The VW iFox another car model we would never get here.

Here in Argentina, as in most part of Europe "big" cars are rare. You know Rappers' Delight - H2s SUV you wont see those here. Partly because, gas here is expensive, the car is expensive, and it been an American car most likely sucks (waits for the Captain comment on that). So we have smaller cars, with smaller engines those are the most popular among the people. You know Peugeot 206, 306, The teapot shaped Ford Ka, VW Gol (yes Gol not Golf..a region made car by VW in Brazil/Argentina) and crap load of Fiats.

About year..say year and half Volkswagen launched the VW Fox here. A small nice stylish looking (in comparison to the Gol) car. Argentina was going to be a test bed to the car's acceptance, and if it did alright, they were going to introduced it in Europe. Apparently things went as hoped, and the Fox made its Euro debut.

Besides now talking in Deutsch the Fox had gained another engine option, a bit of a restyling and the price tag..well its low..in Europe and by European standards. Recently a new model was added the iFox. As you may have guessed it had something to do with Apple. Well its VW Fox equipped with an Apple iPod. The iFox will be delivered with a Blaupunkt Calgary MP3 radio, an iPod adapter and an iPod nano with 2GB. And to say well, thats no exciting enough, its a 500 cars limited edition. Priced @ 9.290 Euros.

What are the chances of us getting something like this? Not good. We always get the cold shoulder when it comes to features (and even safety features like ABS, and airbags) when compared to the Euro Version of many cars. Although Fiat has a special edition of a model with a Blaupunkt radio system and all that, I rather have the Volkswagen iFox. The fact that airbags and ABS are seemed like a luxury item, and only the higher in price spec'd offering of a car model gets it, its by all means retarded. What are we left to do, drive around with F1 Helmets, and a safety cage unless we want to pay for the higher spec model that comes with other features that I may not want. No I don't want climatronic on my car, but I would want to have an airbag to at least slow down the trajectory of my skull towards the freaking steering wheel. Is that too much to ask?

So in short, yes it does sucks how the same model car gets more features somewhere else, even tho is the same car. I just hope the car industry becomes more attentive to the offering that we can get here in Argentina. Not just "luxury" features, but safety features, which in reality shouldn't be a feature but a given on any car model.

A Quickie for Wednesday.

Busy with my web design project (see previous posts) I'm gonna make a short post today. As I coded away in Dreamweaver. You are not hardcore, unless you solely use code view to make your sites kids. I do, thus I am the hardcore web designer.

Whatever, so as I coded away I had the iTunes visualizer in the back, when these new visuals grabbed my eye-attention. Apparently they are new visual built-in into iTunes 5. I just wish they added the functionality to jump visuals by pressing Command + Plus sign or something. Although decent, the built-in visuals aren't all that, anybody know of any good replacements?



Oh soo new and pretty...

Working with CSS and the trials of the "Window's Browser"

By now most of us know the wonders of CSS and layers. Well at least if you are a web designer using a mentality past 1998. Long gone are tables, 1px image hack and nesting of tables and tables. Embrace the power of CSS. As useful as CSS has proved to be, is not as compatible sometimes with a certain browser which I won't name. That browser comes built-in into windows, it has been in version 6 for ages, spyware friendly, tab coming in Vista, and RSS support, you only should use it if you don't know anything about Computing, yea that one.

Thanks to great "exploration of the internet" this browser provides hacks must be made to CSS code in order to make it work. Pain in the neck? Yes. Can you forget about it and code your CSS tailor to everybody else? Maybe.

You see if you don't tailor to the crappy rendering engine that IE has (I wasn't going to name it ..oh well) you are doing the same thing many websites do to us Safari, Firefox users. Many times we have stumble upon websites that refuse to work at all under Safari/Firefox.

Why because many web designers still believe the internet is run on Internet Explorer. This is not only an issue to banks, online bidding sites, and more. It also affects Microsoft's own web site. As to say: "You outsiders we don't want you here!". Although it has gotten better lately, many of the other sites under the Microsoft umbrella fail to be compliant to the standard. Not their IE standard, but the industry standard. See MCP Member site if you need proof. Non-working menus abound.

Although CSS doesn't hamper usability to certain extend as much as hacked IE oriented code does, it still important to give the best experience to everyone. To the ignorant masses still out there, as well as the ones that chose the better alternative.

In short working with CSS, as good and delightful as it may be it is still a pain. Sure its better and its the future along with the whole slew of Web 2.0 stuff (AJAX, Ruby on Rails etc). The fact that you need to nail the same look on every freaking browser platform, through hacking trial-and-error sometimes pisses me off.

Maybe I'm not a very patience filled web designer (or a web designer by that matter..but shhhh ;) )

End of tuesday, into wednesday and PvD plays on..

This XBOX 360 Thing..

...thats coming out November 20-something in the US of A, is as exciting as a new version of EA Sports Game. From what I have been seeing, at least at launch there's nothing good coming out for it. Nothing at all. Where's the Halo-like game for Xbox 360? The one that will make you buy the freaking console play it and then go "that was cool, but mostly it was alright"

Ever since PGR3 isn't launching as a debut title with the console, there's no reason to get it. Hey but isn't Need For Speed coming out at launch? Why yes, but that games sucks. The last good Need for Speed was the Porsche Challenge One. Ever since then, NFS turn to have a really crap follow up and then started to cater to the MTV generation, I puck 200 pound scuba diver tank filled with Nitrous on the back on my crappy Japanese Import car. Sure that's where the money may be, but doesn't take away the fact that the series now suck hard.

Getting back to the Xbox 360. The whole 2 package deal sucks. You either come with an HD or you don't. I image the game developer nightmare it must be where you have to code a game thinking, well we can't put this in because he may not have an HD, and we cant use the HD for faster loading, this that it sucks. So the dual package scheme sucks, the new controller is alright. At least the wire version now gives you the option to be used with a PC via an adapter that it comes with that changes "odd MS USB port to regular USB port".

I'm sure most consumer whore gamers are going to get an Xbox 360, thats a fact. Because its new, its cool, and it makes their manhood 2 inches longer. At the end they will be sitting down waiting for some good games to come out, maybe Perfect Zero will keep them content. I rather wait for PS3. Thats my take, but since I'm Argentina either new system will include a much longer wait, and mad money to be dished out. So it makes you think twice about been on the cutting edge of the gaming world, at least these days it does for me. Ol faithful PStwo and Xbox you are sticking around for a while lol.

Well, at least I have Gran Turismo 4 to keep me company...

Good Podcasts/Vidcasts worth checking out. Part III (finally)

Well the last installment of my series of "Good Podcasts/Vidcasts worth checking out". This been Part III would be strictly for vidcasts. Check out Part II for podccasts if you are interested in that.

Again lets recap my noteworthy vidcasts as deemed by me, after watching Great Chief Sitting Bull look at the stars and scream TIMBUKEE! They are..

• Diggnation- http://revision3.com/diggnation
  


• Command-N http://commandn.typepad.com/
  


• macTV http://live.watchmactv.com/
  

And according to Sitting Bull this is why you should watch them:

• Diggnation - A vidcasts highlighting the top stories at the "new" Slashdot-esque site Digg.com. Good vidcast to no just hear about the stories, but the off-topic crap these two guys get into. It's good fun entertainment for about 30 minutes.




• Command-N - It has a good looking chick..and sum dude there. Well in all fairness its a good podcast, with good contents especially the web links they provide throughout the show. Most of the stuff seems to be geared towards web dev. the links and all which I find useful. From Canada with love.




• macTV - This a vidcast geared at Apple related stuff, if you haven't guessed by the tile already. From old commercials, to video reviews and interviews all related to the Apple world. A great way to see videos that you may have already seen at one point, or new ones that you haven't seen before. All presented in their H.264 glory. Definitely worth checking out.

Also worth mention are: Systm, and ScreenCast Online.

If I missed anything, let me know, or If I didn't and you still want to let me know something. Comment away children.

Where's my friday update? I want my money back.

To the dismay of almost nobody I didn't update void yesterday. Choke it up to laziness, other things in my head etc etc. Update wasn't there. So here we are on a saturday discussing what I didn't do yesterday. Ahh yes, but truth be told I have nothing worthy of telling. That is true straight up no BS.

I continue to work on the revamping of PowerWeight.com, more of less I'm been productive. Production is good, you know? at least thats what many people say. I still have to finishing my podcasting/vidcasts guide, I'll get it to it tomorrow. Just that you know ..I'm tired don't want to type for so long about one specific topic. I have noticed that my hands are slower than my thoughts, I have to revise my writing shit load of times prior to posting, else this would be Tarzan's Adventures blog. Well that is all, I leave with Mr. Pissed off kitten.

Family Oriented Blogs..

..make me mad. I don't know it just makes me mad. The Anderson's Family Blog...IT IS CRAP PEOPLE! Give me my freaking click back, you mercenary of uninteresting crap who decides to put it on the internet for everybody to see.

Don't you get it, nobody gives 9 flying diving craps about random pictures of you with your huge Colgate™ smile baking some fatty food in your backyard. Haven't you thought for a second:

"Geez...I have no comments on our great family BBQ 16 pictures post honey, I wonder why?"

You want to know why, I will freaking tell you why. It's the freaking internet you dumb monkey, who the hell cares what you did last saturday. Why don't you scratch your aging scrotum bag next weekend and take pictures of that as well. Matter of fact get the oldest male member of the family to scratch theirs as well. Take pics of that "event" and post them. I GUARANTEE you will get a comment on that post for sure. Meaning that yes an old guy scratching his balls is more important to everyone else than your crappy BBQ. In short the logic of everyone else but you goes like this..

Old guy scratching his balls is better than your crappy family gathering pictures.

God, who cares dammit. Oh wait, and heres the cake, the ones that really have uninteresting crap to show, like their kids playing with some random toy that reads "NOT FOR CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF insert their kid's age here" They decide somehow that their crappy pictures of basically nothing are so freaking important, that they take out the only way to get out of that hellhole they call their "Family's Blog". They decide to remove the Blogger bar. I'm only left with with the option of going back in my browser like a maniac, or if I can no longer stand pictures of your happy, joyful self to quit my browser.

Listen you bastard, that's my only way to cut short the torture that is your picture filled blog. Why don't you call it a freaking gallery instead of a blog. With so many damn pictures, it sure isn' t a blog anymore. You do know that your blog takes 5 minutes of loading time in your Grandma's 56k AOL Connection right. "Look grandma, here are the new pics of Jenny and Jimmy outside the freaking local supermarket with a can of tuna". At this point Grandma curses you and the spirits, because she has to go and use some technology she doesn't really understand yet, and then wait a longevity to get your happy pictures. Of course she's not going to tell you this, because you hide the fact from her that AOL is a piece of crap, that her computer it so damn old it says "It is now safe to turn off your computer" when you just pressed the freaking button to turn it off in the first place.

In short you Mr. Family Picture Blogger, I said this to you:

You suck, get a gallery for your family, and get your grandma broadband and decent computer. Matter of fact why don't you just print the pictures out and send them to the ones that truly care, and spare the 99.8% of us the torture of seeing you and yours. Thank you for polluting the internet with useless crap. Be thankful this is a free service, and you don't have to pay, because I am DAMMED sure you wouldn't pay in the first place to get your pictures out in the internet for your gradma or anybody else to see. You family blog makes me sick. You stuff is as interesting as a cow's tit.

In a fast german car...

...I'm amazed that I survived / An airbag saved my life...

Radiohead, OK Computer night. Nothing much to say, but that the PowerWeight.com redesign is going all out. Once again my mind gets clouded with good ideas, and yet ideas that are feasible to my doing are all the ones that actually come through.

You have it all in your head, how it should be,looking so good a killer design. Come to doing and actually turning an idea to something worth, you are just left with a lighter, version filtered through your capabilities filter. You have to work with that.

In everybody's head we all have a killer design, but reflecting that in the real world is the hardest part.

Reality check, is a bitch. I'll work with what I have and try to do something worth, although it may just be a small part of what the original design in my head is.

What can you do, but work with what you have.

Fancy some Pirate Boots Dear?

Who knew they sell pirates boots on the internet? I wonder if they are designer Cpt. Blue Beard brand. Thanks again to my trusty void reader the Captain for pointing this out to me. He even provided the pic, as to prove he speaks no BS half of the time, and this is one of those times. Check out his blog, at the right hand side..the link is there. Slythic's Blog.. He's cooler like the other side of the pillow...*shrugs*

If you didn't know an update to iTunes 5 is out, 5.0.1. Some bug fixes here and there. Nothing big, regardless make sure to get it. Podcasts are still part of the main library, so save the bitching. You can however hide them from your view if you go to Edit -> Show Search Bar. Choose Music..look no more Podcasts...feel happy now.

That is all, and here's a quick tip pressing Command + Option + D will hide your Dock. Enjoy.

ARGHHHHH MATEY!!

Shiver me timbers!



If you didn't know today is Talk like a Pirate Day Matey!! A quick Google Search gave me this awesome site that will have you saying pirate phrases and other .... things in no time.


Well besides the Pirate infusion for this monday, it is a monday, not the most exciting time of the week. In my try to make it somewhat exciting I got a hold of The Gorillaz's Demon Days Album. Not bad, I have been listening to that Feel Good Inc. track so many times now I think iTunes is about to quit on me for been so fucking repetitive. That song has an Outkast sort of feel, I dunno..


To wrap up this monday, I have been called to the line on duty on a redesign of PowerWeight.com. Which reminds me I still have to talk about why redesigning a website is harder than making a brand new site from scratch. So yea, if you are into the whole gym weights, shakes that taste like crap, and eating enough tuna to put it on the GreenPeace endanger species list sub-culture, check out PowerWeight.com. I wonder if I can pull something good out of my ....... Dreamweaver app of course ;).


To close it up finally, I commented on some random dude's blog from Holland there which had just gotten an ibook and ipod. If you are that dude reading this, good choice man.
Remember Command key is the Control key of the Windows World.



ARGHHHHHHHH let me caress your Cackle Fruit!!!!!

Skip the Saturday blame it on Blogger

Well, no update for saturday is kinda of odd. In all fairness I was willing and able to do the update, alas Blogger threw a nasty little error on me:



If you can't read it, and that is probably the case, it reads and I summarize:

We apologize for inconvenience, but we can't do what you want at this time. We have let our team of engineers know that we fail to to do what you want, but I'm sure they are fixing it right now...

Well Blogger...you have 2 down for the count already. The other day with the whole 403 issues with images not showing and now this. From what it seems, there's some backstage tweaking going on...and some errors are to be expected :|.

Funny thing this update-less saturday gave me a fantastic number of 4 hits instead of the usual staggering amount of 25 hits. My theory: Updating void gets me 6 times as much traffic, though most of the are random "Clicker-happy on the Blogger bar" type.

I haven't forgotten about part III of the podcasts/vidcasts thing. I'll get to it this upcoming week. That is all. And i believe I'm still sitting at 85 cents...

Blogger.com a landfill for unoriginality?

Oxymoron post of the week. I knew that when I started this whole blogger deal it was a "me-too" attempt at basically nothing. A time killer. Jumping late on the blogging trend I didn't know what to expect. Is Blogger an originality killer, or has the ease of use and laziness kill originality in everyone of us to an extend?

Maybe is the ease of use this medium has, in which case people should concentrate more on the content to make up for it. No setting up to be done, everything is done for you, why don't you drop some worthy stuff in there. Now I'm not the blogger police, nor should you take void as an example of what a good blog is (far from it actually). But I will say this, having random lyrics of your favorite Green Day song falls a bit short, in the interesting category, or the "I give 3 craps" category. At least put why they are important to you. C'mon give us an insight here! Isn't what blogs are all about to hear a personal take on something?

Again reminder, these are my views when it comes to this. I have to say that Blogger.com is by the most part filled with copy cats attempts. Same black theme (Minima Black - Mr. Douglas Bowman - I salute you, for this theme is THE most widely adopted theme around here). I use the black theme, but at least I change the color a bit, and some have too. A great majority hasn't. A great deal of blogs are just there to try to sell stuff, c'mon now stop been cheap bastards get a proper website and .com. Another bunch, are teenager girls that WrItE liKe ThIs OMG XOXXOXOX!1!!. In a world filled by the most part of disposable blogs, is hard to stand out. When all its said and done, eventually it will die down and few blogs are going to be left. Taking with it the MTV watchers, and the ones that have mostly nothing to say, and they want to show the world they have nothing to say.

By the most part this blogging stuff is cheap personal therapy. Let your thoughts out in paper, it's good for you. Truth is, by the most part few care what you have to say. Most are just going to skip this, and not even read this, thus proving my point.

Good night.

Small edit: It Appears that Blogger's Image service has gone to crap. Once again http://imageshack.us/ to the rescue...

Midweek comes to a wrap, and we are in mid September.

Long title, for basically a short statement. We are in mid September, and what have you done? Me I helped bring down a pine tree, no joke. Spare the Greenpeace talk, new trees shall take their places.


Along wit that, dealing with getting my High School transcript been send out to me here in Argentina. The journey as i try to enroll in University studies. I just hate to deal with "system" when it comes to any crap. Long story short, MCSE isn't what it use to be, and you gotta improvise man....

My Take on: Horoscopes.

They are a waste of time. Entertaining read, perhaps, as you try to connect some random ideas to your life. I'm a capricorn, I enjoy long walks...er wait but yea, a freaking goat. Now lets see what the almighty stars and planets which reside at astrology.yahoo.com have to say for September 14, 05.

Quickie:
Trust your instincts -- if a new opportunity seems too risky, it just may be.


Overview:
You can be very helpful when you want, especially if you recognize the merit of someone's idea, but don't be so eager to hitch your wagon to someone else's star just yet -- especially if they're an unproven quantity.

In normal people talk: Don't help a dude on his idea, if you have a felling the idea is basically crap.


Hmmmmm... intereshh-ting so if I follow the astrological "advice" any idea that comes my way tomorrow (actually today its 00:01), just flush it down the toilet.


You know, I don't get many ideas pitch at me often, but I have gotten one or 2 in the recent days. Regardless I have never payed this hore-scopes too much attention. If they were so dead on, I would have a "stable partner" a.k.a chick by the end of the week. Read that on a magazine. Well 3 days left, starts and freaking Pluto..you got some hard work to do homies.


Bunch of lies I say... This is all.

Good Podcasts/Vidcasts worth checking out. Part II

Retaking where we left on saturday with Part I here we go with Part II.

On this part, we will focus on podcasts. Part III will be for the vidcasts. So lets make a quick recap of the list of podcasts that I believe are worthy of your listening time:

• MacCast/eMacCast


• this WEEK in TECH


• Security Now!

And here's my take on why you should take them out:

• MacCast/eMacCast - This is the podcast for Mac Geeks, by Mac Geeks as the motto of the podcast is. A great all around podcast, very well produced aim at you guess it, the Mac world. Covering the latest news in Apple land, as well tips and tricks and listeners' feedback questions. If you are an avid Appple fan, or a future switcher perhaps, and want to know everything about the Apple side of the fence. Check the MacCast out. Comes in a regular .mp3 format, as well as a bookmarked iTunes/ latest iPod compatible .acc version.



• this WEEK in TECH - With the IT world famous, Leo Laporte. Along with him theres a whole set of guests. All of them in technology field related stuff. A run down on the top tech stories of the week. A nice listen to stay up to date with tech related stuff, as well as hearing other people's take on a give story. This podcast is offered in so many formats I'm not even going to bother listing them all. Check the site, you know when a podcast is voted as the 2005 People's Choice Podcast it must be good.


• Security Now! - An offspring idea out of the tWiT chief head, along with Steve Gibson. Security is a big deal nowadays, especially if you are running Windows (ha ha ha!!)..er actually all around no matter what OS you run Security plays a key part in the computer world these days. This podcast is a great approach into educating people about security. From your own network security, including your router and firewalls, to your choice of passwords. Interesting stuff worth checking out. There's again many format offered for this podcast, as well as a text transcript of the show.


And that wraps Part II of "Good Podcasts/Vidcasts worth checking out". Check out Part III where I will go into the vidcasts selection.

Look I'm Blogging without going to Blogger.com

Early morning Digg browsing I happen to stumble across a story mentioning "Ecto".

....Updating a blog from a Web browser is for amateurs. Ecto lets you maintain and post to multiple blogs from one handy desktop application...

So I decided to download it, and give it a try. Input void's URL, name and password, done. Automatically detected that it was a Blogger account, dropped the corresponding Blogs in, as well as posts, all set.

Truly cool stuff, since first and foremost its like writing in a text editor. Way more feature packed that Blogger's web editing tool for sure.

So check it out, its call Ecto. Here's the site: http://ecto.kung-foo.tv/

Renaissance: The Master Series CD 2 from the album "The Master Series" by Hernán Cattaneo

Interesting iTunes song button.. lol

Good Podcasts/Vidcasts worth checking out. Part I

Going back a while in the void archive, I had a post regarding good podcasts you should check out but never made it. Hence the Damn It. Alas I'm here with the first part of "Good Podcasts/Vidcasts worth checking out."

Of all this podcasts are technology related, however if you have you a podcast that you think its worth checking out, comment away. On this first part Im just going to name the podcasts/vidcasts that I believe are good, as well as linking to their corresponding site.

Stay tune to part II and III where I will go in deeper detail of why I think each podcast/vidcast is worth checking out.

Well here's the list.

Podcasts:

• MacCast/eMacCast - http://www.maccast.com/


• this WEEK in TECH - http://thisweekintech.com/


• Security Now! - http://thisweekintech.com/

Vidcasts

• Diggnation- http://revision3.com/diggnation


• Command-N http://commandn.typepad.com/


• macTV http://live.watchmactv.com/

Stay tune for part II and III..

10 Favorite Stories on TUAW of all time.

The stories and links:

10. Apple counts down to half a billion songs sold.
9. Tiger named the best OS
8. The french born iMac G5
7. iPod Shuffle first impressions
6. Discover the Dashboard
5. Apple switching to intel this time we mean it!
4. iTunes Phone finally here..
3. iTunes 5
2. iPod nano

1. Apple's Marketshare jumps

iWednesday

The iPod nano. One of the products announced by Steve Jobs as part of the Special Event hosted by Apple. Along with the iPod nano, came iTunes 5 for both Windows and Mac. Sporting a more refined look, similar to the look of Mail in Tiger. Finally, to the surprise of almost nobody, Motorola's long awaited ROKR phone was finally debuted. The phone is ok, I wouldn't get it mainly because for the most part Motorola's Operating system in their phone plainly just suck. Besides the phone shoe-shape isn't to my liking.

Also worth noting, the final version of Quicktime 7 for Windows is out. Performance is better from what I have heard with H.264 decoding/enconding. A small update for the Mac Quicktime version was also release. This put the Mac version to 7.0.2, only small Bug fixes were mention to take part of this update. A restart is required, so all you uptime freaks may shed a tear about now.

Back to the iPod nano. I want one, plain and simple. I think its great flash memory based player, with color screen. In black it just looks sick. The pice is competitive for how much 4 gig of flash memory costs. I think the price isn't an issue. A worthy companion to my old and trusty 3rd. Gen iPod. Sadly, I cant get one. If anyone is willing to donate for the purchase of a 2 gig/4 gig nano let me know lol. I will make sure to write a review of it, and make mention of your names for been such generous people. Only $1 or €1 is all it takes given that more than 250 people visit this blog and donate. Hey, one can dream...

• Apple


• iTunes 5


• iPod nano (soo sexah!)


• Quicktime


• Moto ROKR

As seen in iChat.

Random complements are always welcome.

Having said that, there's nothing much to say really. About to hit midweek almost, and just another week to put away in the collective memory of my past. Have minor things to do, but decide to put the off, until tomorrow or Thursday. No point in getting things done early, when you don't have anything else to do. We will see what happens towards the weekend. Magic 8 Ball says... "See past week and repeat" ...Interesting. They are at times when the monotony of everyday strikes you. I guess a wake-up call to switch things around a bit. Not too much now, lets not be a dare devil....

I noticed how I tend to go from mostly stuff that will interest some of you, to have some posts where its thoughts crapping out through my fingers and been shot at the screen via a PowerBook keyboard. I guess this post is one of them. Thoughts for a Tuesday in September. Definite post that will get ignore in my book, a cliche blog entry. There's nothing much to say really. Im a bitch.

Electronic Music Making and GarageBand.

Avid Electronic Music listener? Want to produce something, and be the next Sasha? Only have GarageBand? Then you are on a bit of a slow start. Regardless, maybe you don't want to dig into Ableton Live, or Reason. Perhaps you like to mingle with loops first and don't have a MIDI keyboard yet? Your music knowledge is limited (YUP! thats me). Well if you are using GarageBand, here's a small tip.

-Almost by default, all Electronic music is 4/4. So choose that (it's set by default to that).
-BPM can vary. 120-140 is mostly House, Prog. House. 140ish Trance. 160+ Hard German Trance that makes your trip in the Autobahn a mellow experience.
-Build up your song to a climax (hmmm...) then have it drop off.
-Play with panning audio, you have 2 channel use them.

And now for a freebie.

A great free audio plugin that I have found is Buzzer It emulates a analog VCO VCF VCA Synthesizer. Great stuff, you can get it here. It does bunch of effects, and filters. Definitely something to play around with.

To set it up in GarageBand you must first drop the Buzzer2.component into: ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Compontents

Within GarageBand drop a loop, Chordal Synth Pattern 09 for example. Make sure the track is selected and do Cmd + I (Get Info) on the loop. Drop down the Details.. list.

Click on Generator, drop the list all the way down and choose Buzzer. Click on the Pencil Icon on the right. Start Buzzing away.



Well thats is all. Back to listening Sasha and Digweed. Hopefully this quick little tip can help a fellow Electronic head out there. Stay tune, I may start mingleing with VJ stuff... thats cool stuff right there.

Slow sunday to wrap things up.

Well it's a slow sunday night, leading to a brand new monday and week. I can hear some cats in the distance getting it on, or maybe its a chick? Hmm... Another weekend in the memory. Wait its some cats...scratch the chick part. So indeed another weekend past, just a couple more to go before we call this year quit. Amazing how time flies, maybe I didn't noticed before, but now I do. Sometimes it worries me, but I try not to wrap my head over that these days. All things in due time they say. Hopefully that saying does not expire any time soon.

Well, short and sweet. catch me on another week with void inside. I shall leave you with a cool link that showcases Mac OS through the years. Check it out. Amazing how far Mac OS has come (as oppose to windows) through the years.

That is all, enjoy you 14 random by-passers that never comment and stay less than 5 seconds here.... lol.

Deutsch, Warum nicht?

German, why not? Thats the question I posed myself many time ago, when I decided to embark in this journey of learning German. You see I love zee Germans by-products. I love BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche. What happened to Opel and Benz? Well they are partly own by American companies (GM and Chrysler), since then their quality of their products have dropped. Although they still make good products, it's not the same. You can add to that list The Autobahn, The Nürburgring, RUF, AC Schnitzer, and cool architectural design. Check out the VW's Glass Factory in Dresden if you need proof.

I decided to turn my Germanic interests into something productive, and thus I'm learning German. If you want to learn German, you have to go to the best and that is to me the Goethe Institut. The Goethe-Institut is the Federal Republic of Germany’s cultural institution operational worldwide. Quoted from the site, but I believe thats a worthy enough reason to deal with them. They deal with everything and anything Deutsch.

Here we have a Goethe Zetrum, which I must say it's pretty nicely manage. The have a library and they offer courses to fit your needs, express, long term whatever you need. To say the least German ain't easy. The gramatical part of the language is quite a mess to get a grasp on. Akkusativ, Dativ, declinations and pronouns. To say the least your brain cells do get a workout. Regardless I love the beating (lol) and enjoy learning German. Maybe one day I'll see myself with a Lufthansa ticket in hand, itching to drive the next day on the Autobahn at 3 in the morning. Time will tell...

Up to is a pic its a pic snatched during German class brake today. Enjoy it, and doesn't it look kinda City 17?

FIFA 06 Demo - A quick review.

Another year, another sport franchise based game milked by EA Sports (it's in the game!). This time around we have the new FIFA 2006, which they drop the 2 thousand, kept the 06..which would make FIFA 6...but its 11 players in the field, damn new name scheme.

So here we go they dropped the demo, less than a month away, for you to taste the new version. You will also noticed a couple of new bugs here and there, which make no sense you complaining about to them because by the most part the game its done. EA Sports by the most part never patch their games. Well, i lied, they do. For example lets say I want to get my FIFA 2005 game patched (it needs a patch or 2..3..). I would like to regain substitutions, and players' injuries notice in-game, etc. Well of course there's a patch out: -It's FIFA 2006.

The demo comes with (surprising) 5 big name teams to choose from: AC Milan, Barca, Bayern Munich, Man U, and PSG. Home and away kits to your disposal as well. Graphically, from the demo, you can tell the quality of the team kits have gone up. You can finally read ADIDAS on the shirts, instead of sum blurred out thing as in previous versions. Animations have also improved, and the net physics are a lot better. When a ball hits the net, it sorta resembles a net, not a freaking spandex spread across the posts. The players to me still suffer from their faces been to "bulky" and the kits have now a glossy like finish to them, like they were dipped in stain prior to the game.

Gone are John Motson and Alley McCoist, replaced by Clive Tilsley and Andy Gray (they were in previous FIFAs, i think I remember in FIFA WC 2002). The chants are pretty generic by the most part, at least in the demo, BARCA BACA!!..UNITED UNITED!!.. remix #4667 of the Paul Oakenfold's FIFA theme is back, as well as music by Oasis and others.

Finally a bug, the demo tends to go crazy at times. Crazy as in it just switches around like you were pressing the keys. The fix EA gives: Go into device manager and disable HID-compliant devices under the USB branch. So its disable, try to see if its fixed, try another so on and so forth. Hopefully this is something EA WILL address, although I don't know what to expect from them anymore.

From the demo I can say the gameplay has changed a bit, the graphics have been up a notch. The rest is all the same, with of course updated rosters. I would like to give a more in-depth review of gamplay but sadly my Dual action logitech gets all crazy when I try to use it with the demo *sighs*. I just hope they update the network code, because as it is right now is crap stuck to the right hand side of Oliver Kahn's post, and provide good gamepad support. Please EA. We all know you are in it for the $, but don't abuse of your exclusive licenses like you have with Madden and other sport games.

So far it looks like another maintenance FIFA update...

It's crazy in the USA.

Watching the international media, as well as the US media report on the unfortunate Hurricane event makes you see how people aren't so different after all no matter where they come from. When disaster strikes, the worst and best of everyone comes out. You see on TV people stealing left and right, shooting at each other, carrying corpses on the streets, fighting for food, and a place to sleep. Most americans only witness this through their TVs with the (unjustified) Iraq war. Is hard when it hits home, ain't it? People are starting to complain on their government's slow to react policy on this event. The fact that they are locking down the city and not letting anyone out. It's crazy. To add to this, the increase on the price of a gallon of gas is imminent. Matter of fact, they are already reporting shortages of fuel in the Florida area. People are starting to line up, and the prices are starting to go up. The economy is bound to take a hit as well (well another one to add with the whole ongoing war in Iraq).

They have the sources to fly across the world, be stuck in a endless war, trying to restore "freedom", yet they can't do anything at home? Makes you wonder, how truly prepare they really are when shit hits the fan at home. What's going on in New Orleans is truly a tragedy, but at the same time, maybe its karma hitting back. As they say, karma is a bitch Mr President.

Edit: I would like to wish late internet birthday wishes to the Captain, You bastard I hope you had a good time :).