If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll occasionally get a message from me saying that I’m geocaching. So what the heck is geocaching? Quite simply, it is an organized way that folks hide boxes or ‘caches’ around the world with specific GPS coordinates. The coordinates are then posted to a website to allow others to find them and record their visit. This global treasure hunt is quite fun, and after you get yourself a GPS, it’s also pretty much free. Here’s my geocaching how-to: Read the rest of this entry »
Caught the Poison show last night in Madison, WI, with Sara and some friends. Not a bad show–a decent, albeit strange crowd of blasted out 30 and 40+ year olds reliving their high-school years in the 80’s. There was more than one real mullet in the crowd. If I were to rank the music, it would look something like this:
1. Dokken - They rocked! I was surprised at how good their sound was. No George Lynch on guitar, but whomever they got to fill his shoes could really tear it up.
2. Guns ‘n Roses playing on the PA - Before Poison played, they played GNR on the sound system. Yes, this was better than…
3. Poison - They aren’t known for their musicianship, and they proved that tonight. But they can put on a good show, and everyone was having a good time, so it was fun.
4. Sebastian Bach - He has a good voice, but he didn’t prove it tonight. His sound was terrible and his band awful. Thank goodness I missed most of this.
Some pictures from the show, in order of how they played (Sebastian Bach, Dokken and Poison):
I also shot some videos at the show. Here’s Poison doing “Talk dirty to me”:
Popcorn Hour A-100 Part 2: Video Playback and Torrents (this review!)
Popcorn Hour A-100 Part 3: Media Service Portal (coming soon)
Finally, my second part of the Popcorn Hour review. In Part 1 of my review, I detailed my setup with HomePlug AV. I’m still using this, but now that 802.11n is coming close to standardization, I’m looking forward to trying some wireless that should leap-frog the HomePlug AV solution in both convenience and performance. But for now, HomePlug is getting the job done. Read the rest of this entry »
Around 10-15 years ago, I listened to a lot of music that would classically fall into the category of “Heavy Metal” (Metallica, Anthrax, and later on, Helmet and the Deftones). In the mid-late 90’s, I turned off this genre due to most of the “NüMetal” that was all the rage and the Limp Bizkit / Korn clones that sucked big-bime. If it’s done well, it still gets annoying, but when done poorly, I’d rather listen to whales mating.
Enter Protest the Hero, the best thing to come out of Canada since Pam Anderson and Strange Brew. Upon first hearing this album, I was blown away by the throw-back musicianship these guys posses. Bands like the napster-killing-morons, Metallica wish they could play half this well. These guys pound out rhythms at a blinding speed and easily switch between genres flawlessly.
While they have some of the stereotypical screaming that I get sick of, they don’t seem to take themselves too seriously. Tackling subjects like Genghis Kahn’s ruling empire with lyrics like:
“Heads will roll, and throats will be slit, and blood will flow like springs of water, Heads will roll”
Very over-the-top, shockingly funny, but done well, so listenable. A breath of fresh air and a little return to a time when metal covered cool subjects like rulings of ancient tyrants and history lessons. Check them out if you’ve been missing metal. 4 out of 5 stars for me.
Finally, I’ve been severely slacking doing stock photos in 2008… I have probably 200 or so candidates, but haven’t gotten around to working on them yet. To get back in the groove, I did shoot and post a couple to Shutterstock with something we all spend TOO much time doing in the summer:
Got a few sales on the left one so far.
Finally, I’ll be doing some quick shots from my (lousy) cellphone camera from time to time. You can see those on the right side of my website. Enjoy!
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll occasionally get a message from me saying that I’m geocaching. So what the heck is geocaching? Quite simply, it is an organized way that folks hide boxes or ‘caches’ around the world with specific GPS coordinates. The coordinates are then posted to a website to allow others to find them and record their visit. This global treasure hunt is quite fun, and after you get yourself a GPS, it’s also pretty much free. Here’s my geocaching how-to:
