Years ago a little program revolutionized the music world.  Its name was Napster.

Napster wasn't the first way to find music on the internet.  Usenet and IRC had been around for years.  However, both of those solutions required a bit of tech-know-how to use and were not accessible to the mainstream user.  Enter Napster.  A clean, easy to understand interface and instant access for millions of people (many of them college students) to begin sharing and downloading music was born.

Along came Metallica and the RIAA.

Sure, they weren't the only ones, but they became the most vocal.  Lawsuits ensued, the service was shut down, the RIAA declared victory and then realized that, just like Obi-Wan Kenobi, "If you strike [it] down, [it] shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

Now in its seventh season, there is now doubt that American Idol is a powerhouse in American entertainment.  Week after week, it is the most watched show on television.  Millions call in to keep their favorite contestant in the show.  Millions are donated to help a worthy cause.  And numerous careers have been launched thanks to this little singing competition.One of the aspects that makes American Idol fun is the feeling of participation that the viewer has.  We, the au...

As previously mentioned, with the death of The Prog Geek, Progged has been reimagined, redesigned, and reinvigorated.  In order to keep that up, there is some new content over there. 

Why not stop by and check out the reviews for the latest Ayreon album, 01011001?

Arjen again proves that he has the Midas touch. Fans of metal, folk, acoustic, pop, prog and even electronica can all find something to enjoy on this album. Lyrically, the story is coherent, cohesive, and powerful. Agai...

With the transition to the new JoeUser version 2, we saw, with likely little notice, the death of one of the most useful features of the old JoeUser:  Blog Groups.

Blog groups were likely not that popular, though I can't be sure.  And as it was nearing the end of its life-span, the blog group function was a bit iffy at the old site.  Nevertheless, it was incredibly useful.  San Chonino and I created a blog group (actually I created and he joined) the-prog-geek.joeuser.com....

Please refer to the previous post to fully understand my excitement. It is sufficient to say that I passed my stone.

Hooray. I just have some vague lingering discomfort in my back, but nothing like it was. Thank goodness.

Carry on.

The time quickly approaches. I really only have a few months left as a General Surgery resident. Then I make the transition to Urology resident. To be quite honest, I am incredibly excited. Not only am I incredibly tired of General Surgery, I look forward to focusing my time and energy on what I will be practising for the rest of my life.

But yesterday I gained a whole new ability to empathize with my future patients.

It was about 8:45 in the morning. I was working on writing some transfe...

So, the new JU is here.  Lest I sound alarmist, I won't say what I really think.  SanChonino knows.  However, I am having some issues.  Okay, one big issue.  One that has prevented me from even having the slightest desire to come here.  One that will, ultimately, result in my permanent exodus from this site if I cannot discover a remedy.



There it is.  Every page I navigate to with Internet Explorer (or Maxthon in this case) I get this dialog.  ...

As some of you should know by now, we decided to just use a picture of our little ones for our Christmas card this year.  It was fast, easy and we thought they turned out well.  But getting one photo that was decent enough to use, well, that was not fast or easy. 

Alex would only smile for a split second, Jessica wasn't feeling well, and tried her hardest to muster a smile, but it just didn't work.  And Aubrey, well, she is just Aubrey.  You never quite know what you...

Years ago, I started watching Alias.  My wife sat down and we were both immediately engrossed.  It became our weekly show, the one we would set time aside to watch together.  And if one of us couldn't be there we either taped it (in the old days), or (confession here) downloaded the episode. 

It was a lot of fun.  We knew that, every week, we had that time set aside for a little escapism.  Our enjoyment of this activity waned a bit during the third season (our l...

Whew, dusting off the old keyboard here.  Been a while.  But I had to share, this was too ridiculous.

4:30 this morning.  I was on call for General Surgery (and Pedi Surgery and Vascular Surgery and Trauma and ENT).  Other than a vascular patient who decided she wanted to try to die and hemorrhage on us (she's as okay as she can be, at least not bleeding like a stuck pig anymore) it was a pretty quiet nite.

One of the joys of being the junior Surgery resident on call is...

Systematic Chaos By: Dream Theater Year: 2007
Click here for the artists site

2007 marked a transition for Dream Theater.  They escaped the confines of their Warner music label over to one of metal's biggest labels, Roadrunner Records (of course, the beautiful irony is that Roadrunner was bought out by Warner in the beginning of 2007, though this all happened after the plan to switch labels).  Would a change in record labels lead to a change in direction for one of progressi...

Just testing Windows Live Writer to see if it will work with a blog group as well as a personal blog.

San Chonino and I have had some discussion about the direction, etc. of our reviews here at The Prog Geek.  As I was doing some work on the master index article, I came upon a disturbing revelation: We rate things here way to freaking high.  There are too many 9 and 10 ratings.  I just didn't feel we had been appropriately critical. 

Part of the problem is that this is totally amateur.  We review music we have and have listened to, so it stands to reason we would lik...

Yes, yes, I know it isn't even Halloween yet.  But the Holidays are fast approaching and I thought it might be fun to set up a Christmas/Holiday card swap (with enough time for it not to be a burden).

Here is what I was thinking: If you want in drop a comment here, adding your name to the list, then email me (peteyDOTjonesATgmailDOTcom)  an address to which the cards should be mailed (don't want real or email addresses sitting out there for all the world to gather).  I will tak...

A few years ago, a game came along that got pretty great reviews.  It also had pretty steep system requirements, as is often the case with AAA first-person shooter titles.  I knew my rig at the time wouldn't run it well, so never did have a chance to check it out.  As years went on and I got a new system that could handle the game I kept meaning to go back and revisit it.  Time has passed and it is one of those games I just never did get around to playing.

Until now, that ...