Ian Benedict

The school semester is slowly drawing to a close. Sadly though, the snow isn’t.

I’m really happy with my guitar playing. All those days of chord progressions and scales are finally starting to pay off. I’ve been practicing this one particular song which happens to be from Megaman 2 (Yeah yeah I know, it’s a good lick though), and can pretty much play it thoroughly. In addition to the recommendation I made last time for beginner guitarists, I’d also recommend checking out the Metal Method series of instructional dvds. They’re made for the absolute beginner to around intermediate/advanced players. Here’s a video of the song I’ve been practicing (But it’s not me that’s playing, obviously).

In this next section, I’d like to take a bit to talk about a couple of web applications.

First up is Mozilla Firefox, a web browser. Yes I do realize this isn’t something new, however there was a beta released recently for the upcoming Firefox 3. I just installed this yesterday on my home Vista laptop, and so I wanted to talk about it a bit. The biggest feature here has to be the huge cut in memory usage. There have been reports that it uses around 60% less memory as you keep the browser open. This is a huge deal for me because I sometimes leave my browser on overnight and it can just be downright unusable in the morning. That and the fact that I haven’t had the need to use the task manager to kill its process yet is what sold me.

Finally, the other application I wanted to talk about is the not so well-known IM client known as Digsby. What makes it better than the standard MSN or Trillian clients? Well, not only does it support a plethora of IM protocols, it also can track your different email accounts as well as social networking applications! That’s right, this client offers a more connected experience to your social networking platforms like Facebook, for those of you who aren’t already addicted enough as it is. I’ve only just set this client up yesterday on my Vista laptop and it tracks my MSN, GMail, and Facebook accounts. So for example, if someone posts on my wall or sends me a message via Facebook, I’d get a little notification on the bottom right corner of my screen much in the same way as MSN. This client offers just about the closest experience I can get to Adium on OSX (Which I am in love with) while offering features that even Adium doesn’t have. It is currently in beta and only available on Windows so far, however Mac OSX and Linux versions are in the works.

Well, midterms are finally over and I have a bit of free time at last.

Kendo has been going well so far. I’ve been a bit disappointed with my lack of stamina during the last couple of practices, but I intend to rectify it quickly with a lot of cardiovascular exercise. As well, the skin has started peeling from under my feet, so I guess my initiation into Kendo is slowly beginning. Other than that, practices have been pretty fun so far. I’ve been contemplating whether to look into getting my Gi and Hakama around now or wait till the end of the semester.

Guitar practice is slowly coming along as well. I’ve decided to stop randomly playing riffs from different songs and work on mastering the basic techniques. Some of the techniques I’m working on include things like vibrato, legato, palm muting, etc. For the record, if you’re looking into learning to play the guitar, I highly recommend John Petrucci’s Rock Discipline DVD. It’s very good at putting you on the right track to becoming an expert guitar player.

In other news, it seems that Nine Inch Nails has released a new album called Ghosts I-IV. Now, I haven’t really heard much from them in the past but I’m fairly interested in this release. More specifically, I’m interested in how they’re releasing the album. They’ve decided that they’re going to release the first of the 4 CD set, which contains 9 tracks, for free for people to download and enjoy. If you are interested in buying the album, you can pay $5 and download all 4 discs containing 36 tracks in total. Both downloads come complete with album artwork and some extras like wallpapers and avatars. NIN isn’t the first to try this method of content delivery, with Radiohead being the innovators here with their album In Rainbows where they let you pay whatever you felt the album was worth, even if it meant you paid nothing. Personally, I think $5 is a steal for a full album and that NIN is definitely on the right track to finding the right balance for the cost of music.