What's the Deal with Adele?

This is a bit slow and behind the times, but that's how I work. After tons of comments and hearsay about this supposed musical goddess, I caved and gave her a listen. An honest to god chance. So I listened to "Someone Like You" (this version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qemWRToNYJY)
And here were my thoughts.
First off, she gets some rather unwarranted bonus points from me because the guy who introduced her is a fantastic actor by the name of James Corden. But that has nothing to do with Adele herself, so I had to get over my fanaticism and listen.
The first part of the song, the introduction so to speak, is a standard I III VI IV chord progression in A Major, given in a simple arpeggio at about 120 BPM. This put me off a bit, because this is a formulaic pop song opening, and nothing groundbreaking. Nothing beautiful about it either. The music for the song comes off as very superficial, cheesy, and obnoxious. Just like The Scientist, by Coldplay. An annoying overblown pop song.
But I had heard about her singing. Maybe her musical composition was over blown, but perhaps her singing was truly something to appreciate.
I was wrong. Starting off, her voice sounded simply average. Your basic slightly southern sounding drawl accompanied with that sort of huskiness that so many women add to their voices so as not to sound empty. Accompanied with the expected voice cracks, creaks, and squeals, something that supposedly makes a woman's voice sound sultry (think late night radio adverts), but makes her sound rather sloppy to me.
Then the breaking point. She started to screech like some sort of exotic bird. In humans, however, I would never call it exotic in humans. It's just bad singing to me.
My girlfriend claimed to me that it was the lyrical content of the songs that made her music so great.
Except, not at all. Simple rhyme schemes, bland subject matter, etc. All the songs seem to be about some one guy that broke up with her, and she doesn't take any perspective other than the heartbroken ex-girlfriend.
The verdict: Adele is just any other pop star that used the pop music formula to gain popularity. Her somewhat out of the ordinary nature, i.e. not 100% typical, nature led her to be successful in that musical venture, which is what happens to the other successful pop artists.

I would personally like some actual substance to music that got popular, dealing with philosophy or psychology or perhaps history or even mathematics or science. But no, we get songs about sex, and heartbreak. Isn't that wonderful?

Card Wars

I, like many other denizens of the Internet, have oft found myself playing games, watching videos, and skimming my Facebook feed with no real sense of purpose, usually each activity is short lived and pointless.
But every now and then we all find the diamond in the rough.
Today, I have made one of these discoveries.
It's a little game called Card Wars, published by GangOfGamers and GeneralVimes, and it's even more addicting than Pandemic 2.
The game is a lot like Risk, except with playing cards and power-ups instead of dice and figurines.
The last game I played lasted over 50 turns, not one of which was uneventful.
The game has wonderful AI, and the game rules are so simple to learn it's almost ridiculous (but not quite ridiculous).  Further, the game actually has a way of letting you know how well you are doing.
The BGM of the game will change based on the type of situation you are in.  If you have a big advantage, the game will play a relaxed reggae beach tune.  If the game is relatively balanced, then the game will play a sort of medieval/renaissance sounding piece.  If you're really in a dire situation you get a sort of battle song playing.
It's really quite helpful, as well as entertaining.


This game is easily worth the time to play, guaranteed to grant good times if you are a fan of strategy games of any kind.