No, I don't mean that this is the end of days, although it might, we'll find out. I'm merely stating that the end of the year is but 3 days out. As we round out 2013, let's take some time to think about all the things that have happened this year.
In politics, we had a bullshit government shutdown. Shortly after was a shitshow of a software launch in the Affordable Care Act AKA 'Obamacare'. It honestly reminds me a bit of this. I won't go too far into why it ended up the way it did. But looking at it from a computer science background, all I have to say is that it could have easily been implemented for cheaper if it wasn't a government contract. Hell, it could've been done better if politicians simply didn't have their hands all over it trying to make it fail. The decision making process surrounding Obamacare just shows how disjointed and abysmal the current administration is. This doesn't even include the fact that no one in Congress seems to want to agree on anything. If you asked a vote of what the color of the sky was, invariably you'd get that the Democrats say blue and the Republicans say something like 'Oh but it's red right before nighttime'.
Enough about politics though as it makes me angry. Moving onto disasters and tragedies. They haven't ceased. It's as simple as that. From shootings to typhoons in the Philippines, they still happen. While some are directly man-made, the number of natural disasters is nothing to sneeze at.
To start the year I said that 2012 was a jerk. I have to say now that 2013 wasn't much better. The more I think about it, I have to think to myself, was 2013 any better than 2012? Across the board, we repeated the mistakes of last year and many years past. Did we really move forward a year or is this year the same as last? I sincerely hope that your year was good. But for many, many people, this year was the worst possible and to them I hope that 2014 is more kind to you. And with that this post will end my first year doing this. I had some ups and downs but I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. I hope 2014 turns out better than 2013 but I'd be remiss to say the past years have had a good track record.
--CsMiREK
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Gear Days: V-Moda Crossfade LP Striking Sonority
Before the last post of the year, I wanted to leave you with some nicer headphones to look/think about. Forget the under $30 stuff, this is serious. For my next pair of nicer headphones, I have up the V-Moda Crossfade LPs. With an MSRP of $199.99 but a going price closer to $100, these are by no means super expensive. However, that doesn't mean they aren't good or nice; and yes those are two different things as I'll explain. This is going to be a long post, so I'm just going to say that these are closed back headphones like the ATH M50s and stay with that for form. Since these are nicer headphones, I'll go a bit more in depth with the
sound and go into a bit of what kinds of songs I like listening to to
test out new headphones, as such this post will also double as a multiple Top Tracks post.
As always let's begin with accessories. Normally, I'd say something like, these headphones come with a quarter inch plug. Maybe I'd compare it to some other pair of headphones I own. But really, these headphones come with a lot of stuff. Like, I'm gonna just leave this link here to show you. Sorry about the blurry images, unfortunately I don't have the steadiest hands while taking pictures. Also, my camera's pretty old at this point and my phone can't do too much better. Maybe I'll retake them when/if I get some better camera gear. If you can't tell what the V-Moda Crossfade LPs come with I'll walk you through it. First off, you have a pretty nice box, complete with a button clasp which is pretty snazzy. The headphones are held in a plastic hardshell case which is pretty sturdy and fits everything really well. Inside the case you have the headphones themselves along with 2 detachable cables. One of the cables has a built in 3 button remote. It also comes with a small carabiner and a quarter inch plug. Also, all the ties and the holding pieces for the cables are secured with Velcro which I really enjoy. All said and done the accessories are very nice and there are quite a few of them.
Comfort wise they're quite nice. Apparently the pads are memory foam, but all I can tell is that they feel pretty comfortable and the size is pretty decent for over ear headphones. The cups are large enough to fit my ears and deep enough that there is no weird rubbing. The headband is pretty comfortable and doesn't put a lot of pressure on the top of the head. Also the adjusting for the headband makes a nice and satisfying audible click which is always a plus for me. The one thing I don't like about them comfort and form wise is that they don't fold up which isn't necessarily a big deal.
As always let's begin with accessories. Normally, I'd say something like, these headphones come with a quarter inch plug. Maybe I'd compare it to some other pair of headphones I own. But really, these headphones come with a lot of stuff. Like, I'm gonna just leave this link here to show you. Sorry about the blurry images, unfortunately I don't have the steadiest hands while taking pictures. Also, my camera's pretty old at this point and my phone can't do too much better. Maybe I'll retake them when/if I get some better camera gear. If you can't tell what the V-Moda Crossfade LPs come with I'll walk you through it. First off, you have a pretty nice box, complete with a button clasp which is pretty snazzy. The headphones are held in a plastic hardshell case which is pretty sturdy and fits everything really well. Inside the case you have the headphones themselves along with 2 detachable cables. One of the cables has a built in 3 button remote. It also comes with a small carabiner and a quarter inch plug. Also, all the ties and the holding pieces for the cables are secured with Velcro which I really enjoy. All said and done the accessories are very nice and there are quite a few of them.
Comfort wise they're quite nice. Apparently the pads are memory foam, but all I can tell is that they feel pretty comfortable and the size is pretty decent for over ear headphones. The cups are large enough to fit my ears and deep enough that there is no weird rubbing. The headband is pretty comfortable and doesn't put a lot of pressure on the top of the head. Also the adjusting for the headband makes a nice and satisfying audible click which is always a plus for me. The one thing I don't like about them comfort and form wise is that they don't fold up which isn't necessarily a big deal.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Gear Days: Sennheiser CX200 Economical Excellence
We've gone through 2 in ears, 1 on ears, and a pair of earbuds in coming up to this. My favorite under $30 headphones are the Sennheiser CX200s. At $13.99, it is my thought that these represent the best cost to performance rating of any headphones I own regardless of price. Now let's get started with this review.
The Sennheiser CX200s are a pair of in ear headphones. They come with 3 pairs of tips: small, medium, and large as is standard with most in ear headphones. As with all in ear headphones, fit is a big point of importance. In this department, I have to say that the CX200s are a bit hard to put in. However, they fit well and quite snugly when they are put in. After you get them in, these are actually incredibly comfortable so although I gripe about putting them in, they're really not that bad. But enough about this, let's get to sound.
The Sennheiser CX200s are a pair of in ear headphones. They come with 3 pairs of tips: small, medium, and large as is standard with most in ear headphones. As with all in ear headphones, fit is a big point of importance. In this department, I have to say that the CX200s are a bit hard to put in. However, they fit well and quite snugly when they are put in. After you get them in, these are actually incredibly comfortable so although I gripe about putting them in, they're really not that bad. But enough about this, let's get to sound.
Monday, December 9, 2013
Gear Days: Sony MDRPQ5 Funky Freedom
Ah, the Sony MDRPQ5s. These are a bit of a blast from the past for me. I originally got a pair of these from a Best Buy 3 years ago and they've been following me since. At the time they were retailing for $19.99 and now you can get them for as little as $7.99 depending on the colors you get. At the time, I had a pair of Skullcandy in ears that had just broken and another cheap pair of in ears so I just said, to hell with it and picked them up because they looked interesting.
I ended up going with a green pair and surprisingly they've lasted these past few years. I say surprisingly because the build quality is quite shoddy. They do look interesting with the gas mask covers and after you get used to putting them in, I actually find them quite comfortable and snug in my ears. That said, they do feel really awkward when you first put them in and it takes a while until you know that they're in right, at least in my experience. Form wise, they're earbuds, different from in ears, note I'll be calling IEMs and canalphones in ears from now on, just because really. Earbuds rest on the outside of the ear instead of going into the ear canal. Some people compare the difference to being the difference between open and closed headphones but that's not really the case. Open headphones are named as such because they don't isolate sound and sound doesn't reflect off the back of anything. Earbuds generally do. However, the comparison is made because they don't isolate sound the way in ears do. Namely, with earbuds you get more sound leakage and can hear more of your environment.
I ended up going with a green pair and surprisingly they've lasted these past few years. I say surprisingly because the build quality is quite shoddy. They do look interesting with the gas mask covers and after you get used to putting them in, I actually find them quite comfortable and snug in my ears. That said, they do feel really awkward when you first put them in and it takes a while until you know that they're in right, at least in my experience. Form wise, they're earbuds, different from in ears, note I'll be calling IEMs and canalphones in ears from now on, just because really. Earbuds rest on the outside of the ear instead of going into the ear canal. Some people compare the difference to being the difference between open and closed headphones but that's not really the case. Open headphones are named as such because they don't isolate sound and sound doesn't reflect off the back of anything. Earbuds generally do. However, the comparison is made because they don't isolate sound the way in ears do. Namely, with earbuds you get more sound leakage and can hear more of your environment.
Friday, December 6, 2013
Gear Days: Panasonic RP-DJS400 Rainbow Resonance
Let's keep on rolling with the reviews. Up next are the Panasonic RP-DJS400s. These are a pair of on ear (supra-aural), or maybe over ear (circumaural), headphones that come in quite a variety of colors, hence 'rainbow'. I got my pair for $21.95 which is a bit cheaper than it is now at $30.89. But anyways let's jump into the aesthetics and form a bit more.
Aesthetically, they're pretty standard headphones. The colors pop a bit and are fun to look at. Additionally, the packaging is really easy to open which I have to say is a giant plus. The JVC HAFX1Xs that I just reviewed have that really annoying to open clamshell packaging that is just a nightmare to open. As for the form I said that they're supra-aural since that's the case for me. If you happen to have smaller ears I can see them functioning as closed back circumaural headphones as the pads and cups are pretty large for supra-aural headphones. There are reviews saying that they leak sound, which is relatively common for supra-aural headphones but it's hard to tell when you're by yourself and no one's really bugging you about the sound. Comfort wise, I personally find them pretty uncomfortable. My thoughts on that are that one, I don't usually like supra-aural headphones as they apply funny pressure on my ears and that there simply isn't enough padding at the top of the headband so there's more pressure on the top of your head than necessary.
Aesthetically, they're pretty standard headphones. The colors pop a bit and are fun to look at. Additionally, the packaging is really easy to open which I have to say is a giant plus. The JVC HAFX1Xs that I just reviewed have that really annoying to open clamshell packaging that is just a nightmare to open. As for the form I said that they're supra-aural since that's the case for me. If you happen to have smaller ears I can see them functioning as closed back circumaural headphones as the pads and cups are pretty large for supra-aural headphones. There are reviews saying that they leak sound, which is relatively common for supra-aural headphones but it's hard to tell when you're by yourself and no one's really bugging you about the sound. Comfort wise, I personally find them pretty uncomfortable. My thoughts on that are that one, I don't usually like supra-aural headphones as they apply funny pressure on my ears and that there simply isn't enough padding at the top of the headband so there's more pressure on the top of your head than necessary.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Gear Days: JVC-HAFX1X Booming Bass
Next up on the bucket list are the JVC-HAFX1X or more normally called, the JVC Xtreme Xplosives. These can be had from Amazon at a relatively cheap, $16.88. But enough about price, let's get down to it.
First off as always is accessories and looks. If you dig the red cables and black drivers, these are probably right up your alley. With 3 sizes of tips: small, medium, and large these are quite standard and unlike the Nuforce NE-770Xs I just reviewed, there's only one pair of each. Oh well, that's not a deal breaker. The Xtreme Xplosives also come with a small hard case with XX on one of the sides which honestly looks pretty nice. However, I can't say I really enjoy the aesthetics that much as the casings are just much too large for my taste. And by that I really don't mean taste as they have no business actually being as large as they are. But that's a good way to lead into my next topic.
Fit. And these don't really. I find them really hard to get a good fit. I think part of it is the large casings and the other part being the really awkward diagonal angle of the driver off the casings. There are other headphones that do this and I haven't tried them so I can't be sure of that being the cause but in any case I can never get a good feeling fit with these headphones. It constantly feels like they're loose and honestly they're much too easy to take out for in ear headphones, namely they're too loose. Also, because of the large casings they are heavier than most in ears which causes more physical fatigue than necessary.
First off as always is accessories and looks. If you dig the red cables and black drivers, these are probably right up your alley. With 3 sizes of tips: small, medium, and large these are quite standard and unlike the Nuforce NE-770Xs I just reviewed, there's only one pair of each. Oh well, that's not a deal breaker. The Xtreme Xplosives also come with a small hard case with XX on one of the sides which honestly looks pretty nice. However, I can't say I really enjoy the aesthetics that much as the casings are just much too large for my taste. And by that I really don't mean taste as they have no business actually being as large as they are. But that's a good way to lead into my next topic.
Fit. And these don't really. I find them really hard to get a good fit. I think part of it is the large casings and the other part being the really awkward diagonal angle of the driver off the casings. There are other headphones that do this and I haven't tried them so I can't be sure of that being the cause but in any case I can never get a good feeling fit with these headphones. It constantly feels like they're loose and honestly they're much too easy to take out for in ear headphones, namely they're too loose. Also, because of the large casings they are heavier than most in ears which causes more physical fatigue than necessary.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Gear Days: Nuforce NE-770X Colorful Competition
To kick off my headphone review rant once again I will begin with the Nuforce NE-770Xs. For $18, I've gotta say that these are some really good headphones. They also come in 3 different colors so if you don't like blue or white, they also come in a funky what looks to be purple-y grey color. Now that price is out of the way let's get onto the important stuff.
Let's start with accessories as accessories are much more important on in ear headphones than others. The Nuforce NE-770Xs come with 3 sizes of tips: small, medium, and large as per usual for this type of headphone. However, the nice thing is that it comes with duplicate pairs so you get 6 pairs of tips, 2 pairs each of each size which is quite useful as it's not that hard to lose a tip here or there. It also comes with a white Nuforce pouch to hold your headphones in which is quite nice so that's a big plus in my book.
Next up is fit. With in ear headphones, canalphones, or IEMs, whatever you want to call them, fit is of utmost importance. When talking about over the ear or on ear headphones comfort is really important, but fit for in ears is even more important. This is because fit encompasses comfort but also affects the sound you'll end up hearing. The tips you use affect this somewhat in that when the tips you use are too small they might go deep but not form a good seal. Without a good seal you get poor bass response and poor noise isolation which are both things that in ear headphones are meant to do well, assuming a good fit. Personally, I went with the small tips and they fit really well. It took a bit of getting used to as the actual casing is a bit on the larger side, but I find them quite comfortable and pretty easy to get in and out which is always good.
Let's start with accessories as accessories are much more important on in ear headphones than others. The Nuforce NE-770Xs come with 3 sizes of tips: small, medium, and large as per usual for this type of headphone. However, the nice thing is that it comes with duplicate pairs so you get 6 pairs of tips, 2 pairs each of each size which is quite useful as it's not that hard to lose a tip here or there. It also comes with a white Nuforce pouch to hold your headphones in which is quite nice so that's a big plus in my book.
Next up is fit. With in ear headphones, canalphones, or IEMs, whatever you want to call them, fit is of utmost importance. When talking about over the ear or on ear headphones comfort is really important, but fit for in ears is even more important. This is because fit encompasses comfort but also affects the sound you'll end up hearing. The tips you use affect this somewhat in that when the tips you use are too small they might go deep but not form a good seal. Without a good seal you get poor bass response and poor noise isolation which are both things that in ear headphones are meant to do well, assuming a good fit. Personally, I went with the small tips and they fit really well. It took a bit of getting used to as the actual casing is a bit on the larger side, but I find them quite comfortable and pretty easy to get in and out which is always good.
Monday, December 2, 2013
Gear Days: The month ahead
For this month, I'm going to be giving a bunch of headphones reviews for the new pairs that I've gotten. The focus of this set is: cheap headphones. The most expensive of the pairs I'm going to review I got for just over $20. On that note, if you are looking for new headphones, this past week, the week leading up to and immediately after Thanksgiving, is generally a good time to get them for quite a bit cheaper than usual. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the reviews and I'll be getting started with them tomorrow. I hope you stay tuned as I crown my personal 'Best under $30' headphones.
--CsMiREK
--CsMiREK
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Apologies and going forward
I'm truly quite sorry for November. It simply got away from me. Instead of trying to make up the posts that would've taken it up I think I'm going to abandon it. I still have a couple of posts from May that I should really get done and the end of the year is coming up. I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving if you're in the US. This coming month will be a bit on the sparser side with relatively small updates. After this month I'm going to shoot for 2 updates a month with more if I can commit to it. As has been shown I've not been the best at holding myself to my word, although I often do try. That said I hope you enjoy the upcoming posts and keep reading.
--CsMiREK
--CsMiREK
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Gear Days: Microphones
So, this is the last post of the month. Instead of going off and talking about yet another pair of heapdhones, I thought I'd leave the month of gear with a note on microphones or mics. For the starting studio producer/musician, a decent microphone can be more important than great headphones or speakers. Like headphones however, mics come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and types. This post is about some of those and what you might want as a starter mic.
To be honest however, I will say that I have much less experience in shopping for and discerning mics since I still only have one mic and have not been in the habit of looking at them like I do with headphones. Still, I think that this will be an informative and good post for those who are unaware and are interested in recording at some point.
Let's get to it, first up is what different types of mics are there? I'm just going to cover a couple as I'm sure to miss some but these are the ones I can come up with right now. Lavalier mics are a really common mic used by singers and speakers around the world. These are the mics that clip onto a shirt and might also be referred to as lapel mics. The most obvious use of these is to capture a person's voice and are useful in hands free contexts. These are also not to be confused with headset mics which are attached to a headset, although they serve a similar purpose.
To be honest however, I will say that I have much less experience in shopping for and discerning mics since I still only have one mic and have not been in the habit of looking at them like I do with headphones. Still, I think that this will be an informative and good post for those who are unaware and are interested in recording at some point.
Let's get to it, first up is what different types of mics are there? I'm just going to cover a couple as I'm sure to miss some but these are the ones I can come up with right now. Lavalier mics are a really common mic used by singers and speakers around the world. These are the mics that clip onto a shirt and might also be referred to as lapel mics. The most obvious use of these is to capture a person's voice and are useful in hands free contexts. These are also not to be confused with headset mics which are attached to a headset, although they serve a similar purpose.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Gear Days: Review: JVC HA-RX900
Here we go, more headphones. This time up to bat are the JVC HA-RX900s. Coming in at around $60, these are quite a bit cheaper than the last pair, but don't be fooled, these are some really amazing headphones.
First off, aesthetics and form. Aesthetically, these are not the prettiest headphones. They're quite large and bulky, and they happen to be quite heavy, 2.35oz heavier without cable than the M50s I just reviewed. With cord and all, it comes pretty darn close to a pound, sitting on your head which over time gets a bit heavy. Form wise, these are similar to the M50s, circumaural and closed back. They do not lie flat and really look just one way, which is fine for their function.
Next up is comfort. These headphones are really comfortable after you get over their weight. The pads are really soft and don't press much at all. The headband relieves pressure really well and doesn't push down much. They do get quite warm, but most circumaural and supra-aural headphones do. I do recommend that you keep the cable wrapped or handled in some way. It's really, really long (3.5m or 11.48ft). The long cord is really nice, but also can get caught really easily.
First off, aesthetics and form. Aesthetically, these are not the prettiest headphones. They're quite large and bulky, and they happen to be quite heavy, 2.35oz heavier without cable than the M50s I just reviewed. With cord and all, it comes pretty darn close to a pound, sitting on your head which over time gets a bit heavy. Form wise, these are similar to the M50s, circumaural and closed back. They do not lie flat and really look just one way, which is fine for their function.
Next up is comfort. These headphones are really comfortable after you get over their weight. The pads are really soft and don't press much at all. The headband relieves pressure really well and doesn't push down much. They do get quite warm, but most circumaural and supra-aural headphones do. I do recommend that you keep the cable wrapped or handled in some way. It's really, really long (3.5m or 11.48ft). The long cord is really nice, but also can get caught really easily.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Gear Days: Review: Audio Technica ATH-M50
And now, to what we've all been waiting for, or maybe just me, gear reviews. This first review is on my currently most expensive pair of headphones, my Audio Technica ATH-M50s. At around $140-$170 they are definitely not a cheap pair of headphones. However, they demand respect as some of the nicest headphones you can get for under $200.
We'll start out with aesthetics and form. The ATH-M50s are circumaural closed back headphones and as such are a bit heavy, but not horribly so. I personally find them to be really good looking, coming in black, white, or red (I own a pair of red M50s). The cups rotate 180 degrees, which is really nice for lying them flat. They also fold up relatively well. I'm not a huge fan of the coiled cable but it isn't really a big deal in the end as the headphones themselves are very nice.
Next up is comfort. Personally I find them very comfortable. Reading through some of the comments on Amazon, some people don't particularly like them with the stock earpads, especially people with glasses. However, I find the stock earpads to be fine. They're a bit stiffer than many headphones you'll come across, but I don't find them particularly uncomfortable. Something to recognize is that they do get quite hot after a while, but that is a common trait among most closed back circumaural headphones. The earpads do press against your head a bit more than some headphones but it isn't too bad and again, finding replacement earpads can alleviate this. The headband is relatively well cushioned and overall the headphones feel like very solid and well built headphones, which is to be expected at their price. These headphones, being circumaural and closed do insulate you from outside noise quite a bit, but nowhere near as well as say in ear monitors can. If you don't expect to be on planes too often though and don't want to hear the engine noises too much, these might just do fine.
We'll start out with aesthetics and form. The ATH-M50s are circumaural closed back headphones and as such are a bit heavy, but not horribly so. I personally find them to be really good looking, coming in black, white, or red (I own a pair of red M50s). The cups rotate 180 degrees, which is really nice for lying them flat. They also fold up relatively well. I'm not a huge fan of the coiled cable but it isn't really a big deal in the end as the headphones themselves are very nice.
Next up is comfort. Personally I find them very comfortable. Reading through some of the comments on Amazon, some people don't particularly like them with the stock earpads, especially people with glasses. However, I find the stock earpads to be fine. They're a bit stiffer than many headphones you'll come across, but I don't find them particularly uncomfortable. Something to recognize is that they do get quite hot after a while, but that is a common trait among most closed back circumaural headphones. The earpads do press against your head a bit more than some headphones but it isn't too bad and again, finding replacement earpads can alleviate this. The headband is relatively well cushioned and overall the headphones feel like very solid and well built headphones, which is to be expected at their price. These headphones, being circumaural and closed do insulate you from outside noise quite a bit, but nowhere near as well as say in ear monitors can. If you don't expect to be on planes too often though and don't want to hear the engine noises too much, these might just do fine.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Gear Days: Measuring Greatness
More Gear Days, I'm thinking Octobers will be devoted to it, but we'll see. This post is about determining how good a piece of output gear (headphones/speakers) is. There are plenty of articles out there on this topic, but I'd like to put it in my words and at the same time give you some other viewpoints in the form of other articles.
The first thing you have to consider is why even buy different headphones or speakers? Sound is sound right and no matter how much you spend the sound quality won't be very different? Well in my opinion, everyone can tell the difference between cheap headphones and more expensive ones. In most circumstances and uses it might not be horribly important to you but I think that everyone who can hear can tell the differences between one pair of headphones or speakers and another.
So let's get to it. First off is the form of your output. Obviously things sound different on speakers than on headphones. Additionally, how those are built and their forms have an effect on the sound produced, see the previous post on different kinds of headphones. In this space, headphones are a bit more diverse, but there are distinct differences in speakers as well. For instance, a quad system or a 5.1 surround system has different spacial effect that a simple 2.0 system. By the way, 5.1 means 5 'tweeters' and a sub woofer, if you were curious or were not aware. They make for great home theater systems due to their ability to create sounds that can take up a space with really good positional sound, namely you can hear sounds coming from 5 directions. The spatial effect is sometimes called 'panning', more commonly so in 2 channel systems and is actually really important in determining sub par equipment from great equipment. Great equipment accurately represents space instead of shoving it all to the center or in strange places. It's also a good way to tell when equipment is going bad since the center of the sound might shift to the left or right which is likely a problem with your gear.
The first thing you have to consider is why even buy different headphones or speakers? Sound is sound right and no matter how much you spend the sound quality won't be very different? Well in my opinion, everyone can tell the difference between cheap headphones and more expensive ones. In most circumstances and uses it might not be horribly important to you but I think that everyone who can hear can tell the differences between one pair of headphones or speakers and another.
So let's get to it. First off is the form of your output. Obviously things sound different on speakers than on headphones. Additionally, how those are built and their forms have an effect on the sound produced, see the previous post on different kinds of headphones. In this space, headphones are a bit more diverse, but there are distinct differences in speakers as well. For instance, a quad system or a 5.1 surround system has different spacial effect that a simple 2.0 system. By the way, 5.1 means 5 'tweeters' and a sub woofer, if you were curious or were not aware. They make for great home theater systems due to their ability to create sounds that can take up a space with really good positional sound, namely you can hear sounds coming from 5 directions. The spatial effect is sometimes called 'panning', more commonly so in 2 channel systems and is actually really important in determining sub par equipment from great equipment. Great equipment accurately represents space instead of shoving it all to the center or in strange places. It's also a good way to tell when equipment is going bad since the center of the sound might shift to the left or right which is likely a problem with your gear.
Friday, October 4, 2013
Gear Days: Headphones
So it should be obvious that I really like headphones. If not, I'm saying it now, I really like headphones. When looking to get a new pair of headphones, it's important to know what different kinds of headphones exist, and what they're each best at and that's what this post is about, all the different kinds of headphones. I won't talk about the different ways sound are produced by headphones, ie balanced armature vs moving coil, also known as the different transducers used. This post is more about the general form factors.
Most generally, there are 4 main types of headphones, circumaural, supra-aural, earbuds, and in-ear. Now let's just hit them all in order. Circumaural headphones, also called full size headphones or over-ear headphones are just that, over the ear. They are designed to fit around the ears and while usually quite comfortable can get quite heavy just due to them being designed to go all around the ear. Examples of this type of headphone include Bose QuietComfort 15s, Audio-Technica ATH-M50s, and Beats Studios.
Next are supra-aural headphones, also called on-ear headphones. That is because this class of headphones lies on the ear instead of going all the way around. As a result, depending on the pads, they can be quite uncomfortable, especially if the headband is too small. Examples of this type of headphone include Grado SR60s, AKG K81 DJs, and Bose OE2s.
After that are earbuds. These are probably the most prolific type of headphones as every single phone these days seems to come with a pair. This type of headphone rests inside the ear but does not actually go in them. Examples include Apple earbuds and Yuin PK1s. Often times these are pointed at as the worst headphones soundwise, although there are exceptions.
Lastly are the in-ear type of headphones. These go into the ear canal and are very good for blocking out external sound sources if you can manage a good seal. Examples of these include, Skullcandy Ink'd 'earbuds', Klipsch S4s, and Etymotic HF2s.
Most generally, there are 4 main types of headphones, circumaural, supra-aural, earbuds, and in-ear. Now let's just hit them all in order. Circumaural headphones, also called full size headphones or over-ear headphones are just that, over the ear. They are designed to fit around the ears and while usually quite comfortable can get quite heavy just due to them being designed to go all around the ear. Examples of this type of headphone include Bose QuietComfort 15s, Audio-Technica ATH-M50s, and Beats Studios.
Next are supra-aural headphones, also called on-ear headphones. That is because this class of headphones lies on the ear instead of going all the way around. As a result, depending on the pads, they can be quite uncomfortable, especially if the headband is too small. Examples of this type of headphone include Grado SR60s, AKG K81 DJs, and Bose OE2s.
After that are earbuds. These are probably the most prolific type of headphones as every single phone these days seems to come with a pair. This type of headphone rests inside the ear but does not actually go in them. Examples include Apple earbuds and Yuin PK1s. Often times these are pointed at as the worst headphones soundwise, although there are exceptions.
Lastly are the in-ear type of headphones. These go into the ear canal and are very good for blocking out external sound sources if you can manage a good seal. Examples of these include, Skullcandy Ink'd 'earbuds', Klipsch S4s, and Etymotic HF2s.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Gear Days: Audio
First actual Gear Days post. What could be more fitting than going over what audio actually is and an overview of what gear is out there?
Scientifically, the sounds we hear as humans are the interpretations of pressure waves by our brains. More specifically, our eardrums vibrate due to pressure waves in air and our brains interpret those vibrations by our eardrums. Now that's all well and good, but let's talk about gear and their functions at a high level.
Obviously we have output devices. These include headphones and speakers and their use obviously is to interpret audio signal and reproduce it for us to listen to. There are a bunch of different ways that these are made and different ways to recreate sound from a non-analog signal. A good distinction to make is that these output devices represent a digital signal and output an analog signal which is what we hear.
The second class of devices are inputs. These include MIDI devices like MIDI keyboards or synths as well as microphones. The point of these is to either take an analog signal, like microphones do, and interpret that and spit out a digital signal that computers can understand. MIDI devices are a bit different in that they do not start out as an analog signal but are instead send values down the line to represent sound in a numerical manner, but I'll get into that later, when I actually get a MIDI device.
The last class of devices are audio interfaces. These bridge the gap between outputs and inputs and computers or other devices. This class includes Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADC) and Digital-to-Analog Converters (DAC) examples of which include what are called audio interfaces as well as sound cards and media players like cd players. This is an interesting class of devices because when you're beginning to get into headphones or speakers, you'll completely ignore this class of devices. However, if you ever get to serious recording or listening, this is sometimes seen as the most important class of devices of the three. But I'll get into these in a bit.
As of this post I own 7 pairs of headphones, 1 pair of speakers, 1 audio interface, and 1 microphone with plans to get another pair of headphones. More specifically, I have 3 pairs of closed circumaural headphones, 1 pair of closed supra-aural headphones, 1 pair of in ear monitors, 1 pair of earbuds, and 1 pair of closed circumaural noise cancelling headphones. The speakers are a pair of studio monitors, the microphone is a condenser microphone with a cardioid polar pattern, and the audio interface supports two inputs and two outputs. I'll go into what all of that means in future Gear Days posts, namely later this month. I hope you're as stoked about this as I am and until next time.
--CsMiREK
Scientifically, the sounds we hear as humans are the interpretations of pressure waves by our brains. More specifically, our eardrums vibrate due to pressure waves in air and our brains interpret those vibrations by our eardrums. Now that's all well and good, but let's talk about gear and their functions at a high level.
Obviously we have output devices. These include headphones and speakers and their use obviously is to interpret audio signal and reproduce it for us to listen to. There are a bunch of different ways that these are made and different ways to recreate sound from a non-analog signal. A good distinction to make is that these output devices represent a digital signal and output an analog signal which is what we hear.
The second class of devices are inputs. These include MIDI devices like MIDI keyboards or synths as well as microphones. The point of these is to either take an analog signal, like microphones do, and interpret that and spit out a digital signal that computers can understand. MIDI devices are a bit different in that they do not start out as an analog signal but are instead send values down the line to represent sound in a numerical manner, but I'll get into that later, when I actually get a MIDI device.
The last class of devices are audio interfaces. These bridge the gap between outputs and inputs and computers or other devices. This class includes Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADC) and Digital-to-Analog Converters (DAC) examples of which include what are called audio interfaces as well as sound cards and media players like cd players. This is an interesting class of devices because when you're beginning to get into headphones or speakers, you'll completely ignore this class of devices. However, if you ever get to serious recording or listening, this is sometimes seen as the most important class of devices of the three. But I'll get into these in a bit.
As of this post I own 7 pairs of headphones, 1 pair of speakers, 1 audio interface, and 1 microphone with plans to get another pair of headphones. More specifically, I have 3 pairs of closed circumaural headphones, 1 pair of closed supra-aural headphones, 1 pair of in ear monitors, 1 pair of earbuds, and 1 pair of closed circumaural noise cancelling headphones. The speakers are a pair of studio monitors, the microphone is a condenser microphone with a cardioid polar pattern, and the audio interface supports two inputs and two outputs. I'll go into what all of that means in future Gear Days posts, namely later this month. I hope you're as stoked about this as I am and until next time.
--CsMiREK
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Coding 101: Next steps
So this is going to be the last post with the label Coding 101. My goal with this wasn't really so much to teach a lot of syntactical things or coding style. Mainly I wanted to see what kinds of broad topics I could cover that applied to all forms of coding. I wanted to put out some of the languages that are popular at the moment and what they're best uses are.
For next steps, if you're interested in coding, I suggest enrolling in a free online course like the ones on coursera.org. These are often well designed and if you can find a good introduction course, it can be a good motivator to actually learn something new. If you want to take a more exploratory path, you can look at all the code around you. After all, every single website you touch is backed by some amount of code. Simple sites might just have static HTML, but as you get to more complex sites, you'll see sites made with CSS and then JavaScript and if you look into it further, you'll find things like CoffeeScript and AngularJS which can be used to create JavaScript in a simpler manner.
As always, I encourage you to learn coding as it can be a really fun and productive past time. However, I'll also say that coding is a skill that takes time and if you feel you aren't up to it, don't feel obligated to learn it. While I have a really biased view considering my occupation, I definitely think that learning how to code or even just how to read code can enrich your life in ways you wouldn't quite think of. Anyways I hoped you enjoyed Coding 101 and look forward to Coding 102 in the future.
--CsMiREK
For next steps, if you're interested in coding, I suggest enrolling in a free online course like the ones on coursera.org. These are often well designed and if you can find a good introduction course, it can be a good motivator to actually learn something new. If you want to take a more exploratory path, you can look at all the code around you. After all, every single website you touch is backed by some amount of code. Simple sites might just have static HTML, but as you get to more complex sites, you'll see sites made with CSS and then JavaScript and if you look into it further, you'll find things like CoffeeScript and AngularJS which can be used to create JavaScript in a simpler manner.
As always, I encourage you to learn coding as it can be a really fun and productive past time. However, I'll also say that coding is a skill that takes time and if you feel you aren't up to it, don't feel obligated to learn it. While I have a really biased view considering my occupation, I definitely think that learning how to code or even just how to read code can enrich your life in ways you wouldn't quite think of. Anyways I hoped you enjoyed Coding 101 and look forward to Coding 102 in the future.
--CsMiREK
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Gear Days: An Introduction
It's October now and I've been at this writing random stuffs thing for 10 months now, let's disregard the 3 month break during the summer. But really, let's talk about some of the stuff I'm interested in.
To my friends, it's no surprise that I enjoy music. To that end, it's also not surprising that I like the gear to record and listen to music. Over the course of this summer alone, I've picked up a microphone, a pair of studio monitors, an audio interface and 3 pairs of headphones. Since I've started, collecting, see hoarding, audio equipment, I felt like I should talk about audio equipment. Note, I'm not so bad that I would classify this as a mental illness, but also far from a passing interest. Let's call it a hobby.
In the posts labeled 'Gear Days' or GD for short, I'll be talking either talking through how a piece of audio equipment functions or I will be going over and reviewing a particular piece of gear that I own. I hope you find these posts as interesting as I find the gear themselves. Until next time.
--CsMiREK
To my friends, it's no surprise that I enjoy music. To that end, it's also not surprising that I like the gear to record and listen to music. Over the course of this summer alone, I've picked up a microphone, a pair of studio monitors, an audio interface and 3 pairs of headphones. Since I've started, collecting, see hoarding, audio equipment, I felt like I should talk about audio equipment. Note, I'm not so bad that I would classify this as a mental illness, but also far from a passing interest. Let's call it a hobby.
In the posts labeled 'Gear Days' or GD for short, I'll be talking either talking through how a piece of audio equipment functions or I will be going over and reviewing a particular piece of gear that I own. I hope you find these posts as interesting as I find the gear themselves. Until next time.
--CsMiREK
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Coding 101: What Languages to Learn
Let's keep going. At this point I've talked a lot about different programming languages. But, the more important question that needs to be answered is, what programming languages should you learn? More than that which programming languages are easiest to learn?
My answer to those questions is...that depends. Yea, I know that's a cop out but it really does. The context in which you want to program is really important and I'll cover some of the biggest contexts and what languages would be most helpful for each one in this post.
My answer to those questions is...that depends. Yea, I know that's a cop out but it really does. The context in which you want to program is really important and I'll cover some of the biggest contexts and what languages would be most helpful for each one in this post.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Coding 101: Object Oriented Programming
Next topic, let's talk about 'Object Oriented Programming', often abbreviated OOP. OOP is a topic that often comes up when talking about programming languages. So what is it exactly?
OOP is the concept of treating the world as a collection of objects. If you want an apple in your program, create an apple object, if you want a dog in your program, create a dog program. Internally, these objects have properties which describe them, for apples you might have a property for color and another for shelf life. For a dog, you might have properties like breed or age.
So far so simple right? Every 'thing' that you want to exist in your program should be defined as some kind of object, easy. Generally, when talking about OOP, these objects are represented as classes.
So, what does OOP accomplish for programmers? OOP often times is described as allowing for a particular set of things. Depending on who you talk to, you get different answers, as I was taught OOP allows for 3 things, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism each of which I will talk in detail if you wish to continue.
OOP is the concept of treating the world as a collection of objects. If you want an apple in your program, create an apple object, if you want a dog in your program, create a dog program. Internally, these objects have properties which describe them, for apples you might have a property for color and another for shelf life. For a dog, you might have properties like breed or age.
So far so simple right? Every 'thing' that you want to exist in your program should be defined as some kind of object, easy. Generally, when talking about OOP, these objects are represented as classes.
So, what does OOP accomplish for programmers? OOP often times is described as allowing for a particular set of things. Depending on who you talk to, you get different answers, as I was taught OOP allows for 3 things, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism each of which I will talk in detail if you wish to continue.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Coding 101: Typing
Next lecture in my Coding 101 series. Looks like September is another one of those coding based months. Anyways, this post is about typing.
What do I mean by typing? Surely I don't mean the act of typing on a keyboard. While an interesting topic, see Dvorak, this post is not about that. This post is however about programming languages, more precisely the type safety of a language.
In particular this post is about the difference and examples of statically typed and dynamically typed languages.
What do I mean by typing? Surely I don't mean the act of typing on a keyboard. While an interesting topic, see Dvorak, this post is not about that. This post is however about programming languages, more precisely the type safety of a language.
In particular this post is about the difference and examples of statically typed and dynamically typed languages.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Coding 101: Types of Languages (Imperative and Declarative)
Let's push forward with Coding 101. The topic for this segment is the different types of programming languages. I mean for this to be a high level post and maybe in the future I'll go into more depth about them. Anyways, let's get started.
First off are the languages that most people first get introduced to in computer science courses. These languages are the 'imperative languages'. Examples of this kind of language are languages like C, Java, Python, or Ruby. The reason why these are called imperative languages are because each line of code you write is an instruction. It's a command. You can think of languages like these as recipes. You tell the computer a set of instructions that have to be done in a specific order. Logically, these kinds of languages are relatively simple to grasp once you understand the syntax that goes with the language, much like learning French or Mandarin. Since things (almost always) happen exactly in the order that you write them, it's usually pretty simple to figure out when something goes wrong because there is an order that things happen in. There are some wonky edge cases but as a whole this is true.
On the other side of the language fence are declarative programming languages. Examples of this kind of language are Lisp, Haskell, Scheme, or parts of SQL (select queries in specific). These languages differ in that the idea behind them is to declare what to do with your data. For example, imagine you have a bushel of apples, some of them are red and the others are green. Now, imagine you want to know how many red apples there are. In an imperative language, you would have to take each apple out, examine if it's red or green and take a count. In a functional programming language you would apply a function of whether something is red or green to the bushel and get the subset of red apples from which you can take the count. Or you might just ask to get all the red apples from the bushel. Internally, it's quite possible that the two approaches look the exact same, but from our perspective as coders they look quite different.
First off are the languages that most people first get introduced to in computer science courses. These languages are the 'imperative languages'. Examples of this kind of language are languages like C, Java, Python, or Ruby. The reason why these are called imperative languages are because each line of code you write is an instruction. It's a command. You can think of languages like these as recipes. You tell the computer a set of instructions that have to be done in a specific order. Logically, these kinds of languages are relatively simple to grasp once you understand the syntax that goes with the language, much like learning French or Mandarin. Since things (almost always) happen exactly in the order that you write them, it's usually pretty simple to figure out when something goes wrong because there is an order that things happen in. There are some wonky edge cases but as a whole this is true.
On the other side of the language fence are declarative programming languages. Examples of this kind of language are Lisp, Haskell, Scheme, or parts of SQL (select queries in specific). These languages differ in that the idea behind them is to declare what to do with your data. For example, imagine you have a bushel of apples, some of them are red and the others are green. Now, imagine you want to know how many red apples there are. In an imperative language, you would have to take each apple out, examine if it's red or green and take a count. In a functional programming language you would apply a function of whether something is red or green to the bushel and get the subset of red apples from which you can take the count. Or you might just ask to get all the red apples from the bushel. Internally, it's quite possible that the two approaches look the exact same, but from our perspective as coders they look quite different.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Coding 101: What's the big deal?
New segment on an old topic. Let's get down to it. Recently (not so recently), I've come to realize that coding is quite intimidating. There are tons of resources out there and a bunch of them honestly suck. Even the good ones don't do a great job at explaining just how diverse and multi-dimensional the world of coding is.
Now I'm sure I've noted that computer programming or coding is important and that you should get started. But really, it is quite intimidating. For one, there are a ton of programming languages, from C to Python to Perl to PHP to Haskell. While they all kind of look the same they all have their own nuances and their own strengths and weaknesses. As a beginning coder, it's hard to wrap your head around what a pointer is or why dynamically typed languages are 'slow' or what 'slow' even means.
The point of this segment, Coding 101, is to go over things at a high level. Things like, why program or what are the different kinds of programming languages. Why pick one programming language over another, what tools are available for you as a coder to use. I'll try to keep things simple, but as with any technical subject there is a lot of jargon to absorb.
Hopefully someone will find this useful and I hope to cement what I've learned and observed for myself. So let's begin with why program?
Now I'm sure I've noted that computer programming or coding is important and that you should get started. But really, it is quite intimidating. For one, there are a ton of programming languages, from C to Python to Perl to PHP to Haskell. While they all kind of look the same they all have their own nuances and their own strengths and weaknesses. As a beginning coder, it's hard to wrap your head around what a pointer is or why dynamically typed languages are 'slow' or what 'slow' even means.
The point of this segment, Coding 101, is to go over things at a high level. Things like, why program or what are the different kinds of programming languages. Why pick one programming language over another, what tools are available for you as a coder to use. I'll try to keep things simple, but as with any technical subject there is a lot of jargon to absorb.
Hopefully someone will find this useful and I hope to cement what I've learned and observed for myself. So let's begin with why program?
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Big Data
Big data is a topic that many people spout off and one that is quite interesting to talk about. If you're unaware, the idea behind big data is that every website you hit, every search you put into Google, every Facebook post you like is stored somewhere and in turn those companies use that data to better predict what users like you want to search for or buy or might want to look at and like later. So why is this 'big' data? Well for one, there are billions of people on the internet every second of every day. For each person, there is some amount of data being created and stored somewhere on some server belonging to some company. How much data does this equate to? Well here are some ideas. Easily put, it's way more than you can sit and look at even if you had multiple lifetimes to look.
Now that we've established just how big the internet is and how much data there is, how do we deal with that? These numbers are so large that they are beyond what we normally think of outside physics, in particular physics of an astronomical scale. Let's put these numbers in perspective. There are roughly 3 million emails sent per second every day. Now 3 million is a large number I think we can agree on that. But that also means that there are roughly 90 trillion (107 trillion if you're looking at the infographic in the second link) emails sent per year. Sure, a great deal of those are spam, but even the 10% that isn't amounts to over 10 trillion actual emails. If we assume, that each email is just one line long and that there are 50 single spaced lines per page, 100 as we'll even let them be double sided. Let's be so bold as to say that a novel is generally 500 pages, to make the math easier. 10 trillion emails would then be 100 billion pages long or 200 million novels worth, and that's only what we're generating per year!
Personally, I find big data intriguing. There's this idea that this is a internet related problem and so people might call this problem an 'internet scale problem' but honestly, 'Big Data' just sounds better. It's simpler and doesn't really require you to know why these things are necessarily problems. Be assured though, big data is a problem that many people are trying to figure out. As the years go by, more and more ways of handling it emerge from transitioning to NoSQL, to using MapReduce, among other things. If you didn't care for the post, I hope you at least enjoyed the infographics. Until next time.
--CsMiREK
Now that we've established just how big the internet is and how much data there is, how do we deal with that? These numbers are so large that they are beyond what we normally think of outside physics, in particular physics of an astronomical scale. Let's put these numbers in perspective. There are roughly 3 million emails sent per second every day. Now 3 million is a large number I think we can agree on that. But that also means that there are roughly 90 trillion (107 trillion if you're looking at the infographic in the second link) emails sent per year. Sure, a great deal of those are spam, but even the 10% that isn't amounts to over 10 trillion actual emails. If we assume, that each email is just one line long and that there are 50 single spaced lines per page, 100 as we'll even let them be double sided. Let's be so bold as to say that a novel is generally 500 pages, to make the math easier. 10 trillion emails would then be 100 billion pages long or 200 million novels worth, and that's only what we're generating per year!
Personally, I find big data intriguing. There's this idea that this is a internet related problem and so people might call this problem an 'internet scale problem' but honestly, 'Big Data' just sounds better. It's simpler and doesn't really require you to know why these things are necessarily problems. Be assured though, big data is a problem that many people are trying to figure out. As the years go by, more and more ways of handling it emerge from transitioning to NoSQL, to using MapReduce, among other things. If you didn't care for the post, I hope you at least enjoyed the infographics. Until next time.
--CsMiREK
Monday, September 2, 2013
So behind
So I'm sure you've noticed I'm horribly behind. Between working somewhat odd hours and procrastinating on anything and everything I have neglected this blog. Fear not! I am working to back fill all the entries I have skipped. Unfortunately, I will have to let go of August's updates as there were much too many planned and I'm still behind from May. It's been a crazy few months but I think I'm almost ready to get back into this updating thing. Expect lots of new stuff coming up as I have learned much from my job in terms of programming and have had time to work on some interesting side projects of a musical nature.
--CsMiREK
--CsMiREK
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Top Tracks - 81summer
Another installation of top tracks. This time the track is 81summer by Uyama Hiroto. The track is the first on an album called A Son of the Sun and as far as music goes it's really laid back. Genre wise, it might be labeled jazz or hip hop depending on what you're paying attention to. To me, the clean sounds are really relaxing and I find the track really pleasing to listen to. While there isn't a lot of actual action and as a track goes it is pretty repetitive, it feels neither long nor short. From the bits of static noise in the background to the piano to the drums to the sampled voice, all the parts just fit. The piece just evokes a really refreshing feeling that never really gets old. If you ever get a chance to listen to the whole album, most of the music is similar, although it's my opinion that 81summer is the best track on the album and why it has it's spot as a top track.
--CsMiREK
--CsMiREK
Friday, May 17, 2013
Step Four: JavaScript/jQuery
After learning HTML and CSS comes JavaScript. So what exactly is JavaScript? JavaScript is a programming language, much more similar to Java or C++ or Python than HTML or CSS. What this means is that you can do much more computationally interesting things with JavaScript. While HTML and CSS are focused mainly on rendering webpages from text, JavaScript is more about how to add interactivity to a site. This is not fully true as CSS3 introduces a bunch of cool features that allow some interactivity that used to belong fully in the realm of JavaScript
More specifically though, why learn JavaScript? In my opinion, JavaScript is more necessary than either HTML or CSS when it comes to programming for the web. It allows for so much of the web, from pages that have auto-refreshing or auto-loading content a la Facebook walls (AJAX) to adding very complex actions on click or hover events. However, JavaScript is also much more complex than HTML or CSS and takes a lot of work to really understand.
I have also put a point here to talk about jQuery. jQuery is a JavaScript library designed almost solely for common web related JavaScript tasks. What this means is that it is an independently created set of functions using JavaScript meant to make web based JavaScript easier. It is useful, for instance, in when you want to add click events programmatically to objects. Or perhaps you want to add new elements to a page when a button is clicked, jQuery provides easier and well tested ways of doing such things. However, it should be noted that anything you do with jQuery can be done with JavaScript too. In my opinion, you should learn JavaScript before jQuery so you know what kinds of benefits you are getting and so you know exactly what things are possible in regular JavaScript that are not expressible with jQuery functions.
That's all I've got on JavaScript and jQuery. If you intend to do anything web related I view JavaScript as extremely necessary unless you want to make really static pages. Anyways I hope you enjoyed that and hopefully I can back fill some of these old posts more quickly than I have.
--CsMiREK
More specifically though, why learn JavaScript? In my opinion, JavaScript is more necessary than either HTML or CSS when it comes to programming for the web. It allows for so much of the web, from pages that have auto-refreshing or auto-loading content a la Facebook walls (AJAX) to adding very complex actions on click or hover events. However, JavaScript is also much more complex than HTML or CSS and takes a lot of work to really understand.
I have also put a point here to talk about jQuery. jQuery is a JavaScript library designed almost solely for common web related JavaScript tasks. What this means is that it is an independently created set of functions using JavaScript meant to make web based JavaScript easier. It is useful, for instance, in when you want to add click events programmatically to objects. Or perhaps you want to add new elements to a page when a button is clicked, jQuery provides easier and well tested ways of doing such things. However, it should be noted that anything you do with jQuery can be done with JavaScript too. In my opinion, you should learn JavaScript before jQuery so you know what kinds of benefits you are getting and so you know exactly what things are possible in regular JavaScript that are not expressible with jQuery functions.
That's all I've got on JavaScript and jQuery. If you intend to do anything web related I view JavaScript as extremely necessary unless you want to make really static pages. Anyways I hope you enjoyed that and hopefully I can back fill some of these old posts more quickly than I have.
--CsMiREK
Monday, May 13, 2013
Top Tracks - Love, Trust, Believe
This entry in the Top Tracks vein is about the song by Daishi Dance: Love, Trust, Believe. The singer of the song is Lori Fine, who if you wanna find out more also belongs to the duet known as Coldfeet. So, why did I pick this song? Personally, I relatively rarely care about lyrics. However, the lyrics to this particular song are really good and the voice matches them perfectly. It's a very empowering song that's pretty catchy but isn't even completely about the lyrics or the singing. It has a really prominent and interesting piano line and good vocal blending. Sorry if these posts are kind of short. After all, I'm only talking about one song and without going super into the details, I just want to appreciate the music that comes out of the world. Until next time, keep listening and keep reading.
--CsMiREK
--CsMiREK
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Musical Discovery: Parov Stelar
Wow, so if you actually follow this site at all, you'd know that this is being posted like...3 weeks late. I've been busy moving halfway across the country. I'm sure I'll catch up eventually.
If you don't follow this site...well move along and keep reading.
Anyways, this entry is on the electronic/swing artist Parov Stelar. I was originally introduced to the music of Parov Stelar by one of my college roommates. Specifically these songs. Soon afterward, as I get with music I enjoy, I became semi-obsessed. We had some really fun times rocking out to these beats.
In any case, back to the music. Overall, it's a pretty jazzy set of music. While it incorporates a lot of electronic aspects, the swing and jazz feel are really strong and really refreshing. Especially so when you listen to pop music too much. Don't get me wrong I love me some pop music, my first Musical Discovery was on Ellie Goulding after all. But I find that if I listen to too much pop music, it just all blurs into a mess of...indistinct musical tropes. On the other hand, I find that all of Parov Stelar's tracks are while genre-wise similar, their feel and overall execution vary greatly, in a good way. From his use of trumpets with Harmon mute to his saxophone heavy melodies to his awesome collaborative singers, he just seems to make every piece magical in a different way.
Overall, I just think you're missing out if you haven't taken a listen. He's got a bunch of stuff and in my opinion, all of it's good, which is pretty hard to find.
--CsMiREK
If you don't follow this site...well move along and keep reading.
Anyways, this entry is on the electronic/swing artist Parov Stelar. I was originally introduced to the music of Parov Stelar by one of my college roommates. Specifically these songs. Soon afterward, as I get with music I enjoy, I became semi-obsessed. We had some really fun times rocking out to these beats.
In any case, back to the music. Overall, it's a pretty jazzy set of music. While it incorporates a lot of electronic aspects, the swing and jazz feel are really strong and really refreshing. Especially so when you listen to pop music too much. Don't get me wrong I love me some pop music, my first Musical Discovery was on Ellie Goulding after all. But I find that if I listen to too much pop music, it just all blurs into a mess of...indistinct musical tropes. On the other hand, I find that all of Parov Stelar's tracks are while genre-wise similar, their feel and overall execution vary greatly, in a good way. From his use of trumpets with Harmon mute to his saxophone heavy melodies to his awesome collaborative singers, he just seems to make every piece magical in a different way.
Overall, I just think you're missing out if you haven't taken a listen. He's got a bunch of stuff and in my opinion, all of it's good, which is pretty hard to find.
--CsMiREK
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Step Three: CSS
Ok, if you've gotten this far, you know the basics of HTML. But now you're probably wondering how websites manage to ever look nice with the clunkiness of raw HTML. Blah blah you can use style tags and whatnot to position. But let's be honest, that sucks.
And that's where CSS comes in. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, which is a pretty strange name. However, it's what makes web coding interesting. By doing relatively simple things and organizing different fields: id, class, etc. you can make really organized and pretty good looking websites. Don't worry about interactivity yet, that's coming up. (Note that if you're into the hip, new CSS3 stuff, a lot of interactivity can be done with CSS.) If all you need is a really good looking site that won't flip a shit when you change one line in your HTML, after this section you'll be pretty much set. (Interactivity is what makes the internet fun though so I hope you stick around.)
--CsMiREK
And that's where CSS comes in. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, which is a pretty strange name. However, it's what makes web coding interesting. By doing relatively simple things and organizing different fields: id, class, etc. you can make really organized and pretty good looking websites. Don't worry about interactivity yet, that's coming up. (Note that if you're into the hip, new CSS3 stuff, a lot of interactivity can be done with CSS.) If all you need is a really good looking site that won't flip a shit when you change one line in your HTML, after this section you'll be pretty much set. (Interactivity is what makes the internet fun though so I hope you stick around.)
--CsMiREK
Friday, May 10, 2013
HTML Resource Four: Treehouse
Time for the fourth in this series on HTML resources, Treehouse. From a first look standpoint, I find that the site is mainly based off of videos. Now, while I personally don't want to sit through videos, I think that many people do like videos and so I will continue to review it based on content. While the site is a paid site, there are a lot of introductory materials for free that you can try out.
Personally, I'm actually not going to sit through this site but the projects do seem quite good and the videos seem like really good resources. However, I will say that it appears that the site does end up going quite in depth if you're willing to pay and they have stuff all the way from web development to iOS and Android development. So if you're looking to dip your toes into programming and are willing to spend that bit of money for pretty much lectures with instructional aid, this site looks like a really fine website to help you in your pursuit. Going forward, I'm going to cover the basics of what CSS is and what its functions are. After that I'll go over codeavengers and Codecademy for those. Then we'll dip into Javascript/JQuery and again I'll cover some resources to tell you what I think. Until next time I hope you enjoyed the posts.
--CsMiREK
Personally, I'm actually not going to sit through this site but the projects do seem quite good and the videos seem like really good resources. However, I will say that it appears that the site does end up going quite in depth if you're willing to pay and they have stuff all the way from web development to iOS and Android development. So if you're looking to dip your toes into programming and are willing to spend that bit of money for pretty much lectures with instructional aid, this site looks like a really fine website to help you in your pursuit. Going forward, I'm going to cover the basics of what CSS is and what its functions are. After that I'll go over codeavengers and Codecademy for those. Then we'll dip into Javascript/JQuery and again I'll cover some resources to tell you what I think. Until next time I hope you enjoyed the posts.
--CsMiREK
Thursday, May 9, 2013
HTML Resource Three: Codecademy
The next resource I'm covering is Codecademy. Codecademy is a pretty well known site as of now for being really intuitive and covering things in a pretty good and methodical manner. Personally I find it to be a good, if a bit fast pace, more than CodeAvengers. They also cover things for full stack development like Ruby, Python, and PHP if you think you might have a knack for the back end server kind of stuff.
When you get to the website, if you want to learn HTML, head up to the 'Learn' tab up top and go to 'Web Fundamentals'. From there sections 1 through 3 are all HTML. I didn't go quite as in depth on this one and didn't quite finish doing the tutorials, but from what I did, I really enjoyed it. The pacing is pretty good and the examples are quite nice. They don't have review sections quite like CodeAvengers does. However, they do have full project type reviews after the main lessons which is just as, if not more, important to learning how to program.
Overall, I think that the breakdown and ordering of topics that Codecademy uses is better than CodeAvengers. However, don't let that be a view that you pick up just because I said so. Feel free to try everything and see what works. Often times, I find myself picking things up long after I first learn them. Just make sure you put in the effort and time and I think you can learn anything you put your mind to. Until next time.
--CsMiREK
When you get to the website, if you want to learn HTML, head up to the 'Learn' tab up top and go to 'Web Fundamentals'. From there sections 1 through 3 are all HTML. I didn't go quite as in depth on this one and didn't quite finish doing the tutorials, but from what I did, I really enjoyed it. The pacing is pretty good and the examples are quite nice. They don't have review sections quite like CodeAvengers does. However, they do have full project type reviews after the main lessons which is just as, if not more, important to learning how to program.
Overall, I think that the breakdown and ordering of topics that Codecademy uses is better than CodeAvengers. However, don't let that be a view that you pick up just because I said so. Feel free to try everything and see what works. Often times, I find myself picking things up long after I first learn them. Just make sure you put in the effort and time and I think you can learn anything you put your mind to. Until next time.
--CsMiREK
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
HTML Resource Two: CodeAvengers
Here we are at a tutorial based resource, CodeAvengers. For this section I'll only cover the HTML portion of the tutorials (Up through lesson 10 of level 1) they have. For reference, the entire section took me about an hour and a half to finish, although I was trying to rush most of it down, so expect maybe double to triple the amount of time if you're just starting out. Anything else besides HTML covered, I'll cover in a different post. So let's get started.
To start with, I think that this particular tutorial series is kind of dumbed down. It seems quite slow in its pacing, but for a beginner that might be exactly what you need. However, I also find that their chosen interface is kind of clumsy. The phone on the side is interesting, but the button placements and ordering to remember just seems extraneous.
I think the first lesson is kind of a throw away as you're mainly just typing text and it seems kind of pointless. I also wish that they could just show both the example and your page at the same time. Switching back and forth not only wastes time, it detracts from the learning experience and is kind of frustrating, especially when they have hints that sometimes outright give away the answers. I also find that the ordering of topics is somewhat odd as the <p> or paragraph tag is not introduced until the 8th lesson. They also make an example where they have <p> tags without the closing </p> tag, which while unnecessary, is cleaner and more straightforward in my opinion, <br> tags are the only exception really as <br></br> isn't correct syntax. They make their reasoning for this, but I just simply don't agree. Regardless of these differences in opinion, I find the review lessons really useful as they make you find common mistakes which are sometimes quite frustrating for new coders.
Overall, I think that the site is pretty good. While slow paced for me, I already have some knowledge in the subject and for beginners I feel that it is probably moving at the right tempo. Definitely check it out if you think you'd enjoy it. Unfortunately it seems like you can't skip forward, so if you have some experience you'll have to go through the motions again. However, the strictness of the system is pretty on point as well so I think it's definitely worth looking at if you're new to this subject and are looking for a fresh start.
--CsMiREK
To start with, I think that this particular tutorial series is kind of dumbed down. It seems quite slow in its pacing, but for a beginner that might be exactly what you need. However, I also find that their chosen interface is kind of clumsy. The phone on the side is interesting, but the button placements and ordering to remember just seems extraneous.
I think the first lesson is kind of a throw away as you're mainly just typing text and it seems kind of pointless. I also wish that they could just show both the example and your page at the same time. Switching back and forth not only wastes time, it detracts from the learning experience and is kind of frustrating, especially when they have hints that sometimes outright give away the answers. I also find that the ordering of topics is somewhat odd as the <p> or paragraph tag is not introduced until the 8th lesson. They also make an example where they have <p> tags without the closing </p> tag, which while unnecessary, is cleaner and more straightforward in my opinion, <br> tags are the only exception really as <br></br> isn't correct syntax. They make their reasoning for this, but I just simply don't agree. Regardless of these differences in opinion, I find the review lessons really useful as they make you find common mistakes which are sometimes quite frustrating for new coders.
Overall, I think that the site is pretty good. While slow paced for me, I already have some knowledge in the subject and for beginners I feel that it is probably moving at the right tempo. Definitely check it out if you think you'd enjoy it. Unfortunately it seems like you can't skip forward, so if you have some experience you'll have to go through the motions again. However, the strictness of the system is pretty on point as well so I think it's definitely worth looking at if you're new to this subject and are looking for a fresh start.
--CsMiREK
Monday, May 6, 2013
HTML Resource One: w3schools
First up on the resource list is w3schools. w3schools is a pretty simple website. I actually started learning from w3schools just as a beginning. It isn't the most fun nor the most interactive, however it does go through things very thoroughly. If you really want to know why things are the way they are, w3schools helps out a bunch with that, or better yet look at Mozilla's mdn stuff as that's what a lot of professionals like to look at.
This review's pretty straightforward as the site is pretty straightforward. The content is really quite good, but it goes more like a textbook than an interactive guide. If you like that, then this is probably the site for you. It also includes a lot of knowledge on things like CSS and JavaScript and covers those in very much a similar way. As such I'll step back from reviewing w3schools again on those topics as it'll be pretty much the same thing. If however, you find w3schools silly and suck, you're not alone. In the end however, whatever helps you learn best is the best for you and I hope you don't take my words super seriously because as they say, "different strokes for different folks."
--CsMiREK
This review's pretty straightforward as the site is pretty straightforward. The content is really quite good, but it goes more like a textbook than an interactive guide. If you like that, then this is probably the site for you. It also includes a lot of knowledge on things like CSS and JavaScript and covers those in very much a similar way. As such I'll step back from reviewing w3schools again on those topics as it'll be pretty much the same thing. If however, you find w3schools silly and suck, you're not alone. In the end however, whatever helps you learn best is the best for you and I hope you don't take my words super seriously because as they say, "different strokes for different folks."
--CsMiREK
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Step Two: HTML
In learning how to program for the web, the first essential element is HTML. So the question to ask is, what exactly is HTML and why should I care? HTML stands for Hyper-Text Markup Language and without going into too much detail, it's the reason why websites even exist. Your internet browser (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc.) reads HTML and turns it into a readable format along with CSS.
As an analogy, we can say that HTML is the outline for your site. It includes things like title, body, and headers along with paragraphs that are used to help describe and organize websites. And just like an outline, a poorly written HTML file can lead to some pretty terrible looking things. I won't go into details on how to build lists or tables in HTML, that's for the resources I'll cover. However, I would like to say that HTML by itself is quite powerful, even without CSS or JavaScript. But, I will also say that simply knowing HTML isn't enough to make really nice looking and robust websites. Also, while you can do fine tuning of positioning and visual manipulation in HTML, that type of stuff is better suited for CSS, which I'll go over later.
Look forward to the next few updates which will cover some resources to get you started on HTML.
--CsMiREK
As an analogy, we can say that HTML is the outline for your site. It includes things like title, body, and headers along with paragraphs that are used to help describe and organize websites. And just like an outline, a poorly written HTML file can lead to some pretty terrible looking things. I won't go into details on how to build lists or tables in HTML, that's for the resources I'll cover. However, I would like to say that HTML by itself is quite powerful, even without CSS or JavaScript. But, I will also say that simply knowing HTML isn't enough to make really nice looking and robust websites. Also, while you can do fine tuning of positioning and visual manipulation in HTML, that type of stuff is better suited for CSS, which I'll go over later.
Look forward to the next few updates which will cover some resources to get you started on HTML.
--CsMiREK
Friday, May 3, 2013
Step One: Resources
Step one in learning anything new is getting resources. While some people like their books and swear by what books can teach them, I find that learning by book is really poor. Don't get me wrong, books have their strengths, namely in organizing and structuring facts and knowledge. However, they do a poor job of interacting and providing impetus to continue learning. As such, I feel that any resource that does not give a strong level of interaction and satisfaction probably won't be good.
As for coding resources, I'm sure all of you can Google for 'coding tutorials' or 'html tutorials' or whatever the else you feel like typing. But, I'll save you some trouble and give my own ideas about what these things do well and what they don't. You'll notice that this month will have a lot of updates and that not all of them will be coding related. I'll try to cover as much as possible and review as much as possible, but I'll put in some other stuff to break it up I promise.
If you want to get a heads up on what some other people think about the resources available and what it takes to be a coder, check out these links. Ok, so the last one kinda sucks as it seems totally corporate, but I hope this month will be informative for you and I know I'll learn a lot. I just hope you come along for the ride. Also, fun fact, this is post number 42, woo!
--CsMiREK
As for coding resources, I'm sure all of you can Google for 'coding tutorials' or 'html tutorials' or whatever the else you feel like typing. But, I'll save you some trouble and give my own ideas about what these things do well and what they don't. You'll notice that this month will have a lot of updates and that not all of them will be coding related. I'll try to cover as much as possible and review as much as possible, but I'll put in some other stuff to break it up I promise.
If you want to get a heads up on what some other people think about the resources available and what it takes to be a coder, check out these links. Ok, so the last one kinda sucks as it seems totally corporate, but I hope this month will be informative for you and I know I'll learn a lot. I just hope you come along for the ride. Also, fun fact, this is post number 42, woo!
--CsMiREK
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Disclaimer
Unlike previous posts, this month's posts are gonna be a bit more technical. As such, I want to make some things clear. First, learning to program is not easy. Like anything worth doing, it takes time and it takes work. However, like most things, it can be readily learned. And like many things on the internet, it has many resources available to you to help you. These posts will be focusing on those resources and what I think of each one. I am not an expert in HTML/CSS/JS coding so this will be an informative experience for me as well. If you have any interest in the subject my recommendation is to learn a bit from tutorials. But mainly I think the best way to learn is to jump into things, even if you fail, you're bound to learn from your failure. When you can understand and appreciate this and my words, then I think you'll have gotten over some of the biggest hurdles facing you. Without further ado, let's begin and I hope you come along for the ride.
--CsMiREK
--CsMiREK
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Into the Void
Well, I hope you enjoyed poetry month. I missed a couple of updates but they're all up now. Other than that, I think I'll spend this month going over some HTML/CSS/JS resources. Partially because I want to do it to help myself and partially because I think it'll be fun for you guys as well. So without further ado, let's begin our journey into the void of the internet.
--CsMiREK
--CsMiREK
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Farewell
Saying farewell is only inevitable,
But sadness is not required.
Take goodbyes in stride,
And find new beginnings for the ride.
--CsMiREK
But sadness is not required.
Take goodbyes in stride,
And find new beginnings for the ride.
--CsMiREK
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Winding Down
Coming to a close,
And we're all just exhausted.
Let's take some time
And enjoy this one rhyme.
--CsMiREK
And we're all just exhausted.
Let's take some time
And enjoy this one rhyme.
--CsMiREK
Monday, April 22, 2013
Sorry For The Wait
Sorry is what I say,
For when I'm feeling silly.
The feeling I get when I make people
Wait is why I feel sorry.
--CsMiREK
For when I'm feeling silly.
The feeling I get when I make people
Wait is why I feel sorry.
--CsMiREK
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Insanity
Insanity defined
By solemn ties
Those underlined
From those awake late in the night.
--CsMiREK
By solemn ties
Those underlined
From those awake late in the night.
--CsMiREK
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
Time Travel
Come take me away,
To a land faraway.
Where dinosaurs walk
And dodos squawk.
Where androids can dream,
Of electric sheep,
And clowns can throw pies of cream,
While little children sleep.
Take me away,
So I won’t have to see,
Children dismayed,
And ailing retirees.
Let’s go further back
To a simpler time,
Where dinosaurs walked,
And dodos squawked.
--CsMiREK
To a land faraway.
Where dinosaurs walk
And dodos squawk.
Where androids can dream,
Of electric sheep,
And clowns can throw pies of cream,
While little children sleep.
Take me away,
So I won’t have to see,
Children dismayed,
And ailing retirees.
Let’s go further back
To a simpler time,
Where dinosaurs walked,
And dodos squawked.
--CsMiREK
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
So close
We were so close,
But it wasn't meant to be.
Maybe next year they say,
But right now it's time to scream.
Let your anger out,
Let your madness shine,
Staying quiet won't help you,
So scream until you're fine.
--CsMiREK
But it wasn't meant to be.
Maybe next year they say,
But right now it's time to scream.
Let your anger out,
Let your madness shine,
Staying quiet won't help you,
So scream until you're fine.
--CsMiREK
Monday, April 8, 2013
Out the Door
I lived in a house
Like any you’d see
White picket fence
On a hilltop with trees.
A young lad I was
Without care nor fear
Until the day
I saw a giant deer.
Hooves brandished with fire
And a glare full of ice
It spoke to me once
And beckoned me thrice.
Out the door I went
Into the world
A myriad of insanity
All madness unfurled.
It struck me silly
How much I hadn’t seen
The world poured open
--CsMiREK
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Undefined
Variables onto themselves
Have no meaning;
Their voices not yet found.
Undefined is what we call them,
For that truly is what they are,
But people too might be this way.
Undefined is what I mean to say.
From our birth,
We are but a blank sheet,
An unwritten page
In the world around us.
Unlike a variable however,
It may seem
We are always undefined,
And no one can tell us we're not.
--CsMiREK
Have no meaning;
Their voices not yet found.
Undefined is what we call them,
For that truly is what they are,
But people too might be this way.
Undefined is what I mean to say.
From our birth,
We are but a blank sheet,
An unwritten page
In the world around us.
Unlike a variable however,
It may seem
We are always undefined,
And no one can tell us we're not.
--CsMiREK
Thursday, April 4, 2013
To the lost
Among the ashes
Some will say,
That nothing matters,
Not today.
War and turmoil
Leaves wounds unseen,
People lost
And wishing for a dream.
To the lost
I wish to say,
That the world has not ended
Not yet, not today.
To those still here,
Let's not forget those
Lost and unheard,
Those lost among their woes.
--CsMiREK
Some will say,
That nothing matters,
Not today.
War and turmoil
Leaves wounds unseen,
People lost
And wishing for a dream.
To the lost
I wish to say,
That the world has not ended
Not yet, not today.
To those still here,
Let's not forget those
Lost and unheard,
Those lost among their woes.
--CsMiREK
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Spring
Spring is here,
Or so it seems
The clouds have parted
Showing the Sun's bright gleams.
Though where I stand,
This might just be hope
The winter chills,
Will just have to cope.
Flowers and leaves
Are not yet seen,
But patience alone
Will keep me keen.
--CsMiREK
Or so it seems
The clouds have parted
Showing the Sun's bright gleams.
Though where I stand,
This might just be hope
The winter chills,
Will just have to cope.
Flowers and leaves
Are not yet seen,
But patience alone
Will keep me keen.
--CsMiREK
Monday, April 1, 2013
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Next Month - Poetry Month?
So next month is National Poetry Month across the US and Canada. As a result, I thought to myself, "Well...this is a random blog full of random things...why not?" And so, I will be partaking in a month of poetry themed posts, some of them personally written, others just pieces of poetry I find really good, others might perhaps be guest pieces. Who knows what'll happen? It's a good 30 days and there are a lot of updates in the coming month so look forward to it.
--CsMiREK
--CsMiREK
Friday, March 29, 2013
Underappreciated Instruments - Melodica
Let's go! Under appreciated instruments time. This time I was going to cover the harmonica but that's boring. Let's go with an instrument you're unlikely to have even heard of. Therefore, this post is on the melodica, an instrument that my spell check is saying might not even be a word. For clarity's sake, the melodica is also sometimes called the pianica.
Why the melodica? Well I was recently at a concert hosted by my University's performing arts and technology department and they used one. Aptly, one of my friends that came with me asked what the hell that instrument was. As an instrument, the melodica looks very much like a keyboard but...with a tube sticking out. The idea of it is quite similar to an accordion actually. You provide an airflow, with accordions this is done with the bellows, and play the keys to form pitches. Unlike the accordion however, since you are the one providing the airflow by means of blowing air into a tube, the accordion is sometimes classified as a woodwind instrument.
The thing about the melodica is that pretty much no one uses it. The sound is similar to the accordion and is actually a rather simple instrument to play that can be played in multiple different ways while still being mobile. It's actually quite common to play the melodica with a hose attached, which frees up the location of where the instrument is without sacrificing sound. To be honest, it looks a bit strange but let's be completely frank, most instruments look kinda weird when you first encounter them.
Why the melodica? Well I was recently at a concert hosted by my University's performing arts and technology department and they used one. Aptly, one of my friends that came with me asked what the hell that instrument was. As an instrument, the melodica looks very much like a keyboard but...with a tube sticking out. The idea of it is quite similar to an accordion actually. You provide an airflow, with accordions this is done with the bellows, and play the keys to form pitches. Unlike the accordion however, since you are the one providing the airflow by means of blowing air into a tube, the accordion is sometimes classified as a woodwind instrument.
The thing about the melodica is that pretty much no one uses it. The sound is similar to the accordion and is actually a rather simple instrument to play that can be played in multiple different ways while still being mobile. It's actually quite common to play the melodica with a hose attached, which frees up the location of where the instrument is without sacrificing sound. To be honest, it looks a bit strange but let's be completely frank, most instruments look kinda weird when you first encounter them.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Musicians and Programmers Pt. 3
Here we stand, at part 3 in this series about musicians and programmers. You must have questions. Is this the last part? Am I seriously reading this? Why the hell are these posts being posted at 2AM central time? Well...I imagine you have such questions. Much more likely I'm deluding myself into thinking what I'm writing is read much at all. Whatever, don't care too much.
Let's get back to the topic. In this post I'm going to recall most of my college career and the kinds of thoughts I gathered about both topics. Let's begin with programming since it's what I spent most of my college career actively trying to learn. As I said earlier, I think that anyone can code, oh and you should too. My reasoning for that is that I honestly believe that coding is a way of viewing the world. It requires one to break things down to small discrete steps, but let's be honest, we all do that everyday. A computer program in that sense is no different from a personal schedule. Each event on your planner or calendar or what have you, is a function that you do because, through your experience, you have learned what to do on those occasions. So, why am I talking about this? Well, I think what I just said is actually wrong. It's a perception of coding that makes people think that it's about a micro-scale. However, it's more similar to language, where after you learn the vocabulary and syntax, it's about the composing of said vocabulary and syntax into comprehensible and meaningful stuff. Yea, I used the word 'stuff' in an otherwise didactic post, get over it. Anyways, barring the aside, my point is that coding is both about the micro scale which is often the bane of new programmers and the macro scale which is the need to see the big picture in regards to the programs we write.
Let's get back to the topic. In this post I'm going to recall most of my college career and the kinds of thoughts I gathered about both topics. Let's begin with programming since it's what I spent most of my college career actively trying to learn. As I said earlier, I think that anyone can code, oh and you should too. My reasoning for that is that I honestly believe that coding is a way of viewing the world. It requires one to break things down to small discrete steps, but let's be honest, we all do that everyday. A computer program in that sense is no different from a personal schedule. Each event on your planner or calendar or what have you, is a function that you do because, through your experience, you have learned what to do on those occasions. So, why am I talking about this? Well, I think what I just said is actually wrong. It's a perception of coding that makes people think that it's about a micro-scale. However, it's more similar to language, where after you learn the vocabulary and syntax, it's about the composing of said vocabulary and syntax into comprehensible and meaningful stuff. Yea, I used the word 'stuff' in an otherwise didactic post, get over it. Anyways, barring the aside, my point is that coding is both about the micro scale which is often the bane of new programmers and the macro scale which is the need to see the big picture in regards to the programs we write.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Musical Discovery - Alexander Rybak
More European music! This time I'll be covering Alexander Rybak. Alexander Rybak is a Norwegian singer best known for his song 'Fairytale', a common title to be sure. Alexander Rybak came to the limelight as the winner of Eurovision 2009 as the Norway representative, think American Idol kind of. As a musician, Alexander Rybak makes prominent use of his ability to play the violin in a virtuosic manner. Other than that, it's kind of generic pop, not to say that's a bad thing. Personally I like the violin in his first album along with the kinda corny lyrics, all of which are in English. On that note, I didn't actually like his second album but I might just have to go listen to it again. After all, musical tastes change over time and things you once hated you might find you love now for no real reason. Anyways enough preachy pseudo-wise nonsense. Sorry this post was short and late, although I wonder if the post will still have the 2:00 AM timestamp...(I actually posted this around 5) Who knows anyways take care and see ya soon.
--CsMiREK
--CsMiREK
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Top Tracks - Path of Repentance
Time for another top track. This time I am featuring the piece 'Path of Repentance' by Nobuo Uematsu. A little bit older than the previous top tracks, this one comes from way back in...2001. So it's not really that old but definitely older than most of the stuff I've posted on so far.
For those of you unaware, Nobuo Uematsu is the composer behind most of the Final Fantasy game soundtracks. The only game where he wasn't the main composer was Final Fantasy XII. To be sure, Nobuo Uematsu has composed a massive host of incredibly great pieces of music for Final Fantasy. From 'One Winged Angel' featured in Final Fantasy VII to the 'Prelude' from Final Fantasy I, it's obvious that the man knows many styles and facets of music.
So, why did I pick 'Path of Repentance' over the many other pieces that he has written? Well, to me it has some particular intrigue. As a piece it's really clean and simple sounding. There's this incredible tension created when shifting from a 3 beat to a 2 beat in the treble line while the bass line maintains a generally static 3 beat until later in the piece. When it all comes together and both the treble and bass lines are in sync rhythmically, you get really strong beats and a piece that while repetitive, is almost hypnotic in nature. Needless to say I find the piece fascinating both aurally and musically.
Additionally, 'Path of Repentance' is from Final Fantasy X which interestingly enough was the first Final Fantasy game I played in its entirety. Overall the game had an interesting, albeit overused, 'save the world' type plot. However, it made up for it with likable characters and very good music. I actually don't remember the section where 'Path of Repentance' plays all that much but I just remember the music and to think that I can remember the music of a part of a game more than the actual game just is a testament to just how much I enjoy this piece. Well, I hope you enjoyed this little trip to the slightly distant past and until next time.
--CsMiREK
For those of you unaware, Nobuo Uematsu is the composer behind most of the Final Fantasy game soundtracks. The only game where he wasn't the main composer was Final Fantasy XII. To be sure, Nobuo Uematsu has composed a massive host of incredibly great pieces of music for Final Fantasy. From 'One Winged Angel' featured in Final Fantasy VII to the 'Prelude' from Final Fantasy I, it's obvious that the man knows many styles and facets of music.
So, why did I pick 'Path of Repentance' over the many other pieces that he has written? Well, to me it has some particular intrigue. As a piece it's really clean and simple sounding. There's this incredible tension created when shifting from a 3 beat to a 2 beat in the treble line while the bass line maintains a generally static 3 beat until later in the piece. When it all comes together and both the treble and bass lines are in sync rhythmically, you get really strong beats and a piece that while repetitive, is almost hypnotic in nature. Needless to say I find the piece fascinating both aurally and musically.
Additionally, 'Path of Repentance' is from Final Fantasy X which interestingly enough was the first Final Fantasy game I played in its entirety. Overall the game had an interesting, albeit overused, 'save the world' type plot. However, it made up for it with likable characters and very good music. I actually don't remember the section where 'Path of Repentance' plays all that much but I just remember the music and to think that I can remember the music of a part of a game more than the actual game just is a testament to just how much I enjoy this piece. Well, I hope you enjoyed this little trip to the slightly distant past and until next time.
--CsMiREK
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Musical Discovery - In-Grid
Let's take a trip to Europe for a bit before diving into the bulk of my music which, for your information, is Japanese. To begin this brief stint in Europe I'm going to cover a relatively new addition to my collection, In-Grid.
In-Grid is an Italian singer-songwriter. Interestingly enough she is more well known for her songs in French than Italian. Her real name is Ingrid Emiliana Alberini. Her most famous song is titled 'Tu es foutu'. However, I came to know In-Grid through the track 'Vive Le Swing' which is featured in a mix by tallulahgoodtimes on SoundCloud entitled 'swangyothang2'. The mix itself is really good if you're into swing music with a twinge of electro. I might get into how I found that mix in the future but suffice to say, that was my introduction to In-Grid.
With her really bright and energetic sound, her music makes for a good pick-me-up while not being grating on the ears. Since her music is a relatively new addition to my collection I don't really have a huge amount to say. Definitely check it out and I hope you enjoy it. As always look forward to more in upcoming posts.
--CsMiREK
In-Grid is an Italian singer-songwriter. Interestingly enough she is more well known for her songs in French than Italian. Her real name is Ingrid Emiliana Alberini. Her most famous song is titled 'Tu es foutu'. However, I came to know In-Grid through the track 'Vive Le Swing' which is featured in a mix by tallulahgoodtimes on SoundCloud entitled 'swangyothang2'. The mix itself is really good if you're into swing music with a twinge of electro. I might get into how I found that mix in the future but suffice to say, that was my introduction to In-Grid.
With her really bright and energetic sound, her music makes for a good pick-me-up while not being grating on the ears. Since her music is a relatively new addition to my collection I don't really have a huge amount to say. Definitely check it out and I hope you enjoy it. As always look forward to more in upcoming posts.
--CsMiREK
Monday, March 11, 2013
Service Announcement - The Number 24
This is a public service announcement for the number 24. Although everyone knows that it is the number of hours in a day, the number 24 is much more interesting than just that. Posts labeled 'PSA' or 'Service Announcement' are here to symbolize all those silly things that you will never think about unless you take the time out of your day to think about them. Ain't that a contrived sentence?
Anyways continuing onwards. The number 24 is the basis of a young children's game to better arithmetic skills. Often played with 4 numbers you use various arithmetic sequences to yield 24. For example, (5+7) * (6/3) = 24. In music, there are 24 total scales, major and minor meaning. By that I mean that there are 12 major and 12 minor scales for a total of 24 scales. Disregard Dorian, Lydian and the like for that number.
Mathematically, the number 24 is extremely interesting. It is the first number that can be formed by the sums of 3 different pairs of prime numbers, 7 and 17, 5 and 19, and 11 and 13. It is also 4! = 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 = 24. To sum up the rest of these mathematical wonders I leave you with this. Sorry if this post wasn't as interesting as some of the others. But if you want to know some new things, Wikipedia is pretty awesome as long as you have a starting place. Hopefully something there helps you down the line, if not, take pride in learning more about a pretty intense number. I hope that even if you didn't enjoy the post, you'll at least take a look and learn a bit.
--CsMiREK
Anyways continuing onwards. The number 24 is the basis of a young children's game to better arithmetic skills. Often played with 4 numbers you use various arithmetic sequences to yield 24. For example, (5+7) * (6/3) = 24. In music, there are 24 total scales, major and minor meaning. By that I mean that there are 12 major and 12 minor scales for a total of 24 scales. Disregard Dorian, Lydian and the like for that number.
Mathematically, the number 24 is extremely interesting. It is the first number that can be formed by the sums of 3 different pairs of prime numbers, 7 and 17, 5 and 19, and 11 and 13. It is also 4! = 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 = 24. To sum up the rest of these mathematical wonders I leave you with this. Sorry if this post wasn't as interesting as some of the others. But if you want to know some new things, Wikipedia is pretty awesome as long as you have a starting place. Hopefully something there helps you down the line, if not, take pride in learning more about a pretty intense number. I hope that even if you didn't enjoy the post, you'll at least take a look and learn a bit.
--CsMiREK
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Rant Corner - Online Game Launches
So, I'm imagining you might think this post should've been something music related or coding related. If so, maybe you have the wrong impression of why I started this site. This site is almost purely the actualization of random thoughts that come to me. Now while most of these are indeed about music or coding, not everything is. For example, I am a relatively avid gamer. If you give me a bunch of time to do nothing you can pretty well bet I'm gonna spend a good chunk of it playing games.
Now onto this post in particular. I'm not aware if you know but EA has released with Maxis a new SimCity game. Now while I have many things against EA, for example this, I said to myself, "I like SimCity more than I hate EA". Well...EA if you look at the article beat out AT&T, Comcast, and Bank of America to be the worst company in America last year. With the release of SimCity, we might be looking at a repeat winner for worst company in America.
Now onto this post in particular. I'm not aware if you know but EA has released with Maxis a new SimCity game. Now while I have many things against EA, for example this, I said to myself, "I like SimCity more than I hate EA". Well...EA if you look at the article beat out AT&T, Comcast, and Bank of America to be the worst company in America last year. With the release of SimCity, we might be looking at a repeat winner for worst company in America.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Top Tracks - Setting Sail, Coming Home
Top tracks, home to many a good tune. This time I come bearing the track 'Setting Sail, Coming Home' by Darren Korb. To be honest I would love to do a musical discovery feature on Darren Korb but I only know one album that he's composed for. Instead you get this post which is more than just about 'Setting Sail, Coming Home' but is about the entire album it comes from.
'Setting Sail, Coming Home' is the second to last track from the 2010 game Bastion. In relation to the game, it is the ending theme for when you complete the game. However, back to the music. The male singer is Darren Korb while the female singer is Ashley Barrett. If you previously listened to the rest of the soundtrack, you'd know that the track 'Mother, I'm Here' features Darren Korb's vocals as well and that 'Build that Wall' also features Ashley Barrett. As a song, 'Setting Sail, Coming Home' is composed as a mixture of both of those songs along with a unique intro and percussion that is unique to the other tracks. That fact is actually what I find really interesting as each theme is separate and distinct and yet they mesh very well with each other to create a completely different song from the individual parts.
'Setting Sail, Coming Home' is the second to last track from the 2010 game Bastion. In relation to the game, it is the ending theme for when you complete the game. However, back to the music. The male singer is Darren Korb while the female singer is Ashley Barrett. If you previously listened to the rest of the soundtrack, you'd know that the track 'Mother, I'm Here' features Darren Korb's vocals as well and that 'Build that Wall' also features Ashley Barrett. As a song, 'Setting Sail, Coming Home' is composed as a mixture of both of those songs along with a unique intro and percussion that is unique to the other tracks. That fact is actually what I find really interesting as each theme is separate and distinct and yet they mesh very well with each other to create a completely different song from the individual parts.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Rant Corner - Time to Start Coding
I'm not sure whether this is particularly unique to me or whether it's a common occurrence with everyone, but I'm a huge fan of starting projects. Now this doesn't mean that I get a lot done. On the contrary, most of the people you talk to about me would say that I am quite lazy. However, I enjoy starting things without any regard as to necessarily finishing them.
To that end I am starting up yet another feature called "Rant Corner". This one's mainly just for me to voice my various opinions on any number of things. So, the intro isn't completely useless. I'm not so scatterbrained to begin writing and suddenly change my thoughts... Anyways, this episode of "Rant Corner" is about coding, a topic close to my heart.
It is my opinion that computer programming, coding, hacking, or whatever you want to call it is not that hard. People make coding out to be difficult and cumbersome. However, I think that that's a misconception. While it isn't necessarily easy, coding, like anything worth doing, is about the work you put into it. Of course there are people better than you, but that goes for everything else as well. My thought is that through whatever experience, people get this notion that coding is hard and that there's no way that they can get better or understand it. This obviously doesn't apply solely to coding, but it is definitely a factor in how people react to coding. Of course I'm biased but I really do think that anyone can learn how to code and others do too.
To that end I am starting up yet another feature called "Rant Corner". This one's mainly just for me to voice my various opinions on any number of things. So, the intro isn't completely useless. I'm not so scatterbrained to begin writing and suddenly change my thoughts... Anyways, this episode of "Rant Corner" is about coding, a topic close to my heart.
It is my opinion that computer programming, coding, hacking, or whatever you want to call it is not that hard. People make coding out to be difficult and cumbersome. However, I think that that's a misconception. While it isn't necessarily easy, coding, like anything worth doing, is about the work you put into it. Of course there are people better than you, but that goes for everything else as well. My thought is that through whatever experience, people get this notion that coding is hard and that there's no way that they can get better or understand it. This obviously doesn't apply solely to coding, but it is definitely a factor in how people react to coding. Of course I'm biased but I really do think that anyone can learn how to code and others do too.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Double Feature - Pretty Lights - Finally Moving
As I was compiling my lists of musical discoveries and top tracks, it just so happened that the next musical discovery is Pretty Lights and the next top track is his track, 'Finally Moving'. Whether by accident or on purpose, it doesn't seem right that I should separate the two from each other. For that reason we have our first double feature.
Pretty Lights is the stage name of Derek Vincent Smith. As an artist he produces electronic music with an emphasis on sampled sounds and really chill beats. As for how I got into Pretty Lights, I actually was introduced to his music through a friend of mine. He's a big fan of electronic music and at the time I was still kinda warming up to electronic music and the sounds of the entire genre. To be honest I don't particularly follow artists so I guess there isn't too much more I can say about him as a person. However, what is really cool is that all of his albums and tracks are freely downloadable and distributable from his site. There's also an option to donate so if you really enjoy his music, be proactive and support his music and his decision to freely distribute his music.
Pretty Lights is the stage name of Derek Vincent Smith. As an artist he produces electronic music with an emphasis on sampled sounds and really chill beats. As for how I got into Pretty Lights, I actually was introduced to his music through a friend of mine. He's a big fan of electronic music and at the time I was still kinda warming up to electronic music and the sounds of the entire genre. To be honest I don't particularly follow artists so I guess there isn't too much more I can say about him as a person. However, what is really cool is that all of his albums and tracks are freely downloadable and distributable from his site. There's also an option to donate so if you really enjoy his music, be proactive and support his music and his decision to freely distribute his music.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Musical Discovery - Nujabes
This post is technically two days late. However, to me it is the most meaningful post I'll have this month. Three years ago, on February 26, 2010, Seba Jun aka Nujabes died in a motorcycle accident. As a musical figure, Nujabes was honestly the first time I enjoyed hip hop music. As such, I feel a great sense of disappointment and grief in knowing that no more of his music will ever exist.
The genre that Nujabes preferred to work in was a blend of hip hop beats and jazz that even if you didn't always agree with, always worked and was always a pleasure to listen to. In the United States, my guess would be that he is most famous as the composer of the soundtrack to Samurai Champloo. With tracks like the opening, 'Battlecry', to 'World Without Worlds' to 'Aruarian Dance', Nujabes made sure to make interesting beats meld with really traditional themes to create beautiful music for the anime. On another note, 'Aruarian Dance' is actually an arrangement of Ravel's 'Pavane pour une infante defunte' with a hip hop undertone.
What's sad to me in particular though, is that it took Nujabes' death in order for me to go back and really listen to everything he's done and properly enjoy his music. While he had catchy songs like 'Lady Brown' and 'Blessing It', you understand that hip hop and jazz are his roots. But as mentioned earlier, he had a great understanding of past music and respected classical music enough to put his own stamp on a theme well known in the classical world.
The genre that Nujabes preferred to work in was a blend of hip hop beats and jazz that even if you didn't always agree with, always worked and was always a pleasure to listen to. In the United States, my guess would be that he is most famous as the composer of the soundtrack to Samurai Champloo. With tracks like the opening, 'Battlecry', to 'World Without Worlds' to 'Aruarian Dance', Nujabes made sure to make interesting beats meld with really traditional themes to create beautiful music for the anime. On another note, 'Aruarian Dance' is actually an arrangement of Ravel's 'Pavane pour une infante defunte' with a hip hop undertone.
What's sad to me in particular though, is that it took Nujabes' death in order for me to go back and really listen to everything he's done and properly enjoy his music. While he had catchy songs like 'Lady Brown' and 'Blessing It', you understand that hip hop and jazz are his roots. But as mentioned earlier, he had a great understanding of past music and respected classical music enough to put his own stamp on a theme well known in the classical world.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Top Tracks - Fantasy
This time around we come back to Top Tracks. For this segment I will be covering the song 'Fantasy' by LAMA. This song isn't the most out there or bizarre track in my library for sure but I hope you find it as enjoyable as I do.
The song is sung by the Japanese group LAMA which consists of a group of really well known (in Japan) artists who I guess came together and just started jamming. To be honest, I don't actually like most of their songs but this one just works in my opinion. Whether it's the piano line that starts off the song or the very distinctive male and female voices that just never seem to sing at the same time, everything just kinda fits. The handful of pauses that cause dramatic effects. The reiteration of the piano line creates a natural transition back to the male voice. All of these end up being really standard and well used musical techniques. Even so, though the song is not as adventurous as the electronic sound of 'Cybernetic Mariachi' or the synth-y sound of St. Vincent, the song still manages to put itself in an interesting musical space. It isn't quite what we would associate in the US with as mainstream pop music, but it also doesn't sound as raw as indie music tends to be. Overall, I just like the piece and whether I have quantifiable reasons as to why or why not don't matter that much to me.
More info on the song itself. It was the ending to an anime (Japanese animated series) called UN-GO which aired in the fall of 2011 (October - December). The anime itself was a supernatural detective type of show and in my opinion both the soundtrack and this song fit the style and vision of the show very well. FYI, I might go into covering anime but that's still up in the air for now as I have plenty of music to talk about and other interesting things in store for the coming months. I hope you enjoy the song and you enjoyed the post. See ya next time.
*As a note, it is actually possible to find a full original version of this song streaming. Just not on YouTube.
--CsMiREK
The song is sung by the Japanese group LAMA which consists of a group of really well known (in Japan) artists who I guess came together and just started jamming. To be honest, I don't actually like most of their songs but this one just works in my opinion. Whether it's the piano line that starts off the song or the very distinctive male and female voices that just never seem to sing at the same time, everything just kinda fits. The handful of pauses that cause dramatic effects. The reiteration of the piano line creates a natural transition back to the male voice. All of these end up being really standard and well used musical techniques. Even so, though the song is not as adventurous as the electronic sound of 'Cybernetic Mariachi' or the synth-y sound of St. Vincent, the song still manages to put itself in an interesting musical space. It isn't quite what we would associate in the US with as mainstream pop music, but it also doesn't sound as raw as indie music tends to be. Overall, I just like the piece and whether I have quantifiable reasons as to why or why not don't matter that much to me.
More info on the song itself. It was the ending to an anime (Japanese animated series) called UN-GO which aired in the fall of 2011 (October - December). The anime itself was a supernatural detective type of show and in my opinion both the soundtrack and this song fit the style and vision of the show very well. FYI, I might go into covering anime but that's still up in the air for now as I have plenty of music to talk about and other interesting things in store for the coming months. I hope you enjoy the song and you enjoyed the post. See ya next time.
*As a note, it is actually possible to find a full original version of this song streaming. Just not on YouTube.
--CsMiREK
Friday, February 15, 2013
Musical Discovery - St. Vincent
Before we move onto other parts of the world with musical discovery, I have to talk about St. Vincent. A relatively well known indie pop/rock artist, St. Vincent is one of my favorite current American artists. St. Vincent is the stage name of the singer songwriter Annie Clark. To date she has released three incredibly colorful and wonderfully different albums.
Her first album Marry Me is definitely the most accessible of the three albums that she's released. With a strong pop sound coupled with a myriad of wildly different instrumentations, she forges a fun and enjoyable debut album. Starting with 'Now, Now', her album throws interesting chords directly at the listener. Paired with her voice, it's an experience that's just plain different from any current pop artist out there. Getting to track 4 is the titular track Marry Me. While not the most memorable track on the album, it makes awesome use of panning and is a completely solid song in its own right. Chugging along is 'Paris Is Burning', which is perhaps the most popular and memorable track on the album. To be fair, that exact song is how I got hooked into St. Vincent's sound back in 2008 and ever since I just always come back to the song. With an awesome cello line and a surprisingly refreshing meter change from 4/4 to 3/4, it's just an awesome song that I could listen to for hours. After that, the remaining songs kinda pale in comparison to me, but are each incredibly well thought out and good songs.
Her first album Marry Me is definitely the most accessible of the three albums that she's released. With a strong pop sound coupled with a myriad of wildly different instrumentations, she forges a fun and enjoyable debut album. Starting with 'Now, Now', her album throws interesting chords directly at the listener. Paired with her voice, it's an experience that's just plain different from any current pop artist out there. Getting to track 4 is the titular track Marry Me. While not the most memorable track on the album, it makes awesome use of panning and is a completely solid song in its own right. Chugging along is 'Paris Is Burning', which is perhaps the most popular and memorable track on the album. To be fair, that exact song is how I got hooked into St. Vincent's sound back in 2008 and ever since I just always come back to the song. With an awesome cello line and a surprisingly refreshing meter change from 4/4 to 3/4, it's just an awesome song that I could listen to for hours. After that, the remaining songs kinda pale in comparison to me, but are each incredibly well thought out and good songs.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Musicians and Programmers Pt. 2
So it's been over a month since the last post in this series on musicians and programmers. I suppose that means that it's about time to continue. At the end of my previous post, I left you with a couple of questions. At this point I would like to answer some of those.
First, what makes a "good" program? This is arguably a difficult question as different people regard different things as good. We can't simply base it off of popularity as there are plenty of terrible programs that are wildly successful (anyone remember Farmville?) On the other hand, we would be remiss to say that programs that are popular and successful are not good programs. Perhaps an apt way of gauging the "goodness" of a program is its ability to affect a large group of people. Again it ends up being quite arguable as to what constitutes a "good" program. Another example is Google. Quite likely one of the most well known websites in the world, it connects humanity to reservoirs of information the likes of which never existed previously. Surely it must be a "good" program. It affects millions of people daily, serving billions of searches per day to people in over 100 countries, with trillions of searches per year (see this). And yet, an article like this was published in 2008. If you think about it, it is actually true to an extent. The way we receive, parse, and then analyze data has drastically changed since the advent of Google and the accessible web. That's not to say that we are or aren't any smarter due to Google but it's an interesting thought exercise to carry out. In more recent history we have Facebook. A site with billions of users and yet, a single bug can wipe out large regions of the internet. What I'm trying to say is that even the most influential websites and programs have their dark sides and that makes it increasingly difficult to understand what a "good" program really is.
First, what makes a "good" program? This is arguably a difficult question as different people regard different things as good. We can't simply base it off of popularity as there are plenty of terrible programs that are wildly successful (anyone remember Farmville?) On the other hand, we would be remiss to say that programs that are popular and successful are not good programs. Perhaps an apt way of gauging the "goodness" of a program is its ability to affect a large group of people. Again it ends up being quite arguable as to what constitutes a "good" program. Another example is Google. Quite likely one of the most well known websites in the world, it connects humanity to reservoirs of information the likes of which never existed previously. Surely it must be a "good" program. It affects millions of people daily, serving billions of searches per day to people in over 100 countries, with trillions of searches per year (see this). And yet, an article like this was published in 2008. If you think about it, it is actually true to an extent. The way we receive, parse, and then analyze data has drastically changed since the advent of Google and the accessible web. That's not to say that we are or aren't any smarter due to Google but it's an interesting thought exercise to carry out. In more recent history we have Facebook. A site with billions of users and yet, a single bug can wipe out large regions of the internet. What I'm trying to say is that even the most influential websites and programs have their dark sides and that makes it increasingly difficult to understand what a "good" program really is.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Underappreciated Instruments - Accordion
New posts means new sections. This one's all about instruments I love that just don't get the love they deserve. I mean sure trumpets and oboes and violins are cool and all, but there are plenty of instruments out there that have rich and distinct timbres that just get ignored. This particular post is all about the accordion.
While a popular instrument in bygone eras, the accordion has kind of faded in recent years. You might occasionally chance upon a track with an accordion feature, but then again you're probably not listening to pop music. For whatever reason, society has shelved the accordion as an old fashioned sound and it has fallen into general disuse.
For the uninformed, the accordion is part of a class of instruments often called squeezeboxes. The sound is generated by the bellows, the folded regions which create changes in air pressure, and the buttons which change the pitch of the instrument. Interestingly enough, there are actually many kinds of accordions, some of which have piano keyboards, likely what we are used to thinking of as accordions in the US, while others have buttons arranged differently, an example being the Russian bayan. Depending on the construction of the instrument, the direction in which the bellows are moved can both change the volume and the pitch of the instrument which adds another layer of difficulty to the playing of the instrument. Another fun fact is that depending on the construction of the accordion, it is possible to play a range of notes greater than almost any other analog instrument.
While a popular instrument in bygone eras, the accordion has kind of faded in recent years. You might occasionally chance upon a track with an accordion feature, but then again you're probably not listening to pop music. For whatever reason, society has shelved the accordion as an old fashioned sound and it has fallen into general disuse.
For the uninformed, the accordion is part of a class of instruments often called squeezeboxes. The sound is generated by the bellows, the folded regions which create changes in air pressure, and the buttons which change the pitch of the instrument. Interestingly enough, there are actually many kinds of accordions, some of which have piano keyboards, likely what we are used to thinking of as accordions in the US, while others have buttons arranged differently, an example being the Russian bayan. Depending on the construction of the instrument, the direction in which the bellows are moved can both change the volume and the pitch of the instrument which adds another layer of difficulty to the playing of the instrument. Another fun fact is that depending on the construction of the accordion, it is possible to play a range of notes greater than almost any other analog instrument.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Musical Discovery - Rise Against
Continuing my series on enlightening you readers to the various musical artists in the world is this segment on Rise Against. Now I imagine that many of you might know Rise Against as they're a somewhat well known US rock band. But for those out of the country or unaware, this might be interesting to you. I promise I'll get to weird and obscure bands and singers in the following posts in the series. You'll just have to bear with me as I get through some of the more well known bands. I will not cover the likes of say Evanescence or Linkin Park or Sara Bareilles as well...to be fair I think most people know them by now, not much to discover.
Continuing on before my little rant explodes into some random tangent, Rise Against is originally from the Chicago area and formed in 1999, although that's just information I took from Wikipedia. As you might imagine I wouldn't talk about them if I didn't find them interesting. As of this post, they've released 4 major albums which are, in order of release: Siren Song of the Counter Culture, The Sufferer & the Witness, Appeal to Reason, and Endgame. (They released two indie albums previously) All four albums are quite similar in tonal quality with a focus on relatively common punk rock sound. There are a couple of exceptions obviously as you'll find in 'Swing Life Away' which is from Siren Song for the Counter Culture.
Continuing on before my little rant explodes into some random tangent, Rise Against is originally from the Chicago area and formed in 1999, although that's just information I took from Wikipedia. As you might imagine I wouldn't talk about them if I didn't find them interesting. As of this post, they've released 4 major albums which are, in order of release: Siren Song of the Counter Culture, The Sufferer & the Witness, Appeal to Reason, and Endgame. (They released two indie albums previously) All four albums are quite similar in tonal quality with a focus on relatively common punk rock sound. There are a couple of exceptions obviously as you'll find in 'Swing Life Away' which is from Siren Song for the Counter Culture.
Friday, February 1, 2013
More Site Stuff
So this is gonna be a short post. Mainly I wanna point out that the title of this site is really long. It kinda sucks if you wanna type it out. So instead you can send this around if you don't wanna type. http://bit.ly/V9fqmd. Still sucks, but it's shorter. That'll end up redirecting to the main page of this site. Fun fact, you can also make your friends type "aural abstractionist" in quotes like that into Google's search engine. As of me writing this, the only results will be links to this site. If you're on a mobile phone I just got a QR code from bitly as well so you can copy this places and have people scan it.
Look forward to more site stuff including style changes and all sorts of awesome in upcoming posts.
--CsMiREK
--CsMiREK
Monday, January 21, 2013
Top Tracks - Cybernetic Mariachi
For reference, any post labeled "TT" stands for Top Tracks. These posts go into some of my absolute favorite pieces of music and why I like them as well as how I came to find them. None of these tracks will have links to the track but I'll try to make sure they're relatively easy to find on the internet.
'Cybernetic Mariachi' is a track by A_Rival on his album 8-Bit Pimp. What strikes me most about the song is the use of 8-bit sound to augment a relatively good standalone song. However, if that were the only thing that struck me, it'd be a pretty lame song as all the tracks on the album incorporate 8-bit sound. Besides the nostalgic effect 8-bit sound has on me as a child of the 90s, the lyrics just work. While comedic, they fit the style and overall texture of the song in a perfect manner.
While I'm not a huge fan of hip-hop and rap music in general, I find that given the right circumstances, all styles are interesting. 'Cybernetic Mariachi' is a perfect example of blending two usually disparate styles into something much greater than the sum of its parts. I came across the song and album as part of the game music bundle, not to be confused with the Humble Bundle, and fell in love with it. Check both of those out if you're a fan of video games or music and I hope you enjoyed this post. Also, if you like the track, think about buying it from A_Rival at his site, the album is $3 for a digital download, $12 for a physical disc. FYI, you can actually listen to this track for free from his site, as well as the entire album it comes from.
See ya next month, this is the last post for the month.
--CsMiREK
'Cybernetic Mariachi' is a track by A_Rival on his album 8-Bit Pimp. What strikes me most about the song is the use of 8-bit sound to augment a relatively good standalone song. However, if that were the only thing that struck me, it'd be a pretty lame song as all the tracks on the album incorporate 8-bit sound. Besides the nostalgic effect 8-bit sound has on me as a child of the 90s, the lyrics just work. While comedic, they fit the style and overall texture of the song in a perfect manner.
While I'm not a huge fan of hip-hop and rap music in general, I find that given the right circumstances, all styles are interesting. 'Cybernetic Mariachi' is a perfect example of blending two usually disparate styles into something much greater than the sum of its parts. I came across the song and album as part of the game music bundle, not to be confused with the Humble Bundle, and fell in love with it. Check both of those out if you're a fan of video games or music and I hope you enjoyed this post. Also, if you like the track, think about buying it from A_Rival at his site, the album is $3 for a digital download, $12 for a physical disc. FYI, you can actually listen to this track for free from his site, as well as the entire album it comes from.
See ya next month, this is the last post for the month.
--CsMiREK
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Musical Discovery - Ellie Goulding
To start off musical discovery, I wanted to highlight a relatively well known artist. As I continue onwards, I am likely to go further into the obscure. Regardless, this post is about the UK singer Ellie Goulding.
Most famous in the US for the song 'Lights', Goulding blends a powerful voice with elements most commonly associated with electronic dance music. What's most interesting to me about Goulding is her ability to sing in multiple musical styles from having a soulful sound to a bright and distinctly pop sound.
The first of the two can be easily heard off her second album Halcyon in the track 'My Blood'. I'll leave it up to you to go search for it online. When you do listen to it, you'll realize what kind of range and depth her voice really has. While I love musicians who can cultivate and master a particular kind of sound I also admire those who can create bridges between multiple styles to create wholly new styles.
For reference, if you want a distinctly more pop sound, listen to her first album Lights. If you have fallen in love with her voice and can take a darker and more mature sound, pick up her second album Halcyon. I hope you enjoyed this segment, the next one's on the punk rock group Rise Against.
--CsMiREK
Most famous in the US for the song 'Lights', Goulding blends a powerful voice with elements most commonly associated with electronic dance music. What's most interesting to me about Goulding is her ability to sing in multiple musical styles from having a soulful sound to a bright and distinctly pop sound.
The first of the two can be easily heard off her second album Halcyon in the track 'My Blood'. I'll leave it up to you to go search for it online. When you do listen to it, you'll realize what kind of range and depth her voice really has. While I love musicians who can cultivate and master a particular kind of sound I also admire those who can create bridges between multiple styles to create wholly new styles.
For reference, if you want a distinctly more pop sound, listen to her first album Lights. If you have fallen in love with her voice and can take a darker and more mature sound, pick up her second album Halcyon. I hope you enjoyed this segment, the next one's on the punk rock group Rise Against.
--CsMiREK
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Failures of Education in the Current Era
As I was browsing the internet, I came to thinking about the state of education in the US. In particular I found that this video on YouTube held many of the same views that I have. To this end, I felt that it would be interesting to explore more into my views of why education fails in the US and perhaps elsewhere in the world, as this is out of my experience I cannot comment well on it.
To keep this post brief, I will touch upon the one thing that I feel is the most important reason as to why our education system has failed. To me, the main reason for our education's failure is our view of intelligence. I'm not quite sure when society began to shift in this way, surely it has been such since before I was born 20 or so years ago, but there is this extreme push towards test results. It seems as though test results are a better indication of intelligence than anything else.
Tests, however are often an incredibly poor indicator of intelligence. For one, most standardized testing can be boiled down to an extremely small handful of types of questions. This means that the most prepared and most studied often are awarded with higher scores than those who are truly intelligent. Arbitrary facts and contrived passages, that are quite frankly dull to the majority of society, constitute what it is to be intelligent in our minds.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for gauging mathematical and verbal reasoning. However, the current system is about tricks and strategies that just aren't generalizable to more interesting problems. Not to mention that they only test the lower bound for those that have already learned further. For example, given a high school student who is studying multivariable or multivariate calculus, the SAT/ACT are almost insulting in their simplicity.
It shocks me how many people cannot reason about relatively simple things. For example, most sequences of numbers are relatively easy to understand. Given the numbers 0,1,1,2,4, and 7, it should not be difficult to see that the next number should be 13, the sum of the previous three numbers. By the time you get to 4th or 5th grade, such a thing should be able to be abstracted out. Unfortunately, our schooling system is too focused on rote arithmetic to teach the minor critical thinking skills to find patterns in simple numbers.
To me, intelligence is about understanding what one does not know and getting to knowing those things. Intelligence should not be measured by arbitrary facts. Instead it should be bolstered by those facts to gain new insight into how systems work.
--CsMiREK
To keep this post brief, I will touch upon the one thing that I feel is the most important reason as to why our education system has failed. To me, the main reason for our education's failure is our view of intelligence. I'm not quite sure when society began to shift in this way, surely it has been such since before I was born 20 or so years ago, but there is this extreme push towards test results. It seems as though test results are a better indication of intelligence than anything else.
Tests, however are often an incredibly poor indicator of intelligence. For one, most standardized testing can be boiled down to an extremely small handful of types of questions. This means that the most prepared and most studied often are awarded with higher scores than those who are truly intelligent. Arbitrary facts and contrived passages, that are quite frankly dull to the majority of society, constitute what it is to be intelligent in our minds.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for gauging mathematical and verbal reasoning. However, the current system is about tricks and strategies that just aren't generalizable to more interesting problems. Not to mention that they only test the lower bound for those that have already learned further. For example, given a high school student who is studying multivariable or multivariate calculus, the SAT/ACT are almost insulting in their simplicity.
It shocks me how many people cannot reason about relatively simple things. For example, most sequences of numbers are relatively easy to understand. Given the numbers 0,1,1,2,4, and 7, it should not be difficult to see that the next number should be 13, the sum of the previous three numbers. By the time you get to 4th or 5th grade, such a thing should be able to be abstracted out. Unfortunately, our schooling system is too focused on rote arithmetic to teach the minor critical thinking skills to find patterns in simple numbers.
To me, intelligence is about understanding what one does not know and getting to knowing those things. Intelligence should not be measured by arbitrary facts. Instead it should be bolstered by those facts to gain new insight into how systems work.
--CsMiREK
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Musical Discovery - Intro
If you talk to any of my friends, you would learn that I have an avid interest for few things. Among those are music and video games. To better understand just how avid my interest in music is, the current number of pieces of music I have is just under 17000. That much music takes up over 110 GB of space and takes over a month and a half to play end to end. Now while I don't legally own most of it, I do try to get as much as I can legally within my means. (Currently up to a little over 2000 legally owned tracks)
The point of these posts labeled Musical Discovery is to give all my readers a sense of what I like to listen to. It also makes for a good way to get people interested in music that they would never normally hear otherwise. The plan currently is to have at least one or two of these a month, highlighting a different artist in each post. In addition, if you come across any sweet music, leave a comment and I'll look into it. Stay tuned for the first real post in the series coming up soon!
--CsMiREK
The point of these posts labeled Musical Discovery is to give all my readers a sense of what I like to listen to. It also makes for a good way to get people interested in music that they would never normally hear otherwise. The plan currently is to have at least one or two of these a month, highlighting a different artist in each post. In addition, if you come across any sweet music, leave a comment and I'll look into it. Stay tuned for the first real post in the series coming up soon!
--CsMiREK
Thursday, January 3, 2013
The little details
By this point, you might have noticed that I am posting everyday. What you might not know is that I indeed have a planned schedule of updates for this particular blog. Here's a hint, it's not gonna be everyday.
If you look at all, you'll find a bunch of references to all manner of things. Most of these will likely be from TV shows or music but not all of them. If you look even closer you'll discover my update schedule, at least for January. Well good luck in your search in the upcoming months and I hope you enjoy the site and stick with me for some of my upcoming posts.
--CsMiREK
If you look at all, you'll find a bunch of references to all manner of things. Most of these will likely be from TV shows or music but not all of them. If you look even closer you'll discover my update schedule, at least for January. Well good luck in your search in the upcoming months and I hope you enjoy the site and stick with me for some of my upcoming posts.
--CsMiREK
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)