If you are a fan of rock/alt music, this is going to be one hell of a great summer for music. With major album releases by a number of amazing bands, including Billy Talent, Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dave Mathiews Band, Against Me!, Alexisonfire, Green Day, and my personal fave, Moneen, you can be guaranteed to have the next few months filled with fantastic new songs.

My annual “year in review” music post in January 2010 will be filled with fantastic music (and will actually be written properly this year). But before that happens, you should have time to enjoy the music now! So here’s a little breakdown on some stuff you should be listening to.
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After a long wait, and large amount of planning, Hotcakes New Media’s first weekend of shooting was finally started this past weekend. Dave and I just wrapped the “bar scene” and all the live band footage. Keep reading to see more pictures and find out how it went.
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If you’re anxiously awaiting part two of my year in review (the one where I normally talk about music and such), I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

Between the house and my work setting up the business, I just never got around to it. Plus, there’s simply far too many bands in 2008 that have been amazing. It was a great year for rock/alternative/poppunk, so a LOT of great music came out.

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Yes, I am finally taking the time to write my “year in review” post. Hey, give me a break. It’s only 2 weeks late.

2008 was certainly a year of change for me; Not that any of the previous 5 years have been stale by any means, but 2008 was a year with large-scale scary decisions and accomplishments. How did I fare this year? Let’s find out.
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It’s been far too long since I’ve posted. I know. The horrific combination of preparing for the new house and working my buns off to make money with Hotcakes New Media is keeping me from doing frivolous things, like posting here! So I thought I’d take a moment and talk about music; In particular, the new Guns n’ Roses album.
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Just thought I would let you all know that the article I wrote for CONFRONT Magazine is now live. Click here to read the article (with pictures).

Hello Folks,

I thought that I would post about a few really good bands that I discovered while surfing on the net. It all started when I googled The Crow Soundtrack. You see, I have always really liked the song “Burn” from The Cure. I have always been a fan of dark movies and themes with a fascination in things “goth.” But don’t get me wrong, I don’t like “elements” of the goth culture that you see on the streets nor do I like the various subcultures perpetuated by popular media that define themselves with their own sensational spin-off themes like S&M, Deathrock (you know, the kind with lyrics of teen suicide), satanic worship, mutilation, etc.

What I do like and what kind of goth am I talking about? Think the style of dress from the Renaissance and Victoria era, not so much the punk and deathrock stream. Think medieval romances, gothic revival architecture and yes, even the horror genre with ghosts, vampires, graveyards and old country castles.

What surprised me, however, was when I started looking up “Goth Rock” bands, I came up with some surprisingly mellow and very emotionally charged music. So lately, I’ve been expanding my repertoire of music reflecting that taste. Once I got “Burn” from The Cure on my Youtube playlist, on a list of related videos, I came across these great songs from a Finnish Band called Entwine. Well, 4 hours later of exploring, I discovered this great band along with others that fall under the “Goth Rock” label including Lacuna Coil and H.I.M.. And now a lot of their music makes up my very best list for songs from the late 90s to now. So I am including links to the songs that I like most. These songs move me. They make me feel something. Not a lot of bands do that for me anymore.

If you are interested, check out the links. Regrettably, not all of them have a video per se, but some do include the lyrics which is nice…

Here is a list of songs from the band Entwine…

Entwine

• Learn to Let Go
• Closer (My Love)
• Lost Within
• Time Of Despair
• Nothing Left To Say
• Nothing’s Forever
• Frozen By the Sun
• Hearts of Frozen Stone

And 2 from Lacuna Coil

• Entwined
• Falling Again

And 2 from H.I.M.

• Join Me in Death
• Gone With the Sin

If you went to these links, I would really like to know what you think.

Tina

This weekend we started packing for our move to Ottawa. We started with books, DVDs, and CDs. In order to reduce the stuff we have to pack (and subsequently keep in storage for 6 months), I decided to do some purging of old crap I didn’t need any longer. In the process of going through my computer CDs, I came across a backup disc from my PC days (i.e. from a LONG time ago). On MC’s insistence, I popped in the CD to see what was on it, and came across a little gem of a video.
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This week I will discuss how I plan to integrate a series of Apple products to create a fairly low-cost whole-home audio solution. This will be a two part post, with part 2 to be written after moving in to our new house in December. This post will discuss the theorhetical and technical aspects of implementing the solution, while part 2 will be a hands-on step-by-step guide. So why the iHome? Read on.
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Apparently, we’re famous in China! The song we wrote together, Your Everything, was linked to a couple of sites in China somehow, and recently got so many downloads they had to shut down the file. So there you go folks… Butterfly7 made it big.

A7