Livin' La Vida Loca!

The Death of Dynamic Range is an interesting piece about how dynamic range has been progressively more and more mashed in modern music production in the recent years. While this in itself isn’t exactly news, it’s interesting to see the examples and discussion. It’s also interesting to see how the same sound gets maximised quite differently for different formats and/or markets.

The article’s main point is that crushing the dynamic range into (or past) the clipping limit of the medium is destruction of the sound. Of course, it is, but so is using a distortion pedal. That said, it’s not such a “musical” usage of the effect and applying something to the whole mix isn’t the same as applying it to an element to create differentiation in tone colour. Anyway, it’s an interesting page.

Headph0ne Phet1sh

There’s nothing like a nice pair of cans, is there? Well, if you’re into it, check out Headph0ne Phet1sh, where “you’ll find all manner of ladies wearing all kinds of headphones”. Headph0ne Phet1sh is pretty impressive for the sheer quantity of content and as they say, “don’t knock it until you’ve tried it”.

Barcelona or Bust!

I’ve just got a new flat sorted out in Barcelona, so I’M BACK! I have to say, it’s nice to be in BCN again. Big shout out and ’nuff respeck to Lio for the use of his fun bouncy sofa bed while I was looking for a flat.

The new flat, which I’ll be sharing with the Brown Bear, is on Valencia and is quite mad, frankly! Anyway, feel free to visit ;)

(Sorry, nicked the title from the Manchester crew.)

Less is more

The complete lack of design on this site is growing on me. Maybe I’ll just leave it like this…

WordPress 1.5 update

I’ve been threatening to upgrade this blog to WordPress 1.5 for a while, to bring it up to date with domipix and Brown Bear. Now I have, but the style is just a plain version of the theme from domipix.com. It’ll be changin’…

Foxblocker

From my limited experience of Fox News (it’s hard to stand for too long), this seems like a great idea, if it was technically likely to work. FOX Blocker filters out FOX News when you put it inline on your cable input. It’s just a notch filter for a certain frequency, so it’s only going to work with analogue input and only if the frequency is the same. But I don’t suppose that’s the point – the fact of buying it (and getting your name added to an email to the top 10 advertisers on FOX News, to let them know that you’ve opted out of seeing it) is the point. They say openly that they’re a for-profit business but that they will do the right thing and pass on any profit to anti-FOX News sites.

glow brick


Oooh, this is nice!

“glow in the dark nightlight is as simple as it gets: a light bulb set in a clear solid brick.

Recharges from energy in natural light during the day – glows at night!”

Yours for $45. Very nice.

Skype phones

Now that Skype let you buy credit for SkypeOut in Spain with Paypal, rather than being stuck with Moneybookers (nothing wrong with it, per se, but hassle to add credit last time I checked), I’m looking out for cool VOIP phone sets. Maybe a headset would be simplest, but I’d like to check out the possible normal-style handset phone options as well. This one at Maplin looks OK – they don’t say what brand it is, just “USB Skype Phone”, so if anyone know anything about it, let me know, pls. [I’ll add anything else I find on VOIP phones in general on this item…]

[Update: no sooner said than googled: this Skype USB to RJ11 adaptor looks pretty cool, if a *little* pricey (if you compare with a USB handset).]