Archive for the ‘music’ Category
Monday, October 27th, 2008
while i’m feeling so wordy… i’ve been listening to the hadouken! album music for an accelerated culture and does it offend you, yeah?s You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into a bit recently… and liking it.
kinda the sort of music that’d make you feel old if you stopped and thought about it long enough, especially the way hadouken! can start the album “get smashed gate crash”, a sort of full-on ode to corey worthington if that were possible and then the album peters out with “liquid lives” and “spend you life”, the first about the effects of alcohol abuse and mistakes made and the second about societies buy now pay later mentality…
um, weren’t you the one telling me to get smashed and gate crash before? so what then, are you just a bunch of sarcastic guys angling to be serious? so maybe i’m too old or i’m listening too hard. fair enough.
truth be told, because of this, i find does it offend you, yeah? much more enjoyable, fun music, straight forward enough message, very cool.
although in all this, i’m reminded of that arj barker joke.
you know, i really like this vegemite stuff you australians have, if i could offer one little improvement?
it’s not salty enough
replace vegemite for new-rave or dance-punk or whatever this crazy crap is called,
and salt for synth.
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Sunday, August 3rd, 2008
the way i use my ipod touch is probably fairly unique in the grand scheme of things…
i use the winamp media library in conjuction with mliPod to fill it with music, but as a user of last.fm this method has a major drawback; the offline scrobbling and playlist sync’ing doesn’t work with the iPod touch… so i’ve been listening to a stack of music on it and last.fm is none the wiser…
until now…
the other day i heard tom meritt mention the reason why he wasn’t super keen to get the 3G iphone was because it wasn’t jailbroken yet, and that would mean he wouldn’t be able to use the mobilescrobbler application…
which gave me the idea that i could use that application and not have to wait until the genius’ at the winamp forums fix it!
so, after a few bodgy attempts at downgrading to firmware 1.1.1 and the resultant bricking, i found and used the ziphone software, which unlocked the device and added the installer application! …then it was as easy as finding the mobilescrobbler application in the list and installing it (twice for some unknown reason)… but hey, i’ve tested it, and it works!
aren’t you glad?
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Saturday, August 2nd, 2008
brace yourself, this is going to get nerdy.
ever since i started using last.fm i’ve been frustrated at the lack of RSS feeds for user profile data, being able to pull out reports of scrobbled data is, what i would call key in using their service… so yesterday i finally got motivated and decided to have a go at fudging someone elses code… a quick google brought me to a blog post at i.ndustrio.us where the guy outlines a how-to for pretty close to what i need…
below is the code i ended up using in my side bar to display my “last.fm weekly top albums”;
<?php
$user = “_luke__”;
$url = “http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/”;
$url .=”2.0/user/$user/weeklyalbumchart.xml”;
$xml = simplexml_load_file(”$url”);
print “<table align=’centre’ border=’0′>”;
$columns=1;
$i=0;
foreach($xml->album as $album)
{
$i++;
$artist = $album->artist;
$album_name = $album->name;
$album_url = $album->url;
$album_image = $album->image->medium;
if($i==0)
print “<tr>”;
print ”
<td align=’left’>
<a href=’$album_url’>$artist - $album_name</a>
</td>
“;
if($i==$columns)
{
$i=0;
print “</tr>”;
}
}
print “</table>”;
?>
feel free to steal and fudge this as you see fit.
if i cared more, i would include a loop so that it only showed the top ten, if you implement this, let me know, cheers.
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Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
you know you haven’t posted for a while, when you start considering writing about how hard it is to write… or you start revisiting the well worn road of discussing what’s really relevant…
but i know what’s relevant, things like; family, melbourne, football, music, tech, twitter, food… so i don’t need to go there do i… i just need to write more… easy.
now that that is out of the way, you know what’s been annoying me lately? a couple of people have been trying to finish my sentences for me, in an effort to prove they understand what i’m talking about… even when either of them ask me the question… it just proves they don’t, and most of the time it doubles the length of the conversation… **sigh**
ok, in other news, liam took his first real steps yesterday, i was absolutely gobsmacked… he’s becoming a real person! i’ve uploaded some news pics to prove it, hehehe…
hey! why don’t i make this an uber-post and try to cover ALL the categories above… hmm…
- melbourne is cold atm, it’s winter and getting out of bed in the morning is extremely difficult. i still love it though. in the evenings we have the heater on in our living room and often, because i’ve done the wii-fit thing, i stay in t-shirt and shorts until we go to bed, AND THEN, i wonder why i’m so cold…
- football? well, apparently duff scored a hat-trick in nufc’s win against hartlepool(?), i guess that’s good news (better than losing, duh) but you know, i honestly didn’t expect us to keep m.owen into next season, but seeing as liverpool just bought robbie keane, i think he might be safe! this also is the time of the year when i decide whether to join or start a tipping competition… hmm, i think i might skip the telegraph one this year, i get the impression guys do that one as a full-time job!
- music. hmm, i’ve discovered a new blog broken record that is really interesting, and my latest tumblr post is pretty depressing if you’re into it…
- the laptop i’ve been aiming for isn’t going to be released in australia! damn, against kim’s advice i think i’ll settle and if i feel like it later, i’ll buy a solid state disk for it separately.
- twitter is still there, and probably generally unheathy for my writing in this thing. my random thoughts that would used to have been full posts get reduced down to 140 characters or less… otherwise meh.
- and food. what can i say, i’m definitely eating less than i used to and am trying to shun the evil food i love… that said, we had fish and chips with emma and scott last night, and it was awesome but strangely unfulfilling… like the awesomeness didn’t make up for how kinda unwell i felt afterwards?
ok well, that seemed to work pretty well, amazing how much crap i can come out with.
or maybe not.
Posted in family, food and drink, football, generica, melbourne, music, tech, twitter | Comments Off
Saturday, May 10th, 2008
…as per sourceforge…
seeing as kim has been in brisbane this week and weekend, nothing much has been happening that i feel compelled to post about, i thought i may as finish the post from a couple of weeks ago…
so the sourceforge project “mliPod” is the place to go to get your iPod working without iTunes, for whatever reason, i’m not going to get into that now, anyways…
with a correctly tagged and rated winamp media library, the functionality of mliPod is truly astounding… in the same way as pete, i used to just add and remove the same sort of set of albums, but with “autofill” i am listening to a much bigger variety of music and enjoying it more! below is a screen cap of the options presented…
notice, it won’t bother with tracks shorter than 1 minute… my current rating proportions are set like this:
which, maybe needs a little tweaking, but we’ll see… and below is how the software decides on the tracks to use with autofill… once the offline scrobbling issue is fixed for the iPod touch, i will change my setting to be “last play time, least recent first”…
so there you have it, free yourself of iTunes, fair use is for everyone.
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Friday, April 18th, 2008
i was going to do a big “for and against” post for the iPod touch and n95, but in reality i just can’t be bothered to wade into that massive arguement, it’s not that i have anything against the iphone really, just that i don’t understand the hype around what appears to be quite a limited device…
i guess i’m in a relatively unique position having owned the nokia “flagship” device since december ‘07; the n95-8gb… and now that i managed to win an iPod touch last month i feel like i can write a more balanced post about them…
- the touchscreen keyboard is pretty horrible to use and i can’t see it getting better because how is it ever going to know what you “meant to press”? tactile response is still more efficient.
- the ipod touch is pretty big for something that’s going to spend the majority of it’s time in your pocket, i guess you could be watching movies on it… yes, i have been known to watch the odd daily show or robot chicken episode on my n95, but it’s not like either of those are filmed in high def or anything…
- my n95 allows me to subscribe to and schedule the download of podcasts on the fly, over the air… the iPod wants to go to iTunes to do this, which to me, kinda defeats the purpose.
…but i guess that shows my limited ipod experience in general doesn’t; i don’t want to use iTunes, for anything, but it wants me to use it for everything… and well, nokia seem to encourage application development, but without the seemingly apple patented impenetrable field reality distorting marketing…
marketing the n95? case in point, have you seen this or this? add the fact that when you plug any standard usb cable in the phone, it pops up on any computer as a storage device so you can transfer music/images/videos, installing and using real GPS software on the n95 is a snap, and add a 5 megapixel camera with a decent lens… in the end the popularity and hype seems to boil down to a beauty competition.
people will say; “but it just works”, but somehow they forget, apple is just another evil corporation after their money… and everything is designed to be a closed system to keep them locked in and oblivious.
**sigh**
my next post about the iPod will detail how i can use it without having to jump through the iTunes hoops… look forward to it…
Posted in generica, music, tech | 2 Comments »
Sunday, April 13th, 2008
i guess you’re wondering how kim’s doing since i ran her over? the answer is pretty well! her foot is fine, bruising turned out to be pretty much the extent of it, apparently it’s still a bit sore occasionally, but she’s otherwise fine…
well sort of… both kim and liam have been pretty sick this weekend… does the title make sense yet? just sinus congestion and headache… problem is, kim can’t take anything for it and liam… is a baby… we have been using vicks vaporub and that whole vaporising malarkey but it hasn’t been fun for anyone… on the plus side though kim found out the hard way that liam has two teeth! they’re the bottom front ones… AND he’s starting to try to crawl; he’ll go from sitting up, then leaning forward he gets onto all fours and rocks back and forth, this doesn’t tend to last too long as he soon becomes too frustrated and loses concentration… i guess i’d better look at baby proofing the lounge room quick smart hey…
so i finally received that iPod Touch and got it going relatively easily with winamp, it even handles offline scrobbling! awesome huh! it’s good to know other people around the web want exactly the same thing i do, AND possess some pretty amazing programming ability… i’ll save you and do a separate post for the iPod rant…
Posted in generica, music, tech | 3 Comments »
Sunday, April 6th, 2008
if you have a collection of music that is in a digital format like mp3 and have a very mild case of OCD like me… you might know exactly what i’m about to talk about…
take a movie soundtrack for instance, a collection of songs by different artists, musicbrainz or last.fm wants all the tracks labelled with each individual artist which is all well and good (and correct in that, yes, the different songs have different artists) BUT once you start browsing through your music you find that you have millions of artists in your library but each only has one track… maybe a ministry of sound album is a better example, but you get the idea…
so i go back and force all the artist tags in soundtracks to be “various artists”, and albums like ministry of sound/godskitchen/onelove get tagged as such… but it’s a hassle…
i can appreciate last.fm need to keep a united front and yes, i know it’s a free “service”, but they really need to give the album some attention… especially with the iTunes store being so popular, a lot of people have said the album is dead, well thanks for your input, but as long music is being released on CD, i’ll buy it, not because i have money to burn, but because i’d prefer as little loss in quality as possible and i guess because it’s less of an impulse purchase than “one song for 99c” (that i would probably regret buying and delete anyway).
am i a freak or what?
oh hey, i came across a pretty cool site for making “mix tapes” either to give to people or just to make for the sake of web ego called muxtape… because i’m a sucker here’s mine, especially for you…
Posted in generica, music, tech | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
so i went a bit nuts with buying music this month, just thought i’d catch up on a bunch of stuff i’ve been meaning to get for a while… still, i didn’t break my own rules and pay more than $20 for any one album, and in most cases paid less than $15!
- motion city soundtrack - even if it kills me… something newish that i’m really getting into, kinda like the hippos crossed with weezer, very cool, and quite clever lyrics in places, which i’m always a sucker for!
- hard-fi - once upon a time in the west… probably the best “2nd album” i’ve heard for such a breakout band, really dig the horns in “can’t get along (without you)”, and they’ve retained that sort of anthemic sound while resisting the urge to add drama. i also really like that the NO COVER ART cover art is followed up inside the case with a large spread reading INSIGNIFICANT PHOTO SHOOT
- alicia keys - songs in A minor… can’t believe it’s taken me so long to get this one, and it only cost $10! they’re all good but the standout track has to be “rock wit u”, it grates on me to type the spelling like that, but the sound is just that good…
- nirvana - unplugged in new york… i used to have my brothers copy of this and think i almost wore the laser right through the disc, haven’t listened to it since, yet, the mood will grab me again sometime soon, and when it does i’ll be ready.
- gomez - how we operate… this album has taken forever to grow on me, unlike a previous one of theirs “in our gun” but “notice” gives me goose bumps now and the album just gets better from there.
- the white stripes - get behind me satan… another one that has taken me forever to get, the album is full of excellent songs but better than that it flows really well. “my doorbell” is my personal favorite.
- jebediah - of someday shambles… i went through a stage of hearing this album far too many times a week and even still the lead singers voice annoys me a bit; i steer well clear of bob evans… that said, this album is just full of really good songs, it’s inescapable. plus there’s the whole rewind before track one starts thing.
- herbie hancock - the essential… ahh the classic… i rarely buy albums for one song, but since he won that grammy i couldn’t help myself, maybe i’ll discover more of his listening to this… or maybe i’ll just skip to rockit everytime…
- norah jones - feels like home… dinner music, albeit pretty high standard… compared to… i guess elevator music? gotta say though, i love the dolly parton duet… “humble me” has to be the stand out track.
- jose gonzalez - in our nature… maybe my only regret of the month? i find it preachy and annoying, probably the opposite of what he was going for… and do we REALLY need someone else doing massive attacks “teardrop”? damn. teardrop is an amazing song, leave it alone, i’m looking at you wendy matthews, House MD, and of course you Jose.
- the music - welcome to the north… ahh back when emi was releasing crippled media, don’t call it a CD because it isn’t. the album doesn’t comply with the standards that make compact discs, compact discs. anyway, the music were probably the loudest act at the gold coast BDO when i went, beating out slipknot, the beastie boys and system of a down… and this album rocks, my fav i guess would be breakin’
so yeah, massive month for me huh, have you bought anything this month?
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Thursday, February 28th, 2008
i heard about a great idea for the music industry this morning…
log on to the site, download 3 songs for free per band, pay $10 to the band you like and back your belief, once the “belief” reaches $50000, the band uses the money to record an album, and the profits are split 3 ways;
-the band,
-the believers,
-the website that brought them together.
cool huh.
especially since i read the article in wired about that big record exec… the way he contradicted himself, blamed the consumer (his customer) and was still so aggressive about increasing profits, so annoying…
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Friday, February 1st, 2008
so, the brand new concert last night… um, firstly i ended up selling the 2nd ticket i had to someone who replied to a gumtree ad had submitted earlier in the week, so that was cool, i didn’t end up wasting too much money, and she even turned out to be pretty cool… the palace was selling two types of beer; corona at $9 or VB in a can at $6… damn, what kind choice is that!
the mystery 2nd support act was jesse doing an acoustic set… which was very cool, and led really well into the full show, they opened with “welcome to bangkok“; 5 guitarists and 2 drummers at full tilt… super loud and absolutely amazing… the 2nd drummer and other 2 guitars made several more appearances during the night always adding weight to the sound… i wonder what their show was like at the bdo the other day? surely they couldn’t have been this intense (and loud) at 5 in the afternoon…
yet again, i’m amazed at the level of dedication in the audience, the majority of people in the place were yelling the lyrics for the full show… see below for obligatory phone/camera picture.
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Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
hmm, i’ve got a couple of points to make about the bdo just gone, not really sure how to get post this started… my day started at a friends brothers place, sitting on their deck in the sun; champagne cocktails, doritos and general banter about music and whatever…
a combination of excitement and impatience had me leaving the “warm up” with the brothers housemates… and after a short walk found flemington to have the same downfall as princess park!
NO GENTLE SLOPE
…just a flat dusty expanse… portable fences and people as far as the eye could see. i don’t understand why the organisers can’t find a better location, with a slope the crush to get to the front wouldn’t be any where near as big… you could actually just relax behind the D, instead of standing on tippy toes, occaisionally hoping to get a glimpse… anyways… my day panned out like this:
something with numbers
caught the very end of their set while i was coming through the gates and getting a 18+ wrist strap, they sounded excellent considering how far away i was, it was probably that they were playing a few of their singles towards the end of their set that i recognised them, but yeah, very impressive…
british india
very tight rock, i’ve never heard them before but liked it
operator please
well what to say? they aren’t everyones cup of tea, but they certainly had the “crowd” going; i’m pretty sure there was nobody older than 21 in their audience, in any case, going on previous experience, at least they weren’t just screaming the whole time…
anti-flag
my first trip into the D that day, easy as, just walked straight in, anti-flag just rocked, sort of like rancid mixed with surf punk? they were enthusiastic, political and didn’t care… excellent…
faker
i’ve always liked faker but had never seen them live… previously i’d heard their frontman is a tool, and he didn’t do much to disprove that on the day… prancing around and expecting riotous applause before even playing a song… hmm… it gets better, in between songs, he says “hi everyone, we’re FAKER”… **cricket cricket**… “um we made a sign in case you didn’t know”, he says pointing to the stage set **cricket cricket**… and it went on and on. i guess credit to them, they played a lot of their more popular older stuff…
gyroscope
heavy rock, i didn’t recognise any of their songs but liked it. they look really young?
dizzee rascal
kind of funny? i’m not really into hip hop but it wasn’t how i expected… the first song was one long name check, but was pretty funky, then there was the song that focused completely on his new sneakers… again funky enough, but, umm, yeah… jones and i wondered aloud if the moves that all the kids were doing bothered him at all… seemed like everyone except me had been an extra in 8 mile…
regurgitator
we got some food and listened to the gurg, they were excellent, playing stacks of old stuff and some new stuff, dressed up like divo, and cracking jokes between songs… nice
hill-top hoods
after dizzee, the hoods were such a welcome change, the guys were out to have fun, and the crowd was loving it… they even brought a string quartet! midway through their set, i had to bite the bullet and commit to being in the D for the rest of the day… but even in the crush, with everyone singing along, they were great.
grinspoon
…i’m still stuck in the crush… grinspoon are playing, meh, finally we get let in and the band stops so an announcer can tell everyone they the lights probably won’t go green for the rest of the day, i’m glad i made it in… grinspoon? well, phil looked out of it, and his dancing? mincey at best… yikes. at one stage he twirled, tripped and almost fell over at the back of the stage… weird. but their set was solid, and they finished with “champion“, obvious but still good.
arcade fire
so unexpected, so so good, it’s like the cool kids escaped from the cult of the polyphonic spree, and started their own traveling band… one of them even played a hurdy gurdy!! (?) check them out. now.
silverchair
ok so, i am naturally cynical and hard to please, but, me and most australians won’t clap because of who you are, we will clap if you actually put on a good show and get us into it… breaking EVERY song down into solos with your head stuck in the effects board doesn’t get us into it… and then telling us we are your favorite audience doesn’t get us on your side. ben and chris looked bored and/or amused most of the set, i felt sorry for them.
bjork
ok, after the ordeal that was silverchair, i was quite testy, nobody was being let into the D for the rest of the night, so i only had to wait another 80 mintues for rage… so picture for a moment, a mosh pit full of people waiting to see rage against the machine, having to stand through a bjork set… interesting… as good as it was, i’m not sure i’ve ever checked my watch so much! hyperballad was obviously the standout, goosebumps and everything… and she would always say a quiet little “sang-chu” between songs.
rage against the machine
so after so much hype, here they were, the band most people came to see, and they delivered in spades, i was very happy to be so close to the action, the whole D was jumping and swirling… all the great songs, strange to think they only really have 3 albums of originals… while the band was offstage waiting for the inevitable encore, some guy got on the mic and told everyone who had climbed onto the roof of the beer tent to get off before it breaks, and then someone fired a flare into the crowd, terrific, just what we need, a riot. but luckily nothing eventuated, they played “killing in the name of” last, not my fav song, but the crowd loved it… excellent finale with every single light in the place turned on.
so after such a huge day, some things have struck me;
with rage being so anticipated, and the lineup being so top heavy, having to go into the D before 5pm to see a band that kicked off at 8.50 sucked, and it certainly didn’t stop kids from drinking in there, i saw people with plastic hip flasks of smirnov red! i think the whole event should be 18+ and reduce the security around the bars… i guess the whole point isn’t to drink, but the way it is now, there are a lot of people sitting in the “corners” drinking and watching it all on the big screen, and others who are busting for the toilet but are “stuck” in the D and won’t leave for fear of not getting back in…
and my last point? **phew** just as the crusty demons learnt in brisbane all those years ago, the average australian audience won’t respond well if you come out on stage and don’t do what you are there to do, FIRST AND FOREMOST.
Daniel Johns and that guy from Faker should take a lesson from RATM and Anti-Flag, rock out first, that is all.
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