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Archive for the ‘Gizmos’ Category

Inside Soulwax’s live setup

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Soulwax’s live show is one of the best in the biz. Seeing the amount of gear that they’re running on stage and just how precisely timed everything is, it comes across like it was programmed by a nuclear physicist. In this video, David Dewaele breaks down exactly how it works. They even control their own lights from Ableton!

Linos USB Vinyl Player

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Linos is a portable USB record player designed by Charles Pyott. You just slide it onto vinyl, extend the little needle arm, plug the other end into the USB jack, and presto-blammo you got a portable vinyl listening device! The USB both powers the unit and allows you to plays the sounds through your laptop. Too bad you can’t buy it at stores, I gotta find me one of these things.

From Lost in a Supermarket

A Night At The (Synth) Museum

Friday, July 24th, 2009

In Calgary we stopped at the little-known Cantos synth museum and… well… just watch it. It’s insane.
Special thanks to our gracious host Brendan.

Tutorial on NI Massive: wobble basslines

Saturday, July 18th, 2009

Last Wednesday I went to the Native Instruments office in LA for a tutorial on Maschine. While I was there I asked them to explain to me the true science behind Massive, a plug-in that I’ve used a bunch but never quite understood! I got the mathematics, and then my instructor told me that he made this hugely popular youtube clip explaining how to make wobble basslines. Sure enough here it is with 162K views. Watch and learn, kids! Wawawawooowawawooomp.

This fake scratching sounds almost better than scratching

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

By Todd Vanderlin:

AR scratching from vanderlin on Vimeo.

Make sure you watch the 2nd half of the video, it gets pretty bugged out.

This text is taken from the Vimeo description:
“I was playing around with some AR markers the other day and came up with this idea. taking just a plain old vinyl record and attaching an AR marker to the label you can track the record in 3D space. The next question was, can you scratch the record? So by figuring out the velocity of the records rotation and applying it to the payback of the audio you can scratch. There is some digital noise that needs to bee worked out, but sounds pretty good. Its still really hard to scratch, it takes some practice but is super fun.”

Then this guy Theodore Watson created this iPhone app as a response:

Spinning vinyl ipod app from Theodore Watson on Vimeo.

Shout out to Martelo for the inside scoop!

The search for the 10,000LB Hamburger begins

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Make sure you cop your advance tickets for the 10,000LB Hamburger Tour which starts this weekend! Ticket links are here.

Amazing gizmo! The Void LP player

Friday, June 26th, 2009

By Korean designer Rhea Jeong.

This is not an illusion. This thing is said to actually levitate vinyl and play it in the air through that red ball. Check the description:

“The record player uses a carrier and dock outfitted with a magnetic and auto-calibrating control system which carries the LP into thin air as it is playing music. A self-running record player shaped in the form of a red sphere, contains a needle, amplifier and speaker, spins around the record, bringing the music to life.”

Wawaweewa! From designboom blog. More pics after the jump.

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Fashionable swine flu masks

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

The other day as I was waiting in line at immigration in Hong Kong observing all the swine flu masks, I wrote a quick twitter saying I wanted a an actual swine mask with just a snout to cover my nose and mouth. I quickly found out there is already such a thing, and not only that but a whole slew of designs for masks. 

This girl Irina Blok is selling all these designs and giving the proceeds to Children International to help Mexico fight the swine flu epidemic:

And then there’s all this stuff:

However this blog had an interesting article quoting a specialist who explained that these masks couldn’t work because a reusable mask defeats the whole purpose of protecting yourself from germs! 

Other sources: oddee.com, William Earnhardt.

Amazing gizmo: the Flowbee

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

Big shout out to the homie Tittsworth for putting me on to this revolutionary invention. He was actually hoping to find a Flowbee at his seat in a utopian business class flight. As you can see it’s a clipper-vacuum combination that eliminates the mess for “professional style haircuts at a fraction of the cost!” 

Visit the Flowbee website!

See your computer in Kanyevision

Friday, May 15th, 2009

The smartasses over at F.A.T. (Free Art & Technology) made this code that allows you to “view the internet the way Kanye sees it”, i.e. through shutter shades. 

I think this is for PC’s. Go to their post and drag some button onto your toolbar (that sounds like a PC word) and then allegedly every time you click it you can see the compooter like Kanye! 

Actually the funniest thing when you go that page is the little player on the right where you can listen to Yeezy’s songs replayed on MIDI stock sounds.