New Manowar album preview!

Below is a video of members of "The Circle" - fans and media contacts hand chosen by Manowar - previewing the rough mix of the newest studio track, "El Gringo," from Manowar's upcoming album, which will be released in late June/early July 2012.

Not only am I stoked for the new album; I also saw this as an opportunity to hopefully get involved with this "Circle." For now, count on me to promote Manowar news whenever I receive updates. Later, who knows?

 

Also note that 2012 is the 10th anniversary of one of my favorite Manowar discs, Warriors of the World. It's a big year! Perhaps another U.S. visit will be in the works???

Hail and Kill,
Your brother of steel
official band site:
www.manowar.com

The doctor is in

I just finished reading Ozzy Osbourne's second book, Trust Me, I'm Dr. Ozzy, and I really enjoyed it. It's quite an easy and frightfully entertaining read. Apparently the Prince of Darkness has an advice column that's printed in the London Sunday Times and Rolling Stone, where he doles out pearls of wisdom concerning substance abuse, family life, relationships, medicine and darn near everything else under the sun. This book is a greatest hits compilation from that column.

Being only 304 pages and composed mainly of letters from readers and Ozzy's oft-times witty and sometimes sincere responses, it does go very quickly. I pretty much got through it in four sittings (unless the bathroom counts, tee hee), which is good for me. I haven't blasted through a book that quickly in ages. It was highly entertaining and hard to put down. Ozzy's a funny guy. It kind of makes me want to read his first book, I Am Ozzy, as well.

Volunteer work for Peoria Academy

OK, here's that video I was telling you about last week. I put this together for the annual school fundraiser auction, and it was played immediately preceding the paddle raise segment. I got a lot of compliments afterward, but that wasn't the best part.

This video got folks in the mood to donate, and in a big way. We surpassed our goal with the paddle raise. I won't say exactly how much it raised, but I will say it was a five digit figure that came in a few thousand over the goal and paid for the new HVAC unit we desperately needed at the school. Very impressive outcome to say the least.

I can't wait to undertake a more professional recruiting piece for the school's website. I will start planning that one within a few weeks, and I'll waste no time in posting that one when it's done.

High quality link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLs7uq40OZQ

The death throes of print

E-readers are becoming more common lately.

With all the buzz around e-readers like the Nook and Kindle and devices like the iPad with e-reader capabilities, not to mention the proliferation of information available on the Internet, it seems it's only a matter of time before the printed tome sees its last days. I await this day with a feeling of anxiousness and dread.

I've never actually used an e-reader and I don't read as much as I used to, but I'm one of those people that's going to take forever to convert to electronic books, and maybe I never will. One of the things I love about printed books is the feeling of accomplishment I get when the stack of pages to the left of my current page starts to grow then eventually surpass the size of the stack of pages to the right. I can't see any way possible that a Nook can give me that same feeling.

There's also the storage issue, which can be a pro or a con either way. I love being able to display the books I've read (or plan on reading) in my home, but you can't really do that with e-books. On the flip side, it's a lot easier to relocate a Kindle than box after box of books should I need to move. And packing is a snap.

My local library now loans e-books too. I was looking for what I thought was an audiobook on the shelf and ended up having to ask the librarian about it. She informed me that it was an electronic book for e-readers and I was more or less gobsmacked. She said they work the same way as borrowing a traditional book. You get limited access to it before the next person checks it out. Weird.

The recently opened branch of my local library has sparsely
populated shelves and offers electronic loans.

I simply haven't been sold on the e-reader phenomenon yet, but at this point I can recognize some benefits. The library example makes sense to me. If I had an e-reader, I'd be most likely to start using it here due to the fleeting nature of how quickly the library book enters and exits my life.

Oh, you know what I hate though? When I'm happily reading during my lunch break, and everyone who enters the room interrupts me to ask, "What are you reading?" Would that be even worse when the book has no cover? It would be hella easier to lie, I guess. "Oh, er- I'm reading War and Peace. For the third time." (Actually it's the collected Penthouse forum letters from 1980-2000.)

But what brought this to mind today was this article I saw on the New York Times website about the Encyclopaedia Britannica ending its run of printed volumes after 244 years. I'm also one of those guys (relics, I guess) who places more faith in the written word than the electronic one, though it's hard to argue with the power to instantly update an electronic encyclopedia. I guess if you're paying an online subscription fee of $70 annually to access the Britannica material, that's still reliable information at a reasonable cost for a home with a student. My bias against online information is targeted mainly toward the stuff that's freely available from any number of self-titled "experts."

The 22-volume set of the World Book Encyclopedia from 1976
was my best friend in research throughout childhood.

When I was a kid we had the World Book Encyclopedia in our home (still in print, thank you). It was a series that was probably printed in 1976, and each year we got a Yearbook from the publisher that included updates on many of the older topics and even some new ones. The Yearbook came with a couple pages of lick-and-stick citation references to place on the appropriate pages of the volume set. I used to love combing through the different books and placing those update tabs each year. I remember that the entry for computers had nearly a quarter of the page plastered with those little update stickers. The photo in the original entry featured a laboratory computer about the size of two refrigerators.

Electronic information may be easier and cheaper to create, maintain, update and access, but that doesn't mean I have to accept the change quietly. This electronic age is beginning to sound the death knell for printed media in every form. Some magazines and newspapers have gone to electronic-only versions, including one of my childhood favorites, Cracked magazine (which I'm happy to say has matured along with me to a more adult-themed humor). In addition, the United States Postal Service has felt the sting dealt by the ubiquity of electronic communication, which has led to mail sorting facility and post offfice closings all over the country.

This is a new world, folks. I feel like we're teetering on the edge of somewhere I'm not sure I want to go. Add another 30 years and throw in a worldwide nuclear war... Looks like that book The Postman might be more a prediction of the future than pure science fiction. Haven't read it? Oh, you should. The movie's OK too, but I'd recommend the book over the film any day. Oh, and it's available for the Kindle too, at a fraction of the hardback cost. Sigh.

More pro bono work to add to the portfolio

I just finished up a pretty cool video project for my children's private school. My wife and I donated our time last week to plan, write, direct, shoot and edit a brief promotional video to be shown at a fundraiser.

More details to come, but they'll have to wait until next Saturday (March 17). I need to make sure that we have the benefit of first viewing at our school fundraiser dinner and auction on the evening of March 16.

I'm happy to have been given the opportunity to help out again, and not only do I help the school with this project - my wife parlayed it into an opportunity to allow me to create and place a free ad for my son's ballet school in the event program as payment!

In addition, this project is also blossoming into another opportunity, to create a more high-profile video of the same ilk for the school's web page. Hooray for me! Things are looking up. :)

New graphic for the ol' blog

Today I concocted and installed this new favicon for my blog. In addition I changed the header copy to read "M3 Blog" rather than "McGraw Media Matters." There might be a header graphic and title change in the works as well, but I have not yet decided for sure. "McGraw Media Matters" seems not quite right to me. But I love the M3 thing, so whatever I change it to has to incorporate the alliteration of "M."

Early Adobe Illustrator work

These two animal drawings represent some of the first attempts I did at creating vector graphics in Illustrator CS2, way back in 2008. They were traced in the application from actual photographs. This was also long before I had my pen & tablet for line drawing, which means it was all rather clumsily done with a mouse. Regardless, I still think they look pretty darn nice.

 

Photography: It's freaking old

A simple click on today's Google Doodle instantly revealed to me a wealth of knowledge regarding one of the great classical composers, Gioachino Rossini. Of course we all know Rossini from his operatic compositions The Barber of Seville and William Tell, or perhaps from the Great Kat's sensible and low-key speed metal masterpiece Rossini's Rape (NSFW).

But the one thing that stood out for me in the Wikipedia entry on Rossini was the photographs. There are three photos of Rossini in his later years on that page. This is a guy who was born in the 18th Century. That's more than 200 years ago. This is a guy who met and talked with Beethoven as a contemporary. And his photos look amazingly clear for having been taken in what would be considered photography's infancy.

Now, when I think "old photos," my mind turns toward the Old West photos of Billy the Kid or John Wesley Hardin, who once shot a man for snoring too loud. ;) Who hasn't wanted to recreate one of these at the little costume and souvenir photograph shop at Six Flags? They're an ingrained part of historic American culture, but these iconic images came about 10, even 20 years after the photos of Rossini and they are far less detailed.

Think about this: had Beethoven lived another 10 or 15 years, we may have actual daguerrotype images of him in a museum somewhere today. That is one old technology. This goes decades back beyond Eastman-Kodak's first amateur photography cameras of the 1890s-1900s.

So, though I must give props to Rossini, as it is the 220th anniversary of his birth, I must also take this Rare Disease Awareness Day to not only make others aware of Friedreich's Ataxia and its horrible effects on those poor children who have been diagnosed but to give a big shout out to Louis Daguerre, who kickstarted this wonderful medium which has fully matured from people sitting perfectly still for hours in their Sunday best to expose the plate and developers spending untold time perfecting dangerous chemical processes, to sexting, SOPA and the ubiquity of the camera phone which led to the creation of anthropologically and culturally valuable websites like peopleofwalmart.com.

Taking a bite out of Apple?

I just read a very interesting article here. In a nutshell, there's this Chinese tech company called Proview that created a product in 2000 called the IPAD (Internet Personal Access Device). The IPAD was sold throughout Asia.

In 2009 Apple wanted that name for a product it had in development (and wanted to sell throughout Asia as well as the rest of the world), so Apple created a special purpose company called IP Application Development Ltd. to contact Proview and negotiate the possible sale of the IPAD name, based solely on the fact that it was an acronym for their company's name. Proview had no idea that IP Application Development was even remotely affiliated with Apple.

The sale went through, but once Proview realized they had been duped by one of the leading technology manufacturers in the world (worth more than $460 billion), they were not happy. A Proview spokesman said, "While some technology companies create special purpose vehicles in order to obtain trademarks, in this case the sole function of Apple's special purpose vehicle was intentional misrepresentation, and an effort to fraudulently induce Proview Taiwan into a sale of the IPAD trademarks."

Essentially, these guys thought they were selling WUPHF.com to the Washington University Public Health Forum but they were really selling to the Walt Disney Company for way less than Disney would have paid had they known that's who the buyer was. D'oh!

If Proview wins their fraud lawsuit the iPad trademarks in the EU, Mexico and throughout Asia would revert back to Proview. I love Apple and its products, and I typically loathe Chinese products and their shoddy workmanship, but I gotta root for the little guy on this one. Shame on Apple for being so devious and underhanded.

Iron Swedish Chef

God, how I'd love to see this happen. With the renewed energy around the Muppets franchise lately, perhaps it will...

iTunes Ping goes haywire?

I noticed a couple weeks ago that my profile page on iTunes Ping says I have not written any reviews. However, if you scroll through my history you can see my reviews. Confusing. It was difficult enough to find them as is; now it's downright frustrating.

Since I previously called attention to my iTunes reviews in another post, I figured I'd might as well go ahead and just copy my reviews to this blog, backdated to their original posting date and thus making them much easier to find.

Three TV shows I'm glad I found

I don't really watch a whole lot of scripted, dramatic TV these days. Most of my tastes run toward more reality-based shows such as Whale Wars, American Pickers, Survivor, etc., though I do enjoy Doctor Who and a handful of other programs as well.

There are three easily accessible dramas on TV that I am so very glad I discovered. One is no longer airing, one is currently casting for its second season, and the other is into its second full season now.

I went on a long break from watching network TV dramas several years ago. When my wife and I got married, I think aside from a couple of Star Trek series that were playing weekly at that time, ER was the only network drama I was into. Until a coworker at Target with whom I really connected was telling me one night about Lost.

He insisted that he had the same feelings about network programming as I. He did not watch much TV at all, but this particular program was unlike anything he'd ever seen. It was very mysterious. It had an enormous, possibly unprecedentedly so, cast of main characters and was very character driven. It was refreshingly mind-bending.

So on his recommendation I illegally downloaded episode one. Bear in mind, this was before Hulu. It was also before ABC had a library of episodes actually available to watch for free as a streaming feed.

I downloaded it, watched it, and kept it thinking my wife might want to check it out too. I downloaded another couple of episodes and watched them as well. At this point I was hooked, and I had no choice but to share this incredible find with Heather too. I wrangled her into a chair and we watched those episodes at the computer desk. Then I deleted them from my computer and downloaded the rest of that season and the next. One by one, we watched and then deleted them.

Season three found us watching on TV like everyone else. John at Target was right. Lost quickly became my favorite TV show. Each week I was glued to the set, eager to find out the next twist. I began listening to the official Lost podcast each week too, hosted by the show's head writers, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. Lindelof co-created the show with executive producer J.J. Abrams.

Essentially, the show is about a bunch of people who get stranded on a mysterious island after their plane crashes there. They have not only the natural elements on the island to contend with as they try desperately to survive, but also the unnatural (or perhaps supernatural is a better word) elements. They soon find out they're not alone on the island, nor was their crash landing an accident in the purest sense of the word. Though strangers, they are all there for a very specific reason.

The storytelling is done in a very unorthodox manner, flashing from present day to the past, giving subtle clues along the way that help piece together the back story and make connections between the characters that they themselves don't even know exist. In later seasons the flashbacks become flash forwards to what happens after they've escaped the island. During its run we also see flashes into alternate timelines and other things that will just make your head spin with all the possibilities they unleash.

For six seasons, I loved damn near every episode. Man, that show was a trip. I can't tell you how many engrossing conversations that program was responsible for initiating. I miss it sometimes. If you have never watched Lost, do yourself a favor and immediately find somewhere to rent it on DVD. It's also available streaming on Netflix. If you don't find it the most engaging TV you've ever experienced, I'll eat my socks.

Moving forward in time now to 2011, a new horror anthology series debuted on FX network in October. Created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (yes, the same guys who created Glee -- but don't forget, they also came up with Nip/Tuck), American Horror Story once again broke the mold of the television drama.

The pilot episode pushed the censorship limits of cable TV with egregious amounts of violence, sex, cursing and nudity. It was honestly a little hard to watch. I had been expecting something a bit more classy, with more substance rather than irreverence simply for the sake of irreverence. In subsequent episodes the show proved that though it was definitely deserving of its TV-MA rating, the storytelling was solid and the creep factor quite effective.

The story centers on a family of three, including a teen daughter, who move from Boston to L.A. to start over after the wife delivers a stillborn baby and the husband is caught having an affair with one of his students. The viewer knows right away there is something very unsettling about the house: its owners always seem to end up dead. Violently dead.

The first season contains 12 episodes. Like Lost, this one jumps around a little bit to give you glimpses into the back story of either the main characters or the house. I don't want to give too much away, but let me just tell you that the women cast in the show are fantastic. Connie Britton, Taissa Farmiga and Jessica Lange (who won a Golden Globe and a SAG award for her work on the show) give simply stellar performances every week. If you can stomach the opener, track this one down and give the whole series a shot. It rules.

Oh, and American Horror Story should also win an award for creepiest goddamn opening credits sequence ever. It's crappin' scary.

Finally, we come to AMC's breakout hit, The Walking Dead. I know, the zombie thing is getting kind of played out these days. It's gone mainstream and seems to have lost its bite so to speak. This show is a result of that mainstream acceptance of the zombie, but as a zombie enthusiast from before they jumped the undead shark, trust me when I tell you that in this case it's led to a good thing.

It's based on a comic book which, as I understand, is quite successful in its own right. As a former comic reader, though I haven't purchased one since about 2003, I respect the aesthetic of the comic book as an art form and a graphic storytelling medium. I love the idea of basing a television show off of a comic, especially a title published by Image Comics. And, dammit, despite the zombie mania that seems to be sweeping across mainstream America, I like the idea of a TV show that takes place in a sort of post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland.

Apparently a lot of others dig it too. I talk about the series with coworkers. My older sister and her husband watch The Walking Dead too. So do my parents, who are in their 60s for crying out loud, and I've never known them to voluntarily consume any media dealing with zombies. Even vampires are a stretch for them, though we did all see Blade when it originally ran in theaters and they seemed to dig it.

The Walking Dead doesn't have a whole lot of originality in the background story. Seriously, it's your typical zombie apocalypse back story. It's the characters and their interactions that make the series what it is. The light gore and bloody effects are pretty impressive too.

The first season is out on DVD and the second is currently airing Monday nights on AMC. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Not sure how I feel about Google's cloud music service

I've had Google Music for a few weeks now, and if I've learned anything it's that it's nice to have a lot of your personal music collection at your fingertips without having to go through that laborious effort of toting about and switching CDs; but at the same time, it's complete drudgery going through the process of uploading all your stuff to the Google Music server.

I don't know about anyone else, but my upload speed is evidently appallingly slow. It's like being on freaking dialup. I currently have nearly 100 albums uploaded to my cloud and it took probably a week to do that. It's absolutely torturous.

If you can put up with the upload speed, or perhaps you have a faster connection than I, the service itself is very nice. It's free to upload 25,000 songs, free to access them as much as you wish (they are yours, after all), and you can do so form anywhere you can get online. Essentially, your music collection travels with you wherever you go, as long as you can access an Internet connection.

The organization of the albums is nice, as well as the ability to make playlists and edit track or album information. You also get the ability to download your music to another device (up to twice only). You get a few sorting options - by track, artist, album, or genre. All in all, for a free servcice, it's hard to complain about. But I will, in the interest of playing the Devil's advocate.

My biggest beef with this service is that the only way to access it is through a web browser. I'm guessing smart phones can access it, but I still live in dumb phone land so I wouldn't know for sure. What would really be nice, as I've said before about free streaming music service Spotify, is if I could access it from a home video game console. My PS3 is hooked up to my home entertainment system and stereo receiver, so it would be cool if I could pump this music library through that system by accessing it on the PS3, like a streaming media server. That would even be worth paying a premium for. I can always route my laptop sound output through the receiver, but that's kind of ghetto to me.

Another complaint I have is that you cannot edit the information about multiple tracks at once. You can edit album information, that's true, but there's no way to, say, select multiple albums and edit the artist information for all of them. Similarly, you do not have the ability from the main sorting screen to do anything with an album other than play it. If you want to add an album to a playlist, you can't do it from that screen; you must first click the album so that you are taken to that specific album's information. Only from there can you add the album to a playlist or edit its ID3 tags. It just seems like they could stand to eliminate a few mouse clicks here or there.

I also wish it would integrate with Facebook or Google+ like Spotify is. It could definitely be more of a social experience, and I'm very surprised that Google hasn't taken this route with it. By adding music and posting your listening preferences, you would be promoting tracks for purchase in the Android store.

I can tell you one other thing about Google Music. Since I signed up I have barely listened to Spotify at all. Then again, I've spent a lot of time editing inaccurate track information too. Sometimes it's right going in but ends up incorrect once it's there.

All in all, I suppose it's worth taking a look at if you're interested.

R.I.P. Whitney Houston

The image to the left was used in the interior sleeve of Whitney Houston's eponymous 1985 debut album. When I was 11 to 12 years old I can't tell you how many times I stared at this photo while wearing out my "Whitney Houston" cassette tape listening to it over and over. I had such a crush on this beautiful young black woman with the gorgeous and powerful voice.

As more of her saturated the MTV charts over the following years, I maintained my secret crush on Ms. Houston, up until her marriage with that guy that used to be one of the kids in New Edition. When news got out that he was acting like a dick I said to myself, "What in the world is goddess-like Whitney Houston doing with a loser like that?"

Once the '90s progressed further and Bobby and Whitney both became tabloid fodder, she really began losing her sexual mystique. I started seeing her as just another trashy, drug-addled loser. "Crack is wack," she once said to Diane Sawyer in a TV interview, but somehow I didn't believe that she'd stayed away from it despite her protestations. The woman I'd once admired was completely fried. It was then that I did my own sort of mourning for Whitney.

Yesterday's news of Whitney's death is really not that surprising considering her past. It's still a shame though. She was incredibly talented and a legend in her own time. Whitney will be missed.

Like you didn't see this coming...

Well, the minute I started blogging about heavy metal music, any reader who truly knows me would have expected me to lead off with a post about my favorite metal band of all time, Manowar. Gamma Ray was probably a bit of a curve ball for those folks. I didn't want to be too predictable, but I can't wait any longer to give Manowar their due.

Manowar was formed in 1980 in Auburn, New York, by former members of the bands the Dictators, the Rods, and Shakin' Street, along with newcomer vocalist Eric Adams. After recording a demo tape in 1981 a new drummer was recruited, making the new roster Adams, bassist Joey DeMaio, guitarist Ross "The Boss" Friedman, and drummer Donnie Hamzik.


Their debut album, Battle Hymns, was released in 1982 on Liberty Records. Their followup, Into Glory Ride, came out in 1983, as they left their label to sign a contract with Music For Nations (in their own blood, no less) with yet another new drummer, Scott Columbus. This album marked the beginning of the band's penchant for medieval battle and Norse pantheon themes. 1984 brought their album Hail to England, and Sign of the Hammer arrived only ten months later.


1987 saw Manowar's first major label release, Fighting the World, on Atlantic Records. It was through this album that I was first exposed to my new favorite band. In 1988 the band released their best-selling album worldwide, Kings of Metal. During their subsequent tour they parted ways with Columbus and Ross the Boss, recruiting new drummer, "Rhino," and new guitarist David Shankle.


In 1992 Manowar released their seventh album, The Triumph of Steel, and the heads of myself and my friends were fit to fully explode. Rhino and Shankle were welcome replacements, as this album (the first one any of us had purchased on CD) sounded so much more brutal than any of its predecessors. It did have a bit of a downfall though. The first track on the disc was a 28-minute long epic about the Iliad called "Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts." Jeez, I think in the 20 years I've owned that disc I've only listened to the entirety of that track no more than three times. Snoozefest, that one. Sorry, guys.


After a long tour Rhino departed the band to make way for the return of the mighty Scott Columbus, and Shankle left the band as well, leaving a space for new guitarist (and my favorite one of the bunch) Karl Logan. 1996 would see the release of one of my least favorite Manowar albums, Louder Than Hell. Over the next several years touring would take most of the band's time. Two double live albums were released in the interim between 1996 and 2002's return to the studio to produce one of their best efforts, Warriors of the World.


Warriors is a damn fine piece of metal. The first time I gave it a spin I told myself, "This is the record that they should have done after Kings of Metal!"


In 2003, Joey DeMaio created his own label, Magic Circle Music, which is now the band's permanent home. DeMaio also went hog wild with Manowar live DVD releases in the post-2000s, with a few EPs scattered here and there as well. Their next full-length studio album, Gods of War, was released in 2007.


In 2011, drummer Scott Columbus passed away at age 54. No official cause of death was announced, though rumor told of his battles with poor health throughout his on-again, off-again career with Manowar. Upon his passing, veteran drummer Donnie Hamzik returned to the band. This actually gives them the strongest lineup in the history of the band, in my opinion: DeMaio, Adams, Hamzik and Logan. KILLER. They re-recorded their debut album in its entirety, dubbing this release Battle Hymns MMXI, and finally came back to the U.S. for a very protracted tour schedule.

That tour was the second time I saw Manowar perform live, and it reaffirmed my faith that no band puts on a better live show. Period.


Manowar has been collaborating with famous German sci-fi/fantasy author Wolfgang Hohlbein over the past few years on their next outing, The Asgard Saga, which is scheduled for release this year. According to plan, it should coincide with related releases in literary, visual art and film formats as well. Not sure how that's going to work out, frankly. I'm just hoping for another great album.


So here's a taste of a song from Manowar's most recent EP. It's supposed to be a teaser for the upcoming album. The song is called "Thunder in the Sky," and it's on regular iPod rotation for me. Here's a live version:

...And my list of full-length Manowar releases, in order of favorite to least favorite:

1. Battle Hymns MMXI
2. Warriors of the World
3. Kings of Metal
4. Hail to England
5. Fighting the World
6. Gods of War
7. The Triumph of Steel
8. Sign of the Hammer
9. Battle Hymns
10. Louder Than Hell
11. Into Glory Ride

A quick Photoshop project

One afternoon I was asked out of the blue by one of my company's senior managers to whip up a graphic showing a five-point delivery system related to our estate planning services division. He wanted it for a PowerPoint presentation, I guess.

Wasting no time, I went right to work, thinking to myself, "What gives an impression of stability and reliability better than Greek and Roman architecture? It's been standing for centuries, plus they were a very educated people. I should base this design somehow on the Parthenon."

Following that inspiration I whipped this up for him in under an hour using Photoshop CS4. Mission accomplished.

A 20+ year obsession comes of age

OK, so since I've designated this page as media-themed and that can mean just about anything really, I'm going to start additionally using it as a way to spotlight a musical obsession I've had for nearly 25 years: METAL.

And I'm not talking about that cookie cutter new metal that we get in abundance in the USA. I enjoy listening to that stuff once in a while--even Nickelback takes a few turns on my iPod rotation now and then. What I'm talking about is the stuff that doesn't get much or any airplay on so-called "hard rock and metal" radio stations in this country, at least nowhere I'm aware of. There's a whole world of heavy music out there that the average American hard rock fan has never been exposed to. Many of the bands in these subgenres have very successful careers throughout the world but are relatively unheard of in North America.

I'm going to keep this blog going as before, but when I am at a loss for a "normal" post, I'll toss in a link to a YouTube video, official band site, album review or something else within the realm of legality that features a heavy music act that I think deserves some attention.

Kicking it off with some Gamma Ray. The band was founded by Kai Hansen, the original lead singer of German metal band Helloween. During Hansen's time at the helm, Helloween was a very decent thrash band. They only released a couple of EPs and a full-length album before his departure from the band and their new direction which originated the sound that came to be known as power metal.

Hansen went on to form Gamma Ray in 1988. Their debut album, Heading for Tomorrow, was released two years later on Noise Records. If featured Hansen on lead guitar and Ralf Scheepers on vocals. Scheepers would provide vocals for two additional outings before Hansen took over beginning on the 1995 release, Land of the Free. From that point on, Hansen would do double duty as lead guitarist and vocalist. He's also been the main songwriter during the band's career.

Scheepers went on to found another successful power metal band, Primal Fear, after being turned down as Rob Halford's replacement in Judas Priest.

To date, Gamma Ray has released 10 studio albums, three live discs and three EPs. They have become one of Germany's most successful metal acts ever. And deservedly so.

Here's Gamma Ray doing a live version of one of the catchiest tunes from their debut album, "Heaven Can Wait":

The (new) death of filesharing?

The arrests of the masterminds behind MegaUpload are the latest chapter in the war of intellectual property rights on the Internet. This war has been raging since the beginning of the century. Remember Napster? AudioGalaxy? Limewire? BearShare? Pirate Bay? Pretty much all a memory. And now the government is going whole hog on this thing, and MegaUpload is the latest casualty. And this one is huge. Let's face it, Kim Dotcom and his buddies are screwed.

Apparently it's scaring a bunch of others too. FilesTube, TurboBit, RapidShare and other file hosting sites have been killing links or closing up shop like crazy since the arrests. Music sharing bloggers (ARRRRRR!!!) are scrambling to re-up their music or rethink their methods. I'd love to see a web analytic of some kind showing how many dead links there are on the Net now compared to just a week or two ago.

The thing is, no matter what, the entertainment industry waited too long to do anything about this. The creation of the MP3 should not equal the end of CD and movie ticket & DVD sales, but they sat on their hands for too long bitching about it instead of figuring out how their business models could grow with the times and embrace technology instead of fighting against it. It's called progress.

Honestly, though, haven't they learned that no matter what they do to fight this scourge of file sharing, another outfit will come along behind the wreckage and build a new empire? There's got to be another way to address this issue. I'm convinced that suing 12-year-old girls and their grandmothers for tens of thousands of dollars is not the answer. Too, sweeping legislation that has the potential to chill free speech, reach across the globe, and essentially put our vast and incredible World Wide Web under the controlling thumb of the U.S. entertainment industry is not the answer.

This whole thing at first reminded me a lot of the tape trading that went on in the early '80s, especially in the burgeoning heavy metal scene. There's a difference now, though. Tape trading served a purpose. There was little to no radio airplay of metal bands in those days (a practice which continues 30+ years later), and fans traded dubbed copies of tapes, created mix tapes, etc. to their friends to get the word out about their favorite bands. That's how much of the nation discovered Metallica initially.

Even up to when Napster hit the scene in the late 20th Century, there was still that sort of file swapping that, due to bandwidth limitations, mostly of dial-up connections, was limited to merely discovery of single tracks (usually at no higher than 128 to 192 kbps bit rate), which prompted users to seek out full album purchases.

Once high-speed Internet service went mainstream, everything changed. The world was no longer illegally sharing single, low quality songs, but full CDs and DVDs at the highest quality possible. And in many cases, doing it more quickly than they were downloading the single tracks a few years earlier. Today, in 2012, there's no denying that the teens growing up are having an issue actually associating this behavior with theft. And it's rampant.

I repeat: there's got to be a way to address it, but we haven't found it yet. Honestly, I think that the MegaUpload bust is going to make more ripples throughout the online community than any of the previous skirmishes, but it won't end there. The pirates will forge on.

A treasure of days long past and people forgotten

My grandmother's school autograph book from 1928

I was recently granted the privilege of examining an autograph book keepsake from 1928. The book belonged to my now deceased maternal grandmother, Doris Courson, née Foote, and it came into the possession of my mother after her passing. It is a quaint peek into early 20th Century schoolhouse life. I really enjoyed reading page after page of elementary & middle school writings.

The maturity level of some of these writings is very impressive, as is the overall spelling and penmanship. Unless otherwise noted, all entries were written by her schoolmates, children ranging from age 10 through age 12.

I don’t know which of these little witticisms and tributes are original works and which were commonplace elementary schoolboy platitudes of the era, so I’m going to give credit to the author of each just in case there’s an original, genuinely clever idea in here.

There are a few of these that I absolutely adore, but I felt compelled to share them all. Their original formatting has been kept intact as written. I have separated them into categories for my own reasons, which I assume will be obvious as you read them.

We start with some genuine well wishes from what I can only guess were very close friends:

Another friend made
May you ever be so good and pure as you are to-day
I will always remember you
as one of my friends
~Lila Blanche Goodell
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When the golden sun is setting
and your mind from care is free
and o’er a thousand things you’re thinking
Will you sometimes think of me?
~Mary Weff
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When twilight draws its curtain
and pins it with a star
Remember that you have a friend
tho’ you may wander far.
~Verda Clive Dahler
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In this corner I choose a spot
In which I write forget-me-not
Though it be cloudy
Or they be blue
Remember me as I do you.
~Bethol Paul

This moves us into the category of clever quips that make you stop and think:

This old world we’re livin’ in is mighty hard to beat.
We get a thorn with every rose,
But ain’t the roses sweet?
~Lois Miller
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Love everybody but trust few
And always paddle your own canoe
~Your sister, Leone Foote
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May your friends forever be
Numberless as the sands of the sea
~Aunt Rosa

The evolution of romance:

Happy may you live
Single in your station.
Happy be the little man
Who makes the alteration.
~Celia Lois Anderson
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Long may you live
Happy may you be
Sitting in the parlor
On your husband’s knee
~Vera Walker
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When you get married and live upstairs,
Please don’t come down and borrow my chairs.
~Bernadine Pearl McFarland
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Forget the moon,
Forget the stars,
Forget buzzing of the cars.
Forget your husband’s socks to mend,
But don’t forget your old true friend.
~Vera Schoonover
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When you get married
And your old man gets cross
Come over to my house
And eat applesauce
~Dale Roberts
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When you get married and
your old man gets mad and
hits you with a stove poker
Run away to your old friend.
~Vera Marie Varner
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May you forever be happy
and never get married.
~Uncle Aschel
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Sure as a grape vine grows
around a rafter
Woodrow Goodell is the
fellow you are after.
~Lorraine Wheeler

Funny stories:

We mortals have to swat and shoo
the flies from dawn ‘til dark—
‘cause Noah didn’t swat the two
that roosted in the ark.
~Irene Thompson
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Mary had a little lamb
She sat it on the shelf
And every time it would wag its tail
It spanked its little self.
~Mildred Goodell

Funny bits that are probably NOT original to the writer:

When you see a donkey
tied up to a tree
pull his tail and think
of
me
~Mary Lou Ellen Landon
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When you see a monkey
tied up to a tree
pull his tail and think of me
~Russell W.F.
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I pity the baker
I pity the cook
I pity the one
who steals this book
~Gladys Hammond
~Your sister, Ruth Foote
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I pity the river
I pity the brook
I pity the one
that steals this book
~Mary Gebbetti
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Way out yonder upon a stump
Just think of me before you jump.
~Avo Ford
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Here I stand upon a stump
Come and kiss me before I jump.
~Emmilou Nelson
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Roses are red, violets are blue
Sugar is sweet and so are you
~Hagel Horr
~Alberta Schoonover

Which leads me to the next one, a perfect segue into the "Say what?" category:

Roses are red
violets are blue
Coal is black
and so are you.
~Frances Young
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Remember me now.
Remember me late.
Remember your friend
Who writes up hill.
~Ruth Miller
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I bet  you a nickel,
I bet you a kiss,
You cannot guess
What little girl wrote this.
~Miss Mary Miller
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I like bedbugs, I like fleas
I like you if you like me.
~Aunt Elma
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When I stand up high, what do I only see?
But when I see it
It breaks my heart in to
Your friend
~Mary Margaret Marie

And the prize winner for biggest WTF moment goes to:

Pull in your neck
When you’re going through a town,
~Francis Roofner

And finally, since I couldn't end on that one, here's the best wish you can give someone:

I wish you health,
I wish you wealth,
I wish you gold in store.
I wish you Heaven when you die.
How could I wish you more?
~Aunt Pearl
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I hope you enjoyed these relics of a bygone day as much as I enjoyed sharing them with you. Happy holidays to you and yours.

Shane

Thankful

What am I thankful for this holiday season?

1. I am thankful that I have three healthy, talented and creative children to carry on my name into future generations. They have each made me proud in their own ways and I couldn't ask for a better set of youngsters to perpetuate the family name and genes into the future.
2. I am thankful for my parents and the upbringing they gave me. I was taught by example the difference between right and wrong and how to be a good person and a loving husband and father.
3. I am thankful that I have the love of a good woman who not only puts up with all my shit but also challenges me to be a better person than I was yesterday.
4. I am thankful that I have a steady job where I feel appreciated and the goal of the company is to help people. In this volatile climate I am fortunate to be celebrating my five-year anniversary at the same place of employment when many companies are downsizing.
5. I am thankful to have not only a family of my own that supports me but also a family of in-laws that have made me feel a welcomed member of the family from day one. I owe an enormous debt to the Saffords, as they have also helped shape who I am in these last 14 years. I would not be the person I am today were it not for their love and support.
6. I am thankful that I have the opportunity to send my children to a top-notch school where they are getting an education that will serve them well throughout their educational careers and put them in a category above most public school students.
7. I am thankful to be living in this wonderful (though sometimes frightening and occasionally terrifying) Information Age. Gaining new knowledge and insights has never been easier for any previous generation, and I feel fortunate to have entire libraries of knowledge at my fingertips whenever I want it.
8. I am thankful that there is so much left to learn, see and do in this life before I leave it behind. I grow more in my skin each day and I find that each year finds my outlook on life growing more and more positive. I am finally beginning to shed some of that angst that was so close to my heart for many years.
9. I am thankful for my ability to make others laugh. A sense of humor is important, and making others forget their worries, even for a moment, and blast out a healthy guffaw or two is a gift I cherish. Seriousness has its place, but it's good for the soul to be able to let your hair down now & then and to help others do the same.
10. I am thankful for the holidays such as the ones fast approaching, which bring family and friends together to celebrate their love and respect for one another while creating memories to not only last a lifetime but to pass down to future generations. Thanksgiving and Christmas are a wonderful way to end each year, in the company of the people you love, giving one another gifts and sharing warm & fuzzy feelings with one another.

Online Christmas shoppers beware

I thought it was a misprint meant to read "8.5 centimeters in width." Guess not.

I see an opportunity

I send my kids to what I guess you could consider a very enlightened and EXTREMELY diverse private school. Diversity is celebrated there, sometimes overly so in my opinion. Every little holiday that each culture at the school celebrates is noted in school emails, commons area decorations, and even sometimes it's reflected in the curriculum. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I recognize that it's *my* problem to deal with.
 
But this is one instance that put a special kind of bug up my ass. This is an excerpt from the latest school email. Let me preface this by saying that I realize the way I feel is not necessarily correct. It's a gut feeling that is being perpetuated every day in this country by well intended, god fearing, flag waving patriots with no intention of opening themselves up to the possibility that they could ever have been misinformed or misled with regards to their knowledge of other cultures.
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Sacrifice
Some of our families will commemorate and celebrate sacrifice in very different ways this upcoming week.  
Eid-Al-Adha, one of the major holidays of Islam, will be celebrated on Sunday, November 6. According to Muslim tradition, it celebrates the sacrifice that Abraham was willing to make of his own son Ishmael when he was commanded to show his commitment to Allah. The name of the holiday, Eid Al-Adha, means "The Feast of the Sacrifice." Students celebrating will be excused from homework and no tests should be given on Monday to them.  
November 11 is, of course, Veterans Day (official celebration on November 12). We wish to honor all of you who have served our nation, and those grandparents who also served. I am reminded of the quote from journalist Elmer Davis, journalist, who wrote  

"This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."
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My initial reaction to this section is one of disgust. My gut tells me that these two holidays are at odds with one another, and to remind us of a Muslim day of sacrifice immediately preceding a reminder of the honor we bestow upon our dedicated soldiers is a slap in the face to not only those soldiers of ours who sacrificed their lives in our most recent military confrontations, but also to our nation and each of its citizens.
 
I'm going to go out on a limb here, though, and open myself up to the possibility that my gut is wrong. That makes me very uncomfortable, but I think that discomfort might be a growing pain of sorts.
 
Are the Russians evil? Are the Japanese evil? Are the Germans evil? Are Southerners evil? Are the English (British) evil? I say "no" to each of these, but over the last couple of centuries, I guarantee there was a time when the common answer in this part of the country would be a resounding "yes."
 
During the Cold War, all the propaganda was anti-communist. "Better Dead than Red." And I believe many Americans would have considered themselves enemies of the USSR. A Russian was a communist, therefore an enemy of the USA and its citizens. I don't think I'm far off in carrying these sentiments back in time through WWII ("Krauts" are evil), WWI ("Japs" are evil), Vietnam, etc., all the way back past the Civil War and even the American Revolution.
 
Today is no different. We have been engaged in a conflict for many years with an enemy who happens to be represented by people who claim the Muslim faith. To many of us, that translates to "Islam is evil." That's what my gut tells me. Perhaps my gut is caught up in the game just as many others are. Islam is the world's second-largest religion. It's not going anywhere so we might as well learn to tolerate it, maybe even welcome it as this country welcomes everyone.
 
Just as there are assholes in the world who claim Christianity as their faith, there are assholes in the world who claim to represent Islam. Assholes should be judged by their behavior as representing assholes, not as representing people of color or of a specific religion. By that standard, the IED-wearing asshole who blew up some military motorcade in the desert near Kabul would be a first-degree asshole rather than a lowlife Muslim.
 
I understand there are passages in the Quran which might demean women or represent them as lower-class people. I have news for you, there are similar sentiments shared in the Bible. Not to mention all the flogging, stoning and sacrifices endorsed by the Holy Bible. It's what we do with these words and the rest of them as a whole that is the issue.
 
The Bible directs its adherents to abide by the laws of the land in addition to the higher laws of God, as "the powers that be are ordained of God." (Romans 13:1). Does the Quran? I don't know. But there's always the possibility that some asshole is going to take the parts they identify with best and turn them into a holy crusade. Look at Fred Phelps. He's king of the Bible-twisting assholes in this country. Again, this makes  people like this ASSHOLES. When it's a government or an army, it's just a BUNCH OF ASSHOLES. Nothing more. We shouldn't judge and punish the normal folks who live by the virtuous parts of these writings by the actions of the rogue assholes.
 
I'm going to make a better effort to not become a slave to my gut, but to keep it in check with continued education and enlightenment.

Older photography stuff

Throwing up some of my favorite photos I shot at a construction site a couple of years ago, just because. If you like them, click on over to www.flickr.com/darkseid to see more.

Design update

Hey there! Been a long time, huh? Sorry about the delay, but things have been super busy at work and at home. Here's one of the things I worked on at the office since last I posted.

I was charged with designing a "mascot" for the company, to be used internally to bring awareness of security issues. We needed a face to go with internal messages that pass along proper procedures for keeping sensitive information safe from intrusion, keeping the building and personal property secure from theft, and maintaining a safe culture.

They wanted someone part Sherlock Holmes, part Inspector Clouseau. I came up with this inspector-type guy.

A country-pop crossover that everyone should have

Little River Band - Greatest Hits
Four of five stars

You know that one late '70s country-ish rock song? By that one band? Yeah, chances are it was a Little River Band song. And it's probably on their 1982 collection, Greatest Hits.

This is one greatest hits collection that should be in any classic rock or country music fan's catalog. If you're over 35, track after track you're going to be like, "I remember this song! I didn't know this was Little River Band."

There really is not a dud track on this disc, but the ones you'll probably recognize immediately are "Reminiscing," "The Night Owls," "Lonesome Loser" and "Cool Change." Every track brings back pleasant memories of the 1970s. I love this disc.