Ahh man. Good times.

Call of Duty 4 Gun Sounds

Music using only OS sounds

Music using only Windows XP and Windows 98 sounds.


And a version for our Mac OSX brethren.

Black Holes & Revelations

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a writer. Nor do I know a lot about some of the things I love. But I do want to write about things that I love. Those things being music, video games, books, television, cars, technology, internet.... Let's just say I love lots of things, o.k.? Anyway, my friend Ryan just introduced me to a band called Muse, specifically the album Black Holes & Revelations. Now that I've heard the album in its entirety, a few times, ,I feel somewhat comfortable in giving a rating of sorts. I understand that I'm treading on sticky ground here, due to the varying tastes of peoples music. I do however have the best taste in music. J/K. Just take my reviews with a grain of salt and try it if you like what I have to say.

In general I really enjoyed the experience. The album seems to be a commentary of sorts sprinkled with reminders (to me) of other bands, such as U2, The Killers, Radiohead, Pet Shop Boys, and Robb Zombie. Some of the songs seem too political, such as Soldiers Poem and Exo-Politics. I respect their views but I don't usually want to be reminded of such things when I'm enjoying music.

Invincible, Assassin, and City of Delusion really made me feel like jamming. Nice guitars and beats sweetly intermixed with synthesizers gave these songs depth as well as variety. Starlight kind of took me back to simpler times of my life, really reminding me of feelings of falling in love (I know, but I'm a lover deep down).

Knights of Cydonia is a rocking song that is featured on the Guitar Hero III videogame. Playing the song in the game is technically challenging but fun to play. Most importantly it's a good listen and is a great climax to the album, if you will.
7.5/10

Nightmare Before Xmas Impressions

I survived The Nightmare before Xmas. Just barely, it was kind of a nightmare. Parking at this venue is a joke. people were backed up onto the freeway for about a mile waiting to get in to the place. But, this was no surprise to me, I've been to concerts at the Great Saltair before. The place was packed. We're talking like 20,000 people, all of which is general admission. Although it was packed, we were able to find a pretty awesome spot on the balcony straight back from the stage.

At about 8:00 the first band that played was "I hate Kate." Their music was pretty good and they put on a great show. Their set lasted about 30 or 40 minutes.

Then the real problem of the show reared it's ugly head. A 45 minute wait for the next band to start playing? It was kind of a joke. It needed to be a bit more organized. By the time "DATAROCK" started playing we were pretty stoked. Too bad the show they put on sucked ass. A couple of the songs were ok, but the show pretty much consisted of four guys jumping up and down in red warm up suits. All the while one little guitar player kept pelvic thrusting his guitar. Sad.

Yet again another 45 minutes to wait. The "Shiny Toy Guns" kicked ass! They put on a good show and they sounded awesome. It was fun as hell. They played their big songs and a couple of new songs I haven't heard before. I do wish they had played a bit longer though.

Nightmare Before X Mas with Shiny Toy Guns

If you're a frequent visitor to my myspace page, you may know that I'm a big Shiny Toy Guns fan. Tonight I will attend a concert with said band, and there will be much rejoicing. It will be at the historic Great Saltair, located on the southern tip of the Great Salt Lake. I wanna shout out to my wife for the tickets. It was an awesome surprise.

I'll post again with my impressions of the show.

DRM: the state of disrpair

A lot of us probably own an iPod or other music device, I own 2 iPods and a Zune for instance, so we probably know a bit about DRM. Downloading music from iTunes is an easy task, but if you lose that music from a crashed system or other tragedy, you'll have to jump through some hoops to get that music downloaded again, if at all. It's a pain in the ass. Not to mention the music from iTunes won't work on my Zune and vice versa. In order to do that I would have to burn the music to a CD, and then rip it back to my computer in .mp3. Why do we have DRM? Well, record companies seem to think it increases profits. I'm not so sure that holds any weight though.

To get around DRM for instance I just by CD's. Do you like CD's? j/k. I can rip CD's to my hard drive in .mp3 format and transfer it to my iPod or my Zune with no trouble at all. That also gives me the disc itself for a back up. So why do I have to jump through all of these hoops when it comes to downloaded music? It doesn't make sense to me. Luckily the fight to get rid of DRM is on. The first shot being fired by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Check out this article on engadget. It's a good read. Feel free to post your comments on DRM or the article.