It’s A Binary World 2.0

Posted By Eric Mesa on February 1, 2012

The original Top 200 Photo in the #18th spot was:

and the current #18 photos is:

this photo has been on the rise ever since Bradley Manning’s trial started up.

Category: Photography | No Comments »
Tags: Adrian Lamo, Me, Self-Portrait, Top 200 Photos

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 31, 2012

~Last year, when I created the Top 200 feature, this was photo #19:

with 1239 views.

Now the #19 photos is:

Which is a fall from #14 when the Top 200 Started.

Category: Photography | No Comments »
Tags: Precious Moments, rainbow, Top 200 Photos

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 30, 2012

Dan and I started a website called Comic POW! Where each week we go over the best comics of that week.  It’s been going for approximately 3 months and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.  The main feature is posted every Friday, but we occasionally have content on other days.  I’ve also started writing for Player Affinity.  They saw my work and invited me to write for them.  My news articles are posted on Wednesdays and my reviews on Fridays.  (With extra reviews sometimes appearing on Mondays and Tuesdays) Here’s one of my latest reviews.

Category: Geek Love, Me | No Comments »
Tags:

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 29, 2012

Since it took about a year for my Top 200 photos feature to run its course, I wanted to go back and see how things changed within the Top 20 in that year.  When I posted the feature, this was #20:

With 1194 views

This is the current #20:

With 1742 views. So the bar for being in the Top 20 has been raised.

Category: Photography | No Comments »
Tags: Dina, Katy Perry, Me, Self-Portrait, strobographic, Top 200 Photos

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 25, 2012

OK, so it’s been a year since I last blogged about working on this program.  I tried working on the data engine in August and then got stuck right around the time I started my first semester of grad school so I had to drop it, even though it got stuck in my head and I was thinking about it for weeks until the light bulb went off.  I wrote my idea and just had the idea to work on it recently.  I have to say that, overall, QML is pretty awesome for making a quick GUI.  I’ve always struggled with GUI code, but with QML I was able to put together a quick GUI in about 20 minutes.  Now, don’t judge QML too harshly because my plasmoid looks ugly.  It looks ugly because I just put together the minimum GUI to implement grabbing data from my Data Engine.  Once I get everything working right, I’ll fix it up.  After all, GUIs are really so easy in QML that it can be the icing on the cake in the end.

flickr views plasmoid - my first ever original plasmoid!

Man, when I got my plasmoid to this point I was soooo happy!  Unfortunately, I wasted countless hours trying to figure out why my plasmoid couldn’t talk to my data engine and it turned out it was because I was using QT Creator (an AWESOME IDE for QML development) and for some reason using that instead of the plasmoidviewer commandline argument to launch my plasmoid means that it can’t talk to engines.  It was so frustrating when I found out that was the reason for the issues.  I had literally spent hours trying to figure that out.  I’d say, use QT Creator to make your GUI and then maybe create some fake data you can read out of a file to make sure the GUI’s working.  Then move to plasmoidviwer for your final development.

One other annoyance was that in the XmlListView I had to change had to change source: to xml: – another hour or so wasted from not quite understanding the documentation well enough.  Basically it can only read xml from a data engine if the type is xml.  If you use source, it only works if it’s a web page or a file on your computer.  That’s kinda non-intuitive and wasted at least another hour of pointless debugging.

But I’m really happy because now I’m at the point where I’ve essentially ironed out enough of how QML and data engines work in order to finalize the look/feel of the plasmoid.  Then, once that’s done I’ll need to get help from the IRC or the mailing list to iron out the final bugs.  And after that I’ll post my code because there’s a real dearth of example code out there because QML and data engines are so new.  And it’s not always clear from the code documentation exactly how things could fit together.  Speaking of help, sreich on the plasma IRC room and Sebastian Kugler on the mailing list.  They were very patient with me as I worked otu what was going wrong with my plasmoid.  sreich even used his homework procrastination time to help me out.

Hopefully I’ll be able to have another post really soon where things are working at 80-90% of where I want them.  It all depends on how much time I can find to work on the code.

Category: KDE, programming, python | No Comments »
Tags: KDE, plasmoid, QML

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 18, 2012

I’ve installed Debian here and there on different computers in the last seven or so years that I’ve been using Linux.  I almost ended up being a Debian person, but the Fedora book at the bookstore was more comprehensive, so I was set along the Red Hat path.  On the one hand, I’ve often envied Debian both for its ease up upgrades and for its stability.  On the other hand, I like having the latest stuff.  KDE 4.8 is about to come out and I’ll be restless for the next few months before it makes its way into Fedora.  So Debian’s never quite been for me.  I’ve heard a lot about Aptosid (formerly Sidux) which turns Sid (the unstable repo) into a usable distro.  Of course, Ubuntu does this along with a little extra polish, so I figured I’d see what Aptosid’s up to.

Aptosid Grub Menu

As usual for my reviews, I ran Aptosid in a virtual machine, virt-manager.  To my delight, Aptosid uses KDE, my preferred desktop environment.  They’ve set it up to where the folder view is the whole desktop so it behaves like the desktops more people are used to.

Aptosid default desktop

Interestingly, they also have not chosen to have the activities button that’s default on the Fedora and other KDE distros.  It also has the old-style cashew, but maybe that will change once I update the system.  The installer is pretty weak.

Aptosid installer

I guess anyone who would be trying out Aptosid is pretty deep into Linux.  But given that even Debian has a pretty sweet installer nowadays, I don’t know why the Aptosid went with this type of installer.  The partitioning is a LOT more complicated than any Linux distro I’ve installed in the past 4 years.  And it seriously lacks in the visual design.  But it gets the job done well enough.

Aptosid installing

Eventually I ended up at KDM.

Aptosid KDM

So, time to log in!  After letting it run for a while, it didn’t come up with any GUI notifications that there were updates.  Maybe there weren’t any?  I went into Konsole and did an apt-get update followed by an apt-get upgrade.  Lots of updates.  So I let those run.  Surprisingly, given Sid’s reputation, KDE was at 4.6.5, not 4.7.4 as in Fedora.  So it seems that running Aptosid would not be better for me (from a bleeding edge point of view) than Fedora.  Bummer on that one.

When it comes to the default installed programs, Aptosid is no slouch.  For graphics it has SANE, digiKam, DNGConverter, Gwenview.  For internet it has all the usual KDE standards as well as Ice Weasel (Debian’s unbranded Firefox).  Strangely, it did not have Amarok installed by default for audio.  But it did have Libre Office for the Office stuff.  And, of course, since it’s Debian, you more or less have access to every Linux program ever within the repositories.

The strange lack of polish leaves me wondering just who would actually use Aptosid.  It doesn’t have a way to tell you in the GUI that you have updates to install.  It has a really complex installer.  And it doesn’t even have the latest software.  To me I’d rather use Fedora which is more polished AND has newer software.  Perhaps if you’re a Debian-style user it’s your only choice?  But if I wanted to give up the polish, I’d go with Arch and have even NEWER programs for all the work involved.  Although, since Arch makes you configure all the daemons and stuff – with how many KDE has running I don’t know if that’d be more daunting of a task than I’d care for.  I guess I was expecting to be impressed with the latest and greatest being in Aptosid – maybe even KDE 4.8 and that’s why I was left disappointed.

A final note – when I’ve done these first impression distro reviews some people have commented that it might take more time to get to know a distro.  In some cases I agree with them.  In this case, it’s pretty much just Debian, but a little newer and I’ve seen Debian.  So I was mostly just looking for how new/unstable aptosid really was.

Category: Debian, Linux, Red Hat | 1 Comment »
Tags: Aptosid

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 17, 2012

And now my latest Photojojo.  It’s a pretty eclectic collection.

Category: Photography | No Comments »
Tags: photojojo

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 16, 2012

Looks like my most interesting photos then were from Christmas when my folks came over.

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Tags: photojojo

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 15, 2012

I’ve fallen a bit behind on these photo time capsules.  Here’s the one from early December.  Apparently, all my interesting photos from back then were taken in NYC.

Category: Photography | No Comments »
Tags: New York City, photojojo

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 6, 2012

A new level in Bastion

While I’m not some video game hipster that doesn’t enjoy the Triple-A games, I have found myself increasingly having my most compelling game experiences on games created by indie or small studios. I think this is because indie studios are no different from starups, indie bands, and indie film makers in their willingness and ability to explore risky and new ideas. I felt the same way about Braid when I played it in 2009 as I do about Bastion this year.

Both Braid and Bastion are games that borrow from old traditions and then marry them with new elements and a powerful story. Braid was taking the humble platformer and giving it an incredible story (as well as new gameplay elements). Bastion is an action RPG like Zelda games, but unites with with its own unique gameplay elements and a great story. I think the key difference between Braid and Bastion is that while they both have powerful endings, I feel as though I actually understand what happened at the end of Bastion.

Bastion has you take control of The Kid, a silent protagonist (they almost always are in RPGs) who survives The Calamity. A narrator guides you along in the story as you work your way through the first few levels. The narrator is great on so many levels. They selected someone with the PERFECT voice. And they decide to go with a Western (as in the Wild West) sounding soundtrack and his voice goes along perfectly with that. You almost feel like you’re watching an old school Western with narration. But there’s so much more.

When I play a game like Batman: Arkham City (or Arkham Assylum), the joy of the game is BEING Batman. But there are so many things I can do intentionally or unintentionally that break that spell. For the unintentional, there’s falling into water while rappelling along a path. That would NEVER happen to Batman. For the intentional, there’s hitting the barrel roll button as a I run around because it breaks the monotony of getting from point A to point B. But larger than all of that is when the narrative breaks. When a game tells me, Batman – you need to get to point B SOON or you’re going to die! And then lets me run all over Arkham for eternity. To be honest I abhor when games give you a timer because while I have a pretty good sense of direction in the real world, I can’t find my way out of a paper bag in a lot of video games.

Who Knows Where in Bastion

Bastion doesn’t break the narrative because the studio, Supergiant Games, was clever enough to insert a bunch of narrative hooks that seem almost magical. For example, early on in the game, I came to the realization that breaking stuff will give me these little blue things that end up functioning like money in the game. So in one section very early on when all you know is that The Calamity has destroyed your home, I just started breaking everything to find the currency. The narrator said, “The Kid just rages for a while”. I almost jumped out of my seat. And there are little flourishes like that all over the game – places where they took the time to notice if you were going slowly or quickly or favoring one weapon over another. Those little touches make me feel like the events of the game are actually happening and it becomes more engaging than any movie and even more so than most video games that contain narrative.

Because story is so important to this game, I don’t want to spoil any of it. I do have to say that I LOVE how the story is communicated and that, again, it doesn’t take you out of the game. For example, the narrator is talking to you, the player, not The Kid so he’s not saying things that don’t make sense within the universe. For example, in Final Fantasy games (and many, many RPGs) people are afflicted with the need to tell you things that characters within that universe should know. And it can be very strange when you get to those points. I’m currently watching Giant Bomb’s Endurance Run of Chrono Trigger and it’s weird to have people tell your character to press X. “What does that mean?!?” Crono, were he not a silent protagonist, should be screaming in the same way that Jim Carrey’s character in Truman Show does when he realizes his life is fake. Rather for those types of things the game has tooltips that appear rather than having the narrator tell you. Additionally, this is one of those stories where you find out bits about the past and present as you go along, and I felt it just added perfectly to the atmosphere. After all, The Kid doesn’t know what The Calamity is or why it happened. So he learns as we learn.

Crafting New Weapons in Bastion

Again, without spoiling the story, eventually, you gain the ability to strongly customize the game. You end up with tons of weapons and you are allowed to equip two at a time within a “level”. Additionally, you’re allowed to “equip” one special skill that has to do with one of those two weapons. So part of the fun of the game is in trying to figure out what weapons work best together as well as which one you’ll need for each level. Of course, to make the game a bit more challenging, on your first play-through you won’t know which weapons you need for the next level you’re going to tackle and you aren’t always given access to an area that allows you to change your load-out. Additionally, you are able to upgrade these weapons. However, each upgrade is a binary choice for which attribute you want the upgrade to give the weapon. Just these two mechanics would ensure that everyone’s going to have a slightly different experience with the game, but it has even more customizations!

The game also has you customize your character’s attributes with wines. You can only use one wine slot for each level your character has leveled up. (So 2 wines at level 2, etc) And these give you abilities like “all hits are critical if health is less than 33%” or having more slots for health or special skills. Again, the amounts of wines vs the amount of slots you can have leads to an insane amount of variability in your game experience.

The final customization comes in the form of activating various gods which invoke challenge modes within the game. These can allow you to tailor the game’s difficulty if you find you’re tearing through it at too quick of a pace. You’ll also need to eventually be able to do this if you want to get all the achievements.

So we have a game that not only marries a fun action RPG style with a great story, but allows for a pretty complex amount of customization for such a simple and small game. Sounds pretty good just with that, right? But on top of that, this game has an awesome soundtrack. How awesome? I didn’t buy it at first (Steam has a bundle that includes the soundtrack) and as soon as I beat the game I went and bought it. Not only does it have a bunch of great ambient tracks – I think I like about 75% of those, but it has some great vocal tracks as well. They are used to set the perfect moods in the game and are written so as not to sound looped if you take too long in a level. One of the vocal tracks, which comes in during a couple important parts in the game, has been stuck in my head for the past 4 days.

What do do - Bastion

When you get to the end of the game, you’re given a choice of what to do. The choices are pretty much the opposites of each other, but I think which one you choose to see first probably tells you a lot about your personality. But don’t despair, completionists! Just like Chrono Trigger, Bastion has a new game plus mode where you start off with all the levels, etc you had at the end of your first game. I’ve always been a fan of new game plus because it allows you do experience the story again (and pick up on hints you missed the first time!) but also allows you to continue to power up your character. And that leads to new gameplay experienences as you might be able to reach areas you couldn’t before. Also, with the tension of not knowing the ending gone, you can enjoy some of the challenge areas you might have previously rushed through.

Bastion will not be my most played game of 2012. It took me about 8 hours to beat the game. Depending on how many of the achievements I try to go for in my new game plus playthrough, I might play another 10 hours or so. But it is going to be pretty hard for any game I play in 2012 to beat Bastion for the spot of best game I played in 2012. So if you haven’t played it yet – it’s only $15 on Steam. It is WELL WORTH your hard-earned cash. Play it!

Category: Video Games | 2 Comments »
Tags: Bastion, Supergiant Games

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 5, 2012

So I took a look at Blogilo a few days ago. So, taking a look at my Blogilo post I have to say that it is pretty much ALMOST there for the perfect offline blogging tool for someone using WordPress. Sure, it doesn’t allow your to create categories, but a blog like mine that’s been around for ~7 years probably has all the categories it needs. The extra fidelity can come from tags which Blogilo hands just fine.

I mentioned that it doesn’t list the categories hierarchically, but that’s barely even an issue. The biggest issues for me are the lack of captions for images and the fact that uploaded images don’t automatically link to the images. In all of my images, I have them set to link to themselves so if you want to see it full-sized (pretty important when showing screenshots), you can. Blogilo doesn’t have that ability and that’s what pretty much kills it for me because that’s so important to me as a blogger. But I’ll talk to them on irc and/or submit a bug report for that feature.

I think if they just solve these little issues, Blogilo will be the BEST offline blogging software and might even give the WordPress native interface a run for its money.

Category: Linux | No Comments »
Tags: Blogilo, KDE

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 4, 2012

Team Fortress 2

Civilization V (75 hrs) – What can I say about this game that I haven’t said already?  This is the series that made “One More More Turn…” famous and it still works today.  If I were to start a game tonight, I would not go to bed at a reasonable time.

Team Fortress 2 (70 hrs 45 min) – This game is almost as addictive as Civ 5.  I never thought I’d end up saying that about a first person shooter.  But I’ve played nearly all of my 85 hrs logged for this game in 2011 and in 2012 it might even surpass Civ 5!

Final Fantasy X (57 hrs) – I finally got around to this game.  I wrote about what I thought of it.  Overall, I think I’ve somewhat outgrown Final Fantasy games.  It’s too bad I didn’t have access to these games earlier.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (28 hrs 30 min) – Known through various parts of the internet as Assassin’s Creed 2-2 or Ass:Bro, this game was a ton of fun.  It really added a lot to the Ezio story and the ability to have a bunch of assassins at your beck and call was awesome!

Assassin’s Creed II (27 hrs 30 min) – This was the game that took everything I liked about the first one and went and improved it.  Everything from the stories to the combat was refined.

Mass Effect

Mass Effect (16 hrs) – I finished the first Mass Effect.  I have to admit that I enjoyed this game, one of my first American RPGs a lot more than I thought I would.  I think it helped that the game had a solid fictional universe that you almost felt was real.

Greed Corp (15 hours) – One of many games I checked out based on the soundtrack, this was an extremely fun indie game that actually involves more strategy than it seems at first.  It’s kinda like a very fast-paced Risk.  Definitely check it out.

Portal 2

Portal 2 (14 hrs) – This game was AMAZING.  The voice acting was terrific.  The puzzles were fun.  Cave Johnson!  This is about as close to perfect a sequel as Portal could have had.  Portal, like The Matrix or Men in Black was partially awesome because of the novelty of the situation.  With those movies, the sequels never captured the magic of the original.  With Portal 2 they just about did it and they deserve kudos for that.

Tetris (PSN) (9 hours plus?) – It’s Tetris as perfect as you can get it in this console generation

Mass Effect 2 (6 hrs) – I’m just started to get to the point where the story is getting interesting, but this game has the promise to be just as good as, if not better than, the original.

Plants vs Zombies (5 hrs) – This game is not as addictive as Tetris, Civilization, or Team Fortress 2, but it’s pretty close.  I launched it up to get some trophies and then kept on playing all night.

Monkey Island 2: Special Edition

Monkey Island 2: Special Edition (6 hrs 30 min) – This is a point-and-click adventure game.  That means good things like absurdist humor and bad things like puzzles that there’s no way you could solve without a strategy guide or a walkthrough.  I’m glad I played it, though.

The Secret of Monkey Island  (4 hrs 30 min) – I’m going to say that this essentially deserves the same description as above.

Bastion (4hrs) – This game is amazing.  See my review in a couple days.

Batman: Arkham City (3 hrs) – I’m just not feeling this game as much as the previous one.  Unlike Portal 2, this team seems unable to make lightning strike twice.  If there’s a third, I definitely don’t want it.

Portal (2 hr 10 min) – I played just enough to finish the game and see the ending in time for Portal 2.

Cities XL

Cities XL (2 hrs) – See what I wrote about it here.  It’s a pretty great city sim and I hope to get some more time into it.

Mario Party 8 (2 hrs) – It’s a great party game.

Mario Kart Wii (1 hr) – You know this game.

Dungeon Defenders Demo (30 min) – See the end of this article.

My 2011 Game of the Year

If I’d beaten Bastion by the end of the year, it would definitely have been that game.  But of the game I completed in 2011, it’s a very tough call.  I played a LOT of great games.  I think runners up are Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Team Fortress 2.  But my favorite game of 2011 was Portal 2.  That game had everything to make it a great time to play.  I was truly sad when it was over.

Portal 2: My 2011 Game of the Year!

Category: Video Games | 1 Comment »
Tags: Assassin's Creed II, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Bastion, Batman: Arkham City, Cities XL, Civ V, Dungeon Defenders Demo, Final Fantasy X, Greed Corp, Mario Kart Wii, Mario Party 8, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Monkey Island 2: Special Edition, Plants vs Zombies, Portal, Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, Tetris, The Secret of Monkey Island

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 3, 2012

So here’s my top listened artists for 2011.  Some of these entries are a surprise and others are expected.  I can’t wait to see how many of these artists are on this list next year.  Well, let’s take a look.

1. The Beatles (492) – No surprises here; the ancestors of nearly all pop and rock in America has been on top every quarter.  So of course they’d top this list.

2. Girl Talk (363) – A pretty impressive showing for Girl Talk.  If my CD player listens were counted, he’d be at the top of the list.  I’ve listened to it a lot at work and in the car.

3. Doctor Octoroc (281) – For how quickly I tired of this music, I can’t believe how highly it scored for this year!

4. Relient K (210) – Another no-brainer.  I have all their albums and they have a lot of tracks out there to show up over and over.

5. Anberlin (180) – Pretty much the same as above

6. I Fight Dragons (178) – I discovered I Fight Dragons within the last year to year and a half and I really love the sound they’ve got.  A regular rock band with backup instruments from 8-bit Nintendo systems.  They definitely deserve a place on here and would have been higher if I’d gotten around to buying their first full length album.

7. Sambo Master (145) – Great Japanese rock.  So great I don’t care that I can’t understand them.

8. Anamanaguchi (142) – I’ve spoken a lot about them in the past few entries. They’re like the inverse of I Fight Dragons, but I still love the music.

9. “Weird Al” Yankovic (138) – The master of Parody

10. Fire Iron Frenzy (122) – Love them, as I’ve said before

11. Yasunori Mitsuda (107) – I didn’t realize how much I’d listened to the Chrono Trigger Soundtrack!

12. Thousand Foot Krutch (89) – Again, a great rock group

13. Fantastic Plastic Machine (88) – FPM is great mood music.  I enjoy it best when I listen to it sparingly

13. Childish Gambino (88) – Discovered Donald Glover’s alter-ego this year and I like most of the songs for their great puns.

15. Lostprophets (87) – Again, a great group that I’m glad made it to this list.

Category: Music | No Comments »
Tags: last.fm

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 2, 2012

Team Fortress 2

With school over I had plenty of time to get back into video games last month.  I had a blast!

Team Fortress 2 (6 hrs) – Got back into this game because my brother-in-law wanted to play it.  I’d forgotten how awesomely fun it is to play this game!

Plants vs Zombies (5 hrs) – I wanted a quick game of fun so I went after some achievements in PvZ.  I also found this game to be a blast.

Bastion (4 hrs) – There’s a reason why this game is on everyone’s top games of 2011.  This game is amazing.  The action is fun, the narration is mind-blowing, and the soundtrack is so great I’m kicking myself for not buying it together with the game.  Play this game!

Bastion

Batman: Arkham City (3 hrs) – My brother got me this game for Christmas.  As of right now I’m not enjoying it as much as the first game, but I think it’s just like The Matrix – the first one was so mind-blowing that the sequel can’t match it.

Mass Effect 2 (3 hrs) – Got back into this game.  The story is finally picking up and I’ll probably finish this up as soon as I finish with Bastion since Bastion is a shorter game.

Mario Party 8 (2 hrs) – Dina came over to visit and wanted to play Mario party.  It’s the perfect party game because it’s so easy to come from behind and kick everyone’s butt and it’s so awesome yelling at each other.

Mario Kart Wii (1 hr) – Another awesome party game.  It’s just not the same playing this online.  (Also, the Europeans online are INSANE at this game!)

Dungeon Defenders Demo (30 min) – I gave this game a shot because I like Plants vs Zombies and this is also a tower defense game.  But I didn’t enjoy it.  I think it was too hectic for me to do a tower defense game that doesn’t have lanes.

Category: Video Games | 2 Comments »
Tags: Bastion, Batman: Arkham City, Dungeon Defenders Demo, Mario Kart Wii, Mario Party 8, Mass Effect 2, Plants vs Zombies, Team Fortress 2

Posted By Eric Mesa on January 1, 2012

For the last fourth of the year I continued to listen to my music on random via Amarok’s dynamic playlist.  I set it to only play songs that I liked, but other than that left it up to chance.  For the most part, the only exceptions were when I had exams to take and wanted some non-vocal music or to listen to new songs I’d downloaded from Rolling Stone’s website.  Here’s how the artists fared.

1. The Beatles (75) – they continue to be at the top of my list for 2011 because of their ridiculous amount of albums

2. Anamanaguchi (49)- once again the instrumental band Dan introduced me to makes it high on the list thanks to listening during exams.  Considering I only have like 12 songs from them, it’s a respectable showing

3. Aperture Science Psychoacustics Laboratory (45) – The Portal 2 Soundtrack disc 3 was released in this quarter and it has a lot of tracks so it nabbed the number three spot.  Overall, the ambient music is a bit too creepy to listen to all the time, but I do like the ending song.

4. Relient K (42) – I enjoy almost all the Relient K songs I have (except for the first and last albums) so they made a pretty good showing on my list of highly rated songs.

5. MxPx (32) – It’s funny, for a lot of these songs I feel weird listening to them as an adult.  I think punk is a very teen/early adult music genre.  But they do have some great songs that I still enjoy, especially on their later albums.

6. “Weird Al” Yankovic (27) – I don’t remember listening to that much “Weird Al”, but most of his music is great and I’ve only tired of a few of the tracks.

6. Yasunori Mitsuda (27) – I love his work on Chrono Trigger.  I’d love for him to do an orchestrated version although the fan-made orchestrated one I have is pretty darned awesone!

6. Tsutchie (27) – This year I started watching Samurai Champloo and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Cowboy Bebop.  Tsutchie did a lot of the music on the show and it’s a great mix of Western and Eastern rap.

9. Force of Nature (23) – They also worked on the Samurai Champloo soundtrack which is why they’re here.

10. Five Iron Frenzy (21) – I’ve spoken about FIF so many times.  I still love most of the tracks although I’ve tired of some of them.

10. Thousand Foot Krutch (21) – Great rock songs.  Their earlier albums are not as good as their later ones.

12. Anberlin (20) – Again, I love this band.  Unlike some of the other bands on here, I like the earlier stuff better.

13. Sambo Master (19) – Great Japanese rock band

13. Original Cast of RENT (19) – Still one of my favorite Broadway shows.  Love the soundtrack!

15. Lostprophets (17) – I should purposely listen to these guys a bit more.  I really like most of their songs, especially their last two albums.

Category: Music | No Comments »
Tags: last.fm