Something you never, ever, want to happen (body FAIL)
Tuesday evening I was sitting on the couch with my mildly sick (cold/cough) kids and out of no where, an insanely sharp pain jabbed me in my right side just under my ribs! Now I was kinda sick that morning and figured I kinda had what the kids had and as such, I brushed off the pain. Some time goes by and BLAM! The same pain but now it's not going away... fast-forward to late that night, I am throwing up and in even more pain. I took to 'hydros' and tried to sleep. Woke up Wednesday morning to a wonderful world of "YOUR BODY HATES YOU!" It wasn't long after that, that the only thing I could do was scream.
Arriving at the ER, we get checked in and get some CAT scans done to find that my Appendix is twisted, and tucked backwards and up towards my kidneys! ... oh yeah... and ruptured! So I had a long appendectomy and now am forging through medications, anti-biotics and pain at home... waiting for this all to resolve and get me back to work. This has been a long 'weekend!'
Dropbox drops the ball
It was posted yesterday, on the Dropbox blog, that a recent code update to the Dropbox programming left user's accounts accessible by any password given for a period of around 4hrs.
Yesterday we made a code update at 1:54pm Pacific time that introduced a bug affecting our authentication mechanism. We discovered this at 5:41pm and a fix was live at 5:46pm. A very small number of users (much less than 1 percent) logged in during that period, some of whom could have logged into an account without the correct password. As a precaution, we ended all logged in sessions.
It is suggested that you take the time to re-secure your account with a new password; preferably not close to what it was.
Celestial Completion completes me!
So I was working on some web projects this morning and had the chance to finally get my grubby little (read: big) hands on Becoming the Archetype's latest album; Celestial Completion.
I had very high hopes for this album and I must say I have had both my mind blown and my perfectionist nay saying come out! It's a very intriguing place to be...
Production:
The very first thing that struck me about the album was that it was very cleanly produced. To that I give credit. It's not an easy thing to really master a clean metal band... but that being said, it might have been too clean! I really missed having some great bass runs and triggers booming. Maybe this was on purpose, maybe this was just me needing to listen to the album on a different system.
Style Variation
Diehard BTA fans rejoice! They have not strayed away from their original style and sound ever more the brutally natural sounding. The band has definitely continued to show their maturity in their playing and riff writing. This album features a lot more variation in their guitar chops while continuing to keep that melodic and break-down feel in every song that I love.
Celestial Completion also includes its fair share of standard BTA group vocals, piano inclusion and plenty of edgy guitar micro-solos not to mention a healthy dose of great transition solos that have been fairly bland on past albums.
Oh, and just for kicks BTA throws you a curve ball on tracks 9 and 10. Prepare for the run-on sentence: Expect to go from a Southwestern Asia/Middle Eastern inspired throat singing to BTA style 'almost-half-time' then on to BTA + trumpet breakdowns... yeah trumpets! That break down is then followed by a sweet clean guitar chord solo then into some contemporary swing/rockabilly! Yeah what the frick right!? It works, it's a nice mix-up and it's definitely shows that these guys are not your typical head to the stone, boxed-in, metal heads!
Vocals
I was happy to see that Jason Wisdom really has stuck to his guns (vocal style). Many metal vocalists tend to go the way of mixing singing into their style to give them selves "variety" and a break during sets... Jason really has a very natural growl and one that I never get tired of hearing. Also on this album was a lot more of Alex's (guitar) screaming to help compliment the earthy Jason. It was very well matched, not over played and great to see the band expanding more.
Album Length
As far as length, the album is a total of 11 tracks and is a total of 46:37 long. Now you might think, "Wow, that averages out to just over 4mins/song..." Well you'd be wrong as half the album is over 5mins/track! As I worked online, it was perfect background metal. It wasn't flashy enough to distract me from my work but yet offered enough variation in the songs to keep me stimulated.
Overall
This album really was a perfect growth step for Becoming the Archetype. They have really shown that they fully plan to stay who they are and only improve upon techniques. I really think that is commendable by any metal band as most have to change album to album to 'keep-it-fresh.' I would recommend Celestial Completion to anybody that has been a fan of BTA or is a fan of great, uncomplicated (as in a good way), metal with natural vocals that don't give me emo thoughts when listening. BTA is coming to my home town in a few weeks, I can't wait as I've missed the last five of my top-ten favorite metal bands. This will be a sure treat!
Hijack an unsecured Facebook account with your cell phone!
Some of you might remember the Firesheep plugin for the Firefox web browser that took the internet by storm a while back. This week ushers in a new method of doing the same exact thing, but this time, using your Android powered cell phone!
FaceNiff installs on any rooted Android phone and lets you sniff your local WiFi connection for floating Facebook packets. Just like Firesheep, FaceNiff will then hijack any session not using an encrypted HTTPS session during their latest picture tagging of last nights drunken haze. Watch the video for the fun:
Let’s make all schools prisons!
Dear Governor Snyder,
In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.
One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan. We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union. Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan wants to be on top of.
Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.
This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!
Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner. It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future...by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.
Respectfully submitted,
Nathan Bootz, Superintendent, Ithaca Public Schools
Windows 8 Preview at D9
Here is Microsoft's VP Julie Larson-Green demonstrating the new Windows 8 GUI at the D9 conference on Wednesday!