WTF Wicko!

Have you ever wondered what the point of traveling is?  Me too.  But I thought it out and think I have it all figured out.  Rather than just saying what I think, I figured I would bullet things out.  

• Get away from what you know, as life.
• To see new places that you might not have seen before.
• You enjoy planes?
• Local people are out to get you, in real life.
• You want to see porn, but you don’t want to be seen, seeing porn.
• You have an ‘out of town’ persona, so you’re cooler out of town rather than in town.
• Tobacco is good, when the significant other isn’t.
• Dale Hansen makes you naseaus.  
• Being cool means you’re not really all that cool.
• It seems like if you weren’t drunk, you’d be more in control of life as you know it?
• If you’re married, your wife understands shit.
• Shadows only exist if you’re scared.
• Sex toys aren’t quite as cool as Ron Jeremy said they were.
• That previous joke didn’t get any laughs.

If you live on the Gulf Coast or the East Coast, you probably view a Hurricane as frightening. Most other people view them more on the amazing side of things.

Hurricane Storm

It’s hard to find many places in the world where you aren’t threatened by some sort of natural disaster. Here in middle America, we have tornado’s to deal with during the spring time. West coast has to deal with earthquakes, wildfires and big storms rolling in during the winter. I don’t think much is more frightening than a big hurricane headed your way.

Think of a tornado and how destructive it can be. An extremely large tornado can be up to a mile in diameter. Now think of a hurricane and the fact a small one is HUNDREDS of miles in diameter. In a bad spring full of storms in the midwest, the biggest killer is the floods that come with the storms. A hurricane is not only a massive flood producing storm, but it basically picks up the ocean and pushes it up into the coastal cities destroying most everything in it’s path. It’s almost like a slow tsunami pouring into the coast.

I think it proves that humans aren’t really in control of the Earth.

Eyewall

Yo Pingsta, Ryze up. I Tagged a Consumating Friendster. Hi5 Zude! imeem, she did Yelp as I LinkedIn to her Facebook. But you Knol what? That Twitter pulled a Stickam in MySpace and I became Fubar. I had to either Flickr Orkut out and Biip her Badoo.

Sincerely,
Jaiku Ning Vox

More than likely, you’ve seen someone wearing a shirt, hat or something that says “I (heart) NYC”.  I used to roll my eyes thinking most people wear it because everyone else does, plus I’m a huge Dallas Cowboys fan and hate the Giants.  It wasn’t until a few years ago when I took my first trip to NYC with a few friends for a long weekend that I realized the greatness of the city that never sleeps.  Although I would still never wear one of those shirts, I think it’s safe to say that I love NYC.  WTF did I just say?

In all seriousness, if you have never visited The Big Apple and you are one that likes to try new places, do yourself a favor and put it in your schedule.  There is no way you could do everything in a long weekend trip, but in the past 4-5 years I’ve gone, I think I might have only done a few ‘tourist-type’ activities.  The city is so alive and non-stop it’s like you’re in a complete different country.  The scenery is so great:

You can see more great NYC photos over at Flickr.  It is amazing to me, coming from Dallas, TX where everything is flat and spread out, how the city is so big but in such a small area.  The mass transit is so different than where I live and the fact you don’t need a car is mind blowing.

A few of my favorite things from NYC would be:

• Curbside Gyro’s
• Hidden neighborhood bars
• Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge

A few things that aren’t so great:

• Extremely expensive
• Too many people

I’ve been making the trip around October the past 4 years with some friends.  We usually make it happen on the tail end of one of our trade shows for work, which we have one lined up for this coming October and I can’t wait.  NYC absolutely kicks ass!

If you are reading this page, you more than likely have purchased a copy of Tunebite and you’re running into a few issues or questions that you can’t seem to find the answers to. Hopefully I can answer some of the questions you have because I had to learn the hard way.

I recently bought the Radiohead “From the Basement” video album. It is 10 videos of Radiohead performing songs from their recent release, “In Rainbows”. If you are a Radiohead fan, do yourself a favor and look into the music and their videos. Anyhow, back to the point of this post, Tunebite.

The reason I bought Tunebite is because I wanted to take these iTunes videos, remove the DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection, then burn the videos to a playable DVD for use in my DVD player hooked up to my TV. iTunes likes to throw this DRM protection on all music and video files you buy from them to thwart any type of theft. Lucky for us, Tunebite is the program we need to make the media we buy a bit more user friendly .

Now you have a copy of Tunebite and you are ready to rip the DRM off. There are a few things I came across that I was unable to find any type of support on, so I figured I’d post my ‘trial by fire’ experience and hopefully it will help a few people.

• If burning videos, Tunebite will play the video inside the iTunes video player. In my situation, it placed the video in the top left hand corner of my screen and began recording. What I did not know was if you move anything over the top of the video which is being burned, whatever appears on top of the video will also appear in the ripped copy that you are creating. See, it basically records a specific region of your video display so if you put an open window or your mouse cursor in the region where it is recording, that will become part of your recording. My suggestion would be to start the ripping and leave your computer alone. Once it’s done, do what you need to do, but during the recording, go in the other room and leave your computer alone.
• Another thing that took me 2 days of back to back to back to back attempts of recording was the syncing of audio to video during recording. No matter what combination of settings I tried in Tunebite, the audio and video were not syncronizing properly. Usually the voice was a split second behind the video and it made me think the ripped copy was going to be way off.

  Quite the contrary. I finally decided to let the recording finish to see what it looked like once it was completed. Much to my surprise, even though while recording the video / audio was way off, the final ripped copy was spot on. It was at that time that I realized I don’t need to pay attention to what I’m seeing and hearing, I just need to let it finish and see how the ripped copy turns out. Probably the best bet is to start the ripping/recording, turn the volume all the way down or mute it and then walk away until it is finished. Once finished, check the file to make sure it is exactly what you needed.

• What audio and video setting should I use? There are so many different options on each audio and video, I have no idea which one to pick. Look at it this way, the higher selection you pick of each option, the better the quality should be.

  Now I must let you know the higher quality doesn’t really mean a hill of beans. If your computer is remotely slow, then the high quality isn’t really all that effective so consider doing the bare minimum. It speeds the process up and produces a web friendly file but still enough quality to play on a DVD or CD.

  In my situation, I used the audio setting of MP3 (128 kbps) and the video setting of MPEG4 (VBR Q98). The video and audio quality was perfect to play on my DVD player and stretch out to the size of my tv without distorting the picture or audio.

These 3 things were pretty important while I was trying to learn the software. I visited their support section but was unable to locate the answers I needed. Hopefully this post will help at least a few people to make it worth the time spent to type it all out.

If you have other questions or just want to let us know it helped, let me know below.

I’ve been using a Firefox plugin for a little while called Scribefire. It sits inside of your Firefox browser and when you are visiting a page that you feel is blog worthy, rather than starting up another application, downloading the files, uploading the files and logging into all other blog admin panels necessary to make the change, Scribefire does all of this for you!

I’ve been using it for a while and it wasn’t until I heard Patrick Gavin from TLA was behind it did I really get interested. Patrick has a great mind for business and because of this, I have an even stronger feeling that his new pet “Scribefire with QuickAds” is going to be a huge success.

The past year or so, about the time the 125 x 125 banner space jumped into the market as the hot new banner ad for blogs, I quickly noticed there was something missing out there that involved the banner ads and the bloggers. We have our PPC networks (Adsense, Yahoo, Adbrite), In-Content PPC networks (LinkWords, Kontera, Intellitxt), Text Link Ad Networks (LinkWorth, Text-Link-Ads, LinkExperts), Paid Blog Reviews (LinkPost, Reviewme, and Pay Per Post) and so on, but none of these new networks really tailored to the banner ad industry. I felt all of these competing services should be truncated to a simple process for the blogger so they can get the best bang for their buck with the least amount of work involved. In other words, let the networks work for YOU, the blogger. It would appear, Mr. Gavin and his crew have come up with this exact solution. I’m quite sure them boys have quite a vision on where they plan to take this thing. I’m also excited to try it out and see if it can monetize a couple blogs I author.

Speaking of their new system, it’s called QuickAds. QuickAds is an add-on to your existing Scribefire plugin. It has an extra button on the far left that shows as a $ sign. Go through and setup your blogs, then once they’re setup, you start adding ‘ad units’ to the part of the page you want them to appear. Now I haven’t personally reached that point yet, I’m waiting for a beta login from Mr. Gavin.

The great part of this from a bloggers stance is you don’t have to dig around and find the best ad network that makes you the most money. Scribefire has a unique scientific calculator that sits in Patrick’s office where he can do shorthand on the calculator to determine which ads will pay the highest per impression or click. In short, you sign up, plug in the ad units you want, save the look, and then Scribefire and P.Gavin’s scientific calculator does all the rest.

Honestly, I think it’s the best ad product to come out since LinkWorth released our array of unique linking products. If you are not using Scribefire yet, go signup and if they ask how you found them, tell them that “Doug Heil” sent you.

If you’ve had HBO at one time or another, you’ve probably enjoyed their little reality show called “Taxicab Confessions”.  The show is such a great watch.  Most reality shows today do their best to get the reality stars intoxicated and candid so it comes across as ‘great TV’ to watch.  With Taxicab Confessions, specific cabs roll around different cities and roll tape.  If it’s good and the waiver is signed at the end, instant ‘great TV’ moment!

A little example of the one I’m watching right now, the female driver picks up this punk rocker lookin’ dude with this punk rocker lookin’ chic.  They are on their way to hook up for the first time.  The catch to their story is the girl was out with her gay guy friend who is in love with the punk rocker dude.  The punk rocker dude was with his gay girl friend who is in love with the punk rocker girl.  I guess they play gay with their friends, but they’re really interested in each other and are on the way to knock it out.  During the cab ride his hands are all over her ‘areas’ and then she pulls out something of his and does a little shining.  Just shocking while in a cab and the cabbie is adjusting her mirror to watch!

The best part of the show is at the end where they roll the clips of the cabbie explaining how they have been filmed.  You can see them literally try to rewind everything they had just said or done.  My example couple mentioned above just simply told the cabbie chic they wanted to F*$K her!!

An interesting sidebar is that earlier this year we went to SXSW Interactive trade show in Austin.  One night we were out on 5th street at a party and once we were ready to head back to the hotel, we flag down a cab and all 4 of us pile in the back seat because the cabbie mysteriously had all of his clothes in the front passenger seat.  He was driving around in this white tank wife beater, black meshed driving gloves where the fingertips were cut out and weird jean shorts.  He also had this really greasy, slicked back hair and wore these huge black rimmed glasses on.

The cabbie was CRAZY!  He was speeding all over the place throwing us about, almost getting into accidents, when all the sudden I look up after thinking of Taxicab Confessions and what do I see on the roof of the car?  Pen sized video cameras!!!  One on each side.  Then two in the front for the front seat passengers.  I instantly call the guy out on it and he says, “They’re there to see if I kill you.”  :|  A silence fell upon the car as he sped around the corner.  He eventually discounted his comment as a joke and then he went flying through our hotel parking lot and coming to a screeching halt.

The girls with us get out and run away while I was fascinated with the guy and wanted to keep hanging out with him.  Probably due to a few drinks and the thought I might be on HBO!  We traded a few fun comments, then as on cue, cranked up his radio with Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian”:

You’re motoring
What’s your price for flight,
And finding Mister Right?
You’ll be all right tonight

Babe, you know you’re growing up so fast
And momma’s worrying that you won’t last to say
Let’s play…

and he drove off into the dark Austin night.  I still have no idea if they were filming for the festival, but we never signed a waiver or was told we were being taped.  Either me bringing it up killed the deal, we were not interested enough or they really were just there to see if he killed us.

So the moral of the story is, if you get in a cab and are inhibited in any way, look for cameras the size of pens on the roof.  Especially if you’re in a big city like NYC, Vegas or Los Angeles.

WTF!

My previous post was about a new cd release from Coldplay, one of my favorite bands. At this particular point in my life, I think it is safe to say that my top dawg band of all time is Radiohead. Let me digress back to when I first became aware of this new and upcoming band called Radiohead.

Way back in 1993 I had moved up to a college town where people called University of North Texas, “school”. I guess people learned stuff there, but I learned everything a person shouldn’t have learned in college. Anyhow, I’ll save this for another post. During my time of blowing financial aid, I was really getting into local music from Denton, TX. Bands like The Nixons, The Toadies, Radish (Ben Kweller’s old band) to name a few, then other national acts coming through Dallas like Our Lady Peace, Nirvana and Pearl Jam kept my music wiener on high alert. Then one day I heard a song called “Creep” from a band I had not heard of called Radiohead. The song kind of tailed on the grunge sound, but the singer had this harmony to his voice unlike the others. Ripcord was another favorite on their release called ‘Pablo Honey’.

Then the album that thrust them into the great band status hit in 1995, “The Bends”. Wow, where do I start with this one? How about I just list all the tracks:

1. Planet Telex
2. The Bends
3. High and Dry
4. Fake Plastic Trees
5. Bones
6. Nice Dream
7. Just
8. My Iron Lung
9. Bulletproof… I Wish I Was
10. Black Star
11. Sulk
12. Street Spirit (fade out)

All of these songs have their greatness.  But most importantly, this album started the change in Radioheads direction of music.  While other bands were headed in a similar path, Radiohead became experimental and went off into a world of their own with the releases of “OK Computer”, “KID A”, “Amnesiac” and “Hail to the Thief”.   All of these were very far off the beaten path, but heading right down the path that is “Radiohead”.

Towards the end of 2007, Radiohead announced they were releasing their new album called “In Rainbows” to the public for a ‘you name the price’ type of thing.  Most people I know paid less than 5 cents for it.  I paid zero for it.  Who would have thought a year later I want to spend more money on Radiohead to make up for my free copy of ‘In Rainbows’.  I’ve gone to their concert and brought 11 great friends with probably the best seats I’ve ever had for a cool concert. I’ve paid crazy money for some weak ass t-shirts for sale at the show and I’ve also paid for new bonus tracks released to iTunes users. Either way, I’ve put pleny of money back in their pockets for such a superb album.

One of the newest Radiohead purchases is called ‘In Rainbows - From the Basement‘.  I downloaded it from iTunes tonight.  It features 10 video tracks of Radiohead performing the In Rainbows album From The Basement. It is just like being at the concert, except it’s just you and them.

The music on this album is some of the best Radiohead has ever put out and I’m just glad I gave them another try after the previous oddity albums. It’s been almost a year since I first downloaded the music and I still get very excited to hear the tracks again and again.

If you are good with iTunes protected files and want to check out In Rainbows From the Basement, then take a peak over here and download. No password will be given, so you can find the way to convert .mp4 to .avi on your own.

Well, I have to state my allegiance to one of the coolest bands to ever grace the known music industry. You might have your Radiohead, whom is one of my all time top favorite bands, or you might have The Muse, who is also one of my all time top favorite bands. But right in the middle of these is a band I hold true and dear to my musical heart. Why? I’m not sure. I’m really big on bands or music that inflicts musical moody trauma on my heart. I know, I know, throwing the word “heart” in my description probably puts me in the ‘gay world’ for some of you douche bags, but the fact of the matter is, Coldplay is one of the most heartfelt bands out today.

At one time it was U2. Next it was Radiohead. Then it was U2 again. Then Radiohead again. Next Coldplay jumped into the mix. Then Radiohead. Then Coldplay. And Coldplay continued on their amazing trail of expectations for their new album, Viva la Vida.

For the new album, Coldplay moved everyone into a house in London where the band mates were able to re-kindle the flames between one another. The producer, can’t remember who he’s produced, but he said “you guys need to get close to one another” and they did. The new Viva la Vida album is a really unique album compared to the rest of what they’ve put out. While it is a little out there compared to most of their work, you can tell the band is a single unit and they are as tight as they’ve ever been. Maybe it’s due to Chris seeing Johnny’s draws on a daily basis.

One song called “Yes” is a high energy song that is very familiar to the 80’s - 90’s Dinosaur Jr. sound I completely dug back in the day. There’s really nothing to complain about this song as it sets me back many years to a happy, well, extremely happy time in my life.

The obvious tracks I tried to leave out because most of us have already heard the greatness of Coldplay. I have to admit, I’m very skeptical of this new album, but I will give it a fair shake. I think the people that are on the fence with Coldplay..ie, music snobs, music critics and so on, will probably give this album a huge thumbs down. I like it because I like the band, but it’s definitely not one of my favorites. At least not yet.

Go Coldplay and Go Fishing!

****UPDATE****
After reading through this, I promise I’m not as much of a douche as I sound like. HA! I had a drink or two.
**************