Fingel.com Moved, Site Updates
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So I finally got around to merging the old Fingel.com with this new site, which is now austinriba.com and Fingel.com. Spiffy.
Sorry laughingsquid, I just can’t hang with your hosting anymore. I know you just launched a new cloud hosting plans, but I’m on the old system, and its just not working out. My main complaint is the mail system. You only allow 70mb of storage? Is that really sufficient in today’s world? I love my @fingel.com email address, but I’ve basically had to stop using it because time and time again, my mailbox fills up. I set it up as a forward, but that doest help. The mail system still stores my incoming messages, and THEN forwards them. So when my box fills up I simply stop getting mail with no notification that something is wrong. Notgood. If I could find an option to forward without storing, or to delete messages after a certain period, I would have kept using it but… now its too late. I’ve switched the DNS entries over to 1&1. I know 1&1 sucks pretty bad, but at least its cheap and I dont have to worry about running out of space and missing mail.
Ok so enough of that rant. Here is something usefule: Worpress has an awesome feature that lets you export/import entire blogs, including attachments and comments. This made it easy for me to import my entire old blog into this one, as if nothing had changed. Even the old fingel.com links that are floating out there on the internet are still pointing to the correct URL. Not bad!
1&1 users who try to import wordpress blogs might find that the process crashes with an error “out of memory.” To fix it, place a file named php.ini in your /wp-admin/ directory that contains the line:
memory_limit= 20M
This should allow the import to proceed without crashing. However, when I did it the import would still stop after importing quite a bit of stuff, and I would have to reload the page to restart it where it had left off. I did this about 7 - 8 times and eventually it got my whole blog, with a nice message at the bottom “Good to go!” that let me know it was finished.
Lastly, I updated the design of the site. I dont like the name of the site, “Austin Riba” its terribly boring. But until I think of something else, I’m leaving it at that. Hope you like it.
Holiday Time, The Pixies and Huge Mashups
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Haven’t had much computer tome since school got out a few weeks ago, but today I thought I’d stop by and see what was new on the interwebs.
Not much.
But I did come across a few new songs for the New Years Eve mayhem. Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays!
Everybody loves the pixies.
The Pixies - Where is My Mind (Bassnectar Remix)
This is a fun track - a mashup of the 25 most popular songs of 2009 (according to Billboard) in one song. Kinda makes you realize that a lot of these pop songs sound exactly the same…
DJ Earworm - United States of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop)
Syn Emergence
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Im not entirely sure what I just watched. But I like it. From the artist’s description:
Syn Emergence is a project which examines my own associative relationships between sound, form and space.
The project is constructed according to a range of specific sonic and spatial scale rule sets (micro, component, meso and macro) which I designed as part of a cross-disciplinary notation/cartographic system.
Syn Emergence from RICH BEVAN on Vimeo.
Music for Dead Week
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Dead week is upon us. That terrible time when months of procrastination finally catch up to you. For all of you typing 10 page essays the day before they are due, this is for you. Hopefully these tunes can help you out a bit.
Cool track from this band out of Manchester, to get that intro paragraph done.
Everything Everything - My Keys Your Boyfriend
Here is a very dreamy, relaxing song from The Animal Collective. I love the intro.
Animal Collective - What Would I Want - Sky
What cramming session would be complete without some Thievery Corporation?
Thievery Corporation - Amerimacka featuring Notch
Enjoy!
The Triplets of Belleville - Awesome Animation
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This was posted on my facebook wall tonight. Check out the style here, looks like its going to be really good.
Genius - Countdown Stoplight Concept
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Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? Eko, a traffic light concept by Damjan Stanković that counts down the time until the light changes. According to his description the benefits of the light include: Less fuel consumption because drivers can turn off their engine as they wait for the light to change. Less stress, you should be free to text message if you know the light wont change for another minute. What he forgot to mention was the huge benefit it would give to cyclists. Knowing when a light will change can mean not slamming on the brakes at the last minute at yellows, as well as saving energy from slowing down unnecessarily at reds about to turn green.
Very good stuff.
Could We Get a Little Global Warming in Here?
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Ah, the end of the quarter. For some reason it always seems to mean movies, movies… movies in class. Today I watched two films about global warming - one about the sinking nation of Tuvalu and the other An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s most lasting contribution to society. Ironically last night was my first night back at the robot hut, of course, the heater is broken again. I had a dream I was wrapped in a hundred blankets, when I woke I thought I had frostbite on the tip of my nose. Who cares, lets just get to the music.
Thanks to Andrew for trading a few CDs with me last night! Heres a sweet track he made that he also gave me:
Andrew Hathon - Chasing Kids (MGMT vs Snow Patrol)
And some more stuff:
Neon Indian - Deadbeat Summer (thanks Andrea!)
How to Survive a Solo Drive from the Bay Area to Ashland, OR
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Have conversations with yourself. You’d be surprised how much you have in common.
Take the slightest driving errors by others completely out of context (this includes driving < 80 in the fast lane). Express your feelings with your horn, and be liberal with threatening gestures and cuss words. Dont worry - everyone understands.
You don’t really need food. Only eat when your car does at gas stations. Rockstar and pretzels. Nuff said.
Have someone make you a CD before you leave so you can listen to something unpredictable. Who cares if its dance music and you are stuck in traffic, and that someone slipped a Paris Hilton track in there - take it like a man.
Listen to bangin’ tracks like these until you reach your destination:
Army of Yeah - The White Panda
Wonderwall (Conor Cutz & DJ Black Remix) - http://salacioussound.com
Latest Mix
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Put together a mix today while recovering from the mayhem of last night. Good to see all you HMB people that I love! And for all of you that I saw last night that I hadn’t seen for years, it was good seeing you too. I dedicate this mix to all you. Youtube links to all but 1 song:
The Generationals - When they fight, they fight
The White Panda - Army of Yea
Snowden - Black Eyes (Le Castle Vania Remix)
Sebastien Tellier - Fingers Of Steel (Hypnolove Remix)
James Yuill - “This Sweet Love”
Digitalism - Pogo (Shinichi Osawa Remix)
Edwin van Cleef - Overtaken <– wrong song in vid, oh well.
New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
The Heavy - How do you like me now?
The Rapture - House of Jealous Lovers
Bloc Party - Where is home? (Burial remix)
Funky Disco Light Box
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[caption id=”attachment_21” align=”alignnone” width=”300” caption=”The Innards”]
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There is a really cool kit made by Future Kit that will allow you to pretty easily make your own LED VU meter. The kit comes with 15 leds, the PC board, all the components and a little bit of solder. The solder that comes with the kit is pretty big so I just used my own 60/40 rosin core solder from Radioshack. You have to attach your own power supply and the kit accepts 9 - 12v. I didnt want a huge AAx8 power supply so I just stuck with a 9v battery at the expense of slightly dimmer LEDs. It stays in the box with velcro. I wanted the whole thing to be something I could easily carry around (party trick!) so I decided to place mine in a box. Project boxes from Radioshack work well, they are fairly cheap and the material is easy to cut. One thing to watch out for the is the microphone - it has no leads. You have to solder wires on to the solder pads on the back of the mic. Be very careful, if any of the solder drips and touches anything else on the mic it will short out the circuit.
You can order one from Bakatronics:
http://www.bakatronics.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=410
Here is a video of the thing in action: