Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there.  It wasn't until I had my own son that I could truly appreciate all the time, dedication and sacrifice that goes into trying to be a halfway decent father.  Although I don't have the best relationship with my own father, I've come to understand a little bit more about what went into rearing me and some of the unrealistic expectations and judgements I've placed on him.  My sincerest thanks to him for the good and the bad and helping to mold who me into who I am.

In other news Father's Day related news, Blanx continued being Blanx and went overboard buying gifts for others (me) and gave me a Samsung GalaxyTab 10.1.  Me being me, I couldn't turn it down even though I probably should have.;  It was a toss up between the iPad 2 and the 10.1 and after a bit of deliberating I decided the Samsung was the one for me.  When comparing the 2 the iPad actually seemed to have better performance in normal web browsing (I just brought up the same site with pretty heavy background designs and just scrolled around the page and the iPad was a little bit smoother with no background fade-in).  What it eventually came down to was:

1. The Samsung was pretty awesome in its own right, I've been wanting to play with Android dev for a little bit and this gives me the perfect opportunity to.  I already have an iPhone 4 if I want to try IOS dev (which I've been lagging on and too busy for anyway)
2. Not a big fan of Apple as a company or their fanbase
3. I hate iTunes as a method of synching/transferring files
4. Specs-wise Samsung seemed better (lighter; bigger screen although the iPad2 is wider, thinner)
5. Flash support.  Sites like Justin.tv and Ustream have native apps, but don't always have content available in non-flash versions.  Also, just standard Flash support is big for me.  Not sure why Flash does not come installed by default though.

I've only messed with it for a few hours buy downloading the prerequisite free apps (facebook, evernote, angry birds) as well as some free books.  I even purchased the digital "boxed set" of Game of Thrones so that will jump up to the forefront of my backlog of reading.  More impressions to come, but so far I'm pretty happy even if it took Wes messing around with it to teach me how to use it.  In my defense I had some self-restraint and was working instead of messing with it when I first got it.

BTW, if you know of a good case for this thing, drop me a comment or send me a message.

Ever since I first heard Geo on the Native Guns album, I have been trying to spread the news about how dope the duo known as Blue Scholars are.  I've been buying their music, gear, and metaphorically yelling from rooftops about the good hip hop that people are missing out on.  I was one of the people that kicked in early for their Kickstarter funded album, Cinemetropolis,  and my first reaction when I got the early release I was a little disappointed.  I'm glad to say that I hit that one magical album listen-through where it all made sense, and I'd be willing to put this album's quality up against any of the older ones.

That being said, for the uninitiated I'd still recommend starting from the beginning.  That may be counter-intuitive if I'm saying Cinemotropolis is just as good, but sometimes certain albums are just easier to dive right into than others.  The other albums are more familiar to older hip hop heads as far as beats and cadences and more straight forward.  While Cinemetropolis seems to carry the same themes and message, it also seems to have a more personal and individual feel in both the actual topics and beats and the album as a whole.  This may make it less accessible or maybe even a little unfamiliar at times, but if you give the album a chance you'll start to see the effort and care crafted into it.

Cinemetropolis and Yuri Kochiyama were the first stand out cuts, but now most of them have really stuck with me.  Seeing the Fou Lee video bumped that up as one of my favorites now, too.  As a frame of reference, some other albums which I didn't take to very quickly even though I was previously a fan, but ended later ended up really liking: Makaveli, Thug Life, Lifesavas (Spirit In Stone), Sweatshop Union (Water Street), and probably a bunch more that just took the right mood for me to be open to them.

It's been a minute since I've had a blog and it's about fucking time.  The old sites were fun while they lasted, but I eventually got too busy while in the middle of contemplating a redesign and redevelopment.  I'm more realistic this time and for the time being will just grab a posterous blog to drop some knowledge in the old ways.  Unfortunately, all the old content like WTFIDTW and TRH are lost to archive.org or some other sites like that, but I'm planning to at least post here to break the normal routine and re-carve my place on the web, no matter how small.

So why the return to the '90s and blogging, and why not just tweet or facebook?  They've been invaded by work and while I don't claim any real separation or anyonymity from those items, the only way a client or some uptight family member is finding their way here is because they're following me outside of those items and not stumbling on some not-work related content accidentally.  If that's the case, then most likely they wouldn't give a shit about any offensive or offhanded remarks I make here.  If you're reading this welcome back, to the silo thar be some monkeys up in here and we fi'nna get nerdy up in this piece.