Posts (page 2)

A friend called me earlier to ask if I wanted to hang out. I’m always in for spending some time with friends, so I came over. Somewhere along the line they forgot to mention we’d be spending the night watching the hockey game. They know I hate hockey. I think its probably an ongoing joke “Lets get Pat over so we can watch him be miserable as we watch hockey.” I wonder who’s winning that game.

House is on tonight, I’m excited. I love Hugh Lowries character; he’s a sarcastic and witty asshole and actually reminds me of myself. I wish I remembered what happened in the last episode. Perhaps tonight’s episode will remind me. That is one thing that really irritates me about TV, the time spent waiting for new episodes to air is long enough that you usually don’t remember what happened in the past episodes. The worst for that is lost.

I have watched episodes of lost and thought to myself “Who the hell is that” whenever they do a flashback. I forget the old plots. They could actually be redeveloping the characters and I wouldn’t even notice. I love the show a lot, I should probably get the DVD’s and re-watch it so I can remember it.

TOTD: Hair.

Hair? Okay. I used to have long hair. It was growing since the 8^th grade. At first I wanted to be like all of the super cool metal bands. Then It grew, and suddenly I forgot what it looked like short. Would I look like an idiot with short hair? I didn’t want to cut my hair and look like an idiot, despite my parents daily nagging. Finally the day before my 19^th birthday I got it cut. I think it looks better now, and I think I might even take it shorter soon.

Well, that was a boring blog. Oh well.

April 27th, 2008.
Well, that power nap failed. I figured I would take an hour to rest and feel like a million bucks. To be honest, I think that nap may have sucked power from me. Or perhaps Mitch Hedberg’s doctor came to see me in my sleep, Dr. Acula. I’m kind of just rambleing, so I guess I’ll just follow that train of thought and talk about Mitch Hedberg today.

Mitch Hedberg was a comedian from Minnesota who I have been listening to for years. I say ‘was’ because Mitch is no longer with us. He died of a drug overdose, I guess a life of hard drug use will do that to a guy. He had a couple jokes about his drug use, but as March 29th 2007 they aren’t quite as funny anymore. His death marked the end of what had the potential to be a long and successful career, a career I would have loved to follow.

Those of you in Canada will recognize Mitch Hedberg from the overplayed Just For Laughs advertisement they have on Comedy Central. A long haired guy with sunglasses standing on stage,“I used to lie in my twin sized bed and wonder where my brother was.” An example of one of Mitch’s legendary one-liners, although I must admit not one his better ones. But it does showcase the way he talks. His speech pattern is so unique and somehow makes everything the man said hysterical, like a room full of Christopher Walkens compressed into one comedian.

Mitch would walk out on stage with a drink in hand, sunglasses on so nobody could see his eyes, and he would start talking. The man was one of the funniest comedians in the world, yet he was so stricken with stage fright that he would sometimes perform with his eyes closed or with his back to the audience so he wouldn’t have to look them in the eye.  One thing which also didn’t help with his stage fright was that his comedy was a little eccentric at times, so it always took the crowd some time to warm up to. But once they warmed up he was in the zone. He would have the entire crowd in stitches and you could see the smile light up his face. You could tell that he loved what he was doing up there because he would go to tell a joke and he would have to stop, because he was too busy laughing at his own material. It was wonderful to see him glow when he knew he had a room in the palm of his hand.

Even post-mortem, Mitch Hedberg is my favorite comedian. I still listen to his two albums pretty regularly, and every day things still make me think of him and make me smile. If I see an escalator I think of Mitch and laugh. If I see a fish stick I think of Mitch and laugh. If I see butter or margarine, I think of Mitch and laugh. I even started writing todays blog about being tired, which reminded me of a Hedberg joke and turned into what it is now. That is what is truly amazing about a good comedy routine, a good comic can leave his mark on someone for a lifetime. This is a guy who hasn’t told a joke in over 3 years, yet I still think about his words all the time.

I feel like a Nirvana fan when I talk about Mitch Hedberg because I truly think he left far too soon. He recorded two albums and a special for comedy central. He also has countless late-night TV appearances and some tours under his belt. That is practically nothing compared to the accomplishments of some other guys who are out there telling jokes today. I hear people say something and think to myself about how it could have made for a great Mitch Hedberg joke. It is one of the few things that really makes me sad.

Enough talking about Mitch Hedberg, lets check out some of his work. First, two Just For Laughs performances. Then a clip from his comedy central special..

I also suggest that you listen to both of his albums. Strategic Grill Locations & Mitch All Together. Comedic masterpieces. I promise you that you will not regret it. That is, unless ofcourse you have no sense of humor, because then you would most definately regret it.

Later Pimpcicles.

April 26th, 2008
I would like to open this blog entry by stating the obvious. And then stating it again. And if it wouldn’t get me disqualified from the IMBC I would spend this entire blog entry stating just one obvious fact. I love the internet. I am absolutely head over heals in love with the internet. I can’t lie about it, and chances are that if you are reading this you are well aware of my passion for the interwebs. Today I was reminded of exactly how much I adore this series of tubes.

Last night I was playing risk and checking my RSS feed when MC Frontalot made a post about his adventures at ROFLcon. For those of you who don’t know, ROFLcon is an internet culture convention which was held at MIT and had discussion panels with some of the internets most influential faces and/or memes. I knew ROFLcon was being planned, but had no idea that it was happening so soon, and in fact had already started. When I woke up today I went straight to my laptop and looked for some updates on the goings on at the convention. It was the second day of the 2 day convention, and they had some cameras set up sending live feeds to the world wide web for all the world to enjoy. And as a user of the World Wide Web, I did enjoy it, and thoroughly at that.

I wish I had started watching these streams sooner, but the risk game went until 5am last night so waking up before 1pm simply wasn’t happening. When I tuned in, there was a panel in the middle of a discussion titled “Incubating the Mind Virus: Meme Infrastructures” . I quickly pieced together who I was watching. The founders of MetaFilter, Fark, Reddit and OCRemix were answering questions about their experiences as some of the hot-shots in the internet media aggregating business. The OCRemix guy definitely had interesting things to say, but seemed as though he was placed on the wrong panel and was merely keeping Kevin Rose’s seat warm. It was interesting to see the different perspectives of people like Drew Curtis (Fark) who selects which articles make it, and the Reddit guy whose content is all user decided. A summary of that discussion can be found here.

After they finished up, I switched over to another feed where some guys in Guy Fawkes masks were setting up and running a sound test. Anonymous was about to take the stage, and I wasn’t about to miss that. I talked to some friends on MSN as they finished setting up. They then played one of the anonymous scientology videos for a packed room, and began talking about Anonymous’s efforts to take scientology down. It turned out that that none of the Anon’s on stage were of note, and were merely the first five well articulated guys(and a gal) who raised their hands to talk about the issue in front of a crowd.

One audience member asked a question that I really liked about the difficulties of maintaining credibility for their cause when they call a hateful, homophobic, sexist and downright disgusting board such as 4chan their home. That led into an interesting discussion about different sets of behaviors used when talking to other members of anonymous and when dealing with public. They were also asked what anonymous intends to do when they have defeated scientology and gave a pretty entertaining answer which basically boiled down to returning to their basements and fapping furiously.  Definitely another interesting discussion, although I found it ironic that they had 5 people answering questions on behalf of an unorganized mob with numbers in the thousands.

After that there was a little bit of a break before the final panel took the stage in the room where the “INCUBATING THE MINDVIRUS” discussion had taken place earlier. They were still setting up when I tuned in, but I saw a guy being almost surrounded by people who just wanted to meet him. Immediately I knew it was someone interesting. Then it clicked, I had never seen his face before but I knew exactly who I was looking at. It was Randall, of XKCD fame. I checked the schedule on the ROFLcon page, and discovered that I was about to witness their panel on “The internet cult leader.” It didn’t say who the cult leaders would be, so I was in for a surprise. A pleasant surprise if that guy truly was Randall.

They got everything together, and the cult leaders took their seats. Not faces you recognize, but bodies of work every internet geek knows all too well. They introduced them one by one. First was Ryan North, the writer for Dinosaur comics. Secondly they introduced the patron saint of Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, Randall Munroe of XKCD. And thirdly they introduced the mad scientist who crafted the den of internets antagonists, Moot of 4chan. They discussed the power of their fan bases, the effects their creations had on the world and generally sat there being entertaining.

I saw some things during this panel which I never thought I would see. I saw the creator of 4chan stand up and do a barrel roll. I then saw an entire room full of audience members stand up and do a barrel roll just because Randall Munroe said so. I saw Moot tell Randall “Your house tonight… Ball pit..” as they pretended to snuggle into one another. I even saw Tron Guy dressed in his Tron suit ask a question from the audience about 4chan users defacing wikipedia articles. You cant make this stuff up. And best of all, I had a question answered by Moot, and discussed by Randall in more detail. That probably needs some more explaining.

As an internet convention, they had the place slightly pimped out in technology. One such article of pimpage was an overhead projector which displayed the most popular questions which were being submitted at a webpage online. I submitted the question “Moot, which 4chan meme is your favorite?” It picked up popularity through users voting for it, and soon enough it was the top question. It was asked out loud, and I got my reply streamed to me live. Geekin' aint easy. Here is the summary from the ROFLcon page. It is abridged, but you get the idea.

Me: To Moot: What’s your favorite meme?
4chan: Not Rick Roll! I like the song, but it’s getting old.
XKCD: You need to strike a balance between how early you use the meme, and how many people in your target community are already bored of the joke.
4chan: I like Weegee. It is awesome. Like 5 people know what it is. That’s a good sign.

Did I mention that I love the internet? Because I do. I had my question answered in front of a live audience at MIT by the guy who created one of the most evil websites on the internet, and discussed by probably the best web comic artist out there. And I did it from my bedroom in Canada. The internet never ceases to impress me with its potential for awesomeness. The entire abridged summary of the discussion can be found here.

I have just come to the realization that I have been able to write a fairly lengthy blog talking about things that took place at a convention which I didn't even attend. The world truly is being made smaller and smaller by technology. Imagine the things I could have talked about if I was able to go to the convention myself? I wish I had the means of getting there, but there is always next time. There had better be a next time because I want to go party with the internet.

I want to thank the ROFLcon organizers for putting everything together and making it availible live online. Made for an interesting day.
 
Cheers.

EDIT:
While surfing the net I found a youtube video of the panel answering my question. It starts at 2:05

April 25th, 2008
I have plans tonight, and once again I put off the blog writing for too long. Typical, I know.

I’ve been working on getting a game of risk going with some friends. It turns out that getting a bunch of guys together to play a board game is easier said than done. Especially when you are in Canada in the middle of the hockey playoffs. I had two friends who immediately said yes. I had another friend who seemed kind of reluctant to come play. He later bailed on us. A couple of friends were watching hockey, and another was heading downtown. 

Ended up finding a friend I hadn’t seen in months who was willing to come play. I was happy with that. Having school over with for most people a while opens up these kinds of opportunities I love it. I miss high school when socialization was as simple as getting on a school bus in the morning. College, university, residence and crazy schedules make everything more difficult. I’m trying to play risk, while writing a blog, so this could get difficult. I’m either gonna play risk poorly, or write a bad blog. I must uphold my pride, so looks like you’re in for some craptastic blog.

We are currently listening to snoop dogg. Scratch that, Zack just changed the song to ‘Welcome to the Dangerzone”. Now Acid Bath. We are making our way through all different kinds of music.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------
“I think my blog just turned into quotes from tonight.”
“Good, because I’m not going to be able to remember any of this shit tomorrow.

“Their making a printed version of Wikipedia.”
“How the hell would that work? Do they have blank pages on the end to write in?”

“Why are you fortifying Australia and south America?”
“Im attacking from both sides.”
“…”
“Fuck you guys I’m not telling you my plan.”

Anyway, I need to go play a game of risk. My mission of 300 words has been accomplished and I haven’t even gotten my mission card in risk yet. Awesome.

Later peeps.

April 24th, 2008.
First off, I would like to apologize about the sporadic mess that was last nights post. I’m sure you understand, these things happen.

With “school” starting again on Monday, I am cherishing every last minute of this little break. One of my favorite things to do is veg out and watch a movie, but with life as chaotic as it is who has the time to set aside an hour and a half to get lost in a story. I have been clinging to the opportunity, watching two movies so far today. And two days ago I watched another one which I might as well talk about too. Unlike most recent movie watching experiences, I didn’t feel disappointed by these films. That is a miracle all in itself, so I might as well talk about the movies.

I rarely enjoy those big budget CGI movies. Finding Nemo, The Incredibles? Yawn. They don’t do it for me, and the laughs never hit home. Sure, their cute. And if I had to watch a movie with children around they would be a better alternative than Dora the Explorer, but that’s about as much water as the cup will hold before bursting and drenching your socks. I don’t make a habit of watching those movies unless it’s a certain circumstance comes along. And in this case, that circumstance requirement was met by my favorite poet. 

Oh, and what a poet he is. Parent and child alike have gotten lost in this mans prose all over the world for many years. His way of painting a beautifully colored chaotic and magical picture for the ensnared and always eager reader is like no-other I have ever seen. Some dismiss his poems as musings for children, and in many ways they are, but his elegant rhymes still bring a smile to my face to this very day. That poet of course is the one and only Doctor Seuss. Anybody who can compose a symphony of words as spectacular as Green Eggs and Ham must have a mind of pure gold. Well, if the gold was engineered to work as a brain... Nevermind…

So I watched “Horton Hears a Who”. A kids movie -- yes. But with a cast containing both Steve Carell of The Office and Seth Rogen from Knocked Up, and a writer (sort of) as great as The Suesster, who was I to argue? It also starred Jim Carrey as the voice of Horton, and I loved what he did with Dr. Suess’s true grim black-metal necro inverted mountain monster. A lot of people didn’t like Jim Carrey as the Grinch, but I thought he was brilliant. In short, it had potential to be good and it did not disappoint. That, and John had put on his digital ninja suit and Sam Fisher’d it onto my hard drive so it wasn’t like I had to go out of my way. 

Something about the creativity and thought put into the Who’s and their activities and architecture has always caught my eye, and they did a good job of that here. The animation was fantastic, voice acting superb, and the story leaves you with that warm feeling that only accompanies a perfectly executed climax and resolution combined with a happy ending. You know the feeling, the one you got at the end of the end of the LOTR Trilogy. Or the end of school of rock. No more come to mind at the moment, but you know what I mean.

Earlier this week I watched a movie which wasn’t quite as child friendly. It was a cheesy b-grade gore film by Troma Studios, who are pretty much the go-to guys when you want that kind of film. This one, which is rumored to be their last, was called “Poultrygiest: Night of the Chicken Dead”. You can pretty much guess the premises from the title, and I encourage you to go ahead and let that sigh out, the one induced by that masterfully crafted wordplay. Doesn’t that feel better? The film is essentially made as a gory cheesy comedy, complete with a cast of characters named entirely after fast food restaurants, choreographed musical scenes, human sized flesh eating chickens, politically incorrect humor, and some seriously awesome gore. I need to find some people who share my passion for cheesy b-grade movies, because I don’t think I can keep these gems to myself much longer, and most of my friends would hate me if I made them sit through these movies. 

Now for the cream of the crop, and a movie which is now marked forever as one of my favorite films. I can barely contain my excitement about this one, because I have been waiting for a film like this for so long. I wrote about my zombie film passion in my April 7^th post entitled “A post about My brain oozing childhood love”. I can’t stress enough the level of love and respect I hold for the Romero’s living dead trilogy. In recent years we have seen two parts of the Romero trilogy have their reputations dragged through the mud with remakes which gave the zombies super speed. We also saw the man himself direct Land of the Dead, which I felt stretched the organizational abilities of reanimated corpses a little far. I’ll be honest here, I hated Land of the Dead almost as much as the Dawn and Day remakes.

I was waiting for a new zombie movie in the spirit of the Romero 3. I didn’t care who or where it came from, but I have been waiting for it for a long long time. I wanted the zombies to return to a slow shamble, I wanted the underlying social and political commentary to be there. Most of all, I wanted the movie to be about the interactions of people who need to work together to survive in a world where civilization as they know it has come to a screeching halt. The guilt of killing an undead loved one. The social pressures. The psychological changes that take place in people when they need to start thinking about survival rather than their daily 9 to 5. I wanted people reacting to the disaster rather than a film about the disaster itself.

Recently, all of those aspects have been almost completely forgotten in zombie films. They have changed from deep inter-personal commentary into Hollywood slasher-films with dozens of antagonists rather than the usual Freddy or Jason. Instead of the suspense coming from questions like “Will he be able to face his undead best friend” the crowd was instead yelling things like “DON’T GO IN THAT ROOM, THERES A ZOMBIE IN THERE” It was painful to watch a legacy like that bleed itself out. But just as I thought the Dead series was beyond resurrection, the Jesus Christ of zombie films decided to rise from his tomb, and was once again ready to show the world the true path to brain-chomping enlightenment.

Diary of the Dead is about a group of college students who were filming their own low-budget horror film when the dead start coming back to life. The film is like Cloverfield in the way that the main character is also the cameraman, which is something which I don’t think has been done in the zombie genre before. It is done very tastefully, and really adds a lot to the impact of the film. The zombies stumble like corpses again, leaving time for character development and interpersonal conflict. He even includes some very original zombie kill-scenes, which is getting harder and harder these days. This is truly Romero’s return to greatness. 

And despite this film being Romero’s return to greatness, I have come to a sad realization. As a zombie movie purist, I am in the minority. They keep churning out the crap films for a reason, they sell better than the good ones. I usually turn to RottenTomatoes.com for film reviews, and they rarely steer me wrong. Lets check out some of their scores shall we?

• Night of the Living Dead (1968)            95% Fresh
• Dawn of the Dead (1978)                     97% Fresh
• Day of the Dead (1985)                       79% Fresh

     -----------------------------------------------------------------------

• Dawn of the Dead (2004)                     77% Fresh
• Land of the Dead (2005)                      74% Fresh
• Diary of the Dead (2008)                      59% Fresh

 

A score of 59% fresh? They can’t be serious. And rating the original Day of the Dead just above Dawn of the Dead Remake and Land of the Dead is bordering on criminal. These scores are generated as an average from dozens of reviewers, so these scores are about as close to the general opinion of the films you are going to find, which makes me a definite outlier. Then again, I should have assumed that as soon as I said that I enjoyed Poultrygiest. I’m taking my biased ranting elsewhere. If you need me, I’ll be back in 1978 where people still recognize greatness when they see it.

That was a fun rant. Watch out for a cutthroat review of the Day of the Dead remake in the days to follow. But as a quick spoiler; do not watch it unless you are being held at gunpoint. Even then I would consider taking the bullet. 

I’m out for tonight. Have a good one.

I’ve been playing this game for a good portion of the day.  It’s called magic pen, and I have developed a serious love-hate relationship with it. Months ago I was introduced to a game called crayon physics, and have been awaiting its sequel ever since. Today I found this, a flash game which beat crayon physics to the punch, and did it as a flash game to boot.

 

That’s one thing that scares me about being a programmer, competition. What if my job relied on crayon physics doing well, and before I get it out a game like Magic Pen comes out and people are playing it for free, why in the hell would they even blink twice when my software comes out? Oh well, that’s life. Any business is like that.

 

It is 10:47 and I just realized I needed to write this blog. I have 5 friends sitting around drinking beers. Big nerd thing to do, but I’m not losing this competition because I don’t want to look like a nerd. As of today, I am officially in the top 6 of the IMBC. I didn’t write a blog every day for the last 22 days just to throw it away for a reason like that. Nerd pride world wide.

Two hundred words so far and I am drawing a blank. Looks like its time for the topic of the day.  Today’s topic is; What is your favorite movie/TV quote?

An interesting question. I guess I’m going to have to go with a quote from Army of Darkness.
“Ok you Primitive Screwheads, listen up! You see this? This... is my boomstick! The 12-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart's top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about $109.95. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You got that?”

A classic Bruce Campbell quote, containing the most memorable one-liner of his career. “THIS IS MY BOOMSTICK!” Definitely the most memorable line from the movie. And the look on Bruce’s face when he says it is completely freaking epic. I absolutely love that movie, and I love that line.

 

That’s 300 words. I can get back to entertaining my guests and hanging out. Later folks.

I said I would come back with a review of the software I had installed yesterday, and I have returned with some early verdicts. 

I was an early member of the anti-vista bandwagon. It was bloated, buggy and finding drivers that worked was a mess, and these things all remain true. I stuck with my trusty Windows XP, and chose to find alternate means of getting the functionality I was missing out on in vista. One thing that windows Vista had that I didn’t was a fancy alt-tab. I too wanted to switch applications in style, and yesterday I found my way of doing it. With one of the windows power toys called the alt-tab replacement. The power toys are windows XP apps which weren’t give the proper testing time so they never made the final XP release.  Now I have a graphical preview of a window when I alt-tab to it. Booyah. 

My photo editing app of choice has always been MS Paint. MS Paint just has that feeling, that distinct “This is allowed to be sloppy because it was done in mspaint” look. I have constructed some masterpieces in paint, and have mastered every feature that the program has to offer. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep at night, just thinking about the graphic program that the world forgot, but Microsoft kept giving us anyway. They needed to upgrade it, or offer plug-ins, or toss it out and start anew. Something needed to be done.

Like practically anything Microsoft releases, there is a freeware alternative that takes the basic usability of a MS application and turns it into everything the user could ever hope for. I would like to introduce Paint.net, or as I like to call it “MSpaint as it should have been”.

• Gone are the days where you can only rotate on a 90’ angle.
• Gone are the days where you have only one layer to work with.
• Gone are the days when you only have 3 undo’s before you are stuck with it.
• Gone are the days you don’t have a magic wand tool.

 

And that is only from 10 minutes of playing with it. I think when MS Paint comes home and see’s me lying in bed with paint.net, things are going to get violent.

 

Stay tuned for more half-assed software reviews tomorrow. And maybe some paint.net nonsense if I feel like playing around with it some more.

Cheers.

IMBC: 413 + 50 = 463
Total: 16212

I have made today’s mission to optimize the usability of my PC. That includes virus checks, spyware searches, registry hacks, third party defrags and some new navigation tools. My desktop was cluttered and the machine was just running slow. The thing about being a geek is that you get to enjoy these types of things, and learn how to do it better next time. Hopefully by the time I’m done I will have what seems like a brand new machine.

I started with a sweet pacman background I found. It has a very mechanical feel to it, but its still fun. I of course wanted to see the background so I disabled desktop icons, and all of a sudden everything just seemed to look better. Then I experimented with hiding the taskbar and sticking it on various sides of my screen, nothing felt right. I also tried leaving my Royale Noir color scheme behind and trying the olive green task bar to match the background better, but that didn’t sit well either. 

Then I remembered a sweet dock which a couple of my friends use called object dock. Very mac-ish, but spiffy none the less. I toyed around with those skins as well and finally settled for the one which felt like it matched my taskbar the best. I then dropped in the apps I use frequently to fill it out. I especially like the weather dock, which saves me a trip to the weather network website. This new desktop was starting to take shape.

That reminded me of an old application I had installed and forgotten called Launchy. It is an application which launches with a hotkey, and will intelligently guess the application you want to open as you type, and you can hit enter as soon as it guesses the correct one. Once you get used to it you can open up programs far more efficiently than navigating to them in your start menu. Of course I had forgotten the hot-key to open it, so I had to find and modify the configuration file to even get the thing open. Now I have it set up nicely and will hopefully get some use out of it. 

Then I ran my more basic system-task type stuff. AVG for antivirus. JKDefrag for defragmentation. Spybot S&D for spyware. CCleaner for various other garbage. Not many problems detected, although I was in dire need of that defrag. Then a quick rummage through add/remove programs to turf anything I haven’t used in forever. It’s already starting to feel like a new install. That’s as far as I have gotten at this point.

The next step is to check out some new software. My go to guide will be an old lifehacker article I found a couple of months ago entitled “Power replacements for built in-windows utilities”. Did they say power? I think they said power. I am so in. I’ll be combing through the applications, trying most of them out and getting back to you with the ones I decide to put to use.

I am done for tonight, but I will leave you with a screenshot of my pretty new desktop.
Tomorrow is another day, another blog, and hopefully a list of new software which I have fallen in love with.
Adios Amigos.

April 20th, 2008.

Internet Masterpiece Theater Part 2 : Music

I’ve always been a big music guy, just like the rest of the planet. Well, there is this one guy I once spoke to who argued till he was blue that he didn’t like music, but I can assure you that he just hasn’t been exposed to his genre. That is true, because we each have a genre. Some of us even have two, and even fewer of us like all of them. There are those who will say “I listen to a little bit of everything” but that never includes death metal or grindcore or crust punk, or any other genre that generally slips through the radios cracks.

The popularity of music on the internet has been strong for many years. Ever since napster when we saw people start to use the internet almost primarily for music. It would be pointless of me to send you to the websites that everyone knows. Waffles.fm, What.cd, Last.fm. Useful? Hell yeah they are, but I wont waste your time with what you already know. For anyone who doesn’t know those names, that simply means you havnt done your homework. Stay after class to serve detention.

First on the chop-block, KerrazyTorrents. To the untrained eye this site is just a message board. More than that, it is a ridiculously popular message board for metal heads, with a total registered users figure of 33,103 at the point of writing this. Well, I should be fair to you, that is exactly what kerrazy-torrents is, but it goes even deeper than that as well. Once you have registered, you gain access to their torrents sections. Each thread in those sections is dedicated to a torrent file, be it an album or discography. A weird format for a torrent site, but it works for them.

They generally deal with every metal genre under the sun, but there is also a section for non-metal which will turn up some gems as well. You can spend hours just clicking on band names you have never heard of, reading though the comments and downloading anything that catches your eye. This is the exact strategy/website which lead me to the discovery of my beloved Acid Bath, who have been my favorite band for years. Acid Bath then lead me to their vocalists other projects, but I will write about my obession with Dax Riggs on another day.

I understand that not all of you are metal heads, in fact if the figures are correct, very small portions of the population share my love for the relaxing tone of an unbelievably slow and heavy guitar riff. So I’ll give you some tools for grabbing tunes of all kinds off the net quickly. One such page I really like is Skreemr, which looks like a Google search but will bring up hundreds of mp3 results which you can either download directly or stream using their flash music players. Another alternative to skreemr is Songza which does essentially the same thing, but allows you to create a playlist, and continue searching for other artists while you listen to your already selected songs.

When people are arguing whether or not torrent sites should be legal, the file sharing freedom fighters always point out that all a torrent site does is link to the files, which is no more than a Google search does. But nobody actually uses Google to find free music right? Well they would if they knew how to search properly. I bring you Musgle. The name is a freakish Frankenstein combination of Music and Google. Just search for a song and they put together a Google search string which will show you the song you want in its various locations across the forgotten index pages of the internet. Beware though, some of the links will link to advertisements, because the advertisement hounds have found a way to get their greasy fingers into everything.

Now I bring you the RhymeTorrents project. This is a project which I have been following for a while now, and is exactly what happens when you let geeky rappers get their hands on a bit torrent client. Essentially what they do is gather free tracks from NerdcoreHipHop artists all over the internet, mix them into super sweet compilations and make them freely available for anyone who wants to listen. Honestly, not all of it is great and chances are that you will be skipping tracks left right and center, but the good songs stand out and make the entire experience worthwhile. So far they have released RhymeTorrents 1 through 6  to the masses, as well as two releases strictly for Halloween themed tunes. Projects like these make me feel all tingly inside.

I recommend checking out the following nerdcore artists if you’re looking for something to listen to. Use them to try out Skreemr, songza and musgle. They should all turn up atleast a track, but I havn't checked to make sure.

            MC Frontalot
            Beefy
            Ytcracker
            MC Lars
            MC Hawkings
            Optimus Rhyme
            And Halifax's own, Jesse Dangerously

 

I’m off to get my geek on. Later folks.

IMBC: 884 + 50 = 934
Total: 15148

April 19th, 2008.

Have you ever sent a link to somone, just to have them reply immediately with "seen it." Do you have one of those friends who does that consistantly with everything? I am that friend. People joke that I have a printer hidden away somewhere which prints off every new webpage as it hits the internet, and I study them every night before I go to bed. Today I am starting a new theme here on the Blog. On slow days, I am going to post some of my golden browser nuggets for you to bathe in. I will call it; Internet Masterpiece Theater. And it will always be bolded in awesome, that is until I come up with a sweet graphic.

Today’s Internet Masterpiece Theater subject is Old School Gaming.

When I was in the 4^th grade I was introduced to a magical concept. At this point and time all the kids were playing Pokemon red and blue on their gameboys, and like every other geek on the playground I had my game boy handy at all times. Batteries were expensive, and so were new games. Then someone showed me No$gb and suddenly I had every game, and I could speed through boring parts. And I could play on a monitor rather than that stupid game boy screen. Then I moved on from GB to nes, snes, sega,  When the gaming companies caught on, it became damn near impossible to find ROMs because lawsuits were flying every which way. But the Russians were fearless.

I would like to introduce my old friend EmuRussia. Updated regularly with new emulators, and paired with a trusty collection of old-school roms, this site has saved my ass on many a rom-hunt. They are truly the only site that has been standing strong for all of these years without buckleing under the pressure. Their reliability alone has won my heart over. 

And my second internet old school gamer love is the one and only UndergroundGamer. They are a private torrent site who I have been with for several years. They deal exclusively with old games. They are actually moving to a new server right now, which hopefully means speedier load times and more openings for new members. If I am not mistaken they only deal with games which were released prior to 2000, which is fine by me because that’s how I like my games for the most part. They are also an excellent gaming community and are always ready for a good chat. I have a VIP account there so once they have finished their server-swap feel free to contact me for an invite and I’ll see what I can do for you. I’m sure I have at least a dozen invites stockpiled somewhere.

Those two sites have served me well, and the pair have yet to let me down when I want to find some old nostalgic games to lose myself in. Treat my babies well, they deserve it.

See you tomorrow.