Have a nice flight with the movie “Woman in the Moon” by Fritz Lang 1929

Filtertyp

Only time will tell

/poke

Tinytec

Sorry, the debt clocks are to big to completely fit in here

I’ve put this post only into the virtual-world category if you know what I mean.

Source: http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Zalia

Now, there is a funky music lover who likes to let out his passion for music in a non-conformist way by singing along to the music he listens to while bussing. In the video below he sings California Girls by Kate Perry. Disclaimer: I think the original intention to upload this video was to ridicule this guy. I am not down with this, in fact I think we need more people in the world like him. But no matter how how you look at it he – like me – can’t sing

Now, check out what happens when a skilled audio producer lays his hands on Autotune ( or to be more precisely – Melodyne).

Keep dancing

Knoobi

Sincerely yours (lol)

Polignostix

Seems like Herman Cain likes old jokes.

See also here.

Testing his new upright piano. Must sound great ^.^

Well this is the Love, Hugs & Punches Blog, right?  

Olympia 2012 – Welcome

All pictures were looted from Photoshoplooter !

Cya

Zalia

Farewell

Filtertyp

People that I confront with this issue are quite shocked when they hear it for the first time (listening in a fully treated room).  This is something important to know for audio producers but also audio listeners should be more aware of this issue. Your listening experience will improve significantly if you improve your room with acoustic treatments. If you want to really dig into this topic I can suggest this giant wall of text as start: http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

In order to improve the room sound there are basically two options (that can be combined). 1. Room treatment with special material, such as absorbers, to improve the acoustics of the room itself. 2. Equalizers that respond to the room problems and act accordingly, i.e. they raise the frequencies that the room attenuates and vica versa.

Option 1. is the one that enthusiasts and professionals have to look into first but I want to actually make a few notes about room Equalizers or more precisely: The IK Multimedia ARC System and a certain problem with it.

The IK Multimedia Room Correction System ARC is a VST Plugin, that audio producers can plug into their digital work stations, to even out the  problems of their room. (Hopefully in addition to acoustic room-treatment). However, in order to get used to the new sound, there is something quite important missing: The easy ability to listen to other (reference) productions in the same circumstances as when working on own productions. An audio workstation does not really suit as comfortable media-player and I know that a bunch of people are looking for a solution.

So, to finally come to the actual point that I wanted to write about: With Foobar 2000 and the George Yohng’s VST wrapper I finally found a stable solution. Now I can listen to music on a PC with the Room Correction Plugin. There is also a VST Plugin for Winamp but it was made in 2005 and never received an update and works unstable for me. Most importantly it does crash sometimes plus it throws the plugin out each time I load a new track.

So, just grab the freeware Foobar 2000 multimedia-player ( which is a general recommendation, as it is a slick and great player in itself)  http://www.foobar2000.org/ plus http://www.yohng.com/foobarvst.zip and there you go. If you do not know IK Multimedia ARC and want to find out more go to ikmultimedia.com. Please note that IK ARC is not freeware.

UPDATE:

An even better Plugin for Foobar 2000 is the VST Adapter 2.4 by Yegor Petrov. You can plug in many Vst plugins at the same time. Check it out here.

Cheers

Colorsync

A cool freeware program to customize Microsoft Windows [XP,Vista,Win7] is CustoPack Tools which allows you to easily change the Window  theme. It features complete themes including wallpapers, sounds and icons. It’s pretty good, free and so far stable and reliable. You can find the customization software here. Funny thing is: It’s programmed by Mac users ^.^

It may look like this:

Video Tutorial about how to set it up:

New-school Style:

Another nice freeware prog is Omnimo for Rainmeter. Omnimo is kinda a plug-in for Rainmeter. Both are freeware customization programs. They enable you to turn your windows desktop into a modern tablet-like looking desktop. You can already download the Windows 8 theme.

Example:

Setup Tutorial for Windows Phone UI with Omnimo:

You can get Rainmeter & Omnimo here & here !

Have Fun

Tinytec

What I find interesting is the direction of communication. Where as in the past people expressed something, hippies in fact even a sociopolitical attitude, the hands in the bottom row do not. The hands of Row 1 – 3 send out a message, the hands of the last row only receive.

Picture stolen without permission from my favourite blog over at kulturtechno

So long

Colorsync

Check out my little post about the “Never ending C64 Love” here if you like.

All the best

Colorsync

What I see here is capitalism, here in Spain, showing its ugly face. As long as you got and go to your job and waste your free-time with the usual inane consumerism bullshit, and never look at the bigger picture, all is good.

But beware if you dare to be dissatisfied with the system. And many young Spanish people are. [Now that they personally suffer. Before that they were quite...] Most people may not be fed up with capitalism itself but with the pseudo-democratic system which always ends up with the same bullshit: Politicians backing up profits for the elites and pretending to be there for the people – but it’s better than nothing. -.-

Happy Summer

Zalia

Don’t be afraid, it’s stable

“The Cut Chair provides a stable place to sit, but creates an optical illusion that tells you otherwise”

as noted by Peter Bristol, the designer of this nice chair. You can finde his homepage with other projects here.

Stay safe

Tinytec

Picture taken by Oceandesetoiles over at Flickr.

/poke

Zalia

The Commodore C64 was the most popular home-computer ever made. Introduced in 1982 and with a production cease in 1994, which is an amazing long lifespan, sales are estimated to be near 30 million unites.  Some sources say 17 million but that would be still impressive.

Picture by Bill Bertram.

The C64 was considered to be a top computer until the late 80′s by many people. It’s graphic capabilities and it’s famous 3-voice synthesizer chip (SID – Sound Interface Device) were loved by many users, especially gamers.

The C64 Today

But I do not want to talk about the past, I want to talk about the present! But, well, today, many lovely C64s are old and yellowed.

But since the C64 is a never ending love-story many enthusiasts care a lot about their computers and that might look like this: Some crazy (in the best possible way) guys developed retr0bite, a tool that turns even the baddest looking C64 into a fresh looking unit.

Although the introduction of the C64 is now almost 3 decades behind us, the C64 is still alive. You might even hear the C64 SID sound-chip live in action when you walk the streets of Berlin nowadays.

Actually, music takes a huge role in keeping the C64 alive in our hearts (was that to pathetic?). There are some synthesizer projects out there that incorporate the C64 SID Chip. The Sid Chip features 3 oscillators and one analog filter with a bunch of special options. Two SID 8580 spare chips, proudly owned by Polignostix and carefully protected in an anti-static “jewelry box”, can be seen in the picture below 

Hardsid4You. This synthesizer can actually house 4 SID Chips, features a VST editor, can be connected to your modern USB port. [Link]

Then there is the DUY project: Midibox SID. An incredible synthesizer that can drive up to 8 SID chips and offers to many features to name here.

There are different iterations of the basic hardware layout. If you are skilled you can make your own. This one is the MB-6582 made by Midibox member Wilba.

And I can tell you that the hardworking Polignostix gnomes build two tiny SammichSIDS.

The SammichSID (smallest box in the video below) is another derivative of the Midibox SID, here presented by Midibox father Thorsten Klose:

And as you can hear in those examples, this synthesizer is a serious one. There are actually more hardware versions and also some software SID emulations.

Speaking of emulations, there are actually emulations that emulate the complete C64, allowing you to play classic C64 games. A prominent example is the VICE Emulator.

Commodore is actually alive again and they even reanimated the C64. But it’s just the casing that has something to do with the old C64. Most notably it has no SID Chip, the chip that has not been emulated perfectly yet (and probably never will). Instead the new C64 is full of average modern hardware and I doubt that it will sell well. I would prefer an IPAD or something like that any day.

Last but not least I want to provide some useful links. They can be found on a website, that, guess what, is hosted on a Commodore C64   [Link]

Cheers

Colorsync

So hopefully this policeman is a role model for the next (or better the current)  police generation

Made by Wiebke Scholz. Visit her website if you want to see more good stuff. [LINK]

Thanks for your attention

Filtertyp

Famous Egyptian fashion model Yasmin Mohsen. Please note, the hijab is not just a fashion accessoire to her but also an expression of her religios belief.

/freehug

Tinytec

Cheers!

Zalia

More famous pictures remade with Lego can be found here. The originals are there, too.

Cheers

Zalia