Of Epic Proportion

...is the name of a playlist I spent last night making.

Here it is..

Of Epic Proportion

My goal was to capture the progression of Rock from the 60's until today. To that end, you'll find that the playlist mostly advances through time. That being said, there are some times when a song is somewhat out of place to account for its style and how it fit with the songs around it.

While filling in the classics was easy, I found it very difficult to find songs that represented the music of "my generation" -- as they say. Sure, there's certainly a particular feel to music of the 90's until the present, but I find it difficult to distinguish the great from the good like I can with the classics. Perhaps its because only the great have survived from the classic rock era..

Finally, I hard-capped the list at 45 songs -- enough to take up an afternoon while still moving at a fairly rapid pace through the years. If you have suggestions or comments, email me at jterlesk [at] comcast [dot] net.

Domain Downtime

If you usually get here via "http://genius.fugimax.com," I apologize for the outage. Something expired and I hadn't noticed until today. That address should be working within the next 72 hours as the new name-server addresses propagate throughout the network.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

As promised, I read through The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the last few days. I leave the book very satisfied. Things happening for the most ridiculous reasons resulting in the most illogical outcomes is something I apparently enjoy. This is only supported by Adams' ridiculous grasp of the english language, from which the book derives much of its entertainment.

If you haven't read it, here's an excerpt just to get the flavor of it:

"For thousands more years, the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across -- which happened to be the Earth -- where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog."

Colorful, intelligent, and wonderfully absurd. If you haven't read it, I'd recommend you do so sometime soon. I shall be picking up the other books in the "not-so-much-a-trilogy" trilogy shortly.

Late to the Party

I'm going to try and read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this weekend. I'll let you know how it goes and what I think.

Yesterday

The Lord of the Rings - 1:30 PM to 1:17 AM
Ya, I watched all three extended editions straight through yesterday. I setup my 23" Apple HD display at the end of my desk, re-arranged my 5.1 speakers, and had at it for almost 12 solid hours. My roommates think I'm nuts...but whatever.

Drinking - 1:18 AM to 7:30 AM
Needing to balance out the 12 hours of pure nerd, it was time to drink for 6 hours with a bunch of random people my roommate invited over. Flaming Dr. Peppers, the yucca, and many games of Kings were the highlights of the evening. I tried to get people to play drinking Scrabble, but alas, their hearts were not in it.

As for today, I woke up at 4 and went to get beer and groceries followed by Chic-Fil-A. Need to finish up my grad apps and do some reading now. later.

Resident Evil 4

Holy shit this game is good.

I picked up my special edition copy of Resident Evil 4 tonight @ GameStop. After fighting traffic and getting the second to last copy they'd be getting, I have obtained the awesomeness.

If you have a Gamecube, get your ass out there and buy this game -- whether or not you liked the previous ones or not. The game is an amazingly good departure from what had become a mundane and repetitive series (not even counting the number of remakes and ports). This new incarnation is incredible. Graphics are amazing, gameplay is great, and it's already made me jump once or twice. Plus, it has swear-words (HAEHAHEAHEAA!!!)

Buy it...now.

E3 (3 Updates in the same day OMG!)

My media registration for the Electronic Entertainment Expo came through today. Thus, I will once again be heading to L.A. come May 17th. Hurrah!

iPod Car Adapter (Tape)

This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen..

SmartDeck allows you to control your iPod using the built in controls of your cassette player. Using patent-pending sensing technology, the SmartDeck determines which commands the cassette player sends to the iPod.

SmartDeck is more than just a cassette adapter for iPod; it achieves truly seamless integration between iPod and cassette deck. Users can utilize the cassette deck's forward and rewind buttons to advance to the next or prior songs in the iPod playlist. In addition, pause and stop buttons do what pause and stop buttons are expected to do. When the user hits the cassette deck's Eject button or switches from Cassette to Radio, Griffin's SmartPlay technology automatically pauses the iPod.

Link

Currently Listening to:
See You at the Show from the album "The Long Road"
by Nickelback

PowerMate + iTunes

Here's an AppleScript I wrote that uses the elapsed time of the current song in iTunes to set the brightness of the LED in the PowerMate:

PowerMate-iTunesElapse.scpt

When a song begins, the PowerMate will be very bright. When the song ends, the PowerMate will be at its dimmest (off).

Currently Listening to:

A Change Of Seasons from the album "A Change of Seasons"
by Dream Theater

Minish Cap

Just a friendly reminder that this comes out on Monday..

..for Gameboy Advance. Pick it up!

Listening to:

Quintet for Horn, Violin, 2 Violas, and Cello in E Flat Major, K. 407/386c: III. Allegro
from the album "Mozart: Chamber Music" by The Nash Ensemble

Teeth

I also went to the dentist today..

I need a cavity fixed and he wants to yank all my wisdom teeth. The cavity is my fault, but wtf evolution, get rid of wisdom teeth.

New Stuff

One of my christmas presents -- the EcoSphere..

And something I picked up yesterday at the outlet stores -- a new watch..

One-up The Competition

I'm making these ASAP..

(Mock-up only...but they should look pretty close to this.)