Invisible Agent, Irish electro, techno and all-sorts record label, have just pushed out another of their patented “Agent Casts” (a pod-cast with more “invisible”).

Check it out over here: John Dalton playing a blend of straight up Techno – download it for free.

Tracklisting

1. Gerald Mitchell – Out the Boat
2. Gaetano Parisio & Danilo Vigorito – Logica EP C1
3. Alba Patera – Cag
4. Jeff Mills – La Force
5. Gary Martin – Puna Kauai
6. Leni Faki – Lusaka Pt.2
7. Mark Williams – Love Club Pt.2
8. Bryan Zentz – D-Clash
9. Leandro Gamez – You are Poison
10. The Deacon – Multi-Dimensional Drama
11. John Dalton – After
12. Gayle San – Get Serious
13. Ben Sims Vs Mark Broom – City Life
14. Rino Cerrone – Total Off
15. John Dalton – Trial4
16. Diego – Mind Detergent (Robert Hood Mix 2)
17. Deetron – Don’t You Know Why?
18. Gerald Mitchell – Freedom Dancer
19. John Dalton – Tint
20. Bandulu – Deadly Ride

via New Agent Cast (DJ Mix) from John Dalton (August 2009) – Invisible Agent.

I’ve been a bit slow off the mark on this one. I signed up for their beta testing ages ago and quickly got thrown off by the constant stream of test updates to download – and as each download was around the 800Mb mark I couldn’t be bothered..

However they’ve basically got a finished product now and are in the final final stages of beta testing and I have two beta test invites to pass on to anyone that’s interested.

What is it?

In their words:

Record gives you unlimited hard disk tracks, world class effects and mixing gear, and a whole new take on music recording. With an intuitive, straightforward interface and a hands-on approach to capturing performances, Record was designed for musicians – not audio engineers. This is recording done right.

The nice thing is that it fully integrates Reason if you already have it installed. So from my point of view it gives me the ability to have a substantially better mixer along with actual audio tracks – finally!

Cheesy video anyone?

Leave a comment requesting an invite and I’ll send it over to you by email (make sure to use a valid email address).

Wow. If you know me and my steady increase in the number of screens with which I surround myself, you’ll understand my nerd-ish delight at seeing such a thing as displayed below.

This is one of the first photos of an actual gScreen’s dual 15.4-inch screen Spacebook—two full screens (not just an extra 10-inch one like Lenovo’s W700. Really. There were renders before, but here are the photos.

The Alaska based company, started by Gordon Stewart (yep, that is where the G in gScreen comes from), is aiming its dual screen laptops at professional designers, filmmakers, photographers and really anyone who can’t live without a dual screen for everyday productivity. They have also been in talks with the military. The chassis (which we expect is at least 12 pounds) is built around the 15.4 inch screen (though the first units that come to market will have 16-inch or 17-inch screens) and its twin, identically sized screen slides out from behind the first using a uniquely designed sliding mechanism.

via GScreen’s Dual-Screen Spacebook Coming Soon(ish) – Gizmodo.

I’m sure it’s insanely heavy, and sounds like it will command a similarly weighty price tag, but it would be incredible to have that sort of ‘portable’ screen res. Imagine working on music projects on the move with that machine!

I have just been trying to work out how to group posts by year when displaying them in WordPress, something that could come in handy for a portfolio or a section on a website which has posts published infrequently. As I couldn’t find a definite solution elsewhere I thought I’d publish it here in case it helps someone else.

The first clue to how to do this came from Dev Lounge, although their solution uses “the_date” function which allows you to group multiple posts from a single day under one date listing.

However if you want to do this for groupings by year you need to apply a bit of simple PHP and variable assigning.

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<?php
 // Assign the year to a variable
 $year = the_date('Y', '', '', FALSE);

 // If your year hasn't been echoed earlier in the loop, echo it now
 if ($year !== $year_check) {
 echo "<h2 class='year'>" . $year . "</h2>";
 }

 // Now that your year has been printed, assign it to the $year_check variable
 $year_check = $year;
?>

<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<!-- post content etc goes here  -->
</div><!-- end .post-wrap -->
<?php endwhile; ?>
<!-- previous next nav -->
<?php else : ?>
<!-- posts not found info -->
<?php endif; ?>

The same logic should apply to grouping by month - although you might need to tweak the code a little bit!

Many users, myself included, visit YouTube on an almost daily basis. Ever since Firefox version 2.0 implemented the session restore function, when you are watching a video on YouTube (perhaps on other video sites as well, I haven’t really tested that), you may notice a tiny freeze-up of the video every 10 seconds or so. This happens because the session restore is by default set to save all open tabs every 10 seconds. This is especially noticeable if you happen to have a lot of tabs open at once.

The quick fix for this problem, at least for my own sake, is to increase the time between each of the saves performed by session restore. By opening about:config in your Firefox address bar, then typing browser.sessionstore.interval in the filter box, you’ll see a value of 10000, which is in milliseconds. (Meaning your session is saved every 10 seconds.) I changed this to 300000, or every 5 minutes, as I don’t have the urgent need for tab restoration. If you feel like being more on the safe side, try increasing it to something a bit lower, say 120000, or every 2 minutes.

via How to Fix Annoying YouTube Jumpiness in Firefox – Firefox – Lifehacker.

Inspired by John Braine who recently pointed out his use of some Google Reader widgets to publish his shared items from his feedreader, I’ve added a new page to this blog which I have titled “Pastiche“.

In essence it’s a simple page that displays a variety of links to articles and so on which I have found interesting, amusing, visually pleasing, noteworthy and so on.

Some Friday entertainment for you – these monkeys love their liquor – something which provided me with much entertainment over a late lunch today.

Whilst people are harping on regularly about real-time news streams in the form of twitter and so on, there’s still an awful lot of value to be had from RSS feeds which are incredibly widespread on the web. I’ve been using Google Reader to stay on top of my favourite news sources for a long while, and though it’s not without its failings, I still find it to be the best RSS reader available.

Yesterday the Google Reader team added a few features which make it even more useful.

Send To

There’s a new section in your Reader settings which allows you to set up sites to which you’d like to share an item with. This makes it easier to choose a particular network to send an item to instead of just using the generic share button.

Feeds from people you follow

A small but nice touch. By following people you see their shared items in your feeds. Now you can also check out what feeds they have posted to their profile, meaning that you can catch a friend’s blog feed which you might have missed.

“Mark all as read” tweaked

This is the best update by a long shot. You now have the ability to mark as read any subscription, folder, or all items with certain time conditions. As I’ve recently returned from a week on an island I was confronted with 3000+ new items in my feeds. Now with one click I can mark anything over two weeks old as read, which knocks that number down under 2000 new items.

What next?

Calling out to the Google Reader team – please allow us to set up filters, or some way of training our feeds so that we can start pruning out the noise that doesn’t interest us. I have little to no interest in Apple news, of which there is much discussion on many feeds. I care not about Steve Jobs’ health. I’m not interested in Daily Tech’s reporting of latest news from NASA, but I like their other reports. TechCrunch’s excessive reporting of every single movement of the Twitter team bores me.

Make it possible for me to filter this stuff out so I can save time in my morning catch up.

The last few weeks of my life have been wholly consumed by preparing for and going to the Rathlin Jigs and Rigs festival. This year the Audio Terrorists crew excelled themselves and went above and beyond the call of duty to present a truly festival worthy stage and crew kitchen. I feel so lucky to get to work with such a dedicated and focussed crew of people.

Huge shouts out to the Force 10 crew once again for staging the best festival, and consistently working their asses off to get everything to fall into place. I love these guys.

Excessive load in Ste's van

This year we once again ended up leaving Dublin at stupid-o’clock on Thursday morning after a mammoth packing session in Bree’s house in Clontarf. We had so much stuff that our intended convoy of 2 vans plus one car full of people did not go ahead. Instead we had to bring 3 cars packed to the gills with food, marquees, and every heavy item we could manage. Steve Nour, our fantastic van driver, must have  been stunned by the full on immersion into Rathlin craziness but himself and Christian reacted by wholesale throwing themselves into the work load and I’m not sure what we would have done without them. The convoy finally got on the road by about 3am, although I had to detour to Sara’s gaff for offloading of some excess stuff and finally got on the road about 4am.

We finally made it to Ballycastle at about 7.30am with our eyes hanging from their sockets. What better way to start a festival than driving through the night. Jay and Kat took us in at Slacky’s gaff and fed us breakfast. The rest of Thursday was spent getting over to the island, and setting up all the marquees and the kitchen tent in glorious sunshine. It felt fantastic to be back.

Friday

DJ 2BiT got his wobble on

Feeling fully refreshed after a whole 5 hours sleep, Friday was a hectic day of preparation. First up we had a visitation from a contingent of ambulance, coastguard, fire safety, police etc, who were absolutely great and we walked around the site surveying all the preparation and making sure everything met their standards. Really nice bunch of guys and we passed with flying colours. They were delighted to hear of the number of first-aid trained crew, something which I’m really happy to see having happened.

More crew arrived throughout the day and the kitchen tent was in full swing. The rest of us focussed on getting the Audio Terrorists rig up and going and as daylight drew to a close the stage was set to go with Daragh Thomas kicking off the sounds for the weekend. Our tent quickly filled up with the Force 10 crew experiencing some fun and games trying to get going thanks to some odd Serato setup.

Music carried through late into the night with pounding techno courtesy of Steve McCullagh, George, Oisin and Jay Galligan, followed by a mix up of heavy tunes from 2BiT, Ste Nour, and Deadman MBE.

Saturday

Steve Collins throws down some Audio Terror

Thanks to a false alarm missing person just as I was about to go to sleep on Saturday morning I only got 2 hours sleep, so Saturday started a little slowly.. Still, we got the music kicked off after finishing the decor on the AT rig by about 7pm. Chris Chapman and Pron started us off, fueled by Bushmills. This was followed by an excellent guitar powered set from Love Rhino. The Force 10 stage had gotten started a good bit before us this evening and had all sorts of stuff going on including an excellent samba band. The AT rig got truly pumping with Nedule, DJ Acroplane Recordings and peaked with incredible sets from Sunken Foal & Spectac back to back, followed by a rave-tastic high-octane Herv sending the crowd mental. Ronan Dunne kept things pumping through til late when myself and Steve Collins took over (whereupon I made a bollox of things not assisted by my sound card dying mid way through – next time I’ll be better prepared for some proper Audio Terror). 2BiT saved the day until we powered down!

I should point out that at some point on Saturday night there was a magnificent bit of Culinary Terror thanks to Alan Quigley and Shelley who made fresh pasta with some truly delicious accompaniments. I sort of missed out on a lot of the kitchen action whilst trying to keep the AT rig flowing, but between walkie-talkies and a caring crew I was kept well fed!

Sunday

The first time a cellist has graced the AT rig

I think I managed a wholesome 5 hours sleep on Saturday night/Sunday morning, which helped to keep me alive a little longer. More delicious meals abound on Sunday along with DJ Speweywalshe kicking off the AT stage with a mix of punk, ska, reggae, and many things in between. Captain Moonlight’s “Dirty Cunts” drew quite the reaction! Donn was followed by the excellent Scurvy Lass who’s looped cello and vocals was truly fantastic. I got a chance to redeem my mess up of the night before and played an Ebauche live set which sounds like it went down well (despite my sound card dying again just prior to starting my set). I stuck around to catch Alan Coholan spin an eclectic mix of excellent tunes before retreating to the kitchen for some much needed nutrition. I missed out on sets from A-Force and a topless Thalamus both of which kicked ass by all accounts.

The night carried on til 5am or so and I’ve lost track of who else played. I’m raging that I missed the Jahm Band on the Force 10 stage which was apparently a highlight for many people. Definitely going to catch them next time around.

Monday through Thursday

Donn's incredible chocolate mousse

The next few days were spent slowly dismantling everything, eating a lot of food, and cleaning the field. I had to chase a wayward pop-up tent through a marsh, we made chocolate mousse from 2kg of organic dark chocolate and 40 separated eggs. It was incredible. We finally caught the first ferry on Thursday morning when the lack of sleep was seriously catching up. A long and difficult drive from Ballycastle to Belfast to Longford ensued but was made possible by staying in close convoy with Donn. We’ve got a lot of stuff piled up in our gaff and I believe Steve Collins had to drive back to Ballycastle yesterday to collect speakers that were weighing down Steve Nour’s poor abused truck.

Huge thanks again to the Force 10 crew for an absolutely incredible party. Massive shouts out to all the Audio Terrorists crew who worked their collective arses off for the whole festival as well as the weeks running up to it.

Check out the photos on either Picasa or Facebook:

• My Rathlin photos on Picasa Web Albums
• My Rathlin photos on Facebook

Next Friday, 24th July, the Audio Terrorists are out to inflict some more noise on your aural passages in an attempt to raise some much needed funds for our upcoming trip to Rathlin Island for the return of the Jigs & Rigs festival this coming bank holiday weekend.

Venue: The Pint, Eden Quay (was Soul 28)
Date: Friday, 24th July
Time: 10pm – Late
Admission: €8 (suggested donation)

Line Up

Prince Kong (!Kaboogie)
Herv (CockRockDisco)
PCP (!Kaboogie)
DJ Welfare (Electronic Resistance)
A-Force (Alphabet Set)
Chuck (Homespun)

Flyer