Another cracking video by the lads in Swound!

I love Scott Pilgrim, and was delighted to see this video in February, earlier on in it’s production, as Joe sent me a version he’d been working on for months. Frontman Joe put a *lot* of effort into learning After Effects, completely starting from scratch when he’d found a better way to achieve a few effects. That’s my kind of learning, in at the deep end! Plus the video rocks!

I’m very pleased to say that my friends Steven, Mark and Alan have unveiled a new track (download), that’s a great indicator of where they’re heading with their sound as a band.

Great work lads!

I started writing a top 10 list of albums released in 2009 that I’d given regular time to. Turns out that 2009 was a bit shit for my kind of music. Anyway, here’s a few I did enjoy…

Omar Rodriguez Lopez – Xenophanes
Silversun Pickups – Swoon
Street Sweeper Social Club – self-titled
Josh Freese – Since 1972
Rancid – Let The Dominoes Fall
NIN – Another Version Of The Truth: The Gift

I have to put NIN in because of how this free release has come about, especially the video.

“On January 7th, 2009, over 400Gb of video from the Victoria, Portland and Sacramento shows from the same tour were unofficially released by the band.

“By working together, the Nine Inch Nails fan community have created “Another Version of the Truth” – a 3 disc release bringing together numerous editors, designers, and web programmers to create a professional digital film, followed by a physical release created by fans for fans.”

Head over to This One Is On Us to find out more and grab a version of the video in everything from iPod to Blu-Ray format.

But damn, only six. Let’s hope that every band I like was busy writing material for this year…

I love this video! Great imagination and shows what a bunch of brothers and friends can do! Swound! – Predator 3. You can buy it from iTunes here…

What’s more, my little boy loves the video too! He has a shirt like Joe, the singer, and when he sees it, he starts singing and doing the actions from the video, like kicking a ball, rolling on the floor and playing his guitar!

Check him out…

If you like the song, you can check out the Swound! site, submit a challenge and download their first EP, “Hello Future, Our Name is Swound!” for nothing!

Think of 20 albums that had such a profound effect on you that they changed your life. Dug into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it. Royally affected you, kicked you in the ass, literally socked you in the gut if you know what i mean. Then when you finish, tag 20 others, including myself. Make sure you copy and paste this message so the people you tag will know the drill.

Nirvana – Nevermind
Green Day – Dookie
Less Than Jake – Losing Streak
Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream
Rage Against The Machine – Rage Against The Machine
Primus – Frizzle Fry
The Mars Volta – The Bedlam In Goliath
Tool – Lateralus
Nine Inch Nails – Pretty Hate Machine
Underworld – Dubnobasswithmyheadman
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Blood Sugar Sex Magik
LostAlone – Say No To The World
Cable – Down-lift the Up-trodden
Ruthless Rap Assassins – The Killer Album
Regurgitator – Unit
Blink 182 – Enema of the State
The Postal Service – Give Up
At The Drive-In – Relationship of Command
“A” – “A” vs Monkey Kong
Nomeansno – Wrong

For quite a while, I’ve had a Mac Mini hooked up the TV, streaming DVDs and xvids to the TV, and all my music on for streaming to an Airport Express.

The Mini is on 24/7, also acting as a dev web server for nerding, and running ftp and a few other protocols, allowing me to grab an album from wherever, whenever.

As good as Front Row has been, it’s just not… geeky enough for me. The wife uses it without issue, and my son yells when the selector is on a few of the menu options he wants. But I want more geek.

I tried the XBMC, but it stank of PC design asthetics, like a chavved up Corsa, Plex wasn’t bad, but Boxee so far, has been great.

It wasn’t immediately great, it did take a few months to grow on me, but once it did, I now actually like browsing through videos, and music and finding things I’d missed or forgotten.

So how does Boxee make this an interesting process again?

While Boxee and Plex are built on the XBMC framework, the big difference is the social and online aspects of Boxee.

For example, all your films are scanned, and cover art, reviews, and a link to a trailer are downloaded from online databases.The reviews are brilliant for jogging your memory about the plot, or convincing the other half that it’s not a horror movie and she will like it.

You can also rate the films at any point while watching them, and these rating show up in your online profile. Online profiles? Yeah, the social interaction side of Boxee allows you to search for friends, add them and see their stream of activity. In fact, the first screen of the Boxee interface has four of the 16 boxes dedicated to recent activity from your online mates.

As a side note, I truly believe there’s only about 100 people actually online, as I have the same friends on Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, all the others… and Boxee. Everyone else on the internet must be a NPC.

Boxee also features some great web integration. You can add Flickr profiles to view photos, scrobble all your music to Last.fm, and watch BBC TV through the iPlayer plug-in. iPlayer’s not the only TV content, Joost, YouTube, Hulu, CNN and more, the integration of all the plug-ins is very good, and feels like a coherent whole package. I’ve found myself spending time browsing, reading reviews and rediscovering media I forgot I had.

Another thing that’s made the switch from Front Row to Boxee easier is a plug-in for Front Row that adds Boxee as a menu item, meaning the wife can use Front Row but I can jump from that to Boxee, no keyboard or messing about required. There’s also a free, official iPhone Boxee app due to hit the Apple Store any day now too!

All this through the little white Apple Remote…

ps. Add a comment if you want an invite to the Boxee Alpha!