Is This Thing On?

Seriously... Is this thing on?

So my last post on here was... almost five years ago.

Wow.

Just rereading my past posts has been a trip for me. I’ve been through 2 jobs, a few of my friends have gotten married, I’ve transplanted to a new time zone, and I’m living with a girl I love. That’s a lot for a life. Hell, that’s a lot for a re-cap. 

So, for now, I’m going to just say hello. Welcome back! Unless, you’re here for the first time. In that case, Howdy!

I’m going to try to stay up-to-date. I can’t promise, however, that I won’t revisit a bit of my history. If you like it... great. If not... tough.

Aloha, bitches.

The News

So I generally don't comment on local/state/country/world news at all on here because, well to put it lightly, I don't follow the news. Not that I'm advocating being an ignorant tool of whatever system manages to reach me, I'm simply just not that interested in it. Local news tends to gloss over things I would deem to be important in favor of "human interest" stories about cats in trees and farmers with oddly shaped/sized rutabagas. National news tends to report on what's important to people in California and New York. And, to be honest, none of them do it with any sort of flair or panache. They've got no gusto. I demand GUSTO, damn it! Enter The Daily Show.
Now most people would readily dismiss this modern marvel of news and humor as vapid stimulation for an audience lacking any sort intellectual curiosity or interest in actual news. To those people I would like direct the following question: What news show did Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf recently appear on a mere day before his historic dinner/summit with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Bush? I'll give you a hint: this show does not air on CNN.

-Falcon out

P.S. Lupe

Work is No Fun

Dreary days are not meant to be spent at some obnoxious, overly-flourescent entertainment store, even if it is YOUR entertainment superstore. They should be spent curled up in bed, reading and drinking flavourful tea. (The 'u' is there to denote sophistication, by the way. A little trick I learned from my aussie mates.) However, with a little drizzle of rain pattering away on my window, a recently acquired book sitting on the table, and a bag of tea aching to be brewed, I depart for work. Sucks to be me.

Rain, rain, deign to stay
Stick around 'til I can play
I hate to be briefly away
Hi, ho Hastings up, up, and away.

Lousy money.

-Falcon out

A Delightful Discovery (Pandora.com)

One of the guys in my WoW guild posted this website in our forums that I had never heard of for checking out new music. Not to toot my own horn, but when it comes to old school Hip Hop, I have a fairly comprehensive iTunes library. So I thought I should put this site through its paces and see what it can do.

It asks you to type in a song or an artist and it will generate a playlist of songs similar to that one. So I decided to put in a song I thought was new enough and widely known and yet still kicked ass to start off. "Watch Out" by De La Soul seemed to fit the bill, so I went with that. Once I found it in the extensive list and selected it I was presented with the message "To start things off, we’ll play another song by De La Soul that is musically similar to “Watch Out”, featuring east cost rap roots, melodic part writing, a dry recording sound, tonal harmonies, and many other similarities identified in the music genome project."

Holy shit.

What did I get? "The Grind Date." Off to a good start, eh? After that song, it informed me "From here on out we’ll be exploring other songs and artists that have musical qualities similar to “Watch Out” by De La Soul. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the music - that's the point."

Acquisition has been working overtime ever since then. I have heard some fucking amazing music and I cannot recommend this site enough. Not only does it stream high quality music to wherever you are, it does so with no latency and a playlist that will rock your socks off. Plus you can rate each song according to whether you like it or not thereby making the database even more ridiculously perfect. And if you really like the song it has links to buy that song on iTunes or the full album on Amazon.

This old dog just got taught a whole new set of tricks. Nuff said.

Falcon out

OK it's Up... Sort of...

The WoW blog is kind of up. No posts yet, and the layout needs some work, but you can at least bookmark it or whatever it is you kids are doing these days.