I got this in my inbox earlier from Tim (founder of Pandora):

Hi, it’s Tim from Pandora;

After a yearlong negotiation, Pandora, SoundExchange and the RIAA are finally optimistic about reaching an agreement on royalties that would save Pandora and Internet radio.  But just as we’ve gotten close, large traditional broadcast radio companies have launched a covert lobbying campaign to sabotage our progress.

Yesterday, Congressman Jay Inslee, and several co-sponsors, introduced legislation to give us the extra time we need but the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), which represents radio broadcasters such as Clear Channel, has begun intensively pressuring lawmakers to kill the bill. We have just days to keep this from collapsing.

This is a blatant attempt by large radio companies to suffocate the webcasting industry that is just beginning to offer an alternative to their monopoly of the airwaves.

Please call your Congressperson right now and ask them to support H.R. 7084, the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008 - and to not capitulate to pressure from the NAB.  Congress is currently working extended hours, so even calls this evening and over the weekend should get answered.

If the phone is busy, please try again until you get through. These calls really do make a difference.

Representative Lloyd Doggett: 202-225-4865

Thanks so much for you ongoing support.

Tim

Make an effort and contact your congress person and let them know you don’t believe that the NAB’s  (National Association for Broadcasters) persistence and lobbying on this matter is right.

We can’t let these corporations continue to make music less enjoyable. I, for one, am tired of listening to the same song run 10 times in 1 hour. Pandora and many of the music web products out there don’t do that. Again, I know this sounds like a pain to do, but you could make a difference and actually see a great product emerge in a positive way…and be completely legal!!

====================================

UPDATE: Another email from tim. The house of reps took the leap and are supporting the bill, now its time for the senate…

Hi, it’s Tim from Pandora;

Today, thanks to the extraordinary support of many Pandora listeners, we took a giant step forward when the House of Representatives supported Pandora and Internet radio and passed the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008.  Now we need your help so that the Senate will pass it also - and quickly… The finish line is in sight!

After a yearlong negotiation, Pandora, SoundExchange and the RIAA are finally optimistic about reaching an agreement on royalties that would save Pandora and Internet radio.  The legislation would give us the extra time we need to finalize the deal.

Please call your Senators Monday morning starting at 9:00 (Eastern) and ask them to support the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008.

The person who answers the phone in your Senator’s office may ask for the bill number - it’s H.R. 7084 (if they ask for a Senate bill number, you can assure them that in this unusual case, the Senate is actually voting on the House bill number).

Senator John Cornyn: (202) 224-2934

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison: (202) 224-5922

If the phone is busy, please try again until you get through. These calls really do make a difference.

Thanks so much for you ongoing support.

Tim

If you like keyboard shortcuts, or you know how to use Vi to control navigation of a page, then you’re going to love this! (this is not to be confused by jsvi which allows vi control for a textarea in your browser)

I used to use a Firefox extension called Vimperator that basically allowed me to control and navigate through websites using the keyboard with Vim like commands. It was a good tool, actually a great tool, but I got frustrated when I didn’t have this same functionality on Safari, or any Fluid apps (making web apps into a distinct desktop application).

I had planned initially on making jsVim work with websites I developed, but then I realized not too many people would be happy with Vim control on those pages, unless I had a unique activation key event that enabled the rest of the key commands. But anyway, I digress. So it occured to me that making it cross browser specific would be ideal, and the use of Grease[monkey,kit] would allow me to do that.

So long story short, I developed jsVim in javascript form and then created an accompanying Grease[monkey,kit] script to utilize jsVim. There’s still much work to be done (incorporating keyboard events for links/hrefs/onlicks, search/find, colon[:] console commands, etc), but I think what is available is a pretty good start to get this out into the wild.

You can use svn to check out the code, or you can just install the greasemonkey script and get to work using it right away (if you have grease[monkey,kit] already installed).

Greasemonkey script

SVN
svn co http://svn.jadecell.org/jsvim/

Here are some useful commands that should get you started working around in your browser:

• ‘j’ - scroll down on the page (like using the down arrow)
• ‘k’ - scroll up on the page (like using the up arrow)
• ‘Shift+j’ - scroll down a full page (like using the Page Down button)
• ‘Shift+k’ - scroll up a full page (like using the Page Up button)
• ‘h’ - scroll left on the page (like using the left arrow)
• ‘l’ - scoll right on the page (like using the right arrow)
• ‘Shift+h’ - Go Back in history (like the browser back button)
• ‘Shift+l’ - Go Forward in history (like the browser forward button)
• ‘Shift+g’ - goto the bottom of the page
• ‘gg’ or ‘U’ - goto the top of the page
• ‘Alt+Shift+?’ - disable jsVim keyboard shortcuts
• ‘Esc’ - re-enable keyboard shortcuts, remove cursor in a form field from view, remove bottom console window

The next big TODO, is to get link navigation working and a full out help menu when you press the ‘?’ in the window.

Any other ideas and comments are always welcome.

===================

UPDATE:
This script will not work with Firefox’s quick search. Be sure to uncheck “Search for text when I start typing” in the Preferences >> Advanced >> General settings. I’m sure there is a workaround for this, but in the meantime, to get quicksearch up is to type ‘/’, i’ll have my quicksearch disabled until I can get this to work well.

Today is Friday the 13th, and in spirit of bad luck, I’ve done a remix edition of today’s Hip Hop Friday. I’ve eliminated the adding of lame remixes and added true remixes (could be bad, could be good…who knows). I for one hate songs that claim to be a remix because they added another artist…I prefer a beat change, or some tweak at least to the sound.

Anyway, enjoy the mix

Some more old school jams in this mix. Enjoy!

I’ve posted another Mixwit, this time with some old skool hip hop.
Hope ya like it

Made a new Mixwit (i like muxtape’s interface, but still not diggin how they setup the upload thing). This time I’ve made a mix of most of my favorite songs from the Guitar Hero 3.

We’ll see if I keep this up every thursday.
Also look out for tomorrow’s Hip Hop Friday Mix

New mix up from Steve, the Marathon Mix. Be sure to check it out on Beat Savvy.
Comments always welcome. Thanks

I’ve updated and posted the myPyTunes script on Assembla using its Wiki/Trac/SVN project capabilities. I could put it on Google Code, but I figure I try Assembla out since somebody else recommended this to me before. Assembla maybe a bit of fluff, but I’ll give it a whirl for now.

myPyTunes has been recoded and I’m planning to classify (OOP) it for the next update. Another step will be to make it a fully integrated web application with server so it’s completely portable. In due time I guess, but until then, here is the link to the Main Website and SVN

http://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/mypytunes 

I’ve seen and heard about how everybody’s been using Muxtape.com. What hasn’t drawn me to it mostly is the fact of having to upload the music….I just plain old don’t have time to sit and wait for the upload to happen.

I just so happen to accidentally stumble upon Mixwit.com (I seriously don’t remember how I got to it) and it seemed to be a bit more to my liking. It searches for music already on the web (using Skreemr and Seeqpod), and you can add it straight to your mixtape. Some added features include picking out the kind of tape to use, styling it, and adding images. Simple and hassle free.

Here’s the first I made…enjoy!

I used to play with Photoshop alot back in high school and through my early years of college. Ever since Photoshop 4.0 came out onto the market.

I would take my drawings, scan them, and start coloring them on, even what was then, a very powerful program. The process was grueling back then, especially since I was working on a 33MHz-486 Intel processor, but I enjoyed it and didn’t mind the long lag of load time.

Dino (a friend of mine) and I were discussing earlier this evening about an old concept magazine cover I did for him back in I believe was 2000/2001. Looking at it now, it doesn’t seem like much, but at the time, it was one of those “WOW” moments. The Alicia Keys picture was grabbed off of some random website that he found, which was of very, very poor quality and extremely grainy and noisy. I now couldn’t tell you how I did it, but I somehow performed some Photoshop some magic and made it a bit more pleasing to view.

One of my fellow DJ buddies, Frankie (DJ Pumbum), was having a birthday party in which it was the 2nd party to be released under the name Pumbash, and it just so happened to not be too long after the release of the PS2 (hence the PB2). Anybody could’ve done the design, but it was one of those ideas that just somehow sparked up. I can’t take full credit, I’m sure somebody did come up with the idea (possibly even Frankie), but I think this is probably one of my favorites.

The last two presented are probably by far my favorites. Maybe not too much to look at, but I felt with the amount of time and work I put into the flyer, I was very proud of its outcome. There was so much detail, from designing the 3D Texas image, to the random vertical lines that were actually lines of details about the party, and the blurry images in the background. I think I have a few physical flyers for this party left somewhere, I’ve just got to dig them out.

With a few new purchases recently, Pixelmator and VectorDesigner (yeah, it’s not photoshop and illustrator, but they seem to get the gist of what I want to do, and fast!), I hope to get involved again with a few new designs here and there, maybe even get some visually appealing websites going.