Michael Anderson | Gear Diary

Music Diary Notes: Lady Gaga Sells 1.1 Million – Who Wins, Who Loses?

A week ago I could have told you two things: first that Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ would debut in the #1 spot, and second that the Amazon ‘giveaway’ would push an awful lot of copies. What is the source of my mystical powers? The fact that even I, as a non-pop music person, knew the release date and other pertinent details long before the launch. I cannot imagine that anyone with any regular exposure to commercial TV or radio or the internet who didn’t know about this. How over-the-top was the promotion? From an article at MTV News: no…

Music Diary

Pop Goes the Music Diary: Kenny G … Musical Hack & Necrophiliac

I have gotten some flack from folks who see bias in my choices between ‘Music Diary Songs of Choice’ and ‘Pop Goes the Music Diary’: in short, they see me giving jazz and rock high praise, while being brutally critical of pop music. Well, given that one category is made for the money while the other is made for the sake of the music (if someone is playing jazz for the money alone they are terribly deluded), that shouldn’t be surprising. But there are more than a few examples of dreadful jazz music made for the sake of pandering to…

Music Diary

Music Diary Songs of Note: Nefertiti

If you are a jazz fan of any sort, chances are when you hear the word Nefertiti in the context of a song … you think Miles Davis. More specifically you recall the version of the Wayne Shorter composition that was the title and opening track of the epic 1968 Miles recording. Yet many other jazz fans might say ‘hey wait, there is a great 1976 Andrew Hill recording by that name’ – and they would be correct. So would those who point to the classic ‘Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come’ by Cecil Taylor. I have been listening to…

Editorials, Game Diary

Next Call of Duty to Charge Monthly Fee for Multiplayer

C’mon … you KNEW it was coming. First there was the price increase to $60 for this generation of games. That is easy enough to justify and accept based on the cost to product the graphics assets. Next we started with DLC, which very quickly spawned the whole ‘Horse Armor’ DLC nonsense. DLC is paid ‘downloadable content’, and the ‘nonsense’ is that companies quickly realized that gamers would buy $2 – $5 DLC on impulse for games they like – and that it was possible to ‘hold back’ content or at least create it in parallel with the main game,…

Editorials

Web Site Giveaway Adventures in Customer Service

One thing is clear – gadget-heads love their stuff. We love getting it, playing with all the features, and then moving on to the next new shiny thing. I am certainly no exception, and as a result I have loads of tech sites I track on a regular basis – and loads of giveaways I enter all the time. The overwhelming majority of times I lose – but every now and then I win! Just over a month ago a giveaway appeared over at GottaBeMobile, one of the sites I track via RSS on a daily basis. They had reviewed…

Music Diary

Music Diary In Memorium: Gil Scott Heron (1949-2011)

Way back in the mid-70’s the music played on shows like Saturday Night Live represented the same sort of off-beat, out of the mainstream approaches as the show itself. In contrast to the Katy Perry/Lady Gaga/Bruno Mars list of generic corporate-rehash pop ‘Johnny Bravos’, you could hear Leon Redbone, Frank Zappa, Betty Carter, Captain Beefheart, Keith Jarrett, Sun Ra and his Arkestra, and on and on. Really creative music that crossed cultural and musical boundaries instead of the latest ‘pop trash’. And on one night in late 1975, with Richard Pryor hosting, a guy named Gil Scott Heron came on…

Game Diary, Reviews

Gear Games Review: Boxer App

One thing that the constant Apple march of technology from the 680×0 to PowerPC to Intel has done is decimated your ability to run old software. From 1996 until Apple killed off the ‘Classic Environment’ with the move to Intel Hardware, I would play Star Wars Dark Forces on my Mac every six months. The Mac version was superior in every way to the DOS release – double the resolution, enhanced audio, and so on. But since the ‘death of Classic’ I have had to use DOSBox (or SheepShaver on Mac) to play older games. These tend to require some…

News & Features

Today is Towel Day … Do You Know Where Yours Is?

This morning my younger son left for school carrying his towel … since he became a big fan of Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a year or so ago he ALWAYS knows where his towel is! He has been excited about celebrating ‘Towel Day’ all week. Unfortunately he wouldn’t let me take his picture for this post! Towel Day was created just after Douglas Adams death in 2001, in a post that said: Towel Day: A Tribute to Douglas Adams Monday 14 May 2001 06:00am PDT Douglas Adams will be missed by his fans worldwide. So that all…

Music Diary

Music Diary Songs of Note: In a Sentimental Mood

Have you ever just had a song come on and you and your spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other just start dancing? Last night the song Skywriting by a never popular British group ‘The Bible’ came on my wife’s iPod, and we had a nice little dance … to the amusement and embarrassment of our kids. I makes me think back to one of my favorite moments from The Cosby Show – at the end of an episode, Cliff drops a record on the turntable (look it up, kiddies), and on comes a gorgeous song and then he and Claire begin playful snuggling and…

Music Diary

Pop Goes the Music Diary: Original Cindy Ain’t Down With That

OK, so my family has been on a Dark Angel kick lately, plowing through the entire series on DVD (which I grabbed on Goozex). One of the best things is the endless stream of quips from ‘Original Cindy’ (OC). She always seems to have a comment to match the situation, such as when Normal gets involved with a transgender woman who discovers she is a lesbian … “Original Cindy is just too straight to hook up with a science-fiction girlfriend.” Anyway, this weekend we watched some of the Billboard ‘Awards’ show, which largely tossed out popularity prizes and reminded us…

Gear Bits, News & Features

Random Cool Video: Classic Sesame Street

I consider my family fortunate – I grew up watching Sesame Street when it was brand new, and my kids got to experience it as well during a time when both classic and new material was presented side-by-side, and there were plenty of videos, computer games, and music CD’s to enjoy! Last week my wife was shuffling on her iPod and ‘What do I do when I’m alone’ came on, a hold-over favorite from when the kids were little (I still have Rainbow Connection on my iPod!). Then this weekend a post at Buzzfeed looked at a bunch of classic…

News & Features

Random Cool Video: What Would You Do

‘What Would You Do’ is one of those ‘if we happen upon it’ shows my family will watch occasionally on Friday. The show sets up actors playing roles on hidden cameras in public places. Some of the ones we have seen are different teens (boy/girl, black/white) attempting to take a bike chained to a pole, hateful speech lobbed at an overweight girl, a spouse (again, male & female) trying to instigate a tryst in a bar on their anniversary while the other spouse is in the restroom. The goal is to see how normal bystanders will behave when confronted with…

Editorials

Android Owners: Screenshots or Movies … Pick One

I have been reviewing games since … well, since before the advent of smartphones anyway. And yet I have always managed to be able to come up with screenshots from my chosen device -Newton, Psion, Palm, Windows Mobile, iOS … but not Android. For some mind-numbing reason Android lacks a built-in screenshot utility. No problem for many – just ‘root’ the device and install one of the many screenshot utilities on the Android Market. Heck, that almost makes it seem like it is sanctioned officially!. But it isn’t – and that is one reason I have not rooted my Android…

Gear Bits, News & Features

Random Cool Video: Watch Family Guy ‘Its a Trap’ for FREE!

Over the last several years Family Guy has taken on the original Star Wars trilogy, with Blue Harvest and Something, Something Dark Side. Last December they released the final entry ‘It’s A Trap’ on DVD and Blu-Ray, and on May 22nd the show aired as the finale for the 9th season of Family Guy. The episode is once again a humorous retelling of Return of the Jedi using series characters in place of the original actors, but keeping the personalities of the Family Guy characters largely intact. General opinion seems to be that this is the weakest of the three…

Game Diary, Reviews

Mac Game Review: Let’s Golf 2

Gameloft has a certain reputation in the handheld gaming world … oh, let’s be blunt: they make blatant clones of successful games! Halo becomes N.O.V.A, Final Fantasy XIII becomes Eternal Legacy, StarCraft 2 becomes Starfront: Collision, and on and on … so the obvious question is – what game does Let’s Golf 2 clone? And more importantly – is it any good? The Hype: Looking for a faster, more colorful and fun golf experience? Then this newest edition of the popular Let’s Golf series is just the thing you need for the most exciting golf adventure you’ll ever find! –…

Gear Bits, News & Features

Random Cool Stuff: Build a Urinal from Old SNES Cartridges!

Being a ‘Green’ family means looking to repurpose things rather than dispose of them … but I have to admit that I never thought about THIS! A urinal made from old Super Nintendo cartridges! According to Pricecharting.com: Building a video game urinal takes about eight hours of labor and costs roughly $200-250 (not counting the video games). If you too want a custom, hand-made video game urinal follow these steps below: The site goes on to detail the materials needed and provides the step-by-step instructions including images such as this: Interesting idea for the video game loving man looking to…

Gear Bits, News & Features

Random Liger Alert: Napoleon Dynamite … the Cartoon!

We missed out on Napoleon Dynamite when it first came out, but when our kids were a bit older we watched it together, and it remains one of their favorites. All of us pull quotes from the film on occasion. Apparently after enough years that it has properly faded into obscurity, cult classic Napoleon Dynamite is returning in cartoon form. Here is a bit of info from the press release (you can read the entire release below). NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (Heder) is a 16-year-old boy convinced – for no apparent reason – that he is destined for greatness and blessed with…

Music Diary

Music Diary Songs of Note: What’s Going On?

It was an entirely different era … sure there was war and our kids were dying in far off lands for questionable causes, but everything about the way it was handled and perceived was different. And into the mess of the post-Woodstock Zeitgeist Marvin Gaye launched an album that simultaneously soothed and questioned. This week marks forty years since “What’s Going On?” hit record stores and the airwaves. To mark the anniversary, Motown is putting together a 40th Anniversary edition 2-CD/LP ‘super set'(Amazon link). According to his Motown Website: On May 21, 1971, Motown Records released an album unique to…

Gear Bits, Music Diary

Pop Goes the Music Diary: Beware the Rapture!

Image courtesy of xkcd There is a lot being made of the claims of some Christian groups that the so-called ‘Rapture’ will occur on May 21st of this year. At 6pm. By time zone. Apparently this orderly ascent of ‘the chosen’ is well detailed in coded messages in the Bible (despite direct statements in the same book in direct conflict with such knowledge), as revealed in an NPR interview: On May 21, “starting in the Pacific Rim at around the 6 p.m. local time hour, in each time zone, there will be a great earthquake, such as has never been…

Game Diary, Reviews

Gear Games Review: Fierce Laser Gaming Mouse

Gamers are a funny group when it comes to controllers, and none are more particular than PC gamers with their mice. I remember years ago buying a BOX of Microsoft Intellimouse 3.0 mice … that is 5 mice! That way I had one for any situation or possible computer I would access. The reason? The two side buttons were perfect for games like Jedi Knight II where I could assign them to Force Push and Pull. The question now: is the Fierce Laser Gaming Mouse something to inspire that sort of idiotic devotion? Read on and see! The Hype: We’ve…

Gear Bits

Netflix? More Like NetHOG!

Have you ever wondered where all of that internet bandwidth is going? Apparently the answer is Netflix, according to a recent study by sandvine reported at TechCrunch. Here are some details: Netflix video streaming is now the single largest source of peak downstream Internet traffic in the U.S., according to a new report by Sandvine. The streaming video service now accounts for 29.7 percent of peak downstream traffic, up from 21 percent last fall. That puts Netflix above HTTP websites (18 percent), BitTorrent (11 percent), and YouTube (10 percent) as a source of downstream traffic during peak times in North…

Articles by Michael Anderson