Tag Archives: Cliff Notes

DF Pirate Radio – Cliffnotes (2010 Season)

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Cliff Notes – 2010 Season

  • In March 2010 DJ digitalflood went on an elongated hiatus after recording just five episodes for the year. He wanted to focus on his marriage, personal health (he ended up needing shoulder surgery to fix a shoulder dislocation in 2009 that would end of nagging him for well over a year), career, and children. It was a hard decision, but it was the right one to make. The hiatus after two years quickly became retirement from Pirate Radio– though nothing is ever over until it really is over.  😉
  • DJ digitalflood was also having a hard time getting other crew members to dedicate time the show– they too had a lot on their plate. The end result is that three of the five episodes are all music mix sessions.
  • At around 2 hours, Episode 2 (The Worst of 2009) was the longest ever single episode of Pirate Radio. Previously shows that rang in over 60 minutes were broken into two part episodes. With the advent of faster broadband and its ubiquitous availability, the time had come to break tradition and step in the last 2000’s. It would also turn out to be the last episode where you would hear anyone talk as the rest of the season was mix sessions.
  • Episode 4 (Heartbreaking & Baby Making) includes the ever popular “Rick Roll” that was all the rage at the time.
  • The last episode of the season, Episode 5 (2 am Underground) is regarded by DJ digitalflood as his best mix session ever. It would be the last gasp of Pirate Radio we would hear, but it was a Hell of a way to close out the show.
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Mopping The Deck

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Rig at Prow of Sailing Ship -- That's what she said!

Rig at Prow of Sailing Ship -- That's what she said!

I’ve been pretty busy mopping the deck at digitalflood.com over the last 24 hours (despite my continued and never ending bout with stomach flu) trying to improve some things on the site.

My most recent updates to the site include:

  • Updated WordPress CMS to latest version – Improves security, stability, and overall functionality.
  • Updated all plug-in’s for new WordPress – Again improves security and features.
  • Added Browser Navigation Bar Icon – That little thing next to our web address in your browser is our DF Pirate Radio symbol. If you re-bookmark the site you’ll be able to have a cool icon in your bookmarks. ROCK!
  • Updated Mobile WP – Improves mobile phone load times and reduces initial latency loading site.
  • Updated the digitalflood Pirate Radio Volume 5 Cliff Notes to reflect all that happened behind the scenes this year.

This adds up to putting us at digitalflood.com Version: 11.3.2 (Final) as reflected on our DF Code Tracking page.

Things have been humming along since my last updates and I’m not noticing anymore issues with the site going down. I found not only a spam attack, but a strange web attack as well linked to some configurations on our web server. Overall things have been better so there is no plans on upgrading the server anytime soon, but eventually we will have to go there– this is the price of fame I suppose.

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DF Pirate Radio – Cliffnotes (2009 Season)

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Cliff Notes – 2009 Season

* The latest edition to the digitalflood Pirate Radio arsenal for 2009 is a new M-Audio XSession Pro MIDI controller, which when coupled with Atomix Virtual DJ allows DJ digitalflood to mix music in real time seamlessly during live mix recorded sessions. Take a listen and see if you can hear the difference?

* Literally an hour before recording “Oi Vai, This Ain’t Kosher (Vol. 5 Episode 2)” of DF Pirate Radio, DJ digitalflood dislocated his left shoulder. DJ digitalflood had been recovering from shoulder surgery on his right shoulder and this left his collar bone imbalanced. The result is his other shoulder popped out and left DJ digitalflood in some major discomfort all of an hour before recording was to begin. Nevertheless, DJ digitalflood and Reverend Damian Baker recorded the show (albeit at a slower pace). You cannot even tell what happened and indeed this only proves the dedication the cast has to the show.

* Reverend Damian Baker is really converting to Judaism. The good Reverend has previously grown up Roman Catholic, became Methodist as a young adult, and had family who was Presbyterian. He’d spent the last few years as a Unitarian Christian before deciding to seek a Rabbi and proceed down the path of Judaism. Reverend Baker spent his early college career studying Christianity and was actively looking into becoming a Protestant Minister. That was about the time he met DJ digitalflood at SUNY Orange (circa 1996) where they were both members of the WOCC Radio Club and deejayed on the station.

* M’Weezy is really studying to become a Registered Nurse and in her second year at college. This makes her availability spotty during the course of this Pirate Radio season (Volume 5) as classes continue to intensify and take up more of her free time.

* Groucho really did get MC Mary @ The Disco! with a static shock on her butt during the recording of “The Groucho That Stole Christmas” and no– DJ digitalflood didn’t teach him how to do it.

* DJ digitalflood’s house is pretty small. It has two floors comprised of approximately 500 square feet. The first floor is where Pirate Radio is recorded during seasons four and five. The floor plan is fairly open allowing audience guests to sit in the living room and watch the radio show be recorded in the computer area. Other times guests sit over by the dining room table, which is on the other side of the recording area. The kitchen is just beyond the dining room and as pointed out by MC Mary @ The Disco! has a rather slippery waxed surface.

* Just prior to recording this season, Sheeva passed away of terminal lung cancer in the Spring of 2009. DJ digitalflood dedicated “The Beat Feast 2009 Redux (Vol. 5 Episode 3)” to her memory.

* 2009 marked ten years of digitalflood.com and 2010 marks five years of Pirate Radio (there have been six seasons, but one was only an episode long– in 2007 DJ digitalflood went on hiatus to get married and have a kid hence the one episode season). This season DJ digitalflood did a lot of reflection on his DJ and audio production experiences that lead up to this milestone. “The Slighty Unpleasant Dream After Hanukkah (Vol. 5 Episode 4)” is a nod to DJ digitalflood’s exposure to the underground goth and industrial club scene, which molded much of his remix sensibilities early on. Meanwhile the “flAnneljAm: After Dark (Vol. 5 Episode 5)” is a nod to his early deejay and radio production education during his college years. Each was important in shaping DJ digitalflood’s Pirate Radio show and arguably without those influences the show would not exist today.

* digitalflood Pirate Radio is still produced on the same computer used when the show started in 2004. Last year additional memory was added. This year the main hard drive failed and had to be replaced. Otherwise, the computer system is nearly the same as it was in 2004. Regardless of this, overall audio production quality has noticeably improved thanks to updated software production applications and additional new recording equipment, as well as, an overall improvement in production techniques used by DJ digitalflood himself.

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Milestone dfv11RC2

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The site is pretty much finalized and with that I’d like to announce we’re at version 11 release class 2. Minor changes will occur herein to the actual web site framework with most changes being either content updates or additions, but overall development is final.

Last night we opened up comments on the Music and Visual Artwork pages. That takes care of the ability to comment throughout the site. I’m thrilled to be able to offer you the viewer a more interactive experience.

Along those lines we’ll be shifting gears over the next week or so. I’ve built a new Facebook Group profile that you’re welcome to add if you so happen to be on that social networking site. It features full integration with updates from this site so if you’re lazy like me and would rather login there to check both what’s going on there, as well as, see the latest df.com news from here you most certainly can do that.

We’re going to be doing more along the line of turning up social networking profiles and integrating them back to the main news/content on df.com over the next few days including MySpace, Pure Volume, and Twitter. More on that work will be posted as it happens. That should all be rather exciting. If you have a social network site you think we should join let us know and we’ll put it into consideration for future integration plans.

I also added the “Cliff Notes” for each df Pirate Radio season that used to be on the old site. That completes all the old Pirate Radio content and df.com content being integrated into this new site. We’ll see if we can dig up more of the classic df.com news posts, but for now the collection is pretty complete and includes everything that was on version 5-10 previously.

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DF Pirate Radio – Cliffnotes (2008 Season)

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Cliff Notes – 2008 Season

* After two years (since 2006) on hiatus and the first time since November 2007 any new sets have been released, DF PIrate Radio returned to the webcast scene in October 2008 with a brand new show.

* Chrissy is DJ digitalflood’s wife in real life. They were married in April of 2007.

* The current Pirate Radio studio is in the Welch household’s living room.

* The speaking interludes in Pirate Radio are actually recorded days before the show is engineered and produced. The playlist is one of the first pieces of Pirate Radio that is determined. From there a format is fleshed out. A general plot decided. Then recording takes place. The music and sound effects are added in later during production.

* Every live mix show has contained at least one track featuring Old Dirty Bastard. This is an homage to DJ digitalflood’s favorite rapper.

* Live mix shows take longer to actually make than the normal spoken format shows. On top of the normal four hour production time required to create an episode, a one hour recording session must be performed in real time. Normal shows only require about 30 minutes of recording to tape the voice interlude segments. Mixing then occurs in the production software and not in real time thus speeding the actual creation process.

* The lost episode (11/3/08) took some four months to be released. Production began in one version of Sony software and ended in another. Yes– we took long enough to go up a version during production.

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