xrayspx's blog

xrayspx's picture

Rodrigo y Gabriela, Orpheum, Boston, 4-23-2012

Music: 

The Pogues – Sea Shanty

I'm no kind of authority on Rodrigo y Gabriela, beyond the fact that they're awesome and you should see them, I've never kicked them out of an iTunes DJ playlist, ever. I gather they started trying to play metal, didn't make money at it in Mexico, moved to Ireland and got huge with speed-acoustic music. I also know that whoever Gabriela's orthopedic surgeon is, he must drive a very, very nice car. The hammering she does on her guitar is amazing, amazingly fast and amazingly loud. I can't imagine retiring with perfect joints after 30 years of that, but it sounds awesome now, so it's not like I'm telling her to stop.

xrayspx's picture

Bad Brains with H2O at the Paradise, Boston 4-16-2012

Music: 

Big Black – Bad Penny

(excuses for the rambling. It's not even stream of consciousness, it's subconscious, I'm nowhere near awake enough to do a good job, we'll get through it)

H2o opened, and I have to admit that they were a litte "after my time" for hardcore bands (1996), but I was peripherally aware of them at the time. You know, since I'm 37 and therefore I'm from back in Historical Times, when burgers cost 15 cents and I could get into a movie for a quarter. They were great, pretty much sounded like "Epitaph Band", which it turned out they were. I did recognize a couple songs and they did some good Ian MacKaye birthday tributes in covers and dropping Minor Threat phrases here and there. They had lots of local support and we were all really into it.

It did depress me when Toby Morse did a song from the pit, and said "I'm 42, so you know, don't hurt me", and I was like "shit, you're the 'noob' from 1996, and now you're 42, I wanna hang myself". For the record, Ian MacKaye is now 50. The photos of them largely sucked, but I've got a couple for posterity.

Fixed Tags:
xrayspx's picture

An Uninspiring Summer of Music

Music: 

Sleater-Kinney - Slow Song

Lou BarlowLou Barlow laments this summer concert season (Middle East, Cambridge)

Have a look at a generous sampling of shows coming up this summer. We are currently only booked for 2 shows, only one of which isn't a reunion. We have Bad Brains coming up on Monday, and Rodrigo Y Gabriela some time in the next couple of weeks.

Here's what it looks like:

Fixed Tags:
xrayspx's picture

The Daily Mail accomplishes the impossible

Music: 

Del Tha Funky Homosapien - The Undisputed Champs

They've managed to compare Burger King to Heston Blumenthal in one breath. Favorably.

I can't say I'm likely to order either a bacon sundae or a Burger King pulled pork sandwich. I mean, thank you guys for making your fries suck less, but knock this off.

Via The Daily Mail

Fixed Tags:
xrayspx's picture

Fix for DSL latency issue

Music: 

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Isreal

Office
Since upgrading to 7.6Mb/sec DSL, I've had an occasional issue where the Tubes get all slow-like. The modem will say it's connected at full speed, and that things are, highly technically, "GO!". However my latency is horrible. Even to my first upstream router I end up getting like 50+ms ping replies. Pinging my site or 4.2.2.2 or other "Things that are fast on the Internet" ends up well over 100ms.

Fixed Tags:
xrayspx's picture

How To Use An Elevator

Music: 

Chris Cornell - You Know My Name (watching Casino Royale)

Many people seem to require a refresher course on how elevators work. For those of you who would like to brush up, it works like this:

Fixed Tags:
xrayspx's picture

Presidential Candidate Questions

There are several pointed questions I'd like to see people ask our presidential candidates. I'm going to start a list below, if anyone goes to an event, and can get one of these off before being tossed out, I'll buy you a coke. If it gets a reasonable answer, I'll buy you two cokes. If anyone has anything to add, tell me and I'll add it.

I'm going to do them by issue type and candidate, I guess. Most of them are probably pretty interchangeable. I started thinking of these in the context of "questions I would want to ask Rick Santorum", so I'm starting with him.

Fixed Tags:
xrayspx's picture

Candye Kane - Concord Center for the Performing Arts 9-24-2011

Briefly, since I'm on a highway...Here are some photos from the Candye Kane show at the Capitol Center for the Performing Arts in Concord. This was a benefit for the Concord Feminist Health Center. Go donate to them, it's important, I'll wait. She was great, huge voice, good songs. She spoke a lot about the importance of the work of places like CFHC, and about her own fight against pancreatic cancer. She seemed to be doing great and to really enjoy doing shows.

Fixed Tags:
xrayspx's picture

Once again with security Spam

Why can't we pay attention to FB hacking warnings?

People do hack FB profiles, it happens every day. They often do it by inducing the target user into clicking a link that can steal their login information in any number of ways. This happens. It's a Big, Bad Internet, and in all likelihood at some point you will:

xrayspx's picture

Hey Hey RSA

Today I got a customer satisfaction survey from EMC. It was specifically about RSA and how we like their products and the company in general. Cynically, I have to believe that it's not entirely a coincidence that they did this survey during BlackHat & DefCon because, well jeez maybe because half of the people receiving this aren't even in their home fucking state? There was a comment field to one of these asking "why do you feel this way".

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - xrayspx's blog