Native Instruments Maschine Pad Madness

Recently I’ve been pretty interested in NI’s Maschine products… these Youtube videos aren’t helping. Not like I could ever do some of the things these guys are doing…

Here’s Justin Aswell from Mr Invisible:

And here’s David “Fingers” Haynes – a local from Stone Mountain, GA:

Bobby Talks About BitTorrent, and Back Again

So life has been pretty hectic and crazy recently. It doesn’t look like it’s about to change, however I have recently been thinking about the need to revive my little blog. I am still playing with the band, however I am also starting graduate-level studies, so hopefully my classes will bring some new perspectives to my writing.

In the meantime I wanted to leave you with a link to a cool little article I found about BitTorrent. It’s a write-up from Bobby Owsinski’s Music 3.0 blog about another article on the state of BitTorrent and what it means to music today. I found it interesting because the author of the original article clearly does not thoroughly understand the technology that they wrote about, making for some interesting conclusions… I believe the main reason for this confusion is a failure to distinguish between BitTorrent the company or the software client, and BitTorrent, the protocol. Also it’s interesting that BitTorrent stats are invariably interpreted from a sort of pessimist perspective – if music downloads are up, people say it’s bad because the industry isn’t cashing in on them (which is actually NOT necessarily true and reflects confusion about what BitTorrent is and how it works), and if music downloads are down, it’s bad for the industry because “music isn’t worth pirating anymore.” Isn’t it also possible that lower music download numbers through BT could mean that the industry has figured more and better ways to monetize their content?

By the way, if you’re looking for a good BT client, look no further than uTorrent, preferred by geeks everywhere.

Thanks for reading. I’m glad to have you back.

Newspile: Watch Out For Robo-Stalker

• Japanese scientists have developed a robot with emotions and the ability to learn and adapt.  Unfortunately it’s turned into a stalker.  This is both hilarious and totally creepy at the same time.
• A lot of momentum is growing behind the idea that Yelp operates using a business model similar to la Cosa Nostra.  The Consumerist reports – and readers report on disappearing reviews in the comments.
• Del is insane and makes crazy machines out of wood.

Some Cool Eye Candy…

…and the girl singing in the video is kinda cute, too.  It took me a few seconds of viewing to realize that it was sped up and not just done by a casual Mac user.

Apparently, it took a while to put together.

Hooray for Free Stuff!

And this is actually a really cool freebie. Shortcircuit is one of Vember Audio’s kickass software samplers, and it has recently been set free. I downloaded it yesterday and I’m currently hard at work trying to make it do my evil bidding… I attribute most of my issues with it to user incompetence.

I’ve yet to record something with this wonderful new toy that I’ve acquired, but hopefully there’s something on the way.

[Link via CreateDigitalMusic]