Listening to some tunes and playing user created content

Games:With the GDC (Game Developers Conference) this week, Microsoft finally announced and opened the XNA download center. If you don't know what this is, basically it's games created using Microsoft's technology to allow users/ small companies to create games with this small license. These games used to have to go through rigorous Microsoft(M$ from here on) background checks before they were able to be sold on XBL Marketplace. Since most people just wanted to make their games free, M$ decided to make a "youtube style" download service called XNA Club. I have yet to really play any but I have downloaded all that are available on XBL at the moment.

To get them yourself you need to download the "XNA Creators Club Game Launcher" which puts the menu of XNA games under your Games Library. Then when thats available go into my games and move your tab over to "XNA Creators Club" and press 'Y' to 'Download Games." This should bring up the list of games to download. Jeff Gerstmann recommends The Dishwasher but that is pretty much the only one he was able to get his hands on by the time of posting.

I will update with my impressions on those, game to game, in a bit.

Music: I picked up 2 very different CD's recently and am very happy with them both. The first being The Horrorpops' most recent album Kiss Kiss Kill Kill. The Horrorpops are pure psychobilly with a bad-ass chick singer. I would like to mention here that this is one of the only modern bands that I truly enjoy a woman singer over a male. This album has a great biting edge to it with many of the songs being extremely catchy like those of early Tiger Army. The best song on the CD is by far the Live version of Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell." She growls the vocals better than Billy himself and the controlled rhythm of the band is really amazing. The rest of the album is really solid and a definite recommendation to any psychobilly or even punk fan.

The second CD I picked up was The Aggrolites' self titled album. To sum the band up in a few words would probably sound like "old 60's reggae pop sound." I really like this album because it is a great mellowing out CD. I have been listening to it doing most of my schoolwork and more recently typing this blog up. The one funny thing is, these guys are white but they sound really great. Think Sublime but with much more influence from reggae.