Sunday, March 30, 2008

MixWit / This Is My Jam / Muxtape 


Two/Three new ways to share your musical tastes with others:

MixWit

MixWit has a totally fun way to make a little Mix Tape of your favorite tunes by searching for them from free-roaming online MP3s via Seeqpod or Skreemr, sequencing them in order and then picking a cute olde-skoole blank tape graphic to post on your blog or what-not.



Demo video here:

Pros:

* The service provides access to whole tracks, so folks interested in your musical tastes can check out whole songs streamed from places all over the web.

* The Mix Tape graphic and play/pause/ff/rew (hover over) interface is super fun and appeals to old fart hipsters like myself.

* The ability to switch between Skreemr and Seeqpod as your MP3 search engines is great. My two go-to sources for digging out tracks online.

* You can go back and edit existing mixes which is necessary function when you realize that you suddenly hate a song.


Cons:

* The music selection is at the mercy of whatever regular folks/criminals have posted online.

* Some songs may disappear from old locations on teh intarwebs (thank you old Porchsleeper songs) leaving holes in your mix.



ThisIsMyJam

ThisIsMyJam uses some alien Roswell technology (via The EchoNest) which takes little bits from 30 second sound samples of songs available on Amazon and beat-matches (and even key-changes) them to make a little postage stamp mix of your favorite tunes. Now I've got a little graphic kind of like a "commercial" for songs that I've been into lately that people can tune in to to hear what My Jam is.



Pros:

* The beat matching and key shifting makes for some fucking sweet transitions between songs. This is really well done. Check out the transition between "Waiting on a Friend" into "Oxford Comma" into "Breakable" into "The Only Living Boy in New York" to hear the real magic.

* The Amazon catalog is pretty deep and offers access to songs that aren't free roaming around the 'net.

* Drag and drop interface works well, although looking through long lists of song results involves many pushes of the "More" button.

* They offer "Similar Jams" by other people based on the songs in the your mix. As this service gets more popular I can see this becoming valuable, and on that note...

* The little "snapshots of songs" format works really well. I can listen to "Dudeman2000"s mix and get a little glimpse of some other tunes I should maybe check out, but not be barraged by an hour of music I'd likely be skipping through much of anyway.


Cons:

* Song samples only. Not full tracks. This is fine for browsing peoples' tastes, but a drag if something comes on that you might be interested in.

* Indie stuff and demos that are available around online (like Great Lakes Myth Society's new "Brablec Farms") are not available here, but are available via the MixWit mix tape widget.

* As a "Jam" creator, there isn't any way to edit a Jam that you made yesterday. I talked with one of the dudes there and he said that function is high on their list of To Dos.

* You can't really log in to your jams...like I made a Jam from my PC upstairs, and when I tried to find it while on my laptop, I couldn't log in and find it again. Once logged in, you can log out, but not the other way around. See Vonnegut's Catch 22 for more information.

* Sometimes the graphics of the album covers gets "off" from the song that is currently playing. This may have something to do with scrolling on your mouse as the Jam is playing...I can't really pin it down, but it makes to tough to track which song you like and which one you hate. This is a potential pain if you want to click through to the Amazon page to buy that album.

* Their Embed code is jacked for Blogger, involving some manual editing to the code (adding an </embed> tag at the end).

* Once the mix is done playing, I can't figure out how to kickstart it again without refreshing the page.

* The graphic on this page exposes that I've been into the new Jack Johnson album to all the world, which I never thought I would be displaying so prominently. Such is life. The album is light, but enjoyable.


Overall:

Jesus, man, what a crazy-ass futurama utopia we're living in. I can't wait to see what's around the corner. I'd love to see either of these (especially ThisIsMyJam) tied into my Last.FM account so it could automatically make these little Jams of my recently-listened-to tunes.




Late Addition Muxtape


cassette
datawhat.muxtape.com

A bro comments: "all the hip kids seem to be into this muxtape.com. you actually get to upload your own songs to it."

Y'know, the Muxtape interface didn't really do anything for me.

http://datawhat.muxtape.com/

I like the idea of being able to upload one or two tracks of my own music, but I dunno if I want to upload an entire MixTape's worth of music. The majority of these songs are out there and I feel as though I should be able to use that stuff instead of spending bandwidth pushing songs up to their servers.

Plus, sending a bunch of copyrighted music (that I own but don't own the rights to redistribute) up to a server that I have no control over (and they have my e-mail address) makes me a little skittish. If I upload an hour's worth of Beatles and Metallica tunes up to my Muxtape, am I going to have the RIAA and Lars and Yoko pounding on my door? That visual is too scary to be worth the risk.

To be honest, the real reason I didn't post about them is that the site made me feel stupid. Their servers were not responding properly for a while Sunday (or something) and I couldn't get any music to play back. The big problem that I had is that there was absolutely nothing on the site that said what to do.

I googled around and finally found that you were supposed to double-click on a song to get it to play. So I tried that, and nothing happened. The song percentage would flip up to 100% but no sound.

The thing that bugged me the most was that all of these sites are saying "It's so simple, it is a beautiful exercise in simplicity!" and I couldn't get the fucking thing to work. Made me feel like I was back in math class and everybody else was getting it while I was falling further behind.

Finally I found somebody who said "You gotta restart Firefox to get it to work" which I did and it was pretty simple. Still, there's no tutorial, no FAQ, no "troubleshooting" section...the whole thing made me feel as though I was missing something when it was really their fault.

For the record:

1. Sign in/register

2. Close Firefox/browser

3. Reopen Browser and go to somebody's Muxtape page.

4. When you double-click anywhere on the text of a song, there should be a gray percentage meter that climbs from 0% to 100%.

5. On the far right, large green numbers should start rolling to tell you how far into the song you are (the track time).

6. If you are just seeing a long gray bar on the right side, something is jacked. Try restarting your browser or try a different browser. (I think you must be logged in to hear anything, but again, there are no instructions on any of this.)

7. You can jump to the next song or to the previous song by using the right and left keyboard arrows, and you can pause it by clicking on the track that is playing.

8. UPDATE: Nope, I still can't figure this damned thing out. Sometimes you double click, sometimes it's a single click, sometimes it works in Firefox, sometimes only in IE. I can play my own song that I uploaded but right now I can't access other songs in Firefox. IE seems to work if I click a song three times. Bleh. Don't believe the hype.


Comments: 0

a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman 


A couple bros hipped me to the Photoshop Disasters site, featuring this three-armed damsel.

3

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From Bash.org:

Greenday2262: I'll bet Gandalf got SOOO high.
Greenday2262: That fool can blow smoke-ships ffs!
SunuvaChod: hahaha
Greenday2262: I mean if Gandalf wanted to blaze with you, you would blaze right?
SunuvaChod: if gandalf wanted to blaze with me
SunuvaChod: id already be so fucked in the head that blazing wouldnt fuckin matter
SunuvaChod: so yes i would

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The funny papers.

Garfield Minus Garfield makes Jon Davis' cartoons much more entertaining:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

cramp

Some wack-ass comics that Matt Tobey stumbled across:

Funky

Herb & Jamaal

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This has viral marketing/urban legend hoax spray painted all over it, but I am totally compelled by these abandoned couches with Levitra painted on them.

sleep

From the posts on the site:
"About a day later, a girl named Brenda said she saw a wreck of a couch on Aquino Drive in Natomas, and that it was spray painted. She didn't have a picture, so I went myself to see what I could find.
When I saw it, I knew right away. I started yelling like an idiot in the car.
It was another Levitra couch!"


and

"You don't know me but maybe you know something about the paint job on my couch. My porch couch has become an ad for Levitra. A situation I find distasteful. After reading your site, I see that most of the couches there are abandoned or junkpiled. My couch, however was not, so please let me know whose ass I get to kick when I found out who is behind this graffiti.
T.I West"

Note: This guy's site has a whole section on (semi-mediocre) pranks he's pulled, and the Levitra pages are plastered with AdWords-related ads for Levitra, so it may all be malarkey, but if not, isn't that weird?

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Two new Great Lakes Myth Society recordings.
"She's Come Home To Steal Her Rainbows" is a re-recording and "Brablec Farms" is all new.

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This post from a toy designer called Rejected a Long, Long Time Ago... is about all of these crazy-ass ideas for Star Wars toys that they brainstormed out. Most of them are horrible (Jabba the Hutt beanbag and Han in Carbonite Mini-Fridge among them), but the Cockpit Sun Shield totally pulls the ears off a gundark if you ask me.

Cockpit

The only real question is whether you bust out The Falcon or the AT-AT picture.
....I guess you could flip it around depending on how your morning commute went.

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Bizarro new rock band: Fleet Foxes, Ruiner of Worlds.
Kinda like old Genesis meets The Shins on the Renaissance Faire stage at Bonnaroo.

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Thanks Steve
Thanks Goody
Thanks Dan
Thanks Chris
Thanks Lee
Thanks Matt
Thanks K


Comments: 0
Sunday, March 23, 2008

More like 'Across the Spew-niverse' 

Does anybody have a copy of the Beatles Anthology DVDs that I can borrow? I'm in a major Beatles jones right now and I need to wash the awful taste of Across the Universe out of my mouth.

Anthology

I have the whole thing taped from TV on VHS tapes but I lost the keys to my time machine to go back and watch things on a VCR. If anybody can hook a brother up, I'd be most obliged.

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I should've listened to your review Perry


Comments: 0
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

This is an awareness test 




I won, but then I lost

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Thanks Chris


Comments: 0
Monday, March 17, 2008

Could be a Crackhaid 




Happy St. Patrick's Day

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Thanks Dadid


Comments: 0
Wednesday, March 12, 2008

that's too much banana and not enough peel 

Steve sez:
Today is a glorious day.

I finally, FINALLY managed to track down the image that was the original source of Brian's famous "that's too much banana and not enough peel" line.

Behold:

jumpshorts

If I had to pick a favorite part of this picture, it would be the fact that it looks like he's got some kind of one-legged FloJo shorts on, which Steve called "Jumpshorts."

::

Super Awesome Japanese Rocket Chair OK!



Somebody in the comments noted that you could never do this in the U.S. because everybody would sue.

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Not to overclock the geekometer on this blog, but I am really excited about these photos of the costumes from the upcoming Watchmen movie.
Key-ripes The Comedian looks awesome.

::

Fail
FailBlog

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You summbitch bastiges...
Farging Ice Hole
You fargging iceholes

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Really cool life-sized Blue Whale in flash.
That's one big eye...

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Some great Motivational Posters:

Sip

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Rocky and Apollo in Love
YTMND

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oop

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Thanks Steve
Thanks David
Thanks Rob
Thanks List Of The Day
Thanks Dan
Thanks Exquisite Dead Guy


Comments: 0
Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Roll the dice to see if I am getting drunk! 

Dork godfather Gary Gygax has rolled his last 12-sided die (gettit? "Die?").

A Futurama episode where he was one of Al Gore's Action Rangers:



Old Summoner Geeks video:




Steven Lynch with his musical tribute to D&D



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A terrific prank where 200 people gathered at Grand Central Station in New York to pull off a 'frozen in place' act.
The onlooking travelers who weren't part of the act were mystified as to what was going on.

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New Hold Steady album in the works, to be called "Stay Positive"
"...after months of being hunkered down in the studio, growing their beards, the thing is finally in the can."

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Awesome nerdy type term:

keming

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Amazingly cute 3 year old explains the plot of Star Wars.
"nobie kenoby moves things around...sometimes he moves things around."

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The Top 10 Rap Songs White People Love.
6. Rob Base and DJ Easy Rock - It Takes Two
Knowing the words up to "I get stupid, I mean outrageous" is standard and unremarkable.

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Sco-Jo auctioning off a (brief) handshake at some kind of Oxfam ...something ...something ...boobs.

eBay

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Yeah, where does all that random crap on the walls of chain restaurants come from?
A Galosh.

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fail

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Thanks Steve
Thanks Goody
Thanks Dan
Thanks Bob
Thanks Brendan
Thanks DJC


Comments: 0

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