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I really should do OSI justice and publish a full review, but I'm still digging into the album. It's nice to have some new, interesting music to listen to! Kevin Moore's influence is all over the place, in a great way, and Jim Matheos plays some of the most tasteful guitar work I've heard in a while. Mike Portnoy's drumming is strong - especially on what I consider the penultimate track, "shutDOWN" - and Sean Malone fretless bass playing is refreshing, especially on "Horseshoes and B-52's". Steven Wilson's guest vocals stint on "shutDOWN" is especially powerful.
The album's getting heavy rotation during my work day. Very fun to listen to. I still have to listen to the three Limited Edition tracks more, and watch the videos.
If you're a Dream Theater, Fates Warning, or Porcupine Tree fan, you'll probably dig this album.

A band I found out about a few years ago is named Gist. They're based in the DC area. I used to work with their ex-bassist Jim Campbell's mother and she encouraged some of us to come see the band perform at The Wire in New Cumberland. I can't remember how long ago that was, but I don't see it listed on the band's tour dates page, so it was probably in 1999. I thought they were interesting, but not having heard their music before, I didn't really get into it.
Things changed when Jim's mom shared with me a CD of the mixdowns from some studio sessions they did in either late 2000 or early 2001. I thoroughly enjoyed most of the fifteen tracks, and I've been a closet fan since. I hadn't checked up on them via their web site since I had heard Jim had left the band. I went out to look today and found out that they've released a new CD, "Art Is Now Human", and it's content are the same songs I've been listening to for about 2 years now! I'm definitely going to pick up a copy of this CD to see how things turned out.
I read some bad news for me on their website - turns out they played Harrisburg during the Millenium Music Conference a few weekends ago and I didn't know about it! I would have loved to have gone downtown to see them; I even have their "G.I.ST" shirt I could have worn! Argh. Doesn't look like they're planning on playing here again anytime soon. I've added a link to their site in my Quick Links block, so hopefully I'll remember to use it!
I highly recommend listening to some samples of their work - you can check out some at CD Baby.

Anyone feel like going to a King's X show on Thursday, May 8th, at The Trocadero in Philly? They seem to stop at the Troc every tour and I've never gone out there to see them; I've also never been to downtown Philly. After seeing them play a short set to open the final date of the Dream Theater/Satriani tour in September, I really want to see them play a full set, and it looks like they'll be playing stuff from a new album due out soon called "Black Like Sunday".
Before September, I had only seen them live once, in Buffalo in '92. Phil and I went, and the show was at a place called "The Scrapyard". I was about 7 feet away from Doug entire show and absolutely loved it. It's time for me to see them again!

Courtesy of K5: Terry Jones of "Monty Python" fame has an opinion piece out about the goings-on in Iraq. An interesting read. More of his pieces are linked to in the K5 article.

Courtesy of Slashdot: a new book discussing the feasibility of building a "space elevator" has been published. I've only heard of this idea the last few years, but it's very intriguing to me. I definitely want to check out this book. The article I've linked to is a review of the book and has a great deal of primer info about the concept. Imagine a 2-meter-wide ribbon of carbon nanotubules that extends from an ocean-based platform up into and through the atmosphere, to another platform in geosynchronous orbit. Now imagine climbers hauling stuff to put into orbit (or bring it down) using this ribbon. Too cool.

I'm probably the most unlikely fantasy hockey fan, as I haven't watched too many games this season. But, alas, I'm on top in my Yahoo! Fantasy Hockey League as we head into the playoffs. I've been keeping up with my team weekly, making the right assignments; I had the benefit of getting some great players in our league's automated draft. Brodeur and Lalime are two of the hottest goalies this season. I've made very few trades, and I'm really surprised that I'm in first place. I get a bye this week and begin two weeks of single-elimination playoffs after that.

In an attempt to further diversify my site, I've added a current webcam image from home to the rightboxes. Read on to find out how I'm doing it.

Over on Rush.com they've begun promoting the DVD I mentioned here.

Promo Poster
Track Listing
After reading the description of the DVD contents, I think I'm going to be a very happy owner of this DVD. Hopefully the described 16:9 video will be an anamorphic presentation. It'll be nice to have a Rush concert video that includes an entire show! The extras should be cool as well.
Now, can we have a release date?

Our leaders have abandoned diplomatic efforts to forcibly disarm Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein; here's a link to the current AP article on the situation. President Bush is going to address the nation about this tonight at 8PM.
Based on the linked article and other ones I'm reading, it sounds like unless Hussein and his immediate family leave Iraq today, an offensive will begin with a massive bombing campaign against Baghdad. I can only hope that if we start this, we have a plan for finishing it. Or knowing when it's time to stop.
Update: This Iraq-related article from a few weeks ago is receiving some fresh comments. Feel free to chime in now that the President has conditionally declared war against Iraq.

I was talking to some friends about my all-time favorite PC games, and "Total Annihilation" was on my list. I hadn't played it in awhile; I loaded it up, patched it, and started playing it again last week. Also, I had heard that Civilization III was pretty cool; I saw it on sale for $30 over the weekend and decided to pick it up.

This is one of the most eloquent speeches I've heard or read about the current state of affairs regarding Iraq: Robin Cook's Speech to the House of Commons.

One thing that still bugs me about the timeline of events after the Gulf War is how four years went by before UN weapons inspectors were sent and allowed back into Iraq. And now, not even 6 months later, it's been decided by the Bush administration that Iraq's not cooperating, won't cooperate soon enough, and that their leaders must now leave the country.

There's definitely many ways to watch and interpret these events, but one thing's clear to me: President Bush will not be as popular after this crisis is over. I guess us little people don't need to know all the facts that absolutely point to the Iraqi leadership being in league with those who would terrorize us. If we know and have proof they are a corrupt regime, there have to be ways to prosecute the corruption other than going to war.

These were Ari Fleischer's words at 9:45PM; he then said the President will address the nation at 10:15PM. TV news is showing anti-aircraft fire over Baghdad. I think it's beginning.

I upgraded my main workhorse, Earthshine, from a P4 1.6GHz to a P4 2.4GHz. It runs about 10 degrees Celcius hotter, but it's stable. It'll help my XviD encodes and it can play back HDTV-resolution video without too many frame drops. Not that I have a display that I'm running at an HDTV resolution... yet. ;)

We took a trip to Buffalo this weekend to see family; I got to meet my new little nephew. He's only two months old and reminded me of my son when he was that age. Too cute for words.

I've been following the war coverage. I'm disgusted by the reports that described the repeated airings of the videotape that supposedly show dead US POW's, some apparently executed. Even if you feel this is an unjust war, I don't think you can say that the Iraqis responsible for the treatment of our POWs (if it's true - apparently it is) aren't a bunch of worthless thugs.

I'm also gaining an interest in learning more about the UN's charter and how it has and hasn't fulfilled that charter in the last 10 years. I think the UN has work ahead of it if it will remain a credible representation of its member nations' collective will. Keep in mind that during all the Iraq-related situations since '91, they have remained a member of the UN. As I research this more I'll probably write a feature on it.

Lastly, this guy is doing a hell of a job posting to-the-minute web coverage of the war. Bravo. If you want to read his content, please use one of the listed mirror sites.

Here's the scoop.
Oh my goodness. I can't wait to find out these dates. And according to The Queensryche Campaign, Chris DeGarmo is back with the band and will be touring with them by the time these shows will be happening (July/August). Should make for a great show.
Don, I think we'll have to check out at least one of these shows together, don'tcha think?

I'm playing with new versions of Icecast2 Win32 and Oddcast v2 for the player called Foobar2000. FB2K is pretty cool. Once I get things up again, I will probably be streaming at a slightly lower sampling rate. We'll see how it goes.
Update @11:22PM: Foobar2000 and Oddcast v2 are a nice combination. FB2k has great support for Replaygain tags and has a nice limiter built in. It doesn't have a crossfader, but that's OK because it's a bit too CPU intensive. I'm building up a new playlist now. Let me know if you like what you're hearing (or not). I downsampled to both 22050Hz and 32kHz and they sounded like crap, so I'm still streaming at the same bandwidth as before.

After a crash course in the Unreal Tournament 2003 Dedicated Server, I've got it up and running on this server (ping alexharden.org for the address) at the standard ports. This is a private server; it's not being advertised on the UT2003 Master Server lists.

Email me if you want the password. I'd like to get some semi-regular Friday or Saturday night fragfests going.

My first official fantasy hockey season is now over; I eked out a win in my playoff matchup this week to achieve third place. Our league was a free, non-hard-core league, but there were very few "ghost teams". It was a fun experience.
I'm looking forward to joining Don's rotisserie league next year; should be fun.
Now I'm going to start planning the fantasy football league I'm going to host in the fall!