Archive for January, 2006

iPod Purge

Published at January 30, 2006 in Music and Tech. 1 Comment

In an effort to start listening to my iPod (40gb - 4th gen) again on a regular basis, I reformatted the drive, hereby deleting all songs from it (I have them all backed up on an external drive). My goal is to slowly add music back on a daily basis in an organic manner.

My library is full of material I have either not yet listened to, or haven’t heard in a long time. By always making sure I have about 6 to 8 hours (a day’s work) of fresh music each morning, I will ultimately listen through my entire library. This process also helps me weed out albums and songs from my iTunes library that I do not deem to be ‘iPod-worthy’.

My goal is to store about 20-30gb of music on my iPod. The rest of the space I will use for Voice Memos and extra hard drive space (should I need to transfer or store a large file).

Griffin iTalk

For Voice Memos, I use Griffin iTalk. I don’t really record voice memos… I use the iTalk to record musical ideas I come up with when playing guitar, most always the result of endless noodling and improvisation. I’ve started doing this last summer, and it’s been an invaluable way to build a library of riffs and melodies that could later expand into a full-length tune.

Back to the iPod Purge, here are the first albums I’ve transferred back. You’ll note I’m going somewhat in alphabetical order.

AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Back in Black
Aerosmith - Get A Grip, Get Your Wings, Permanent Vacation, Pump, Toys in the Attic, and select songs from Big Ones and Greatest Hits
Arcade Fire - Funeral
Beatles - Revolver, Rubber Soul
Phish - Live at Madison Square Garden, New Year’s Eve 1995

This amounts to 147 songs, 11.5 hours, and 854.2mb.

M-Audio Fast Track Pro

Published at January 29, 2006 in Music. 2 Comments

FastTrackPro

My M-Audio Audio Interface device arrived this weekend. The Fast Track Pro allows me to record music to my computer via USB 2.0. I can input my MIDI keyboard, or a mic’ed guitar, amp, or vocals, and record them into Logic Express. I purchased Logic Express a few months ago, but haven’t played around with it much without a decent interface. Hopefully now my music composition will see an increase in productivity.

I ordered the Fast Track Pro on from sweetwater.com. A small plug for this company… the customer service was great. I happened to stumble upon them online when looking for this product. I had originally looked at the larger companies: zzounds.com were out of stock, and musiciansfriend.com was too high priced. When I found Sweetwater, I called them and spoke directly with an employee who was very knowledgable about the product and music in general. Even better, my package arrived with candy inside!

I hope to test it out this week and write a full review later.

First Photo Post

Published at January 28, 2006 in Life. 0 Comments

In honor of setting up my Flickr Pro account, I’m posting my first ‘real’ photo… that is, my first photo taken with my digital camera, not camera phone.

With Mitra

This photo of Mitra and myself was taken last month downtown at a Japanese restaurant. We were out celebrating a friend’s birthday. Later that night we went to Deco’s, a nightclub in the Gaslamp Quarter. One of Mitra’s friends managed to get us all VIP passes, so we got in with no cover charge. I’m not a big fan of clubs, but this one was okay…. probably because it was free!

Flickr vs. TextAmerica vs. PHPGallery

Published at January 28, 2006 in Tech. 1 Comment

I finally purchased a Flick Pro account last night. This comes after some consideration whether to switch to Flickr or stay with TextAmerica.

I’ve been a member of TextAmerica since Sept 2003, when I purchased a Nokia 3650 camera phone. I used it mainly as a moblog, a place to store my camera phone images uploaded (via email or mms) soon after I take them. It was fun for a while, but soon my photo posting rate started to slow down…

In Dec 2004 I got a digital camera, a Canon Powershot SD200, which I used on my travel to Europe. I wanted to set up an online album, and I chose PHPGallery. I picked this mainly because I had access to my own server (this one, courtesy of Ethan) and I didn’t want to pay the hefty fee to upgrade my TextAmerica account.

Last year saw the rise of social software, particularly Flickr and Delicious. Flickr seemed to be ahead of the game in online photo galleries, whereas TextAmerica seemed to be playing catch up. PHPGallery always felt clunky and slow to me, and lacked the community environment that surrounds both Flickr and TA.

Flickr has the best user interface of them all, including smart use (placement) of AJAX for admin functionality. TextAmerica’s control panel is still somewhat buggy and definitely more convoluted. Flickr just feels nicer.

There are some factors, however, the sway to TextAmerica’s advantage. TextAmerica supports video, including 3gp, mov, mpg, etc. Flickr has no video support. There is also the loyalty factor. I was introduced to TextAmerica by Ethan (who, btw, has also switched to Flickr a while ago), and in turn I introduced TextAmerica to my friends when they also bought camera phones.

I had never purchased a pro TextAmerica because I always viewed it as a (camera phone)moblog. I used PHPGallery for my albums. For a while, I had always made a clear distinction between these two uses in my mind.

However, since my camera phone is really shitty (compared to new phones today), I would take more pics with my digital camera and less with my phone. My iPhoto library keeps growing, and I’ve been lacking to get new photos online for confusion of where to upload them. I would never have a large enough cluster of photos to constitute an ‘album’ for PHPGallery, and i felt weird uploading to TA since I was so used to posting real time from my phone.

Flickr feels like the most comfortable place and change of scenery. Not to mention, the $24.99 annual upgrade fee is much friendlier looking than TextAmerica’s hefty $69.99 annual upgrade fee.

Over time, I will post more photos from the past as I continue to upload new photos soon after I take them. You can view a rundown of pro account features for Flickr.

WordPress 2.0 is My New Blog!

Published at January 27, 2006 in Life. 1 Comment

I am happy to have the latest version of WordPress installed as I start a new venture into the blogging realm. In addition, I’ve been recommended by Ethan to download the k2 theme which seems to contains lots of enhancements. I’ll trek through the codebase this weekend to get familiar with some of them.

My previous blogs are still online:
My ill-fated blog last year: Blogger 2005
My short-lived Europe blog: Europe 2004

With this blog, I aim to post mainly things related to technical stuff (programming, web development, etc.), musical related (guitar, composing, etc.), and anything else (photos, etc.). Who knows if it will really take off or not. I have a bad track record… we’ll see.