Author: loserx

Dead Musicians

A friend claims I have an obsession with dead musicians, and I cannot say she is incorrect as I am very much looking forward to Johnny Cash’s soon to be released American V: A Hundred Highways. I am not a fan of country music, but I have been a big fan of Mr. Cash since his dominating performance on U2’s The Wanderer. The Man In Black was a total badass, and Bono is in agreement1.

That I count Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Buckley among my favourite musicians only supports her opinion.

Speaking of which, is it a sign of aging that I am as excited about Johnny Cash’s and Neil Young’s new albums as Pearl Jam’s and Tool’s?

[1] Bono said: “Locusts and honey … not since John The Baptist has there been a voice
like that crying in the wilderness. … Every man knows he is a sissy
compared to Johnny Cash.” Amen.

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Categorized as Music

Diabolus in Musica

Interesting article on the BBC about the Devil’s Interval, otherwise known as the tritone. It’s cool that Black Sabbath was mentioned, but come on, you have an article about the tritone and no mention of Hendrix’s Purple Haze?

Wagner’s music rocks, by the way, even if he was said to be an unpleasant individual.

New Love

Picked up this darling just a couple of days ago, courtesy the government of Singapore.

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Its an Ibanez SZ320. The photo fails to do it justice.

Posing it in front of my other treasure, the CD collection. Fell in love with the tone and feel when I tried it, was a no brainer. The intonation was just about perfect off the shelf, and I did not need to adjust the action. It has a set neck, string-though-body design, mahogany body and neck, rosewood fingerboard… and the bridge is a thing of beauty. Sustains forever. Aaaaaaa… you could go and have a bite and… aaaaaaaaa… you’d still be hearing that one.

Oh my ex-guitar, you have served me well, but your hardware is corroding, the frets are worn out, and your knobs and pickup toggle and other bits are falling off. And Marty Friedman endorses my new love. I’m sorry but it wasn’t even a contest…

Now all I need is an amp that goes up to eleven.

Daughtry Unoriginal? Surely Not…

So, the controversy over how Chris Daughtry made the cover of I Walk The Line “his own” refuses to die. Get over it folks, its American Idol, blandness is a virtue. It only proves one thing, the judges are out of touch, and Daughtry really should have corrected them.

Disclaimer: I do not watch American Idol.

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Categorized as Music

Kerio Carries On

Some hopefully good news. Sunbelt has agreed to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall from Kerio Technologies and will continue to have a free version available for home users.

With Zone Alarm suffering from stability problems, and Sygate getting discontinued, this could be great news.

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Very Disappointing, Symantec

Looks like Sygate Personal Firewall will be no more. Knew this was going to happen, after Symantec took over Sygate a few months ago. I was a pretty loyal user of Symantec back in the late 90s but now I avoid their products like avian flu. While Norton Antivirus is just bloated, the Internet Security suite is bloated and under-performing. Killing Sygate PF is not going to increase sales of your Internet Security suite, Symantec.

Sygate PF was probably the best of the free software firewalls available. I’ll probably be taking a look at Jetico.

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BEST BT CLIENT EVAR!

Introducing µTorrent. It is a pretty young client, and already it is gaining a groundswell of rabid users. I have been using it for a while and, barring an unfortunate tracker stat incident with an earlier version, am very pleased with it.

Why?

  • The size of the executable is under 100 KB
  • CPU and memory utilisation are minimal, as in just about insignificant
  • Very fast iterations for bug fixes/new features (though this means users are all essentially beta testers)
  • Enough features for most users

The only negative I can think of is that it is not open source, but probably a moot point given the amazing work done so far.

Respect…

…to John Densmore.

Ex-Door Lighting Their Ire

“People lost their virginity to this music, got high for the first time to this music,” Densmore said. “I’ve had people say kids died in Vietnam listening to this music, other people say they know someone who didn’t commit suicide because of this music…. On stage, when we played these songs, they felt mysterious and magic. That’s not for rent.”

Oh yes. It definitely takes me back to the time I…well, moving on.

Here are some words from the man himself:

Riders on the Storm

So buy a album by the Doors today. I recommend their self-titled debut or the follow up Strange Days.

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Categorized as Music