I love this rendition; something very pure and calming about it.

_{(or download an mp3.)}

This is the best ever. Just kick off your shoes, curl up next to the fire with a cup of apple cider, and enjoy.

(As heard on the Mikey Show on Rock 105.3)

Overall I like it, but there’s still some slightly rough edges that will hopefully be addressed via minor updates.

Until I’m able to write further on the subject, I’ll leave you with the swank “Now Playing” screen:

7:52 pm Update: If you’re having album art troubles (where some of the album art doesn’t match properly), check out this workaround from Microsoft. I had a few that were off, but are now fixed.

I was using my favorite audio player/manager, MediaMonkey, this afternoon and ran into a really annoying bug. All of the songs in a particular album would play except for one. MediaMonkey would just skip the file, no error or anything.

At first I thought the file was “corrupt”, but it couldn’t be. It had only been ripped a few weeks ago, and plays fine in other players, such as Winamp, VLC and Foobar2000. I started to think logically about the problem, and noticed that particular track had parenthesis in it’s filename. I removed the parathesis, and replaced them with another character. Nope, still skipping.

So I thought more, and concluded that the filename was the longest filename on the album. I removed a few characters and tried again. Voila, now it works!

I do some research and find that MediaMonkey (at least the new beta for Vista) uses the Quicktime API to playback AAC files. I decided to try an experiment, and attempted to load the troublesome file (with it’s long filename) into Quicktime via Quicktime’s own “open file” menu. It’s leads me to a wonderfully unhelpful error message of “Error -37: a bad filename or volume name was encountered”. Oh, really?

Doing even further research, it seems that Quicktime can’t handle a file with a name longer than 60 characters. What the crap?

Searching around the web, I find a handful of people who have run into this same problem. Why hasn’t this been fixed yet? Is this why iTunes automatically stores most songs in a “cut off filename” state when “Keep my iTunes Folder Organized” is checked?

Ugh. Will someone at Apple get their head outta their butt, fire the entire Quicktime/iTunes for Windows development staff, and start over? I’m tired of it crashing, having exploits, making my computer slow to a crawl, and not playing back “HD” content on even screaming-fast PCs. All major reasons I switched to MediaMonkey. But alas, since MediaMonkey relies on Quicktime for it’s AAC playback, I’m going to have to truncate all my AAC filenames until a fix comes out.

Amazon unveiled their new “amazonmp3” service a short while ago, and it instantly replaced iTunes as my provider for purchasing legal music. Bye bye, iTunes, with your DRM/protection. Yes, I know Apple sells “unprotected” files via their store, but you’re paying more for that. At AmazonMP3, you’re not. Most tracks are .99 or .89, which is fine by me.

If you don’t understand what I’m saying.. If you purchase music through iTunes, just plain ‘ol .99 cent tracks, you’re paying for a track that is “protected” and locked to only work with iTunes and iPods. You can’t using the music in Windows Media Player, or any non-iPod digital audio players (well, you can, if you burn a CD, then re-import it, but that results in a loss of quality, and who has the time?!) — Apple is basically limiting what you can do with music you _own_.

Anyways, Amazon has a little downloader program too to help automatically download tracks you purchased and stick them into Windows Media Player or iTunes for you automatically.

If you like paying for music, head over to Amazon’s site and start browsing. They’ve got over two million songs. And the sound quality is great. Amazon says they’re 256kbps, but some of the tracks I’ve downloaded are actually VBR MP3s, encoded with Lame 3.97, using the profile “MP3 VBR V0”. If you ask the guys over at Hydrogen Audio, they’ll tell you those settings are awesome.

Apple announced all new iPods today, and whoopty-do, they manage to screw it up pretty bad.

1. Ringtones cost extra — Yeah, I really want to spend .99 cents more to take a PIECE of a song I already paid .99 for and make it into a ringtone. I also DO NOT WANT the ability to use tracks I ripped myself and convert them to ringtones. Bind my hands, please.
2. iPhone is now $200 cheaper — All you suckers who paid top dollar for the privilage of having an iPhone right away.. I am pointing and laughing at you. I still don’t want an iPhone, even with the cheaper price point.
3. The new Nano looks terrible — I know some people will disagree with me and say it’s beautiful, but I’m sorry, you’re wrong. It’s like a hobbit made love to one of the new “classic” iPods. Rumors of terrible performance (coverflow is jerky, etc.) and the small video screen don’t help my desire to get one at all.
4. The new iPod “touch”, oh wait, don’t you mean IPHONE? — Jeez, you might as well buy an iPhone. Or wait for iPhone v2, where they finally put WiFi into the iPhone. Shouldn’t they also have changed the form factor just a tad? I mean, it’s skinnier, sure, but what about making the screen bigger? Or changing up the face.. just anything to make it stand out against an iPhone. And don’t just disable things, either, *cough*e-mail*cough* on the iPod Touch to make it not compete with the iPhone.
5. Starbucks integration; who cares? — So, your iPod Touch will light up like Christmas every time you walk past a Starbucks? And you’ll get to see what artist/song is currently playing? And be able to buy it?!? It sounds like you want to force advertising in my face. And for all that, I don’t even get free WiFi internet access? Boohoo, Starbucks. Hopefully you can turn this “feature” off. I’m sure Starbucks and Apple will make gakillions of dollars, though. Whatever.
6. No WiFi syncing — Isn’t this obvious? You’ve got an iPod now with WiFi capabilities.. why can’t someone sync it when they get home automatically through the power of WiFi?

Enjoy! I didn’t like it at first, but it’s growing on me. I guess I was just expecting something a little more “large budget”. But some shots stand out, such as the hands grabbing her underwater, and the very large dress at the end. Yay Eisley!

Check out my photos:

http://www.flickr.com/gp/33771723@N00/1732wc

Heather was originally supposed to go, but got very sick today, please keep her in your prayers. Instead, Michael went with me and we had a great time.

It was so awesome being able to go whereever we wanted, hang out backstage, etc.. but I’m kinda bummed that we watched Eisley from the side of the stage. I wanted to hang out/talk with them a bit, but didn’t really get a chance to.

Gomez was alright, but not really my cup of tea. The Fray was amazing, I definitely need to pick up their CD. Lots of energy and emotion going into the music.

I’m trying to upload a video of The Fray performing Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie”, but having some trouble with YouTube. I’ll try to post it later. Why can’t it just take the AVI off of my camera? Hrm. Anyhow. Wait, it worked! Check it out here.

With all that said, a few rants about concerts in general:

• People, your cell phone is not going to take a nice photo of the band from hundreds of feet away. Your cell phone camera’s zoom is DIGITAL, not a real zoom. What could you possibly want a blurry overexposed photo for? To send to your friends to show you’re there?
• STOP SMOKING MARIJUANA. I don’t care what you do in your personal time, but smoking pot out at a concert is just lame. And blowing it directly behind someone (namely me) makes me enjoy the show a bit less.
• Hey, guy? Yeah, you, the one who sells water in bottles for the venue up and down the aisles? No one wants water bad enough to have you ruin the concert with your flashing red-LED headband and lit–up water bottle in the pitch-dark of night. It’s a bit distracting.
• People usually come to see the band perform. They usually don’t want you and your (drunk/high/dumb) friends shouting the lyrics at the top of their lungs. Just a thought. Oh yeah, your random phrases and shout-outs during the silence between songs is really “cool” too. SAN DIMAS HIGHSCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!
• If you don’t have tickets to be in that section, then why are you trying to climb over/push through people to get to that section? This applies mainly to the “pit” but can also work for the people in the standard assigned seats. Why are there 10 of you crammed into a space that has 4 seats?

Oh yeah, by the way, I saw a large “Zune” sea-train with lots of flat screens and Zune units/headphones for people to check out, and there were also little Zune teams wandering around the crowd (in-between acts) to demo the Zune. I thought that was kinda cool. Anything to get it out there, you know? I still prefer it 2 to 1 over my iPod any day.

Watch Kanye West ruin the song about halfway through. Ugh. Should’ve left the guest lineup as just John Mayer.

I can’t stand Kanye. Look man, you’re not Jesus. And you’re not Akira or Daft Punk. And GEORGE BUSH DOESN’T CARE ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE!

It’s awesome. I can’t wait to hear what the rest of the album, named “Combinations”, is like. You can tell they’ve spent a lot of time and crafted their sound, just based on this one single. And I can tell too, that the production value is a lot higher. On their first album, they had a number of producers doing different tracks, and it kind of showed. Some of the tracks were even engineered poorly (in my opinion.) For this album, they got Richard Gibbs, who was in the amazing band Oingo Boingo, and like his former bandmate Danny Elfman, currently writes scores/music for television shows (Battlestar Galactica!) and movies. Richard’s experience shows in this single.

It’s called “Invasion”, and from what I’ve heard, is based on the movie/book “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, which seems to be a cool concept to write about, something you can really read into (or hey, aliens taking over other peoples bodies if you want to stay literal.)

Download the MP3 for “Invasions” here, and check out the lyrics:

the colorless words are burning our heels as the bright lights
of the city fade
taking the chase to curb our fear as the bloodless moon
cast's it's face

oh something's not right, i can feel it inside

you would take the breath from my throat
and you would take the cherished people that i hold

all in time you will be one of us painless, us blameless
go to sleep, this wont hurt a bit
shifting your shape to our shells

and they will try to make us forget ourselves
one by one one by one
call me crazy but they are after us
one by one one by one
you don't have to know the truth
if you believe it, i believe it too

oh something's not right, i can feel it inside

you would take the breath from my throat
and you would take the cherished people that i hold

P.S.: Visit Nicole’s excellent Eisley pix site if you want to see more pictures of the band, etc.