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DJ Thread For President!

2008-07-25T22:00:52Z

http://news3online.com/

All Settled in the New House

2008-05-25T19:21:00Z

Hi, Internet! My site only just came back online because I took my sweet time about properly configuring my Gentoo Linux server to support my Mephisto blog. The site was being run by my good friend and roommate, Matt Nagi, but now that I’ve moved into my new house with Julie, I’ve set the site up the site to run on my very own cable modem. So please be gentile. :)

The new house is awesome—having a cozy place to call your own is totally worth the bit of extra work required to repair and maintain it.

And I’m still “Unraveling” on dnbradio.com every Tuesday at 7:00 PM EST.

Miro: Internet TV Made Easy

2008-04-04T23:59:37Z

When Miro 1.2 came out, I decided to give it another try after some previously failed attempts due to annoying bugs. Well, I’ve been using this free and open source, next generation video platform on my Mac for a while now, and I must say it’s quite nice if you fancy yourself watching some of the great, free video content available on the internet.

Miro is RSS + Bittorrent. Find sites with cool videos that interest you, subscribe to their feeds, and when new content is published, you can have it downloaded and waiting for you by the time you realize it’s there. It’s just so smooth the way I can play the first video, and all the new content plays like my personal TV station. Cmd+F throws me into full-screen mode. It didn’t used to work nearly this well, and I’m just all so very pleased with today’s offering. (It will even search and play YouTube videos.)

Ok, so you want to try this. Click the “Miro” link above and grab the player. It comes with some default channels, but I’ve deleted all but the Onion News Network. The Miro Guide appears to be a nice index of most/all of the content available for the platform, but please allow me to recommend a few of my favorites.

Revision3 is The TV Network of Kevin Rose (of TechTV and Digg fame) with great shows like Tekzilla, Systm, and of course Diggnation. I also have come to watch the goofy Internet Superstar... I haven’t even tasted many of the Rev3 shows yet!
Mahalo Daily is a great 5-day/wk short form (3-5 mins) show with Veronica Belmont. (Although she’s about to leave…) They visit someone and show of something… usually very interesting stuff. I like the one about the dude who makes music with Gameboys.
WebbAlert is another daily, short form show with Megan Webb. Just a quick overview of the tech news.
GeekBrief.TV is yet another daily, short form show with the bouncy character that of Cali Lewis. Again, it’s an overview of the tech news. Maybe a product review or interview here and there.
commandN is a longer form (15-20 mins), weekly show with Amber MacArthur, Will Pate, and others. They talk about the news and share cool website picks. Amber’s brother, Jeff, usually has a longer segment where he usually reviews a product.
Hak5 Is a great, long standing show with a great crew. They hack stuff and talk about it on the show.
Cranky Geeks is a talk show with John C. Dvorak.
DL.TV is a tech show with some of the folks from TechTV.

Also, anything from Leo Laporte is fantastic. I’m a very regular listener of Security Now, TWiT, MacBreak Weekly, Net@Nite, and Windows Weekly on his TWiT.TV (audio) podcast network. While there aren’t any regular, internet-available video shows from him yet, he’s been talking recently about a new studio he’s setting up where he’ll start doing some video shows. He’s a great personality… One to watch.

I hope I’ve captured the interest of some new internet TV consumers. Watching this web-based, independent content has really never been this easy.

Celemony to Release Revolutionary Audio Tool

2008-03-20T23:59:55Z

Celemony is set to release Direct Note Access in Autumn of 2008. There is a nice video on the DNA page that explains what it does, but this software is able to identify and isolate different voices within a single audio recording. The user can then change the pitch of and mute individual notes without affecting the overall mix! This is the first piece of software that allows you to reach into a simple, flat audio stream and manipulate its components in this way.

It’ll be really interesting to see how artists use this product to remix familiar tunes.

Korg Makes a Synth From a DS

2008-03-13T14:41:00Z

Holy crap this is totally awesome. Korg will soon release Korg DS-10: a music composition tool that runs on the Nintendo DS. Check out the short video for an idea what it does. It seems like it could be significantly more versatile than the Kaossilator Touchpad Synthesizer.

Link via Wired Blog

Shure E500 vs UE Triple.fi 10 Pro

2008-02-28T03:35:00Z

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about my audio equipment (or about much of anything) ... So allow me to give a short comparison between two of the best universal fit IEMs available. It goes on and on, so allow me to place it below the fold.

Make no mistake about it—I like IEMs. There’s something very nice about enjoying a good stereo speaker system or some nice over-the-ear headphones, but nothing can isolate your environment and inject the sound directly into your hearing organs like IEMs. By this fact, you typically lose some amount of soundstage (vivid separate of instruments on the horizontal plane) when coming from more serious, over-the-ear headphones and certainly speakers. So in this respect, IEMs are about compromise: all these fancy drivers and electronics must be crammed into very tiny earphones.

Nonetheless, I’ve always been impressed at how they can so clearly articulate details—there’s just very little air between the drivers and your ear drums.

About a year ago, I became very interested in the newly announced Triple.fi 10 Pros from Ultimate Ears. UE was accepting preorders for them, but at $400, it was a bit expensive. The Shure E500 (SE530 is the new E500) was getting rave reviews (here’s mine) and the street price was nearer to $300 since they’d been out for a while. Needless to say, I lept on them and didn’t think too hard about the Triple.fi’s.

Well, when I recently had to send my E500’s back to Shure for replacement due to the infamous cracking cables (which it seems they have now addressed with newer batches of the SE530) I decided I would try the Triple.fi’s as I’d heard great things and they now have a more appealing street price.

I’m going to focus on two primary characteristics of these phones: sound quality and comfort.

The E500 has quite a deep bass that slams. This bass blends nicely into a warm, smooth midrange. I love these things about this earphone, but it does lack the ability to reproduce sounds in the highest range of our audible spectrum. These sounds aren’t required to enjoy the music by any stretch. In fact, many reviewers have not discounted these earphones much for this deficiency. They still sound great for pop and beat-driven music. But these high frequencies cause the shimmer and sparkle that really gives you a sense that the instrument is actually being played before you. The Etymotic ER4 is said to have this, but lack the bass.

Enter the Triple.fi 10 Pro.

These things seem to have it all. The tight, detailed bass doesn’t overstep it’s bounds quite like the E500, but remains very present, extended, and integrated! Their very clean, airy, non-fatiguing high end is the main contributer to the realism that the E500 lacks.

It seems that in this case, sound quality and comfort are mutually exclusive. The Triple.fi’s require a twisting motion to lodge their short and fat nozzle in the ears with the proper seal. They don’t really hurt much if I put them in properly and don’t touch them, but eventually I’ll reach up to reposition and realize that they’re causing a minor earache. It’s too darn easy to lose the seal, too. And this is all not making a fuss over how goofy they look, sticking out of your ears. The E500, by comparison, slips straight in quite smoothly and comfortably, keeps a low profile, and is quite ergonomic to use. To me, it wins hands down in comfort.

As good as the E500 is, I think Ultimate Ears can provide an even more accurate and balanced spectrum of sound with a clearer separation of instruments. But how do you get this amazing level of UE sound quality with comfort? Well, I’ll tell you. You get a custom earphone.

That’s right, I’m settling for neither and dropping the big bucks on their highly touted UE11. This way, I can avoid the whole decision and make off with not just a custom in-ear monitor (with all their benefits) but an insanely good one that should surpass my wildest expectations. More on this later.

If I had to choose between the E500 and the TF10 in direct comparison, it would be a very difficult choice. Both the E500’s comfort and the TF10’s sound quality are impressive and sought after. I’d ask myself which is more important (uncompromising sound quality or comfort) and let that be the deciding factor.

Quizzle Goes Live!

2008-02-25T19:50:00Z

The project that I’ve been a part of for most of my time here at Quicken Loans has finally gone live. Think of it as a flexible financial tool. We want Quizzle to one day be your one-stop shop for learning where you financially stand against the ever-changing climates of the home markets and economy.

The most important feature for most folks seems to be the FREE credit report. You might laugh and say there’s no such thing as a free lunch (as you may have learned in attempting to get other “free” credit reports from other sites). But at Quizzle, we not only give you a completely free and easy to understand credit report, but we manage to do so without your having to provide your SSN! I don’t believe anyone else is doing this right now.

There is a lot to be had inside Quizzle apart from the credit report, though. A set of your incomes and debts will be imported from your credit report into the Budget section of Quizzle where you’ll be able to manipulate them to gauge your debt-to-income ratio. You will receive a free home value estimate along with a list of comparable homes in your area. You will have access to handy calculators to help determine how much you should be saving each month for your retirement or your children’s college funds.

We have a lot of interesting ideas for the future of Quizzle, and there’s just no end in sight for the development of this intriguing new tool. We even have the groundwork laid for an invite system where people can refer others to Quizzle and gain credit towards perks and freebies.

I encourage home owners out there to check it out, see what they think, and perhaps offer some feedback! We’ve really only just kicked this thing off. And if you’re a renter, let us know during sign-up, and we’ll let you know when functionality for renters is added!

Scientology is Funny

2008-01-29T00:20:00Z

With recent happenings in the news revolving around Scientology (leaked vids, new enemy) I’ve found myself a bit interested in it. Before approximately a week ago, I knew nothing about this organization. Now, though, I’ve come to know it as a fake “religion” conceived by sci-fi writer L. Ron. Hubbard to make a buck. He basically wrote a great many books and spoke a great many lectures where he outlined his mad ideas about where we come from and how things work.

Now I understand weak-minded people with personal issues who need something like this to turn to… and… after a bit more coercing, you might have me making sense of how popular, insane celebrities with too much cash might find themselves belonging to this group. But anyone with common sense who has done any amount of research on the organization could tell you that it’s a complete fraud. I am fascinated by the numbers who call themselves supporters.

I hereby dub the ideas and writings of “Scientology” as an Encyclopedia of Nonsense.

And as part of this, I’ve created a new slang use of the word “scientology”: Use it as a synonym for nonsense.

Example: The guy went and upped the price on us! What a bunch of fucking scientology!

And please vote up my new word on urbandictionary.com. It’s #49 at the very bottom.

Update: It moves. Currently, I’m at the bottom of page 6.

Goodbye, OiNK...

2007-10-26T08:59:00Z

It really sucked to see OiNK’s home raided this Tuesday morning. The servers went down, and 180,000 music fans worldwide lost their music gold mine.

It’s pretty much the consensus that OiNK was the #1 best place on the internet to find music. They usually had multiple versions (qualities) of just about every single album you could think of—old or new. Often, they had FLAC rips, too. There is no doubt that it was the best place to find lossless music.

People consume music differently these days. It’s not like a music enthusiast is going to actually buy every single album they want to hear. OiNK provided a very easy way to taste a broad spectrum of music, and most will tell you that it has led them to purchase CD’s, go to concerts, etc.

Artists used the service, too. I’m actually making this post because I really wanted to link to this brilliant posting from DJ Rapture. He sums the whole thing up rather well from a unique point of view. Check it out.

Update: Rob from Demonbaby made an excellent (even longer) post about how the record industry has totally blown the new era and shot itself in the foot. He has a lot of good points, and a few good laughs. He calls for a boycott of the labels so they will hurry up and get the point.

Less Choice == Better?

2007-10-09T13:35:31Z

I found this article & video about a talk from Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert, way interesting. According to his research, happiness has little to do with the things your brain leads you to believe will make you happy like material possessions. He says that having limited choices can actually lead to more happiness than more choice.

There’s a video at the bottom of the page that I highly recommend!

DJ Thread - The Unraveling [2007-09-04]

2007-09-05T10:58:32Z

Spun a nice set yesterday. Get it right here from Sendspace in ogg vorbis or right here from dnbradio.com. The DNBRadio one is a while longer as I didn’t want to go too long on my recording. The ogg will sound better, though… and the first hour and a half was the good part, anyway. Lots of new tunage. You even get a track list!

Matt U & ICR – Totem
Chase and Status – Hurt You
Sprint – Sapphire
Alex Perez – Vanguard
Breakage – Clarendon
Twisted Individual – Galloping Elephant
C.A.B.L.E. – Awakening
Survival – Sidewinder
Bungle & Ney Faustini – No Routine
Gridlok feat MC Dino – Watching Us
State of Mind – Flashpoint
Survival – Resolution
Heist – Don’t Hold Back
Tomi Kain – Your Sister
Calyx and Teebee feat MC Verse – Dualprocessed
Heist – Sucka Beats
Noctournal – Cross the Line
Spor – Molehill
Dementia – Phenotype (feat. Confuzed)
Arsenic & Genr8 – Aneurysm
Unknown Error – The Yearning
Sizzla – Solid as a Rock (Remix)
Redeyes – Leaving this Planet
Noisia – Omissions
kr4y – Neuro Linguistics
Tomi Kain – Unamed Ninja
Nu Tone – Beatnik
Danny Byrd vs Tomahawk – Control Freak
Noisia – Street Dreams

Web 2.0 Burgers

2007-08-22T17:40:00Z

If you know me personally, you probably know how much I love my burgers. With cheese and lots of fixins, please. I found this Digg today and just loved it.

There’s some good material in the comments, too… like this one: “The Rails burger: comes with a kit to make a burger in 20 seconds… it will be ok if you eat it alone, but if more than one person tries to eat it at the same time it will fall apart”

The First Web 2.0 Burger Joint and 30 Menu Suggestions

DJ Thread - The Unraveling [2007-08-07]

2007-08-08T15:44:39Z

I dropped a pretty wicked ~2 hours of dnb last night. Find it here at the dnbradio podcast section.

I'm Still Here

2007-07-14T11:31:00Z

... I just haven’t had much to say, I guess. The weekly DNB show is still going on—usually running long. If you’re into that, do check for those MP3 archives if you can’t listen live on the DNBRadio.com Podcast page. This last week’s set rocked out with a length of 3hr 13m, while the prior week’s show clocked in at nearly an insane 4.5hrs! I was all cookin myself up some pizza during it so I could keep spinning till my eyes got blurry :) That could be my longest ever.

In other news, I seem to be sinking deeper into this “hobby” they call headphones. I’m really, really enjoying the sound of a good pair of headphones on my head with an amp and external dac. I have some pretty nice stuff at this point, but I’m not quite sure I’m done just yet. Damn this hobby, I tell you! (My Head-fi.org profile always has my equipment status.)

DJ Thread - The Unraveling [2007-05-08]

2007-05-08T09:51:27Z

We’re still having internet issues at the apartment, so once again I’ve prerecorded the set. Here’s the 128kbps mp3 to be aired as usual later on. Good, fresh tunes to be heard:

Commix – Whatever You Want
Bungle – Down to Earth
Noisia – Street Dreams
SPL & Noah D – Revolution
Kenei – Jack the Ripper
Amy Bullman – Hear No Evil (DJ Marky & Bungle Remix)
Electrosoul System – Call My Name
Calibre – Overation
Agent Alvin – Room Full of Bullets
Zero Tolerance – Old Oak
Aspect – Ruthless
Wikaman – Salsarica
Heist – Don’t Hold Back
Kryptic Minds and Leon Switch – The Forgotten
Spectrasoul – III Note Soul
Stalefish – The Curse
Innovatah – Look Yout Man (Dope Ammo VIP Remix)
Bungle – Resized (Feat Laura Pacheco)
Concord Dawn – Ninja
Danny Byrd vs Tomahawk – Control Freak
Nu Tone – Beatnik
Commix – Talk to Frank
Dope Ammo – Kill Bill (Taxman Remix)
ASC & Mav – Too Deep for Ya
CLS – Their Names Were Trot & Melon
Mindscape – Freezing Point
SKC – Do That Thing
Bulletproof & The Upbeats – Rapture
Spor – Judderman
Pish Posh – Corrupt Cops Remix
Shy FX & T-Power – Everyday (Chase & Status Remix)