A Little Off-Beat

Just A Little Ranting

2010-04-17T00:41:00.009-06:00

This post is about musical instrument transportation. Some past events have stirred some reflections and ideas on this subject, and I figured this would be a good venue to express my thoughts in full.

Everybody always complains about having to lug their instruments around to gigs and performances. It's pretty much a given in a musician's life. "My double bass is enormous AND I have to take an electric bass too"; "I hate dragging my bulky drum set around"; "my contrabass clarinet is so unwieldy"; "my tuba's so heavy, my arms are going to fall off"; et cetera, et cetera. However, I'd like to submit that us piano players have definitely got it the hardest when it comes to performing in varied venues.

Sure, I understand that carrying a big instrument around is a pain in the butt. I play the euphonium and the trombone in concert band, so I've lugged my fair share of bulky instruments around. However, even though his instrument weighs as much as he does, at least the sousaphone player gets to carry his own instrument around. At least musicians with portable (or even semi-portable) instruments get to choose the quality of their instrument and get to play an instrument they're familiar with.

Piano players have no such luck. Their instruments are so big and heavy that transporting a piano to a performance is completely impractical and mostly impossible, unless you're fantastically famous like Elton John and you have to have your flaming red piano with you everywhere you go. Normal pianists are completely at the mercy of the establishment to provide them with an instrument, and sometimes the instruments available leave a lot to be desired.

I play the piano in a jazz combo with a few friends that all have pretty big instruments, and we play gigs at restaurants and venues all over our local area. The tenor sax player has a pretty big case to carry around, the bassist has a big double bass and an electric bass and a big amp, and the drummer has all the different cymbals and toms and bits and pieces. Since I almost never take my own instrument (we occasionally take a digital piano for me when there's no alternative), I end up helping load and unload other peoples' equipment all the time. The drummer always says "Thanks for helping me, man. Carrying my drums around everywhere is such a pain", and I always think "it's a bigger pain to not be able to carry an instrument around. I'd rather be carrying a big bulky instrument around than relying on the mercy of the event organizers."

Throughout the course of our combo's career, I've played on everything from eleven-foot Steinway concert grands, to driftwood pianos with tin strings and only half the keys, to nice-looking pianos that could sound nice if anybody had bothered to tune them in the last fifty years. I've also played on Steinways that sounded terrible (mostly tuning issues) and weird off-brand pianos that sounded and played like a dream. I've seen my fair share of different pianos, and I can definitely say that pianists are at a disadvantage when it comes to instrument transportation. Our bassist gets to carry his beautiful $7,000 double bass with him everywhere, but sometimes I'm stuck with pianos that cost half that and sound like it, too ($7,000 buys a fantastic double bass, but $15,000 is not too much to pay for a decent-quality piano, and that's only at the low end).

The issues with a piano aren't always tuning, either. Sound quality is another huge deciding factor, but that pretty much can't be helped. If the piano's soundboard is crap, then it's crap. But sometimes there are other small problems as well. Sometimes there are keys that don't work. Sometimes only certain keys are out of tune. Sometimes the key action is too low and you can't get good volume out of the piano. Sometimes the damper action is too low and you either get bad sustain or poor cut-off from the sustain pedal. Sometimes the pedals won't work or the action on the pedals will be too low or high. Most of the time, people don't like you dismantling their piano to address these various issues.

Digital pianos are an obvious solution to the problems presented by relying on other peoples' pianos. They never need to be tuned, they're portable, can be set up easily, are less bulky than acoustic pianos, and you can amplify them and increase the volume easily. However, I dislike digital pianos for many reasons. Sometimes venues I've played have provided digital pianos. Most of the time, they don't realize that a sustain pedal is an absolute necessity when dealing with any sort of piano. I've taken to carrying my own sustain pedal to gigs, just in case, because I've ended up playing pipe-organ style piano - trying to sound fluid and connected without a sustain pedal - one too many times.

Unless you have the most ridiculously expensive digital piano out there, the instrument's synthesized sound will almost always sound like crap. The sound samples, however well blended, still sound nothing remotely like a real piano, and the volume controls are way too finicky. Even if you have a ridiculously nice-sounding digital piano, they just don't feel right.

Digital keyboards with unweighted keys feel way too light, more like a toy than an actual instrument, and it's hard to be accurate and subtle when playing on unweighted keys. Weighted keys, on the other hand, are often weighted too heavily, making the digital piano feel heavy and unwieldy. As with unweighted keys, accuracy and subtlety suffers, especially at faster tempos. I have yet to ever play a digital piano with keys that felt naturally weighted. There's nothing like a good solid block of natural wood mechanically hitting a hammer and pounding the strings on an acoustic piano. Digital just doesn't compare. I'm not entirely opposed to playing digital pianos, and I have played digital pianos for many gigs before, but if there's any alternative at all and any opportunity to play an acoustic piano, I'll usually take it.

Basically, what this all boils down to is: When I'm rich and famous, I'm having my fourteen-foot super-grand piano shipped everywhere I play so I don't have to bother with any of this crap again. If the rich and famous thing doesn't quite happen, I guess I'll have to learn to deal with it, because the problem certainly isn't going away. Unfortunately, there will always be an over-abundance of poorly-tuned, poorly-cared-for pianos out there, and someone will always want you to play them.

Grab A Slice Of CAKE This Summer

2009-05-29T18:21:00.003-06:00

As today was the last day of school for me (holy crap, next year I'll be a SENIOR! Then after that I'll have to join the real world!), I figured I'd share one of my favorite summer albums. "Comfort Eagle" by CAKE is an awesome summer album. I bought it at the start of summer last year, and now it epitomizes everything that summer is: Warm, happy, carefree, fun, and lazy. Without further ado: Comfort Eagle is CAKE's fourth studio album. Released in 2001, it's spawned a few good singles, including the hit "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" that I think almost everyone has heard and that almost everyone should love. There are a number of excellent gems on this album, though, besides just the hit single, and I buying the full CD is well worth your money. One of CAKE's better releases, almost every song is catchy and features super-awesome lyrics full of metaphors and wordplay, courtesy of CAKE frontman John McCrea. McCrea's velvety voice shines through on all the tracks (except the instrumental "Arco Arena" of course) and I think the vocal performance is what endears me to CAKE the most (excellent lyrics and awesome bass lines are also big selling points). Whether McCrea is actually singing or sort of rapping/vocalizing makes no difference; he is talented enough to make even rap sound good.

The album opens with "Opera Singer". This is a good fun-in-the-sun summer song with pounding drum machine and sweet meandering guitar lines funky trumpet. There's nothing really special about the song, but it's fun nonetheless.

"Meanwhile, Rick James..." is the second track and is a melancholy song drowning in confusing metaphors and symbolisms. What the heck does "Fawn, Joe, and Tootsie are out on a wire/Lettuce-toothed junkies are full of desire" mean anyway? Not a big Rick James fan myself, I don't know any of his back story, but John McCrea claims to have written this song before ol' Ricky went crazy and became a druggie kidnapper and rapist. He seems to have predicted Ricky's future, then, because it mentions his drug addictions ("Swim in your kidney, kidney shaped pool/Scratching at the bottom for another clue") and his controversies with women pretty accurately.

"Shadow Stabbing" is an awesome song that embodies summer. It's light and bouncy but not quite "poppy". The funky guitar at the beginning is my favorite part, although the melody is pretty freakin' awesome too.

"Short Skirt/Long Jacket" is possibly CAKE's biggest hit, with contenders in "Rock 'N' Roll Lifestyle" and "The Distance". There's a good reason why it's a hit, though: Because it's freaking amazing. Full of wordplay and lists of absurd qualities that McCrea wants in his girl, this one is an instant classic. Great bass, nice overdriven guitar, and sweet trumpet make the music awesome; McCrea's awesome lyrics and light rap make the vocals amazing. My favorite lines are "I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity/Who uses a machete to cut the red tape/With fingernails that shine like justice/and a voice that is dark like tinted glass". Those lyrics are just so ridiculously hilarious that they get me every time. What the heck does justice look like? What does tinted glass sound like? And I can totally see this ideal girl hacking her way through rules and regulations without a care in the world, as if she was taking a machete to them. It's awesome.

The next few songs are pretty good. "Commissioning a Symphony in C" is pretty fun (funny thing is, it's not really in the key of C. The chorus is in C, but the verses and bridge modulate to F) but nothing special, and the instrumental "Arco Arena" is actually kind of boring, although it makes for some nice filler.

"Comfort Eagle" is a hard-rock Indian-influences song that's pretty sweet. The lyrics are lashing out against the music industry and comparing it to some trashy cheap religion that gives out trinkets in exchange for loyalty. It's pretty cool, and it's fun to sing along with the "Calling you DUDE!" parts.

The last four songs are all really nicely-built songs full of good lyrics. "Love You Madly" especially is a good song about wanting to love a girl without all the crap that comes with relationships like unreasonable commitments and commercialism-laced holidays. Other than that, none of the other songs are tremendously note-worthy.

Most of the songs on the album are just part of the wash and they're not specifically stand-out songs, but the particular "wash" of the Comfort Eagle album is set at a surprisingly high standard. None of the songs are weak, but few of them are particularly strong singles-worthy songs. CAKE is not about being amazing rockin' musicians that kick butt and take names every time they pick up their instruments, CAKE is about making good music and having fun. CAKE is the ultimate lounge band, and they show it. This is not music to perform covers of at a rock concert (with the exception of "Short Skirt/Long Jacket"), but it's excellent music to listen to when you're just hanging out or driving down the road. I don't know what qualities make a good "summer album" but this one had that label jump into my head from the first time I listened to it, and to me it feels like it fits that label perfectly.

Make Room, Weezer!

2009-02-16T22:48:00.001-07:00

Bringing you yet another review of an emerging artist, the artist I'm spotlighting today is the band "Switches". They're a British band who has only been around long enough to release one EP and a full-length album. I'll review their album farther down the page, as part of the emerging-artist spotlight.

Switches play energetic powerpop with mixes of other, older genres laced throughout. They're not far removed from Weezer, although they turn the rock meter up a little bit higher than the Weez boys. Switches are very big fans of Weezer, though, drawing inspiration from the Blue Album and Pinkerton and the Green Album, as well as going to one of the famed Weezer Hootenannies this past year. The individual members of Switches have very eclectic music tastes, from 80's pop to 60's bop to Britpop and etc. etc. The prominent genre is powerpop, but there are many brilliant little genre shifts throughout their songs.

Switches' first album is titled "Lay Down The Law". While not very musically new or unique, it's a fun rockin' ride all the way through, with few dead moments and no real filler tracks. Right from the starting gate, with "Drama Queen", Switches set the rocking-out standard and they keep it for most of the album. There are a few boring moments in "Snakes And Ladders" but the track has been slowly growing on me, mostly because of the great vocal parts. The title track, "Lay Down The Law" should have been a massive summer hit (it was still a summer hit, but not on a huge scale). Kind of inane lyrics and a great rockin' feel keep this song marching forward all the way until it ends all too soon. Despite the strong face that "Lay Down The Law" showed, the next track doesn't disappoint or feel like filler. "Coming Down" is an excellent song sung in the Ric Ocasek/Cars style and it's great. The album slows down for "The Need To Be Needed" and features some great falsetto by singer/lead guitar Matt Bishop. The next tracks, "Message From Yuz" and "Every Second Counts" are fairly uneventful, although the killer hook in "Message From Yuz" and the vocals in "Every Second Counts" both deserve mentioning. "Step Kids In Love" is a great piano rocker with some very dark pounding piano at the beginning and some weird plinking later on. "Lovin' It" is kind of a boring song but you forget all about its mediocrity when "Killer Karma" comes on. "Killer Karma" is the best song on the album by far, with everything from a great hook to excellent lyrics and snotty vocals to an interesting rhythm that is part Latin, part one-drop reggae. The album closes with "Testify", which starts out boring but ends strong.

All in all, Switches are definitely a band to watch for in the future. Switches feel as though they're just getting comfortable with themselves as a band, and the stories from each of their members (especially Matt Bishop - playing electric guitar and overdubbing songs at age four and recording hundreds of conflicting-style songs as a teen) leave hope that they'll only get better with time. Hopefully they'll be breaking into the US music scene in full force in the next few years with a new album release that could possibly be even better than this one.

Their entire album, as well as some remixes and B-Sides, is available for streaming on MySpace Music. Seriously, it's a great resource for stuff like this.

Switches' MySpace page
Switches' official web site
Switches' official "DGC/Interscope" web site
(There are multiple Switches websites out there. The former is beautiful and brilliant and has tons of excellent information, including a full band bio. The latter is an ugly, messy, DGC/Interscope cut-and-paste band website that has more than its share of bugs and glitches and has no relevant information. I'm just linking it to make you aware of the two contrasting sites and to let you know that there is a better Switches website out there. I guess the one thing the DGC one has going for it is that there's a forum/message board/comments system, so you can leave messages for the band if you so desire.)

Step Aside, Coldplay!

2009-02-15T13:32:00.006-07:00

The new kings of melodic atmosphere rock have arrived! If only they had the exposure, I'm sure they would be able to whup Coldplay and take their spot on the top. I'm doing my part here to help it happen, I guess.

The band I'm talking about it called "Low vs Diamond" and I have been unable to stop listening to them since I discovered them about a month ago. Their sound/style is like that of Coldplay's. It's a little heavier on the rock and they have no true acoustic songs, but the music contains the same soaring melodies and the same weird atmosphere/ambience noise in the background.

They're a new band, with only a self-titled debut album, but the eleven songs on it are so great that I could listen to them for days on end (and that is not an exaggeration).

The best song on the album serves as the first track, which in most cases is a mistake, but the rest of the songs on the album are excellent enough that the order doesn't matter too much. Just don't leave "Don't Forget Sister" on repeat for too long or you'll wear a groove in your CD and then you won't be able to listen to the rest of the album.

"Don't Forget Sister" is an excellent song that builds gradually into an amazing final section. It starts out with some drums and some piano and some atmosphere and some vocals, then builds and builds into a full-out barrage of awesome alternative pop/rock and finishes with soaring melodies that you can't help singing along with. It's really no surprise that this song landed number 59 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Best Songs of 2008, even though the band still labors in relative obscurity. It's just so amazing.

The rest of the album explores other pop/rock ideas and structures. There is not much acoustic guitar on the album, and it always takes a backseat to the other instruments when there is. There's a fair amount of piano, though. No other styles are explored, so it's not an album that will satisfy everyone, but for anyone who enjoys excellent melodies and meaningful lyrics, I recommend this album. Heck, "Don't Forget Sister" itself is almost worth the cost of the entire album.

Before you purchase, you can listen to the album in its entirety on the band's MySpace page. That's a great new feature from MySpace. I love being able to listen to full albums before I make a decision of whether or not to buy the album. It's great, and you should give it a try with artists that you enjoy as well as new artists that you've discovered.

Low vs Diamond's MySpace page
Low vs Diamond's official website

Happy Weezer Day!

2009-02-14T23:41:00.002-07:00

I guess we'll get the 2009 archives started up now, with this first post of mine in the new year. I have really neglected my blog lately because I don't really use it for small personal updates, and my posts about other things are generally big and long. I just haven't sat down and typed up a big long blog post in a while. My Twitter account is very active, however, and if you want more poojalooba_cow, I suggest you folllow me on Twitter rather than checking up on this blog frequently, because this blog's update schedule is anything but frequent. It might possibly be getting a little busier in the next little while, because I've got some ideas for content that I can blog about. I want to do some CD reviews and some Emerging Artist profiles, and I'll slap them up here on this blog when I get around to writing them.

Anyway, today, Weezer, as a band, turns 17 years old. Sure, it's also Valentine's Day, but I prefer to remember Weezer's birthday instead of some corporate commercialist "holiday". Weezer has come a long way since their humble beginnings in "The Garage" in LA in 1992. Most of it has been good, some of it has been for the worse. I guess I'll go over a little bit of that in this post.

Also, last weekend Weezer won their first Grammy in their career - their song Beverly Hills received a Grammy nomination in 2006 for "Best Rock Song" but they honestly didn't deserve to win that because Beverly Hills is the worst song that Rivers Cuomo ever wrote (the sweet talkbox solos don't even make up for the awful rest of it). This time, they really did deserve the Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video - the video for Pork and Beans is hilarious and was the most-watched video on YouTube for a number of weeks. The song itself also spent eleven weeks at the top of the Billboard Modern Rock chart, but the Grammy award wasn't for the song. Maybe someday if Weezer picks up the game a little bit, someday they might win a Grammy for the actual music they perform. In my opinion, Weezer hasn't released any Grammy-worthy songs since 1996's Pinkerton album, except maybe Hold Me on the Make Believe album (but it wasn't released as a single so it didn't receive enough exposure). I still love Weezer, but their songs are not the best of the best, the cream of the crop (the exceptions are of course, Pinkerton and The Blue Album, which are absolutely amazing instead of just fun like the other Weezer albums).

Hopefully with this new "business model" that Weezer is pursuing - with every band member contributing to the songwriting and other creative processes that used to be hoarded by frontman Rivers Cuomo - the Weez boys can maybe earn back some respect from fans of the old Weezer, as well as gaining new fans and good critical reviews without falling back on tired pop formulas.

I saw Weezer in concert during their 2008 Troublemaker Tour (on October 7, 2008) and it was the most awesome thing I've ever seen. They were way better than they have ever sounded on an album, and Rivers sounded great (I'd seen live videos of Weezer before and Rivers sounded pretty bad, but he sounded excellent in concert. I also learned later that he had just recovered from a head cold. It didn't reflect in his vocal performances at all). Despite all the awesome music, one of the most excellent things at the concert was the statement that Rivers made at the end: "See you next year." That implies, in a vague and subject-to-change way, that Weezer was going to record and release another album quickly and go back on tour in 2009. I heard rumors that Weezer was scheduled to head back into the studio in November 2008, but then Brian Bell quashed that rumor and stated that Weezer had no definite future plans other than enjoying the Red Album for a while. However, recently I've heard reports, from sources very close to the band, that Weezer is working at least part-time in the studio with Jacknife Lee and that means there's possibly an album due at about the same time the Red Album came out last year, and possibly a subsequent tour. Rivers has said that he wants to tour again in 2009. I don't think he'll tour for the Red Album again (Weezer has never done two tours in between albums, except during their five-year hiatus between Pinkerton and the Green Album). I think this means that we can probably expect a Weezer album out in the second half of 2009 somewhere, and hopefully there will be some Grammy-worthy stuff on it this time!

The Newspaper Music Video

2008-11-27T00:50:00.004-07:00

About a month ago, Jman--8 and I decided it'd be fun to make a music video for one of the songs that I had written. Over the course of three days we recorded all the content, and then Jman--8 spent the better part of a month diligently working on editing the video. His efforts have finally paid off with an awesome music video that I'm very impressed with. My only complaint is that the guitars are a tiny bit out-of-sync in some parts (Jman--8 is not a musician, so he didn't have any past experience to work with). Other than that small hitch, I love the video, and I think Jman--8 did an excellent job. Visit the YouTube link or watch it embedded below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxzub9Yj2P0

Also, please visit the following links:
http://www.poojalooba.com/06_poojalooba_cow_the_newspaper.mp3 - Download the free mp3 of this song
http://www.poojalooba.com - My website
http://www.myspace.com/poojaloobacow - Official MySpace artist page
http://ilike.com/artist/poojalooba_cow - Check out all my songs on iLike
http://twitter.com/poojalooba_cow - Twitter page
http://apps.facebook.com/ilike/artist/poojalooba_cow -Support me on Facebook

Thanks for watching!

Links To Cool Stuff!

2008-11-21T18:11:00.001-07:00

I'm back after a really long break to bring you a few links to cool things. I'll start posting a little more regularly from now on, because I've got three more cool electronics projects that I'd like to write about, and I'm thinking about reviewing some of my favorite classic albums, instead of just new ones. I've also started work on a new website and am writing/recording songs feverishly, so I'll write updates about my music project as well.

For now, though, I've got a list of cool Internet stuff that you should check out.

"A Scientific Attempt To Create The Most Annoying Song Ever" -This "song" is twenty-two minutes of mind-numbing hilarity. It's not really one of the most annoying songs ever, it's one of the most hilarious. Written according to data collected in the 1990's, this song incorporates everything from country western to opera to rap to children's choirs to pipe organs and tubas. Check out the rapping opera singer and the children's choir ripping on Wal-Mart.

"Songs To Wear Pants To" - Andrew "Pants" Huang lives in Toronto and is a prolific songwriter. He writes songs as his full-time job and earns money from commission and from $0.99 downloads of his popular songs. I wish I could earn $50 - $200 per minute of music from people wanting me to write songs about anything from first loves to robot pirates and hot dog eating contests. Here's a list of a few of his songs (there are almost 400 free-to-stream songs in his archives) that demonstrate his breadth and versatility and tongue-in-cheek style. Most of his songs are free to download, but if you like one of the paid ones enough, please give the guy a buck to download it. It's his only source of income, so support the guy while getting awesome songs!

The Indie Band Survival Guide -For those looking for good advice and information on everything from recording to CD manufacturing to gigging to merchandising, The Indie Band Survival Guide has got you covered. It's just about the coolest thing ever. I've found it very useful in my own musical explorations.

Le Site Du Billou -Billou is a guy from Lyon, France and he's very very smart. He helped me set up the chat function on my old site, and I've respected him very much ever since. He speaks English well enough to be fairly clear on most of his points, but some of his sentences are worded a little weirdly and they take some thinking about before you understand them. He's an excellent HTML coder and .xml gadget-builder. His site is full of little tips and tricks for Google Page Creator, but many apply to other sites as well. His HTML/JavaScript tricks are pretty impressive, and his site is worth checking out, if just for the "Google Page Explorer" gadget that parses and reads the sitemap.xml file of almost any website (every website that has a Sitemap.xml file, at least) and can show you every single file and page attributed to that site.

Nvu/KompoZer - Nvu (pronounced "En-View", for "New View") is a simple WYSIWYG web page editor. KompoZer is the updated version with bug fixes but exactly the same user interface. It's really very easy to use and makes web page authoring quick, painless, and almost fun. You can apply all kinds of attributes to anything just with the click of a button, and easily call external sources like Flash, Applets, CSS Stylesheets, and JavaScript. Think a low-power, free Adobe Dreamweaver and you've got it. I am currently in the process of authoring my own website with the remarkable KompoZer program and I'm enjoying it immensely.

Anyway, I'll be back soon with more personalized updates and I'll get the blog rolling again.

poojalooba_cow: 2 Electronics: 0

2008-09-22T23:44:00.008-06:00

Today I scored another point against that devious being, electricity, and without using a single bead of solder or hot-glue. Using only a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, a length of wire, a roll of electric tape, and an old headphone jack, I was able to rig my outdated car cassette tape player to play audio from an iPod or other mp3 player instead. Once again, I'll provide detailed (albeit kind of poor-quality) pictures of the process and the idea behind it.

The story begins with the sudden failure of my car stereo to even power on. I let it sit for a few months without anything changing, but on a whim when I went to get the catalytic converter's heat shield fixed, I asked the mechanics to yank the stereo for me as well.

When I got my car back, I inspected the stereo. There were no problems that I could see with it - the fuses were all intact and nothing was burned out on the circuit board. I removed the pins that prevented me from pulling the stereo out of its niche so that I could insert it and remove it at my pleasure this time (it also makes it vulnerable to stereo-jackers, but who wants a ten-year old stereo console that only plays cassette tapes?).

When I plugged it back in, it powered on just fine, and the radio worked perfectly. The tape player, however, was still messed up. I'm not a fan of tapes - being a more digital-age kind of guy - so I had no use for the tape deck anyway, but I had an idea. Maybe if I could bypass the reader-head on the tape player, and insert an audio feed from say, an iPod, then I would be able to listen to anything I wanted in my outdated old car, instead of being restricted to the radio (all they ever play on the radio is crap anyway. I'm not a teenybopper who enjoys David Archuleta's "Crush" every other song, so there's no appeal for me on the radio, except maybe NPR, which is great).

The inner workings of the stereo console:

There were a few problems. The tape deck's reader head would not engage unless it genuinely thought that there was a tape inside the machine, and the tape deck refused to recognize and play a tape, and it wouldn't eject the tape once you jammed one in there.

I took the tape player out of the main console and messed around with it, determined to overcome these problems. I discovered that the reason it wouldn't eject was because a spring had popped loose, and I put it back in place so that the spring-loaded eject action would work. I discovered that it wouldn't recognize a tape because of an issue with the reader-head section jamming and not fully engaging, because of a problem with the spring-loaded eject button (they're all interrelated. They have gears and little plastic pieces that affect parts clear across the unit, all over the place. It took forever to figure out what parts affected what actions). It wouldn't play a tape because the reader-head wouldn't fully engage and the system was receiving a messed-up audio stream and decided that there couldn't be a tape in with that output.

So, with a little jiggling and clicking of parts and a lot of dumb luck, I finally snapped the reader-head and the eject mechanism back into place and everything ran smoothly. I popped it back in the unit, and it played a tape just fine. The audio was all messed up, though. It sounded as if the sound was coming from underwater - it was all warbly and tinny-sounding. I figured the reader-head was old and messed up. This didn't matter too much, because if I had my way, the reader-head would never be used again.

The tape player section of the stereo console. The eject mechanism is the black plastic face on top of the unit, the reader-head is the square metal thing on the center right with the brown strip coming from it, and the two of them were causing jams underneath the unit on the bottom left (not visible):

The reader-head communicated with the main section of the stereo console through five wires encased in plastic that ran from the reader-head and plugged into a jack on the main control board. I figured if I could find out what signals these five wires sent, I could bypass them and add my own audio instead of the audio that the reader-head would normally pick up. Since the reader-head plugged directly into a jack, I didn't have to desolder anything or cut any connections, I simply unplugged the wires from the jack and popped my own wires in instead. Through a highly scientific process called "trial and error", I discovered that the top wire was the negative lead for all four other positive leads, the next down was left-channel A-side tape audio, the next down was right-channel A-side tape audio, the next was left-channel B-side tape audio, and the farthest down was right-channel B-side tape audio. I figured it'd be way too much pain to try and configure both sides of tape audio, so I put in a left and a right channel on the A-side of the tape (the two red wires in the picture) and twisted the two negative leads from those wires together and stuck them in the communal negative port (the twisted black wires in the picture).

The reader-head and the bypassed connection. The reader-head's cables are unplugged and the red and black wires are wires that send audio signals from an external source instead of the tape player's source audio:

In order for the main console to accept audio from the reader-head, it has to believe that there's a tape in the machine for it to play, otherwise nothing will happen. This is where the dummy tape comes in. I pulled all the tape out of an old cassette, so that it would be just an empty shell. That way, the tape player wouldn't ever come to the "end" of the tape and try to switch sides (because I had no B-side audio set up, remember. If it switched sides I wouldn't be able to hear anything from my external source). The dummy tape successfully "tricked" the console into thinking that it had a tape in (because technically it did have a tape in. It just wasn't playing anything), thus engaging the reader-head (which is disconnected; it actually engages the external audio source) and amplifying and playing the signal that comes from it.

The dummy tape engaging the reader-head. Since the reader-head is unplugged, the audio is actually coming from the external audio source plugged into the red and black wires in the reader-head's place:

So, as long as there's a dummy tape in the tape player, it will continue to play whatever signals are coming from the reader-head jack, which in this case is music from my iPod. I wrapped the wires through holes in the console frame so they wouldn't come loose or short-circuit each other, then I pulled them around to the front so they'd hang out of the console and be able to have a headphone jack attached to them:

Then I slid the unit back into its niche:

It hangs out about a centimeter from where it normally would fit, because the wires are thick and don't like to be bent three directions and squashed in order to fit, but that's fine because I can now pull the entire console out with greater ease. I might need to do this because it's an old tape player and if it ever has a problem, it'll refuse to play and might jam and then I'd have to open the console up and disengage the reader-head and engage the eject mechanism manually in order to get the dummy tape working again.

This is the end product - what it looks like in my car and how it looks when it's in use. The four wires hang down and are connected to a cut-apart headphone jack that sends the right and left channels from my iPod to the right and left channels of the tape player's reader-head jack:

There is a little bit of static feedback - my guess is that it's from the sensitive amplification circuit picking up the electric "hum" of the motors running the tape player gears - but if I turn on the Dolby Noise Reduction System on the console, it effectively reduces the static to a point where it's not even noticeable (and when you're listening to music it's barely noticeable at all even without the noise reduction, the only time it's audible is between tracks). The iPod volume must also be turned almost all the way down in order for good sound quality to be preserved. Apparently after the signals are received from the reader-head, they go through some pretty hefty amplification. You can crank the console volume as much as you want, but you have to keep the iPod/external source volume down or the gain becomes too great and things sound really muddy. There's one more peculiarity: For some reason, the bass is amplified a lot more than the treble. On just normal equalizer settings, the bass is loud enough that it shakes the whole car while the treble is much quieter. Fans of hip-hop and rap might not object to this, but as a person who wants to rock out and hear the guitar chords and the singing, I'm a little put off by this. Luckily, the console has an equalizer, and if I turn the bass all the way down and the treble up a little, it sounds almost normal. If I activate my iPod's equalizer as well, and set it on the "Bass Reduction" setting, the sound is completely normal and balanced and the bass is not too heavy or overbearing. It's just right.

All in all, this project was a resounding success. I can now listen to whatever I desire whenever I drive anywhere, instead of being confined to silence or crummy radio junk. It works a lot better than one of those FM radio iPod transmitters or even one of those faux-tapes that plays your iPod through a tape (mine uses a tape also, but it's just a dummy and the real audio is a direct line in, so it's better sound fidelity). It's [just barely] not quite as good as a professionally-configured line-in port where all the circuits are built to handle an iPod/mp3 player audio signal, because I'm patching into the signal from an entirely different sort of media. The ultimate redeeming quality of this project is, of course, that it cost me absolutely NOTHING to make, and I even learned a thing or two along the way!

The Browser Of The Future

2008-09-10T17:39:00.007-06:00

Wow. I haven't posted in forever. I've been meaning to post about my new electric guitar and the homemade talkbox I made as well, but I never got around to it. I was kind of waiting for a good opportunity, like once I had finished writing a cool song with guitar/talkbox, but I only just barely did that. I'll supply some wonderful pictures of that sometime later. What I really wanted to write about right now was Google Chrome, though. Maybe the real reason I haven't posted in forever is because I was running FireFox and it was holding me back. Even upgrading to FireFox 3.0.1 wasn't nearly as amazing as switching to Google Chrome has been.

Google Chrome is a new open-source web browser released, obviously, by Google. It's main points of argument are: Why must the entire web browsing experience suffer because of one window, and why do we continue to rely on outdated scripts to run all of the high-end programs of today? So, they've made it so every tab work and process independently. This initially causes more resource drain than a normal browser would, but in the long run it's incredibly helpful in increasing loading speeds and if one tab crashes, the others continue to function fine (currently, YouTube is having troubles in one of my other tabs, but this tab works perfectly fine in the meantime). They've also re-written lots of code for JavaScript and other plugins so that they quit running like they were designed to run ten years ago and start running and functioning as we need them to now, in the 21st century, where our JavaScript does much more than play a MIDI file and show a tap-dancing banana.

The result is astounding: Google Chrome is an amazingly simplistic and intuitive browser (you thought FireFox was stripped-down, wait till you see Google Chrome). When you open a new tab, it shows a list of your recently-visited sites and a grid of your most-visited sites. Come on, those are the sites you were going to open in that tab anyway, right? It's great. Sites load really fast once they're established, web-based plugins (like Flash player and JavaScript) work really fast, the security is amazing, with a huge database of Google's sites that are not to be trusted to pull from, and I haven't been bothered by a single pop-up. Google Chrome has caught every single one. It tells you that a pop-up was blocked, and a window pops up in the bottom-right corner. You can drag it into the main window if it's like a music streaming pop-up, or you can just hit the X on the window and kill the pop-up without having to see it at all if it's advertisements or something.

This is a beta version of Google Chrome, though. The full release isn't expected until 2009, so there are a few bugs. YouTube is not quite up to scratch, and Gmail is a little sketchy occasionally, which is ironic seeing as how it's another Gmail service and they're supposed to be optimized by Chrome. For the most part, though, Google Chrome is a geek's dream come true and you can't call yourself an Internet connoiseur until you run the Internet in Google Chrome.

So, read about Google Chrome, and then download it and give it a try. Guaranteed satisfaction or your money back!

It's A Long Title For An Album That's Done All Too Soon

2008-06-19T00:29:00.004-06:00

Yesterday, Coldplay released a new album, entitled "Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends." I'm a fan of Coldplay because of their laid-back acoustic feel, but this album is decidedly more crunchy. Everything in this album, from their um, interesting choice of album art, to the untidy scrawl of the album name, to the sound of their first single, is more in-your-face and more aggressive and rockin'. I like acoustic music, but I like good rock also. There's always old Coldplay (and plenty of tracks on this album) that I can turn to when I'm feeling mellow, but it's good to hear some rock from the boys.

As with the Weezer Red Album, I'm going to listen to this album for the first time right now, and I'll write my impressions of each song as they come up. I'm not going to put a lyrical excerpt from every song this time. I'll just put lyrics that are catchy or that stand out to me.

Once again, I got the pre-order iTunes edition, so I have two additional bonus tracks: Lost? and the acoustic version of Lovers In Japan. I'll still write about those, but keep in mind that they might not be available to you.

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1. Life In Technicolor
This is an instrumental track. It starts out with chiming sounds and a quick repetitive riff underneath. Next, a plucky stringed instrument (doesn't sound like a guitar...) comes in. More and more layers are added to the mix until it's a pretty good rockin' song, but it contains the classic Coldplay atmospheric noises in the background as well. There are yells by Chris Martin, does it count as instrumental then, even if the voices aren't saying anything?

2. Cemeteries of London
This track bleeds right in from Life In Technicolor. It's got a dark ambient feel, and Chris Martin singing in a weird key signature. It doesn't sound like a minor (aeolian) scale, maybe it's phrygian? Quickly-picked acoustic guitar and slapping drums come in. There's a weird vocal harmony part, and then an electric guitar solo with a voice not unlike the sound on Coldplay's "Talk" comes in. I think this song is about seeing evidence of God in everyday objects. It ends with a nice little sliding-down piano riff that didn't fit with anything else on the song.

3. Lost!
Hard-pounding drums and handclaps, plus pipe organ make the beginning of this song very distinctive. Tambourine and more organ layers come in for the chorus, and an electric guitar comes in halfway through the chorus. Falls into familiar Coldplay territory about two minutes in: Mellow vocal harmonies over atmospheric ambience. There's a distorted guitar solo right after, though, but the harmonies are kept in and hummed this time. This song was way too short. It was amazing, but wasn't long enough.

"You might be a big fish/in a little pond/doesn't mean you've won"

4. 42
Obviously, "42" refers to Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, where it is proclaimed that "42" is the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything. I wonder how this song is going to reference that. There's a weird piano part and then of course, the ambience comes in, but that's okay. I like this kind of ambience, where it's setting a mood and underlaying other things, but I don't like ambience where it's just noise for the sake of noise, like some of the stuff Pink Floyd does. Two minutes in, some kind of weird instrument comes in, like a cross between a trumpet and an electric guitar. This instrument leads into a happy, upbeat second section with a drumbeat and guitar riff that sounds a lot like New Order or The Cure could have done it. It goes back to the original section for the last two lines, and that ruins it. I also did not detect much of an idea about why "42" is the title.

"You thought you might be a ghost/you didn't get to heaven but you made it close"

5. Lovers In Japan / Reign Of Love
This song continues the feel of actually belonging to New Order. There are lots of guitar parts, some acoustic, some ambient, and some fuzzy electric riffs. It makes for a nice mix. There's a plinky piano part in the middle of the first song, it sounds like they put the microphone right next to the "bridge" of the piano where the strings don't vibrate as much and generate a plucky sound. They could be synthesizing it, of course. Lovers In Japan is a very good, happy, upbeat song, but it's kind of inane. It doesn't stick in your memory, because the riffs are too long and the sections change too often. I like it, but I'm not likely to be humming it anytime soon. It'll take a lot longer to memorize all the ins and outs of this song.

Lovers In Japan ends on a big, loud, fuzzy guitar tone, and Reign Of Love fades in right over the top of it. It's got some sweet rolling piano parts in the foreground, with weird percussion noises in the background. I have no idea how these guys recorded all these weird sounds. The rolling piano continues clear to the end and makes a nice finish to the track.

6. Yes (With Hidden Track: Chinese Sleep Chant)
Some very weird noises start out this song. Chris Martin's voice is very heavy in the mix, taking up all the space and leaving not much else able to be heard. It sounds like they put the microphone right in his mouth when recording, it's so resonant. Someone in the band (or I guess it could be someone else...) is good with a violin. It can't have been synthesized, because there are sounds of fingers fretting strings and the box sticking across the strings, making them resonate. It's a quick, low, choppy riff, and it sounds cool. Most of the songs so far have been comprised of a few chords in the background and funky riffs going back and forth between instruments. It's not a bad way to write music, but it sounds a little too... progressive for me. Coldplay is not supposed to be progressive rock, they're supposed to be mellow, beautiful, flowing arrangements filled with emotion and thought-provoking lyrics. I don't like it a ton, but they pull it off pretty well, I guess.

The second song on this track makes up for the really heavy voice in the song before it. There's a fairly heavy (for Coldplay, that is) guitar chopping away at chords and a bass creating a flowing background canvas, and Chris Martin's falsetto is shoved to the very back of the mix, as if it's... I dunno, as if the music were a big waterfall and he was trying to sing from behind the waterfall...

7. Viva la Vida
This song has made the rounds around the modern-rock charts and has remained one of the top-downloaded songs on iTunes since the very day it was available about three months ago. If you haven't heard it yet, there's something wrong, because it's everywhere. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that. It's a great little ditty, played mostly on orchestra instruments (including an upright string bass, none of this imitation electric bass stuff) and concert percussion, not a drum set. It creates a great feeling. The song is about a dethroned king, and thoughts of kings bring back memories of the olden days, and the olden days bring back thoughts of classical music, and this song captures that feel of good ol' classical music, without being classical.

8. Violet Hill
This is the band's first single, and it's done the rounds on iTunes and YouTube and the rock charts as well. It definitely takes the top place on the list of Coldplay Songs With Heavily Distorted Electric Guitar. It's very... crunchy. That word has been used a million times all over the place to describe this song, but that's the only word that fits. It's got very distinctive, rockin' guitars, but they're not very loud in the mix. The lesser-distorted guitars playing ambience take top spot, and the heavy chords come in quieter. It makes for a cool, top-heavy song, and it's no wonder that it's such a hit.

"When the future's architectured/by a carnival of idiots on show/you'd better lie low"

9. Strawberry Swing
Sounds as if they recorded this all together on some concert hall stage, instead of overdubbing tracks in a studio. It's got reverberating handclaps and drums that are giving off a much more rounded sound than they otherwise would in a studio... I dunno, maybe it's just a microphone trick. This song has great folk-style guitar riffs leaning a little bit to the right-side channel of the stereo mix, while the guitar chords come in later, leaning to the left, balancing out the song right as you start to feel a little off-balance. This is kind of an inane, silly, happy pop song, but it's great, and people will love it. It's upbeat, and without a trace of negativity or unhappiness. Since many Coldplay songs deal with loss or insecurity, this is a very welcome change-up for their usual musical theme.

"It's such a perfect day"

10. Death and All His Friends
The beginning reminds me of stuff done by The Fray: quiet, fuzzy, rolling piano and a single voice. Coldplay adds a mellow guitar riffs into it as well. The piano starts to pound the chords together instead of rolling over them, and the guitar riffs gets a little heavier, then comes a heavy one-measure fill, and a perfect pop song is born. The drum beat is the epitome of pop, and the piano is banging out bright chords in a syncopated pattern, and the guitar is drilling into a repetitive riff. Multiple voicals come in for a few great lines, then fade away to let the piano resume rolling and slowing down to finish off the song. Actually, I guess the song is only about halfway done. The piano fades into total silence for a few seconds, then another completely different song comes up, still under the same title. It's got rolling guitar tones reminiscent of the album opener, Life In Technicolor, but this time with words, albeit few of them. This is the last song on the official album, and all three sections of it would be great stand-alone album finishers.

"And/in the end/we lie awake/and we dream of makin' our escape"

11. Lost?
Not to be confused with Lost!, this is Lost?, and it's a more reflective, questioning version of the other one. Even though the lyrics of both songs are exactly the same, the music makes them sound much different. In Lost!, the heavy beat and quick tempo, it sounds as if Chris is singing about being already lost and the hopelessness of things. In Lost?, the slower tempo and the mellow piano chords without any other major music creates a feeling of being in denial about being lost. He sings as if he still has some hope of finding something or being able to get out of the hopelessness, instead of giving up and making the best of the little he has, like on Lost!. It's odd, but the different versions really do carry very different emotions with them, proving that lyrics are not everything.

"Just because I'm losin', doesn't mean I'm lost/doesn't mean I'll stop/doesn't mean I will cross"

12. Lovers In Japan (Acoustic Version)
Fifteen seconds into this song (essentially enough to get a plucky-sounding intro off the ground), and I'm already digging this song a lot. It's not just straight-up major guitar chords, like so many "acoustic" versions of things are. There are plenty of the atmospheric Coldplay sounds here, mostly supplied by a very far away tambourine and a mellow bass line, but there are plenty of very interesting acoustic guitar noises. Dissonances, sustained chords, and silly little repetitive riffs make this feel very... organic. Down-to-earth. Not as produced as all of the other songs on the album. Real. Something like that, I guess. Ends on a very high sustained note that sounds like a voice but is way too high for any normal human being to hit. This tone slowly fades into black, and that finishes up the album.

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In conclusion, I'll say that Coldplay has created another brilliant album full of songs I'm sure to enjoy again and again. There are some problems, some things I didn't like, and just some weird things in general, but those are just small wrinkles in the otherwise smooth, glassy surface of the music. Some of the minor things I have taken issue with include:

-The atmospheric noises: Sure, ambience is great, and it can carry great emotion and can be great for setting the mood of a piece, but when every song has weird noises in the background and constant, high-pitched sighing things, it gets just a little bit old. It seems as if Coldplay is using the ambience as too much of a gimmick, and not a thing to be taken seriously and used sparingly in order to achieve the full effect. It's nothing major, but it detracts from the overall experience by being ever-present and demanding. If they would remove the weird noises in a few places, it would leave their music much bore open and raw and exposed, and that can carry more emotion than ambience will ever be able to.

-The weird multiple-songs-in-one-track idea: Sure, maybe a bonus track at the end of the album is okay, or maybe some kind of short song placed at the end of another long song is acceptable, but when you have seven songs rolled into three tracks, it's a little annoying. I will most probably be clipping these songs all apart and re-labeling them as individual tracks, just so I don't have to skip through things or remember time positions so I can jump right to the song I want to hear. When the last track contains three completely different songs, it could mean one of many things. You can be telling people that you had so many great ideas that you couldn't choose a good album finisher, which leaves you seeming pretty arrogant. You could be saying that you don't know how to pick a good album finisher and haven't given the matter proper thought or production time, which I doubt is the problem here, because this album feels almost too produced, (which is just another very small issue that I had, but not even big enough to merit its own paragraph). Or, it might say that you're trying to be too gimmicky with your music and trying to be clever or funny or quirky, in which case you end up not being taken seriously. Either way, it was kind of lame to stuff three songs into the last track, as well as hiding two other "bonus tracks" throughout the rest of the album. The extra songs are all good songs, but it would be nicer to at least have them out in the open as individual tracks so that you can listen to them and their companions separately and at your leisure.

All in all, though, it's a very good album, full of emotion and thought, and will have me listening to it on repeat for a long time to come. Clocking in at just over 53 minutes, it's not really a short album, but it's such a great musical journey that you'll never realize you've been lost for an hour in the land of Coldplay. 8 out of 10.

The Greatest Album That Ever Lived?

2008-06-03T03:18:00.008-06:00

Weezer's Red Album was just barely released! I haven't listened to it yet, though, but I'm going to be listening to it all night, that's for sure, and I'm going to listen to it for the very first time right now and write my impressions on each of the tracks. They might be edited later on when I'm more familiar with the tracks, but I'll make a note of that, so that my first impressions are also preserved.

No, I'm not proclaiming that Weezer's Red Album is the greatest album ever. It's just a pun on one of the tracks on the album. It's a very good rockin' ride of an album, though, and it departs a little bit more from Weezer's traditional power pop sound, which is by no means a bad thing. I'll go through and listen to the album, and write my views on each song as I go through them. I got the iTunes Deluxe Version Pre-Order, so I have sixteen tracks. The standard Weezer Red Album that is available in stores has only the first ten tracks, the Weezer Red Album Deluxe Version available on iTunes has the first fourteen, the fifteenth track comes with an iTunes purchase of the entire album simultaneously, and the sixteenth track is an iTunes exclusive track that only is available if you pre-ordered the album. That said, some of the tracks I write about will not be available to you (although I'm sure if you look hard enough, you'll be able to find them on the Internet, and I'm not saying any more than that...) Anyway, here goes:

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1. Troublemaker
Not quite a power-pop song, but definitely fairly mainstream. Nice bright guitars. Funny, cool chorus, even if it doesn't mean much. There isn't a whole lot about "troublemaking" in this song, but it's still really cool.

"I'm a troublemaker, never been a faker/doin' things my own way, never givin' up/I'm a troublemaker, not a double-taker/I don't have the patience to keep it on the up"

2. The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations On A Shaker Hymn)
This song is EPIC! I love it. It starts out with a crowd cheering and mellow piano, then goes into a rock-rap section, and after a verse of that, the mellow piano comes in with the rock-rap. Next is an acoustic section with Rivers Cuomo singing in falsetto, then an INCREDIBLE vocal chorus section with the entire band. Back to another acoustic section with higher falsetto, then a straight-up rock section. Brian Bell singing cool backup vocals. An almost swing-style section with offbeat, syncopated drums and guitar. Back to more straight-rock, then a plunky guitar part with Rivers speaking metaphorically about life as a stage. Another vocal chorus (not quite as amazing as the first one, but still darn good). A last rock section, and a great ending chord, sung by the band. Amazing harmonies, this song is excellent.

"After the havoc that I'm gonna wreak/no more words will critics have to speak/I've got the answers to the tangled knot/sleep tight in your cot"

3. Pork And Beans
Great power-poppy song, definitely a "single" sound. The music video is currently the most popular on YouTube, with over 5,000,000 views since May 23rd when it debuted. It's not my favorite song, because it's full of all the standard power chords, but it's got a good hook and nice lyrics. (Don't forget, you should watch the music video for Pork And Beans through this link to help me out in the contest for a guitar signed by Weezer!)

"I ain't gonna wear the clothes that you like/I'm fine and dandy with the me inside/one look in the mirror and I'm tickled pink/I don't give a hoot about what you think"

4. Heart Songs
Cool acoustic intro, with bass drum beats like a heart beating. Rivers is singing about all of his musical influences, from Gordon Lightfoot to Cat Stevens to the Beatles to Iron Maiden to Michael Jackson and Nirvana. It's a cool laid-back song with nice bell sounds. Heavy section when he mentions Nirvana's Nevermind. Synthed strings section that is a perfect foil for the heavy building guitar part. Excellent vocal counterpart breakdown with the band singing the chorus at half speed and Rivers overlaying it with repeated sections.

"These are my heart songs/they never feel wrong/and when I wake, for goodness' sake/these are the songs I keep singin'"

5. Everybody Get Dangerous
Sounds like a car speeding by and breaking glass, then some sweet chugging guitar comes in. Rivers is "singing" rap-rock about being bad as a kid. A song akin to "Troublemaker" but with more admissions to being a bad kid. Very good chugging guitars and fast vocals, reminds me of Anthony Kiedis' (Red Hot Chili Peppers) singing style. A long "bridge" section without the chugging guitars. Rivers holds out "place" for about a minute while the rest of the band comes in with other parts, then it's back to the march of the awesome guitar! The guitar ends suddenly and is replaced with a really sweet drum solo with falsetto yells on top of it, and this fades into the next song.

"And what will we say when our kids come to us/and ask with a smile on their face/hey, Dad my friends got some new ninja swords/is it cool if we slash up this place?"

6. Dreamin'
Another epic song, happy and upbeat. Cool ambient intro, standard pop-rock beginning, then fades into a cool mellow section with Brian singing lead and Rivers singing counterpart. A little section with some cool guitars in the middle that make you think it's going to go back into the heavy rock, but then it heads back into mellow counterparts again. Eventually, the pop rock comes back in underneath the counterpart and they make an excellent combination, until the straight-rock last four lines take over to finish up the song.

"I'm dreamin' in the morning, I'm dreamin' all through the night/and when I'm dreamin' I know that it's all right/I'm dreamin' in the evening, I'm dreamin' all through the day/and when I'm dreamin' I know that it's okay"

7. Thought I Knew
It's got a techno sound to the beginning, then comes in with an acoustic guitar and bass. This is a song that Brian wrote for his band, The Relationship, and he sings lead in the re-done Weezer version. This is originally a really dark-sounding minor key song, but Weezer has made it a light pop ballad. Brian has a very good voice. I like it, and it's a fresh change from Rivers (not that he's a bad singer, but it's way cool when bands have other people sing lead). Got a cool wandering guitar solo (first one on the album...) through the last chorus and breakdown.

"Sorry, if I caused you pain/sorry, I forgot your name/sorry, but you left me out in the rain"

8. Cold Dark World
Scott Shriner wrote the music and sang for this song, and it's got a really cool bass line (of course, seeing as how he is the bassist), keeps chugging and is just loud enough to be heard but not be overbearing. This is a really dark, almost creepy song, but it's so cool. It's another fresh change for Weezer, and this album is looking to be full of those. Cool synths and distorted vocals, plus really cool clicks on the percussion track, offbeat and perfectly fitting with the song.

"Angel girl in a cold dark world/I’m gonna be your man/angel girl in a cold dark world/I’ll make you understand"

9. Automatic
Drummer Patrick Wilson wrote this song, and frontman Rivers played drums, while Pat played guitar and sang. He's got a really great voice, deeper, throatier, and broader than Rivers'. Pat wrote it about loving his family. It's got really chugging guitars and a really sweet guitar solo (the second on the album, and it's really short, and this is the second-to-last song on the "official" album. Apparently guitar solos aren't what Weezer focused on this time around). Nice vocal harmonies. The guitar is really distorted and sounds way cool.

"When do I lay down/and get to see the world inside your eyes?/how can I reach out/and hold on to the joy you’ve got inside?"

10. The Angel And The One
Slow ballad-type song at the beginning. Rivers sings this song kind of emotionlessly, but all the emotion is still translated right through to you through the music, which is dark and sad as well as hopeful and promising as well. It gets happier about two minutes into the song, and Rivers adds some emotion to his voice. There's a part with standard poppy power chords, but they're fuzzed out and shoved to the back of the mix in favor of the ambient synthesizers and the vocals, and it creates a really cool effect. The vocals end at about five minutes but there's still two minutes of music left after that. It fades down quiet and then starts to build back up. Slightly dissonant and very mellow guitar chords and synths make a great finisher to the official album, but I'm glad I've got six songs to go.

"I’ve reached a higher place/that no one else can make a claim in/I’ll take you there my friend/I’m reaching out my hand, so take it/We are the angels and we are the ones that are praying"

11. Miss Sweeney
This song is hilariously unconventional. It starts out with a big sustained synth and a guy talking over an office intercom. Rivers comes in rapping as if he's continuing the message of the manager on the intercom, discussing business with Miss Sweeney, then comes in with a love-struck chorus. He then apologizes for the chorus and says he doesn't know what came over him, then goes back to talking business, and then comes into another chorus and admits that he's falling for... his secretary, and how much she means to him. It's a really sweet song though, and it's got some great parts. A choppy acoustic guitar plays during the verses and the breakdown, and there's a great bright, not-too-distorted electric guitar part in the choruses.

"Girl, you make the rain clouds disappear/the sun always shines when you’re near/I’m waiting until you love me"

12. Pig
This is a song that Rivers wrote about the life of a pig. He grows up with his family, finds a wife, has children, and is slaughtered. Fans loved Rivers' demo so much that it is in the album by popular demand (I suspect that Rivers liked this song, also, because it's amazing). This song starts with great foreign-sounding drums, like a shaker and an snare drum with the snare turned half-off, plus lots of hand claps and percussive strums with the acoustic guitar. Rivers and Brian narrate the life of the pig, Rivers semi-rapping the lyrics and Brian singing the falsetto harmonies that used to be Matt Sharp's job. Nice piano chords come in and synth strings and make it incredible. I think I detect a bit of clarinet as well, and I know Rivers can play the clarinet, so it may be possible (EDIT: I do believe it's actually a harmonica). Super-distorted guitar and bass at the bottom of the mix make it powerful as well as quaint and hilarious. If you didn't know the title, you'd think it was just a song about human life, until the very end where Rivers discusses getting slaughtered and giving thanks to Farmer Pete for giving him food and taking care of him. It drops down back to laid-back acoustic guitar and slow drums, and then is over all too soon.

"I’d like to thank Farmer Pete/for bringing me scraps of food that I could eat/he always had a smile on his face/he didn’t want to think of this day"

13. The Spider
Another song about animals having to die, but not entirely. There is a spider in the story, but the main gist of this song is the idea that we don't have much time before our lives are gone and we need to make the most of them and not be afraid of what might happen. Rivers' vocals sound like he sang on a stage and put the microphone at the back of the audience. There are nice ambient synths in the background. There's a lot of acoustic guitar on this album, more than all the rest of the Weezer albums combined. I might have to get some tabs for these songs, because I like to play along with Weezer, but if the Weezer music is acoustic and I'm playing along on an acoustic, it'll sound so much better.

"There’s a spider in the drain and he’s feeling pain/and he doesn’t want to die any more than you or I/he’s struggling to live but he doesn’t have much time/any more than you or I, you or I"

14. King
Scott sings lead on this song, because Rivers didn't like it but Scott fought for it to be put in the Deluxe Version. Scott sounds like he could be a country singer or something. He's got a deep, scratchy voice that sounds great. Amazing reverberating synths come in after the acoustic guitar has been playing alone for a while. There's also a lot of synth work in this album, and other Weezer albums have hardly had any. It's nice to hear them branching out from the standard rock band instruments, but it seems almost that they're using them as too much of a gimmick instead of enhancing their music. The synths sound great, but they're unnecessary in some sections of the album. Later on in this song, a really distorted bass comes in, which is an interesting combination, because the acoustic guitar is still playing mellow Spanish-style chords. Good, original drum beat with more than a two-count repeat rate. This song is like a mix of classical Spanish music, New Wave synthesized stuff, and hard rock. It's way cool.

"You see I own this town. You best not come around/if you wanna get by, then cool it down/if you wanna start something, know one thing: I’m king"

15. It's Easy
Country-pop acoustic guitar work at the beginning of this song. It sounds like Brian singing (it definitely isn't Rivers). Really cool acoustic bass guitar sounds in this song. It would be way cool if Scott played an upright string bass, but an acoustic bass guitar is pretty cool also. Excellent acoustic guitar solo. I really need the guitar tabs to some of these songs, because I'm really digging the acoustic guitar stuff. This was a sweet country-style song (even though I don't specifically like country) with awesome riffs in it. Great break from power-pop and power chords for Weezer.

"Gimme time, give it up/draw the line, raise the cup (EDIT: I'm pretty sure "raise the gun" is the actual lyric, and it fits more with the song's idea as well [EDIT EDIT: I guess it actually is "raise the cup," even though "raise the gun" fits so much better])/it's easy to be mean (EDIT: "not to be mean")"

16. I Can Love
Sounds like a poor-quality garage band recorded with an eight-track. Rivers has a great falsetto, but this is some kind of weird jam of a song that could be cool if it were properly mixed. I can't hear enough of the parts (I guess I'm just not used to pre-production demos). This is the iTunes exclusive pre-order track, and it's pretty cool, but I don't like the poor audio quality. I guess it's not poor quality, so much as it is a few microphones set up around the band jamming, with no post-recording production or anything like that. Sweet twangy guitar riffs, though. You can hear Rivers giving instructions as they play the bridge. "Six times", et cetera.

"I didn't hope for much, I was used to how things were/even though I was not sure, you'd say/I was throwin' it all away and I never learned to heal"

--------------------------------------------------
In conclusion, I really like the Red Album. It's a great turn away from power pop for Weezer, and it's an amazing musical journey. Sure, there's nothing wrong with power pop, but there's only so much you can do with twelve power chords, right? Exactly. The acoustic guitar, the synths, the alternate singers and the unconventional song forms all combine to make a completely original album full of great songs that you'll want to listen to again and again until you have squeezed every last drop of amazingness from them (which will take an incredibly long time). 9 out of 10.

Weezer's Pork And Beans!

2008-05-30T20:35:00.004-06:00

Hey, everybody (if there is anybody who actually reads this blog), go watch Weezer's new Pork And Beans video on YouTube, but please do it via this link: http://www.weezerjonas.com/CDA5240F87574D8387EBDE8FEC733210/tracklink.asp?guid=23E1D36BEFE44585A2786E91A1214E59
This link will take you directly to YouTube, but it'll also add a point to my profile and put me in the running to win a guitar signed by the members of Weezer. How cool is that?

So, if you'd be so kind, help me out and click on the link above. You don't even have to watch the video if you don't like Weezer, just click the link and then close the tab. It'll still add a point to my score.

If you help me win the guitar, I promise to share it with you, through online pictures, and awesome electric guitar music on my music project. It'll be a gift that gives back to you!

What are you waiting for? Click that link RIGHT NOW!

Links To Cool Stuff!

2008-04-14T16:14:00.002-06:00

I'm back again, after gathering up a bunch of cool things to share over the last month. Here goes:

Snopes - http://snopes.com Snopes is an online urban legend-busting site, kind of like unto MythBusters, but with all of its information readily available online. You can find anything you want, from urban legends to virus scares to presidential candidate myths to forward emails debunked. It's amazing, and anything I read anything suspicious or receive a false-sounding email, I immediately check Snopes. It hasn't let me down yet.

FreeRice.com - http://freerice.com I was very suspicious about this one, until Snopes backed it up! FreeRice.com is an actual charity site that really does donate twenty grains of rice for every words problem you get right. The rice is paid for through the advertising at the bottom of the site, and it really does go to starving children. Try it out! It's good for your vocabulary and it's good for those who are less fortunate than yourself.

Twitter - http://twitter.com This is like a mini-blog that only lets you post 140 characters per post, maximum. It's great for little updates on projects that you're working on. Mine is http://twitter.com/poojalooba_cow

The White Stripes - This band is absolutely wonderful. Jack White on vocals, guitar, and piano, and Meg White on drums and backing vocals. Their sound is simple, stripped-down and raw, but it's amazing. Everyone and their dog has heard "Seven Nation Army" but you should try out their other stuff, such as "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)" or "Icky Thump" or "Blue Orchid" or "My Doorbell" or "The Hardest Button To Button". Heck, just buy all of their albums and you can thank me later. http://www.whitestripes.com

Dave Barry's Blog - Dave Barry was a humorous column writer for the Miami Herald for a number of years (alas, he no longer is), as well as a pulitzer-prize winner for his books. He's quite possibly the funniest guy in the history of the universe, and he's got a blog, which he updates about eight times a day. Most of his updates are links to bizarre news items, but quite a few of them are hilarious little tidbits that he has written or thought about, or et cetera. http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog

Bathtime In Clerkenwell - http://poojaloobacow.googlepages.com/bathtimeinclerkenwell.wmv None of the videos on YouTube had decent sound quality, so that's a link to my own site's upload of it, which has much better sound quality. I know I've mentioned this before, but if you liked the song, you can download the music video from my site, for your own personal enjoyment, without having to be tethered to the Internet to watch it. All credit for this movie and the music behind it goes, of course, to Alex Budovsky (animator) and Stephen Coates (composer).

Rants Against Humanity #2

2008-04-14T14:26:00.002-06:00

This topic is not as angry or serious as my previous Rant Against Humanity, but it still can be a very annoying part of certain people, and so I am going to complain about it. Today's Rant is on "Your Mom" jokes.

Come on, people! Napoleon Dynamite was FOUR YEARS AGO! "Your mom" jokes weren't even funny back then, either! Lay off the stupidity and find something genuinely funny to say!

Now, I'm not saying that all "your mom" jokes aren't worth their time. As long as it's not crude or rude, but retains a certain amount of hilarity, I'm fine with that. The thing I'm complaining about is people who think that anything with the "your mom" prefix attached is automatically hilarious. NOT SO! All it really does is make you sound like a third-grader. Unless you are a third-grader. Then it's acceptable, but you better change your ways next year!

And, that's all I have to say about it. This is one of the shortest posts I've done in a while, but that's all I have to say about "your mom" jokes and how pathetically lame they are. If you are one of those "your mom" jokers, please take a moment to think about your habit, and possibly maybe contemplate changing your ways. Honestly, it would do the whole world a favor. It might even extend your lifespan, too, because if you keep at it, someone is bound to strangle you, or gag you with a dirty sock, or poison your meal, or run over you with a steamroller, or accidentally push you out of a moving vehicle.

Lastly, your mom makes stupid "your mom" jokes!

Both Familiar And New

2008-04-06T14:53:00.012-06:00

First off, you'll have to go to http://www.urbanfonts.com and download this font here if you want to read this blog post in the right font. It's in weezerFont in honor of them. It's an awesome font! I guess if you don't download that font, it'll just appear in the regular Blogger font, but how can you resist a font based on the weezer typeset? (Hey, that's a cool question mark! ?????)

There has been lots of information concerning weezer's sixth studio album recently, and I thought I'd add my two cents to the bank of thousands of people blogging about it.

According to weezer.com, the new weezer album will "very likely" be released on June 17th, 2008. It will "very likely" be self-titled "weezer", just like their 1994 "Blue Album" and their 2001 "Green Album". It will "very likely" be a red color theme, thus the "Red Album" (hence the red-ified past weezer albums above [yes, I was the Photoshopper. Yes, I didn't to very well. Yes, they look cool anyway]). The album's first single is "confirmed" as "Pork And Beans". Other songs "possibly" on the album include "Everybody Get Dangerous", "Automatic", "Ms. Sweeney", a "12 letter word starting with T and ending with R" (my money's on "Troublemaker"), "I'm the Greatest Man That Ever Lived", and "Daydreamer".

I can't wait for this album. I've been an all-out weezer junkie for about a year now, and I own their Blue Album, Maladroit, and Make Believe, as well as selected songs from the Green Album and Pinkerton (such as "Hash Pipe", "Island In The Sun", and "El Scorcho"). I fully plan on buying the rest of Pinkerton and Green, as well as buying the "Red Album" the very day it comes out.

If you haven't heard of weezer, or haven't liked their singles very much, you really should give them a chance. Their clever lyrics, their amazingly catchy riffs, and their energetic power pop style has totally endeared them to me in just a few short months. Good thing they're signed with Geffen for at least two more albums!

If "Beverly Hills" is too repetitive and lame for your style, if "Buddy Holly" is getting old, you should dig deeper into weezer's albums and discover some of their other gems. Honestly, the best weezer songs were never even considered as singles. Songs like My Name Is Jonas, Surf Wax America, Across The Sea, Butterfly, Don't Let Go, Slob, Burndt Jamb, Hold Me, The Other Way, and Freak Me Out are way better than the singles on their respective albums. Try some weezer. Grow to love them. Get hyped for their next album. It's gonna be great!

If you're afraid that weezer's new album is going to be too safe and unoriginal, like unto their 2005 album Make Believe, have no fear. Rivers Cuomo (weezer's frontman, duh!) has said that the Red Album will be entirely different from anything weezer has done before, containing "longer songs, non-traditional song forms, different people writing and singing, instrument switching, TR-808s, synths, Southern rap, and baroque counterpoint." There's a sample of Patrick Wilson (the drummer) singing lead on a song called "Automatic (LA Riots Remix) for a trailer of Gran Turismo 5 here. I can't wait to hear other weezer members stepping up and taking lead. Come to think of it, I can't wait regardless! Track-by-track review to come on June 17th, if I haven't died of excess anticipation before then.

Rants Against Humanity #1

2008-03-28T23:48:00.007-06:00

There are plenty of topics I could rant against humanity on, but I'm just going to choose one at a time. This is kind of a more angry post for me, instead of my regular sharing something cool or stating an idea, but these Rants Against Humanity are not just for whenever I'm randomly feeling mad at the world. These are rants dealing with serious issues that the majority of people possess. I'm not just writing this because I had a bad day (I didn't), I'm writing it because I hope to be able to change some opinions, or at least make a few people think.

Today's Rant is about tailgaters. Every time I set foot in my vehicle, I pick up a tailgater within minutes. I can't even drive down the street in my suburban town (which lacks any commercial buildings at all, it's solely residential) without having someone right behind me down the hill. Even at 6:30 in the morning, when I leave for school (a mere four miles away), I am tailgated all the way to school. Why is this? It's because I actually drive the speed limit. A shocking revelation, no? I've had instances where people turn their brights on right behind me, thinking that somehow that will make me drive faster or something (and when you drive a '98 Volkswagen Jetta, the brights from almost any vehicle get you right in the eyes). I've had people so close on me that if I were to tap the brakes at all, they would plow straight through my car before even having time to react (on the freeway, no less!). I've had people so antsy to pass me, that by the time I pull into the turn lane, they've already accelerated twenty miles per hour and are blazing straight past me. All this, just because I drive the speed limit.

Why must the law-abiding citizens be the ones to suffer? Technically, you have no right to get ticked off at me for going the speed limit. After all, that's the law, and any higher than that and you are liable to get a ticket (even if it's only two miles per hour over, you can technically still get a ticket). People should be thanking me for preventing them from having to pay a speed tax, not flashing their brights in my eyes. Tailgating is not only extremely annoying, it's incredibly dangerous. If there were to be a deer in the middle of the road one day as I'm driving to school, I would be the person likely to incur the most damage, because I would have to jam on my brakes to avoid hitting the deer, but I would then be hit from behind by the moron who was in such a hurry that he had to be six inches away from my back bumper.

If you can't follow the speed limit, people, I don't think you should be on the road. Deliberately driving faster than the speed limit is a blatant disregard of national law, and is akin to embezzling funds or lying on your tax returns or cheating on your time sheet. If you consider yourself above such mundane things as a speed limit, who knows? Maybe the next thing you'll be doing is stealing money from your employers. The rewards of law-breaking (a few seconds' worth less of travel time, a few extra dollars, a few more dollars not withheld by the government, et cetera) are far outweighed by the consequences (which can include hefty fines and prison time). Most people wouldn't steal money from their company, so why would they break other laws and drive too fast?

The benefits of driving fast aren't even all that great, anyway. On a sixty-mile trip, if you drive sixty miles an hour, it takes you one hour, no? Driving seventy miles an hour results in a trip time of fifty-one minutes and twenty-five seconds. Thus, ten miles per hour over the speed limit saves you eight minutes off of an hour-long trip. When you're going less than sixty miles (say, down the road to piano lessons, or to the grocery store to pick up some milk, or whatever), the time benefits get even slimmer. The penalties for being caught remain just as heavy, though. Think about it. Anyone with half a brain should know better than to exceed the speed limit.

My experience with being tailgated is such that I've begun to avoid major roads in favor of other, lesser-traveled routes. I haven't even had my driver's license for six months yet (I got it on November 23, 2007), and already I hate driving through town, just because there's always a line of people behind me who are in such a hurry, and have no patience for this young fool who actually drives the speed limit. There's also a prevailing mindset of people around where I live, in which they believe that police officers are not allowed to pull you over unless you're going ten miles an hour over the speed limit and above. This is a lie. Police officers can pull you over for going as little as one mile per hour over the limit (that's not saying they will, because discrepancies in speedometers can be fairly large sometimes, but it's legal nonetheless).

Plenty of people drive thirty-four miles per hour down residential roads, just because "I won't get pulled over, because a cop isn't going to waste his time on me when there are other, more serious crimes being committed. Besides, I'm not even going ten miles an hour over the limit!". True, you might be able to drive like that for many years without having an encounter with the law, but it's the principle behind the idea. It goes back to the embezzling funds analogy. You wouldn't do that, would you? Why should you be exceeding the speed limit, then? Speeding is every bit as illegal as money laundering. Yes, people might argue that they have been driving nine miles over the limit for years and they have never been pulled over, but the odds are stacked against you. I plan on never getting pulled over for going too fast. If you are careful about following speed limits, that goal is most certainly reachable.

I have hardly ever had an opportunity to tailgate people. Even on the rare occasion that I'm stuck behind someone slow, I am always respectful and maintain a two-car length distance, no matter how slowly Grandma and Grandpa are crawling down the hill. I'll admit, I'm not perfect, and sometimes I catch myself driving too fast in a residential zone or on the freeway, but for the most part I'm pretty good about it, and at least I try.

On a tangent, some of the best fun you can ever have is when you're on a single-lane road with a low speed limit, and there's someone behind you who is obviously in a BIG hurry. Try driving exactly the speed limit down the road, and pay special attention to the car behind you. It's hilarious to watch the driver get all angry and mad at you, but by far the best part is the knowledge that he is not legally allowed to do anything about it. After all, you're driving the speed limit, and he is supposed to be driving the speed limit, so there's nothing for him to complain about. Road rage? That's a possibility, but not a probability. Humans are mostly civilized nowadays, even if many of them are stupid.

On a final note, please use some common sense and drive the speed limit. Okay, that might be too much to ask. Some people are just so busy and their time is so valuable that they feel they have to save as much time as possible while on the road, even if it's only eight minutes per every sixty miles. If you hate it when people ahead of you are going slower than you are, please at least maintain a safe two-car length distance.

A Best-Seller In The Making

2008-03-27T22:22:00.005-06:00

I actually finished reading this book three weeks ago, but I've been so addicted to Desktop Tower Defense as of late, that I've done nothing else on the Internet. I've almost mastered the game, though, so I'm going to concentrate on other Internet-y things more now. (By the way, if you want to try to compare your scores against mine, enter the group name "Poojalooba" on the score submit screen).

This book is Airman by Eoin Colfer. He's the author of the Artemis Fowl series and The Supernaturalist and The Wish List. I think he's certainly one of the best authors around, and I hope he continues to crank out crazy stories and ideas for a long time to come.
Airman is about Conor Broekhart, who lives on the island of Great Saltee, a few miles north of Ireland. A few miles away from Great Saltee lies Little Saltee, which is a prison island full of diamonds. Law-breakers on Great Saltee are sent to Little Saltee, where they are forced to work in the diamond mines there until they have either paid their debt to society or died. (The Saltees are actual islands, but they have been uninhabited since around the time that this book would have taken place).

Conor Broekhart is the son of the captain of the Saltee Sharpshooters, an elite rifle group dedicated to defending the Saltee Wall. Since Little Saltee is home to the richest diamond mine in the world, many invasion attempts have been made on the Saltees over the centuries, and it takes the very best soldiers around to keep the islands from falling into enemy hands.

Conor spends his days in the castle on Great Saltee, having adventures with the princess Isabella, and he dreams of being able to fly (he was born in a hot air balloon at the Paris World's Fair). His tutor, Victor Vigny, is just as passionate about flying as Conor himself, so they spend their days designing flying machines, soaking up knowledge about the world around them, fencing, and shooting. Unfortunately, his life is about to be turned upside down.

The evil Marshall Hugo Bonvilain, captain of the Saltees' foot soldiers, kills the king and Victor, and Conor is the only witness. When Conor confronts Bonvilain immediately after the murders, Bonvilain overpowers Conor and uses him as a puppet to reach an evil goal. He tells Conor's parents that Conor died a valiant death trying to save the king, and he tells Conor that he has framed him for the murders and the entire island of Great Saltee hates him. Through very clever deceits, Bonvilain manages to fool both parties into believing what he wants them to believe, and can manipulate them accordingly.

Conor is transported to the diamond mines on Little Saltee, where he is forced to work in the diving bell, mining for diamonds underwater where conditions are dangerous and his mining partner is more dangerous still. I won't divulge anything more about his mining partner, but rest assured, it's an awesome part.

The years roll past and Conor is still stuck on Little Saltee, and he has been shaped into a tough, smart, and desperate person. Princess Isabella is due to be crowned Queen, and Conor has been carefully cultivating an escape plan that revolves around her coronation. When the coronation is moved ahead two weeks, Conor is hard-pressed to keep on schedule. Does he eventually escape Little Saltee, even with these complications? Of course! That's only the first half of the book! Conor escapes, all goes well, and the next amazing section of the book begins.

Conor leaves behind his life as Conor Broekhart and becomes the Airman, a black-clothed, flying thief. Victor left behind a Martello tower full of equipment needed to build flying machines, and Conor utilizes these to create a glider that can transport him across the sea, provided the wind cooperates. Conor is no petty thief, however. He is stealing diamonds that he has carefully been saving up on Little Saltee for the past three years. Yes, Conor designs a glider and flies back to his hated prison island, in order to steal diamonds and make himself a rich man. Throughout the course of this section, there are many amazing parts that both demonstrate the sheer awesomeness of the characters that Eoin Colfer has thought up, as well as showing some great character development along the way.

Marshall Bonvilain eventually discovers Conor's escape and learns where he is hiding, and leaves him with a message detailing Conor on Bonvilain's plans to murder the Queen and Conor's family. Conor knows this is a trap set up for Bonvilain to kill him as well, but Conor is our valiant and fearless protagonist, and he has to do something!

The rest of the book is too good to give away, so you'll just have to read it. It's full of Eoin Colfer's clever wit, with humor-filled dialog and superfluous bits that add to the hilarity. It's not just a funny book, though. It's an excellent read with an amazing plot that never seems to be going the way you want it to -even up to the very end- but somehow still ends up awesome anyway.

This book receives ten stars out of ten by me, poojalooba_cow. I'm no official critic or anything, and I'm probably more than a little bit biased, but I have been around the block and I've read plenty of books, so I can say I have a pretty good idea of what's good and what's boring. Just for the record, I was going to give it nine out of ten before, because I felt that it didn't have as much of Eoin Colfer's staple cleverness and subtlety. After you read it more than once, though (I've read it twice in the last week), you realize that all along it did have some very clever bits, you just have to have read it more than once or remember all the little confusing bits until they're resolved. You have to dig kinda deep, but everything resolves and is very witty and sharp and fresh. Highly recommended read.

poojalooba_cow's Debut On The Silver Screen

2008-03-18T20:30:00.005-06:00

I'll start off by saying that I absolutely HATE Disney Channel and almost all of the content they put out. That said, I will be appearing in the new "Disney Channel Original Movie" called Hatching Pete that will be out this December. Apparently it's a story about a really popular kid named Pete who is also the school mascot, which happens to be a large chicken. Apparently he thinks kids will laugh at him for dressing up as a chicken, so he tries to hide this fact from people. I'll be appearing alongside (okay, not alongside, but behind) well-known Disney channel actors like Mitchel Musso (Oliver in Hannah Montana), Jason Dolley (Newt in Cory In The House), and Brian Stepanek (Arwin in The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody). These are all Disney Channel shows that I absolutely HATE, but oh, well.

It was shot earlier today near where I live, and they needed two marching bands (it was a parade scene along our old, "historic" part of Main Street). Me being in the band, my band director asked a few of the band members to show up as extras at 6:30 IN THE MORNING! It was so cold that my instrument (trombone) stuck to my lips when I tried to play it. We didn't actually play any music, though. We just stepped in time and pretended to play. They'll dub over us later.

I spent fourteen hours standing around on Main Street and we got maybe a good fifteen minutes of footage. I was highly disgusted, and I have decided that I will never, ever, EVER join the acting guild. Too much time-wasting and not enough doing.

I was one of three trombone players in the "Rooster Band" (Pete's hometown is Brewster, and their school mascot is the Rooster, so they're the Brewster Roosters), and when the movie comes out, I'll be the trombone player on the far left of the screen (or, more easily, the only person of the male gender playing the trombone). There were two marching bands, but I was in the one with the big letter B on our chests, not the "dorky flannel star" band (the star was a patch covering up their high school marching band logo [holy crap, I just realized that I use a ton of parentheses. I need to cut back...]).

Besides marching in a band, our extras group jammed to some (horrible) tunes at the parade, and chased a car-jacking chicken. There were even some stunts we were slightly involved in, including a chicken doing a backflip and a bunch of hay bales exploding.

All in all, the day was about medium level tolerable. It was fun at times, but at other times it was terminally boring. I understand that being on the set of a movie as a main character is lots of fun, but being an extra most certainly isn't.

Supposedly, there is some money involved in being an extra, but alas, I am not to see any of it. Apparently the time and skill of my bandmates and me (yes, that's the proper way to put it) was donated to my band, which is currently heavily in debt. Other kids who weren't tied to local bands claimed that they were being paid upwards of $150 for the same things that we were doing, so I'm just a little chapped about that, as you can well understand.

Anyway, watch for me in December on none other than everybody's favorite Disney Channel! I bet you can't wait, huh? Well, I can.

Links To Cool Stuff!

2008-02-18T17:39:00.005-07:00

So, I decided I'm not going to weekly post cool things, because that's kind of a little bit lame. I'll just post a bunch of cool stuff when I build up a big list. I won't try to set myself to a time schedule or anything. I have quite a list right now, because I've found lots of cool things since last time. Here goes:

-The Landlord: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/74 This is a clip about Will Ferrell and troubles with his landlord. Watch out for language. This clip would be rated PG-13 if it were a movie (for language and alcohol abuse by a minor), but it's still really funny.

-My music page: http://poojaloobaCow.googlepages.com/music I've been working on composing some music for quite a while, and I've just finished getting a music website up for them. I plan on filling an Indie album with about fourteen songs (right now I have music for four) and releasing it for free on iTunes, but until then I'll upload demos, samples, and "singles" to my website for sampling before the final project is finished. Right now, you can listen to my first finished song from the album, as well as an early demo of another song I'm working on. You can also listen to covers and other garbage that I didn't compose, but that I did originally record. Watch out for my music on iTunes in the next few months (it'll be under the artist name poojalooba_cow).

-Anti-Phishing Phil: http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/antiphishing_phil/quiz/index.html This little game is actually almost fun, but it's more aimed at being educational. It's about a fish named Phil, and his dad is teaching him about phishing websites. Created by professors at Carnegie-Mellon University, it was designed to teach people about how to recognize a phishing site based on its URL and several other factors. It's an effective tool, because people are much more likely to want to play a game (even if it is a game that's trying to teach them things) than read a bunch of text on a website. Studies reported that after playing Anti-Phishing Phil for fifteen minutes, people were much better able to recognize phishing websites. It's a really clever way to educate people, and it really does work, too. A few days ago I encountered a phishing website and I would have had no clue that it was one if I hadn't played Anti-Phishing Phil before. Thanks to Phil the Phish (ha), I wasn't scammed into giving out personal information or money! Give it a try, it just might save you a lot of grief in the future.

-Pandora: http://pandora.com This is a music site that lets you listen to artists and songs similar to songs or artists you give it. It bills itself as the "Music Genome Project" because it categorizes songs into an immense number of sub-categories (such as "Major Key Tonality" or "Dynamic Male Vocalist" or "Subtle Vocal Harmonies") and creates a listening experience entirely catered to your likes. The more artists and songs you feed it, the more accurate it'll be at choosing other songs and artists that are similar to that. It's great for finding new songs and artists, as well as rediscovering old favorites.

-Desktop Tower Defense: http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/game.asp An incredibly addicting little game. Swarms of "creeps" come crawling across your desktop, so what do you do? Create little towers to destroy them, of course! It's a mix of strategy, speed, creativity, and trial-and-error. Try it. You won't be able to stop.

-Dwarf Fortress: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves This game is a real-time strategy game where you make and manage a fortress filled with dwarfs (hence the name...). It's really hard to learn (I've just barely started getting the hang of things after a week), but it's hilarious and has a really detailed engine behind it. The game art is less-than-commendable (it's an entirely ASCII-art game, so it looks like your screen barfed out a bunch of punctuation marks), but it's still really fun.

-N: http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n.html "N" is an incredibly cool game about a ninja and his thirst for gold. You have ninety seconds to complete five levels within an "episode". In order to be able to advance to the next episode, you have to complete the five levels in the previous episode. It's got a totally sweet physics engine, so when you die, you'll bounce all over the place and your limbs flop independently. It comes with a built-in custom level generator, so you can create your own awesome levels. It's coming to the XBox Live Arcade and the DS and the PSP, also. I'll most definitely be getting it for my DS.

-Orbiter: http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk This is a flight simulator with a little extra to it: Besides just flying around on Earth, you can take to the stars and fly to virtually any planet (and any of that planet's moons) in our solar system. It features real physics equations (you can't just take off and fly straight up into the sky), so the learning curve is steep because there are all kinds of weird forces acting on you that you've never even heard of before (especially when you're in outer space), but it's strangely addictive, and it's even got some educational value to it!

Yeah, that should keep anyone busy for a while. I'll be back whenever with more.

poojalooba_cow: 1 Electronics: 0

2008-02-11T17:43:00.001-07:00

On Friday, I built a wireless microphone and interfaced it with my computer. I haven't had a chance to blog about it until now, though. I'm quite proud of my success, even though it's essentially just shorting out a wireless phone base and hooking the short into the computer input port. My other, smaller projects include a wired computer microphone and a sustain pedal for my digital piano keyboard, but this is the first semi-difficult electronics project that I've succeeded with, and I'll be keeping score from now on.

I had to pull apart the phone and the base station, first off. Then I had to find a power cord that would put out 9VDC (Volts Direct Current) of power and close to 350 mA (milliAmps). I finally found one that gave off 9VDC and 210 mA, which was close enough to get it to run (800 mA at 9VDC just made sparks and smelled like things burning...) Sorry if this sounds complicated or confusing to you, but it's the only way I can adequately explain my project.

Since I'm way too cheap to go buy a wireless computer microphone ($100), I then proceeded to find the audio output on the base station using the scientific method Trial and Error. I short-circuited across random solder beads on the base station with a screwdriver until I heard a click come from the speaker on the phone unit. I got the first group on my first try. I then tested it by feeding audio from a CD player into the two beads I found. Ta-da! Weezer's Beverly Hills came out loud and clear from the speaker of the phone. Now my microphone could be two-way. I could play audio through my computer into the base unit, which would then transmit it to wherever the phone unit happened to be, and I would eventually be able to record what the phone unit was hearing as well.

Next I had to play music into the microphone of the phone unit and touch leads from an old pair of headphones to random solder beads until I could hear the audio coming into my headphones. This part took me considerably longer to get right, but I eventually could hear Weezer's We Are All On Drugs coming through from the phone to the base station.

Then came the tricky part. I had to find a reliable way to keep my short circuit wires in contact with the solder beads, while being able to plug in an audio source or an input jack or whatever into them so as to receive or send audio using whatever I wanted. Not having a soldering iron handy, I used the next best thing: A hot-glue gun. Hot-glue dries almost as fast as solder, and is safer if you get it on yourself. Once the wires had been hot-glued to their leads, I was ready to hook it into my computer. I used my normal wired microphone's wires, and I just changed the attachment on the end from the wired microphone to the base station (alligator clips are great that way).

Now, the moment of truth. I loaded up Audacity and started recording, then went to another room with the phone unit, turned it on, and started talking. It worked! I recorded a clip so that everyone can have proof of my accomplishment: http://poojaloobacow.storage.googlepages.com/success.mp3

Here are some pictures of the microphone and the base station. They're kinda fuzzy, but I tried my best to sharpen them up in Photoshop (for the most part, I failed):

Both units together:

The base unit:
The wireless unit. Note the stylish lack of plastic casing, even though it is just a normal cordless phone (plastic casings are sooo last year):

Not Just Science Fiction Any More

2008-01-19T12:30:00.001-07:00

Every kid (well, me, at least) has dreamed at some point of having contact lenses that can display things on them. Think about it- you could have the world at your fingertips through Internet connectivity. You could instantly check email, blog, look up weather or sports or information that you lack. You can call up pictures, videos, et cetera right in front of your eyes. It would bring a whole new dimension to gaming. Now, that future just might be possible. Researchers at the University of Washington have discovered a way to place an electronic circuit on contact lenses, and they tested the lenses on rabbits for up to twenty minutes, with no ill effects appearing. The electrical circuits are created from components that are only a few nanometers in width (a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers) and they're built so that only the correct components fit together, so there's no need to solder or use other toxic substances to get the circuits to stay together (because nobody wants arsenic or lead pressed up against their eyes). The contacts would be powered by radio waves and solar energy (that means if you closed your eyes for too long, your contacts' displays would die), so they won't need to develop really tiny batteries or anything.

Reports say this new technology could be commercially available soon (in the technology world, that means about ten years). Me being a wearer of corrective contacts, this would be totally awesome. I could have my vision corrected and be wirelessly connected to the world at the same time! With pocket tools that you would also carry around, you could turn your lenses into a computer that follows you everywhere. A pocket keyboard or, even cooler, a pen that can recognize letter strokes and transform them into text- this could also double as a mouse; a small hard drive embedded in your watch or your shoe, a wireless Internet card in your wallet; and speakers embedded in your teeth would make your body the ultimate device in the modern world. How cool would that be?

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/self-assembling.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,323929,00.html

*EDIT:* Oh, dear. We've finally achieved more than fifteen blog posts, so the very first post to this blog has now disappeared into the land of the blog archive. I guess that's a good thing, because that means I've been posting fairly semi-regularly lately and I hope I'll be able to continue that! Don't forget to check the blog archive from time to time to see if there's anything good in there...

The Return Of The Weekly Links!

2008-01-15T20:49:00.003-07:00

I've decided to expand the topic to a weekly link to cool stuff in general, because writing a post to a cool site like XKCD like I did or a cool video or something is relatively pointless. Other blogs do it, but I won't. What Jman--8 posts is, of course, up to him (he actually is working on a post right now, but there hasn't been anything added to it in over a week), but I'm just going to stick everything I found that I think is cool into one weekly post. This blog is about interesting and thought-provoking technology and video games and concepts, not just a drain for us to pour all the cool things we find into. Henceforth, I will be posting all the cool things I find that don't quite merit an entire blog entry into this weekly topic. Soon there will be a whole big long list of weekly cool stuff links to search through! (Jman--8, you're more than welcome to add your own weekly links to cool stuff if you feel the need.)

First off is a cool blog I found awhile ago but haven't mentioned anywhere before, and I just realized that. It's called the Weekly Geek Show and they talk about all things geek. They have a podcast and lots of separate categories and reviews and opinions on things. It's pretty cool, but it can be slightly profanity-laced sometimes, so read with discretion. http://weeklygeekshow.com/

Next up is a hilarious music video I discovered a while ago. It's called "Bathtime In Clerkenwell" by "(The Real) Tuesday Weld" and animated by Alex Budovsky. It's awesome - the tune is catchy and addictive, and the video adds even more hilarity to the mess. http://youtube.com/watch?v=awuTkVytgYs

Lastly, just in case you missed the original hype, it's not too late to get hooked on Line Rider. It was originally created as a deviantART project by Bostjan Cadez (a Slovenian art student), but inXile Entertainment bought the rights to the game. They've claimed they were going to release a version for the DS and Wii, but the "tentative release date" was over a year ago and nothing has happened with it other than a video by TechDawg (Line Rider's most prolific rider) showcasing a new version of Line Rider. It's still fun to play the old Beta 2, however, but I recommend downloading the Flash File to your hard drive by clicking "File -> Save Page As" in your browser, because playing it online is slow and full of advertisements. http://linerider.com/play-line-rider-online

Well, that's all for today, because I didn't have a list of stuff that deserved mentioning. I'll start collecting things for next week's starting right now, though. There'll be a better variety next time. Promise.

Flu Season... For iPods?

2008-01-12T22:35:00.002-07:00

I've noticed this with both of the iPods I have owned and I can't find anything on the Internet about it, so I guess I'll be the first to bring this up.

I've owned two iPod Nanos - one 4GB 2nd Generation and my current 8GB 3rd Generation (I returned the 2nd Generation one because I bought it ONE WEEK before Apple released the new line of iPods. How annoying is that?). Anyway, out in the cold I've noticed that the left channel earbud will make popping, squeaking, and crackling noises, usually when I take a step with my left foot. This is probably just the earbuds, since I'm just using the standard iPod earbuds that came with my iPod. However, they're two different pairs. The first pair I had and my current pair both made crackling and squeaking noises when it was cold outside. The current pair makes the popping noises as well. I realize that the iPod earbuds are crap, but they could at least make them work a little better than they do right now. I realize that the cold plays weird games with electronics, but speakers are just two drums vibrating together. Surely the cold can't cause too many problems with things like that? I went skiing yesterday and it was below freezing with wind and snow the entire time, and my iPod headphones barely worked. They were covered up beneath my coat, a neoprene mask, goggles, and a fleece headband, but I still had to turn the volume up and live with crackling and squeaking. By the way - DragonForce is excellent music to listen to as you pound down the slopes.

Also, the cord connecting the earbuds to the iPod is way too thick. When it's cold, the wires stiffen up and become less pliable, so if you have them in your ears, there's a big thick chunk of metal connecting you to your tunes and that gets annoying. Thinner wires would allow for more flexibility even when they're stiff and cold.

I guess I'm just ranting. I don't expect Apple to do anything about this relatively minor problem, and if I don't like it, I should go out and get some decent earbuds. Until then, though, I will continue to whine about my earbuds (just not on the blog any more).

Something That Must Be Shared

2008-01-04T23:17:00.002-07:00

A buddy of mine recently emailed me a link to a site called xkcd. It's "A Webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language" by its own billing, and it's absolutely hilarious. If you hover the mouse over the image for a few seconds a little comment from the author will pop up, and they normally add to the hilarity. Read with discretion, however. Some of the comics contain fairly strong profanity and other things, but most of them are clean. Don't say I didn't warn you, though. Below is a list of my favorite comics. Don't forget to mouse-over!

http://xkcd.com/30/
http://xkcd.com/36/
http://xkcd.com/42/
http://xkcd.com/44/
http://xkcd.com/53/
http://xkcd.com/55/
http://xkcd.com/61/
http://xkcd.com/70/
http://xkcd.com/71/
http://xkcd.com/74/
http://xkcd.com/77/
http://xkcd.com/94/
http://xkcd.com/96/
http://xkcd.com/106/
http://xkcd.com/121/
http://xkcd.com/123/
http://xkcd.com/132/
http://xkcd.com/135/
http://xkcd.com/163/
http://xkcd.com/165/
http://xkcd.com/166/
http://xkcd.com/242/
http://xkcd.com/253/
http://xkcd.com/258/
http://xkcd.com/262/
http://xkcd.com/325/
http://xkcd.com/327/
http://xkcd.com/353/
http://xkcd.com/356/
http://xkcd.com/360/
http://xkcd.com/361/
http://xkcd.com/369/

And finally, one that you shouldn't read if you want to avoid the rude and crude aspect of the comic, but is funny anyway: http://xkcd.com/72/

A Year Old And Still Going Strong

2007-12-31T19:58:00.002-07:00

It's been reported by Amazon.com that they sold about 17 Wiis a second when they had them in stock this season. That means that one minute after they listed Wiis in stock, they had already sold over a thousand. They also reported that this holiday season was their busiest ever, with sales climbing to 62.5 items a second. This link here humorously describes the news, reinventing the cliché "Selling like hotcakes" to "Selling like Wiis". I saw a funny editorial cartoon in the newspaper the other day along those same lines, with the owner of a pancake shack commenting "Wow, our hotcakes are selling like iPhones!" Sadly, an Internet search for the image yielded no results. The Wii and the iPhone and the iPod Touch are the hot commodities this year, and that suggests some interesting things.

This news, I think, is a good omen for Nintendo. It means that they're still doing quite well with their little underdog machine. I'm a Nintendo fanboy through and through, and I think it's excellent that Microsoft and Sony are finally being trounced. Sure, Microsoft still has sold more 360's than Nintendo has sold Wiis, but that's because the 360 has a year's head start. The selling right now is about a four-to-one margin for the Wii. They're flying off the shelves faster than Nintendo can produce them, and even though Nintendo has doubled its monthly production rates (two million Wiis created every month, now), they still cannot meet demand for this excellent, "Revolution"-ary machine (they should have stuck with the old name, I liked it better, and I'm sure many others did too). Nintendo's stock has more than doubled in the last year, and it keeps going up and up. I think there are great things to be expected of Nintendo in the coming years.

Of course, Nintendo could tank once again, as is their wont over the years. They do well off one thing, then they try too hard to be different and revolutionary with other things, and it turns out they're just making poor choices. They hit a home run with the Wii, but other "innovative" Nintendo items haven't done so hot. Does anyone remember the Nintendo Power Glove? No? How about the "Virtual Boy"? Of course not! There have been some pretty hard falls for Nintendo in the past, but I think they can go far with the creative talent they have nowadays. Here's hoping.

Good luck trying to find a Wii anytime soon. Oh, and Happy New Year.

Blog Page Changes

2007-12-30T22:42:00.001-07:00

Today I have slightly revamped the Poojalooba Blog Page. You might not even notice the changes- in fact, you probably haven't, even though four of them are right in front of your very eyes. I worked through the HTML/JavaScript template for this style of blog and decided it could use some improvements. My thanks go out to Todd Dominey for creating the original template, and most of his code is still intact, but I've changed the layout and many of the settings for the "Scribe" template and I quite like the new "face" of the Poojalooba Blog. If you have anything to say about the changes, please speak up and leave a comment. Anyway, I'll list some of the changes I've made:

<-- These bullet icons used to be some wussy flowery-type thing. Sorry, Todd. Flowers just don't cut it for me, so I changed them to a nice Red Hot Chili Peppers-esque asterisk.
I widened the blog face by 100 pixels so that it didn't look so cramped. This included downloading, resizing, and uploading the "scribe" background with the parchment-y look to my own site and coordinating the code.
The background in the margin has been changed. It's a little more busy, but I like the feel of this one more. Once again, that involved creating my own new background template and uploading it and changing the code.
The title font has been changed. In Blogger, you're only allowed to use nine fonts, but in HTML code, all the cool fonts are enabled, so the title is now in Blackadder ITC. It's probably temporary, though. I'm going to work on creating a nice, simple logo and a different name for us as soon as I'm back home at my own computer with access to Photoshop.
The fonts and sizes for various little things including post titles, timestamps, the sidebar items, and post footers have been changed and redone.

The overall look and feel of the Poojalooba Blog remains the same, but those are the small (visible) changes to the blog, and I quite like them. We hope you (if there are any of you that read this) feel the same.

I don't have anything about technology today. I was just rambling about the changes.

A Latecomer's Review

2007-12-27T21:24:00.003-07:00

Well, it's been quite a while since last time anyone posted an entry here. It was kind of fun, so I figured I'd try to start up again. I don't know if Jman--8 will or not, but I at least am going to make an attempt at posting regularly. I didn't just come here to apologize to our (possibly nonexistent) readers, however. I do have something to add to the blog.

I recently bought a new 8GB iPod Nano (sadly, no, it wasn't a Christmas gift. I paid for it with my own money). I know every big site has already posted reviews about the new line of iPods, but here's a simple, average American teenager's review of it, with focus on what really matters in a portable music player.

Here are some of the most important features for the Nano:

4 GB and 8 GB models, at $149 and $199, respectively
QVGA screen (320 x 240) capable of playing MPEG video files
Battery rated for 24 hours of continuous music playback (with the backlight off) and 5 hours of slideshow or video playback (with backlight on)
Updated operating system, emphasis on album artwork and video viewing
2" wide by 2 ¾" tall by ¼" deep
The hold switch, the charge port, and the headphones jack are all on the bottom of the unit
The hold switch is very minimalist in design, a tiny dot on the left side of the bottom panel.
The scroll wheel is smaller to accommodate a larger screen
Variable screen brightness
Still no manual EQ controls...
Runs on Flash memory, so there are no moving parts and it is impossible for your music to skip due to heavy physical shock. Running solely on Flash memory means that things load faster and transitions and movements are smoother and more natural.

Here's a picture of it in the palm of my hand. It looks pretty big, but it really is quite tiny. It fits perfectly in your hand (my hand, at least), and isn't too big or too small. It fits quite nicely in a jeans pocket, and is no trouble pulling out or putting into a pocket.

This is the back of the iPod. Apple reverted to a brushed aluminum backing instead of the same-color metal backing in the second generation Nanos. It looks quite nice, actually. The little blurry spots at the top of the iPod are actually letters that spell out "poojalooba_cow". I had it laser engraved, seeing as how it was free, one more way I stuck it to Steve Jobs. Another way I ensured that Apple made less profit off of me than they otherwise would have is my choice of color. I chose the Product(Red) iPod, forcing Apple to contribute money to AIDS relief in Africa. That wasn't just to help fight AIDS, mind. Red is a cool color.

Now, on to its functionality. The iPod headphones suck, as usual. I recommend going out and getting some decent headphones if you want to hear bass notes or good-quality music. However, normal people aren't tremendously concerned about hearing the full range of sound or hearing the best-quality sound available. We just want our music available whenever, wherever. For that, the iPod is great. The headphones are cheap junk, so wrap them around the iPod's body and jam it down in your pocket. Ta-dah! Two thousand songs available on demand.

The screen is nice and bright and big. Videos, while a pain (who wants to squint at a two-inch screen for two hours?), are very sharp and clear, due to the fact that this screen has the most pixel density in any Apple product to date. 320 x 240 in a 2" screen leads to some very crisp images, as demonstrated by the new line of games included with this iPod. Say goodbye to "Brick" and "Parachute". Gaming on a 3rd-Generation iPod Nano has been kicked up to a whole new level. I'm being completely sarcastic here, iPods will never replace the XBox 360 or the PS3 in setting the gaming standard, but the games included on this iPod are fun nonetheless. First up is "iQuiz" which is Music Quiz revamped (not only does it have you identify songs, but it has you identify artists, years, album art, and random trivia questions), but it also includes Music Trivia, Movie Trivia, and TV Show Trivia questions. And believe me, they are trivia. I didn't know the answer to a single question the first time around the trivia packs. Vortex is a 3D version of brick, and it's quite fun to play. Klondike is a smoother, more visually appealing Solitaire, but there's still not much point in playing it.

Watching videos on an iPod is cool, to be sure, but with only 8GB of storage, there's not much that you can put on this. A few video podcasts, the movie you made in 8th grade with some buddies, some home videos from last summer, and you're about full. If you're purchasing full-length videos from the iTunes store, you can fit about eight of them into an 8GB Nano, but if you use a DVD ripper to rip your DVD's to AVI on your hard drive, and then use an AVI to m4v converter, you can cut two-hour movies down to about 400 MB (with video at 256 kbps and audio at 128 kbps), so you can fit quite a bit on it. Currently, I have I, Robot, Monty Python And The Holy Grail, National Treasure, and one of the Horatio Hornblower series movies on my iPod, as well as 50 other 3-minute video podcasts and 924 songs and 154 pictures, with 200 MB left free. Not bad for something the size of a Saltine cracker.

The iPod's User Interface has experienced an update, as well as some of the ways you navigate the menus. Included on this iPod is the option to browse through your media library with Cover Flow, letting you see album art and artists for all of your music. Now, if you're like me and have close to 1,000 songs in your library, Cover Flow just isn't practical. It takes too stinking long to browse through all your album art just to find one song you want to listen to. You can easily flip through the Artists list and find things much faster. Now, if you have lots of albums that are compilations of artists and songs, then using Cover Flow is just a cool gimmick. The rest of the User Interface is designed with album art and graphic previews in mind. On the main screen, large views of album arts and frames of video show on the right side of the screen. When scrolling through the list of albums under an artist, a small thumbnail of the album shows to the left of the album name. When scrolling through a list of songs, you are told which artist the song belongs to. All in all, it's easier to find what you want without making mistakes or taking too long.

The battery really does last 24 hours with music playing continuously, but it only lasts through 5 hours of video if you don't have the backlight turned up too bright. Turning it up too bright, however, eliminates subtleties of color differences, so things look less detailed. About 40% is a good backlight setting for video viewing.

The unit is fairly durable. I've had mine a week and there are the typical spiderweb scratches and streaks on it (they're especially visible on the brushed aluminum backing), but those are standard in anything, and with proper care (obviously, it's a problem if I go around dropping it on the cement), I think my new toy will be long-obsolete before I have anything like a screen break or major scratching occur.

All told, I am very pleased with the new generation of iPod Nano. There have been a few weird problems, such as the music not playing and the album art being replaced with staticy green-and-black squares, but nothing has been so bad that holding Menu and the Center button for six seconds hasn't fixed it. Nine stars out of ten.

The World of Wikipedia...

2007-08-18T09:15:00.001-06:00

Millions of articles, in many different languages and formats.... Information and fun facts of topics pertaining to anything and everything.... information on a rock band to information on yesterday's earthquake, Wikipedia is the place to go.

Wikipedia is one of the world's largest online encyclopedias, and it is growing at a phenomenal rate every day. Thousands of users all over the world post information on Wikipedia every day, and millions of other users benefit from Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is an amazing thing to me, not only does it allow random people from random places in the world to express there knowledge, it allows this all the while having thousands of personnel scouring the articles, and fixing where spammers and other morons, post either inappropriate stuff or mess up perfectly good articles. Wikipedia is a non-profit organization, and they have made this site purely for the benefit of others. Even though in today's world, profit and money means everything.

What I like about Wikipedia is the information it brings on the main page of the site, and also the many different languages that articles can be written, translated, or expressed in. On the Main page of Wikipedia you will see the, Featured Article of the Day, as well as fun facts, picked randomly for the day, featured picture's of the days that are both interesting and non-crude, and the most interesting and the part that I like the most, an "On this Day" section where it gives you famous events that happened on the present day.

This is a very wonderful site and it is a dot org, which means that it is government approved. No only that but for some reason school teachers have resented the site and have condemned anyone who likes or appreciates what it has to offer. This just adds fuel to the fire in which it makes Wikipedia a must go, in terms of having to learn about different subjects.

On a final note, I would like to add my own voice to the thousands/millions of other's out there that use and appreciate what Wikipedia has to offer. I would also like to add my recommendation to go and use this site, whenever you have research to do for school, as well as any other reason to look up information.

poojalooba_cow's Vacation

2007-08-12T16:32:00.002-06:00

Sorry for not posting anything in the last three weeks, but I've been on vacation and haven't had time to write anything. However, someone doesn't have that excuse. Jman--8 is just lazy. He did, however, save my life in Ronald Reagan National Airport by having an intelligent discussion with me via Gmail Chat. It was the first intelligent conversation I'd had in weeks and frankly, I needed it badly.

I visited three places on vacation with my family: Yellowstone National Park; Spokane, Washington; and Washington DC. We drove to my grandparents' house in Washington state, but then we flew to Washington DC. I did lots of waterskiing and swimming at my grandparents' lake cabin in Loon Lake, Washington, but the fun and interesting part of my vacation was the Washington DC trip, and that's what I'm going to focus on in this blog post.

We landed at Ronald Reagan National Airport late Saturday, August 4th, and we left on Wednesday, August 8th, so we had almost four days to wander around and explore. I won't go into detail on any of the things I did there, because that wasn't the important part of the trip, either. The highlights of my trip to Washington DC were... The drinking fountains and air conditioning! It was SO hot and SO humid there. I won't say exactly where I'm from, because this is a worldwide audience (if we even have any audience), but I'll just say that I live in a very dry state and the humidity almost killed me. Accordingly, I decided to make a rating of the water fountains and air conditioning of every building we stayed in. Ratings are in the standard 1-10 style, 1 being horrible and 10 being perfect. Here goes:

Hilton Arlington (The hotel we stayed in):
Water- 5
Air Conditioning- 10 (They keep all the rooms at 60 degrees Fahrenheit)

National Holocaust Museum:
Water- 7
Air Conditioning- 8

Bureau of Engraving and Printing:
Water- 8
Air Conditioning- 8

Washington Monument:
Water- (No Water)
Air Conditioning- 10 (REALLY BIG fans blowing tons of air)

Smithsonian Castle:
Water- 4
Air Conditioning- 7

National Aquarium:
Water- N/A
Air Conditioning- 8

Museum of Natural History:
Water- 7
Air Conditioning- 7

Air and Space Museum:
Water- 8 (Ice-cold, but very little water pressure)
Air Conditioning- 9

White House Visitors' Center:
Water- 9 (Would be 10, but there wasn't good pressure)
Air Conditioning- 8

Jefferson Memorial (Visitors' center underneath):
Water- 7
Air Conditioning- 4

National Archives:
Water- 9 (No water pressure)
Air Conditioning- 10 (Very good climate control for all those old documents)

National Gallery of Art East:
Water- N/A
Air Conditioning- 9

National Gallery of Art West:
Water- 6
Air Conditioning- 7

American Indian Museum:
Water- 8
Air Conditioning- 8

US Botanic Gardens:
Water- (No Water)
Air Conditioning- 9 (In the administrative areas, and not the obscenely hot and humid greenhouses)

Ronald Reagan National Airport:
Water- 4
Air Conditioning- 9

The Mall (The outdoor strip of grass between the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building):
Water- 5
Air Conditioning- N/A

Sorry they're not in alphabetical order. I was planning on doing that after I had typed them all up, but Blogger won't let me move them around very easily and I'm too lazy to take the effort to do so.

In summary, the water in DC was generally disgustingly lukewarm and unrefrigerated. In a few places, the water was very good, and that's where we filled up our water bottles. However, fifteen minutes later our water would be warm and yucky again. Turns out the wonderful water at the Archives was just a very chilled form of the standard lukewarm DC garbage.

Air conditioning was a different story, however. For the most part, buildings in DC are kept at very low temperatures, which feel divine as you walk into a building from outside. Mom complained about being cold inside the buildings, but I reveled in every second spent inside. It was a fairly enjoyable trip, but I hated the heat. In actuality, the only day it got hotter than 90 degrees was Wednesday, when it peaked at 98. All other days, it was 85-ish all day long, but it was SO HUMID that it still felt like it was 120. Give me 105-degree dry desert heat any day!

Well, that's my random blog posting for now.

Digital Water Pavilion

2007-07-14T13:52:00.002-06:00

Before I start off, I am deeply sorry for not posting any blogs of any kind for the past week. I have been extremely busy and have found no time to post and enlighten your lives. This apology of course is directed to our viewers... (If we have any yet)

As I was surfing through the internet, a headline stood out to me. This headline read "Building with walls of water," Now of course this intrigued me greatly and I went to the site. Which is http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19750906/

In this site I saw the coolest and most impressive architectural design I had ever seen in my entire life. So in this blog, I will tell you about the "Waterfall Walls."

Every wall in this building, (which is under construction right now), will be a waterfall. Which I think that fact alone is unbelievable. However after reading the article I realized that this was not the fact that impressed me the most.

The waterfalls will be under the control of "digital water". Digital Water is controlled with a computer; it has motion sensors to detect when movement comes toward the waterfall. So in other words, if you were to throw a ball, or walk towards it, the motion sensors would determine how far away the ball or you are and also determine your speed.

So in essence you would see a hole open up and come down right when you reach the curtain of water. You can enter the building from any point, and the motion sensors will pick up your movement. This is amazing as you could be running, entering at a corner, anywhere at all.

This building will be on display at the International Expo Zaragoza 2008 in Spain, it will feature an exhibition area, café and various public spaces, it is something that when it is built I would love to go and see. I can only hope that more buildings will be like the "Digital Water Pavilion" as this is a technological and architectural milestone.

Logitech MX Air Mouse

2007-07-13T14:01:00.001-06:00

Well, I was working from 6:00 AM to 9:30 PM these last few days, and apparently Jman--8 wasn't around either, so this is the first new post in almost a week. I promise I'll post more consistently in the future, okay?

Anyway, in this post I'm bringing you a new piece of cool technology: The Logitech MX Air Mouse. This mouse is similar in function to the Wii's controller, the Wiimote, but for the PC.

Instead of having wireless mice where you use a scroll pad or a joystick to move the cursor, you move the device itself to move the on-screen cursor. It's got a range of up to thirty feet, and algorithms in place that eliminate the cursor shaking with tiny movements from your hand (hold your hand straight out and perfectly still. It's absolutely impossible not to twitch just a little bit, and that would be extremely annoying while using a motion-sensitive mouse). It features an intuitive volume control button: Push and hold the volume button, and wave the mouse to the left to turn the volume down and wave it to the right to turn the volume up. Plus, the functions I like best: Programmable gesture recognition. Hold the gesture button and wave the mouse in the gesture that you programmed in, and it'll execute the command you've set to that gesture (for example, hold the gesture button and wave the mouse in a circle to open iTunes, or whatever). Now that's a cool mouse. However, it's a little bit pricey at $149. Maybe I'll wait on it for a while.

http://www.techtree.com/India/News/A_New_Mouse_that_Works_in_Air/551-82172-581.html

Weekly Links To Other Blogs!

2007-07-09T10:51:00.003-06:00

Every Monday, in order to get our blog out there by using backlinks, and in order to show our readers (if there are any) some other cool blogs, I'm going to post a few links to other cool blogs every Monday.

This Monday's blog theme is blogs on technology in general.

Here's a nice blog on general Windows tips and tricks by a guy called Kaustubh Gujar. It's http://techbit.blogspot.com He's not a native English speaker, but it's easy enough to understand. Here's a post of his I rather liked: http://techbit.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-microsoft-does-not-sucks.html

Here's a blog called "Heliotropic" by Carl Lenox. http://greenvolts.blogspot.com/ He blogs about renewable energy and biofuels. A rather cool post of his: http://greenvolts.blogspot.com/2007/05/carbon-hat-trick.html

And the last one, since I'm tired of looking for these already: Digital Inspiration, by Amit Agarwal. http://labnol.blogspot.com/
He's also got some useful technology tips, including this one, which I especially liked, since I've had lots of problems like this with my optical mouse: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/07/clean-mouse-with-white-paper-for-smooth.html

That's all for this week! I hope the backlinks are saved somewhere, because we need more visitors, and these are cool blogs!

The Steorn Orbo "Free Energy Machine"

2007-07-08T21:00:00.002-06:00

This caught my eye the other day... It's an Irish Technology Consulting company who claims to have created a perpetual-motion machine that returns up to 400% efficiency, which means that three times the energy you put into it is available for use, because it runs itself. Apart from equipment failure, the idea is that this thing can run forever, which totally contradicts all our ideas of the laws of physics and the conservation of energy. Here's a picture that I pulled off a video on their site about the basics of how the Steorn Orbo Free Energy Machine works:

Steorn CEO Sean McCarthy explains how the Orbo functions: "Orbo is based upon the principle of time variant magneto-mechanical interactions. The core output from our Orbo technology is mechanical. This mechanical energy can be converted into electrical energy using standard generator technology either by integrating such technology directly with Orbo or by connecting the mechanical output from Orbo to the generation technology. The efficiency of such mechanical/electrical conversions is highly dependent on the components used and is also a function of size."

This means, in lame-man's terms, that the little ball-thing gets acted on by the three magnets in three different directions and rotates around all of them, creating mechanical energy that can then be turned into electrical energy.

Obviously, since the very idea of such a machine is a violation of all the laws of conservation of energy, the Orbo has been met with skepticism, ridicule, and contempt by the scientific community. In response, Steorn issued a full-page ad in The Economist, a scientific journal (the ad alone cost $60,000), challenging the scientific community to form a "jury" to come inspect the Orbo and deliver a verdict on whether or not it actually works. Twenty-two people were eventually chosen, and their decision is expected at the end of this year.

On July 6th, the Steorn team was scheduled to give a public demonstration of the Orbo machine at the Kinetica museum in London. They had rigged four live video feeds in the Orbo chamber so that around the world, people could watch live video online. However, the lights mounted above the camera apparently caused "unexpected equipment failures" and when they tried replacing the equipment, it led to "further failures." Thus, the demonstration has been postponed for at least three weeks, possibly more.

This incident, coupled with Steorn's obsessive secrecy about the project (they won't release schematics or models of how it works, they won't release the name of the company who makes their prototypes, they can't give demonstrations to journalists, etc), has led to feelings that it's just a big scam and a hoax, but the company appears to be serious about promoting this product and the benefit it will have on our lives and the lives of people in developing countries. I think it'll be interesting to follow this company, and to see if their machine works at all.

http://www.steorn.com

A New Millennium...

2007-07-08T20:41:00.002-06:00

What new invention will change the world? Do we know... do we even have the slightest hint what it might be? Could it be a new weapon, or maybe a mega- computer? Who knows, but a company is claiming that there new product will.

The company Millennial Motors Inc, makes Electric Motors, but not just any electrical motor they claim to have revolutionized the electrical motor, there web site http://www.millennialmotorsinc.com/ Goes into much more detail.

A picture of there electric motor pulled off of there site.

But if there claims are true, and there motor can do all that they say it can. Then yes, there product very much could revolutionize the world. No more would we have to go to gas stations and pay hundreds upon hundreds of dollars a year on gasoline and oil. If what they say is true, then we could travel for over 500 miles towing a 2 million pd. trailer all in a pick-up without recharging your car.

It would completely eliminate all form of pollution as the engine can run in factories, planes, cars you name it. This is a very interesting discovery by them; one that has completely has the scientific world baffled.

But you have to ask yourself this though. How could the great minds of the world working for NASA and other great corporations not of figured this out, and even go as far as saying it's not possible what Millennial Motors is claiming. It’s a very interesting topic and one of much debate.

AoE Discussions

2007-07-08T19:43:00.001-06:00

Alright so starting off on this blog of ours, I thought that we could begin our intelligent conversing, with an old game that has been apart of us since we first met, this game of course is "Age of Empires".

Although for the past year or so our interest in the series has been declining, due mostly to the fact of other interest's (like javajoe's girly troubles =)) Ensemble Studios has announced that they will be releasing a new expansion pack for AoE 3.

Although the new expansion pack is not something that people didn't expect, it's who will be creating it that is the shocker. Big Huge Games, creators of one of my most favorite games "Rise of Nations", is going to make the new expansion pack for AoE 3. The game is called "AoE 3 Asian Dynasties", and I must say that is a step in the right direction. It will introduce the three major powerhouses of the time, China, Japan, and India into the game.

So I am just wondering what to expect from this game. The other expansion pack "The Warcheifs" (I don't believe you've ever had the privilege to play it). I recently bought the game "The Warcheifs" and I must say it is a great edition to the collection. But what can we expect from this new expansion? With Big Huge Games and Ensemble working on it, the possibilities of the game our amazingly high.

I don't want to get my hopes up, but I can't see how they can blow making this game a "must have". I have very high expectations for this game as it is AoE and a long time favorite for both you and me. Also I would encourage all gamer's who are interested to play this game, as it will brighten and enlighten your day and mind.

A Blog? Whatever For?

2007-07-08T19:42:00.002-06:00

So, Jman--8 and I have started a blog. We thought it would be kind of cool to have a place on the 'web where we could post our thoughts on technology and video gaming and what could be done to improve things. Plus, it's a good opportunity to share our Intelligence with the world!

Anyway, as my first post, I thought I'd explain a bit about Jman--8 and myself: Jman--8 and I are the senior members of a comedy group called Roast Beef Educational Programs. Our first movie, The Killer Knight, was a project for our English class, and it was so popular that we decided we'd do more. We're on YouTube, so look us up!

Here's our first movie, The Killer Knight, filmed with JavaJoe7, who -due to a minor misunderstanding- is no longer part of the Roast Beef Troupe. Enjoy!