DJing

The book I read to research this post was DJing for Dummies by John Steventon which is an excellent book which I borrowed from the library. I think the main reason most DJ’s become DJ’s is their enhanced ability to pull women. It’s also quite nice to see the crowds reaction when you play a great record though. If you are interested in becoming a DJ you should have a go with someone else’s equipment initially to see if you like it. One thing a lot of budding DJ’s don’t realise is you need good quality equipment that’s specifically for that job. If you use cheap record decks or cd decks the vibration from the bass is liable to make it skip. Also at high volume it’s liable to have feedback & distortion. Also with record decks you need a good motor after all you are going to be using them quite a lot. You should certainly test them thoroughly before buying them especially at high volume. Some DJ’s skimp on the mixer which if you buy a decent one you can get special effects rather than just fading from one song to another. You should never use noise cancelling headphones in a DJ environment because you need to be able to hear any interference or distortion. These days a lot of DJ’s use an ipod or laptop to store their music which is much more portable than lugging around a load of records or cds. Also some DJ’s store their music on some blank cds in the form of mp3s. If you are burning cds or copying music onto a hard drive for music performance you need a special which at the time this book was written was £200. You should make sure any equipment isn’t liable to tip over after most of the people dancing will probably be drunk & if there’s any chance it can tip over it probably will. Established DJ’s can often demand something like a case of budweiser beer when they perform. If you are performing somewhere you need to clear up whether you will get free drink. Especially if you are starting out it will probably be each time the manager visits the booth.

Thank You

Thank you everyone who has left a comment. I do enjoy reading them. I notice somebody asked me to recommend a post I’ve done recently. I think the Concorde Story is interesting. I’m pleased to see I’ve got a lot of comments on the zune. I wonder if microsoft ought to revamp it & relaunch it.

Starting an iPhone Apps Business

The book I read to research this post was Starting an iPhone App Business for Dummies by Joel Elad et al which is an excellent book which I bought from Kindle. An Apple iPhone App Developer subscription costs $99 per year which you need if you are going to do an iphone app. In addition you need the iPhone App SDK or software development kit which is a free download. It’s relatively easy to learn to write an iPhone App compared to for example learning Visual Basic. If you already know Java you have a headstart because iPhones can understand that. Stanford University has written a course in writing iPhones which can be found on iTunes. Many Apps are free, often because someone is new to programming & wants a good job so does it to show how skilled he is. Some people give Apps away because they sell advertising space on it. Others do a limited version free & offer a premium version for a fee. Yet other Apps are free but charge a subscription for a service which is a part of it. The vast majority of Apps are either free or only charge a small fee. Interestingly the ones that are expensive tend to be ones aimed at medical professionals, who if they had to buy special equipment to do the same job it would be quite expensive. If you can get a software developer interested in your App, you can make money without the hassle of promoting it. If you’ve an idea for an App but don’t want to write the code you can get a programmer at a site like

http://guru.com

They might do a simple App for around $500. A more complex one could cost from $1,000 to $5,000. You might be able to get it done a bit cheaper if you agree the programmer can reuse the code. This book also tells you all about how to promote your App but I think it would make this post too long if I went into all that.

iPhone 4S

The book I read to research this post was iPhone 4 S for Dummies by Bob le Vitus et al which is an excellent book which I bought from Kindle. This is the smartphone I have & this book covers pretty much covers all you could possibly want to know about the iPhone 4 S. You can do video calls with it using Facetime & that also supports more than 2 callers at the same time or conference calls. It has a bigger screen than any of the previous iPods. It’s essentially an iPod with phone capability. You should take it out of its case to recharge it as it can get quite hot which can damage the battery. If you install Skype on an iPod Touch you can make phone calls via a computer network. One of the best features of the 4S is the maps which work like a GPS & show you your location in relation to everything else. A lot of people want to use iCloud which is the current version of Mobile Me mainly instant messaging. To use that if you have a pc you need a minimum of Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 installed. You sometimes need to download updates or reset your iPhone via computer ie if it’s malfunctioning. To do that if you have a pc you need a minimum of Windows XP with Service Pack 3. Apple will continue providing updates for the iPhone & one thing it said in the book is that might include support for video & audio formats that aren’t currently supported. Certainly most of the major formats are supported. iTunes is quite nifty & you can download television shows, films, podcasts, music & apps for your iPhone from this. It supports the playback of video files in a HD format but these take up extra space on the hard drive. I think the podcasts are particularly good value as practically all of them are free.

Welcome

I notice I’ve got a couple of new subscribers so I’d like to welcome you. If anyone else is interested in subscribing it’s free & just means when there’s a new post wordpress send you a copy by email.

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango

The book I read to research this post was My Windows Phone 7 by Brian Posey which is a very good book which I borrowed from the library. This book is particularly if you have one of these smartphones as there are lots of pictures showing how to operate it. I have an iPhone but I thought this book would be interesting. Actually on the subject of Apple Computers I have noticed they have got a website at

http://safaribooksonline.com

At that site you pay them £30 per month by direct debit & they let you read any of thousands of books online on computers & technology & they also give you free vouchers that you can save up to get free downloads of their computer ebooks. When you consider the prices of computer books I think that is a good deal.

Anyway I’m going to write what the new features of the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Release are.

They have support for multiple email accounts.

YouTube & Facebook integrate with it.

It includes a version of Internet Explorer 9.

Their version of Office supports comments with in documents & charts.

You can download & install patches for the operating system.

These phones use a faster processor than previous Windows phones.

Stem Cells

The book I read to research this post was Stem Cells for Dummies by Meg Scheinder et al which is an excellent book which I bought from Kindle. Stem Cells are cells that help you reproduce cells. In humans they are found in quite a lot of places including the brain & heart. Humans are incapable of growing limbs but some animals like crayfish can. Stem Cells connected with reproduction are called Embrionic Stem Cells & these are particularly controversial because some people think we will be cloning people in the near future. In fact it might be possible to clone sheep & dogs but humans are much more complicated. In fact any kind of cloning weakens the DNA & the clone is liable to have disabilities or at the very least weakened DNA. Dolly the sheep which was a clone only lived 6 years which is half what you would expect a sheep to live to. In the 60’s they did an experiment with mice where there irradiated there blood & bones & then transplanted bone marrow into some of them. The ones who had the transplants mostly survived. It was from this that the standard treatment for leukemia was born. With this they give chemotherapy to the bones which destroys the marrow & then transplant new marrow which will hopefully grow & replace the infected marrow. A little while ago a religious cult called the Raelists which believes that aliens produced us by cloning 25,000 years ago, claimed to be cloning. It’s thought this was just a publicity stunt & they haven’t got access to this kind of technology. In America a lot of Stem Cell research is funded by the government & the various state governments. Industry in general won’t fund it because much of it is experimental by nature & getting any profits is in the long term. Stem Cell research offers hope to people with illnesses like parkinson’s & alheimzers which currently are largely incurable. They can’t even alleviate a lot of the symptoms.

 

Lightroom 4

The book I read to research this post was Lightroom 4 by Jordan ferris which is a very good book which I bought from Kindle. This ebook is on a special offer of about £2 for this week only. Much of this book consists of the keyboard shortcuts for Windows & Mac. I own Lightroom 3 & very well may get Lightroom 4. Photoshop & Photoshop Elements are photo editing programs & are primarily intended for artists. Lightroom on the other hand is a photo archiving program with only basic photo editing features although it’s intended for the serious photographer. One thing I noticed with Lightroom 3 is that it will even import from an iPod & I think has a much wider range of digital cameras it will import from than the traditional Photoshop programs. If you enjoy this post I did a post on Lightroom 3 on my computing blog at

http://scratbag.me

It might be worth a look. In Lightroom 4 it’s still quite simple to import stuff. You merely check your settings & then click import. They recommend importing as a DNG file which is compatible with all Adobe programs. If you have stuff imported into another program it might be necessary to reimport it into Lightroom to use it in that program. A final point I bought Lightroom 3 off an Amazon Affiliate & got quite a good deal. It might be worth considering that if you want to get Lightroom 4 cheap.

Thank You

I’d like to thank everyone who has left a comment. I have got a book on the iPhone 4S so you can expect a review of that soon.