I purchased and downloaded some new music last evening off of Amazon by a band called Jackson Cage. A Belfast, Ireland-based 6 piece folk/rock group that musical sound is influenced by 60’s and 70’s rock groups such as The Band, Neil Young and many others including some contemporary alt. country bands. There is a hint of bluegrass as well.
The MP3 download costs $5.99 for 10 awesome tracks. Here is a link to the Amazon download page.
Over at MOG (check out the site) Charley Rogulewski blogged about The Police being the highest grossing tour of 2007. That’s awesome! What’s not awesome is that I was NOT able to go to a show. I was hoping to see them in Philly and Hershey, PA but timing wasn’t just wasn’t good.
Overall the rock trio grossed over $212 million (in 54 shows in North America) in 2007, almost doubling the other reunion tour by Genesis, grossing $129 million (in 46 shows). Now if you were Sting, how would you spend your earnings?
I was able to grab a few torrents of different legs of the tour from DIME.
OK well my (early) Christmas gift from my loving wife, Cathy, was a Slingbox Pro! We had helped her boss with his Slingbox back in the summer and she remembered how neat I thought it sounded. Also, Cathy was looking for a way that we could both watch recorded TV shows without having to be in our freezing cold basement.
Well she solved that problem with my gift. Yeah yeah, I know it’s not even Christmas Day yet but I accidentally found out she bought the Slingbox when we were looking for an email message on her laptop. This was the first year (in five) that she was going to be able to surprise me and now I found out. Sorry babe!
So anyway, once opening the large outer box and pulling out FEET of brown packaging paper, I found a really cool Slingbox package. They really went all out on the marketing of the box. It’s a nice design and very easy to follow the quick guide for fast and simple setup.
Within 10 minutes of opening the box I had my DVD player broadcasting over my home network to my laptop. The next few hours I spent getting my “build your own” DVR working. I have had GB-PVR (www.gbpvr.com) installed on a old desktop PC for about two years now. It’s an awesome PVR (personal video recorder) and it is FREE! So that makes things even better.
Hey picked this cd up at my local library last week and am now giving it a good listen. I had heard of these guys before but didn’t know much about them. For one, I had no clue Switchfoot is an Alternative Christian rock band. From the sound of their music and listening to the album while I update my blogs tonight I sure didn’t get that feeling. Not that that really matters!
Out of the 12 tracks on the CD I think I’m at about an 90% approval rating on the songs. Of course I keep listening to a few of the same songs over and over to help drown out the poor pathetic just down-right awful performace of the Philadelphia Eagles tonight which I have playing in the background.
So back to the reviewing. Some of the best songs on the album have to be:
Happy Is A Yuppie Word - cool tune The Setting Sun - all around good beat brings this song to the top of my list, vocal harmonizing, and the chorus is ‘catchy’ Stars - I think it’s the guitar lick that catches my attention! I’ll tag this as my #1! We Are One Tonight - one of the fastest paced songs, good guitar and vocals
Well if you are up for an all around good CD to add to your collection I would check out this one!
Wonderful music! I’m just getting back to using Jamendo to find some fresh music and I came across Allison Crowe and found her music to be something I’ve been searching for for a long time! From the first song, How Long, I kept listening to the songs as I downloaded the entire album. I’ll be checking out the rest of her albums on Jamendo tonight!
For those reading this on my blog, Allison Crowe is a pop, gospel, blues pianist with a fresh voice that to me is uplifting and new! As I mentioned above, from the first 20 seconds of How Long I knew I would enjoy this album. First instincts are always right!
Ok folks, here is a CD Released by a friend and co-worker of mine, Neall Alcott. Please if you have the time, stick on the headphones at work and listen to a few of his tracks. If you enjoy the Beatles, XTC, and other Brit-pop artists you’ll probably find yourself listening to this album with delight.
Neall gave me a pre-released (hmmm, and unsigned) copy of his CD a few months ago to give some feedback.
I really enjoyed it…from what I like to call the “summery sound” of State of Mindto the “highway driving hit” When The World Comes Down On You there is a little bit of something for you to enjoy, especially if you are hunting for a new artist to add to your library.
So here is a plug for Neall and his blog site, www.neallalcott.com, like I mentioned, when you have a minute go take a sneak peak at Rittenhouse Square.
Well being a techie and living with my wife (non-techie) who didn’t understand the imporatance to me of buying a Tivo unit a few years ago, also doesn’t understand my desire to own a HDTV Projector or Flat Panel among a few other things! Well with the birth of our son in 2004, I needed a solution to record & watch TV shows when I had the free time to do so…between 9pm and 11pm. So I began my search for a solution that would work. Of course I immediately searched google for ‘open source tivo’ or maybe it was ‘open source dvr’. Anyway, that’s not the point, the point is, is that I located a solution.
Enter MythTV (2004). MythTV is an open source PVR (personal video recording) application that runs on a Linux based server/desktop. Sweet! I had a few spare machines just lying around waiting to do something. I downloaded the source code, installed Fedora Core 3 server and installed MythTV. COOL! I was almost ready to watch LIVE TV on my Linux computer!
…click click click…tick tick tick…WTF? Why wasn’t it working? I followed the (then) tutorial to the letter! Sheesh, another linux install tutorial that I could not figure out. I was so damn close to getting it to work and things looked so cool with the Myth frontend on the monitor. Boy was a bummed!
Well Round Two: Enter GBPVR! [visit web site]again another open sourced app but this time it installs on a Windows server, not that the server matters, but the install was a snap. Download the file, unzip, double click to execute and BANG! it’s off and running the install. Five minutes later I was able to record my first “test” show and watch it. Also was able to pause, rewind, FF the live tv show as well. Freakin’ awesome!
GB-PVR is a fully featured home media center application, allowing you to easily use a remote to watch tv, schedule recordings, watch videos, watch DVDs, listen to music, view photos etc.
Best of all it’s 100% Free! You can set up an account at ZapToIt to get your local cable or satellite guide downloaded daily! The config app for GBPVR pretty much allows you to manage how the application will run, where to store video, pictures, music, etc.
All in all if you don’t have a DVR and don’t feel like shelling out a ton of cash and annual subscription fees for Tivo AND you have a spare PC laying around try out either MythTV or GBPVR. I would say go with GBPVR as I’ve NEVER had any issues with the app!
Hey I just learned about this great acoustic music podcast, and best of all they are all LIVE! I’m a lover of live concerts for over 10 years collecting way too many cassette tapescds torrents to count! But now I can download a few acoustic podcasts and give them a listen while I work/walk/whatever.
The podcast is from Acoustic Long Island (http://www.acousticlongisland.com/). The live podcasts occur every Wednesday night from the living room of a historic 19th century mansion in St. James, Long Island, NY. The sound quality is amazing and the singer/songwriters interact with the crown in a very close and intimate setting.
Tonight I’m listening to two shows:
Mieka Pauley - June 20th & David Berkeley - May 16th
make that three! give a listen to Patrick Fitzsimmons on May 23rd, good stuff!
I would give David’s show a listen. He’s got a laid back, mellow voice that is great music to listen to.
I couldn’t make this any easier…click the image to subscribe to the podcast!
Wonderful music! I’m just getting back to using Jamendo to find some fresh music and I came across Allison Crowe and found her music to be something I’ve been searching for for a long time! From the first song, How Long, I kept listening to the songs as I downloaded the entire album. I’ll be checking out the rest of her albums on Jamendo tonight!
Hey I just learned about this great acoustic music podcast, and best of all they are all LIVE! I’m a lover of live concerts for over 10 years collecting way too many 