Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog – Page 59 – Struggling with the dark and responding to the light.

VIVO Conference 2011

Forgive the rare work-related post.

Tomorrow morning I will be heading to the Washington DC area for the second annual VIVO Conference, as well as some activities related to the wrapping up of the VIVO grant, which has been a part of my working life for the last 2.5 years. (I have been the technical lead for WCMC’s implementation over the life of the grant.)

VIVO — since I realize I have not mentioned it once on this blog in said 2.5 years — is a web application intended for use in generating profiles for research faculty at an institution. It’s based in a lot of semantic web ideas, and I will stop describing it right there seeing as the phrase “semantic web” tends to send both technologists and technophobes into a glazed-eye panic.

Were that not enough to make you want to book travel to DC immediately and furiously live blog, I am actually scheduled to present with my team on a side project we did during the main grant. It seems to be a very popular side project. I am only mildly terrified seeing “You’re Speaking At This Event” in my Lanyrd event list.

In any case, if I seem particularly out of touch for the next week, now you know why.

Tags vivo, work

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Why Do Things The Easy Way?

Post author By Dan Dickinson
Post date August 15, 2011
3 Comments on Why Do Things The Easy Way?

“It has almost bankrupted us, almost killed us, and estranged us from family and friends, but we had to do it.” – Dave and Steph Dewaele

If there is a musical project worth your attention this summer, it is Radio Soulwax.

To describe it briefly: Dave and Steph, two of perhaps the most ingenius DJs on the scene today, have opted to not merely release an hour-long mix every week, but also with an appropriate visual accompaniment. There are free apps for iOS and Android allowing for download and streaming, and the web site provides a rotating scheduled stream of the mixes.

Being 13 mixes in, there’s a solid half day of music up already; some quick recommendations:

* *Introversy* – as many song intros as they could jam together in one hour.
* *(Nothing Worse Than A) Bad Rap* – as many horrible late 70s/early 80s rap songs as they could find.
* *Librarian Girl* – library music, as in instrumentals generally licensed for backgrounds in TV or movies.
* *This Is Belgium Part 2: Cherry Moon On Valium* – perhaps my favorite of the mixes thus far, this mix is 20-year old Belgian rave and Hi-NRG songs that have been slowed down from their typical 140-150 BPM down to a “sexy” 115. This would be amazing even if it weren’t for the visual accompaniment of people doing the appropriate rave dances to the music.

New mixes are released roughly every Monday. Enterprising souls might be able to pick apart the mobile versions to reap the rewards of pure MP4 files.

If you’re into electronic music in the slightest, and have a sense of humor, don’t miss this.