M i a b i . F i l m s » music

Which do you prefer?

Greg — Wed, 18 May 2011 03:27:27 +0000

Thanks to my buddy Dennis for sharing this hilarious clip. Why do British accents make everything great? Which Radiohead do you prefer?

Double Complete Rainbow

Fantaisie

Greg — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 19:51:08 +0000

My friend Shane asked me to put this video together. Exactly one year ago today, with tax season being over, (he’s an accountant) he decided to learn Fredrick Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu on piano. And he decided to film the whole thing. Over the course of three months, he practiced nearly every day and here are some excerpts from those sessions.

Hey That’s pretty cool

Greg — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 05:52:45 +0000

Try it out! It’s the Mystery Guitar Man doing the Human Drum Machine.

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Cloud iTunes

Greg — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:18:48 +0000

The rumor mills are churning it. My friend Bryan has been taking about it for years. It looks like this summer, with the release of the iPhone 5, we could see a completely revamped MobileMe, again.

MobileMe is Apple’s cloud-based suite of services that includes; me.com mail, calendar/address book/bookmark syncing, photo galleries, online storage called iDisk, and a few other neat tricks. First let me say that I do pay for this $99 a year service. Almost exclusively for the syncing features. I have four devices that are all completely synced up. Add a contact on my laptop at home, and it’s on my computer at work when I get in. Bookmark a webpage on my iPhone while waiting in line at Penn Station and it’ll be there waiting for me on my iMac back at the apartment. The syncing is flawless and done in the background and I love it. However, with the exception of “Find my iPhone”, a service that allows you to locate (and wipe if you have to) a lost iPhone, you can do all of the things Apple offers in MobileMe with other, freer options. And in most cases, better. Me.com is ok, but Gmail is light years better. Apple galleries are ok, but Flickr and even Facebook offer more for less. Even syncing between all of your devices can be achieved in a number of ways other ways.

The point is, it’s really hard to justify spending $99 a year on MobileMe. Unless you’re me.

And until now. Maybe.

I really don’t like to write about Apple rumors here because it’s usually pretty fruitless and too techno-lusty for me. But there IS a lot of chatter pointing to an upgraded MobileMe with a seeming focus on a cloud-based iTunes option. It makes a lot of sense. Keep the costs down on the iPhone by offering less local storage and the ability to stream your music (haven’t heard squat about video content) to your phone or other computers away from home. Obviously this is not a perfect solution, yet. My commute to work is completely underground and that’s where I do most of my music listening. But it would represent a major dive into living in the cloud where we’ve only been lounging in the warmer waters of the baby pool. Apple even recently built a massive server farm in North Carolina which many assume is expressly for this purpose. This one is a little more solid than a rumor.

Here’s my question… How do I get… 16,184 songs (76.48GB); 1,275 episodes worth of TV (306.92GB); and 386 movies (347.85GB)… How do I get all of that into the cloud? Do I strap my 1TB external drive to an Estes Rocket and launch it at Apple so they can do it for me? Because I’m sure as hell not uploading all of that to MobileMe. It would tie up my computer a take MONTHS to transfer.

I see two options. Turn iTunes into the server which streams your media library from your computer. But that would mean having to run your computer all the time. And I suppose would present some security risks. Another option would be to upload all of your music to a central pool of sorts. You don’t have to upload “Teenage Dream” because it’s already up there. You’ll simply be given access to it. Sounds tricky, but I’m pretty sure this was where Lala was headed…before Apple bought them. You’ll still have to upload all of those mp3s of your friend’s band and depending on how much of that you have, it could take some time and resources. Dont worry though, I’ll be uploading “Satanic Mass” by Coven so you don’t have to.

NOTHING beats having your entire music collection in your pocket like I’m able to achieve with my 80gb iPod, but I’m not carrying around both an iPod and an iPhone. Not happening. An 80gb iPhone would be nice.

A cloud-based iTunes is a pretty good workaround and in line with what most of the major tech players have decided is our destiny.

Arabian Knights

Greg — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 05:43:49 +0000

Arabian Knights (Muppet Heard a Rumor) | 2:16 (2011)

Muppet heard a rumor. It was just a rumor. Muppet sings another one of his favorite songs, this time Arabian Knights by Siouxsie and the Banshees. Lovable menace. Hot of the heels of last year’s hit single, In Heaven.

Pinch Me

Greg — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 05:15:01 +0000

This was featured on Gizmodo a few months ago. Just found it in my bookmarks and figured I’d share in case you missed it.

Two things are very apparent when watching this. Everything looks spellbinding in time lapse… including monster trucks? And everything looks even better when a loud, foreboding soundtrack goes along with it. The incredible song here is called Dream Is Collapsing by Hans Zimmer and was featured in Inception. I only worry that this song will take off like a similar track from Sunshine. That song is Adagio in D Minor by John Murphy and is now featured in absolutely anything that requires an intensely building and dramatic score. Click here to listen. I know you know it. It’s one of the most beautiful songs you’ve ever heard, but is currently being over-used to the point of cliche`.

The monster trucks kind of bring it down a notch for me, but I’ll excuse them because the landscape shots are mind-bending. Enjoy.

Boardwalk Empire visual FX compilation

Let It Be, please

Greg — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 05:50:25 +0000

This is cringe-worthy and hilarious all at the same time. Apparently, to promote it’s fourth season, Norwegian talk show Gylne Tider created this promo of D-List celebrities singing a borderline Muzak version of “Let It Be”- “We Are The World”-style. The cheese and randomness factors are through the roof on this one. What is unclear is whether or not they are being ironic or simply believe in the power of celebrity so blindly that they’re willing to put this many once-names into a promo for a current show. (I also submit that there is the possibility that Gylne Tider is actually a show about D-List celebrities from the 80′s and 90′s)

Love seeing Robert Englund make an appearance. Three cheers for Lou Ferrigno and Berlin too!

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Take Me Out

Greg — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 11:04:26 +0000

A couple weeks old but totally worth sharing. Brooklyn band, Atomic Tom, perform their super catchy tune “Take Me Out” aboard the B train… completely on iPhones. Never mind that it’s incredible they’re doing this on their phones, I defy you to not get the song stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

Steve must be sitting atop his perch in Cupertino, smile on his face like a proud papa bear.

“iPhone version” – way better than the regular version.

“Regular version”

Tomorrowland

Greg — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 04:43:48 +0000

In honor of a Mad Men season finale, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but also made me scratch a hole in my head, I give you this re-imagining of the theme song. It’s gonna be a long 10 months to season 5…

Cute Girl, Catchy Dance

Greg — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 11:41:08 +0000

Here’s a video my friend forwarded to me. Sure it’s a commercial, but it’s a cute commercial and makes you smile. I like how clever they were with the concept.