DATE: 27 Apr 2007, 11:41 am / MOOD: Happy

1... Coca-Cola was originally green.

2.. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

3.. The name of all the continents ends with the same letter that theystart with.

4.. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

5.. There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

6.. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row ! of the keyboard.

7.. Women blink nearly twice as much as men!!

8.. You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

9.. It is impossible to lick your elbow.

10.. People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you sneeze,your heart stops for a millisecond.

11.. It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

12.. The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.

13.. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib.If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck
and die.

14.. Each kin g in a deck of playing cards represents great king from history.Spades - King David Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts -
Charlemagne Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

15.. 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 =
12,345,678,987,654,321

16.. If a statue of a person in the park on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the
horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in
battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground,the person died of natural causes.

17.. What do bullet proof vests, fire escapes,
windshield wipers and laser printers all have in common? Ans. - All invented by women.

18.. Question - This is the only food that doesn't
spoil. What is this? Ans. - Honey

19.. A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

20.. A snail can sleep for three years.

21.. All polar bears are left handed.

22.. Butterflies taste with their feet.

23.. Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

24.. In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

25.. On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

26.. Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and'bump'.

27.. Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

28.. The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

29.. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

30.. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to thebody to squirt blood 30 feet.

31.. Rats multiply so quickly that in 18months,two rats could have over million descendants.

32.. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.

33.. The cigarette lighter was invented before the
match.

34.. Most lipstick contains fish scales.

35.. Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is
different




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DATE: 22 Apr 2007, 1:09 am / MOOD: Happy

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Article On DJ ing

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So you guys must have seen how DJs around the world pretend that they are the überkool personalities? Well to be honest, here in America DJs are considered to be the guys who couldn't get the chicks, or who don't know how to dance.
The aim of this article is to teach you how to do simple DJing(and if you practice a bit, you can do better mixing then your local DJ on his 50K turntable).

NOTE: The aim of this article is to teach you how to do DJing for fun, I do not aim to create an army of computer geek DJs and attack the local Pubs and discotheques.

For the starters: You need to download this excellent DJing software called "DSS DJ", its a very good software for learning and doing DJing. In fact when I used it, I even replaced my winamp with this to play my regular music. You can download its demo version. All the features in the demo version work except that it has a 30 minutes limitation. For the purpose of learning its fine.
http://www.myxoft.com/

Its a really small software and once you have downloaded it we will move to the next step and that is.

Acquiring some trance music: Now I am asking you to start with mixing trance music because they all have got a regular tempo and beats. There are many good trance artists in the market, my favorite being DJ Tiesto, and Paul Oakenfold.

Installation: After you have acquired the necessary stuff, we need to install this software and get started, I won't be covering installation of the software so in case if you end up having some problem during the installation please contact the support forum of the software.
Configuring the software: First of all get yourself acquainted with the interface of the software; it's a bit unique (like all the other DJ softwares, they all try to imitate a hardware turntable).

Then you will have to find the Menu Button(its in the center) and then select Configuration. In the new properties window, choose Audio Output tab. Now what we are doing here is that for DJing, we need to preview the song which is going to be played next, and since this previewing cannot be done on the output which is already being played for the people to dance, so we will have to listen to it on a separate audio channel. Usually its done by professional DJs to have a separate or a multichannel sound card.

Now like most of the people I am assuming that you have neither, so I am suggesting you the wonderful workaround provided by this software. Its called Split Mode, where the cue(or preview) will be heard in one of the speakers and the master output will be heard in the other speaker.

To enable this split mode you will have to click on the check box which says Split mode. After setting that up you can click on OK to exit the configuration page.

Simple Mixing: We will first start with really simple mixing, the cross fade mixing. Its just to get the feel, you wouldn't wanna mix two songs like this. To start you will have to load a trance song in Deck A. You can do that by clicking on ADD button to add a new song to the library.

Once you have added a new song in the library you can load it in any deck but either dragging it to the deck (but I have heard the software to perform badly if you drag and drop a song,) or try the other way by right clicking on the name of the song and click on load in Deck A. Once you have loaded it in Deck A, you will have to find the cross fader knob.

This knob is horizontal (unlike all the other fader knobs), and its just under the VU meter. This knob controls the audio output from both the decks and how much quantity of each output should go to the Master speakers. Just bring that knob to the left most side (in the direction of Deck A). And press the Play button of Deck A (its labeled as Play-Pause).

If you are using the split mode (and I am assuming for the rest of the article that you are using split mode) you will be hearing this song in one of the speakers. This speaker is playing the Master output, when you play music in public, this is what they will hear.

Now load another trance song in the Deck B, click on Play (of Deck B). As you can see you won't be able to hear any sound. That is because this song is neither being sent to the master output, nor its being sent to the cue output.


To listen to this song you will have to click on the CUE button on the Deck B side. It turns RED to indicate that its on. Upon activating this CUE you will be able to hear the song on your other speaker. This is the cue output speaker; you and only you will be using this output for the purpose of previewing the song and the mixing which in a few minutes everybody is going to hear.


Now here comes the main part. Click and drag the cross fader knob from the direction of Deck A to Deck B. As you will be able to hear that the song loaded in Deck A is slowly faded out and song loaded in Deck B is slowly faded in.


Well once you bring the cross fader to the other side; you are done mixing your first song. Congratulations.

Beat-Mixing: You must be thinking, "hey wait a min, that isn't how professional DJs do in a club", there mixing sounds so much better (well I admit the mixing you did in Step 5 isn't how you should mix your songs).

Now how to make the mix sound better, well here we come on the next step, Beat Matching and mixing. Its very difficult to describe what is beat matched mixing of songs, so I will show it to you with examples. First example is of simple cross fading as done in step 5, second example is of beat matched cross fading which is going to be taught in this step.

http://www.merifiles.com/uploads/Xfade.without.beatmatching.mp3
http://www.merifiles.com/uploads/XFade.with.beatmatching.mp3

So you can see how different they sounded. Of course the second example sounded much better. Now we come to the step, how to do beat matching.

You see in real world a DJ has to play the song on his vinyl on the right tempo (speed at which the song plays), once the song is in right tempo, that means the time difference between the two beats of song A is equal to the time difference between the two beats of song B, then the DJ has to match the beats so that beats of song A play at the same time as beats of song B so that the songs sound as one single song.


Once this thing is done, the DJ cross fades from one song to the other. Sounds really tough, but in the age of softwares, our job is done very easy by highly sophisticated algorithms for beat matching. We will do the same thing a DJ does, except without all the fuss about finding out the right tempo and matching the beats.

To do beat mixing, first load the song in Deck A, and bring the Cross fader to extreme left(so that we can hear only and only Deck A), then play Deck A, then load the next song in Deck B, turn on the cue button and play it. You will be able to hear both the songs simultaneously and they will be very out of sync.

First of all we need to put both these songs on the same tempo. To do that, click on the button on the Deck B which says A

Once this is done, in many cases you will find that you don't have to do anything else and the songs seem to sound in sync, and you can simply cross fade them, but in most of the cases this won't be the case.

The songs although will have the same tempo, but their beats will still be unmatched. To match the beats, DSS DJ(and most of the DJ softwares) comes with a handy tool in hand, that is, Beats offset display. This display shows how a synchronized the songs are.



You can find it on each deck where the waveform is being displayed. It fluctuates when both the songs are being played. If this display is empty then the songs are perfectly beat matched, if a red line appears then the songs aren't beat matched properly.


If the songs are in tempo then the red line displays but it remains static, and does not move too much, but if the songs themselves aren't in the same tempo then the line moves from one direction to the other.

To fix it, press the sync buttons (I have already shown you the AB button), once the tempos are matched, the red line will stop moving continuously (it might move slowly but its no big deal, it happens with songs with not a constant Beats per Minute or BPM).

Once the needle is stable, we need to bring it in center. To do this, you need to locate the pitch bend buttons.

Now I am trying to use as less terminologies as possible, but still it's better if you learn them for using other softwares (or even for hardware DJing).

Basically what pitch bend does is, it slows or fastens the track till the time you keep it press, so that the track catches the beat of the other deck. It's important to know which button to press +/-.

Good thing is, DSS DJ displays the button to be pressed in red. They blink with every beat. If plus sign is glowing then just tap plus sign, and you will see that the red needle for beats offset display comes closer to the center, you keep on tapping it till the needle is in center, if you tap more or keep on tapping the plus or minus button then the needle will move to the other side of the center, and you will have to use the opposite button (minus or plus) to bring it back in center.

Once the needle is stable in center, congrats the songs are beat matched perfectly you will be able to notice it on the speakers. Now all you need is to move the cross fader knob to the other side slowly and smoothly. BINGO, you have just beat mixed your first song.

Other Mixing: After beat mixing your first set of songs, you will realize that its really easy to perform DJing, but wait a min, since you are using software so the beats are mixed and matched actually by the software (and I know the Hardware DJs are going to hate you and even insult you for that) so its really easy to mix and match two songs.

And this is the most difficult type of mixing for hardware DJs. For them it's easier to do other types of mixing, which does not involves changing the pitch of the song.

I am not going to teach you that, but just going to give you enough hints so that you can play and discover them yourselves. First one of them is, cutoff filter mixing.


To know what cutoff filter mixing you need to experiment a bit with the DSS DJ.

Look for the large Knob, which says Filter. It's just under the loop song button. Just try moving it around while playing a song. You will be able to handle the button well after a few times trying your hand on it. You must have seen this effect a lot of times done by a DJ.


Anyways, to mix two songs in DSS DJ (where there are separate knobs for both the decks, you need to decide first till where you will be turning the knob (because we need to have both the knobs turned till that common value).

To do this, first play the first song and reach close to the position till where you want to cross fade, then turn on the second song and listen it in cue output. Start rotating the cutoff filter knob of the second song in either direction (one of the them is high and second is low), reach to the place where you can hear either only the beats (high cutoff) or only the very high frequency sounds (low cutoff).


Once you are there, start rotating the knob of the first song in the same direction and bring it till the position of second song, then either quickly bring the cross fader to the other direction, and start bring the cutoff filter knob to the off position (in DSS DJ its in middle), you will hear something like this


http://www.merifiles.com/uploads/Highpass.Xfade.mp3
http://www.merifiles.com/uploads/Lowpass.Xfade_1.mp3

As you can see for trance songs its better to cross fade with beat matching, but for other genre of songs with not a proper or constant BPM, (or for example songs with lots of vocals) try this cutoff filter mixing. Experiment with it, to discover new tactics.

There is another type of mixing, although not very successful with trance songs. In this you just kill one common specific range of frequencies of the song and then cross fade and bring them back.

http://www.merifiles.com/uploads/Kill.Mid.Low.mp3
http://www.merifiles.com/uploads/Kill.High.Mid.mp3
http://www.merifiles.com/uploads/Kill.Low.mp3
http://www.merifiles.com/uploads/Kill.High.Low.mp3

You can kill either Low, Mid or High frequencies. The buttons to do that are located on rightmost and leftmost bottom of the DSS DJ screen. I haven't done very good job for the samples, because this doesn't really suits will all sorts of songs.

Advanced Software DJing: Well if you really are interested in software DJing, you can discover other softwares too, but DSS DJ works just fine.

It provides pretty much all the standard features you are needed by any professional DJing software.
If you want to actually start DJing in the parties then I would suggest you to invest in the hardware (after you buy a full version of DSS DJ, because you wouldn't want your music to stop after 30 minutes of play).

What you can buy is a separate soundcard (in case if you are having a Desktop computer) or if you are having a laptop then you can go for a usb interface for additional software output like one of these.

In fact I would suggest you even if you have one of the desktops. After this the second accessory you can buy is a MIDI controller. A midi controller sometimes also known as control surface is a hardware input device with various knobs, faders and buttons using which you can control your music software.


I own an Evolution UC33 although the link takes you to UC33e (which is a later version of UC33), because the company has stopped selling UC33 model. You can buy a never used UC33 from ebay for cheap (under 100$). Of course there are many other options available to you for example Hercules DJ Console MK2 (there is a cheaper edition of Hercules also available on ebay, which has now been discontinued, but you can try it), Berhinger B-Control Deejay, Evolution X-Session

As you will realize that I showed you a Cutoff Xfade mix on step 7, well you won't be able to do it like that only with a mouse. I know nothing will come below a 100$, but if you are interested then you should try getting your hands on a second hand MIDI controller if possible. And research your market as thoroughly as possible, try typing "control surface", "dj usb", "dj control" etc on Amazon and ebay.

I hope you enjoyed this article, Happy DJing, and next time a local DJ introduces himself to you as DJ something, try yawning.






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DATE: 22 Apr 2007, 12:52 am / MOOD: Happy

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CAN YOU READ THIS

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fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too

Cna yuo raed tihs? olny 55% cna.


i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, th e olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.


ONLY FORWARD IF YOU CAN READ THIS


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