I like to visit California — my sister lives in SF, the weather is always great, and there’s always a chance you’ll see someone famous. Our recent vacation along the Pacific Coast Highway was no exception. Just outside Santa Barbara, in a nice campsite across from El Capitano, I saw a celebrity.

The skateboarding dog from the iPhone commercials. On his skateboard. Slobbering heavily and clearly having the time of his life.

It was awesome.

On certain models, mainly MacBook Pros, this seems to be the case. I’ve been having trouble staying online recently, mostly on my home network. Connections are maintained, but it’s increasingly hard to create new ones. DNS lookups can be painfully slow, and Google Talk conversation (through Adium) die midstream, with nary an error message in sight. My problems date to around the time of the 10.4.10 Update, although they’ve been getting much worse in the past week as I spend more time on my home WiFi connection. Some users are reporting frequent kernel panics, others are having stability if outlet power is used instead of battery. In my case, it’s just very frequent poor connectivity.

I’ve just installed the fix recommended by user IamNobody in the Apple forums. Let’s hope it works. Look for the post dated Jun 30, 2007 5:01 AM.

Update: looks like I’m late to the party. Apple released a fix within minutes of this post. Yay?

One of my favourite ways to get introduced to new music, and to introduce others, is through a simple game called “revolving DJ”. It can be played at parties, in your office, or anywhere you can hook an iPod up to a set of speakers. The rules are simple: each participant plays a 3 song set in turn until the party ends and everyone goes home. By trying to choose music you think everyone else will enjoy, or is unfamiliar with, you pick up all kinds of new influences.

It was during a lazy Friday afternoon of Revolving DJ and beer than an idea was sparked in my head, regarding the iPhone and the lack of 3rd party native applications. It doesn’t take too many songs before you long for a method to effortlessly transfer tracks directly from one iPod to the next. A few moments later, someone will inevitably realize “hmmm, the Zune could actually do that“. Unfortunately, it’s implementation was so hopelessly crippled by the marketdroids and RIAA-fearing managers at Microsoft that the device was essentially stillborn.

Apple has also built an iPod with WiFi — it’s called the iPhone, and while most people are rightfully focusing on the new features of the device (phone, web browser, email client), it’s also considered one of the best iPods ever built (ignoring the anemic storage for now). The device runs a version of OS X, meaning the only preventing a mobile p2p application that can share music with friends or strangers is a smart programmer and a way to load the application onto the iPhone — conveniently left out. The Zune crippled it’s WiFi in firmware, but an open SDK on the iPhone would mean anyone could easily install such an app on their phone. Even better, if you didn’t already have the p2p app, you could easily jump on the web and download it the moment you needed it. It’s the viral-social, the dream application for music-heads everywhere, and Apple can’t stop it without throwing the baby out with the bathwater, which is pretty much what they did by not shipping an SDK for the phone.

I suspect that for most fans of electronic music, there was a trigger song, band or album. It’s not like you hear this stuff on the radio — certainly not where I grew up in Calgary. College radio played hard-core techno on Friday nights, but to me it was (and remains) totally inaccessible.

My song was Orbital’s “Halcyon + On + On” from the Hackers soundtrack (at least, that’s where I heard it). I’d listened to a bit of other stuff, but that track blew my mind. I promptly went out and bought In Sides, and never looked back. Over the years, I collected every other Orbital album as well. Long before I dreamt of being a DJ, I imagined building new sounds out of “I Wish I Had a Duck”, from Snivilization. Layer upon layer of electro-squish and samples, Orbital created an imaginary world in the confines of that song.

Years later, I found myself searching for an opening track to complement Layo & Bushwacka!’s brilliant “Saudade”, and I reached for “I Wish I Had a Duck”. Orbital’s best work still resonates, and in a way this mix brings me full circle.

Sidenote: if you’re an Orbital fan, be sure to check out Paul Hartnoll’s solo album, “Ideal Condition”. Justifiably moving away from the core Orbital sound, he manages to find some brilliance in cinematic work and pop collaborations.

Tracklist:

1. I Wish I Had A Duck - Orbital
2. Saudade (Remix) - Layo & Bushwacka!
3. Rej (A Hundred Birds Remix) - Ame
4. When I Listen 2 This Sound, feat. ZM (Alex Celler Mix) - Nikola Gala
5. Builder (Kris Menace Re-Edit) - Eva
6. Anime (Sequential Remix) - Hernan Cattaneo, John Tonks
7. North American Scum (Kris Menace Remix) - LCD Soundsystem
8. Affectation (Dousk Dub Electro) - Chris Nemmo & Andree Eskay
9. One & Only - Jimmy van M & Nick Warren
10. Tornado - Habersham
11. Discopolis (A Hundred Birds Remix) - Lifelike & Kris Menace
12. Tease - James Harcourt
13. One Day (Spiritchaser Terrace Mix) - The Craftsmen

 

 Standard Podcast [77:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

One of my biggest frustrations with Vista, at least initially on my 2-year-old desktop, was the incessant disk thrashing. The computer sits in the corner of our living room (it’s a small condo, so it’s basically all living room…), and the hard drive is not exactly quiet while under load. Every night, after about five minutes of idle time, the disk would grind away endlessly for hours at a time. I have a ton of mp3s and videos, so I assumed that eventually Vista would index everything and it would settle down. It never did, so I went on an adventure of shutting down every possible service to see what was causing the disk thrashing.

Eventually, I found it. If you’re suffering this problem, change the frequency of index updates and it should settle down:

• Open “Power Options”
• Click “Change plan settings” for your currently selected power plan (if I try really hard, I can almost imagine why this is under Power Settings. Almost.)
• Click “Change advanced power settings”
• Find “Searching and Indexing”, then “Power Savings Mode” in the tree
• Change the setting to “Balanced”

Well, after three months of disk thrashing and obscenely poor performance, I’m going back to XP on my desktop. Vista has some niceties, but on that machine (only 1GB of RAM) it was just too painfully slow to use, especially with two accounts logged in at the same time.

Windows Explorer keeps frustrating me as well. Switching directories takes 10-12 seconds while it refreshes it’s thumbnail cache, and the “smart” columns wants to treat every directory as if it were full of MP3s (thanks, but I really don’t need to see the Artist and Rating associated with my ZIP files).

The change, for me, is actually much bigger than that: I’ve quit my job, and joined a startup in the online money transfer arena. This is the project I’ve always wanted. A small, focused team of great people, and the chance to work on something I can truly call my own. Live by the sword, die by the sword, and all that good stuff. I’ll be the sole UI dude, designer and implementer of wondrous interfaces for the website and administration tool. To accomplish this, I’ve made the big switch — I bought a Mac. MacBook Pro, to be precise.

I’ll post more in the future about my experience with the Mac, but if my initial impressions hold, it’s everything I dreamed it could be, and certainly everything Vista is not.

Some shorties:

• Expose: Wow. Completely changed my workflow. I love it
• Font Rendering: I never had a problem with Windows’ font rendering. Now I do.
• It Just Works: for the most part, it actually does just work
• Home/End keys: come on, Apple… really. I hit the Home key probably 300 times a day, and I’ve never, ever wanted the behaviour Mac’s use by default. Thankfully, there are workarounds for this
• Uptime: I’ve had it for a week, and I still haven’t rebooted it. Ever.

After I first installed Windows Vista, I attempted to use the default application (whenever possible) for activities which I usually installed some kind of helper app. For example, I initially toyed with Media Player instead of installing Winamp, and use the included photo manager instead of grabbing Photoshop Album.

In the process of installing my iPod software, I also decided to give iTunes a whirl. I have never actually used iTunes — it’s always been completely at odd with my expectations from music management software. The few times I played with it, it was baffling. I didn’t quite understand it’s legendary status as the most usable media player available. It was also huge. Read the rest of this post… »

It seems silly that it’s been so long since my last release, a problem that’s rectified by In Completion. My first set with the new Mixmeister Fusion software, it’s a lot closer to my live sound than the studio sound of previous mixes. The tone is mellow overall, but you’ll find a few barn burners stuffed in there as well. Enjoy.

Tracklist:

1. Tripswitch - Indigo
2. Ormatie - Glossow (Funk Harmony Park Remix)
3. Jody Wisternoff - Nostalgia (Remix)
4. Funk Harmony Park - Crystal Sky (Hernan Cattaneo & John Tonks Remix)
5. Jaytech - Starbright (Jaytech Touch Your DJ Mix)
6. Above & Beyond - Good For Me (King Roc Dub Mix)
7. Dominic Plaza - Korny (D-Nox & Beckers Remix)
8. Jaunt - Travelling
9. Benz & MD - Signals
10. Achillea - The Seeress Prophecy (Micah’s Premonitions Remix)
11. Jaytech - Manipulator (Parallel Sounds Remix)
12. Tsewer Beta - Marl 1 (You’ll Never Guess Remix)

 

 DJBS - In Completion [77:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By day, she’s an evolutionary biologist. But secretly I think my sister wants to be a designer too.

Three weeks ago, I decided to trade in the ol’ Toyota Echo for something a little more… ahem… manly. The Echo was a great car; it used almost zero gas and seemed virtually indestructible. Maintenance costs were limited to oil changes. Unfortunately, it also looked like a squished up baby buggy and had these ridiculously tiny tires that made driving in winter a bit of an adventure.

So enter the 2006 VW Jetta, a car I’d been eying for over a year. I love driving it, and I love the feel and consideration of the German-engineered dash. Apparently, though, I aggrieved the new car gods with my sinful pride, and punishment was swift.

On Saturday, while helping my friend Guy move, a girl backed into it with her SUV, crunching the tail light and denting the bumper and corner panel. I heard it unfold from the comfort of his back deck, and fortunately was able to get her insurance information. Damage was light but I’m sure the repair costs will be expensive, given the bodywork that will be required.

My pride had not been abated. I would look at the car out of the corner of my eye and think “Isn’t that lovely. And it’s mine.” So yesterday, while parked in the parkade beneath my office building, the CEO’s wife decided to back into my driver door with her SUV. Helloooooo, Christmas bonus.

That’s right. 5 Days. 2 reversing SUVs. 2 insurance claims. 3 dented panels. 1 busted tail light. 1 sad Ben.

At least I wasn’t in the vehicle either time.