Reading/Watching/Listening

Since I’ve slowed down in updates I decided to steal something I see on other blogs, the “Reading/Watching/Listening (To)” posts. It’s pretty self-explantory, but for anyone that isn’t a geeky blog reader it’s pretty simple to explain. It’s a list of what I am reading, watching, and listening to. It’s not literally what I am doing right now, obviously I am writing a blog post right now, but I think you get the idea. Maybe you think I’m the coolest guy around and want to follow in my foosteps and read the books I read, watch the shows or movies I do, or listen the music I like. If not, just call me a self-indulgent prick and move on to the other posts, pics from RC races, or another blog, whatever floats your boat. Anyways on to the list for today, this week, this month, I’m not sure yet.

Reading - Horns by Joe Hill. I started reading this last week, and so far its a great book. This book grabs you from page one, and rolls along at a good pace to keep you turning the pages. The main character Ig wakes up after a night of drinking to find he has horns, and the people around him tell him their inner thoughts. Ig is caught up trying to deal with gruesome murder of his girlfriend a year earlier, which many of the townspeople think he was responsible for. I won’t say much else about the book, mostly because I am only halfway through it and don’t know any spoilers yet. The book is another great read from Joe Hill. I’ve also read his earlier books Heart Shaped Box, and 20th Century Ghosts, both awesome books as well. Anyone looking for a good horror/thriller book should pick these up.

Watching - Lost and House. Like a large majority of the country I am watching the final season of Lost. I never got into this show when it was on until sometime last year. I ended up loading my Netflix queue with all the seasons of Lost that they had, and watching them all back to back. I even managed to get Jess addicted to the show a little bit too. I don’t think I need to explain Lost, most people know of it already. If you like mysteries and/or sci-fi, you’re probably already watching it. If you’re not, you should be. The show is great, even if it does run around in circles a little, or a lot. Who cares the show is great and Evangeline Lilly is hot. House, another somewhat obvious one. Most people know about it already, so I won’t go into any details. I like House  a lot, the show is awesome, and it seems a lot better without the Vicodin issues. I just wish Fox would stop screwing around with the season and let it be on. It’s on such a sporadic schedule, I never know if it’s on until Monday nights at 8 when it’s either in the guide or not. Please Fox, if you’re reading this, just let me watch my damn show.

Listening - MUSE, a LOT. Jess and I went to the MUSE concert down at the TD Garden in Boston, MA on Saturday. The show was incredible, even better than I had expected. MUSE is an alternative rock band (that mostly fits) from the UK. Anyone that played Guitar Hero 3 will remember Knights of Cydonia, that would be their song. They are also on the newer Guitar Hero 5 with the song Plug In Baby. I have liked this band from the second I heard Knights of Cydonia for the first time. Since then I have been into all of their music. So I bought the tickets and we went to the concert last week. Like I said, the show was incredible. They had these 3, skyscrapers I guess would describe them best. They were a bunch of LEDs or lights that functioned as screens for all sorts of light show type graphics, and actual video of the band playing on the stage. The skyscraper things had a gap in the middle, vertically, so the guys could perform from on these elevated platforms with the screen above and below them. The whole show was great, the lights, the band, lasers, fog, it had everything. They even threw out like 10 gigantic balloons that looked like eyeballs, with confetti inside them. I have only been to a handful of concerts, 5-10 maybe, but this was the best show I have ever seen. Even Jess enjoyed it, and she did not really like their music before the concert. Now she won’t stop listening to them (just kidding). But for Jess and I to actually agree on music is rare, so that says a lot about them. If you haven’t heard much of them, or anything at all, I really recommend giving them a shot. Their newest album The Resistance is great. You might know the more popular song off the album, Uprising, it’s the music playing in the background of all the commercials for the TV show V.

In geekier news, I am working on learning some new skills for web development. I started learning PHP, as well as how to work with Drupal and Joomla as content management systems for web sites. I’m hoping to expand my skills and maybe be able to pick up some freelance with those skills. Freelance work might be good to pay for the RC hobby. I’ve also decided to stop using the host for my www.coreyonrails.com site, and move that to this hosting company, Dreamhost. Because I didn’t it out well, the coreyonrails.com site is down until the transfer is complete. I’m sure many of you are heartbroken, and will not feel like your day is complete without being able to visit that site, but shit happens. It’ll be back up eventually so it can sit there and collect internet dust.

Well that’s it for now, and I am going to go back to reading Horns. I’ll be back next week, or maybe next month, with an update. I have a never-ending supply of books to read, so I can guarantee there will always be at least a “Reading” part of the “Reading/Watching/Listening” post.

Have fun and “keep it between the ditches”.