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Best of Bootie 2007

It’s time for my annual post telling you to go download the Best of Bootie. The 2007 compilation features 21 of the year’s best mashups from the usual suspects such as A + D, Party Ben and more.

My favorites this year (so far, after 3 listens):

    1. The Illuminoids with Donita Sparks – Pretend We’re Alala (L7 vs. CSS) – Los Angeles
    1. team9 – Britney – Dead Or Alive? (Britney Spears vs. Dead Or Alive vs. Daft Punk) – Perth, Australia
    1. Divide & Kreate – Illiterate City (Jackson 5 vs. Guns N’ Roses) – Sweden

Give it a try – it’s one of the few ways I actually here pop music these days. More at Boing Boing.

Extreme

My favorite late 80’s / early 90’s rock band, Extreme, has announced their re-union, along with a new album and tour in 2008.

Say what you will about More than Words and Hole Hearted, but when Extreme came out in 1989 with their first album, and Pornograffiti in 1990, they had a refreshing twist on the hair metal bands of the day. Their blend of funk, with horns, and Nuno’s guitar playing put them head and shoulders above their contemporaries, such as Winger, Slaughter or Poison.

I saw them a number of times live, including headlining at the Eagle’s Club right after Pornograffitti was released, with Alice in Chains opening, before Alice in Chains broke big. One of the two times I saw Alice in Chains, and it was already clear that Layne Staley was in the throes of the heroin addiction that would later kill him, as Alice in Chains performance was awful, and they were booed off the stage.

Extreme live was a different story – Gary Cherone’s energy is infectious, and Nuno’s guitar playing is absolutely amazing. I’ve seen them in everything from a small club to an arena, and they always rocked the house. I always swore I wouldn’t be one of those old guys who goes to concerts of the bands he followed in high school, but I may have to make an exception for this one.

Lawyers, Guns & Money

Unreal Tournament 3 was released Monday. But the Linux client demo never appeared, and the Linux retail server and client haven’t appeared yet either.

The UT3 mailing list has also been quiet recently, but last night Icculus sent a tweet out and the news hit the mailing list soon after: UT3’s Linux bits are hung up in legal. Somewhere along the way Epic licensed some middleware that can’t be included in the Linux version. Hopefully we’ll get some more news soon.

In related news, no Gears of War for Linux, only Mac. Something about the publisher who is based in Redmond squashing that idea. Damn them.

Rock Band

I more than enjoy the Guitar Hero franchise, having got my PS2 out of the closet a year and a half ago after buying all the Guitar Hero games, including this last one on the 360 for the first time.

Tomorrow marks the release of Rock Band, and Ars Technica takes a look at it and approves.

I’m pretty excited to get it, even with the high price point, as a few of us have been known to get together and rock out to Guitar Hero. Now we just need to find a 4th… And I can play with Alex, who I am sure will get a kick out of banging the drums. I’m happy the Guitar Hero guitar works with Rock Band, but very disappointed the Rock Band guitar doesn’t work with Guitar Hero as I don’t want to buy another guitar, but really want to unlock the co-op songs in GHIII. Hopefully they will patch the 360 version so the Rock Band guitar will work with GHIII sometime in the future.

Thankfully, I have the room in my basement for the setup, although if I do pick it up, I won’t be able to play it until next week since we’re going home for the holiday.

Quake Wars on Foresight Linux

The Enemy Territory:Quake Wars Linux client was released Friday by id. The 17mb client and installer is using Icculus‘ Mojo Setup for installation. This is a welcome change from the Doom3 and Quake IV installers which required you to manually copy the .pak files from the CD or DVDs over to your hard drive. With Mojo Setup, you just run the executable file you download from id, pop the DVD in and it installs the client, Punkbuster and copies the necessary files over from the DVD.

With both the demo and the client, I was running in to keyboard lockups when playing. It didn’t matter if I was playing in full screen or windowed, the game would continue, but my keyboard was totally non-responsive. I tested Compiz enabled and disabled, windowed and non-windowed, and dual monitor and single monitor. It turns out that Pidgin, X-Chat and Mugshot would cause it to lock up. Basically, if anything appeared in the notification section Quake Wars would free the keyboard. Alt-tabbing to different applications and coming back to Quake Wars didn’t help. Disabling those applications before running Quake Wars has stopped the keyboard lockups.

Playing in full screen mode is definitely more immersive, and Quake Wars supports a native 1920×1200 resolution. Playing windowed in dual monitors I was playing in 1680×1250. It’s a pain though to switch xorg.conf and restart GNOME just to play a game, so I haven’t made up my mind.

The Quake Wars FAQ recommends a low latency kernel configured with CONFIG_HZ_1000=y. Foresight’s kernel does not include that setting, and using the Nvidia drivers currently in the repo, 100.14.03, performance has been smooth as silk. I’m running a Core 2 Duo E6300, 2 gigs of RAM and a Nvidia (BFG) 7950GT.

I’m enjoying the full game much more than the early beta client I played in Windows. While the game is definitely faster than Battelfield 2, it’s not as fast as I first thought. I still have a ton to learn (like joining a squad or learning to fly the air vehicles), but it’s fun. 2 out of 3 maps played this afternoon, and I was top Soldier, top kills, and close in top EXP. The promotions and unlocks by campaign is better than I expected, as I wasn’t sure how tempoary unlocks would be, but they work well. I thought I had played on a ranked server today, but searching for my stats, I can’t find them. Guess I need to play some more!

Kudos again to id for releasing a Linux client. It’s nice to have a state of the art game to play on Linux. The next month or two should be great for the state of gaming on Linux, with the rumored Gears of War release, and the definite release of Unreal Tournament 3.

Buying Spree

I’ve been on a bit of a buying spree for CD’s over the last month or two, especially picking up a lot of indie bands.

In no particular order:

  • The New Pornographers, Challengers: One of the best albums I’ve bought in a long time. I’ve always like the New Pornographers, but it wasn’t a disc I would spin over and over. This disc is amazing – Neko Case and the whole gang did a heck of a job writing some very memorable songs that are guaranteed to get stuck in your head. My favorite track by far is All the Old Showstoppers.
  • Rilo Kiley, Under the Blacklight: I bought this and the Challengers on the same day, and both of these have vied for the same playing time, with Under the Blacklight probably getting the edge in total playtime. I was introduced to Rilo Kiley a few years ago on 89.3 The Current, and ended up getting their last release free from the station at a volunteer opportunity. I really liked, but this disc is a major step forward. The title track, Under the Blacklight, 15, Smoke Detector and Give a Little Love are standout tracks. (I also picked up Take Offs and Landings, their second album but first released commercially.)
  • Interpol, Antics: Very similar to their last album, but it seems a touch more mellow. I need to listen to this one more.
  • Tegan and Sara, The Con: I absolutely adored their last disc, but this one doesn’t live up to that. The Con is more of a concept album, and while not a departure from the twins’ signature sound, it doesn’t have the 2 or 3 songs that you couldn’t get out of your head that So Jealous did.
  • Fountains of Wayne, Traffic and Weather: I don’t think these guys get the credit they deserve. They write catchy pop alternative songs with interesting lyrics, but all that everyone remembers them for is “Stacy’s Mom”. Good album, on par with their last effort.
  • Dolores O’Riordan, Are You Listening?: The former frontwoman for the Cranberries unleases a solo album that was 3 or 4 years in the making, and it was worth the wait. If you ever liked the Cranberries even just a little, pick this up. Ms. O’Riordan’s songwriting and lyrics have matured, and this album has it all, from mellow to rockin’ out.
  • Garbage, Absolute Garbage (Special Edition): Greatest hit collection from the alternative band from Madison, WI. I’ve seen Garbage live a few times, and they have always been one of my favorite bands. From Butch Vig’s catchy pop sound to Shirley Manson growling or purring, Garbage is the real thing. I made sure to pick up the Special Edition and get the second disc of remixes, which were a bit of a disapopintment. But I’ll give it to Garbage, the songs collected for the greatest hits album were perfect.
  • The Donna’s, Bitchin’: The follow up to Gold Medal, this all girl band left their label and is publishing this independently. They’ve cranked the amps up to 11 for this album, and are rocking even harder. What I love about this album is the classic 80’s hair band feel The Donna’s bring. While not over the top, most songs are anthem rock songs without going too over the top. I highly recommend this album. (I have a friend who digs The Donna’s for the song Take it Off from the Gold Medal release, as he can play it on Guitar Hero).
  • White Light Riot, Atomism: This local band from Minneapolis has been getting some airplay on 89.3, and have an indie sound that’s a little harder than some of the current indie favorites out there, and a couple of the songs are pretty catchy. Due to some of the favorites above I haven’t listened to it as much as I’ve wanted, but I’ve been happy the few times so far that I have.
  • Bruce Springsteen, Magic: I was blown away by Radio Nowhere, the first single from the album, and unfortunately the rest of the album doesn’t sound like it. I’m a Springsteen fan though, and while the rest of the songs don’t rock as hard as that one as it mellows out a bit, the rest of the album is good. If you liked The Rising, you’ll like this release.

I need to go buy the new Radiohead album off their website now. I’ve also been poking around Amazon’s store, and they are promising an album downloader for Linux. I’m really looking to give that a try. But more on physical vs. digital another time.

ET: Quake Wars First Impressions

I stopped by my buddy’s place last night and put my ET: Quake Wars beta key to use on one of his Windows boxes. After downloading the client, I hopped in to a random ET:QW running about 8 on 8.

One word sums it up: Fast. It’s Quake3 / Quake4 fast. I’ve always thought and heard that Q3 was considered faster than UT2k4, and if that’s true, than Battlefield 2 is molasses.

There is only one map for the beta, and it feels a lot like the Assault mode on UT2k4 with timed objectives. I played human (GDF), and we were the attacking force. Once you met your objective, your spawn point became that forward way point, and the Strogg’s objective was to keep us from moving forward.

I played almost all of the classes, and in the 90 minutes I played, it was hard to form an opinion, but due to the speed of the game and the respawn, I was mostly assault, playing all 3 classes with the assault rifle, heavy machine gun and rocket launcher.

I tried Medic out briefly, and due to the speed and chaos, it was pretty easy to rack up some experience bringing back soldiers from the dead.

Speaking of dying and respawn, respawn is fast. Twenty seconds tops, on average about ten seconds before all the dead soldiers are re-deployed as a group at the most recent objective / spawnpoint.

I intuitively understood the layout and the icon structure, but feedback from my friends has been they’ve struggled with that so far. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’ve been reading the fan sites off and on over the past few months and had a clue what to expect, but I was able to navigate the map and the objectives fairly easily.

You get experience based on kills, but more based on choosing an objective out of a few available, and then completing it. I was promoted to Soldier during one run where I had the rocket launcher, and my upgrade was that the lock-on for the rocket launcher went from about 7 seconds to 2. So there is definitely an advantage in going after the objectives than just randomly kililng people.

It remains to be seen if the maps at release are bigger, which reduces the speed and chaos, as it will give you and your fireteam (squad) a chance to get organized and go in together. The game also needs voicechat, you can’t keep up with the text on the screen with the speed of the game.

I’m going to need to play this a few more times – with UT2k7 on the horizon, I’m not sold on ET:QW as much as I was, just based on how fast the game was moving. I want my squad to move together as a team, not just keep rushing like lemmings against the objective.

Truth is, I’ll buy it to support gaming on Linux, but my first impression was cautious optimism. I may play a rounds of ET: Wolfenstein this weekend just to compare how fast the gameplay was in the orignial.

In related news, Michael Larabel of Phoronix notes that ET:QW has been delayed again, this time until Sept. 3rd.

Happy Birthday Bladerunner

Today is the 25th anniversary of Bladerunner. To celebrate, I’m off to watch the movie on the big TV with my laptop in tow to get some work done.

I was only 9 when this was released, but I still vividly remember seeing the re-release in 1992 at the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee when the Director’s Cut was released. I love everything about this movie, and can’t wait for the box set later this year.

I’m still working my way through the Library of America collection of Philip K. Dick novels. I’ve read The Man in the High Castle and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch so far. I’m looking forward to Ubik and re-reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the story Bladerunner is based on.

Quake Wars Update

I’m standing in Chicago last night (just after eating at a Chicago-style hot dog place, one of my favorite things to eat, but I digress) waiting for the train to take me to the airport when I get a call from a good friend informing me that Quake Wars beta keys were available.

Linux Games has an update from Timothee Besset at iD regarding the Linux client and lack of beta:

I don’t want to commit to any schedule for the ETQW Linux client at this point. Most of my time is spent working on the game itself, on the Linux dedicated server and on the network infrastructure.

Once those things wind down (in the upcoming weeks) I will start working specifically on the client. But fear not, ATI and NVidia have expressed interest in getting a Linux client early, so they can review how it performs and get their drivers adjusted. When we release, we’ll release a high quality product, just like we do on Windows.

In any case, don’t expect to find Linux binaries on the retail DVD. It’s hard enough for everyone to get gold masters done, there are enough things to check and worry about, I will not place additional strain on the procedure by trying to squeeze my additional set of files on there.

I have my key, looks like I’ll have play the beta at a buddies house for now. September can’t come fast enough for when I can play at home.

Last.fm

I’m a big fan of Last.fm and since I started using Banshee, I’ve reported all my my music through it. A couple of tools came to my attention today.

Digg linked to the Mainstream-O-Meter to measure how mainstream your listening habits are. Digg, being the force they are, have made the site go offline temporarily. My music came in at 68% mainstream. 68%! I like to think I’m a little more eclectic, but maybe I’m not. Or maybe tech geeks like me who use Last.fm just have similar tastes. 🙂

Pscott linked the second one, LastGraph, which graphs out your music listening habits over time. You can set the background color / theme, and the date range you want to graph.

Here’s my 2007 graph:

2007-music

And here is since I started using Last.fm in Oct. 2005:

all-music

Click through to Flickr to actually read them. A couple of notes:

  • I hacked my Xbox, and added Last.fm reporting. My wife listening to music through it really skews it. (Dixie Chicks or U2 anyone?)
  • I’m definitely a streaky listener. I get stuck on an album or artist and listen to the crap out of it. (Liz Phair, Chili Peppers, The Shins)
  • You can tell when I installed my home theater in August of last year. From August to December, I wasn’t spending any time in my office on my PC. It was all about the new, big TV. The little music I listened to was on the Sonos through the network. (I so wish Sonos had Last.fm reporting built-in!)
  • I also listen to a lot of 89.3 The Current, both on the radio through the home theater, and streaming online through Banshee. That is not reflected in the graph. That is truly eclectic listening.

I’m a big enough fan, that I’ve actually subscribed for over the last year. I can’t say I’m thrilled by the recent acquisition by CBS, but I love the statistics Last.fm collects and lets me share, both on their website and through the badge on this blog.