Technology, 2011 - where are we headed?

So in 2011, we have cellphones & texting, apps, the internet, email, blogging, internet radio, music & video downloads & streaming, software programs, help menus, tutorials, online support, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Blu-Ray, Bluetooth,  CD's, DVD's, HDTV, GPS, Netflix, streaming, Wii, iPods/MP3 players, iPads...you get the picture - remember the days of having a plain ole television, a stereo console, and corded phones in your house and that was pretty much it, technology-wise? There's a good chance a lot of folks don't remember that, depending on your age, of course, but there's so much stuff available now, so many technological toys, it can really be mind-boggling what with so many learning curves to deal with. I'm 53 and do remember those earlier days I just spoke of (and sometimes fondly & nostalgically). It's just amazing how far we've come in the past 30, 20, even 10 years and with all the techno stuff we have these days, it makes you wonder how we got by entertainment-wise before all this stuff was around. But, even more than that, it makes one wonder what things will be like in 10-30 years from now. Your thoughts/comments about our technologically-enriched world, both now and where we're headed?

Hurricane Irene in NC today

Well, as of this writing, we've been very, very fortunate with Hurricane Irene.  It's now about 6pm and our lights went out for about 30 minutes then came back on, thank goodness. Many folks further downeast have not been as fortunate, and the Berkeley Mall in Goldsboro had a roof collapse today.  The winds are still blowing pretty good outside at the moment with a bit of rain falling.  Hopefully this storm will weaken substantially as it moves on up the coast.

New CD-R compilation

Been working this past week on a music compilation cd-r and I've finally come up with a tracklisting I'm pretty pleased with...

"CLASSIC ROCK PLUS, Vol. 2"

Side 1 (Track 1 - 23:39) Classic Rock

1. Breathe - Pink Floyd

2. Born On the Bayou - Creedence Clearwater Revival

3. Blue World - Moody Blues

4. Happiness Is a Warm Gun - The Beatles

5. Subdivisions - Rush

6. Any Major Dude Will Tell You - Steely Dan

Side 2 (track 2 - 22:26) Plus  (deep tracks)

1. Mr. Bellamy - Paul McCartney

2. Can't Feel The Earth III - IZZ

3. Say You Will - Fleetwood Mac

4. Miracle - Oceanlab

5. Say It With Love - Moody Blues

Programming note:  Each Track on this cd

represents an album "side" with multiple

songs contained in each track

"Side 1" is a group of songs considered classic rock while "Side 2" is mostly newer tracks/album cuts not generally heard on any radio station.   It's all smoothly-sequed, slightly cross-faded for that radio effect.  A couple of cool things about this comp is that "Breathe" by Pink Floyd morphs into "Born On the Bayou" by CCR - a pretty neat effect.  "Side 2" starts out with the sound of a phonograph needle dropping onto a record.

Original guitar music

Here's a song I put together using some cool software called Mixcraft.  It needs more work but this is the basic demo. 

http://www.box.net/shared/44u3nf5tfjq5y6rleru6

Sunday 8/7 Plans for Blog

Thought I'd start a blog page to have an outlet for posting mostly music talk, whether it be about my CD collection,  the latest exciting musical discoveries, my MP3 player playlists, and home recording - my original guitar multitrack recordings (I'll provide audio links from time to time).  I'll also keep you up-to-date on the latest DVD's I've seen, which will almost always be mostly of the suspense/thriller/horror genre!  And, I plan to change my profile picture soon since I'm already using this one on Facebook. 

Original "first post"

So, the first post I made that didn't actually get posted was about my spending most of  the morning farting around with trying to find a program to convert WAV files on my computer to FLAC files for transferring to my Sansa Fuze and found out that Winamp does that absolutely free.  Anyway, I'm happy now because I can listen to FLAC files on my Sansa without the loss of audio quality inherent to MP3 files.  So. I'm closing out now since I have to go to Smithfield and eat with my family at the Cracker Barrel, (yum!). 

RickH

Let's try it again

New Post #2.  Trying out blogsspot for the first time and thought I had posted the "preview post" but evidently did not.  Why does all things computer-related have to be so damn complicated?