"Like A Rainbow in Dark" - RIP Ronnie James Dio

Although not geek related, we here at allroundgeek thought that we should take a moment to write a few words for Ronnie James Dio, who passed away on Sunday 16th May, 2010 after a 7 month battle with stomach cancer. Although small in stature, he certainly wasn't lacking in character and over the decades he has contributed huge amounts of quality to Heavy Metal and many of it's sub-genres. Even after being diagnosed with cancer he was determined to get well and back touring as soon as possible, but unfortunately it was not to be.

I invite the gang to write their own messages in the comments section.

\m/ \m/

Coded music: sc140

This is totally geeky: a collection of electronic music, each piece having been composed using only 140 characters of SuperCollider code - this was done by some of my colleagues. Download the album and sourcecode here!

"It Might Get Loud" trailer

If you love music then "It Might Get Loud" is a documentary made for you.

It is about the history of the electric guitar and it brings together three famous guitarists (Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge from U2 and Jack White from The White Stripes) to share thoughts about the instrument that changed music.

Enjoy the trailer:

Online Music Tax in the UK

Dumb-asses in the UK government are thinking about enforcing a new tax, the online music tax. Basically this will be a tax of 20 BP (approximately 21 euros or 28 dollars) for every broadband connection in the country. This tax would be used to cover the losses of big music and production companies from illegal internet downloads.WTF?

This does not make sense. The tax payers will start paying for the failures of the much-hated record labels? It is not enought that UK tax-payers pay 100 pounds per year to the BBC as a licence to watch TV, now they will have to pay an additional 20 pounds to the labels. Think about how much money these companies would be gaining for nothing? Why should we give them such a present? What sick mind thought of that? I think they will start to justify all sorts of stuff just to play along with the big companies, saying its all because of the economic crissis....I am getting angry again....calm down..calm down..

All Nightmare Long - Metallica music video

It is no secret that I am a big fan of Metallica. Their forty fourth single All Nightmare Long from their new album Death Magnetic has the most interesting music video I have seen for a really long time. It is a documentary-style horror film including a cartoon animation sequence about an alternate history of the cold war. In the film the tunguska event introduced the Soviet Union to a new extraterrestrial organism that they used to create a biological zombifying weapon that unleash on the USA. Apart from the old bad communists aspect of the film it is very-very well done. Its nightmerish creepy look and its documentary style Grindhouse worn film look make it very unique. Enjoy it.

* UPDATE: Apparently the music companies don't want you to watch the music video. They prefer to gather around in their corporate offices and watch it alone, them and only them, they did not make it for you....If I find another version somewhere else I 'll post it.

* UPDATE 2: you can view the video from the official Metallica website

Kirk Hammet said he bought the original cartoon video in Russia years ago and he always wanted to incorporate it in one of Metallica's music videos. I just now have to find the original video and watch it all.