Rock your face off Friday!

Today's band...the ever-rocking Dillinger Escape Plan!

Milk Lizard

 

Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants

 

The Mullet Burden (careful, this one might melt your face off)

 

Black Bubblegum (a song that drives old DEP fans crazy, but I think it's delicious)

Posted by AvastYeBilgeRat @ 9:58 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

The Financial Crisis explained to the rest of us

I saw this on Digg today and thought it was great.  Cuts through all the crap and explains how we got in this mess in 10 minutes, with easy-to-follow visuals.

Posted by AvastYeBilgeRat @ 11:56 pm EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

Rock your face off Friday!

New weekly feature: "Rock your face off Friday."  WOOT!

Today's band is Protest the Hero out of Canada. I really dig the way these guys fall into a groove, then switch it up, then groove some more, then all hell breaks loose, and then you find yourself in an epic ending. First, a couple from their latest album "Fortress," released in 2008.

Bone Marrow - no video for this one, but this is one of my favs off the album.



And here's Bloodmeat - most popular single. Not crazy about the lame video (actually, PTH appears to suck at making videos, period), but the music is insane. Again, E.P.I.C. ending...hold on.



And a couple off their major debut, Kezia. Little more of a punk influence in places, but the prog/groove metal is still there.

Blindfolds Aside:



Heretics and Killers - aka PTH does the flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz.

Posted by AvastYeBilgeRat @ 10:40 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

Return to the Blog (9 months later)!

Then and Now

Hard to believe my last blog entry was when our little girl was 3 months old.  She just turned 1, is starting to walk, her first word was "baby" and she says it all the time whenever she sees or hears another baby/small kid.  I can't believe how fast everything's happened.  Of course having both of us get new jobs, sell our house and purchase a new house in a different town, and getting pregnant again has certainly helped speed things up a bit.  Many days still do feel like the fish slap clip from my last entry, so I have that going for me.

1 Week to 1 Year

 

Tessa's little sister Ainsley is scheduled to be here late May.

Gaming Life

Aside from a short-lived but insane flash addiction to World of Warcraft for the first time (yea...that one didn't go over well with the real-life schedule) - gaming overall hasn't really been on the radar.  To those who haven't played it but have scratched their heads at the stories of WoW addiction, it's for real.  WoW is a HELL of a game and is insanely addicting.  I levelled my character (Arrmatey - Blackhand - Survival Hunter) all the way through Northrend and was raiding endgame content in a period of a few months and LOVED every second of it.  It's got something for everyone from the casual player to the hardcore PvPer or PVEer/Raider.  Glad I never subscribed and just did the pre-paid cards because I'd have been unable to cancel I think.

Here was my final armory...not too bad eh?  R.I.P. Arrmatey (9/15/08-1/15/09)

Upgrading to a new PC also led me to pick up The Orange Box which is fantastic value, I just haven't done all that much with it.  The PC I got was a Gateway FX-4710 from Best Buy.  This line of mid-high gaming rigs that Gateway sells for low-mid rig prices are GREAT deals!  It's MSRP was $1600 and Best Buy had it for $1099.  Q9300 Core 2 Quad, 6GB RAM, Nvidia GTS 9800?  Yes, please.

The really strange thing is, that even though for the first time in my life gaming isn't a daily part of what I do...I don't miss it all that much, and I don't know what to think about that.  Be glad I've moved on to being involved with other things?  Be sad for the nostalgic days of getting lost in my favorite interactive pasttime?  Be envious that I wish I had the time and the life situation to get lost in games and let time slip?  I dunno.  I'll just be fine with having XBox LIVE Silver for now (it hasn't been booted up for anything other than a spontaneous Rock Band session during parties for almost a year now) and do whatever I have time for.

Music/Reading/Movies

The neat thing about not gaming so much, other than spending all my time with my wife and little girl, has been falling back in love with other forms of media which are easier for me to consume daily than interactive entertainment given my schedule.  I'm currently about halfway through Hubbard's Battlefield Earth which I've never read and I'm finding it to be an enjoyable story so far.  I've also got Martin's A Game of Thrones on deck, which I've heard is the mack-daddy of Fantasy series, so I'm REALLY looking forward to starting it.

I think we've been out to see one movie on a date-night in the last 6 months, so anything we're watching these days is TV or on DVD.  The neat thing here is that I did splurge on a Sony Blu-ray player.  Not many movies to speak of yet, but I did grab Band of Brothers Blu-ray when it was on-sale at Amazon a couple of months back.  It is AMAZING on Blu-ray.  I think the thing that surprises me the most is the difference is SOUND.  It's an unbelieveable difference.

Music-wise, I've gotten rather "heavy" recently, really into a Progressive Metal world I haven't ventured too far into until now.  I'm still not the fondest of growling vocals, but they do grow on you when you follow the lyrics along to actually understand what they're saying.  I'm more into when growling/screaming is used for emphasis - kind of like how I feel about cursing.  Saying "f**k" every other word doesn't have the same effect has not using it a lot then unleashing a "What the F**K?!?!"  Anyhow, heavy in my "heavy rotation" these days are:

Protest the Hero - Fortress (my album of 2008...wow)

Burst - Lazarus Bird

Between the Buried and Me - Colors

Opeth - Watershed

Posted by AvastYeBilgeRat @ 1:25 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

The kind of week it's been...

The week: 1-10 seconds
Me today: 11-15 seconds



Posted by AvastYeBilgeRat @ 9:44 am EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments