Floozy Speak!

The Kaossilator has become my new must have mobile play toy.  I carry with me where ever I go.  Any time I wanna jam, bam its there, and its quite fun.  Of course this dangerous because now its sparked a whole slew of must have new gadgets for me.  Luckily all this stuff is pretty cheap.  Still all combined its about the cost of a new laptop I could be wielding, but screw that, I'm making music here. 

Next up, something basic.  Stereo cables for the iphone.  Yes, I wanna play with music on my ipod ya know.  Cheap. 12 bucks.

Then the next biggie, the Korg KP3 Pad.  I debated for a long time, some 3 days really on whether or not to get the Mini-KP vs the full fledged KP3.  The mini offered me portability which I REALLY REALLY like, but it fell short on complete usefulness and thats where I figured the KP3, while unable to go the battery route was a bummer, its far more interesting as a piece of gear.  I can't wait to screw with sampler!!  I miss my old Roland SH10!  HA!  The KP3 however, was $349 bucks.  But it will be my core workhorse. 

Lastly, something to make our whole experience more interesting let's throw in a real time MP3 encoder/recorder.  The iKey Plus.  Real time MP3 or WAV analog to digital conversion goodness.  Its a cool idea really, a mini converter gizmo that you simply attach any USB storage device to it and you're good to go, as a bonus it has a mic jack, so it could be a good podcast/field recorder.  Cost $120.

So this is good.  No more being stuck to the mac for jam sessions.  Mary can sleep in peace (the mac is in our bedroom), and I can flee to the basement, or anywhere and jam, effect, and record away. 

Again I cannot stress enough how cool the Kaossilator is, you can do anything with it fast.  This morning I was intentionally playing notes that sounded bad to see if I could end up with something good, and usually I did.  Pretty wild. 

Ya know the iPhone and its whole track pad tech would make for a fun musical device as well.  I've seen a drum machine for it out there, but it'd be cool to see someone hack together an app that was kaossilator-like. 

Tags: korg, kaossilator, kp3, ikey, iphone

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Technorati Tags: gatordave, youtube

Posted by dan at 12:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Technorati Tags: apple, floozyspeak, imac, mac, video

Posted by dan at 02:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sony gets plenty of crap online these days, but they are AMAZING on the security IP camera technology. We use four SNC-RZ30 pan tilt wireless IP capable video cameras in our retail video ethnography rig. They are awesome cameras. To do what we wanted to do with our retail research rig, we had to make some modifications to how the cameras would operate. Mainly we wanted to able to walk into a store environment put up cameras in a flash and get down to observation and research. To do that you have to think about power, battery power, our RigMasterTroy whipped up wheelchair battery powered camera setup for us. We use wireless B to run the cameras, snag a few laptops and yer doin some fun stuff. Best of all the cameras are placeable anywhere now free to give their pan till goodness.

Pretty soon we knew we'd need some cases. How do you ship a rig like this? Its bulky, batteries are heavy and so on. We ended using some good cabbage cases that do the trick however, in our last rig, the cameras we're damaged in shipping.

By now I've had the cameras 3+ years, and I didn't really expect Sony to walk to water for us in helping us out with broken cameras. I wanted FedEX to pay for the repairs cause they basically threw these cases off trucks. The cameras were packed good, foam padding, bubble wrap and all. To damage cameras you basically need to drop them off a truck, 5-6 feet would probably shake anything inside to pieces.

Sure enough when I was back in Hartford last spring thats just what happened. I had 3 damaged cameras and I had 2 days of research to do. I pulled a win via a linksys wireless webcam, that we made work for our purposes. But I was still hacked off at FedEX. As time went on and FedEX finally sent a guy out to visit us and review the damage, and he never said anything yes or no on the outcome. FedEx told me weeks later ummm no. Great. Out of warranty cameras, damaged and now what? I call Sony and say, ok I need to get these repaired or replaced if thats too expensive.

Sony service center people in the security division are godly!! They told me "oh ya know... there's a flaw in those cameras, you may of never noticed, but we'll replace them for free.. in fact probably upgrade you to a newer camera... is that ok?" OK?? ARE you frickin serious?!? OK!?!? That's awesome!!!

UPS blue, bam new cameras on the way. That people is frickin delivering on the promise for life. These cameras aren't cheap, and maybe Sony just wants to keep ya security folks happy but holy frickin yaness!

Thanks SONY!!! YOU GUYS+GALS ROCK!
PS- Big thanks to Jackie!!!

Technorati Tags: sony, cabbage, buddychrist

Posted by dan at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well none of my ftp's are working this evening. I can't seem to remember my floozyspeak ftp, damn that info, it escapes me from time to time. Anyways...

I was going thru my list of "beta" bookmarks this evening, hell I have a huge stack of them.

Check this one out. This could be a killer little research tool for lextant. The power of video is compelling in research. When a client has the option between a 39 page report or a video, they almost always take the video option.

The problem with video is getting to the good stuff in a way you want too. Click.TV is dead on the mark - simply jump to it. Annotate as you watch. Woah, that is slick. I like. They even throw in bookmarking to make the video jump points even more interesting. You can even sub-clip a clip out and put it somewhere else to view.

This thing is damn cool in my book.

I could seriously see using ClickTV on a larger scale in some intranet or client review website concept. Folks at work are gonna digg this puppy.

Technorati Tags: annotation, design research, flash, clicktv, video

Posted by dan at 01:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

testing testing

Posted by dan at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A music video put together about a year ago. I loved the track, just
dig that drum and bass. The song had a nice, if a bit depressing
kinda sound to it, that worked well with Yukikaze (anime) that also
has the same kind of strong emotional visual mix and a bit of
depression in it as well.

Combining the two seemed to just work well. I leflt the audio sound
effects in the mix cause, well I couldn't take them out.. but I think
they make the video personally.

When I worked in anime, I always thought the films had good effects in
the background that would easily complement whatever soundtrack i put
on top, especially if they didnt have any music.

As for the edit itself, just messing around. I like effects and audio
bits that sync up, pretty soon the music and the animation is one..
like they were meant to be togethger.. I like that alot.

One of my favorite videos for sure.

Music: Concord Dawn Take Me Away (All Skillz Remix)
Video: Yukikaze (anime)

Posted by dan at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a slice of the view audioblogger gives you of your encoded video clips.  It’s really a nice way to look at all your clips.  Its great for me.  Hey… wait a sec, I want that “greatness” on my blog as well though. 

A few things I’d do…

1. better reference other than black – allow me to set what the 1st frame of what the blog would see, rather than that notorious black always taking the limelight and giving viewers no idea about what they are bout to see, gimme, 10 frames in, or the frame at 12 seconds. 

2.  I would love a bloglines like blogroll of all my audioblog clips on my site.  Heck these mini-tvs with the play button on them would rock.  Click one and it opens up a mini window, plays the clip, slickness. 

3. ok i only really had two, but i’d like SMS nofication that yer stuff has been pinged and played… that’d be groovy.

But really its about better representation of yer audioblogger content in the blog.  I can post individual clips, and I suppose I could maybe export… hey there we go.. say i pick off the clips i want, 1,3,5, 6,7,8,11 etc.. and then i say “export to totem pole coolness” and it’d give me the code that would create the audioblogger video clip totem pole which i could them put into my site. 

There we go..

See it is possible..

Maybe…

Posted by dan at 06:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

he year was 1998 and the movie Dark City rolled into theaters everywhere. I think I have like four copies of this movie at home. I really really liked it. Working at ADV at the time and I'm not sure what caused this, but I began tinkering around idea of a Hello Kitty meets Dark City type of animation and story. I hooked up with one of the girl-friends of one of the artists at work and we began crafting Dark Kitty.

The setting:

Tokyo, Japan. Deep in the heart of the city is a monstrous apartment complex and on the 48th floor an apartment where a female japanese student lives with her black cat. The cat, always curious continually gets into trouble with the neighbors and is a bit skittish when it comes to human contact. In fact the cat really dislikes people, even its own master.

The cat is plagued by human presence is often up on the highest un-accessible by people perch and it stares out into the night sky and flickering lights of traffic below.

When the cat closes its eyes to sleep - the world of Dark Kitty is created. In this imaginary world, a comical reflection of reality is painted, but this time.. Dark Kitty rules this world, not man.

Dark Kitty, our main character is an evil cat. She hovers through town collecting kids and performs odd experiements on them. As the story unfolds, she finds them and puts them to sleep, saves them for.. something.

A priest lives in this dark kitty town, and in every shot, the chapel can been seen off into the distance. The priest fights off Dark Kitty as best he can and he's quirky too.

But Dark Kitty isnt the only bad thing in town, Thatsmadu, based off of Hello Kitty's Batsmaru is also in this world. He is represented as the shadow, the darkness that consumes all. He appears in city streets to kids as a black balloon, tempting childern to come play with him.

Thatsmadu and Dark Kitty are like rivalries in the show, each one fighting for control and presence. In some ways its like the cat's mind is battling it out between what it wants to do and what has to be done to cope with reality. The cat isnt happy in mans world so it creates a world where it is happy.. happy at terrorizing man.

I wrote a total of about 20 episodes of this show back in 1998 to 2000. We created story boards and character concepts and expanded the universe to include more characters and more strangeness. It was fun. At work at the time, you could see SLEEP written everywhere, people were chatting about it in the halls, Dark Kitty was damn popular.

Posted by dan at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Hot news folks, HOT news. Listen to dantunes and get a tasty bite of info on what is happening at the flooz. There's tad bit of audio badness in this cast, which i'll clean up for next time.

news about:

demofall 05, WoW plague, googleWiFi, paparazzi beware, web 2.0 upon us, slide.com, filmloop.com, photo-frames, mini cooper Stretch/Wagon?, truveo.com, billyharvey.com, bullshit bingo, $200 19" flat screen, giant pink bunnies on boingboing.net, ADVFILMS goes bittorrent, redbull, trailers i didnt get to make, roadrunner beeps, keepin up with the gadgets, sony dsc-m1 breaks, orb.com, placeopedia.com, modulobe.com

tasty tracks & artists include:

Doctor Who Theme, TransFatty, iiO, Way Out West, FSOL, Basement Jaxx, Hybrid, Aquasky,

Posted by dan at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Despite my ongoing battle with my "normal" listserv friends, they are decent folks for the most part.. except that one guy todd.

Back in 2003 an event took place of note within the "normal" gang - the mother of all car radio installs.

The video was shot with two cameras. One was a small surveillance camera I had used at Lextant to do various covert pin-hole camera like activities. Its pretty handy really. I've used it once to record cool road footage, had it part of vest we wore to do some retail research and when this project came up, I thought it would be fun to take the camera into the car, into places you can't take a dv camera. So we did that. The other camera shots were done with standard sony dv cam.

What was fun about the pinhole cam was that we put it on the end of stick and used it like a ridgid push it here cam thing, you'll see in the video, we had some fun using it.

Edited on the Avid nothing too fancy here. Nada scripted, just camera go and shoot. I didnt really plan on making this video, it just sorta came together. Like many of my edits, i got a song, i had this footage and what the hell.

Posted by dan at 06:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week in FloozySpeak we explore the world of questing music in online gaming. Tunes i used to listen to while playing games like everquest. Also covering: world of warcraft gaming, wow-casting, trinkets, being 60, old everquest thoughts and more.

Special bits include highlights like: Faranan's proper pronnoucation?, Drathox Rap?, Klaget's Buffage?, 2 - that's TWO tracks for Kaledon, Music about breaking mezz and more.

Posted by dan at 05:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I love xfrog, sure its really designed to make 3d trees for other 3d graphics applications, but I use it to do abstract doodling. I'm addicted to wireframe graphics. I think I get it from all those years of watching japanese animation - the early years. Stuff they made back in the late 70's and 80's in where in their special little anime scifi worlds they had to create various visualizations of the future, the bad guys, and grand plan.

Its funny though. Here's this application that can do soooo much and I skin it down to just basic wireframes. I do the same thing in Poser. I love the boxed robot look. Seems more authentic then to try to pull off the realistic feel that your brain never accepts cause its not real. Course animation is getting better these days so the mind is accepting more and more.

What I do is make an abstract 3d model in xfrog, then change its defining parameters over time. Then i save the image sequence out, import that sequence into after effects, apply a filter of my chosing and continue to alter the sequence until I stumble onto greatness.

From there I export out again to the avid, apply music, sync up the pieces i think go together sound and music wise and fashion a name for this "thing" and crank out a video.

xfrog is one of those tools that totally relaxes me, its weird, i guess its like a painter and his color or something, you just forget about anything else and roam the canvas and see what it can make for you.

Posted by dan at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I collect things, espcially footage. About two years out of highschool i got into video via the video toaster on the amgia computer. I made videos of all sorts ranging from videos for clubs and bars to raves to boring industrial yadda yadda biz crap. At some point back then around the early 90's I shot this video with a friend of mine who worked at an insurance company. I was freelancing for him and I remember telling him how I just bought my first pc and left the world of the amigas, all for this one game.. called doom. My 1st PC was just to play doom. Heh.

I thought the gaming culture back then was really gonna take off, this doom game was crazy fun, and we played it for hours on end. I wanted to make some video.

The video was shot, put in the "can" and then lost. Not really lost but never edited until I found the footage one day cleaning my apartment in Texas.

I transfered the vhs to betacam and sucked it into the avid. At the time of the edit it was nearing Troy's birthday. And Troy is the one saying "shoot me.. will you just shoot me.. i'm like low on health..." in this video. Its a classic line from the world of deathmatch gaming. Especially since their in this little spawn room with a double barrel shotgun dancing around each other while I was setting up the gear and getting ready for what i wanted to video.

Brings back some hilarious memories.

Posted by dan at 07:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For all you NORMAL listserve folks, dantunes, as requested is back. Enjoy 12 lucious tracks picked by the Dan man himself and mixed in with spoken word, just as you used to hear my so long ago. The 911 mix here will kick it up for a good hour and 22 minutes.

Theme for the mix? Deathmatch! I miss the days of quake.

1. Solid Tactics - Original Mix by DJ Hidden

2. Coils - Original Mix by PFN

3. Chacon Soun - Jose Spinnin's Balearic Mix by Erich Ensastigue

4. Fear - Original Mix by Smoke Keepers

5. Walking Round The Block - Original Mix by Kabanjak, Protassov

6. Hold Your Colour - Original Mix by Pendulum

7. Let Me Breathe - Original Mix feat. Miss Trouble by The Rogue Element

8. Plasticworld - Original Mix by Pendulum

9. Rhetorical Question - Chris Micali Remix by Habersham and Numinous

10. Slam - Original Mix by Pendulum

11. Wise - Radio Edit by Ali Kay

12. Infinite - Original Mix by Skyform

Types of tunes: drum and bass, trance, and nuskool breakbeat goodness

Duration:
1 hour, 22 minutes, 42 seconds

Posted by dan at 01:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Fun with POSER here on this small sampel of a music video I was crafting back in 2002. Actually I bet it dates further back than that. Anyways using POSER + ADOBE PREMIERE here to create the effect shown. This was basically the background plate. I wanted to add alot more to it. Its still in the edit bin actually, one of the many clips I need to complete.

Posted by dan at 04:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Come on kids.. ask for GATOR VISION today!

Posted by dan at 05:07 PM | Permalink

powered by Audioblog.com

Posted by dan at 09:41 PM | Permalink

powered by Audioblog.com

Posted by dan at 10:42 PM | Permalink

Ok so here it is and I sound like a muffled biker. Quick rant though, the catagory selection for podcasts are so limiting, its the atypical selection, are you comedy, are you biz, are you arts, are you food, are you cooking. If anything the net is a total mix of everything. I hate selecting on cause I'm really two parts something else and dash of this and that and the other thing. Its all good I guess, just wish they'd update that list someday to actually reflect reality. So my voice, i sound terrible i think, maybe its these headphones or these walls or that cellphone... i sound so... blah! And thats anything but floozy baby!

Posted by dan at 06:34 PM | Permalink

are u ready

Posted by dan at 05:56 PM | Permalink