Upon purchase, I quickly came to understand that “The Hazards of Love” is a concept album in the truest sense: the songs are a single, uninterrupted blob – continuous sound from the haunting opening notes of “Prelude” to the final waves of “The Hazards of Love, Part 4.”  The challenge, as with any Decemberists offering, is to decipher the meaning of the often Victorian-style lyrics, and with “The Hazards of Love,” it’s proven to be a challenge.  However, within, find my interpretation of the Hazards of Love story.

Before I get into it, let me address a few complaints I have with this album:

1. The CD liner smells like a camel pen
2. The font in the liner booklet is far too small, doubling the challenge
3. That’s it

I have no other complaints about this disc at all.  In fact, I’ve read only two complaints online, the first being that the talented Jenny Conlee is underused.  To those who have noted that, I urge you to relisten.  Her harpsichord, the Hammond, and her accordion can be heard throughout the album, and while she certainly takes a backseat on some songs, she provides depth to many of the themes that might otherwise deliver much less forcefully their message.

To those  who felt this album is too “heavy metal” and too far a departure from previous Decemberists material, I ask you to relisten paying greater attention to the story.  There is no unnecessary “metal” here.  There is only emotion to properly align to the lyrics.  The queen is accompanied by loud electric guitar.

So, let’s get on with it, shall we? Please read on, I’ll include my entire dissection of “The Hazards of Love.”

The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone)

This song sets up the entire story.  We learn right away that a young lady – who we will later love as our heroine Margaret – goes horseriding out past the fields, far from home.  She crosses into the forest, as she often does, and comes upon a young deer at the edge of the forest, injured and limping, but despite the rapidly approaching dusk (“white and green and gray“), being a woman, the fairer, caring gender, she dismounts and tries to help the fawn.  Before she can assist, she feels a sharp shake of the ground, and the fawn shifts shape into a man.  She glances upon the man and falls immediately in love with him, and he with her.

They have sex, right there, in the forest, upon the forest floor, flowers and leaf beds (the “thistles“) providing the only padding.

Later, back in the grounds of the village,  the ladies relax and chit-chat, worry-free and without care, except one: our Margaret, who is otherwise distracted and thinking of her William and their marvelous encounters in the forest.

A Bower Song

Margaret’s sister, or perhaps just another maiden (Edit: or a nun), approaches and says to our heroine, “Don’t cry, Margaret! I know you’re pregnant, when are you going to give birth? And, by the way, which of the jerks around town is your baby daddy?” (I had some trouble with the line “when wilt thou trouble the water in the cistern“, but I’ve decided that troubling the water must mean draining it or reducing the level, which would mean an event that would require lots of cleaning, in short: the birth.)  As Margaret’s baby bump begins to show, rather than stay with the maidens and be exposed, she packs her things and heads back to the forest to find her William.

Won’t Want For Love

Our Margaret makes her way back to the forest in search of William, begging the forest as she goes to create a path to lead her to William and to alert him that she seeks him.  As she grows tired, she makes a bed in the forest, just as she and William shared a leafy bed in moons past.

Meanwhile, not so far away, William calls to Margaret, he pains to be with her.

The Hazards of Love  2 (Wager All)

William finds Margaret and they declare their love for one another.  William tenderly confesses that he feels more for her than just a need for sex, rather, he loves her.  He lays her down in soft clovers and makes love to her beneath the sky.  In post-coital bliss, he tells he that he wishes that they could lay together all night, naked, until the morning birds sing.  We’ll later learn that he explains his predicament: his mother, the Queen of the Forest, she who rescued him from a clay cradle in the rough rivers, has cast a spell upon him.  He will live the remainder of his days as a fawn by day, a man only by night.  But he will risk everything for Margaret, he will face his mother, in due time…

The Queen’s Approach

Unbeknownst to our lovers, William’s adoptive mother, the Queen, approaches.  Our lovers, in great haste, part ways once again. Update: I’ve been rethinking this. It makes more sense that the Queen catches William and Margaret, and as a result, she forbids William from going out at night. That’s why they’ve spent nights together, but he must beg his mother to let him out in “The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid”.

Isn’t It a Lovely Night?

I like to believe that our lovers sing this song while together, but it makes more sense to me that as Margaret soliloquizes from her perch in the forest, William sings from afar.  Margaret remains, perhaps, in the bed of flowers and clovers referenced earlier that she and William had shared.  She cherishes her baby-to-be, the child of William.  William, retreating to his forest dwelling, smiles giddily remembering how the breeze bent the leaves which tickled him as he made love to Margaret in the brush.  Each agrees that in many ways, parting again is like dying a little death. Update: As pointed out in the comments below, “little death” is middle English slang for orgasm. Make of that what you will.

The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid

Now the story gets interesting.  The Queen — William’s adoptive mother — finds William, and although she hasn’t caught him in the act,, she knows that he’s been out sleeping with a woman.   In anger, he tells her that he heard her coming, her approach was betrayed by the weight of her footsteps, much like black smoke covering a coffin precedes a funeral. He tells her that he wants this night to do as he pleases, for the need to be with her is strong, and although he can suppress it from time to time, sometimes, he cannot (hence, the wanting comes in waves).

She responds: “Hold on, I saved you from the river.  I cradled you.  I raised you.  I protected you.  You belong to me.  And now you want the night, the only time you’re a man, to spend with other women?   This is how you repay me for the years I spent as your mother?”

He bargains with her; he makes a foolish, pennywise offer: let me free for this one night, and I will return by dawn, and I will be yours forever.  Of course, we already know, he’s planning to run with Margaret.  After all, he’d “wager all.”

Th mother thinks this over and carefully responds: “Ok, you can have tonight – total freedom.  But here’s the catch, as you promised, come morning,  you belong to me for all future nights.  You just cashed in your one favor, m’boy, from here on out, we’re sqaure.”

An Interlude

Relax and enjoy friends, we’ve know the backstory, here’s where the adventure begins.

The Rake’s Song

Enter: The Rake.  The Rake is a vile man, married young.  The first 9 or so months of marriage was great, as he got lots of sex from his wife.  Of course, there was one unintended consequenece: she started having babies.  However, when delivering her fourth child, she and the baby died, leaving the rake with three kids and no chance to have the amount of sex he was craving. So he sets about to change his life: he poisons Charlotte by feeding her bad flowers.  He drowns poor Dawn in the bathtub.   And while his son Isiah struggles admirably, nonetheless, he kills him, and in response to the fighting, he burns the body.  Though we might think he’d be bothered by all of this, he assures us, it’s never really bothered him.

The Abduction of Margaret

The rake hides in the bushes, the very same bushes in which William and Margaret enjoyed their first enounter together.  As Margaret passes, the rake grabs her, binds her hands, throws her over his shoulder then across his horse, galloping away.  Then he comes to Annan Water, the uncrossable wild river, the very river from which the Queen once rescued baby William!

The Queen’s Rebuke/The Crossing

Here we learn the backstory I referred to above: the Queen, she of the very fabric of the forest, found William in a clay cradle.  She took the poor baby and gave him the form of a fawn by day.

“So,” she says to the Rake, “since you have kidnapped Margaret, the only thing that has ever tempted my poor boy to defy me, I will fly you over the uncrossable Annan Water, so that William will be unable to chase you.  In exchange, you may keep young Margaret, to do with as you will, including raping and killing her, if you so desire.”

Annan Water

Meanwhile, William discovers that Margaret is nowhere to found, and upon tracking her trail, soon learns that she has been abducted.  He begins his quest to rescue her, but soon finds himself at the bank of Annan Water, the uncrossable river.  The river is far too wild and untamed to be crossed without a suitable boat of some sort,  a device which he neither has nor has time to make.  His horse would never make it across, and his mother has warned him many times that attempting to cross on horse would certainly end in his death.

But William is close, and can hear poor Margaret’s screams.  He is due to return to his mother for eternity and Margaret is captured by the Rake.  Desperate, he beckons the river: “Please, river, let me cross.  As I cannot grow wings and fly across, calm your waters and let me save my love.  If you do this, I will return, and if you desire, you can have my body then.  I will willingly submit myself to you.  Just let me pass to rescue my Margaret!”

Margaret In Captivity

The Rake, in one of the particularly creepy moments of the tale, paces about the bound Margaret in a small, abandoned forest castle, leans in, and tells her pointedly, “My swan, do not struggle, as you will only cause yourself rope burns or break your precious wrists and fingers. ”

But she calls for William.

“Don’t bother getting your hopes up,” the Rake continues, “no one will hear you, and no one will find you.  At least not before I’ve raped and killed you.”

But she calls for William!

The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)

The song begins with theme from “The Wanting Comes in Waves,” which we know, by now, is William’s theme.  William comes for his Margaret! But is he in time?

But wait! What is that sound? It’s the ghost of Charlotte, come to warn her father that his children have returned, she rises. Enter Dawn, chastising papa for keeping the water running, but fear not – she breathes again.  And Isiah,  the struggling son, has returned as well.  In fact, the Rake is driven mad by the return of his vengeful children.

The children have saved Margaret temporarily, but for long enough?

The Wanting Comes in Waves (Reprise)

The lack of lyrics here leave much of the story up to us, so here is how I see it: as the Rake is struggling with the ghosts of his late children, William triumphantly bursts into the fortress, killing the Rake, and saving his Margaret!  He pulls loose her binds and they leave the body of the Rake behind to be forgotten.

The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)

No Decemberists adventure is complete without a tragic ending.  This one bothers me more than most.  I wish it didn’t end this way, but I think it’s clear what happens.

William and Margaret are now stuck on the far side of Annan Water.  They attempt to cross, but the waters, obeying William’s one-time wish, attempt to claim his body, as he promised.  He cannot escape Annan Water like he did his mother.  So, as he and Margaret struggle to stay above water, William asks Margaret to marry him, with only the waves to witness their matrimony.

William’s debt to the water exists, of course, only because he decided to rescue Margaret, and Margaret knows this. What is left for our star-crossed lovers? William can only be a man during the day and his nights are promised to his mother, who will stop at nothing to prevent Margaret and William from being together. Margaret cannot return home with child. William cannot stay in the forest, as he has crossed his mother, and she has sent the Rake after Margaret. It looks like there will be no happy ending for our hero and heroine.

In their last moments, they swear eternal loyalty to one another and share a final and touching kiss as the air rushes from their lungs and, then, gently and willingly, they submit to the rough waters of Annan.  And with that, our poor lovers break the surface and rest, entwined, at peace, undisturbed, in Annan Water, for eternity.

————————-

What we don’t know is whether or not the child has survived.  It would be nice to think that Margaret has actually delivered the baby and that the poor child survives.  It’s funny to think that somehow, William himself was abandoned in the forest.  However, it seems unlikely that Margaret would have been wandering for the Rake to seize her without her baby.  I fear the child has gone to the eternal rest with his parents.

Either way, it’s sad to think that William and Margaret were unable to escape and live happily ever after.  I’ve listened to the album several times through, and I fear I cannot find any way to bend the story such that they don’t die.  Unfortunately, this is one section of the lyrics that is relatively straightforward.

A note on geography: the first Hazards of Love makes reference to Offa’s Wall. Offa’s Dyke is, according to Wikipedia, “is a massive linear earthwork, roughly following some of the current border between England and Wales.” That, it would seem, puts us in the British isles. The Rake’s fourth child was named “Myfanwy,” which is an Welsh name, which seems to set us firmly in Welch territory. The only hesitation I have on this is that the taiga, referenced a few times, doesn’t extend to Wales.

There is a town called Annan Water in Scotland, not far from Glasgow, which I found by simply Googling Annan Water. It doesn’t appear there is taiga in Scotland, although there are apparently “taiga bean geese” which are nearly extinction. Given that Annan Water is in Scotland, but Offa’s Dyke in Wales, I think it’s safe to give Meloy and crew some poetic license and simply conclude that it’s either Wales, England, or Scotland. I’m even willing to grant that the “taiga” we’re referring to is only cold forest, but that, for literary amusement, we’re calling it taiga. I may be wrong here, but I don’t think it’s necessary to plot the location with GPS precision.

The incredible story of this album is puntuated by the recurring themes of the music and the associated voices.  I am absolutely haunted by Queen, voiced by the incredibly vocally gifted Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond.  Her last note of “Repaid” is one of the most amazing moments of the story.  She conveys the Queen’s seriousness in one dramatic note.

The tragic story of The Hazards of Love is one that is best understood upon multiple listenings.  Take the time to pass over it more than once before passing judgement, as a complete package, it’s absolutely enchanting.

From this scene, many bands grew, most notably in my mind: Gorilla Biscuits, Fugazi, Quicksand, Sunny Day Real Estate, and many others.  Also a defining moment in emo history was the release of the commercial flop “Pinkerton,” Weezer’s 1995 masterpiece, which is now often considered the band’s best release.  Although once very popular in this scene, one band that is largely forgotten is “Sense Field.”  From California, former members of Reason to Believe got together and created several demos before releasing the eponymous Sense Field. 1994 welcomed the beautiful Killed for Less, which is a great album: fantastic music, but in contrast, still maturing lyrically.  Then, shortly thereafter, Sense Field delivered Building.  Building is an amazing album, full of energy, fun, kicking beat, and melody.  The unique voice of lead singer Jon Bunch (who later fronted Further Seems Forever) is especially well suited for this type of music, which captures the 90s Gen-X angst that had yet to become whiny and obnoxious Gen-Y posing.

The first track of Building, called Overstand, is a short but sweet song that will hook you.  If you like this style of music, you’ll be ready to delve in further right away.  Side 1 will just keep kicking your butt.  This generally continues through Different Times, Will, and Leia, and lasts all the way through the final track, Sight Unseen, which is also in the run for my favorite.  In fact, there’s only one song on this CD that I’m not crazy about, but lest I spoil you, I’ll keep it a mystery.  The fact remains that Sense Field delivered and then some with Building.

Sense Field went on to record three more albums including an EP, however, the final two albums never really had the magic spark, which singer Jon Bunch attributed to several factors, including the label pressures and bad financial decisions, but moreso to the fact that the scene had changed and the guys had just lost their passion for that band at that time.   I was able to see Sense Field on the east coast twice on two different tours, and the final time, I was able not only to meet them all, but also chat with them.  It was sad that so few people appeared to know their songs and their history.  Unfortunately, Sense Field is likely to be most remembered for their one radio hit, “Save Yourself,” about abstinence, which may have ironically led to their downfall.  Not only did the song get them labeled a “Christian band” (“not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we’re not a Christian band,” says Bunch) , but it also gave people a taste of Sense Field that really wasn’t who they were, leading people to check them out and then potentially be disappointed.

Nothing will change the fact that Building was and remains and incredible album, strangely as strong today as it was then.  Check out Sense Field’s Building on Amazon.com.

Heroes has, for some time now, sucked.  Long ago, the writers decided to give up on character consistency, and they decided that they would have the characters stop on a dime and act completely contrary to their previous actions.  Case in point: Nathan, who quickly turned on his fellow mutants and now wants Peter dead, apparently.  I can’t even get into Heroes other than to say it’s such a mess it really should be canceled altogether.

Kyle XY is a show I started watching when I was a sick a few years ago, and I kept on for the mystery.  The problem is: the writers revealed too much too soon, and when the basic mysteries were solved, the second season introduced a worthless character, Jesse XX, as a plot device.  Then the plot become bigger as they introduced “Adam Baylin”, and explained a backstory to Zzyzx.  When that concluded, we learned that Madacorp was behind it all.  When that was done, we learned that it was actually “Latnok” was behind it all.  In other words, the lazy writers just keep making up more complex backstory as they go.  I hate to be a broken record, but compare this to LOST, where a clear vision in the first place prevented sloppy cut-and-go storytelling that leaves everyone confused. The good news is, this show was canceled, so hopefully they can conclude it nicely and wrap everything up cleanly.

Grey’s Anatomy, an interesting show in season 1, has gotten worse with age.  Each season has been less intriguing and more annoying.  Every single character sounds like Shonda Rhymes now, they all have the same affectational pitter-patter sing-song intonation.  I hate Izzie, who was once interesting.  I hate George, who has become an extra.  I hate Bailey, who vascillates between a professional and over-attached.  I hate Meredith, who is whiny.  I hate Cristina, who is a cold bitch.  I hate Callie, who whines and made the fastest jump to Lesbianism ever.  I hate the Chief, who is a total pushover.  Actually, I like little Grey, Shephard, and Sloan, and I’m learning to like Dr Arizona, but mostly because she’s kinda hot.   Either way, this show jumped the shark long ago, and I wish they’d put it to sleep.

Prison Break has introduced more plot twists than any show ever in history, but once you get used to it, it’s kinda fun.  However, it’s carried on for 4 seasons now, far longer than the concept of a “prison break” should have permitted.  I am glad they pulled the plug on this, not because it’s not fun, but because some premises simply can’t sustain forever.

On a lighter note, I originally had called “Fringe” a disappointment, but I must say, I’m feeling good about it lately.  It’s interesting, the characters are getting to be consistent and interesting, and the overall storyline is shaping up like the X Files: small mystery solved each week, large mystery gets more complex.  I hope this show gets even more time to bloom.

The singles released from “Leaving Though the Window,” their first album, include “Punk Rock Princess” and “If U C Jorden”, both of which, I think, hold up well today. But the masterpieces are in between: the gorgeous harmony of “Hurricane,” the slow rocking of “Fall,” the bounce of “I Woke Up in a Car,” the humor of “Drunk Girl.” Something Corporate was able to convey a sense of humor balanced against their strong composition. For example, without sounding didactic – the way they build up to the first chorus but pull it away in favor of another verse; or the way a first chorus will only give you half the lines before the fuller subsequent ones. “Leave ‘em wanting more” really does apply with music, and it leads to repeat listens.

What makes Something Corporate unique is that they are built around the piano played by their frontman, Andrew McMahon. As a result, every song has a depth and tone missed by second rate bands like “Panic! At the Disco” and “Fall Out Boy” driven by almost entirely by power chords. The future for Something Corporate is definitely cloudy: McMahon was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after recording a solo album mid-decade and has gone on record suggesting his interest in Something Corporate is more nostalgic than create, but also as suggesting that not ever recording and touring again would be a let down to fans. Not counting demos, EPs, maxi-singles, and earlier releases, we only have two major releases for this young and talented band. Every single song on “Leaving Through the Window” is worth a listen. You should check it out.

Picasa is tightly bound to Picasa Web Albums, the first 1GB of which is also free, in contrast with Apple’s MobileMe, which runs $99/year.  In addition, in my experience, Picasa Web, while it has its drawbacks to be certain, worked pretty much everywhere, whereas I’ve had problems getting MobileMe’s photo gallery to work properly.  

I’ve chronicled my wish for Picasa for Mac for about 3 years now.  As you can see, the post continues to receive comments and remains, to this day, one of the most visited entries on my site. Clearly, there is demand for this product.

What I believe makes Picasa such a successful product is just how powerful it is. Although iPhoto works very well on the Mac and the iLife integration across applications is priceless, the fact remains that for serious editing and effects, the Mac user must venture outside of iPhoto. Picasa, on the other hand, has an entire suite of tools for photo finishing. Furthermore, Picasa features Google’s search tool, a bevy of organization tools, a plugin system using “buttons,” out-of-the-box integration with Gmail, Blogger, Picasa Web Albums, and the ability to make collages, movies, and more. In fact, there is little doubt that Picasa is a much more robust application that iPhoto.

There are some missing features in this beta: Geotagging didn’t make the cut, nor did webcam capture, screen capture, and screensaver. Also missing are the ability to order prints, an HTML export, and the fantastic Picasa Photo Viewer. Most of these features are certainly tied tighter into the OS, and while they will be missed, they are by no means deal-breakers.

I noticed the menus in Picasa for Mac are very “Windows-y.”  The menu bar still has a “File/Edit/View/Tools” bar across the top, which is decidedly “un-Mac-like,” although the preferences window does use the current Mac look and feel.  

What remains to be seen is whether or not Picasa is stable, whether or not it’s fast, and whether or not it can handle large photo libraries. I know people with well over 15,000 photos in their iPhoto collection, and the application is solid. Since Picasa doesn’t store it’s own library, but rather, merely catalogs photos elsewhere on your disk, we’ll have to see whether this translates into a performance advantage or disadvantage. It remains to be seen if Picasa for Mac can go toe-to-toe with more mature, native solutions. That said, count me in as one of the many waiting to find out.

Heroes is a brilliant concept executed as poorly as possible.  It’s of of the worst written, poorest plot-bearing, illest planned, silliest scripted series ever to grace Sci Fi.  Everything about Heroes stinks except the actors and the core concept.  The rest blows.  Let’s examine:

1. Firstly, we’ve got a science problem  

The science of Heroes is always screwy.  Some might argue that there must be a certain suspension of disbelief with science fiction, and I’d agree.  We suspend disbelief about the fact that there, for example, is space travel in Star Trek, but we expect the writers to follow the known laws of physics in space.  We expect the ship to be sound.  And we expect that when the rules are bent, there’s a reasonable and semi-believable explanation.   With Heroes, we have a day long eclipse that occurs everywhere at once.  We have someone who can run REALLY fast who can apparently bring anyone with her at the same speed.  If you can fly, you can apparently lift anything through flight.  

2. Second, we’ve got a motivation problem

A “volume,” which runs about half a season, takes 13-16 weeks to unfold.  But it occurs in much less time for the characters.  And yet, they go through major emotional changes in a short span.  Just look at Sylar.  He went from villian to man seearching for redemption to soon-to-be loving father to angry to ruthless villian in the span of this story.   Why would he change so quickly? His actions make no sense.  Going from “No, Sylar, I *am* your mother” to ‘I’m working for Dad’ to ‘I’m going to kill Angela’ was too rocky and didn’t give the character time to understand his own actions or emotions.   Let’s not even get started on Mohinder, who makes no sense at all, or Angela, or worst of all, Arthur, who could have avoided this entire series by simply making Nathan not investigate Linderman in the first place, which means no need for Angela to kill him, which means no revenge, which means no Pinehurst, which means no Nathan vs. Peter.  Which leads me to…

3. We’ve got a logic problem

Aside from things like “Why is Sylar changing his motivations so quickly?” there are much bigger logic flaws, like for example, ”Why does Clair hate her father one minute but then love him the next ALL SEASON LONG?” Sorry, but this is central to the show.  The Bennetts – Clair and Noah- are core characters.  So making their emotions so whimsy is not just a character motivation problem, but rather a major logic flaw.  These characters are inconsistent.  Is Clair a cheerleader, a kid, or a company warrior? How can someone work for this elite “Company” with no real training other than smacking a stick around for a few minutes? Why does Clair – and Noah – think  that regeneration abilities makes someone a natural for fighting this huge “war”? 

4. We’ve got plot problems

What was the point of the eclipse? Why did they make a big deal about the catalyst if it was resolved so readily? Where would the catalyst gone had Hiro not shown up to take it?  Why did Parkman have to have the spirit walk? What about HIro? These things were required for nothing other than killing time.  There was barely anything happening this arc.  When you introduce information and plot points that have no real value to the story, it’s your first clue that your writers are in over their heads.  Suckage. 

5. Lastly, we’ve got a concept problem

This concept is so brilliant, the idea of following “specials” around.  But the implementation is flawed, because you’ve decided to commit to your cast.  This concept would have been awesome if, as we followed each volume, we moved to new, interesting characters.  A built in reboot every half season.  But unfortunately, now this show is like any other serialized drama, and I don’t trust it.  I don’t believe Sylar is dead.   I don’t believe Arthur is dead.  I didn’t believe Hiro was stuck in the past, I don’t believe we’ve seen the last of Hiro’s dad.  I don’t know if I believe Meredith is dead.  Elle might be dead, but she was always peripheral.   So nothing is believable, and I’m not ready to be burned again.  

Yeah, I’ll end up watching volume 4, but not because it’s a good show.  Because no one can turn away from a good train wreck.

I could’ve told you well ahead of time how much this album was going to suck.  After all, it’s been 14 years in the making.  Axl has gone through several line up changes and at least 3 lead guitarists since Slash.  All of them have some appearance on the album, I’m told.  14 years of nonstop revision has got to lead to the inability to be objective.  And it’s gotta be overproduced as all hell as Axl does nonstop tweaking.    

So when I got my hands on the album and gave it a listen, I was surprised to find that it was actually… pretty damned good.  Read on for the full treatment.

The album starts with the title track, which, I have to say, is one of my least favorites. The good news is that it rocks.  It starts off with a long build, and when it kicks in, it has a nice rhythm, but sadly, the whole thing builds to an expected chorus that just never arrives.  It’s a decent track, but only that: decent.

Track 2 is Shackler’s Revenge, which many might recognize since it was included in Rock Band 2 (or Guitar Hero, one of those) pre-release.   This is another heavier song with a good rolling guitar line and a fun dancing hi-hat chorus.  It’s got Axl’s signature self-harmony in the verses and some creative overdubbing in the chorus, which is both memorable and catchy.  The main guitar line riff almost sounds like 1990’s Ozzy Osbourne (Zak Wylde era), because of the harmonics. 

Better, a several years-old track, was leaked long ago.  Although at first you might find it foreign, it’s a great song.   This song sounds like the most natural progression of Guns N’ Roses so far.  It has a very nice riff which serves as the chorus melody and overlaps the verses nicely too; good song writing.    Also, the band teams up to deliver well on this.  The drum line and the stringed instruments work very well on this to deliver a complete, seamless song.  This version is definitely better than any previous iteration.  

Track 4, Street of Dreams, starts like an Elton John song, but rapidly develops a very familiar GNR feel.   It has a nice Use Your Illusion II vibe, sounding quite a bit like Estranged, but ultimately really taking a place as the Yesterdays of this album.  The song used to be called “The Blues” in previous performances, and I suspect there’s a little bit of autobiography in it.  When Axl says, “What this means to me is more than I know you believe,” a part of me thinks maybe it’s his confession that he really wants us to love this album after he’s slaved over it so long. 

If The World, the fifth track, begins with an almost Middle Eastern flavor.  But it’s deceptive, because it actually mutates into a funky power ballad.  Again, it feels like a natural, more relevant Guns N’ Roses.  The drums and rhythm are really nicely recorded.  They have a very nice electronica feel, without getting cheesy, and yet, seem in place.  Good track.  

There Was a Time is, in my mind, straight outta the GNR songbook.  It feels like a cross between a song of Appetite and Use Your Illusion I.   The chorus is not nearly as melodic as I’d like, but the verses are really nicely done and it’s very typical Axl.  Ultimately, this song’s bridge makes up for the lack of melody, and it remains a solid, familiar GNR song.  

I like Catcher in the Rye, although, I can understand why many won’t.  This is not your typical GNR.  In fact, if it weren’t Axl singing it, it could almost be a pop song.  It’s a nice interlude, not bad, a touch out of place, but probably reflective of the fact that Axl isn’t the same songwriter that he was 20 year ago(!). 

We’re rocking again with Scraped, and I have to admit, I haven’t yet connected with this song.  I get it, I’ve heard it several times now, and other than the “ah-ah” Immigrant Song-ish section, I’m just not feeling it.  It kind of meanders around as a rock song.  

The next song is Riad N’ The Bedouins.  Admittedly, I don’t know the backstory here, but I’ve seen references to it being based on a Arabic or Moroccan story.  Interesting that the song contains the line “somewhere in time,” which is an Iron Maiden album, and the term Bedouin, whic, according to one Internet comment, “are a group of Arab nomads who were partly the inspiration for the Fremen in Frank Herbert’s novel Dune.”  Maiden did a song called “To Tame a Land,” which was all about Dune.  Either way, it’s a great song. 

The next song is Sorry, which is a very non-GNR sounding power ballad.  It sounds more like Seether or some other modern band.  But – you know what – it’s a great song.  I like the chorus especially, it’s immediately memorable, and it’s got great harmony.  Those familiar with metal might liken it to Anthrax’s Black Lodge in tone.

I.R.S. was also released on several pre-release leaked copies of Chinese Democracy.  I like it now as I did then, it’s definately GNR, definitely Axl, and definitely a typical GNR guitar line.  It’s one of my favorites on the album, but that may have to do with the fact that I’ve known the song for a few years now.  

Track 12 is Madagascar.  I hesitate to call it a power ballad, but it’s certainly a slower tempo rock song.  Decent, also present on previous leaked releases. 

Certainly, This I Love is a ballad.  It’s nice, the first half isn’t much for me, since there is no drum track, and therefore, it never gets the power it should have until about 3 and half minutes into the song, at which point there’s a nice guitar solo, and the song takes shape.  It’s got a good flavor, but not necessarily as memorable as other tracks.   

The album closes with Prostitute, which, like Catcher in the Rye, could be a pop song.  If this was performed by Hannah Montana, it would absolutely be standard pop fare.  I actually like the song well enough, but I recognize that it’s just metal-ed up pop.  

In the end, Chinese Democracy holds its own surprisingly well.  In fact, all of the things I would have expected did not come true.  The production is nice and not overdone.  The songs are clean and not overlayered or overly engineered.   The same old Axl is there, but the sound is oddly current feeling.  

If you liked GNR before this album – particularly if you liked the Use Your Illusion albums, I think you will be very satisfied with Chinese Democracy.  And while you might think this is really just an Axl solo album, it feels an awful lot like classic GNR.

If you perouse the internet, you’ll see – pretty much everywhere – that Vista sucks. You’ll also see a super harsh, super successful Mac compaign aimied squarely at the PC and Vista, and you’ll see Microsoft abandoning the name “Vista” in their marketing initiatives in favor of their new “Windows, not Walls” slogan.  Lastly, you’ll see Steve Ballmer telling you that waiting for Windows 7 is okay by him.  So Vista, by pretty much all accounts, is a flop.

When I first began using Vista in February of this year, it was killing me.  Application after application wouldn’t install.  UAC prompts were bombarding me faster than I could “ok” them.  The system couldn’t copy across the network faster than I could retype my documents (it seemed, at least).   It was absolutely unusable.  

Almost a year later, I have to say, I’m really at home in Vista.  I’ve only ever seen 1 blue screen event, and, ironically, it was due to Apple’s iTunes 8 Vista USb driver fiasco.  Service Pack 1 fixed the network copying issues, pretty much every app has goten situated so that it works in Vista, the icon previews are nice, and there are only a few remaining annoyances; but XP has plenty of those too.  

I’m a Mac guy at heart, but truthfully, Vista is the prettiest Microsoft OS ever to come out of Redmond.  Whereas with XP I had to disable Luna just to not want to poke my eyes out, Aero is smooth and comforting.  The ribbon has grown on me, and the system doesn’t gradually become slower and slower, at least as fast as a naked XP box will.  

So there ya go – Vista is a decent product, albeit, after 2 years in the market.  I’d still recommend people wait for Windows 7 – no point in training users and getting them comfortable if Windows 7 will be a fraction of what the E7Blog is suggesting.  But the Vista/Windows 2008 combo is a good one.  I’m not suggesting it beats Leopard, but it’s certainly better than XP/2003.

But my CSS isn’t going to win any awards, my javascript could be collapsed a lot and made much more efficient, and my HTML often suffers from “div-itis” and “class-itis.” Enter Mr Camen, whose motto, “code is art,” is evident upon initial inspection.  Kroc’s code is not only well written, the source itself is actually beautiful.  We have collaborated on both CSS and PHP in the past and both are the better for it.  

That said, we have strikingly different positions about publshing on the web.  Kroc writes his website for himself, and as a result, publishes in HTML 5; his site doesn’t work in IE, his mindset being “if you choose to use a subpar browser, you will have a subpar experience. ”  Indeed, his site is a complete mess in IE 7, the fault only of IE and its abysmal CSS support, not the code itself.   I, conversely, attempt to code with a much more conservative bend, coding to the masses, at the expense of using several great tricks.   

Getting back on track, when it came to discussing the <abbr> tag, both of us found ourselves remarkably on the same page.  Although one can get into the nitty-gritty details and find the whole conversation trivial, I think there’s something to be said for using tags properly and getting your information properly parsed.  After all, screen readers exist with regularity today, XML is very popular (most commonly in the form of RSS), and search engines spider the majority of popular websites several times times a day if not every hour.   Using tags, and using them properly, should be important to content publishers and republishers.  

I also agree with Kroc’s point that it’s not your job to educate your reader like an encyclopedia.  The <abbr> tag is not so much about education as it is about properly marking up your  code.  

As the second wave of the browser war heats up – as Tracemonkey, Squirrelfish Extreme, and V8 start really setting themselves apart from IE in even larger ways, coding to standards will become even more important.  Understading lesser used tags is elemental in writing the best, most concise code and ranking well in search engines.

Last week’s pilot episode set up a great premise.  The “translucent” body effect and the mystical “Pattern,” complemented by stone cold Matthew Abadon Agent Broyles left me wanting more.  I suspect the second episode was much more indicative, however, of what this show will actually be.   Read more after the break.

Unfortunately, last night left me a little let down.  The plot was mostly interesting (Caution! Spoilers ahead): a series of murdered women leads us back to Dr Bishop’s ex-colleague’s experiments regarding rapid aging, and the only way to slow the rapid aging, we learn, appears to be pulling the pituitary gland from the brain of these women – apparently while they are awake and tranquilized, for some unknown reason, rather than simply anesthetized - and… doing something with it.  

It was the surrounding elements that left me unhappy.  First of all, the eccentricity of Bishop is overkill.  The way he speaks was overplayed, and Joshua Jackson, while believable as the boy genius, had lots of poor dialogue, such as “Can you just speak like… a person?”  Secondly, Bishop’s experience with… uh… everything seems stretched.  I was willing to suspend disbelief that many of these things are possible, but to suggest that he was able to do all of these things, in just the second episode, seems pushing it.   Thus far, he can interview the dead, he can grow a human and accelerate aging, and he can project thoughts on a monitor by pulling the electric impluses from a dead ocular nerve – I’m not making this up.   It’s just too far fetched.   

As far as the characters go, I like Anna Torv’s Olivia Dunham.  But she’s no Dana Sculley, and I don’t know if she can carry the show.  As of now, she and Broyles are the only two main characters, as Joshua Jackson’s younger Bishop is merely “the babysitter” for his convict father, and his father is only available as long as he’s part of the picture.  While we all know they are part of the team, it’s yet to be firmly established that the characters are committed to investigating “The Pattern.”  

The problem here is that this show is poised to fill the same type role as “The X-Files,” but thus far, they have lacked when establishing character authority and credibility.  Franky, I’d rather follow Broyles and the “Massive Dynamic” secretary, as they both seem much more immersed in the mythology than our main characters.  

I’m inclined to stick with Fringe because I like the set-up, not because the second episode was so good.  I think many shows need some time to find their niche and this one may strengthen once the actors get used to their characters, give them some identity, and let them play out and evolve.  I fear that, like X-Files, much of “The Pattern” will never be properly explained and that we will be doomed to years of frustration and unanswered questions, rather than an arching story like Lost, where we expect to have much of the backstory revealed to us.  I suspect that four years from now, we’ll still understand very little about The Pattern except maybe a larger tie to the founder of Massive Dynamics.

So, for now, I will continue to watch, I’ll probably give it a season to hook me.    

First of all, the default skin is really nice.  Unlike the last one, this one is a little more “Plastik” and a little less glass.  I may be making this up – but since the entire experience is smoother, it feels lighter and more responsive.  The slow “clicking” of posts is gone.  Whereas before, if you scrolled down in Opera and other browsers it would slowly chunk down the page, it now scrolls smoothly and easily, without effort.

The fonts and basic layout are both familiar and attractive, and the javascript is very pleasant in its fading and other dynamic effects.

This is the first of the Bloglines betas that I could use everyday and the first I prefer to the live site.  Way to go, Bloglines team.

I saw The Dark Knight on Friday afternoon. Like many movies, I need a few days to truly digest the film. Sometimes, I like a film and later decide I didn’t like it as much as I thought (see: Spiderman 3, Die Hard 4). Sometimes, I like a film and decide later it was better than I thought (see: The Matrix, The Bourne Ultimatum).

In this case, I knew I liked the film. It was very true to Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins film in both storyline and dark overtones. But, like James Bond, I fear there are some real breaks with reality that I struggle to accept. Nothing in the Bourne movies I mentioned above requires major suspension of disbelief. But The Dark Knight pushes reality a little too much. Let’s examine some aspects of the film:

Cast and characters
Again, masterfully done. I enjoyed the acting quite a bit. Christian Bale, Michael Cain, Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhardt, Gary Oldman, Nestor Carbonall, all were fantastic. Heath Ledger – while I won’t call him Oscar-worthy, primary because I don’t really understand what makes one role Oscar worthy but not others) – was truly genius. I say this for several reasons: firstly, his facial expressions, voice tone, and eyes were masterful. Secondly, because I largely forgot it was him for most of the film. To me, this was the Joker, not an actor I’ve known for over a decade.

Storyline
Like the last film, pretty well executed. The entire thing felt a bit rushed – they crammed a lot of plot into a little time (note it still runs well over 2 hours), meaning some characters got a little short-changed, primarily Two-Face. The fall from do-gooder and justice-seeking Harvey Dent to the conscious-less Two-Face was a bit too harsh and dramatic. Such a cool character would have been a great long-term adversary.

Bruce Wayne was a bit brash, which I suppose was how they wanted to keep him, a trait established last film. Alfred Pennyworth and Lucious Fox were consistent. The Joker was perfectly executed in that we learned virtually nothing about him and his origin remains a mystery.

Where Things Went Wrong
Okay, I’m a stickler for plot bending. I don’t like when an otherwise semi-realistic film, requires me to entire dicard realism. So there are several key points here:

Amazing Explosives!

How did the Joker get the hospital wired so effectly and so quickly with no one noticing and no real team of goons to speak of? That were a LOT of very well placed explosives that would surely require a very skilled expert to help design that implosion, no?

Sonar on your mobile?

After months of work, presumably, Lucious Fox was able to design a prototype “sonar” using CDMA or GSM technology. He was able to rig a device to use it. He was able to make it work through existing mobile networks with neither the networks, nor the satelite owners, nor the military noticing it. We must presume, given these facts, and the limitationsof existing hardware, that the data was tranferred as internet data. Not much later, with no previous knowledge of the project or how it works, Bruce Wayne, never an engineer, was able to decipher, understand, and deploy this technology to millions of existing phones, most of which, I’d wager, do not have internet plans, a good portion of which is using half-decade old technology. We must also presume that the Wayne R&D department has the necessary bandwidth to receive the data from millions of phones and that their ISP and the phone carriers wouldn’t notice this incredble spike in traffic. Oh yeah, did I mention that they somehow were able to locate a particular crystal-clear voice amongst this overwhelming parade of sonar? Pshaw!

Extra! Extra! Commissioner Dead!

Explain how the Joker and/or his minions were able to get into the commissioners office, replace his booze with poison, and get him to drink it at the exact time?

Mayor Assasination Attempt Thwarted by Gordon

So, uh, the Joker anticipated the Batman locating a name that was NOT actually him and going there and breaking in? And conveniently, some cops who had recently been kidnapped were all there waiting? And the Mayor, while under fire, delivered a speech in a neighborhood with more Windows than a room of government computers without a protective shield or bulletproof glass? What the hell? Who runs Gotham security? Find him and smack the bitch upside his stupid head!

A Boatoad of Trouble

Lastly, why didn’t the boats explode at midnight? Did Batman somehow disarm it off camera? It was the BACKUP Joker was holding. That means the original device failed. But how? By the way, give me the remote while I’m on a ferry with my wife and kids. The scene would be like this: “Give me the remote!” BOOM!

All the foolishness aside, I still really liked it. I really hope there’s a third entry to this series.

Not too long ago, Slashdot started overhauling their incredibly horrendous HTML and rewriting in mostly compliant HTML. The goal of the rewrite, amongst many other things, such as incredible bandwidth savings, was to support stylesheets and graceful degrade. When all was ready, Slashdot held a contest to solicit new stylesheets and received tons of submissions, some really cool and others really ugly, and chose a very nice, very reserved, very modern-but-conservative one as their new default style.

Let’s back up a bit: Slashdot is written in Perl – ack! – and is built upon an open source system called, simply enough, “Slash.” Slash code is horrendously out-of-date and the last download is pathetically old. In fact, the only way to get Slash in any recent form is via CVS access. Slash requires mod_perl and tons of Apache and perl customization. Since Slash is tried-and-true, it’s not really “new” code. And it shows in many ways.

Not too long ago, the Slash folks started realizing that new technologies and new sites were introducing amazing interactive features. Perhaps they realized when a chunk of their userbase got fed up and left for sites like Digg, Techcrunch, Mixx, or some other aggregation type site. Nonetheless, the Slash team started hacking in features that emulated many of the Web 2.0 sites. First it was tagging. “Taggging” has been in beta for some time now. It allows users to arbitrarily tag a story with keywords. The FAQ says that once enough people use a tag, it shows up as a suggestion for others. But I always see weird tags suggested. Either way, it’s pointless, because I don’t know what good tagging does for me.

Then came the “firehose.” The Firehouse is essentially Slashdot’s answer to Digg. The diea is this: users submit stories, links, bookmarks, journal entries, etc, and other users vote on the stories. As the stories get “warmer,” or redder, the entries because available to the editors to convert into real news items. Neat, huh? The idea is cool, except the interface is nowhere near as dynamic or alive as Digg’s, and the content doesn’t rotate as fast. And the load time hurts. So I never use it.

In the last 6 months to a year, Slashdot began rolling out “D2,” their new dynamic discussion system. It is a replacement for the static comment system of days past. The problem is multi-fold, however. Firstly, the layout is a screaming nightmare. There is so much whitespace and what is there is totally overwhelming. Big garish buttons take the place of links or real buttons. Dynamically fetched text takes many seconds to load, even generic insertions like a comment form takes 5 seconds plus to appear. Slashdot has become flat out slow. And D2, which should have remedied a lot of that, has not lived up to its promise.

All the places where things got dynamic on the site feels like a new paradigm being smashed into old code. I wonder if Slashdot might be better off rewriting the entire engine as version 3.0. I know that sounds scary, but when OSNews was starting to feel the pain, we ditched the entire front end and rewrote it – every single line of PHP and HTML and CSS and JS. A combination of creative time-based caching, caching on request, and sleek, optimized queries resulted in a snappy and very responsive front end with smooth ajax integration, a super fast loading page (minus the ads, subscribe today!), and a zero lag experience. The differences between the v3 backend and v4? None. If you exclude new features we built in (news tags, extended user preferences, and conversations), the backend is exactly the same.

Slashdot’s database likely won’t have to be dumped or modified at all to rewrite all of their Perl and Javascript/Ajax. But it might result in a faster, smoother, nicer looking front end. It’s time to reel in the speed issues – the entire site takes forever to load (a 200K front page plus externals doesn’t help). It’s time to fix the ajaxian display weirdness. It’s time to get your JS working well in Opera. Fix those and then perhaps we can deal with the elitist userbase.

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Booting up, there’s nothing immediately different. I tried copying a 28MB file over the network to check on time. It copied the first half in light-speed, but then stopped. I called the guy whose machine I copied from: “Hey, did you just shut down?” His response, “Negative, I lost connection all of a sudden.” Uh-oh, I thought.

But alas, after he rebooted, I copied the latest ISO of gOS, which weighs in at 535MB, and it told me 60 seconds, and by jiminy, it took about 60 seconds.

Thus far – after 30 minutes use – I’ve only noticed one new feature, it appears Vista SP1 has some new “modes” of desktop wallpaper display, and can finally “stretch” wallpaper. Thanks God, because my larger secondary monitor always had stripes with Vista RTM.

Click the link for a larger picture

So, first impression? So far, so good. My biggest pet peeve – the abysmal network transfer speed – appears to have been quelled (potentially, we’ll need more data for a final conclusion). I’ve long since gotten used to the graphics and learned to enjoy the subtle fade-in/fade-out of apps. I still am warning people to stay clear of Vista for some time, and still have no plans to roll it out at work in the enterprise, but I certainly think that Vista is coming along. I think there’s a better shot that when Windows 7/IE8 come of age, people will be willing to rethink things on a larger scale.

It’s typical for me to buy/install new software for testing on my own machine. I can generally test most software and evaluate it pretty tough, so it seemed with the XP consumer drop-dead date fast approaching, I ought to have better than cursory familiarity with Vista. It’s also a good time to ensure that all of our critical tools run on what will, unfortunately, likely be a platform our IT guys run shortly. So I embarked on the Vista adventure.

The verdict? Well, let’s start at the beginning? You know how every review of Vista… like ever… has complained about UAC? Well, imagine that level of annoying times 10 and you can begin to understand UAC. The most pointless utility ever not only bugs you for virtually everything – including deleting shortcuts from the desktop – but also moves all over the screen so it’s impossible to predict where it will show up next. Also, sometimes it sits in the taskbar, perplexingly pausing application installs until you notice the subtle orange blinking and “activate” it. Also, UAC doesn’t require a password or anything, just a click. And best of all, it’s stupid. If I delete something that requires admin access, and then repeat the action, it sometimes asks for the permission twice in 10 seconds. UAC is the worst thought out decision a team that brilliant has ever produced, and it took me about 5 hours of use to de-activate it entirely.

Most applications, surprisingly, installed just fine. Even older tools I prefer – some from 2004 – work without any problem. However, many recent tools, mostly those from Microsoft itself, don’t. You cannot install the Windows 2000/2003 admin pack – essential tools for Windows network admins – onto Vista without a stream of commands not publically advertised by Microsoft. I built myself a big batch file to run it, and I will share that file on this site later. Eventually, I did get it to run. Turns out that it’s a “security risk” because it involves certain DLLs running at elevated privileges… or something. I don’t know. But it should be embarrassing for Microsoft that Windows Vista users can’t administer Windows networks. Embarrassing… or pathetic.

Every single window in Vista fades in and out. It’s a neat effect to be certain, but it’s overused. Sometimes dizzying.

You can’t use Windows Update anymore – you have to use a app built into the control panel.

The Start Menu is a disaster. Drilling into subfolders takes a good 2-3 seconds. And they are impossible to view as a whole. While it’s pretty, it makes me long for XP’s Luna Start Menu, which is odd, since I found that to be such an abomination that I always de-activated it immediately. It’s a nightmare.

The Control Panel is much more logically organized, except I used to know where everything was, and now I have no clue where to find it without scanning the whole damned thing.

Same goes for many folder options, locations on the hard drive (it’s now C:\Users, and profiles are in C:\Users\%username%\AppData), and some other configurations, which have mysteriously moved.

I changed the path of C:\Users\%username%\Documents to re-map to my H: drive on the network – as it’s ALWAYS been – and the .NET framework wouldn’t install. I had to un-map the drives to get it to work.

But the cherry on top – by far – was my adventure to get the Citrix admin tools installed. I kept getting an IMMEDIATE error on launch; I tried many versions of Citrix, same error every time. Eventually, I traced it back to the Windows Installer service, which wouldn’t run. At all – it wouldn’t start. I kept getting the same error: Windows installer service cant start Error 193:0xc1. I googled it and looked at all the results – Google it yourself. Here, I’ll even give you the link: “Windows installer service error 193:0xc1″. You’ll notice a lot of feedback, but lots of unanswered questions. I dug and dug and eventually started poking into the DCOM service, thinking this was the problem, since the Installer service depends on DCOM. But DCOM ran just fine. So I dug further. I tried everything I could: I rebooted, I tried everything as the local administrator, I removed all of my temp files, I unregistered some files. Eventually, I found an article on Microsoft’s K-Base that discussed some problems, but you’ll notice it only covers the ancient “Windows Installer Service 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0.” XP runs version 3, Vista runs version 4. Could these be relevant?

When I got to the registry search, the key it mentioned wasn’t there, but having been through the registry several times today, I decided to do a search for “msiserver” – which is the Microsoft Installer Service. I found the new key, and one of the sub-keys is called “ImagePath.” This key is present in almost all services and gives the location of the files it launches. In the case, the file was “C:\Windows\system32\msiexec /I /v” (those switches might be wrong). So, on a whim, I wondered if many the permissions on that file were wrong. I poked into the system32 directory and found msiexec, but it was a 0 KB file. Blank. Weird, huh? Then I realized that there was ALSO a “msiexec.exe” file. In short, the path was referring to the exe without an extension, and somehow, there was a blank file without an extension by the same name! Wha??

Simply renaming msiexec to msiexec.old and trying to restart the service did it. So that’s one possible fix for Error 193 – make sure the ImagePath references the proper path.

Anyway, re-building and migrating a laptop ought to take about 3-5 hours, depending on the volume of data to transfer, and setting up Vista took me the better part of 2 days. Will I recommend it for other users in our company? No way. Will I recommend it to other IT professionals? No way. Will I recommend it to anyone at all? Sorry, Microsoft, but no way. Vista is everything you’ve read. Pretty, but dumb.

I have high hopes for Service Pack 1, but I should think it’s fair to say “too little too late.” Vista is a disaster, even moreso when compared to Leopard, whose bugs are much less serious, many of which really merely annoyances (such as stacks and menu bar complaints). But Vista is the real deal: a sympton of a company too big to make sane choices. I will definitely be posting a SP1 follow-up, to be sure. Here’s hoping for a retraction.