i heart trent reznor | 7:06 AM >

If his label hated him before, they've really gotta hate him now. But he's got a point on those Aussie CD prices.

musings and music | 8:33 PM >

I found a place that sells battery chargers for my Exilim z750. I'm so excited. I've been without a camera for too long, and when I went to find a replacement for it I couldn't find anything that wasn't a downgrade in one way or another. If I can keep it going like this, with an external charger (I broke the charging dock somehow), then I might skip getting another point and shoot like this one and opt for something more professional next year.

There's quite a lot of new music in my life lately, which I blame wholeheartedly on Stef and Thérèse. Without breaking confidences or incriminating the innocent, things the both of them have said led me to listening to whatever the hell I wanted to without feeling guilty or what have you. That led me to buying The Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way (which I think I mentioned I bought just for track 6, Lullaby, and ended up loving in its entirety). Think of that CD as my gateway drug. After that, it was some Townes Van Zandt (Flyin' Shoes), then Wilco (Sky Blue Sky). But it wasn't until Gillian Welch and her Elvis Presley Blues got stuck in my head that I realized my 4-gig iPod Mini is almost half-full of country music right now.

For someone who generally fills their iPod with NIN, Cat Power, and a bunch of other random non-country stuff, this came as quite a shock to me. At the same time I figure I'm about due to start listening to all this stuff. Growing up a prairie boy I was certainly exposed to enough country... Heck, they had some at every school dance from junior high on. There was even this girl I used to ride the bus with in junior high, Patty, who listened to country almost exclusively and found it obscene that I hadn't heard any that I'd liked. She'd brought a different artist every day until we discovered that Michelle Wright (one of her earlier albums -- this was '93 or '94) was alright by me. I guess she was my first pusher, and now I'm hooked.

Alright, I said it. I'm out of the closet about country music, and I feel better for it. Maybe by the next time I post I'll have some new pics from my old camera to post. ^_^

あいどんわなだい | 9:51 AM >

This is so NSFW that it's amazing. It takes a good two minutes to get started, but the buildup is worth it. And to top it off, the band is pretty awesome too. Anyone ever heard of these guys before, or know a cheap way to order them from Candada?

on the way down | 9:26 PM >

Wow it's been a while. Lots has been going on, so lemme lay some of that out.

I guess the biggest thing is that I got a MacBook Pro, one of the shiny new ones with a 2.2GHz Core2Duo chip, two gig of ram, the NVidia 8600 for portables, and an OLED screen. I can't say enough good things about this machine. I remember going from my 800mhz G3 iBook to the 12" G4 Powerbook, remember how much faster everything was and how editing photos wasn't as much of a chore, how I could actually run 3D apps without so much of the spinny wait cursor. The difference between that Powerbook and this laptop makes me feel like I've evolved from cro-mag to trans-galactic.

But the machine isn't really all that useful unless you have something that runs on it that didn't run on the old hardware, right? You're also now looking at the proud owner of Cinema 4D R10. That's right -- I finally have a pro-level software package. I got the XL bundle, so I even have renderfarm abilities on up to three machines. (Which I plan to test at some point in the future, as we have that many machines in the house, currently, including my desktop PC and the monster in the living room.)

It's been two weeks since Calgary and I still feel like, if I could, I'd just pick up and walk across the distance between her and Toronto. Every time I go back it only reinforces the feeling of Calgary as Home for me, even though I know the old maxim of never being able to go home is true. I probably would be stuck in a job that is not on my intended career track, too. But the feeling stays.

As I type this I'm actually en-route to the second wedding of the summer, of Herr Binki and Lady Jen. Should be interesting. J and Patti will be my lovely dates. Or Patti will be my lovely date and J will just stand around looking like a bearded James Bond. In any case, there will be shenanigans. Yes, plural.

I've bought a tonne of CDs lately, and I wanted to talk about a few of them.

Smashing Pumpkins, Zeitgeist: I was ready to hate this album, or to write it off as another Corgan failure, but I bought it and had listened to it through twice before deciding it's probably their best since Melancholy. It doesn't have the same level of polyphony; I suppose that, since there are only two people now and Corgan is essentially doing everything but the drums, that such is expected. Despite that, though, all but the last two songs on the CD are quality. It opens with Doomsday Clock (which you've already heard if you've seen Michael Bay bukkake my childhoodTransformers and stayed for the credits), and stays fairly strong throughout. My favorites are actually the first two tracks, although Neverlost is also nice. Their attempt at a silverfuckian (it's a word now) epic track, United States, doesn't quite hit the same level of frenetic energy, and the last two songs should never have been put on the CD at all, but in the end I felt like it was worthy of the Pumpkins name and a nice addition to my collection. It gives me hope that the next one will be on the level of Siamese Dream.

Marilyn Manson, Eat Me, Drink Me: Well, it's Manson. You either love him or you hate him. That said, I think this album, more than some of his past efforts, is more mainstream. There are parts that have a hint of symphony in the background, and his voice isn't as grating as on some of his earlier tracks. It's not something I can listen to every day, seeing as much of it is about personal destruction, but it can be oddly relaxing. Highlights include Heart-shaped Glasses and Mutilation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery. (Yeah, fuck you, too.)

Lucinda Williams, West: You know, I was really disappointed by this album. I heard about it on one of the Sunday morning shows. The guy touted it as a mature, well-done album full of the kind of emotion not present on the albums of pop-tarts like Britney and Lindsay. In actuality, it's a bland set of songs about personal loss or bad mistakes from her past. That might be okay if the words were elegantly written, or if her voice had a range that was moving, but instead the words seem to repeat too often (Mama You Sweet) and the entire CD has her singing in a one octave range without any serious effort to stretch herself or shock the listener. I guess not even that's a huge sin -- Garbage's [#name] started off much the same way. It's just that for someone like Lucinda Williams, who has such a reputation and has influenced so many, I expected more.

Trespassers William, Having: I found out about this Californian band on Buffy years ago, and I've always been a fan. Their earlier stuff vacillates between quiet alternative and shoegazer, I would say, but this latest album is nearly all shoegazer. Or post-shoegazer, perhaps; they don't sound like they're from the same camp as, say, Velocity Girl or My Bloody Valentine. They lack the airy vibrations, and the way you can hear empty space around those other bands. Still, if you like shoegazer or just want something to chill out to, this is a nice, quiet album that's fairly solid from beginning to end with the kind of aural breadth that shoegazer bands lack. Personally, while I enjoyed it I'm disappointed that songs where [#name's] vocals are more apparent did not make as much of a showing on this album, songs like my favorite, "I Know."

Oh, one more thing. I did a neat set of Flash work this week in a freelance project. When the project is totally finished I'll post a link to the final site as well as to the copy of my part in my portfolio. (Update: the final site is up.) It was fun, even though I'm starting to lean towards the camp of people who say that Flash sucks, even if it's not for the same reasons. Part of it, I assume, is that I'm still using Flash MX 6.0 (I don't have the money to upgrade); I hope that either upgrading or moving to Flex 2 will solve some of the issues I've had. But seriously, MX6's ability to load files and the fact that clips exported to action script on the first frame cause the first frame to not be loaded until they're fully loaded (breaking all preloaders) are both annoying as hell.

Alright, I'm passing into Pennsylvania right now, so I'm going to sign off and possibly write more later.