sixtyPercent: Cochlear Implants, Aviation, Technlology, and Philosophy 2005/12/15
Beatles Mashups and Other iPod Filler
I've been actively seeking out and listening to more mashups recently. I was introduced to The Grey Album by a friend, and that began my quest to learn a bit more and find other underground treasures.
Recently I stumbled into CCC's Revolved -- a mashup of The Beatles Revolver album with a variety of other artists.
In a way it reminds me of a well done Saturday Night Live skit — an excellent concept, well executed, but with something unknown missing. The best tracks to my mind are "Got To Get You In The Mood" which combines The Beatles "Got To Get You Into My Life" with Glenn Miller's "In The Mood", and "Close To No One", mixing The Beatles "For No One" with The Cure's "Close To Me". The Beatles seem to be a popular target for mashups -- perhaps due to DJ Dangermouse's "success" with the Grey Album, and perhaps just simply due to their popularity.
But even better than those is CCC's non-Beatles mash of "Stand By Me," featuring The Police's "Every Breath You Take" and of course Ben E King's "Stand By Me". The technical quality is great, and it's fun to watch the cognitive dissonance expressed in the faces of unsuspecting friends as the song plays out. It may not be a masterpiece like "99 Problems," but there's room for a lot of variety on a 60 GB iPod.
by David Creemer : 2005/12/15 : Categories music : 0 trackbacks : 2 comments (permalink)
Blocking Junk Fax Spam with Asterisk
We have a fax machine in our master bedroom (don't ask), and eventually the fax spammers got ahold of the phone number. Pretty soon the middle of the night beeps and noises became intolerable, and I began to look around for a solution. Junkbusters has tons of great advice for taking legal action against the criminals sending this crap, but I don't have the time to do this, unlike, say Steve Kirsch.
Looking for a quick technical solution (ok so everything looks like a nail to me), I developed a simple, but pretty effective approach using Asterisk. Asterisk is a telephony server that I already run in our home, handling things like long-distance least-cost routing, and so on — basically I'm using it as a IP-PBX. It's also wonderfully programmable, and has a decent 3rd party soft fax addition.
Now when we get a fax call, Asterisk picks up the line and check for caller-ID. If available, and the number isn't in a blacklist (or is in the whitelist), then the fax goes to our fax machine. If there's no caller-ID, then Asterisk plays the special information tone (SIT), then the fax goes to the soft fax, and then emailed to me (where it's usually deleted).
The SIT or "Tele-zapper" tones is the sound one gets before the familiar "we're sorry, that number..." when something is wrong with a call (at least in North America). This may help remove our phone number from the junk faxer's lists.
The results are quite good though not perfect. We've gone from about 1 fax per night, down to about 1 every couple of months.
by David Creemer : 2005/12/15 : Categories technology : 0 trackbacks : 8 comments (permalink)
