Blue Yeti, big....isn't it?

I just got the Blue Yeti Microphone, and after two hours of playing around I already love it. It’s a solid piece of equipment (4 lbs, I think), no hassle install woes, and great sound out of the box. I had a fan running in the room the whole time with almost no carry over. It’ll be fun to try to push it to its limits. For now, it’s a couple of spins with the penny whistle and Skype conversations.

I like to use Frere Jacques as a test case. See what it sounds like on my Logitech Pro 9000.

Flutes Frere Jacques Take 1 by raymondberg

Now on the Blue Yeti.

Flutes Frere Jacques Take 2 by raymondberg

Keep in mind that calling me a trained professional is like calling Michelle Bachmann a viable presidential candidate. I try hard, but it’s really laughable by those with any sense at all. In that same vein, I’m having a blast pretending to know what I’m doing. I’m not comfortable uploading my lack of singing talent to the interwebs, but it’s been interesting to see what I can make in 20 minutes or so. I really need to get back to some music theory to create some fun little experiments.

The biggest problem with the Blue Yeti + Blue Pop [Filter] is a common one among internet users. However, all of their innovative, costly, or dangerous solutions seem to be way harder than something I came up with in about 4 minutes.

MacGyver is an amateur

Yes, that’s styrofoam. The grip is solid; I can pick up the Yeti at a 45-degree angle from that clamp. I wouldn’t carry it through the desert like that, but it’s a fantastic desktop solution. The best part is where I got the styrofoam from*:

*knife not included

This may be a little too emotionally revealing for some, but those who know me well know that I have no trouble exposing myself. (And yes, I did look up the Google Chart Api’s to write the url by hand just for that joke).  The other thing you have to know is that I don’t blog about things in the pop timeline; I usually play video games, watch movies, and listen to music approximately 4-7, 10-31, and 3-5 years behind the average human, respectively.

The song “Human” by the Killers has an amazing set of lyrics that you have to hear:

I did my best to notice
When the call came down the line
Up to the platform of surrender
I was brought but I was kind

And sometimes I get nervous
When I see an open door
Close your eyes, clear your heart
Cut the cord

Are we human or are we dancer?
My sign is vital, my hands are cold
And I’m on my knees looking for the answer
Are we human or are we dancer?

This is hands-down one of the most nonsensical and beautiful line of lyric I’ve heard in pop music lately. I don’t listen to the Killers very much, but the songs that I hear turn out to be some of the most evocative things I can pick up over radio waves. It took me 2 years (2005 and 2006, for those playing along at home) to be able to listen to “Mr. Brightside” without becoming deeply saddened.

If you, like me, enjoy living outside of the time-space continuum, check it out:

That said, I wish it wasn’t repeated 30 times in the song. When I heard the lyric the first time, I thought “Sweet Baby Moses! Genius lyrics these guys are slinging. This song is blowing my mi-ohhhhh wait, recapitulated already—-in the chorus????—–every chorus????……” I’d call them musical gods if they just let the words swell and die in that third stanza.

I was sitting at a bus stop yesterday and a guy with a Droid X asked me how I liked the phone. He was much older and said he was reticent to start, but bought one a few weeks ago because he was impressed with the amount he could do. He commented on how people on the metro stare at their devices the whole trip, and he hasn’t yet figured out how/why. I gave him my guess: the Kindle App.

(more…)

Today is the last day I get to pack up my stuff. I’m moving to a smaller, and more awesome apartment up north of DC. Unfortunately, I’m the world’s worst packer. I take, literally, days of puttering around and multiple “last-minute” deadlines to get housework done.

One of my other problems is that, as I put things away, I like to use them for something before they go in the box. It’s like saying goodbye with one last hurrah. Well, today I have to pack the keyboard, so when I woke up I went straight to it and got a little creative. As I say in the comments, it’s called The Irish Run because it’s “an odd pairing of electronica, irish melody, and some sort of weird pacific guitar. Need better voices.”  I think the Irish influence is probably a Sunday morning thing. This style is the closest I’ve gotten to church in a while unless you count that wacky Moog thing I’ve been working on (Play “Metal Church” clip).

The drum rhythms were way easier this time because I actually bought a couple pairs of drumsticks, and it turns out that the keyboard pads respond much better to those than they do fingers. The only problem is the significant delay when playing with these drum pads. I had to listen about a half-beat behind and play it in. It’s unfortunate, but luckily the digital notes are easy to manipulate and move back.  One concern is that there are some really weird artifacts in the audio stream. I suspect the drum voices aren’t playing well with the others.

Anyways, best of luck on your housework as I get to work on mine. See you in Maryland, the state of ranks skewed by proximity to DC.

I’ve got a bit of a bug in my ear right now with no outlet. It’s unlikely that it’ll actually turn into a song and will probably frustrate me forever, so here it is.

iv		iv[9 maybe]		V-V7		i
But when the tortoise		shell came		down, there was no room for		me

I played it out so you can hear what’s in my head. While it’s definitely not what I was originally thinking, it probably has no hope outside of some sort of ode to Mario Kart. I’ll make up some adjoining lyrics to sway your mind:

“I hugged the corner, racing fast,
It seemed I’d place top three,
But when the tortoise shell came down,
There was no room for me.”

Anyways, now it’s out of my head and maybe stuck in yours. Let me know if you want to sing the lyrics for me. I’m thinking a dude or girl with less powerful pipes, but I’m open to interpretation…clearly.

I’ve never been a Kevin Rose mega-fan, but I do find him fairly interesting and able to try new projects. His newest is Foundation, a subscription based mailing list.  Essentially, they pre-release all content to subscribers($3.99 per month) 7 days prior to the free release.

The first talk (below) is with Twitter inventor and Square founder, Jack Dorsey. I had never seen an interview with him before, but through watching it seems that I get to know his passions and major life threads fairly intimately. If this video is any indication of the upcoming content then I am extremely excited. I would probably pay for the content if I weren’t miles behind my other subscription services.

This interview has also gotten me reinvigorated in Square; I think it has the potential to revolutionize small businesses and vendors.

If  I haven’t wished you a personal Merry Christmas yet:

Here’s what I’ve been listening to this Holiday Season….my top 20:

(more…)

In 1984 Leonard Cohen, notorious singer-songwriter and all-around talented guy, wrote a now famous song called Hallelujah. While difficult to get released in the beginning (see CBC interview) this song went on to eclipse, if you’ll forgive the artistic license, every song except Happy Birthday and How Great Thou Art in interpretations and performances. I fell in love with this song a few years ago when I heard Jeff Buckley’s version, as recommended by a good friend. I had no idea of the rich and illustrious background of Hallelujah; but I did know that it would be one of my favorite songs for the rest of my life.

(more…)

I highly recommend reading the following bit of spam I received from “bbenjiluin@hotmail.com” (Note how it doesn’t match the email in the email). The best quote is “I want  to initiate dating with you”.

Hi!

I received a letter from dating site. And they informed me about your email.  They also tagged that you are looking for a partner. I was fond of your character so I want  to initiate dating with you and learn you more bettterr. We could send photos each other. How do you consider this?

My email is h_zdenek@yahoo.com .

and I will respond you gladly and I will send some photos too.

My name is Helen and i am from Turkey.

As usual, my first stop is always Amazon. They seem to have pretty solid, just-under-retail pricing scheme. They’ve been my number one online source for online purchases for the last five years. In this case, the price seemed incredibly high: $211!! That’s just over $40 dollars per season, which was more than what I would expect any  individual season to cost. I’m not buying diamonds, people.

To verify this I added all of the individual seasons together, again priced at Amazon.   The result? $202.  This was disheartening. You could basically get a 5% discount by buying each item individually, but it’s not impressive enough to be anything more than  a blip. Something is wrong at Amazon, and I don’t like it. While I love Babylon 5, there’s got to be a better way.

At this point I checked eBay and put in a few bids. Most sets seemed to be going for anywhere between $90 and $140. This is 50% cheaper than the Amazon prices, but you’ve got to take your chances with the unknown sellers of the massive, online-sales supergiant.  I was further restricted from this option by my terrible bidding skills;  I kept losing every bid.

Returning to the world I love of higher prices with no bidding skill required, I decided to check Buy.com to see what they had in store for me.  I’ve been using this site on and off when Amazon’s prices border on the insane. The full series of Babylon 5 is available for $153 with shipping!!! How can this be? This price is 25% lower than the Amazon options.  At $30 per season we’re almost in business. It’s still quite the investment, but we’re talking about one of the best sci-fi shows of all time.

The last test was to see if the blip in Amazon’s pricing also applied to here.  Individual pricing of the seasons was $20 per season resulting in a flat $100 for all 5 seasons of B5. This cost is less than 50% of the Amazon prices, and 30% less than Buy.com complete set. The best news is how comparable the Buy.com price is to eBay listings without any of the hassle or dangers of bidding sales. If you haven’t noticed, I hate bidding on things. It makes me feel so…..dirty.

BONUS:

The Amazon Video Store is asking $2 per episode with discounts bringing the 20-something-episode seasons down to between $36 and $38. This puts their Video on Demand price for the full series at about $185. I’m a big fan of streaming video (Hulu, Netflix, and the Roku), but this price seems outrageous to me.  The distribution costs of the electronic versions are drastically lower than physical discs. While there will be continuing maintenance/bandwidth costs for electronic distribution, it’s completely absurd to think that this market will be successful without drastically reduced prices. I think Amazon is basing their VoD pricing on iTunes’ Store and Amazon’s own cloud services. It doesn’t make any sense to the end consumer right now to be spending this much on intangible product. Even if they see profit margin reduction in these early days it seems like they couldn’t afford the long term cost of losing any potential consumer base to Netflix, Blockbuster, and other video services.