MN, Best Buy, and rain

April 24th, 2008 | general

I tend to find myself driving to the Twin Cities to drop people off at the airport rather frequently. Today was one of those days. It rained the entire day, a big downpour many times throughout.

After my airport duty I walked around the Mall of America. Yes I’m still looking at computers so I had to check out the Apple store to play with a MacBook Pro. I recently saw a demo of the new things the mouse pad can do; I even remembered a few off the top of my head, so I tried them. Fun! I also saw the Macbook (Nike) Air. Wow, that is one skinny computer. I felt like I would crack it just by typing hard.

After the mall the next destination was Guitar Center off of France Ave. By this time it was 5pm…rush hour with downpouring rain. Mall of America is right off 494 exit 2. France Ave. is exit 7 off 494…so I had to travel 5 miles. That was the longest 5 miles ever, for what turned out to be a waste. G.C. is pretty much a disappointment these days (I used to love that store).

Next stop was driving back east on 494 to Best Buy off Lyndale Ave., which is about 3 or 4 miles from the France Ave. exit. This took even longer. It’s always a good feeling when you’re listening to KDWB and they have the traffic report on only to mention that “494 east is the slowest moving part of the city. But once you pass Lyndale you should be fine”. Ugh. It was slow enough that I was able to eat a bag of cookies and the leftover pieces of pizza I had.

I went to Best Buy for 3 things: Paramore CD, Flight of the Conchords CD, and look at the Dell XPS 1530. Upon walking in the store I saw a Fender USA made Stratocaster and a Gibson Les Paul with a Line 6 halfstack…more on that later. I found the CDs so off to the computer dept I went. After looking at a few Gateways and an Asus I found the Dell section and tada…an XPS 1530. One problem: it didn’t work. the 1530 comes in numerous screen resolutions so I asked an employee what screen resolution this one was, since I couldn’t get ‘properties’ to come up. He couldn’t make it work either and restarted it. And then he restarted it again…until he finally said they were having problems with the Dells crashing over and over. hmmmm.

I played with a Dell Inspiron since the XPS was dead. I noticed the mouse trackpad was jumpy and nearly impossible to control. I then tried an HP…same thing. I then tried Toshiba and a Gateway…all the trackpads were difficult to control. I have two theories: either vista uses so much power it causes it, or the program loaded by Best Buy for their in store demos is using heaps of power (the employee trying to fix the 1530 said the Best Buy demo program took forever to load and start). I do think something was wrong because every single computer, all different brands running Vista at Best Buy were hard to control. Of all the computers I played with today I liked the MacBook Pro the best.

After the computers I walked around the store wondering where those guitars and the amp came from. I found a special “instruments” section in the far back left of the store. These aren’t the normal $80 guitars for kids. This was a full music shop with it’s own cash register and guitar strings behind the counter, and an entire room with a sealed door for acoustic guitars, plus a couple drumsets and keyboards! They carry a full line of BOSS effects and have many top level Gibsons and Fenders…SGs, Les Pauls, American Strats and Teles, even the Eric Johnson Strat. To be honest I was amazed. It was like a mini-sized Guitar Center.

Anyways, the drive home was awful due to huge amounts of rain. I don’t normally mind rain, but it slowed me up enough that I missed the beginning of LOST. booo…

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mp3 codec huh

March 29th, 2008 | tech

I have a Motorola Razr. There are +’s and -’s to the phone, but it’s not too bad. I also have Motorola’s Phone Tools software. Using this I can easily transfer photos to and from phone, resize photos so they fit on the wallpaper of my phone, and I can usually take mp3s of songs…crop them…and make them into ringtones.

For awhile now I’ve had Kasabian’s song “Empire” as my ringtone, the chorus part. In the past I’ve used the intro to Bloc Party’s “Banquet” and a couple other songs. For a couple days now I’ve been wanting to use one part of the last track on Battles’ album. So I opened Phone Tools. Oops, updates, so click yeah.

While updates are installing I get a nice little message saying software isn’t confirmed by Microsoft and if I continue it will harm my computer now or in near future. Choices are continue anyways, or stop. I clicked stop…the installation kept going. huh? oh well.

Updates installed, connect phone, find song on computer, crop song…good. Save cropped mp3 to computer: NOPE. file is invalid (or something like that). So I try skipping the save to computer part, I’ll just transfer the file to phone. ERROR…invalid codec. umm codec what? So I tried another approach. Save the cropped file as a .WAV, then go into the file transfer part of Phone Tools and transfer it to phone. For some reason saving as .WAV works fine. Next, transfer to phone. Ugh, files must be mp3, not wav.

After about an hour searching Motorola’s poorly designed help sections I learn a lil bit about codec and that there are many kinds. It says Phone Tools relies on codecs from Windows Media Player. If I’m having problems, make sure WMP is up to date. So next step, I check my WMP expecting to find updates I didn’t know about available. What do I find? “All updates and codecs are up to date”. hmmm, if I have the codecs, and Phone Tools uses codec from WMP, why won’t the program work?

After searching through help forums for the majority of the night (about 5 hours) I gave up. I still don’t know what I’m looking for, or where to find the specific codec I need. What’s really frustrating is that I’ve used Phone Tools before and it worked. Then I remembered the updates.

In a last ditch effort I uninstall the updates. Program still doesn’t work. So why not, I uninstall Phone Tools and reinstall the whole thing. Still doesn’t work and now half of the menus don’t even appear. Crap, things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse. Ahhh another idea…the HP.

I remembered I put Phone Tools on the HP desktop computer. I sent my original mp3 files to myself on email to transfer them to HP. Open Phone Tools. Install updates? NO THANKS…continue. Find my song, crop song. Save song. What? Yep that’s right, worked first try. Next I click “transfer to phone”. No error comes up…brilliant. A simple window appears for me to name my file and within 3 seconds my new ringtone is on my phone. Hooray!

The main problem here is 1. I primarily use my laptop. 2. the one computer Phone Tools won’t work on is my laptop. 3. I have no idea how to fix the problem.

/rant

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insert generic “random thoughts” title here

March 12th, 2008 | tech, sport, music, general

here we go again:

1. First there was the band Kill Hannah. Now a band named I Hate Kate. If I were to name a band after a girl I’m upset at, would I keep changing the band name as the years went by? On the other side of things, at least the Bouncing Souls have a song titled “Kate is Great”.

2. Which would you rather have: a guitar that is known throughout the industry to be the ’standard’ for which everything else is judged (Stratocaster, Telecaster, Les Paul for a few examples), or would you rather have a high-quality instrument that noone else is likely to have which you’ll probably end up describing to everyone that “it has the clarity of a Strat but with the fullness of a Les Paul, yet retains that trebley jangley sound of a Tele”?

3. Formula 1 is about to start. Driver lineups have changed at nearly every team (except BMW Sauber and Red Bull). It will be a great season no doubt. I just remembered I forgot to write my annual Preseason preview. I still have a day or two to do it…

4. When will Yamaha release sound clips of their new Pocketrax 2g mini recorder? it looks so nice and small and portable. Yamaha, are you really going to make me wait until April for sound reviews? booo. It’s still the Pocketrax vs Zoom H2.

5. My computer sounded like it was about to blow up tonight the fan was running so hard. Then it started working super slow. Makes ya wonder when I’ll break down and buy a new machine.

6. Thanks to the WIAA state basketball playoffs last week I still haven’t watched last week’s episode of LOST. I’ll bet $100 it won’t be aired again tomorrow thanks to the girls WIAA basketball. blah.

7. DIY effects pedals seem so fun at the moment. Too bad the easy-to-build pedals are a bit useless to me….boosters and fuzz pedals. How bout a DIY phaser, flanger, or delay…but make it easy to build. I guess that’s why there are pedal companies that build pedals haha.

8. NRL (rugby league) starts this weekend too. My Warriors travel to Melbourne to take of the Storm…who just happened to win the title last season. To make matters worse, one of Warriors’ key players got injured during a preseason game and is out for the season to recover from surgery…and the season hasn’t even started yet. It will be a long season.

9. Keeping with sports, Premier league is getting towards the final part of the season. Fulham better start winning…NOW.

10. That’s all for now. Just as I’ve said every other time…photos and new features etc etc are coming soon haha.

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Rip City woohoo

February 9th, 2008 | general

I recently just got back from a week long stay in Portland. The main reason for the trip was to ride snowboard on Mt. Hood. Well, due to weather that was the one thing that didn’t get accomplished. Here is a list of stuff about the trip:

1. I got the window seat on the plane on the way out and the way back. Special bonus: both trips, noone was sitting in the middle seat. YAY

2. Back in the day I loved the Trailblazers. I still remember Buck Williams, Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter (a UWSP alum), and Kevin Duckworth. I think I even remember their jersey numbers (52, 22, 32, 00…if I’m wrong don’t blame me, I didn’t even google it). While there PDF and I watched the Blazers narrowly lose in OT to Denver Nuggets. Curses to Iverson. Nevertheless, the game restored my love for the Blazers. And I learned that a nickname for Portland is Rip City (thus the title).

3. Visited the coast at Oceanside, OR again. It’s amazing how different it looked from just a few months ago. It’s still a fun drive too.

4. I got to try a few music items. I love the Orange Rockerverb 50. Now I just have to try a Laney VH100R and L20R first. I didn’t care much for the E.H. Flanger Hoax. Yes, it’s cool, but how many of the sounds are useable? My dreams of a possible Jazzmaster purchase were dashed by a poor-playing demo. I shouldn’t have to raise the action a mile high just to bend strings. I now have my eyes set on a different guitar, the Galaxy 4 by DiPinto.

5. It was fun playing with PDF, Chris, and Will. An amazing session. And thanks to recording setups, I can listen to what we actually played.

6. Stash tea is based in Portland area. Stash tea is great. yum.

7. I finally got a pair of magic shoes. haha.

8. LOST season premiere was on while I was out there. Brilliant, again.

9. Check out pics from the trip on flickr. Yeah, that’s right…I’m actually uploading pics to flickr.

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blah. more updates.

January 7th, 2008 | general

1. Xmas was good. Presents were wonderful.

2. In the month of December I was at MSP airport 4 times and never boarded a plane, or even set foot in the airport for that matter.

3. The Electro-Harmonix POG effects pedal is brilliant. It really makes you rethink the way you play. And it’s not just for guitar players.

4. I’m finally getting closer to having new songs recorded. If only I could figure out how to set my Tascam to record in stereo with my MC-505.

5. I’m able to open photoshop without getting an “error” and having the program closing on me. This means I can now resize photos for my Flickr account I have yet to use.

6. Speaking of programs back from the unuseable dead…Dreamweaver is now working. Look for some website updates soon (starting with BG colour).

7. Even with #5 and #6, I’m still looking at new computers. Although, forget Dell…PDF and matches have me sold on Apple. word.

8. I got my snowboard ready to ride and found my boots and goggles thanks to the loads of snow recently. Sadly it rained today and the snow is now crap.

9. I’d like to get this list to 10 items, but I can’t think of anything else to write. I’ll stop now.

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