The Gimcrack Miscellany

Once upon a time there was a site called Blogmusik or something like that. Well, long story short, they faced legal troubles due to their music distribution policies, but ultimately won in the end, changing their name to Deezer to mark the occasion. It’s a French site but the only time you’ll ever know the difference is in the occasional untranslated error message or the dual-language subject line in the welcome email. Come on, just give it a try, you won’t get any French germs on you.

Deezer is a web application similar to Finetune or Pandora in that it intuitively creates stations with music that matches your preferences and streams them to you. The difference is that Deezer allows you to search for songs and add them to your playlists (which Finetune and Pandora do) and then navigate your playlist and play any song you want just like you were listening to your purchased music using iTunes or Windows Media Player (which is where Finetune and Pandora fail to deliver).

Pandora. Clever ad skins. Neat. No thanks. Kbye.

Finetune. It is dark and ruthless and it scares me when i use it after 6pm.

Deezer. iTunes? No, I said Deezer. iTunes? Actually, ok yes, iTunes - I can see where you’re coming from.

Another Deezer-specific feature is the ability to upload any and all mp3 music tracks you want, which means potentially you could replicate your mp3 library using their resources. You gotta figure though, that’s really just good for sharing your own original music, because if you uploaded your entire 5000 song library at about 30 seconds per song it would require an entire work week or more.

Can you embed it into your blog just like your fancy Finetune player? Calm down, you cutie pie, sure.

Here’s a snippet from Deezer’s less-than-informative press release:

After SACEM1 closed down Blogmusik.net in February 2007, the site, which is now called Deezer.com, has announced that an agreement has been reached with the societies that protect copyright royalties.

Deezer.com is now the first global website for music on demand with no restrictions: listening to all kinds of music is now free, unlimited, legal and accessible to all Internet users via a Web browser.

I’m just starting to create my playlists and explore the rest of the site. I uploaded a track called Humoresque in b (performed by Poroshina) and added it to my playlist. Each uploaded track has to go through an identification process before it can be publicly searchable, but you can access it any time regardless of whether it’s accepted or rejected by their system.

Oh, and uploaded files have to be in mp3 format. To convert your current library, see this blog post which refers to this software. Not all of the songs are 96Kbps or higher, so you may come across some bad recordings.

All in all it’s pretty buggy and lacks some instructional verbiage, but it’s based on a pretty comprehensive song database. For instance, I searched for John Williams and found 840 songs. If I could find out how they create their song archive I would tell you. If I could find anything about Blogmusik or Deezer on Wikipedia I would be happy to share. If I even knew for sure that Deezer is not really just a Weezer tribute band from France I would relay that information to you gladly. Alas, I don’t.

Does anyone know any more about Deezer? Tell me in the comments.

I understand this is a little belated. I understand 10,000 people have blogged on this film. I understand everyone and their mom has seen it and loved it. You’re still not getting out of your Berating. I’m just putting it out there - you’re welcome to pick it up or send it right back my way.

The Good

Micheal Bay always takes you on a thrill ride, whether the setting is Alcatraz island, the future, or an asteroid hurling towards Earth. With Ben Affleck on it. I wish it would’ve hit. Needless to say, I was expecting the thrill ride Transformers takes you on, but I still wasn’t prepared for the magnitude or ferocity of said ride. I don’t think there was a single second of the film that didn’t contain either A) a billion explosions at once, B) an hilarious one-liner and a thousand explosions at once, or C) the hottest women currently alive with only around 50 - 70 explosions at once. At one point in the film I noticed I was making this weird continuous grunting noise kind of like you would make if you were about to be slung out of a giant sling shot but you didn’t know exactly when.

Notice we’re still in The Good category. I love eye candy and Transformers had tons of it. I keep trying to think of other things this movie had, but the only thing I really remember about it is explosions. Wait, I do remember this one time where it was sort of calm… nope that was Fight Club.

The Bad

I hope you didn’t just think The Good was The Bad because trust me The Bad will not be mistaken for The Good. You’ll just be reading two The Bads and the Berating that follows will not make sense because you’ll be like “what did he see in that movie to not B-Rate it worse than that?”

My first problem with Transformers is the acting. I don’t require monologues of great length and Shakespearean dialogue, but I do expect there be at least AN actor who is just that: an actor. I’m being too hard on Shia LaBeouf. He can act, but he can’t yet be the singular source of acting skills in all of a movie, like such stars as Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, and Tom Arnold can. If he would’ve come out with 4 movies this year instead of a mere 3, like he did, he might be ready for that. The rest of the cast is robots, army guys, and annoying hot AND smart women who can crack computer codes and rewire car engines.

Let’s not get into the plot. Ok let’s, because it will be really simple. There are good Transformers and bad Transformers, they fight each other, explosions happen, something about a Camaro, more explosions, pop culture is referred to, closing credits.

And now we come to the unbelievable events of Transformers. Just to be clear, and in case you don’t know about the Beratings instructional kit, I’m not talking about what the movie is intentionally selling me. For instance, I believe these guys are from outer-space, I believe their secrets have been held by our government for years, and I believe they can fly and transform in mid-air. I don’t believe, however, that good old Shia LaBeouf can be struck by the arm of a Decepticon and launched 100 feet onto the windshield of a car, and then get up and run away without a scratch on him. I don’t believe a 19 year old strikingly beautiful blond from Australia can walk into a government think tank with 100 of the smartest computer geniuses in the world and suddenly solve everything. And someone please tell me how a couple guys from Iraq who should be in hospital beds, some random high school kids, a hand full of government agents, and a video gamer who lives with his mom all end up together in a different part of the world engaging in hand-to-hand combat with transforming machines. I could maybe believe this if they all happened to be on the same bus (i.e. Speed), or be in the bank at the same time (i.e. Inside Man), or be renewing their licenses at the BMV on the same day (i.e. Hell).

The fact that this movie didn’t score a higher Berating is either a testament to how high I value the element of eye candy, the nostalgia I feel for the Transformers franchise from my childhood, or a result of over-hype and uber-advertising. Nevertheless, I hope to own Transformers one day and complete my Micheal Bay collection. Wait, I don’t own Pearl Harbor.

The Beratings

Acting - 1 berating
Plot - 1 berating
Inconsistencies - no beratings
Unbelievable Events - 2 beratings
Schematics - no beratings

Recommended Investment = See it at the dollar-fifty

0/10 Stand in line for the very first showing
1/10 See it the first weekend
2/10 See it at full price
3/10 See it at the Five-Buck-Club
4/10 See it at the dollar-fifty
5/10 See it OnDemand
6/10 Rent it from Blockbuster
7/10 Watch it on TV
8/10 Watch it purely for spousal points
9/10 Never watch it
10/10 Buy it and publicly destroy it

I used to try all kinds of sizing techniques and non-xhtml compliant methods. I tried absolutely positioning a div tag by giving it a left:20% and right:20% attribute, but this didn’t work in all browsers (I’m looking your direction, IE). I tried wrapping the whole div tag in a ‘center’ element, but we won’t even go into how many standards that violates.

I finally figured it out, thanks to the genius of Arcsin’s CSS skills, when I was looking at the stylesheet for the very blog you are reading as we speak, or as you read, rather. The blog. As you are currently reading the blog this post is in, as we sit here and speak, during whilst you read it, or something concurrently, visa vie.

Ergo, here is the code. Don’t blink because you’ll miss it, that’s how simple it is.


.container {margin: 0 auto;}


Just put everything inside <div class=”container”></div> and you’re ready to rock and roll. Speaking of rock and roll, did you know Death Cab for Cutie rocks and rolls? I watched a RockDock about them and they go crazy up on stage. I mean they’re really rocking and rolling. You wouldn’t guess it solely by listening to their albums.

P.S. Make sure your container div tag is inside another div tag with attribute text-align:center or this technique won’t work in IE.

The Bourne Ultimatum is the third and final installment of the trilogy about former CIA assassin Jason Bourne. I must say, I was blown away.

The Good

The cinematography, score, directing, acting, stunt effects, and plethora of settings were all superb. This movie did something that few movies are able to accomplish, especially in this day and age. Do you remember what it’s like to get chills while you’re watching a movie? I’m talking the first time you saw The Matrix, or when the armies of Gondor ride over the orc horde as the sun bursts over the horizon in LOTR: Return of the King. The Bourne Ultimatum was able to give me chills on the part where Jason Bourne is fighting another “asset” in a Moroccan apartment. There is a book involved. You will know what I’m talking about when you see it.

The Bad

There was a little bit lacking in the plot category, but so what? The plot was still ok, and all the stuff I listed above was more than enough to make up for whatever was lacking in terms of plot.

The Beratings

Acting - no beratings
Plot - 1 berating
Inconsistencies - no beratings
Unbelievable Events - no beratings
Schematics - no beratings

Recommended Investment = See it the first weekend

0/10 Stand in line for the very first showing
1/10 See it the first weekend
2/10 See it at full price
3/10 See it at the Five-Buck-Club
4/10 See it at the dollar-fifty
5/10 See it OnDemand
6/10 Rent it from Blockbuster
7/10 Watch it on TV
8/10 Watch it purely for spousal points
9/10 Never watch it
10/10 Buy it and publicly destroy it

The show was shorter but the venue was much better than when we saw them in Chicago at The Aragon. They still interacted with the crowd just like in Chicago and they still played their songs with amazing energy and spirit. This was the last show of their North American tour, and possibly their entire Eyes Open tour (with the exception of Lollapalooza), but their level of fatigue did not show.

Of note:

• Front man Gary Lightbody verbally ravaged a couple that was sitting down in the second row. Everyone cheered.
• I had the best seat in the house, front row, center stage, and could read the tattoo on the bass player’s arm.
• The bass player handed my wife his pick. Notice I didn’t say he threw it and she got lucky and caught it. He actually saw her reach towards him, stopped playing in the middle of a song, bent down, and literally handed her his pick.
• Last but not least, we hung out with the guys from Snow Patrol after the show at The Rathskellar and I got my ticket stub signed by the keyboardist, bass guitarist, and drummer.

In summary, it happened again: I grew to be an even bigger fan of Snow Patrol by seeing them live. Now if only I could get front row tickets to Coldplay. And hang out with them after the show at MacNiven’s.