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It seems that Metallica’s management, Q-Prime, were the ones responsible for requesting that the early reviews of their new album be pulled from various sites. Apparently the members of Metallica were on tour and hadn’t heard about any of this. Upon returning, and getting wind of the situation, they decided to make it right. They’ve since issued a non-apology, and posted the reviews on their own site, as well as linked to the re-published original posts, here, here, and here. Good for them. Maybe Metallica has really learned from their mistakes.

Additionally, upon reading the reviews in question, it turns out that the write-ups are, by and large, cautiously optimistic about the new album’s progress. Two of the reviews go as far as to say that the new material sounds like a return to ‘…and Justice for All’ form. Impressive, if true.

I might have to amend my previous plan of action. I may have to download the album when it’s available, but instead of deleting it, I’ll give it a listen. If it’s good, and truly a return to form, I may just have to buy it.

As an aside, it’s good to see that Metallica has reverted to using their classic logo, as opposed to the grungy logotype that’s been their visual calling card since the disaster that was Load. May the classic logo’s return herald good things to come.

1- Apartment hunting.

2- Frakking Twitter.

3- Putting the final touches on the Little Brother print (see previous post).

4- An Advance Reading Copy of Scalzi’s Zoe’s Tale.

5- GTA IV (but not as much as you’d think).

6- A corporate brochure for a freelance client.

 

Little Brother Sketch

Originally uploaded by pablodefendini

Trying out Flickr’s ‘Blog this’ feature. . . Let’s see what happens. This is a sketch inspired by Doctorow’s Little Brother, which may turn into a book cover, but probably not. If not, I’ll turn it into a print, either silkscreen or woodblock. We’ll see.

EDIT: Well, it worked, although Flickr told me it didn’t. Also, it doesn’t seem to play nice with the WordPress theme I’m using. Sheesh.

Went and saw the metal cello quartet Apocalyptica last night at Irving Plaza with Jen and Liz. What a kickass, utterly metal show! These guys keep it real, as Jen would say, but I’d add real metal: angry, but with a healthy sense of fun. They mostly did songs off their new album, Worlds Collide, which is awesome in its own right, but since they originally got well-known for doing covers of Metallica songs, they also regaled us with their take on ‘Nothing Else Matters,’ ‘Enter Sandman,’ and that oldie but personal favourite, ‘Seek and Destroy.’

So I’ll leave you today with ‘Path,’ from their album Cult.

RAWK!

After much cajoling from co-workers, breathless watching of the trailers and gameplay videos, and much hand-wringing, I’ve broken down and bought a Microsoft product: namely, an Xbox 360, and the prerequisite copy of Grand Theft Auto IV.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be in Liberty City for the foreseeable future.

Lawrence Lessig –founder of the Creative Commons, board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, all around kickass dude, and one of my heroes–has just climbed like fifteen hundred notches on my scale of awesome by turning his attentions from fighting for copyright reform, to fighting for government reform. From Wired.com:

“The problem we face is … the problem of crony capitalism using money to capture government,” he said on Monday during the launch of his project in Washington, DC. “The challenge is whether in fact we can change this. The political experts tell you that it can’t be done, that process always win over substance.”  

As such, he and Joe Trippi have founded The Change Congress Project, which aims to bring an unprecedented degree of transparency to politics. A short piece by Lessig himself, outlining his intentions with this project, can be found here. This is a perfect example of how technology, properly wielded in the hands of many, can and will bring transparency and accountability to the opaque back-room-deal-type of politics that we’re unfortunately used to, and which so many of us abhor. I think one of the biggest trends of the coming decade or so is going to be the disruptive effect of technology and communications on politics in the US and worldwide, an analogous situation to how technology has disrupted the entertainment industry over the past ten years or so. We’re going to start seeing a lot more politicians being on the up-and-up, because they won’t have a choice, they will be under too much scrutiny. 

This is a Very Important Speech.

Think Lincoln. Think Kennedy. It illustrates one of the main reasons why Obama’s got my support over Clinton: he’s trying to move politics away from knee-jerk, black and white, sound bite friendly policy, and towards a more considered narrative born of deliberation and a realist perspective on the state of affairs, both good and bad. To boot, he wrote it all by himself, no speechwriting by committee here. Maybe that’s why it sounds so authentic. 

Or maybe it’s the fact that he refuses to gloss over the ugly realities of race, but instead of being all angry about it, he looks the problem head-on, and outlines ways in which we can start to fix it.

Man, I hope hope hope he becomes the next President.

Terry Pratchett, author of the bestselling Discworld novels, has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer’s. He has donated half a million pounds (approx $1 million) to Alzheimer’s research and appeared in the media highlighting the low levels of research funding Alzheimer’s receives. Millions of loyal readers from around the world have responded and are helping to match Terry’s donation.You can help here. 

I just wrapped up design work on a small freelance project that has had me bustin’ up my circadian cycle left and right all week long. Despite the lack of sleep, and subsequent late rising every morning this week (thus eliminating the possibility of morning swims and reading/writing sessions before leaving for the office), I’m very happy with this job. Everything seems to have gone very smoothly, especially considering that it was a rush job, and much could have gone very, very wrong. It’s a design for the homepage for a bank rewards program (pedestrian, yes, but not everything can be exciting and SFnal), and if my client’s client likes it, there may be the possibility of designing the whole site. Which means more work for me. Which means more scratch. Which means that a financial safety net is within reach. Or at least somewhere on the horizon. 

Eventually I’ll get back to working on the custom template for this blog, importing posts from the old blog, and rolling in new content (specifically, some work-in-progress/portfolio-type posts). For now though, I plan to sleep, and see if I can get back to waking up every day at 5:30 a.m. again by Monday. But not before watching this week’s episode of Lost.
If only I can get the roommates to stop hogging the damn television. 

This is my first post in WordPress, after a very painless installation process. Eventually I’ll start migrating posts from my previous Blogger blog over here, in addition to my portfolio posts and some other goodies. In the meantime, I’m going to be very very busy cooking up a custom template for this beast, because dammit, that’s just the way I roll. Once that’s taken care of, I’ll redirect the homepage from Defendini.com here, and this will become my new homepage.Anyway, so far, so good. We’ll see how long that lasts. . . .