Benton Pena @ technology + culture + life and everything in between

US Crisis rebounds: Merryll Lynch and Lehman Brothers enter the fray

Last weekend the US damaged economy had to deal with a new severe blow. Merryll Lynch was sold to the Bank of America for $29 a share at a value of $50 billion. Meanwhile, Lehman Brothers faces the bankruptcy after failing in its attempt to find potential buyers.
The Federal Reserve board announced on Sunday several initiatives to provide additional support to financial markets, including enhancements to its existing liquidity facilities.
On Monday, the news are affecting world stocks and all the financial markets are already reacting to the crisis.

Read more…

OPEC draws a line in the sand at $100

OPEC surprised the oil market in the past week by announcing a cutback in oil production of roughly half a million barrels a day. Indirectly, OPEC made it clear that the cartel would not accept a price below $100/bbl. However, there has been a shift of sentiment in the oil market in recent months.

Read more…

this is hilarious, are we still here?

Hello? Tap, tap, tap, this thing on? - Engadget

“It worked! The LHC was turned on this morning and has been shown to have worked. Engineers cheered as the proton particles completed their first circuit of the underground ring which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). (And we’re all still alive too!)”

My god… here the details:

09:49 — Confirmed, the first beam of protons has been fired! It took 48-seconds for the pulse to generate and then a tiny flash of light on a computer screen indicated a successful firing around the first 3-km of the 27-km ring — they will methodically extend the range throughout the day.

10:25 — The beam just completed the full ring (in stages) in less than an hour. Things are going much more quickly than expected. They are about to fire the beam around the complete ring, unimpeded.

First Beam Fired - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4722261.ece

Here three news articles about the public reaction to the Large Hadron Collider or LHC.

LHC scientists get death threats

So it’s come to this: Death threats against physicists. About what? The earth-destroying Large Hadron Collider, of course. Such is the angst that the American Nobel prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has even had death threats, said Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University… Read More

LHC and Faith-Based Science

Public reaction to the Large Hadron Collider is so ignorant and brain-dead we need a theory to explain what’s going on. I asked Charles King at Pund-IT for a theory. He offered this: I believe that much of the public reaction to the LHC is grounded in a kind of ignorance that might be called… Read More

Stephen Hawking: LHC vital, absolutely safe

Since the geniuses at CERN have failed to assuage amped-up (if entirely unfounded) fears that the Large Hadron Collider is actually a doomsday machine, they have reached up to the mountain to get Prof. Stephen Hawking himself to address the issue. He appeared on BBC 4, as the Telegraph reports.
Read More

For those new to what the LHC is check out the Large Hadron Rap:

CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.

More… http://webcast.cern.ch/index.html

NEW YORK - International Internet traffic kept growing in the last year, but at a slower rate than before, and carriers more than kept pace by adding more capacity, a research firm said Wednesday.

The findings by TeleGeography Research are important because some U.S. Internet service providers say they are struggling with the expansion of online traffic, and are imposing monthly download limits on heavy users. The figures from TeleGeography don’t exactly correlate to average Internet usage by U.S. households, but give an indication of wider trends.

TeleGeography said traffic grew 53 percent from mid-2007 to mid-2008, down from a growth rate of 61 percent in the previous 12 months.

Growth on long-haul lines in the U.S. was even slower, at 47 percent. The big increase came in regions where the Internet is less mature. Traffic between the U.S. and Latin America more than doubled.

Meanwhile, international Internet capacity on ocean-spanning optical fibers increased 62 percent. On average, Internet traffic now uses just 29 percent of the available bandwidth.

TeleGeography research director Alan Mauldin noted that the number of new broadband subscribers has been falling since 2001, but that the overall increase in Internet traffic remains high because of the increasing demand for online video.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)

Deep within me
Turn all the secret stones
Voice of fields
Breathing when love holds
Still no word we can speak
A path should been chosen
But all trembling track
She lead us back and here
the guts are

Experimentos:

Desierto:

Vespa:

Jungla:

Live Electronic Music from M4M, very cool!

gear used
esx1: all sequencing and drum sounds
tx81z: reverby/pumpy sawtooth bass/lead (chain:tx81z-mfc42-alesis nanoverb-dbx266 ch1 (pump)-ch2 (compression)-mixer)
mks50: hoover/saw/lead/pumpy synth (Chain MKS-boss sl20-dbx266(stereo, mostly pump)-zoom rfx2200-mixer)
Redsound SoundBite Pro: vocals/looping
korg kaoss pad 2: delay
kaoss pad 3: loops, looper(snare rolls), grainshifter
kaossilator: noise sweeps (path: k01-mini kp(delay)-mixer)
er1: beatbox AND sidechain signal (Chain: left out-boss v-wha-sansamp gt2-boss volume pedal-boss dd5 delay-volume pedal(stereo from the delay)-mixer)
Motu midi mixer: my mixer, controlled by the BCF)
Kawai midi patchbay:guess
dbx mc 6: output compressor
NOT used:
a computer, besides recording it; no edition, no mastering, What you hear is what I send out of the main outs

August 5th, 2008 is the sixth anniversary of National Underwear Day. I think this just an excuse but, anyway I found this funny video about a segment from Craig Ferguson’s late night show last week where Regis Philbin and Craig Ferguson compare underwears, in honor of National Underwear Day.

Here some history http://www.freshpair.com/underwear-day-history.html

Peer to peer (or P2P) networks uses diverse connectivity between participants in a network and the cumulative bandwidth of network participants rather than conventional centralized resources where a relatively low number of servers provide the core value to a service or application. Such networks are useful for many purposes like sharing files!!!

One of my favorite P2P clients is Bitcomet, because it’s powerful, fast, very easy-to-use, and completely FREE. It contains many advanced features for BitTorrent download and extends its leading BitTorrent technology to HTTP/FTP to accelerate downloading up to 5 - 10 times faster.

So the easiest way to configure Bitcomet with your Onebox from Onemax, is as follows:

Login to your Onebox, make sure you are properly connected and launch the web browser. Type 192.168.1.1 as the URL. A password screen displays the default password is 1234 displays non-readable characters. Following screens displays to change your password click ignore, then click Go to Advanced setup

Once there you see the status screen, use this screen to look at status of the device, system resources, interfaces, etc.

Click Network in the upper left side of the screen. And finally NAT

Click Port Forwarding tab, make sure Default Server in Default Server Setup is 0.0.0.0 and in Port Forwarding let’s modify rule #1.

Rule setup:

• Active check
• Service Name: Torrent
• Start Port: 6881
• End Port: 6999
• Server IP address: 192.168.1.33

This IP address is the default from the DHCP pool, make sure this is your computer’s IP address in case you have more than one computer connected to the Onebox.

Then download and install Bitcomet, and open Options. Go to Connection, and modify your listen port to let’s say 6999 click OK

Verify the status bar says WAN:190.52.226.75 this IP must be the IP address of the WAN interface of your Onebox.

Happy downloading!!!

Finally finishing my home studio, here the photos of how my project is going…

As I posted before, here it is the main MIDI controller an M-Audio Ozonic, the groove box Korg EMX-1 on blue, on black the Korg KaossPad 3 an Effects box with a 4 track sampler. –>

<– Here the mixer the Edirol M-16DX from Roland, this mixer is quite versatile has 16 channels, effects and what I love is that works as an audio interface so this completes your DAW more information here.

This is one of my favorite synth, the Novation X-Station, sweet fat sounds and most parameters can be accessed right in the panel, also works as a MIDI controller of course and has an audio interface, great for traveling as it can work on batteries or powered by the USB port. Sounds just great. –>

<– Here the rack, on top the I/O module of the M-16DX, below the classic synth Yamaha TX81Z, below a rompler the Roland M-DC1 classic dance sounds and effects. Below a vintage piece of equipment the Akai ME30PII Midi Patchbay, expander and merger 4 x 8 no more troubles with MIDI devices. In the bottom the classic Emu Proteus I, a rompler with the basic rock and pop sounds from the EIII library. I used this machine in 1992 when I use to play rock with the boys.

What’s left is a rack power conditioner the monitor speakers that will be the M-Audio AV40, the monitor stands and a LCD monitor… But the more exciting, an analog synth, combined with a analog vocoder plus a modulizer, sorry but this will be a custom made device(DIY) that will be my signature sound for my music, so I can’t give further details.

It’s a little messy, but is a work in progress thing