Hobo Code

Days have been jam packed with rafting, hiking, programming, video editing, eating ice cream cones, and other good stuff. I've made some great changes to Hobo2.0Lifestyle.com to go along with the latest episode here in Jackson Hole.

For you web nerds out there, it's been a dive into php and the Google Map API to get it where it is now, but the results are great. Each episode now has a whole experience, not just the video. Now it's all on one page, a big map showing markers of where I've been on the trip with all my photos geotagged (pinpointed in the exact location they were taken) right on the map, and of course the video that pops up right on the same page. It took some figuring out to get it how I wanted it, but good times are rolling now.

So what's next? A couple more weeks in Jackson Hole, a visitor to look forward to, progress with MoBubble (another site I'm working on, details coming later next month), and some traveling ahead of me. I'm trying to get to Vegas in mid-late august, anyone think they can get me a ride? I'll be in Wyoming and Montana a bit, and I can always catch part of a ride east bound if it means landing in a spot where someone can head back west towards Vegas. In September I'm going to Sacramento. That's the story so far.

Fresh Music from Cyderobin

Who knew that Starbucks would be what motivated some progress on the music front? Their little contest (which I know nothing about) is what spurred the past week's recording sessions here at the apartment with Mark and Sean, aka Cyderobin.

I started mixing the 3 songs last night after we were done recording, and finished mixing and mastering them tonight. I just uploaded them and decided to redesign the cyderobin.com site Sean's been working on, adding a working music player so you can enjoy some good tunes. So go listen to the new music, you can download it too if you want to rock it out all over the place.

Bursting out the Bubble

The past week has really been a blast, good times on every front. Good people, good times, and plans for future good times have dominated my time. As I write this I'm working on a solid 36 hours without sleep and still not feeling too tired, there's just too much fun to be had.

I've spent some great times with old friends and new alike, and even doing things with old friends that I should've been doing more of a long time ago, like recording some songs with mark and sean. I'll post those as soon as I finish mixing them, in the meantime you can always check out the latest video of a recent jam session.

I got around the city throughout the week, and even got down to Coney Island for a day at the beach and to enjoy Nathan's hotdogs, god I love those. As much time as I've spent with friends hanging out or playing music, I've some how made a ton of progress on the website front. The Music Slice redesign looks awesome and slick, plus we've set a new launch date, June 14th. I haven't even posted that to the official Slice blog, so consider yourself privileged to that information.

I've also made significant improvements to the Hobo 2.0 website, making it run smoother and adding some new videos, blogs, and other good stuff. I'm also starting to get requests (demands?) from some friends to put them on my route once I set off on that great adventure.

Another semi-secret site I'm working on involving photos is also getting pretty close to being ready, I'll actually fill everyone in on that pretty soon, but it's really cool.

I uploaded a couple new photos to my flickr account, like me in the bubble above, and also just uploaded a video of me battling a 3 year old at the rubix cube, so enjoy those if you'd like. Until the next time, have fun.

The Hobo and a Few Slices of Music.

I've spent the past week living in weeks yet to come. My vision for Hobo 2.0 is becoming abundantly clear, and this summer it will become a reality.

I've set up the site, Hobo2.0Lifestyle.com, and it's just waiting to get filled with tales of my journey as I move through the world. It's become even more real as I now have a replacement room mate to take my place when I leave so Mark and Sean aren't left hanging, and an initial ride across the country to get it started.

As slow-going as Music Slice appears from the outside, it's actually moving fairly quickly and with blistering excitement. Music Slice and my new Hobo lifestyle will go hand-in-hand as I move through the world. My backpack will be just one room in the virtual Music Slice office, and how better to spread the word to musicians and fans then to show up all over the country?

Cyderobin, the band in which I play the drums for with Mark and Sean, will have to go on without me. I'll still be on the other end of wednesday night jam sessions watching on WatchWhatIDo.com, and I look forward to the days of coming in as a guest jammer, because after all, I'm not so much leaving New York as much as I'm going everywhere.

In fact, I intend to pick up some type of pocket instrument, the harmonica seems like a good choice, so perhaps with the help of Music Slice's technology I won't have to leave the band after all, just change instruments. There's still plenty of time before I set off on my journey, and tonight is a Wednesday jam session that I can still enjoy live and in person. Good times.

The Music Slice Playground

While the real Music Slice developers are plugging away at the really complicated code to get the site up and running, I decided to create a little playground for myself to put up some quick and easy ideas for the site in the meantime.

MyMusicSlice.net is where you'll find my playground. What's the first toy I'm sharing with you? An awesome music search that'll find your favorite artist or songs on YouTube and other video sites, shows, news, blogs, and even their myspace and other home pages. Enjoy.

Live jam session broadcast is now a weekly treat

Our jam session last Wednesday night was a huge success, and a ton of fun. People tuned in everywhere from California, to Chicago, and even our neighbor right downstairs (who quickly came up to enjoy it in person). If you missed it, you missed some killer surprise saxophone and even some wicked harmonica action. We've decided that we're going to make it a regular thing, every Wednesday at 8pm.

Of course, we broadcast live on WatchWhatIDo.com so anyone in the world can watch and listen, but we also invite any musicians to come jam, and anyone to come and enjoy it in person. There's not a whole lot of room, but we find ways to accommodate. Bringing beer is highly appreciated and guarantees a good seat.

We're also going to start recording the whole thing, and I'll edit down the video to a digestible length so you can enjoy the highlights if you couldn't tune in live.

Swimming in Code

I remember way back in middle school I got into programming with Chris Atkinson, wreaking all kinds of havoc. We even made a little program that would write out our compound interest homework for math, if you don't know what I'm talking about, compound interest is the longest and most boring kind of "show your work" math homework known to man.

Since those days I've dropped programming for the most part, only coming back to it once in a while in one form or another. Now I find that a lot of my ideas these days require the skill once again, only this time on the web. Some things require simple html or little scripts here and there which anyone can handle, but larger projects, like Music Slice, require much more.

Wanting to focus my attention on creativity and the necessary business side, I went to seek out programmers who loved programming when I started Music Slice. It's not too easy when you have no money to pay them, and have to find someone with enough faith in your idea to take ownership with you.

Music Slice is still my number one priority, but as more time goes on I can't help but have more ideas, ideas I want to test out right away. Enter Secret Project 2. Secret Project 2 is much smaller in scope than Music Slice, the definition of a side project, but it requires just enough programming talent to be beyond what I can do. If you think it's hard to find someone to get on board with you when you have a great idea like Music Slice, try finding someone to get on board with a tiny idea like this new one. Ouch.

I actually did find someone, they aren't as much help as I'd wanted, but help none the less. Either way, I've found myself trying to jump back into the sea of coding again these past couple days, bringing me back to those middle school days. It just seems a bit more confusing these days, as there's several languages you have to learn, and it's not always clear what languages those have to be. I think I've narrowed it down to PHP, XML, Javascript, and CSS... and hey, if you know all those and have a few free hours a day to spare, I have an idea for you.

Google 411 is here, regular "411" is Dead

Google just came out with this today, you can dial 1-800-GOOG-411 to get information about whatever place you're looking for, and they'll even connect you directly for free, or send you a text message with the info. Regular "411" calls usually cost money, but 411 is now a useless service, thanks to Google. Here's their page describing the new service, but there's really not too much to it, you just call.

Google Map of My Life

Google Maps just came out with a feature that lets you make your own map, allowing you to place markers, shapes, and lines anywhere in the world. With each marker you can attach pictures, videos, or just a word or two about it. I've started making a map of my life, including markers of places I've lived and that kinda thing.

Cool stuff, I'll have to make another map documenting my hobo 2.0 lifestyle once I get that going.

Phones with wii-like motion features

I've been hearing a little about this, and just saw another decent article about it on CNET - phones that have various features controlled by motion sensors, similar to that of a Wii controller.

Some of the more innovative ideas put into use include being able to scroll your web browser up/down and left/right by tilting the phone. That's just awesome. Another simple but great idea is a phone that slips into landscape mode automatically when you turn the phone that way. There were also plenty of games mentioned, like a mobile golf game where you actually swing your phone, now that's straight out of the Wii's handbook.

I like seeing this kinda thing, a lot of possibilities, I just hope more phones start to implement new functionality like this.

Live Video Broadcasts of our Music

What do you do when you don't have time to go out and perform? Broadcast video live using your home studio of course. We tried this for the first time tonight, it turned out well considering we got the idea just hours before we decided to play, some people even tuned in despite the short notice.

If you're interested, you'll be able to watch us play live on www.WatchWhatIDo.com right on the front page, I'll get the word out as to when and what time, there's also a calendar on the page that'll show the next time we plan to play.

If it's working well we'll start inviting other bands to play, at least the neighbor's band, and jam out some more. A little chat room is also set up so everyone watching can discuss whatever, maybe even request a song? Why not, that's cool. Hope to see you all at the next one, let us know what you think.

My Experience with Jumpcut

Jumpcut is an web-based video editing site, I used it for the first time to edit the Jackson video in my last post. I decided to use it since the video files taken on my phone (mp4) weren't readable by windows movie maker or premiere which was odd, and I didn't want to bother converting them.

The process of editing was pretty slick, about on par with windows movie maker which is saying something seeing that it is web based. The downside was that I couldn't download the finished product, as I had wanted to host it on You Tube with the rest of my videos. Also, the published video points to the "session" instead of a rendered video, and I've noticed the edits are slightly different every time I watch it, sometimes very different... interesting. I guess they do that so I can edit it at any time and the changes are seen instantly; that would be cool if it actually worked right, and I've been told it takes a while to load as well.

Although I thought it was a really cool concept, I probably won't use Jumpcut again until they at least let me download the videos I edit.

Running Linux on Delta Song

We're playing inflight trivia at the moment, it's cool because you play with other passengers and can see what seat they sit in and keep score. Unfortunately linux has crashed several times so far, wiping away my top score under the name "owns.u"

Using all 24 hours

I was planning on pulling an all-nighter for the exclusive purpose of setting up the studio and testing some things, now it seems more has come up though.

I'm working on a new *secret* project to keep me busy when I'm not working on Music Slice, and it turns out my partner in crime has turned nocturnal and is working on it at this moment, so I've been going back and forth with him working out the details. It's refreshing to find someone with passion who gets obsessed over what they're doing and has fun with it, this is gonna be a blast.

Another Blue Velvet Studio Comeback

Looks like I'll be up all night re-wiring and treating our apartment to get it back to the Blue Velvet Studio it once was. It'll definitely be all set by the time Mark wakes up to start recording. Meanwhile Ren & Stimpy just came on TV, classic, have to watch this first.

Twitter

I joined another site today called Twitter. It's like a blog (it's a blog), but you're limited to 140 characters per post. The idea is that you update it constantly with what you're doing. You can post to it on the website of course, but also by sending a text message or an IM.

I think it's pretty cool so I'm trying it out. It allows me to post minor stuff over there with less clutter over here. I did put a little Twitter widget on the sidebar of this blog that shows the latest, or you can go straight to my page there and even subscribe if you're so inclined. Better yet, join Twitter, I think it's a lot more fun with friends, so let me know if you join.

Playing Tag

I've gone back and re-tagged everything I've ever posted so you can filter and find what may interest you. Check out the right column for the list of tags. I recommend "classic", it's some of my favorite posts, but "video" is also pretty good, and "pictures" to filter just posts with... pictures.

"moments" are mostly posts I took while in action, or describing something I did some odd day, while "thoughts" are the posts where I write about ideas or things I found interesting. There's also "music slice", as I write a good amount about that, and "tech and web" for the same reason.

Facebook is Old School

I finally gave in to the Facebook, perhaps it was the recent story that they're controlled by the CIA that made it seem that much more attractive (that's a link to the story on digg, so you can see the comments that debunk the obvious Kevin Bacon logic they use to link facebook to the CIA). Still funny.

Anyways, I've found that it's a lot better than myspace, the black eye of the internet. Besides the nostalgia of finding old friends from high school which was easy, it's tough to find other people I know, even college is tough, but that's probably just because the way Full Sail was set up with a graduating class every month.

Have my personal information Facebook, give it to the CIA if you have to, it's cool. I'm just glad they're not bombarding me with spam and error messages... not yet at least.

Patterns and Music

I've been doing some tweaking to the concepts and math behind the best ways to suggest music to people, determine the most popular music overall, and detecting and catering to people moods while playing personalized radio stations.

The whiteboard is the newest addition to Slice Headquarters, it helps a lot. Sean calls it 'old school' media. I wish we could afford the electronic whiteboards... Oh well, this one has been great so far.

Bacon Krispy Kreme Burger at Google

Bacon Krispy Kreme burger, originally uploaded by satanslaundromat.

This picture was taken at the Google cafeteria here in NYC. Those employees are so spoiled... I'd kill for one of these burgers and they get 'em for free without even leaving the office.