DJ Thread – A Big Long One

So it was a lazy afternoon around the house. Colleen has moved out, Erin is home for a couple days, and Matt is at work now until he leaves to go home as well. I think I’m going to end up at a house a couple blocks over for tonight since there isn’t anything going on around here.

Here’s the first mix for the new year, and it’s pretty long at 163:45. Unfortunately, mixxx was being a bit fussy today, so there are a handful of spots where it breaks out for a few seconds. It’s a pretty nice mix otherwise, though.

Update: Damn, there are some really nice bits in this mix, but when Mixxx gets disconnected from jack, the interruption really sucks. I genuinely apologize, once again. :)

Happy Christmas Etc.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas or whatever holiday you’d like to celebrate this time of year. Yesterday, we went to the aunt/uncle’s place for a family get-together of about 17 family members. As for loot, I got mostly just the cash and checks. The clear message this year is that people don’t know what to get me. But I pretty much expected this… which is why I’ve already upgraded the computer like a month ago. :)

In unrelated news, our amateur neighborhood wireless provider has proven that he has no idea how to manage an ISP. 1-2 days ago, he began blocking ALL except a select few outbound ports. This had the net effect of breaking my dnbradio streaming, quake playing, file sharing, and even email checking (imap) capabilities to name a few. He’s been faster to fix some than others. SSH tunneling allows me to use some services over an encrypted tunnel (using a 3rd host) but that doesn’t work for a lot of apps that are unpredictable as to which ports they’re going to use (quake, bittorrent, etc).

But anyway, he wants my dad and I to come over tomorrow and help set up a linux box as per my suggestion to handle the firewall rules and quality of service functions for his ISP. He’s clueless, but at least he’s willing to accept help.

A Blog Update

Here’s a blog entry for the sake of making a blog entry. I dj’d on dnbradio for the um.. third time tonight. It was a pretty long set, but it wasn’t great. I guess it’s just as well cuz I didn’t record it. Also, it’s kind of hard to stab at your keyboard when you’ve rubbed off all your keys. Or I guess I more like scraped them off. But anyway, it looks really frickin cool, and I can work fine with it most of the time. Hehe.

In other news, I made some larger updates to the Hardcore Racing eStore this evening. Both the search and the browse functions have been enhanced. I’ve ditched the idea of using ajax for the browse feature. It really didn’t make much sense. Instead, I take you to a new page each time. (It doesn’t break the back button!)

But the real exciting part about what I’ve done is the caching. I’ve been able to cache bits of generated html that require lots of database interaction so that they can be just called up in subsequent requests—without the costly database query.

And it was damn easy… (stay tuned)

My New Gear + Intruding Vine

I’ve been meaning to post some pictures of my new gear… you know… to exercise my bragging rights.

Up above, you can see the speakers from Creative Labs. They don’t look like much, but they sound quite good. They’re perfect for what I need down here in my room, and they were less than $60!

Also, the Logitech MX518 gamer’s mouse that I just acquired very recently is friggin amazing. On-the-fly adjustable dpi (essentially sensitivity), nice side buttons, and sweet ergonomics make it very comfortable to use.

Here’s where most of the work went. I’ve already layed out the specs in prior posts, so I won’t bore you with them again. It lives under my bed, but I can move with it pretty easily with the HANDLE you can see on the front. It’s a very nice case from Aspire. And if you think I care about the white face plate on the dvd burner, you’d be wrong. I don’t. So there.

One last thing… a friend casually hanging out in my room suggested that I post a picture of this vine that seems to have grown through the ceiling of my room. It is pretty funny, so I thought I’d share it with you.

Rails Article, eStore Goes Live

Fresh on Slashdot…

Robby Russell writes “ONLamp.com has published another article by Curt Hibbs titled, ‘What is Ruby on Rails?.’ In this article, Curt goes on to discuss all the major components of the popular Rails web framework and shows it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. This article highlights all the major features, from Active Record to Web Services, which are going to be included in the upcoming 1.0 RC release of Ruby on Rails. With one book published already and four more on the way, do you think Rails will continue gaining as much popularity in the coming year?” An interesting follow-up to the two part tutorial from earlier this year.

I told you guys… RoR is on the upswing.

Oh, and my eStore has finally gone into production! Check out the Rails Goodness. Please excuse the design. I get to battle with clients and bosses over design/usability issues, so don’t blame me if the fixed width page is cramping your style.

Hardcore Motorsports eStore (site no longer available)

New House, Back on Campus

So it’s been a full week since I’ve moved into the new house here on Gunson Street. I’m already really enjoying living here with 3 other people: Erin, Matt, and Colleen. The house is very nice—4 (legal) bedrooms, a couple bathrooms, and a very cozy living room in which we now have 2 couches and 3 chairs. I think we’re all pretty excited about living here. Not only is the house so nice, but it’s a 2 minute walk from campus; there are lots of houses and apartments all around.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures…

Vacation in Charlevoix

Yay vacations! They can be fun even if they cause you to miss important exams for your summer classes where you’re significantly penalized for missing them! Er- nevermind that. We came up last Saturday, and will head home this coming Saturday, stopping in Traverse City on the way.

We’re in this giant condo on the south-west corner of Round Lake out here with my mom’s parents and her brother’s family who have two of our cousins, Miles and Tristan. They’re only a few years younger than my brother and I, and we get along quite well. The back/side of their heads can be seen in the first picture there as they sit in our lower level living area. You can see the docks right outside our sliding glass window. On the other side of the room is a full kitchen. There’s another kitchen up 2 levels where the main level is. If you haven’t already figured it out, this place is monsterous: 4 levels, 2 kitchens, and too many bathrooms and bedrooms for me to keep track of. There’s a pool down the docks a few paces, and downtown Charlevoix is right around the corner.

My uncle took our grandad, cousin Miles, and I on a fishing trip. We got on the charter boat only a few hundred feet from our house at about 8am, and went for a 30-45 min ride to the middle of Lake Michigan somewhere where we had some VERY good luck pulling in 4 big fish. I was told that a boat usually only pulls in about 50% of the fish that bite the line because they wiggle free, but we pulled in 4 out of 4. Also, the other charter boat from the company that went out that morning never got a single fish! Their approach was the most economical, and was described to me as the lazy man’s fishing. They had 4 fishing lines off the back of the boat at all times, each at different depths with different lures to get different kinds of fish. The two Ward guys were very knowledgable and took care of most of the work. All we did was reel in the fish once they were caught on the hook—which wasn’t easy! I got the largest of the 4 fish, and it was a bitch to reel in; this king salmon gave a serious fight. (For the record, we came back with 4 king salmons, and 1 trout.)

Charlevoix appears to be a popular vacation spot for families of all sizes. The weather has been very nice if not a bit hot, and we’re ready to enjoy the rest of our time here.

DEMF Thing Sucks

So I was going to go to the demf, festival, or whatever they decided to call it this year even though I knew they were going to charge ($10) to get in this year. Well, my friend and I got to the front gates, and we were redirected to Cobo Hall (same direction we had come) to purchase wristband ticket thingies before we could get in. So basically we had to walk up and down this super crowded sidewalk, wait in at least 2 lines, and actually pay money where we hadn’t in the past. My friend said it first, “Fuck that.”

Luckily, though, a friend of mine called me up earlier that night about a house party in Lansing. So, we decided to hit that up after all. There were some good people and good sounds there, so it wasn’t a wasted night… but we sure did drive a bunch (like at least 3 hrs in the end).

Obligatory Update

Well, I haven’t posted in a while. I don’t have anything terribly interesting to say on this occasion either, but I’m having lunch at Panera Bread today and for the first time, I’m taking advantage of their free wireless service. I guess you could say I like to post from different places now that I have a nice little wifi lappy. Oh, and wireless T1 at our house in the boonies has been a godsend; who knew it would ever happen!

Anyway, I’ve since the last update had a couple of weeks or so lounging around the parents’ house. Man, I really like working for myself. I can get up whenever I want and as long as I get the work done, none of my bosses complain. :) Today, for instance, I woke up at 11:30, went to the gym, and now I’m having an amazing lunch at Panera. Once I’m done, I’ll have to pick up a half dozen of their awesome bagels for the mornings ahead.

As for the DJ’ing… I’ve been playing with Mixxx on and off all this while. I even recorded an hour and a half set last night, and was enjoying it during my workout (still not quite done listening). It’s just too bad it’s a terrible mix. I will continue to hone my DJ skillz and hopefully release another one significantly better than my first at some point.

Scottfro on DNBRadio

So I guess the set never made it onto Scott’s iPod, so I just took the liberty of cropping it off myself. It was a bunch of fun hosting the show. I think the dnbradio people appreciated the sound even though it deviated from the usual schedule of mixed dnb. Here’s the larger, uncropped version of a picture I took and here’s a link to the torrent.

Update: And for all you torrent deprived ppl, out of the goodness of my heart, I’ll give you a direct link. Oh, and upon another listen, you can actually hear me trying to say some stuff at the end of the set, but the mic levels weren’t right so you can barely hear me at all. Oh well…