Zune 4.0 Rocks
I like it lots. Good style easy to use and some good new features. Go Zune!
Of the new features I like the smart DJ the most. This was an ipod feature that I was jealous of. I also like the addition of movies finally. It is cool that you can use your 360 to play HD movies on your TV right from your computer. So much for Bluetooth. Looks like I will be just fine without that technology.
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Fourtrack Test Track iPhone!
This little song clip was recorded on the iPhone using Fourtrack. My kids were hanging over me the entire time (you can hear them on the track in places). It still sounds pretty good, and for a phone is sounds amazing!
I did this little test using the Fourtrack Recording software on the iPhone. I recorded this little song clip using only the iPhone mic and some instruments. I started by recording the guitar track, layering another guitar track, putting a quick little drum track, and lastly the bass.
For the guitar I played an acoustic with the iPhone on my bed, facing the guitar.
For the drums I placed the iPhone on my lap facing away from the drum set and then played using brushes to not cause the track to peak. (it did a little anyway).
For the bass I played through the amp, and placed the iPhone close to the amp with the mic facing the amp.
Now this was a quick test done in a few minutes time but you can see that there is some great potential to use the iPhone as a tool for recording demo songs and getting track ideas layed down. I would think that this would be a tremendous tool for bands and song writers.
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Softball Drum Free Track
This is a drum free track to help in drum practice. There are three versions of the song. One is an example track that shows how the song could go. The other is a metronome version that helps keep time during the song. The last version is a drumless track for you to jam to. Have fun practicing with them.
I recorded this drum free track last night. It is a good driving rock groove to practice 4 on the floor.
Example Version
Metronome Version
Drum Free Version
If you enjoy the drumless tracks let me know by leaving me a reply. I create these mostly for my own use, but if others are enjoying them I will continue to post new songs as they are created.
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Best Free Kindle Books
It is sort of hard to sift through all of the Kindle books that are free and find them without seeing a bunch of stuff that you would probably not ever want to read. So I have started this post to put up all of the Free Kindle books that I find which people might enjoy reading.
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Double Bass Practice Song
Here is another set of practice tracks for drummers. 3 tracks, one with drums, one with a metronome and one with just the guitar and bass. Have fun.
This is a double bass track with full drums as an example. Drums are electronically simulated.
This is the double bass track with no drums. The first 8 counts are the intro, then next counts are for a drum fill. the the band comes in.
This is the same double bass track with a metronome.
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Another Global Warming Sham
This is just some more talk about Global Warming being a total sham. We are not warming up. Get over it.
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Tired of Global Warming.
The only thing that has provably depleted the ozone layer is the suns gamma rays.
It is a cycle. The earth gets a fraction closer to the sun or it tilts on its axsis or extra solar activity occurs and the ozone is bombarded with gamma rays and the earth heats up and the ice melts. Then the earth moves away from the sun or tilts by a fraction and is hit with less gamma rays and the ozone recovers, the earth is hit with less radiation cools and we have an ice age.
It is so obvious, but the truth will not get you a grant to do more research. So we have Al Gore's theory of Global Warming. Awesome.
72% of the earth is area that man cannot even occupy because it is ocean. Out of that 28% man has not even touched all of it. Out of the 28% one third is not habitable as a desert. So that means that we live in 9% of the earths surface. Out of that 9% take into account that we have Siberia, Mongolia, Wyoming (lol that is a joke) and most of Canada, Antarctica ect... that people don't live. We are but a speck of dust on this planet. We could all fart for 3000 years at the same time never stopping and we would have no effect on this planet. We are smaller than ants on an ant hill, but because of our awesome accomplishments we feel we can change the weather.
Because we can fly in planes, rocket ships and boats we think that we are a little bigger than we are. Take away our transportation and it would take years for a person to get from Colorado to New York. It would take me many days to just get from Parker to Denver. Something I do everyday in 30 minutes.
Man does not cause global warming. We also cannot transform Mars into an oasis. We just are not that cool.
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My thoughts on Global Warming.
Global warming is made up. We are exiting an ice age. The next ice age will hit about 10,000 years and will cover most of north america in ice 500 ft thick. It will then recede carving a new landscape creating new lands. One of them will be called Mordor, the other the Shire. In between there will be the lands of dwarfs, elves and goblins. Man will exist, but will largely be left out of the "in crowd" and will always be a few steps behind in their knowledge of what is going on in middle earth. All magical people will tease and make fun of humans and eventually humans will get pissed and nuke the elves. The radiation will cause the elves to grow incredibly strong and have super powers. They kill most of the humans and chase the rest back into caves. A few of the super-elves will have discovered that their hatred of the humans does not run as deep as they first may have thought and they will mate with human women. These hybrid species of humans and elves will be called Humlves. Humlves will be extremely smart but slightly wicked and will seek to destroy the planet by creating a virus that only spreads to those beings missing the "h" gene. Once removing the filth from the earth, they will then re-design the earth by adding in new water parks, cheap housing and affordable health care.
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Marriage
You can not find secular life before Christianity. Religion was the control system that held society's together since we quit hunting and gathering. Every culture consists of sets of beliefs in some sort of God or Gods that set up the foundations of moral law in a society. Even today, Science is a religion and atheism is a religion. They both fill the void of knowledge with faith in some construct to which they subscribe. Somebody who claims to be atheistic must therefore think that a God fearing person is crazy. Just as a God fearing person thinks that an atheist is crazy. They are polar opposites. One cannot exist with the other one any more than the North Pole can be the South Pole at the same time. We all subscribe to a belief that covers the holes in our knowledge of things around us that we cannot possibly explain.
Maybe it wasn't the Christian idea or marriage, but before Christianity there were other religions. Those religions formed one type of construct of marriage, but marriage as we know it is from Old Testament days 6000 years before Christianity. Before that marriage was a status/property concept. Money was passed from house to house and bloodlines were formed using marriage as a tool. It had little or nothing to do with love and devotion. Those are Christian principles that were tied to original marriage traditions from long ago.
Despite what you might want to believe this country was founded on Christian traditions and therefore most of the constructs that we operate under come from these traditions. Even the most secular marriage is usually tied to love and devotion and not obligation. Or at least the types of marriage that they are proposing to want to have recognized by the state. Therefore they are very much similar to biblical traditions. So it is easy to see why a Christian might be offended when their traditions are being distorted by another group. It would be like a Christian going to a Mosque to worship Budah.
No matter what nobody is going to be happy. There is no utopia and never can be in this world. Even if we all were brought under a common flag with one ruler and a single point of view we would fight about where the lines in the grey sand should be drawn over all sorts of issues. Think about it. I guarantee there is a person in this world that thinks it is wrong to brush your teeth with a blue tooth brush. That dude will never be happy until everybody quits using their blue tooth brushes. Problem is that some other dude only uses blue tooth brushes and will kick the crap out of anybody that tells him to use anything but. Now we have a toothbrush war. That is just the way it is
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Google Wave
Google is taking collaberation to the next level. This is really going to be a tool that I think all businesses are going to want to have. It could increase productivity and allow web developers to really create unique web content that would be updated faster than twitter.
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Zune HD Videos and Previews
I love my Zune. I have been a part of the ipod generation, but the Zune is a great product especially because of the Zune Music service. I am excited about the Zune HD. I am going to buy one as soon as it becomes available. Until I get the chance to fork over my money for one of these units I will have to be content watching some other people touch them on YouTube. So here goes.
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PSP to finally get Gran Turismo
I have been waiting for this game to come out on the PSP since the PSP first came out. It was one of the reasons that I wanted a PSP. I like many fathers in this world don't always have exclusive access to the household TV. Most of the time there is Wall-E or Monsters Inc. playing on the television that is hooked up to the game systems. So the answer has always been for me to play some of my games on a portable unit. The PSP is the best portable unit for people that love games. The DS is much better for the casual gamer, GTA China Town Wars excluded, but the PSP always had the feel of being a full size system in your hands. To be able to have Gran Turismo finally come to the PSP is one of the best announcements at the 2009 E3 show in my opinion.
Not much is known about the game. It looks like there will be a good selection of cars 35 different tracks and probably many other features that we have come to love about Gran Turismo. It comes out in October, so I am guessing that there will be much more quality information coming out in the up coming months. I will be pre-ordering this game as soon as Amazon puts it up for sale. Amazon has made a link available to sign up for when the game will be available for pre-order. You can get to it by clicking below.
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New Super Mario Brothers E3 2009
Nintendo released the New Super Mario Brothers game at this years E3 (2009). It is a 2d platform game that can be played with up to four players co-operatively. It looks like a good title, but I was hoping for something more like Mario Galaxy 2 because in my opinion that game was a real ground breaker. You be the judge. Here is a YouTube Video showing off the action.
This just in, Super Mario Galaxy 2! Ok, now they have my attention. You must say that Super Mario Galaxy was one of the best games ever. If there was ever to be a sequel to a game I would pick this as my choice. Way to go Nintendo.
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Wii Motion Plus Wii’s Next Big Thing?
Nintendo announced that Wii Motion plus will revolutionize the revolutionary best controller in the entire galaxy. I had the feeling from watching the press conference that it was almost hard for Nintendo to boast about this new controller add on that is built for precision after Microsoft just laid the NATAL bomb on everybody. Wii's new controller add on is built for precision but from watching the video it seemed to work almost exactly as the old Wii remote has always worked. This left me a little confused and wondering if the Wii motion plus was not just a clever way to milk $30-40 bucks out of everybody. I was left saying to myself "great, in order to play some of the new Wii titles I will have to buy yet another piece of hardware". I have to have the Wii Remote, the Nunchuck, the Balance Board, and now the Wii Motion plus. I am going to own more hardware than games for the Nintendo Wii system if it keeps going like this.
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Xbox 360 knocks them dead at E3 with NATAL
I just finished watching the E3 show on the new Xbox releases for 2009. They really are coming out with some great stuff. There were some decent games coming out and it was good to see Metal Gear finally hit the Xbox console, but the real news was with the new controller. That controller might just take a huge chunk from Nintendo. It looked amazing. It recognizes who you are, and allows you to interact with the screen without a controller. That will be huge for some of the games like Oblivion for instance where you come up to characters at different points in the game. Using this controller you will be able to talk directly to the characters and have them communicate back. Plus they will recognize you when they see you a second time. Very cool technology.
The other thing that I am excited for is the ability to watch a movie with your friends over Live. You can hang out and talk with them while watching a flick. That is a really cool feature that I think many people will enjoy. Also it is great to see that they will expand on the Netflix system and get rid of the need to use the computer to select movies. That has always been a bit of a problem.
Good job Xbox.
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Zune Rumor
I read a rumor that the new Zune might offer Netflix instant viewing on the device. If that rumor is true it will be fantastic. No secret, I am a huge Zune fan. It only makes sense really. The Zune music service allows me to download all of the music in the collection for $14.99 a month. My music stays current; I get to keep 10 songs each month. Some people criticize my love for the Zune however I usually win the argument when I break it down for them this way.
I love music. I used to buy 2-3 albums on average each month at a cost of $16-20 each. I was spending $60 a month on music. Now an iPod can hold 20,000 songs. If I were to fill up that iPod legally (I do not illegally download music) then that iPod is worth $20,000, $3000 more than my latest car purchase. Instead I could use the Zune music service for 111 years and keep my music current, fresh and allow my collection to change with my tastes. One day I am into Jazz, but another I want Hard Rock. Sometimes I listed to Blues, but another time I might want something to play in the background while I study. The Zune is the way to go and I keep thinking that it is silly that people will not look at the device because it doesn't have an apple on it. The iPod doesn't work better, play louder or offer anything that other MP3 players do. It proves my point that people in large are followers. They also think that when they buy songs on the iPod they own that music and that they will have it forever. I guess time will tell for all of the users of the iPod, but as for me I will keep my Zune and smile to the fact that when the new albums come out I already have them.
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Things Amazon Needs to Add for the Kindle
I have been using my Kindle 2 for a little over a week now and it has already changed how I read. I have found that it is easy to read much longer and with greater focus. The screen is actually easier on my eyes than paper! I am not making this up as an exaggeration I have really been able to read more books in a shorter amount of time using this device. Now with this said you probably can tell that I am a huge fan of the Kindle. I love the device I think that even in generation 2 that they have really done a good job in providing a reading specific device that works well has tremendous battery life and will be something that I use every day until I wear the thing out.
There are a few things however that Amazon.com is missing to support the Kindle. These are not things that the Kindle is missing, but rather things that the website is missing that surprises me since Amazon.com was founded on web technology. I just sort of assumed that these features would be a part of the device and never looked into it.
- There is no way to add books to your wish list. If you are like me you use your wish list as a way of helping family and friends get you gifts that you will love and not have to return or sell at a garage sale. Now that I own the Kindle 2 I want more books! It would be great if you can wish list your kindle books.
- There is no way to gift books. This is sort of the same thing as #1, however if you think about it you should still be able to gift books without having them on a list. Nintendo has this figured out. I can go on my Wii, pick out an online title and gift the game to one of my friends. This is huge because there is nothing more fun that coming home to find that warm blue glow of your Wii telling you that you have a new message waiting for you. When you find that it is a new game you are overcome with excitement. I was happy to find out however that you can gift Xbox live games now and that is a step in the right direction.
- Some sort of limited exchange program with your purchased books and people that are your friends on Amazon. Now this sort of thing might never happen, but it would be a cool idea. My thinking is that you could register friends that have kindles and trade/share books with them. The system could take away the copy from your kindle and give it to the registered friends kindle for a length of time like 10 days or something. Then it could return the book back to your kindle after the time is up. Again, I don't think that they have any intention of doing such a thing but if they did however, it would be AWESOME. Maybe they could put some restrictions on the amount of time you could loan the book out or something like that. I know that my Zune allows me to do something just like this. It gives the listener 3 plays of an MP3 that is borrowed from another Zune.
- Changing the screen saver options using an Amazon.com interface. It would be awesome if I could go to Amazon.com and pick out my favorite authors and have them be my screen saver when I turn the book off. I know that I can change this with the USB cable, but it would be cool if I could do this sort of change without any computer knowledge using the Amazon.com website.
There are lots of other cool features that could probably be added, but these seem to me to be a step in the right direction. As for the Kindle itself I hope that one day the Kindle DX can make research easy by allowing me to tie parts of my library together when I find parts and pieces of texts that fit with one another. Then when you open up a book for your work you would uncover all of the links to other books that might talk about the same thing or provide more information about that subject. Maybe even tie it to websites in a Wikipedia like fashion. I think some of these types of ideas could make the Kindle a reference power house.
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School is Done!
Last night I completed the final course for my Computer Information Systems degree from Colorado Christian University. I could not be more excited! Finally after years of putting it off I made one of the best decisions of my life to go back to school and complete what I started many years ago. So what is next? Grad school of course. I will be spending the next year getting my Masters Degree in Curriculium and Instruction. Then after that who knows what I will do.
By the way this entire post was made using a $249 Asus Eee Pc. Even the image was taken using the super cool web cam that is built in to the little mini computer. I love this little thing. I think that most laptops will probably get a bit smaller. They are so much easier to carry and bring with you. Really it is a great computer for those who travel or need something that will not weigh them down. And at $249 it is a bargain!
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You can gift Xbox Live Games using Amazon!
I am very excited that you can now gift Xbox Live games using Amazon.com. It works fairly simple. You find a game for Xbox Live by searching for it at Amazon.com. Once you have found the game you purchase it just as you would anything else. The screen looks a little different than if you were buying a toaster or a book, but after you have purchased your product you are given the opportunity to e-mail the code and a note to the person that you are sending it to. The user then enters the code they receive from the e-mail into their Xbox and they will then be able to download the game. It is a very cool system. So go and make your friend happy by sending them a new game!
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