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MxPx – Plans within Plans
After spending the last year and change filling in the holes in the MxPx discography from when I last was an active fan with 2000’s The Ever Passing Moment, I have arrived at the final full album I was missing, Plans within Plans. I still have a couple EPs to buy, but this will probably…
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2021 in Music (Last.FM and Spotify Listening Trends)
This year I was able to attend the Paul and Storm / JoCo concert that COVID stole from me last year. While there I bought the entire Paul and Storm discography, but I think because I listened to it so much on Spotify in the past, I didn’t listen to it as much as I…
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Review: Final Fantasy VI
Final Fantasy VI by Sebastian Deken My rating: 3 of 5 stars I was a kickstarter backer on the campaign for this book I’ve been waiting for this book for a while. This game, along with Chrono Trigger, was very formative in my early gaming years. The book decides to focus on one of the…
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Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm at Ram’s Head in Annapolis
On 30 June 2021, I attended my first concert since COVID-19 started. I was masked since the Delta variant is a thing and singing indoors is definitely an activity that increases transmission. Despite that, it was awesome to get to do it again and there was a real sense of joy in the room from…
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How Desktop Environment Tweaking Helps Me Be More Productive
A few months ago, someone asked about whether the rices*/modifications/tweaks people displayed on reddit.com/r/unixporn (where people show off their desktops, not human pornography) were actually useful. Someone commented they’d like to see a post on how someone uses their mods. So I decided to write this up. *I know the term ricing could be considered…
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Five Iron Frenzy – Until This Shakes Apart
Over its long tenure as a band, Five Iron Frenzy has had some really silly songs. Songs like “Arnold, Willis, and Mr. Drummond”, “Oh, Canada”, “Blue Comb ‘78”, “The Untimely Death of Brad”, “Where is Micah?”, and many others. But they’ve also always been a really political band. On their first album, Upbeats and Beatdowns,…
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2020 in Music (Last.FM and Spotify listening trends)
Thanks to COVID I missed out on the concert where I was going to see Paul and Storm and Jonathan Coulton. Compared to last year, I also barely bought any music. This year I switched from using Ampache to listen to my music at work, to using Funkwhale. The more responsive interface has led to…
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Review: Dawnshard
Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 5 of 5 stars Disclaimer: I was a kickstarter on the campaign that provided an early copy of this novella a reward This was a great book. It is also fascinating in the sense that, as I was reading it I kept thinking that you could about 80% read…
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Review: Thrilling Adventure Yarns
Thrilling Adventure Yarns by Robert Greenberger My rating: 4 of 5 stars I participated in the Kickstarter for this anthology because of meeting Crazy 8 author Mary Fan at Farpoint. I’m quite glad I did because nearly all of these knocked it out of the park! And those that didn’t were still good stories that…
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All Journey and No Destination: Friday and Fast Times at Ridgemont High
By complete coincidence I ended up watching Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Friday (each for the first time) back to back this week. I watched Fast Times because it was being covered by Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson were covering it on Unspooled, their film podcast. As for Friday, well, that’s a slightly more…
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Review: Surrija by Surrija (formerly Jane Lui)
Like, perhaps, many of my readers, I knew Jane Lui’s music mostly from her cover songs. But I really liked her voice and so I decided to back the Kickstarter for her new album, Surrija. By the time this review is published, I’ll have had the album for about 2 months. For this review I’ll…
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2019 Concert #5: The PDX Broadsides with The Misbehavin’ Maidens
I would have backed The PDX Broadsides’ Kickstarter for Relatable Content no matter what because I loved Trust Issues and I enjoy nearly all of their older songs. But the thing that made me spread the word everyone and try to get more backers was that they had a goal to do an East Coast…
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Review: I Fight Dragons – “Canon Eyes”
I have been following I Fight Dragons for almost a decade now, including their journey from self-produced to being a label band and rejecting that to going back to being self-produced. I was a backer on their last album, the ambitious concept record The Near Future. That was a seemingly long five years ago. I’ve…
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Review: The Misbehavin’ Maidens – “Swearing is Caring”
When I backed The PDX Broadsides’ Kickstarter, they pointed out their friends, The Misbehavin’ Maidens, also had a Kickstarter campaign going on. As I mentioned in the review for Relatable Content, The PDX Broadsides started off as a pirate shanty band. The Misbehavin’ Maidens still are a pirate shanty band, or at least a few…
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Review: The PDX Broadsides – “Relatable Content”
This year I have sponsored a lot of Kickstarter creative work, including lots of music. One that I was very excited to support was The PDX Broadsides’ latest album, Relatable Content. They started off as a pirate shanty band and have evolved into a nerd filk band whose songs range from silly to profound. I…