Musical Archaeology - Rhapsody Playlists ('n' More)

This site is managed with GVIM, Filezilla and PHP, yeah I code my own stuff..

Due to the nature of this blog, archives have to be provided in seperate locations, to get back to the most recent blog, simply click on the default link. The site will always link to the most recent one.

Blog Archives: [Current, 2007], [2006], [2005].

For You Lazy YouTubers: YouTubeify It Bookmarklet + FREEDB = Easy YouTube music searches.
For Those Who Haven't Patience To Use YouTube: CHANN3L Z - What If YouTube was TV. (NEW!!!, 2/07) Quicktime (30MB), YouTube One and Two, Tutes.
Cheapest way to podify yourself: Buy this mp3 player (I own two of these with 1 gig SD cards ) (--> DEMOSTRATION VIDEO)
Cheapest way to listen to audio:Dell A215, Get Some Clip On Headphones, Sound Blaster Live!
Best way to veggitate:

www.chann3lz.com Youtube + Me = Chann3lz, a completely random music video playing jukebox of content, managed by the audience, no registration necessary, all mechanism, no policy.. www.youtube.com Videos, Videos, Videos and more Videos, and you don't have to download anything, you don't even really need a Video Codec. It's all FLASH!! Tubeify Everyhit Take YouTube, Combine with Everyhit.com, What Do you get? iTunes How-to-install iTunes (v) here is a downloadable tutorial (v) if you have a slow line. RSS NETCASTS (Hint: Drag&Drop These Links onto iTunes "Podcasts"): Wikipedia Synthesized Mind "Fart" Synthesized (Monthly) Musical Archeology Synthesized Wikipedia Turkeys Synthesized If you want your own netcast (netcast = podcast, Apple is trademarking podcast), but are not sure how to set one up, get my drop-it-in netcast generator script. Script is provided as-is, use at your own risk, thus I'm not liable if somehow you don't get it to work or it eats your cattle and causes you to lose a bunch of money. My tutorials require Real Video not because I'm a Real-Rhapsody fan, but because RealVideo happens to be the best format for low-bandwidth tutorials

Rhapsify Everyhit.com looks for albums of a date range precise to a month, providing links to rhapsody-online (and YouTube).
YouTubeify Everyhit.com is much better for tracking down music videos to precise songs on "YouTube.com".

BEST WAY TO PERUSE YOUTUBIFIED LINKS
1. go to url "about:config" in address bar of firefox browser.
2. toggle 'browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs' to true (pre 1.5; post v1.5, search Advanced Options )
3. then middle mouse click on each youtubified search link
4. click on the videos, bookmark, make into playlists, enjoy..

How Fast Is Your, Connection, Really!! a script I wrote that computes data connection uproute/downroute rates (here is mine, Comcast).

Where to Find Quicktime Pro Forums (and many disgruntled owners): Quicktime for Windows Forum.

Best way to secure your computer: Grisoft AVG (free), ZoneAlarm (free*!) {flash demo}, TCPView (free) {for semi-advanced users}.
Best way to discover music besides this one: Coverville.com
Best way to access your computer remotely: VNC, in particular TightVNC (stay away from www.gotomypc.com)
Best way to obtain/distribute huge files (bit-torrent clients): Azureus
Best way to make backups: Knoppix (Linux/DVD*R), Audiograbber (CD2mp3), DVD Shrink (FreeDVDBackup)
Free Knowledge: UC Berkeley Courses (no credit)

Interesting netcasts for programmers: Software Engineering Radio
How to painlessly publish/purchase a book: LULU.COM
Best of the Best (non-obnoxious): 46 freeware utils
Best webhosting: Geocities (free, commercially scaleable), phpwebhosting (commercial with ssh/sftp-access), Find Hosting.
Best information resources: Google (no brainer), Wikipedia (def)
Best place to lust for synthesizers: Vintage Synth Explorer
Best way to convert wikipedia articles to sound TextAloud, the Eddie voice, and my custom UserTranslations.chl file (put in install directory). TA also comes with a firefox/IE plugin that will read web pages for you, making it easier.. I use it when I hate reading web pages..

Alternative Content Discovery: Blogdigger, WebJay
Trouble Viewing Videos? You need some Codecs: Matroska Pack (good), free-codecs (works, but it may have a Trojan)
Need to convert Media format X to media format Y? Use Mediacoder its a freeware media swiss army knife, that is supposedly open source (its on sourceforge, huh?).
Need to convert video formats that Mediacoder doesn't? Use AVS Convert , I own a copy myself, and it lets me do stuff with Quicktimes and WMV's that neither Microsoft nor Apple will permit me (note the site looks kinda cheap, but the program isn't.
My most favorite rhapsody playlist: Smooth And Punchy Playlist
My most favorite bands (and most played): Level 42 (r), Nik Kershaw, Cock Robin, Double (not played, on my wishlist), etc.
My most favorite years (musically):1978 (r), pretty much any year from 1976 to 1989
My most favorite movie (note: works, and could be made on a low budget):Brainstorm
Most Favorite Music Video (5/12/07):Brinsley Schwarz - Surrender to The Rhythm..

Why is this page so huge: Google can cache it all, audience is broadband users, I use less than 50% of my quota per month.
Your most favorite rhapsody playlist: The Brian Eno Playlist
Big application wish: SOUNDBLASTER LIVE! PRESET EXPORT, so I can share with you some of my killer rooms.

Cool way other than Chann3lz for listening to audio.

Say No To Software Patents
Thanks to: JESUS (CHRIST) *, Richard Stallman (AVI, RM, RM2-SP), and the respective creators of these packages and places.

Bag 'O' Tricks Directory lists tips/tricks and reminders and other stuff I would love to clog my header with.

* - Wikipedia is edited by anarchy, don't use for christian inspiration. Christian Bahai is a oxymoron BTW.
*! - I use Zonealarm Pro, which is what that flash demo is demonstrating, ZoneAlarm costs about fifty dollars a
year with updates, but is well worth it, it also comes with spyware weeding software, so there is no need for an application like "Ad-Aware",
"Spybot Search & Destroy" or "Spyware Doctor".

Companies/Organizations I Currently Consider Evil or Stupid:
Why?: Claims to save time and accelerate processing but Wastes Hours of Time Submitting Rebate Offers no Recourse if Rebate Fails!! DELIBERATE THIEVES

All Rhapsody Playlists found in this page (and some not).. All Rhapsody Playlists YouTubeified

Tip Jar ->

or my Amazon Wish List

-[  Mind 'Fart' Blog (May 2005) ]

Web www.bl3nder.com

[ Index ][Top] blog:[Current,07][2006][2005] [YouTube-ified Playlists]

Has anyone noticed how much Rupert Murdoch looks like Chancelier Palpatine?

(def)

and Star Wars is distributed by FOX, you think this is a coincidence? Well I could tell though since Episode 1 that the chancelor was Darth Sidious, because if you look at episode 5 and 6, the small chin is a dead giveaway, and it's just a necessary feature to have an actor with that kind of chin to play the part. I just have this knack for finding similar faces in similar poses on the net.. I think it's just a coincidence that I should find two characters who share about as much evil and similar faces.. Lachlan Skywalker, I am your father!

(5/31/05 2:37 PM): Was watching C-Span2 today, one of those call in shows, talking about lending practices and such.. Some caller said that one way to get banks from sending junk to your mailbox is to mail the junk back to the bank in their own post-paid envelopes.. I think I might try that sometime.. Just say "no" to American Express and Discover, they both suck. Also if you are in one of those high-rate loans for a house, or thinking of buying a house on a introductory low-rate loan, go to www.responsiblelending.org , its the portion of the government that tries to protect consumers from predatory lenders. Fight for consumer rights.. And consequently the lawyers that fight for these companies will make a lot more money fighting back. I wonder if the lawyers and the consumers could work a deal where the predatory lending companies are bankrupted, that would be even better! I don't care if the lawyers have a feduciary responsibility to their clients, their clients are crooks. What's the best way to penalize the crooks than to make litigation impossible?

BTW, this site seems to be more racially bent than something that is representative of American consumers.. I mean they are partisan to black and latino democrats than white republicans.. I'm poking fun at the assumption, BTW.. I think nobody benefits from this predatory lending, but I do believe it happens in poor communities and considering the average income of Americans, this would be about 90% of us.. IF the richer keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, what if the rich go to live in China or India? Now I can see why the liberal democrats are against the war. The more vocal point is its killing Americans, but the less vocal point is that its making the rich richer and the poor poorer, the worst case scenerio, you have some single company that owns America and it turns into a commercial empire (why does this sound like something out of the movie "Rollerball"? If, they do a remake can I play the TV Announcer?).

(5/29/05 9:15 PM): The first I ever saw of Talking Heads (v), this may use rhapsody as a proxy, this is why I don't use a lot of videos from Rhapsody's frontend.. You can get it from the free version probably.. And this is the last I ever listened to David Byrne

What kid is not being tormented by their parents by replays of this devo music video (v).. I was ten when I first heard this, probably 12 the first time I saw a music video.. I think I played a lot of video games to this music.. That and journey..

Oh, they are torturing the George Harrison estate, better put upthe real tribute to George, not this cover album by Den Fiori (r), it could be that this is all they can put up, Michael Jackson ownes the Beatles licenses, I don't know if this has anything to do with it.. But obviously someone is layering their voice atop George's.. I wonder if Jeff Lynn knows about "When We Was Fab" from "Cloud 9" is on this cover album?

(5/29/05 7:58 PM): Yeah, Elvis Costello's profile on Rhapsody has a mess of Music Videos!! Maybe I can get a few links.. Veronica (v), how about Peace Love And Understanding (v)? This Town (v) (never saw it, but recognize it from the "Spike" {jones, god's comic} Album), or So Like Candy (v) or Sulky Girl? For the record, last time Elivs gave a concert in Santa Fe, they boo'd him on stage, Santa Fe is a tough crowd.. Well I read this in the paper. Anyhow, I think he has lost his coolness, but he lost it back with the Attractions.. It's tough to stay angry and get old at the same time unless you are really evil. He just got commercialized.. I think he would be more accepted if he just kissed off the RIAA and record companies and accepted people to bootleg his concerts, and went au-natural no synths and acoustic guitar, his acoustic studio sessions from his CD's are way better than his mannicured studio compositions. Maybe he could get in edgewise with an opera in Santa Fe. I'd love to see him do a opera, he's such a poet.

Great, they have some more Richard Thompson, but I still love this Misunderstood song.. It's got a bit of a Bonnie Raitt thing going, which dates it a bit, early 90s stuff.. Almost sounds like he reused some of her studio musicians.. Listen to this.. Being 35 and unmarried, "Nick of Time" is one of those haunting/hopeful songs, a cheesy middle-aged cheese of a song, but its a lament more than a song.. Ah, I guess Richard Thompson is Raitt's guitarist, that would make sense.. Ah, I found a Tribute to Richard Thompson called Beat The Retreat, with Bonnie Raitt and X (of all artists!), REM? Whoa!! Why have I only heard about him like so recently.. Hmm.. This is like finding out Thomas Dolby (r) was at the mixing board of a Prefab Sprout album, and to not even know who prefab sprout was until a year ago.. Nate brought this PRefab stuff to my attention because the "King of Rock N Roll" was stuck in his head for weeks, mine too.. It's the first song on my repetitive song pain playlist (search down).. Anyhow, on that Thomas Dolby sampler I just made, there is the song that gave him the money to do Wireless, his stint in making Foriegner's "4" album. Listen to "A Girl Like You". Thomas makes a big deal of this break into the entertaininment biz.. And lives in California, I believe.. He loves Los Angeles.. I also have "Flat Earth" on CD, in my car, and had it playing for the last week. This is another one I re-bought as a CD, bought first on cassette tape. He wasn't as prolific as bands like ELO, though nobody really was in the 80s except Michael Jackson.. You will find more musicians with yearly record releases in the 70s than the 80s.. These days you will have a band make three albums at best before the record company tries to split the band apart into a solo albums.. Gwen Stefani is doing pretty well, even though you can tell she anticipated the break of No Dobut with much dismay (had a little humor of it in music videos), but that's what sucks about the record industry. Many bands from the 80s fear "where are they now" series from VH-1 like a recurring drug addiction. I think most musicians would do good just to show old footage, they will never live up to it, and nobody really ever tires of it, its like a memory of youth but its possible for later generations to be broed miserable by it.. I personally can't imagine what its like to feel youthful listening to Roger Daltrey croon about "My Generation", but listening to Thomas Dolby on Flat Earth is of a similar essence. But its easy to get obsessed with that past.. Who doesn't get the blues thinking about the past, just don't let the obsession change who you are, I mean its impossible to return or relive it, but we all remember how great the 80s and 70s were musically and the fun and newness of it all.. It's not fun to see that youth get old, but the music is ageless.. At least it doesn't sound like a faded 75rpm from the 30s. Tom Waits probably would love to adopt that sound, but give me the clarity of a Elvis Costello recording any day of the week.

(5/29/05 6:04 PM): This is my favorite Genesis CD (r) (a Phill Collins Biography), of course I hold a special place in my heart for Tony Bank's synth work. This CD is the one that is on repeat play in my car, now. This was probably what Mark Hamil and Carrie Fisher were listening to when making the first Star Wars in London. And was the one I was playing on the way back home after seeing Star Wars Episode 3.. (pointless jabbering removed). And here is a picture of a squirrel using my car as a watch-tower.

(5/29/05 3:48 PM): Got a stereo microscope for my five year old niece, on ebay. Though made in china, it's still relatively cool, its 50x with special eyepieces, the front-projecting light didn't seem to work well, I hope its the difference between using NiMH batteries and regular ones (1.2 versus 1.5). Well its nothing a gooseneck high-powered clip-on light shouldn't fix. I observed a dead gnat about a milimeter in size that looks like a fly magnified. I purchased some petri containers in hopes that I could observe stereo live gnats.. Well if she doesn't like the gift I will probably buy it off and get her something better, but either way I think I'm going to get one for myself.

Purchased a copy of WIRED, and relearned the reason I don't like WIRED, two pages on how much it costs to raise the perfect kid.. Only fools with money read this stuff.. And then I realize its NY based mag, certainly makes sense.. This is what biz-heads call a porn mag.. Ad-ridden mag that thinks Bill Gates is the king of the world and claims that science is going to cure the worlds woes in a pill. Hi-tech Snake-oil salesmen whose franchises are going IPO, and they mail some payola to a jounalist of WIRED... This is the last time I'm paying for somebodies vanity.

Got the "Trackmania Sunrise" Video Game this week after completing HL2, its not quite what the demo was.. The best tracks use the blocks from the demo, and infuse a few block-sized buildings that look small for buildings (more like stacked layers of saltines than buildings. The soundtrack to the game seems to use the open source "ogg" audio compression, the actual sound track is something like Lindsey Lohan, Supergrass and Joe Jackson.. The tracks I played on multiplayer were cramped and impossible, note I was playing on a New York server (is that any stretch of the imagination?) , the French server I played next was a bit better but not much fun. The single-player tracks are really good, and challenging, you have to earn medals and trophies to unlock the other tracks, the cars are customizeable, but there is only a few more models than the free-demo, but there is a tinge of that soup-nazi mentality in the commercial product that are not present in the demo. I may go back to the demo because the multi-player system on the commercial version is password protected (the gall!!). Who was the brainless exec that thought this one up.. They have your CD-key, now they want your login/password and a email address.. This is so they can measure their market potential, maybe.. Maybe its to avoid piracy, but if the CD-key is used as a password they can at best disable it from the servers, however if they have your login and password and email address and cd-key, what would they do to someone whose CD-key was stollen via virii or rootkit? Well I was not much offended but I Just saw this is as a really bad business decision, but then again I don't make that much money to tell what is good or bad, to do business is like learning to intentionally lie (which is about the only way a businessman can make a profit, by being slient which is technically pretty close to be untruthful).. It's just no wonder you won't find the kind of numbers online that you did with the demo (yeah, you have to spend money, but if they lowered the price ten dollars that wouldn't be much of an issue either). After playing HL2 I've lost interest in Trackmania, I think its something to do with the physics and the graphics card utilization, but its mostly because I played myself out on the demo.

(5/25/05 2:24 PM): Found that epinions does video game reviews, cool, I never would have thought to look here..

(5/25/05 1:39 PM): Played Half Life 2 to the end, couldn't avoid it.. And the ending was such a let down... No cheering crowds, no rebuilt soceity, no fireworks, no marriage to alyx vance with children, no bowling and beers with the gravity gun and some of your close game characters, all expectations/emotions muted, probably payback to guys in germany for stealing and distributing their code on the net.. Well, I'm going to spoil it




you destroy the time/space portal which uses a fancy refractive pixel shader ala Tron/Breakout MCP style, then time slows.. then you hear "Oh is it that time again, oh..", it's that G-MAN guy you've never seen anywhere throughout the game, except at the very beginning, "well I guess when we need you we'll get back to you, but I'm not at liberty to say when or where that is.. " , then he leaves the building, everything fades out to scrolling credits. Plain uninteresting basic credits, (the kind that just scrolls from the bottom, what a disservice to the contributors, they could have made it like a opening to star wars at least, at most like flying 3D logos and personalize each an every one). If you wait long enough though, you get to see the doctor kliener's runaway defanged headcrab, jump into the darkness, and the whole thing ends with it jumping at you.. Well I have to admit the game was well done, maybe they were just trying to make a delivery date.. For me, the best senseless but emotional ending would have been to have a crowd of Antilions to command to eat the bad guy.. That would have been the most fun and "least work" ending.. But at the end you never see the bad guy again. Read this epinion where someone else describes the ending, it described my thoughts exactly, you would think they would leave people with some kind of happy ending, so at least people would want to play again.. But they left it open ended like this so they would have more crap to shuffle you through.. And I really wish I could talk about how great the game was, and it was, but the ending really just blew all my inspiration, sorry. You guys could have done better, left people on some kind of high..

Well, at least It's raining, yeah! Well it has been dry for weeks, I guess that's the fireworks from seatle.. The rain only lasted about 60 seconds but I can already smell the ionization.

(5/24/05 10:46 PM): NAte sent me this video of a domino tumble done in Half Life 2, this just shows how accurate the physics are in "Half Life 2".

(5/24/05 3:26 PM): Fatcow is down it seems, so oldcliche.com, where I store the pictures for HL2 is also down.. Most of my heavy content I put on fatcow because the web-hosting deal is unbeatable, but I do my site content like text and such on phpwebhosting, however I'm considering on switching to a host in San Francisco that is giving complete SSH backend access with similar broadband throughput as fatcow, but this is the cool thing, you can configure PHP to do things like recognize html files as php scripts and set default error logs and junk like that.. I also use phpwebhosting though because fatcow isn't secure enough, like all your stuff doesn't going into a directory htdocs, the root directory of fatcow from the ftp server is the root directory of the account.. And no SSH access!! That sucks.. Oh well.. I don't pay much more than about 20 dollars a year for URL's and about 20 dollars a month for web service.. It's worth it though.. Beats being on geocities or some sponsored web space where all your stuff gets ads and popups.. And to get PHP access with Mysql firewalled off, SSH/SFTP access, with a linux/unix backend, priceless (well almost). I still have yet to put in RSS feed or login/password with a bulletin board.. The reason I don't, I'm one of those coders you has to know everything is 100% hack-proof before I put it up.. I like open source, insofar that I know what the code is doing and what it can do.. Also if I gave my readers a voice, it might get that community-blog thing going, or it may just allow them to mock me.. So I choose the WYSIWYG approach. need some say over mine? get your own blog.

Reminds me of that Christian joke:

One day a group of Darwinian scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one Darwinian to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.

The Darwinian walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."

God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After the Darwinian was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this? Let's say we have a man-making contest." To which the Darwinian happily agreed.

God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."

The Darwinian said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!!!!"

(5/24/05 ??:?? AM): BTW, if you find this product on ebay, http://www.luxuriousity.com/ this is not new software, this guy is a fraud that is renaming open source packages and selling them under another name, those using blender may be aware of this already.. Its not wrong to sell open source software, there is people who make a living distributing copies of linux on ebay.. This guy is quite a different case, he pretends to be the creator and maintainer of this software.. Some other info 1 2 3

(5/24/05 ??:?? AM): Time in the morning is a secret, shhhhh.. I kinda like looking at family photos of swedish ATI employees, so I checked out this site.. Note, I have an ATI card, updated the drivers.. Oh yeah.. Now I recognize where they got the shots of the aliens on the back of the ATI Radeon 9600 SE box, its a bunch of Antilions from Half Life 2.. The fragment shaders are nothing short of amazing in HL2, I spent about 5 minutes just mesmerized by this building.. I'm now on the beach where if I set foot on the sand a bunch of Antilions come out of no where and start attacking me, the Antilions reminds me of bugs from "Starship Troopers", I'm sure that's where the influence came from.. But its got a bit of a DUNE influence in it.. In some parts of the map you see these large thumpers, reminiscent of the ground thumpers that call the sand worms in DUNE.. Anyhow, I stopped at the beach because I'd be up all night picking up junk and laying it down to walk on.. Its likely I will come out of this game respecting cardboard boxes a lot more. Anyhow, got some more shots from the game.. Whoa, a nice little behind the scenes site on DUNE..
BTW, I would advise just getting Half Life 2 just to check out the fantastic rigid and soft body dynamics, and the pixel shaders, it really will exploit the best your computer and graphics card can do.

(5/23/05 12:43 PM): I was 7 when I saw the first Star Wars, and a year later saw Superman, both at the Lensic in Santa Fe, NM, in that dark eerie purple glow (I guess were blacklights). These days the lensic is a public theatre (as in plays, it as a movie theatre was a bit of a let down in the 70s and 80s, but you spent about 3 dollars and got this great theatre as a frame, I mean it was a let down for the theatre, not to the movie go'er.. It was a real pleasure to watch movies as the Lensic!! Also saw Amadeus in that theatre.. Anyways oh yeah.. I was just going to set things straight for the old foggies and yung-uns the Star Wars stuff..

Star Wars movies were made in this order:

1. Episode 4 (1977)
2. Episode 5 (1980)
3. Episode 6 (1983)
4. Episode 1 (1999)
5. Episode 2 (2002)
6. Episode 3 (current, 2005)

BTW, this was George Lucas' first movie, photo montage made into a film, he was first a photographer and took a film class.

(5/23/05 12:30 PM):

Real seems to be placing Rhapsody 2.0 musicians on the 3.0 side as an incentive to get people to upgrade.

(5/23/05 3:08 AM): Better get to bed, too late for me.. Anyhow, I got pretty far on HL2, hide the children, this will scare them silly, maybe.. here is some screen shots, I have a Radeon FireGL T2 (got it with Softimage), the screen shot is in HL2 with the highest setting (full reflections, 6x anisotropic subsampling, full textures, etc..) Also had 5.1 Stereo turned on. Its an awesome game, and with all that set it didn't slow down the CPU much.. Every puzzle is physics based, and what I said about the physics, its actually more accurate than what I had thought.. I spent about ten minutes moving a cadaver out of a electric chair, and the cadaver really did seem realistic, the IK was pretty precise.. Also the head-crabs ("Alien" inspired, Sigourney Weaver bite your head off) feel eerrieely like something fleshy when you hit it with the crowbar, it flops around, and if that weren't enough,there is the environmental sound of the crab falling over and the HDRI influenced anisotropic specular sheen coming off the underside of the crabs body.. The more interesting parts are when Eli shows her Dawg (robot that likes to play catch with very large objects.. Also spent about and hour in a swamp buggy skimming over acid lakes, unfortunately I only got to know where the screen capture was until the very end of the swamp buggy part.. The whole game is made to play through linearly and its tough not to go through it wrong, and each area emphasizes some thing you have to get familiar with, like using guns, grenades, driving the swamp buggy which is more like driving a pogo stick, and using the gravity gun.. That's about where I am now.. And you thought that there was just Alien influences here, I can name a few movies that this represents.. I really don't like violent and gross movies, but games are easier because its not graphic enough to scare your pants off.. Don't let the children touch this game, it would put them into convultions, maybe..

(5/22/05 9:20 PM): There is a style of music that should be called Syncapated Piano Rock..

(5/22/05 8:36 PM): Before playing games, just a note.. The movie Heros with Henry Winkler, the movie ends with "Carry On Wayward Son" from Kanasas.. The videos that end this way are bound to be collectors items because the new version, at the least the ones at blockbuster, doesn't.. And IT SUCKS! ARGH! This dates me, but I was 7 when that movie came out.. Oh well..

(5/22/05 7:50 PM): Music you probably never expected to find on rhapsody.. Well I didn't at least.. Jim Belushi and Dan Akroyd (r) (it didn't make sense until I remember Jim was john's brother, then I went Oh! Oh yeah.. well.. ) they make a good "Polk Salad Annie".. Oh and Hobbit.. Sounds like Rush, Triumph and Green Jelly (r).. Argh, ballroom music (r).. Argh even worse than ballroom!! 70s Loung Lizzard Music (r)...

(5/22/05 7:23 PM): Earthlink failed on my computer, so I'm switching over to thunderbird, turns out the pop3 instructions are hidden in their site, they really just do not want people to use something else other than their email package.. Well it doesn't work and I don't like picking through the registry, so I just changed email packages.. At least they allow it.. JUNO does too, but its tough to dig up the details (this is what Google is really nice for, do site searches by keyword). Oh yeah, BTW, there is a plugin for thunderbird/firebird that forces all content back through a Swedish Chef filter.. Smorgish Shorgish purkee pooder, dirkee slurph.. Ho ho ho ho.. Yep!!!..

(5/22/05 3:41 PM): Well Star Wars Episode 3 is sold out here, I can't sww the movie.. Makes me wonder why they are showing it only on one screen, dorks.. As for Mike Portnoy, I determined why his name sounded familiar, Gary Portnoy made the theme song to the TV Show "Cheers". Take time to listen to the original song, go to Gary Portnoy and hit "listen to radio" in rhapsody, and you will usually hear this song.. I which I could get URL's for radio stations on rhapsody.. Only the insiders like Rhapsody Raddish do, I guess.. I think whoever manages Rhapsody Raddish is either a friend or someone working on the inside of Rhapsody.. I'm not.. I'm just a music freak..

Oh now, I started listening to the Gary Portnoy channel and now I'm being tortured with Madonna.. Argh!!! She's a contemporary, but was he that much obnoxious?

I purchased a copy of Half Life 2, and have been mesmerized by the fragment shaders and semi-accurate physics, I say semi accurate physics because its not completely accurate, for instance try to stack barrels in real life into pyramids.. I think they handle some of the physics without the tangential momentum, so you don't get to through around much of anything that is asymmetric, its why most of the objects are cylindrical or box like, now is it aerodynamic, but you can lay objects sideways and stand on them, I'm stuck at the part of the game where I have to stack barrels in knee deep water to get through a wide hole in the wall (found it as 3.18 in this guide). I actually tried to get out through the air duct, and succeeded getting up there, I'm sure the designers got a lauch with that map because there is a power up at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel doesn't go anywhere but up into nothingness, but I got this far in three hours, I wonder how many were able to get that far in three hours. Assuming the map is not many times longer, I bet I get it done in a few days, ha! I picked the game up more just to learn Softimage, but found out from the message boards that Softimage is useless for making mods for Half Life 2, that everyone uses something called Hammer, Half Life's own mod tool.. I guess Softimage was just trying to boost sales of their application.. Well I guess I will try to make mods anyhow.. Maybe I can adapt blender to do them. The game market BTW, as was said, is about 10 billion, that's three times the music industry before mp3's, makes me wonder if musicians will start making video games now..

(5/20/05 7:59 AM): Like many, waiting until all the Star Wars Fanatics storm the theatre, to go to see movie.. Anything to avoid meeting Star Wars Fanatics, I will pay gladly. BTW, here is a paper on H.264 (def), its essentially MPEG-4 Part 10, much of the work these days for mpeg seems to be done as high quality for low bitrates, I can't really tell the difference between them but from what I understand it takes a keyframe and uses some motion vectors over a series of frames to push the content in the first frame around the view, much like how an oil painter would.. But sometimes technology is made unecessarily complex to guarantee nobody would even want to implement their own, its a psychological game that companies play by taking ordinary things and calling them "proprietary" just to attract investors.. This happened a lot during the dot-coms and it was funny to see CEO's refering to their portal as having proprietary technology. It's just a game. Mpeg-3 Audio is just Mpeg-2 audio with support for lower bit-rates (for modems), everybody uses mpeg2 audio, its just that mpeg-3 was the name of a codec that a individual made and distributed when people started coining the term for this compressed audio technology, however you would do fine to compress audio with a compiled binary of the source that IUMA was distributing to encourage people to upload their music to the IUMA site. That's where I got the source at the time, and used it to encode about 100 songs from a CD player on an SGI.. Then I made the SGI's into jukeboxes of sorts, I could have written a CGI for webservers I was running on them so that people could request music to play in the computer pod. It was just an amusement in 1996 when I was using this technology first. These days its just this big thing.. I can also remember waiting for the release of a MPEG video codec with audio support and methods of encoding video with audio.. In the early days you couldn't specify a bitrate, you had to specify I, P and B frame patterns, and then whatever bitrate you got, you got, the berkley video encoder (source code) wasn't limited like MPEG1, that was a commercial standard for video in hardware, its what the MPEG was designed to be, a way to put movies on CD's.. So your bitrates for audio and video were derived from the throughput of a CD player which is about ~192 Kilobytes per second (16-bit = 2 bytes, 2 * 48,000 bytes/per channel/per sec, 2 channels = 4 * 48,000 bytes/sec = 192,000 bytes/sec) . Mpeg1 Video + Mpeg1 Audio would allow a vendor to cram a movie like "Dances with Wolves" in a CD.. But the Mpeg1 standard was developed in the early 90s, before the Internet took hold, You can see how the crap hit the fan when the Internet got to be popular.. Even in 1996 there were sites distributing "Pearl Jam" bootlegs over Mpeg2 audio. The thing is the industry has been trying ever since to reclaim control over compressed video/audio content since the mid-90s, and the newer audio/video formats intend to leverage in proprietary technologies, licensing methods, ways to protect copyrights, encryption, however people and the industry can harness this energy and make money from it, either to develop codecs or to protect content creators. But fundamentally, many Codecs are essentially Mpeg1/Mpeg2 or Mpeg4 these days, some are plays on it, different arrangements, I personally am waiting for the content creators to embrace the release of studio reals as mp3's with multiple tracks, so you can mix your own content.. Something like this would inconvenience the distribution of compressed music and would encourage the distribution of music on DVD's.. Imagine storing the placement of instruments, virtually, in a 5.1 speaker configuration, with the potential to use a 32 speaker configuration, 2 speakers are not enough.. And as for mpeg video, the quality can get better, and lower bit-rates will benefit from the improvements made for lower bit-rates.. The key to content creators, in making money, release more data with your content.. Not more content, but more data.. Use more mics.. Distribute the studio reels.. Encode more video feeds.. MAke it nearly impossible to distribute video and audio content over the Net, and at least possible over DVD's.. If you can keep your content ahead of the net connections and the codec technologies, you will realize a greater market that is willing to pay for this quality and access.. I'm personally waiting for 3D, 5.1, music video content..

For example, take your 32 track reel, dump it to 4 AAC audio tracks, get some engineers to make a program that runs on Os-X and/or XP that takes these 4 feeds of AAC, 8 tracks per feed, and plays the audio over 5.1 speaker system with the possibility of 32 outputs, give the users a mixer board and a way to distribute the instruments through space, develop methods fo sampling instruments from the front, behind, to the side, inside, collect sound from the side of the artist's mouth, in behind the spit-guard, near the nose.. Collect multiple shots, at least one stereo 3D video shot at concerts. Try to preserve as much of the experience as is possible and feasible. If its only possible to store 30 minutes on a DVD, its the technologies fault if it can't keep up.. And if you need to expand the market, just reduce the content.. Its easier to reduce the content than it is to take something that was mixed down to stereo and extrapolate it to multiple output streams.. Also the use of proprietary media that works on Windows and Apple computers, adds value that is not easily extracted and replicated by counterfieter's.. The harder you can make it for them to replicate the media, the less piracy you will realize.. True, everybody in the world has your Stereo, 2 channel content, on their computers.. They do not, however, have your studio reels, from Jimmy Paige's solo guitar riffs in "stairway to heaven" to the harikrishna chants on a Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" album. There is still a lot that is unreleased, and still sellable.. But rememeber, no matter how much you encode, with these audio/video formats, the content is lossy, so the quality will never be good as the original, and it will lose more quality the more re-encoded it is. This is the reason all the piraters want the content to be in a more accessible format and not in something like Realvideo or WMV.

(5/19/05 2:01 AM): If you are ever in a _______ in New York on New Years Eve, its tough not to be in a ___________ in Manhattan especially on New Years eve, anyhow, if you do this is most likely what kind of music you will be singing (r).. Too bad they don't have Neal Diamond's Jazz Singer.. But I would have had a playlist of Van Morison's if I could recall his name, somehow my mind spits out "Thin Lizzy" which is not too far off. But Thin Lizzy is not what they will play in a New York ____________ on New Years Eve.. More those fun songs like Billy Joel's Piano Man or Neal Diamond's "Coming To America" or "Sweet Caroline". And you can bet every girl in New York knows the lyrics to Van Morison songs. Of course this is an easterner thing. In the south-west this is probably what would pass for _____________ music, but I wouldn't know never been in a ____________ in the south (r).. But for lyrics? Whoa, That's a Hard one, I'll have to think about that one.. Weezer? (r)..

(5/19/05 12:51 AM): Ever wonder what the video game Jackie Chan was playing at CES, here it is.. Though Jackie Chan is cool, I think this is a bit overblown considering its like a scaled down version of a DDR pad, for only two feet.. Its like obvious someone looked at a Playstation with the Eye Toy and DDR, and said "Sheesh, we can do that".. Half of what makes these videos funny is it fun to watch people make complete fools of themselves for Jackie Chan (wait 20 seconds, is that Tom Arnold?).. They need to do stuff like this more often at Electronics Shows, just for the entertainment value of the videos.. Say Lindsey Lohan, and one of these mats.. It's probably a toy manufactured in China, Am I good or what? I guessed at this just by looking at the console design, looks like a Chinese product. no wonder they got Jackie Chan.. Notice though, nowhere on SSD's site, the Xavix site, it says anything about it being made in China, it says its focusing on the American market expanding it from Japan.. Its incredibly easy to spot chinese products, just look for the sharp rounded corners and the cheap silver finish, usually no readout, lack of style, at very least its very small and may, just may have a LCD screen.. Makes me wonder if the New Apple iPod shuffle is Chinese Manufactured.. Cute, Apple puts their telephone number into the URL path so those who prefer to call will locate the number easily.. I think the reason the shuffle doesn't have a LCD screen is to make the iPod owners feel like their purchase of the hard drive version was not in vain. This is like when the executives in a company decide they are going to print a catalog in blue and white to prove to the creditors that they didn't spend a whole lot of money on the printing, when really the difference isn't that great.. Its a mind-game they are playing.. I can get a CD player with a LCD screen on it, even from china, that plays mp3's and will give my the ID3 tag info and even pre-buffer songs (if I'm not song surfing) and that CD player (as I've shown you) costs 20 bucks..

(5/18/05 8:57 PM): Whoa, was that Mandy Patinkin doing a commercial for Crestor? Note Mandy is the Inigo Montoya guy from Princess Bride. And he sings!! (r) BTW, this is not Glenn Frey (r), Glen lacks Mandy's chin.. BTW, The Eagles have removed their albums from rhapsody.. I guess they weren't making the kind of money they expected they would, same probably happened with Madonna. But I like the Eagles, but not enough to take notice, until now..

(5/17/05 4:55 PM): I was watching that "DUNE" Trailer again.. Quite a starstudded movie.. They don't make movies like that anymore.. Star Wars doesn't count. Let me see, Patrick Stewart, the guy that played Bluto in Popeye (also played a guard in Midnight Express), Sting (Roxanne!!! You don't want to put on the red light), who else Virginia Madison (I like her with an english accent), I wonder if that little girl is still alive - I wonder if she like knives (she has a cool part in that movie, being Paul's little sister, she's got that Exorcist voice too), I think a certain recent science fiction TV show had to be heavily influenced by that movie.

(5/17/05 4:36 PM): Know your place, if you are selling music. I like rhapsody because its convenient, but anyone with a Soundblaster-Live knows perfectly well how to record this stuff, its just not convenient.. Convenience is wy people buy stuff, its the new asset.. Know your place!

(5/17/05 12:34 PM): Who said techies don't produce anti-tech technologies? This one might help celebrities and millions of british peoples regain their privacy.

(5/17/05 1:16 AM): HL2 arrived, I'm trying it out.. Found that Kylie Minogue video that is sooooo cool.. Don't ask me how they do it, I believe they are making advanced use of something like a Z-cam and a computer controlled rig, but it could also just be clever compositing.. The street may actually not be in the shot, except for things like the props, this would let them layer stuff and play with it , but also notice a street light passes in front of you before Kylie dodges herself, that's so she can do teh same sequence several times before finally getting it right, she first passes in front so any screws will be lost in the composite, its really just a very clever choreography of steps.. Whereas all the replicated people are actul, not pasted in (because they interact, computer generated imagery can't interact, Kylie is in danger, though, of passing through herself, specially if they are using Z-buffering techniques. They probably also have z buffer data on the props in the background, so that Kylie can pass under ladders, behind cars.. What I'm saying is the car she passes may not be there. Its the euivalent of laying down audio track, just with video, and the content used to judge how its mixed is the Z-buffer track of each video. The reason I think they may be using a Z-cam is that Z-cam's have a limited depth of about 10 meters or so, so this would be the only kind of video where they could exploit the technology without hitting the limit of the depth. Another thing, they chose to do it on a day that was overcast, so therefore there are little or no shadows, so they don't have to worry about shadows draping over others in the scene.. I'm rethinking whether they used a Z-cam and not just clever compositing.. I doubt Kylie is in the scene with everybody else in the scene.. They are probably also using something like a light array around her, like something Paul Debevec made after coming up with HDRI. There may actually be one of her that is real, for the first run, but all the others seem to be composited under others in the scene, for instance before she gets to the street-light pole, one of her clones goes between two men, and the purportions are wrong so it looks strange.. Also on the first run she comes in contact with a lot of things and interacts, but her clones don't.

(5/15/05 11:47 PM): Great little photo archive here, see if you can name the musicians without looking at the names, I had a really hard time.. The easy one was America.. BTW, I thought for some reason David Paich was Jeff Porcaro, and that he was the drummer who died in that accident with the pesticide, that ended the TOTO group for a short time.. Thankfully not forever.. No it was Jeff not David, I have a way of writing improper sentences.. But I wonder why they haven't produced more great music, maybe its that I haven't listened to them (r).. Yeah that may be it.. Ooooo check it out Toto made a whole album of cover tunes, I juxtaposed it with the real songs for all but about two, boy I wish rhapsody had some elvis costello, I hate shuffling CD's back and forth between my car and computer.. David Paich BTW is the guy who did that wonderful DUNE soundtrack, which is not on rhapsody (I wish).. I loved that movie though some might have hated it.. The visuals were phenomenal and Stings performance was really good.. It had some of the best effects (mental and visual), the heart plugs gave me nightmares as a kid.. Anyhow, Patrick Stewart was in it (need I say more).. And the closing credits at the end.. I'm one of those nuts that collects sci-fi movies that reach cult status, but never worship the stuff.. I just really am inspired by it.. That inspiration just goes into my brain and nowhere else now, but I have ideas.. Anyhow.. if you want to see a good movie and have no preconceived notions about how a movie should be done and such, see DUNE, there is nothing like it.. I really wouldn't mind seeing another like it.. Now everyone all at once say "Muad'Dib", now say it with the sweat sucking suit and weapon that kills with sound.. I think this is where Kate Bush got her idea for that song "Experiment IV (r)". You know Muad'Dib would be a good name for a rock band, I mean killer names.. But nobody would ever get it unless they knew that was from that dune movie (v)..

(5/13/05 11:54 PM): Another lonely friday night, its friday the 13th, but was a pretty lazy day for me.. I didn't see any ghouls.. But I did watch my Paul McCartney DVD..

I don't know why it is I enjoy melow 70s musicians.. Maybe I long for days where times are more laid back and happy than they are these days..

Now for some music videos to relax to: Stumblin' In (v) and It's a wonderful life (v).. A little Gerry Rafferty (mp3).. And some Fredo Viola.. Wow I found an audio jukebox.. And a video jukebox.. Mike Portnoy, why does that sound familiar, isn't he the drummer for Toto? No that is Jeff Porcaro (sounded familiar), and a music shop that just gives a little bit more than a 30 second music clip.. Hey I like these guys, something like Queensryche, Genesis and Pink Floyd.. Boomtown Rats Remix (mp3)..

(5/7/2005 noonish): Do some drugs (lv). Great music for brainwashing people via TV (lv). Let Bush Senior Rock You (lv).

And Dance the Night Away (r)!! (5/6/2005 3:05 AM): Just a bit overdone, Freddie Mercury is turning in his grave. (I didn't know who Farrokh Bulsara was, until I found out it was Freddie, I guess dogs are more manageable in a music video than cats). This is Electric Six, and their seventh member (I noticed they have the background image selected at random, so this is the one I meant).. Serriously I never listened to Radio Ga-Ga this much from Queen, however I had a friend in College who was a dual Queen and Metalica fan, I don't know how he managed that since Metalica is nearly unlistenable, I was born around the time of Woodstock, so there was relatively a lot of non-metal, so call me an old fogey.. I knew what life was like a bit before Star Wars and Video Games and Computers, well it kinda sucked, but we had rock.

(5/5/2005 4:02 AM): Okay I need to go to bed, but I think I have proof that Steve Jobs is the son of Groucho and Karl Marx the king of Soup Nazis everywhere, in other words iPod stinks and can you imagine this is the same guy that came up with the blue box not suprising I guess, Bill Gates is an investor of Apples, this is like something he would do.. I WILL NEVER BUY AN IPOD!!! Or any highly leveraged mp3 player using Steve Jobs as a Poster Boy, for that matter, except CD players from China for 20 dollars from Target..

(5/5/2005 3:14 AM): Made another playlist, I'm getting bored.. Got some 70s New York Music, this is how I imagine New York would sound if it were portrayed as a sound.. Steely Dan and Billy Joel (r)..

(5/5/2005 3:00 AM): Another one of those stupid All-nighters.. Anyhow, can you see this.. I was pretty sure that the real video links on Rhapsody use Rhapsody as a proxy for the connection, if that's the case then you shouldn't be able to see this realvideo link.. If not, then you should be able to see it and I might be able to ferret more off on this site.. The Technical term for this method is called Tunneling, its fun if you have VNC and an SSH connection.. Ahhhhh So it does work, I got out of rhapsody and seems to work fine.. Well I will have to look around for more vides on Rhapsody I can post here.. Keep posted..

(5/5/2005 1:21 AM): Yuck who picks these videos? (lv) Well anyhow, this is pretty cool like Pink Floyd meets the Scissor Sisters, They would do good to pick up some moves from David Byrnes "Once in a Life Time" Video. .

(5/5/2005 1:01 AM): Boy I really dig The Bees Flash site (v)..

(5/4/2005 10:58): Added the Blue Man Group's I Feel Love to "Repetitive Song Pain" playlist, called "./playlists/StickyTunes.rpl" . Also I am using Googles Web Accelerator, if you hate the download times on my site, try using this.. Its already saved me 17.2 seconds, but mind you I have the worlds Fastest Internet Connection.. The Comcast salesman told me that the line reading was negative against against their delay compensation.. I get about 40KBps up and 450K up, something like that.. I believe that the purpose for this web accelerator is it will allow Google to better detect the popularity of sites and use that to weight search results more accurately, it also could allow them to filter out content, but its your choice whether or not to use them.. You can always turn it off.

(5/4/2005 10:30): Explain this.. Real's Rhapsody uses Windows Media Player to deliver Audio, and its own player for video. AOL, who owns Winamp, uses Realvideo for their player instead of Winamp's video player.. I like realvideo, but unlike Winamp Video and Windows MEdia Player, it will not play on a second ATI monitor.. Anyway, Here is the Blue Man Group with "I Feel Love" (v). I keep Wondering, is that Lisa Loeb? Oh Her Name is Annette Strean, She's French, Oh La La.. Well when I was living in Manhattan, I lived about ten minutes from the Blue Man Theatre.. Kicking myself for not having gone.. Kick Me.. I could have met Annette.. Oh Well.. Merci..

(5/4/2005): Real is about to release 3.0, I'm hopeing that I will get to continue my playlists, however I can see they are introducing new methods of echanging playlists, I know this is just a data mining scheme so they can register the trends and popularity of the artists. A big problem with online music sharing, as I've heard from an interview on CNN with lawyers backing the RIAA and a grassroots organization supporting online distribution of music, there is a lack of visibility to the artists of who their venue is, and how they can plan concerts for such a venue.. Determining the venue could be one way Rhapsody makes money, thus the need for a central place for people to share playlists and interests. Also people tend to value communities more than services, so it makes sense..

(5/3/2005): Added LaFemmeEstrange (r) - Three Decades {and a bit more} Of Strange Women (Nico,Kate,Marianne,Grace,Siouxie,Muses,Goldfrapp,etc.)

Sorry, Bjork is just too cute to be strange.. And PJ Harvey can't be classified. Garbage is like a more obscene version of Goldfrapp. Well these are the essentials..

(5/2/2005): Added "Best Of Best" sub blog, laid a whole mess of funk near the Top 100 playlists. Added a few more there too.

(5/1/2005): Added 1982 Top 40 playlist in the UK (look in the top 100 playlists), and yeah the mp3 player bit..

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