tunequest

One of the lesser-used features of iTunes is its visualizer, the colorful animated display that accompanies any music that's playing. The visuals are a fun little distraction, but once the novelty wears off, the usefulness of the function tends to be limited. Though, in college, a PowerBook and an LCD projector made for a pretty rockin portable party system. Ol' trusty G-Force iTunes, from version 1.0, has shipped with a default ...

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I spent a portion of this Saturday going through my extended archive of music, the stuff that's not in my central, everyday iTunes library. Most of those files are a bit old and for either quality or tagging reason, they've been left unincorporated. Some of these songs have been sitting untouched and unlistened to on cds and hard drives for years. So I've decided to start sorting and evaluating them ...

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What can I say? This is brilliant. It's a bit long (11 minutes), so block out some time to watch the whole thing. It also helps to be familiar with Trapped in the Closet, R. Kelly's hip-hop opera in multiple parts which tells a complex story (with several interwoven plots) of increasingly bizarre cases of infidelity and sexual hang-ups. Here's a Google Video if you need to brush up. Sometimes ...

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Poor Kermit. Times have been rough for the ol' muppet in recent years. Things just haven't been the same since Jim died. The last major film was considered a dud and the Muppets have largely stayed out of the public eye of late. To add insult to injury, the franchise is controlled by Disney, Disney! of all companies. Oh, for the heady days of the late 1970s, when Muppets were ...

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Yeah, What They Said, links to interesting stories that I don't have time to write about. Some people call it "link sharing." In television and movies, "sourced" music is music that is heard by the characters in the scene. That's opposed to the underscore, which is heard only by the audience. StarTrek.com has a series of articles on the source music used in: The Original Series The Next Generation Deep Space Nine Voyager and ...

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The ringing in my ears serves as a reminder that I have permanently lost a portion of my hearing, but I'm telling you it is worth it. I just got home from Ratatat's show in midtown Atlanta and I have something to admit to you: Seeing Ratatat perform live is one of my favorite things in the world. This show marks the third time I've managed to catch a performance ...

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Yeah, What They Said, links to interesting stories that I don't have time to write about. Some people call it "link sharing." Why “Vote For The Worst” Just Might Work. Medialoper has a Theory of Popularity in a niche-dominated, long tail world and relates it to American Idol: "In a culture defined by niches, the more popular something is purported to be, the less popular it actually is." Director Nicholas Meyer ...

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Allow me to preface this by saying I've never been that impressed by Alanis Morissette's work. She's a decent enough performer, but her songs always struck me as, well, whiny. But this performance here is bordering on brilliance. It's a rather unexpected cover of Fergie/Black Eyed Peas' My Humps. I'm not sure what Ms. Morissette has been up to the past few years, but this is the last thing I would ...

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Though sold and marketed as a portable device, I've recently been intrigued by Philips' new DCP850 DVD player with integrated iPod dock. It boasts support for standard DVD, DVD+/-R(W), VCDs, DivX files, MPEG-4 files, compact discs, MP3s and photos. It also features an SD/MMC card reader for playing movies and photos via a memory card. The iPod dock, of course, charges the iPod and allows access to and playback ...

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