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Myndurzen September 2009 Podcast

Kailash Amruthur - September 2009 Mix - Flashback, Fast Forward

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Myndurzen (Mid) August 2009 Podcast

Kailash Amruthur - August '09 Mix - Dim Mak

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This is most awesome app I have seen in a while. A lot of people prefer TweetDeck, but I find that rather bloated with features.

Here's a good SAT analogy:

TweetDeck : Azureus :: DestroyTwitter : Transmission

It's lightweight, not obtrusive and does the job. I'm really starting to like the AIR platform. These are really neat apps!

More Info

Get the 2 brand mixes for June only at DoJoElectronica:

Kailash Amruthur's Mix 007

Myndurzen's June 2009 Podcast

While you're there, check out the facebook and twitter pages. If you enjoyed the mixes, please make you digg them. Thanks!

I'm glad to hear Sun finally found a suitor, but it would been nice if IBM bought them. In any case, this will test Oracle's commitment to open source and I certainly do hope MySQL is here to stay because it's such a great product. Even if Oracle was to close the code on MySQL and eventually dismantle it in favor of Oracle DB, numerous releases have already forked out of old MySQL code in response to Sun's modification to the code. It would be nice if there was some kind of code merger because I know Oracle DB has a lot to offer.

Staroffice will also belong to Oracle now. Oracle previously did not have a major office suite and can now guide openoffice's development to combat MS Office and Lotus. I don't think Oracle cares all too much about Java. It'll be there, but won't be a weapon. The major weapon here I see is MySQL if it can be cultivated properly. Perhaps creating some kind of relationship been MySQL and Oracle DB that resembles Openoffice and Staroffice.

Today is an important day. It has restructured the IT landscape making Microsoft evermore susceptible to failure, which is what I want to see :)

My March Podcast, under the moniker Myndurzen, is now available at http://ayernet.homelinux.org (Virginia) and http://livroresistente.homelinux.org (California)

Enjoy

My two personal websites: ayernet.homelinux.org and livroresistente.homelinux.org are undergoing some major changes. This account will still be updated with stuff as the blog on those websites are just electronic-music related. Cheers.

I DJ. I do it on Linux and haven't had second thoughts of switching to OS X. Well, the thing is I don't have money to buy OS X and all those fancy applications used for DJing like Traktor or Ableton. Maybe one day, when I turn out to be like Sasha, I'll think about it. But for now, my bread-n-butter is mixxx. Mixxx is sort of like the firefox of DJing applications. It's sleek, sexy, not bloated, and fast. Did I mention free? 100% gratis. Great application and it'll only continue to improve.

But what Linux doesn't have is an Ableton and this has been bothering me. I just saw a video today showing how you can connect Traktor (The IE of DJing) with Ableton. Actually, I respect Traktor much more than I respect IE. The video showed how you can hook up Traktor as a channel in Ableton, while doing other stuff in Ableton. This is a very cool feature to have. Too bad Linux doesn't. Linux does have JACK, which allows you to hook up mixxx to a bunch of other applications, including Ardour, fluidsynth, etc. Ardour is like Pro Tools, but I'd wish it were more like Ableton. You see, live performances are well supported in linux yet. Ableton Live is such a great application, but it's not made for Linux unfortunately (even in Wine, it sucks).

So I request someone out there to start a project to create an Ableton Live open source clone, much like the way Mixxx was created to meet the demands of Traktor users. If no one starts it, then maybe I will.

To all who read this,

Head over to my personal website, where I have a couple of DJ mixes posted. The link is http://ayernet.homelinux.org/ and you can go into the mixes folder and download stuff. If you don't feel like downloading it, but rather want to stream the mixes, visit http://ayernet.homelinux.org:8888/.

I'd describe this music as a hybrid of deep and progressive house with a hint of trance. Personally, I'd call it "Zen House." I really don't know why. But enjoy!

We are born with a brain, but what happens over time as we develop? Language and logic begin to dominate daily routines. As a result, the left hemisphere in our brains gets task priority. Broca's area, the seat of our language skills, is located in the left hemisphere. Logic and our other analytical skills also use up areas in the left hemisphere.

Task priority means while your brain in general requires oxygen to function, the oxygen will go to the places where more firing occurs, naturally. This means the creativity gets neglected over time and our right brains literally become dormant, nearly not stimulated as much as our left brain.

But what makes savants and geniuses? Savants have some injury to their left hemisphere resulting in the right hemisphere having to compensate. This results in more creativity than usual, but comes at a price for showing low language development. Geniuses end up using both hemispheres successfully and end up relying a lot on their right hemisphere. The right hemisphere is also the seat of intuition, important for math, physics, chess, etc.

Wikipedia has a nice article on the lateralization of brain function. Also see the article about Allan Snyder, who uses the Transcranial magnetic stimulation to turn off regular individuals left brain to make them a temporary genius.

I hope this inspires people to stop their usual routine of being "left-brained" and "ordinary." There's a genius hiding in all of us!

After upgrading my laptop to Fedora 10, I decided to try something a little different. I would typically import all my music into Rhythmbox, the default player in Fedora and life would go on. Rhythmbox has a last.fm plugin, radio station & podcast support. What more could you ask for?

Lots more. Rhythmbox has kind of become like Windows Media Player in that it serves a basic role and accomplishes that task fairly well. But when you're an audiophile, you do notice a void.

Well, Songbird takes care of that. With a simple visit to their website, I was able to find an RPM for Fedora 10. Voila!

The most distinguishing feature Songbird has to offer is its hybridization of web browsing and audio playback. Now player to date has seamlessly accomplished. Songbird clearly accomplishes this, having been built on Firefox, and makes you wish Firefox was kind of like Songbird.

Now, I'm into the whole Zen philosophy of using something to accomplish only one thing. Having a web browser and music player in one program is going against my philosophy. However, at the same time, it makes me focus elsewhere. What do I mean? Well, in GNU desktop environments/window managers, you have this thing called workspaces, which lets you segregate programs, definitely a "zen"-ful concept so you can focus and avoid clutter.

Songbird lets me browse the web, invalidating my efforts to use firefox, right? Actually, I run firefox and songbird with the help of workspaces. Currently, I have it set that "leisure/junk" web browsing will be handled by Songbird and I do all my useful browsing (work-related) in firefox. The idea didn't hit me until I visited last.fm on firefox, while Songbird was playing music. last.fm is music website, so why can't I just do all that on songbird?

So what's been happening recently is I visit less and less "leisure/junk" on firefox and defer that task to songbird. It has proven extremely successful. Before I would usually have the problem of loading leisure/junk tabs right next to work tabs, which would lead me to surfing leisure/junk websites more and more decreasing my productivity because it was right there while I was working.

So while you have a zen idea that one program should do one task, productivity in the presence of many one-task programs running tends to decrease. Segregating junk from work using spaces has always been done, but the difference between junk and work vanishes when using a conventional web browser like firefox.

I've already quit using Rhythmbox, but'll use it if Songbird starts getting buggy. One thing I wish Songbird had was a crossfader effect between songs that I've come to love so much in Rhythmbox.

BOTTOM LINE: If you listen to music while "working" and you feel a lul in productivity, you should strongly consider using Songbird. It's cross-platform and comes with many plugins and would make a good companion with your conventional browser (used for "productivity").

This is far weirder than Dell + Ubuntu. Actually Dell + Ubuntu is not that weird at all. Well, let's hope Sun and Toshiba make the best out of it. Perhaps this will shut the Jim Zemlin up for a while.

This is absolutely amazing! Please go to this website and be wowed. Aiko certainly isn't in the Uncanny Valley, yet.

Now would be a good time for people to check out The God Delusion. As a 'Zen'-cular Humanist, I would say this is the book that enlightened me about religion and the violence that hides behind it. Not to say that all religious people are violent; it's just that why should we be tempted about these violent ideas in the first place? As a former Hindu, I would say the Mumbai attacks are rather shocking in today's India, but things like this have been occurring for ages. The difference here was the magnitude of the attacks that got the international spotlight.

If you're thinking about "converting" to atheism, but think that's too cold and harsh for you, I strongly recommend:

Zen
Secular Humanism

In response to this post, I must ask why are you praising Apple after you just paid them something on the order of thousands of dollars to say that some free software organization owes them big?

I've used FreeBSD a couple of times. I used to use it during the 4.* era and after realizing the crappiness that 5.* was, I switched to DragonFly, the natural continuation of 4.*

I must admit that I like OS X more so than Windows, but that's about it. I also realize that FreeBSD 7 is good, good enough for me to burn a CD. But you know something? I've been burning every OpenBSD release since 3.6. We're now at 4.4. I love the OS to death. It runs on my firewalls and even web servers. Granted that FreeBSD/apache may be slightly better, I don't care. It does the job. With that, OpenBSD keeps spirits up by releasing music, which is awesome. No other OS in the market I know does this.

I haven't used NetBSD too much, but I'm working on the port to get it into my Playstation 2. Why? Well, let me start by saying that the hardware/software world is an ecosystem. You have the CEOs and you have the garbage collectors. Now, one day, suppose the garbage man didn't come to collect the trash the CEO left out. What would happen to the trash?

My intention is to not put NetBSD in the wrong light. I have just as much respect for them as I do for OpenBSD. My point is, old hardware gets neglected in this world, and where does it go? Fortunately, NetBSD is nice enough to allow room for everyone who wants to come. That's why it's the OS that supports the most platforms. That's a pretty amazing achievement.

So, might I say that these two OS's are not idiosyncratic and lethargic technological backwaters, but rather a continually developing set of OS's that learn to evolve with the times. Evolution demands this trait. It's the big ones that fall hard (hint: MS and Apple). "Technological" natural selection, if I may call it that, insists that an OS must evolve with the times. Linux is doing a great job right now acting like how the our mammalian ancestors did right before the dinosaurs perished. Maybe *BSD is something smaller than Linux, but these OS's can survive and will. Whether it's FreeBSD getting help from Apple, or whether it's OpenBSD borrowing technologies like pkgsrc from NetBSD, these organizations will find a way to thrive in the most dire situations.

Windows and Linux are EAL 4 certified, but I know that OpenBSD is better than that. It is the most secure production OS on the planet.

NetBSD does support more platforms than any other OS. And now, FreeBSD is more robust than ever, thanks to Apple, but no thanks.

Bottom line: There's no need to owe Apple. These OS's can take care of themselves. FreeBSD would be where it is today even if Apple hadn't donated Darwin code. I have respect for Darwin as well, but I guess some people just get carried by that darn Aqua interface and get carried away into making these claims, just like how LF's Zemlin declares Solaris dead. Oh, it's time to buy more DRM'd-songs from iTunes and then sync it to my iPhone!! (sarcasm)

EOR

Under Virginia law, apparently recounts are mandatory if the margin is less than 1 percentage point. So, I'll just have to keep biting my teeth.

Read more here: http://raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=17104

Ahhhh...change. There's nothing like the smell of it. It's the feeling you get when you open your dryer and see that old, dirty clothes have now been transformed into warm and clean ones, ones you just can't wait to wear, kind of like that episode in Seinfeld, when Kramer wears clothes fresh out of the dryer.

I'm trying to make a point here. Virgil Goode has been in office, representing Dems, himself, or the GOP in that order, for 12 years. It's time for a fresh, new perspective, courtesy of Tom Perriello.

Now, apparently, the 5th district has 100% precinct reporting (Fluvanna took forever), giving Perriello 50.2% and Goode 49.8%. However, Periello hasn't been declared the winner yet probably because of the miniscule margin between the two contenders, a difference of only 1157 votes. This race was far more interesting than the presidential one!

So as I set up my OpenBSD firewalls, I started wondering what it taught us about ourselves. A pf ruleset is something that pf, also known as Packet Filter, reads to know what kind of network traffic through. This is how we can build firewalls without relying on vendor-provided ones. Anyways, I will go more into depth later about why our minds need a similar ruleset in this age of information to prevent our minds from getting "hacked" or even "infected".