Month: March 2004

The future of music, its digital because its remixable…

Warning this record label pays radio stations to keep independent music off the air - downhillbattle.org

This ties directly into my digital mixing debate in some way, not worth getting into right now. Anyway, I didnt mention anything about the grey album. Shame on me, my mind was too focused on the EUCD I think. Anyway, if you havent heard about it check it out.

But it brings up the old issues of sampling and fair use but this time its war…
With Jay-Z Construction Set, I douht this will die down too soon. Really interesting post about the whole area and how the industry would benefit from the videogame content creation model. Cant help think this links to companys like SonyEricsson encoraging people to produce content while others prefer you only to recieve. Creative Commons also did a huge feature on it and there are still comments coming in on alternatives viewpoints.

My own view is shared with Yoz. I actually remember using the samples on my ST using the mono mastersound sampler. Not saying it was as impressive though.

UK band The Shamen also did this back in 1991 with their single “Progen 91 (Move Any Mountain)”, the CD of which contained most of the raw samples used in the track, calling it a do-it-yourself remix kit. It's more impressive when you bear in mind that they were a pretty popular band at the time and the song was a top ten hit.

Interesting enough Yoz talks about the remixable form of Cory Doctorow's Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom. Oh had fun reading about Dance dance revolution comps going on in London. Another viewpoint on my digital mixing point of view maybe? Need to write the damm post soon…

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No no, what are you doing?

I love the BBC, I use to hate the idea we pay a TV licence fee. But we get so much good for such a nice price. Also dont get me started on Community vs… Anyway, I'm a little ignoyed that I missed the last AIGA meeting. But I've only just heard about the BBC iMP through these blogs. And I'm kind of shocked there using Microsoft Windows media with DRM! Oh my… This isnt what Greg dyke was talking about surely? By the way you get some odd results looking for posts in this area. However I do hope at the same time someone works on a 14day EPG for Freeview.

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I’m hacking it…

I was reading pvrblog.com, for the review of snapstream 3. As the review on slashdot wasnt all that I feel. Been thinking of turning my linux box into a dual boot with snapstream, then again I've been thinking of mythTV too but nothing about it yet. However I'm also interested in the new replayTV stream option which I spotted in Xbox media centre, by the way I got the March release which is even smoother. Anyway was reading about that too while looking for my old entry about live streaming to the xbox all that time ago.

When I spotted me hack, youhack we all hack. Which linked to mehack. I started scanning, and I thought to myself this guy knows what he's talking about, this blog is going on my feeds. I mean come on first post – xbox media center is the best there is, i'm already hearing that… then I see the second and third posts, overclocking megadrives and turning your archos into a rockbox, and I'm left thinking, there bring linux to the ipod? Anyhow I was well impressed and started thinking, I need to do more hardware hacking… Maybe follow the lead of some of my students who bought the Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks. I need to check out the ton of links which I have passed over to write this entry.

Oh man, forget the new media2go, gonna find a cheap Archos and load up this nice open firmware. Hello! what the heck – DVArchive, Virtual ReplayTV for your PC. I so need to get my hands on a cheap ReplayTV box if they work over here in the UK. Going to wait out on getting a Freeview PVR box now.

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Nokia does your Life and blogs

Dear friend of mine (SarahK), has been working on Lifeblog. Now theres little information on this service at the moment except a mention on the feature and a sneak preview on BBC. Maybe this Nokia turning on its heels about people generated content? Who knows, but I douht it unfortually. Will be interested to see it working though, wonder if Nokia are going to run somekind of service or will it link into another social network or blogging service? Still think SonyEricsson may have the upper hand with there camera come phones and the services which will come with it, look out Kodak, there after your digital market.

Talking of which techdirt has some great pieces regarding the above in different ways. First up SonyEricsson and my Kodak comment, the lines are blending. Kodak are sueing Sony? Enough said about this for now. The other one is good and bad news for sarahk, better interfaces needed for mobile phones. How on earth can they patent touchscreen mobiles? Hello you not seen the Ericsson T380? all of 4 years ago? And theres been plenty of others. I'm shaking my head just thinking of it.

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If: the lights go out, were pretty much fcuk’ed…

IF logo with black birds flying

Yeah its official were fcuked. Most of the power supply in England will come from northern europe or/and russia by 2010, says the BBC docu-drama. Been reading up about this anyway before the programme and I seriously thought we might be ok. However were not, wind power needs backup, which leads to gas. Coal burning is too much money because you need to put huge expensive filters on the pipes. To quote It would be like putting a level3 catylistic converter on a clapped out car.. While Nuclear power stations are being shutdown more and more, and could take as long as 15 years to turn back on. More facts here. Once again, we need to do something about it now, but people are too focused on other issues, kind of reminds me of the lack of media coverage to the EUCD. Even though IF was on BBC2, it was well advertised, on at primetime 9pm and had a good talk afterwards chaired by paxman. If only this was true of other issues…

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Too little, too late: EUCD passed

EU backs tighter rules on piracy. Its all too late… Here are some more stories. Anti-piracy directive could expose consumers
Can you believe this all went through without much media coverage? All the web finds nothing. Yahoo news. Altavista news. Shame on you searchlores.

Thank god for slashdot. and ip justice.

I saw this while browsing – European Union Copyright Directive lecture. and this is great – Why America’s Mistake is Europe’s Future. Can you trust your computer? by Richard Stallman. Lawrence Lessig's comments. And finally spiked-online has a debate in the same area, while I was reading Lawrence again…

Some more fall out later after the date. EU Tightens Copyright Laws

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A way not to do digital mixing

Following on from my blog about taking advantage of digital for what it is not copying vinyl mixing. And more material for a nice long write about digital mixing.
Hercules Audio – DJ Console Portable DJ Mix Controller & Multi-Channel Audio. Cheap but still the same vinyl forumula. Except maybe the midi in and out could be used for something decent later on with good software. The pure digital opticial and coaxial SPDIF in and out also helps quite alot to keep it ahead of the standard dj mixers. However, if I ever see this piece of crap ever again it will be far too soon. Blame NTK for my rant today

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Topping up the TV

Top up TV

Seems channels such as E4, UKTV and Discovery will be coming back to Freeview sooner than expected in the form of TopUpTV. I would say eight pounds a month isnt too bad for 10 extra channels. However I would prefer to pay something like one pound per channel. Basicly the channel line up is E4, UKTV Gold, Discovery, Cartoon network, Discover H&L, TCM, UKTV food, Bloomberg, Boomerang and UKTV style. So a real mix bag of channels. I'm only interested in E4 and the Discoverys. Anyway there doing a trial run soon, so I may consider it, would be better if I had the twinview PVR box really.

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Xbox mediacentre another look…

The Project Mayhem skin for xbox media center alpha

Kevins been chipping his xbox today, some guy at the local computer fair which is really nice to know as I now know where to send people. Costs 60 pounds chip and install, includes rom i believe but cant see why the guy would bother taking the risk. Anyway, kev dropped me a ftp site with the latest xbmc. And I started doing more research into xbmc.

There seems to be a new looking skin not based on windows media centre as its got copyright issues. However the alternative looks pretty good too, its based on the dell media centre.

The xbmc team have finally put a load of screenshots online too. Which brings up lots of questions for me. Where can I download that project mayhem skin? I didnt know xbmc can copy and manage files?
Good to see the imdb and it looks like cddb feature works well. Theres an on screen keyboard for the xbmc? Does a usb keyboard also work, as that would be really cool. Thank goodness shoutcast streaming is still supported, any chance of icecast streaming? Super large icons for all sections, very nice… Not sure what this is, too short for a movie and too long for trailers
. I'm wondering if xbmc allows for natrual categories like years, timing, etc? Could be right? There must be somekind of plugin arctecture, my weather? I'm hoping this will mean a return of xmltv listings and some new cutting edge features like streaming from xbox to xbox using xbconnect. Its also good to see new visual effects, as groom was kind of boring, plus theres a competition for more visualization. Screensavers? and this is stupid nuts.

On a whole its all too much to take in… I cant wait to see what happens next…
By the way theres a poll for what should be the default skin.

Ok I've installed xbmc and it does pretty much eveything seen in the preview and more…
First thing, the web front end is now working, its really shabby but it works. You can browse through the shares and click on the piece of media you want and the xbmc will play it a couple of seconds later. You can also pause and stop. I dont see anyway to setup a playlist but there is a skip forward and back button. Ideal skipping adverts while watching Hollyoaks from the sofa with my tabletpc on my lap.
So anyway that works well, even though I have yet to try it on my ipaq or smartphone. Imagine with port forwarding I could control xbmc from any where I can get the Internet. Home automation is almost there.

Screensaver works well, also has the option to auto shutdown after a set period. Visuals not too good, same as xbmp. Weather works but not too amazing, can wait to see what other webservice clients they build, or if its easy enough for me to build one. Can just imagine RSS readers, etc. Anyway the other thing which is also very interesting is the intergration of imdb, cddb, etc. You can look up films, tv shows, tunes and games. Then use them for thumbnails on folders as well as files. Theres also a auto scan option which will scan and create thumbnails and info for all folders and files under the current folder. Trust me it takes a while to do. The keyboard feature is also very cool, it allows you to rename files, search through files, etc. I tried out the usb keyboard and it didnt work, which was a shame.

The thing which i find really amazing is the natrual categories. Basicly when you add metadata to your files and folders via the scan option you can then look at all media through a selection of categories. Genres, Actors, Year, Title in the movie section and Albums, Artist, Genres, Top100, Songs in the Tune section. And flicking between the filesystems and categories is so easy, i cant help but do it. Makes me want to put all my movies on a couple of Huge RAID arrays rather than CD. With the right kind of money… Anyway that aside, I'm going to start using xbmc more now because its more stable than it use to be and the features are so rich and useful. Thumbs up from me…

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disagreement [Digital mixing != Vinyl mixing]


They call him the hands


In brief I'm talking about moving digital mixing into a mininorty report style gestural interfaces…
Checking out MICHEL WAISVISZ again. He's one of the pioneers of digital live music, and the human interfaces he uses are so adaptable to digital mixing. He runs Steim. The OIK project will be of interest to all.
See the problem is that vinyl djs is going in one direction while digital mixing could easily go another, but people keep on cloning vinyl djs aka final scratch and the others. The pictures on this site will easily give you an idea of where digital mixing could should go. As mentioned before the key is a beat. Atomixmp3's beat-aware engine is a step forward. Add a hardware midi or ethernet connection with a internet protocal like soap, xmpp or sip and your well away.
Going to add sections to my writing digital mixing. Will be using parts of First STEIM Touch manifestation in 1998 by steim and this question and answer with Waisvisz. No one seems to be talking about multiple layered mixing using 2 laptops or 2 versions of atomixmp3. Also the greater aspects of aggeragation within digital mixing. I also outlined a real example of digital mixing which I'm calling wireless mixing. Maybe blocky might be interested in doing a night based around these real examples? Till I write the piece or do a night…enjoy the pictures.

touch exhibition

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European Union Directive for the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights

European is about to vote for or against the European Union Directive for the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights, which would ultimately create a intellectual property legislation that copies and extends the American DMCA.

The legislation would allow copyright owners, such as record labels, to raid P2P users' homes if they suspect the user for sharing copyrighted material via P2P networks. It would also allow copyright owners to seize users' assets and get their bank accounts frozen whether they had any financial — or any other — gain from file sharing or not.

Briefing Materials on the European Union Directive on Data Protection
Campaign for digital rights – European Union Copyright Directive

European Union directive – Wikipedia
Use this page to contact EU Parliament members with a pre-written message from EFF

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Maths and art

Miles dropped a email about kandid . It sounds interesting and I may try it out later after some other things have been done on my giant to do list. But my reason for blogging has to with how this reminds me of apps on my old 16bit machine. At the time there was little way to get the real feel for maths in art. It took too long to do fractials for example. I remember playing with L-systems and it would take hours to build a highly populated L-system. However even then I enjoyed the results. If you remember the old cubicgarden background, that was built using L-systems.

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Bookmarks blog vs Furl

I was flicking through seblogging when I found this interesting web service via this post.. It is described as…

Your Online Filing Cabinet for Useful Web Pages Furl is a new web browsing tool that lets you save and organize thousands of useful web pages (you know, the ones you want to save for future reference but then can never find again) in a personal “web page filing cabinet”.

Once saved, you can effortlessly find any page again later using a powerful full text search tool. With Furl you can forget trying to save and organize dozens of bookmarks, forget saving web pages to your desktop, in fact forget everything except how to find a useful web page again next time you need it.

As Sebastian Fiedler rightly points out, the interesing thing is that you can fiddle with the rss feed it gives off. So this will basicly do what my bookmarks page does already but with a little xsl can be tightly intergrated into anything. I'm thinking about for example a reading list of not only books but websites for my students. Or with a little aggeragation you could pull together a couple lecturers or even students favourate sites into one feed. Nice.

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Learning and advancement through blogging

I've been reading Dan Saffer blog about his experience on the MA Interaction design course in Carnegie Mellon for a while now. And I just caught his post about his interview by elearningpost.com.

Anyway I wanted to write a comment to Dan, but felt I had lots more to say and should bother him too much about it all. Oh its also good to see he now provides his rss feed in complete form. Wish more moveable type users would do this. Anyhow I'm going to pick through a few things in the interview.

Why do you blog your course?
In a way, it's about justifying the personal and actual expense of leaving work and going back to school: something I could point to and say, see, that's why I'm doing this, this is what I learned. This is why it was worth it. – Exactly…I really believe students are empowered by blogs because it not only gives them a voice but allows them to compare experiences with others in simular situations. See it would be great to have my interaction students commenting back all the time while Dan and others commented on the interaction blog. I know Dan's doing a MA and my students are doing BA but that shouldnt make a difference. In broader aspects blogs are great for justifing work to yourself. I look back through my blog and cant believe the amount of projects I have running and I can always check up on there progress even years later.

Didnt know Dan's class had a project blog. He finds it more useful than email, but I wonder if he finds instant messager useful too? I see lots of equals with my students wanting to setup there own website. For any of my students reading, read between the lines…

Has blogging helped you increase your learning network?
Dan brings up some healthy problems with blogging generally. The whole problem with quoting and citing is one so difficult to solve. I tend to say who dropped the idea or quote, but not too much because yes it can get really stupid. Only a couple of times in the interaction blog have students quoted me, and they tend to be Ian said today. As a open lecturer, I'm not that worred about students taking a little credit for something I suggest but it all depends on the situation. On the RSS comment thing, its a problem but I feel the barrier to entry is just right. Someone needs to change from RSS reader to web browser so they can write a comment. Most wankers wont be bothered to comment, while those who do really wanted to, and will leave something interesting to read.

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