For me, it’s all about down tempo beats and no lyrics. And it started on DI.fm in the Chillout Channel.

I was listening to a mix that just really got the juices flowing called Ott Times. It was mixed by Morlack. The song lead me on a quest to find the artists in the mix, which included:

• Shpongle
• Ott
• Younger Brother
• Entheogenic
• Shulman
• Hallucinogen

Since then, I’ve managed to acquire almost every physical CD of each of these artists. I’ve put together a few of my favorite playlists that I enjoy while coding, chilling, or doing whatever. So that’s my flavor, one that’s worked for a while. I’ve since added some new artists to the roster, including Phutureprimitive and a few others. It’s amazing what you can find just lying in bed searching through the iTunes music store on your iPhone.

The MacBook Pro continues to evolve. Post Fusion install I’ve gotten all my development tools installed, including Resharper, TestDriven.NET, TortoiseSVN, and NAnt. So far everything seems to be working great. I’ve yet to install PowerShell (so I can have my NIX command-line goodness for the Windows box). I pulled down the trunk of Castle and got it to build as well. I had to create the Test & Test2 databases on my local instance of SQL Server 2005 in order for all the tests to complete.

It looks like I’ll be giving a presentation on MonoRail at the TulsaTechFest 2007. It will be an introduction to building a web site using MonoRail and Brail. MonoRail is part of the Castle Project and provides a MVC (model-view-controller) framework within ASP.NET. MVC is a solid pattern for building web applications that is a significant improvement over the page-based WebForms model. MonoRail embraces web standards allows applications to be built based on controller logic and helps facilitate the separation of concerns. It’s good stuff, I can’t wait ot talk about it.

Did I mention that I’m old and staying out until 2 AM at a live show is painful the next day? Where is the Tylenol again? Strange that I can stay up until 3 AM playing with a new computer and not feel fried the next day but this was… different.

Oh yeah, Peggle Extreme is part of the pre-order package for TeamFortress2 on Steam. I highly recommend it as a fun diversion! Speaking of TF2, I’m all set for the beta that starts on Monday. I can’t wait to play the game, I hope for some cool in-game video recording (with FRAPS or otherwise) next week. I wonder if voice-chat is built into the game? Things I don’t know — they are plentiful today it seems.

I got my iPhone store credit, $100, fast and easy from Apple. I guess this means a trip to the Apple store is coming soon.

Oh, and today’s post is an experiment in link diarrhea to see how long it takes this post to go up!

Collective Soul rocked the house with a short 40-minute set including some of their great hits.

Third Eye Blind then took the stage and played a bunch of songs I didn’t know and a few I recall hearing on the radio (was never a big fan, still aren’t, would have preferred Live made the bill for Tulsa).

The last act was The Counting Crows. They played a solid set with a lot of old favorites and a bunch of new stuff that I didn’t like. Really once August and Everything After and Recovering the Satellites were done, I was done with them — there really wasn’t much more they put out that I liked. And even now I find myself hitting Next on their tracks. They sounded okay (aside from the mixed-up live arrangements that always ruin the song) and ended on a somber song that about knocked me out (read: put me to sleep).

A fun night out with the wife (and no kids) regardless of the music, so it was certainly a good time!

The new album from Younger Brother, “The Last Days of Gravity,” is coming out on September 3rd, 2007.

I cannot wait!