Dark Roots of Earth - Testament review

Testament is, in my opinion, one of the greatest thrash metal bands to walk this Earth. they should probably replace Metallica in the Big 4; but that's just me. i listened to their last album, The Formation of Damnation, so many times on the way to classes and back that the lyrics were stuck in my head...and some still are.

so you can imagine my excitement when i first heard Testament was planning to release a new album toward this Christmas. then, my excitement when the release date was brought up to July 31 in the US. not as exciting was the European release date of July 27, so i could hear it ever so much earlier. two singles were released from Dark Roots Of Earth - "Native Blood" and "True American Hate". both songs have since gotten high play counts since their download.

so, what about the rest of the album? simply put, it's an amazing piece of thrash metal. my personal favorite part is their cover of "Powerslave" by Iron Maiden, available on the Limited Edition along with the rest of the covers ("Dragon Attack" by Queen and "Animal Magnetism" by Scorpions.) as far as Testament's songs go, it's hard to pick favorites but "Cold Embrace" is definitely among them.

to end the review, i'm borrowing the words of my friend Clayton: "Goddamn Testament, y u so gewd?"

***RATING***- 5/5

OS X Mountain Lion review

in what is quite possibly the earliest time i've adopted anything new technology-wise, last night i took a chance and upgraded my MacBook to the newest version of Mac OS X - Mountain Lion. Apple certainly does like naming things after cats....somewhat like Atari did back in the day.

OS X Mountain Lion is full of new features, such as Airplay Mirroring which allows those with a compatible Mac and Apple TV to stream content from their computer to their Apple TV. another useful new feature is Twitter integration to allow sharing of content from supported apps. Facebook integration will be arriving at a later date as a beta. speaking of Twitter, Mountain Lion borrows the Notification Center from iOS 5 and it seems to be working pretty well. notifications for new emails, Twitter activity (including the ability to Tweet right from the notification center), future Facebook activity, Messages (another thing borrowed from iOS), and so forth show up there (the gray panel on the right side of my desktop).

when my Macbook booted into Mountain Lion after the install, i noticed the overall appearance didn't change much from OS X Lion. one very noticeable difference is the new dock. another is the fact that you can't have your menu bar display the time left on your battery charge; either the percent remaining or just the icon. personally, i think the new dock is a much better look than Lion's was. Mountain Lion is a nice update as far as looks go.

Apple had said when they first announced Mountain Lion they were wanting to use it to tie iOS devices and your Mac computer even closer than before, and they certainly have. the new Reminders and Notes apps sync with your iOS device through iCloud, just like Messages does. Messages replaced iChat in OS X but you can still use all the other accounts that you could in the past. in fact, those who have used an iOS device should have seen the download progress bars that show up when a file is being downloaded. OS X Mountain Lion uses these as well, as pictured here:

this is the download bar that shows up under my Downloads folder on my dock. also, if you transfer a file to your desktop, for example, you get a download bar there as well as an "X" icon in the top left corner just like iOS has. clicking the X will cancel the transfer if you change your mind.

don't get me wrong, the Twitter integration and all the tie-ins to iOS are really nice to have, but my favorite part of Mountain Lion is the fact that Safari has gotten a major overhaul. you can search from the address bar just like you would if you were using Google Chrome. additionally, Safari 6.0 seems to have lost its hunger for your system's resources because i've noticed a far faster browsing experience in this version than in past versions. if Safari keeps this up, i might have to switch back from Chrome. the search engine can be customized, if for whatever reason you don't like using Google.

Apple has started taking a bigger interest in system security with Mountain Lion, adding a new feature called Gatekeeper. Gatekeeper can be customized to allow app installations from only the Mac App Store, the App Store and "established developers", or from anywhere at all. if you have common sense with the apps you download and install you shouldn't have to worry so much about turning Gatekeeper off.

and, for what it's worth, i've noticed that my MacBook runs A LOT faster and smoother than it did when i had Lion on it. that's just my system though, it may not be quite so fast for everyone's.

there are supposedly over 200 new features in OS X Mountain Lion, and there's no way i've seen them all so that's why this review might be considered lacking a bit. if you're a heavy user of an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch that can use the iCloud syncing features, or someone who wants to stream a movie or something from their Mac to their Apple TV, Mountain Lion is really aimed toward you. however, as someone who doesn't use those features, it's not a bad upgrade for a pretty reasonable price  -- $19.99 on the Mac App Store. the installer is roughly 4GB in size so you'll need a good internet connection to download it. downloading it is your only way to get it - Apple won't be selling it on a USB drive like they did Lion.

my honest opinion on OS X 10.8? i say go for it. the few features i've messed with so far have been pretty useful, and i really enjoy the new and improved Safari. even my iTunes is faster now.

***RATING***- 5/5