Category: media-and-expression

When I first saw the Sanyo Xacti HD1 I thought wow you could film a movie on this easily. Some people totally disagree but I felt the quality was good enough to pass for most things online and even offline. But to be fair the mpeg4 codec wasn't quite good enough and the lens wasn't big enough to get lots of light down it. So when I first saw the Sanyo Xacti HD1000, I started thinking hey this is the revision which could be the break through camcorder.

Well it seems I'm not the only one, thinking this way. I met a startup company doing interviews with people all over the place using simply a Sanyo Xacti HD1000 with a radio mic and large light. It was perfect, the presenter would move the medium hand mic back and forth between himself and the person being interviewed. While the camera man would hold the camera generally quite still and check the levels on his in the ear headphones.

I grabbed a few minutes with the camera man and asked him about his setup. He said he use to walk around with a Canon DV camera but its too big and heavy plus the “downtime” of encoding footage was costly. He said the camera is great but the light makes all the difference to the footage. He also said he'd considered the HD1010 but he's waiting for the 3CCD version before upgrading.

I have more photos of course…

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Ah geez, like or not I was a child of the 80's and so I do kind of remember a lot of these pop songs. But I saw this on the Diggreel recently and couldn't help but share. Its Aha's Take on me but described as it plays in tune.

Dusto MCNeato seems to be the man behind the almost internet meme/trend which also includes a few pro-amatuer attempts such as the Rick roll one. I say almost because its very difficult to do and I can't imagine many people creating them. However there might be lots of bad copies to come… Till then enjoy.

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While at Web 2.0 Expo, I learned about Soundcloud. It was during a pitch event, so I started off thinking so what but then was quickly turned around when hearing about how it works and what features it has. After the pitch event I grilled one of the guys ( Alexander Ljung of Soundcloud) behind it about data portability and you know what? Soundcloud comes out really well. Not only does it keep the origninal tune ala blip.tv but you can also assign licences, bookmark sections, comment on parts and syndicate tunes. They are considering the idea of using archive.org for permanent long term storage after I mentioned what Blip.tv promise in there end user licence agreement.

While talking to the soundcloud guy, I mentioned I've been looking for somewhere to upload my dj mixes because I now own a pacemaker device. Those were the magic words, as he explained that he knew the guys behind the pacemaker (yeah both Soundcloud and Pacemaker are swedish). He then explained how they tried to get the pacemaker guys to interop or replace there pacemaker.net dj mix section with soundcloud. For what ever reason they didn't and now pacemaker.net has become a little bit of dead community due to the limits on uploads and general lack of focus. The device is great but the site is poor to say the least. Using Soundcloud makes sense for many reason. Number one being the can just stick to making the pacemaker better via firmware updates and a range of related objects. Pacemaker.net reminds how the camera makers such as Kodak, Nikon, Canon, etc all setup there own photosharing/gallery sites for there customers. Now most of them lead you to Flickr or Photobucket instead. Makes sense for the Pacemaker to go the same way in the near future.

Till then I'll be recording my mixes and uploading them to soundcloud.com/cubicgarden, myself

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Slotmusic is a collaboration between Universial music, Sony BMG, Warner music and EMI. Basiclly its DRM free music distrubuted on microSD cards. Yes microSD cards, why? I don't know, but it shows how out of touch the music industy really is. Not defending the iphone or ipod but like it or not there the most popular at the moment and they don't support microSD cards. Does the Zune? Don't think so either. I also have no idea whos going to pay for music on MicroSD? I bet the cards are locked to the drive, so that means swapping the · Online and P2P distrubtion is the way forward period. Hell I just bought 12 tunes from Audiojelly.com yesterday. Cost me about 16 pound in total.

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So since adding my mix to the web which included the horrorist's – One night in New York city (chris liebing mix). I've been getting quite a lot of traffic from elsewhere, which is really cool but its all because Things to come records (owned or setup by Oliver Chesler aka the horrorist) have listed my mix in there dj mix directory. So I spent some time checking them out, as you do.

Things to come records seem to be doing everything correctly, there a model for other record labels. There linking to everything which is related to them and it would seem replying when possible. There making there live performances available online when possible or linking to fans recordings. There also providing remix kits of quite a few of there artists tunes and encoraging people to remix them and post them back under a creative commons licence. A shop selling there own music in 320k Mpeg3 (no DRM) along with other things like tshits, etc. A news blog with photos (using flickr) and video (using blip.tv) sections of previous events. Encoraging people to get involved in creating electronic music through raw sound and fx kits which you can download and use to make your own music.

Refreshing to see and i'm actually considering buying some there stuff because it all sounds like the type of music I enjoy, I wouldn't mind hearing more from simlar artists and hell there doing such a good job. I mean the only thing they don't have is a twitter account for each artist (*grin*).

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I bet that title attracted your attention? But your mistaken, I've not suddenly decided to talk about my personal life. Instead its the title of a frankly amazing film which I watched and am now recommending to all my friends.

Its a comedy centred around five different couples and one night (obviously not at the same time, you dirty minded people) Nope its basically five stories (from wikipedia).

• The Best Friends – Matt and Kristen decide to become friends with benefits, but discover romantic feelings for each other exist
• The Couple – Husband and wife Andrew and Abby choose to celebrate
  his birthday, only to find that their love life was worse than they
  thought.
• The Exes – Mia and Eric meet up for a one-off after having broken up some time back.
• The First Date – Jamie brings her womanizing date Ken back to her apartment.
• The Roommates – Gord, his girlfriend Inez and his roommate Dave.
  Gord invites Dave to make love to his girlfriend while Gord watches.

The problem with this film is that the name, young people fucking or ypf. People instantly think its a porn film or going to be tacky and crap. Its neither and good fun. Seek this film out if you can. Its unfortunately only available in America and Canada, but of course there's other ways to seek it out.

Actually I was making this point to a work friend the other day. She was asking about the economics of media if people are downloading content for free. Anyway, after a bunch links (including the government study that the biggest downloaders pay more for media) I made the point that Hollywood alone is putting out up to 60 movies a day and there is no way anyone one person could watch all those movies. Ok I didn't pay to watch YPF but if I could buy it on DVD now, I would. I also would have happily paid to watch this at the cinema. Actually to be honest if they brought this out in the cinema, I would watch it again with friends. Oh to note, I spend more money on going to the local cinema (the lovely 16 screen AMC in deansgate) every month that some people spend on DVDs and the cinema in a year! So that study really makes sense to me.

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I can't believe I'm defending a line of people about to buy the iphone 3g, but the reporter in this video sums up the general stinking attitude the mainstream media has for geek culture. It stinks and I'm glad someone asked called the reporter out on how childish his questioning and reason for being there was. It would be great to have something which re-addresses the balance but without going all play-school. News night for geeks?

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Saw this article in the independent the other day, although its dated back to June it was in my aggregator for so long. Hopefully my python based APML project might help with this in the future. Anyway I think its a fair article pointing out the weaknesses of using the pacemaker being battery life and flat out snobbery. Actually on that I found this forum which I was dying to reply to, but couldn't be arse'd to convince these bunch of morons otherwise. Anyhow, here's some nice quotes from the independent article…

“We could see young, affluent consumers becoming more proactive with media, making their own music, film and editorial,” Sars says. “We saw the door of portability kicked down by the iPod, which taught consumers that you can take all your music everywhere. We wanted to move both things a step further.”

The idea of sharing, whether it's in the pub, on the beach, at a club or online, was the driving force of the project,” Sars says. “If you have a party at home and everyone loves the music, you can take the music you've mixed, save it on the device, then upload it to the online community via Pacemaker Editor. Then you can just email everyone and tell them, 'Here's my music from Friday night.'”

“We are not out to substitute professional DJing,” Sars says. “We're coming to the market with a complementary product, a new way of viewing music. It's about having a go anywhere, anytime. Genre doesn't matter – just mash it up. If you look at the fresh, intelligent young generation of people today, that's how they view media. You don't have to follow one genre; as long as you love it and go for it, you can be totally unafraid.”

I've been doing a lot of mixes and I actually need to upload them. Including a mix from the south pier of blackpool one late night. I can't believe I was djing in cold winds till gone 11pm. Crazy eh? Some people did come up and ask about the weird device I was playing with and I would explain and actually quite a few people were interested. But some loser said I should check out the ipodmixer. So I did and I think he totally missed the point of the pacemaker.

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Ok I should I really be pointing my finger at another part of the BBC? Yes because they will never learn if someone does not say something, even if its going to be a moan and groan.

BBC Radio 2 have been running a season of programming around dance music, so I checked it out and was for most of it pretty happy with what I heard. I mean these guys went way back, back to the northern soul, disco and casino era. It was good to hear this because all the other documentatries about dance music have made it out like it totally came from America and we just adopted it. Nope you can certainly see how everything was being put in place including the soul weekenders. Anyway slowly we get into the warehouse scene and lots of talk about where the music was coming from. At once again for the first time, finally we hear it wasn't just from a bunch of djs going to Ibiza and trying to create the same vibe in England. So I'm thinking wow, this might actually live up to the name of The Definitive History Of UK Dance Music. Then we hit 88 and 89…

Things get a little hazy in the reporting and acid house is mentioned but not as much as I thought they would have. Hey at least they played Acid Trax by Phuture (the first acid record). The reporting picks up again and there on the ball again about things like the free parties, criminal justice bill, etc. But 1993 comes and there is a mention that hardcore split into many genres but you know what. Happy Hardcore never gets mentioned!

Instead theres lots of talk about Jungle, Garage (funny enough not much about Drum & Bass). And on the other side lots of talk about House, Progressive House and techno but once again nothing about Happy Hardcore. You could say they tried to mix it in with techno but Carl Cox and Derek May doesn't play happy hardcore and would be the wrong people to talk about it. Thinking about it Gabba and European Techno influenced music (think TTF, Scott Brown, Bass Generator), didn't get a mention either, which is strange because it seemed so popular up in Scotland with massive rave events like Rezerection. Actually from the Rez website.

New Years Eve 1993 proved to be a watershed event for Rezerection, as 1994 saw the demise for the traditional London style breakbeat sound favoured by the regular Rez DJs like Grooverider, SS and Seduction. The new Rez sound was heavily influenced by the Dutch and German hardcore scenes and the likes of Westbam, Tanith, Dye Witness and GTO took over from Grooverider, SS and N-Joi as hard trance, bouncy techno and gabba dominated the Scottish scene.

Like I said its more a moan and groan than anything, but I remember growing not listening to BBC Radio 1 for this almost exact reason. There was no place for happy hardcore on radio 1. It was rejected then because it was seen as cheesy, too happy, etc. And obviously thats has carried on through because never mentioned in this definitive history of dance music…! I was also going to make the point that Trance also got very little attention in the documentary. I'm not sure why, but at least it got mentioned and I guess Underworld, Sasha, etc are pretty close to trance.

Anyway so in wrapping up the whole documentary, they talked about things like UK only music like Grime, Big Beat (chemical beats or punk house), Bassline, etc. But once again no mention of Happy Hardcore's split into Freeform Hardcore, Hard Dance (or Future Dance) and NuEnergy which are all uniquely british.

Don't get me wrong, I don't know too much about music genres but when it comes to Happy Hardcore, I know what I'm talking about even if I'm a trance head nowadays. It was left out of this documentary and never talked about, shame on you Radio 2!

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Ok I was catching up with the 1up show and they had a segment on the Korg DS-10.

Finally, one of the most powerful new drugs to hit the market is introduced for the very first time outside of Japan by Korg scientists Kazuhito Inoue and Masanao Hayashi. The DS-10 is set to out-perform even its predecessor, the mighty MS-10 thanks in part to its much smaller size, which leading musicology experts Torrey Walker and Ryan O'Donnell have declared to be “almost swallow-able!” Side-effects of the DS-10 include: overwhelming desire to create electronic music on-the-go and to quit one's job in a misguided quest to become a star performer. Oh, and to buy a metallic-pink DS.

Basiclly its a full synthesizer on your DS which can use the wifi feature to link more that one together. Not only that but the touchscreen and multiple screen displays make it very easy to play with. I even believe you can record tracks and play them later. Wow! This awesome, don't get me wrong I still prefer my pacemaker but anything to make the barrier lower and for people to get back into remixing and making music is a good thing in my book. You know stop us from being just consumers. Actually why would you even bother with a ipod now a days, when you have things like this and pacemaker?

I was on the train the other day coming back from London via Shefield and there was this woman sitting next to me. She must have been about 40ish and she asked me what the thing was I kept fiddling with. I explained it was like 2 ipods but I can dj/remix live on them (my usual response for people asking now). She seemed to understand but just ended up saying, she thought it was a new type of mobile phone or games device. I was going to ask if she wanted to have a try but she didn't seem like she was that interested. Maybe next time I'll get some club chick instead.

Technorati Tags: ds, nintendods, korg, synthesizer, pocket, music, remix, make

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I can't remember exactly how I found the site but oldskoolanthemz.com is taking me all the way back. In the site is a section where you can listen in full to tracks from as early as 87 to almost the current day which are self-described as old skool. There's roughly over 2000 tunes and there all there ondemand. The only thing which I wish they would support is a Mpeg3 download store. I would be lighter of 100 pounds by now if they supported that. Instead they have a place where you can buy the Vinyl or CDs via Amazon, they've missed the trick. I'm sure its not as simple as that, a lot of old skool stuff came out under multiple labels and people and so tracing the copyright owners back will be a nightmare. Anyway, if your into old skool and never checked out these great resource, take a couple of hours out and do. I can hardly pull myself away from it. For example in the last few moments I just found – Frequency – Kiss The Sky, I mean you can get any more classic than that?

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Found via Diggnation and Neowin

Korean computer engineers are introducing a new digital music format that has a six-channel audio equalizer and separate controls on the sound volume for each musical instrument, such as guitar, drum, base and voice. The new format, which has a file extension format of MT9 and a commercial title of “Music 2.0”, is poised to replace the popular MP3 file format as the de-facto standard of the digital music source, its inventors say.

The MT9 technology was selected as a candidate item for the new digital music standard at the last regular meeting of Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG), the international body of the digital music and video industry.

Interesting but not really… I instantly thought it sounded like .XM, .MOD and .S3M. Although there is a question about how much people will actually use such a format and how the bands will feel about such a format. To be honest, who cares what the bands think?

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There was something in I think episode 1 and 3 which made me feel uneasy about the two Jennifers (Jennifer Maguire and Jenny Celerier). They ganged up and no douht bullied Lucinda. Serious you could see how upset she was and other housemates did little to help her. I think there was a point when even Sara, turned her back because she knew it wasn't possible to get a word in between the two Jennys. Anyway, when Sir Alan Sugar changed the teams Lucinda showed what she was capable of, and boy oh boy did she do a amazing job. So good that Lee was singing her praises. She made management look easy and she did in a way which wasn't aggressive or bullying. There's no doubt her management and style was different but in a good way. Shes always colorful and her honesty is unlike anything else I've ever seen.

Anyway, so this week both Jenny's got sacked, which was great to see. They both deserved to go and I'm surprised Sir Alan didn't sack Micheal too. The *uckup over Kosher chicken was beyond laughable. The turning point was when Sir Alan noticed the way both Jenny's used his words against the other housemates. The turn around meant goodbye.

Yes I know Lucinda, isn't going to be hired by Sir Alan, but no one deserves to be bullied and no I don't think shes like Katie from last year.

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