software | The Spicy Cauldron

The Disconnected Free Radicals Mix

I took a while producing this mix for you to download (right-click the link on PCs, ctrl+click on Macs). It comes in at a hefty 92.7Mb when unzipped, but the download is just under 60Mb. Disconnected Free Radicals brings you an hour and five minutes of thought-provoking, thematically-linked tracks. All for gratis, nought pence, nuffink.

Okay, if you still don’t get it, it’s a free gift.

I was annoyed to find after completing it that one of the tracks skips, just once, seconds only, but it’s there. Very annoying. I previously thought it impossible for a digital music file to do that, unless you converted a vinyl record that had scratches on it (or if your cat jumped on the turntable when you weren’t looking), or maybe if you ripped a CD that had dirty great fingerprints on it. But no. The track in question was, it’s true, ripped from a CD. But being slightly OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) when it comes to maintaining my analogue music collection in sparkling condition (and making sure all my digital music is tagged properly), there’s no way the original CD had a skip on it. I checked the digitised track in question after doing this mix, and found it to be skip-free.

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Friday, May 30th, 2008

tags: acapella, choons, commentary, dance, DJ, experimental, goth, mix, mp3, pop, protest song, software, trance

When what you buy isn’t everything you wanted until you pay some more to someone else (or get hacking and void warranties)

You have to wonder sometimes why third parties have to come up with add-ons for hardware and software that really, all told, should have had the functionality bundled in the first place. Our household makes extensive use of Apple’s Airport Express to stream audio, and the Apple TV as well ever since its software was upgraded to version 2.0 and the ability to stream was magically unearthed. But neither device will support streaming from anything other than iTunes unless you pay the (not unreasonable) sum of £15 for Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil.