.lists and stuff.

music, records No Comments

Hi.

It seems that most of the people are back to their daily routines, but i’m still trying to grab on anything solid. In my point of view the last year just ended, and as always i’m late as cufk on everything. But now that i have almost everything else in order, i decided to to my own list of records released in 2009. The wasn’t that bad in releases. There were many really great new albums and 7” put out. The reason i was inspired to do this, is some of the good lists around the internet.

Let’s go then.

Albums of 2009.

  1. Cloak/DaggerLost Art LP (Jade Tree)
    Brilliant LP, that didn’t open on first listening. Somehow it seemed much more difficult and more “thought-through” than band’s first “We Are” lp of 2008. Band has been very important to me since summer ‘08, and you might find influences in our band’s works. It was odd to find out that this didn’t make it to MRNR’s staff’s lists. Here’s what Jason Mazzola had to say about it:

    “I haven’t seen any of the best of 2009 lists from MRR but didn’t expect us to be in there. They gave our demo and 7″ a good review and I was happy about that. Collin and I bought a copy of the issue with the 7″ review and he curled his up, slept on it, tore it to shreds and it ended up on the floor of our van in pieces like I knew it would. I still have mine saved away. I haven’t seen the review for Lost Art but Alex said it was luke warm. There were a lot of awesome punk and core records in 2009 and you can’t please every one. In the end it doesn’t matter who ends up liking it as long as you are happy with the finished product and I am.”

  2. The ResonarsThat Evil Drone LP (Burger Records)
    One of my alltime favourites made a great recording this year. Great modern psych-garage-powerpop as Matt Rendon always does. I ordered my copy straight from Burger Records, since there weren’t any european distribution.
  3. SedativesS/T LP (P. Trash)
    Something newsounding for my ears. Well.. Not that new, but somehow this makes it to very top of my list.
  4. American SteelDear Friends and Gentle Hearts LP (FAT)
    Talk about powerplaying some record.. This lp stayed on my player for weeks, once i got it. And copy on cd in my car until i crashed it. The car, not the cd. This band’s progress is admirable. From ska-influenced core to really amazing poppunk suite in just twenty or so years. Gotta love it.
  5. Ernie K-DoeHere Come The Girls CD (Evangeline)
    Evangeline record’s re-pressing of amazing soul/funk/r’n'b record. Yea. It’s not “Mother-in-Law”, but still worth every cent.
  6. Death With A DaggerDark Alleys CD (Def Forever)
    First finnish album on my little list. And i must admit, one of the best finnish records to date. These guys know their Hawkwind and Iron Maiden. Mix that with filthy punk attitude and there it is. One of only few “more metallic” bands that i like to listen to.
  7. Soundtrack of Our LivesCommunion 2CD (Akashic)
    Easier to listen, TSOOL has been always very close to me. Their new doesn’t (surprisingly) disappoint me at all. Few tracks are truly soundtracks of my life.
  8. Good LuckInto Lake Griffy LP (NoIdea)
    Almost forgot this one! Most emo in all of my list, but still one of the records that made my spring of ‘09. It really gets to me, how someone can play the guitar like that. It sounds like he’s on the edge of his abilities all the time, but still manages to keep it perfectly together. And songwriting is worth mentioning.. Only bad thing was that my future wife said “Haven’t we listened to this song already?!” I guess she didn’t quite get this one.
  9. Banner PilotCollapser LP (FAT)
    Not so sure why so many modern pop-punk bands end up on my player. This one really hit me. One of those which spent a lot of time on my turntable. And will be there for much more hours in the future, along with “Resignation Day”.
  10. RiverdalesInvasion USA CD (Asian Man)
    Great comeback from Mr. Weasel. Hits like a 100 000 Volts.

Not so sure about the order, but Cloak/Dagger’s Lost Art is definitely first. Other records worth mentioning for the year 2009 would be:

- Hasta La Vista Social Club – Lake Lark White Trash CD
- Anti-Flag – People Or The Gun LP
- Hex Dispensers – Winchester Mystery House LP
- Psyched to Die – Both 7”
- Kakka-Hätä 77 – Ei tää lama… 7”
- Maakuntaradio – Ex-tytöille LP
- and on and on and on and on…

Didn’t really watch any movies all year. Or read anything exept Hannu Nyberg’s “Elvis Elää?”, which i got as birthday present. Yup. I don’t think he died in ‘78…

Blah. I guess this is not as interesting as first thought it would be. Somehow it surprised me, that there’s not much obscurity in my list…

Well. I guess that’s it for now. I think i should get on some work-related stuff or get some sleep or something else than watch reruns of Mythbusters and sit on my computer.

Oh. One more thing.. As new year’s resolution i promise to write more songs than last year. (We’ll see about that..)

.notitle.

general Comments Off

Hi.
I updated the record list today. Totaling 1068 items now. I’m waiting few more over mail any day now… Even fixed my ol’ faithful Dual 505 with piece of wooden toothpick. Yea. That’s right. Buying new is not an option.

I’m too tired to write anything even remotely understandable. So i’m off to bed.

.still browsing.

browsers, linux, web 1 Comment

Hi.

Yesterday evening i was just browsing around and something made me notice, that Chromium browser’s latest builds support flash. Finally. Great. Coders say that “it’s very unstable and causes lots of crashes”, but i spent about an hour viewing stuff on youtube. No crashes, stalls nor any trouble whatsoever. I think that if i really try, i can kill the plugin, but that’s not really anyting new. After all i’ve been using latest builds of so many different softwares, that some crashes are familiar. And shiretoko’s  (that i build myself) flash-plugin dies every now and then. I guess i should install “official” 3.5.2…

After more googling i found out that there’s “adsweep” plugin for chrome/chromium. It installed without any difficulties. You don’t even need to use userscript to get it working.

Let’s take a look of my last night’s Futuremark Peacekeeper results…

browsers290809

As you can see, Firefox 3.5.2 keeps getting better on every update. Opera 10 is in RC-state, which means that there’s not much radical changes ahead considering final 10 release. Nightly build (24734) of Chromium 4.0.204.0 runs over it’s earlier builds as easily as i drink coffee in the morning.

Chromium, with 2294 points, beating it’s old score of 1924. And now there are working implementation of flash-plugin and adsweep, which make this much more usable than earlier builds. That’s when i decided really to give chromium a go.

But. Not that fast! – You’ll need to start chromium with these options:
chromium-browser --enable-greasemonkey --enable-user-scripts --enable-extensions --enable-plugins
instead of just:
chromium-browser

Then you should copy plugin file to chromium folder:
sudo cp /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/chromium-browser/plugins

Lastly, check out http://www.adsweep.org/, download adsweep.crx and install it wit answering “yes” :). Restart chromium and check back adsweep site, to confirm that plugin is in use.

Let’s go through few cons of these operations.. Pros we know. The fastest browser available. Frankly, it loaded our band’s myspace page with ads much faster than firefox 3.5.2 did with adblock running…

  • Unstable! Don’t ignore this, if you don’t want crashes. This software is not ready for stable “granma proof use” yet.
  • Fonts. Somehow chromium renders fonts differently, than (for example) FF. So don’t be surprised, if your pages look “a bit” different than what you’ve used to.
  • Themeobientlessness. Awful word (not exactly even sure if it is a word). You can choose to “use GTK theme”, which just uses your button images. You’ll still have min:max:close buttons on the right top corner of the window.

I’m going to give it a go for week or two as my main browser. We’ll see how it manages everyday use. I guess i’ll have to figure java out…

Sorry FF & Opera. You rule, but you’re just a bit behind. Personally i can’t wait for FF3.7/4 to come out. Then we’ll see who’s who in modern browser wars.

.active me.

general, music, network, web, wp No Comments

Don’t really know why, but seems like i’ve got more things done than usually when i’m unemployed..

First off, i’ve applied for all available jobs, that i have education for. Not many of those around. I went to (un)employment office to create my “work searching plan”. Nice name for doing exactly same thing as i was doing, except now i have to report every application i send out to the officer. Otherwise i’m not applicaple for that small ammount of money i may get after months of waiting.. Anyway.. That just was something that i thought i do really well.. I fired up OpenOffice spreadsheet, and made nice spreadsheet about all the jobs i’ve applied, if and how they answered. Can’t wait to show it to my employment officer..

On other stuff i’ve been up to…

We’ve played two gigs already with my band, The Lenients (yea, the name is what it is). And we have one more gig confirmed for november. It’s very far away, but hopefully we’ll get our planned cdr out before that. You can listen to our “music” on our myspace. I’ll share the links in a moment. Here’s a very homespun logo that i’ve cooked up with old newspapers, scissors, our dog, adhesive tape, my scanner, The Gimp and my livingroom mat..

logo06

I also spent last night battling with php and css. “The Lenients” webpage is up and running. I must say that i’m pretty impressed with my performance, taking in count, that i’m really a newbie when it comes to web-designing. Thankfully wordpress is always great in these situations. May it be, you’ll still need some knowledge on css and php if you’re palnning to customize any basic theme to your own needs. This page you’re reading is one example of that. My first “real” lookin page ever. But this one is mostly based on themelab theme. I just modified few things (thanks themelab by the way). But The Lenients page is much more hacked from original template, than anything else i’ve done before. I could say “happy me”! (you can read this as “i can make customized wp-theme for your punkrock band for few bucks!!”)

Well.. All’s not that great. I also had a war with css on myspace. Must say that the usability of that site is 0 points of 1000. How about a own modifiable page for css instead of hiding the code to somewhere it clearly doesn’t belong?? How about it Tom?? Altogether whole myspace is so 2003 all over again. But where else can you advertise your punkrock band?

So. Ready for link-a-rama?

The Lenients webpage
The Lenients myspace profile
The Lenients facebook page

So that’s what i’ve been up to!

Care to comment?

.and more.

general, music No Comments

I’ve been really getting things done today. Not as much as i wanted, but pretty much anyway. I sent out few job applications and resigned from school. Still much more to do this week..

Anyway, reason why i’m posting again, is that i got this site to the condition i’ve wanted it to be for quite some time. I’ve cleaned much of language errors (not all obviously), made few pages easier to read and used iframe to insert my recordslist properly to the page. Yea. I know it sounds stupid, but i haven’t done anything like that before. Now it’s easier to keep up to date. So i guess you’ll see latest updates this week. Count is now about 1057 items, and i guess it had really much to do with me working all the time. I personally think that 150-200 records per year is something i consider enough to keep collection growing,  and still be able to avoid buying bad records. That’s right. I’m collecting music, not records. Of coure there’s occasional first pressing here and there, some records i might even have doubles as different pressings or same record as cd and vinyl. But still. It’s about the music. Not about the pressings.

So. Welcome to my finally updated blog-page, and if you’re hiring, check me out. I’m all out for work!

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