Wayne and Rebecca Madsen :: Links

Pikamatrix

kentback@elitemail.org (Wayne Madsen) — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:42:23 -0800

Nice experimental sounds with pikachu.

Check it out here.

I hate radios

kentback@elitemail.org (Wayne Madsen) — Thu, 25 May 2006 23:16:16 -0800

I always have hated radio stations. I can't stand TV either. Both threaten me by pushing their horrible material on me while harassing me with neverending advertising and consumerism, polluting my mind. I've always been a fan of searching out new music and never had enough money to buy the cds I wanted. Worse yet, my musical tastes have always been so obscure that I can never carry on a conversation about what bands are near and dear to my heart because no one I know has heard of them.

It's not that I'm a music snob, I just have very picky tastes. I like certain things very much; the music I listen to inspires my artwork, so I have to be controlling about it. Anyways, lately I've been really starved for new music (I'm a poor married college student, what did you expect?)...enter: pandora.com

I've been fascinated by large music databases since I became a teenager. They used to have MUSE booths at the record store where you could punch in what you like and see everything by that artist. I've been a fan of www.allmusic.com, but this post isn't about that site. Pandora.com is a radio service which (unwittingly) follows Nicholas Negroponte's ideas of end-user-demand service; instead of a DJ playing the same five tunes over and over again, the service narrows your search for new music by allowing you to decide what songs they play you like and which you don't. Ideally, it should reach a point where every song it comes up with fits your category, but it's all new music. Ah, heaven.

If only I had the money to buy all the new cds I've found.

MIT research?

kentback@elitemail.org (Wayne Madsen) — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:09:56 -0800

Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as theprotective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. Weinvestigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a samplegroup of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average allhelmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions(either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from thecranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatlyamplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bandsreserved for government use according to the Federal CommunicationCommission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets mayin fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate thatthe government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

This was on a MIT students page for the research he did. Read the rest of the article here. Apparently they couldn't get their findings published. But this is very funny. Ah, MIT: the finest of research opportunities.

Flock: Update

kentback@elitemail.org (Wayne Madsen) — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 09:51:37 -0800

New version of flock just came out and they updated some features on their blogger. I'm not sure what else they have updated, but this thing is really working great! Heads up to all of you out there.
Update: after looking closely at their blogging functions, I'm quite pleased with the features. They fixed the interface to do a better job of offering categories in MT. However, their code is a bit messy when you check to see what HTML they put into the entry. Still, for the average user, this is a perfect program for simply writing your thoughts down and posting them on your site.

Flock!

kentback@elitemail.org (Wayne Madsen) — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 10:45:29 -0800

I just found THE most amazing program, brought to you by the makers of Firefox.

Sure, firefox replaced Internet Explorer for me pretty quickly. It was a much better designed program with better security features. But the developers at Mozilla are at it again and they just release a SUPER-BETA new browser called Flock!.

It's got dead ends everywhere (so they disclaim on their site), but I haven't found any. I don't recommend anyone go get it now, because there are a lot of features they are improving, but if you're the type of person like me (freak) who likes new things and wants to give feedback on things they could improve, then maybe you should try it out.

Update: for example, although they have a great weblog publisher which is going to revolutionize the way we blog to websites, making it simpler and more user friendly, it lacks the ability to add categories to a post. we'll see if they improve on that, eh? oh and they also add in technorati tags...whatever those are for.

Technorati Tags: art

My Daily Links

kentback@elitemail.org (Wayne Madsen) — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 13:48:42 -0800

I figured it was time to make use of the Links section of this website to post some of the links that I visit daily or find important enough to mention.

From left to right on my browser quick link bar:

Homestarrunner.com - the funniest and best running flash animation cartoon online. These guys are brilliant and if you haven't become a weekly watcher of Homestar Runner and his friends, then where have you been for the past three years?

Fastmail - it's my best email server. Sure, gmail is great. I've got that on my daily links as well (i don't visit it unless I'm not using outlook and getting my email through that program), but I've actually never experienced a faster email server than Fastmail. How do they get it so fast?

Engadget.com - I'm a technology junkie. I like to know what's going on. Engadget lets me know. Top of the line reporting there, guys. Keep it up!

Movies.com - I use movies.com for all my movie needs, be it web trailers, movie times or just plain movie news. Very comprehensive. First thing I check out is the Buzz bin, to get my daily fix of movies news.

That's about it for my daily needs. Check back soon and I'll post all my art links.