Arriving Somewhere

Some recent releases by a few of my favorite bands….

Prog mastermind Neal Morsereleased “?” at the beginning of the month and it has received rave reviews.

The Gathering released their first official DVD A Sound Relief earlier this month as well.

Extol creates some of the most complex metal you’ll hear. Their album The Blueprint Dives came out back in May.

Those punky secret agent brass musicians (and cellists…) Alamaailman Vasarat released their third album way back in March. They defy description… go the website and listen to some samples.

Dark Tranquillity released Character this earlier this year.

Maria Taylor (half of Azure Ray) solo ablum 11:11 came out in March.

Garbage released Bleed Like Me in April.

Veruca Salt released an EP Lords of Sounds and Lesser Things that can be purchased at their website.

Porcupine Tree is finally re-releasing their 1999 album Stupid Dream. As an avid collector of PT I have been waiting a long time for this one.

The reissue of Porcupine Tree’s 1999 album Stupid Dream will be available in early 2006 in the form of a 2 disc set containing a remixed and remastered stereo CD, and a 5.1 surround sound DVDA. The 5.1 disc also contains surround sound mixes of “Ambulance Chasing” and the full length version of “Even Less”, the video to “Piano Lessons”, and a photo gallery. This 2 disc edition will only be available to buy direct from the Porcupine Tree Store. A standard CD edition will receive a wider release at a later date, as well as a 2LP vinyl version on US label Gates of Dawn

My pick for the number one album of 2003 is getting a follow up! Office of Strategic Influence (or OSI for short) is made up of Jim Matheos (Fates Warning), Kevin Moore (Chroma Key), and Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater). OSI was an amazing and unique album and I am totally stoked about OSI 2!!!

Jim, Kevin and Mike were at Carriage House Studios in Connecticut on November 18-20 tracking drums for the forthcoming OSI album. Jim and Kevin are now tracking guitars and vocals, and mixing will take place in January.

And a release soon after? This is the album I look forward to the most in 2006!

Technorati tags: Dream Theater, Prog Rock

Italian rockers Lacuna Coil have tentatively scheduled a release for their new album Karmacode for March 2006. Considering how long it’s been since their last release (2002), I hope the intervening time was well spent. I’ll expect to be blown away.

Technorati tags: Lacuna Coil

It looks like Amazon has decided to experiment with “tags” as a means of classifying. Users of Flickr, Del.icio.us and Technorati will be familiar with creating, assigning and sharing keywords or “tags” – and will soon have the opportunity to do so at Amazon.com. In my opinion folksonomies are the way to go as they make sense to the average user who may not understand how an item has been classified by the experts. Not to say that we don’t need classification by those in the know, but why not provide additional access points created by the average user? And really, who’s to say the experts know any better than then my Grandma or your nephew?

Anyways, Daniel Terdiman has some info about Amazon’s experiment: Amazon tries its hand at tagging

Technorati tags: tags, folksonomy, Amazon

Last Thursday I went to Applebee’s Restaurant to watch the Fresno State – Boise State football game. It was awesome to witness Fresno’s trouncing of their conference rival at home and in the rain. Especially for me, being 3,000 miles away as I rarely get to see my Bulldogs play. I’ve still got plenty of respect for Boise, I’m sure they’ll be gunning for us next year… and their fans have a ton of class. Despite the ugly start to the rivalry (anyone remember the cheap shot when a Fresno player laid out the Bronco kick returner, then the revenge a year later?) Boise fans showed their class by coming out to the MPC Computers Bowl game last year (when we upset Virginia) and rooting for their conference.

I think I was the only person at Applebee’s interested in the game… I had a funny conversation with a drunk Univ. of Maryland student that went something like this:

drunk UMD student: Where’s Fresno State?
me: In California.
student: What city?
me: Fresno.
student: Where’s that?
me: (ponders how to describe a geographic location to someone who is obviously not familiar with California geography) In the middle of the state.
student: What city is it near?
me: (now annoyed and trying to watch the game) Well, halfway between, um, do you know where Sacramento is?
student: No.
me: Fresno is in the middle of the state.

I am so glad the Prince George’s County passed a resolution barring smoking from establishments beginning in the new year. All evening I was surrounded by chain smokers and I came home reeking. Ugh, how disgusting.

Fresno State, college football

While I don’t blog about it much, that doesn’t change the fact that I am a huge American Football fan… and I love college football. Tonight is a big game for my alma mater, Fresno State, and in my opinion the biggest game of the season – more important than next weeks game against #1 ranked USC. Tonight we’re playing Boise State, our conference rival and the team that has repeatedly dashed our dreams of a busting the BCS.

Whoever wins tonights game will undoubtedly finish the season as the conference champion. Will it be a four-peat for the Broncos or will the Bulldogs finally beat the smurfs and go on to be USC’s toughest opponent of the year?

Since the Broncos joined the WAC this rivalry has been an exciting one to watch. I’m looking forward to seeing the game on ESPN tonight…. only the second game I’ve been able to watch all season due to being on the east coast!

Fresno State, college football

Keyword searching on the web via Google or Yahoo! or whatever is all fine and dandy, but it sure can be overwhelming when the results number in the millions! Wouldn’t it be nice if someone you trust could point out the good sites and the bad sites on that list? Well, someone has created a plugin for Firefox that does exactly that.

With Outfoxed you select the users (called ‘informers’) that you trust, then when you do a web search it will mark the results Good, Bad, or Dangerous as rated by your trusted informers. You too can rate websites or write short reviews. As a social network you can determine how many degrees of people to trust… in other words, you could select to trust the informers that your informers trust, or trust the trusted of the trusted of those you trust, and so on. Confused? Sorry, its really all quite simple and I am not very eloquent. Just have a quick look at the site [http://getoutfoxed.com/]. Trust me. Then download it and let me know so that I can ‘trust’ you!

Of course, this doesn’t work with M$ Internet Explorer, only with Mozilla Firefox (the best, safest, quickest browser).

technorati tag: Outfoxed, social networking, Firefox