Robot Rebellion Survival Tips

Some solid tips from How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion

1. A robot trying to find you will use thermal imaging based on the roughly 91-degree temperature of human skin, so smearing yourself in cool mud will confuse them.
2. If your robot “smart” house — one wired with video surveillance and computer gear — tries to trap you, chop your way out with an ax and don’t take your cell phone, because the house will track you with it.
3. If a two-legged android gives chase, seek out a body of water, as most robots will sink in water or mud and fall through ice.

New Look: Nemesis 0.5

The previous iteration of this layout was misbehaving in IE, and had been for some time, so I decided to give the whole thing a coat of fresh CSS. Codenamed Nemesis, I hope to package up this template and distribute it as a real Wordpress template, that is, as soon as I’m bored of it and I’m ready to put it in a box in the information super-alleyway for the homeless with the words “Free!” written jauntily on it, in just the same way one would discard ancient dog-eared magazines or last month’s iPod.

It still misbehaves slightly in IE, which I am going to say is on purpose, as a punishment.

RPO Traxx

Good tribal- and electro-house out on the Rick Pier O’Neil’s RPO Traxx family of labels: RPO Traxx, Garbage Recordings, Xperience Recordings and Vesta Recordings. DJ friendly pricing at €1 or USD$1.33.

Flock

Flock is awesome.

Beatport RSS Feeds 0.2

Update : New genres Minimal and Electro House have been added to Beatport Feeds, under headings Techno and House, respectively, which seemed like the thing to do.

Beatport RSS Feeds 0.1

Update: In addition to the genres available below, you can also get RSS feeds for labels here.

Totally Unofficial Beatport RSS Feeds are now available! I’ve been using it with NetVibes as my feed reader for a while, which works perfectly and it has a built in mp3 player, so you can listen to all the new tracks on one page. Here’s a action screenshot. You can also use the feeds in iTunes as a podcast and in Firefox as a Live Bookmark. Google Reader has problems though. Here’s a list of RSS readers for you to try out. If you use these feeds and encounter any issues or have any suggestions, please leave a comment.

The feeds are cached, so updates will normally show up every hour. The feeds are usually accurate to Beatport’s New Releases genre pages, but sometimes you can listen to tracks on the feeds that haven’t yet made it to the site.

Tip: Add ‘&type=m3u’ to the end of the URL to get a streaming playlist for your media player.

Feeds

P.S. To Beatport™: Don’t sue me!

Presslab Records

Presslab Records have recently opened their music store, with purchases via Paypal at the lower-than-Beatport price of USD$1.45, bless their souls. One drawback: Flash interface. But they do have their complete back catalog available, which is interesting. Most (good) House DJs will mainly play newer records. Unless its a really special record or really fits in the mix, most DJs don’t play older stuff, older than one or two years. Sometimes older people who used to buy, I dunno, Credence Clearwater Revival or something on vinyl come over to my house and see that I have vinyl. Naturally, they assume that it must be all old Bob Dylan records, so they dive right in, only to be terrified and confused that I have no records made before 2002. Sometimes they cry a little or curl up into a fetal position in the corner, which is understandable. When I encounter something new and different that isn’t mentioned on my favorite sitcoms, I do everything in my power to block it out of my mind.

Jokes aside, why do DJs have a bias towards new music? My theory is that its because of the economics of vinyl distribution. House is a very, very niche market. Few people listen to House, even fewer become DJs and buy records, so as a record label, you can’t afford to print extra copies of records that won’t be sold, and a record store can’t afford to keep quantities of records on the off chance that someone will come in and buy them. There’s also a limited pool of talent to draw from, and a DJ wants to differentiate himself from the crowd. Playing old stuff that the crowd has already heard is not going to do that.

The economics of internet distribution radically change all of these parameters. The cost of distribution lowers the barrier for new record labels to enter the market, and drives the cost of stocking older titles to nearly zero, so they will be more available. The costs of music production technology has fallen dramatically, causing a flood of new producers on the market competing with each other to drive the average cost of a track down. I’m hoping that the knowledge that your tracks will be available for years to come and the growing financial pressure to take advantage of that availability will conspire to cause producers to create music with more enduring value, and that that new future-orientation will carry over into the EDM culture at large.

Podcast: Forest Machines Chant And Let Go

I’ve been wanting to do a really chill progressive mix for a while. That’s what this is. I see from my logs that one person has added me to their iTunes podcast list. This one is for you, Anonymous from San Diego!

Download or Stream

Tracklist

1. Osamu M – Smoky Forest [Womb]
2. Santiago Nino – Arpeggia feat. Paleday [Pooky]
3. Micah Lukasewich – Terras (4mals Obscuras mix) [Segment]
4. Christian Cambas – Paramount [Audio Therapy]
5. Aldrin & Akien – Dig This [Distraekt]
6. Nikola Gala – Everything Is You [Stripped]
7. Chris Micali – Chant [Blueprint]
8. Alex Dolby – Obsessive Sound (Extended mix) [Mantra Vibes]
9. Space Safari – Machines Music (Chris Micali Remix) [Flow]
10. Kaan Duzarat – Organic Intellectual [Only]
11. Yunus Guvenen – Let Go [Bedrock]

Update: Traktor has some kind of crazy issue with Yunus Guvenen – Let Go, deciding it has some better ideas on how to mix that track. Redoing that portion of the mix doesn’t convince it otherwise, but moving the tracks around a bit does. Could it be because that track is an M4A? Anyway, its updated and less awful.

Interesting Lectures

Here’s a fascinating collection of lectures on society from Brian Eno, Jared Diamond, Ray Kurzweil among others. Listening to: James Carse – Religious War In Light of the Infinite Game.