My Own Biggest Fan

I am starting to get into this whole lo-fi thing.

You’re Lou Reed.
God, you are cool, can I touch you so the magic
will rub off?
You are perceptive, witty, and badass. You wear
cool shades, even at night, and probably wear
black more than most people. You don’t give a
fuck what other people think, but you are also
very sensitive in the way that you pick up on
things that others don’t. Sometimes you come
off as an asshole, but that’s what makes you
cool. You are a poet, and you embody New York
City. You will still be hip when you are old,
and artists love you.

Which rad old school 70′s glam icon are you? (with pics)
brought to you by Quizilla

Trust Joe to find the Collage Machine before me.

There is a new trailer for The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy at amazon.com. Undownloadable (boo).

Kids can be cute, but that doesn’t mean I ever want to be infected by one of those parasites. Thank you Steve Sneeze for relating this great story to me so I don’t miss out on the few and far between “joys” of parenting.

I have always prided myself on having a unique first name. In ten years though it seems that the annoying little whippersnappers hanging outside of 7-Eleven will all be named “Mason”. Just look at the graph showing the popularity of my name from 1900 to present.

In the 70′s it was the 534th most popular name, today it is 53!

Track your name too.

Here are the Top 10 Lokitorrent alternatives.

Those fuckers have shut down Lokitorrent. Now my download won’t finish. If someone can direct me to DVD-R quality rips of the Pre-Special Edition Star Wars movies, that would be very appreciated. The sheer nerdiness of this statement is noted, and all comments relating to that will be deleted.

Seriously, I just wanted a god damned un-fucked movie. Their smug little splash page is just the worst shit ever. Suddenly I have a desire to make copies of Spiderman 2, Spanglish, The Girl Next Door, and… and whatever just-add-celebrity piece of shit is hot right now and give them away for free on the street.

I can’t wait for work on the decentralized and encoded Bittorrent client to be finished. The RIAA and the MPAA sat on their asses throughout the entire birth of this technology and they can’t figure out a way to exploit it? Give me a fucking BREAK!

Hey guys! If you gave your customers what they wanted, you wouldn’t be in the awkward position of suing the ones that tend to spend the most money on your products you twits.

So good, it deserves to be a meme.

-hang a rainbow keychain from your louis vuitton purse or wallet. let them think youre queer – if someone assumes youre gay cos of the rainbow, condescendingly laugh it off. they will feel like the pedestrian they are while you continue oozing cool by being such a friend of homos that you dont mind being mistaken for one.

-quote eminem, and oprah – theyre hot too, and so are you if you can pull off quoting a homophobe and the queen bee of pedestrianity. if shit is given unto you, point out that you respect him as an artist, but eminems views are not your own (quote voltaire if necessary); or that oprah singlehandedly crippled the american beef industry (whats your movement done lately?). being acquainted with mass media icons is the hight of rebelliousness cos its rebelling against the rules of rebellion. my word!

Bear with me, I am really chuffed with this phone. However I am not chuffed with the fact that I have to pay $2 for a new ringtone. With a little investigating I found how to make just the right ring that tells everybody within hearing distance of me and my phone what kind of person I am, without spending a dime.

What you need:
A cellphone that plays polyphonic ringtones.
A way to get files onto your phone.
Quicktime Pro.
This Tutorial assumes you are using a Mac. Doing this on a PC would be similar to what I explain below, I would think.

First off you need to find out how to get files on and off your phone. I am using PhoneAgent. True, it costs $30 and I had said we wouldn’t spend a dime, but I am still in my shareware term and I haven’t paid for it – yet. (I do need it to get my pictures off the phone) If PhoneAgent isn’t compatible with your phone, don’t come crying to me. Google is your friend.

Then we need to search for the tune that says “Mason”. We Built This City by Starship will do nicely. For our purposes, we need a midi file of it, these can be tricky to find. Sure, they are always around when you don’t want them. Like when you are looking for nude pictures of Sarah Michelle Geller at 3 A.M. and suddenly the theme to Buffy comes blasting out of speakers because some nutcase wants to make their “Shrine of SMG” a multimedia experience. Very 1994.

I have found a couple of repositories of .mid files for you to use, so you don’t have to go searching for hours like I did. I wanted Trash by Suede – no luck. I guess I will take what I can get.

Midi Database
Midi-MP3.org

Ok, so we can’t just dump a .mid file onto your phone, those things take-up precious Kb! We need to trim off the section that captures the essence of the song that captures the essence of you.

Open your .mid file in QuicktimePro and stretch the window so it is really long and skinny. Like so: (click to enlarge)

Notice how I have highlighted part of the song? That is my ring. Or, it will be soon. On your file, highlight roughly what you want to be your ring. Then hold down the Command Key and press in succession, C, N, V. This will – in one easy step, copy that bit, open a new window, and paste that bit into a new window.

Now you probably have straggling notes on the beginning and end of your ring. Do what you did with the whole song earlier. (stretch out the window, select the bit you want, etc…) Cutting off the rest of the song gave you a much higher resolution to work with, and makes it easier to get the bit you really want. It is a good idea to just listen to the loop alone, so type [Cmd]+T to do so.

Repeat the [Cmd]+C,N,V combo.

You are ready to export it. Click FILE > EXPORT…

Make sure your window looks like this:

Use your phone manager to upload your new fandangled ringtone to your phone.

Now you can be indiscriminate with the songs you upload to your phone, and not worry about getting a huge bill from not only the ringtone supplier, but for air time as well.

Listen to my “Built This City” ringtone.