Farsong Blog-o-Matic

Last year, we had a drought. This year we already have great releases from three bands that have been already well-established within a month of each other, and a slew of other releases planned. It's a banner year. If last year was a drought, this year is a torrent and a deluge. A rivulet, perhaps? Enough with the water metaphors: I'm thirsty, have to go pee, and teed to take a shower. Regardless, it is begun; we already have contenders for the top-ten of Aught-Seven:


“Dü-dü düm. Where's that from? Where's that from?”I found myself mumbling desperately last night, scrolling through files and comparing the digital ones to the thoughts that remain in my mind. I was listening to the latest album from the Arcade Fire. The fact that, even after hundreds of successive listenings over the past years, their previous album has not worn out is a testament to the Arcade Fire's skill, and the very fact that the album was filled with the utmost pure magics.

And guess what? Their newest album, Neon Bible, recaptures the same magic that they had before — the magic that made me listen to them on an endless repeat on crappy, muddy headphones. It was seriously the album of my senior year.

And somehow this album has lived up to the enormous expectations that were held for it. It's new, it's different, and it's the Arcade Fire doing what they did. I want to listen to all these songs over and again and again (especially tracks like “Black Mirror”) — and I'm fairly certain that these feelings will remain.

And it's not as if the band has been hiding under a rock, either. They've been touring and some members playing in the wonderful Bell Orchestre (likened to Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Ros, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor). They seemed to have picked up the “Wall of Sound” from 2005's wonderful Broken Social Scene, and have added a great pipe-organ to their repertoire (as awesome as if Coldplay had the gumption to play a giant pipe-orgel). Oddly enough, they seemed to have made a journey back in time. On a number of tracks, lead vocals Win Butler seems to sound almost like the vocals from LED Zeppelin in places on tracks two and three (“Keep the Car Running” and the title track, “Neon Bible”) and like Bruce Springs-teen's warbly voice on “(Antichrist Television Blues),” all very good, though it did throw my mind into chaos last night.

There's also a new recording of “No Cars Go” from the old “Us Kids Know” Arcade Fire EP. It's crisper, faster (albeit by some some 15 seconds), cleaner, and filled with sound. There are some really fun flourishes to the music with harmonies and turns, and the addition of a (French) horn. It's an interesting comparison to the older recording. I don't know if I like this remix yet, though. I still have time to decide, though.

And even though it doesn't pop like Architecture in Helsinki (come on, those guys are Australians and are therefore automatically awesome), Neon Bible is not an “older and wiser” album — these kids still have a magical fire, the Arcade Fire.

Okay, that was cheesy and bad and I appoligize, even if it is true. But it's still true that Neon Bible lives up to its expectations in unexpected ways. It's no Funeral, but it's something new and different, infused with the same endearing quality that made us all fall in love with the Arcade Fire the first time around.

— Steve “No-I-Will-Not-Give-a-Numberd-Rating” Johnson goes to college in Tacoma, and is pursuing a major in English Lit. He plays Classical trumpet and nods politely when the Music Majors start talking about “divergant sevenths in triads” even though he has no clue what they mean. He listens to a lot of different types of music (both many different genres as well as a great quantity) and claims to have been to a Decemberists concert once.

Alpha-Shade

I should probably be scolded for not reading this comic before now, only reading through the archive for the first time yesterday. But while it is still fresh in my mind, I write:

Alpha-Shade is a flash-based comic, as in, the website and all its pages are kept in a flash-based archive, and the comic its self is made in Flash—though, oddly enough, the site won't run properly in Firefox on either of my Macs (Opera and Safari are fine). That's the first thing one notices when first coming to the page, and makes the drawings very smooth and crisp, though I notice the method used to achieve a focus blur is actually a slight ghosting of the image outlines, which happens to be exactly the way astigmatism works in my eye. Of course, there is also a low-bandwidth version of the comic, in the form of jpegs, but this detracts from one of the coolest things about the comic: the ability to zoom and look at small details of the pages.

And this is a very attractive thing because the art and the detail that is put into each panel almost begs the reader to examine the pages more closely. In many cases, there are details hidden in scattered pages and corners of rooms—details only testifying to the thoroughness of the artist.

This level of thoroughness is carried throughout the pages of Alpha-Shade, shown in the detail of the airships, weapons, and other vehicles, including the flyers—great blue birds-of-prey carrying agile riders; these happen to be my favourite. Every character is different and instantly recognisable, though the style of drawing makes the characters look rather young. The scenes that are created are fantastic, packed with steam-powered airships and all kinds of detailed weaponry creating a wonderful feeling of knowing and being part of the world. A steampunk world—initially what attracted me to the story.

But yet, this also seems to be one of Alpha-Shade's drawbacks—it seems to be continually focused on all these explosions, as if it is only retains excitement through these sorts of things. It feels as if the story is sometimes nothing but one unexplained explosion after another, and this detracts from the slower reasoning why and how.

And there is certainly a story there—one filled with war and secret alliances between empires, betrayal, robbery, explosions, and, if I had to guess, Zeppelins. And it's a hell of a story. There is only one problem: suspense. The entire first chapter definitely sets up the world, but it is seemingly left behind in the next two chapters, though many of the characters have somehow come from this steampunk world to the Earth as we know it. It builds suspense, yes, but this can be a problem, too—the comic is only up-dated once a week, and with as in-depth a story as this, the comic could go on for a long time, and there are a number of things that could be explained further, though this could potentially happen later in the story.

The biggest problem is that nothing feels resolved—it feels as if there have been big broad chapters setting things up, but each of these seems to leave a reader with more questions than answers—“What happened to that character?” “What is the reason for this event or character?” I do think that most of these will be answered in time, but it leads me to wonder whether a serialised format is the best for this story. Transmetropolitain by Warren Ellis was a somewhat-serialised comic, consisting of three chapters that were first released as issues, and then as individual volumes—somewhere in the neighbourhood of ten such volumes by the end of the series. Each set of three had its own mini-arcs that would be contained within each chapter, resolving at the end, but with arcs that would span all three chapters, finally being resolved at the end of the volume—a very clean format. I do wonder if Alpha-Shade could be better-served by a form like that, or whether it would work well in a large book made up of many chapters.


Of course, this is not to say that Alpha-Shade is bad, because it's not—it's excellent, and a great amount of work goes into each page. The art is crisp and clean and highly-detailed. The worlds that the story is set in are amazingly detailed, and filled with dry humour (such as a pizza parlour called “William Theodore Franklin Pizza” or “WTF” for short). the comic is filled with colour and great and original drawing, but I can't help but feel that the pacing is slightly off.

Alpha-Shade is a fun comic set partially in a steampunk universe with an interesting story—and it doesn't update nearly as often as I would like.

This Wednesday, I got a pair of Bluetooth-enabled Logitech headphones for the iPod.

Simply put, the headphones are simple and easy to use, though the sound quality is not nearly as good as wired headphones, though the bass frequency response is surprisingly excellent; the headphones are not cheap or tinny. However, there are to reasons what make these headphones wonderful: first, they are wireless ergo free of restrictive cords what catch on things whilst walking. Point the Second: they are a talking point, upon which I field such annoying queries as "Those headphones! They have no wires! Are they wireless?" though once past these, the conversation progresses.

A little heavier than normal headphones, these are not too heavy or bulky, and are also quite well-designed.

Full review after the jump.
( Logitech Bluetooth Headphones for iPod )


P.S.: The new Decemberists album, The Crane Wife, is amazing.

I'm impressed. Microsoft has gotten its act together.

I've just been playing around with Microsoft's IE 7, beta 2. It's actually quite nice. It's a big change from IE 6 (deemed the 8^th worst tech product).

I heard that Microsoft had released a beta version of IE, but I didn't think much of it—I have a PowerMac (as opposed to one of the newer Intel ones—a matter I hope to soon remedy) and I run OSX, so Safari is my browser of choice. Mac OS was left in the metaphorical dust of IE technologies with the buggiest browser ever: IE 5. The thing is a joke, and breaks pages left and right. I really pity any Mac user still out there with that browser. Perhaps it was good in its time, but that time is past—there are plenty more worthy browsers for Mac.

While I didn't leap at the chance to check out IE 7 beta (I would have to use Windows), while I have been working on computers, the thought crossed my mind: I should at least take a look at IE 7.


The app (should I say “program”?) is actually very nice-looking, inheriting a lot of its design from the still-pending Vista. The interface is a lot more stream-lined, even eliminating the menu-bar. The interface is overall quite clean (though, to Mac users, this sort of design will be nothing new). The address bar even goes as far as to include a Google search box (not an MSN one, proving the Googleplex's ubiquity!).

A good two years after tabbed-browsing went mainstream, IE finally acknowledges its existence. Of course, Microsoft did it right, too. IE's execution of the tabbed interface is stellar, akin to that of WebKit-based Shiira's “Tab Exposé”; clicking the “Quick Tabs” tab (or pressing Ctrl+Q—a scary prospect for a Mac user) yields a window filled with thumbnails of the current tabs, to keep track of the open tabs.

However, with multiple tabs open, the tab bar can get a little cluttered, especially on a smaller screen (around 1024x768); IE ends up hiding the tabs, much in the same way as Safari and Firefox (I've found that Opera's wrap-around feature for the tabbed-browsing is a lot nicer).

IE also features support for RSS feeds, and a rudimentary RSS reader for subscribing to feeds that puts Firefox's “Live Bookmarking” feature to shame. The RSS aggregator doesn't have the OS-level integration Safari has, though the up-coming Vista is supposed to have RSS integration built-into the OS, to a greater extent than OSX.

Overall, the browser seemed snappy and responsive to the rudimentary browsing I did, though I was using a laptop with rather low RAM content (a mere 512 Mb, with the shared Video memory bringing it down to a paltry 448) and the execution on the part of Microsoft is stellar. I might just have found a new browser for the PC.

And if this is any indication of how Redmond can get its act together, I'm excited for Windows Vista has in store.

IE really deserves a second look.

Hmm … just watched Sleepy Hollow. It was creepy Tim Burton fun, with Danny Elfman's awesome music … on that line, I saw a man to-day who resembled Danny Elfman, too.


It's March, which means that sandal-wearing starts now. I actually started wearing them sometime in mid-February this year, because it's so temperate over here.


Playing euphonium is going swimmingly; the instrument sounds wonderful; it's a beautiful sound. I'm still a trumpet player, though.


I know that I’ve mentioned it before, but there’s a first-gen G3 iMac—a bubbly Bondi flavour—down in the Cave, sitting with no power source and no mouse. These are both easily remedied; I have extra mice, and can get another power cord quite easily. However, the problem is that I don’t really need another computer, let alone a large CRT like that Mac, and it would take up too much room. But it would be awesome, and it has a keyboard, already. I could put OSX 10.3.9 Panther on it! It could be a print server et al! It’s just so sad, just sitting there miserably, unloved.


Then there’s the case of the Saddest Typewriter: an old IBM Selectric II, sitting outside of Tech Services on a cart, with a large “Surplus” sign on it. It’s sad, and I really want the typewriter, though I have even less use for it than I have for the G3 iMac.


I have a thing for old computers and such; I can't bear to see things being un-used. Even if I already have a nice, impressive G5 tower …


And, there are some comics in the queue, but I want to do more than just put up scanned sketches.

( old Sketch-things )


I got a new album to-day, as well. I realized that I've been spending more time with video games than with Music; I finished Drill Dozer yesterday, and recommended it to my mom. She went out and got it for my brother straight-away, and he was playing it to-day, loving it a lot. I'd say that the game was definitely worth it; it's lots of fun.

But to fix the fact that I haven't done the music “thing” of late, I got an album off of iTunes that I haven't been able to find anywhere else: menomena's I AM the FUN BLAME MONSTER. It's an excellent album that reminds me of Ben Folds crossed with M83. It's got some really fun instrumentation with a contrabari-sax, awesome, crisp vocals, and keys.
ETA: It's also a ridiculous album, with songs about monkeys and coughing--ridiculous in the same way that the Flaming Lips are ridiculous.

The past few days, I've also been really into both a lot of the older Modest Mouse (yay for Lonesome Crowded West), and a melodic hard rock group called ISIS, which makes mellow music good for listening to while studying, along with Sigur Rós and Herbie Hancock's Headhunters (a classic fusion masterpiece).

Gratuitous question marks. In more need of interobangs, actually.

It made me happy to, upon entering the dorm this afternoon, hear Mica playing Billy Joel and Ben Folds. It doesn't hurt that Mica is a trumpet-player by nature, too.

To-morrow is the 28th, and apparently there are machinations of the Steve variety.

On a related note, PA makes me smile to-day (scroll to the end of the first newspost).


To be perfectly frank, I expected it tomorrow, or even Wednesday; I certainly did not expect it to-day, especially not with the campus mail service being as slow as it usually is. Drill Dozer came in the mail, to-day. I've been playing it for several hours, this evening. It's far too much addictive fun.

Drill Dozer is a classic side-scroller, like MegaMan, with similar music. You play as a little girl with crazy pink hair in a large drilling robot; she is the daughter of the leader of a gang of thieves, but when their red diamond is stolen, and her father is hurt badly, it's up to her to lead the gang and get the red diamond back from another rival gang. Worlds are bright and colourful; what's more, everything is accomplished by drilling—using the shoulder buttons of the GBA to turn the drill clockwise. In addition, the cart has a rumble feature built into it, and can actually rumble the big DS (though the GBA SP or Micro do rumble more), and though it sticks out of the bottom of the DS and the GBA SP, it isn't awkward. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this game is that it was made for the GBA; it's true that some of the best pieces of software come out for systems in the twilight of their lives (think of things like Shadows of the Colosus, Zelda: Twilight Princess, or Majora's Mask and their high production values). If you want high production values, just look at the manual that what comes with the game, in addition to the manual—a mini-comic of the back-story.

I'm really tempted to get this game for my brother, too; I know that he'd get a kick out of it.