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The Commercialization of Music Makes it Worse..

So, this morning, after a night out on the town in Madison, I am listening to Pandora.. and the Rolling Stones come on. Rolling Stones! Classic..the song is “I’m Free”. The thing is, all it does is remind me of those stupid credit card commercials that use the song. (ok the nitpickers will say it was The Soup Dragons, but their version wasn’t popular).. Anyway’s, the point is, that the commercialization of music just makes it worse. I didn’t feel like listening to the song.

It is so prevalent in TV/Media today, companies take popular songs, use them as they are (maybe remixed or covered) or they take them and change key lyrics to match up with their brand identity. I hate it!

One of the biggest things is, you will hear TONS of Beatles songs in commercials. But NEVER by the Beatles. Just bands covering them or whatever. The thing is, 95% of people listening don’t even know it is the Beatles. They hear the commercial and think its a unique new song. Just because Macy’s took a good Beatles song and had some no name hip hop artist or rock artist play it, does not make it new.

I think I would be more OK with it if people actually knew the original songs that were used or at least knew that the songs on the commercials are just taken from old songs, but still to me it doesn’t make the songs better.

It is even funnier when the song in question has a totally different meaning than what they use it for. A few I think I can think of of the top of my head..

Ford – they used a song by Morningwood called “The Nth Degree”. They cut out the part where the band sings (spelling out) “M-O-R-N-I-N-G-W-O-O-D”

Macy’s (or some other shopping company) – They used a song by Fats Domino called “Whole Lotta Lovin” – basically once you get into the song it turns out to be about kissing, and then a little “bomp bomp” (he usually does it with his foot) in the song, you can figure out what that is…

Westminster Dog Show/Apple, others – They use The Caesars – Jerk It Out. oook…even if the song isn’t about that, you can kind of figure out what it might be taken as.. * note, this is the 3rd time I have blogged about this song – First Time, Second Time

I am sure I could go on here, but you get the idea.

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links for 2008-01-12

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Product Reviews

All Newsgator Products Free!

Check it out here

I have been a huge fan of Newsgator since it came out. For the last few weeks I have been using Google Reader, which is OK, but not as good as FeedDemon by far, there was an article posted about that here recently..and in the comments all the trolls yell “but goog reader is free!!” – well , now is Feed Demon (and the rest of the products) – awesome.

Now just sync with Google Reader (really this is a request for the Google Reader team to allow auto import or sync with Newsgator) and I will be happy. I have a feeling I will be switching back to Newsgator soon though..they have iPhone interface, they have FeedDemon, NewsNetWire and Online versions…so it fits all my devices!

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Geeky/Programming SQLServerPedia Syndication

SQL Server 2005 Books Online Scoped Search

Stumbled upon this today

http://search.live.com/macros/sql_server_user_education/booksonline/

Pretty sweet, using search macros, you can search books online..well, ONLINE 🙂

Here is a search for DATEDIFF

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=DATEDIFF&go=Search&form=QBJK&q1=macro%3Asql_server_user_education.booksonline

Handy little macro if you don’t have SQL BOL installed. You can always search Google or MSDN to find the info, but this seems “scoped” for just what you need for books online, pretty cool if you ask me..

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Geeky/Programming

PHP, IIS7, Vista, VS2005

Tonight, just for the heck of it, I decided to get PHP running on my machine. I am running Vista (not SP1 beta). I already have IIS installed, so that pre-req was taken care of.

First thing, I made sure I had everything turned on..

Start->Run->Programs and Features->Turn Windows Features on or off…

image

I made sure CGI and ISAPI was checked. I then downloaded and installed PHP (http://www.php.net/get/php-5.2.5-win32-installer.msi/from/a/mirror)

When I went through the install, I changed the path from Program Files to Windows (read online that it would be better – rights – if in Program Files it doesn’t have the same rights as in Windows)

Then, I opened IIS7, and  went to “Handler Mappings” and clicked “Add Script Map”

image

It will prompt you when you hit ok to add to CGI stuff, hit Yes.

Then you can make a test PHP page in your wwwroot, put <?php  phpInfo();  ?> in there and it should work!

Now, as an added bonus, I wanted to use VS2005 IDE to develop PHP scripts, and found VS.PHP (http://www.jcxsoftware.com/vs.php) which lets you make PHP projects in VS2005. There is a 30 day trial, but then it is 99 dollars. I installed it and tried it , pretty awesome.

I don’t know how much PHP programming I will do, but every now and then it is nice to dabble into other technologies and code up something, or just keep up on the latest trends.

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Madison Differences #4 – Coffee Shops

Ok, another big difference from Portland. The coffee shops in Madison are few and far between, and there aren’t many Starbucks around, and if there are, they are drive thru, or at Target. And the east side of Madison is really low on coffee shops..

I have been to a couple of shops on the east side:

Cool Beans – This is located within the East Towne mall area roads. It is a bigger place, as big as a normal Starbucks. It has a fireplace which is cool, and it seems normal enough. My EVDO card worked so I didn’t try the Wifi, but the downside to Cool Beans is that there is like 1 (maybe 2) outlets available, and there are a lot of just “cushy” seats, like not useful for using a laptop. Coffee shops should have outlets at every table! The good thing is that it is pretty closet to my apt, but I think Beans ‘n Cream’s east Madison location is actually closer.

Beans ‘n Cream – I have been the the Sun Prairie location. It was nice, a little far to drive from my apt every day. It was hot with a fire going. The kicker though, my Verizon EVDO card got a weak or no signal, and it was on National Access (read: slow) so it was worthless. I tried out their wifi, but it isn’t open. You have to go to the counter to get a 60 minute pass, they print you off a user/password. Kind of odd, I didn’t like it. I will try the east Madison location, hopefully my EVDO card will pick up Broadband Access (read: fast) – I walked by the east Madison location, and there seemed to be less seating. One thing is that there were some outlets (always a good thing) at both..

Starbucks – ? Non-existent in Madison. There are a few, but the parking sucks, or they are drive-thru. They are mostly on the west side, and I am not driving 30-45 minutes to go there. The closest one to me is at the East Towne Target, and there are NO outlets – WTF? I mean I would go to Target and just try it and see how it went, but no outlets? It is hard enough to find one at a regular shop that isn’t being used. I guess they don’t want people with laptops to show up and stay for a while (I actually think the Starbucks at Target is ran as a different type of franchise than a regular Starbucks).

Overall? Well, I don’t even drink coffee (I do but not often) – so it really isn’t about the coffee, it is about the atmosphere for me, and the standardization (outlets, fireplace, places to sit, etc) – usually I am just getting hot chocolate… I do miss the bagels at Wired on Burnside though, and the coffee 🙂

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Madison Differences #3 – The Roads Suck (Report a Pothole)

Stumbled across this site – http://www.cityofmadison.com/reportaproblem/Potholes.cfm

You can report potholes in Madison. First off, can I just report an entire road? All of 151/East Washington/University from the Interstate to Middleton. And then how about every road surrounding the East Towne Mall. Add into that just about every side street in town.

I swear the roads in Madison are the worst I have ever seen. It would be better driving on dirt roads, at least townships have to grate them every once in a while, so they are driveable. I hope my car survives Madison roads – and I don’t even drive that much!

Report Pothole Link via dane101.com

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Geeky/Programming

MSXML2.IXMLDOMNodeList – Loading XML from files or strings

Again with the VBA, working with MSXML2.IXMLDOMNodeList objects. How do you load XML? Well MSDN shows you how to do it from an XML file..

Loading from an XML File:

Dim MyIXMLDOMNodeListVar As MSXML2.IXMLDOMNodeList
Dim xmlDoc As New MSXML2.DOMDocument30

xmlDoc.Load “c:myxml.xml”

If (xmlDoc.parseError.ErrorCode <> 0) Then
   Dim myErr
   Set myErr = xmlDoc.parseError
   MsgBox (“You have error ” & myErr.reason)
Else
   Set MyIXMLDOMNodeListVar = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName(“MyElement”)
End If

Loading from XML string:

Dim MyIXMLDOMNodeListVar As MSXML2.IXMLDOMNodeList
Dim xmlDoc As New MSXML2.DOMDocument30
Dim myXml As String

myXml = “<MyElement>Steve Rules!</MyElement>”
xmlDoc.loadXML (myXml)

If (xmlDoc.parseError.ErrorCode <> 0) Then
   Dim myErr
   Set myErr = xmlDoc.parseError
   MsgBox (“You have error ” & myErr.reason)
Else
   Set MyIXMLDOMNodeListVar = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName(“MyElement”)
End If

You will notice there isn’t much difference, except when you want to load from a string, you use xmlDoc.loadXml instead of just xmlDoc.Load .. I wish I could have found that in the documentation somewhere (maybe it’s there and I just didn’t look hard enough) 🙂

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VBA vs VB.NET – turn bytes into bitmaps

So, recently working on some things, I have noticed the HUGE difference between VBA and VB.NET, specifically with turning bytes into bitmaps.. (assume GiveMeBytes() returns a byte array that is a bitmap)

VB.NET:

Dim image As Byte() = GiveMeBytes()
Dim memStream As MemoryStream = New MemoryStream(image)
Dim bitImage As Bitmap = New Bitmap(System.Drawing.Image.FromStream(memStream))

bitImage.Save(“C:test.bmp”)

 

VBA:

Dim image() As Byte
image = GiveMeBytes()

Dim bitImage

bitImage = FreeFile
Open “c:test.bmp” For Binary Access Write As bitImage
Put #bitImage, , image()
Close #bitImage

Now, maybe there is an easier way in VBA/VB6 to do it, but this is the way I learned way back in the day. I am sure you can do something with the FileSystemObject (I am guessing)..

You notice that the VB.NET snippet mostly deals with converting bytes to MemoryStream to Bitmap, and the saving is 1 line, whereas the VBA is really nothing with converting but mostly deals with saving the file. Can we get the best of both worlds? I am not sure, but I still like the .NET implementation better, it just seems “cleaner” to me, and the VBA just seems “dirty”, but they both do the same thing.. (notice in the VBA I didn’t strongly type the bitImage Dim)

In conclusion…”viva .NET!” 🙂

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Geeky/Programming Life

Relationships and Geeks

Saw a post this morning on Geeks are Sexy, about “Why Geeks Shouldn’t Change For Anybody”, which has a clip from Diggnation (which, I would love to do a show like this, just need someone to do it with).. anyways..

Watch the video:

 

They are spot on. This is exactly right, and it is funny, because it does happen. I am going to be playing video games when you leave, and yes, when you come back I will be playing the same video game. Why? Because that is what we do. We are normal. Geeks are going to take over the world, they already are, so people should get used to it. 🙂

 

Via GaS

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