this must be the place....goin strong , yeah baby!!!

Monday, January 24, 2011

Biggest Tool on the Internet

From bleacherreport.com.
I love to hate this guy.


OK, so I don't know exactly how, but I keep finding these links that are like "the 50 worst NFL coaches" or, this weeks edition "the 50 worst Championship teams in all of sports." The list is exactly what it sound like...some guy going "sure he won the superbowl, but his all time won loss percentage was a paltry .569 . Or something like that (one of the coaches even had a winning record, srsly). It is really absurd. He puts the 93-94 Rockets as the 32nd worst championship team out of principal because MJ didn't play that year. Oh and the Seattle Supersonics lost in the 1st round, thats somehow a black mark against Dr34m.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/530269-worst-of-the-best-50-worst-championship-teams-ever?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=outbrain#page/20

Oh yeah, how about you go out and win an NBA championship, then we can talk.

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The Dream

Update: The Hakeem interview went well.

Aside from some audio fidelity issues (this was a phone interview) and a polite decline of my request for a voicemail drop ("Wassup this is Dream, shake out a message for my all-star friend Dan Gentile") the interview went pretty well. We spoke for 40 minutes (he talks fairly slow).

I learned:

Despite his website's statement that he has a "private palace" in Jordan it is just a small house. He was upset about this, seems like somebody's gonna get fired. He would also love to have Michael Jordan visit him in Jordan.

Hakeem's dream shake would be vanilla with strawberries and bananas ("you've gotta keep it creative, mix it up, use different combinations").

When asking him about the controversy behind his height (some say 6'11, some say 7 foot) I got him to admit that he is in actuality 6 foot 5 inches. This took some convincing and included me using the phrase "Don't lie to me, Dream!"

He's not familiar enough with the ninja turtles to pick one that he most resembles, despite Dwight Howard (who he called the best big man in the game today) constantly referring to him as Master Splinter in an adorable YouTube video of the two working out together.

He has never played NBA Jam, thus making my question about whether he used the unstoppable combo of Shaq and Scott Skiles irrelevant.

We had some taco talk regarding the double decker, which he starred in a commercial for with Shaq. He said he's trying to watch his weight so he could probably only eat two of them, and that he would not want to compete with Shaq in an eating contest.

The fashion equivalent of a dream shake would be wearing a cashmere sweater with jeans. This was without a doubt the best part of the interview, Hakeem spoke very passionately about his personal style at length and how the key to fashion is to make it look like you're not trying.

He still plays 3v3 pickup games with Clyde Drexler. God help the other 4 guys that randomly end up in that game.

Those are the highlights. I might chop up some of the audio and post it soon. Watch for the Thrillist piece sometime next week.

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Saturday, January 22, 2011

Vintage Sampler Floppy Disk Salvation

We interrupt these awesome basketball Dream posts to bring you your quarterly nerd report:

Having trouble backing up your Ensoniq EPS Classic (wiki) sound disks?

I was.

I've been using software called Omniflop which basically reads your non-pc formatted disks as raw as possible, then saves that as an 'image' onto a computer...which it can later use to recreate the floppy.

I ran into some problems with some EPS disks not wanting to read...hey, the most recent date on any of these 1989, so we can cut mother nature some slack in this case. Specifically, these disks WOULD load in the sampler, but would not load in my computer disk drive.

The solution:
Find a floppy that DOES load fine on your computer. This is going to be your 'transfer disk'.
Format your 'transfer disk' with your sampler. Make it fresh.
Take a 'problem disk', and load it into the sampler. Load the sounds as normal.
Now simply save the files onto your freshly formatted 'transfer disk'. If you could read the disk before, you can likely read it again, albeit this time with new data on it.

So it's a lot of insert disk, load, eject disk, insert xfer disk, save, eject disk, insert into pc, backup disk...over and over (more depending on your sampler, maybe)...but it is a way to salvage your material!

I will be posting soon about my experience into installing an HxC SD Floppy Emulator into this same EPS, so I don't have to go through this failing disk / drive nonsense again.

You may now return to higher caliber journalism.

-j

BONUS POINTS: Save an image file of the formatted disk, and instead of formatting in the sampler later, simply load the formatted image via the PC.

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Friday, January 21, 2011

Smooth Jazz

hey there Blogermanics! or should i say "Legomanics"!!

I thought there was no point to smooth jazz music....no environment where it was like "oh yeah, thats the stuff". I am happy to report I am wrong. When looking for video evidence of this: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=6037737&sportCat=ncf on youtube (amazing) I came across this:



ps howd that hakeem thing go? Everything you dr34med about?

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Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Hakeem Update 2

The Dream has agreed to let me interview him. Bloggermaniacs keep your eyes peeled for the full story next week.

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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Hakeem Update

So I'm trying to interview Hakeem Olajuwon for my other blog. The reason for this post is to let you know that Hakeem's PR representation casually calls him Dream, as in, "I will speak to Dream today about this matter."

Keep your fingers crossed bloggermaniacs.

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Monday, January 10, 2011

Hakeem



Also, Hakeem is as serious about fashion as he is basketball.

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Friday, January 7, 2011

horrible acting ("fuck you mom and dad")

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Thursday, January 6, 2011



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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Space/Time 001


Hey there bloggermaniacs, I've missed you. I've got a few epic posts I've been sleeping on, mainly a review of the Kanye record, but in the meantime here's a mix my DJ homies and I put together.

Flying Turns - Space Time 001 Mix

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Sunday, January 2, 2011

J's 2010 - Non-2010-released-but-thoroughly-jammed-in-2010 best of

01. Chemical Brothers - Further
Originally released 2010. BLEW MY MIND. Over and over. Again and again. Absolute best thing that's been released in years. The DVD is also worth it, and in a pricing mishap, I got the deluxe double disc version for less than the cost of the standard cd. This album is the most banging, psychedelic, dadgum beautiful thing I have heard since...damn maybe when I first heard those Bran Van remixes (more on that later). A MUST-JAM.

02. Toro Y Moi - Causers of this
Originally released 2010. This one sneaks in on a technicality, because even though it was actually released in 2010, I already had used it on my 2009 list. It's that good, let the thing rule the top of lists for both years. A MUST-JAM.

03. Soul Mann and the Brothers - Shaft
Originally released 1971. I just listened to this record so much this year. This is the origin of the very popular guitar sample found in Erykah Badu - Bag Lady and Dr. Dre - Xxplosive. Also this gets props for the massive GIGs of bounty it pulled filling a request on what. Works very great as bed music too when doing announcements on air.

04. The Rip-Off Artist - Copper Blue EP
Originally released in 2002. This is record I found this year that not only completely satisfied my expectations, but blew the doors off them. Some of the best, no bullshit, minimal/micro house you can find. Every track is killer and I mixed this with everything I could find, from Roy Acuff to Venetian Snares.

05. Roy Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys - Great Speckled Bird
Originally released 1958. The godfather of country music had a huge share of my needle wear this year. A voice that resonates straight from the throne, and melodies that remind you why home-grown american music is the defining force it is. Also, props to to the title track for inspiring my search to find all the songs that actually share that same melody (save that for a later post).

06. Tom T. Hall - Homecoming
Originally released 1969. Man, this dude can write a damn song. Sometimes slim-pickins to find his albums, but having a hits comp and the album 'Homecoming', which travels the distance between silly-country-story songs to full string section psychedelic-awareness-country-story songs, I'd say I played Homecoming straight through more than the other.

07. The XX - XX
Originally released 2009. Just a little late to the game with this one, this record has one of the most unique and bold sounds I've heard from a pretty popular band in a while. It's refreshing to hear this stuff coming out that sounds totally un-copycat from anything else out right now. If you don't know, it's super mellow.

08. Bran Van 3000 - Drinking in L.A.
Originally released in 1997. FLASHBACK. Found this record still sealed in Seattle and it stayed in my active crates for the rest of the year. You forget how good 90's jungle was then you hear these epic remixes and it hits you. SHIT WAS GOOD. (loosely related...)

09. John Tejada - The Matrix of Us
Originally released 2000. Whenever I need something smooth - but banging, distinctive - but familiar, analog - but digital, fast - but slow...you get the idea...I turn to this wonderfully edited vinyl EP. Tejada has range.

10. Joy Orbison - The shrew would have cushioned the blow
Originally released 2010. Another one I can't throw enough positive adjectives at. Songs usually 8-12 minutes, a big slap to the face to the trendiness of new genres...as this takes those elements and creates something completely it's own. Something for everybody in these tracks...bass, vox, beats, atmospheres, melodies, LFOs, shuffles...for technical refinement this guy takes the cake.

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