I was at a loss for words when I found just how srs my brother really is. Check it out: Matt is Totally Serious.

Just … wow.

I listen to tons and tons of Buckethead - like easily 50% of what I listen to, and probably closer to 80%. A buddy introduced me to Buckethead around June and my fandom has grown steadily since then.  As I was listening to mostly Rush and Nine Inch Nails at the time, it was initially very weird to get used to hearing fully instrumental music - you really do get used to voice being one of the instruments in a band!  Besides having some really insane technical skills on the guitar, he’s also an extremely talented songwriter that can cover a huge range of styles.

Buckethead just came out with three new albums, which I ordered and received last week.  Unsurprisingly, two of them are a bit weird and experimental - Buckethead puts out a lot of different styles - but one of them (Decoding the Tomb of Bansheebot) is classic Buckethead and completely off the hook.  On top of that, I’ve been swimming in high quality Buckethead bootlegs ever since discovering archive.org’s amazing Buckethead live collection.  While there are a few low quality ones at archive.org, it’s quite surprising how many are such good quality; some of them sound nearly as good as soundboard recordings!

Buckethead’s not for the faint of heart - he has a bit of a twisted sense of humor, but I assure you it’s all in good fun.  I really like Buckethead.

I added the “Latest Tweet” to this page a while ago, but never actually mentioned Twitter. Twitter is a damn cool service - I’m hesitant to even call it a “web site”, as that’s not usually how I even access it - which centers around posting small messages to friends and/or the public. At first, I wasn’t really sure what use it would serve, but I’d heard some rumblings and ravings about it, so one day I decided to just give it a try.

If you enter Twitter alone, you very well might not “get it”. It asks you, “What are you doing?”, but you don’t really have a feel for the target audience. At first, I felt like I was just duplicating my chat status / away messages; it seemed a little pointless! Then, over the course of a week or so, a few things happened: two of my closest friends signed up and started posting updates; I linked it to my phone, so I could send and receive updates through it, too; and I loaded up an awesome Twitter desktop app called Twitterrific. Soon, the service really clicked, we were all using it, and we were all saying, “Twitter is so awesome!”

It’s a very simple but elegant system for which I can envision a lot of different uses. For me, it’s a great way to stay in touch with my friends throughout the day, even when one of us does not have access to a computer (or our own computer). It’s also much quicker and less formal than typing an e-mail or posting to a Google Group. Others use it for micro-blogging, social networking, or meeting new people. I highly recommend it!

Recently, I have begun checking out another service called Pownce. I originally heard this described as “Twitter on steroids”, which piqued my interest because I love Twitter so much. The basic premise seems the same, but there are some key features added - and lacking. The good stuff: different types of things to send - messages, links, files, and events; each item can have its own replies, like a blog post; more options for grouping friends and to whom each message goes (really great!); a very nice, elegant presentation on the web site; messages and files you send are displayed in an appropriate way - events look like a calendar entry, pictures are displayed, movies and music can play from the browser. The bad stuff: no phone interaction (the big one for me); no public API (yet); the desktop app, provided by Pownce, is ugly and clunky compared to Twitterrific, IMO; the elegance of Twitter’s simplicity is sacrificed, though it’s a trade-off for the features that are added.

Despite my gripes, I find myself coming back to Pownce regularly and I think it has lots of potential. I have reservations about using both services, as sometimes I simply find myself cross-posting, but I also find that each really does have its own flavor that facilitates different types of activity. I don’t think I’ll be using both of them a year from now unless there’s some kind of convergence, but for now I am. Lastly, Pownce is still in beta, so I don’t judge it too harshly for the stuff it’s lacking.

I’d say check them both out if you haven’t already. I’ve got Pownce invites if you need them. =)

In my many months long blog hiatus, I’ve been playing a lot of guitar. I’ve toyed with a lot of song writing, but nothing too serious until lately. A bass guitar purchase has been on my radar for a while - even as far as having everything loaded into my cart at Musician’s Friend - but I’d basically been putting it off as long as possible. Well, a couple weeks ago I ended up writing an instrumental song that I was very happy with, so I simply had to get a bass to lay down some bass tracks for it. =)

Several hundred dollars later, I had myself a shiny new Ibanez GSR200 - very shiny! I had never played a bass guitar before in my life, so I don’t have much objective reference as far as its playability or sound, but I feel that I made a pretty well educated decision on buying a decent first bass. (MF has a nice 45-day return policy, which quelled my fears somewhat…) It seems pretty sturdy and well constructed, feels good in my hands, and sounds good to me, though - I definitely have no complaints! I am already quite enjoying exploring playing bass, finding it to be quite different from a “regular” 6-string guitar.

Now the good part - some pics: opening the box; shiny, sitting on the stand; group shot with all my main gear. Oh yeah, the white guitar is my lovely PRS Santana SE, which I never ended up posting about. There was a snafu with the SE Custom order from the guitar shop (guess why I’m ordering online now?) and that’s what I ended up getting instead. Luckily, despite their poor customer service, the guitar and the Toneport UX2 I bought from them work great! Hopefully I’ll be posting some samples of my playing in the near future.