To all the sites that think video tutorials are a good thing: please rethink this. When people need a tutorial they need something they can follow along with step by step. Often times I want to come back and just read one part of it again. Or, heaven forbid, print it out to take it with me to where I need it.

Following along with a video tutorial is nigh impossible. I’ve gotten to the point now that once I see a tutorial is in video form that I leave, I don’t care, because no matter what the reputation of the person giving the tutorial is I know that I’ll have a much easier time getting through a written tutorial. This is magnified 10 fold if I’m trying to get some info at work. I don’t have the time to get through your entire blabbering video. You don’t know how to present. You don’t have a good enough mic or a good enough voice for that matter. Your cadence sucks. And to boot I’m gonna be interrupted 10 times while trying to get through it so having to re-watch and re-listen to parts takes me exponentially more time to get through than it would if the tutorial were just written out.

So, please, if you really want to make a video and the video really can add value, do it as an accompaniment to the article. This will make the content much more usable, you’ll get better SEO from it, and it’ll become a resource that’s very easy for people to come back to again and again.

But for now, I’ll just keep closing those browser windows when a video tutorial shows up.

Thanks! or not…

Its too nice. And it doesn’t feel cohesive. The old recordings have, to use a completely overused and subjective measuring stick, a warmer and more natural sound. This new mix sounds like a studio mix. While the original mix sounds like it could have been recorded live and that there’s some kind of interaction between the band members the new mix sounds like it very well could have been put together from sessions where the band members never even saw each other. Just by listening I know they’re in a studio.

That feeling goes away as the power in songs picks up, but overall it sounds so very sterile with too much emphasis on Eddie’s voice I keep cutting new mixes off half way to go back to the originals. What I’m finding that enjoy about the originals is the cohesive sound that they generate. I can’t quite put my finger on it but the new sounds strips the feeling out of the songs.

Why Go in particular suffers. The original’s softer, more brooding, sound really lent itself to the subject matter. And maybe that’s it, the subject matter. The songs are all part of a dark, disturbed story and the new pristine presentation just doesn’t feel right. The new mixes even manage to steal some of the power from Evenflow. Again, its very subjective and I’m still not sure what it is but they just don’t sound as good.

I will admit, though, it’s not ALL bad. Release gains a much more ethereal sound than it used to have. The new-found details in the playing really lend themselves to this song. I think its also that the vocal mix in Release isn’t an assault like some of the others. Black and Alive are others that come together well in the new mix. While gaining a bit more detail and clarity they doesn’t give up their original feel.

State of Love and Trust is another that I enjoyed. This is a song that they’ve put together in a few different incarnations, but this one feels nice. Not quite as up-tempo as the version that first appeared on the Singles soundtrack but still holding together very nicely and, most importantly, feeling like a single piece instead of the many parted pieces that a lot of the other mixes present themselves as.

I’ve never heard Brother before, and I like it. This recording is exactly what I’m talking about as far as the feel of a recording. Everything is coherent but there’s no assault of any given instrument at any given time.

Who knows, maybe I’ll feel differently tomorrow, and maybe I’ll never notice the difference when they’re mixed in the normal rotation of songs on the iPod iPhone, but side by side I enjoy the feeling of the older mixes much more. Its a more full sound and its more like a band than Eddy and some guys. What the remixes do accomplish, though, is to remind me that Pearl Jam always has been a very articulate band. I just can’t help but listen to the old recordings and just enjoy them while the new one’s just make me think “I can’t wait to hear this live!”

I could be full of shit, too. But I don’t think I am.

Update: How about the link that prompted this post. She had to be drunk. Really. Could she have been sober?

But then there was Gears of War. Truly addictive, very fun, and bloodier than hell.

Since we let our old xBox Live subscription expire we couldn’t get out old names back, but at least I could find something fun. Come and kick my ass if you see me online. I really suck. Though I’m starting to think that the Berserkers are actually kinda cute…

That other game we got too

As part of the package we also got Project Gotham Racing. And while I’ve enjoyed this game in the past I was sorely disappointed in the graphics after playing Gears of War.

I need to find a good driving game. I adore the old Gran Tourismo games and would love to see something along those lines on the xBox. I guess Forza does that, but I’ll have to try playing it first… despite having dove into Gears of War I really do have a hard time diving into new games without knowing a bit about them. Especially driving games where the feel of the game is so very important.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on differences between him and the Bush Administration

(Source)

I still wanna know who called me old and creepy.

Oh, and Tom, looks like the copy / paste missed some spaces and line breaks… yeah, I’m a bastard like that.

I don’t like it. No matter how you look at it, from the player’s side or the owner’s side, there’s not enough money going into the NHL, and in taking this long to settle the expiration of the Collective Bargaining Agreement they’ve up and lost a ton of money.

I can only imagine what advertising premiums they’re gonna lose as well. Not to mention fan support. The only reason I had any kind of extended Cable TV coverage was to get hockey, but now I think I may have learned to live without it. I used to love to watch hockey. The love / hate relationship with the Avalanche was a hard thing but overall was a lot of fun and on the whole Hockey is a fast and very dynamic game to watch. I don’t miss it anymore. I think that might be a bad thing.

Ah, maybe I’m just grumpy ’cause I missed an entire season of Hockey, but I honestly care more about seeing good games this upcoming season than I do about seeing big names on the roster.

We learned last few years that high priced teams don’t mean squat. The cups have gone to hungry teams not to the top talent. This tells me that the players don’t care as much about being on the best team as they do about who pays them more. And with teams out there like the Rangers who will just throw money around willie nillie we’ll continue to have a salary problem.

The players and the owners need to police themselves and keep it reasonable. I hope they do figure something out – I’d like to be able to afford to go to a few games when I regain interest in hockey.

Pookmail is service that offers temporary email addresses. Any emails sent to that temporary address will be forwarded to an address that you specify when signing up. The address expires 24-hours after creation.

This is such a wonderful concept. How many times have you signed up for something that you have to supply an email address for but don’t need it permanently? Spur of the moment site registrations? Or that one time registration to get the free e-book? Now you can sign up for things and not get onto spamming lists. Simply sign up with a pookmail address and don’t worry about it.

I never would have thought about providing this service but at the same time I wonder why it didn’t pop up earlier.

So, without any further bad humor, here it goes:

Total volume of music

43.88GB, 11238 songs, 31 days. Most are encoded at 128k AAC. All this resides on a file server and I keep about 13GB on my 20GB iPod.

Last CD that I bought

The last CD that I bought was Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (iTMS link) by My Chemical Romance from the iTunes Music Store.

Song playing right now

Paranoia! Cha-Cha-Cha by The Soviettes.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me

1. Posession by Sarah McLachlan
2. Yellow Ledbetter by Pearl Jam
3. Cecilia by Simon & Garfunkel
4. I’m a Fake by The Used
5. Bright Eyes by Bonnie Tyler (yes, you read that right)

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton

1. Andy Parker
2. John Pennypacker
3. Joel Schou
4. Scott Hill
5. Harold Land

* EDIT

Looking back

As I track back the lineage of this particular baton I find it fun to go through and see what other people’s musical tastes are. I’m also finding a few bands to go back and get a better listen to as I start to Google some of these new bands that have been listed. I hope everybody that I’ve passed it to participates as though it means nothing at the very least it is interesting to be able to track the lineage of a ‘virtual chain letter’ (as John P. labeled it).

Probably not, but still, I sometimes feel like I am.

I wrote and rewrote this post many times because each time I started to ramble and my disdain for the church comes out each time.

I have a hard time coming to terms with the place of religion in a modern society and I really should write out my feelings on the matter because sometimes all I feel inside is disdain for the church and all that it has done (and not done) throughout history.

I have a lot of similar feelings about politics (and politicians) and can see many parallels between politics and religion, and not just the influences they have on each other.

I wonder if it would be productive to follow up and write out and organize my thoughts on religion & politics, wether I would have anything different or even coherent to say on the matter. Wether what I have to say is more based on feeling than fact or based more on how religious and political leaders treat those who they are sworn to serve. They are supposed to serve us, right? Right?