Albums of 2008

Top 10(+1) (in reverse alphabetical order)
Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Favorites: Walcott, A-Punk, entire cd!

NY 4 piece band with a diverse background (and it shows) that put together an excellent first album. Makes me want to sing-a-long and even Jimmie tells me she likes it. Now that's saying something!

Santogold - Santogold
Unstoppable, Creator, You'll Find A Way

Another diverse disk from what sounds like a UK R&B/hip-hop artist... except this isn't R&B. Instead this is like angry elctronic-dub-pop or something.

Plants and Animals - Parc Avenue
Faerie Dance, Good Friend

Canadian 3-piece rock band with another notable first effort. I'm also bias because I saw them live, but they have the ability to jam when they want to but also have softer songs with clever lyrics. Works for me.

Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping
Id Enganger, An Eluardian Instance, For Our Elegant Caste

Of Montreal... probably one of the more bizarre artists on this list. This can easily be heard if you listen to the lyrics which include such tidbits like "I'm a black shemale" (stage persona) and "we can do it softcore if you want, but you should know I take it both ways". This album is notably different from past releases and is more funky.

The Oaks - Songs for Waiting
The Attraction of the Pilgrim, The Two Calls, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Indie/folk rock from FL. Meaningful music with lyrics telling stories... pretty easy to get lost to as the sound is defintely natural and not over-produced.

Microfilm - The Slingshot Orchestra
Dario Argento, Disco Demolition Derby, Ciccone

Electronic duo out of Oregon. Bonus points for personally responding to me on FB to a linking error I emailed them about. Tracks do an excellent job of eaving different beats/melodies and distorting vocals, etc. I'm a sucker for those sorts of things.

Forest City Lovers - Haunting Moon Sinking
Country Road, And the Trees, Orphans

More folk/indie rock... this time out of Canada (again). Must be the consistent cold weather, but the Canadians always take up a decent chunk of my listening time. THis is perhaps a more orchestra/pop sounding version of the Oaks and switch from male to female vocals.

Foals - Antidotes
Olympic Airways, The French Open, Hummer

Punk/Dance rock out of you guessed it.. the UK. Stick them in the category with Bloc Party, Forward Russia, etc. Fast paced and catchy, it makes me tap my feet and rock the head and attempt to sing with a British accent.

Cloud Cult - Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)
May Your Hearts Stay Strong, When Water Comes to Life, Everybody Here is a Cloud
*** Bonus points for coolest album artwork featuring tornadoes!***

So a relatively local band (Minneapolis) gets a knod on the list. Indie rock that is frankly, at times, bizaare, but I like it. Many of you may have already heard of this group unknowingly... they have a song on einsurance commericals now (which are equally bizarre). With some weather theme going on here, plenty of bonus points for this release.

Beach House - Devotion
Astronaut, Turtle Island, Home Again

Indie/Folk Rock from Maryland. Good music for a rainy/fall day... slow paced and sentimental sounding.

Alaska in Winter - Holiday
Close Your Eyes (remix), Highlander Pt. 1, We are Blind and Riding the Merry-Go-Ground

2nd album from this folk/electronic/indie group. With ties to Beirut, there is no suprise it has some of that balkan sound going. This album is a little more diversified than their first release, however. Amazing to think this all originated from a HS dropout in New Mexico of all places (along with Beirut). Where did that talent come from??? THis album gets runner-up for album artwork haha.

Honorable Mentions:
Bloc Party - Intimacy
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Forward Russia - Life Processes

Albums I still enjoyed but didn't make the cut:
Young Jeezy - The Recession (winner of hip-hop category)
Willoughby - I Know What You're Up To
A Weather - Cove
Bionic Commando Rearmed - Soundtrack
Semifinalists - 2
Portishead - Third
The Organ - Thieves EP
Oh No Oh My - Dmitrij, Dmitrij
Noah and the Whale - Peaceful the World Lays me Down
Mystery Jets - Twenty One
The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath
Islands - Arm's Way - ** Bonus for touring to North Dakota**
Calexico - Carried to Dust

Update!

Not much to update. Well I suppose there's a bazillion things to blog about since I posted last time, but I'm lazy so I'll summarize.

Summer is over! Cool temps have arrived... I enjoy the fall, however, so it's ok with me - as long as it doesn't get too cold too quick!

I wish I could say I entered the semester well rested, but that would be a lie. Between finishing the paper up, remodeling projects, etc. I could use an actual break. Not sure when that will occur.

This semester will include a flurry of research including revisions to the paper from the coauthors, and then starting a new "sub-project" semi-related to what I'm doing and presenting research in NYC at the end of October. That's pretty darn soon so we'll see how that goes. Also have some other directions to pursue in the normal research. On top of that, I'm TA'n a radar class and lecturing for my advisor's class when he is gone which will be frequent this semester. I believe he has at least 3 ~week long meetings lined up.

With fall also comes softball season! Our co-ed meteorologist team had it's first two games about two weeks ago. I had an OK outing going 2-2 until I jacked up my knee tagging up on first. One of those crazy fluke accidents, but it made a horrible popping noise and gave out of me. Needless to say I'm on the DL for who knows how long. While I can gimp around handily, it still has a long way to go to feel even 50%. The biggest issue is I can not bend it back very far or lock it completely straight. HOPEFULLY this is because of all the fluid and junk lingering around. The doc said my ligaments seemed ok right after the injury, however, he said there is always a concern for cartiledge damage. I'll probably give it another week or two and if it doesn't look like it's making progress, I'll go back in. That will probably involve getting an MRI and seeing what's up. Until then, I'm loading up on some joint medicine, and limiting myself to basically walking.

Old Skool... DOS and Micro Machines

The internets are an amazing thing...

I recently found out about Dosbox... an emulator for running dos games in windows! I've been catching up on many of my old favorites...

Indy 500 We would play this to see who could make the largest car crash.

Flight sims were also a favorite such as...
Chuck Yeager's Air Combat
A-10 Tank Killer (man did SAMs suck!)
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (amazing because you could man turrets on bombers)
Aces over Series (Europe,Pacific, etc.)
Red Baron

Side Scroller shooters, many by Apogee such as...
Commander Keen
Secret Agent
Duke Nukem 1/2 etc.

Top-down space shooter/RPGs
Star Control
Solar Winds

Then there was teh classic line of Lucas Arts games such as///
X-wing
Tie-Fighter (I remember the tie defender simply owned space)
Dark Forces, etc.

I can thank many of the games above for getting me into computers. I defintely remember learning how to do command line stuff by making book disks and editing autoexec.bat to load the proper amount of base memory (600k!?!?!?) needed.


Another great memory I just recalled is one of my favorite toys... Micro Machines (with the other being legos)! I found a website which is an online museum!

It's amazing how many of these I can remember owning. For example, I remember getting in deep crap for leaving them out in the hallway. One of my favorites, a German ME-109 got crunched by my mom, hurting her foot. WWII aircraft were defintely my favorite such as this one. Others came in crazy color schemes such as this Corsair I had.

A month goes by...

1. I passed the qual and by a good margin. Yay!

2. Been busy with housework.

3. I had a long post planned, but I forget what it was going to detail. Oh well! I'm too lazy... just wrapped up working around the house for tonight.

The Rumor Mill

Word on the street says PASS with regards to the qual exam. Yay! Still awaiting official word. Tomorrow stats the laundry list of work on the house... going to tackle the entryway and upstairs hallway and fix the whacked out tape/mud job previous owners did on the drywall. Once that is completed and the walls are touched up... it's painting time!

nothing to report

it's summer! nothing to report!

Uh Oh...

Boredom... what's that??? Now I remember! It's amazing how much weight has been lifted off the shoulders. The qual exam has honestly been the biggest fear of my life for the last who knows how many years.

I celebrated Memorial Day by going into the office. Believe it or now, Aaron is disorganized when it comes to some things... especially class notes. I have spent parts of the last 3 days slowly but surely organizing my piles of classwork. I bought drop in folders for my file drawers in the office. I then separated classes into notes and hw/test categories. In the process I filled 1/2 a recycle bin (essentially a garbage can) in our building with paper. There are still shreds of paper ends from my notebooks covering the floor. I feel sorry for the janitor!!!

Sadly, I did not receive the NASA fellowship. I had one really good review, and one review that called us naive. The sad thing is I agree exactly with what the reviewer said, however, I have stressed what he said was not possible wasn't and instead, was trying to show how well these schemes of a model work and where they can be proved. I guess I didn't word it well enough. With a bit of rewording, I'm confident I could of had the fellowship which is what really pains me. Oh well! Live and learn.

In other news, I must be getting crazy cause I finally had the hey it would be nice to have a kid(s) and start a family feeling. Probably cuase I was out biking and saw a bunch of familes out enjoying the weather and crap. I told Jimmie if we could both get in shape we could confront that topic... don't want that to occur to quick so I sit here with some mint m&ms haha. I must really be bored!