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Ah to have lyrics and therefore something resembling song titles, but never mind. Another track that isn’t exactly ‘new’, but has a new middle section and probably the best recorded version of it. I was tempted to slow down the main tempo in case it felt a little rushed (and to make it a bit easier to play), but soldiered on at the original. I’m quite pleased how it turned out.

Whilst myself and my buddy enjoy making music, we are afflicted by the problem that, while we can do the rest, neither of us can sing. These guys however seem to have the opposite problem.

Despite watching the regular amount of Daily Show/Colbert today, this made me laugh the most, and is easily the dumbest, cheesiest, and yet most awesome thing.

Battery, bat-tery, battery, bat-tery!

EDIT: I’ve just thought of a way for me to finally do some solos!

Back from another staff party. If TV and Film are to be believed Staff parties are supposed to be terribly boring affairs, but for the 2nd year running, this staff party has been ace! There may just be something to getting drunk on a Thursday, but if this was every week I could get on board with it. Hell it was this time last year that spawned ‘Pub Thursday’, so it is only fair that this year live up to expectations. I only hope that I can make this year’s Xmas party as it is supposed to surpass the respective Summer one (not that I’d know having missed mast year’s Xmas party); it has a lot to live up to! Great band, great music; and just to set the record straight, I do not love Jay-Z, I just recognised the appropriate song to proceed with. Hey, I ain’t even got 99 problems…

… for some value of ‘new’. This song has been written for ages but I thought I’d re-record it with all the skillz I’ve acquired since I first finished it. Once I’ve got a decent collection of tracks I really need to work on my soloing; it’s the one thing this track is missing and I can’t drag anything out that sounds half-decent.
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A cover I’ve been working on for a few weeks of the Rammstein song ‘Adios’. Nothing too special here, as it’s a pretty easy song to play. I concentrated more on the production as there isn’t many layered tracks but there is a lot of different sounds (a clean sound for one). A good experiment in the kind of sounds I can drag out of my guitar with a bit of tweaking. The drums were a bit tricky as well due to the way the song is played mostly on the snare in the verse, but I think I’ve got it realistic enough.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7528503.stm

So apparently some former Google employees claim their new search engine is better than The Google. Let’s run a quick test based a slightly edge-case search, but one that I have needed the answer to in my working day: “oracle v$open_cursors bug”:

Google: 3,260 results. How useful these results might be doesn’t need commenting on when…

Cuil: 0 results. Seriously? Surely a few results for just ‘oracle’ would have been better?

Result: FAIL

Not to be confused with the Next generation; I occasionally buy my clothes from other places. ha

So the ‘next-gen’ consoles have surely now become the ‘current-gen’ consoles. As such it only seems appropriate that I pick myself up one of these bad-boys. The trouble here is the ‘one’ part. I really don’t want to buy multiple consoles. I don’t play that many console games, or at least play them for long enough periods to warrant having all the consoles. And so I have decide which: PS3, XBOX 360, or Wii.

The worst thing about this generation of consoles is that it isn’t a case of finding the ‘best’ console, as it is finding the ‘least-bad’. Let me demonstrate by listing the cons (for me at least) of each console:

360:

• Build quality. I know 3 people who have 360s. All of them are on their 2nd ones, or higher. I want to fell comfortable moving my console when it’s on that it won’t assplode.
• Region locked games. This wouldn’t be a problem if game publishers realised that Europe is here, but as it stands games take months if not years to come out in Europe after the U.S. and Japan. I don’t import that many games, but I want the option of being able to.
• Hard drive cost. The 360 has entirely proprietary hard drives, which means that price per Gig is insane. I have a 750GB drive in my PC that cost less than a 120GB 360 drive.

PS3:

• Bad OS. I guess that’s not really fair. It’s just bad compared to the 360. But come on, in-game XMB? How does that take 2 years? And I’m sorry, but if I select the Album list from an artist, order the songs by track number, not alphabetically.
• Bad online. Again, just compared to the competition, but when a game (GTA4) writes a whole matchmaking system into a game on one console and not the other, it really shows how deficient said console is.

Wii: Forget the bullet-points. No online. Friend codes?! No hard-drive. Europe doesn’t exist. Wiihasnogameslol.

So it comes down to 360 vs PS3. Most people would argue that the 360 has the better game library, but not really games I care about as I’m not a 15-year-old obsessed with FPSs. Unfortunately there’s only 1 console game I care about that’s coming out in the next 6 months:

Rock. Band. Two.

And that my friends has made up my mind. 360fanboys be damned, it will have to be the PS3. RB2 will not be out in Europe for god knows how long, and thus I will want to import it. So why would I buy a 360? It is a vastly superior Media Centre, but I’ve already got a dedicated PC for that.

So that was easy. Microsoft could have made their games cross-region, but they didn’t. Now I must wait for RB2 for the PS3 (slated for mid-October) and I can finally join this generation.

It’s all so much easier on the PC. Why won’t Empire: Total War be out sooner.

Note: These are not in order of hatred, but as and when I find more reasons.

Anyone with more than a passing interest in the ‘08 US Presidential Race will know who John Hagee is. Alas that guy is not really a reason to hate religion per se; there are always crazies in any belief system. In fact it was reading a story about an interview with him that ticked me off:

Hagee’s phone lines were clogged with calls from worshipers asking whether they should vote for McCain.

And there it is. Hagee’s followers were conflicted as to whether to vote for a guy to be the most powerful man in the free world, and what did they do? Did they do a little research, weigh up all the options, and decide whether the guy fitted into their vision of the world? No. They asked their Pastor to tell them what to do.

Not taking responsibility for one’s own life. Another reason I hate religion.

Everyone has a pair of truly comfy shoes. Those shoes that you wear all the time that have taken the exact contours of each foot. They are there welcoming you each morning; you haven’t undone/redone the laces in years.

Alas, my own pair of said shoes has finally been retired. I think it’s time when they behave not unlike a sponge with even the slightest hint of moisture in the air. The left one has acquired a squeak that I can only put down to water retention.

And so they must be consigned to the cupboard. I can’t bring myself to throw them away, even though they are in a greater state of disrepair than my designated ‘festival trainers’. I don’t even know if they will make it to my new abode, although I am reliably informed (by my own nose) that they don’t smell too funky.

A tribute then to my most comfy of shoes. You served me well.

Now long will it take for my new work shoes to get that comfy… I don’t want to wait.