LeRoi Moore
(1961 - 2008)
An important part of music went with you.
Archive for the 'Music' Category
So, I helped Mike with getting new ringtones for his iPhone 3G without paying the ridiculous $2 per tone. Well, the system I showed him works just fine, but only for the Mac. I found an easier way that as far as I can tell works. Unfortunately, I don’t have an iPhone 3G (yet) to test this, so I’m going to show you guys the video and have you guys tell me whether or not it works.
When I followed this procedure, sure enough, I have a 30 second snippet of a Bad Religion song in my Ringtones list. I did this on iTunes 7.7.1, but like I said, I don’t have an iPhone to put the ringtone on to, so try it out and tell me if it works for you.
Now, I’m going to try to edit a song down with Audacity and see if it works that way too. Hold on a sec.
Yeah, I did it. Turns out though, that Audacity won’t output to AAC, so I exported the clip in MP3. Generally, I export the audio as the same filetype and bitrate as it was imported. Then I used dBpoweramp Music Converter to convert it to AAC and changed the filename to m4r. Maybe the video’s method is a bit easier, but I like to have a lot of control over my ringtones.
Good luck and let me know how it goes.
I’m not really going to talk about things that have been happening to me because, really, I’ve been on spring break and sitting at home doing nothing. Having no friends really sucks.
I will talk about a game real quick. Dave, two days before he left for Kosovo with no Wii, purchased Super Smash Bros. Brawl. This Wii game is essentially a shit-ton of Nintendo and other characters in a fighting game. Really, it isn’t my cup of tea and I sucked hard core at it. Playing as Link and unlocking Snake was fun, but really, beyond that, I didn’t have a ton of fun. Granted, I can see how this game can be a lot of fun if you like doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. Not for me. At least, not for me in a fighting game.
Other than playing the on and off game here and there, I have mostly been focused on setting up collections and such. I went over how I cataloged my DVDs, games, and books. I finally finished tagging and deleting my music. I deleted a good chunk of music that I don’t listen to or was severely confused as to why I had it in my collection. The tool I used was Mp3Tag. This program will read the ID3 (or other type of) tags on your media and give you an opportunity to change it. The super convenient part was re-tagging whole folders. As I have my music organized by artist and album, it was easy for me to load up a whole album, look up that album on the internet and have Mp3Tag import that information and apply it to the files. Some of the tag sources will even import cover art for the album. When it was all said and done, I had three or four albums that the software couldn’t find cover art for. I looked these up on the web and imported it into the program and boom. Then, I imported all of the files into my iTunes library and now my iPod has cover art for every album and song in my collection. Everything is all organized and makes me a little happy on the inside.
I’m sitting here trying to think up other things to write about and really, I don’t have a whole lot. I think I need a hobby or something that will take my mind off of my friends or lack thereof or how they have been influenced by the actions of others. Something I did notice is my friendships with Adam and Steve have both changed. It’s ok with me. I just keep thinking about how would I go about making new friends. Really, I have not idea and the nature of people in the Broadcasting degree field is MUCH different than the nerdy geek that I happen to be. Maybe when I start my crusade against the lack of mobile learning and/or converged access to information, I might meet some more people with the same interests as me. Though, I think the biggest problem is that I think older and am older than a lot of the others I attend class with. Maybe because I’ve been going to college for too damn long. Maybe I should get into more extracurriculars. I don’t know. It’s tough for someone who is socially awkward. I really do think that if I get a position at the Apple Store, things will change.
You know. With my interest in video and computers, maybe I should combine the two. I mean, still focus on video production, but also add computer science. I think I will change my minor to computer science. I’ll start at the beginning of the minor and make no presumptions that I know what I’m doing. Hopefully I will learn something this time. I’m not expecting to be a hardcore coder, but at least I will have a good idea of what would be possible with code and a direction to start going with it until I find someone (like my brother-in-law) with the proper skills and drive to help me bring my ideas into fruition. Yeah. That sounds like a great idea.
via Rock Band. During a live performance in San Francisco, Coulton brings three people on stage including Leo Laporte of TWiT and Veronica Belmont, the host of Mahalo Daily. I bet that was an awesome concert and a fantastic time on stage.
Jonathan Coulton performs “Still Alive” in Rock Band from Joy Stiq on Vimeo.
Lexy and I just got back from a Weird Al concert in Kansas City. It was very fun and very awesome. The only bad thing was that since the concert had its venue changed from a hall in Kansas to one in Missouri, we didn’t get the seats we paid for. Our tickets were for the original venue and they were honored, but when we went to sit, it turned out that we had to pretty much fight for a seat in a “general admission” style area in the orchestra area. Both Lexy and I were so disappointed and upset that we almost left the concert and demanded our money back. Gladly, we stayed and the show was fantastic. Not as good as the concert I went to in St. Louis during his Poodle Hat tour, where we sat front row center, but still a very fun experience. They did allow photography, but sadly we forgot our camera and my phone only did so much. None of the pictures of Al and his band turned out very good, so I won’t be adding them to my gallery. I am kind of sad about this, but at least I have the memory of the concert and the very blurry pictures. One thing about the concert that was so god damned awesome was during the song “The Saga Begins” he had a line of Storm Troopers line up and dance to the song. Darth Vader and Boba Fett were also there. Super sweet. Super sweet. He also, shortly, wore a t-shirt that said “Atlantic Records Sucks,” which Lexy and I found very amusing.
Great concert and Weird Al remains my favorite music artist.
I went with Dawn to her friend Brandon’s birthday party last night and I met some interesting people. They showed me the band Dragon Force. They are pretty bitchin’. Their guitar playing and drum playing are so badass. I will post a couple of the music videos here. I warn you, prepare to get your face rocked off.
[youtube vDesqj7HOgA]
[youtube Ywxm6zLEjFY]
That lead singer totally sounds like the lead of Journey. Tell me I’m wrong.
I think I like The Who.
Yeah. I heard one of their songs on an episode of House. What of it?
I need to do more research, but I like Baba O’Riley. You can listen to it over on Blogmusik.net. Try to find the one from The Ultimate Collection, it sounds better. I wish their embeddable Flash player worked. Oh, and forget all that crap in the song about a teenage wasteland. I don’t really give a rat’s ass about all that. The variety of sounds in the song is pretty amazing to me. I was going to use “cacophony,” but it doesn’t fit as I actually thought to look that word up and get a precise definition of it’s meaning.
I need to do more research on this The Who issue. Also, bed is good. Yeah… I also need a shower. Damn cable guy and their early morning arrivals.
First, a real quick thing about Thunderbird 2.0. If you like Thunderbird as your email client (and if you use FireFox, you should), you should check out Thunderbird 2.0. It has a few new features that I ran into, but I haven’t been able to play around with it very much. There is a neat little live search function you can use to find a particular email quickly.
As for our TV situation, that got fixed. I spent a good chunk of yesterday morning on the phone with a Samsung service tech. Well, actually it was a guy from a local TV repair shop that happened to be a certified Samsung repair center. We determined, pretty convincingly, that that problem was not with the cable to the TV or the TV itself. That left just one thing: the DVR. So, I got online and Live Chatted with a couple of Charter techs who probably live in their cubicle in India, but who knows. They sent a “signal” to my box, but wouldn’t tell me what it did. So, I followed their directions and waited 15-20 minutes and power cycled the box. That means I turned it off… then turned it on. Ha, I’m hilarious. Well, it didn’t fix the problem. So, I scheduled a service call. Well, around 6:30pm (18:30), Lexy and I went to dinner at Mexico Lindo with Dave and Natasha. Dawn was supposed to go with us, but she stayed home (not letting us know she wasn’t going until the last minute, which is annoying as we all know) because she was sick. Then we get back and she went to a gay meeting. *Sigh* Whatever. People are stupid. Well, when we got back, I did some research on my DVR, a MOXI box. I checked my software version (3.2 vs. the most current 4.1) and sighed because Charter isn’t about being up to date. Then I noticed the line problem was gone. I checked my one minute of footage I recorded that showed the problem amazingly well and it wasn’t there. I guess the software update took around four hours to actually employ itself. So, I called Charter to see if there was anything that I could do to get a better DVR, one with more hard disk space. No… of course there isn’t. If I had the 4.1 version of MOXI software, I could plug in an external HDD via a USB 2.0 port AND have a wireless extender in my bedroom. Such is not to be, I guess. Apparently Charter is planning on upgrading the MOXIs to 250GB HDD versus the alleged 80GB in there. We’ll see how THAT goes. If TiVo didn’t have a monthly subscription, we’d probably get one of those. Damn monthly subscriptions for shit that’s free. You know what you pay that monthly subscription for? Channel Data. That’s it. You know, the channel list that Windows XP Media Center Edition can do for free? Yeah. Thank you capitalism. Thanks.
The last, most important thing is about Internet Radio. It is dying thanks to SoundExchange and The Copyright Royalties Board (CRB). There is a significant increase in royalty rates coming on May 15. This will up the royalties to:
2006 - $.0008 per performance
2007 - $.0011 per performance
2008 - $.0014 per performance
2009 - $.0018 per performance
2010 - $.0019 per performance
That may not seem like a lot, but consider this: that channel has to pay for each song AND each person listening to that song. Each person listening is considered a “performance” of that song, so the channel has to pay per “performance.” Here’s the kicker, the rate increase is retroactive. So, the channels will be billed for the new rate all the way to the beginning of 2006. Not really fair, if you ask me. Recently an attempt for an appeal over the new rates was denied by the CRB, so it appears they are really excited about getting more money until these channels have to shut down because they can’t afford a triple rate increase.
What can be done? Well, because most of the recording companies are part of SoundExchange, they have a huge following and lobby in DC. Internet radio customers have to write their Congressman. So, if you want to help save Internet radio go to Savenetradio.org. Save Net Radio! You love it and you know you do.
of Michael Jackson. The man could fucking dance like a motherfucker. Who cares what he allegedly did with kids? He never had a childhood and the situations, from what I’ve read were completely misunderstood. Whatever you think happened, you cannot deny that the man who popularized the Moonwalk was a bad ass and had some pretty cool songs.
[coolplayer width="480" height="380" autoplay="0" loop="0" charset="utf-8" download="0" mediatype=""]
“Billie Jean”
[/coolplayer]
You can’t deny it. The Moonwalk is the best fucking dance move ever. There is not a single situation where you can’t apply the Moonwalk. Go ahead, think about it for a minute. I’ll wait.
Told you. There isn’t one.
Just think for a minute. You’re in a job interview, you finish answering the questions, you stand up, shake hands, and promptly Moonwalk out the door. Boom, you rocked their world. You get off the coach, go into the kitchen to get a soda or something. Oh, damn, you forgot something. Boom, Moonwalk your ass back in that kitchen and get what you need. You’re at your own wedding. Moonwalk down the aisle. Get your groomsman and bridesmaids to do the Thriller at your reception while you’re at it.
I started listening to the Blue Man Group album “The Complex” this morning and the first song, Above. My reaction to this song went like this, “Holy sweet Jesus of Nazareth… this is awesome!” I’d post the song in my little audio player plugin, but I think that might be illegal somehow. Check it out.
