Archive for the 'Media' Category

Still Alive

Published
by
Jake
1 day, 17 hours ago
in Bits & Blips, Jake's Life, Observations, TuneStuff and World Gone Mad
. 0 Comments

Just FYI.

I love me some GTA IV. If you can wrangle a couple friends to play the online multiplayer it all becomes worth it. My Xbox Live Gamertag is JakoBlah, but I won’t be your friend unless I know who you are first.

I caught Explosions in the Sky on Austin City Limits this past weekend. They are right up my alley.

Scarlett Johansson singing Tom Waits songs? Not as bad as you might expect, but not exactly awesome, either. She sure is pretty, though.

Hillary is … Guh. Never mind.

—

Do you ever feel like you’ve stopped having ideas? I can solve the problems presented to me with little effort, but I can’t say I’m coming up with anything cool on my own these days. It relates to the paucity of posts on this here blog.

Later: Isn’t that a coincidence?

Quick Hits

Published
by
Jake
2 weeks, 4 days ago
in Bits & Blips, Code Monkeying, Getting Fit, Homebody, Love, Life, and Cam Neely and World Gone Mad
. 0 Comments
  • My Colorado Avalanche managed to make it through the first round of the NHL playoffs. Now they have the pleasure of playing the possibly unstoppable Detroit Red Wings in the second round. In truth the Wings have looked fairly human this season, especially in the playoffs. We shall see.
  • The Wife and I are suddenly both able to jog something like 2.5 miles continuously. This is a big jump from where we were. I definitely believe a course change is the prime contributor to the improvement.
  • Since September of 2007, I’ve manage to whittle myself from around 220lbs to 190-ish. I only have this to say: It’s a lot of friggin’ work.
  • I cannot tell you how excited I am about GTA IV. The multiplayer action looks like a flat out hoot. Email me if you want my Xbox Live gamer tag. ;)
  • Meanwhile, The Wife is all about the Karaoke Revolution on the 360. They’ve been all over adding downloadable songs to it. It’s really pretty impressive so far. Not to mention tons of fun.
  • I’m really sick of the Democratic primary garbage. I’m still backing the liberal black man, though.
  • My Ma has a fancy new deck on her house. It’s totally sweet.
  • I really need to sand & stain my deck this year (just like I have for the past couple years). Boo.
  • Went to a DeRailed (the Denver Rails user group) meeting last night. They covered interesting material, but I ended up leaving early anyway. It was definitely what you’d expect, demographically. ;)

Both Kinds

Published
by
Jake
1 month, 1 week ago
in Colorado Living, Folx and TuneStuff
. 4 Comments

That John Croghan kid sure puts on a good show. Like, for real.

As The Wife put it, “He plays country music I don’t mind!” ;)

Worth noting are the “Face Melting” covers* featured last night: “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Six Days on the Road” (which I know as a Taj Mahal jam).

* Not featured last night was my own request for “More Than Words”.
The Excuse: “The band didn’t have time to learn it.”
The Wife’s reaction: “There’s no band in that song!!”

Look at all that def!

Published
by
Jake
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in TechnoLust, Televisio and Viva la Consumerista
. 4 Comments

You may recall that my dearest mommy got me a big ol’ television set for Christmas this past holiday.

Well, I’ve finally got it running at full capacity now that I have a TiVo-HD (got a deal on a refurb from Woot!) and boy is it something.

Of course, the CableCARD install wasn’t perfectly smooth, but at least it turned out to just be a bit of an annoyance while the cable guy fiddled with it for an hour or two. It was definitely not the sort of tragedy I had read about on various TiVo forums, etc.

It’s funny what HD does to you, though. Two words to illustrate my point: Sunrise Earth. My friends (who were all way ahead of me on the HD curve) all told me about this hypnotic show, and I always pointed at them and laughed. Turns out they were right on the money. It’s just mesmerizing. Even beyond that, though, I’ll watch a nature show or rock concert in HD before just about any other option now. Good times.

The Wife’s favorite bit - aside from when I blew her mind by showing her how we can watch shows from our old TiVo unit on the new one - is the dual tuner action we get from the TiVo-HD. Now “Boy shows” don’t automatically trump “Girl shows”. Peace reigns supreme at the Lazy ‘S’ Ranch, though it does give the TiVo twice the opportunity to record one of it’s off the wall suggestions…

A.G.G.R.O.

Published
by
Jake
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Colorado Living and TuneStuff
. 0 Comments

The Aggrolites rocked it last night. I definitely recommend you catch them if they come to your neck of the woods. (Boston kids, that’s April 15 for you.)

The opening acts were The Haggardies, a local Goldfinger clone with songs about skateboarding and stuff (meh), and Synthetic Elements who are like a poor man’s Streetlight Manifesto and plenty of fun to watch on stage.

As is typical with these very small shows, the headliners were miles above the opening acts. The highlight was the encore, during which Jesse and the boys did a reggae / ska / two-tone / dancehall / soul medley that had us all singing along at the tops of our lungs.

Good times.

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig

Published
by
Jake
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Albainn Gu Brath, Colorado Living, Folx and TuneStuff
. 5 Comments

Supposedly, that’s Irish Gaelic (which I’m allowed to rock thanks to my 13th century Kilpatrick heritage, yo)…

So, yeah, it’s St. Patrick’s Day and it’s snowing like a bitch this morning. Luckily the roads stayed mostly clear, and we didn’t get anything near the high end of the 4-8 inch predictions.

Nevertheless, I am pleased that I was able to get my celebrating out of the way this past Saturday with Brozovich at the “Lazy J Ranch” of one John Croghan. John pulls together a nice little crowd of good people, so it was an excellent laid-back time. Plus he had a keg of Guinness. Hard to go wrong there. (Hell, I didn’t even bother to check if it was carbonated or nitrogenated. No need to be rude in the man’s house.)

By the way, John is doing his country crooning thing in Olde Town Arvada on April 4 at the 12 Volt Tavern. He’s guessing he’ll go on around 10pm or so. I’m definitely going to be there. If I’m lucky, John might even sing my request. ;)

In other music performance news, The Aggrolites are playing in Denver this Wednesday. I love those boys. We saw them open for Madness in Los Angeles a couple years ago and have since collected all of their stuff. Well worth the $13 ticket, I’m thinking. (Here are some YouTube samples for you. Oh, and The Wife’s favorite track.)

Oh, there’s also roller derby on April 5. The Wife was asking about derby last night, so we’ll probably try to hit that, I think. Derby’s always worth the $13 ticket.

That’s all I’ve got, but that’s way more than usual, so I’m fine with it.