JoeChinni.com

Gibson announces guitar that uses CAT5 cable.

What’s this from?

“No Smoking
El No A You Smoko

Fasten Seatbelts
Putana da Seatbeltz”

what was the last music cd/(whatever) you bought?

Alright, so now that the Saga is complete, what does everyone think? I’ll start…

btw, If you haven’t seen ROTK yet, shut off your computer and go see it right now!
(more…)

folding@home is a distributed computing project designed to help medical/nano scientists simulate the assembly, or “folding”, or proteins. it’s kind of like seti@home but a tad more useful in the sense that it’s practical research instead of what seems like random number crunching. i get the feeling lately at seti@home that it’s not really about finding extra-terrestrial life anymore, it’s about who has the highest rating.

what’s cool about folding@home is that it can run in the background using the cpu only when it’s idle. so you essentially run the terminal app in the background all the time instead of a screensaver (we all know how much you hate screensavers, joe.) i’m pretty sure it works the same way with pcs.

anyway, i figure it’s a noble cause and not an inconvenience at all since it only uses the computer when you’re not. all you really sacrifice is some ram with having it open all the time. i figure it’s worth it for curing cancer. and you don’t even have to open constantly. it comes with a terminal app that you just double click and automatically starts crunching. no shell crap.

if you decide to do it, a few buddies and i made a folding@home team. it’s team number 34819.

folding.stanford.edu

how many mp3s/aacs do you have in your itunes library (or whatever mp3 jukebox you use)?

what percentage of them is legal?

Running out of gift ideas? Check out this site, which specializes in islands for sale Prices starting in the sub-millions!

do you own a tivo?

do you want a tivo but can’t afford one?

have you bought a tivo as a gift for yourself or someone else?

do you think tivo is a senseless pop novelty destined to die out, giving way to the next senseless pop novelty?

I don’t know if any of you tried making a bookmarklet but if you did and you’re using Safari then you know it doesn’t work. However, there’s a page that has an updated version of the link so it works in Safari.

Safari Bookmarklet (Drag to your bookmarks bar.) (Thanks Phil!)

Insanity Test

Here’s an interesting little gadget posted on gizmodo.com. It’s a bluetooth device that you plug into the headphone jack of a stereo or whatever and it transmits it over the internet via a bluetooth enabled phone. Cool idea.

Link

apparently overstock.com is having this special where everything is only $1 shipping. but hurry up because it ends tomorrow (dec. 16th at midnight which i guess is technically dec. 17th).

overstock.com is kind of like an amazon with better prices most of the time. be careful though. they have gotten mixed reviews for their customer service. but don’t worry, joe. they’re probably much better than buy.com.

I’ve been using a web browser plugin called StumbleUpon. The basic idea is that whenever you click the “Stumble!” button, it loads a random webpage. But not just any random webpage — rather, those part of your pre-selected categories or friend’s list, and those rated well by other users. Each page is rated either thumbs up or thumbs down by other members, and as you view pages you can rate it thumbs up or down yourself. Anyways, I’ve actually found it pretty interesting…I’ve stumbled on a few webpages I liked that I wouldn’t have found otherwise!

StumbleUpon “operates based on the collaborative ratings of it’s members.” This seems like a fairly successful technique but here’s an idea: in addition to correlating rankings by user/category, also correlate the page *content* itself using techniques in Natural Language Processing. This includes methods to determine high-frequency phrases, auto-categorization, word counts, etc.

Perhaps StumbleUpon is already moving in this direction. But if not, I’d be happy to help for a nominal fee

So, it’s official, I have the coolest girlfriend in the world. We exchanged Christmas gifts last night and she got me an X-BOX!!! And she got me Halo and a couple other things too. I was totally surprised and I can’t wait to get X-Box live and start kickin some ass. Thanks Alex!!

Alright, If I was still writing music I’d be pretty pissed that Finale isn’t out yet for Mac and that they pushed the release date back AGAIN! I mean Finale has most of its user base on Mac doesn’t it??? And wouldn’t you think that having 2000 Berklee students use your product would motivate you to get your shit done or maybe hire another programmer?? Well, I for one think Berklee should think about switching to Sibelius. We’ve spent so much money on Finale and what has it gotten us? OS X has been out for 3 YEARS!! I mean if Digidesign and MOTU can release their recording suites with minor problems I think Coda should be able to get their shit out. OK, that’s enough.

Their “commitment” to the Mac community.

Holy iPod Batman
(via gizmodo.com)

Here’s a song my brother wrote that I recorded/produced. It was done a while ago but I just realized it wasn’t on my site. It’s called Bigger Fool.

So says researchers from Northwestern University:
Link

Short-term stress causes cells to release protective proteins that extend cell life.

Except its not the kind of stress you may think:

“Stressors also include elevated temperatures, oxygen stress, bacterial and viral infections, and exposure to toxins such as heavy metals, all of which challenge the environment of the cell. A master protein called heat shock factor senses the stress and responds by turning on the genes that encode molecular chaperones.”

Oh..so its *physiological* stressors. Does that mean I should stick my head in the microwave, hold my breath, infect myself with SARS, and eat a handful of metal shavings? Hmmm…..

This is Alex Roberts’ Design Synectics final project. I especially like her choice of music. Comments are welcome. Check it out!

Performance art hits Wal-Mart. This is awesome.

Link (Thanks Evan!)