Daydreamin': masmediaspace '06 Mix

Here is is folks, a mix full of diverse goodness from what I would consider a good year in music. Part greatest hits, part under appreciated bands, what I was trying to accomplish was a cohesive, yet diverse album that flowed well and had some kick ass tracks from 2006. Enjoy!

Track list:

1. "Daydreamin" Lupe Fiasco
2. "Buckle" Tapes N Tapes
3. "Alligator" Grizzly Bear
4. "Those Feelings" Herbert
5. "Wayward and Parliament" Amy Milan
6. "Wolf Like Me" TV on the Radio
7. "Save Me" Jem
8. "St Elsewhere" Gnarles Barkley
9. "Elevator Music" Beck
10. "Elevate Myself" Grandaddy
11. "Tribulations" LCD Soundsystem
    
12. "Take What You Take" Lily Allen
13. "True Skool" Roots Manuva & Coldcut
14. "Don't Feel Right" Roots
15. "Peach, Plum, Pear" Joanna Newsom
    
16. "Reading in Bed" Emily Haines
    

PDX Implements First Stage of Free WiFi

As of yesterday, Portland is officially has free wifi available in areas near downtown. Users only need look for the "MetroFi" signal, login, enter name/email, and whalla! You've got internet speeds up to a respectable 1 Mbps! The only downside is users will be subjected to banner adds in the top of their browsers which will help fund the project. The other fiscal benefit is the ability to save on parking meter fees by not having to pay fees for each individual transaction.

It must be noted that this was an uphill battle with ISPs and there was a solid resistence but in the end it looks like the citizens of Portland have won the battle for municipal internet. Comcast was not available for comment.

The Wonders of Photoshop/Stylists!

iTunes 7 Screenshots, CoverFlow Integration

After I downloaded iTunes 7 I was shocked at the changes: the first of which is an incorporation of the sweet little jukeboxy-type app CoverFlow. Here are some screenshots:

CoverFlow view

iPod info pane

Download This! Free Essentials for Macs.

NOTE:
All of the following are free

1. VLC(VIDEO PLAYBACK): It plays every video file known to mankind, so when Quicktime fails you, which it will, never fear: it will play in trusty ol VLC.
   
2. Firefox/Camino/Opera(BROWSERS): these are all great browsers for different reasons. In short, Camino is super lightweight/fast and Opera is super customizeable as is Firefox with its many extensions. Try em all and see what works best for you(including Safari). Firefox is the best bet IMO, but Safari is also great for most users.
   
3. Flip4Mac(WMV PLUGIN): a plugin which allows those annoying windows media files to be played on your Mac. Trust me, you'll need it, some companies believe think everyone is running IE7 and they're 70% right.
   
4. Menu Meters(MAC SPEEDOMETER): curious how those dual core processors are performing? Or perhaps you are curious to see if that 512MB of RAM is sufficient? Menu Meters gives a nice view of how your system is performing. I recommend expressing the processor as a percentage and your dual core chip as 2 separate indicators(right now they're both at 4%).
   
5. Monolingual(REDUCE CLUTTER): your mac comes with hundreds of megabytes and even gigabytes of language support you don't need; Monolingual removes these files. I saved 2.5 GB on my system! Just be careful and read the faq before running.
   
6. Onyx(SPEED UTILITY): Kind of like Disk Defrag and Scandisk for PCs, a nice app that cleans all the files that accumulate as well as repairing permissions an much much more. I consider this no brainer; run it at least once every few months and you'll likely notice your mac runs a little snappier. Also, if you have a noticeable slowdown, 9 out of 10 times you just need to run some maintenance scripts and Onyx make that task a lot easier than typing commands in the Terminal.
   
7. Limewire(FILESHARING): With a good internet connection, you'll be downloading music faster than you can say Ted Nugent. No ads, spyware, popups and good integrity...just make sure the file your downloading 'makes sense': That 642 kb bile is NOT the latest episode of LOST. This is the easiest way to get movies and music but not necessarily the best(see below).
   
8. Transmission(BITTORENT FILESHARING): If you need to download full albums, seasons of tv shows, or feature movies...this is the best way to do it. The only problem is it may require some tweaking to get it to work at a good speed. This app is lightweight, simple and effective.
   
9. Mac the Ripper(DVD RIPPER): If you wanna make backups of you DVDs or rip them to your hard drive using the original DVD file structure, just download this bad boy and it removes the encryption in one easy step. On average it takes about a half hour to rip a feature length DVD.
   
10. Audacity(AUDIO TOOL): I use this program to crop songs for music videos or make
    ringtones on my phone but there are more features and its simpler than Garage Band.
11. Handbrake(CONVERT DVDs TO ANY FORMAT): Easily converts DVDs into your format of choice. Includes a lot of encoding options such as video codec, framerate, bitrate, audio settings etc.
    
12. Super Duper(BACKUP UTIL): Nice app that will make a perfect copy of your current system. Backup, what's that, you say? Required. I don't care if you have a Mac, your hard drive WILL FAIL you someday(my friend's did 6 month after I got her a backup drive). If you don't have a lot of files, at least put those important documents on a CD/DVD/USB drive at a minimum.

Hope this helps!

BTW
Version Tracker, Softpedia, are all good sources for apps; check em out.

Tractor Pull

Moblogging Kernal Days in Wells, MN.

Philips DVP642 DVD Player Quick Review

The 2 main reasons why I love the DVP642 player are its low cost(about$50) and it plays every video format known to man. I've been burning .avi, mpeg, xvid and it plays EVERYTHING! To put it more simply, all you have to do is burn the disc with the data and this player will play it in its encoded format. Almost every other player requires you to encode files which adds an around 3-10x the amount of time it takes to just burn a data disc! This is very cool for someone that uses Bittorrent alot or has digital home movies that have been compressed. This is the category killer of DVD players as far as do-it-all computer friendly DVD players. Last I checked, there were over 600 reviews for it on Amazon with an average of 4 stars. Not bad. A couple downsides: the remote and load times are not great.

Its all relative

Check out this quick visual guide to the relative size of various planets/stars, its pretty amazing.

Google Earth 4.0 Beta: Nice Update

Mt Jefferson, formerly known as "lo res white blob".

I just upgraded Google Earth and where once was white blobs in the cascades are now beautiful, richly detailed mountains. Its nowhere near 100% complete but we're seeing the potential as more map data is integrated into the system. According to Google, 20% of the earth is now covered by hi res imagery and 33% of the worlds population can now see their home.

The UI is quite slick as well, not normally a Google strong point. Its intuative, transparent and immediately user friendly. Overall, this is a great addition...now if I could only watch climbers in real time on Mt Hood...

HD DVD VS Blue-ray: Primed for the Technology Trash Heap

VS

This much hyped format war is really about the last battle for video sold on physical media and its turning out to be very underwhelming. Here are the reasons why its not working and ultimately will never be the next DVD phenomenon:

1. People are OK with DVDs. Heck, some people still use VHS, although admitedly not many use Betamax or Laserdisc but I digress. DVD is a good format with great features and it still beats the pants off most network tv quality.
2. Dirty sales tactics. At twice the price, Blue-ray has some powerful allies: the retail salesforce.
   
3. Efficiencies of cooperation were ignored. Time is running out. This war for the hearts and minds of video enthusiasts has drained so much time and money that it is turning out to be expensive, boring and lacking real benefits. There is still a need for quality content, full 1080p resolution, faster access times. Meanwhile, a new kid is coming to town...
   
4. Very soon ONLINE DISTRIBUTION will start eating market share. As iTunes, Bittorrent and other RSS video aggregators become more ubiquitous, the home computer becomes the center of a computer based media experience.

Let's face it: physical media is a dying breed. We learned from music that there are some real advantages to having all of your music in a svelte, neatly organized, scratch proof package and ready to go in a moments notice. What if all of your TV and video were this well organized on a 2 Terabyte hard drive? We need to focus on getting fiber to American homes and skip the idea of this new format being the next DVD phenomenon altogether.

Democracy 0.8.4: Review

For those not familiar with it, Democracy is an excellent app used to distribute and view video via RSS. Think podcast client for video. I've been using this player for 6 months with continuous crashes and perpetually hanging downloads inhibiting my useage. After playing around with the 0.8.4 upgrade I find it finally is running smooth on OS X.

The Democracy platform has excellent potential for those looking for an online distribution method that is totally free. If you've got some quality content that you'd like to sydicate or just want to check out some original content, there is no reason not to check out Democracy Player now.