 14-year-old groupies every night, something that I can’t argue is impressive (although slightly illegal in this day and age, I must say). So, Mr. Bingenheimer, I salute you. May you rock on forever.

I have to come straight out with this one – I don’t like the new Mummy movie. Firstly, because there’s no mummies in it. Someone needs to do their research, because without the process of mummification, the undead != mummies. Secondly, they yet again overuse the line of “Not this again!” and “Boy, I sure hate mummies!”, and so forth. Goddammit, get some decent acting in there. Thirdly, the new actors are stupid – bring back the proper Evelyn Hammond, one that doesn’t sound like she’s made out of wood, and get rid Alex cause he just seems like a right dick all the time. And finally, it just doesn’t seem as epic as the last movies, I’m sorry. Oh well, at least it’s nice to see Brendan Frasier back on the big screen, and the special effects are good, and yada yada… come on, Hollywood. Don’t make me go through another period of watching British independent movies in order to find a decent film – restore my faith.

Oh, and I turned 19 today. I don’t think many people really care, so I’ll just say happy birthday to myself, shall I? ^^;

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Moving An Island? Easy.

June 2, 2008

I’m not gonna criticise it, like most people have done… I actually enjoyed the Lost season finale. Yeah, so it might have gotten a little crazy when Ben went deep into the centre of the island, blew a hole in the time machine, crawled into an ice cave, turned a giant donkey wheel and moved the island, warping himself to the middle of a Tunisian desert a year or so in the future… Okay, so it got a lot crazy. But I don’t really mind that at all. I’m one of the people who doesn’t mind how absurd it gets – the intrigue and mystery is what I enjoy most about the show, and it keeps delivering. Bring on the next season!

I went back down to the ‘boro for the weekend for the Middlesbrough Music Live festival, the only people still stranded down in the halls were Matt and Sheila – I’m not complaining, although it was a bit boring with my room being completely empty and all. The festival started off good (only because half the people there were skinny scene kids… yum), but towards the latter half of the day it turned into a charv’s family day out on the main stage. There were a few drunken fights/riots, usually when the performing band started playing Pigbag… bleh. Ash were awesome live, I’ve been wanting to see them for ages now, and I managed to get on the front barrier for the whole set ^^ Apart from the whether and having to stand for 11 hours straight in the mud, a great day!

Oh, and if you were the cute girl wearing the Metallica hoody that smiled at me, let me know. You were only a few rows behind me, but I lost sight of you after The Delays finished their set… damnit. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? ¬_¬

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Mmm… Pretty Boys…

April 2, 2008

S’been a while since I wrote something, ’cause most of my spare time is now busy doing work. Let’s see… I must talk about the new Panic at the Disco album, entitled ‘Pretty. Odd.’. Most popular bands seem to just churn out albums that sound the same every year or so, but it seems that Brendon and folks actually sat down and thought about it for a change (it’s been two years, so they’ve certainly had long enough to thing about it). The album sounds very uplifting and cheery, even (dare I say it?) Beatles-esque at points. The signature track, ‘Nine in the Afternoon’ really reminds me of Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘Mr. Blue Sky’, and they seem to have a slightly different sounding style on each track (with none of those styles being synth disco pop). It’s not that I didn’t like them before, I just prefer their new sound. Go check it out folks, as well as getting the new Raconteurs album while you’re at it.

Anime-wise, I’m working my way through Death Note at the minute. Just finished the first story arc (the first 26 episodes), and moving onto the Mello/Near storyline soon enough. This is about where I stopped watching it last time, so hopefully I’ll be able to plough through it like I did with Gurren Lagann last month. Oh, and I also finished off Ouran High School Host Club over the Easter weekend, a very refreshing series that I enjoyed a lot. Wait, a pretty boy almost-yaoi series, followed by a dark mystery thriller… where’s all the boobs gone? S’okay, I just finished getting Green Green ^^;

I should be doing a lot more work like everyone else seems to be doing at the moment, but I’m not to stressed about it, to be honest. I have 6 weeks to get everything done still but saying that, it’ll take me three weeks alone just to do the TAC ICA successfully… bah ¬_¬ But at least my money came through a few hours ago, and there’s a 22″ widescreen monitor somewhere with my name on it. Good times! :3

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