My original intent was to go see a local band named Nephilim whom I personally know. They were one of the opening acts for Finnish metal band Finntroll last night. There were two other bands (Abyssmal Nocturne and Elfion) but I was unable to get there early enough to see.
Nephilim is a fine up-and-coming band from Orange County, California consisting of four members — Mike Hess (vocals), Andrew Hicks (guitar), Arya Zarrinkelk (bass), and Max Whelihan (drums). While I like their music, I think they need some constructive criticism to improve.
Arya seems to be out of sync with the rest of the band on stage. His bass playing does not provide the driving bass metal is famous for and the clothes he selected to wear did not fit in with the genre nor what the other members outfits. Arya’s dance style while playing bass is distracting.
Mike’s vocals are good and with more practice plus gig work will be very good. His interaction with the other members on stage was more than adequate but was a bit too one dimensional. Of course, the short stage due to Finntroll’s equipment already setup and covered behind them did not help.
Max is a drumming machine and is one of the highlights of the band along with Andrew’s guitar. Thrumming double bass and smart playing with complex rhythms represent Max in the total. A fine drummer and a fine member of the band.
Andrew is a really good player but I feel the band is missing an angle. A second guitarist would round out their sound.
Back to Andrew’s play — really better than good. He is just outstanding. He interacts with the other members on stage well and never missed a riff.
One major criticism I have for them is to not promote themselves during the concert by telling the audience to buy their merchandise. This happened not once but twice during the set — bad form. Let your music and presence sell you. The second time they got booed.
The crowd listened intently but, with but a few exceptions, little enthusiasm. No mosh pit opened up although there was some head banging going on.
The bass playing was not clearly defined in the set but rather muddled in with the drums. Drums were crisp and clean but the bass drums overpowered the unusual playing style of the bass player. The guitar was well played but sounded muddy at a few points where is was difficult to discern the riffs being laid down. Vocals were a bit unintelligible but that is more from the sound setup than the vocalists performance.
Overall, Nephilim is a fine band that I hope makes it one day. With some adjustments in their style and possibly the band member makeup, they are sure to get a recording contract.
Finntroll
I had heard of them but never heard their music. I was blown away last night. They were extremely tight and played the audience well. Being this was their first gig at the Galaxy, I was impressed with the size of the crowd that came out for them. They were extremely tight and the set was upbeat and fast paced. Well done!
The mosh pit was active after Vreth (lead vocals) encouraged them to dance. Security managed to keep a few crowd surfers from spilling onto the stage. Guitars were crisp and clean and the bass player was clearly heard and not muddled as sometimes happens in these small venues. Vreth played lead throat well and considering it appears they are nearing the end of the tour in the US and Mexico, I was impressed with the quality.
The Finntroll performance was rousing and I wish them good tidings and luck!
The RIAA (not to mention the MPAA) and the recording industry are just plain WRONG! What ever happened to fair use? Down the toilet with a lot of the rest of our rights. And don’t blame President Bush alone. Congress and most of our governing bodies are at fault for taking away our rights along with our complacency.
I see the pattern here — you buy a CD and so you have a license to listen to it from that CD. But if you copy it to your iPod, Zune, or computer, well that is another copy and so of course you have to pay a new license fee to use it that way. Bullsh*t!
And I feel so sorry for Jammie Thomas. What ever happened to the punishment fitting the alleged crime? $222000US? Oh man! That really fits the crime now doesn’t it? And please don’t get me started on jury instructions that block the jury’s right to decide the case.
Of course the artists, producers, distributors, and sellers have a right to make a profit. We have the right to use the material personally as we see fit as long as no profit is being made (unless it falls into academic, artistic, and documentary fair use). There needs to be a balance. Come on industry, come up with a business model and pricing scheme the average Joe will accept and move on. The industry is just as much at fault for the file sharing as the people performing the file sharing.
I have been looking for something like this for some time. I know of no sites reposting my blog material in entirety from RSS feeds, but I do worry about it. It is MY content and I don’t want anyone using it improperly.
This plug-in adds a signature to each entry in the RSS feed. I plan on putting in a disclaimer and copyright notice. It won’t stop someone from reusing my posts but if they are scripting it, it will show up on every post.
We all have a responsibility to work against the modern day slavery. As Wilberforce said over 200 years ago, “We are all guilty - we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others.”
Being compassionate individuals, we have to stop this. I don’t know what methods we should use, but it has to stop. It is the right of all persons to have the freedom to pursue happiness and well being — to live with dignity.
As a libertarian, I won’t advocate war although sometimes it does take force to correct a situation. The state is not the answer — we are.
Don’t sit by idly. If you know something, tell the authorities. If you live in an area of the world where slavery is the norm, protest it. Movements start small and grow.
In developed countries, we need to provide aid to the groups resisting the evil that slavery represents and report anything you know to the proper authorities. Again, the state is not the answer. Private charities with people working in concert, that is the answer.
“Our favorite designing man shows us his favorite appliances and accessories, and shares his secret for fabulous cabinets”
Isaac Mizrahi is a Brooklyn-born designer who launched his first collection in 1987. Since then, he has designed couture lines for Bergdorf Goodman, as well as a women’s sportswear and a home accessories line for Target. Mizrahi created costumes for movie, dance, and theater productions and was the subject of the 1995 documentary Unzipped. He has also starred in off-Broadway plays and hosted several television shows, including Isaac, which appears on the Style Network.
Epicurious as a video tour of ’s kitchen. Quite interesting…
There still aren’t a lot of downloads out there that can really improve Vista, but we’ve found twenty real keepers that will allow you to tweak it and improve your experience with the OS.
Preston Gralla
Nice overview of various downloads that you can use to tweak and improve your Windows Vista PC.
Whip Vista into Shape
09.24.07 Microsoft Windows Vista is a pretty muscular operating system, but it still needs toning. These three utilities give your new OS more speed and endurance.
PC Magazine online has a good article on tweaking Windows Vista. Not as thorough as more technical sites, but good for what it covers.
intro LEDs for Beginners
This instructable shows how to wire up one or more LEDs in a in a basic and clear way. Never done any work before with LEDs and don’t know how to use them? Its ok, neither have I.
Planning on upgrading my PC, I have been itching to do some case mods. Searching produced the above article at Instructables.com. I pretty much knew the content but it helped refresh my memory.
Recently purchased Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GTS TDH video card (was an ATI X1950XTX until my daughter needed a more powerful card and so I got the new card).
Lite-On DVD burner (don’t remember the exact model)
Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (upgraded from Windows XP Pro earlier this year)
Because of issues I have been having (on board LAN is now dead) and apparent load issues, I had to pull two TV tuners I had installed. I have enough power to run everything and it was working fine for quite some time.
2 sets of G.SKILL F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ DDR2 (5 5 5 15) memory (2×2GB for 8 GB total) (DDR3 is too expensive to go that direction yet)
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit
PCIe SATA/IDE card for the two 500 GB ATA-100 drives since the motherboard has only one IDE port and my DVD burner has to go there
Video editing, Photoshop, some programming, games — this should be able to do these for me easily. I picked the quad core that I can afford for the video editing and Photoshop work and from the reviews I have been seeing, it overclocks like a dream, which is why I picked the Tuniq Tower for cooling.
More memory will definitely help with video editing and Photoshop work. I may pick up a 750 GB SATA II hard drive for speed and capacity and move the two 500 GB ATA-100 drives to my server.
Alternatively, I may buy an ABITIP35 Pro motherboard instead of the Gigabyte.
You all know the slogan: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” At the Digital Rights Strategies conference in New York City, a similar message could be heard: “DRM doesn’t anger consumers, content owners abusing DRM anger consumers.”…
So true! I understand the want of DRM by the content makers. However, fair use is important. Since the sale is a license and not a transfer of ownership, the consumer must be able to backup their purchase. Or are the DRM proponents going to give a new copy of an accidentally destroyed work for a small fee?
I am against DRM. Educate the comsumer base, remove DRM, and come up with new, innovative business models please.
Deepest Sender is a client that will allow you to post to blogs from directly within Firefox. It is primarily a LiveJournal client, although it supports Blogger (GData) and WordPress (metaWeblog) too, with support for more stuff to come.
Deepest Sender is a client that will allow you to post to blogs from directly within Firefox. It is primarily a LiveJournal client, although it supports Blogger (GData) and WordPress (metaWeblog) too, with support for more stuff to come. Note that the actual Deepest Sender website will always have the most up to date version.
Works with: Firefox Firefox: 1.5b1 – 2.0.0
I posted this from Deepest Sender. It is quite nice to be able to surf and then blog about something you find, directly from Firefox.
got the new card).
