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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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

This is freakin hilarious. Nuff said.

Ok this is a funny one. Use an oldschool mac as a backpack, albeit uncomfortably. I found it on Gizmodo.

This flow chart gave me a genuine chuckle. I know it’s a joke, but as the post author points out, it’s rather accurate.

So I’ve been meaning to post something about this for a while now, but just hadn’t gotten to it. I think Twitter is so impulsive by nature, that it may have made me more spontaneous in my blog posting. (Let’s hope.)

Expressive Connections is a fully web 2.0 compliant website that allows its users to create a profile page and upload “works”. Works are images like photos, drawings, etc, or writings like articles, poems, or other literary works. The site also allows you to share a list of links and even your resume. What you end up with is a simple portfolio site that can be easily updated. Here’s mine.

It’s been Julie’s pet project since her web design class last semester when she took a simple html/css design project and turned it into an opportunity to allow me to help her along with learning Ruby on Rails. This semester, though, she’s in a real Rails class at MSU and is taking advantage of the opportunity for furthering the website. Expect OpenID support, on-site messaging, groups, and a “favorites” feature which will allow you to have friends and keep track of them somehow. And other fancy features are on the horizon!

I’ve been following a series of articles on one of the feeds that I watch, Gizmodo, about an RIAA boycott. They are really throwing their weight in the wrong directions, and the only way to stop them is to choke their money supply. I highly recommend this post to get acquainted to the boycott and its reasons, and if you want more, look at this newly-posted entry with links to all the others.

I’d been hearing about Twitter.com for some time now, particularly from the TWIT podcasts. (Leo Laporte uses this service quite a bit!) So, I decided to sign up for it last night.

The gist of it is this. Whenever you feel like it, you twit: Answer the question, “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. (Or don’t answer the question at all…) When you add “friends” to “follow,” you can see what they’re all up to, creating a type of feed that can be somehow fun to check in with.

I’m not sure just how awesome this is, but it seems interesting enough for me to try it out. There’s also a dashboard widget among many other methods (IM, SMS, other apps) to make twitting as effortless as possible.

If you sign up, add me—I’m djthread.

Update: Talking to a friend, we decided this is the opposite of stalking. The stalkee continuously broadcasts everything to everybody rather than the stalker trying to “pull” the information surreptitiously.

Update 2: There’s a way to twit from Firefox and a wiki full of more alternatives.

Update 3: omg if ur on os x, Twitterific is nice!

So Novell and Microsoft finally made the deal they were apparently in talks about for some time. The deal essentially gets Microsoft a foot into the commercial aspects of linux use. They talk about sharing patents and increasing compatibility between the two OS’s, but ultimately it sounds pretty shady. Microsoft will be able to exert a great deal of pressure upon businesses who wish to use linux by outlining a “Microsoft blessed” way of doing things. Check out what Bruce Perens had to say.

Here’s what Red Hat said:

“An innovation tax is unthinkable. Free and open source software provide the necessary environment for true innovation. Innovation without fear or threat. Activities that isolate communities or limit upstream adoption will inevitably stifle innovation.”

I don’t typically discuss anything of this level of importance on my blog, but this is something I need to mention. I’ve been hearing a lot about the 9/11 conspiracy theory as of late. Some new documentaries have been coming out, and both YouTube and Google Video seem to be carrying an increasing number of these.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, let me give you the gist: All reasonable experts agree that the official theory on why the towers fell (fire from planes) is a very bad one, especially when you take into account building 7, which wasn’t even struck by a plane. No, folks, this was a controlled demolition that you witnessed on September 11, 2001. What this actually means is anybody’s guess, but the fact that our government has handled the situation how they have – withholding facts & other evidence and absolutely ignoring other, far more reasonable theories – suggests that they do, indeed, have something to hide.

If you’re new to all this, I highly recommend the following videos:

• Barrie Zwicker Speaks @ Winnipeg 9/11 Truth Event – This writer does a great job of explaining how important it is that we stand up and get the facts. Not just 9/11, but how it has been the basis for so much legislation. The “fear campaign” is bs. It’s short; I recommend watching it first.
• 9/11 Mysteries – This relatively new and very good documentary explains the events of September 11th very well. If nothing else, watch this one!
• Loose Change – Another leading documentary on the attacks.
• Independent Media In A Time Of War – A talk by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!.
• Improbable Collapse: The Demolition of our Republic – One final recommended viewing. I love the part at the end where CNN’s Tucker Carlson more or less refuses to air a clip of Tower 7 collapsing as writer David Ray Griffin’s asks him to.

I’ve watched a fair number of these videos, and these are my favorites. For more information, I recommend the 9/11 Conspiracy Wikipedia entry and 911Truth.org.

Update: I need to add some more videos to the list. First, an 11 minute interview with author David Ray Griffin. This one is scary. At only 3:34, they speak of the Wolfowitz Doctrine and how its radical ideas could only rally support after a “massive catastrophic and catalyzing event.” (Sure enough…) And finally, a full-length documentary discussing the absolute failure of our mass media to ask the tough questions or otherwise reflect the opinions of huge proportions of our population that still have beliefs contrary to what we’re told.