DJ Mixing Software

My brother who operates a sound system dropped his PC at home for repair. The PC boots fine but when he launches the DJ mixing software he was using, the computer suddenly reboots. Took me a few days to shoot the trouble. The problems is a mixture of bad hard disk partition and memory. The hard disk has 2 partitions, the one where the OS was installed is doing fine but the one where the tons of MP3s are stored is damaged. So every time the music software is launched, it accesses the bad partition and crashes. There was also problems in some parts of the memory. So the hard disk and memory were thrown to the waste basket and replaced.

As for the DJ mixing software, I installed a small free software from Native Instruments, whose bread and butter are high-end music software that cost lots of dollars. Fortunately, they also offer a free player formerly called Traktor Beat Port Player but is now called Beatport Sync. The major difference is that Sync has an online capability which enables the user to connect to the internet and buy music. I don't really need the connectivity stuff, just the playing and mixing parts. So I used an old download of the Beatport Player. The player is great. It has two decks and a sync function. The catalog and search functions are also useful. After installing it, I loaded the PC with more than 3,000 mp3s from my collection and have the software load them in its catalog and analyze each song. It took the software 20 hours to finish the analysis which is just figuring out the BPM of each music.

And while hunting for a good and free mixing software, I stumbled upon MIXX which has a white interface and looks promising. I'm still test driving it to see if it fares better than Beatport.

By the way, i'm not really into this DJ thing. My players of choice are - the good old Winamp and VLC.

Recently

The Kite Runner - never read the book. The film is good. It reminded me of my "burador" days back when I was the same age as the kids in the film.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry - Adam Sandler in a comedy film about same-sex marriage. The last two Adam Sandler flicks I saw before this one were serious ones and amazingly he acts good in serious roles. Check out Reign Over Me and Punch Drunk Love for proofs.

Live Free or Die Hard - saw this one before inside a bus on a trip to the city. I thought the one I downloaded is the Unrated Edition with bloods and cursing. It's the same sanitized version.

I'm Not There - a artsy Bob Dylan flick where he was portrayed by six different actors including Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Kate Blanchett. Took me three installments before I finally finished watching it today. I pause the video a lot to check out real bob Dylan videos on youtube.

The Earth is missing on my Google Earth

When i opened Google Earth tonight, i was alerted that a new version (4.3) is already available. I promptly updated to see if my small town already has high resolution image. But when i opened Google Earth after the update it turned out that not only is my town missing but the entire earth suddenly turned invisible. All that remained are the yellow outlines of the countries. Weird.

I tried uninstalling the application and then I downloaded and installed it again but the same problem persists. I miss Earth.

Update: Problem solved. Apparently, my PC is not using the OpenGL 3D engine which is the default setup on Google Earth. So i switched to Direct X. The option is in the Tools menu. Earth is beautiful.

PPTminizer - minimize Powerpoint presentation and Word documents

This software is useful when uploading or e-mailing powerpoint presentations or word documents. sometimes the original files are just too big making it hard or slow to attach to emails or to upload.

PPTminimizer reduces PowerPoint and Word files by up to 98% of their initial size using an intelligent compression technique. The software preserves the original file format so files can be edited without having to unzip them. The optimized files, without any quality loss, are then much smaller, safer and ideal for sharing. Mailboxes, servers and networks are relieved and loading time is accelerated.

The website offers two flavors of the Freee version. The quick trial offers 5 free optimizations and the Comprehensive trial, which requires registration, gives away 12 optimizations. So after those free trials, your only next choice is to buy the software.

So, my next assignment would be to hunt for a really-free kind of this useful stuff.

The Slip - Nine Inch Nails' New Album Available for free download

Apparently, there's a business model in giving away free music. NIN's newest album, The Slip, as well as the previous one called The Ghost I-IV are available for free at the band's website nin.com. You can even choose the file types. The physical version of The Slip will not be available until July, and based on the band's previous experience, the album will sell even if it's freely available on the internets. I hope more bands will follow Trent Reznor's example.

Viewing Subtitles on VLC Media Player

The last two divx flicks I watched - 10,000 B.C. and Lust, Caution - needs subtitles. The people in 10,000 B.C speaks good english but some speaking parts uses unknown languages. Lust, Caution, directed by Ang Lee is in Chinese. Torrents of foreign language films are often bundled with an .srt file which is the file for the subtitle. To be sure if a torrent comes with a subtitle, you should look at the file name. There's a code thing going on in the torrents world. If there's something like [sub] somewhere in the torrent's filename, then a subtitle is included, either on the film itself or as a separate .srt file. If there's no subtitle file included, never worry. there are lots of websites offering free subtitles for downloaded movies. Try here for some samples.

And since i'm a VLC fan, here's how to make the subs appear on the video:

1. Open VLC media player.
2. Open the divx movie.
3. Click on Settings....then Preferences.
4. Click on the small arrow button before the Video option to expand the video settings.
5. Click on Subtitles/OSD
6. Click on browse next to the Use subtitle file text box.
7. Browse and select the .srt file of the movie you are watching.
8. Click OK.

That's it. The subtitle should appear after a few seconds. And while you're into foreign language viewing mode, try these titles: The Orphanage, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Pan's Labyrinth. Happy viewing and reading!

Sine + Wikipedia = my new habit

I've just noticed that every time I finish watching a movie (mostly on an old laptop), I immediately check out the film's wikipedia page. Sometimes I even check the film on wikipedia first before watching it but mostly it's movie first, wikipedia second. I prefer the wiki than the imdb site. The reason why I do it is I want to know more about the story behind the film - how it was made, how it fared with the critics - and to learn more trivia. I'm a sucker for the-making-of thingy. Here are the last two flicks that I watched:

The Golden Compass. A fantasy film set in a parallel universe where people's soul in the form of animals (called "daemons") live outside their body. The battle of the two talking polar bears strikes me as funny. What i learned from wikipedia: This film almost bombed in the US and caused a restructuring in New Line Cinema's organizational chart.

This film lives in the same neighborhood as Narnia. I think this would be my last serving of films with talking animals for the year.

10,000 BC. It's like Apocalypto with mammoths, saber-tooth tigers and big chickens. What i learned from wikipedia: Two companies recreated prehistoric animals. To cut time (it was taking sixteen hours to render a single frame) 50% of the CGI models' fur was removed, as "it turned out half the fur looked the same" to the director.