New mix up from Steve, the Marathon Mix. Be sure to check it out on Beat Savvy.
Comments always welcome. Thanks
Marathon Mix
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myPyTunes v0.2
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
Nostalgic Designs
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.
SxSWi 2008 – Wow
South by Southwest Interactive has been amusing, fun, and strange….all wrapped into a tight little package. Actually, maybe not so little…but it’s definitely been a huge experience.
I’ve been to a few conferences, AjaxWorld being one of them (which in a way could have been a complete waste of time if it weren’t for the networking aspect of it). Don’t get me wrong, a few of the panels at AjaxWorld were very good, but not $1500 worth. Not to mention, I saw alot of the same panels weeks before online. The best way I like to look at it is, if you’re a developer….don’t go to AjaxWorld! You live and you learn I guess.
But I digress, back to SxSWi. So the entry fee was very reasonable in comparison to what I’ve been paying before for other conferences, but it made sense as I walked amongst many of the attendants. Everybody was in a startup, or had been in a startup. I’ve never had the pleasure of being where most of these people were, and I envy that. Big adventure, struggles, working together on something new….its exciting stuff. And here’s little old me trying to find out about the latest and greatest in web tech so I can jazz up our company site, while everybody else is trying to understand the pitfalls and bottlenecks of a starving company. I don’t think I’m ready for that (plus I don’t think I can survive financially at this point in my life), but it’s a dream to be there sometime in the future.
The conference touched on everything imaginable related to the web tech industry: developers, designers, bloggers, artists, venture capitalists…you name it, they were there. And to see big names like Adobe, Sun Microsystems, and Microsoft amongst all these little guys, and the way they were there to help the community, rather than take over, made it that much better. I had just learned that AOL finally decided to make AIM open source….which is just great! I knew they had API’s available to the public, 
but to actually go out and release the code, finally gave me the nerve to respect them (just a little bit at least). [I haven't actually gone out and looked at the code yet, so this statement could change, fyi].
Onto the parties. The parties were great (except for the Facebook parties, don’t go to them unless you like boozhee, shiny shirt, and god-wannabe door people). Yeah, sure, BT was there, but it just seemed too much like a commercial party. Which brings me to how the 16-bit party was….lame!! Too many dam people, no free drinks (apparently the check didn’t clear?), a line from hell (luckily we got there early), aggravated people (as my friend Andy likes to say: it’s like the many components packed into a notebook with a crappy heatsink). If there were a 32-bit party, no possible way am I recommending that to anybody.
Anyway, the Pure Volume Ranch parties were awesome! The Gametap party was even better (the food they had was amazing!). The Frog Design venue was nuttz. The 16-bit party should have used that venue instead of the Scoot Inn. The Digg party (at pure volume ranch) was pretty good as well, apparently Mark Cuban was there (cool I guess, but the Rockets are winning the championship this year). Midway through, I got a text from a friend about Moby being at the Mohawk, so we headed out there. 
That venue is AMAZING! Not just because I know some people, that know people, who know people that are affiliated with the place (yeah, I’m practically just a normal citizen at that point huh?), but from what it looked like a year ago in comparison to today….all I have to say is WOW.
Anyway, I’m not the biggest fan of Moby, but he did rock it that night, and the crowd responded very well which is always good to see. He did make an appearance at the Digg party afterward as well, so I’m sure they were thrilled to see him (better than just Mark Cuban….Ha, just kidding).
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You can find out about the adventure in Eugene Hsu’s post on Ungerground Online’s website. More pics of the Moby event are available there as well.
So now that the Interactive conference is done, the music portion of SxSW has started, and I’m attending a few events here and there for that. I’ve got a few videos, and photos up, but I’ll save that for another post (maybe).
myPyTunes: iTunes from the Terminal in Python
Inspired by the Controlling iTunes from the Terminal article explaining a bash shell command line script to (as the title says) control iTunes from the terminal. I liked this, but I felt I needed a bit more flexibility (meaning I want it coded in something i know better), and I really like Python (especially when i decide to classify this script), so I decided to port it over to Python.
I found this useful to have installed on the Mac Mini sitting on a desk while i was across the room on my Powerbook. Very handy since I didn’t want to have to get up every time I wanted to change the song, or pause it when the phone rang, etc.
So far its a pretty clean traslation over with a few modified functions, and a few functions I’ve thrown in from other posts I had seen, or functions I feel would be cool to be added.
I’ve only tested this on OSX 10.4.11 – iTunes 7.6, so even though I believe it should work on other versions of iTunes/OSX, don’t take my word for it, but please let me know if you do run into any problems with it.
Right now i’ll upload the file along with this blog, but i’ll be sure to use a versioning tool as i make updates.
Download myPyTunes here – Right click the link and choose “Save As..”
Here is the basic help menu when you type in “itunes -h”:
———————————————————-
iTunes Command Line Interface
———————————————————-
Usage: /usr/bin/itunes <option>
Options:
status = Shows iTunes’ status, current artist, and track.
play = Start playing iTunes.
stop = Stop iTunes
pause = Pause iTunes.
playpause = Play/Pause iTunes.
next = Go to the next track.
prev = Go to the previous track.
mute = Mute iTunes’ volume.
unmute = Unmute iTunes’ volume.
vol up = Increase iTunes’ volume by 10%
vol down = Increase iTunes’ volume by 10%
vol # = Set iTunes’ volume to # [0-100]
quit = Quit iTunes
launch = Launch iTunes
playlist @ = Play iTunes’ playlist named @”
list = list playlists.
shuf = turn on shuffle playlist
noshuf = turn off shuffle playlist
ostream = open stream
help = what’s showing now
———————————————————-
Yahoo Live!
Registered with yahoo live to broadcast video out. We will try to use it to promote some live mixes that we do.
Go ahead and check it out here
Python: where is the switch/case?
i was writing up some code in python and had several if/else like statements that i figured would require a better syntax and figured that the switch/case method would possibly be a better way to handle it. lo and behold, after research…there’s no switch/case like statement!!
i found several ways of solving the issue, which seem to be rather interesting. many people thought that the if/else was probably the best way to go…of course we can’t have that, and continued to find some people stating to use the dict like command to determine your call. for example:
def performAction1():
print “some crap”
def performAction2():
print “some more crap”
{
”action1″: performAction1,
”action2″: performAction2,
…etc…
}[actionToPerformString]()
this seemed to be a good way to do it, but something about the actionToPerformString trailing like that bothered me, so there was also this method which seemed to be more visually pleasing to me:
def defaultActionToPerform():
print “default crap”
action = {
”action1″: performAction1,
”action2″: performAction2,
…etc…
}
action.get(actionToPerformString, defaultActionToPerform)()
as you can see, it also allowed for a default function to be called, plus it reall just does look cleaner. if anybody has a more elegant solution, please feel free to comment.
Beat Savvy Website Updated
I’ve thrown up a new mix on Beat Savvy.
Check out the redesign and let me know what you think.
Nokia 6120 == <3
Been gone for awhile, and figure it was time for an update
In my trip to Dubai, UAE (pix); I purchased the Nokia 6120 (something I cannot find here in the states), and am loving it!
The pros (and there are alot):
- super small (pocket friendly)
- 3.5G quadband
- very nice QVGA screen
- dual cameras
- a real loud loudspeaker
- latest symbian available
- usable and coherent mp3 player (unlike LG’s)
- super fast browser (based on apple/safari’s webkit)
- j2me love (i’ve got a ton of apps already installed and all work flawlessly)
- gmail
- yahoo go
- google maps
- opera mini
- shozu - all the great things about nokia that i’ve always loved (gui design, profiles, contact lists, groups)
- new blackberry/winmobile like front menu (list of favorite apps to show)
- mac connectivity (got my stuff sync’d and working no problem)
Cons:
- haven’t figured out the application limitations on the phone yet, but it seems like i can’t run more than 3 or 4 j2me apps at the same time (especially if all of them are trying to use the network)
- camera is great during the day…sucks at night and flash seems to make everything blue
- no good FREE all inclusive (aim, msn, yahoo, jabber) client. so far i’ve tried out
trutap (no jabber)
gizmo (no jabber)
fring (ugly and missing some features)
eqo mobile (nice, but i don’t like how every time i send a message it states what application i’m using and telling the other person to download it)
palringo (can only get on jabber; aim, yahoo and msn dont seem to work)
ebuddy (probably one of the best looking, but missing jabber…although it has gtalk, but i don’t use gtalk…and i can only log into one screen name per service at a time)
nimbuzz (another good one that i probably use the most, but it randomly shuts down on me with no warning) - would love sms threading (tired of having to go through txts from 2 or 3 days ago)
- i think thats it…
I’ll update with anything else I do find.
Gmail gets IMAP (finally!)
all i have to say is…about damn time. thanks google
