Lord Nikon here again with something quite interesting, i got to interview a very interesting person. An audio engineer by the name of Drew Mazurek. He happens to be my instructor at The Sheffield Institute for the Recording Arts. He has worked with Linkin Park, G.W.A.R., Nothing Face and Hell Yeah . So here’s the brain picking i got to do.
1. What has been your favorite project to work on?
It’s hard to pick a favorite. I’ve been fortunate to work on projects that looking back have ended up being somewhat influential, at least in their genre.
The people of this generation are completly different from the generation 20 years ago. When IBM ,Apple, and other companies were getting started, nobody ever thought that people would be using technology to become closer to God. My have the times changed as people are addicted to email, internet, and fast pace living. The more I watch the Matrix, the more I question its possibliltes. That is also partly becasue Im a nerd too
So what do you do when you have Blackberries, Iphones, or Windows?How do you have time to read your Bible, Quran , or Torah? You download it. Thats right , even these busy people have been going with the flow of technology to manage . Today we are gonna talk about the Apples Iphone and how it keeps people connected to their religion. This is a great topic and I hope to get some good comments on this one. Some may say its taboo to bring technology and religion in one topic. I say its just going with the times. As people run around in a ratrace, software programs are adjusting to these busy lifestyles.
Lets kick it off for all the Christians out there. So you wanna get a couple of daily scriptures in before your work day . The ESV Scripture widget gives you access to the Old Testament and New Testament. Its a nice way to get quick and easy scriptures at your hip .Now for the more intense Bible Reader IBibleSpace is a advanced application thats satisfies most of your Christianity reading needs. Is has the entire standard english version of the Bible. You have your own personal notebook to highlight your favorite verses, Bible keyword search, and access to daily Podcast. You can’t go wrong with this thing. Its free and works on every version of Iphone.
The whole motivation for this blog started when I went and saw one of my friends at work. When I came in at lunch time ,I heard his iphone go off and I heard the prayerdhuhr. This made me relies that technology is playing a bigger role in religion these days. So far all my Muslim brothers and sisters we have several ways to keep track of time for Salat. This first widget is called Prayer Times .It allows you to get current prayer times for any location and very easy access. Simply enter your locations and Prayer Times calculates Islamic prayer time for Fajr,Shuruq,Dhuhr,Maghrib, and Isha. The company is Batoul Apps , and they are geniuses for this one.
Moving to the second helpfully widget for the Islamic faith is called IQuran. By the same makers of IPray , they have released a new version that will recite the Quran back to you. Holy smokes ,this is amazing! Its quite simple to use . The program is divided into 3 sections which are : Browse , Read/Listen , and Bookmark. If you download the program without sound its around 35 Megabytes and with sound its about 500-600 Megabytes. I found another blogger out there who specializes in Islamic Iphone Apps so click here to visit his page at http://iphoneislam.com/en/. Also to get a free copy click here.
Now for all of our Kosher friends we have a widget that will keep you on track for Jewish Shabbat and special dates. Its called the Hebcal Widget 1.0. A brief description is that it has Candle-lighting times for holidays and Shabbat. Also it gives you upcoming fast days and weekly Torah readings (sedrot). Also allows you to localize your location and choose your time for observing Havdalah.
Let me start with 5 easy ways how to start blogging. But first of all you should ask yourself why I’m doing this? 1. The blog topic should be your passion, or area of your expertise. You should be able to talk about it for hours.
2. You should be consistent, and write your blog for fun. It helps when you have nothing to write about
3. You can find a lot of friends, employers, clients, and your even a love by letting the world know who you are!
So the GTA IV Free Giveaway Contest was a fun success. The winner is Michael G. from Florida. Congratulations man , you just saved $60.00 and got one of the best games of the year. After testing GTA out for two days , we are highly impressed with the overall game play. The story line is great and the action keeps the GTA tradition alive. Also, the multiplayer is just sick ! Overall the nerds give it a 10 out 10 to add to your gaming collection.
So the success of the contest is due to all you viewers,gamers,bloggers, etc. Thanks a lot and we cannot do this without you . Youtube was a success bringing in as of right now 1:21 EST time combined views of 6,000 hits for our video blog entries. With direct traffic links to our website increased our overall views for the website. Here is some Google Analytic numbers for you tracking the weekend traffic :
Friday, April 25, 2008 - 6.23% (157)
Saturday , April 26, 2008 - 4.29% (108)
Sunday, April 27, 2008 - 4.01% (101)
Monday, April 28, 2008 - 10.7% (272)
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 - 18.8% (475)
Not to bad for first time bloggers, and to be running for one month.
To be honest Im gonna have to give all the credit to this growth to Darren down at www.problogger.net . We have been following his instructions on how to promote and create a successful blog as we discussed in our previous post. Our test proves this man is right, creating a contest will draw people in to get your blogs name out there . Thanks Darren, your the man. We had great time reviewing the game and made some cool friends on the way. Thanks for your views , we love you. Dekon
Hey guys, Lord Nikon here. It was recently brought to my attention that it may be interesting for others to get an idea for how i write music, being that a lot of people are in the dark about all the awesome possibilities that you have with just a computer. But I think I’ll take it a bit further and get very in-depth in what will be a multi parter. So I will start off with some of the basics(terminology, etc.) basically just give you a proper intro. If there are any questions please post them in the comments section and i will reply promptly.
Ok, so ….. i think ill begin a the most logical starting point. Which is the waveform …. calm down, No crazy science or math here. Just some basics to help you understand what certain knobs and sliders will do for you. Trust me i hate math too. I will explain the basics of a waveform to you today and why and how they can effect you. At best you will come away from this with an epiphany, at worst you will understand you car’s EQ a little better.
So, the waveform…..for the explanations i will use the most simple form of an audio waveform a sine wave. As you can see there are some interesting attributes to this image. You can tell that there are changes in amplitude happening over time in which certain degrees are being marked. Now for the explanations…. the amplitude when related to audio typically means volume, Pretty cut and dry. The degree markers are markers plots in the phase of that wavelength. Now on to what this means for you. There are things that can happen with phase relationships that are as follows:
Phase cancellation: As you can see by the pictures below the two waveforms are 180 degrees out of phase. Now if you had these two waveforms up in a DAW(Digital Audio Workstation) of any kind and they were out of phase like this, They would make no sound at all.Whats happening is essentially a big tug of war. As the first sine wave tries to go up the other tries to go down and since they are absolutely symmetrical it just becomes essentially no waveform, a flat line, which means no amplitude = volume. Pretty weird i know. But being that every sound you hear is not this simple and not symmetrical this is a rare thing to achieve. But definatly a good thing to understand.
Phase reinforcement: What happens here is when they are essentially in-sync. Peaking at the same times and dipping at the same time. This the opposite of what happens above and so is the result. Twice the amplitude = volume. In realistic situations this can cause certain parts of a sound to kind of JUMP OUT AT YOU . Being that 99.99% of natural waveforms will not be this symetrical, You can still get the effects mentioned above but most of the time they will be spotty. The same is true with phase cancellation, It will tend to make things sound thin. This is typically called phase shift because its not happening all the time just certain parts of the waveform shifted to cause alterations in your sound. Which can some times be what your looking for. If you know what a flanger or phaser are this is the method by which that effect is created. Doubling the source sound and the controlling how the phase shifting is affecting it .
I can see that you are wondering “well what about the space/time part?” That is actually the biggest thing for today. As you can see there are 2 complete waveforms happening in the image above. If that happened over 1 second of time that would be a 2 Hz waveform.the measurment of hertz is based on frequency……. how frequently a complete waveform happens in a second. its really that simple. Humans would not be able to hear this due to the fact that we can only hear from 20Hz to 20,000Hz (20kHz) at best. I mean only babies can hear that. now this relates to pitch in a number of ways but ill keep it simple unless i get a request to go more in depth but basically the higher the frequency the higher the pitch. Now maybe that cleared up a little bit of what you see when you look at an EQ in your car or even in your DAW. I am thinking about going more in-depth with the relationship of frequency to pitch but ill let you guys tell me what you want in the comments since i was just trying to keep this simple and to the point.
So what happens to your cell phone once you get that new upgrade or new service plan? Well most of us retire to the hall of fame or even pass it on to someone in our family who doesn’t need it. I mean does $50.00 dollars sound better than $100.00 dollars? Well there are several different ways you can go about getting some money back from your ” old faithful” . Here at omynerds we have 4 ways for you to get a return back on that once $125.00 cell phone. Some are easier than others, but some can be rewarding as well. So listen here and learn.
The first way is the most common way. We all know this online auction from its catchy commercials. Thats right eBay ,amazon,etc. With these auction websites , you pretty much get top dollar for your product. Now there is always the shipping , fees, and dues but normally you get a good return. Also you could run across a couple scammers but generally eBay is kosher.
The second way is to have a big heart. Thats right , donate it to a charity. There are tons of organizations who take old cell phones to recycle , reuse, or donate phones to people who are in need. One of the bigger organizations is www.phones4charity.org. and www.charitablerecycling.com. Both are reliable charities and they will make sure your “old faithful” gets put to its best afterlife. So where is the money you ask? Well in the tax write-offs of course. So there are about 800 million retired cell phones just laying around, don’t you think your business could use the write-off? $100.00 x 5 phones = $500.00 dollars to right off. Don’t you know that even a free Nokia base model is still worth about $70.00 when you recycle.
For all you Blackberry fans this one is for you. Blackberry has a thing called the Trade up Program. It’s quite simple and has a 4 step process.
1. Complete online quote- They take almost every brand of cell phone and rank them based off of excellent, good, poor scale. You gotta be honest to
appraise for the proper amount .
2. Purchase your Blackberry smartphone. Go out buy your phone from any
carrier and save receipt.
3.Return your old cell phone and wireless device. You will send back your
proof of purchase as well.
4.Recieve your check
Here is the website for my details http://blackberry.tradeups.com . This is a
great program because they pay out pretty good versus most trade in programs.
Just to start off , this is a picture of me working ultra mega hard late night with a red bull . So grab yourself one too.Alright , so Im getting a little pissed of these days. We have been open for buisness for about 1 month or 2 weeks . I have still not gotten the traffic I demand. We were hoping the GTA Giveway and review would push some traffic but it has not done what its supposed to . I have posted videos everywhere, we got Lord Nikon commenting on others blogs, and I am aslo paying for advertising on facebook. What the hell am I supposed to do next. As you see Im pretty ticked and frustrated. So Woooosaaaaaaaaaaaaa .
Now as you see , were are trying to make a little earnings off the website. We have applied new banners on the side to some Affiliate companies out there. One of my favorties is the www.pepperjamnetwork.com. They make it so easy for you to pick what company to advertise and their banners kick ass! Also we are using the Myblog banner to see who has stopped by. It really makes your website stand out like the pro’s. You can register there for free on this link and to join our community . Also for all you first time bloggers another advertisement company we suggest is bidvertiser. There one of our advertisements on the side that we are in referral program with. This is a way to make 25.00 bucks by just referring people to a service that will do your blog some justice.
So all in all our little blog website is having a hard time getting the traffic but for the most part , it is a slow progression. If you look back to at where we started in the previous post , you can see the steps we are following. Hey guys don’t forget to subscribe and also don’t forget to put some comments. WE NEED FREAKING HELP , OR ANY ADVICE !!!!!!!!!Also don’t forget our lovely GTA IV FREE GIVEAWAY, and get a chance to get a free copy of GTA IV by just pushing one button. This is Dekon , Peace
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