Google's Quasi-GPS

My cell phone bill is nearly $100 a month just to get my basic phone service with something like 500 anytime minutes (my unlimited nighttime minutes don't start until 9:00 pm) and my blackberry enterprise service. Thankfully work covers my blackberry fees (or else I wouldn't be using it), but it still leaves me with what I feel is an overpriced plan for a phone I don't use a whole lot. The thing is, I have the 2nd cheapest plan through the perennially evil AT&T. The cheapest is just ridiculous and I can't see anyone using it since there's hardly any minutes available.

Anyhow, one of the features my blackberry has is GPS. I can't use it, though, unless I add on a $10-$20 GPS service onto my monthly bill. It'd be cool to have GPS but, frankly, I wouldn't use it much since I don't leave the metro area very often.

Leave it to Google, though, to come up with a free pseudo-GPS function added into their Google Maps application on my blackberry. It was rolled out probably 6-9 months ago and it wasn't that accurate. It could locate me in a 1,000 meter radius or so, depending upon where I was in the metro. Cool as it was, it wasn't useful since it would show me 5 blocks away from where I actually was which didn't help when driving.

Now, however, there must have been some updates because as I was tinkering with it yesterday I noticed that it was locating my position accurate to within 3 meters at time (usually between 5 and 10 meters, though). That's almost GPS like tracking using cell tower signals (I'm assuming). Who needs GPS with this kind of accuracy using my cell's signal that I don't have to pay extra to use?

I'm sure that once I get out of the metro area it won't be as accurate, but I don't see myself needing it to be ultra-accurate when I'm driving out in the country and there are turnoffs every mile on average. It's awesome to have a free GPS alternative and hopefully it'll stick it to AT&T and get them to allow GPS usage for lesser fees or, God forbid, free. If you have a blackberry, download the Google Maps app and give it a whirl. It's pretty damn useful.

Jeroan Drive - The Stones Remain in Silence CD Review

Your enjoyment of this release, and ultimately of the band itself, hinges on one very important aspect of the band--the vocals. Erik Fǽo has a screeching wail that takes a little getting used to, to say the least. Coming off as a mix of Dennis Lyxzén from Refused, Johnny Whitney from The Blood Brothers, and Cedric Bixler-Zavala it’s easy to see how Erik’s approach may grate on many listeners’ nerves. I’d like to say that you’ll eventually get used to it and may even grow to like his approach, but that isn’t necessarily the case. I know that for some, his vocals just won’t ever be approachable and that should be expected with such an outright abrasive style.

While the vocals are sure to be the focus of your ears the first time you listen to Jeroan Drive, the rest of the band doesn’t sit back with the knowledge that they aren’t the focus. Honestly, it might be interesting to hear some instrumental tracks and a few more instrumental passages since these guys pull together some of the better pieces of Refused, Thursday, and even some Helmet-esque moments. “The Greatest Betrayal” contains some of the best Helmet riffs in the last 4 years that haven't been written by Page Hamilton. Really, though, this song is a little bit of a departure from the band’s predominant sound, focusing on the really heavy riffs between the subdued choruses filled with melodic female vocals that are, unfortunately, mixed a little too low and almost get lost in the shuffle.

The band does get to show off their chops on the latter half of “11:57 at the Laundry Service” as they lay down a very precise, surgical post-hardcore groove that no doubt slays when played live. At times, as stellar as Jeroan Drive are, they tend to stray a little too much into the realm of merely mimicking Refused. “Mirror Escapades”, for example, sounds like it could have been a long lost b-side from The Shape of Punk to Come. The only thing that keeps it from sounding exactly like a Refused song is the spoken word style vocals near the end of the song that, frankly, should have just been left out.

Special note should be given to the title track as it shows the band really stretching their musical legs. The song has many disparate and interesting elements. It’s barraging at first, but it still possesses a mellow undercurrent courtesy of the backing chimes. The melodic female vocals make a return on this track to much more success than in “The Greatest Betrayal”. The song flows nicely back and forth between thundering heavy verses and the more restrained choruses before spreading out into a sprawling instrumental bridge that eventually fades to silence only to be resurrected in a cacophonic, cathartic, and unrestrained release, easily becoming the album’s strongest song.

It’s easy to peg this band as nothing more than a Refused clone with some slightly more abrasive vocals but, believe it or not, this band is much more than that. There is a genuine sense of emotion flowing through this band, showcased in the violently delivered vocals and intricate instrumental delivery both.

Collection Complete

It's a really great feeling when you get to complete something, especially if you're somewhat of a collector by nature. I've always had that collecting urge ever since I was a kid. I was an avid baseball card collector, comic book collector, and toy completist. It was my goal to get all of the action figures in a specific series or the entire run of a comic series or the entire team of a certain sport. It was in my blood.

I've managed to wean myself away from that "need" to have all of a particular thing since, sometimes, it was a money sink and I didn't always need the entire set. For example, I might start reading a comic series and find I really didn't enjoy it, but I'd keep buying it because of my completist nature. I've since broken that habit. Now I just need to break it when buying TV on DVD since I've bought more television DVDs than I can possibly watch in the next few years.

Anyhow, what this is leading up to is me saying that I've finally met one of my remaining completist goals--I just received in the mail the final volume of Lone Wolf and Cub. This 28 volume graphic novel series has been so critically acclaimed since its release that I told myself I needed to get the entire set someday and then sit down and read all the way through it, experiencing the epic as a whole. At about 250 pages a book, that's around 7,000 pages of reading. It's a daunting task, but the set is staring at me from my book shelf every time I walk by it. I'll start it soon... soon.

This Week's Dozen

It's time, once again, for Ricky G's Weekly Dozen. I wasn't feeling a particular mood to do a theme about this time around so I decided to throw a variety of tunes in the mix, but since it's such a variety of tunes I made sure to keep it short and sweet--no song is longer than 3 minutes. So check it out, here's the track list:

1. Mors Principium Est – “It is Done”
2. Finger Eleven – “Other Light”
3. Unkle – “Lawless”
4. Aesop Rock – “Labor”
5. Index Case – “Listen”
6. Amoral – “Raptus”
7. Witches with Dicks – “One Whopper for the Copper”
8. Your Demise – “Too Little, Too Late”
9. Theatre of Tragedy – “Let You Down”
10. Biohazard – “A Way”
11. Scarve – “Senseless”
12. Near Miss – “Call for Help”

My Stimulus Check

The stimulus checks will start being sent our way starting in May. I'm one of the first batch to receive my $600 and it should be direct deposited the week of May 2nd. I haven't really thought about what I was going to do with it since $600 doesn't seem like that much money. Now don't go and rail on me for thinking that it isn't a lot of money. Comparatively speaking, it isn't a whole lot. I received my tax refund last month and it dwarfed the stimulus check that'll be heading my way so I was more concerned with how to use that.

What I did do with my tax refund was invest in a couple of stocks and pad some of my mutual funds. I don't need to spend it right now, so why should I? I know that the government would love for me to take my $600 and go blow it on a new TV or a video camera or a nice dinner or a vacation or some other materialistic thing so that the money is pumped back into the economy. I just don't have a desire for any of those things, though, so I'll probably just use it to pad my mutual funds a little further.

I have considered using it to buy a bike since I don't have one and would like to have one so that I'm not reliant on my car to get me to places that aren't too far away, but I wouldn't spend the whole sum on a bike anyways. I can't imagine spending over $300 on a bike. I'm not a person who is going to do bike races or anything like that. I just want something decent that will hold up and get me from point A to point B, and that can also be used for a biking workout every now and again when I'm not running.

Anyhow, what I was trying to get at is that it seems odd to have a sum of cash getting sent my way and not wanting to immediately spend it on something frivolous. I know if I were 5 years younger I'd totally have it blown before it arrived, but now I don't feel that strong materialistic urge to spend, spend, spend on crap I don't need. The few things that come to mind that I want outside of a bike is a water softener for the house (which is increasing the value of the home so it isn't really money that is leaving my possession), saving it for some new cabinets in the kitchen, or putting it away for when my car eventually dies and I need to get a new one.

It's a nice "gift" from the government, but I'm not going to spend it how they want it, unfortunately, and I'm assuming most other people aren't going to either. Maybe not because they don't want to, but because they can't with mounting bills and a rising cost of living. So anyone have any big plans for their stimulus checks?

Enamel Annoyance

I don't know how I did it or when, but I managed to chip a small bit off of one of my lower front teeth. I probably would have never noticed, except that whenever I run my tongue along my front teeth, it catches on a jagged piece of enamel. At first I thought it was probably a sharp piece of food stuck in my teeth and tried to tongue it out, all the while simply scratching up said tongue. Eventually, I got frustrated and tried picking out whatever it was with my fingernails. That was the point at which I realized that there was, in fact, no food in my teeth.

Looking into the mirror I could just barely see the small off-shooting of white that was as sharp as a newborn kitten's claws. I was amazed that such a tiny piece of my tooth could be the cause of all this ruckus in my mouth. Figuring that eventually it would just wear down, I kept tonguing it and tonguing it and tonguing it until the front of my tongue was raw. The tooth chunk hadn't been worn down at all. How I didn't realize that would be the result before I started my tongue vs. tooth battle is a mystery.

Knowing now that tooth trumps tongue, I escalated the battle to using food warfare. I chewed some gum, which obviously didn't help. Later I employed the help of some hard candy... same result. So at this point, I'm pretty much to the point where I've learned to get along with the sharp mini-blade tooth chunk in my mouth, but I'd be damned if I let it win. It was time to pull out the big guns.

Visiting the bathroom, I picked up my tweezers to see if I could get on the edge of the tooth blade and snap the point off. The tooth blade was too small, however, and I merely wasted my time trying to get a hold on it and subsequently poking myself in the cheek or under my tongue. I was down to my last option--my nail file.

Snapping open the nail file that is a part of my fingernail clippers, I maneuvered it into my mouth so that the file could work against the tooth. Filing away at it for a bit, I then checked it with my tongue. By golly, it was definitely less sharp! But then I looked at the file. The took, somehow, wore down the metal file edges while slowly giving up pieces of itself. I was impressed. Who would have thought that the metal of my fingernail clippers wasn't that much tougher than a tiny chunk of tooth? I was pleasantly amazed.

Today I have no more bladed chunk of tooth bothering me. I won, but it was a long fought battle. It taught me a little something too -- If my teeth can give a metal file a pretty good fight, I'm pretty sure cavities are are a myth. There's no way food particles can burrow into my teeth if it takes a chunk of metal to simply knock a small piece of it off.

Bloodbath - Unblessing the Purity CD Review

It’s hard not to go into listening to this EP with expectations running high. Considering the pedigree of the members of this band, which include musicians from Opeth, Katatonia, Witchery, and Edge of Sanity, you’d think that there would be no way that this album could not be amazing. Sadly, the album treads some very familiar territory and does not quite measure up to the masterpiece that could be expected.

I suppose we shouldn’t kid ourselves and expect Bloodbath to tread anywhere outside of the Swedish death metal genre, but there was at least a little hope that maybe some influences from the band members' work in Katatonia or Opeth would show through. However, that is not the case, and really hasn't ever been the case in Bloodbath's history. This is full bore, no-holds-barred, balls out death metal with “Mouth of Empty Praise” only touching briefly on a melodic guitar line mid-song. The EP starts off by throwing a vicious blast beat attack at you before letting up on the tempo just a hair to give the song some actual structure, which seems to be something these four songs at times lack -- the shifting of gears between the more grooved riffing and death metal blasting isn’t always the smoothest. There are no complaints about execution however, but at times the transitions seemed a bit forced or ill-fitting.

That being said, one of the best songs of this band’s career is most likely the aforementioned “Mouth of Empty Praise”. The band flirts with some melody in the guitar solos, all the while letting the song develop out of the band’s ingrained death metal format. It closes this EP in spectacular fashion with Michael Akerfeldt adding his always crushing vocals. Unlike his work with Opeth, there is not a single moment of melodic crooning on Unblessing the Purity -- it’s growls all the way through and, really, that’s the only type of vocal approach that works here. Throwing in some clean vocals just wouldn’t seem right and would feel much less credible alongside the punishing death metal onslaught.

Unblessing the Purity is short and sweet and to the point, everything and EP should be. Despite some weak moments, the overall execution of this mini-album is spot on. If they can iron out some of their transitions and maybe ease up a little on the blast beats, their next album is going to be a monstrosity of everything that is right in the death metal genre. This band knows what they’re doing and show it on this EP.

Food is My Weakness

Most weeks I try to make it to the gym or run at least 3 or 4 times. Ideally, I like to do something 6 out of the 7 days of the week and if I exercise heavily on all 7 days, I feel awesome about it. Now you'd think that if I was working out that much that I must be in tremendously good shape, or at least in pretty darn good shape. That assumption, however, is quite incorrect. I'm not horribly overweight or anything, but I'm also far from being in wonderful shape. And it's definitely not because I'm not exercising enough or hard enough... it's my diet. I eat like crap.

I love pizza and hot pockets and greasy burgers and anything you can make in a microwave. I salivate over anything with high cholesterol content and lots of fat. And don't even get me started on candy, cookies, and sweets. Put anything chocolaty within reach and I'll scarf it down before you know it's gone. I love food. And it's because of that undying love that I have to exercise so much. If I didn't I'd be a 300 pound couch potato who can no longer see his toes.

I'm trying to get better about what I eat, however, since I'm not always able to exercise as much as I'd like. First, I try to not buy candy or sweets if at all possible because, if it's in the house, it gets eaten. I've been relatively good about this over the last month or so, breaking down only occasionally to get ice cream or cookies.

Sweets are only part of the problem, however. The other part is microwavable food. I've made a conscious decision to not buy any more hot pockets, burritos, TV dinners, or other "quick fix" microwavable food once my current stock is gone. This will force me to actually cook the food I eat. I find a lot of the time I'm not super hungry, but since microwavable food is so convenient it's hard to say no to it. Now if I had to actually get out pots and pans or use the oven to make food in those situations, I'd probably pass because I'm not that hungry.

We'll see how this goes. I'm almost out of hot pockets and other microwavable food. I do have a lot of Easy Mac and Ramen left, but I have an easier time not turning to those foods for comfort. The only obstacle I still need to overcome after all of this is ordering out. No more running up to Papa Murphys for pizzas that weigh more than a newborn or hitting up the Chipolte if I feel the burrito urge. It'll be tough, but it'll also help my pocketbook, which I can use as another way to motivate myself.

All in all, I think soon I'll be able to start making some headway in changing my eating habits. Not right now, though... I've still got some pepperoni lean pockets and a bucket of ice cream calling out to me. 'Scuse me, I'll be right back...

Windy Days

Tuesday afternoon I volunteered to help out at a local track meet taking times at the finish line. It was a beautiful day and it got me outside in the afternoon to enjoy the weather and it also gave me a chance to think back fondly on my track days which were, hard to believe it, nearly a decade ago. I'm 27 now and I ran my last competitive track meet my senior year of high school when I was 18. It doesn't seem like that long ago when I'm thinking about it, but after I get in from a hard run that I would have dominated at that age, I can definitely tell it's been a while.

Watching the kids running, I kept thinking to myself, "Man, I could totally kick these little kids' asses." Then I'd get their times and realize that I probably couldn't hit some of those times without putting in a little training first. Adulthood and the working world isn't exactly conducive to giving you time to put in daily strenuous workouts. I'm lucky if I get in 3 or 4 runs a week. If I put in some time at the gym or lifting at home on top of that, it's a huge bonus.

In thinking about it, I'm pretty sure getting out there and running a 100 or 200 wouldn't be too much of a problem because with sprints usually the people who are good at them have the natural ability to move fast or they don't. It's hard to take a slow person and get them to sprint fast, you just need to have that innate ability to start with. Luckily I was pretty decent at sprints and I still use a lot of my quick speed muscles and sprints in ultimate.

The biggest hurdle that I'd have to overcome if I was racing my same high school races today would be the 400. I can guarantee you that I would not be able to whip out a sub 55 second 400 if I tried my hardest, there just isn't enough gas in my tank for that long of a sprint and I'm probably about 10 lbs too heavy to really push that long of a sprint. Now that I'm talking about it, I'm actually curious how I'd run a 400 now. Would I blow all of my energy sprinting out the first 200 and die in the last half? Or would I be way too conservative to start thinking I'd need the extra gas at the end?

Being out at the track, beyond bringing back memories of the old "golden days", gave me some motivation to really try and put some effort into my runs and getting a few more in if I can. I don't want to be relegated to talking about the good ol' days--I want to be able to still be in shape, quick, and able to crank out a good 5K time. I know it's not a sprint, but there aren't any real competitive options outside of 5K and 10K road races, so it's time to channel some of that competitive nature to beat my ass back into shape.

This Week's Dozen

This week I'm all about bringing the heavy tunes. So if you want a soundtrack to beat someone up by, then this is it. Check out the mix here. You'll get treated to these kick ass songs:

1. Chimaira – “The Dehumanizing Process” (live)
2. The Great Deceiver – “Marathon Man”
3. Freya – “Through the Eyes of the Angel of Death”
4. Bloodjinn – “Break the Silence”
5. Thick as Blood – “Dead to Me”
6. Century – “Watch Them Become Animals”
7. Norma Jean – “Absentimental”
8. God Dethroned – “Hating Life”
9. Unholy – “Awaken the Sleep”
10. As I Lay Dying – “The Sound of Truth”
11. The Breathing Process – “Pandora’s Rebirth”
12. Gone Without a Trace – “Power and Greed”