Just this weekend, I launched my take on collaborative music online. I am sure there are already sites out there that do this, but I wanted to focus on the layering concept of creating music with a multitrack editor. Anyone who’s ever recorded with a single microphone knows the process of layering subsequent tracks well. You start with a click track or something similar and build up from that, one layer at a time.

I really think that this process opens up a ton of new possibilities in music creation by allowing people from all musical backgrounds to share and mix increasingly unique songs. We even provide the free drum samples if you can provide the beats.

It’s 100% free and you can check it out at http://letsj.am. I encourage you to log in and post a few tracks or layers yourself. There’s also a tutorial/wiki if you want to learn a little about the process. Feel free to leave a comment or suggestion here, or drop me a message.

So I’m doing homework, and this center of gravity thing is pretty cool. In Location Strategy they use it to find the best location for stores and such on an X-Y plane with points that have certain weights or populations. “Well that’s neat,” I thought to myself. “I’ll make a little calculator using AJAX and PHP.” Because I really have nothing better to do.

It’s a pretty simple center of gravity calculator, just put in the weights first, seperated by comma’s, then the X coordinates and finally the Y coordinates. You should have the same number of each, if not, well, it’s just wrong. You should get two numbers back, these are the (X,Y) coordinates of the perfect center of gravity.

Enjoy my fancy “Center of Gravity Calculator” that I wasted 25 minutes minutes creating.

This has been added in 2.8! Don’t install this if you have 2.8! Read this instead.

This little plug-in adds a fancy little description field to the “Edit Tag” pane in WordPress. It also adds a function called single_tag_description(); that does just that but only on the tag page. Not really sure why the tag description isn’t available by default, seems like it would be pretty useful. Basically, you can describe your tags and echo that description on each tag page with the above function; pretty simple!

Please enjoy and note that some of the code came from a thread I read on WordPress.org, but some of it came from extracting similar core code, I just made it into a WordPress plugin. Download it now.

Well, I just put together a little mini web-app with AJAX jQuery goodiness called Was That Guy In…?. The basic is concept is this:

Sometimes I am watching a movie and I notice an actor or actress that I think was in some other movie I had previously seen. Unfortunately, I rarely know thier name and I don’t feel like searching IMDB for the character name to find out. I want to know if he/she was and who they played.

So, I made this app. You just put in the name of two movies and it will tell you who was in both of them. It does a pretty good job going deep in the cast, but isn’t perfect. Sometimes Car Driver #1 (uncredited) is that guy you thought you saw. In that way, it can be pretty powerful.

Also, it has been brought to my that IMDB has already done this common search thing before me. That’s fine. Mine’s prettier and has AJAX and is much more specialized in finding actors. Their’s kind of sucks, no offense.

I came across this little guy today while I was trying to track down a pesky audio driver for Windows XP. It seems to contain the entire driver profile for the Vostro 1400 so you no longer have to search for each of them individually. Nothing like being punished for not wanting Vista.

By the way, this contains the NVIDIA 8400 driver, and not the integrated Intel video driver. Sorry, that means you have to hunt down *one* driver… (Hint: its right here.)

Why Dell or other manufacturers don’t do this is beyond me. How hard is it to build a system that uses your service tag to zip/bundle the correct drivers on the fly? Maybe I should build something like that, but I’d probably get sued into oblivion by all the overzealous big company lawyers.

Download the driver pack here.

If you’d like some customization done on the theme, I refer you to the stellar Magatheme Pro Package WordPress Magazine Theme with customization! It’s got all the options you all asked for, built-in! Everything from an awesome tab slider and homepage layout to drop down menus and a couple subtle color schemes are ready out of the box. So check it out!

Well, I just got finished with the brand new Magatheme (1.0.5)! Ultimately, I’ll incorporate a full front page outline (Pro Edition), just like your favorite magazine themes have, but until then you’ll just have to enjoy this classy, minimalistic WordPress theme just like any other Plain Jane theme.

But wait! If you download within the next 15 minutes you get…

• A classy, minimalistic design!
• 3 column, golden ratio deduced layout!
• A cool, slightly blue ice color scheme!
• Six sidebars! Count them, six!
  • Wide Sidebar
  • Left Sidebar
  • Right Sidebar
  • Left Footbar
  • Mid Footbar
  • Right Footbar
• Completely valid XHTML and CSS!
• WordPress 2.7 compatibility!
• Zebra striped comments!
• Highlighted author comments!
• (Pro) Selectable magazine or blog style homepage.
• (Pro) Over 15 widget ready locations.
• (Pro) 4 color schemes.
• (Pro) No-edit ad and tracking integration.
• (Pro) Feedburner integration.
• (Pro) Drop down menus and fancy homepage tab slider.
• (Pro) Hide/show author, date, categories, tags, and comment sections.

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think of the theme! I’d love to hear it. Perhaps your suggestions will make it into the next version.

PS: I haven’t tested IE6 yet, let me know if it works for you! It works in IE6!

Download it now! or View the Demo! or View the Pro Demo!

Bluesman?

I hear this nonsense a lot, it usually goes like this: John Mayer is awesome at guitar (indisputable), John Mayer plays blues songs and they sound good (also somewhat indisputable), therefore, John Mayer is a bluesman!

Errr, no. At the risk of sounding like a “cut off your nose to spite your face” hard assed purist (which I am really not), you can’t be a bluesman when over 90% of your recorded music is bubblegum poppish acoustic/electric mishmash.

Now don’t you take away from this rant that I dislike Mr. Mayer, I really do like a lot of his stuff. Continuum was pretty good. I’ve even listened to Room for Squares and thought generally positive things. But playing blues live on occasion and on a live album, back to back to Your Body Is a Wonderland (which he wrote) does NOT make you a candidate to share the esteemed title of bluesman with B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, and Robert Johnson.

He is a pop-guitarist who can play a mean blues lick and idolizes SRV (you clever bastard!). Well, more power to him. Just expect to see me cringe when you say John Mayer and bluesman in the same sentence (unless there are an odd number of negations in there).

Now, I hate reality television as much as the next guy, I avoid “Big Brother 43″ and “Survivor 37: Urban Style” like the plague. However, there is one show that doesn’t quite deserve being lumped into the same category as the others, although it is definitely real and is on TV. It isn’t the similar but oh-so-tacky “Man VS. Wild”, it is the fascinating “Survivorman” series from Discovery Channel.

Real realism, and no drama for drama’s sake.

This show is all about surviving alone in the wild, and since most people surviving are without the luxury of a camera crew to help or sneak a protein bar, Les Stroud doesn’t bring a camera crew either, just cameras. Now stop and think about this, he does all the filming himself while surviving. That’s pretty intense.

While there is no threat of being kicked out of the game and losing a chance at a million dollars, there is the threat of not eating dinner tonight or drinking safe water. In the end, it’s just a really knowledgeable guy with a couple cameras alone for a week in the Arctic Tundra (or Utah Desert, or somewhere else).

Genuinely useful information, you know, just in case.

This shit could save your life! Especially if you are a big fan of hiking, hunting, camping or you commonly put yourself into situations where you could get lost (but that never happens, right?). Just the knowledge that water can contain harmful bacteria that will put you out of commission, if not kill you, is enough to keep you well until someone notices you didn’t return and a rescue crew is sent.

His method of preaching preparedness can also determine your survival, bringing a simple knife and a few minor food supplies can be the difference between life and death. Knowing how to deal with the psychological aspect of surviving alone is also very important, and something he never fails to mention.

A shot of emotion.

There are very few things more despondent than a man completely alone, draining himself filming whilst still trying to survive. Although you know he’ll be fine (they’ve already shown previews for next week), it still puts a big smile on your face when Les finally snags a big fish after 4 days of eating dandelions. You can feel his happiness, his sense of accomplishment, his satisfaction in himself; and its contagious.

At the end of each day, his lonesome wails on the harp serve as a substitute for the nutrition denied him as he spent a seemingly desperate day searching for a more substantial dinner than a few nuts and berries.

But I guess that tune will do.

Thanks for the great show Les.

Just when I thought I had kicked the habit. I hadn’t been playing Halo 3 on XBOX at all, and I haven’t played through any PC games (save Portal and company) for like 2 years, which was my real obsession. I only rarely indulged in Wii on a drinking night. I hardly ever played Desktop Tower Defense anymore, even in class. My spouts of addiction to random physics based games liked The Fantastic Contraption, Armadillo Run and Splitter had long subsided.

But noooooo, along comes Left 4 Dead in all it’s gory beauty. Damn you Valve.

I love zombies. I love killing zombies, so therefore, I love Left 4 Dead.

A lot has been said about how zombies cannot run. While I tend to agree with Simon’s position, when you add slow moving zombies to a first-person-shooter, you get a big steaming pile of boring. So this was part of my original justification to try it out, along with the fact that Valve was involved.

My verdict: bloody good. The best part is re-playability. Every time you play through a new campaign, it’s different. Random crowds of zombies will come at a different points each time. Boss zombies will be in new spots, sometimes…

Also, the concept behind the campaigns is solid. There is no back story, just four players (usually human in an online world) in a situation trying to get to an extraction point. Surrounded by zombies. Oh, you also get guns, ammo, health items and grenade items, but you need to get the hell out of there.

Each campaign ends with a huge fight as you wait for rescue, these can be intense and rewarding. I remember one time fighting at the riverfront, waiting for a boat. We see the boat coming it’s just three of us now running for the dock. Of course I run the slowest being a woman the most damaged and I get knocked to the ground 10 feet from the boat. One guy covers me while another helps me up as we watch a Tank boss (aka the Hulk) comes crashing towards us. We made it out with less than a second to spare. A great moment in gaming. You had to be there I guess.

To PC or not to PC: PC vs. XBOX

I have played both PC and XBOX versions of Left 4 Dead, and they are both fine. I enjoy mouse and keyboard a lot so I tend to like PC. However, I do like how much more reliable XBOX Live seems to be over the PC online play, and the split screen is awesome, especially with some brews.

So yes, I will be online, playing this game.

And I don’t think I will be quitting anytime soon. So hit me up on Steam as mstrymn or XBOX as Cheezsticks.

It was 15 miles to school, uphill both ways. In the snow.

Seriously?