CD Burner #2 RIP

I was making up a batch of album orders today and my CD burner croaked. This is the second burner casualty since starting my whole DIY home burning operation. The last one died back in October '03 so I got a year and change out of it which isn't too bad. But still this is something I hadn't factored into my whole home burning thing and is making me wonder if I've outgrown my ability to do it.

Remixes
Cut-up Resources

Scott sent me The Cut-up Page. And it's a pretty great resource for anyone interested in cut-ups. My favorite one so far is Bot 002 which makes cut-ups from text it finds on the web randomly through Yahoo. It'd be extra great if you could specify the source or seed it with some text for its search query, but still it's better than most of cut-up tools I'd played with before.

Apple Announcements

The new Apple announcements made today are pretty interesting for us stingy PC users. The iPod shuffle is a 512mb-1GB Flash-based iPod for $99-$150. As a musician I'm of course excited about how many more consumers this will get into the iTunes music store so they can buy my album. As a consumer I uh want one. The Mac mini looks super cool. A tiny (6.5 inches wide / 2 inches tall) 1.25GHz G4 Mac priced at $500. Doesn't come with monitor, mouse or keyboard, which is fine. Engadget claims the lack of audio in is a big deal, but I can't see how it is. You may not be able to use your crappy $10 microphones with it, but with USB and Firewire you can use all sorts of audio devices ranging from consumer to professional.

Very sassy moves by Apple all around. I'm curious to read about how easily that Mac can be turned into a tiny recording studio.

Coolfer: Tech Myopia

Coolfer: Tech Myopia - Coolfer takes tech journalists to task. I often think that just as folks in the tech industry cringe when outsiders think they "get it", tech writers need to realize that maybe the music biz is a little more complicated than it seems on the surface.