Things ive been watching and listening to lately (visiting family edition)
Posted 12/6/2024
HARDWAREZ by Master Boot Record
i've been a big fan of MBR for a couple of years now at this point and i've been a real big fan of their most recent release. HARDWAREZ is a solid addition to their discography and i really love listening to it. MBR makes me think i would be a pretty big fan of metal music but its uh, hard to find metal music that doesnt have singing/lyrics of some kind.
MBR is a musician i'd call consistent if anything. each album has a unique feel and tone, but MBR has a surefire style that i love in all of their albums. i look forward to every new release of theirs!
ULTIMATE UNDEAD and ArchDevil (EP) by LostSckare
so there is a… trend. with cyberpunk/synthwave music, in that there is at least a 50% chance that the cover includes a scantily clad/skintight clothes/just naked female form of some kind. i'll not spend the time to rationlize this or discuss the reason for this today, but if there's something that LostSckare gives me is a synthwave album art that isn't going to give me the smack on the arm from my mom.
i think LostSckare's sound is a bit more unique in the synthwave scene i see, and especially because their albums seem to be themed more around demonic or supernatural forces rather than a strictly cyberpunk setting. i really appreciate this approach, since this was something i liked about Abyssal Arcana by Draven, was there are several songs about vampires.
give Ultimate Undead and ArchDevil (EP) a listen on bandcamp!
Technology Connections (the whole youtube channel)
truly don't know why i haven't been watching Technology Connections this whole time. i'm a big fan of Alec's presentation style and obviously my interest in electronics extends to appliances and other unique bits of tech and i love learning more about them.
i've been slowly watching the videos of what subjects particularly interest me, but the newest video "LED Christmas lights which don't hurt the eyes: it finally happened!" is really good and as someone with light sensitivity, actually dimmer LED lights in any regard is a godsend for me since i also loathe how bright christmas lights are.
every video is really well researched and discussed, so if you're like how i was about 2 weeks ago and have not watched any of TC yet, give it a watch on youtube!
Ranked With Babish
i like cooking videos by themselves and i have a few channels i like, but because its a part of my normal video content i'd lean on not including them in this type of blog post unless i'm really into a particular video.
Binging with Babish (or Babish Culinary Universe as the youtube channel is now called) is not among the ones that i tend to watch just because the notable content on the channel is recreating dishes from tv shows and other pieces of media, but i don't actually watch those pieces of media so i don't have the context for the significance for the dish so it doesn't really interest me. i still do think Andrew has a really good precense on camera and the videos of Binging with Babish i have watched i have enjoyed.
which leads me to learning that they have a series where Andrew just ranks a bunch of members of a particular category of food, like boxed mac and cheese, jarred pasta sauce, campbell's soups, and the most recent one i watched: flavors of gatorade.
i like this series of videos because it feels like when other chefs do some kind of ranked video series it's usually more in the realm of "cheap" food type versus "expensive" food type, like ranking how good a burger is with $5 beef, $30 beef, and $100 beef. and while those can be entertaining because i'd like to see some $100 steaks be brought down to the level of burger, it's obviously something that i could never do. the Ranked with Babish is something i could do at home and that's what makes it fun to see Andrew's takes on something i could do myself.
another variation on the food comparison vids are done by this guy that tries to make a beginner, experienced, and pro version of a particular food and i like how even the "pro" version is something that i could feasibly do if i has the time to do some of those steps. he usually picks the middle/experienced version of the food as the best one and i might try some of these recepies out some time.
Game Changer by Dropout
i like dropout's content, its real good. a free episode of their new cooking show, Gastronauts, is on youtube too if you haven't seen that yet btw.
when trying to watch stuff with my parents after dinner it was a bit hard to find something that interested all of us or was actually good, so i opened the youtube app on their smart tv and played a couple of dropout's comedy stuff available for free on their youtube (since i couldn't figure out a way to stream the dropout app's videos to their tv).
my dad really liked game changer and my mom liked make some noise, and when they went to bed i just rewatched more episodes of game changer on my phone. game changer is really a show of all time, i love the energy that the contestants bring to each game and i love how they keep inovating on the format they've created to keep things interesting for everyone watching and playing. its a good show. go watch the stuff on youtube or give dropout $5 to go watch everything else they have.