Alex Skolnick Trio – War Pigs

Alex Skolnick? Who is that? You may remember him as the guitar prodigy who joined thrash metal legends Testament at age 16.

So, what has he been up to? How about being involved in a jazz guitar trio interpreting metal and rock “standards”. Crazy idea? Maybe, but I know I like it.

Here’s the Alex Skolnick Trio delivering a jazzed up War Pigs.

Alex Skolnick Trio - War Pigs

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Halite 0.29

Woo! No protocol encryption yet, being dependent on libtorrent’s implementation, which I hope is underway. Can’t find a changelog, but 0.29 has got to be 0.01 better than 0.28, right?

Get it from the official Halite site, as usual.

Rush – Far Cry

One day I feel I’m on top of the world
And the next its falling in on me
I can get back on
I can get back home
One day I feel I’m ahead of the wheel
And the next its rolling over me
I can get back on
I can get back home

The lead off single from the upcoming album Snakes & Arrows. Some very tasty riffs in there. Can’t wait for the release of the album proper on the 1st of May.

Hopefully it is better mastered than the last studio album Vapor Trails which was horribly over-compressed. There are rumours of a remastered version but for now it remains just that, rumours, not hard news. Come on record label guys, do the right thing.

Rush - Far Cry (Official Video)
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Goodbye Sygate, Hello Comodo

 It was finally time for my beloved Sygate Personal Firewall to go.

As the pipes I have access to got fatter, Sygate’s CPU utilisation was getting unacceptable, up to 15% sometimes.

It was also getting long in the tooth (Symantec stopped development after taking over. Damn you Symantec!). Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but being a closed source application, the possibility of unpatched vulnerabilities is a concern.

And so, off on my quest. My criteria were simple.

  1. Cheap, free is even better
  2. Simple, as in “stop trying to do everything”
  3. Perhaps most importantly, effective

Unfortunately effectiveness can only be judged by reviews and tests as I have neither the means nor the desire to see for myself.

The popular candidate would be Kerio, but I do not like that it does web filtering, or that it nags you to register when the full version trial is over.

Happily, I decided to give Comodo Personal Firewall another go.

I have tried it before, maybe a year ago. Back then it had the obnoxious “Comodo LaunchPad”, and was bloody “chatty” with the warnings. Glad to see the LaunchPad is gone, and the sensitivity maybe tuned down somewhat.

Very nice, Comodo. Thanks.

Jimi Hendrix – Little Wing

This is the song that made me want to master the guitar. The video quality is atrocious, so just close your eyes, listen to the music and fly away.

Surely Jimi must have been channeling the music from somewhere not of this earth. That bit about me mastering the guitar? Still working on it.

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Brad Delp 1951 – 2007

There is really only one thing I can quote:

I looked out this morning and the sun was gone
Turned on some music to start my day
I lost myself in a familiar song
I closed my eyes and I slipped away

R.I.P. Brad, and thanks.

Update: It was a suicide. Damned shame.

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