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.

... 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.)

Nine days ago, Tuesday December 19, 2006, marks the last exam of the last semester of my undergraduate college career. It was a long time coming, but I’m finally done! (What blows is that I was unable to find a subleaser for my room up there on Gunson Street. I haven’t quite given up on the search, but I think I might be getting screwed on this one.)

The good news, though, is that I’ve joined ranks with the brilliant folks at Quicken Loans in full-time fashion. I get to work in a tight team of only a handful of people (the Web Interaction Team), and I’ve so far really enjoyed working with them. I can’t wait to see what we’re capable of moving forward with our current project. The company as a whole is doing really well in the marketplace, and appears to have a very bright future, indeed. I’m very excited to be a part of it.

Oh, and a Very Happy Holidays from DJ Thread!

My site has been out for about the last 24 hours. I finally got things sorted out on the web server. We’ve moved from the shaky-service Dreamhost to Railsmachine.com. This company employs some real Ruby on Rails contributors who know what they’re talking about, and who seem to care more for their clients than Dreamhost. Their specs/price ratio is a bit higher than Dreamhost, but it’s guaranteed specs. We’re all pretty sure that Dreamhost is overselling their capacities.

Anyway, I’m back now, so everyone can just calm down. ;)

Next: my weekly dnbradio set!

My girlfriend, Julie, has just launched JewloftheLotus.com. She says she’ll just talk about whatever on there—not too much in the way of focus. (But who needs focus on a blog, anyway?)

Isn’t it nice (and cheap!?) to have a little domain to call home?

I haven’t missed a week yet! Check out my latest mix in the DNBRadio Archive and another good recent one has been added to the torrents page for a few days now.

Update: Oh, and I also meant to mention that I’m now using Textmate to blog with. (Check out the screencast!) It is damn sexy, and I’m not kidding.

Every so often, I do an svn update on my Typo codebase to see if there’s new updates… particularly because of a rather nasty bug I’ve been experiencing. Whenever I post a new item, it inserts some error message in the post’s text_filter column, which causes my entire blog to break. The home page appears empty (0 posts) and the admin area crashes when trying to view the post. I had to go into the database and manually set the text_filter field to NULL. Needless to say, this undoubtadly had an impact in my posting frequency. But with the latest update of Typo 4.0.1, I’ve found the issue to have vanished! Hooray for blogs that actually work properly! \o/

I just returned today from spending the weekend in Chicago with Julie. The clubs in that city are serious business, let me tell you. (Fun!) Also, I go into Quicken Loans for my first day of part-time work on Tuesday since I interned there two years ago.

Apparently, in the eyes of David Barr, my DNB is akin to robot wrestling… and dnbradio needs to use torrents.

Oh, and I spun another nice 2.25 hr set for my show last night. DNBRadio Archive.

Well, it’s the Sunday before classes start again and it all went by so fast. I spent the time with my girlfriend of about 2 months now, Julie. We went to visit her parents’ house In Aurora, Illinois for the first friday through monday weekend. We also spent saturday night at my friend’s apartment near Columbia University in Chicago, met some good friends, and had a nice Italian dinner.

We drove back up to East Lansing on the Monday, and then drove to my home in Ann Arbor on the Tuesday to hang with my brother who was home for the week and see some friends. Unfortunately, Julie suffored a 24-hr stomach flu that lasted from Wednesday morning til that night, so we stayed for another night. Miraculously, though, I walk away with no illness! Yay!

The final bit of excitement for my break came last night (Saturday) from Taste of Chaos at Detroit’s Cobo Hall where the Deftones rocked the house. Actually it was a bunch of bands, but they were mostly loud and boring. Deftones have some good material, though. BOH

Apparently, according to this source, the most effective way to stay alert when you’re not exactly well rested is to take a caffeine nap! Drink a coffee or other caffeine source and then sleep for 15 minutes—no more, no less.

http://goalsuccess.typepad.com/goaltips/2006/02/how_to_take_a_c.html

I’ve got the thing set up at the kitchen table right now… so that’s what’s in the picture. I was nothing but wow’d when I opened the thing up. I’m really not used to seeing screens larger than 19 or 20 inches. The design is really nice; the black & grey scheme matches the rest of my system. The base allows the screen to swivel with ease in all conceivable directions—including raising the entire screen up and down. You’ll need to raise it up in order to make enough room underneith to rotate the entire screen 90” clockwise and go into portrait mode. I haven’t looked into making this feature work in linux yet. Oh, and it has a multi media card reader in the left side of the screen which saved me just now when I couldn’t find the usb cord for my camera. I have no frickin clue where that thing is…

And I found it interesting that this product made #5 on PCWorld.com’s 100 Best Products of 2005.

The second good thing happening today is that I’m going to go DJ at a house party on Durand street (like a block over from me). I’ll be working in some other styles besides dnb to appease the peoples tonight. I may end up posting at least part of it for those of you who couldn’t make it. ;)

My friend Tim Riley wrote about someone who wrote about Music to hack to. He links to a bunch of mixes that I’ll have to check out as well as my site. ;)

I, too, am into things upbeat. Drum ‘n Bass is my preference, but I must admit that it will distract me at times. It’s still my favorite though.

One mix that I heard this morning is a very sweet techy liquid one by the Future Engineers who I only recognize as authoring a track on an also very nice atmospheric dnb mix album from Blame.

Update: I can’t believe I forgot to add the link to the mix. I just decided to listen again today and realized the link to the mix download page was missing. I guess it’s a freebie. GO LISTEN!

So it was a lazy afternoon around the house. Colleen has moved out, Erin is home for a couple days, and Matt is at work now until he leaves to go home as well. I think I’m going to end up at a house a couple blocks over for tonight since there isn’t anything going on around here.

Here’s the first mix for the new year, and it’s pretty long at 163:45. Unfortunately, mixxx was being a bit fussy today, so there are a handful of spots where it breaks out for a few seconds. It’s a pretty nice mix otherwise, though.

Update: Damn, there are some really nice bits in this mix, but when Mixxx gets disconnected from jack, the interruption really sucks. I genuinely apologize, once again. :)

I hope everyone had a great Christmas or whatever holiday you’d like to celebrate this time of year. Yesterday, we went to the aunt/uncle’s place for a family get-together of about 17 family members. As for loot, I got mostly just the cash and checks. The clear message this year is that people don’t know what to get me. But I pretty much expected this… which is why I’ve already upgraded the computer like a month ago. :)

In unrelated news, our amateur neighborhood wireless provider has proven that he has no idea how to manage an ISP. 1-2 days ago, he began blocking ALL except a select few outbound ports. This had the net effect of breaking my dnbradio streaming, quake playing, file sharing, and even email checking (imap) capabilities to name a few. He’s been faster to fix some than others. SSH tunneling allows me to use some services over an encrypted tunnel (using a 3rd host) but that doesn’t work for a lot of apps that are unpredictable as to which ports they’re going to use (quake, bittorrent, etc).

But anyway, he wants my dad and I to come over tomorrow and help set up a linux box as per my suggestion to handle the firewall rules and quality of service functions for his ISP. He’s clueless, but at least he’s willing to accept help.