So You Think You Can DJ - Track 2

From Brother Dan I got two new sets of slip mats for my turntables. I was in desperate need of new ones because the current pair were leaving marks on my records. So once I got home I of course had to try them out. The new slip mats have less friction the my old ones so that’s going to take some getting used to. But with the great vinyl transfer of 09 I now have all my vinyl correctly coded with an accurate BMP. This is what I’ve been missing all this time. I was rocking records back and forth with the greatest of ease. My gosh I’ve never had this much fun with my turntables. I also started using the faders (volume levels) to mix the records and keep the cross fader at center. This helped me keep thing organized in the headphones. I only stopped because I had to walk the dog and go to bed. If this is a sign of times to come, I can’t wait for my SL3. Oh, and because of my mom and grandma, I’m $540 closer.

So You Think You Can DJ? – Track 1

The Past:

I’ve always been fascinated with DJ’s for as long as I can remember. Well, I guess it can be traced back to 1991 or so when I first heard some techno that really grabbed me. I was at favorite store; Junk Yard. It was like if Hot Topic was cool, and had crushed cars in the store and chain link fencing on the walls. They were playing The Lords of Acid’s - Voo-Doo U. It was a few years later that I bout my first Technique 1200 and a mixer. Not sure what I was mixing with just one turntable. Oh right, I had the plan to get a second one, which I did a little while later. Over the next few years I started building my record collection.

Unfortunately I’ve never had a good job; or real good access to a record shop so I have a pitiful collection. And I was never very smart about my music choices. I have about 5 records of each genre. Some drum-n-bass, hardcore, trance, acid trance, dance and some other just weird stuff. I tired mixing them together but just couldn’t get it together. I did manager to pull out one hour long mix that sounds pretty good for the first 20 minutes, then I start to loose it with the rest of the set. If you really want to hear it, let me know and I’ll up load it. Years past and I sort of lost touch with my equipment, only playing with the records when I got really board and wanted to frustrate myself.

The Now:

Thanks to the power of Facebook I was able to reconnect with an old friend of mine. And get this, he’s a DJ. And an even bigger get this, he credits me for getting him into techno back in the day; thus spawning his love for music and DJ’ing. Those were some good days too. Staying up late and listening to DJ JT on Rev.105 FM and Big Daddy Greg Comstock on 93X FM.

Anyway, I’ve been picking his brain about his work and have gone to a couple of his shows and now I’ve got the love again.

I have no clue how this slipped past me, but he, and a million other DJ’s are spinning mp3’s instead of real vinyl. This is so my thing. I have so many mp3’s that I’ve all ready got a good start. But not many of them are DJ mp3’s, with nice long intros and outros for mixing. So at this moment I’m starting to save money so I can start buy DJ mp3’s. And better yet, this will be current music. The last time I bought a record was about five years ago or so. By mid January I’ll have enough money to buy the hardware necessary to connect my laptop to my turntables.

The Future:

My goal is to really get myself into DJ’ing. This will be the easy part. The hard part will to book one show. That is my goal. In one year, I want to book one show. I know I’ll be the opening and playing for a room of about 10 people while the rest of the people trickle in waiting for the next DJ or the headliner to start. And that’s fine. This is my I-don’t-want-to-go-through-life-wishing-I-had-done-something resolution.

I’ll try to throw up updates as I gain my new music, equipment and any other “ground breaking” events I encounter.

From the easy grind to the boring.

So today is my last day with the Guest Data Security team at Target. I joined them on a temporary assignment back in March of 2009. It was hush hush type of work. But I can tell you I was working to keep you, the Target consumer and your data with us safe from the bad guys. It was a nice change of pace for me and the four other co-workers who joined me. We all came from Guest Relations and were used to a very strict schedule. All breaks are decided for you, you have to get your vacation time approved at least a week in advance and you’re tied to your desk when not on breaks because your job is to answer phone calls. With Guest Data Security it’s a very relaxed environment. Come and go as you please, break whenever. Need some vacation time? Just tell your boss and it’s done. Get the work done, and you’re free to be you. I’m happy that my first day back in Guest Relations will be next Monday. Meaning I miss out on working Black Friday, my first in six years.

While I was with the GDS team, my desk has been move in GR. I’m not happy about this. The people I’ll be sitting next to are nice, but they all feel that I care about their problems and that I’m their free tech support. I don’t mind helping, but it’s the same problem over and over again. And since I’m about 50 years ahead of them when it comes to using all the available benefits of a computer, they’ll be looking over my shoulder asking about the various tools I have and wanting me to explain how they work. I’ll have to keep my Twitter app secret because that’s not a conversation I want to get into. These are the type of people that buy a computer so they can forward email and play Solitaire. Sorry, didn’t mean to get on a rant about that, but it’s coming, I know it.

The work I do in GR isn’t hard, just boring. I’ve been at it for just over six years now so I’ve pretty much mastered all the skills I need to work the job in my sleep. Answer the phone, resolve the issue. Not hard stuff. Once and a while you get what I call “The Principles.” These are the people who will argue over $.50 (that really happened too). It’s not about the money, it’s the principle. Ugh, shoot me now.

I hear there’s a small, small change that I might be able to go back to GDS and finish up the work I was doing. I’m not going back to GR because I was done, but because it’s the holidays and GR needs everybody than can get to work. This will be an untrue statement, much like it has been in other years. When I first started this time of years was b-u-s-y and it was really fun. But as the department grew in size, and shoppers started spending less, the holiday season and just been a bore. They will be sending people home early and calls volume will be low.

 

On a nothing related note, I’m going with my brother to a big DJ bash tonight. 20 performers on three stages. Going to see my friend DJ Blaze One rock some dub step. I hope it’s dub step, a new genre that I’ve only heard about until recently when I saw him spin a few weeks back. Hot shit I tell ya.

 

Well, it’s near 8:00a and I guess I should get to it.

 

And crap crap blogger.com is acting a fool with craptastic IE6. I’m just going to email this post in a not give a damn about the formatting.

 

I recorded records.

Wow, it's been a while since I thought I had something to say. And it will be much longer too because I never have much to say about anything. I finished up my record recording project. I took about 50 of my best trance, acid trace, house, drum-n-bass, dance and hardcore records and transferred them to my computer. The Process: 1. Played the record and used the simple sound recorder app on my Linux machine. 2. As that was recording, I was taking photos of each side of the record so I could pair them up later to the finished .mp3. I never used my cell phone camera so much. 3. Also, while the record was recording I was transferring the raw audio from the Linux machine to my Windows laptop. Once it was transferred I loaded it up in my audio editor to remove the level check and the little clicks where I was dropping the needle. I had to do the Linux to Windows transfer because my laptop does not have the correct sound card for quality recording. 4. Once I had all the photos cropped, and the audio trimmed I loaded the .mp3's into my tag editor. From there I could get all the ID3's created and attach the photos to each song. 5. When all the tags were correct, I uniformly renamed all the files to match the record as best possible. Artist - Side. As in Busta Rhymes - A. I don't care about the name of the song, just what side of the record I was listening to. I did this so I could listen to my records on my iPod. I want to know these records like I know most songs on my computer. I've been trying to play DJ for years but was always getting frustrated because I could never get the mix right. Mainly because I didn't know the song well enough. And if all things work in my favor, I won't need the records anymore. I'm looking into buying hardware that will allow me to control my .mp3's using my turntables. (Let it be known I still hate the WYSIWYG editor for blogger)

Flash!

One of my Twitter pals posted an old Flash animation she did. That got me to thinking, I had some too. It's been so long since I even thought about them. And with this being the age of the internet, and sharing if just as common as breathing, I thought I should share as well. You can thank @AimeesBlog for the awesomeness you're about to witness. Oh, and @HMorgen, she was a big part of the art back in the day; when she was still my girlfriend. Expect an edit to this post when she reads this and tells me we were already married or something.

http://bit.ly/superflash

Get it away from my face!

This is an idea, theroy maybe that I've had for a while. H suggested I blog about it; because it'd been super funny. O.k....here goes, funny.

Something I've realized over my 30 years of life is that my face will tell me just how gross something is, or how much something hurts.

You step in dog poo, it's gross, but you can handle it. Get it on your arm and it's still gross, but you want it off fast. Now, the poo is on your chin, you're probably gagging a little and running to the nearest source of water you can find. Then you can start answering the questions about why you have poo on your chin.

Or, maybe you just smashed your foot in the front door. That sucks, right? You deal with it and go about your day. Smash you hand? Hurts, and you start doing that funny jazz hands thing to yourself; because jazz hands have the magical power to heal ya know. Now, you smash you face in the door and you're screaming like a jerk and maybe crying a little. Again, you'll get to field questions from the gallery about why your face was in the door to begin with.

They are many other scenario's that I can't think of right now because I'm pressuring myself to do so, but you get my point.

1 2 1 2 this is just a test...and some other stuff

I'm really just writing this to see what happens. I just found on Facebook that I can import stories from other website that I use. O.k....I get that I can import my blog posts, but I can import my Picasa and Pandora stories? So I write 90% of my blog posts in Google Docs, I can then push it to my blog directly from Google Docs. So, I'm seeing just how it looks and works with Facebook. I'm then going to upload a photo or two to my Picasa album and see just what the hell Pandora will do.

Something you may not know about me...I love booty bass. The dirty sounds from dirty south. Dj Smurf, 69 Boyz, Hi-Town DJ's and so forth.