Dropbox it like it's hot

So I am trying out this app called dropbox that could be pretty sweet. It basically creates a 2gb free folder for you on their server that you can access anywhere. That alone isn't the greatest part, when you install dropbox to your computer(s), it adds a synchronized folder to it. I just installed it on my desktop and put my files for my bioinformatic final in the dropbox and in theory I can goto school, grab the files and work on them, come back here and have them be the current version. It's kinda like a svn repository for whatever you want.
Try it out yourself: https://www.getdropbox.com/

Give this album your ear: week three

The Tallest Man on Earth - Shallow Graves

This guy is awesome, and you probably haven't heard of him. I don't want to explain everthing so here's a basic summary:

I saw him open for bon iver, and it was a great show. His voice is awesome. His guitar playing is amazing because it is pretty perfect and seems random at the same time. He is folk.

Here he is:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=2bada3e30b9de9fd61d4646c62b381cbe04e75f6e8ebb871

TGIF! Totally Getting It Free!

I have an awesome dilemma. It's not awesome in the sense that I enjoy it or that it will be the easiest choice, but it is the first time this decision had to be made for me. I need to choose between using an open source sound editor or using a pirated copy of one that is very not free. In leu of having a computer without Ubuntu studio and wanting to not use UbuStu again because I think there are more powerful linux distributions out there for sound editing. And so instead of picking a new distro I downloaded the next thing that I have used the most, Ableton Live!. When I bought my m-audio firewire solo to record my guitar, it came with a free demo version of Live! and I thoroughly enjoyed using it. It lets me do a lot of things, from create drum beats to adding guitar effects. The free version was limited to only a few effects running at once, which was annoying and so after I first got UbuStu I never went back. Colin and I used the open source program Ardour for the very first Hello Blacksmith recordings and it wasn't the greatest and didn't have as many features, it was open source.
Open source is something I support very strongly, it gives users the power to add the functionality that they want, ever improving the program. And as long as each version is maintained, it can result in very powerful tools, like GIMP, which has almost all the functionality as Adobe Photoshop. Granted, GIMP is a lot less user friendly and its window management still makes me almost smash things in anger, it works. Ardour has a lot of features that are great and recording and editing are very easy to do. Its main weak points are that it is all simplistic, you can do the basic editing functions, cutting, moving, layering, and looping. It doesn't have very many manipulation tools and the ones it has are weak and don't change all too much.
From that summary of each alone I don't see why I wouldn't use the more powerful Live! for producing the upcoming Hello Blacksmith EP, right? Wrong. (Doesn't that wording just make you feel bad inside? Sorry, just a common way to say something, no harm against you) The price point of Live! is $400. But Martin, you support free information and so why don't you just steal the full version and use that? Well, I do have a full copy it, and using it is quite great. But, I cannot bring myself to use stolen property to create something that I will be selling for money. It is an issue I haven't encountered until now because I never sell anything I make in copyrighted applications. Having to think about the decision, it wasn't a hard choice at all to use open source programs instead of pirated ones. I knew the answer as soon as I asked myself the question, and I guess I could have said that in the first paragraph but there should be some point to reading this far.
So, just so you know, and I don't know if HBS will advertise this on the CDs or not, but we use only open source applications in the production of our music. The sound is edited in (as of right now) Ardour and the images are modified in GIMP. I hope that eases your conscious a little bit.

Waking up at noon (or: how I look so awesome)

I woke up after my class started at 9:15, and I slept till 12:30. It was kinda sad, but I needed it or something. I've stopped staying up for completley unreasonable amounts of time at night, thanks to last week. But one thing I stopped doing was eating well, or in general. Yesterday I ate two smaller meals, and that's it. I don't know why, but I just forget to eat, and I don't think that it is related to why I feel so tired or have not the most energy. But using last week as proof, I was much happier when I ate all my meals. It was so nice.

But I have a plan, at least for today. I'm going home after this class and making a couple sandwiches for my radio show and after that I will go home and eat and clean my room.

My room is a disater, just so you know. It's not exactly gross, just cluttered. And when I say cluttered, I mean half my bed is being used as a shelf. It feels strange, but comfortable sleeping next to a guitar, if you wanted to know.

You should...

Do this.

A collection of movies that I enjoy

So I was (actually, I am in the progress of) talking with lauren and meghan and we were (are) talking about favorite movies, and I was thinking about what my top 10 list would be. It would include a lot of movies, well, ten, but it would be varied. Like, here are some off the top of my head. Boondock saints, starship troopers, rounders, primer, naked gun series, brain donors, fight club, star wars, matrix, memento, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, garden state, monty python, and many, many more.

What I need is to rate all the movies I've ever seen. Same with music. And books too. Then I could have an actual top 10 list.

The growth on meghan's finger and how it hurts

I needed a blog topic to write about, well, I didn't need one, I just wanted one. And I went through my dilemma of "I can't write about subject because someone might read it and take it personally." I don't want to write something that singles one person out, or singles a group of people out for that matter. I just want to write. And what puts a halt to my writing is knowing that if I write, it will be about something that I don't want someone to see. Whether it is me being critical of an action, or just a commentary about an issue that people care about.
But n-e-ways, meghan said that i should write a blog about this thing on her finger, so that's what this was i guess.