Digitalflood.com got a bit of a steroid boost today. This afternoon I took down server between 2:20 and 2:25 pm EST. I added additional RAM to help offset some minor bursts in traffic we see time to time. So far, so good. From a hardware standpoint we’re definitely where we need to be to keep the site running stable. We’ll now be focusing on getting the software configured properly and getting all the final graphics loaded.
We had a brief outage at digitalflood.com this morning, but have fully recovered.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be lots of random pics of Emperor Penguins on the Net. We can change that one blog post at time! (© Samuel Blanc - http://www.sblanc.com)
I spent some time over the last twenty four hours building out better menu sorting for the digitalflood Pirate Radio episodes that I think you’ll find quite the time saver. If you hover over the “Music” menu at the top of this page and then hover over “DF Pirate Radio Webcasts” you’ll see a new sub-menu shoot out that breaks down all of the episodes season by season. I know this is long overdue, but better late than never (as they say).
I’m still mulling over what I want to do for “digitalflood Pirate Radio Vol. 6 Episode 4”. I don’t have any guests setup for the show and MC Mary @ The Disco! is back on college hiatus (as she continues pursuing her degree in nursing) so it looks like another solo session. If any one is interested in being on let me know. You probably won’t be able to make this episode, but at least I can maybe get another show going at a later date with actual people on it. In the meantime, I’ve been dying to trying out some new tricks I learned online from some tutorial videos. I picked up a new technique for using the cross channel frequency mixer to blend songs together and maybe that’s what I’ll record either Sunday or Monday night. Release date is still to be decided, but I’m aiming for either this Tuesday (1/26/10) or Wednesday (1/27/10). More on that as things begin to gel and actual recording takes place.
I have to tell you, my search page referrer hits for shoulder surgery have taken off as of late. I’m getting tons of visitors coming across this site just from my weekly recovery logs and it has been a pleasant surprise. I apparently rank pretty high across the various search engines (Yahoo, Google, etc…) when it comes to shoulder surgery searches. My hope was when I began all of this recovery logging that it would both allow me to track my recovery, as well as, help others as they go through the struggle of recovering themselves. Judging from the hits and feedback that seems to be the case. So now we can say digitalflood.com is more than pure fluff– there’s some science and biology in there as well. Who would have thought that?
* 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.
| Title: Vol. 5 Episode 5 (Click link to play) | Rel: 12/21/09 |
| Description: “flAnneljAm: After Dark” – Back in 1996 DJ digitalflood launched his public broadcast career on SUNY Orange’s WOCC 530 AM radio station. The world was not quite ready for it. Back then DJ digitalflood went by the DJ alias of flAnnelmAn. It was a salute to his alternative grunge loving music roots. DJ digitalflood was a huge fan of the alternative and underground college music scene. He religiously wore a flannel shirt every day. His hair was ridiculously long. He didn’t buy his shirts in the mall. And he wore khakis pants long before they ever appeared in a Gap commercial. Needless to say, he did not necessarily fit into mid-90s Orange County, NY college culture. Nevertheless, his lunchtime hour long show “The flAnneljAm” became a cult favorite amongst the student body. His off kilter wit and fearless self depreciating humor made even the most musically dull student interested in what he’d say next. So while he had their attention he made sure to slowly bore into their minds by subjecting them to the hardest underground metal and hard rock.
It’s been a long time since 1996. Over a decade, if you dare count up the years. The question DJ digitalflood couldn’t let go of is– what if he had all the skills and technology of 2009 back in 1996? What would the “flAnneljAm” sound like then? Well, you could be a jerk and point out that since the flAnneljAm evolved into digitalflood Pirate Radio it’d sound exactly like every other episode of Pirate Radio, but let’s not be a douche like that. Let’s pretend that it didn’t. And if you can for one second pretend that far then you can also pretend it’s 1996 and this is the flAnneljAm… even if it’s Pirate Radio… which (yes) is one and the same… *ahem* This episode is chalked full of alternative metal, grunge, and underground indie music from circa the early 90s. It reads like the who’s who of the scene before the scene. You may not recognize every song, but you’re sure to recognize every artist even if at that point nobody aside from the guy at the turntable knew who they were. It’s history brother man. Pure history. |
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