Christoph Blecker » Reviews

Music Mondays – “Whatcha Say” by Jason DeRulo

Toph — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:51:12 +0000

Yeah, I’m a slacker who hasn’t updated in a few weeks. In my defence, it’s been busy! Work, work.

Jason DeRulo

This week, I’ve taking a liking to “Whatcha Say” by Jason DeRulo. Jason is an emerging Pop singer/songwriter from Florida. The song is a typical Pop piece, but there are a couple special bits about it. First, I quite like Jason’s voice. He’s got a good range, and he seems to have pretty good control over it. Although with advancements in editing, the long notes can be dragged out digitally, so I don’t know. The other thing that I like, is it samples “Hide and Seek” by Imogen Heap. This song is most popularly known for it’s use in FOX’s show “The O.C.“.

Music Mondays – “Paper Moon” by Our Lady Peace

Toph — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:23:36 +0000

My main reason for attending the 2009 Virgin Music Festival in Deer Lake Park was to see Our Lady Peace. I’ve been a fan of them since about 2002, when they released “Gravity“. I like most of what they’ve done, both old and new. They’re a canadian group that was formed in Toronto, Ontario.

Our Lady Peace @ Deer Lake Park (Virgin Festival)

One of the songs they played live was called “Paper Moon”. It’s a softer song, but moves into a strong passionate rock. It’s off OLP’s seventh studio album, “Burn, Burn“. So far I like quite a bit off their new album. OLP has a very unique sound, in both their style of music and of their lead vocalist, Raine Maida. They had a great performance, and despite a very easy going attitude on stage, they have such a passion for their music, it’s unmatched. During the performance, Raine even starting climbing up the stage. They continued playing even as a severe thunderstorm took over Deer Lake Park, even cracking jokes about joining the crowd in the downpour.

“I was thinking that if you know a way out, then I’d like to go with you..”

Music Mondays – “Spotlight” by MUTEMATH

Toph — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:17:54 +0000

In an effort to push myself to post on this thing more, I’ve decided to steal an idea from the intarwebs: Music Mondays. I’m going to try to post at least each Monday with something simple about the music that I’m currently listening to. My tastes change so much, it should be easy to come up with new topics.

To kick off Music Mondays, I’m going to introduce you to MUTEMATH.

MUTEMATH @ Deer Lake Park (Virgin Festival)

I saw these guys live at the 2009 Virgin Music Festival. They are a Grammy Award nominated American rock band from New Orleans that formed in 2003. I had never heard them before, but they effing rocked the house (had there been a house, mind you). They have a very power driven sound, and you can feel the raw passion for their music. “Spotlight” is the first single off their new album “Armistice”.

Codeweavers Gives Away Free Software

Toph — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:45:14 +0000

Codeweavers makes a wonderful piece of software called “Crossover” that allows you to install and run Windows Applications and Games under the Linux and Mac OSX platforms, without needing to install or run Windows. It’s not an emulator, but it’s based off of the Wine emulation layer. I’ve been meaning to write a blog entry about it for awhile, because it’s a very solid piece of software, and they have a great support team that is constantly working to improve the program. However, I had to write an entry today, because tomorrow they are going to give their software away for FREE, for 24 hours.

Yes sir, I said free. Free as in air. You can go here to read the press release on why they’re doing it, and how to get your hands on a copy of this gold nugget of software.

The godsend of Spanning Sync

Toph — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 21:00:45 +0000

So upon moving from my Windows Platform over to my Mac, I had to figure out a new way to do e-mail and calendar. I have had a Google account for some time, and have used the Google Calendar on and off for the last 6 months. The big issue was always synchronization. I like having a good web client, which Google has, but need to have mobile and desktop access to it as well. Between my Mac and my new Blackberry, my calendaring problems are solved!

On the Mac side of things, I’m using iCal and Spanning Sync. Spanning Sync was the first ever application I bought for my Mac, and I don’t regret it in the slightest. I bought the lifetime subscription for it for a mere $65 and it has already done so much for me. It was very simple to install (as most MacOS applications, it was a simple integrated installer), and all it required me to do is sign in with my Google account information and choose the local calendar it should sync the remote calendar down to. Done!

It pulled down my whole Google Calendar with no sync issues. All the funky repeat events, exceptions, everything. I have been using it for about two months now and only had one sync issue, related to the 10.5.2 upgrade, but by the time I had installed it, Spanning Sync already had instructions on what to do to correct the issue and remove the duplicate events.

It is a solid shareware application, and has very good support from the developers. They have been gaining steady support and have steadily developed a repore with Apple in getting iCal bugs reported and resolved.

Honestly, this piece of software is a bargain at the $25/year price, and a STEAL at $65 for lifetime updates. It keeps the lovely web client in sync with the beautiful Apple desktop client. And right now, you can get a $5 discount by clicking this special link: http://spanningsync.com/?r=SAUHNN or using discount coupon code “SAUHNN”. It’s just that easy.

Now I could have stopped there, or used the data now in Apple Sync Services to manually sync stuff over USB, but Google had a better idea. They have developed an application called “Google Sync for Mobile” which is an application built for the BlackBerry. This application enables over-the-air (OTA) syncing of your Google Calendar down to your Blackberry calendar. It’s the next best thing to having a BES server. It runs in the background and syncs your Blackberry’s calendar to your Google Calendar at a defined interval.

So now I have the total solution — a calendar that stays in sync with my online web client, by offline desktop client, and my semi-online mobile client. It’s pretty sweet. If only the rest of my life was so perfectly organized!