Music Review: Hamilton de Holanda Quintet – Brasilianos 2
If Brasilianos 2 was a racer, it would have unleashed its turbo rocket boosters early to get ahead of the pack, only to cool off and found its right tempo at the end. While all of the songs by the Hamilton de Holanda Quintet are fresh and original, the opening three tracks are hectic, fast paced, and not a good example of what the rest of the album holds. The strength of Brasilianos 2 comes from it's slower tempo songs. Each musician in the Hamilton de Holanda Quartet gets a chance to be showcased without feeling like they are fighting for attention.
Read the full review only on BlogCritics.Org
My Top 30 Songs of 2009 – Starts Tomorrow!
Tomorrow starts my countdown of my top 30 favorite songs of 2009. Most of them will actually be big hits and will probably be very obvious. There are a handful (on the upper half of the list) that may not have been the biggest of hits, but I fell for them as well. I guess this countdown can become, "How high did the Wonder Girls rank?"
Either way, I found that compiling this list of songs actually gelled really easily. I'll post a video on how quickly I put together the list (probably on the 1st or 2nd of January). Insert story of backwards E here.
Of course there were tons and tons of songs that were catchy that didn't make the list. All the artists only show up once on this list so songs like "Halo," "My Life Would Suck Without You," "Funhouse," S.O.S (Let the music play)," "Boom Boom Pow," and "I Hate this part" didn't make the list in lieu of songs by said artists that I deemed better or personally more favorable.
Five songs that didn't make the list because I just found out about them:
5. Brad Paisley - Welcome To The Future - Okay, I'm not the biggest of Country music fans, but this song is oddly catchy. Brad has a strong voice and it's accompanied by "futuristic sounds." There's a big plus because I like the references to Pac-Man and the Philippines.
(Click Read More to find out who else just barely missed the list)
Link updates: Dancing with the Stars
Here are the Dancing with the Stars links for this week. Was I shocked about Joanna? Not so much. She had no fans.
Recap: Dancing with the Stars - Performance #9 - For the first time in Dancing with the Stars history, the semifinalists have to dance three dances......
Review: Dancing with the Stars - Performance 9 Results - It's been nine weeks on Dancing with the Stars and I didn't expect to see Joanna, Kelly, or Donny around this long. Unfortunately, one of them was eliminated........
Figuring out Photoshop
I use the banners above as a quick and dirty way of practicing my (lack of) Photoshop skills. As I mentioned previously, my weeks get busy so I don't have time to just dedicate to photoshop and realized that it's just easier to practice my layers with Photoshop. I don't get to do a lot of color adjustment and my personal judgment is still rickety.
My biggest problem is the fact that I love high contrast photos. I dunno where that love came from, I just think that strong definition in pictures. It's odd because I love art nouveau, but I associate art nouveau with pastels that blend into each other. Maybe I should think more of Tiffany lamps that have strong black lines and realize that it may just fit my aesthetic better than I realized. Oh well, there goes my defense.
I still don't know what I would do without Photoshop. The program is amazing, and I still don't know if I could convert to another program. Possibly if the price was low, Adobe is reallllllly costly.
Article Updates
Here's three more links:
Dancing with the Stars: Performance 4 Results - TV Squad
So You Think You Can Dance: Vegas Callbacks 2 - TV Squad
America's Next Top Model: Petite Ninja Warriors - TV Squad
Some comments:
Top Model - I like the concept, but I'm starting to hate Sundai. Even if she looks like mini-Dani (Season 6).
SYTYCD - I couldn't stop cringing after seeing tennis ball ankle.
Link Updates
Here are two articles I've recently written:
America's Next Top Model: Dance with Me - TV Squad
Music Review - AfroSambaJazz: The Music of Baden Powell - BlogCritics.Org
If you could, leave comments on both sites. Comments mean love!
Yay! New Website features
I know I'm not the most up-to-date, hip, CSS, HTML, Widget friendly kid, but I've been milling this idea around until I found a plug-in that would work for what I need. So above this post on the main page will now be links to articles I've written.
Sure I struggled because I'm an idiot (and the answer was right in front of me), but I persevered. So above will be the 10 most recent artlicles.
Don't worry, I'll still be updating my Article page on weekends (starting this Saturday I swear!), but this gives my page a slight bit of flash.
I still can't get the spacing issue between the image and the heading of this down, but that will be another fix that I will work on.
Such a beautiful day for an error.
I’m having website meltdown. At the moment I hate HTML. I really do. HTML, CSS, Javascript. Everything. Why can’t websites be drawn on a piece of paper, scanned, and then mysteriously just work the way you wanted? Of course I have to struggle my way around with my small web bag of tricks, trying to make this webpage as effective as possible.
It’s pretty, but not exactly everything I wished for, you know? Sometimes the image in my head doesn’t match the drawing on the picture.
Anywho, I realized that one thing that websites are supposed to do is increase the length of time one person is on it for a while. How is a personal website supposed to do that? I’m not going to offer games, contests, or giveaways. That’s not my style and I’ve heard from other webmasters that giveaways aren’t as helpful to increasing readership. It causes a spike then disappears again. Moot. That’s what it is.
The underbelly of websites
Sometimes I have those days where I'm just trying to make sure that I have a properly functioning website. I mean, I do pay for this damn thing. Yes, I understand that there is only one photo album at the moment, the contact page is sparse, and the review table mysteriously disappeared when I updated the design. But, the big thing I finally fixed was the damn RSS feed. Now it actually works up-op. Thanks Feedburner for never telling me that Google ate you.
So now, Feedburner should be taking care of my problems with RSS. Maybe I can finally get past that one subscriber and have...dare I say... two?
(Click on that Continue Reading for a picture of Sailor Moon and a dumb story)
Upgrade!
WordPress has been hounding me for months to update my WordPress from 2.6 to 2.7. If anyone recalls, I actually had a meltdown the last time I tried to update my website because I lost all my posts and pages. Luckily for me, I read the instructions correctly. Yay for paying attention. Funny enough, I took so long to upgrade that I'm actually running on 2.8.
Anywho, today was one of those days where I felt like I kept doing several thousand things and yet time didn't pass me. It's odd, I haven't had that feeling in such a long time. I got almost everything done today (even fixing this website!). I'm going to continue checking things off of the To Do list.
I love those weekends.
My Monthly Musings
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