…is comming…or I am going…or something like that. The idea is that we have a date on 28th, and I will make sure I am going to be there. She brings the waves, I bring the wine.

Unfortunatelly, this year the 2 main weekend activities (snowboarding and seaside-sitting) could not be linked as I would have wanted, but 1st of May is almost here and I will make sure I will be with some sand in my shoes by then.

Yeah, some might call it mainstream or some might call it old-fashioned, but I don’t really care. I will meet about 30 nice people (best friends included), we will have some wine and finally I might get some vacation.

And as this blog is about music, I could say that sure the guy who is going to drive the car (Tutu – the legend:D) will apreciate this song played over and over again: Rosu si Negru – Ora de Mare. Maybe some of you will apreciate it too.

See ya there !

When I started listening to rock music, I dived headlong and started straight with Overkill. No mellow shampoo boys with soapy ballads, no cheezy lyrics, I went for the real deal. I can safely say I liked “Elimination” better than any other heartbreaking song. And then I liked “I hate” because of the cocky lyrics, of course. Although an older album, it was early 1991 when “The years of decay” – very inspiring title, innit? – finally grabbed me.

Couple of years after, after getting acquainted with both the mainstream and the underground musicians, after listening to the old as well to the young and emerging, after humming “So fine” (GNR of course) and losing my voice growling over “Sleepless” (by Anathema), I liked discovering tracks that were somehow against the whole trend of an album. I wonder how many of you know this song. If you like it, be warned the rest of “Serenades” is NOTHING like it, so don’t say I never warned you…

My guess is the language is Gaelic.

But don’t go just yet.

*Grabs the mic* God bless Mihai, and God bless you all as well. Hi I’m Linda and I’ll be your co-host as I write this post and a few others more, fingers crossed.

As I spring to life on The Music Blog, I have to talk about death, and remind you of the darker side of things. It won’t do much good to write about the man that changed the face of popular music (Nirvana did the unthinkable and bested Michael Jackson by throwing him off the top spot in the U.S. way back in 1993). A band that every neo-punk idiot loves to hate nowadays, Nirvana weren’t only grunge, they represented an era, and Kurt killed it the way he bred it.

All this is merely an introduction for an omage, Sinead O’Connor covering All Apologies.

Sinead O’Connor – All Apologies mp3

It’s very tragic to me, how Kurt also captures a quintessential Romanian myth by melting two words, married and buried.
More
Kurt Cobain Journals – buy / read excerpts
Buy the goods chez Amazon.

Remembering Kurt Cobain

After moving to the new place, I have some issues with the old audio solutions….basically, I do not want to use the laptop anymore for storing and playing music, but I want a more professional solution. And also the speakers should go and be replaced by some more professional ones.

As the new apartment offers a lot of open space, I want to see as less cables as possible, so I am thinking of a wireless solution. The ideal thing would be for a small and compact “device” that is able to store 30-40 Gb of music and is able to send the sound wireless to speakers mounted on the walls. Of course, it has to have a remote control :)

As I have limited time to wander through the shops, the Internet is the best option for me now. After dozens of searches over the web, I did not manage to find too much, so I decided to ask some “professionals”. As Bose was well recommended, I decided to send an e-mail and ask. I told them what I want, I even mentioned a couple of products I found on their website and I asked for the price.

All good until now, I (think I) did my part. But would you think they answered? No. Three days have passed and no reply from them. I was quite determined to buy, I send them all the details, all they had to do was to reply and give a configuration.

Now, this is what I don’t understand in Romania. Some people really don’t want to sell. Same happened when I tried to buy a TV from Metro, the guys were nowhere to be found and when I found them they treated me with so little consideration and actually said that both products I wanted were not properly functioning. Why do you display them then ?? Of course, they did not recommend anything else, they just went away. So I went to Altex, where a nice guy managed to convince me to buy a TV twice as expensive as what I was looking for initially. Just by showing me everything, being very nice and detail answering all my questions.

Think I’ll go to Altex again or, for a much more professional solution, I’ll try B&O…. Still, the question remains. Why do some people do not want to sell when the buyer comes?

Acest post va fi in romana, pentru ca se pare ca asa e traditia. Been tagged, so, nu e frumos sa refuzi :) Deci, sa incepem….

4 filme: Kill Bill (1 si 2), Beautiful Mind, Natural Born Killers (we’re not killing anybody on our wedding day :D) si … si …. Avocatul Diavolului. Grea alegere, mai erau multe pe lista.

4 seriale: Famila Bundy, Fantozzi (so old, so good), Seinfeld si oh, da, Oz

4 carti: Neitzsche – Zarathustra, Poe – Principiul Poetic, Wittgenstein – Tractatus Logicus-Philosophicus, Papini – Gog.

4 mancaruri: Ciuperci umplute cu ciuperci, Pizza, Supa alpina, Penne carbonara.

4 locuri in care as vrea sa fiu acum: Pe partie la Solden, Pe partie, Goteborg – Suedia, Rossignol – in Poiana (pe partie).

4 locuri in vacanta: 2 Mai, Hungaroring, Suedia (aproape vacanta), uichendu’ ala la Moeciu…(cu P.)

4 pagini web zilnice: Google.com, Wall-street.ro, DealBook-ul de la NY Times, diverse bloguri.

4 joburi: “muncitor pe santier”, HR Manager, Account Manager, Consultant.

4 locuri in care am locuit: Galati, Oltenita, Bucuresti – Titulescu, camin (Tei si Moxa).

4 pe care-i tag-uiesc: Sece, NpunctC, Andrei, Cristi.

si sa mai adaugam una….

4 bauturi: Jack Daniels, Absolut Pepper, Heineken, Remy Martin.

After the recent switch to Neogen, I also decided to switch to WordPress. This is why you now see a different design. But you also see some nice functionalities, like Categories, which blogger did not support previously.

As I promissed to some people I would share my experiences with WordPress, let’s make a quick “executive summary” :)

- Installation – very easy, just under 5 minutes, like they say in their presentation.
- Interface – very easy to work with, lot of functionalities that come handy.
- Support – bad. Even though I would expect a the big wordpress community to write various FAQ and articles about everything, it seems they did not manage to properly cover even the basic things, like troubleshooting on the import. Even though I did everything they said, the import from blogger just didn’t work. So I wimported everything manually :(
- Templates – quite hard to edit, it’s more like PHP, so a simple HTML “beginner” like myself had a hard time adjusting the template. This is why I decided for a more out-of-the-box one, with some minor changes.
- Functionality – well, it supports almost everything you need, from Categories to Plug-ins, from Users management to password-protection for posts and comments and so on. You really have to play around with it to get a feeling of everything.

Well, it’s time to get back to tweaking now, so I will update this after some more testing of what wordpress can and can’t do.

Did you experience any problems so far with it? What should I be careful about ?

P.S. Thanks, Christina, for the help!

No, I am not a snowboard addict. No, I did not wake up this morning dreaming about Austrian slopes. No, I do not regret I did not stay one day longer. No, I am not smiling everytime I see the boots in the hallway (thanks, Calin!).

And all of the above are just lies.

I am. And music on the slope just makes it better. And if the B&O headphones make music better (and they do!!), then B&O will definetely join me on the slope.

I promised to share the experience, and here it is:
- first of all, the comfort is great. Even under extreme conditions (yes, one might fall, specially with shitty rented boots…), I did not even feel them, I was just hearing music and felt like singing.
- the sound quality is great. At one point, I thought the music was playing on the entire slope and I stopped to look if it’s true. It wasn’t, it was from the sublime iPod + B&O headphones combination.

And another great thing is the music that can be heard at Rossignol, in Poiana Brasov. It’s a great clubbing / house / close-to-rave music which just makes you move. And together with the hot wine, they also make a great pair :)

Too bad it was some ice on the slope, too bad there are lot of people not looking where they are going / sliding and too bad it was so short.

But there are only 5 days left ’till the next weekend :)

After making a few “is-it-worth-it, is-it-not-worth-it” calculations, today I could not resist it anymore and I went downstairs….To the B&O store. I knew exactly what I came for and nothing could haved stopped me. Well, almost nothing.

I asked for them, I tested them (BeoCenter 2 is also great, even though the volume control is a little slow in response) and now I am the proud owner of a fine set of B&O A8 earphones.

So, what do they offer so special for that $150 ?

– The Sound. First of all, the sound. It is crystal clear, it is very relaxing, not disturbing at all, it inspires a state of calmness and quality when you hear it. I compared them to my original iPod earphones and, even though the iPod ones were great, these are absolutely briliant.

- The comfort. The are really very comfortable to wear, easy to adjust, and they are not painful after several hours of use, like usualy in-ear headphones are. Being manufactured from aluminium, they are very light, which is something you really come to appreciate if you plan to use them extensively. Anyway, the final test will come on Saturday, when I hope they won’t keep falling while snowboarding, like the wiped ones did :)

- The service. Maybe I was they only client they had today, or maybe the guy was in a very good mood, but the service was great! He didn’t even needed for me to ask about testing, he offered right away, he let me take my time with it, he offered a complete brochure with all the other equipment, neatly presented the handsfree and so on. Great customer service I can say !

Overall, great sound quality, very good comfort, I really cannot find anything to complain about. They are really worth all the money !

So, it’s time to get back and enjoy music through the A8s. The only bad thing is that now my home music system is going to get soooo jealous :)

P.S. Another great thing is the warning in the user manual – While most manufacturers say that a high volume will cause damaging of the headset, B&O warns you that “Prolonged listening at a high volume might cause hearing damages”. Hopefully, my ears will last long enough for the A8s.

This is a test for my new Dailymotion account.

I might use this to upload music files for everybody to listen to.

What do you think of the playback quality of Dailymotion?

Those of you who are regular visitors of this blog (heh, who am I kidding, I am the only one :D) might have noticed that yesterday the blog returned an Apache installation message instead of the usual great posts aroung here.

Well, this was mainly because of switching the hosting, which proved to be not that of a technical problem, but more of a communication management issue between the 2 involved companies (Connex and Neogen), which I had to solve.

This was the bad news.

The good news is that now it works (if you see this post, it really works) and now I have more storage space and is working better (even though without a proper admin interface, but this will come soon).

So what do we do with this space?

Well, first of all, here is some music for you to enjoy (please don’t download and use, just listen, in order not to break the copyright laws :D). And wordpress will probably come soon.

Enjoy the following:
Stratovarius – Will My Soul Ever Rest in Peace
Pearl Jam – Even Flow
Deathcab For Cutie- The Sound Of Settling
Carla Bruni – Raphael

Please provide feedback after listening :)