The Blog - AskOmar.com OG’s Collection of Opinions

Welcome to the first edition of the Week In Review. Since I don’t like to deeply expand on a subject, but I like to talk about a lot of subjects, from now on (and hopefully in a consistent manner) I will do a Week In Review.

Facebook Applications are No Different Than MySpace’s Glitter

Yeah, I can hear what you are saying, MySpace sucks, Facebook rules, its applications are amazing. But when you give power to the user to customize their profile, hell breaks loose. The user experience goes to shit, and becomes unpleasant. The lack of control of how many applications a user can have on their profile is not strongly enforced. I just wanted to say hi to an old buddy, but I find 5 different walls, in which one should I leave my message?! DOES HE FUCKING NEED ALL THOSE WALLS?!!

I don’t totally blame him, I blame how easy and pretty the application do the job of spamming and encouraging its users to spread their application to all of its friends. I stopped installing application about 4 months ago, and I have received since then, approximately 100 invites to install applications, all of them which have been declined. They are no different than the Hot Girl On the webcam XXX spam that I get (outside of the possible boobies on the webcam one). It is tempting to click, but you know its no good.

And by the way, MySpace is doing a hard, but good job cleaning up its act. Redesigning its site, reducing incredibly the amount of spam received, and controling phishers. What I am saying is, once you give the user power to control, you will start seeing a lot of non-user friendly. And that was a rant!

Music Of The Week

Crookers

I have known about them for over 6 months, thanks to some music blogs that I follow. You should listen to their Essential Mix; a very solid mix, which without a doubt put them on the map.

Chemical Brothers - Salmon Dance (Crookers Remix)

A-Trak

Check out Running Man: Nike + Original Run. Loving this mix.

A-Trak feat. Lupe Fiasco - Mastered

Girl Talk

Feed The Animals is his latest mash-up release. Go get it here in a “pay what you want download” format. I highly recommend it, it is a fun album.

Girl Talk - Here’s The Thing

Funny Of The Week

Brought to you by rumorsontheinternets

The Website Is Down
The Web Dude vs The Sales Guy

Favorite Links Of The Week

Guide To Achieving Flow an Happiness in your work
Shoe Lacing Methods
10 things to do in Amsterdam besides smoking pot

Video Of The Week

Where The Hell Is Matt?
I hate you Matt, for being so cool.

Where The Hell Is Matt’s Girlfriend?
… Not so cool anymore…haha

Girl of the Week

Olivia Munn

Olivia Munn has, pretty much, all but conquered the small screen, co-hosting Attack of the Show!, and the big screen starring in Big Stan, as well as modeling for many magazines, including Playboy (Though she did keep her clothes on) and Men’s Health.
Olivia Munn was born in Oklahoma, the daughter of Kim and Sam Munn, being of Chinese and Caucasian descent. When Munn was two years old, her mother married a man enlisted in the Air Force, and the family moved several times. However, Munn was mostly raised in Japan, in the Shinjuku District of Tokyo. -  [source]

It was hard to choose a girl for my first edition, it was because I didn’t remember Olivia! She is a 10 on my books. Gorgeous and funny. She is one of the reasons that I watch Attack Of The Show. I would happily marry her or a woman that looks that her that is funny.

Rapidfire Thoughts

• Twitter has been very unstable lately damnit
• Plurk is cool, but not as easy to use as Twitter.
• I’m happy that our thoughts are not out loud. A lot of fucked up things come into thought at random times during the day.
• Don’t go hungry to the supermarket, you will buy extra stuff… don’t go to the supermarket thirsty, you will only buy beverages (i did it this weekend)
• New PS3 Software is available, now with trophies and you can read and message your friends while playing a game. sweet stuff
• Awesome The Dark Knight Poster

Quote Of The Week

“You should send him a box with a turd inside of it.”

My comment after Chris Jennings told the story of his “friend” trying to scam him with $150 dollars.

So That Means I Don’t Need To Wear My Glasses

AgencyNet - Fort Lauderdale Office, originally uploaded by chrisfullman.

A photo of the Agencynet Family.
A lot of growing has happened since I was the 6th person joining in.

Is that time of the year at the NBA, that refs don’t call stupid fouls, or wrongly estimate the time left at the shot clocks…oops, I think that already happened.

It’s very exciting to see the young players step up their game and be this generation Magic Johnsons, Isiah Thomas, Larry Birds and even MJ. Kobe Bryant is the only one that is closer to be compared to Michael Jordan. It’s not Lebron, he still needs to improve a lot, make smarter decisions, smooth his game. I see Lebron James more like a Dominique Wilkins. Back to Kobe, Kobe Bryant is such a great player, you can see his finesse style at both sides of the court. Sure, he has a great supporting cast, he makes them look good.

The Lakers and Kobe are great team to watch, but they are not the one team I want to see on the Finals. The team I want to see in the Finals is the New Orleans Hornets. Chris Paul (CP3) is my favorite player right now at the playoffs. His game is smart, finesse and almost perfect. He is being a PG version of Dwayne Wade at the top of his game, but less selfish.

To be honest, the East is not that exciting to watch. I predicted by mid-season that Detroit and Boston would meet at the Eastern Conference Finals. Boston is such a good team with 3 Superstars. If one of them is having a bad game, the other 2 Superstars will be there, which works well with them. Detroit Pistons, they just play well as a team.

Here is my prediction of the teams at the NBA Finals:
Wishful Thinking - New Orleans Hornets vs Boston Celtics - New Orleans in 6 games, Chris Paul MVP.
What the Media and NBA Wants - LA Lakers vs Boston Celtics - Lakers in 7, Kobe Bryant MVP.
What most likely will happen - LA Lakers vs Detroit Pistons - Lakers in 7, Kobe Bryant MVP.

I love music, it makes me happy, it makes me work better, it inspires me. I enjoy listening to new music every day. Sometimes I know what I want, and many times, I don’t know what I want. So I start discovering new sounds, stuff that I haven’t listened before. I have thought that I am addicted to music, music is my drug, I always want more and something new every time. If you are reading this, it means that you are like me when it comes to music. This will guide you to places that you could find new music and possibly add to your list of favorite artists, without using software like Limewire or bittorrent networks.

Where to Start and Last Resorts
iTunes Store - Access it through iTunes
Amazon MP3 Store (on a side note, why do amazon uses non-user friendly URLs?)
Rhapsody

News
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com
http://thedailyswarm.com
http://stereogum.com/
http://www.subterraneanblog.com/
http://www.mtv.com/music/charts/
http://www.mtvu.com/music/ahead_of_the_curve/
http://www.current.com/fix

Where To Discover
http://fairtilizer.com - You will need an invite to get in. I have a few, if you ask me nicely, I can give you one.
http://audiomap.tuneglue.net/
http://www.musicovery.com/
http://www.spiralfrog.com/
http://soundslikenow.org
http://mog.com/
http://music.myspace.com
http://muxtape.com - Create your own “Muxtape” or randomly click on any of the ‘muxtapes’ at the homepage, you never know what good treasure you might find. Check mine out, I will try to update frequently with different ‘ear food’.

On iTunes
1. Open iTunes
2. Click on Radio
3. Open the Eclectic Tab
My favorites from that list are:
Pig Radio
KCRW

Search Engines
http://hypem.com
http://beemp3.com/
http://g2p.org
http://elbo.ws/
http://skreemr.com/
http://www.musire.com/
http://www.albumhunt.com/
http://www.mp3gle.net/

On TV
I rarely watch TV, but here are three programs that I watch to discover new music.
MTV U
Subterranean - MTV2 - Sunday Nights at 1:00 AM
The Fix - Current TV - Tuesday Nights at 10:00 PM
MTV Hits - Watch out for the MTVU and Subterranean playlists.

Blogs
Here is a short list of blogs that I constantly keep an eye on.

http://palmsout.blogspot.com - electronic, mixes
http://missingtoof.com/ - electro, mixes
http://digitaleargasm.blogspot.com/ - electric, pop, mixes
http://www.discoworkout.com - electronic
http://caucasian-tabloid.blogspot.com/ - electronic
http://my.opera.com/Licorice%20Pizza/blog/ - eclectic, oldies
http://deekmedia.wordpress.com/ - eclectic
http://redthreat.wordpress.com - electro, mixes
http://musichole.blogspot.com/ - eclectic, bootlegs, mixes
http://blog.tracklistings.net/ - radio shows, mixes
http://mp3daily.blogspot.com/ - eclectic
http://www.nialler9.com/blog/ - indie, eclectic
http://www.brooklynradio.net/shows/ - eclectic, various
http://www.newmixes.com/ - radio shows, mixes
http://therapup.rawkus.com/ - hip-hop
http://findasoul4sale.blogspot.com/ - hip-hop

All of the sites above have RSS feeds. RSS is a very powerful instrument to get information from the sites to us, instead of us going to the site to find about. To keep an eye on new updates that any of the blogs that you like, use any RSS aggregator such as Netvibes, Use it, abuse it, stay informed and up-to-date with music, and share your tabs with the world.

More Info
The following link, I collected some information from them and used it to compile this list. You may find something else useful on them.
http://mashable.com/2007/09/20/music-news/#more-11067
http://www.mahalo.com/How_to_Download_Free_Music
http://blog.brokep.com/2007/10/27/what-to-use-instead-of-oink-waffleswaffleswaffles

• Go to your favorite artist myspace. check out their top friends. Click on any of their “friends” and keep digging in.
• Click on the blogrolls (the links on the sidebar). You never what treasures you may find.
• On Google. Use this string artist name "rapidshare.com/files"|"megaupload.com/?d"|"badongo.com/file/"|"mediafire.com/?"|"http://www.zshare.net/audio/", replacing ‘artist name’ with the band or artist that you want to search.
• Google Images - Search for album covers in this format (Artist Name - Album Name). The best results are Blogs posting the links to download the full albums. You might find more music of your interest.
• http://www.music-alerts.com/ - You type the name of your favorite artists, and it will create a RSS feed from the artists you input and keep an eye for anything that is released from them.

Enjoy music, feed your ears, stimulate your senses with aural goodness! And that’s it. I will keep updating this post, whenever I find a good site, or any recommendations that I may get. Enjoy!

The blog is now living on a new server and under a new domain (no more “theblog” subdomain). I also updated wordpress to 2.5, pretty sweet update.

I still need to go to some cleanup on some of the posts, upload images, relocate things, arrange stuff. While testing I found this page which I totally forgot, it made me laugh.

Awesome that this migration went very smooth. Thanks to TaskPaper, I kept track of what I needed to do.

Since the ‘main’ domain name is om12.net, I did a quick HTML CSS prettyness crap, go check it out.

I want to thank Mr. Fullman for hosting my domains in the past.

In case you were wondering, now my sites are hosted at mediatemple. I must say, their account center is pretty neat.

I decided to give a new look to my blog, since the one I did sucked. I’m using now a theme called SpringLoaded by the449.

One day I will start on my own blog design.

Social Networks are a great part of our life, even if we want it or not.

Here is how it has affected out daily thought process, explained by scenarios.

“[insert anything common], should I twitter it?”
Some quick examples:
“I just farted and it smells” - NO
“The house is burning down, where is the baby?” - NO
“I’m taking a dump” - NO
“Batman dies” - Watching The Dark Knight on opening night and sharing the ending.
“Driving at 95, idiots should not be in the road” - NO, twittering and driving don’t go along.
Don’t drink and twitter. Is like drunk dialing, except 45 of your twitter buddies have to read your drunk update.

“Hmm, I should take a look at craigslist” - After seeing someone buy a new TV. You know he has to get rid of his old TV one way or another.

“DUGG” [with a thumbs up] - to a hot girl, or hot guy if you are a female.

“6, 7, 5, 8, 9, 1, 6, 8, 4, 10, 2″ - Coming out of the club, and looking at the girls at the line coming in while giving the “hotornot.com” rating.

“Buried as inaccurate” - After seeing a not-so-hot girl wearing a shirt that says “Sexy Hot Girl”

“Buried as inaccurate” - After your friends describe you a girl, and is not totally how they painted it.

“You just get vinegar, and it will get rid of those stains… I read it on Wikipedia” - Trying to be a smart ass on something you read on wikipedia.

“Oh yes, I’m gonna get 1 million plus views on this baby!” - After filming your friends singing and dancing to the Spice Girls, and contemplating of the YouTube possibilities.

“I wish I can find her on MySpace” - After eyeing a young looking cute girl

“OMG, these photos are going up to flickr” - Taking photos with a fancy nancy SLR Camera at the park.

“OMG, these photos are going up to Facebook” - Taking photos with a point and shoot in last nights party.

“Bla bla bla, look at me, I’m singing along, I found that rare remix song on The Hype Machine” - Showing off to your friends at a club that you are “truly indie”

Final words - Don’t underestimate the power of the web and Social Networks, they are called “Social Networks” for a reason. It is a big party that everyone is in, and you control if you want to be the center of attention, with difference of the real world, people pay attention to you. Be smart about it… or not.

Friday night, I arrived to Ponce, Puerto Rico, an hour later I was in my hometown, Coamo Puerto Rico. My brother, Emanuel, picked me up from the airport. I really missed being home, being around my family. My mom was very happy to see, as always.

Saturday morning, I was awaken by the most beautiful girl I have seen, my niece Estephanie. I wont forget the first look she gave me when she saw me. It was a look of confusion, of “who is this tall dark man?”, but also a look, like she knew me. It took a while for her to accept me. Abuela Nilsa facilitated that, my mom did one of the sweetest things I have seen, my mom kissed Estephanie in the cheek and in the hand, and told her “besito besito” (little kisses little kisses), I gave her a kiss on her cheek and on her hand, and Estephanie gave me a big smile. That moment made my whole day much better. I have taken so many pictures and videos of her, that I haven’t got tired. I really want to be “Super Tio” to her. I want to be the uncle that took her to Disney, which I already started to save for that day.

I learned that cute baby girls are “chick magnets”. I went to the mall, and I was pushing the stroller, and without lying, 8 out of 10 girls, looked at me, which is something that does not happen when I am alone. I’m gonna bring her with me where the hottest girls hang out, ha ha.

During the 2 days, I have seen so many high school friends, and they all remember me. most of them have kids and families. i also saw one of my best friends in high school, Gaby, a guy that I haven’t seen in over 6 years, it was good seeing him, I’m looking forward meeting with him again, hopefully for my birthday.

Saturday night, i went to a local festivity, it was crowded and nice until someone pulled out a gun and shot 6-8 shots, everyone in the crowd ran. it was a scary scene, everyone running, in panic, cops pulling their guns out, looking for the person that have made the shots. today i learn, there was one dead, and 2 injured. it is my first time in that type of scenario, i wanted to stay and film more, but with the people i was with, they all started running.

Sunday, was the half-marathon San Blas. The streets were crowded, it was hot, it started raining, and not a lot of athletes participated, as I remember 10 years ago.

Well, this is my first weekend at home. I will be taking more pictures and writing more as the week goes and I get out and do things.

Oh yeah, I went underwater with my brother and Estephanie.

This Cannot Be More Accurate

Hey all. Like the usual, I’m being lazy with my blogging. I have 8 drafts that I haven’t finished, because..I don’t know…

Hope to finish them one of these days, sooner than later.

For now, check my bastard child, rumorsontheinternets

AskOmar Blog has a Bastard Child!

there are so many quick things on the web that needs to be shared, that I created a tumblr account, and Rumors On The Internets was been born!

It doesn’t mean that I will write less, it means that I will post more random shit, and write more comprehensive things in here.

Bookmark it or add it t your feed readers!!!
i heard some RUMORS ON THE INTERNETS

Its Turkey Time!

Hi Everyone, its been so long since my last update. So much has happened. I got punched in the face, saw a boxing match, saw my friends get wasted and dance in a pole in Miami,went to a wedding with a Luchador mask, and got a new computer! Crazy me, for not doing such massive update before.

I’m gonna be brief here, this post is take off some dust from the blog.

Click here and laugh!
Talking Cats (Thanks Larissa!)

Happy Halloween everyone!

So the Mohawk won! wait for later in the week for videos and photos of glorious mohawk!

Here i leave you with some Derren Brown Videos

Subliminal Advertising
Derren Brown beats 9 chess players simultaneously.
derren brown zombie
Russian Roulette (Intense)
Derren Brown NLP (Mind Blowing)

Is that time of the year that my ‘fro has reached new heights. Last week sucked for me and my hair, I hated it. This week I’m contemplating leaving my afro. I like to hear from you, the reader.

October 31st is the deadline. Lets see what the outcome of my hair will be!

I messed up the theme!
The new WAS up!

Here a small update

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Sony Bravia - Pyramid
People Getting Punched Just Before They Start Eating - I just have to say, Andy’s song selection is one very sticky, that you will want that track (Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek, Iran So Far)
What Top Gun Really is about by Quentin Tarantino
Quoting digg user clutchperformer

Have you ever heard that insanity and genius are separated by a thin line visible only by an electron microsocope? Tarantino is exhibit A supporting that theory. That guy lives in insanity but takes vacations to genius.

What’s On My Playlist
Minus The Bear
Circo
Telefon Tel Aviv
Vitalic
Hot Hot Heat

Enjoy!!!