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looksideways

Perth boy now in Singapore.

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November 28th, 4:39am 1 comment

iPhone playing two tracks at once - Trance Mandarin

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In my preparations for my upcoming China trip, I've been listening to some audiobooks to give me a headstart with Mandarin. I don't expect it to teach me huge amounts in the time that I have, but anything I expose myself to can't hurt.

While listening to audiobooks is OK, they can get bland. It's just voice. Literally, voice. At least there are a few different voices, but I am always aware that the rest of the spectrum can be filled up with something. Hence I was determined to find a way to play music at the same time as listening to these podcasts. On a computer, it's easy - open up two media players and run them at the same time. But on iPhone it's a little more difficult.

I imagined that there must be an app out there that allowed you to have separate audio streams with their own levels, mixed into a final channel. I began by searching in the App Store for 'simultaneous songs/audio', and found no results. I tried forums as well - there were a couple of posts on the Apple Community Forums from 2010 that had no useful responses. One suggestion mentioned reversing those y-audio cables you can get to split an audio signal into to headphones.... bit of a shame. As it wasn't a huge problem to me to have music with my audiobooks, I decided to let it be for the time being, and just put up without the music.

Then on the bus on the way back from the east, I had a stupidly brilliant thought. That app I was imagining with separate audio streams already exists and I've been using similar apps for the last eight years... it's a digital DJ deck! I felt so stupid. I immediately downloaded Djay as it's constantly refered to as a brilliant app and is now on sale for $1.99 over Thanksgiving.

And quite rightly, it's a wicked piece of programming. I run ASOT on one deck, and then load my audiobooks into the other deck. There are a number of shortcomings - the first is that a 200MB, 2hr ASOT podcast takes about three minutes to load into the deck. This is fine as you can listen to the audiobook first, and then the ASOT kicks in when it's ready. The second is that although there is an automix function, you can't have one deck continually push track after track from a playlist once the previous track finishes. The automix is for mixing between decks. But that's fine - loading tracks is a breeze and manageable.

The app as well is buttery smooth. No doubt it is killing my battery - I had it crash my phone already today, but then I don't think having a full 2hr podcast on the decks is the way it was meant to be used.

At the end of the day, it works and I'm happy. Now I've just gotta learn to speak. Zai jian!

 

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September 25th, 6:35pm 0 comments

New gear - flashes and keys

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In the last two months I have been seriously considering picking up some photography and music gear. After balancing the numbers, I figured the poor American dollar meant that it would be cheaper to pick it up from the US and have it shipped to me here in Singapore, than to actually buy here in Singapore itself. Case in point - Akai MPK is US$70 on Amazon. Buying the same keyboard locally is over SG$200. I could buy more than two from Amazon for the same price.

I set up an account with Shipito.com earlier this year for this purpose of buying overseas. Shipito act as a middleman between users and US-based vendors, and as as result I have an American postal address. They are exceptionally efficient and provide a huge amount of information to us through their website. I had a DHL Priority package sent to me - it departed Torrance, California last Wednesday, and was delivered to me Friday evening. Shipito are really cool guys and I highly recommend them. Their service charges are extremely reasonable as well.

I bought an Akai MPK Mini, a 580EX MII Speedlight, Hoya 72 UV filter, speedlight extension cord, some Bose IE2 headphones for gym, Honl speed strap and colour filters, a diffuser, intervalometer and a mini softbox. Needless to say, Friday was a good day.

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