Music Remixes and Sampling

Have you heard of any remixes of The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme) song from Star Wars?

The first time I heard one was this past July when I took a trip to San Diego. I took the trip cuz I had never been to SD and I heard good things about it. Well coincidentally the Comic-Con show was going on the same weekend I was there. Now I’m still not sure what the show is all about, but there were many people dressed up as their favorite comic characters. Some were even dressed up at the bars that night! So in honor of the show, the DJ at one of the bars played a dance remix of The Imperial March song and I really liked it. When I got home I searched for it and guess what I found instead. A Rage Against The Machine remix of the song and it kicks ass!

Rage Imperial March Remix on YouTube

I am a huge Rage fan because they make music that you can listen to no matter your mood, positive or negative. But most importantly, I think their creativity is second to none. I have just about everything the members of the band have done, including their other projects or spinoffs like Audioslave and One Day As A Lion and some of their collaborations with Wu Tang Clan, Prodigy and Snoop Dogg. But this one was totally unexpected but a pleasant surprise. Which brings me to another point.

I find it funny that the majority of rock bands who use music from older songs call them “covers” while in rap/r&b/hip hop they can just add in their own rhymes and call it their song with not so much credit to the original. Do you agree? For example I was driving to my friend’s BBQ out on eastern Long Island and once I got into Suffolk County I lost many of the radio stations tunable from NYC and Nassau County. So I had to surf for other radio stations, which isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes it’s good to try the older stations because you can discover where the melodies from current hip hop artists originated. Well I came across an oldies Hip Hop station and the song “Juicy Fruit” by MTumes was playing. The same melody was used by The Notorious B.I.G. in his now famous “Juicy” song. The only credit to the original is the title of his song, which doesn’t even work with the message of his song which is to tell a rags-to-riches story. Now I knew that he used an older melody but I needed this reminder. I’m sure there are many people who had no idea!

The Search For: Great Driving Roads

This past Sunday was a gorgeous day so I decided to take my Corrado out for a nice enjoyable drive around Long Island. I love driving so I like taking random drives whenever I get the chance. It helps clear my head as well. This time as I drove around I decided to explore some new roads on Long Island I haven’t taken before. I took some back roads near Huntington and realized that I’ve lived on LI for 25 years and there are still many areas that I haven’t explored before! I bet there are plenty of fun roads to drive on. I think it’d be fun to search for the best driving roads in the northeast.

But what do I consider a fun road? There are 3 main ingredients for a great driving road:

• Smooth
• Winding and curvy
• Nice Scenery

Do you agree? What are some great driving roads that you know of?

Business Idea: DIY Garage

Pictured below is my garage. It is a typically sized 1.5 car residential garage with just enough room for me to work on my Corrado and the other cars I’ve owned. Like many of the people I know, I like to do my own work on my cars. In hindsight I know it would’ve been nice if I had a lift, tools, and some help when I worked on my car! Hence my idea…

My biggest and most ambitious business idea is a Do It Yourself Garage. “Garage Time” as I think I would call it. It would be a professional style garage where a customer rents time to work on his or her own car using the lift and the professional and specialty tools that are made available. Plus there would be a mechanic on site to supervise and offer tips and help where it is needed. Kinda like the autoshop class some of you have probably taken in high school.

Some of the people who would benefit from my business include car guys who would rather work on their own cars but don’t always have the right tools to do the jobs (like me), people who live in condos or apartments that do not allow them to work on their own cars, and people who want to learn how to fix their own cars. It can also be a meeting place for car clubs to meet and have a tech day.

Although I’ve done just about all the work on my cars, look at my toolbox. As you can see it is pretty empty. I would be a good candidate to go to my own business!

  
Well, the truth is I have tools that I don’t keep in my toolbox. But you get the idea 🙂

So what do you think? Would you want to be one of my customers?

Content and Layout

Engineers are known for putting function before form. I am an engineer by education and trade and I’ve been told more than once “You’re such an engineer.” So I guess I chose the right profession! However, I’ve always appreciated good industrial designs and I admire those who have the talent and the eye for aesthetics. My blog will be my attempt to show that I too have at least a little bit of an industrial designer in me.

I think the basic blogger templates emphasize function over form. Luckily, blogger allows for a bit of freedom to change the template and I am going to take full advantage of it. The visual challenge of a blog site is to create a page that is fun to visit and navigate, while allowing for the content to be read with the least bit of eye strain. I hope you can appreciate the look of my blog when I finally begin posting regularly! It may take some time because I will have to learn some code. In the meantime, check out the following links.

These are the sites I will be using to learn how to code and create my template. Plus of course alot of trial and error with existing blogger templates. I have taken intro comp science classes in college so some of it made sense to me from the beginning:

• Blogger Template Tutorials
• Learn Coding
• Free Blogger Templates

 

And the following should whet your appetite for some fancy blog designs.

• Blogger Showcase
• Best of WordPress Gallery

 

What were some of your favorite blog designs?

Intro to Me and My Corrado

I have been a car enthusiast for as long as I remember. So it was only natural that I would end up getting a car that I would make my hobby to own and modify. Well I chose a 1993 Volkswagen Corrado SLC as my hobby car. I’ve wanted one since this particular version came out in 1992 (I was 12 yrs old!). There are plenty of reasons why I desired the Corrado and these will be chronicled in upcoming posts so stay tuned!

As for my particular Corrado, I have owned it since January of 2000. I bought it from an older gentleman from Tennessee while I was attending college at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. At the time it had approximately 46k miles on it and I became its 3rd owner. Currently it has over 112k which is still pretty low considering it’s a 16 year old car. So I’ve enjoyed many many miles and smiles with it 🙂

Well enough talk, here are some pictures I took recently at a small park in Levittown, NY. This is one of the better and more creative photoshoots I’ve done so far considering my new foray into the photography world. Plus it’s rare that I have pictures with me in them too! Each picture was taken with my Nikon D40 DSLR and enhanced with Apple’s Aperture software. Enjoy!