Aural Masterpieces – Music in the 70’s

Aural Masterpieces – Music in the 70’s

Music, Observations
Once upon a time, music was fucking awesome. Then the 80's came along and ruined everything. The 80's birthed such aural atrocities as Dead or Alive, Starship, Guns 'n Roses, Madonna and other nasty poo. That said, it wasn't all lost, with occasional gems that popped up like The Sundays, Madness, Suzanne Vega and Roxy Music. But, in my exalted and biased opinion, the good stuff was left behind in the 1970's. Music like ELP's From the Beginning (see audio/video below), David Bowie's albums Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust, Queen's first, second and third albums, Yes with their prog rock anthem Roundabout and the incomparable Mike Oldfield all made life in the 70's that much better. FM radio was in its infancy as DJs spun entire albums (Dark Side of…
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When Price Isn’t an Issue

When Price Isn’t an Issue

Music, Observations, Of Interest, People
Fazioli pianos are arguably the finest pianos in the world, hand made in Italy and priced accordingly. Their model F308 is the largest concert pianoforte in production today at 10' 3" and comes with an equally large base price of $147,000.00. That's the base price. Now add a custom, very high-end case and you're talking about serious dough. Vancouver resident Zhao Zai Chen commissioned architect Ernest Collins and his wife, professional artist/designer Grace Gordon-Collins to design a case for this world-class musical instrument. After all, Collins designed the 19,000 square foot Shaughnessy home (worth $17.5 million when Chen purchased it in 2010) where the piano would reside, so why not design a case for the custom built piano? Duh. Ernest and Grace also designed the cabinet that went in behind…
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Hacker Scumbags

Hacker Scumbags

Assholes, Internet, Observations, Technology
I think it's time we legalized lynching as punishment for hackers that deface, destroy or hijack websites. I speak from experience because this blog has been attacked numerous times over the past year and cost me hours of time spent picking malicious code from the hundreds of files that make up this blog. So why do these scumbags do it? There's a variety of answers to that question but most are attempting to inject iframes or other bad code into pages allowing them to reroute traffic or deliver malware to unsuspecting site visitors. And then there's the little bastards that sit in their basements and troll the net looking for vulnerabilites to exploit. But, whomever these miscreants may be, they should all be dragged from their homes, strung up left…
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Urinots

Urinots

Observations, Silly Stuff
When building service personell serviced the two urinals in my office they went above and beyond the usual valve repair or drain clearing. Have a look at the understated signage hung during urinal 'maintenance' a few weeks ago. Yes, they removed both the urinals from the wall and hung these signs to ensure we didn't piss on the walls. But we pissed on the wall anyway, which is probably why they never remove the toilets.
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