Viral videos aren't always viral...
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viral-videos
Friday, November 23, 2007
Dawkins (Hearts) Jesus
This was too amusing to pass up posting. This is Richard Dawkins, scientist, friend of athiests the world 'round, author of "The God Delusion" and my all time favorite book "The Selfish Gene".Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Updated Feed
To all of my MANY MANY subscribers, please update your feed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/trevormckee
Friday, November 16, 2007
Open Source & Free Software
Over the last few years, obtaining pirated/cracked versions of expensive software has become less and less worth my time. I've got too much to do in my life these days that when I have free time, I don't like spending it either tracking down a key generator, a crack, hack, workaround, or just trying to get a pirated version downloaded via bittorrent to work properly.
As such, I've been weaning myself off of the name brands and slowly migrating over to free and open source alternatives. These programs that I use are of course free, and often times are just as robust, and most of the time, more stable than their $300 counterparts.
Alternative to Microsoft Office: Open Office.org
Open Office does all the things MS Office does, it supports MS Office files (both reading and writing) and is smaller, sleaker, faster, and more stable.
Alternative to Photoshop: The Gimp
Alternatives to Windows Media Player (Although technically free, WMP is an extremely bulky pain in my ass): VLC Media Player, Media Player Classic (My Favorite, even more basic and easy to use than the popular VLC, great for simple, quick dvd playback)
Alternatives to Nero: Infrarecorder
I just found this last night. Free, extremely lightweight and fast. I may never use nero for basic cd/dvd buring again.
Check out more at Osalt.com (Open Source as Alternative)
As such, I've been weaning myself off of the name brands and slowly migrating over to free and open source alternatives. These programs that I use are of course free, and often times are just as robust, and most of the time, more stable than their $300 counterparts.
Alternative to Microsoft Office: Open Office.org
Open Office does all the things MS Office does, it supports MS Office files (both reading and writing) and is smaller, sleaker, faster, and more stable.
Alternative to Photoshop: The Gimp
Alternatives to Windows Media Player (Although technically free, WMP is an extremely bulky pain in my ass): VLC Media Player, Media Player Classic (My Favorite, even more basic and easy to use than the popular VLC, great for simple, quick dvd playback)
Alternatives to Nero: Infrarecorder
I just found this last night. Free, extremely lightweight and fast. I may never use nero for basic cd/dvd buring again.
Check out more at Osalt.com (Open Source as Alternative)
Monday, November 12, 2007
Sicko, It'll Make You Want to Barf on People
I unfortunately didn't have a chance to see this in the theaters, but I just saw it on dvd. Go rent this right now. It'll piss you off, but it a good way. Perhaps the best point he makes in the movie is not about the American health care system, but how afraid we are to rock the boat when we're being exploited and stepped on.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Season 7 Cancelled
Because of the writers strike, Season 7 of 24 will not actually premeir untill september of 08.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Slowtastic
Comcast has been acting like turds lately, and it's high time something was done about it."An investigation by the Associated Press caught Comcast secretly inspecting online communications and crippling users' ability to share information with one another.
This is a gross violation of Net Neutrality -- the longstanding principle that ensures a free and open Internet. Free Press has filed a legal complaint demanding that the FCC take action to protect the Internet's free flow of information. By sending the letter you join the fight to stop Comcast and other gatekeepers. "
Translation: Comcast has been prioritizing certain Internet traffic and de-prioritizing other (such as bittorrent) traffic. This would be like if your city's police department decided to re rout your car on the way to your work so that other, more important people wouldn't experience as much traffic on their way.
Fill out this form to send a letter to the FCC.
Monday, October 29, 2007
As Much as I Love Digital Media, This News is Comforting
From Wired:
As counterintuitive as it may seem in this age of iPods and digital downloads, vinyl -- the favorite physical format of indie music collectors and audiophiles -- is poised to re-enter the mainstream, or at least become a major tributary.
Talk to almost anyone in the music business' vital indie and DJ scenes and you'll encounter a uniformly optimistic picture of the vinyl market.
"I'm hearing from labels and distributors that vinyl is way up," said Ian Connelly, client relations manager of independent distributor alliance IODA, in an e-mail interview. "And not just the boutique, limited-edition colored vinyl that Jesu/Isis-style fans are hot for right now."
Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today's music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.
"For many of us, and certainly for many of our artists, the vinyl is the true version of the release," said Matador's Patrick Amory. "The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music."
Because these music fans also listen using portable players and computers, Matador and other labels include coupons in record packaging that can be used to download MP3 versions of the songs. Amory called the coupon program "hugely popular."
Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs.
Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It's the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound.
Another reason for vinyl's sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist's theorem to the contrary.
"The digital world will never get there," said Chris Ashworth, owner of United Record Pressing, the country's largest record pressing plant.
Golden-eared audiophiles have long testified to vinyl's warmer, richer sound. And now demand for vinyl is on the rise. Pressing plants that were already at capacity are staying there, while others are cranking out more records than they did last year in order to keep pace with demand.
Don MacInnis, owner of Record Technology in Camarillo, California, predicts production will be up 25 percent over last year by the end of 2007. And he's not talking about small runs of dance music for DJs, but the whole gamut of music: "new albums, reissues, majors and indies ... jazz, blues, classical, pop and a lot of (classic) rock."
Turntables are hot again as well. Insound, an online music retailer that recently began selling USB turntables alongside vinyl, can't keep them in stock, according to the company's director, Patrick McNamara.
And on Oct. 17, Amazon.com launched a vinyl-only section stocked with a growing collection of titles and several models of record players.
Big labels still aren't buying the vinyl comeback, but it wouldn't be the first time the industry failed to identify a new trend in the music biz.
"Our numbers, at least, don't really point to a resurgence," said Jonathan Lamy, the Recording Industry Association of America's director of communications. Likewise, Nielsen SoundScan, which registered a slight increase in vinyl sales last year, nonetheless showed a 43 percent decrease between 2000 and 2006.
But when it comes to vinyl, these organizations don't really know what they're talking about. The RIAA's numbers are misleading because its member labels are only now beginning to react to the growing demand for vinyl. As for SoundScan, its numbers don't include many of the small indie and dance shops where records are sold. More importantly, neither organization tracks used records sold at stores or on eBay -- arguably the central clearinghouse for vinyl worldwide.
Vinyl's popularity has been underreported before.
"The Consumer Electronics Association said that only 100,000 turntables were sold in 2004. Numark alone sold more than that to pro DJs that year," said Chris Roman, product manager for Numark.
And the vinyl-MP3 tag team might just hasten the long-predicted death of the CD.
San Francisco indie band The Society of Rockets, for example, plans to release its next album strictly on vinyl and as MP3 files.
"Having just gone through the process of mastering our new album for digital and for vinyl, I can say it is completely amazing how different they really sound," said lead singer and guitarist Joshua Babcock in an e-mail interview. "The way the vinyl is so much better and warmer and more interesting to listen to is a wonder."
As counterintuitive as it may seem in this age of iPods and digital downloads, vinyl -- the favorite physical format of indie music collectors and audiophiles -- is poised to re-enter the mainstream, or at least become a major tributary.
Talk to almost anyone in the music business' vital indie and DJ scenes and you'll encounter a uniformly optimistic picture of the vinyl market.
"I'm hearing from labels and distributors that vinyl is way up," said Ian Connelly, client relations manager of independent distributor alliance IODA, in an e-mail interview. "And not just the boutique, limited-edition colored vinyl that Jesu/Isis-style fans are hot for right now."
Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today's music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.
"For many of us, and certainly for many of our artists, the vinyl is the true version of the release," said Matador's Patrick Amory. "The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music."
Because these music fans also listen using portable players and computers, Matador and other labels include coupons in record packaging that can be used to download MP3 versions of the songs. Amory called the coupon program "hugely popular."
Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs.
Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It's the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound.
Another reason for vinyl's sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist's theorem to the contrary.
"The digital world will never get there," said Chris Ashworth, owner of United Record Pressing, the country's largest record pressing plant.
Golden-eared audiophiles have long testified to vinyl's warmer, richer sound. And now demand for vinyl is on the rise. Pressing plants that were already at capacity are staying there, while others are cranking out more records than they did last year in order to keep pace with demand.
Don MacInnis, owner of Record Technology in Camarillo, California, predicts production will be up 25 percent over last year by the end of 2007. And he's not talking about small runs of dance music for DJs, but the whole gamut of music: "new albums, reissues, majors and indies ... jazz, blues, classical, pop and a lot of (classic) rock."
Turntables are hot again as well. Insound, an online music retailer that recently began selling USB turntables alongside vinyl, can't keep them in stock, according to the company's director, Patrick McNamara.
And on Oct. 17, Amazon.com launched a vinyl-only section stocked with a growing collection of titles and several models of record players.
Big labels still aren't buying the vinyl comeback, but it wouldn't be the first time the industry failed to identify a new trend in the music biz.
"Our numbers, at least, don't really point to a resurgence," said Jonathan Lamy, the Recording Industry Association of America's director of communications. Likewise, Nielsen SoundScan, which registered a slight increase in vinyl sales last year, nonetheless showed a 43 percent decrease between 2000 and 2006.
But when it comes to vinyl, these organizations don't really know what they're talking about. The RIAA's numbers are misleading because its member labels are only now beginning to react to the growing demand for vinyl. As for SoundScan, its numbers don't include many of the small indie and dance shops where records are sold. More importantly, neither organization tracks used records sold at stores or on eBay -- arguably the central clearinghouse for vinyl worldwide.
Vinyl's popularity has been underreported before.
"The Consumer Electronics Association said that only 100,000 turntables were sold in 2004. Numark alone sold more than that to pro DJs that year," said Chris Roman, product manager for Numark.
And the vinyl-MP3 tag team might just hasten the long-predicted death of the CD.
San Francisco indie band The Society of Rockets, for example, plans to release its next album strictly on vinyl and as MP3 files.
"Having just gone through the process of mastering our new album for digital and for vinyl, I can say it is completely amazing how different they really sound," said lead singer and guitarist Joshua Babcock in an e-mail interview. "The way the vinyl is so much better and warmer and more interesting to listen to is a wonder."
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