Music Review - Jon Foreman

I recently purchased Jon Foreman's Fall EP (there is expected to be an EP for each of the seasons: Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer, you get the idea). For those of you who may not have ever heard of Jon Foreman, he is the lead singer/song writer for Switchfoot. And if you haven't heard of Switchfoot or Jon Foreman, then shame on you :) The EP contains 6 songs, all accoustic, each with their own distinct sound.

I've only listened to it a few times through so far, but I would say that my two favorite tracks at this point are "The Cure for Pain" and "Equally Skilled." If you're a fan of Switchfoot, or of Coldplay, or a similar sounding band, it's definitely worth checking out!

I'll give it a 4.5 out of 5.

News Tewsday - 12/18/07

• GarageBand 4.1.1 Offers Custom Ringtones for iPhone (2007-12-14)
• Google develops Wikipedia rival (2007-12-14)
• Celebrating 60 years of transistors (2007-12-14)
• No download needed: OpenOffice beta available as Web app (2007-12-12)
• The most useful keyboard shortcuts you probably don't know about (2007-12-13)
• The waterless car wash (2007-12-13)
• Word-of-the-Year Ritual Pauses for Puzzlement - New York Times (2007-12-13)
• 'Danger: Avoid Death' Wins Annual Wacky Warning Contest (2007-12-12)
• Celebrating one of the best-selling PCs ever (2007-12-12)
• Get DivX Pro for free (2007-12-12)
• Humans Evolving 100 Times Faster Than Ever (2007-12-11)
• Honda unveils robots that 'talk' to each other, work in pairs - USA Today (2007-12-11)
• December MacUpdate Software Bundle Sale [11th App Added] (2007-12-11)
• Arkansas Boy, 5, Kills 445-Pound Black Bear (2007-12-11)
• Father Jonathan: An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins (2007-12-11)
• Top Sellers of the Year on iTunes Revealed (2007-12-11)
• Firefox 3.0 beta 2 due by year's end (2007-12-11)
• NBC hitches onto download service from Apple rival SanDisk (2007-12-11)
• Zune vs iPod: The Results Are In (2007-12-10)
• Microsoft Disses Windows to Sell More Windows (2007-12-10)
• Fan Falls to His Death During Football Game (2007-12-10)

Questions? Comments?

Tech Blog Up and Running

For anyone who's interested, I have also started a blog that focuses more on my technical thoughts. There's a link on the right side of this page... or you can get to it directly from here.

This Week's News...

By popular request, I will start listing the headlines I've shared in the News of Interest... section (hopefully weekly) so if anyone would like to comment on them, they can!

So, without further ado, here are this week's headlines:

1. Negotiations Break Down Between Striking Writers, Producers (2007-12-08)
2. CompUSA closes shop (2007-12-08)
3. Scientists Report Success in Treatment With 'Reprogrammed Stem Cells' (2007-12-07)
4. Blogger presses Gates for IE8 answers (2007-12-06)
5. IBM says chip 'breakthrough' will shrink supercomputers (2007-12-06)
6. Judge Sentences Kiefer Sutherland to 48 Days in Jail (2007-12-06)
7. Former Evangelical Minister Has a New Message: Jesus Hearts Darwin (2007-12-05)
8. Verizon Wireless warms up to Google's Android (2007-12-04)
9. Gmail integrates AIM, adds colored labels (2007-12-04)
10. Teacher Accused of Using High School as Personal Meth Lab (2007-12-04)
11. High-quality unboxing photos of Amazon's Kindle eBook reader (2007-12-04)
12. Microsoft to Try Nagging Housewife Approach to Pirated Software (2007-12-04)
13. Italian Court Orders Cartoon Characters to Witness Stand (2007-12-04)
14. Oh, THAT big square box! (2007-12-04)
15. Behind the Activision-Blizzard union (2007-12-03)
16. Opening act for Gibson's self-tuning guitar (2007-12-04)
17. Rare Mummified Dinosaur Unearthed: Contains Skin, and Maybe Organs, Muscle (2007-12-03)
18. Futurama Returns! (2007-11-30)
19. Blizzard and Activision Announce $18.8bn Merger (2007-12-02)
20. The First 100 Dot Coms Ever Registered (2007-12-03)
21. How to Block Facebook's Privacy Compromising Beacon Feature (2007-12-02)
22. Man Believed to Have Drowned Shows Up 5 Years Later (2007-12-03)

Thoughts? Comments?

Catch Phrase!

I'm sure all of you have played Catch Phrase before, but in case you haven't, it's kinda like charades, but you can talk. Basically, you look at the word/phrase given to you, and you can say anything you want to describe it, besides the word(s) itself. If you've played Taboo before, it's exactly that, but there are no restrictions on the words you can say. In any case, I look at as Taboo, but MUCH, MUCH easier.

This weekend, we had a Christmas Party for my Dad's side of the family (as we do every year), and it seems as though a new tradition has been added to the usual evening: Eat dinner -- which resembles a Thanksgiving meal, Eat more cookies than you can handle (there are seriously at least 10 different kinds of cookie), and now, play Catch Phrase until the Guy team (we played Guys vs. Girls of course) is up by at least one game.

However, this year, the guy team just dominated. Maybe it's the connection between all of the siblings (my dad and his brothers) for anything older generation, and then me, my brother and my cousin + friends for the younger generation stuff. Even though I was missing my brother this year -- which is the best teammate to have -- we managed to pull out the win.

I hope you all are enjoying your Christmas Season, and being blessed by time spent with friends and family as I have.

Reasons Why it Was Not a Ninja...

I came across a news headline this morning that states, "3 Armed Ninjas Rob Man in His Florida Driveway" found here. Here are the facts:

• The Victim claimed that three men dressed as "ninjas" held him down and took his wallet cell phone and cash.
• The "ninjas" were wearing gloves and had guns.
• The "ninjas" had everything covered except for their eyes and spoke in very low tones.
• Two of the three "ninjas" have been arrested.
  

Based on these facts, here's why these 3 men were definitely NOT ninjas:

1. The fact that there were 3 of them. If a real ninja was involved, it would only take one to get the job done.
2. A ninja doesn't need to hold down their victim. If a ninja wants someone's wallet, they'll just take it and the victim wouldn't feel anything.
3. The fact that the "ninjas" had guns. Since when do ninjas carry guns!? Ninja Stars, a sword/dagger and maybe some nun-chucks... maybe. And that's it!
4. The "ninjas" spoke in very low tones. Ninjas don't need to instruct their victims on what to do. They just do what they want without making a single sound.
5. The fact that they got caught. Everyone knows ninjas don't get caught. They have ways of making themselves disappear unnoticed. Ninjas would never have a car with a license plate to give them up, or leave any kind of paper trail. Come on.
6. And most importantly, the victim is still alive. If a real ninja has a target, that target will meet its maker 10 times out of 10.

And that's why, these men were not ninjas.

Orange Box

My brother got me the Orange Box set of Half-Life related games for my birthday this month. I must say, if you're any gamer of sorts, this is definitely worth picking up. I've been playing Team Fortress 2 (which feels almost like I'm in a Pixar movie with the graphics), and I already feel like it's worth buying. I have yet to play Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2 and Portal... the latter being amazing from what I've heard. So, if you haven't gotten on this bandwagon yet, now is the time. And then let me know so we can play! Of course, the last 2 weeks have been completely dominated by family events, with Thanksgiving and all... so it's time to get back on track. Unfortunately, I'm at work at the moment...