Review – Dimmu Borgir (In sorte diaboli)


Dimmu BorgirIn sorte diaboli
Released 2007
(Melodic Black Metal)

This band from Norway has established itself as one of the pillars of the blackened Metal scene over the course of the past 15 years, starting with their third release “Enthrone darkness triumphant”. However, they are not entirely without controversy because of their commercial success. To some this may seem untrve. But, and this is much to their credit, not all artists stick to one way of doing music but instead evolve their style. The first two albums “For all tid” and “Stormblast” had norwegian lyrics and as of “Enthrone darkness triumphant” it has been english lyrics ever since. They also considerably increased the overall speed of the music.
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Modern Experiences at a Concert

This is a response to a post on Daily Exhaust which itself is inspired by an image from the D11 Conference.

I’ve been to festivals for the past five years and every time I’ve taken lots of photos and even some videos. Especially last year, equipped with the iPhone, I was able to create 1080p video. I have to admit that shooting photos or recording videos takes away part of the experience but, for me at least, it has a big value in retrospect. From all those data I created videos for each of the last three visits to the festival and added some music to it. If available I also chose music of the band that is on the respective photo. Those videos are like a documentary on the whole festival, from getting there, setting up the tent, wandering around, seeing funny things and the actual concerts. I love watching them from time to time and think back at the great time I had. Just last year my sister recorded a “I died for you” from Iced Earth and I used the music from the Alive in Athens live album in the video and it matches so perfectly you could almost think it being the sound of the video (until you realize it’s not Matt Barlow on the stage). Still, a great memory!

I think, as also mentioned in the linked article, that you should be wary of how much you see through your camera and how much you experience by really watching. For me it’s about being there and living it, but also use all that photos and videos as vivid memory to build up a pleasent anticipation for the next gig.

And frankly, who would not want to remember that? (I picked the more catchy ones ;-] )

 

 

Java I/O Performance Iterating Directories

A while ago at work we were confronted with the task of creating a directory listing in a Grails application. We’ve tried a couple of approaches, one the Groovy way and one the Java way. Both delivered only a poor performance. A short search brought forth a Stackoverflow thread addressing the issue of slow Java i/o performance with only one real solution: switch from Java 6 to 7. That’s no option at work but out of personal interest I gave it a try at home.Read More »