表裡不一

人地封面故事講一個外表呃晒人既疑犯，寓意睇野唔好睇外表咁無知；成班人就為左呢個封面鬧爆人，係咪對號入座呢？

Music app and channels

I have got a new Android device (more on that later.) This gave me a great opportunity to try out new music apps. The first one that I'd like to recommend is the TuneIn Radio App, which you have probably heard of, even before reading this, because of its advertisement. In fact, I went by their office location on U Ave in Palo Alto the other day! It's actually quite similar to XiiaLive, which I have been using to listen to ShoutCast stations (Shoutcast is a technology for serving audio streams and also a directory of internet radio) Like XiiaLive, it also has timer and alarm features, which I use quite often. It seems to offer different stations than ShoutCast though. From TuneIn Radio, I've found a few good channels:
1) Blue Rock from ROCKRADIO.com plays the likes of Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Freddie King... etc. That's my favourite Blues sub-genre

2) Thrash Metal from ROCKRADIO.com plays my favourite Metal sub-genre. Death Angel, Testament, Slayer all played thrash. I've also heard Shadows Fall on it! And I "discovered" the German Thrash band Cripper featuring female vocalist Britta Görtz (another metal goddess after Angela Gossow)

3) Hair Bands from ROCKRADIO.com plays my guilty-pleasure Metal sub-genre. One of the first songs I heard was "Every Rose has its Thorn." Hard to not like it!

4) Radio Web Guitar Warrior seems to be European and played quite a bit of Power Metal. Not really my cup of tea except it usually features good guitar solo!

5) CLASSIC METAL RADIO plays a lot of mainstream/pop metal. I heard Aerosmith's Angel on it. Love that ballad! Also heard "Don't Look Back" from the "new" Queensryche (the one without original singer Geoff Tate but the vocal still sounds like him)

6) Guitar Jazz from JAZZRADIO.com. Jazz guitarists gotta love it!

7) Sax4Love (Smooth Jazz.) Another guilty-pleasure sub-genre :P

8) Jazz Radio Network

BTW, TuneIn listed both JAZZRADIO.com and ROCKRADIO.com with a Palo Alto address! Maybe it's the epicenter of internet radio.

Italian CamJazz

I consider myself a jazz lover that listened to a great variety of jazz, including European jazz musicians who record for the ECM label, like the Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, whom I saw live at a SFJAZZ concert with Charles Lloyd (each with their own group) Well, I just learned that I should pay attention to Italian musicians when it comes to European jazz. The Italian label CamJazz has released quite a few good gems. For example, I am listening to House of Card by Fulvio Sigurta, another trumpeter. Check out this review. I like the playing of the guitarist Federico Casagrande on this disc a lot.

Sports highlight: auto racing

Can't believe I missed Tim Lincecum's no-hitter for the Giants vs the Padres last Saturday. He might never be a dominating pitcher again but this is another highlight (after 2 World Series rings and Cy Young) on his already outstanding resume. With many other sports being in the offseason, the main thing for the Summer weekends to me was auto racing. First, I watched both NASCAR races, with the Sprint Cup one won by Brian Vickers, who had to endure a few unlucky events: his health issue (blood clot) forced him out of NASCAR for a while. Then the team he raced for, Red Bull, decided to withdraw from NASCAR. I understand it's a business decision, with Spring Cup television ratings no good in the 18-to-34 age group (as of 2011) Even though Red Bull's NASCAR team is far less successful than their Formula 1 team with multiple-time champion Sebastian Vettel, it seemed competitive enough and got good exposures alongside other energy drink brands like Monster (sponsoring Kyle Busch in Nationwide) and 5-Hour (sponsoring Clint Bowyer in Spring Cup) Oh well, I don't drink much Red Bull with or without their presence in NASCAR. Anyway, Vickers doing well and finally winning a race was a feel-good story for sure.

Another interesting story has to do with Danica Patrick, again. I wrote about her current boyfriend, Ricky Stenhouse Jr caused a big crash that collected Danica at Talledega 2 months ago and the story was not mentioned a lot in the media. Well, it's the other way around this race: Danica wrecked Stenhouse. And it caught a lot of attentions! Sexism? This time most reports mentioned the Talledega crash and I found out Danica was actually not happy with Stenhouse last time (Well, she tended to be angry with anyone involved after every crash from her IndyCar days) This time she apologized on TV and admitting her fault. Nice! BTW, the third car involved in the crash was #93 Travis Kvapil, who was so mad with Danica after the crash. Guess what team he was with? BK Racing, a team formed with some remaining personnel and equipments from the now-defunct Red Bull team!

There were also 2 IndyCar races, at Toronto. As I mentioned before, I have been rooting for Verizon/Penske driver Will Power for the past few years. He lost his road course qualification magic for the first race and didn't start from the pole. And once again, when his car finally got to the front and started looking promising to win the race, it faded and he finished outside the podium.