June 17th, 2014

Nothing up top today.  Tomorrow maybe.  Lots of daily stuff below though.



June 17th, 2014

ACDC really brought it with "The Razor's Edge".  This was a band at its breaking point, finally reaching the excess that did in Bon Scott a decade before.  Brian Johnson was embroiled in so much court stuff over his divorce that Malcolm and Angus took over lyrical duties.  Malcolm had just finished a stint in rehab for alcohol addiction, an addiction so strong he did not tour the US with the band.  Drummer problems stirred so much that they had to get a session drummer to fill the roll.  ACDC had something to prove, and they brought the decade a great rock album.  "Thunderstruck" is the best rock song to ever start a rock show with.  "Money Talks" is in the runnings for my favorite ACDC song of all time.  "Fire Your Guns" and "Are You Ready" are live show stand-outs that made the cut.  There is not a "repetitive" song in the bunch, no 25 chorus repeats like from "Those About to Rock" eras.  There are no "bad" songs on the whole album, though Mistress for Christmas is close, but because ACDC has that raunchy and silly to it from its old days, it gets a pass.  I think Angus heard someone say "all you can do is rock, we like shred" and had enough of that bullshit.  Angus showed that Rock is a choice, and he had the skills to shred with all the young'uns if he wished.  I loved the album.  New songs added to my play list have to be "Let's make it", "Are you Ready", "Good-bye and Good Riddance".

Intel is celebrating the 2oth anniversary of the Pentium line.  Once the flagship, the term "Pentium" has been regulated to budget status for the past half decade.  Looking at the 20th Anniversary Pentium, you might think "oh, its just more budget line crap", but this is not so.  The 20th Anniversary Pentium has one really really great trick; its unlocked.  This means that like the old Intel Celeron 300a, you can get an under $100 chip and overlock it safely to being really really fast.  This Pentium is reported to be under $80 at launch, so where's the catch?  Its only a dual core without hyperthreading.  What THIS means is that you probably do not want it for video editing or workstation usage, but the truth is that gaming really has not taken advantage of hyperthreading and multi-core gaming in any appreciable way.  So the difference between a $400 Intel chip and the $80 intel chip inside of games like Assassin's Creed is only going to be a couple of frames at the same speeds.  The competing chips at this price are laptop layovers from AMD that are clocked at speeds like 1.2 ghz, but boast hyperthreading as giving them things like 8(bullshit) cores.  This Pentium starts at 3.2ghz and will overclock past the 4ghz range.  For budget gaming, this chip is going to become legendary.

I've made my opinion of Wil Wheaton's show(I don't like it), but I do like Wil Wheaton.  I love reading his blog about dealing with "TV people" as of late, because it seems so alien compared to how people are doing Youtube and being famous in other ways.  It is hilarious how much shit he gets from "TV people" for his twitter account not being all Kardashian, and the "tips" he gets are priceless.  Another way he catches shit, and it might haunt him later, is that he's using links to The Pirate Bay as a ratings evaluation of his show.  The more people pirating his show, the more popular it is.  It is a pretty genius way of looking at things, since Game of Thrones is the reigning king of Pirate Bay.  Thing is, industry people are jumping down his neck, and people on the "inside" are telling him he needs to "alter his approach" because its pissing people off.  I'm all for people taking down the twisted "reality" of what is Television/Hollywood.  Its a creature that's survived by itself for too long and has become weird, strange, and too fucked up to live.  Wheaton gets some shit for doing his Youtube stuff in the same "way" as a television show(inflating costs), but he's no where near how real tv is made these days, not even close to how screwed up it is.