I bought the new Red Hot Chili Peppers CD. I know this is a departure from the usual indie music that gets talked about around here, and I feel like you’ll think less of me after this post, but that’s okay. RHCP is one of my favorite bands for the last five or six years, and I’m not at all ashamed to admit that.

The CD starts out jagged with some random drums and tuning notes on Monarchy of Roses. The song is a good opener that seems like a totally new direction for the band, kind of like Warped did in 1995 on the One Hot Minute record that I don’t think anyone talks about anymore. The chorus is bright and shiny, though, and feels very Chili Peppers-esque. I give this song an 8/10!

Factory of Faith. Kiedis rap/sings through most of this song. It’s got a great groove and reminded me of Hump de Bump from Stadium Arcadium. The instrumental bridge is out of the nowhere and very solid. Also 8/10.

Brendan’s Death Song is fucking brilliant. Excellent poetry, powerful overall. The first time I heard it I wanted the song to end a minute earlier, but the oft repeated chorus along with a chaotic drums/bass for the last part of the song becomes more appropriate the more you listen to it. Another great bridge that really punches you in the chest (not literally, don’t be afraid). 10/10 fo sho.

Etheopia is the next song on the CD. The lyrics start out with ‘E I O I E I A.” and that’s according to the lyric book. WTF? I guess it’s typical peppers. The chorus is okay, I don’t remember much else about it right now. 7/10

Annie Wants a Baby Now – This is an okay song; not worth mentioning on its own but not worth skipping either. 7/10.

Look Around – The chorus on this one is so annoying that it buries the rest of the song. 5/10

The Adventures of Raindance Maggie – If you listen to pop radio, you’ve undoubtedly heard this one. I can sing along with this song, but I’m okay with it being over when it is over. 7/10

Did I Let You Know – One of my favorite songs on the cd; an interesting guitar jingle peppers every line, alternating with the vocals on some parts and overall making things all nice-nice. The chorus is great, and the first time on the cd that new guitarist Josh sings lead. 9/10

Goodbye Hurrah – Can’t be very good since I don’t remember how it goes. I’m pretty sure it’s one of the skip ahead songs that ends up on any RHCP cd. ?/10

Happiness Loves Company – Really good song; the lyrics make no sense, there’s piano, and it’s got a decent foot stompin’ quality to it. The chorus reminds me of a song that I wrote, but I’m not upset about that or anything. 9/10

Police Station – The verses have a nice vocal melody; probably some of the best on the cd, the chorus is pretty snazzy too, Josh’s backing vocals offer some nice counterpoint. He does sound a little weird and breathy in this song though. Since originally writing this review the song has grown on me a bit more, I now give it an additional point. 8/10

Even You Brutus? – All this song has going for it is the back and forth between preach/rapping and singing and not even that is all that good; the chorus is atrocious with the little howl that Kiedis gives at the end of some of the lines; I can’t believe nobody, not a producer or a bandmate or an executive or anybody would tell him how dumb he sounds when he’s doing that. If I could break one part off one part of this CD so I could burn it and never heard it again, it would be this song. -4/10

Meet Me at the Corner – A quiet, somber, beautiful song. It reminds me of “If” from Stadium Arcadium or “I could die for you” from By the Way, except inverted lyrically. It’s a breakup song of some sort, and apparently Keidis sits in a forest through part of it, which is a little weird if you take it literally. (10/10)

Dance, Dance, Dance – Fucking rubbish track; By The Way ended with the epic Venice Queen, Stadium Arcadium ended with the equally epic “Death of a Martian,” I’m With You ends with a fucking dance song; the last line is ‘Let’s play, let’s play.” It’s catchy but it makes you want to gouge your eyeballs/earballs out.

Also as a side note, the inclusion of Josh on some of these songs gives the songs a Ween-esque quality for some reason. I’ve only listened to one Ween album (Chocolate and Cheese), but some of Josh’s backing vocals remind me of that of ‘Roses are Free’, or ‘Joppa Road.’

I give the album overall a 7/10, and that may or may not be the actual average rating of the aforementioned songs. I’m not here to teach math, I’m here to review a CD. But just in case anyone is here thinking I’m going to give a math lesson, here’s how you convert Fahrenheit to Celsius:

C=(5/9)*(F-32)

I hope any confusion has been resolved.

I swear I was only moments away from attacking my phone with a hammer.  My Virgin Mobile Samsung Intercept was a laggy hunk of dung.

Suddenly this morning, I was finally update to Android 2.2.

Now, the power of the kings of old rests in my fingertips, vomiting forth a deluge of golden wonderment.

LIFE AS WE KNOW IT WILL NEVER BE THE SAME, INTERNET.

I purchased a PS3 a few weeks ago to enjoy the gleeful bliss that is the Blu-ray Disc. I was planning on getting a stand-alone player, but a few features, namely Wi-Fi (for updates and BD Live) and the ability to play Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, made the PlayStation 3 the winner in my book of entirely too-low standards.

For years I’ve had a PC tethered to my TV to play video files or music (and Puzzle Fighter emulated in MAME!), and more recently to use for Netflix’s Watch Instantly streaming feature. Though Blu-ray was what I was going for, I was pleased to discover that the PS3 also was a great solution to play media via my home network.

Using software that acts as a “media server,” you can stream files from a computer on your network to the PlayStation. The icing on the cake is that this software can also be used to transcode media on the fly — meaning that file types that the PS3 does not support can be converted into a stream that is playable. There are several software options available to do this, but the catch is that some of them sort of… suck.

I started out with Nero MediaHome, then tinkered with TVersity, but neither of them cut the mustard (am I using too many food related sayings?). There was not enough customization available, nor could I get many of my video files to convert into something I’d want to watch. Also, both of these options depend on indexing a library of your media, rather than being able to see what’s available on the fly. TVersity does have some interesting RSS support, which I still continue to play with a bit.

Finally, I found PS3 Media Server, and it is by far the best I’ve tried so far. Completely free and currently in active development, this thing will play anything, I tell ya. The first time I used it I was streaming 1080p video with 5.1 surround over Wi-Fi within minutes. Craziness. A few positives:

• Handling restrictive situations like streaming over Wi-Fi require minimal tweaking.
• Live file viewing — no “indexing” required to view your media. Recently, a media library feature has been added, but it’s optional.
• Read some basic instructions and ensure you have the proper codecs. You can play anything. MKV, OGM, H.264, 720p, 1080p, surround sound, whatever.
• “Issues” tracking system on Google Code. Track issues and see them resolved, or make suggestions for features.

Though I can’t say enough about PS3 Media Server, I do have a second love, that fills a different niche: PlayOn, from Media Mall Technologies. From the site:

If you have a PLAYSTATION 3, Xbox 360, or HP MediaSmart TV, PlayOn lets you watch Netflix, Hulu, CBS, YouTube, ESPN and more on your TV. Check it out with a 14 day free trial.

We will also be adding support for Nintendo Wii in early 2009. Stay tuned!

I use Netflix Watch Instantly a ton through PlayOn, and it has worked nearly flawlessly. Basically, it shows you what’s in your Instant queue on the Netflix site, including the box art and summary. From reading through the Media Mall forums, there are some issues, including problems with “silverlight enabled” accounts. The free trial is there for a reason, so check it out.

My one lingering “fear” is that Netflix will eventually somehow shut PlayOn down or block it. It is not officially supported, so I’m not sure what will happen in the long run. I’m not so much worried about losing the money I spent on the license, but the ability to play my movies and shows through my PS3!

While doing some random googling, I came up with an interesting interview with bengal, thanks to some StumbleUpon reviews.

I’d like to get my hands on his graphic novel, Meka (book 1, book2), but I’m not entirely sure I want to fork over $50 to Amazon.fr to get em In other words, I need to wait for correct moment to impulse buy.

UPDATE-A-TRON

I ordered them

Articles expédiés le 17 avril 2007 :
Date de livraison estimee: 25 avril 2007 – 2 mai 2007
1 colis via service postal international

1 ex. de : Meka, tome 1 : Inside Vendu par : Amazon.fr 1 ex. de : Meka, Tome 2 : Outside Vendu par : Amazon.fr

Amazon.fr isn’t too hard to navigate, even if you giggle whenever you read French, like I do.  Babelfish was helpful where my not-quite-educated guessing fell short

So, I had some money, and I bought me a new guitar. I wasn’t entirely planning to, but I just can’t pass up a good deal (and weird coincidence) sometimes.

I had looked at this certain guitar online a few times, and had noticed that it had a lot of the exact features I wanted–a combination of single coil and “humbucking” pickups, a Floyd Rose trem, and quite the snazzy paint job. Unfortunately, it was quite a bit more than I was willing to spend.

Now don’t get me wrong, I really needed a new electric guitar if I actually wanted to play without feeling my guitar was impeading my abilities. My old guitar is a reasonably (read: very) cheap Strat knockoff, made by Karera (yeah, I don’t know who they are either). Additional features include: a giant crack at the top of the neck (I don’t know how is hasn’t entirely broken), a completely unusable tremolo, and knobs that barely work!

Like I was saying, I really did want a new guitar, but I put the idea out of my mind for the time being, since the features I wanted rarely came at a price I was able to pay.

And then! BANG BOOM! Through the miracle that is the United States Postal Service!

I recieved a Musician’s Friend catalog in the mail as I often do. And lo and behold (hah!), on the front cover as the main feature, was the same exact guitar I had wanted–the Jackson DK2 Dinky, blue/orange flame version. At first, this just annoyed me, since I recalled the price, but then I noticed that it said “$399! 61% off!” Holy shit. 61 percent is a hell of a lot off in my opinion. I even looked up the suggested retail price, and it was $1049.99. Wow. As an interesting side note, this guitar is hand painted and signed by the artist that did it. Since it was made in Japan, the signature is writen in Japanese (see picture).

Needless to say, I bought the damn thing for $400, with only the slightest of hesitations (I do hate parting with my money). I also bought a very nice hardshell case from Jackson, which alone is worth about as much old guitar! A week or so later, Fedex (no link for you, out of spite!) was kind enough to leave it sitting on my front porch for half the day while I was at work, and somehow no one ran off with it!

I really think I was taking a little risk, buying a guitar I had never even set hands on, but it plays like butter (but slightly less greasy). I’ve felt so out of practice, having not played my electric much at all out of flustration, that this is a great experiece. It’s like I’m finally learning how to play.

On a slightly related note, I found an interesting story on Slashdot. Guitar virtuoso Robert Fripp of King Crimson has been asked to create the “soundscape” for Windows Vista. This of course means the new “Microsoft Sound.” There’s a great video for how its being done on the Channel 9 forums (if you’re into that sort of thing).

This isn’t an entirely new practice for Micrsoft. Brian Eno (“St. Elmo’s Fire” is an amazing song, thanks Mr. Eno!), for example, composed the Windows 95 version of the “Microsoft Sound.” In an interview he had some interesting comments on the experience:

Q: How did you come to compose “The Microsoft Sound”?

A: The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I’d been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, “Here’s a specific problem — solve it.”

The thing from the agency said, “We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,” this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said “and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long.”

I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It’s like making a tiny little jewel.

In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I’d finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.

Yikes. I wrote a lot.

Brian Eno – St. Elmo’s Fire