Z-Trip Link

The Z-Trip album is growing on me. I plan to use a track in my next mix which should be a fun one. I promised you a live set from Z-Trip long ago. I was just over at the official site and was surprised to find a link to Old Mixes. I haven't finished downloading anything from there yet, so maybe it is all whale noises or something, but if you want to hear some live Z-Trip, you might give it a shot.

The Night Speaks To Me

I was in Las Vegas last week and had a great time. One night stuck out more than the rest. I won't say it was the best night, but it certainly was the most surreal.

Things started with a visit to friend's room in THEhotel. Wow, what a nice place. Widescreen TVs on the wall, barware, a DVD player, and nice artwork. I really wished I had stayed there instead of the regular Mandalay Bay hotel.

From there we went on to Red Square, a resturant with a Russian/Soviet Union theme, and a large selection of vodkas. The martinis here were good. If you want a spectacle, order a Chernobyl and watch them mix it. We had a Russian speaker with us, so it was nice to get the translation of things written on the walls and menus. Oddly enough, he skipped out on the pre-dinner drinks because he couldn't resist the siren song of the nickle slot machines (lol).

The surrealness began when we sat down to dinner. I began to hear very familiar music building in the background. As they turned the music up a bit, I was able to confirm that it was indeed DJ Shadow - Building Steam With a Grain of Salt. Wow, I thought. I'm liking this place even more. If you've been following along, you'll remember that I named this DJ Shadow album in my top ten of all time. I offered anyone at the table $5 in the could name who was playing. I'm pretty annoying with that game. I'm not sure why, I just do it.

After Building finishes, I hear another DJ Shadow track, The Number Song, come in. Wow, I'm really liking this place now. The vodka is setting in, I'm with friends, and my favorite music is playing. Again, I offer up the $5, and no one thinks to guess the artist that I told them the last time. No winners yet.

The third song is again DJ Shadow. I'm getting the hint that they are just playing most of the album now. No complaints from me. I again offer up the $5 prize and no one wins. I guess my friends are slow learners. The DJ Shadow experience continues for the next hour as we dine on traditional Russian dishes and put back a few flights of vodka.

After spinning about the town for the rest of the night, I returned to my hotel room and decided to check the weather for the next day. Of course, the only proper way to end the night was by hearing an old ambient Moby track playing behind the forecasts of sun. Moby is also on the top ten list and is my most collected artist. The night had spoken, and I listened. Thank you Las Vegas.

More Apple Gushing

So last week I was pissed off at my iPod. I thought it was dying. It wouldn't sync for crap with my XP box. It would BSOD the Dell. The iPod would lockup and I'd have to warm boot the iPod. I warm booted that thing more in two days last week than I have in the entire time I've had it.

I got fed up enough to decide I needed to attempt the dreaded "restore to factory defaults". I couldn't get the XP box to live long enough to do it, so I used my iBook from work. Everything went great. I was feeling better. I hooked it back up to my Dell to sync to my library and "blah blah blah, I need to make this work with Windows, shall I do that?" came up. Sure, whateva. Go for it you hunk of crap. So, it did, but of course it restored to an older version than what is current because Apple doesn't software update the installer to PCs, only Macs. So after it finished that, I had to go download the current installer and do it again.

It was finally latest and greatest and Windows flavored and it still took a dump when I connected it. WTF? I disabled iTunes enough that I could mount the iPod and run scan disk on it, even though Apple says don't do that. Scan disk found nothing. Then I checked iPodlounge and found the disk check secret handshake. It ran and said everything was fine.

So, last ditch effort, I decide to load music in to my iBook and sync from there. Guess what? It worked perfectly. Yeah, no problems at all. Once I drained the moron juice from my head I remembered that you can turn off the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library". Even better, now I can sync through the iBook without filling the drive.

But then, I found the ultimate. Did you know that you can just drag files from wherever onto your iPod icon in iTunes and it loads them up? No need for them to be in the iTunes library. It will happily copy them on to the iPod and leave the library out of it. Maybe you knew that, I didn't. So, I still need the iBook, but only as a "drag between" my external Firewire drive and my iPod, my lovely iPod.

Installing - Are you sure?

This is the poster child for bad app design. I can't blame it all on Firefox, most installers look like this. As a software engineer, I'm ashamed. Why do we need to tell the user 4 times that we are installing? Surely some of those other status areas could say something more useful, or not be there at all?

Even better, if what we are doing is called installing, why did I run Firefox Setup? Sure, someone will jump in with why setup includes installing, but to the I-just-want-to-use-it user, it's all pretty confusing.

While I'm picking on Firefox 1.03, why, as I sit in the Blogger editor, is the status circle continuing to spin and the status bar still says "Transferring data from www.blogger.com..."? IE doesn't say that. Safari doesn't say that. Firefox, take note, the page has loaded.

Don't get me wrong. I like Firefox, and I'm glad that folks spent time writing software to give to my whiny ass.

A Google Loop

Google is building an empire. It may not be an evil empire, but it is an empire none the less. Google has tremendous services and is slowly evolving from a search technology, to a provider of data. This data is coming in maps, answers, blog content, and whatever else they announced today. Sooner or later, they are going to weld all of their services together. This blog entry is an observation of one of those possible Google solutions, or what I'll call, a Google Loop.

My Google Loop involves digital photos. I love my digital camera. I love that I can shoot as many images as I have MBs and battery to allow. I love that I can make backups of those photos. I love that I can edit those photos easily. I love that I don't have to pay for developing costs. I love that my ReplayTV will use them as a screensaver.

As great as all of those things are, we haven't even scratched the surface of what we can do with these digital photos. For one, I can't wait to get a Mac so I can play with the photo books in iPhoto. But, that's still just a pretty presentation of the pictures. We need to go beyond looking at the pictures and add further context to them. Where were they taken? When were they taken? How are they different from photos that other people took at that same place, but perhaps at a different time?

They key to all of this is metadata. Without metadata, the picture's true value could be locked in the heads of the people who were there.



1. We'll start our Google Loop by importing some pictures we took at Yellowstone Nation Park in to Picasa. Now ideally, the picture already contains GPS location data inserted by the camera, but those cameras are still rare, so let's say that Picasa allows us to assign location data to that picture.

2. I never have enough disk space, and Google is nice enough to give me 2 gigs and counting in Gmail. Let's say that Google lets me use that Gmail disk to save Picasa pictures. Thanks Google!

3. I have a blog (duh, you are reading it) and on occasion, I'll put up a picture. I'm lucky enough to have server space to host those images, but most people don't. Let's say that Google allows me to link in to those saved images in my Gmail disk. Thanks Google, you're the greatest!

4. I blog about my great vacation to Yellowstone. Pictures are included and, what's this? You can click my pictures and pull up a Google Map or satellite data of the location? Very nice. Hey look, there are even "pinned" locations on the satellite view that are clickable to see my other pictures. The world is good.

5. AdSense does it's thing to the right of my blog. I see that there are tour packages available for Yellowstone. Hmmm, I'll have to check those out next time, and maybe even stay in "super-duper-fantastic hotel" that says they will give me a great rate. My friends read my blog and think Yellowstone looks like a cool place. They make use of the AdSense and book a trip. Now sure, this is possible today with AdSense, but the only reason they stuck around was all of the cool photos that I was able to host for free and nifty maps that let them do a little armchair exploring of their own.

6. OG (that's original Google) makes note of all of this and returns search results of my blog and my images when people are looking for Yellowstone.

7. Desktop search is right there too. From my Google deskbar, I type Yellowstone when I want to be reminded of that great trip and Google Desktop gives me my original images, my blog entry, and the same maps that I was able to show other people. Google, I love you.


What do I get from this Google Loop?

* Incredible usability of my pictures
* Internet hosted storege for sharing my pictures
* A one company, integrated solution
* Related information that I might find useful

What does Google get?

* A happy customer
* User profile data on me that they can use to sell me things
* Chance to serve ads to me in GMail, Google Maps, and Google Desktop
* My images in their Google Images cache which lets them show ads to others

Certainly Google isn't the only one capable of this sort of thing. Apple has a huge buzz going around Spotlight right now. I'm eager to make use of it too.

I'm really surprised that Apple isn't doing something like this. They have iPhoto and .Mac for image hosting. Add in Spotlight and things are starting to cook. What they don't have over Google is blogging, map data, and a way for them and I to make extra money just for using all of this software. Maybe that's good though. Apple gets to sell me hardware and software and I don't have to deal with ads anywhere.

In closing, this is just one loop. I'm sure you can think of others, and I'm sure you could access these services in a different loop order. That's the power of cooperative services and metadata.

Thinkback - Slices and Goofy Plastic Boxes

So Slashdot has Slashback. That's where they revisit a previously posted subject. I'll copy that theme and present Thinkback.

Today's Thinkback takes a look at some recently released Mac mini slices, and a USB hub that is not a goofy plastic box.

So, I still don't completely have what I want, but MicroNet and Macpower have brought forth some nice offerings. The Macpower slice appears to be slightly vaporware. The Micronet slice is at least orderable. I like that I can put my own drive in the Macpower slice, but I like even more that the MicroNet slice will come with a drive that it *knows* will not require an extra fan. Neither of them have front mounted ports or card readers though, so I'll hold off a little longer.

Belkin brings us a 4 port hub that is different than the regular lot. It's claim to fame is a top load USB slot that apparently is meant for iPod shuffles, but I'll get one and use it for generic flash drives and frequently attached/disconnected test tools. I can't help but notice that with the right object sticking up, this will look like an Atari joystick. Hey, there's an idea. Give me a USB hub that looks like an Atari joystick with a matching cylindrical flash drive!

Free Hip Hop

Today is just a few links to some music that you might enjoy. These links all came from my search for the setlist from DJ Z-Trip's Live at Uprock in Austin TX show. I haven't found the setlist yet, but I did find some fun stuff along the way.

What do you get when you combine DJ Shadow and Boyz II Men? Well, you get DJ Erb - Goodbye, of course.
[Edit: This was cool the first time. It was interesting the second time. I'm over it now.]
I'm going to have to explore DJ Erb some more. He has quite a few rock influenced hip hop sets for purchase. I downloaded his remix of Lyrics Born as well. Don't forget, Lyrics Born has a new CD coming out on Tuesday.

Over at Solesides, there is a page for Nostalgia Progression. You can grab their track Stepping Stone. I'm digging it. I'll bring Lyrics Born in one more time and recommend that you grab RL Burnside feat. Lyrics Born - Going Down South off of the Solesides main page.

All that and you didn't have to spend a dime.

Do You Crokinole?

Last weekend I visited my buddy who lives in Milwaukee. He introduced me to a 1800s Canadian game called Crokinole. It is played on a wooden board using pieces that look like checkers. You flick the discs at scoring areas and each other, much like shuffleboard, which I also enjoy.

I had a lot of fun playing and started looking more in to the game when I returned home. I checked out the site that my buddy bought his board from and even took a spin through eBay. At eBay, I saw a combo Carrom/Crokinole board that awakened my memories. I thought to myself "That looks just like a board my parents had when I was a kid." I called my parents up and arranged to take a look at the board the next day. I tried explaining what a Crokinole board looked like, but they didn't much care. "Just come look at it" was the response I got :)


Well, I went and looked, and sure enough, it was a Crokinole board. This thing has to be nearly 30 years old. Amazing how things come full circle huh? Boy, the game probably would have been more fun as a kid if we knew how to play it. My parents let me have the board, which was quite nice of them, especially since I probably would have shelled out the cash to buy one over the web. There was one peg broken off, but I spent some time in the garage and came up with something that seems to do the trick.
I still need some decent pieces though. We've been playing with Othello discs, which aren't quite regulation :)

I'm hoping the Crokinole board will be a big hit at our next Poker party. It should be a fun side game for the people that get knocked out.

Take a Trip - Cheap, New, Music

Best Buy's $6.99 CD this week is Shifting Gears by DJ Z-Trip. This should be a great album. The album includes collaborations with Jurassic 5, Chester Bennington from Linkin Park, and even Public Enemy. You can hear some samples here and over at Amazon.

I was first exposed to Z-Trip from reading the Denon boards. He does some incredible live sets. I'll have to dig up a link to one of those. Some of his tracks sound a bit like my favorite artist, DJ Shadow. Z-Trip even did some remixing for Shadow on the Mashin' ON the Motorway single.

I'll be at Best Buy on Tuesday, how about you?

Shack Up Your Mac

Hey, one of my predictions came true. I'm not Nostradamus, I just put in writing what I'm sure many people were thinking. A couple of weeks ago, I said "The Mac mini is begging for a USB hub and card reader that matches it." Well, The Plasticsmith made it happen. They now have the Mac mini shack.

The shack is a little ol' place where your USB peripherals can get together. There's no card reader (yet), but there are 7 USB ports. These guys are progressing from the silly Mac mini skirt, but I hope they don't quit with this hub. 7 USB ports is cool, but where's the FireWire? Where are the card readers? Surely they can cram some more good stuff in there.


You know I can't pass up a good 'shop opportunity, so I did a quick mock up for what I think the Mac mini Shack should be. First, it needs ports on the front and back. The front ones are for connecting your friend's camera, an iPod shuffle, or maybe a portable hard drive. The back ones are for your permanent Mac mini peripherals. I also added two flash card readers. The scale in the drawing is bad, but the idea is one SD slot and one CF slot. You get the idea. Plasticsmith is selling a do-it-yourself shack, so I just might have to see what "guts" I could buy to make this happen. If this thing did exist, I'd buy two. One for the mini and one for work, to use with my Dell. This would not be a goofy plastic box because it has some design to it, it would have some weight, and it would give me the front and back ports and cable management like I want.

Keep at it Plasticsmith. You are real close to getting some of my money.

Live, Location Enhanced, Data

It is amazing how the value of information increases by orders of magnitude when presented in a familiar context.

Google Maps + Craig's List = Home Buyer's Dream

Polish the Apple

Just some Apple linkage today. While we wait for Tiger to ship, you might be interested to look at Apple's latest facts and figures. I wonder if we realize the history that is being made here. All signs seem to point to "grow" for Apple right now. I bet we'll see 1st gen iPods in museums in 100 years.

Death to goofy plastic boxes

At work, I have to use quite a few USB devices and I also use CF and SD flash cards. Currently, I use some silly card readers from SanDisk that have cords that are way too long and they take up way too much space. I also have a USB hub that doesn't space the ports apart far enough to actually use them all and it is poorly designed for me since all of the ports are on the back. I got tired of my setup at work and decided to find something better.

All I found was a wasteland of flimsy, ugly, me-too plastic boxes. It seems that most USB hubs these days all include the following design criteria:
* Plastic, the more the better
* Rectangular, don't forget to round the corners
* Silver, LEDs are spiffy too, but silver is required

I don't think I'm all that demanding. I just want a nice USB hub with built-in flash card readers. I define nice as:
* Good build quality - give it some heft so it doesn't slide all over
* Thoughtful design - let me get at the ports and space them far enough apart that I can use all of them. Make the hub power supply stay in. Barrel jacks suck.
* Tasteful design - Metal is good. Wood would be fine. I have no need for see-thru plasic windows and the LEDs are usually more annoying than useful.

Let's take a quick spin around the web and see the junk that is available.

Adaptec - Goofy little plastic boxes

D-Link - Goofy little plastic boxes

Linksys - Goofy little plastic boxes

Belkin - Gggggggggggoofy plastic boxes


Targus - At least they have the best looking Goofy little plastic boxes

Keyspan - Goofy!

-------------------

Now, I did find a few devices with potential, but even these didn't wow me.

Macally - Attractive hub plus card reader. It figures that this would look halfway decent. It's marketed to Apple owners.

Iogear - I like the vertical design and styling. Unfortunately, I read a lot of reviews that say the thing plain doesn't work most of the time and plugged in cables tend to topple the thing over.

Fellowes - This one has an interesting swivel design which would be useful. Too bad it doesn't read flash cards.

Kensington - I like the dome design of this one. Unfortunately, no flash card readers and I read bad things about plugs not fitting in to it well.


Maybe something will come out of all of the Mac mini accessories. The Mac mini is begging for a USB hub and card reader that matches it. Given a decent weight, I might look at something like that for work.

How about you guys? Anyone have any products that they like that they can share? Have you seen any devices out there that fit what I'm looking for? Links please!

All Day I Dream About Soccer

If you didn't know, I'm the freak behind sadida.com. Sadida.com is the original adidas fan blog. It was a blog before they invented the term blog. I started it very humbly in 1996. I started the site more to learn about HTML than anything else. For a good laugh, you should head over there and check out the way-back link to the original 1996 site.

I sort of gave up on sadida.com in the last few years, but recently I've gotten the itch and have decided to try keeping it updated again. If you have any adidas related info for me, send me an email at ryan@sadida.com. If you write me a review to post, I'll give you a cookie!

Do One Thing and Do It Well

Throughout this blog, you'll see me complain (err, suggest) how products could be designed better. Last week I came across another perfect example of poorly designed products. Clocks, specifically, alarm clocks.

My Grandma got a new alarm clock. I can't recall the brand right now, but if I could, trust me, I would publicly shame them. Her alarm clock has two alarm settings. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is, she couldn't figure out how to set them. One of the alarms was set for 11:52 at night and it would wake her up every single night. If I were her, I would have unplugged the damn thing until I figured out how to turn the alarm off, but I guess she needed to know what time it was. I was called in to save the day and I too was initially perplexed at how to set the silly alarm. A quick consult of the instructions solved the problem, but why did I have to resort to that?

An alarm clock isn't a complex beast. It shows the time and makes noise once a day. How is it possible to design a product that makes it difficult to do those tasks? Apparently the Hilton Family thinks they have this problem licked. They are putting their easy-to-set alarm clock in all of their hotel properties. You can get a better idea of how to set the alarm clock by looking at this picture. Honestly, it looks pretty good. There is a clear indication of whether the alarm is on or off and it seems simple enough to tell the clock when you are setting the alarm time.

Finally, to balance out today's negativity, I'll tell you about a positive clock experience. Daylight savings required us to change our clocks this past weekend. I always hate that task, but at least Nissan makes it a little nicer. The clock on the CD player in my truck is cool. There is one button, and it says "Clock". If you push it, it turns the clock on. If you push it again, it turns the clock off. If you hold it, the stereo beeps and you can use either set of up/down buttons to set the time. I like this, it JFWs! I've had plenty of finger cramping combos to set stereo times before, so this is welcomed simplicity.

Your Laziness Astounds Me

Lazy American? Yes, I've seen quite a few. Let me share with you my latest encounter. In my neighborhood, we have shared mailbox areas. The mailboxes from about 10 houses are clumped together. I'm always amazed that folks drive to these mailboxes, when they are 3 driveways away at the most. On Friday, I witnessed the following... My neighbor that lives no more than 40 yards away from the mailbox came home from work, she drove past her house and proceeded to park in the middle of the frickin' street, turn off her van and get out. She walks over to the mailbox and gets her mail. Remember, she is still blocking the street. She then walks back to the van, gets in, starts it up, and then drives down one more house. She pulls in to their driveway, the WHOLE way (wtf?), and then backs out, drives up the three houses, waits for her garage door to open, and drives in.

She's not disabled. She didn't have heavy things to carry. It wasn't raining. There are nice sidewalks the whole way. I don't see any excuse to not get two minutes of fresh air. Maybe she is on one of those no exercise diets.

Bluetooth isn't dead, it's common

This article over at Blueserker was quite interesting to me. Bluetooth has now arrived. When you can buy headsets in discount stores, it isn't a niche product. It isn't just for geeks. It's for everyone. I especially like the price trends lately. Bluetooth products are reaching price point where people can buy a headset or people can buy a Bluetooth mouse, just to play around with it, try it out, and see how they like it. Next up, Bluetooth enabled GPS receivers in truck stops along I-80.

Rock Out

So I finally got around to finishing a new mix. I'm not going to go as far as to say I am proud of this one, but I do enjoy listening to it and you might as well. It starts better than it ends. You'll have to ignore the slight train-wrecking in parts. I make no claims to being good at DJing, but I do have a lot of fun doing it.

This set uses a lot more vocal tracks than I normally include. It leans towards the rocking side of Prog and Breaks. You'll notice an Evil Nine and Marine Parade flavor to the set. This is not light switch rave type stuff.

Tracklist:
Gardner & Thomas - Turn to Try
Trafik - Your Light
Infusion - Better World (Infusion Mix)
Freeland - Supernatural Thing (Adam & The Evils Remix)
Evil Nine - Cakehole
Moguai - Get:On
Phil Kieran - I Love You (Phil Kieran Remix)
Paul Jackson & Steve Smith - The Push (Far From Here) [Radio Edit]

Supernatural Thing, Cakehole, and I Love You are available on iTMS if you need to spend some free songs ;) I don't plan to leave the set up for long, so grab it while it is hot. If you know me, and want to save Ian the bandwidth, just ask and I'll bring you a burned CD or the .mp3.

Then We Can't Get Down

Evil Nine are easily one of my favorite groups right now. Today must have been Evil Nine day for me.

First, I was working on a new mix which happens to be very Evil Nine influenced. Look for more on that in a future post.

Second, I came across their video for Crooked, online. You absolutely must go watch the video. Talk about a head nodding track!

Third, I purchased some Evil Nine tracks off of Beatport. I've known of Beatport's existence since day one, but I've stayed away because I really don't enjoy buying music for lots of different sites. I like iTMS. I'd prefer to just do business with them. Evil Nine made me crack. I just had to have a copy of Crooked, and I had to have it now. Hopefully I haven't opened another set of flood gates. I already buy too much music.

BTW, Evil Nine's album releases (again) on March 29th. I can't wait.

I think we woke the baby up

Huey, Louie, and Mountain Dewey

My plan to reduce my daily consumption of Mountain Dew is proceeding as planned. I have established a baseline and as soon as the Pepsi/iTunes promotion is over, I'll start the reduction. Today, I tried something a little different. I replaced this Dew drinker's regular Dew with Diet Dew. Let's see if he notices. Hell yes I noticed. I honestly can't remember if I have ever drank a full Diet Dew. Today I did and it was not a good experience. That stuff is bottled ass! I swear I had the exact same taste in my mouth as when I leave the dentist, and that's not a good thing. I even had to add a third bottle for the day just to cleanse myself of the purgatory that is Diet Dew. Diet Don't!

So, the obligatory idea of the day. Pepsi comes in a full range of sugar pain. You start with the high octane regular, then the Pepsi Edge, then the Pepsi One, and then the Diet Pepsi. You truly do get to pick your poison. Dew drinkers have no such luxury. You either get the full caloric goodness or you get to drink spider spit. Where is my Mountain Dew Halfpipe? They make Dew in regular, Cherry, Orange, Grape, and some bastard creation, Baja Ass, they only sell at Taco Bell. Where's the reduced calorie, but non-sucky version? I smell an Apprentice episode!