Category Archives: News & Updates

Shoulder Surgery – 8 weeks in

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Arm Pulley PT - Not as painful as it looks.

Arm Pulley PT - Not as painful as it looks. Trust me.

Last time I talked about the ever closer road of normalization as I continue my recovery from Open Bankart Surgery on my right shoulder. I would say this week has been much of the same. I am eight weeks away from surgery and six weeks into physical therapy (PT). There has been no major change in my physical condition overall since my last post. My left shoulder continues to experience minor dislocations and is now in more pain than my right. This is because right now my right shoulder has little to no pain 90% of the time.

My range of motion is still limited in that I cannot reach outward above my shoulder, lift or pull more than ten pounds, or partake in strenuous physical activity such as sports or heavy housework. Overall though I’m able to do about 80% of what I did living with my shoulder in constant danger of location. The difference is there has been no indication the right shoulder would dislocate and that is a major improvement. It’s in there pretty good indeed.

Otherwise the week has been pretty much plateau in nature. I made no more forward progress beyond 170 upward and 30 degrees outward. Nevertheless after being examined by the PT’s office chiropractor I was pronounced fit to proceed with light physical exercise and told that I’m recovering very well considering the extent of the surgery. He also altered my routine a bit. Now they do the shoulder massage, apply heat, and then let me do scapular crunches against a wall with a balled up towel in the middle of my back. I also so a free arm pulley to lift my right arm upward and perpendicular to my collar bone. Each of these is for ten times. I then walk the wall ten times with my arm again to stretch it upward. Then it is twenty circular pendulums in each direction, twenty side to side pendulums, ten shoulder shrugs, ten forward and reverse shoulder rolls, ten bicep curls, ten elbow circles in each direction, and then three 15 second neck stretches to each shoulder. I actually get done with the whole thing in about ten minutes. It’s actually pretty painless and I feel good afterward. They then ice me while applying electrical stimulation.

I also do this routine once a day at home while in the shower in the morning in addition to my three times per week during PT.

I am now through my second full week of work. There has been no issue with that. I do notice my shoulder does bother me in the extreme cold (sub-twenty degree temperatures) and my regular PT therapist says that is typical.

Otherwise no news for once is good news.

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RI Rabbits Head Into Semi-Finals

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RI Rabbits Helmet (Home Color)

RI Rabbits Helmet (Home Color)

I’m happy to announce my Yahoo! Fantasy Football team, the Rhode Island Rabbits, have made it into the semi-finals play off match. Final regular season standings ended my team with an excellent ten wins and four losses, as well as, the most total points in the league. I easily clinched last week play off status and this past Monday grabbed number one seed spot in the final regular season game. Overall standings look like this as of today:

Rank Team W-L-T Pct Pts Streak Waiver Moves
*1. Rhode Island Rabbits 10-4-0 .714 1430.08 W-7 8 8
*2. Brooklyn Dodgers 8-6-0 .571 1340.52 W-1 1 4
*3. 5yardsout 8-6-0 .571 1304.42 L-1 4 10
*4. really da really 8-6-0 .571 1282.38 W-1 2 11
5. League Champs 8-6-0 .571 1137.16 L-1 5 19
6. doobie brothers 7-7-0 .500 1301.28 W-1 10 15
7. HTOWNHARDHITTAZ 7-7-0 .500 1185.78 L-2 9 12
8. ICRMBWNHB 6-8-0 .429 1277.78 L-1 7 12
9. cowboys21 4-10-0 .286 1203.50 W-2 3 –
10. DOmers 4-10-0 .286 985.18 L-3 6 13

Play offs start this Thursday and are lined up as so:

Week 15
(Dec 15 – Dec 21)		 Week 16
(Dec 22 – Dec 28)
Final

Since I grabbed first place with a clinch (in other words nobody could bump me) I got to play the number four team instead of the normal number three. Hypothetically that allows me to play the weakest team in the play offs and thus give me an edge.

If you look at the prediction of stats though you’ll see my opponent “Really da Really” has quite a team and they are far from easy to beat (though I have done it in the past three weeks). Right now we match up with me having a slight edge (103.14-102.69) but those number are constantly in flux (it was actually flipped 102 to 103 with Really Da Really in the lead earlier this morning). I clobbered them 128.92-73.18 in our last meeting. They did manage to beat me early in the season in a heart break win 73.66-70.18. Either way, this is no cake walk game and all the beans are on the line.

I’ll let you know whether or not next week if I make it into my league’s Super Bowl final or not. Wish me luck!

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Any Press Is Good Press

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Empire State Building in NYC - Main off air transmission array for TV.

Quick note, you’ll see me interviewed in today’s edition of The Times-Herald Record. The story centers around one customer of ours (“ours” being my employer WVT Communications) who seems to be having ongoing issues with her cable TV service. The first time I ever heard about her was on Monday (12/14/09) when she left me a voice mail in the afternoon while I was at PT. I returned her call early yesterday morning (12/15/09), but only got her answering machine. I then got another call later that day from a reporter with the Record requesting an interview. With our CEO’s permission I gave a rundown on the good, the bad, and the ugly about digital RF off air reception including addressing how you deal with as a TV cable provider an overall weaker local channel signal level and a higher susceptibility to co-channel interference. Of course the upside is that same local channel signal provides better picture clarity and audio, as well as, allowing multiple channels to be broadcast within a spectrum space that once only allowed one. I haven’t heard back from Mrs. Watson, but I hope I do– I honestly feel there are other issues at work here aside from the digital off air transition issues as she’s stated to the Record she saw them on all channels (not just the local NY/NJ channels) and that leads me to believe there may be something unique to her house happening that is causing her ongoing issues. Either that or there’s a bigger problem I’m not aware of. She alludes to other customers having the issue as well, but makes no firm identification of who those individuals may be. My hope is one of those other customers (or Mrs. Watson herself) allows WVT to look at their equipment and isolate the issue, which may have nothing to do with those previous digital off air transition issues. Only then can I offer all the effected subscribers resolution and restore their service to proper working order, which of course is my ultimate goal.

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Any Press Is Good Press

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Empire State Building in NYC - Main off air transmission array for TV.

Empire State Building in NYC - Main local off air transmission array for NY.

Quick note, you’ll see me interviewed in today’s edition of The Times-Herald Record. The story centers around one customer of ours (“ours” being my employer WVT Communications) who seems to be having ongoing issues with her cable TV service. The first time I ever heard about her was on Monday (12/14/09) when she left me a voice mail in the afternoon while I was at PT. I returned her call early yesterday morning (12/15/09), but only got her answering machine. I then got another call later that day from a reporter with the Record requesting an interview. With our CEO’s permission I gave a rundown on the good, the bad, and the ugly about digital RF off air reception including addressing how you deal with as a TV cable provider an overall weaker local channel signal level and a higher susceptibility to co-channel interference. Of course the upside is that same local channel signal provides better picture clarity and audio, as well as, allowing multiple channels to be broadcast within a spectrum space that once only allowed one. I haven’t heard back from Mrs. Watson, but I hope I do– I honestly feel there are other issues at work here aside from the digital off air transition issues as she’s stated to the Record she saw them on all channels (not just the local NY/NJ channels) and that leads me to believe there may be something unique to her house happening that is causing her ongoing issues. Either that or there’s a bigger problem I’m not aware of. She alludes to other customers having the issue as well, but makes no firm identification of who those individuals may be. My hope is one of those other customers (or Mrs. Watson herself) allows WVT to look at their equipment and isolate the issue, which may have nothing to do with those previous digital off air transition issues. Only then can I offer all the effected subscribers resolution and restore their service to proper working order, which of course is my ultimate goal.

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Deck The Halls

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DJ Tech Tools VCI-100SE Arcade... this and my two front teeth are all I want for Christmas.

DJ Tech Tools VCI-100SE Arcade... this and my two front teeth are all I want for Christmas.

If you’ve checked out df.com lately, you’ve already seen over the last 48 hours we decorated the site for the Holiday Season. Groucho the Cat has kindly offered to reprise his role as Groucho Clause once again. If you load df.com in Mozilla Firefox you’ll even get little snow flakes falling on your screen. It doesn’t work in Microsoft Internet Explorer for several really nerdy reasons that you’re not going to be interested in either way. So… if you like snow go with Firefox. If you don’t, load up IE. Problem solved.

Work on “digitalflood Pirate Radio Vol. 5 Ep. 4” has started and we’re on target 100% for a release this Saturday (12/19/09). I grazed through the set very quickly and it honestly sounds great. The final production version you’ll hear will be even better.

This afternoon J Diddy showed me a new DJ controller he saw on the G4 Channel’s “Attack of The Show”  the other day called the VCI-100SE Arcade. It’s made by a company called DJ Tech Tools and I have to say that I was completely blown away. The Arcade is a custom built remodeled variant of the original VCI-100SE USB DJ controller that includes arcade gaming style buttons in lieu of the traditional “brick style” trigger buttons found on most controllers. The design was engineered by electrical engineer, musician visionary, and WordPress web guru Ean Golden who is part of the “Controllerism” DJ mixing style. Controllerism is basically using mapped sample cue points in mp3 DJ mixing software (such as the Traktor Pro software used by Ean) to remix/rebuild an existing song or in some cases create an entirely brand new mashed up song. The style is notable for its quickly triggered samples that in turn require a highly sensitive USB controller. Hence the arcade style buttons that offer low latency, high durability, better tactile feedback, and less wear/tear on your hands than the aforementioned traditional controller. You can watch the video of Ean mixing live for a real quick introduction to his DJ style. He’s pretty darn nifty at DJing in my not so humble opinion.

MIDI Fighter DIY Kit - This week on "This Old Controller" Norm builds a sampler.

MIDI Fighter DIY Kit - This week on "This Old Controller" Norm builds a sampler.

This got me thinking about my “Cut Like Crack” style of mixing and how I can actually incorporate this into my mixing technique. I used some different software for my production (VirtualDJ, Acid Pro, and Sound Forge) and a different USB controller (M-Audio X-Session Pro), but the underlying concept is the same. In fact, many DJs are using M-Audio’s controllers with retrofitted custom arcade button configurations similar to how Ean rebuilt the VCI. I am thinking though that I can harness the same tricks through remapping my existing controller input knobs, wheels, and buttons to both a custom effects mapping setup and a custom cue mapping arrangement. The result should be very similar. I can then work backward to incorporate it into my existing methodology to hash out my own bastardized variant (Cut Like Crack In Control anyone?). I’m going to experiment during downtime between production, but if something develops you can be sure as heck to expect to see it turn up in a future Pirate Radio mix session. I’ll let you know how it goes either way.

I’m also eying the DIY MIDI Fighter kit. You need to add 24 arcade buttons and the whole thing prices out to about $200 in material with shipping. If I find something compelling in my aforementioned Controllerism experimentation this could be any easy option that allows me to not have to purchase the VCI. Ideally I’d like to keep using my M-Audio X-Session Pro (which I arguably absolutely love because of its underlying smoothness and ease of use) in conjunction with the MIDI Fighter to pull the whole Controllerism DJ setup off without having to foot the whole cost associated with $1k for a VCI. I’d actually end up better off because then I would have 24 sample/cue triggers plus my existing mixing controller’s setup and $800 in savings. Since the style is cue based I’m not losing anything in the end. Again, I’ll have to see how things play out; but I see the whole thing as a viable option.

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