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teewee and liu picked this up first, and so finally I caved and went ahead and picked it up (via iPhone no less) for $8 on iTunes. All but one of the songs are live versions of songs from her two normal albums and it’s made up of 8 tracks.

PSEUDO-TECHNICAL
Sounds great on the home system, as well as these Sony MDR-7506 cans. Clear, typical reverbed concert sound. Sound stage is spaced out a bit for that binaural feeling. The Sound of Silence stands up above the rest, which might be biased, since it’s also probably my favourite track. In it, the two guitars are quite spaced, so you can really differentiate and pinpoint the different guitars. Brooke’s voice is great as usual, and the recording clarity is pristine enough that you can hear all the annunciations and when she opens and closes her mouth hah. The bass is also quite prominent throughout the album. +1!

ENJOYABILITY
Most of the songs have a little bit of a different intro. You can hear someone yell something at the start of Arithmetic and Brooke chuckling. C.S. Lewis was the start of the set and so has a 2 minute extended intro with the instruments coming in one at a time with a pretty cool guitar/bass riff combo. Definitely one of the highlights of the album. I have a soft spot for well covered classics, and the fact that it’s a “new” track from Brooke, The Sound of Silence probably stands out as my favourite track. It’s very simple, starts out with two guitars and Brooke, then some really deep bass comes in with some keys. It’s a really warm rendition and comfortable to listen to.

Overall, very easy to listen to, mellow and warm throughout.

I will rate it.. arbitrarily 5 out of 5 TProlls.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7772902.stm

Chinese girl gets ‘kiss of deaf’

A young Chinese woman was left partially deaf following a passionate kiss from her boyfriend.
The 20-something from Zhuhai in Guangdong province arrived at hospital having completely lost the hearing in her left ear, said local reports.
The incident prompted a series of articles in the local media warning of the dangers of excessive kissing.
“While kissing is normally very safe, doctors advise people to proceed with caution,” wrote the China Daily.
The doctor who treated the girl in hospital was quoted in the paper explaining what had happened.
“The kiss reduced the pressure in the mouth, pulled the eardrum out and caused the breakdown of the ear.”
The chorus of warnings was echoed by the Shanghai Daily, which wrote: “A strong kiss may cause an imbalance in the air pressure between two inner ears and lead to a broken ear drum.”
The young woman is expected to regain her full hearing within about two months.

Just in case you haven’t seen the ridiculousness that is my elder sibling.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=940105

Where we lived and went to school etc! Craziness!

They have no orange unfortunately.. so:

Red – sadd3j
Blue – YFA
Green – JasonC

View Larger Map

The perfect game for wasting a few (read: many) hours on a lazy Sunday. So yesterday I spent the whole afternoon/evening sleeping and playing Fallout 3 (picked up used at Rogers, also got Ocean’s 13 and The Kingdom for $2 each). It’s a really cool game, I’m not sure if anyone else in TPX would really take to it, but it’s pretty amazing and quite a lot of fun.

I played the original, or more accurately, watched my brother play the original. Fallout? No.. the original on which Fallout was based was Interplay’s 1988 computer game, Wasteland.

Anyhow, the graphics are great, and can’t complain about the surround sound. Also re: 360 over the PC version, I figure if I’m going to spend hours on an adventure game, I’d rather do it in a blanket on my couch than sitting at a desk. I’m not usually a fan of the free-roaming-do-anything-you-want games like Oblivion etc. due to the aimlessness feeling, but Fallout 3’s starting story is really interesting and so far has kept me in it.

That being said, out of the 8 hours I played it yesterday, after maybe the first hour and a half of the story, I spent the other 7 hours doing side quests from the starting town. The degree of freedom (or at least perceived freedom) has really impressed me. For reference, the game is post-apocalyptic so everything is poor and run down. The starting town, Megaton, and is shantytown built around an atomic bomb which didn’t go off but was still armed. Once you’ve talked to some people, you get some quests, and so it’s all typical so far and follows the typical rpg recipe:

1. Starting town.
2. Get quests.
3. Complete quests.
4. Do story quest.

For reference, it’s post-apocalypse and everything is run-down, poor and dirty.

One of the quests I picked up from the sheriff/mayor was to disarm the a-bomb in the middle of town, sounds pretty typical so far right? I fix the BIG problem in town and then voila, story progresses. Anyhow, I walked into the bar and picked up another sidequest, deliver some message to family in another town, go strongarm some druggie girl for money etc. etc. Then I talked to some suspicious, well dressed character in the corner. This is where the game REALLY turned it upside down for me (and I will admit, caused me to have to reload a prior save).

The sketchy guy said he worked for some powerful people.. who wanted to basically get rid of the town.. wouldn’t give many details, just said that it paid really well. The quest was basically to detonate the a-bomb in the center of town. I turned it down because I’m inherently good :p and I had picked up all these other quests.. what would happen to all of those? I said I’d think about it and headed back out. I talked to the sheriff again as I was walking past to leave the town, and a new dialogue option had appeared to tell him about the guy who’s offering money for someone to blow up the town. The sheriff told me to follow him.

He ran up to the bar and confronted the guy with his rifle. After some initial questioning at gunpoint, to which the guy denied anything of the sort, the sheriff told him he was going to put him in jail for questioning. The sheriff tells sketchy guy to follow him and he leads him out of the bar. As he was leading him out of the bar.. sketchy guy pulls out a silenced 10mm and blows away the sheriff and then starts attacking me for ratting him out! This left me gah.. now BOTH disarm and explode the abomb quests are gone!

So I had to reload.. but due to autosave the sheriff is already confronting the guy.. so I had to shoot the sketchy guy to save the sheriff. Anyhow.. now I’m just doing some other sidequests which are pretty fun so far and leveling up some and gain some skills. Of course there are so many skills, that you have to specialize, I’m kinda specialized in small guns, sneaking, and hacking.. but yeah.. not sure If I really need the “big guns” skill later or what.

Really a cool game so far.