TechgnosisWeb Prime

Sorry, as always, about the delay in between posts. And this one will be short, too. I just acquired a 16GB iPod Touch, and have spent the last few days in a happy haze of technolust. The new iTouch is now officially jailbroken (only 74 easy steps!) which means I can run 3rd party apps on it, access the filesystem, do anything I want with it, really. I’ll see about posting up some pics of it to the Flickr stream later. I also installed a couple od iPhone/Touch friendly plugins to this blog, so when anyone browses it from their mobile device, they automatically get a much nicer interface than the usual one, more suited to the mobile browser. Perhaps more importantly for me, I also installed an iPhone friendly interface for the admin side too. In fact, I’m writing this post on it now! More news (cause I know you all care so very much) as it develops.

Taking a break from the (a)religious flamewar going on below, let’s touch on something I recently discovered that I think is freakin’ brilliant: Pandora.FM. What is it? basically, it’s a mashup of the two best music reccomendation engines I know of: Pandora, and last.FM. I’ve been using both for a while now, as each one has its own charm and uses. Pandora, for example, lets you create a station with as little as one song or artist to build from, letting you stream good, high-quality music no matter where you may be. As you listen to the station, you can fine-tune it to your tastes by giving each song a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’, which allows Pandora to find out more and more about the type of music you like, and give you more of it. Part of its beauty, to me, is the ability to have multiple stations: Pandora doesn’t just learn if you like rock, country, and dance, it learns exactly what kind of rock, country, and dance you like, and you can have individual stations for each of your tastes, tailored for you.

And then there’s last.FM. I love this service, because it allows me to track, tag, and view everything I listen to, by integrating into Winamp, Windows Media Player, Amarok, or whatever media player I happen to be using. Then, I can mark what I like, what I don’t, and build feeds and lists for me to go through and share with others. What was that track that you listened to a couple days ago about the monkeys? last.Fm knows. It also has a strong social aspect: get your friends to join up, and you can each see what the other is listening to, and make recommendations. The system is even smart enough to learn what tracks that you might like they’re listening to, and it’ll point them out to you. Add the ability to buy tracks directly through iTunes (and even the occasional free mp3 directly from the site), and you’ve got a winner.

Unfortunately, up until now, both services were separate: when I listened to my Pandora station, last.FM knew nothing of it. Songs I love came and went, and I’d lose track of them. Enter Pandora.FM, one of the coolest little mashups that RSS ever made possible. You log into Pandora.FM using your last.FM account, and the service takes care of the rest. As songs scroll by on your Pandora player, a bar at the bottom of the screen allows you to tag them, view and edit their metadata, and submits them to your last.FM profile, so when you look at your feeds, there’s everything you’ve been listening to, tagged, bagged, and ready to parse. Not to mention (if you use the ‘More Options’ interface), view information on the track, the band, your recently played tracks, top played tracks, browse photos and videos of the artist playing, and even start new Pandora stations based on the track you’re listening to. Sweetness. If you’re not using any of these services right now, I can’t recommend them highly enough for discovering new music to listen to. Go sign up for last.FM, set up a Pandora station or three, and feel the love with Pandora.FM.
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To bring you the following announcement:

09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0

That is all. Move along.

So, I’ve always wanted to be more of a DIY sorta guy, but working with power tools and such never quite appealed to me. I never really felt the lure of the power tool section at Sears. But I always wanted to be able to have something in my hands and be able to say: “Look! I made this!” It’s a wonder I never turned to electronics before.

Recently, Dethroner dedicated a week to the wonders of electronics, specifically the DIY kind, and they invited Aaron Dunlap, of Electroids fame, to co-host the week. The whole thing inspired me to actually get around to ordering one of the $10 9V USB Charger kits from his site, and the parts arrived not too long ago. Of course, the kit only includes the basic stuff: the battery snap, the USB connector, an LED light, a resistor, a 9V-to-5V IC, and that’s about it. You supply your own solder, soldering iron, electrical tape, battery, and, of course, Altoids tin. So, for those of you thinking of taking this on as your first electronics project, and telling yourself it’s worth it ’cause it’s so cheap: you’re going to end up going to Radio Shack and spending ~$100 on additional parts, including the solder, hookup cable, soldering iron (stay away from those ColdHeat irons, they suck), electrical tape, and, if you’re like me, a little Dremel tool for poking holes in the Altoids tin. However, look on the bright side: by the time you’re done buying all that extra stuff, you’re well-equiped to handle other electronics projects, and I can assure you that once you finish your first one, and get the ‘OMG, I made something that works!’ high, you’ll definitely want to make more.

So, over the past couple of days, I’ve been cursing my lack of soldering skills, and slowly trying to avoid burning myself (or frying the components) while soldering wires and resistors and stuff… but it has been worth it:

Behold! My very own Electroids charger, fully working, and charging up Glitch. It’s a thing of beauty! And I can say with pride: I made this.

Katharine McPhee

Originally uploaded by Katsushiro.

I will keep my ramblings about my shameful, dirty addiction to American Idol this year to a minimum, but I will take a moment to post about the girl who I’m rooting for: the lovely, talented, and absolutely delicious Miss Katharine McPhee. Go, looky-looky, clicky-clicky, I made a set of her pics.

Natalie and I are both completely taken with her, as she’s a delightful mix of cute, playful, and sexy that just hits all the right spots. Oh, and she can sing, too. Anyway, Katharine, my girlfriend and I have decided that we want to share you. Call me, OK?

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