Sideshow & Syrana

I’m posting this since it’s been rolling around in my head and getting it typed out helps me collect it all in one place. Plus, I should probably talk about these metal guys before more of them die off (Rest in Peace.)

Throughout my music listening career, I’ve never been much of a drummer fan. I’ve always noticed it. It’s there. I just didn’t think twice about it. Then, once we had ownership of Rock Band, I decided to see how bad I was at the drums. It turns out I was very bad..at first. Once I got into it and once I learned how to control each limb on it’s own, it became really fun. I’m still no expert and you could argue that they’re not real drums; I definitely have more rhythm than I had a year ago. There is no doubt about that. One thing the game does teach is rhythm and limb independence.

Once that happened, I started hearing music in a brand new way. Now I can hear the drums and each and every note. I can now pick out the bass drum and other drums. Music that I haven’t listened to in long time suddenly becomes new to me. I have much more respect for a lot of the drummers I listen to. I find myself reading more articles on metal drummers and watching them more in concerts. I still have no idea about the ins-and-outs of a drum kit, but I’d love to learn. If money and floor space were no object (sadly, they are) I’d love to get a drum kit and learn. Fortunately, my current Rock Band drum kit can also work as a pretty decent electronic drum kit, so I do have that going for me.

I thought I’d brain dump my favorite metal drummers (in no particular order) and maybe, hopefully open up others to their style and talent.
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Ronnie James Dio

Rest in Peace (and Metal) – 1942-2010

I thought I’d do another game review. It’s been awhile, but it is only the second new game I’ve purchased since the last review. I’m doing much better. This time it’s for Just Cause 2.

I had bought the first Just Cause back in 2006 since I’m a fan of sandbox-type games like GTA and it looked like that sort of game. While it was that sort of game, it was pretty weak. I quickly made the decision to sell it on eBay and get something for it before other people heard it wasn’t too good. Which is why I wasn’t expecting much from it’s sequel. I played the demo and it was pretty fun, but it really didn’t explain much and sort of threw you into the action.

I read an early review, I forget where it was now, that said you shouldn’t play the game. In the review it went on to say that you shouldn’t actually play it, but don’t get it to actually “play” it, get it to “use” it. Just Cause 2 gives you a plethora (ooh, neat word) of tools and ways to destroy, kill, and make boom of everything in the game. The voice acting is really weak, but it a funny way, so it’s not horrible to deal with. The story isn’t really all that important anyway. Asian country is taken over by some crazy leader, super mercenary goes in and creates choas, everyone is happy, things explode, etc. The missions in the game are pretty simple: go here and steal this, go here and blow this up, rescue this person, take over this base, and all of the other standards.

The real essence to this game is the sandbox portion. The map is huge and maybe to a fault, but once you’ve been somewhere, you can call a chopper to take you there later. The huge map gives you a crap-load of things to do. You need to collect “Chaos” points to buy things on the black market which you get by destroying things and “completing” areas (basically blowing up all of the leader’s contraband.)  There are probably 50-100 villages, bases, and other areas to complete, including 2 major city-type areas. Good luck on trying to get the 100% completion achievement.

The cream-of-the-crop tool that your buddy uses is his grappling hook. He had it in the first game, but it was pretty weak. You can now hook it onto one thing and then hook the other end onto something else. This creates endless fun and chaos. Oh, yes, you can hook it onto innocent people. It never gets old hooking an innocent old lady and then hooking the other end onto a truck speeding down the highway. Or hooking a enemy vehicle and then hooking the other end onto a tree. They stop quickly. Hell, they even made a “Grappling Hook Trailer” for the game,

I haven’t completed the story, mainly because I spend so much time just traveling around and creating chaos and seeing what neat things I can do with my grappling hook. Did I mention he has an unlimited supply of parachutes, too? Steal a plane, jump onto the nose (why not?), jump off, parachute down, grapple onto a car, ride on the roof for a few miles, then jump and parachute off of a bluff. The possibilities are endless. Realism? Who cares?

Verdict: Buy, if you’re in the buying mood, otherwise definitely rent it and give it a shot. The demo doesn’t do it justice.

I enjoy music, as most of you know, so I thought I’d post a song everyday during the week using my Blip.fm station and tweet it at the same time (if you wanted to follow at home.) Every week, I’ll recap my choices and write a little blurb about them.

This week I am trying a new site for playing the songs called “Grooveshark.” It also allows me to use a website widget that should let you listen to the song right on our site instead of requiring you to click a link. Let me know how it works. Unfortunately, there is no volume control on the widget, so just an FYI.

Check this tag for my other “Songs of the Week” posts.

Hopefully, it’s a good chance to hear some new music (or old music) and get my take on it. I do tend to lean towards Heavy Metal and Hard Rock, so most songs will probably be in that general area, but I will veer from time to time. I know music is very much like religion and politics, so I’m not pushing anything onto you. If you don’t like something, I respect that. But, if you do, I’m more than happy to get you more info on it, just let me know.

Most entries will have a Wikipedia and Last.FM link at the end for you to get more information and listen to other songs at your leisure.

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It looks like I have a fan on the Alliance side on Eitrigg. I’m so flattered. I ran across him when doing the cooking quests during Thanksgiving with my Alliance rogue.

I enjoy music, as most of you know, so I thought I’d post a song everyday during the week using my Blip.fm station and tweet it at the same time (if you wanted to follow at home.) Every week, I’ll recap my choices and write a little blurb about them.

Check this tag for my other “Songs of the Week” posts.

Hopefully, it’s a good chance to hear some new music (or old music) and get my take on it. I do tend to lean towards Heavy Metal and Hard Rock, so most songs will probably be in that general area, but I will veer from time to time. I know music is very much like religion and politics, so I’m not pushing anything onto you. If you don’t like something, I respect that. But, if you do, I’m more than happy to get you more info on it, just let me know.

Most entries will have a Wikipedia and Last.FM link at the end for you to get more information and listen to other songs at your leisure.

(continue reading…)

I thought I would grace you with my presence since Syrana is taking a short hiatus and removing the sick germs from herself. What have I been up to? I bet everyone is waiting with anticipation.

Last I posted about WoW was when Syrana asked me to answer a few questions. One of those questions was about what I wanted to accomplish in 2010. I basically said that I wanted to get both the Salty and Chef titles. Looking at what I had left, Chef should be simple to grab first. It turns out that I got Salty first. I really didn’t spend a lot of time trying to catch that rare fish. I usually just logged in on my laptop during football games on Sunday and fished while I watched. I’d say it was probably 4-5 hours total until I finally caught that Dark Herring in Howling Fjord. I’ve read comments from people who’ve taken almost 40 hours to catch a rare fish. Crazy. Sadly, I still haven’t got the Chef title yet, but I really haven’t tried. I did take a quick WoW break for a few weeks to play other games.

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This week’s theme is newer/underground bands. They may not all be completely unknown or new, but they are probably new to a lot of people. Hope to spread the word.

Check this tag for my other “Songs of the Week” posts.

I enjoy music, as most of you know, so I thought I’d post a song everyday during the week using my Blip.fm station and tweet it at the same time (if you wanted to follow at home.) Every week, I’ll recap my choices and write a little blurb about them.

Hopefully, it’s a good chance to hear some new music (or old music) and get my take on it. I do tend to lean towards Heavy Metal and Hard Rock, so most songs will probably be in that general area, but I will veer from time to time. I know music is very much like religion and politics, so I’m not pushing anything onto you. If you don’t like something, I respect that. But, if you do, I’m more than happy to get you more info on it, just let me know.

Most entries will have a Wikipedia and Last.FM link at the end for you to get more information and listen to other songs at your leisure.

(continue reading…)

Check this tag for my other “Songs of the Week” posts.

I enjoy music, as most of you know, so I thought I’d post a song everyday during the week using my Blip.fm station and tweet it at the same time (if you wanted to follow at home.) Every week, I’ll recap my choices and write a little blurb about them.

Hopefully, it’s a good chance to hear some new music (or old music) and get my take on it. I do tend to lean towards Heavy Metal and Hard Rock, so most songs will probably be in that general area, but I will veer from time to time. I know music is very much like religion and politics, so I’m not pushing anything onto you. If you don’t like something, I respect that. But, if you do, I’m more than happy to get you more info on it, just let me know.

Most entries will have a Wikipedia and Last.FM link at the end for you to get more information and listen to other songs at your leisure.

(continue reading…)

I finished Mass Effect 2 on Sunday night. It was an amazing ride and Bioware created an amazing game full of epic moments and a great story.

This game was started from my Mass Effect 1 savegame using the import feature, so all of my major decisions from the first game were copied over. I did change my class-type (not sure what it was) and also my face. I thought my last customized Shepard looked kind of odd, so I wanted to make him look more normal.

Since ME1 has been out for years, I can talk about some of my major decisions from that game that I carried over (that I can remember.) I know that when the decision came to kill Wrex, I chose to let him live. Also, when the decision came to save either Ashley or Kaidan, I chose to save Ashley and sacrificed Kaidan. I chose this partly due to not using Kaidan as much and the fact that my Shepard was a bit “interested” in Ms. Williams. I also let the Rachni queen live instead of killing her.

The rest of this post contains major Mass Effect 2 spoilers! Please do not continue if you’re still playing, unless you don’t care about seeing major plot points. I wanted to post my outcome and decisions for others to compare since it seems like there are dozens of possible outcomes.

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