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I've added a new wallpaper. I created the normal 1024x768 and a widescreen 1440X900 version. I used photoshop to create it. The entire wallpaper was created from scratch except for the apple logo. I used a varitey of filters to create the "brushed steel" look.
David bought X&Y by Coldplay a while back, and I found that I really enjoy it. The entire album is pretty good, something I find unusual for contemporary music. Most modern music albums have a couple of good songs and a bunch of "filler" songs, none of which stand out. X&Y is comprised of mostly slow songs that have a couple of rockin' moments. Anyway, I wrote a little review-->
The first track on X&Y, "Square One" is pretty good. It starts out pretty slow, then picks up with some pretty good electric guitar. Chris Martin's vocals are also good, like most of the album. Square One is one of my favorites. Four stars.
"What If" is alright, the piano in the beginning works well with the vocals. It is a little repitive, though, and doesn't have anything that makes it special. Three stars.
"White Shadows" is okay, it's got a good beat to it. As with the majority of the songs on X&Y, it starts out slow and then builds with some electric guitar. Three stars.
"Fix You" really stands out against the other tracks on X&Y. The first half of the song is a long vocal solo with acoustic guitar in the background. Then the song has a long build of electric guitar untill the entire band chants the chorus. Outstanding. I saw the live music video on VH1 and it gave me goosebumps.
"Talk" is probably my favorite track on the album. The echoing guitar in the beginning is great. The chorus is outstanding, but not too different from all the other choruses. It still is a great song, though. The guitar solo at the end is good, too. Five stars.
"X&Y" is a decent song. It has a good build to it, though the vocals aren't too outstanding. Three stars.
"Speed of Sound" is probably the most widely publicized track, and the only song from X&Y I've ever heard on the radio. It is certainly worthy of the publicity, it is a great song. The vocals are good and it certainly has a ring to it.
"Speed of Sound" is the first Coldplay song I ever heard, I purchased it off the iTunes Music Store shortly after the album came out. I don't listen to it nearly as much now, though it sounds just as good to me now as it did then. Five stars.
"A Messege" is another good song. As with many of the songs on the album, it has a slow acoustic solo in the beggining and builds. Four stars.
"Low" is a good song, the beat is good, the vocals are good. Pleasant to listen to. Three stars.
"The Hardest Part" is okay. The vocals are kind of silly, but the melody is nice. The song is upbeat and nice to listen to. Three stars.
"Swallowed in the Sea" is my second favorite song on the album. Most of the song is fairly slow, one of the few like it on the cd. I can listen to the song over and over and not get bored of it. The vocals are great. Very soothing. Five stars.
"Twisted Logic" isn't too outstanding. There's not a lot of struture to it. Granted, it is still a good song, but not too good. I don't listen to it too often. Three stars.
"Til' Kingdom Come" (otherwise known as "+") is okay. The song is pretty slow, and stays that way. I don't listen to it that often.
In conclusion, X&Y is a great album is is worth the full price of the CD. I'd definitly recommend it.
Recently, an idea struck me. What to do when would-be theives and ne'er-do-wells attempt to steal my beloved iPod? How to protect it? Answer=indisguisePod. I purchased a low end cassette walkman and ripped the guts out of it. It took quite some time to chop through the plastic, but eventually I managed to completely empty the plastic shell of the cassette player. The front face of the indisguisePod is held on by ductape. This may be a bonus, though, because all those ne'er-do-wells wouldn't consider a beat up, ductape'd cassette player worthy of thievery. Check out the "sweet" pics.
I stumbled upon this list while "surfing the web." It is quite funny. I really liked this one:
I will build machines which simply fail when overloaded, rather than wipe out all nearby henchmen in an explosion or worse yet set off a chain reaction. I will do this by using devices known as "surge protectors."
There are three pages, make sure you read them all. You can see the original site by clicking the copyright notice at the bottom of page one. There's also a rather stylin' widget for all you mac users out there.
Well, I had been contmplating if I wanted to get the dock for some time now. I was surfing Amazon when I saw one for $12. I decided I'd might as well get it. It came in the mail yesterday. It matches the iPod perfectly, it's completely white except for the bottom which is gray with the apple logo indented in it. The dock has some weight to it, it needs some to keep the iPod at an angle. On the back side is the usb/firewire port and the line out. The dock doesn't really do anything special except keep the iPod off any surfaces. It certainly helps organize all my cables better, though. The only other real feature is the line out. It supposedly has a higher quality then if you were to plug your aux in or whatever into the headphone out. Its also supposed to protect the iPod from being overloaded. This would helped when I tried to plug the iPod into our dying surrond sound system. I'd say that the dock is not neccicary, but a cool thing to have if you can find it cheap.