Month: January 2009

The panic attack at midnight mix

So my first recorded mix of 2009 and its a festival of hard beats and bleepy sounds. I would normally call it progressive trance but I'm fed up with the confusion between that and progressive, Which seems to be some kind of rock genre. So now I'm calling it Tech Trance. Anyway, whats important is the mix is pretty fast pace due to the introduction of a Rave classic (Put the bassdrum on by the ascendant masters) at the start which I also had to slow down by 10%. There's a bunch of new tunes which I've never played before in this mix including the show stopper Panic attack by Simon Patterson.

The Panic attack at midnight mix is available for download as a Mpeg3 too and is licensed under a creative commons nc-nd licence, obviously the tunes themselves are all rights reserved copyright. Enjoy!

  1. Put the bassdrum on – the ascendant masters
  2. a new dawn (virtual vault mix) – Steve Forte Rio
  3. smack – simon patterson
  4. shnorkel – Miki Litvak & Ido Ophir
  5. Rheninkraf – Oliver Klien
  6. Panic attack – simon patterson
  7. Pegasus (megaminds mix) – Mauro Picotto
  8. Body of conflict (cosmic gate mix) – Cosmic Gate
  9. Kink – Trentemøller
  10. Grasshopper (dance version) – Sander Van Doorn
  11. Coincidance (Trentemøller Remix) – Mathias Schaffhäuser
  12. first strike (signum signal 2004 remake) – Signum
  13. Interstate Emperors – Jeffed
  14. Kalopsia (Monogato's Filth Remix) – The Blizzard
  15. Lyra (leon boiler mix) – Leon Bolier Pres. Precursor
  16. The last pluck – Marcos Schossow
  17. strip search – simon patterson
  18. massive motion – M.I.K.E

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Playstation 3 or Xbox 360?

Current generation of consoles

I can't decide. They both have there advantages and disadvantages but I'm hoping the people out there will be able to help me.

So quickly a couple of things. Blu-Ray is a non-starter for me, I'm not interested and so being able to play back a HD disc source is not going to score the PS3 any points. The high price of the PS3 is off putting due in part to that Blu-Ray drive which I'm not going to use. I also don't need a media player replacement, I already have a Ubuntu box running XBMC and Boxee for Standard and High Def content across my network. Plus I have a Xbox which runs a older XBMC (need to upgrade it really) for backup even. I know I can stream stuff to the PS3 using Universial plug n play which is nicely built into my NAS box. The xbox 360 seems to require other less standard software to do anything with media.

Home on the PS3 also looks silly but so does the new dashboard on the Xbox 360. The PS3's online play is also very dubbious compared to Xbox Live but its free and seems to work ok with Little Big Planet.

On the game front, Little Big Planet and Wipeout HD are killer reasons to own a PS3 while on the Xbox 360 I'm loving Geometry Wars and Burn Out Paradise. I also hear Rez HD is on the Xbox 360 for a cheap download, and I got to say I like the idea of little mini-games like Geometry Wars which you can have a blast at for a while then put down again. I think the last game I completed was Max Payne on the PC.

I don't really get the difference between the Xbox 360 Arcade and Xbox 360 Premium, it seems once you buy a couple of games you might as well have bought a Premium package. The PS3 comes in many flavors, but the cheapest I've seen one for is 179 pounds for the 40gig version. HDMI is all good for me, which they both support now. I think the fact the PS3 seems to play/run unsigned code seems like a good thing to me. Yellow dog linux is running on it no problem while on the Xbox 360 it seems almost impossible to run anything on it besides signed code (hackers have been trying for years). But then again that was before the XNA team showed off Kodu which really interests me. But then again some people are saying Little Big Planet has that end covered off on the PS3. I'm not so sure.

I think this will come down to economics, if I buy a Xbox 360 on ebay, I might be able to get one for less that 100 pounds and that means more for my home cinema upgrade which needs to happen sometime this year. I was also considering if I was to get a Xbox 360 and PS2 that might be a good compromise.

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The Palm Pre

Palm Pre

So Palm unveiled the saver of the company, the Palm Pre. I have to say I quite like the pebble look of it, seems it would be nice to hold for long periods (something I got to say the ipod touch isn't good at). Its also got all the tech you need inside such as Wifi, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, some sort of 3g (Comes with EVDO, but 3G/HSDPA is planned for Europe in the future). The screen is a little disappointing after looking at the specs of the HTC Touch HD (3.1-inch 320 x 480 instead of the HTC's 3.8-inch 480 X 800 screen). The Operating system seems to be jazzed up to be something between the Android and iphone UI, so pretty with tons of transparency, etc but real multitasking like Windows mobile and Android.

One thing which wonders me is how close in design the Palm Pre is to the HTC Touch Dual.

HTC Touch Dual

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My New Year Resolutions 2009

So I've already done a review of 2008 and I see everyone's doing there resolutions, so its time for my 2009 resolutions.

  1. Go skiing on real snow

    Yeah believe it or not I can Ski, I learned over a summer holiday on a scheme called Splash in Bristol. Now to be fair that was like 12 years ago but I think I can still do it. But I've yet to try it on real snow, only dry slope. People tell me its easier on Snow, so I should be skiing down the black run before you know it.

  2. Work and execute a Alternative Reality Game

    I'm still a fan of these things, and want to build upon what we already had last year but maybe change some of the goals to something much more local and spreadable.

  3. Build up a better routine
    So as most of you know, I'm a night person. I tend to ponder, read and write at night and don't feel the effects of being tired till very late. So because of that I'm going to bed at times when people are starting to wake up. This isn't right and I'm now vowing to go to bed before 2am every night and get up before 10:30am every day. This means I should build up a good routine and people can start to expect to see me more often. I think its also about layering the routines on slowly one by one instead of making sweeping changes.
  4. Work smarter, with less pace and less stress
    This is important because although the easy thing to say is I want to spereate my work and play life, I think thats frankly bull (as Nicky says its all very grey) and I enjoy doing what I do at work. So I want to find a way to do much less of the boring stuff in my own time. This is also a extension of Use the technologies around me better, because I want to start paying for more services which save me time or do good things for me. Currently I pay for Plaxo, Basecamp, Flickr and a few others. On the pace side I want to slow down less urgent stuff like replying to emails.
  5. Go out more and be live more heathly
    So this time its not just about Comedy clubs but also about going out clubbing. My experience at Gatecrasher on new years eve reminded me how much I love Trance music. Man you can't beat that combination of rhythm, 4 on 4 beats and melodies. So I've decided I should try going to more, even if it means going alone (but if anyone wants to come along, give me shout).
    I'm also living more heathly, since I've moved to Manchester. Not only am I walking everywhere but I've never had takeaway delivered to my flat. If I don't feel like cooking, I'll go out to a restaurant instead and even after clubbing or a night on the town my flat is close enough to go home and cook up something quickly. I'm also playing Volleyball regularlly and hope to pick up Basketball again soon. So its all go on that front already.
  6. Be more daring with matters of the heart
    I'm a confident guy but don't take enough risks, so thats going to change this year. Don't worry I'll be a perfect Gentleman. Sometimes…
  7. Start organising Werewolf and Werewolf+ nights in the North
    Yep this one is simple but also it would nice to develop Werewolf+ as I'm coining it as. I got talking to Cristiano about my thoughts for extended Werewolf rules and between us we came up with something quite interesting but we never quite wrote it down or tried it out. So this year, I think we should actually develop it, write it up and let it spread.
  8. Build a web application
    So theres a couple of small scale web 2.0 applications which I'd like to build, this was why I was trying to learn Python and even Air. But I've decided its not about the language. I think some of my realtime web mashups can be done using my existing knowledge in XSL. Plus I've been looking at Cocoon 2.2 and 3.0, its seems you can build very powerful apps which are deployed without the usual cocoon madness. Aka I can create little webapps using nothing more that XSL and XML.
  9. Blog every film I watch
    I watch and own a ton of films, but I watch them like I chew bubble gum. So I'm going to try blogging each one even if that means mentioning them on a Microblogging service. I'll try and tag them with hashes or the like, so maybe I can later pull all my reviews together or see all the movies I've watched over the course of a month or year.
  10. Read more
    So I bought a ipod touch for reading ebooks and RSS. And to be fair I'm reading a ton more RSS thanks to the ipod and Newsgator. Hopefully the ebooks won't be far behind, but I do need to find a good source for the latest stuff like the new Thomas Friedman book. I was going to suggest I read before bedtime but that never works. So when ever I got a spare moment, out pops the ipod and off I go reading, neato.
  11. More Trance music
    I love trance music, I really love it. So it comes as no surprise that I'm thinking not only should I be out clubbing more but I should be listening and mixing more.
    I've recently found that almost every trance dj have there own podcasts, which is usually a mix. So its like getting a mix tape every week from the best djs in the world. For example here's Gareth Emery's , Armin Van Buuren's (currently number one dj in the world by the way) and Tiestos podcasts. I'm also thinking I could get back into djing live now I got the Pacemaker. So I'm hoping to play live in front of a clubbing crowd by the end of 2009. In the meanwhile I'm also looking into djing at smaller parties, festivals and online radio. I mean the pacemaker gives me huge flexiblity, I could dj out of a moving car if I wanted to.
  12. Lots more graphics
    Believe it or not, I use to be a designer or am a designer. I find diagrams and visuals useful to understand and to communicate. I don't know why I've taken to writing a lot more over the last decade. Maybe its just the medium or something. Anyway, I'm going to do a lot more work in one of my fav open source app – Inkscape. And I've recently started playing with POV Ray again. POV Ray or Persistence of Vision Raytracer is a amazing piece of software. It uses text files to create scenes that are Raytraced not Rendered. (Theres a very important difference between the two). The best thing about Povray is that it runs on every system and I can render scenes of higher that HD rez in seconds on my 2ghz laptop (unfortually it still only supports single processors right now).

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The Pacemaker v2 is coming soon

I could have put money on my prediction. I knew the 120gig Hard drive of the Pacemaker version 1 was too big. Currently I have 17gig of tunes on it and another 14 gig of tunes backed up in a different location on the same device. Don't get me wrong, we're still talking about 1500+ songs with a average length of 6mins each. Anyway, it still looks like the same device but they have redone the UI of the device [theres a short video from CES 09] to make it more quickly usable for new users. Auto beat match is like a major no no in the world of the dj. Version 1 had a BPM counter but it wasn't automatic. It seems one of the major changes is the automatic application of this feature. I don't quite know how pro-amateurs and pros will take the pacemaker v2 because the 1st version did come scrutiny for making mixing skill-less but they quickly found out it didn't. Either way, I'm hoping the UI changes will be a firmware update for the V1 Pacemakers. I checked for a Firmware today but nothing, however the forums seem to be on fire with the news.

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Pay us to remove the DRM

I seriously don't believe this…

Apple has dropped DRM from iTunes — and is offering to remove their DRM from music you already bought for the low, low fee of $0.30 per song.

Why the hell should people who have paid for there music legally have to pay again to take the DRM off? I can't work out what's worst, buying DRM music or having to pay again to have the DRM taken off. Someone is taking the living piss out of the consumers who try to stay on the straight and narrow path.

Actually this reminds me of something else I saw the other day. Considering a life of crime by Euan Semple. Euan talks about how iPlayer and Audiable's restrictions are weakening his grip on the straight and narrow. Hey no wonder Usenet usage has grown exponentially. There's also estimates (not from the BBC of course) that the recent special of Top Gear was watched by over three times the amount of people online and outside the UK that on tv and iplayer inside the UK.

I got to say I also don't understand the point of paying 10 pounds a month for higher quality streams from iplayer. Something jars with my net neutrality thoughts, specially when I'm already paying over the odds for premium bandwidth and most isp's are not even giving you what they advertise let alone tricking you with there acceptable use policy. 

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A month into the Apple iPod Touch experience

Everyone knows i'm not the biggest fan of Apple products and services. So it was a shock when I went out and bought a Apple iPod Touch. I struggled from day one to do anything with it except turn it on due to the crazy notion that you must pair it with iTunes before it will actually work at all. There's a ton of tweets I sent out of frustration of this process. But how have I been doing since?

Well I tend to carry it with me everywhere because it slips into my pocket really well. I did have a shock when I saw the Sony eBook Reader on sale for 189 pounds the other day because I was thinking hummmm maybe i'd be better off with that. But then its not as portable and although it has a RSS reader, I doubt it can cope with my requirements.

The iPod Touch's shining and worst feature is the Apple App store. Its good being able to download apps quickly over a Wifi connection but its also painful to search (25 items at a time) and there's not enough information for somethings. For example I was looking for a decent RSS reader and the only way to really tell the difference was to try them out. So I tried out the Free ones and then spent 1.19 pounds (the only money I've spent on the App store to date) on a pay one which I used for 2 days.

Its also worth noting that many app authors create a Free version for you to download to get around the lack of a demo option on the app store. On Windows mobile you get apps like PC apps, demos which are time locked or cut down till you enter a serial number.

Then I switched over to Netnewswire because of its ability to sync with Newsgator on the web and on my Windows mobile phones. So I never end up reading the same news twice. But now how do I get my 1.19 pounds back for the app which I hardly use?  I'm also upset about the choice of ebook readers, maybe I need to pay out a load of money to test the paid for versions. But so far each ebook reader has its own storage container, so any new apps can't see the already uploaded ebooks!!! Yes maybe someone might create a decent ebook reader, but how would I ever know?

Multitasking on the iPod touch is painful!!! I hate this device for this thing. Here's a example of why, so I see a good news item and I want to email it to someone. I click the send via email button and it launches the mail app which I have setup. I send the email to the person (its usually stored in the outbox because I'm not online) then I have to click the one button to go back to the app menu then click the netnewswire icon again to re-start netnewswire. I have to do this everytime I want to send a message from Netnewswire and I got to say it becomes a bit tiresome after a while. Some real multitasking wouldn't go a miss, specially when I decide to have a ebook open and want to update my rss. Or even during the night, when I got the alarm set and want to use the ipod as a bedside night clock but also pull down rss during the night time.

I still can't put music on the device even if I wanted to because I'm not using iTunes and nothing I've found on Linux supports the iPod Touch v2 firmware even Hipo, Rhythmbox, Amarok, etc. When I connect it via USB it comes up on desktop as a camera device which Fspot wants to manage although it doesn't actually have a camera.

The keyboard input is still painful to use for me and I generally dread putting in my password to get updates from the app store. I also got to say the way it asks you if it can use your location is good but it would be nice to have a don't ask me again option. For all the fuss about the multi-touch I have used it a couple of times in my current ebook reader to zoom in a bit. Some apps like the first RSS reader I had don't even allow you to do it so its a real inconsistent experience. Something I'm sure Apple would love to stomp out.

The Wifi can be spotty too, sometimes my Windows mobile devices can see wifi that the iPod doesn't, but whats worst is if you get a wifi point which requires web page authentication like BT Openzone, The Cloud, Tmobile, etc. Safari will not attempt to navigate to that holding page. Instead it sits there like a lemon moaning theres no internet connectivity.

So overall, the iPod Touch makes a reasonable RSS reader device. Its true I'm reading tons more RSS that ever before but the move to Newsgator also had its part to play in that (although now i'm looking for a Linux Newsgator compatable reader). The screen makes a good ebook reader but the software is far off the mark. The best I can find can open pdfs and text files. I then have to use another app for chm ebooks and another one for .mobi ebooks. The first one doesn't even support reformatting of PDFs, so you can't really zoom in for that super fast reading. Once this is solved, I'll be happy and the ipod touch will have done everything I've bought it for. Although I got to say if ebook reader hardware got better and more open, I'll trade in the ipod touch no problem.

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HMV now stock the Pacemaker

HMV now stock the Pacemaker

In a very surprising move, Tonium has done a deal with HMV to sell the Pacemaker on there site and in selected stores. This is great news, because finally the device will be available outside of the pro dj shops and in the hands of the general public. I do however wonder if people will understand it without some direction or some time in such a busy shop? Oh well its yours for only 399 pounds now, which isn't bad if you consider how much I paid for mine back in May 2008. At least I can claim braggin rights with number 211.

Oh if you've ever wanted to see whats actually in the pacemaker, someones actually taken it apart [1] [2]. Here's how to do it.

The case is held together by two sets of pins on opposite sides.

If you attempt this yourself, gently pop one side off, then even more gently wiggle the other side off. If you've ever yanked a laptop hard drive, you know the side-most connector pins will get bent if you rush it.

The twin chips are each 512mb of RAM. The spotted one is possibly the Freescale i.MX31L. The spots run to indicate moisture damage. The uppermost chip is audio power management. I didn't look underneath the hdd's ZIF connector as it's really fragile.

The USB and phones boards are tightly secured to the back piece. All of the jacks are snug against the pc boards and i didn't notice any weak solder points.

Looking at the front piece, you can see that everything is screwed tightly to the chassis and backed up further by the hard drive and battery. This means no buttons to break off and push in and nothing to jiggle loose.

Beautiful work Tonium.

As expected its pretty straight forward because the guys behind it only had off the shelf “standard” components to work with. There's already talk about replacing the Samsung HS122JB hard drive with a ZIF comptable Flash Drive on the forum. But the biggest challenge is software it seems. People are trying to build replacement ways to get music on and off the device without the editor. The best attempt so far is the Pacejacker software, which is written in Adobe Air and allows you to alter the song names, genres, etc without touching the files. I'm convinced once this device gets more into the public, your going to see much more hacking on it.

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A few points about going clubbing

I love going clubbing, everytime I go, I remember what I'm missing in this weekend world. Anyway, there's a few things which do bug me about the experience. And seeing how I just got back from Gatecrasher NYE in Bristol's Syndicate Club, I thought I'd share a few of them before going to sleep for most of New Years day.

  1. I don't like it when I go to a club and the bouncer/door person looks at me and asks if I know what's on tonight. This has happened at a few places including Gatecrasher, where the door man asked me and without letting me answer started jumping side to side clicking his fingers saying something about it being a hard house night. I replied with “ummm no its a trance night.” And he says “all the same to me…”
  2. I don't understand why the door people make a big fuss about whats in my little bag but fail to check my pockets or even do a quick body search. If I was carrying drugs why would I put it in my bag? And a weapon could be tied into the lining of my motorcycle jacket easily.
  3. I don't understand why I MUST check my bag into the cloakroom but woman are allowed to carry huge handbags around with them?
  4. I don't like being followed through a club like I'm public enemy number one. And if your going to watch me, don't stand beside me or just behind me, its too obvious and surely a hour or so of doing must be boring, even if you swap now and then with another.
  5. Plastic bottles are good, they stop people killing each on the dancefloor, woman can wear baare feet and club generally. But they make a terriable mess on the dancefloor because they get slidey when crushed
  6. What is it with Lazers, there amazing but only on for 2mins max at a time and there no longer pointed towars the crowd. Even from a safe distance. And whats with the lack of programmes?
  7. The guy who stands in the toilet all night. I don't like it, there always usually african and get abuse from drunk people. I also sometimes just want to get out of the stinking mens toilet as fast as possible but can't because I can't dry my hands till the guy gives me a paper towel and then I need to leave a tip or be rude. In actual fact, that exchange is a influencing trick, where someone does something small for you and then you reicplicate at a much higher cost that the first action.
  8. I don't expect to get the piss taken out of me on a new years eve when getting a taxi back home. They wanted 40 pounds for a journey (town to Fishponds) which is shorter that the journey I took 2 days ago (Clifton to Fishponds) which cost about 15 pounds. In the end I walked from town to Eastville because I also missed the night bus which only came once every hour
  9. What stupid rule is it it that you can't use a dayrider (all day all buses faire) on a night bus, the following morning. Bristol sort out the public transport
  10. Why make a back door exit into a smoking area in a club? The cold air blows into the club and it starts to smell smokey again. This is not good, at least put something between the outside and inside. I've gotten so use to going clubbing and coming home smelling slightly sweaty but not like I've just walked through a forest fire.

That will do for now

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