- The Kleptones come in first!
Eric under his Kleptones monicker made history by putting out the first album of the new year(decade), and like his other efforts it’s a textured mashup landscape mixing classics and obscurity. I have always liked the Kleptones because they let you get into the original grooves but not without the twist of something new being layered in and this latest effort is the modern extension of that signature. First listen through and your already through but it takes a dozen to realize where that “one movie quote” is from.
Anyways, another quality release. Fingers crossed that Eric can justify a trip stateside soon.
Oh, and most importantly the album is free! What are you waiting for – get it!
Popularity: 51% [?]
- Eaton Park Remix – 6.25
So I finally got a video setup. I am still getting the hang of everything. Here’s something I pulled together quick in iMovie…
The crew doing their thing:
Eaton Park 6.25.2008 Remix from Adam Hevenor on Vimeo.Popularity: 49% [?]
- Youth gone wild! (as seen on Youtube)
So I think youtube has been getting a bad rap lately. A lot of press is surfacing that this free for all of content is a breading ground for adolescent cyber-crimes. They’re have been some high profile teen fight vids lately that truly are a shame. But that’s the glass half empty side of things, here are a few of kids taking things up a notch.
This first one is an 11 year old BMX kid on a 16 inch pulling everything in the book! We’ll be seeing more of him I am sure.
Next up is the 10 year old sand wheelie. This kid has got some serious throttle control.
Popularity: 35% [?]
- Muxtape – Ghetto-blastin’ the web (2.0)
Holy crap. This is going to be one the best indy sites we’ll see in 2008. Built by Justin Nouellette it has a simple interface for making your own sharabale mix-tapes for the web. You get your own sub-domain and everything, and it streams nicely through an AJAX interface which means it will work on an iPhone (but it only sort of works). Click on the links below to rock my own personal mix; it’s got it all!
Popularity: 25% [?]
- Apple Customer Service Report – WTF
I decided to upgrade my system last week, and outfitted my home office with a nice mac pro, complete with dual 20″ displays. I spend much of my waking life at the computer so I figured it was worth it to splurge and I made the conscious decision to pay that extra cash to get more than enough hardware, and the option of being on Leopard instead of Vista. I am fully impressed and satisfied with the systems performance and interface BUT when I set things up I realized the build was mis-configured!
The system was not installed with the optical DVD drive I had purchased! I am shocked. I could have bought a car for the money I paid! I figured the three business days it took them to ship the system was a QA cycle. What happened?
Today I got on the phone with a customer service rep to address the situation. No biggie, I figured, I’ll just get them to send me the part and I can either install it myself or bring it over to the Apple Store. I have heard from Apple service folks before that the online store and the physical store location are two different entities, but certainly they can communicate on a service issue like this. NOT THE CASE! “We can’t really do that, they are totally separate.” was all the rep could offer me.
“OK Fine”, I said. “Send me the part.”
“Well, I am going to have to process this as a return because we don’t sell that part online.” the rep stammered.
“What? I don’t get that. There is obviously a part missing, get your hands on it and ship it to me.” I was getting a bit heated at this point.
“Well,” he explained, “the part comes from our shipping center, and I don’t have the ability to get the one you need.”
“So really this is a communication problem with your warehousing and fulfillment infrastructure? ” I proposed for him.
Silence.
This didn’t seem to be going anywhere for either of us at this point so the rep changed his strategy and asked if I wanted some free speakers. I conceded and settled for a copy of Office 2008 instead and am going to have to part with my brand new precious system for a few days to get it reconfigured. As a customer I was very dissatisfied my customer service experience, and as a share holder I am worried about the communication and quality assurance problems I uncovered. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect more and certainly hope someone at Apple is reading this post; my contact info is on the About this Site page if you care to take this off-line.
Popularity: 22% [?]
- WSOD Blog Post
This is a quick post for Client Solutions. If you were able to make my presntation, I’d love to hear what you think. Please comment below.
Thanks!
Adam
Popularity: 22% [?]
- A new look for 2008
I was getting sick of the same old layout. It’s really been the same for about 3 years now so I have designed a new theme for 2008! Thanks to Phatfusion for the navigation inspiration. There are still a few tweaky things I’d like to correct, but I am pretty happy with how it turned out.
Old:
New:
Popularity: 18% [?]
- The Kleptones – Liver than you’ll ever be
(In a traditional stylee – Just like the albums, but with a bit more reverb and cheering
So The Kleptones have a new release that was posted in the last week or so. I am a huge fan of Eric’s breed of bastard-pop. It draws on all kinds of musical influences with classy to hilarious song pairings. The best part is that The Kleptones operate under a Creative Commons license. This means two things; first, they do not clear samples so their music is packed with otherwise off limits mixes. Second, the album is free to download on their site! No iTunes, no DRM, just free music.
The album has some real highlights; David Bowie – 2000 Light Years with Rappers Delight, and The Eagles, Life in the Fast Lane with Beck E-pro are my favorites. The full breakdown is already on wikipedia. The only down side is the album has quite a few repeat tracks from their current albums; but hey it’s live and free. (I am actually not exactly sure what that means for The Kleptones honestly but it rocks).
Popularity: 78% [?]
- Here comes another bubble
Popularity: 21% [?]
- Automata
So the latest DARPA challenge is currently underway. If you haven’t heard of it, last year they were racing automated cars across the desert. The Stanford team took home the cash prize with their modded VW Touareg.
This year the ante has been upped and the contest is being held in an urban environment. Wired has some pretty good coverage, but the best stuff is up on youtube.
All this reminded me of a crazy post I saw on NPR a little while back. This guys is creating some truly remarkable “creatures” completely powered by the wind with 40′s erra mechanical processing “brains”!
Check out the video on the TED site
Popularity: 15% [?]
