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Uncut Special: Art Explains Research on How Dogs Read Human Facial Expressions

This is too good to leave on the cutting room floor. Dr. Art Markman explains new research on how dogs read human facial expressions and what it could tell us about how they think.




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Time, Attention, and How To Complete Tasks

Time is important, especially when it comes to the brain. In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about how our brains process and understand Time, and how we can reorient out goals within tasks to stay motivated and get more done.




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How We Learn Language (Rebroadcast)

Can you remember what it was like for you to learn your native language?  Probably not, but why is that? As humans, we begin learning to speak our native language during the earliest stages of our lives, in infancy.  Most people don’t have many accessible memories from this period of development. How do we do...




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How Many People Are Too Many?

Growing pains are inevitable, and the frustration associated with them can often magnify existing issues or create new ones altogether. In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the psychology of population – and why this all matters.




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How to Interview for a Job

From a Views and Brews recorded live at the Cactus Cafe KUT’s Rebecca McInroy talks with Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke about the psychology behind how to interviewing for a job.




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How To Crush Writer’s Block (Rebroadcast)

Writer’s block! That phrase might induce panic and a recollection of a familiar experience. It’s a very common phenomenon. So what is it? In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke explain the ins and outs of how and why we sometimes get stuck – and what...




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0x3C: FOSDEM 2013: How to Share a Trademark

Karen and Bradley listen to and discuss Pamela Chestek's talk from FOSDEM 2013, entitled How to Share a Trademark.

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:00:33)

Karen and Bradley introduce the talk.

Segment 0 (00:02:05)

Pam gave us slides, but it's all in one big SVG.

Segment 2 (00:55:10)


Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).




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0x6A: Live Show from SeaGL 2019

The first live podcast of Free as in Freedom, hosted at SeaGL 2019 in November 2019. Hear questions from the studio audience and answers from Bradley and Karen.

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:38)

Producer Dan speaks on mic to introduce that this is a live show.

Segment 1 (01:17)

  • This is a live show from SeaGL 2019, a community-organized FaiP (02:15)
  • Carol Smith from Microsoft asked about being a charity in the USA under recent tax changes regarding tax deduction and, and asked about Conservancy's annual fundraiser which had completed by the time this show was released. (04:53)
  • Deb took a photo during the show (07:30)
  • A questioner asked about the so-called “ethical but-non-FOSS licenses”. Bradley gave an answer that is supplemented well by this blog post (10:15) and Karen mentioned at CopyleftConf 2020 there was a discussion about this. (15:15) The follow up question was also related to these topics (15:44).
  • Eric Hopper asked about how Conservancy decides when a project joins, and what factors Conservancy considers in projects joining (18:14)
  • A written questioner asked how to handle schools requiring proprietary software as part of their coursework. (22:00)
  • Michael Dexter asked about Karen's teaching at Columbia Law School. (27:25)
  • A written questioner asked about copyleft-next's sunset clause. (29:22) Karen mentioned “Copyleft, All wrongs reversed” as it appeared on n June 1976 on Tiny BASIC, which inspired the term copyleft to mean what it does today. (30:45)
  • Karen spoke about the issues of copyright and trademark regarding Disney, that is supplemented by this blog post. (32:52)
  • Carol Smith asked what Karen and Bradley thought were Conservancy's and/or FOSS' biggest achievements in the last decade. (35:20) Karen mentioned Outreachy was a major success. (37:08)
  • A questioner asked about using the CASE Act to help in GPL enforcement. Bradley discussed how it might ultimately introduce problems similar to arbitration clauses. (41:42) Since the podcast was recorded, the CASE Act has also passed the Senate, but does not seem to have been signed by the President. (47:30)
  • Bradley noted that Mako Hill has pointed out that FOSS has not been involved in lobbying enough. (48:10)
  • A questioner in the audience asked about the Mozilla Corporation structure would allow Mozilla to do lobbying for FOSS. (50:57) Karen explained the Mozilla corporate legal structure (51:35).
  • A questioner in the audience asked about Mako Hill's keynote and how individuals can help further the cause of software freedom. (54:53)
  • Michael Dexter asked if software patents are still as much of a threat as they once were. (1:01:30)
  • Carol asked about the supreme court hearing the Oracle v. Google case (1:09:04)

Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).




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Best of “Higher Ed:” How Much Is Too Much On A College Application?

This episode was originally published on Sept. 23, 2018. High school seniors have something extra added to their workload in the fall semester. Those who are going on to college have to navigate the college application process. In this episode of KUT’s podcast “Higher Ed,” Southwestern University President Dr. Ed Burger and KUT’s Jennifer Stayton...




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Higher Ed: I’m Content. And Comfortable. And Don’t Want To Change. Learn How To Do It Anyway.

“The only thing constant is change.” That saying, or some derivation of it, is attributed to the ancience Greek philosopher Heraclitus around 500 BC. But it certainly rings as true now as it did then. In this episode of KUT’s podcast “Higher Ed,” Southwestern University President Dr. Ed Burger and KUT’s Jennifer Stayton discuss preparing...




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Higher Ed: How To Keep Tired Students Engaged? Help Them Produce – Not Just Consume – Knowledge

Students have a lot of tugging at their energy and attention including classes, homework, jobs and activities. In this episode of KUT’s podcast “Higher Ed,” Southwestern University President Dr. Ed Burger and KUT’s Jennifer Stayton strategize on how to keep exhausted students engaged in the classroom. Ed received an email from a “Higher Ed” podcast...




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Higher Ed: Holding On Tight Is Easier Than Letting Go. Why We Need To Learn How To Do Both Well.

As Dr. Ed Burger prepares to leave Southwestern University to become President and Chief Executive Officer of St. David’s Foundation in Austin, Texas, he and KUT’s Jennifer Stayton discuss the art of letting go, as they wrap up the KUT podcast “Higher Ed.” Ed says “letting go” in the workplace starts with a pretty straightforward...




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Synth maker Sequential checks in on how they’re running in the pandemic

Sequential this week ran a video this week showing us how the makers of the Pro 3, Prophets, and more are keeping productive during the pandemic. We wished Dave Smith a happy birthday recently; here's what everyone else is up to.

The post Synth maker Sequential checks in on how they’re running in the pandemic appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.




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How to bang: a deep dive into a live techno set from Berlin’s Florian Meindl

We can’t dance to these sets in a club at the moment, so let’s use this opportunity to really watch what’s happening. Techno madman Florian Meindl takes us inside the craft of playing his fully live, all-hardware set. We’ve got detailed answers from Florian about how he works and plays, and copious links to all […]

The post How to bang: a deep dive into a live techno set from Berlin’s Florian Meindl appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.




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Brittany Howard - Stay High

Brittany Howard is the guitarist and lead singer of the four-time Grammy-winning band Alabama Shakes. This month, she’s releasing her first solo album, called Jaime. In this episode, Brittany breaks down the song “Stay High,” which was the album’s first single. She started working on it while staying at a house in Topanga Canyon, near LA.

songexploder.net/brittany-howard




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That's How They Get You

On a day like this, be sure to check your website for scorpions before putting it on.





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signature doesn't show up

You can have signatures on/off on a per message base as well .. like it's off in this one ... I think ... it tries to do smart stuff with that ... showing a sig on all old posts unless it was deactivated for it on the per message base .. when the s ...




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This Song: Vickie Howell

Vickie Howell has been bringing knitting to the people since the early days of the internet. Hear how her roots in the DIY SoCal punk scene watching bands like Pennywise, Social Distortion and Bad Religion influenced her work with Austin Craft Mafia and continues to inspire her as she embarks on her new project -- "The Knit Show with Vickie Howell."




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This Song: Vickie Howell — Rerun

Vickie Howell just released her new web series “The Knit Show with Vickie Howell.”  The project, which Howell conceived and developed, was funded through a successful crowdfunding campaign.  Hear how the So-Cal punk scene inspired her life as a DIY entrepreneur, and how she’s working to inspire us all to “DIY your dreams.” Subscribe via […]




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How to host a successful webinar

I’m currently hosting a series of live webinars for up to 150 people per event. In the past I’ve hosted in-person meetups but, due to current isolation initiatives (COVID-19), online is the way to go. This of course offers great opportunities for reaching a wider audience however does offer technical challenges different to those experienced […]

This article appeared first at ❤ OrganicWeb - Mailchimp training, consulting & integration experts.




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COVID-19 Economic Depression: How to deal?

How can we prepare for and mitigate the effects of economic depression as residents of a major US city (NYC)?

It's clear the world is headed for an extended economic depression. History teaches us that cities are badly affected by depressions. Crime goes up, local services get worse, "-isms" get worse, the world gets.....meaner and smaller and less stable.

We're fortunate enough that my partner and I are unlikely both to be made unemployed at the same time in the medium term and will thus keep our home and be able to pay bills. (And yes, we realize this is a position of immense privilege)

What should people such as ourselves - middle-class, middle-aged apartment owners who are not on the edge of precarity - do mentally and physically to prepare for and mitigate the consequences of economic depression?

I'm seeking advice on BOTH the mechanics of the obvious:, like improved situational awareness and security for themselves and their belongings, but ALSO other advice on activities, mentalities etc.

Open to links to discussions on this from other places as well..

We live in Queens, NY, near some neighborhoods that are already economically badly affected and will get worse. So, obviously, I'm particularly interested in NYC, USA, but more general relevant advice is welcome.




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How do I approach learning to sew by way of this very specific project?

I want to teach myself to sew by replicating this apron, probably many, many times. I bought the apron; what next?

After spending a lot of the past couple of months in a Bon Appétit rabbit hole (thanks MeFi!), I'm obsessed with this apron that seems to be favored by many of the presenters. Despite its ridiculous price, I went ahead and bought one as a bit of retail therapy.

Well, it arrived today and I loooooove it. I want to give them to all my friends and family, and I want ten of them hanging in my own pantry, but spending $5K on linen aprons from France isn't on the agenda.

So, no time like the present to merge this motivation with another long-standing goal, which is to get competent with my sewing machine, a Singer from... maybe the early '90s? It was given to me by a friend about ten years ago, and since then I have used it three times, always with a more experienced helper to thread the machine, help cut the pieces, etc. The last time it came out of the closet was at least four years ago, so please assume that I am starting from zero.

I have watched a fair amount of Project Runway, but despite that I do not really know where to begin :) This tutorial seems reasonable easy to follow to make a pattern, but... then what? Is there anything more to it than just trying and trying again, presuming I can't ask or hire anyone for help in the foreseeable future? What is the absolute cheapest fabric I can practice on that will help me not ruin the first few yards of linen that I (with luck) will ultimately graduate to? Can I just use reasonably-sized rags/old clothes from the basement?

Any general tips on learning to sew on your own as an adult are also welcome!




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how to explain a long-distance social distancing &quot;bubble"

Me and my partner have decided to form a shared social distancing "bubble" with another of our couple friends. I believe we are following safe protocols for this but wanted to get an honest outside opinion as to whether we could be managing this better/safer/etc.

Here is the situation: I am a musician, and my main music collaborator used to live about a half hour from me. Back in January, he and his girlfriend relocated about 90 minutes away, in a major city that has had a large amount of COVID-19 cases. Where I live hasn't been as bad, but we are all still being cautious.

Musician friend and I are collaborating on a music recording project to combat boredom because we are both unemployed and obviously live gigs are right out. We have been doing most of our planning remotely, via Zoom and phone calls, but every now and again we do have to meet in person as his recording studio is in his apartment and sometimes he and the girlfriend come up here to ease the stir-craziness. We believe we are being safe in our methodology but wanted to confirm.

When we embarked upon this project, we made a pact with each other and our partners that the only people we would allow into our homes is each other. The way this works is, when I have to drive to his place to record, I wash my hands, mask up, and drive down to see him. He lives in a neighborhood with ample street parking near his building. When I arrive, I mask up again, buzz into his apartment, take off my outerwear and shoes immediately and keep it on a hook outside their front door, take mask off and put in my purse leave purse in one spot on a table, hand wash and hand sanitize. He and girlfriend also hand wash and hand sanitize, and have been cleaning all doorknobs and buzzer buttons and handrails of the stairs with disinfectant wipes before I arrive. When we record, we disinfect all microphones, headphones, gear we touch including instruments with wipes before and after use. When I leave, I wipe down the table where my purse was, wash hands again, mask up, drive home. All clothing I wear is promptly laundered.

When he comes up to work with me his protocol is similar: wash hands, mask up, drive to my house, where I have been disinfecting doorknobs and other surfaces. When he arrives, he parks in our drive, his outerwear and shoes stays out on our patio, he washes hands again and hand sanitizes, we rehearse for a couple hours, then he washes hands again, masks up, drives home, masks up, goes into building, washes hands. All clothes he wore go immediately into the laundry. Any surface he touches in my house gets pre-and-post wiped down with disinfecting wipes. We don't record in my home there is no gear to disinfect other than his guitar.

His girlfriend works from home and keeps herself separate from us when we record in their home. My boyfriend lost his job due to COVID but busies himself with projects in his home office while we rehearse in our home. The four of us have mutually agreed that we are the only other folks we will allow in our homes and we follow this safety protocol to the T every time we travel to see each other.

So, question 1) are we being safe enough, or are we being dumb? None of us so far has gotten sick and we are comfortable with our routine. How could we improve our safety protocol? Neither of us stop at gas stations to and from each other; we gas up on our own time and hand sanitize after doing so.

Question 2) Musician friend and I are getting ready to record a video of us performing a duet in his apartment. Our mutual friends know we no longer live near each other, and my fear is that when they see evidence that we haven't been keeping six feet apart at all times in his apartment we will get scorned by our colleagues, or near the brunt of actual anger because they are not aware of our safety routine. How can we explain that we have been talking proactive steps to keep ourselves safe and have chosen to be a somewhat long distance social isolation bubble with each other when we release this video to avoid angry responses? Is it necessary? Musician buddy is ambivalent, but I am a worrier and don't want to inadvertently bring us bad publicity.

Please be gentle with me. We are doing our best and we so far have not gotten sick with this protocol. Our partners are also proactive in hand sanitizing and/or hand washing once one of us leaves the other place. Are we being stupid? Is there a way to explain this succinctly when we release our video to pre-empt any judgement?

Seriously please be gentle. My anxiety is on high alert just from reading the news each day and I really hope this community will refrain from a pile on because we are doing everything we can to keep ourselves and our partners safe.

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you.




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How unsafe is my apartment laundry room right now?

The one vector between me and total isolation is my apartment laundry room. Am I overestimating my risk?

I am in a better coronavirus situation than many. It's me and my three-year-old, and there is no other adult to fail to comply with the rules. I continue to get paid and am working from home. I do get occasional grocery delivery, but I do have enough stockpiled at this point that I don't have to do that very often and I could cut that out if I need to for the time being.

I am prone to anxiety, and in the past have fixated on small details as an outlet for this. For example, when my son was a baby I did a lot of reading about and see if sleeping situations and was extremely vigilant about his crib and its condition. My rational brain knows that the odds for such a thing to happen are remote. But it was something I could control and it gave me comfort to control it. I feel like this laundry situation might be the same thing.

I do feel nervous when we go outside but I'm careful to not touch anything and sanitize our hands as soon as we are outside. So I tell myself that's OK. But the laundry...there is no getting around it. It's a communal laundry room. It's making me crazy to the point I've contemplated moving.

To be fair, the last time I visited the laundry room was this morning. I went first thing in the morning and the only person I encountered was the super, and she was gloved and masked and in the process of cleaning the elevator buttons. I do think my building is taking the reasonable precautions. I guess I'm just not really clear on how big a vector this might be? Like, I could be terrifying myself over a strawman here?

So, talk me down from the ledge. We stay away from people, we wash our hands as soon as we come inside. Are we likely to have anything dire occur to us from our visit to the laundry room?




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How do I get rid of stuff during COVID?

I'm going to be moving from a 1 bedroom on Long Island to a studio in Manhattan sometime in June. This will necessarily involve a certain amount of downsizing of stuff and furniture. Normally I'd donate items. What are my options to get rid of stuff now?

Why am I moving in the middle of a pandemic? To start residency now that I've graduated medical school, of course.




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How do I add a criteria to the aggregate function in this excel formula?

I've been working with this Excel formula for a month or so. It comes from Leila Gharani's Youtube tutorial.

=IF(ROWS($A$1000:$A1000)<$J$291,INDEX($B$2:$B$300,AGGREGATE(15,3,($N$2:$N$300="Japanese")/($N$2:$N$300="Japanese")*ROW($N$2:$N$300)-ROW($N$1),ROWS($A$1000:$A1000)))," ")

In this iteration, it's indexing column B, which is a list of movie names, and returning a list of every Japanese language film. Film languages are listed in column N. The formula takes advantage of Aggregate's "Ignore error" option; since Excel treats yeses as 1's and nos as 0's, dividing the aggregate results by itself returns an error for all the nos, since you can't divide by zero. Pretty clever. Then the formula multiplies the 1 by the row where it's located, and finally returns the smallest number in the list to the index function (then the second smallest, then third smallest as you drag down the formula).

My question is, how do I add criteria so the film not only has to be in Japanese, but also has to have a RottenTomatoes score of >75%, if Column T is RottenTomatoes scores? I'm feel I should just multiply the Japanese criteria by the RT criteria in brackets and then divide that product by itself, but I keep getting errors when I try this. Maybe my syntax is screwy?

And yes, I know it would be a lot easier to do this using VBA, but I'm running the workbook on Sharepoint, which doesn't support VBA.

Thanks!




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How can I get the functionality of Twitter&apos;s Legacy Version?

Twitter has announced it is shutting down its "Legacy Version" on June 1, 2020. I use the legacy version to get the functionality of Legacy Twitter that allows you to have a window open with a Twitter page up, and when a new Tweet happens, a "(1)" shows in the browser tab. How can I get that functionality? The solution needs to work in Chrome & Firefox, and whether I have a twitter account or not. I want to be able to open 3 or 4 or however many tabs with twitter accounts I'm waiting for an update from, and see a notification in the tab header that there's a new tweet.




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How Not to Get Shot: And Other Advice from White People [Download]

How Not to Get Shot: And Other Advice from White People by D. L. HUGHLEY [Download Audiobook] ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️.

This item belongs to: image/opensource_image.

This item has files of the following types: Archive BitTorrent, JPEG, Metadata




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How to Be a Friend: An Ancient Guide to True Friendship [Download]

How to Be a Friend: An Ancient Guide to True Friendship by MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO [Download Audiobook] ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️.

This item belongs to: image/opensource_image.

This item has files of the following types: Metadata




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional

Ive been making music for couple of years now but still cant figure out why my mix doesnt sound professional. Im I doing something wrong? This is the link to my tracks http://www.ourmedia.org/node/300488 Someone please help me out.




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional (Reply)

The 100% guaranteed way to get your bedroom mixes to sound more professional (and by far the most expensive) is to spend time in a recording studio. Take the raw tracks to something you want to mix, import it into their ProTools setup (or whatever they use) and have a pro engineer (must be a talkative, friendly one, not a grumpy, cynical one) to mix it. ASK A BILLION questions, be a dork and write stuff down if you have to. The worst case scenario is that after 2/3 hours at least you'll know what questions to ask of Google or at the local tech book store. The best case is that your music impresses the engineer and he/she becomes a pseudo mentor for you. Engineering is by far my weakest area (along with playing in tune and in time) so everything that follows is said that caveat: I have found that going cheap on mastering tools (compression, limiters, eq) hurts bedroom mixes a lot. Money I've spent on the top utilities there (I use Waves) dwarfs all my other plugins put together by an order of magnitude. (Reason's mastering suite is pretty good so you may be covered there; although I've applied Waves L2 to mixes done after the 'final' Reason mixdown and there's no question there was a marked improvement in pro-sheen.) I have found tweakheadz site very useful, especially their mixing 101 page. Finally I have been told (and have experienced it myself) that posting often to ccM and asking for real, brutal reviews and feedback has helped a lot of people. I, for one, am very, very embarrassed by several of my uploads from 2 years ago here, while only very embarrassed by more recent ones; all strictly due to people hearing stuff I didn't.




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional (Reply)

that sounds good. ill look for a studio near my place. at the end you said that the comments from ccmixer is very useful but what shall i do if i want a brutal review of my own original mix? because on ccmixer i can only upload remixes or samples or separate tracks.




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional (Reply)

being a remix site and short on resources we can't handle original material. so, er, get remixing... ;)




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional (Reply)

my buddy des has a great blog he runs that can surely help almost anyone here with improving their production. http://www.hometracked.com/ also, his music is worth checking out, just so you can see that he knows what he's talking about. des is a great guy and a really excellent artist. http://www.deshead.com/




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional (Reply)

U need to have a good pair of monitors, headphones will not do at all! I agree with Fourstones, Waves is a very good suite. I use it within SoundForge and it really does help in cleaning up the frequencies. My mixes really improved when I had monitor speakers included in the set up. Experiment and let me know, I'll give u some quality feedback, no holds, sometimes the truth hurts! LOL! EZ m8 Morr




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional (Reply)

The best thing I can say is: learn about sound. Learn about frequencies, which ones sound like what and do what to the overall mix. Whether or not to use a low or high pass filter on something. Fiddle with EQs for hours. And more importantly, get criticism. It's the easiest way to learn what sound to look out for, and such. And most importantly of all: Practice. Mix till your ears bleed. (from the time spent listening to the same song, not due to the terrible mix :P) Mixing is one of my strong suits, but most of it is just being able to hear the song, and make the adjustments that I want, to be able to make the necessary changes and just know what needs to be done.




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional (Reply)

bravo!




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional (Reply)

That's a very good point- I started with a Mac LC, EZVision and an M1, with the only audio manipulation being Hypercard. I got good at customizing patches and finding seamless loop points manually just to get what I could out of what I had, with mastering being 1/4"-to-RCA from the headphone jack on the M1 to AUX IN on the cassette player, or the same thing with 1/8" adapter for the 'puter sound files. Then I'd record and bounce these cassette tracks to my 4-track, with final routing from 4-track's headphone-out back to the cassette. Ugly stuff, but that's what I had to work with...




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional (Reply)

This is a very good point. I think that it's easy to keep adding new gear, and thus miss the richness of existing gear and software. I like to work with more limited software sometimes, so that I can feel as if I am exploiting it to its fullness.




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional (Reply)

Ive been making music for couple of years now but still cant figure out why my mix doesnt sound professional. Im I doing something wrong? This is the link to my tracks http://www.ourmedia.org/node/300488 Someone please help me out. The first thing I noticed was the lack of higher frequencies in your mix... My mixes always end up being bass heavy (because I suck horribly) so I can see we both have the same problem... There's is (however) an over-abundance of frequency-fighting in your track... A lot of distorted things competing for my attention (at least in my ears). Dunno if any of this has been helpful, but we could all learn things...so hopefully you'll have advice for me in the future ;-) Good luck, and we me luck too! -Joel




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional (Reply)

This is a useful thread. Im just in the middle of mixing a new ccmixter-based song and its just not coming together for me. The tweakheadz and hometracked sites are great. A couple other useful sites: tips and techniques at gearslutz - http://www.gearslutz.com/board/tips-techniques/168409-tips-techniques.html ; Live tips - http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27120 ; general EQ reference - http://www.idmforums.com/showthread.php?t=11466 Im definitely going to get the mix Im working on up here, I need some blunt advice.




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DIY :: How to make my mix sound professional (Reply)

OK, I uploaded Hollywood Picture Book (feat Calendar Girl and Kaer Trouz) and entered a pluggy plug for comments over this weekend.




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The Talk Shows

Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:




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How Far Off The Mark?

Eating healthfully can sometimes seem daunting.
"Who are they kidding?" a Lean Plate Club member from Frostburg, Md., complained in an e-mail soon after the latest U.S. Dietary Guidelines were released in January. "Two cups of fruit and 2 1/2 cups of vegetables [daily]!"






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WSU’s DJ Rodman talks about watching ‘Last Dance’ show spotlighting his dad Dennis Rodman


With the third episode of "The Last Dance" largely centered on his father, DJ Rodman made sure his schedule was clear so he could watch unbothered and uninterrupted. What he saw even surprised him.




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How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone

Brian McCullough, who runs Internet History Podcast, also wrote a book named How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone which did a fantastic job of capturing the ethos of the early web and telling the backstory of so many people & projects behind it's evolution.

I think the quote which best the magic of the early web is

Jim Clark came from the world of machines and hardware, where development schedules were measured in years—even decades—and where “doing a startup” meant factories, manufacturing, inventory, shipping schedules and the like. But the Mosaic team had stumbled upon something simpler. They had discovered that you could dream up a product, code it, release it to the ether and change the world overnight. Thanks to the Internet, users could download your product, give you feedback on it, and you could release an update, all in the same day. In the web world, development schedules could be measured in weeks.

The part I bolded in the above quote from the book really captures the magic of the Internet & what pulled so many people toward the early web.

The current web - dominated by never-ending feeds & a variety of closed silos - is a big shift from the early days of web comics & other underground cool stuff people created & shared because they thought it was neat.

Many established players missed the actual direction of the web by trying to create something more akin to the web of today before the infrastructure could support it. Many of the "big things" driving web adoption relied heavily on chance luck - combined with a lot of hard work & a willingness to be responsive to feedback & data.

  • Even when Marc Andreessen moved to the valley he thought he was late and he had "missed the whole thing," but he saw the relentless growth of the web & decided making another web browser was the play that made sense at the time.
  • Tim Berners-Lee was dismayed when Andreessen's web browser enabled embedded image support in web documents.
  • Early Amazon review features were originally for editorial content from Amazon itself. Bezos originally wanted to launch a broad-based Amazon like it is today, but realized it would be too capital intensive & focused on books off the start so he could sell a known commodity with a long tail. Amazon was initially built off leveraging 2 book distributors ( Ingram and Baker & Taylor) & R. R. Bowker's Books In Print catalog. They also did clever hacks to meet minimum order requirements like ordering out of stock books as part of their order, so they could only order what customers had purchased.
  • eBay began as an /aw/ subfolder on the eBay domain name which was hosted on a residential internet connection. Pierre Omidyar coded the auction service over labor day weekend in 1995. The domain had other sections focused on topics like ebola. It was switched from AuctionWeb to a stand alone site only after the ISP started charging for a business line. It had no formal Paypal integration or anything like that, rather when listings started to charge a commission, merchants would mail physical checks in to pay for the platform share of their sales. Beanie Babies also helped skyrocket platform usage.
  • The reason AOL carpet bombed the United States with CDs - at their peak half of all CDs produced were AOL CDs - was their initial response rate was around 10%, a crazy number for untargeted direct mail.
  • Priceline was lucky to have survived the bubble as their idea was to spread broadly across other categories beyond travel & they were losing about $30 per airline ticket sold.
  • The broader web bubble left behind valuable infrastructure like unused fiber to fuel continued growth long after the bubble popped. The dot com bubble was possible in part because there was a secular bull market in bonds stemming back to the early 1980s & falling debt service payments increased financial leverage and company valuations.
  • TED members hissed at Bill Gross when he unveiled GoTo.com, which ranked "search" results based on advertiser bids.
  • Excite turned down offering the Google founders $1.6 million for the PageRank technology in part because Larry Page insisted to Excite CEO George Bell ‘If we come to work for Excite, you need to rip out all the Excite technology and replace it with [our] search.’ And, ultimately, that’s—in my recollection—where the deal fell apart.”
  • Steve Jobs initially disliked the multi-touch technology that mobile would rely on, one of the early iPhone prototypes had the iPod clickwheel, and Apple was against offering an app store in any form. Steve Jobs so loathed his interactions with the record labels that he did not want to build a phone & first licensed iTunes to Motorola, where they made the horrible ROKR phone. He only ended up building a phone after Cingular / AT&T begged him to.
  • Wikipedia was originally launched as a back up feeder site that was to feed into Nupedia.
  • Even after Facebook had strong traction, Marc Zuckerberg kept working on other projects like a file sharing service. Facebook's news feed was publicly hated based on the complaints, but it almost instantly led to a doubling of usage of the site so they never dumped it. After spreading from college to college Facebook struggled to expand ad other businesses & opening registration up to all was a hail mary move to see if it would rekindle growth instead of selling to Yahoo! for a billion dollars.

The book offers a lot of color to many important web related companies.

And many companies which were only briefly mentioned also ran into the same sort of lucky breaks the above companies did. Paypal was heavily reliant on eBay for initial distribution, but even that was something they initially tried to block until it became so obvious they stopped fighting it:

“At some point I sort of quit trying to stop the EBay users and mostly focused on figuring out how to not lose money,” Levchin recalls. ... In the late 2000s, almost a decade after it first went public, PayPal was drifting toward obsolescence and consistently alienating the small businesses that paid it to handle their online checkout. Much of the company’s code was being written offshore to cut costs, and the best programmers and designers had fled the company. ... PayPal’s conversion rate is lights-out: Eighty-nine percent of the time a customer gets to its checkout page, he makes the purchase. For other online credit and debit card transactions, that number sits at about 50 percent.

Here is a podcast interview of Brian McCullough by Chris Dixon.

How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone is a great book well worth a read for anyone interested in the web.




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