by Matt | May 27, 2006 | Culture
Caught the new X-Men movie last night. Enjoyed it, even if it isn’t even vaguely close the the “comic timeline” as far as the events are concerned. Then again, with upwards of 500 issues of Uncanny X-men and god knows how many regular X-men (considering how many times they started over with the numbering), it’s really no surprise that they’ve assembled a jumbled timeline. Leaving my geek membership card at the door, I really liked the film. I thought it had some slow parts in the middle, but otherwise is a good continuance of the francise (movie wise) they’ve set up. I did have a few complaints, most of them involving spoilers. You can click “read more” for those.
I also realized that MY X-Men are long gone. I checked out Marvel.com this afternoon, and I can’t find any trace of the “classic” X-Men team in the comics. I was this close to picking up a few issues and checking out whats going on with my favorite muntant team of my childhood…. but I couldn’t find them. There’s Wolverine in his own book, New X-Men (which has a whole new team of new kids) and Uncanny X-Men that has a few old characters but is so out in leftfield I have no clue what they’re up to. Where the fuck is Cyclops, Jean-Gray, Wolverine, Gambit, Rogue, etc? Anyone? What the hell is going on? I stopped collecting comics a while a go, and now I’m all sorts of confused. Anyone (Nagle) recommend a good online comic store and maybe a few issues worth reading to catch back up???
Remember to click “more” and check out my issues with the movie. Contains spoilers.
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by Matt | May 25, 2006 | Music
It takes a whole lot of well crafted web magic to impress me these days. There’s AJAX this, Ruby that, Flash apps, all sorts of crap. Most of it is kinda interesting but not entirely useful on the whole. Today, I found something that I really think is pretty slick.
Pandora by the Music Genome Project
From their site:
“Ever since we started the Music Genome Project, our friends would ask: Can you help me discover more music that I’ll like? Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs. We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you. ”
At the most basic level it’s like all those “find similar band sites” like last.fm and nova-something (which I can’t remember), only taken to an entire other level. You put in a band you like and create a “radio station” based on that. I chose Less Than Jake for my first test. I put in the band name and it creates a station based on not only LTJ but music thats similar, impired by, has similar characterists of and/or sounds like them. I started with Liquior Store, a song it chose randomly from the LTJ catelog. Then, it filled the “radio station” with songs and artists that it thought I might like. I can adjust the tastes and blend of songs based on yes/no votes. It’s live, streaming, and always on for me to listen to. It’s full songs, good quality, in a great mix, streamed directly from the browser. No media player involved.
In the past few hours I’ve listened to: Gogol Bordello, Flogging Molly, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Swingin’ Utters, Mustard Plug, The Pogues, The Mountain Firework Company, Spitvalves, Lawrence Arms, Streetlight Manifesto, Fall Out Boy, Operation Ivy, Pink Spiders, Kid Dynamite, and the Street Dogs. That’s a great mix. Nothing has repeated. They never picked any cheesy over played tunes. I’m really liking it.
Definatly a website to check out, especially if you want to hear some new tunes.
http://www.pandora.com
by Matt | May 17, 2006 | Music
Completely and totally random thought of the day…
Mxpx – The Darkest Places
Arctic Monkeys – From The Ritz To The Rubble
LCD Soundsystem – Daft Punk Is Playing At My House
1208 – Fall Apart
Autopilot Off – Make A Sound
Reggie & The Full Effect – Congratulations Smack And Katy
The Rolling Stones – Street Fighting Man
Streetlight Manifesto – 9mm and a Three-Piece Suit
Mxpx – Late Again
Bloc Party – Helicopter
Bowling For Soup – Captain Hook
Sahara Hotnights – Push On Some More
by Matt | May 16, 2006 | Culture
I had recorded a 45 minute podcast using Odeo’s online recorder and the damn thing isn’t there. What the hell. Now I’ve got to rant and rave all over again. That’s BS. Don’t advertise an “online recorder” that doesn’t save shit. Arrrrgg.
by Matt | May 11, 2006 | Culture
Alright gang. I just setup an Odeo account and gave the “phone in a podcast” feature a try. I’m really diggin it. Odeo seems like a cool service. Completely 100% free. You can podcast via phone, web based recorder or pre-record and submit a MP3. It does the RSS for you so you can feed it that way, or, if you like, you can embed a shockwave widget thing into the page and play the audio that way.
So, this is all a big test just right now. I’ll try and do a “real” one on Monday. But, in the meantime, let’s try this out…
I’m going to put a big Odeo “My Podcast” button below here, which should link directly to the page. Also, below that, I’m going to embed the little shockwave thing (which is based on the opensource “musicplayer” project over at SourceForge). And below that I’ll put a link to the RSS. So, hopefully, you should be able to hear/test this out using any of those options. Let me know which one works the best and I’ll use that as my primary means of posting.
MP3 Link
Audio in this Podcast (RSS, m3u, xspf)
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