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Wow, its been just over 10 years since Dee (Chim Chim) and I put the finishing touches on the last SimStim album. A lot has happened over the years: Dee’s recorded new Penal Colony and solo works, and I have recently returned to production and DJ work trying to relearn in digital what I knew in vinyl.

In a fit of nostalgia, I listened to the album recently. Surprisingly, or not, it still seems fairly fun. We were always careful to try and not fall into stereotypical genre patterns — things that tend to sound dated as music and tastes change.

So, for a short time, I am going to make the album and some extra material available for download here (link at the bottom). Sure, it might cannibalize all those iTunes sales we have (hah!) but what the hell.

Disclaimer: If Dee starts flinging poo at me for doing this, I’ll take it down and replace it with incriminating pictures I have of him.

Read more…

tags: brian mars, chim chim, electronica, jack in log on nod out, oldskool, simstim

Before starting, let me make it clear that a) I don’t own a Kindle and b) I don’t  think it has a plugin architecture. But a) I will eventually (or one of its descendants) and b) it really should.

So, what I want is a plugin similar to the dictionary widget. That one allows you to look up a word in the current text you are reading. In this case, however, it triggers on currency amounts.

Suppose you are reading Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (which, oddly enough, I am) and you see a line of text that reads

For a fare of twenty francs, the vehicle went down Broadway
to Union Square, took Fourth Ave. to its junction with Bowery St.,
turned into Katrin St. and halted at Pier 34.

I want to select twenty francs and have the plugin determine the publish date and tell me what that is in today’s US Dollars. Simple. To the point. And for me, incredibly informative.

Remember, as with all my “prior art” entries, if you make it and sell it, I want my cut.

tags: Amazon Kindle, Jules Verne, plugin

I work at a fairly large corporation that feels its necessary to treat their employees as children. To that end, they have installed one of those subscription based proxies/firewalls that blocks internet content based on URLs.

I also read a number of mailing lists everyday and the number of links that are floated my way on a daily basis is staggering. The number of them that will make it through the firewall – not so much.

I am ok with ocassionally hitting the “Bad Dog No Biscuit” page when a request goes through. What I don’t like is hitting that page for the same URL/domain multiple times. Sure, I know that I cant click on certain links, but my tiny brain refuses to remember them all.

So – I would like to see a Firefix plugin that can capture those error pages and if I click a link that would trigger another one, have the plugin alert me before the request goes through.

Get on it plugin developers!

tags: blocked, firewall, internet content

Another billion dollar idea here folks.

Currently, I am reading a hard cover book that is nearly 1000 pages long. Amazon pegs its weight at 2.8 pounds. Now that’s a hefty chunk of words to be throwing in my messenger bag and toting around all day to read on the MAX or at lunch.

So, here it is. Sliced Books. Allow me to purchase a volume where the binding is designed to cleanly separate into more manageable chunks – 100 pages or so. Then, I can just grab the volume that I am on, and am good to go.

As always, if you are a book publisher and you use this idea, I want my vig!

I would like to see an application for the iPhone/iPod Touch called “Keep The Party Going”.

When your mobile device pauses a song and its on its home wifi network (example: you just walked in the door, and hit pause on your iPod) it should signal iTunes on a designated machine to start playing where the iPod left off.

I want this app to be free, so in lieu of my vig, you can just credit me. Otherwise standard million dollars and controlling ownership of your company is just fine.

As I was reading this story over at What Would Tyler Durden Do? about Tobey Maguire sitting in his car getting blinded by camera flashes, it struck me. Instead of sitting there patiently until you lose it, why not fight back? Install super bright flash lights on the exterior of your car and start flashing back. You know, like a million candle power bright. The kind of bright that makes the back of your eyeballs hurt. As they stand there stunned/clawing at their retinas, you drive peacefully away.

Remember, if you turn this into a million dollar idea, I want my vig.

When you take this idea and make a million dollar company from it, just remember to give me my vig.

Setup some applescript to do two things:

1. Fire off an audible alarm. delegate to the Alarm Clock app most likely.
2. If script is not killed within 10 minutes or so, start Twittering embarrassing personal info into the ether.