Andy's Blog

Fall Out Boy: From Infinity On High

In the tradition of my review of Fall Out Boy's last album, "From Under The Cork Tree", I am going to start my review of their latest album with how it looks in my iTunes:

The tracks and the stars of Fall Out Boy 3.0

While I have been listening to this album a fair amount, I do have to admit that I am a bit disappointed with this album. The first two singles off "Infinity On High" - "This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race" and "The Carpal Tunnel Of Love" are very, very, good. In fact, FOB made these two songs available for streaming on their website, before the album came out. I listened to them repeatedly, which really built up this album in my mind. As a result, I think that things were a bit over-hyped for me. I was expecting an album that should have been absolutely transcendent. Instead, I got something that was merely pretty good.

That isn't to say that this album sucks (my resident Music Critic has it stuck in his craw that I declared this album to be sucky. I hereby declare that I did no such thing!), it's just that I expected more.

In general, the Music Critic and I differ on the songs that we like -- I tend to like the harder ones ("Thriller", "Carpal Tunnel"), while the Critic is more taken with some of the tracks in the middle (which I don't find to be as memorable). For example, we both agree that the beginning of the fourth track, "I’m Like A Lawyer With The Way I’m Always Trying To Get You Off (Me & You)", is pretty fantastic. But 40 seconds in, the song totally changes, and while FOB loses me, they retain Kevin. To each his own, I suppose.

On the upside, I think that this album shows a lot of promise. The experimenting that the band has been doing, with more dance beats and R&B influences has the potential, I think, to make for some truly ground-breaking work. For example, the last track, "I’ve Got All This Ringing In My Ears And None On My Fingers", starts with a combination of a really great beat, and a nifty horn section. I am really taken with the entire first minute or so of that song, but unfortunately, it wanders off a bit at the end, thus denying it the coveted 5-star rating. So, I'll continue to enjoy what I have now, and hope for more greatness in the future.

If you don't know if you should pick this album up or not, stream some songs off of the 'net, or borrow a friend's copy, and see what you think. You might find it to be more to your liking than I do.

-Andy.

Another amazing achievement in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

So, at this point, I'm almost proud to admit that Kevin and I are still playing freakin' Mario Kart: Double Dash!! like crazy fiends. While we're not exactly playing daily, I would say that we're still playing about 5 hours a week on average.

One of the reasons why this game is still engaging us, now 14 months into our addiction, is that it still (even after all of this time) has new things to offer. I have prognosticated for awhile that one of Kevin's and my races might come down to a tie, but as of yet, it has never happened, because the timing for each race goes down to the millisecond level. We have had race times separated by as little as 2 milliseconds, but we've never had completed identical times.

Until today:

Identical 3:22:606 times on Rainbow Road in 150cc

And so, finally the question has been answered -- what will happen if the race times are tied? Will the game award 10 points to each player (declaring the match a draw), or will it choose a winner and loser?

Now we finally have the answer: it will declare me the winner (mine is the kart with the flying Koopa and Baby Bowser), and Kevin the loser (he favors the Toad + Koopa combination). Actually, the way that the algorithm appears to work (we had a long discussion afterwards about this, naturally) is that in order for the person who is in first place to go down to second, the other racer must not only meet the first-place player's time, but exceed it. And in this race, I went into the final turn ahead, and even though I didn't play it well, Kevin only managed to catch up to me, but not pass me. Therefore I held my first place position throughout the entire turn, and Kevin ended up getting second (even though he had the same exact time).

Of course, I got hit with two blue shells, so I would have had the moral victory no matter what happened. :)

-Andy.

Not-so-new-to-me music reviews (part 1)

It has been a long time since I have done any music reviews. While I have acquired some new music since March, there is one thing that has been dominating my musical consumption to such a great extent, that there hasn't really been room for much else. That special something, of course, is the new Tool album, "10,000 Days".

But, I am going to try and review that album, as well as a few others that have fallen into my collection since March:

• Tool - "10,000 Days": What can I really say about this album? It's friggin' tremendous, and if you don't worship it yet, it must mean that I'm not your roommate, and I haven't been brainwashing you to like this album by playing it 3 times a day during Mario Kart sessions.

  Seriously, I could write a long, long blog post just about this album alone. It took me quite a few listens to get past the simliarities between "10,000 Days" and Tool's previous album, "Lateralus". But trust me, the new album is very different, and all together spectacular. I have been listening to this album non-stop since it came out (probably on average of twice a day), and like all previous Tool albums, I will be listening to this one for a long time to come.



• Air - "Moon Safari"": I fully realize that this album is quite old - I resisted picking it up for quite a long time. However, I was up in Berkeley (for some reason -- visiting Mike I think), and I picked up a used copy on a whim. As it turns out, the reason why I never bought this album (even though I read a lot of good things about it), was because I don't like the single - "Sexy Boy". Well, I still don't like that song, but the rest of the album is great. Atmospheric, without being too esoteric (if that makes any sense). My resident music doesn't like the accent that the female vocalist (Beth Hirsch?) uses on some of the tracks (he finds track #3, "All I Need", to be particularly offensive), but what does he know? Recommended.


• Pretty Girls Make Graves - "Élan Vital": It took me awhile to warm up to this album. I would say that it is a bit of a departure from their last album, "The New Romance" - less hard rock, more meditative and subtle. My favorite tracks on the album are the last two - "Wildcat" and "Bullet Charm". Overall, I have found this album to be to my liking, and I'm sad that this band is breaking up. If you are looking for something a little different, I recommend checking this album out.


• Sleeping At Last - "Keep No Score": It is slightly criminal how little that I have written about this band. I think that their last album, "Ghosts", is tremendous. I think it would have been my pick for the best album of 2005, had I ever written that blog post. Unfortunately, their new album, "Keep No Score", is a rare mis-step for this band. The songs tend to be incredibly delicate, meandering around without really ever becoming something great. The only exception to this is track #4, "Envelopes", which is a really, really, really good song. Seriously. I recommend that you check out that song, and if you like it, go and seek out their previous album, "Ghosts". While I usually like my music to be affiliated with Satan, don't let the fact that Sleeping At Last is unabashedly Christian stop you, when they want to, they can crank out some great stuff.


• The Hush Sound - "Like Vines": This album was highly anticipated, seeing as how it was co-produced bh the great Patrick Stump (the resident Music Critic made me say that). Seriously, while I do like The Hush Sound's brand of lo-fi happy pop rock, I found this album to only be okay. It's not bad, but it's not so transcendently awesome that I can't get it out of my CD player. The standout track is #6, "Don't Wake Me Up" (which Patrick apparently co-wrote) - it's got a nice beat, and can stand toe-to-toe with the best that any band has to offer (well, maybe not Tool). I recommend this if you're a fan of The Hush Sound, otherwise, just get Patrick's song.


• Gnarles Barkley - St. Elsewhere: Wow, this album is terrible! The main single, "Crazy", is amazing, and shows that this collaboration between Cee-Lo Green and Danger Mouse is capable of producing some tremendously good music. But curiously, they spend the rest of the album making stuff that is barely listenable. I spent a few weeks torturing the Resident Music Critic with this one, and then gave up on it.

Well, that'll do it for now. I have a few more albums to write about (including the new Fall Out Boy), which I'll hopefully get to next week.

-Andy.

"That's what I'm talkin' about!"

Paul Martino, the CEO of Aggregate Knowledge (the startup that I joined last year) formally announced the company to the world at Demo 2007 last week. From all accounts, it seems like things went pretty well. I recommend watching the video (it's only 6 minutes), so you can get the scoop on what we're working on.

In a nutshell, we're working on discovery -- web technology that lets website visitors "discover" what they're looking for. Our technology is flexible enough that it can easily be integrated with our customer's websites - everything from commerce to media. For an example of Aggregate Knowledge technology at work, check out Overstock.com (that's us on the right of the age) and the Washington Post (at the end of the articles, registration required). I'm pretty excited about the technology that we have so far, and I think that 2007 is going to be a very interesting ride.

But for now, we're even starting to get some press coverage -- check our website for a full list of articles. I'm glad that we're a little bit more "out in the open" now. I'm not saying that I'm going to start blogging more about work, but I just might.

Oh, and the subject of this post? Probably the most frequently heard expression at the office. Paul seems to be pretty good at spreading new memes - he even has me saying it.

-Andy.