Aug 29, 2007

project "Rock'n Roll in a pocket"

One little 1GB display-less MP3 player in a pocket. Two minimally decent earbuds(*) and 9hrs battery playtime.
The motto: deep down growling guitar suffering Rock'n Roll.
Which bands should be part of that Rock-Pot-In-A-Pocket? The nominees (on tuesday night at 00:30) are:
  • The Black Keys (thanks Harald)
  • 22-20s
  • Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
  • Year Long Disaster (thanks Chris)
  • ...

I'm not considering adding aussie bands like Wolfmother or The Datsuns; although the latter has one foot in the list and one out of it.

Such list will never finish, research and suggestions will make it bigger and better! Let the filling begin!

An evening trip on ShoutCast (using XBMC of course) or another online rock radio should help find out some heroes. A couple of friends, some wine or dope and "le tour est joué"...

* (fuck the iPod ones, they suck big time) a pair of Shure Sound Isolating Earphones would be sweet, but my money has right now another designated purpose. I'll stick to my SONY 25EUR in-ear buds for now.


Aug 27, 2007

Be creative or not...

I need something (or somebody) to bring me back to drawing/painting. I've been severing from a chronical lazyness!
I can't remember the last time I sketched something interesting:(
My last brightest moments were achieved on my boss' TabletPC and the Sketchbook Pro license I bought from eBay for 50% of the retail price. I used to carry the 3kg heavy laptop with me in the train back and forth from home to the office and would eventually open it and use the 20mins ride to sketch something. But then again, those were sketches and no real drawings.

I love concept design and there are some amazing online references out there. My favorite one, displaying Work-In-Progress and Finished art is Sijun. Another good place to spot what "famous" artists are doing around the world is ConceptArt.Org.
Some of (almost all) those artists have their own site and some of them have some tuition videos, being the most famous (and probably the best) ones those from Gnomon School of Visual Effects (located in Hollywood) and their Workshop department.
They have the most amazing DVDs, Scott Robertson and Feng Zhu are among my favourite teaching artists.


Hazel has some references to some Graphic Competitions and one looked particularly interesting:


... a bit too short-termed I guess for the speed I have been doing things:P

I also have some in-job graphical challenges, I am on the process of creating a logo for a joint-team, the result from joining ours and another team. Fact is, ours has a logo and the other needs one.
It's funny, I do not consider myself that creative and still I am along with another fellow the most creative from the team. So much for creativity amongst ITs:)

The challenge here is also to use the tools made available, namely Microsoft's Expression Suite. In this case, only using Expression Design. There are some very sweet features in it!

(UPDATE) I need to get some new T-shirts:

yours truly (... not creative)


Aug 23, 2007

A day picking up daisies

I passed my CompTIA Security+ exam today.
It was so easy that I got scared and actually thought I would not pass! I wasn't really feeling like being challenged or anything. It took me 1hr to answer all 100 questions and do a brief review.

I am in a very happy mood and the success at the exam is a major contribution. After postponing it once, I was determined to take the exam today and not delay it any more. Every scheduled/obligatory element I have on my agenda is such a weigh on my mind. Gradually relieving myself from those weights puts me in a *very very* positive mood. It's like dropping a giant boulder from my back.

Speaking of boulders, I just reminded I need to find Boulder Dash for my PocketPC! It was THE coolest game on C64! (yes, it's my geek side talking)

Being in such a happy mood, I took a stroll on the internet and collected some nice daisies.



Dan's building a home server, so I recommended him to make a NAS out of it and proposed FreeNAS;

  • According to the description, this 36MB large package does just what one needs and its FreeBSD distro can surely be completed with some more features;
  • SMB, NFS, Live boot, RAID, web admin console => major coolness!
  • bundle (if possible) mt-daapd to it and you got your music library streaming to iTunes;
  • there are other free media streaming software solutions (GNU, linux), a couple of searches and you're there.

UPDATE: This guy built a NAS based on Ubuntu and a series of other server-related apps, nifty stuff!



Hak.5 is a mediatic (australian?) hacker/modder group that regularly make some nifty videos (podcasts) covering themes like :

  • hacking iPods to install linux on it;
  • setup a computer with FreeNAS;

sidenote: They like a little bit too much to whack MS Windows, but that's almost expected from a group of linux loving hackers/modders (more on that in another post).



There are a couple of very good radios out there and I've not been able to play their online streams on XBMC. Today I found out what I was doing wrong and I will try the solution as soon as I am at home:)

  • Radar Lisboa - Probably the best alternative radio in lisbon (stream)
  • FM4 - the best alternative radio around here, it's broadcast from austria (stream)
  • Triple j - I was told it's the best (publicly funded) australian radio (stream)
  • m94.5 - the alternative station in and from Munich (stream)



The same goes for online streaming videos. There's a script that (seemingly) allows XBMC to browse the very complete http://www.tv-links.co.uk/. There are other similar sites of joyful time wasting, although I do not know if there are XBMC scripts for them. Anyway, any web browser should be able to make anyone enjoy them:

UPDATE: tv-links.co.uk on my XBox (XBMC) kicks MAJOR ass! From Japanorama to The Simpsons, passing by Afro Samurai, it's just plain fu**in' amazing to watch stuff on my TV without any computer or tv or satellite connection. (requirements: XBMC/XBox and a fast internet connection)

Today, I'll be welcoming a couple of australian CSers and will try to go out and have a nice steak or sausage chomp! Let's see where we land.

My geek side will definitely want to setup the different online streams this evening:)


Aug 7, 2007

Techy's in the house!

This is how I cooked myself a little music/movie player based on the following hardware pieces:

  • Network Attached Storage (NAS), 1 of 2 slots with a 320GB hdd (for now);
  • modded XBox 1 with XBox Media Center 2.0 (XBMC), free Open Source application
  • Stereo
  • small 7'' LCD (a TV is optional but recommended for movies:))


A NAS is basically a computer-in-a-box with a hard disk which allows to store and share files.
The XBox is an old one where I added a chip (without having to solder it) which then allowed me to add a smaller hard disk and use an alternative software, XBMC.
XBMC is the best multimedia player for the XBox, it plays music from all formats known to me, including online Shoutcast streams, all movie formats...
I use one XBox controller to handle the interface and the small LCD to display it. This allows me not to use a full-blown power-consuming TV.
XBox is connected to my Stereo on the AUX input.

  1. My home network connects computers, NAS, Xbox to themselves and the internet;
  2. I store my MP3s, AVIs, MOVs, etc... on the NAS;
  3. I turn XBox, LCD and Stereo on;
  4. XBMC is displayed on the LCD, I control it with a game controller and the sound comes out on the Stereo;

Extra notes:

  1. If I want to watch movies on a bigger screen, I just turn off the LCD, and plug the video RCA cable to the TV and turn it on;
  2. The best party music mode is to just select an adequate Shoutcast stream and let it play all night (either BIGUPRADIO for Dub or Boulevardurock.net for indie);
  3. It's also possible to control XBMC from a computer through a web page with XBMCAJAX (only works decently with Firefox though);

I would love to get a device like the SlimDevice's Squeezebox, which would replace the XBox, but it's DAMN EXPENSIVE, 350EUR for the wireless version and 300EUR for the wired one. The major problem is that the online radio Pandora is not available outside of U.S.A. anymore and guess what online radio the Squeezebox connects to!

Pinnacle has the Soundbridge M1001 (also called Roku Soundbridge), which is cheaper and looks good enough (to please me), and recently the wireless module also supports WPA encryption:D Here's a review.

I am not terribly geeky, but with the amount of media one can store and listen to, why not make life easier and set such an environment. I just LOVE the feeling of arriving home, opening the door and having music playing! And for barely 170EUR, it looks more and more appetizing.

More about QNAP, iTunes server, Yamaha E810, XBMC, wireless music another time...

Cheers,

norbs


Aug 6, 2007

Tous les garçons et les filles de mon âge

... se promenent dans la rue deux par deux.

Those were the times of fabulously tender and also exciting music...


  • Françoise Hardy - Tous les garçons et les filles



  • Claude François

    ... great dancing, I WANT to do that!



  • and another Claude Francois





The german record company Panatomic, tied to the very cool Atomic Cafe, releases the French Cuts samplers one, two and three, these babies are *packed* with good oldies!


I felt a sudden urge for a 50s french pop dance night. Didn't you?


norbe (à la française)

death and music

Even at work, I use the blog format to keep links of stuff I like, without having to use locally saved Bookmarks.

I saw Death Proof yesterday evening. No comments about the movie, go watch it yourself. The soundtrack deserves a note, a special mention to the closing score even:


  • April March - Chick Habit


The original tune is french, written by Serge Gainsbourg and interpreted by