jamiroquai

jamiroquai
Originally uploaded by Alexander Rojas.

Bueno, el gran concierto pasó y es hora de seguir adelante y que mejor que algo para rumbear. La verdad es que Jamiroquai me gusta en las fiestas y a Karen le encanta, entonces decidimos que no ibamos a ir a lo más costoso, de culaquier manera no pensaba perdermelo.

Bueno, espero en esta ocasión si pueda conocer a alguno de los lectores que vaya a ir al concierto.

Por cierto, mañana les pongo la foto de mi autógrafo de Mike Portnoy (si, lo logré!!!) aunque a última hora y por salir de afán me di cuenta que no había llevado mis discos... así que pues, cagada.

Cuando los sueños se hacen realidad (Dream Theater en Bogotá)

Como lo he mencionado, esta ha sido mi banda favorita durante los últimos cinco años. Y la espera valió la pena. No quiero hablar de la organización del concierto la cual dió pena. Un gran desorden para entrar y aún adentro, ni del retraso de más de una hora ni de la falta de Tom Abella. Solo puedo decir que la interpretación fue magistral, el sonido excelente y el ambiente espectacular.

Una vez adentro logré ubicarme cerca a la tarima de tal manera que podía ver muy bien como tocaban estos virtuosos. Quien me sorprendió de verdad fue el bajista de Dream Theater, John Myung, de quien casi no se habla pero ciertamente es uno de los mejores interpretes que he visto en mi vida; de la talla de otros grandes como Geddy Lee (Rush) o Tony Levin (King Crimson).

Despues de la espera, las luces se apagaron. Empieza a sonar el outro de "in the name of god" y de repente las cortinas se abren. Uno a uno los músicos entran en escena. Jordan Ruddes, Mike Portnoy, John Myung, John Petrucci y James LaBrie. Y el mejor concierto que he visto en mi vida empieza. Portnoy con una batería bellamente adornada con el simbolo majestic en una seña de transito, vistiendo la camiseta de la selección Colombia unos lentes oscuros y una gorra. Petrucci vestido de negro con su guitarra Ernie Ball siete cuerdas y luciendo un peinado y una barba que recuerda el estilo de James Hetfield durante su concierto en Colombia. Myung como siempre no dió ni una sonrisa, pero con esa forma de interpretar el bajo se le perdona. luego de the "Root of all evil" vino "Panic Attack" y luego "A fortune In Lies" la única de su primer disco. Luego el primer plato fuerte... "Under a Glass Moon" la cual tiene uno de mis solo favoritos de Petrucci. y "Lie" con otro de sus grandes solos, esas dos son de mis canciones favoritas de la banda. Luego vino "Peruvian Skies" que como siempre vino acompañada de una parte de una canción de Pink Floyd y otra de Metallica (en el once in a lifetime son "have a cigar" y "enter sandman") en este ocaciòn fueron "Whish you were here" y "wherever I may Roam." luego una buena tanda del scenes from a memory que realmente disfurté, salte y gozé. Personalmente no esperaba que tocaran "Fatal Tragedy." Luego vino algo del Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence pero desafortunadamente ninguna de mis favoritas de ese album. y entonces llegó el intermedio.

Tras quince minutos la banda aparece de nuevo, esta vez Portnoy y LaBrie con pintas de metaleros ochenteros... y empezaron bien con "As I Am" y "endles sacrifice" luego una larga tanda de canciones de su último disco donde lo que más me gustó fue la introducción a lo "Shine On you Crazy Diamond" (Pink Floyd) de la canción octavarium. Esta vez cortesía del gran Jordan Rudess y James LaBrie a quien jamás había vito tocar los teclados.

Para finalizar estubo "The spirit carries on" canción que a traves de los años me gusta cada vez más y que realmetne disfruté. Luego vino "Pull Me Under" considerado el más grande éxito comercial de la banda y que puso a saltar a todo el mundo en el Palacio y para cerrar este magnífico concierto tocaron "Metropolis Pt.1 The Miracle and the Sleeper" la cual en su parte instrumental llevó una buena parte de "the Dance of Eternity," aunque personalmente me hubiera gustado escucharla completa.

Esto fue el concierto, al final abrazos con mis amigos por haberlo logrado, por haber visto a los maestros. Sin embargo me quedé con ganas de más y con la sensación de que algo faltó. Me hubiera gustado escuchar "the Ytse Jam" y tal vez algo (sino todo) el "A change of Seasons" pero ¿me puedo quejar? tocaron por más de tres horas!!!!! yo creo que no.

Set List:

In the Name of God outro (intro tape)
1. The Root of All Evil
2. Panic Attack
3. A Fortune in Lies
4. Under a Glass Moon
5. Lie
6. Peruvian Skies (wish you were here/wherever I may roam)
7. Strange Deja Vu
8. Through My Words
9. Fatal Tragedy
10. Solitary Shell
11. About To Crash (Reprise)
12. Losing Time/Grand Finale
~~~intermission~~~
13. As I Am
14. Endless Sacrifice
15. I Walk Beside You
16. Sacrificed Sons
17. Octavarium
~~~encore~~~
18. The Spirit Carries On
19. Pull Me Under/
20. Metropolis pt 1

Cambio de Idioma

Por alguna razón que aún yo mismo no comprendo, he decidido cambiar el idioma en el que llevo este blog. Bueno, realmente si entiendo por qué decidí cambiar el idioma del blog. En este momento una de las cosas que me interesa es conocer gente dentro de mi pais. Si bien es cierto que he conocido gente maravillosa en otros lugares del mundo (paritcularmente Europa y medio oriente) pero ahora la idea es concentrarme en gente a quien eventualmente si pueda conocer y no a traves de las costosas llamadas (ya me metí en problemas por llamadas a Holanada).

Así que espero que los muy pocos lectores internacionales que tenía este blog no se molesten por este cambio.

Music Reviews

Well finally I could put my hands over four albums I wanted to listen some time ago. Now is time to talk about them... but where to start?

The first one I want to talk about is " Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra in E flat minor " from Yngwie Malmsteen . I know all of you have hear about non classic musicians who palys with a filarmonic orchestra (Metallica, Scorpions, Kiss, Deep Purple, etc) but excetp some songs in the Deep Purple album this presentations consists only in a classical arragement of well known artist's songs (The deep purple ones includes some movements composed as a concerto for rock band and orchestra). So this album can be considered as the second attemp to reach an entire merge composing. In fact the electric guitar plays for the orchestra and not otherwise.

Anyway, I know Malmsteen from a long time ago and I can't deny he's a virtuoso of guitar. But sometimes he became boring with all this notes he play and this album is not the exception. Is a real good attemp and sounds good but anyhow I didn't like the fact that he plays in allegro temp when the orchestra is playing an adagio. Please Yngwie keep focus, and adagio is a relax time not a time to show how good are you on guitar. Despite this fact is a really good album.

The second is really two albums from the same band, Bajofono Tabgo Club . I'm a big fan of tango music since I listen to Astor Piazolla for the very first time and I remember I listen some of this band years ago and I dindn't like it because I though it was an Heresy against tango. Then I listen to a song into radionica station (99.1 FM in Bogotá) but I din't know it were them. Anyway today I listen to both albums and I liked them... What change into me? Back then I didn't like electronic music and know I like it a lot. So this albums are not really tango music stuff despite the fact is based on it. This band is a very good chill out that you should try if you like Chill Out.

The fourth album is from my favorute childhood band, Queen . is called " the return of the champions " and has Paul Rodgerts making Freddie Mercury parts. I remember saying that I woundn't accept other singer into queen but Mercury. Anyhow time proves me wrong. Is true that some songs were written for the voice technique of Mercury but Rodgerts is doin' well. He's not pretending he's Freddie. He's using his own vocal technique, and when the song doesn't works for him... well he sings different. Is not like "I'm here to take Freddie's place" but is like "I liked queen, I'm not Freddie but I'm trying to bring some joy to you and an oportunity to see queen again" and I like that way of thinking.

I hope this reviews work for you, and expect more of this from me.

Is the world ready?

I was reading my news wen I found this article ( here ) about how the copyleft philosophy would bring down the UK anty-piracy system.

What I fount in all this stuff is that the world has become paranoid about the way things are distributed. And also world has become very selfish so we can handle global collaboration.

I encoureage all of you to think in a new model where we all go thoward others (I cannot stop thinking about the Ubuntu word) and stop thinking in old fashion ways,

Read more at business.timesonline.co...

The GNU Privacy Guard - GnuPG.org

Well, If you readed my previous post about google seeing your e-mail and you're a privacy addict, freak or whatever. But the fact is you're scared of someone seeing your e-mail (bad boys) there are options to secure your mail.

Before I give'em to you I want to tell you something. You cannot imagine the times I've seen people givin their passwords so incently. Even me, I shared the all my passwords with one person and she did the same to me. Anyway this was a matter of trust, not stupidity. What I was talking about is pages that pretteng hotmail is broken and they ask for your password. When you innocently put the password this one is emailed to a hacker. Second of all, be creative with them. There are passwords security testers. But you should use long password (mines tends to be 30 chars long) use capital letters and non capital, numbers and punctuation symbols... it works a lot.

Well if nothing of this works or is enough to you, you can use a PGP service. Below a provide the links for GnuPG which is the GNU implementation of it. The other one contains a list of different PGP systems... I never try it one of this, even while I was taking my cryptography course. I would try one of this only to test its capabilities... anyway I think is a little paranoid to use a PGP system, in fact I think I have nothing to hide.

Read more at www.gnupg.org/ , www.pgpi.org/

Linux worm turns on Mambo and PHP - vnunet.com

This is a new... Last week a heard about the first OS-X virus and now we're talkin about the linux one. Well not a Virus but a worm and it doesn't affect you unless you use mambo (I don't to be honest cos I never liked PHP. Anyway cos I know a lot of people use it there I go. best find a way to figure it out.

Read more at www.vnunet.com/vnunet/n...

Firefox2/Features - wiki.mozilla.org

When I saw IE 7 beta for the first time I scared myself. I mean, This browser is almost as good as firefox (we all know is nothing but a copy of firefox) and had the bonus to be preinstalled (not by now but just wait for Windows Vista) in every computer so I thought. If a person have it preinstalled in its own computer why would he mind to chenge it. So I thought mozilla needed to do somethinh fast.

The answer came last night when I saw the roadmap for mozilla firefox 2.0. And they keep a leap ahead of almost any browser I know, I'm really excited. I cannot wait to see the next mozilla browser.

Read more at wiki.mozilla.org/Firefo...

Azureus : Java BitTorrent Client

Today I had my firs experience with azureus and bitTorren... and the best part of all is that it works, but I'm still a newbie, so I'll tell you later ;)

Read more at azureus.sourceforge.net...

rfsd: ReiserDriver

If you like me, have to OS in your comuter (in my case Windows and Linux) one of the nightmares is that Windows don't even seen other filesistems than FAT, NTFS, CDFS, CDA etc. but what happens if you want to read a file you let in your linux partition which usually is EXT2, EXT3 or ReiserFS. Well I found this tree programs (well two of them work as drivers) for this kind of partitions.

As far as I know Explore2fs seems to be the more stable of them, but this is not a driver, is a program and it doesn't write over EXT3 (but it reades it). Anyway is not transparent for windows.

ReiserFS and fs-driver Mounts this filesystems to be excecutes at the same level of NTFS or FAT so they are cleanly read by Windows as just another Hard Drive. FS Driver also writes EXT3 mounting it as an EXT2 partition, it leaves EXT3 with som lack of security but it works.

The main problem of this programs (and is not a problem is just the way windows works) is that anybody can read and write any file... so be careful with your system drives, you don't want to lose your passwd file.

Read more at rfsd.sourceforge.net/ , www.fs-driver.org/ and uranus.it.swin.edu.au/...

queensryche.com

All the people who likes prog rock and conceptual albums shoud have heard, at some point of their lives, an album called Operation Mindcrime from the band Queensrÿche . From my point of view I love that album although not all songs and albums from the band (in some point they become too heavy metal for me).

Anyway, I just have seen the release of Operation Mindcrime II Well, this is an album I have to buy :D

Read more at www.queensryche.com/

MSN Search Toolbar

I haven't test the new msn search toolbar (and I don't think I ever try it) however this is an extension I think would help IE users, anyway the trying to adopt ideas others had fisrt. Tabbed browsing (so you don't need to download IE 7 which only works in windows XP SP2 and windows 2003) and desktop search... however in this deskto thing I trust more in google... well they have the best search engine, doesn't the?

Read more at toolbar.msn.com/

Police blotter: Patriot Act e-mail spying approved | CNET News.com

What the hell does this mean.... people in the US keeps atacking google because the index our email to give us the chance to see the ads that are relevant to us but they approve things like this.

As far as I now this violates all the principles of privacy, I mean not even a paper letter could be read by anyone cos is a federal crime... and what is the difference between parper letters and e-mail, well, that e-mail is faster.

This just pisses me off.

Read more at news.com.com/2100-1030_...

Mozilla Update :: Extensions -- More Info:Viamatic foXpose - All Releases

QuickTabs for Firefox. When I heard about the quicktabs for IE 7 I thought that it was the only feature that firefox didn't have (as extention) that IE 7 have. Well I found I was wrong, firefox already have all this stuff with this extention. So I ask, why somebody would try to use IE when as all we know is insecure, Memory eater and slow when you can usa firefox.

In fact, yesterday I was reading something about time response, A critical update in IE takes almost 130 days once the flaw is found, in firefox it takes 10 days, so, what do you think.

Read more at addons.mozilla.org/exte...

Blogthings - What Color Should Your Blog or Journal Be?

Your Blog Should Be Green Your blog is smart and thoughtful - not a lot of fluff.You enjoy a good discussion, especially if it involves picking apart ideas.However, you tend to get easily annoyed by any thoughtless comments in your blog.

What Color Should Your Blog or Journal Be?

Songbird

I was just looking around and I found an article about this Open Source "iTunes Killer" which search for all free music on the net which have no that malicious DRM. I havent prove it yet, in fact I'm just downloading it right now, but you may try it. We all shall support our freedom.

Which Surprise me the must, is the fact that the developemnt is lead by the ex winamp team which quit winamp due to problems with the new management who doesn't like the freeware culpture. Well, long life songbird

By the way, I cannot wait till the Linux version.

Read more at www.songbirdnest.com/

Plasma: KDE4 Desktop Shell: Plasma for KDE

I've been looking into the new KDE desktop and I must confess that I'm anxious about its realease. I mean, some time ago i decided to move into Gnome because I though KDE was an old fashion desktop (and because Ubuntu didn't gave me the oportunity to use anything else) anyway I started using gnome and I liked it.

Well, I use KDE for almost 5 years (all my way into college) I dind't even use gnome apps, I remember that gnome looks like KDE did but it was more obstrusive. Now in the past month I started using gnome cos as you already know I start using mozilla (which I'll change tonigh for fedora core 4). When I started it begun with that feeling of using Tiger (previously known as Panther, the OS X UI). Everything was small, and easy to find... Then i decided to keep using gnome but I remembered all those KDE years so I started to search for the KDE 4 project. And I must say, if they achieve half of the things the want to achive for this project. Then I'll go running back to KDE.

Read more at plasma.kde.org/

Pocket-lint.co.uk Google delists BMW Germany for foul play news story

I just can't balive this. Why a company which would have a high page rank into google engine would want more? I'm happy that google would make this so this would work as a lesson to anyone who think in develope SEOs which only destroys the quality of search.

Read more at www.pocket-lint.co.uk/n...

Imagining the Google Future - January 01, 2006

Somehow this remember me the book of 1984. How its going to be goolge in some years. If you read it, let me know what you think.

Read more at money.cnn.com/magazines...

Duke Nukem in full production?

I just found this interview and somehow i think is a bad joke. I mean after a decade of development do you really think DNF is comming out? I don't think so, and I still think this is nothing but a bad joke.

Read more at www.1up.com/do/feature?...

hibernate.org - Mapping a Blob to a byte[]

This is something I should not forget and everyone who uses Hibernate and Oracle. I want to give you this link to avoid you to search for a week in order to solve the problem of mapping an oracle blob to a byte array.

By the way, Use the third nullSafeSet and the nullSafeGet needs to be modified too.

Read more at www.hibernate.org/73.ht...

hibernate.org - Mapping a Blob to a byte[]

This is something I should not forget and everyone who uses Hibernate and Oracle. I want to give you this link to avoid you to search for a week in order to solve the problem of mapping an oracle blob to a byte array.

By the way, Use the third nullSafeSet and the nullSafeGet needs to be modified too.

Read more at www.hibernate.org/73.ht...

I remember the first time I heard of Dream Theater. It was in my junior year at college. I was also starting into guitar playing. Just six months before I got my guitar (a beautiful midnight blue fender fat strat). I ask to one of my best friends (who spended more time playing guitar than me. I mean he played sicen he was 12. And he left computer sciences in order to become a musician) which was the best guitar player he knew. He told me about a player called John Petrucci and that he played in a band called Dream Theater. Without any mora information I went to a music store and bought "A Change of Seasons" EP. It was the year 2000 of our lord.

I remember when I put the CD into my player. It starts with a 23 minutes lenght song called A change of seasons then comes 4 more songs with covers and medleys from bands as led zeppelin, Deep Purple, Queen, Pink Floyd and other. When the album finshed I was in ecctasy and suddenly became my favorite band. The I started to collect their albums Metropolis pt.2: Secenes from a memory, Images and Words, Falling into Infinity, Awake, When Dream and Day Unites, Metropolis 2000: Scenes from New York, Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence and Octavarium. I also got t-shirts an everything like a real fan.

Nor I remember me debating with some friends (who also liked Dream Theater) if the would come to Colombia some day. We talk that the best way to see them was to trave to another country. I also remember the 2001 when Mike Portnoy said that he will come to made a drum clinic. But then the episode of the twin tower happened and he didn't come. Despite the fact that I'm a guitar player I paid for the clinic (fortunately I got my money back). Then the past year they say they would come to a south american tour but my country was not in the list. Some friedns traveled to Venezuela to see them there. Anyway I didn't.

The suddenly I saw the dates of the 20th aniversary tour and to my surprise Bogotá was on the list. I couldn't belive it back then and I cannot belive it right now and best part is that it is one of the so called "an evening with Dream Theater" which are presentations of four hours. As soon as the tickets came to the sales I bought mine (as you can see in the pic) . The only thing that I think now is that this will be a great year. If you want to know more about this amazing band just got to the official dream theater web site www.dreamtheater.net. And I will let you know about how the show was ;).

Now Listening: "Ceilling Unlimited" from the album "Vapor Trails" by Rush.