• The Beatles - Past Masters Volume I
• The Beatles - Past Masters Volume II
• Beatles For Sale
• The Police - Every Breath You Take - The Classics
• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Greatest Hits

via Rasputin

Irwin Handi-Clamps

These pincer-shaped clamps are designed to open and close easily. They ratchet shut, and only open when you pull the release lever. I got them for holding wood down on the sawhorses when I’m using the saw, but unfortunately they don’t grip tight enough for that — they can only grip as tight as you can squeeze. They’re still useful for holding guides down on the board though.

Score: .5. Useful, but not for heavy-duty tasks

Irwin One-Handed Mini Bar Clamp

Like the Handi-Clamp, these are designed to open and close easily. However, unlike the Handi-Clamp, these things are much more substantial. This model has a pump-action grip, so even when the jaws are already clamped to the object, you can still tighten it more by squeezing the trigger. These will hold a board to a sawhorse. These have a release trigger as well. They have a ratchet-like action (though it dosn’t appear to be an actual mechanical ratchet) so you can push them closed onto an object with your hands (and then pump the trigger to make it tight), but you can’t pull them apart without pulling the release.

Score: 1. Very handy and works well.

As always, everything is rated on the Binary Scale.

• Roger Waters - The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking
  Very similar in style to late-pre-breakup Pink Floyd, such as The Wall or The Final Cut. Actually, it’s what late-pre-breakup Pink Floyd would sound like if you replaced David Gilmour with Eric Clapton (who plays guitar on this album)

  Rating: 1
  Choice tracks: “Sexual Revolution”

• Marilyn Manson - Mechanical Animals
  Often billed as “industrial”, Manson just sounds like metal to me. Not constant, cover-to-cover goodness, but enough good songs to make it a worthwhile purchase

  Rating: 1
  Choice tracks: “Great Big White World”, “The Dope Show”, “Mechanical Animals”, “I Don’t Like The Drugs”, “The Last Day On Earth”

• The Who - Who’s Next
  It’s The Who. How far wrong can you go?

  Rating: 1
  Choice Tracks: “Baba O’Riley”, “Bargain”, “Behind Blue Eyes”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

• System of a Down - Toxicity
  More metal. I like it, but not as much as the other two SoaD albums (Mesmerize, Hypnotize) that I have.

  Rating: 1
  Choice Tracks: “Prison Song”, “Chop Suey!”

• No Doubt - Return of Saturn
  I’ve decided that I don’t really like No Doubt very much. There’s only a few songs, across several albums, that I even remotely like. There’s only one on this album, “Ex-girlfriend”, but I do really like it.

  Rating: 0
  Choice Tracks: “Ex-girlfriend”

• Cyndi Lauper - True Colors
  I’ve had this on tape since I was a kid, but I’ve long since lost the tape and have been looking for it on CD ever since. It finally showed up at Rasputin’s this week. I liked it then, and I still like it now.

  Rating: 1
  Choice Tracks: “Change of Heart”, “Calm Inside the Storm”, “One Track Mind”

• The Best of Santana
  The Latin-rock classics you’re all familiar with, plus some more 80s-rock style tracks.

  Rating: 1
  Choice Tracks: “Evil Ways”, “Black Magic Woman”, “Oye Como Va”

• Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits
  More classics, with their distinctive (yet not quite definable) style

  Rating: 1
  Choice Tracks: “Go Your Own Way”, “Little Lies”

• More Abba Gold
  I’ve discovered that I don’t really like Abba either. Between the first “Gold” compilation and this one, there’s only a handful of songs I like.

  Rating: 0
  Choice Tracks: “Eagle”, “Angeleyes”

• The Who Sell Out
  I recant what I said above. There’s only a couple tracks on this one that I really like. Rael, one of the bonus tracks on the remastered CD, features a passage that would eventually evolve into one of the recurring themes in “Tommy.”

  Rating: 0 (Much as it pains me)
  Choice Tracks: “I Can See for Miles”, “Rael 1”

• Kitaro - The Light of the Spirit
  Moody new-age music, a combination of synth, orchestra, and even a tinge of rock.

  Rating: 1
  Choice Tracks: “Sundance”, “Howling Thunder”

Since I’m too simpleminded to describe anything to better precision, I rate pretty much everything using the Binary Scale. Basically, it’s a scale from zero to one, integral.

To my amusement, it confuses people that aren’t familiar with it when I say of something, “I give it a one.” It usually confuses them even further when I explain that it’s one “out of one.”

Sometimes though, even for me, the binary scale proves inadequate. In those cases I use the “Extended” Binary Scale.

If something is not good enough for me to honestly give it a one, yet not bad enough to condemn it with a zero, I just give it a .5 and forget about it.

Likewise, if something is so extraordinarily good that a 1 doesn’t give it justice, I’ll give it 2. And if it’s so utterly without merit that it’s an insult even to 0, I’ll give it a -1.