ChrisBellini.com

The Pens surprised every one (including me) and won the Cup. Iran's citizens had their election stolen from them. A bunch of celebrities died. At the end of the month, I'll be attending two weddings. Combined with a heavy workload at work, I've done absolutely nothing with this website o' mine in the past few months. Yet somehow, I always find time for tunes. Here's what I've been listening to lately while I try to figure out what to do next with ChrisBellini.com:

Alexisonfire - Old Crows / Young Cardinals
Yes, I like "that screaming band". You hear screaming - I hear another texture in the wall of noise. And I don't shun noise. This time around, though, the screaming has been toned way down with Dallas and Wade sharing much more of the vocal duties. Lotsa mid-tempo numbers too, but it all sounds great to me.

Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
Album number two for the re-united J, Murph and Lou (yes, I rhymed that on purpose - I'm lame). Their ninth album takes all of Dinosaur Jr's best traits - noise, J's solos and more noise - and puts them together in a nice package. Even Lou's songs, which are traditionally mellow and introspective, are rockers. It's good to see them in fine form.

Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Contrary to many reviews, this album does not hark back to EVOL, Sister or Daydream Nation. Finely tuned out-of-tune guitars aside, this album chugs along (thanks to Mark Ibold?) with the energy of a band not showing their age.

Think About Life - Family
I don't want to say that Think About Life are Canada's version TV on the Radio, because you'd only agree with that after the initial listen. Repeated listens will reveal their upbeat nature and put you in a good frame of mind.

Winter Gloves - About A Girl
Catchy electro-rock that leaves me anticipating a new album.

I redeemed my self in the conference finals, nailing both of them. Now it all comes down to this. Do or die. And...

...it pains me to say it, but I think Detroit is going to win - again! Ugh. At least this time, I wouldn't be annoyed as I usually would. Detroit and Michigan have fallen on some serious hard times - have you seen the empty seats at the Wings' home games during these playoffs? Maybe winning it all would make this financial meltdown a little bit more bearable for those in Detroit.

Someday, I'll remember how to write a proper blog post complete with content worth reading. But until that day comes, here's what I'm listening to lately.

Crippled Black Phoenix - 200 Tons of Bad Luck
A Love of Shared Disasters prepared us for the apocalypse and 200 Tons of Bad Luck is the traveling carnival you visit on the way out.

Isis - Wavering Radiant
Still drone-y, but Isis have added a few new instruments to their toolbox (organs!).

Japandroids - Post-Nothing
If No Age were more tuneful or if Death From Above 1979 stuck around long enough to record new albums, they might sound like Japandroids. Fuzzed out and catchy pop songs.

Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care
Synth pop minimalists just got a little less minimal.

Metric - Fantasies
Every Metric album up to this point has always sounded like something to kill the time in between Broken Social Scene albums. Now that BSS is on hiatus, Metric has finally recorded a full-fledged album with all the trimmings.

Silversun Pickups - Swoon
Rocks with the familiarity of Carnavas but with the expected sophomore album touches like overdubs and strings.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz
It's Blitz has me chair disco dancin' in my cubicle.

Wow, I was I way off, going 1-3 in round two's predictions. Let's see if I can redeem myself in the Conference Finals:

East
Pittsburgh vs Carolina

West
Detroit vs Chicago

I'm really unsure about that Pens-'Canes series. Carolina aren't called the "Cardiac 'Canes" for nothing. They definitely have the ability to surprise everybody.

In the first round, I went 6-2; stupid Devils and Rangers. At any rate, it's the second round and these are my predictions.

East
Vancouver vs Chicago
Detroit vs Anaheim

West
Boston vs Carolina
Washington vs Pittsburgh (although I'd rather see the Pens win)

I love this time of year. Here’s the first round matchups and my predictions are in bold.

East
Boston vs Montreal
New Jersey vs Carolina
Pittsburgh vs Philadelphia
Washington vs New York Rangers

West
San Jose vs Anaheim
Detroit vs Columbus
Vancouver vs St. Louis
Chicago vs Calgary (still hoping for the Flames to win)

It's been a couple of months since I've posted one of these, so it'll have a few more entries than usual:

• ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - The Century of Self
  Easily their best album since Source Tags and Codes.
• Asobi Seksu - Hush
  Instead of drawing from the My Bloody Valentine chapter of the shoegazing bible, they've flipped the pages to the beginning of the book where the Cocteau Twins' chapter can be found.
• Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains
  Equal parts Built To Spill, Modest Mouse, Pavement and Sonic Youth; these are good touchstones for this young band's first album. I'm looking forward to how they'll mature by taking these influences and turning them into something unique.
• Dan Deacon - Bromst
  This fun collage of sounds makes for great background music at work.
• The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love
  A grand, sweeping rock opera of epic proportion.
• Marnie Stern - This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That
  Wow, can she play guitar. If any of these songs were included in Guitar Hero or Rock Band, your hands would explode trying to out-Fake Plastic Rock her.
• Mastodon - Crack the Skye
  For those unfamiliar with Mastodon, think of a more aggressive version of Yes! or Rush. Crack the Skye catch quite touch Leviathan but it comes close. And if Mastodon's loud 'n' heavy concept albums either frighten you or are beneath you, then Airhead's Joe Mantegna's character's quip about "if it's too loud, you're too old" holds true.
• The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart
  Bubblegum pop run through a My Bloody Valentine filter.

I recently attended a friend of mine's Stag and Doe in my hometown of Timmins, Ontario. Like many young people from Northern Ontario, I graduated from university and relocated to a city with more opportunities that are applicable to my field of study. As such, I make the 800 kilometre trek from Kitchener to Timmins for visits and occasions like the aforementioned Stag and Doe - and in all honesty, I don't do it as often as I should. That said, there are many people in Timmins that I know/knew and have consequently added to my Facebook friends list. While at the Stag and Doe, I noticed some new social dilemmas brought about by social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

There are those on my Facebook friends list - acquaintances, really - whom I speak with sporadically if at all, yet if they provide status updates and post pictures, I have a pretty good idea what's going on in their lives with no actual conversation between us required. I've seen pictures of their vacation to Cuba, the house they just bought, their newborn children and the wicked kegger they went to last weekend. I know when they're happy/sad/at work/[insert any number of life's banalities here]. So when meeting face-to-face with someone I haven't seen in a while whose recent life events are available to me on Facebook, a few awkward moments can occur. For example, people post lots of pictures on Facebook:

Them: Wanna see pictures of our baby?
Me: I saw them when you posted them on Facebook.
Them: Oh, ok. [down-cast face]
Me: [summoning enthusiasm] Let's see them again.

Awkward! It's like entering a room where people are supposed to shout "surprise" at you, but you caught them off guard when they weren't ready, so you're requested to leave and enter the room again and act just as surprised.

Another confusing situation is when you meet a person whom you haven't seen in some time and struggle to start a catching-up conversation. They may have posted status updates about how they hate their boss or renovated their kitchen or bowled a perfect game or bought the Dalai Lama a beer - and you, in turn, commented on these status updates or wrote on each other's walls. The whole face-to-face catching-up chit chat that would normally take place in the good ol' pre-Facebook days is eschewed, and what you're left with is something akin to an old Chris Farley sketch from SNL when it was still watchable:

Me: Hey, remember when you when said you bowled a perfect game and I'm like "three-oh-oh my God, that rawks" and you were all "ya, I was so pumped"?
Them: Yeah.
Me: [giddily] That was awesome.

Admittedly, I'm a staunch technology advocate and early-adopter, but I am concerned about where we're headed as a species. Once upon a time, the concern was that email, IM and IRC would erode our social skills, leaving us tethered to computers in darkened rooms incapable of having in-person conversations ever again. The thing about email, IM and IRC is that they're still essentially two-way communications; you bring up a topic of conversation, then you get a reply, then you reply, then you reply and so on. Social websites like Facebook, on the other hand, allow people to broadcast the goings-on of their lives and an audience comments and rates the activities. It's like we're all Jim Carey's character in The Truman Show, except that we know we're the show and we play it up. Yet because Facebook is our window into everybody else's life, it leaves us with little to say to our acquaintances that we've reconnected with on Facebook when we're standing in front of them once again. Some of our interactions will have to evolve, but how?

I imagine that you've finally recovered from the hangover related to celebrating 1234567890 Day a few weeks ago. Today, the computer/math dorky holiday Square Root Day brings back all of the feelings of joy and wonder only a holiday such as this can.

The reason today is Square Root Day is because the day and the month are both the square root of the last two digits in the current year. So if we break it down:

This year's two-digit representation = 09, or simply 9.
The square root of 9 is 3.
Both today's month and day = 3.
Therefore it's Square Root Day!

So party it up by eating root vegetables like sweet potatoes, radishes and turnips cut into squares. But don't overdo it - give yourself time to recuperate for the next Square Root Day on April 4, 2016 (4.4.2016).

Amazon is now shipping version 2 of their Kindle ebook reader. Many of the blogs and Twitter-ers that I follow are espousing the latest Kindle and mention how quick they are to order one of the $350 USD little gadgets to "try it out".

I know I'm not part of the blogging and Twitter elite - I'm a scrubby Z-lister blogger and Twitter-er - so I'm clearly doing it wrong. Yet I could not fathom a need to drop that kind of cash on a device to "try it out" or even out of a want for the thing, and here's why - if Apple starts selling books on iTunes or the App Store, it's game over for the Kindle.

The Kindle is a little device that allows you to purchase ebooks from Amazon via a built-in 3G-style wireless and read them. That's all well and good, but what about books with full-colour images and illustrations? To me, that would be like ditching your Nintendo DS and picking up the original GameBoy. The other knock I have against the Kindle is its inability to display monospaced fonts. Almost anything I read is related to software development and reading code in a proportional font is unacceptable - you be the judge:

Monospaced Code:

// You should see this in a monospaced font. Yay : - )
using System;

public class HelloWorld
{
   public static void Main(string[] args)
   {
      Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");
   }
}

Proportional Code:
// You should see this in a proportional font. Boo-urns : - (
using System;

public class HelloWorld
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");
}
}

It's a no-brainer.

Which is why I say Apple can destroy the Kindle if they decide to sell ebooks on iTunes or the App Store. The iPhone and iPod Touch have beautiful full-colour displays, can render monospaced fonts and feature full 3G and 802.11 wireless connectivity complete with Web browsing abilities.

Today, a once-in-eternity event happens. On this very day - February 13, 2008 - at exactly 6:31:30 PM (Eastern Standard Time), 1,234,567,890 seconds will have elapsed since 12:00:00 AM (UTC) on January 1, 1970.

What's so special about January 1, 1970, you ask? Officially, it's the moment that Unix time began. The Unix operating system uses the total number of elapsed seconds from that date to internally represent dates/time. Therefore, at 6:31:30 PM (EST) today you may proudly salute your Mac Book Pro, Linksys wireless router, or your Facebook account, because those Unix-based products and services will have reached a worthy (but admittedly useless) milestone.

Economies all over the world are tanking. Doom and gloom hangs in the air like a thick fog of woe. Yet in all of this darkness there is a light - a bright light of hope. You can join our team and, with your software development skills, help us fight the good fight against malware. Our Waterloo office currently has two new positions available:

Software QA Lead

Software Developer

Interested?