Could it be fate?  It must be fate!  As I set out on starting to review the albums in my collection I was curious what my first review would be.  My worry was that the random selection would draw an album from my collection that I wasn’t fond of, and I would lose motivation to carry on with this project.

Well my friends, I’m happy to say that isn’t the case.  In fact, as luck would happen I’ve drawn my most listened to album in my collection (as per iTunes play count)!  The first album to be reviewed is…

Rise Against - The Sufferer and the Witness

Review: #1

Released: 2006

Wikipedia Synopsis:  (Full article)

The Sufferer & the Witness is the fourth album by American punk rock band Rise Against. The album was released on July 4, 2006. It was their second release on major label Geffen Records, following 2004’s Siren Song of the Counter Culture. It sold 48,000 copies in its first week, debuting at #10 on the Billboard 200. The album has been ceritified gold by the RIAA and platinum by the CRIA.  

Discovery: I’ve been a huge Rise Against fan for many years so it was only natural to add this album to my collection.  Bonus points that made me excited for this album was that the first single was filmed in Vancouver, BC.

Ranking: Rise Against has 5 studio albums at the time of writing.  Because they are one of my favorite bands it’s really difficult to rank the albums, but this one ranks somewhere in the middle.

Rating: 4 stars

Favorites: Chamber The Cartridge, Bricks, Drones, Survive

I remember very distinctly when I added this album to my library.  I was heading up Vancouver Island for a Maylong weekend camping trip and I was in search of some fresh tunes.  I was excited to get the album the night before and proceeded to listen to it twice on the drive up, multiple times on my iPod by the campfire (completely ignoring the social-ness of camping) and on the drive back home.

The album explodes open with Chamber the Cartridge, arguably one of my favorite Rise Against songs of all time.  In fact it’s the highest played track in my iTunes library with 103 plays, and likely countless more on my iPod and in my vehicle.  In the song, Tim McIlrath questions:

Can we be saved, has the damage all be done? / Is it to late to reverse what we’ve be become?

The Sufferer and the Witness is arguably the album that propelled Rise Against into mainstream rock.  Ready to Fall was a massive radio hit, and Prayer of the Refugee got the Guitar Hero status.  It used to be one of my favorites, unfortunately I find myself skipping it.  Regardless, the album has a great flow from beginning to end.

On Bricks, which is the albums fastest (and shortest track), McIlrath sings:

We’re setting our fires to light the way / We’re burning it all to begin again / With hope in our hearts / And bricks in our hands / We sing for change

The album closer, Survive, is a motivating tune that simply states:

How we survive, is what makes us who we are.

I’ve always found this album to be very inspiring lyrically.  Whenever I was going through tough times I could throw this album on and it would begin to turn my perspective around.

As mentioned in the intro this is one of the top played albums in my library, up there with Thrice’s Artist in the Ambulance and Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Stadium Arcadium.  I really wanted to give this album five stars, I really did.  But with a few floundering tracks like I mentioned above I had to drop it to 4 stars.  I also didn’t want to start my review blogs with a 5 star review, that would be setting the bar way too high!  Still this album is definitely worth adding to your collection.

That’s all for my first review, be sure to keep checking in as we journey through Dilly’s Albums!

Dylan

In the interest of generating more content for my blog, I’ve decided to start doing random album reviews pulled from my iTunes library.  This series of entries will simply be called Dilly’s Albums and will cycle through my vast collection of tunes.

I’m a big music nerd and this is the best way for me to dust off some of those old albums in my collection and also continue to keep dilly.ca fresh.  I’ve got a few friends that follow this pattern in their blog and it works quite well, so I’m totally going to steal the idea!

The run-down on the process is as follows:

1. I’ve installed the Play Random Album 2.0 script in my iTunes directory.  (By the way, be sure to check out Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes for many many more handy iTunes scripts)
2. Every few weeks I’ll fire up this script to grab a random album from my iTunes directory.  No skipping!
3. Listen to the full album, hopefully in one sitting.  At most, the album must be listened to in two sittings.  This will likely be stretched for multi-disc albums.
4. Whip up a review and post it here!

For consistency each review will have the following format:

• Name - The album name.
• Release - The year the album was released.
• Wikipedia - The synopsis of the album, copied from it’s Wikipedia article.
• Discovery - How I happened to come across this particular album.
• Ranking - How the album ranks in comparisons to the Artist’s other albums.
• Rating - My rating on a scale of five (more on this below).
• Favorites - A few of my favorite tracks from the albume
• And then of course, the actual review.

Once the review is complete each album will receive a personal rating.  The rating scale is as follows:

• Five Stars - This album is golden and should be purchased/downloaded immediately!
• Four Stars - Solid album that can easily be listened to more than once.  Might have a few tracks that aren’t the greatest, but all in all a good offering.
• Three Stars - Average album that likely has some flaws that keep it out of my regular rotation.
• Two Stars - A few good tracks but mostly unintersting or crappy material.  On the cusp of being removed from iTunes.
• One Star - Garbage the Cat.  Any album that receives a one star review will promptly be removed from my library!

I’m hoping to tackle an album every two weeks, and with about 30GB of music in my collection right now I don’t expect to run out of material anytime soon.  Of course I’d welcome suggestions on how to improve this review system, so feel free to let me know.

So stay tuned and be sure to check out my next post for the first review in Dilly’s Albums!

Dylan

I’ve managed to snag some pretty sweet geek toys since I’ve moved down to the US.  One of the nice perks of living in Silicon Valley is you’ve got access to lots of new technologies and also some great competition from wireless providers.

Two new gadgets that I’ve picked up down here are the HTC Incredible and the Apple iPad.

HTC Incredible

As mentioned in one of my previous posts, I’ve recently made the switch from the iPhone to an Android-based device.  This was a tough call for me as I absolutely loved my iPhone 3G… so much so that I was one of the first in line at the Fido store when it was released in Canada a few years ago.  That being said I was eager to pickup a phone here in the US and knowing that there would be a long list of people wanting to get the iPhone 4, I bit the bullet and picked up the HTC Incredible from Verizon.

The phone itself is a beautiful device feels less like an iPod and more like a cell phone, which took a bit of getting used to at first.  One feature I really like is the vibration feedback the phone gives when typing, unlocking and using other functions.  HTC Sense is a nice addition to the phone as well which gives it multiple screens in a fashion that resembles Spaces/Expose on OS X.

The HTC Incredible’s screen isn’t as wide as the iPhone’s screen, which I’ve found to take a bit of getting used to especially with fat thumbs.  However, the OLED screen is a huge improvement from that of the iPhone 3G.  Images are very crisp and the user experience is very snappy and responsive.  It comes packed with a 8 megapixel camera with flash (a huge jump from older iPhone versions).

The only downside I see with the hardware is the battery life.  This is a known issue with the HTC Incredible and has been reported by multiple users.  That being said I regularly charge my phone every night and I’ve never had a problem.

The phone is currently running Android 2.1 which I believe to be a MUCH better phone operating system than iOS.  The fact that it’s open source is a big win for me, I’ve been able to install apps that are outside of the Android Marketplace which is more that can be said about the iPhone.  All this without having to jailbreak (or rooting) the phone.  Widgets are a neat tool as well and allow you to customize the UI of the phone by adding photos, application links and other neat functionality without having to launch an app.

Speaking of apps, some of my favorites on Android include:

• Google Voice - Integrates perfectly with the phone.  Free calls and text messages to Canada is an added benefit.
• Mint - View your bank accounts and access your budget items.  Widget support is awesome as well.
• Dropbox - Access your files on the go, plain and simple.
• RunKeeper - This was a requirement for me before moving to Android.  I use RunKeeper almost every day.  The Android version has less features than that of the iPhone but I’m guessing this will change in the future.
• RememberTheMilk - For managing tasks on the go.  I like the Android version much better than the iPhone.
• OurGroceries - Excellent app for tracking your shopping lists.
• BART Rider - Up-to-date BART schedules.

The only downside I see with this phone is the music player.  It’s sufficient, but it’s obviously not as smooth as the iPhone’s iPod interface.

All in all, I’m really happy that I’ve made the switch from the iPhone to HTC Incredible.  The biggest feature for me has been the Google Voice integration.  I may have jumped ship on the iPhone, but I am still an Apple fanboy at heart…

Apple iPad

I finally gave into the hype and picked up an iPad this week.  Not surprisingly, it was ridiculously hard to find one of these in San Francisco.  Apple stores sell out of these by lunch time and Best Buy only gets a new shipments in a few times a week and sell out quickly.

My initial questions around purchasing an iPad were around WiFi vs. 3G and what size to pickup.  In the end, I ended up going with the 16GB WiFi version, for a number of reasons:

• I primarily plan on using the iPad at home and at the office, both obviously have available WiFi connections.
• In the odd time that I need to get it connected when I’m out and about, I plan on rooting my Incredible and setting it up as a WiFi hotspot.
• I don’t plan on storing a lot of content on the device, so 16GB should be plenty for Apps and a few videos at a time.

The iPad is truly a slick device.  I had played with one briefly in the past but it’s not until I had a few evenings with it and being able to customize it that I realized how impressive it really is.  It’s blazingly fast, which is a nice improvement over the slowness I was having with my old iPhone.  The display is amazingly crisp and is awesome for viewing videos and photos.

Another thing I was really impressed with was the battery life of the iPad.  I’ve been using it extensively over the past few days and I haven’t seen it drop below 50%.

I’ve only had the device for less than a week, but a few of my favorite apps so far include (all are free by the way):

• iBooks - Awesome for downloading e-books.  Text looks crisp and is easy to read.
• Twitterrific - Awesome Twitter client for the iPad, crashes less than TweetDeck.
• IM+ Lite - Great application for connecting to your IM services.  Has Twitter integration built in as well and allows you to browse while staying connected.
• FeeddlerRSS - Great app for syncing with your Google Reader account.
• Dropbox - What can I say, access all your files from your iPad.

I also picked up a Griffin Jumper neoprene sleeve for my iPad, which I’m really happy with.  It provides 100% coverage of the device and is also sturdy enough if I drop it from a few feet.

The only downside I can see with the device at this point is lack of multitasking (which should be coming in the Fall), and no Flash support (lame!).

Conclusion

All in all I’m really happy to have the best of both worlds here.  I’m stoked to be using an Android phone and I’m excited to try Android 2.2 (Froyo).  As well, I’m glad that I’m totally not ditching my Apple roots and have a cool Apple toy to play with.

How about you, do you have an iPad or Android device?  Any cool apps that I should try out?  Let’s hear ‘em!

Dylan