If this were everquest, I could make this.
The evidence is clear: [ Donkey Konga - Japan Trailer ]
Cory Doctorow makes an interesting point about appliances, DRM, etc. in Protect your investment: buy open
When Sony invented the VCR, it did so after the movie companies had already decreed that they would only license their movies for use on the "Discovision," a hunk of shit best forgotten on the trashheap of history (much like the products that Sony later delivered instead of MP3 walkmen). With the VCR, though, Sony delivered what its customers wanted, and the movie companies got rich off of it, dragged kicking and screaming to the money-tree again.It's worth a read, mainly because I agree with everything he says, ergo he's right.
A new documentary hopes to psychoanalyze our favorite fictional individual: The Corporation
Self-interested, amoral, callous and deceitful, a corporation’s operational principles make it anti-social. It breaches social and legal standards to get its way even while it mimics the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. It suffers no guilt. Diagnosis: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a psychopath.via Boing Boing
I mentioned the other day that I had made the new years resolution to learn CSS. Charlotte Lambert made css the page that made me want to learn CSS. The style sheet she made for css zen garden is so beautiful, I just keep going back to it constantly to look at it. I don't know if it's the hand-rendered in drawings or what, but it's just got that YOW that Steven Berkowitz is always talking about.
And btw, css Zen Garden is so cool, it really made me realize that Cascading Style Sheets is cool, is worth doing.
I have a new year's resolution to actually learn style sheets once and for all, and I don't mean just making text different colors, I mean the whole shebang... any way, I found some stuff on Safari (only) support for drop shadows and alpha transparency, and some guy's blog called What Do I Know? which had some nice things in it, especially a story about Winston Churchill's Parrot.
Ok, this is a good example to illustrate why I still don't know css.
I wrote this to apple, using their feedback page:
But you knew that. I have a few suggestions, from a prosumer user (Ed market, light (as in short educational projects) ProTools, FinalCut and ACID use ):
1) There needs to be a way to import ACID loops. I know they're not as good as Apple loops, but there's a million of em, and a lot of us own them already. I spent a good bit of time trying to get acid loops into GB today, and when it works at all it's a pain... I own over 5 GB of Acid Libraries, and they are very useful. If I can't use them in GB, I'll cry. No, not really. But I'll probably be really disappointed. =)
To sum up: Either add support for a drag/convert for Acid Loops in GB, or add a batch convert function to the Soundtrack Loop Utility where you can take a selection/folder/disk of Acid wavs and convert them to Apple Loops in the Garage band folder.
2) What about making a loop in GarageBand? I just made a stupid four measure piano arpeggio in a track, and then tried to drag it down to the loop browser, assuming that it would prompt me to name and catalogue the loop, so I could use it later. I was totally surprised when it didn't, and figured there must be another way. There doesn't seem to be. I even tried saving it as a GB file and opening it with the SLU, but that didn't work either. I should be able to select a region in a track and choose "convert to loop" and have it be saved in my loop library, preferably in a special folder where "myLoops" are saved.
3) The Soundtrack Loop Utility (shouldn't you rename that to Apple Loop utility?) needs an update. First, it needs to be able to open user made loops created in GarageBand (see #2 above). Secondly, it needs a batch convert function for Acid loops (see #1 above). Third, the browser for when you open sound files needs to tell you a few more things: bit-depth, length, # of beats if available, and have a preview function so you can ear the sound you're thinking of opening. Fourth, it should always be able to save a sound as an Apple Loop (for example, if you open an Acid file)
4) Speaking of Soundtrack, I noticed that Gb and ST store their loops in separate locations--this is fine. But unless I missed something, they can't tap into each others loops which is sort of lame. I suggest adding the ability to both to look in multiple places for their loop library, so that users can maximize their loop library while saving disk space (it looked like there might be a bit of overlap between the two libs).
5) By the way, what about Audio Units? There are a number of decent AU instuments available (some are free!), and some are installed on my machine. It seems like you have your own special virual instrument for making the Software Instrument tracks, and it's very nice, but I'd like to use Zebra and Airysynth too. Audio Units are maybe your most exciting technology (to me, anyway), and I don't understand why you wouldn't take advantage of them... especially when you do take advantage of the AU effects (which is nice). I won't bother to ask you for VST support, since I don't care about it, but other people might as well. Again, this is about maximizing both your users software assets and GarageBand's usefulness.
It turns out that you can use AU instruments in GarageBand, it's just a little bit hidden. Thanks to balconycollapsee
, here's the steps to use AU instruments:
6) Integration, file this suggestion under "and I'd also like a pony:" I think this may already be possible (albeit kludgy), but it would be nice to be able to use GB with other applications, specifically Reason, in my case. It woul be awesome if GB was Rewire-able, and I guess there's other standards too. Bt Rewire is the one I care about.
Via die puny humans (what else?), I came across the The ROZZ-TOX Manifesto, written by Gary Panter circa 1980
Law: If you want better media, go make it.Yes sir.
Note to self: update the mp3 page =\
The (or is that "da") hip hop crib has a Reason Support Group that looks intriguing.
I haven't posted in a month?