Category Archives: News & Updates

Please Vote If You Can On 11/6/12

Posted on by
Reply
Obama Biden 2012

DF.com proudly supports Obama & Biden in 2012.

It’s not secret at this point for most people who know me, but I am a Democrat and plan on voting for Barrack Obama for President tomorrow (11/6/12), as well as, the wider array of Democrat candidates on my local ballot. I’m not going to get into some sort of political battle over it. If your opinion differs– so be be it. I find myself aligning with the majority of issues and positions that the Democrats espouse and therefore it is the most fitting party for me to support.

If you want to find out who you align with there is a wide array of political tests out there, but I find this one works fairly accurately. Political Compass will at least give you some bearing of where you are if you are not quite sure yet (which most of us probably are– but hey it can’t hurt to do a sanity check). It is non-biased and will truly plop you somewhere on the political compass pretty accurately as long as your answer honestly.

I encourage to vote for whomever you wish, but the bottom line is that I hope you do cast your ballot. Voting is the essential duty of any eligible American citizen and I only hope you do take advantage of your rights to do so. There are many other countries where you would not be allowed to do so and therefore please do not take it for granted. I wish all the candidates the best of luck (of course you know I’m rooting along the Democratic party line so I’m hoping they do well across the board) and hope you do decide to make the effort to vote if you it is within your means to do so.

Share

Hurricane Sandy – The Aftermath

Posted on by
Reply
Downed Power Line in Warwick NY-- note the burn marks and hole in the pavement from the current.

Downed Power Line in Warwick NY– note the burn marks and hole in the pavement from the current.

On October 29, 2012 Hurricane Sandy arrived within striking distance of the Northeast. It had been building strength slowly, but surely over the course of a week’s time. It was already Category 1 and putting record low pressure measurements out even at some 200 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean before making landfall at 8pm EST. As the storm drew closer to it’s final landfall point in Southeastern New Jersey the Tri-State Metropolitan area was steadily torn apart by Sandy’s relentless winds. By the time the storm was done rolling through some twelve hours later there was a path of destruction wrought across New Jersey, Southern New York, and Eastern Pennsylvania that left millions without power, running water, heat, and in many cases shelter. We are still trying to understand the ramifications that Sandy left in her wake. Beyond its major landfall impact Sandy had destroyed much of the East Coast on its path towards New Jersey. The shoreline from Florida all the way up to Maine had been pounded by 80MPH+ winds, record sea level swells that induced major shoreline flooding, and rains that drenched communities far inland from the storms center.

I witnessed Sandy’s wrath firsthand and though at any given point I was no closer than 100 miles from storm itself my house shook, crackled, and shimmied more than I have ever seen in my five years living here. It was easily the most powerful storm I ever personally witnessed. Winds easily topped the 58MPH peak measurements taken off nearby professional meteorological equipment sheltered by far more trees and cover than I was. In the wide open plains of the former farmland of Warwick Sandy’s wrath was nothing short of ground-shaking (literally). We did not get much rain during the storm itself. About two inches over the twenty four hours prior to the storm passing through and only about .80 inches during the storm itself. This was not a flooding storm like last year’s Hurricane Irene. This was something new and unique in nature. A so called “super storm” capable of swallowing the entire Eastern US under its cloud cover, intense winds, and seemingly never ending power.

I was fortunate to suffer only minor loss of property (my beloved charcoal grill used for several DF Backyard Parties including our fan favorite “You Bring It, I Grill It” events) and a small portion of my East facing roof that I was able to get repaired within twenty four hours. I lost electric for only twenty minutes and all my family members (direct and extended) made it through without a scratch. I find myself returning to seemingly normal life until I had to venture from my street and make my way into the greater world some twenty four hours after the storm had passed. It is then I realized how truly blessed I was to get through so seemingly unscathed.

Much of my hometown of Warwick, NY is under darkness due to a widespread electric outage. The power companies are slowly, but surely restoring power. It is reasonable that 90% of Warwick will have power by the end of next week. There are hundreds of downed trees being cleaned up. At work we are restoring phone services at the customer level. We were able to get the majority of our subscribers back  in service within forty eight hours, but many need their telephone cabling put back up on the house. Many streets remain impassable. Many remain in the dark without power, water, or heat. Until we recover the power grid and finish removing the tree debris this will be the new normal.

It gets far worse though the further you go into Jersey or the closer you get to the shoreline. New York City, Staten Island in particular, was severely impacted. The New Jersey Shore is completely destroyed. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, remain without power, food, sanitary water, or shelter. Federal and State governments are trying their best to help. With a disaster so widespread though it is impossible though for the government and individual home/business owners to clean this up on their own. The Northeast needs your help and we need it bad.

This is why I humbly write to you. If you have the means to do so I respectfully ask for a donation of any size to be made by you to Red Cross to help out those most in need. Any dollar amount will do and you have my sincerest thank you for doing so, as well as, my respect. You can do so by visiting The Red Cross.

If you are in need of assistance, The Red Cross is also a great resource for you. Please feel free to reach out them if you need help recovering from this horrid event– that is what they are there for.

Together we can pull through this and rise above this– but we must do so by standing united together so as to support each other however possible. Thank you again for your time and consideration for donating.

Share

Who dat?

Posted on by
Reply
Groucho Spent The Hiatus Trying New Brews-- That Silly Groucho!

Groucho Spent The Hiatus Trying New Brews– That Silly Groucho!

Another hiatus– it’s what you’ve come to expect. I tend to hibernate between ventures at digitalflood.com. So with my latest hibernation/hiatus I have been up to some very cool stuff. Most of it has been professional development and related to my day job. Those ongoing daily forays into coding, server building, and network engineering have expanded my online capabilities. Now it is time to reconvene, update the site, and get things back in production mode here.

I also spent a great deal of time with my wife and two daughters. I’m blessed to have such a great family and as such it is only appropriate for me to dedicate time with them. Couple that with my mother, sister, inlaws, and such– well you can see I needed a lot of time with my family and that too has helped stoke those old creative fires.

I’m sure you too have been up to some pretty cool stuff and are itching for a that good old df.com stupidity that you have come to love and cherish– if not too bad. It’s coming any how.  😉

Share

DJ A.D.D. Birthday Battle Swag

Posted on by
Reply

DJ ADD Birthday Bash & DJ Battle 2011 tee-shirtFor those of you out there who both attended DJ A.D.D.‘s DJ Battle & Birthday Bash event on 7/30/11 or for those of you who couldn’t make it– DJ A.D.D. has put the official DJ tee-shirt for the event for on sale in his Merch Shop. It can be found online here.

All the DJs at the Battle (including your’s truly) wore the shirt while mixing. You too can get this official heirloom and homage to all things “noise”. Gain instant scene points and be the envy of (some) of your friends! Pretend to be a DJ and score tons of girls (or probably not)!

And of course if you’re looking for offical DJ digitalflood swag, you can score that in our Merch Shop as well. Just saying!  😀

Share

New DJ Hardware – NuMark NS6

Posted on by
2

httpv://youtu.be/DEG2JGkMePg

NuMark NS6 Controller - Photo provided by NuMark.com

NuMark NS6 Controller - Photo provided by NuMark.com

Hot on the heels of the NAMM Show release of the DJ2Go mini-DJ MIDI controller, NuMark is at it again– they have downsized their venerable NS7 full size professional DJ MIDI controller and packaged it into a hefty (read “heavy”) full sized control surface dubbed the NS6 that is smaller than the 35 pound NS7, but far from a featherweight in its class when compared with similar offerings from other companies.

The good news is that the so called downsizing of the NS6 did not come with loss of features, but it did reduce the price tag down to around $1,000 USD (from the NS7’s $1,500 USD MSRP). The unit still weighs in at around 14 pounds and has a considerable footprint of 23.8″x13.4″x2.5″ (WxDxH). Bottom line: Do not expect to push this puppy into a back pack. You’ll definitely need a flight case to tote it around. Product engineering must have been very aware of the size because there are two convenient handles built into each side of the NS6 that helps to ease the burden of moving and placing the MIDI controller.

What the NS6 lacks in ease of transport, it makes up for in professional features. There are four stereo inputs (two with pre-amps) and two microphone line in ports. For outputs, the NS6 comes with four total ways to bring the noise: Master (Stereo XLRs), Master (Stereo RCAs), Booth (Stereo RCAs), and Headphone (Stereo 1/4″ and stereo 1/8″). This offsets the need for lugging along a mutli-channel mixer and somewhat explains the footprint.

Like you would expect in a MIDI controller at this price point, there is a built in 24-bit sound card for audio files that samples at 44.1 kHz. MIDI is 14-bit. Again, this means your laptop audio needs are completely offset especially considering the output is rated at >98dB SNR on all analog ports. Expect professional grade sound output when paired with a decent computer using good quality MP3s (192-bit 48 kHz sampled) audio files. Sample output audio I heard via was excellent and on par with other professional grade MIDI controllers.

NuMark NS6 Controller Back Ports - Photo provided by NuMark.com

NuMark NS6 Controller Back Ports - Photo provided by NuMark.com

Layout is somewhat cumbersome (watch those controller disc platters when adjusting effect parameters pot knobs). This issue is similar to other NuMark units and if you do nudge the platter when reaching for a knob you will see the same “reach and accidentally nudge/stop a track” issue happen when in “scratch” mode that you see with the DJ2Go and other NuMark controllers. You do not know embarrassment until you accidentally pause a track by bumping the controller platter during an effect adjustment.

The controller strip feature on each deck is pretty neat. This lets you manually slice and skip through a track using the touchpad like you would be able to do with a traditional “needle drop” on an analog turntable. The controller strip therein enables all sorts of “controllerism” style mixing.

NuMark NS6 Controller Front Ports - Photo provided by NuMark.com

NuMark NS6 Controller Front Ports - Photo provided by NuMark.com

The normal array of sliders exist and a welcome “full range” pitch slider is found on each deck. There are plenty of knobs for tracking pot based parameters (such as gain, volume, EQ channels, effects, etc..) and easy to configure hot buttons to trigger effects, as well as, sampling/cue points (not to mention beat repeat and being able to increase/decrease beat repeat counts on the fly with the touch of button).

The unit comes with Serato’s ITCH DJ software (for both Windows and Mac). I know several DJs who use ITCH and the biggest complaint is “limited” interface that is not as extensible as other DJ software applications such as Traktor. Do not get me wrong– from an integration stand point ITCH will perfectly integrate with the NS6, but it does so at the expense of limiting that user experience with canned effects and limited knob configuration. Having said that, the software product is easy to learn and will work for most DJs out there without a gripe.

Traktor support is provided through a TSI file, but because NuMark partnered with Serato back in 2008 and developed a high resolution “HID MIDI” standard that samples at ten times the normal rate of MIDI, the wheel jog and slider functions are no where as accurate or quick in Traktor as they are in ITCH. Is this a problem? Not unless scratching is your thing or you are completely adverse to using ITCH– then you are going to find yourself between a rock and hard place.

Serato ITCH controlled by the NS6

Serato ITCH controlled by the NS6

It should be noted that Virtual DJ Pro (7.0.4) also includes native NS6 mapping and the same standard MIDI sampling rate is present in this software package as well. I must reiterate the point that this is not a show stopper, it is something to think about though as you choose your software path. I suspect (though I haven’t been able to test) you could overcome this issue in Virtual DJ using the configuration “sensitivity” settings. Mind you, this would not offer the HID experience in complete, but at least give you a seemingly close enough for government paperwork experience when scratching.

I have been able to make scratching work well enough with the much less expensive DJ2Go and Virtual DJ. In fact, my feeling is the wheels on that unit are far too sensitive (including the aforementioned “nudge issue” when in scratch mode and reaching for the gain pot) so I feel pretty confident it can be overcome with the superior circuit board wiring that feeds NS6 even in standard MIDI mode. The experience isn’t perfect, but most listeners will not notice when in a club setting.

All in all, the NS6 offers a logical lay out and ease of use with cutting edge features that will lend itself to enhancing the capabilities of most DJs. It is definitely not an entry level product. The NS6 is clearly meant for the professional DJ who needs a durable full featured mixing control surface. Most event DJs will find it as overkill for weddings and the like, but club DJs along with electronic or hip hop DJs will find it has the right features to enable the creativity process both live or in the studio.

Share