Music Highlights of the Day 8-15-2011

Spanish Sahara by The Foals:  A friend had told me to check out Spanish Sahara by The Foals, so I did.  At the beginning of the song I was a little hesitant because it was slower than I expected.  Not really sure why I expected it to be more uptempo but I did.  While listening to it, I kept saying to myself, "This has got to pick up at some point."  And sure enough it did and I love it.  Below is the music video for the song.

Black Leaf by The Cave Singers:  The Cave Singers are a band that I had heard of before but never listened to their music.  Recently I had read on Twitter that they were opening for the Fleet Foxes, a band I love, and that Robin Pecknold, the lead singer of Fleet Foxes, was blown away by their performances.  Because of that I had to give The Cave Singers a listen.  I listened to the album while working one day, nothing really stood out.  I decided to give the album another listen and when I heard Black Leaf something just hit me.  Not sure what it was but I loved it.  I really like the way the lead singer sounds and enjoy the tempo of the song.  Here is the video below.

Orange Sky by Alexi Murdoch:  The other night I was watching the movie Away We Go and one of the first things I noticed about it was the music.  I immediately did a search to see who it was that was featured in the movie.  It happened to be Alexi Murdoch, a singer who I've had on my iPod for years but haven't really listened to him.  First thing Monday morning I decided that I must listen to his album.  I really enjoyed what I heard but what stood out to me the most on the album was the last song, Orange Sky.  The part I enjoyed the most had to be the lyric "In your love, my salvation lies".  This lyric is repeated multiple times throughout the song and something about it just gave me chills.

Music Beta by Google Hands-on Day 2

After about three and a half hours, I finally have about 2.5 GB worth of music up on Google's cloud. Now that the music is up on the cloud, how do I access it? That's a simple a simple question to answer, just go to music.google.com in any web browser.

Music beta by Google has a fairly basic looking media player interface. You have the option to sort your music by songs, artists, albums or genre. I prefer to listen to albums in their entirety so I tend to sort by artists then select the albums I want to listen to. Selecting an album is fairly easy you just click on the album artwork which then shows you the track listing from there you just select a song and hit play. It seems fairly idiot proof.

I didn't really do too much today to challenge Music beta, all I did was listen to two albums in their entirety. As I use Music beta the rest of the week I will try creating playlists and instant mixes (whatever those are). So far I am fairly satisfied with Google's cloud music player but not 100% certain it will replace my iPod.

The Dark Knight Rises Teaser Poster

The first teaser poster for the next Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, has been released and here it is:

The Dark Knight Rises is set to be released a year from now and is currently being filmed.  For those of you that don't know me that well, I have been looking forward to this movie the second I walked out of The Dark Knight.  I absolutely love the Christopher Nolan Batman movies and can't wait to see what he has in store with The Dark Knight Rises.

Image originally posted here:
http://www.thedarkknightrises.com/

Music beta by Google Hands-on

About a month ago Google finally announced a cloud based music service. For the past few years I've been wondering if they were going to get into the music player business. Once I heard about music beta I knew I had to get my hands on it. I decided to sign up for it right away and within a music weeks was accepted to give it a try. Google isn't the only one with a cloud based music player, Amazon was the first to release one and Apple is soon going to launch there's. Since there are options I decided that I would spend a week with Googles and Amazons to determine which one is better.

For those of you that don't know what music beta by Google works here is a quick summary. With music beta, you download a Music Manager on your computer. With the manager you set the location where the music is on your computer that you want to put on the cloud. The cloud is a server that Google has where users can place their music so they can access it anywhere there is an Internet connection.

Is the Music Manager is needed to load music to the cloud that is where I will start. The Music Manager has a fairly simple interface. On the first tab you have the option of where the music is that you want to put on the cloud. The options are iTunes, Windows Media Player, My Music folder, or other folders. Since I have over 70 GB of music on my netbook I selected other folders so I could have more control over want goes on the cloud since I don't need all my music up there. The second tab allows you to select how often music gets sent to the cloud. The options here are Automactically, Once per Hour, Day, or Music, and then Manually. I've selected manually so music only gets added when I want it. There is also another option for how much bandwidth you want to allocate for uploading the music. In the Music Manager there is also a button at launches the Music Player which opens in a web browser.

Now that I have my Music Manager set up, it's time to add music to the cloud. I've selected just under 1 GB worth of music to add. I've selected the bandwidth allocation to be the fastest possible. Let's see how long this takes. The music gets added to the cloud 2 songs at a time, this could take a while.

Must See Movies of the Summer (May)

With Thor coming out this weekend I think it's safe to say it's time for the summer movie blitz to begin. The summer time is the best time for big budget blockbusters to be released. This summer you will also find big name comedy sequels and potential indie gems. I thought it would be a great time to give a run down of the summer movies I am most looking forward to. I will break of the films by month. First up May...

Thor (May 6th)
Once summer comes around you know you can count on a few big comic book movies and Thor is the first one this summer. Thor stars Chris Hemsworth as the comic book legend. Along with Chris, you will find Anthony Hopkins, Kat Dennings, Idris Elba, and the always amazing Natalie Portman. For those that don't follow comics, Thor was created by Stan Lee, the mastermind behind Spider-man and Iron Man. Thor is a warrior from the mystical realm of Asgard and gets banished to Earth when he starts a war. I'm looking forward to Thor because I love comic book movies and always enjoy a good action film.

Hesher (May 13th)
Hesher is an indie film staring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception and 500 Days of Summer), Rainn Wilson (The Office), and Natalie Portman. I don't know all the details about the plot, but I've always enjoyed Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natalie Portman, so I have high hopes that I will enjoy Hesher.

The Hangover Part II (May 26th)
The first Hangover film was released in 2009 and was an instant hit, both at the box office and with critics. When that happens you know there will be a sequel and this summer is when the sequel is released. The Hangover Part II stars all of the big names from the first movie, but instead of being in Las Vegas, they take the madness to Thailand. I have some hesitation when it comes to this film just because most comedy sequels aren't that great. As long as they come up with new antics and laughs this could be a very funny movie.

Kung Fu Panda 2 (May 26th)
Everyone remembers the joy and fun that was had with Kung Fu Panda. This summer we are given the opportunity to experience it all over again with Kung Fu Panda 2. I haven't seen any trailers for this one yet so I'm not really sure what to expect. Dreamworks has been know to release some amazing films as well as some stinkers. I hope Kung Fu Panda 2 is at lease entertaining.

Top Ten Video Games of 2010

Here is a list of the Top Ten Video Games I played in 2010

1.  Red Dead Redemption (XBOX 360)
2.  God of War III (PS3)
3.  Super Mario Galaxy 2 (WII)
4.  Donkey Kong Country Returns (WII)
5.  Call of Duty: Black Ops (XBOX 360)
6.  Alan Wake (XBOX 360)
7.  Madden 11 (XBOX 360)
8.  Scott Pilgrim vs The World (XBOX 360)
9.  Halo: Reach (XBOX 360)
10.  Metroid: Other M (WII)

Now there are some games I haven't played that would probably make this list.  They are:

Epic Mickey (WII)
Mass Effect 2 (XBOX 360)
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (PS3)
Kirby's Epic Yarn (WII)
GoldenEye (WII)

Top Ten Movies of 2010

Here is a list of the Top Ten Movies I saw in 2010.

1.  Inception
2.  Toy Story 3
3.  127 Hours
4.  Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
5.  The Social Network
6.  How to Train Your Dragon
7.  The Kids Are Alright
8.  Never Let Me Go
9.  Winter's Bone
10.  Kick-Ass

Now there are some big movies I haven't seen yet that may make it into my top ten once I see them.  Here are those films:

The Town
Black Swan
The Fighter
Tron: Legacy
True Grit
King's Speech

My Take on Paste Magazine's Top 50 Albums of 2010

Paste Magazine just released their picks for the Top 50 Albums of 2010/  The list can be found here: http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2010/12/the-50-best-albums-of-2010.html

Out of the 50 albums they have listed, I have so far listened to 28 of them.  Because I have listened to more than half the albums, I've decided that I would start with the lowest ranked album on their list that, that I've listened to, and work my way up to number one. I will rank each album as I listen to them and see if I feel they should be higher or lower on the list.  Here is my list so far (I have placed the Paste ranking in parenthesis):

29. Phosphorescent: Here's to Taking it Easy (8)
28. Titus Andronicus: The Monitor (5)
27. Anais Mitchell: Hadestown (41)
26. Freelance Whales: Weathervanes (29)
25. Vampire Weekend: Contra (27)
24. Josh Ritter:  So Runs The World Away (38)
23. Blitzen Trapper: Destroyer of the Void (33)
22. Big Boi: Sir Lucious Leftfoot: The Son of Chico Dusty (37)
21. Beach House: Teen Dream (24)
20. She & Him: Volume 2 (30)
19. Girl Talk: All Day (34)
18. The Roots: How I Got Over (31)
17. Band of Horses: Infinite Arms (14)
16. Spoon: Transference (36)
15. Cee Lo Green: The Lady Killer (18)
14. LCD Soundsystem: This Is Happening (1)
13. Justin Townes Earle: Harlem River Blues (15)
12. Frightened Rabbit: The Winter of Mixed Drinks (10)
11. Sleigh Bells: Treats (6)
10. Suckers: Wild Smile (20)
9. Lissie: Catching a Tiger (26)
8. Mumford & Sons: Sigh No More (3)
7. The Tallest Man on Earth: The Wild Hunt (22)
6. Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz (9)
5. Janelle Monae:  The ArchAndroid (2)
4. The National: High Violet (11)
3. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (4)
2. Local Natives: Gorilla Manor (48)
1. Arcade Fire: The Suburbs (7)

Top Ten Albums of 2010

1.  Arcade Fire: The Suburbs
2.  Local Natives: Gorilla Manor
3.  Kanye West:  My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
4.  Avi Buffalo: Avi Buffalo
5.  The National:  High Violet
6.  Janelle Monae:  The ArchAndroid
7.  Sufjan Stevens:  The Age of Adz
8.  The Tallest Man on Earth: The Wild Hunt
9.  Mumford and Sons: Sign No More
10.  Lissie:  Catching a Tiger

2010 NFL Preview

Are you ready for some football???  I sure am.  Tonight is the first game of the 2010 National Football League schedule.  First up is the Minnesota Vikings playing at the New Orleans Saints.  This game is a rematch of last years NFC Championship game that New Orleans won and then ended up winning the Super Bowl.  Both Minnesota and New Orleans had high powered offenses last year that scored a ton of points and you can expect more of the same this season with both returning a majority of their offensive firepower.  But this is just the start of what should be a great season of football.

Most people know that my team is the Green Bay Packers and this season I am feeling a bit antsy.  Last season the Packers lost in a shootout with the Arizona Cardinals in the first round of the playoffs.  This year the expectations are extremely high, many are saying Super Bowl or bust.  I've spent the last couple days reading expert opinions and many have the Packers reaching the Super Bowl and some even have them winning it.  Most fans would probably love hearing that their team is good enough to make the Super Bowl, but to me that's a lot of pressure and can lead to major disappointments.  I did have the chance to see the Packers play in Seattle this preseason and they did look great, but you never know what will happen once the games start to count.  When you look at the Packers schedule you will see many tough, but winnable games.  Their first opponent is the Philadelphia Eagles, who are starting a new quarterback, Kevin Kolb.  The Packers on paper should easily win the game, but playing in Philly is never easy.  The Packers also play in a division that includes the Minnesota Vikings and Brett Favre and everyone knows that storyline.  Hopefully this season the Packers can go out and beat Favre.  The Packers will also play Dallas, the NY Jets, the Niners and New England, all Super Bowl contenders.

The expectations for the Packers are high and I would love for them to win the Super Bowl, but I'm not sure if I can handle another Super Bowl loss.  This is my favorite time of year and I will enjoy watching how the season plays out.  Hopefully all will work out and the Vince Lombardi Trophy will be coming back to the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin.  GO PACKERS!!!!!