I was watching Sarah Lacy interview Mark Zuckerberg on AppleTv and for some reason this video game up as a “related” video.

I have no idea why or how this video’s related but I’m glad it showed up. I used to watch this video all the time a year or so ago and I’d like to thank YouTube for reminding me of it. I was even learning how to play this song but due to being busy as hell I abandoned that lil project but I figure this is as good of a time as any to resume.

If anyone else is interested here’s the tabs.

The insane drum fills towards the end are, well, insane. That Mike Portnoy really is one hell of a drummer.

Here’s what I love about this song.

• 2:45 eerie stuff
• 3:23-3:31 cool bass thing
• 3:31 rockin’ stuff w/ strange time
• 4:12 strange keyboard solo
• 4:29 cool keyboard tone kicks in. sounds like a piano but not quite
• 5:26 chills out a bit. kinda calm almost
• 6:01 rocks again
• 6:08 klutch pinch harmonic
• 6:16 drum beat changes & Mike stands which is pretty sweet
• 6:34 first of my fav drum fills
• 6:41 french horns
• 6:42 snare madness on drum
• 7:53 eerie keyboard stuff is back
• 8:42-8:58 absolutely amazing drumming
• 9:15-end take us home boys

Now image you’re in the NY orchestra and they tell you you’re gonna be backing a metal/prog. rock band. You’ll probably think there’s gonna be some wanking and non-musicianship going on. It’s totally beneath an orchestra guy to play metal. But then, they hear songs like this… or the 24 minute long Octavarium.

Dream Theater’s no joke dude. These guys are musicians. I really wish I was there and could see the orchestra guys’ faces when they first heard the music that they’re gonna have to back. I bet they were pleasantly surprised/interested.

I’m killing some time before I head out to see Nothington at the Bottom of the Hill so I decided I’d blow a few minutes on YouTube. As I started clicking through some videos I notices their new, bigass ads.

What the fuck is this shit? I dunno why, but I feel all violated. I always felt that one of the highest value parts of the page (obviously, after the video itself) is the box where you can read the description, see who posted it and get your hands on the HTML you need to embed this thing somewhere else.

This placement is stupid for a few reasons:

• Like I said, they demote the contributor. Especially if this is original, user generated content… aka UGC (i hate that acronym BTW). If I was posting some original content I’d be a bit upset.
• It pushes down the EMBED code. This is their viral stronghold; why would you fuck with that? Ya, some people “know” the site now and will assume that real estate has moved but there’s a ton of newbies (my dad for example) and not-so-smart people out there that will trip over it.
• The “More from” and “Related Videos” sections got pushed down too… again, more valuable stuff got “demoted” and possibly pushed below the fold.
• plus its this big fucking eyesore

I guess you gotta start making $ off your $1.5 billion investment but c’mon. This is stupid.

Here’s my suggestions… move that fucking thing. I dunno where but somewhere, anywhere. Maybe text-link ads under the video instead of some video ad that I don’t wanna see slapped right next to the video I’m trying to watch.

While you’re at it…. You know those “Related Videos”… sometimes they’re not so related. That’s fine… but what would rock is if they’d put an AJAX driven search field right above those suggestions. See you’d get this:

While I’m watching my video I could do some searches and essentially create a 4 or 5 item playlist, on the fly, before the initial video’s even done playing. Now, that’s value. I’d love that. That could increase time on site quite a bit… then maybe, with more time on site per user, you’ll have a different story to monetize and can ditch those eyesores.

Thanks!!!
xoxo
Arin