2022 on Jackson Taylor

2022 Summer Music Recap

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 00:00:01 -0500

My job picks up during the summer and beginning fall months, so that’s why I haven’t been as active with posting on this site. I’ve got some plans for the site, mainly converting it to Hugo. Which I’ve gotten decently far with, I just have some decisions to make because it won’t be a 1:1 copy over from what I can tell. I was hoping it would be ezpz and if I weren’t to announce it, no one would be able to tell the difference.

Anyway, since I’ve been busy with work I’ve been listening to a lot of music. And this year has been AMAZING for it. I said I was going to do another post about my summer recap if it came out. From what I’m reading, it did come out, but I missed it :(. Oh well, I’ll catch the next one. I’ll just go over what I’ve been listening to and liking. These won’t be in depth reviews like the American Heartbreak one, but I’m going to list out the albums that I was excited for and what I thought about them. If anyone wants an in depth review on any of these, email me.

The End, So Far - Slipknot

I love Slipknot, and most of whatever Corey Taylor does. I haven’t finished listening to this one yet. Adderall kinda shocked me, it had a groovy kinda feel to it that wasn’t bad, but I didn’t think Slipknot would try (Corey Taylor, maybe, but not Slipknot). I thought their last album was ok, I didn’t like it as much as their previous ones. But I’m always happy to see them do stuff.

Hell Paso - Koe Wetzel

I think someone needs to check on Koe. This record was so incredibly sad. It’s got so many great songs, but they make me question Koe’s mental health. I give it an 8/10. Favorite song is probably “So Low”.

Summertime Blues - Zach Bryan

Zach Bryan can pump out some songs man. A whole new album less than 6 months after American Heartbreak is insane. This one has some really good ones on it that he includes in his concert rotation (I saw him in September). I really like “Motorcycle Drive By”, “Oklahoma Smokeshow” and “Jamie (feat. Charles Wesley Godwin)”. I give this an 8/10 mainly because it STILL doesn’t have “Sunday Afternoon” on it.

Here are some albums that I hadn’t heard before, but aren’t really new.

No Vacancy - Treaty Oak Revival

I hadn’t heard of these guys before until I heard their song “Missed Call” the other day. These guys are super underrated, and they’re going to blow up, there’s no way they don’t. This album is so good, it’s crazy this is their first one. They have a sort of familiar sound, but not at the same time. I highly recommend giving this one a listen.

How the Mighty Fall - Charles Wesley Godwin

I’ve known about CWG through Zach Bryan for a while, and I really liked the song “Seneca Creek”. I wasn’t really a fan of his singing style, it was kinda shaky or warbly or whatever, and wasn’t my cup of tea. I went to a concert with CWG opening for Zach Bryan, so I figured I’d listen to his new album so I wouldn’t be totally lost. This has some really good songs like “Temporary Town” and “Jesse” that I love and was very excited to hear at the concert. This is a smaller artist that I think deserves more recognition. Super fun concert.

I’ve also been listening to more of Keith Whitley, Conway Twitty, and will probably add some Loretta Lynn to my playlist in the next few days (RIP).

2022 Spring Music Recap

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0530

YouTube has started doing seasonal music stats so you get a lot more throughout the year.

Spring seems totally off for me. My most listened to artist SHOULD be Zach Bryan. Because I listened to his new album for at least an hour or 2 a day for about a week. I have 2 theories on why it seems off: They stopped pulling information before Zach’s album came out, and they don’t count downloaded songs in the listens. It could be both, but I think the second explanation is definitely the most plausible and would make the most sense. I didn’t listen to it via radios/the non downloaded versions much/at all.

Anyway, here are some of my stats:

Top Artist: Hank Williams, Jr.

I use to not like Hank Jr. I had only heard “Country Boys Can Survive”, and wasn’t the biggest fan of it, so I just kinda wrote him off totally. But he is actually a really really good musician, and I really like a lot of his other songs. So I got on a Bocephus kick for about a month.

After watching interviews and stuff, I don’t think we’d get along hanging out much (apart from the age difference). He’s really vocal about politics where I’m not, and he used to be a pretty big party guy which I’m not. But I’ll listen to his music all day.

Top Spring Songs:

Stars In The Sky - Kid Cudi
Weatherman - Hank Williams, Jr.
You Should’ve Seen The Other Guy - Nathaniel Rateliff
Do it, Try it - M83
O.D.’d in Denver - Hank Williams, Jr.

Stars In The Sky is a decent song, I’m really surprised it was #1 on my list, I haven’t even seen the sonic movies. I think O.D.’d in Denver should have been higher in the list, because I listened to that song on repeat for like a week.

Do it, Try it was up there because I went to a Letter Kenny live show in Durham and they played it a few times. I guess I listened to the version that wasn’t downloaded more than other songs. It’s good, it gets stuck in my head really easily. Most of the songs on this list do actually.

I love In Memory of Loss by Nathaniel Rateliff, it’s such a good album. I’ll get on a kick every couple weeks and listen to most of the album.

Top Spring Artists

Hank Williams, Jr.
Deer Tick
John Moreland
Dawes
Lucero

There isn’t really anything surprising here, except for the exclusion of Zach Bryan, but that might be for the reasons I mentioned earlier. I’d love to see all of them in concert if I can at some point. Deer Tick is by far my favorite artist on this list, I love everything they put out. I hope they put out another album soon.

Lucero is the one I’m least familiar with, but their self titled album has a ton of great songs. Their singer has a super gritty voice.

Top Spring Genres

Country Music - 47%
Independent Music - 27%
Hip Hop - 8%

I like to thing I listen to a wide arrangement of music, but apparently the numbers say otherwise. But, nothing surprising here to be honest.

There are some neat stats here, I feel like the way I use YouTube Music might be skewing my results a little bit. I might have to do some experimenting in the next few seasons to see if I can narrow down how they generate their stats. If the summer one doesn’t include Zach Bryan, I’ll know they don’t count downloaded plays. If it does include him, I’ll know they stopped gathering data before spring actually ended.

We get to keep struggling!

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 00:00:00 -0400

The team behind Berserk just announced that they are going to continue the serialization, we get to keep struggling along with Guts!

According to the “berserk_project” twitter page, a close friend of Miura had been told the ending of Berserk and a lot of the major plot points that were to occur to get us there.

Link to twitter post

This is really cool timing for me, considering I just got caught up a literal week ago.

Kouji Mori had been friends with Kentaro Miura since they were in high school. They both worked on various manga and anime projects over the years, and would frequently consult each other on their works and get feedback. Miura told Moji that he was the only one to know the ending of Berserk. I think this shows how good of friends they actually were. Based on the statement given from both Moji and Young Animal Studios, I think this is going to be the best shot at doing what Miura would have intended. I know it’s going to be a project filled with love and respect for Miura, and they are going to try to stay as true to the material that Miura had left, and told Moji. Miura’s apprentices are going to be working on it as well.

Though it might not be exactly what Miura had planned, I don’t think anyone else would be qualified to work on this and continue it than the ones that have stepped forward for this monumental task. I am very excited to see more.

Even though I have caught up, and was beginning to write my review, I am going to hold off on until it’s finished. I’m sure I’ll still really like it, and I definitely already respect what they’re doing. But I will probably break it down between Miura and Moji portions just to compare the 2 to see if they are able to keep that same feeling.

Happy Tuesday!

Zach Bryan American Heartbreak Review

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 26 May 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Last Friday (May 20th, 2022) Zach Bryan released his album “American Heartbreak” to the world. I’ve had it as a todo on my reviews page for a while now.

The review is done, you can find it here:

Review

The record is a little long, but I would suggest listening to it for yourself as well (preferably before you read any review).

I'm Reading Berserk

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 10 May 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Despite my better judgement, I decided to start reading the manga “Berserk” by Kentaro Miura, and I am loving it.

I don’t read very many mangas (Is the plural of manga, mangas? Or is it like moose, and it’s still just manga?). When I do read, which isn’t that often, I am usually reading non-fiction philosophy, or some programming/tech book or something. The only manga I’ve actually ended up reading was like the first volume of Dragon Ball Z, and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure - Stone Ocean. I enjoyed both of them. I had already seen a little past the Raditz arc in the DBZ anime at the time so I knew what happened. Stone Ocean is really the only one I’ve read and it’s been all new.

It’s not that I’m against reading manga really, I’m just bad at committing to reading or watching long running pieces of media. Dragon Ball is the longest thing I can think of that I’ve watched, which is 567 episodes and like 15 movies, and that took around a year or 2 to finish completely.

Berserk is (currently) 374 chapters, each around 20 pages with some exceptions at the beginning, so 7480 pages roughly. It’s a chunk of books to read. So why did I decide to start reading it?

Berserk is pretty well known as a really good series, and has been running for over 30 years. It has inspired a ton of other projects, such as the Dark Souls series. I felt like I was missing out on some references. I’ve heard the Dark Souls games are pretty fun too, so I may end up playing them at some point.

Ok, if it’s so good, why were you against reading it?

Unfortunately, last year Kenato Miura suddenly passed away due to an aortic dissection at the age of 54. This is very unfortunate for his family and friends, from what I can tell he was a very good person and loved by many.

That being said, Berserk is currently unfinished. The editors would like to be able to continue the series, from what I’ve read, but I’m not sure if Miura had any concrete plans on where it was going. I’m only about halfway through, so I have no idea where they left off. I hope that more content come out for Berserk in some fashion.

I’m probably going to be really sad once it’s over, if they don’t make anymore. For now though, I’m really enjoying it, and am planning on writing a review once it I’m finished.

Something that I do frequently with manga and anime/TV, is I try to finish them too quickly. I’ve sorta gotten to that point with Berserk, and am probably going to have to go back about 5-10 just to make sure I’m understanding everything that’s going on. I’m on chapter 176 I think (depending on where you read it, the numbers can change it seems). I may start writing notes about individual chapters just to keep everything in my mind.

This also opens the door to me potentially trying to read One Piece. My friend has tried and tried to get me to read it for years now, but I’ve always been against it due to the length. I might finally give it a shot, not sure yet.

Stone Ocean delayed

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0400

I’ve talked a lot about Cowboy Bebop on my site, but I have watched some other animes. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is probably my second favorite.

Netflix worked with David Studios on part 6, Stone Ocean, and they were going to release it in sets of episodes over a course of unknown time. The first set was 12 episodes long, and probably like many other people I had it finished in less than a week. This past week, Netflix announched that the next set of episodes will be releasing in the fall of this year…

This is pretty dissapointing. I’ve already read the manga for part 6, so I know what happens, it’s just unfortunate for those who haven’t/don’t want to. This is almost an entire year for 12 episodes.

From what I’ve seen so far, it looks pretty up to par with the rest of the animated parts though, so I hope they are able to keep the same quality throughout. Towards the end, this part was hard to follow (at least for me), so I hope the anime is able to help with that and make it more clear.

People on twitter have started making petitions for Netflix to release episodes weekly, which would be cool I think. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t, unless it could effect their watch times or something.

Funny Reddit Comment

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 00:00:00 -0400

I tried really hard to not look at too many people’s opinions on the live action Cowboy Bebop remake, that way my opinion was more my own and I wouldn’t be parroting the same things thousands of others have said.

But I started browsing r/CowboyBebop today just seeing what was top rated, and found this really funny comment regarding Gren that I wanted to share.

‘Gynecomastia doesn’t really jive with the Twitter crowd, and Netflix really wanted to tick that box’. - Eternal_Indifference

This was in response to a joke about a headline from an article where Mason Alexander was talking about how the live action was “fixing the problems in the anime”.

It made me laugh pretty hard. This is a good joking way to explain my thoughts on the Gren situation (sorta). If you want to read my full opinion, it is linked on the home page of my website.

Reviews Section

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Sun, 30 Jan 2022 00:00:00 -0400

I’ve decided to add a “reviews” section to my website, for general overviews over things I like and want to talk about.

The first thing I’ve decided to review is the live action Cowboy Bebop series. So go feel free to read it.

I’m not going to link it in this post because I’m thinking of moving some stuff around, and I don’t want to have too many broken links in my RSS feed. It’s just on the home page.

2022 Resolutions and plans

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Like 2020, 2021 was “…a year”. I think 2021 was slightly worse than 2020 for me personally, but good things did happen, so it’s not all bad. For instance, I had a nephew born at the very end of 2020 and one born in July, so new babies were big wins for the family. They are awesome.

Several friends moved away, unfortunately. But they are moving on to better things and are all going to do really well, I’m very proud of them. They say they’ll come back and visit, I can visit as well, and I still talk to them very frequently.

I didn’t become as involved in this site as I think I wanted. But, I did learn more about systems administration when it comes to hosting services (libreddit, nitter, xmpp, email, etc.), and messed around with OpenBSD and GPG. I haven’t kept up with the blog that well because I don’t have that much to say, and we’ve been really busy with this very large project at work.

Personal goals turned out alright. I’ve grown a little bit as a person, so I think I’m able to look at things in a more healthy way, and can let things go more often. I still struggle with certain things, but I’m able to better identify what about them gives me trouble. I’ve been reading more philosophy books, such as Marcus Aurelius’s meditations, and trying to apply different ways of thinking to my life.

As far as fitness goals, I’m about 5 pounds heavier compared to the start of 2021 (I weigh 205 now), which puts me 35lbs away from where I want to be. I hurt my back on a vacation to Virginia Beach, so I haven’t been going to the gym as often or working as hard while I’m there. Then Christmas also messed my diet and sleep schedule up, which doesn’t help.

That’s my recap for 2021, now on to 2022: I’m going to try being a little bit more lenient on how/when I achieve my goals, and take smaller baby steps.

I want to go to the gym more often and do more cardio, ideally 2x a week.
I want to start eating less and control my portion sizes more. A box of zingers at 1am is not a snack, that’s close to 2 meals from McDonald’s.
I really want to go to SOME concert, every event I’ve tried to go to in 2021 was cancelled. This isn’t something in my control, but I’m holding hope for Zach Bryan or Koe Wetzel.
Finish all the books I have started but not finished.
Begin learning AWS.

I want to keep the list small and manageable, so I’ll leave it at this. Happy New Years everyone, thank you for reading.