Sony Playstation 3

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Until recently, I thought I had a truly kick-ass home theater system setup. I mean honestly, it was freaking awesome. I was sporting a 50inch Hitachi LCD television, Denon high-power surround receiver, Definitive Technologies speakers and a ground-pounding subwoofer. The houses next to me hated it, but I loved it. It was expensive to build up, but not once did I regret the cost.

Well, I recently cashed out a Google Adsense account that I had been saving up and decided to get the final component I needed to complete my system – a Blue-ray player. I have high-def cable(1080i), but my DVDs were still old-school. It was time to step up, spend the money and get the best…

So, cash in hand, I headed to the local Best Buy. I had done a bunch of research and found a couple of models in the $250 to $350 range that had all the features I wanted. The only issue is, I’m a terrible shopper. Driving up there, I half expected to do what I always do – walk up and down the isle about a hundred times until I get frustrated and leave without buying anything. After all, I do this all the time when pondering any substantial purchase.

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PHISH – A Live One – One of the Best live records ever!

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Any band can spend a week in the studio, recording take after take until they capture that perfect track. With today’s software, you can just about make anyone sound like a rock star – but give them a stage, a huge audience and a set of complex songs and you see just what sort of musicians they are – or more importantly, are not!

Anyone will tell you that some bands just need to be seen live to really get an honest impression of how good they really are. Personally I’ve seen a lot of bands live, and a few come to mind as being incredible on stage. Bands/performers like Billy Joel, Ra and Dave Matthews just need to be experienced in concert.

Of all the live concerts I’ve seen, Phish is clearly the best live band. It’s funny actually. You mention the name Phish to anyone that is not a fan and all they conjure up are images of Dead-heads and Phish-heads smoking grass and dancing around in a field. Granted that is clearly the case at most concerts, but you can’t judge the band by their fans. Phish is one of the most talented bands I have even known.

I’m a musician, and I became a Phish fan after another guitar player I know dragged me to a concert at “Great Woods” (now the Tweeter Center) in Mansfield Massachusetts. It was a free ticket, so I went because I had nothing else to do that night. I literally sat there, glossy eyed as Trey Anastasio tore the roof off that place for like three hours. I was in instant fan, for all the right reasons. Trey, Mike, Page and John are all masters of their own instruments.

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Amesbury Ma – life is good in the carriage town!

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Living in New England is just awesome. The weather is never boring, the people are generally decent, and I love the fact that I can sip coffee on the beach in the morning, take a hike in White Mountains in the afternoon, and catch a movie in the city at night. New England rules. I’ve lived in the Amesbury, Newburyport area most of my life. Now that I’m married, with family on the way, it somehow seems “right” that I own a home here.

I took advantage of the spring weather today, and wandered around town for a couple hours after work. While walking, I got a renewed appreciation for all the cool things I have in walking distance. I took some pictures:

I started the night with a quick three miles on my bike. This shot is from the top of the big hill at Woodsom Farm:

woodsom-farm

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Pan’s Labyrinth – Surprisingly Badass

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Ok, first off – I never rent movies. I think I’ve rented like three or four movies in the past four or five years. I usually get On-Demand titles from cable, but lately the selection has sucked, big time. The other night I decided to stop by the local movie place and see what they had. We walked around for like twenty minutes and finally settled on two videos – “Children of Men” and ” Pan’s Labyrinth”

I wanted to watch “Children of Men” because all the peeps at work said it was decent. We put that one in first. It was long and boring as hell in spots but the actions scenes where out of this world. The end battles scenes are incredible. It’s worth watching it just for the last like 30 minutes. I mean come on, blood on the camera? Hellz yeah!

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Line6 Spider III 120 – probably the best guitar amp I’ve ever heard

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I’ve been pondering buying a new guitar amp for a while now. I currently use this old Crate Guitar Combo Amplifier that I bought off a friend like six years ago. It’s good and all, but the clean channels crackle and the effects are only fair. I want to begin recording some tracks in my basement and the sound from the Crate just isn’t what I am looking for. I’ve had it for years, driven it hard, and it owes me nothing. I guess it’s time to move on.

Over the years I’ve developed what I consider to be a unique progressive funk-rock style of playing. When it comes to electric guitar, I primarily play my Gibson Les Paul Studio. For my sound, I like strong mid-range, a decent amount of gain, and rarely use any effects aside from reverb. I’m not sure why, but I’ve had this mental block about muddying up the guitar tone with needless effects. It’s strange, I’m a huge Joe Satriani fan and he uses a bunch of effects. I guess I’ve always thought that he just uses them with a certain level of “taste” that other guitar players, myself included, just can’t seem to be able to duplicate. For me, too much effect can ruin the sound. For example, in my opinion Steve Vai just seemed to pile up the effects layers as high as he could, like someone buying a big truck or fast car to make up for something. Needless to say, I was never a big Steve Vai fan. (Go ahead, start the hate mail… ;) )

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Noise-canceling headphones for musicians

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I’m a guitar player and have a basement full of antiquated gear. Most of the crap I play though has had beer spilled on it, been dropped, kicked, and generally abused. My guitars are beautiful, but the rest of my gear needs badly to be updated. This was brought home to me the other day when I went downstairs to play for a bit.

I don’t seem to get much time to play these days, and when I do it seems I spend most of the time trying to get a decent sound. Usually I put both guitar and vocals through a mixer (Alesis MultiMix 8 USB Analog Mixer) plugged into a guitar amp (Crate Guitar Combo Amplifier), which is in turn plugged into a four-twelve speaker cabinet. It was great for jamming with people, but not the best sound quality.

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If you had one week, to do anything…

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A few years ago, while I was working as a grower in a local greenhouse, I had a conversation that has echoed in my mind for years.

I was driving around in a delivery truck with a guy I worked with. We were going to some garden center, or farm with a load of plants and we somehow got on the subject of life and happiness. More to the point, we got to talking about all the things we wanted to do, or places we wanted to go before we died. This was not an uncommon topic with me. I was getting antsy in my life, and needless to say my life’s goal was not to be working for fairly low pay and delivering plants in the ninety-degree heat.

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