luis is a co-founder and social software architect at Infinite.ly. he likes building small web toys a whole lot. More ...

quick links to the good stuff

• 25 First Dates 25 May 2009
• True Crime: Confessions of a Criminal Mastermind 17 Feb 2009
• Finding Your Soul Mate: A Statistical Analysis 27 Jan 2009
• Sex and Schrodinger's Cat 07 January 2009
• An Extended Rant on Heroes 26 September 2008
• Zero Barrier 05 May 2008
• Sweatshop Blogging Economics 08 April 2008
• The Doomsday Singularity 25 February 2008
• Piracy and Its Impact on Philippine Music 21 January 2008
• The Manila Pen-etration by the Hotelier Antonio Trillanes 29 November 2007
• Journey of a Thousand Heroes 17 December 2006
• Shake, Rattle & LOL 30 December 2005

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• 0

  Nusic: From First to Last

  13 Aug 2004

  From First to Last is another evolutionary emo band in the same vein as Coheed & Cambria or … well, Coheed is the only other band on the same level as these guys, imho. The power and versatility in these 12 (actually, 11 if you don’t count the prologue-esque number) tracks makes for one very complex and very rich debut, and I will be happily lugging this album along with me for the next couple of days at least. Standout tracks include “I liked you better before you were naked on the Internet” and “One Armed Boxer vs. The Flying Guillotine,” although the entire album is just riveting, believe me. (So yeah, the only reason I even wrote them down is because hell, how often do you see song titles that sound like the mad scribblings of a drunk blogger?)

  I don’t really have much info on these guys, as it doesn’t look like they even have an official website up yet, except for the microsite over at Epitaph.

  Posted in Music | No Comments »

• 2

  Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind

  10 Aug 2004

  Well, it’s been an intense five days since my last entry, which by normal standards is … well, pretty normal. The past month has seen 5 web projects, with some 2 animation projects on the side, so needless to say, my schedule hasn’t exactly softened up since my last work-related rant. But I digress.

  Last week I finally got to see Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, which is that wonderful film that the blogosphere was raving about like, early this year. Movies like this tend to take awhile before being released in my mass of islands, and in truth, it’s a bit high-art to be recommending to just anyone. I thought it was positively visionary though, and any moderately serious film enthusiast should go see it. On a sidenote, is there some sort of ongoing fad in the film world, where directors are suddenly deciding to begin their movies with a sequence from the end of the story?

  It’s funny that my reviews of good movies are so much shorter than for bad ones, but I guess coming up with synonyms for words like “brilliant” or phrases like “by far the best movie of the (insert unit of time here)” can be pretty tiresome. Suffice to say that “Eternal Sunshine” is a movie that got it right for once, and I am hard-pressed to find any faults in its presentation or pacing.
  

  Posted in Movies | 2 Comments »

• 0

  Nusic: Sparta’s Porcelain

  4 Aug 2004

  The mainstream-friendly half of the now-defunct At The Drive-In released their second album a few weeks ago, and I thought hell, I’ve listened to the whole thing thrice; a review is in order!

  Ever since their debut, you knew Sparta wasn’t going to be anywhere near as important as ATDI, what with songs like “Papercut” and “Mye” all geared toward being accessible rather than being bold and experimental. That was ok with me; my favorite ATDI song was “One-Armed Scissor,” after all. Sparta’s first album was pretty successful all things considered, and (more importantly) was consistently entertaining throughout its 13 songs. It didn’t matter that The Mars Volta (the other half of ATDI) was churning up a shitstorm on the experimental end of the newly labelled post-hardcore scene; Sparta was fun, and that was that.

  Two years later, the boys are back and the industry held its collective breath (I know I did). My review in n ten words or less: Porcelain is a lot like Wiretap Scars. There. I said it.

  I think that the problem with most mainstream bands is that it’s very easy to fall into a repetitive sort of rut, when you’re not constantly experimenting with ways to improve your craft. Sparta has this problem, (as does everybody from The Red Hot Chilli Peppers to Aerosmith to Incubus) and indeed, I didn’t hear a single song on the new album that sounded like they were, you know, getting better.

  I’m not saying it’s a bad album, I’m just saying it doesn’t sound very new. A couple of songs, “La Cerca” and “Tensioning” in particular are very good, but to someone who has been listening to the older stuff for the past year, they mostly sound like upgraded versions of “Vacant Skies” and “Red Alibi” respectively (which is my all-time favorite Sparta song, btw). “Splinters” is pretty good too, and was a fine way to end the album.

  I’ll probably listen to the album a couple of more times over the week, but I don’t imagine it staying on my iPaq for longer than that.

  Posted in Music | No Comments »

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