Fecal matter

Tere.

It is that time of year again when vegetables, fruits, grain and all other stuff gets to ripe state in the god forsaken land called Estonia. Since all the other time of year we almost get nothing out of soil and when it is the time there is going to be plenty! As is the case with the tomatoes for example. This time around I actually did not manage to use the vegetables and herbs that I would have liked to, but surprisingly this was the best tomato soup I have done thus far - little is more!

As is the case with the food I would like to always keep the amounts and ingredients pseudorandomed by the universe, you don’t get the exact recipe with the numbers and shit, but you would get the journey.

Here are the main ingredients - fresh tomatoes straight outta greenhouse, smoked snack ribs and some Estonian traditional melted cheese (I do not know if this translation is correct, so I leave you with russian one - “плавленый сыр с креветками”). And to spice shit up, some pepper also coming off chillin’ straight outta under the sun.

To combine the full range of tastes that are laying around the field then quick frying process for red onion, carrot, garlic and rutabaga. Also add some black pepper and salt here. I suggest you to use pure butter and/or coconut oil as I did use both. I usually use white onion here as it gets more crisp and sweet when fried.

At the same time let the pot start working on medium heat to slowly extract the tomatoes into pieces. Add important spices like laurel-leaf, 1 piece of bouillon powder, black pepper, salt etc... I combined the ribs into pot already to get the smokey taste into vegetables. Oh! And of course add the chilli pepper ;)

After frying other veggies add them to the mix too. Let everything go through almost boiling like process (remember to use little to medium heat, so it does not start to boil heavily). Add some water if needed, depending on the tomatoes.

After 20 minutes it should already look something like this, do not forget to use spoon to mix it up from time to time...

So after maximum of 30 minutes (I used 20-25) extract the ribs, laurel-leaves and liquid using sieve.

Use the blender or puree mixer to smash the veggies.

Join the liquid and puree back together and now fine tune the taste. I add the herbs latest. I use mediterranean herb mix and basil (usually I have fresh one off the field too). Time to add cheese (in my case плавленый сыр с креветками) and in my case always a spoon of fresh to death Estonian honey straight out of the beehive that is still sizzling and buzzing.

Leave the history and old feelings behind and get yourself backed up by the new behind. Madness, I know, but quit the sadness. Songs that mattered 2015.

No hard feelings = not much description this time.

NOEP - Move

For the scenarios when the courage is void.

Ta-ku - Love Again

Who says, something is better than nothing?

There was actually a strong competitor to this one from the same LP.

The Weeknd - Can’t Feel My Face

I know I am going mainstream (truth to be told I did not like the song at first), but the video. Not only the video, I truly think Beauty Behind the Madness is easily top 3 LP this year. Reconsider... number 1.

And the list of sorries - “I did not mean to do you wrong” - goes to...

It is not only the music, but for other topics as well, where second release is not THAT innovative, interesting or successful. From football to movies. Call it a life's jinx or inherent error of the process, but extra joy is when things do not go that way.

A$AP Rocky - At. Long. Last. A$AP

This is that Didier Drogba looking rapper. The fact why I was not believing that Rocky could strike again was simply his style that he exhibited on his debut. Although not super trap/swag/bling style I thought that he cannot bring out anything new anymore. After you have exposed something new, it is extremely hard to innovate - basically you need to switch up the flow and the style. But he managed to do it perfectly. Not so much hard-hitting beats on this one (remember Goldie or F*ckin problems?). He succeeded switching up the style, getting new producers on board (ASAP in house crew, Delgado, Danger mouse ...) and introducing new talent Joe Fox to the world, who indeed was the detrimental piece on this album on many songs.

Okay this M$ is a go to track when you need energy.

But this L.$.D joint is a go to track to lay back and chill.

Probably the best track off the album

Big Sean - Dark Sky Paradise

Okay, now I jinxed myself. This album is third by him. BUT he has had sophomore slump with Hall Of Fame, because he basically got killed by K.Dot on his own joint (this was excluded from that album, but still). The fact why I consider this a great surprise is that I have always considered him to be one of those plain swagish rappers who basically do not have anything meaningful to offer. This has changed, my eyes and ears opened from now on. It is his first no. 1 album. Packed with great features from Drake to Kanye West coupled with great producers from Mike WiILL Made It to Boi 1-da. Featuring amplifying tracks and soulful joints.

Easily top 5 songs of this year

Amp yourself up

I was really happy to listen to couple of vets bringing the heat back. Usually the case is they still keep releasing LP material, but the hype, the dopeness is not there anymore. Well, it is still highly subjective what is “dope”. For hardcore fans they might be poppin their idol until death do us apart. But I am searching for something that made those cats cool at first place (that is why I do not like Snoop so much anymore).

E-40 - Choices

Yup! No album, but it is still coming - another installment to Sharp on all 4 corners. This song alone brought me back the reminiscences of hyphy music (remember Blow the whistle or U and Dat or Vans?). Besides the awesome flow this song also carries the message and in the video almost everybody on the rap scene is depicted from K-Dot to Bun B to Macklemore.

The Game - The Documentary 2(.5)

Game has been always known to etch out the illest beat. Besides the name dropping that still remains his key property for rhymes he managed to bring up the major Feats back to his project. This project included two versions talling 19+18 songs in total. Critics gave rating of 75/100 which is pretty decent when you consider the amount of songs that were released. So this album is perfect for hardcore fans and new cats getting to know the (Compton) rap. Here are the gems I liked the most.

The old school Compton trap sound - Step up feat. Dej Loaf and Sha Sha

This one is from the 2.5 - better than the coffee

Dr. Dre - Compton

Quietly Andre finally released his last solo projects that has been shelved and waited for sooooo long. Probably it did not come out as it would have been in the first place as a Detox project. But nevertheless we gotta propz the top 3 legend of all time for coupling up this with the release of the N.W.A biopic. Since man be sitting up in the directors board of Apple, you ain’t gonna get the music out of youtube (Gangsta rap made me do it - from c.o.m.p.t.o.n to c.u.p.e.r.t.i.n.o). Pay for your music people :)

Some of my favs with Apple Music links:

For the love of money

Genocide

Jill Scott - Woman

Although Jill does not fall exactly into the category “rejuvenated”, since she is always fresh, powerful and meaningful. But still she has not released any albums for 4 years and the LP was packed with soulful music. Couple of I wanna share with you here.

This year has been turbulent, personally and for all the world. Conflicts loom over Middle east and in the Europe (again). Bad moon rising, since global warming is still the answer why we do not have snow in Estonia. But you gotta keep it positive - do not let the bad things poise you. I have managed to put up with the team at ELIKO first smart street in Estonia. I have met more great acquaintances and friends (Tere Brett, Tere Helena, Tere Marilin ...), as well did manage to meet with long gone brothers over a long time (Tere Rainer, Tere Kristjan U, Tere Mait, Tere Kristjan K, Tere Ryan ja Christy, ...). Personally I have developed myself further at recording spendings, analyzing and making statistics out of them. The greatest development personally is actually the fact that I picked up the bike commuting again. Once you go fixed you never go back (new bike in line for a new year, as well new gear). So inherently my performance sport-wise has risen steadily. Also I picked up some new skills and interests (#savvusann, #playing4chordsonaguitar, #TEDtranslation). And I had trips to the Alps, Paris, Hannover, Munich, Stockholm. Also I am very proud of all my friends. There are too many to name here, but I am extremely proud of the development of Matsimoka (Tere Sten ja Maiken), Elsa and Mr. Jakob (Tere Jorma, tervitused ka su tiimile), my brother from another mother pursuing PhD studies at Newcastle (Tere Aare!), my cousin’s first son (Tere Erti!), also the daughter of my brother from another mother (Tere Keio!) - they are keeping Estonia going. But new year has already begun for me, since I am facing a job position alternation (yet again). Like I said I have a new (faster, cooler, more durable) bike in the order line. We have great basketball team (Aitähh Taimar!), which is going to crash the playoffs (2-2 thus far). Also I have plans for the alps trip again. And I am going to have some occasional #buildmode for the savvusann. Until then, I am going to publish (annual) personal music top 3s(#currymode) again. These are published in the following days... But now I am going to present you a song, which inspired the title of this post. This was discovered through the pseudorandom ways of the universe, from the greatest dance song of the year to the greatest message of the year for the current crisis. I do really like the version of the cover by Sade.

Music has been sucked out of ideas, more and more each year that goes by. But somehow someway, the topic most covered, the love songs, still manage to creep up like a new ish. Probably this is connected to the humans need to feel deep feelings over and over again (hello polygamy). Adding the latest revolution between the non-gender bounded love, we hear new influences in those songs...

3 - two letters down to alphabet Nico & Vinz - Am I Wrong

This song has such an immerse honesty, pureness and the vibes of Africa (google the artist and their origins). Great message and great instrumentals, such have not been released for a while. Somehow Scandinavians have a very good DNA for the music (1989 producers for example). On a side note, it is connected to good memories of 2014 for me.

2 - This should be rated R Beyonce & Jay-Z - Drunk In Love

If all these situations and emotions would be pictured explicitly then this video should be banned, I think even..., for up to 25 years old. Mature love and relationship experience that Beyonce without a doubt possess, is put into this one song. Although there was some drama this year (Hi Solange), seems like everything is still good between these two megastars and moneymakers. The track itself is one of the singles off of the B's self titled surprise album released just before the christmas last year. The album introduces new sounds via the producer/singer Boots, who was brought to the came by B's spouse. One should note that this guy needs to be kept in mind by every music fan, since the album was not the only masterpiece he managed to craft this year.

1 - Purple is the new hetero Sam Smith - I'm Not The Only One

When I first heard him I thought that he is some older guy (over 30), the most slept on talent, that was brought up by the Disclosure. Turns out this is not so. Unorthodox in many ways, he probably is simply the best singer out of the UK after Adele. Although the guy is not straight, we can still relate (no rhyme intended). What I like the most is the classical approach of the instrumental and the overall smooth-soft fusion that hits so hard. There is only one guy in the world I would think of who could make a really good addition to this song - Mart Sander.

I was parsing the output of my access point in C++. The raw data coming from COM port is saved into a vector buffer, where one unit is defined as uint8_t. One of the bytes is RSSI and that is signed integer. So I did my usual stuff: int32_t rssi = static_cast<int32_t>(packet[3]);

I had a need to get to know the cause of the reset on MSP430 platform. Everything was quite simple. But the NOINIT pragma did not have the effect since I was using legacy COFF abi (will switch, but since some libraries are prebuilt and linked with COFF I cant switch over to EABI). And I needed to somehow to protect the variable and do it before the main, because the data would get re-seted otherwise. Again I get full satisfaction off of the C's "powerful" pointing techniques.

#pragma NOINIT (SysRstIv); // Actually no effect on this right now. const unsigned int SysRstIv = 0;

int _system_pre_init(void) {     // Stop WDT.     WDTCTL = WDTPW + WDTHOLD;

    // Save reset information.     unsigned int* tmp = (unsigned int*)&SysRstIv;     *tmp = SYSRSTIV;

This year also I start with a rather bizarre category - a songs without words, no acapella, pure instrumental. But keep one thing in mind, you will not get any trance dance shit, I still pick the best out of my genre. So here it goes. 1st one to be on the podium  Shining Janelle aka Shinell released her sophomore album this year which was full of very good songs. One of them which suit into this category was the intro to its latest suite, the fifth one. It has a positive more uptempo tone and is good to listen to almost with every mood.

Wiener in the middle Indicud was not exactly as good as "Man on the moon", but it contained some gems which showcased Cudder's different solution of the formula of making music.