Baby Don't Hertz Me

With everybody sporting high power computers and USB MIDI controllers everybody wants to be a musician these days, myself included. Many people try and sell what they produce regardless of the quality while others produce superb music and release it for free. I am a strong advocate for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) but I am also a supporter or free music. With pop music being stuck in a rut for the most part, finding good music has become harder. Fortunately the internet allows us to rapidly find a large variety of music that suits our needs. Over the years I have used several different sites to find free or creative commons music. Soundcloud and Jamendo have been my main sites for such purposes. There is a lot of terrible music on both platforms but once you know how to look it becomes apparent that there is a lot of beautiful music available. Throughout my digging I have found a few artist that continue to impress me to this day and they are Proleter, Gramatik and Profes...

Edit: Big thanks to the Google+ community for giving me direction to some good documentation on snap files. As a result I am updating this post as of June 2, 2017. With every major upgrade, Ubuntu usually brings in a big new feature or two. Like back in 2011 when they switched from Gnome to Unity in Natty Narwhal or when they switched from Rhythmbox to Banshee and then back to Rhythmbox (I am a hardcore music fan. Don't mess with  my audio player!). With the release of Zesty Zapus, I have noticed that Canonical seems to be pushing Snaps as their new install package. With any new linux tool, lets take a look at it! Here are some of the pros and cons of snaps in my thoughts. 1. Pro: Snaps are easy to install. I am pleased to say that this upgrade does seem like a move in the direction of making Ubuntu more accessible to the general public. One simple command in the command line and you can browse through many many snap packages. You can even download and install them from...

I love gaming. I really loving gaming. Over the past few years I have put in thousands of hours. In just Steam games there has been more than 2000 hours. Be it FPS, MOBA, RTS or even indie games, I love it all. During university I rarely have time to play as much as I would like but still manage to squeeze in time between classes. Lately I have found some stellar games through Humble Bundles and a variety of sales and so I thought I would share some recommendations.  They Bleed Pixels  Last week I picked up the Humble Very Positive Bundle on a whim. The games looked pretty meh despite having great reviews on steam. Nothing from the trailers impressed me that much. Between work and training I managed to play They Bleed Pixels for an hour or two and all I can say is WOW. I have enjoyed the odd pixel art game but this one definitely takes the cake. The game controls are pretty straight forward but the game is very tricky.  You are a girl, you have dream...

How many social media or productivity tools do you use? One? Two? Three? Five? Nine? I always get frustrated with so much to do and so little time. There is little I hate more than having to do easy, repetitive tasks. With the Internet of Things (IoT) getting more and more popular it will only be harder to stay up to date on all the information and systems that you have. Thankfully there is a magical things called "IFTTT".  No this isn't the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT). What IFTTT standards for is "IF This Then That". The system does just precisely what its name states. If a certain criteria is met, a certain action is then completed.  I hate backing up my photos from my phone. I would like them available on all of my devices. They have a "recipe" for that. Every picture I take will get backed up to a folder in my Google Drive. The recipes that I use are to synchronize my social media posts. Nothing really fancy but it does sa...

Being productive is hard. Working is hard. I find listening to music makes me way more productive and makes time fly by. As a result I listen to a lot of music. Often times I get frustrated listening to the same 50 songs and so I have started relying more and more on YouTube streams and mixes. As opposed to Spotify, there is no ads on the streams (sometimes on the mixes) I use which makes it even better! No interruption for some silly drink ad every 30 minutes, just beautiful music all the time. 1. Lofi Hip Hop Radio by Chillhop Music This is one of my two main streams or mixes that I listen to on a daily basis. Very relaxing and can easily be thrown on in the background to drown out noise. Chillhop also has a large amount of their music downloadable for free from their bandcamp site. Free stream, free music download (yes, they are legal!) and high quality? What isn't to love!? 2. Lofi Hip Hop Radio by ChilledCow Another great Lofi hip hop radio station on YouTube. ...

Every so often I log off Steam and decide to relive a small part of my childhood. It may be for the nostalgia, it may be because I am bored of the games in my Steam library but ultimately it is to enjoy the atrocity that is many flash games. 1. Swords and Sandals II This game will definitely go down as one of my favorite flash games of all time. This game is grungy, has terrible sound effects and absolutely no plot except for a cut-scene that tells you your name. Surprisingly it still has great game-play and is a great way to dump many hours. If you end up having a tough time with the game and want to gain an advantage, type two commas in as your name. After changing your character name click on "randomise" five times or so and then your character will be given starting armour and better stats which you can then adjust. It is hosted on a ton of different sites but I would suggest playing on Flashbored since it has the full version and works consistently. It als...