Blueslisted – JW Jones

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From the Canadian capital of Ottawa, comes JW Jones, a blues singer & guitarist of a more traditional Chicago blues sound. In the last decade, he has released five albums and played in 13 countries, 4 continents, over 200 cities and over 800 club and festival appearances. He plays with a no frills all feel approach to his guitar playing.

Alright, let the music hit me! A cool sounding Double Eyed Whammy comes rushing through your speakers. It’s a fun sounding tune about a terrific woman that the singer wants to make his own. Looking The World Straight In The Eye is a combination of funk & RnB with maturity showing in the vocals and great guitar playing. Can’t Play A Playboy reminds me of 1950s flicks of street fights & gangs (in musicals ofcourse). The song is basically a warning to not play around with the protagonist. Similarly Mad About You sounds like it could have been off the soundtrack of movies like Grease!

Wasted Life is a lament about times & opportunity gone by on which guest guitarist Little Charlie Baty noodles out his jazzy style. Somebody’s Got To Burn is a darker song on vengeance with some intense riffing. Heavy Dosage, a West Coast swing number, allows Jones & his guest guitarists Baty & Junior Watson and the rhythm section to just stretch out into a jazz & swing vibe and belt out an instrumental. That’s Wrong Little Mama is a cover of a BB King original. Waiting On You is about waiting & getting impatient for your woman to get ready to have fun.

The Doctor is a fun danceable track about falling in love with a …… you guessed it, a doctor! In Out Of Service harmonica support this song about the cell phone blues. Anyone who waited for a call from their lover can relate. Bogart Bounces Again is a good instrumental lead by guitar but amiably supported by the drums, keys & bass and you can hear a horn section here & there. Silent Treatment & Tickets On Yourself bring the rear section of the cd and prove that there’s not a weak link in the entire lot.

Thoroughly enjoyable blues record. Here’s Jones playing Double Eyed Whammy live on stage.

Firefox 3.5.2 – Updated & Now…Deleted

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I came home and switched the pc on and as I clicked on the Firefox icon, I got the message and the progress bar that let me know that a new version was being installed for me. That was Version 3.0.13.

On further checking of Mozilla’s site, I saw that they also have version 3.5 ready for download and it has had two updates to it. So I clicked on the option for downloading version 3.5.2 and installed it – presto! Brand new & shiny version, released August 3rd, is here for me!

Wasn’t it not that long ago that all of us who use Mozilla’s flagship application were usingour fingers & mouses and clicking on to download Firefox 3? Since then a few versions have come and gone. So what’s new over here?

  • The logo is darker (no it’s not the one shown here)
  • included tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode, and the ability to go back in time and Clear Recent History.
  • Supports the HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements
  • It has an ‘undo closed window’ option through the History menu
  • Comes with a ‘Forget this site’ option to erase a particular website from the browser’s memory
  • Grab a tab and drag it out a bit to create a new browser window from it. Drag windows into tabs again, and open any tab in a new window from the right-click menu, if clicking and dragging isn’t your style.

It seems faster and more powerful but I’ve already noticed a problem – my browser looked out of whack for a few minutes. I guess there might be a problem if you open a few tabs at a time. We’ll see how this goes.

Update: –  It’s been a total bust! Damn, with just 4 tabs open, Firefox shows a popup ‘A script has been stopped due to lack of memory’ and when you close it, some of the images on the websites that you have open vanish! It looks all out of whack. I tried it out twice and even after restarting the system, the same issue presisted.

I’ve uninstalled Firefix 3.5.2 and gone back to version 3. Good ole version 3. Has anyone else gone through a similar issue? Please do let me know.

WWE – Show Of Champions

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I haven’t been able to watch WWE ever since my stupid cable company, Asianet, stopped showing TEN sports channel a few months ago. Even before then, I barely watched a full show of the three banners – RAW, Smackdown & ECW – in the last 2 years.

I used to be a big fan of WWE and I still do like to keep up with the news & pay-per-view event results by clicking on the appropriate page in Wikipedia. However, the whole thing has changed too much for my taste. In recent years, storylines became way more important that the actual wrestling. It’s still entertaining when you have good characters who can mouth off funny lines but unless you back it up with the moves in the ring, it’s not worth watching.

Another issue that I have with WWE is that they seem to be trying to please way too many wrestlers (and consequently each individual wrestler’s fans) – there’s way too many title winners in a year! Too many. I can’t keep up with the changes; it’s like flavour of the month.

Each of the main titles in the 3 shows keep getting changed after 2 or 3 pay-per-view events. In a year either of the World Heavyweight Championship, WWE Championship or the ECW Championship has 4 to 6 Champions in a year. How can you keep up? And they want to please everyone by having a whole lot of wrestlers winning titles.

The recently concluded Night Of Champions had only 2 title holder changes (one of which was Christian who beat Tommy Dreamer for the ECW Championships) among the 8 titles on the line but we’ll have a different set of champions in a couple of months. How does one keep up?

Looking For An Mp3 Catalog HTML Converter

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I’m searching for a good free software that will catalog my entire mp3 collection and create a list and that will also let me generate that list into an HTML format. The mp3 player application Winamp has an inbuilt feature that lets you do this and earlier I used to just add each and every file in my collection and then generate an html file – but that only works if you have a smaller collection!

The last time I tried it, Winamp crashed and I had to restart the application again. Since then I’ve added close to 10 GB of mp3s so I do not think that it’s an option that I can use. I tried to find a satisfactory freeware application online but I can’t find one that does the job. I dunno, it seems like a basic requirement since most people have digital copies of their music and music lovers will have huge collections.

If anyone reading this can suggest a really good application, please leave a comment.

The Aftermath Of Turning 33 Years Old

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I wasn’t going to spend the day at home even if my foot is still bandaged and walking is still a little painful. I spent the morning drinking cups of coffee and replying ‘Thanks’ back to the sms wishes that came to my cell. I watched an episode of Star Trek Voyager & an episode of V.

I took a shower and went to Coffee Beanz at around 1 pm where I had a iced mocha and some French fries. By 1:45 pm Binny came over and we exchanged video files – I got 5 movies and the mini-series based on a Stephen King novel IT. We talked for quite a while and I bought two dark forest cake for us. By 3 pm we went our seperate ways – I went to get me some vodka.

At Oberois bar, I had 3 vodkas + 7up and a lovely omlette & a couple of peices of fish. The vodka was Muscovy and I’m not too fond of this particular brand but it had to do as they didn’t have anything else. So I sat there and sipped my vodka and thought about the past year. I left the bar and bought some chicken for dinner – my dad said that he’d cook for me & my mom.

I came home and plonked on my bed. I watched IT in it’s entirety. It was nice to watch the vid and lie back in bed. After that, it’s been listening to mp3s and not much else. I’m tired and want to go to sleep early ad I’m not as young as I used to be ;). So goodnite children.

And Just Like That I Turned 33

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I was born 33 years ago on this day – 2nd August, 1976 in Kuwait City, Kuwait. I hate the fuss that comes along with having a birthday while in the office or while in a group, so I’m glad that this year my birthday falls on a Sunday.

Celebrating a birthday is for the under 30s. Once you start growing older it just sux to know that another year as passed you by. While I keep thinking that growing older blows, it does feel special on your birthday, no matter how old you are.

And I can always console myself by saying my personal motto – ‘You’re only as old as the girls you feel!’ So bring on the 16 year old chickies!

I think I’ll go out and have some wonderful coffee and maybe enjoy a slice of cake! You enjoy a live rendition of one of my all time favourite songs, which is very personal to me – What A Good Boy by the Barenaked Ladies.

The Last Team Lunch

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Finally 5 of my team members have decided to make the move to another BPO in Chennai and they are happier with the higher pay packages that the company is offering them. The 5 of them have submitted their resignations using the online option provided at the company I work for. Only one of my senior trainers and my MIS guy will remain back.

From a strong team of 7, I now will have just 2 – although there will be an IJP run and I will get to select 5 replacements from the senior associates in the call center. It will just not be the same. Although I am excited & motivated at getting fresh & enthusiastic newcomers and I would love to mold them & guide them in doing a good job in their new profile, I am going to miss the 4 guys and 1 girl who are leaving.

I especially know that they do not really want to go but that they are fed up of the way things are going on at the office. They asked me to apply to the new place that they are going off to. I told them half-heartedly that I would try, although I do not want to live in Chennai. So I took them to hotel Sea Park for the last lunch outing that we will spend together as a team. I told them to order whatever they wanted – the company was paying – and boy did they do so! The final count was 3 biriyanis, 3 fried rice, 2 mutton masala, 1 beef roast, 2 porottas, 4 huge fish fries, 2 chilli prawns, 3 plates of chicken 65, 3 fresh juices and 6 ice creams!

Man that was enough to feed the Chinese army! My biriyani was the last to arrive and I sat looking at them as my kids ate to their hearts’ content. I enjoy watching them eat as I have stated before and I love it when they can enjoy a good meal. The next time the training team goes out to eat, it will be a whole new team with new faces. But the older ones will always be a part of my life.

RIP Sir Bobby Charlton

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I was extremely sad to read about the demise of Sir Bobby Charlton. Sir Bobby was a former international football player and, after retirement, manager of several European clubs and the England national football team. His professional playing career as an inside-forward spanned nearly 20 years, during which he played for just three clubs – Fulham, West Bromwich Albion and briefly for the defunct Vancouver Royals. He also made 20 appearances for England, scoring four goals.After his playing career he found success as both a club and international manager, winning league championships in both the Netherlands and Portugal, earning trophies in England and Spain, and taking England to the semi-final of the 1990 World Cup.

His last management role was as a mentor to the manager of the Irish national football team. Robson was created a Knight Bachelor in 2002, was inducted as a member of the English Football Hall of Fame in 2003, and was the honorary president of Ipswich Town. From 1991 onwards he suffered recurrent medical problems with cancer, and in March 2008, put his name and efforts into the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, a cancer research charity.

Rip Sir Bobby (18 February 1933 – 31 July 2009)