Onyx ft Britney

Britney bringing that fiiyaah.

Stolen from allhiphop.com

V-Moda plugs verdict

When I previously wrote about V-Moda's Vibe Earphones I promised I'd give an update as to their quality. First of all, shopping from V-Moda was a delight. I payed $5 for shipping, payed no taxes and the package showed up in my mailbox a week later. No complaints there.

Now I'm not gonna go all unboxing-geek on you, but I'll comment on the some of the physical aesthetics of the plugs. When I first took them out of the box, I was a bit surprised, the outer part of the plugs looks somewhat less 'flashy' than the images suggest. The detail on the image is fairly high, and the plugs are (obviously) smaller, which contributes to a more discreet look than what I imagined. They still look good, just not all that bling-bling-ish, which in my book is a good thing. The cord seems to be of good quality and the part that connects to the jack is reinforced with a metal casing, which makes it a lot more sturdy than those damn Apple buds (I've had atleast 3 that caved because of their rubber solution). Since these are 'in-ear-plugs' I was a bit worried, because I couldn't get the ones that came with my cellphone to stay put in there. They kept falling out all the time until I just gave up. This however, is not the case with the Vibes. So far so good...

As far as the sound goes, these are by far the best plugs I've ever heard. I tested them on a Sony Ericsson W810i and a first gen iPod Nano. Let me start by saying, If you're ever buying a SE phone, make sure you get some other plugs straight away. Because god damn thats about the worst I've ever heard. When I tried the Vibes it felt like the SE ones was made out of cardboard or some crap like that. V-Moda's detail in comparison was nothing but amazing, but I'll get back to that in a second. Now, I've always suspected the iPod buds to be pretty lousy as well, and let me tell you, they are. I did a lot of testing back and fourth swapping these 3 pairs of buds and 2 gadgets, and no matter how I ended up, it still breaks down to this: If my new Vibes and myself get separated for some reason, I'm running home ordering a new pair. The sound is so good it reminded me what a pleasant experience listening to music actually can be. Personally I've always been so grateful just for the fact that I can bring my music anywhere, that I never really questioned the quality of earbuds. And since I've always been pro-earbuds, because I don't like walking around looking a like a recording artist with headphone-hair, I've just used them - no questions asked. But thats what these babies will do to you, ask questions, like: Why the hell didn't I get these a long time ago?

And to the question everybody else is asking: Yes, there's bass, there's great bass! The only problem I'm having here is coming up with a solution on how to explain or evaluate bass in a fitting manner. Screw it - I'll just say; If you have a pair of iPod or SE buds, what you don't have is bass. The Vibes on the other hand, have great bass. But it's not only the bass thats a refreshing new element to my music-on-the-go. The treble really makes your music come alive. I know this is starting to sound like a wild rant, but this product is actually worth it. Like a friend of mine said while I demonstrated the difference between the iPod buds and the Vibes on him: "I can distinguish sounds with these I couldn't with the white ones". While he might have been a tad overexcited when stating that (I could hear the sound he was referring to with both), his excitement is enough to prove my point: These plugs sound great - with great bass and excellent dynamics.

After I wrote the initial post on this, a few of my friends have IM'ed me about them, and one of them was wondering about buying a pair of Koss Portapros or the Vibes, and I happened to have a pair of Portapros lying around. As the nice guy I am, I did a comparison with the Koss headphones as well. The Portapros has a lot more bass (as expected as they are headphones, not in-ear-phones), but the Vibes makes up for it as the music sounds a lot less flat, and the bass more balanced. As I've been quite happy with the Portapros I was a bit surprised that I preferred the V-Mode listening experience over the Koss one.

To conclude this rant, I'd like to add that my friend Mads, who's as anal about sound as only sound technicians get, also gave this the thumbsup. If you know him, that means a lot. If you don't just go get the damn bastards...

• What's in the box?
• Buy

Underground Kingz

The album of 2007, in my perspective, will drop April 3. according to amazon.com. Wowhee I'm excited!

Meanwhile check out their new video:

MC360 1.01 for XBMC

Yesterday Team Blackbolt released the final version of their MC360 skin for Xbox Media Center. This is a replica of the GUI for Xbox 360 for the original Xbox. Refined graphics, support for wide icons and lots more are some of the new features.

For those of you who have yet to experience the beauty of XBMC and don't know what it is, it's the ultimate Media Player (well atleast if you don't count HD material) that completely revamps your ol' Xbox. If you have one gathering dust just lying around, read up on xboxmediacenter.com and get your entertainment shit together! :P

No clicking!

So after a quiet day at work with not much to do I picked up some cool links from StumbleUpon:

I've never been upset about having to click my way around on the net, but someone apparently is. Either way, both the design and interaction with this page is pretty sleek

Advertising for peanuts is a blog dedicated to interesting commercials. Sounds a lot more boring than it actually is.

Another blog, haha.nu came up with a list of the craziest statues around the world, where Oslo apparently has the craziest.

This one is pretty old, but is still a bunch of nifty desktops. You'll get the picture...

The George Bush Speechwriter is also hillarious. See, I told you StumbleUpon was a boredombasher...

FireFox addons

FireFox addons are user generated extensions to our favorite web-browser.

Some of these are hands down beautiful, and once you try them, surfing the web isn't quite the same anymore without.

Here's a list of my favorites:



Adblock Plus is an addon that removes all kinds of image- and flash ads on webpages. It is automaticly updated and easily disabled, if you for some reason would like to see ads. This plugin doesn't only make your webpages more pleasant to navigate, it also makes your surfing faster since you don't have to spend your precious bandwidth on unwanted ads. Use this with the Filterset G companion and you won't see another ad again.

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer is an addon that backs up your bookmarks to a remote server and enables you to synchronize your bookmarks anywhere. This is very handy if you are using multiple computers. I have one at home, one at work and one at school, and my bookmarks automaticly sync between them.

Scrollbar Anywhere enables you to scroll your webpages the way you would in Adobe Reader or Photoshop. Click (customizable left/middle/right mousebutton) on the page and drag it up or down. Handy powerbrowsing tool :)

Stumbleupon is a pretty neat boredom fighter when you need to kill some time. Set up a profile, start clicking and it offers up random websites that's rated by other users who share your interests. Since the site suggestions are community generated, the results aren't all that bad.

Google Reader Notifier is only for those of you who use Google Reader. It pops up and keeps me updated when new articles are added to my subscriptions.

Auto Copy copies selected text to the clipboard automatically (like in linux or mirc) and keeps a clipboard history. You can also rightclick selected text and copy to searchbar, adressbar etc, which comes in handy for non-parsed links.

Linkifaction simply parses text URLs to normal links.

Norwegian Doomsday Vault

How cool is that word huh? Doomsday Vault, refreshingly apocalyptic, aaah, just what I need in the morning. Anyway this is a Norwegian initiative to preserve seeds from around world in case of a cataclysmic event.

The total storage capacity of both vaults combined is 3 million seeds. Ideally, the vault will house every type of seed available in today's world, and Norway will add to the collection as more seed types become available. The key, supporters say, to long-term survival after a catastrophic event is genetic diversity. In this case, it's genetic diversity in food crops. Who knows which seeds will be able to adapt to life after nuclear holocaust or major ecological destruction from global warming?

How come I haven't heard about this in Norwegian media?
Read the whole article at howstuffworks.com

Cord solution

Here's a pretty slick way to tuck away your cord when putting away your mp3player:

Mighty Mouse

My friend Kjetil is doing some real avantgarde commercials for Apple's Mighty Mouse, check it out. Like one of his commenters says:

If Apple had adverts like that windows would go out of business!

On a sidenote, I'm guessing Kjetil's pretty happy with his school projects right about now. :P

Nip/Tuck

So I just finished the last episode of Season 4, and I got to admit, this show is definitely up there with my biggest favorites.

As I'd previously only seen random episodes of this show, I thought it was just a cheesy portrayal of assholes. But after I watched it season by season chronologically, I really got it, and the show is all but superficial. An excellent cast, with great dialogue and a thrilling storyline makes this show a testament to good great television!

Recommended!

• Nip/Tuck @ imdb
• Nip/Tuck @ tv.com

Ferbruary 07 Desktop

Made a new desktop this month, click the image to check it out. Also, get a feel for what you can make your dull old Windows machines look like by checking out some of my previous desks:

• January 2007
• December 2006
• July 2006
• June 2006

Guide: Mac-like dock for your XP/Vista

Yes, I like the Mac GUI and it's functions/look, and here's another tip on how to add that to your dull PC.

Rocketdock is a free piece of software that enables you to recreate that famous dock from OS-X. I've tried a few apps that offer this kind of feature: Stardock's ObjecktDock and some stuff for AveDesk/AveScripter, and so far I've been enjoying RocketDock with far less annoyances than the others

Features:

• Minimize windows to the dock
• Real-time window previews in Vista
• Running application indicators
• Simple drag-n-drop interface
• Multi-monitor support
• Supports alpha-blended PNG and ICO icons
• Icons zoom and transition smoothly
• Auto-hide and Popup on mouse over
• Positioning and layering options
• Fully customizable
• Completely Portable
• ObjectDock Docklet support
• Compatible with MobyDock, ObjectDock, RK Launcher, and Y'z
  Dock skins
• Runs great on slower computers
• Unicode compliant
• Supports many languages and can easily be translated
• A friendly user base :)
• And best of all... its FREE

As usual you can get PNG's to use for the dock at DeviantArt. Also you can use WinCustomize both for skins and icons

You can take a look at the new desktop I made for february to get a feel for how it looks. Also there's a video of RocketDock in action here.

Bow Wow, this kid's got moves

New earbuds on the way!

I've come to the conclusion that my old, taped up iPod earbuds are ready to be replaced. To be honest, I had no choice when I found these babies online the other day.

Uncrate wrote:

Whether you use them with your iPod or Zune, the V-Moda Vibe Earphones ($101) will grab all of the attention. The noise-isolating earphones feature an elegant, lightweight design sculpted from alloy metal. In our sound tests, we were surprised to find that the Vibes rank right up there with Etymotic and Shure earphones we've used. Great bass, mid-range and highs. The earphones come in a leather pouch with three sizes of ultra-soft silicon fittings to fit any ear.

Let's just hope they sound as good as they look, come mailday and I'll let you know.

Guide: Those damn videos that just won't play (Win XP)

There's so many types of different videoformats out there, I just can't wrap my head around which one's what, so... I stopped caring.

The thing is, it's just not that easy. So I thought maybe I'd come up with a guide, so you won't have to smash your keyboard the next time your newly downloaded porn movies won't work.

Like I said, my actual knowledge about how all this stuff works is pretty limited, but I do know of two alternatives that's enabled me to stick with just one player that works well.

The first one comes in the shape of K-Lite Codec Pack, which is my first choice. This comes in three different 'packages', whereas if you're just looking to playback videos, the Standard is your way to go. This includes the playback software Media Player Classic, which so far has played all my media. Even though it might look like crap, it works like a charm, and leaves a very small footprint. (Which translates to 'uses little memory and CPU')

The second alternative is VideoLAN (VLC), which works to my knowledge just as well as The K-Lite pack. It seems to have a small footprint as well, and the only downside I can think of compared with Media Player Classic, is that dragging the timeline works much more smoothly with MPC. On the other hand, VLC is multiplatform and works with Windows, OS-X and Linux/Unix.

The best part of it all: They're both free! Enjoy...

Speaking of letdowns, what are you doing RJD2??

If you haven't been paying attention the last years, RJD2 has been one of the most celebrated alternative producers, making beats and remixing his Def Jux labelmates. But the best part's always been this guys solo albums.

I consider Deadringer (2002) and Since We Last Spoke (2004) to be two of my all time favorite albums. So once again, I must admit my expectations were on steroids when I unexpectedly got a hold of his new album The Third Hand.

His previous albums have been semi-instrumental, where vocals have been restricted to samples. Now, I've never been against artists trying new stuff, but I think RJD2 took a wrong turn somewhere with this release. Word of advice Mr Krohn, surround yourself with different people, because if none of your friends told you you have a terrible singing voice, who knows what kinda shit they're keeping from you!

That's right, he's singing on this record, on almost all of the tracks. And as aforementioned, he's not good at it. But that's not all. His productions seems uninspired, dull and nowhere near the classic tracks he's cooked up in the past years.

If you're new to RJD2, try these songs instead: Clean Living, Good Times Roll Pt 2 and the 'hidden track' (entitled The Air That's Left) on Deadringer. That'll give you an idea of the genious this guy is capable of.

If you're not new, my advice is, lower your expectations and cling on to Murs Beat and Sweet Piece (which are the two songs that doesn't downright suck) while we wait for a new Soul Position or another production

Tracklist:
01. Intro (1:01)
02. You Never Had it (4:04)
03. Have Mercy (3:18)
04. Reality (3:01)
05. Work it Out (3:26)
06. Laws of the Gods (2:10)
07. Get it (3:30)
08. Someday (1:22)
09. Murs Beat (4:04)
10. Beyond (3:57)
11. Sweet Piece (4:00)
12. Rules (4:03)
13. Legends (2:49)
14. Just When (3:28)
15. Evening Gospel (2:53)

The Third Hand is in stores March 06, 2007

Not smokin at all...

Smokin Aces had it all, at least on paper. A good story including the mafia, a sleazy Vegas entertainer and lots and lots of hitmen. So, with castmembers such as Jeremy Piven, Common and Alicia Keys, why did it have to suck so badly?

While sitting through this half assed movie, my ass actually fell asleep due to the crappy chairs at the Rockefeller Rock Cinema, but the only thing that was keeping the rest of my body awake was my expectations. Biggest letdown of 2007 so far!

Guide: Make your Explorer functional & hot (Win XP)

First off: The Basics
If you don't know what I mean by 'Explorer' hit your Windows-key and 'r' simultaneously and type in 'c:'
This will bring up your normal explorer window.
- "That's right mom, it's the file-manager tool."

FindeXer
If you've ever used Finder on a Mac, you've probably spent some time wishing you had those nifty shortcuts on the left column on your Windows OS as well. And if you haven't, you should have. Why? Because if you spend 10 minutes setting up your favorite folders, you have quick access between them, and it makes organizing, copying etc very efficient. Plus it looks good :)

Installation:

• Head over to Tom's Effect and download
• Unzip the files to a directory of your choice (ie. C:\Program Files\FindeXer)
• Doubleclick the register.bat file and you're set!

This is the point where you start setting it up, which should be pretty easy. If your FindeXer column isn't showing, click View->Explorer Bar->FindeXer.
Drag&Drop your folders to the column, and right click them to edit images and text. Use the options dialog to set it up to your likings.

You can get nice PNGs to use as icons in FindeXer at DeviantArt

Follow your hahahaheeart!

"Where do they find these guys..?"
Vol 2

The Tron Guy

"Where do they find these guys..?"
Vol 1

His amazing page...

Kong ft Koopa

Pretty dope...

Can't wait for the new Chamillionaire album though.

Scrubs stars with Jimmy Kimmel

Gotta love Scrubs, funny cast...

Oh, and don't believe a word these guys say, that song is gay no matter what!