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Troy's Blog
Good 1969s practice. Working on new and old songs. We have a few gigs booked the next couple of months so the year is starting off good.
Attending Webinar: Expanding creative possibilities in Vegas Pro: masking and compositing techniques
Another productive 49th Vibration rehearsal. We just about have the new song, "Waiting", arranged and ready to add to the list. Very excited about it.
working on new song. I'm getting very close.
There cannot be better running weather. 74 degrees with a slight breeze it feels great.

there cannot be better running weather. 74 degrees with a slight breeze it feels great.
Just now getting into the world of mobile computing. I have my first real smart phone: Droid Charge. It's pretty damn awesome
Samsung Droid Charge

I went from what some called a "phone first smart phone" in the Nokia Nuron. It ran the Symbian OS and Nokia's Ovi apps. Well, it was pretty much crap. It had some cool features and apps, but for the most part it didn't perform well and added frustration because it gave me taste of what I really wanted in a phone.

The Droid Charge is really a whole new world. I don't have anything to compare it to. I have not owned or messed with iPhones and other Android, Windows, etc. smart phones, so I can't tout this phone over any other (what I consider) high-end phones. But for me, it's awesome.

I had my contacts all backed up so I imported my contacts from my old phone to my Gmail account and set up my Gmail account on my phone and that was done.

So what did I use most often on my old phone, and how easy was it to get up and running on the Droid and how did it compare?

Calling and texting:
That was pretty simple to get used to. It was very intuitive. I quickly leaned to call and text and to create quick desktop links to my most used contacts.

Camera
There was a link to the camera app, but I had to click on "Applications" and then scroll over to get to the button, but I easily figure out how to add the button to my home screen. My old phone did have a manual button to quickly bring up the camera. I do miss that, but not a big deal to use the screen button. The quality is a million times better than my Nuron. It has an 8mp camera with another lower quality camera for self portraits and video chat. Just like my Nuron, you can  quickly send a picture to an email, text, blog, etc.

Google Maps:

There was already and app/link so that was a click.

Endomondo (workout, run/ride tracking app)
I went to their site and installed the Android app. done. I have not tried it yet, but this could be a big deal as Endomondo on my Nuron was really quirky. My times were never real accurate as I had to wait sometimes up to a minute for it to start tracking and it never seemed to get my mileage right. I'm hoping the Android version can actually show me the map during my workout. I need an armband phone holder to start using it for running. I have one on the way.

Voice Recorder:
This is where it starts to get fun. The Nuron was such junk in this regard. I used the voice recorder a lot at first because I like to record song ideas and other notes. Well the Nuron many times would jack up the audio and it was listenable. With the Droid I downloaded a free 4-track recorder. Boom!. How sweet is that?

Video Playback:
The Nuron was shit. It was unwatchable. It was pixelated, show, jerky, crap. With the Droid I plugged the phone into a USB port on my PC and dragged over 3 video files. An AVI (divx), and AVI (h.264), and an MP4 saved from YouTube. The two AVIs were HD 720 and the MP4 other was 360. They looked awesome. The phone with the video playback capabilities and screen size makes it truly a media player that I could watch movies on during boring plane and road trips.

Of course all of these apps worked even better on the Droid: Facebook, Twitter, Posterous, Foursquare, etc. and just plain browsing the web is so, so much better.

Voice recognition:
And I big deal is the voice commands. they seem to work pretty good. This will come in handy in the car when trying to dial a number, text, or search Google maps. I'll  have more to say on this the more I use it, but so far it has worked pretty good.

Phone call audio quality:
The only thing that is not clearly better is the audio quality of regular old phone calls. The sounds is pretty bad, but that was what I had before. It's what I've come to expect with cell phones, but I wish it was better. That could be a Verizon issue and not phone issue.

Battery Life:
My only concern is the batty life. I have not really got a handle on how well it performs here. I will defiantly test it one a long run or bike ride. I was able to get in at least two hours on a run with the Endomondo app running with the Nuron. I hope I can get that out of the Droid.

49th Vibration rehearsal tonight. Worked on new tunes. Very excited!
Mastering Elements Part 1: The Buss Compressor - http://tinyurl.com/3taqffc
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From http://audio.tutsplus.com:

Mastering is a pretty big subject, so instead of tackling it in one tutorial I thought it might be easier, for those new to the subject, if I split it up into bite sized pieces. Each tutorial will look at a separate process used in a typical mastering set up, why we use it and what it achieves.

One of the first processors used in any mastering chain is a buss compressor, this is really just a name for compressor used to treat an entire mix (i.e. the master buss). Let’s take a closer look at how the compressor is used in mastering and the different processors used for the task.

http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/mixing-mastering/mastering-elements-part-...

Birthday present to me...out of gas on the tollway. Crap.
01122012776
Weird disappearing content on refresh using JQuery with WebKit broswers. Using a table fixed it. Go figure.
A few more pics from @the1969s rehearsal last night.
49th Vibration - 1st rehearsal for 2012. Ready to rock the new year!
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49th Vibration - 1st rehearsal for 2012
We played through some old songs and worked on a new one. We sounded pretty good for not getting together in over a month. We hope to nail down a few new tunes that we are working on and then book some shows. Stay tuned.
49th Vibration 1-8-12

1st 1969s rehearsal of 2012. Getting ready for first show of 2012 next month at Bryan Street Tavern
1969s rehearsal tonight and after I got to hold little Maisy.
Not one for consiracy theries, but did Les and the offense get paid off? #LSU refused to alter their plan or QB.
Les_miles
@SportsSturm, Lions were the beneficiaries of the inadvertent whistle. Lions were awarded the fumble even though the whistle had blown the play dead.
That was not a potential game-changer or anything for the Lions. They were awarded the ball, but because the whistle blew the Saints stopped playing, so if Bob Strum is saying that the inadvertent whistle robbed the Lions of a touchdown.... uh, not so much. It was in fact the right call, as far as the fumble goes, but the whistle stopped the play before the Lions could "potentially" advance the ball, but it also stopped the Saints from pursuing the runner, and probably tackling him, so I think without the quick whistle, the Lions might have gotten a couple of more yards... maybe.

League admits errors on Lions-Saints fumble

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/01/08/league-admits-errors-on-lions...

This prompted outrage from Lions fans, who believed that Detroit had been robbed of a touchdown. < -- Bullshit!

Update: According to the article, the whistle was blown before the fumble was recorded, so even more reason to see why the Saints were standing around and not trying to recover the ball and not trying to tackle the Lions player who recovered the ball.
My Favorite Smallware: http://www.marktaw.com/reviews/MyFavoriteSmallware.html#Backup
NIce list of useful programs. Some I use and know about and others I will defiantly try.
What a finish to the #Broncos - #Steelers game. First play in OT #Tebow nails it. Wow.
We had our first 49th Vibration rehearsal of 2012. It has been over a month, but went well. New songs, olds songs, etc.
Computer is slow, so I ran Malwarebytes, Avast anti-virus, CCleaner, TDSKiller, ComboFix, TFC, Smart Defrag, DDS.src, RAM.vbe, DiskCleanup.
Computer is very slow, so I ran Malwarebytes, Avast anti-virus, CCleaner, TDSKiller, ComboFix, TFC, Smart Defrag, DDS.src, RAM.vbe, and DiskCleanup.

Turned off some unneeded services, turned off indexing, visual effects, auto search for net folders/printers, adjusted pagefile, delete prefetch files, Added more crap domains to host file.

I have about 60 of free space on the HD and it has been defragged and optimized.

It's an older computer and was never fast, but it's much slower than it was a few years ago. I could buy more RAM, new HD, new computer, etc. I know that I can buy stuff. But I am trying to avoid that for as long as I can.

I think I'm down to a reformat as my last resort. What a pain.

The genius that is "Day Job Orchestra" - Obama Cosby - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS-h63iU1io

Day Job Orchestra is a band and a group of people that make funny freakin' videos, and kick-ass progressive rock music - www.dayjoborchestra.com

#DrewBrees is then NFL single-season passing yards, completions, and completion percentage leader. Go #Saints

Saints rip Panthers, enter playoffs on eight-game winning streak

By Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS -- New Orleans Saints shrugged off injury risks, barreling into the postseason with an all-out effort.

"Every facet of our offense is clicking right now, but yet you're constantly finding ways to advance it," Brees said. "We've raised the bar for ourselves. We have a high level of expectations, and we're just trying to meet that level."

Brees passed for 389 yards and five touchdowns, and the Saints set a slew of NFL and club records in a 45-17 blowout of the Carolina Panthers on Sunday.

The NFL single-season records set by the Saints (13-3), who head into the playoffs on an eight-game winning streak, included offensive yards with 7,474, team yards passing with 5,347 and first downs with 416.

Brees, who was 28 of 35, finished with a record 468 completions this season, breaking Peyton Manning's 2010 mark of 450. He finished the season completing 71.6 percent of his passes, breaking his own 2009 NFL record 70.6 completion percentage.

In terms of playoff seeding, New Orleans gained nothing with the victory, finishing with the third seed because San Francisco (13-3), which had a better conference record, held onto the second seed by winning at St. Louis.

Yet New Orleans hadn't forgotten the bitterness of limping into the playoffs with a loss in their last regular-season game a season ago before being bounced by underdog Seattle in the first round.

"You obviously saw the result last year, and we didn't feel like we came out and played well or carried momentum into the playoffs," Brees said. "I feel like we're playing our best football right now. This is where we wanted to be."

Derrick Mason with Tennessee in 2000.

Carolina (6-10), which had won four of five, kept up for much of the first half but wilted over the final two quarters while the Saints set a franchise single-game record with 617 yards of total offense.

"We caught a football team that is on a roll right now," Panthers coach Ron Rivera said. "That's a playoff-caliber football team that did that to us."

Marques Colston caught Brees' first two scoring passes, making a spectacular, spinning catch with arms outstretched on the first one from 15 yards out.

Colston's second touchdown went for 42 yards, and he finished with seven catches for 145 yards.

Afterward, Colston, who studied psychology at Hofstra, declared: "Mentally and emotionally, we're as prepared as a team can be."

Brees also connected with Graham on a 19-yard scoring strike, and added TD passes of 9 yards to Sproles and 1 yard to fullback Jed Collins.

Graham's TD catch was his 11th, matching a club record also reached by Joe Horn in 2004 and Colston in 2007.

Brees surpassed 300 yards passing for the seventh straight game and 13th time this season, both NFL records he already held and simply extended.

The records come one week after Brees passed Dan Marino's 27-yard-old single-season record of 5,084 yards passing.

Brees finished the season with 5,476 yards to go with 46 touchdown passes, fourth most in NFL history. First is New England's Minnesota Vikings (556).

Still, Brees balked at the opportunity to engage in much self-congratulating for the history he and head coach Sean Payton's offense have made this season.

"All this stuff along the way is awesome and special and we can reflect on that for years and years, but you play this game for championships, for rings, because that links you together forever," Brees said. "Here we are having accomplished so much, and yet the ultimate prize is still out there."

Cam Newton closed out an otherwise spectacular rookie season 15 of 25 for 158 yards, one touchdown and one interception.

"It was embarrassing how we ended that game," Newton said. "Offense, defense, special teams, the whole 9 yards, it was real tough."

The Saints had 360 yards of total offense in the first half, when they easily blew past the Rams' 2000 yardage record of 7,075.

Brees passed for 249 yards in the half, when he hit Colston for the Saints' first two passing touchdowns.

Both defenses struggled for much of the half, and each team might have scored more if not for Patrick Robinson's interception of Newton in the Saints' end zone and R.J. Stanford's interception of Brees deep in Panthers territory.

Robert Meachem was taken out of the game as a precaution with knee pain in the third quarter.

Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press

Watched the whole first season of Modern Family this weekend. Funny.
Tracking the #DrewBees #TomBrady yardage. Brees is 284 ahead at the moment.
Drew Bees started the day with a 190 yard lead over Tom Brady. The race is for the single-season passing yards record. Brees broke the record last week, but Brady is right there. Brees has a had good start to the game today and Brady has not, but there's a lot of time left. If the 49ers end up blowing out the Rams, which they look like they are on their way, the Saints might take Brees out of the game if there's nothing else to play for. The Pats are still playing for home-field advantage with the Ravens and Steelers on their heels, and both of those teams play later in the day, so Brady will be playing to win.
For a 6 win team the Panthers sure run their mouth a lot. And I USED to think Steve Smith was a class act.