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Review: Walter Isaacson – Steve Jobs, a biography

Oh my. How painful it is to read this book and think “what could have been”. Here you have a guy that has amazing access to the man Steve Jobs and then he writes a turd of a book. I remember reading Gruber’s review in February and thinking “it can’t be that bad”… Well I [...]

The fun begins: NHL Playoff preview

Sleep will be scarce for the next two months as the NHL playoffs begin. Here’s a little preview aka my picks for the first round. EASTERN CONFERENCE No. 1 Rangers vs. No. 8 Ottawa The Rangers will win this in 5 games. And they will go much deeper. No. 2 Boston vs. No. 7 Washington [...]

A long musical story about 4 1/2 almost perfect minutes

(the writing might be slightly inspired by three books I read recently: Gentlemen, we’re living on the edge, Red, and Home Ice) As a musician I am not very complicated. I have somewhat high standards in regards to the people I play with, yes, but when it comes to myself I don’t think I suffer [...]

Review: Flying Colors – Flying Colors

(before you get any ideas, I have the pre-order confirmation so I think it’s ok to write about it) Although it’s only March I can say without a doubt that this album will contend for album of the year. Flying Colors, the supergroup consisting of Steve Morse (Dregs, Deep Purple), Neal Morse (Spock’s Beard, Transatlantic, [...]

Review: Van Halen – A Different Kind of Truth

So, Van Halen has a new record out, some 13 years after Van Halen III. I am not a Van Halen super fan, I like 5150, OU812 and the one with Poundcake on it. And I wasn’t too thrilled after news got out that most of the songs came from the vault and came of [...]

Review: Dream Theater & Periphery live in concert in Hannover 2012

This was probably my 10th Dream Theater concert, give or take one, and this was in the top 3, along my first ever show back in Rendsburg for the Awake tour and probably one show during my ultimate fanboy-phase. Why? Probably because I was very much looking forward to it, after liking the new album [...]

Dear Foursquare, you are idling a bit. Please fix these bugs!

I love location-based game/service/juggernaut, that’s no secret. I can’ even put my finger on “why”, I guess it’s part of tracking my life (for a detailed intro into tracking look at the ‘Quantified-Self Series‘ from Third Wave). However, there are a couple of things that really bug me. A lot. For a company that has [...]

Preview: Reading 2012

As for the last couple of years, there will be a reading list for 2012. Last year was pretty good, I worked my way through 24 books. Some of them were short, sure, but the ideas still valuable. After 28 books in 2009 and 18 in 2010 two books/month is a nice pace, considering that [...]

2011 in Review: Top 10 albums

2011 marked a year that brought me back to music a bit more. I saw more concerts than last year, played more guitar and listened to more. My top 10 of the year: Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn of Events Amos Lee – Mission Bell Trivium – In Waves Symphony X – Iconoclast Whitesnake [...]

How Steve Lukather influenced my guitar playing and learning

This is going to be a longer and stream of concsciousness-type of post, so if you lose interest just jump to the final paragraph for the morale of the story… My alltime top 5 guitarists are probably Paul Gilbert, Nuno Bettencourt, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, who can ever tell. There was a time [...]