1. Monolythe - Siberia (Jelo Remix) [because of the bassline, wow!]
2. Skirmish - Dont Tell Anybody ft Cherly Cole [its clarity, simplicity and even more impressive bassline]
3. Jayson Miro & D’Arezzo feat. D. MC – Chop Till You Drop (Original Mix) [mellow sounds meet ghetto-trash-cheap-youth-electro]
4. Deadmau5 vs Jelo – The Reward Is Cheese (Johnny Krazy Rework) [as steady as they come]
5. The Residents Evil - Bite [another growling bassline]
6. X-press 2 - London Xpress (Tim Healey Vs Marc Adamo Remix) [excellent remix, listening to this one for months. The siren is awesome.]
7. KANE DUBSTEP - bioluminescence [this goed beyond every imaginable fucked up noise and is SUPEREFFECTIVE]
8. Tremourz and J. Rabbit – Energylegs [IT WILL MAKE YOU HAVE 400 BABIES]
9. MC Jakes  - Warface (Distorted Minds Remix) [private joker, why did you join my beloved corps?]
10. Pascal & Pearce – Disko Biskit (Original Mix) [game over]

Yes, too lazy for youtubes… check them out, its worthwhile.

- i’m sorry ‘ did i break your concentration? go on! -

Taking on the challenge

My first attempt was performed in Textedit, and it was a cumbersome process of shuffling and reshuffling numbers. My guess was that R was a negative number, and with some negative trickery the puzzle was solvable.

After a few minutes of failed attempts I recognized my brain failed at this hour. So lets do some stupid programming, in order to figure out the correct values for the puzzle.

Firing up a text editor and writing out the formula, i hunched at the formula’s tightness. If the formula is not written correctly, the puzzle is incorrect and thus unsolvable. If not, the numbers will probably even out in a few iterations. The challenge then is to find an iteration that matches the start value: Z = 1.

Finding initial values

The formula did balance out. Only with some initial values set to 8 or higher, the result would crash. With the following initial values, i found the simplest outcome of this puzzle:

$K = -1;
$L = -1;
$R = 2;
$W = -1;
$Y = 1;
$Z = 1;

iteration 0
Y + R = K | 1 + 2 = 3
K + R = L | 3 + 2 = 5
R + R = W | 3 + 2 = 4
Y - R = Z | 1 - 2 = -1
K - W = Z | 3 - 4 = -1
L - W = Y | 5 - 4 = 1
R * R - W = R | 2 * 2 - 4 = 0

iteration 1
Y + R = K | 1 + 0 = 1
K + R = L | 1 + 0 = 1
R + R = W | 1 + 0 = 0
Y - R = Z | 1 - 0 = 1
K - W = Z | 1 - 0 = 1
L - W = Y | 1 - 0 = 1
R * R - W = R | 0 * 0 - 0 = 0

K = 1
L = 1
R = 0
W = 0
Y = 1
Z = 1

I also found one other answer after a few other input combinations. How many more could there be?

Taking it one step further

That wasn’t too hard, just some guessing, and it was fixed. All iterations after iteration 1 resulted in the same answer: Z is 1 and manually checking this sum confirmed correctness. Now, what other answers could there be. I expanded the sourcecode of the original puzzle to try all input variables from -9 to 9. That would be  18 * 18 * 18 * 18  * 18 * 18 * 18 attempts, or 18 ^ 6 or 3401224 attempts to solve this puzzle.

I was wondering how many solutions there would be, and how many input variables resulted to the same solution. Couldn’t be that hard. With little rewriting and some debugging we came to the following code:

The final answer

For humans, trying any value below -9 or higher than 9 would mean intense complexity. So after performing all 34 million possibilities with some iterative logic, the chance of someone guessing the right answer is pretty high:

Array
(
    [notfound] => 33487344
    [7.10.3.6.4.1] => 314928
    [1.1.0.0.1.1] => 209952
)

Correlation

Floating points

Using floating points resulted in nothing new. Unfortunately, i’d hoped for some cool answers that did not involve integers. Well, at least we’ve tried. The cool thing with floats is that the answers keep on fluctuating; it never evens out. Well, i tried with 10.000.000 iterations, and still different things happen.

The following morning: Hey just wait a minute… Only R and Y make sense in this equation. Thats why most of the time nothing happened. Lets try it with only modifying R and Y… nothing

Conclusion

My initial assumption was wrong: there is no answer that uses negative integers in the range of -1 to -9. It just doesn’t exist. Excel couldn’t make heads or tails of the data, it was simply too large for a graph. I’m thinking of datawhorehouse tooling. Trying with fewer parameters and only 0.1 and etc didn’t result in any answer. Well, enough for now, i could stretch this to the end of the galaxy. All files are available for download.

That concludes this nights brainteaser, its time for slee… zzzzzzz

• Attached file: midnight_brainteaser

Begin 2000 kwam ik in Zutphen wonen. Een turbulente tijd, maar er was een constante; een radiostation dat 24/7 hiphop en r&b uitzond. Het was een station dat ik had gevonden tijdens het scannen naar goede zenders; 1224 AM. Een shit frequentie, maar wat heb ik daar vaak naar geluisterd. Gezien de beperkte informatie over Qthebeat heb ik  de info die ik kon vinden bij elkaar geschraapt, en geef ik mijn kijk op de opkomst en ondergang van dit station. Mocht je nog artwork, jingles of andere meuk hebben: laat het achter in de comments.

Urban

Ik was al fan van urban muziek. Elke maand downloadde ik de OOHLA hip-hop/rnb top 30. Zelfs na 10 jaar bestaat die lijst nog, met nog steeds de beste nummers. Veel hiervan zullen het hier nooit maken, maar zijn zeker de moeite waard. Ook was smoothbeats.com een van m’n favorieten. Dat bestaat ook nog steeds, en ze vieren hun 10 jarig bestaan. Toen kwam ineens, uit het niets, een experimentele zender op de AM voorbij: Qthebeat. Het was niet altijd in de lucht, waardoor het leek op een piratenzender. Ik luisterde ongeveer elke dag om te horen of er weer werd uitgezonden. Het zou augustus of september 1999 zijn geweest [1]. Als het er was, stond het aan. De kick van de laatste nummers, goede urban en gewoon de AM-shitty frequentie maakte het fantastisch.

Opbouw

Het station begon met 24/7 een urban playlist, met recente hits zoals The Beatnuts – no escaping this, Cam’ron – What means the world to you, en Eve – Who’s that girl (met DJ CLUE geschreeuw NEW SHIT, WHAAAAAAAAaaa, echo). Volgens mij maakte het voor Qthebeat niet uit waar ze de nummers vandaan haalden, als ze maar werden uitgezonden. Na een jaar kwam de Blockbuster; een toekomstige hit die om de 2 uur, aan het begin van het uur werd gedraaid. Dit was altijd iets om naar uit te kijken, elke week was er een nieuwe, waardoor je als eerste Shaggy – It Wasn’t Me,  Outkast – Miss Jackson of  Crazy Town – Butterfly hoorde. Dat was gewoon heerlijk. Er werd nog steeds niet gesproken, en de AM ontvangst was nog steeds shitty.

De AM, het geluid en de zender

Hoewel anders werd beloofd[4], was Qthebeat gedoemd om altijd op de AM te blijven. Behalve dat het bedrijf achter Qthebeat dubieus zou zijn [3], was er ook geen geld [1]. Er waren ook geen reclames. Het geluid was absoluut waardeloos, zeker als ik hard had staan kwam, afhankelijk van het weer, een harde piep door de opnames heen. Op sommige dagen was het niet eens goed te ontvangen, maar dat droeg bij aan de charme. Juist ruis en storingen maakte het leuk om naar te luisteren. Ik kon niet zonder Qthebeat, dus ik nam ook regelmatig wat op zodat ik het op m’n walkom terug kon luisteren. Cassettes. Recentelijk heb ik al mn 80 tapes afgeluisterd om te horen wat voor geniale muziek erop stond. Daar vond ik ook een stukje Qthebeat. Dat klonk ongeveer zo:

Bleh… Youtube opname doet er iets langer over… Er komen 3 filmpjes aan met Edith den Doosch.

Wat achtergrond info over de zender: Qthebeat werd uitgezonden vanaf het schip de “MV Communicator”. De studio stond in Hoofddorp (gebouwd door en fotos bij d&ms). Er zijn foto’s van het schip in de aanlegplaats in de pampushaven bij Almere. Het schip is inmiddels gesloopt, uiteraard na berichten dat het in perfecte staat verkeerd. Een trieste dag voor schipzenderfanaten. Op de website van een radiofanaat staat nog een Qthebeat Jingle. The best in urban music.

Presentatie en programma’s

Het laatste jaar was er presentatie. Eddy keur en zijn dode-baby grappen zat in de ochtend, Edith den Doosch en haar eeuwige pubertijd zat in de middag. Op zaterdag was er de Snoop Dogg radio show en kwam er regelmatig een mix voorbij. Hierin zat o.a. AZ – Problems (remix van debarge), wat nog steeds een van mn favorieten is. Owja, ook regelmatig een cutup van Missy Elliots – Get Your Freak On en Jay-Z + R Kelly – Guilty until proven Innocent. Ik weet nog wel dat we naar het strand in Busloo gingen, en ik per se de walkman van een vriend moest lenen. Daar zat een AM ontvanger op, dus kon je Qthebeat mixen luisteren op het strand. Fucking heerlijk.

De Snoop Dogg radio show was op zich ook wel lekker om te luisteren. Wat gelul over snoops nieuwe kleding, maar ook wat leuke platen zoals Bone Thugs N Harmony – Ecstacy en een remix van De la Souls Saturday. Owja, en Edith kondigde vrolijk Get Fucked Up van de Iconz af, dat was wel grappig. Maar duidelijk; de laatste 2 platen waren geen blijvertjes maar leuk die dagen. Eddy had het volgens mij niet echt op rapmuziek, maar de ochtendshow was best legendarisch.

Ik vraag me af of een van al deze mensen ooit een euro hebben gekregen van Qthebeat. Vast niet.

Documentaire

Op het hoogtepunt is een cameraploeg van de VPRO langsgeweest. Deze hebben een item geschoten waarin Qthebeat het onderwerp was.  Er werd gesproken over een amerikaanse partner die al 1000 stations in bezit had. Dit was ClearChannel Communications. De documentaire was te zien op 11 maart 2001 om 21.05 in het programma Zeven Dagen [11] [12].

Het archief zegt hierover het volgende:

“Reportage van Robert Oey over de veiling van de commerciële radiofrequenties op de FM-zender. De overheid heeft anderhalf jaar geleden aangekondigd dat deze veiling er zou komen. Onder protest van de huidige commerciële omroepen lijkt men de veiling te willen opschorten. Kleine commerciële radiostations dreigen nu een claim in te dienen, waaronder radiozender Q the Beat uit de Randstad. Q the Beat wil zich
koste wat kost een plaats zien te verwerven op de FM-zender en ziet nu, door het uitstellen van de veiling, zijn plannen in het water vallen. Div. medewerkers van Q de Beat worden gevolgd tijdens overlegsituaties.
INTERVIEWS hierover met:
- Rob van der Vegt, dir. Q the Beat/Media Matters;
- Jack Meesters, radiostrateeg;
- Mark van Oosterhout, accountmanager Q the Beat;
- Leontien van der Meer (Q the Beat/Media Matters);
- Nicolet Don, advocaat Q the Beat.”

Helaas is er niet heel erg veel te zien in de korte documentaire. Het eindigt met een shot van een basketbal veld met een ghettoblaster, maar het is ookal weer 10 jaar geleden. Mocht ik ooit bij het archief langsgaan, dan ga ik deze zeker opvragen.

Ondergang

Het station draaide, maar leverde niets op. Zelfs toen er genoeg diesel in de aggregaat gegooid werd om continue uit te zenden, kwam er nog niets uit. Clearchannel wilde er geen geld meer insteken en medio augustus 2002 was het gedaan[1]. Of er sprake is geweest van een herstart is onduidelijk, maar die kans lijkt me groot. Het zit in het bloed [2]. Colorful radio schijnt er ook iets mee van doen te hebben.

Echter stierf het station niet zomaar, er is geprobeerd om een frequentie te krijgen. Dit heeft voornamelijk te maken met het moederbedrijf Clearchannel, wat poot aan de grond wilde hebben in Nederland. Het liefst voor een paar dubbeltjes. Tijdens de herindeling werd er door Arrow en Qthebeat behoorlijk wat tamtam gemaakt [6]. Er was veel remoer over de herindeling, tot diep in de politiek [7] [9] [10]. Dat heeft uiteindelijk niets opgeleverd; Qthebeat verdween. Ik vroeg me af of er daadwerkelijk geld zou komen om het überhaupt rendabel te maken. Arrow heeft inmiddels ook de geest gegeven. Overigens vind ik het vreemd dat CCC Arrow niet heeft overgenomen; als ze zo graag een poot aan de grond wilden. Maargoed… wat weet ik nu weer van radio maken.

Domeinen qthebeat .com en .am zijn inmiddels dood. Het .nl domein naar is inmiddels weer vrij. Het internet archief heeft niets bewaard, helaas. Maar de website stelde ook niet veel voor. Een 24kbit stream en een Q logo. Jingles en andere huisstijlen lijken inmiddels de prullenbak in gegaan. Het station is voorbij en liet 1.3 miljoen aan schulden achter [5].

De namen achter het station, o.a. Rob van der Vegt[8], levert niets op met google. Overigens scheen die samen te werken met Leontien van der Meer, wat ik samen mooie achternamen vind. De bedrijfsnamen achter Qthebeat waren The Beat Goes On BV en Media Matters BV.

Oproep

Als iemand nog verhalen, opnamen, artwork of jingles heeft; zet ze in de comments of stuur ze op. Dat maakt het plaatje compleet. Ik ben vooral benieuwd naar de bron van de mixen op zaterdag. Groeten, Elger

Bronnen

1. [1] = http://radiomonique963.punt.nl/?gr=772653
2. [2] = http://radio.nl/portal/home/medianieuws/010.archief/2000/04/71233.html
3. [3] = http://radio.nl/portal/home/medianieuws/010.archief/2000/08/71892.html
4. [4] = http://www.radio.nl/portal/home/medianieuws/010.archief/2000/11/72592.html
5. [5] = http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zerobase
6. [6] = http://radio.nl/portal/home/medianieuws/001.zero_base/zerobase_nieuws/default.asp?intArticleID=79129
7. [7] = http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME04/Mag_de_rechter.shtml
8. [8] = http://www.radiovisie.eu/nl/nieuws.rvsp?art=00039825
9. [9] = http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME03/Protesten_problemen.shtml
10. [10] = http://www.radiovisie.eu/nl/nieuws.rvsp?art=00042802
11. [11] = http://www.manuelfm.radiowereld.nl/portal/home/medianieuws/010.archief/2001/03/73412.html
12. [12] = http://www.vpro.nl/programma/7dagen/afleveringen/3430477/

Okey, i’ve updated and improved the RetroTV project with a few additions.

1. Added the sourcecode to github
2. Started a wiki
3. Built communication between VLC and php
4. Added date-support for shows, making weird schedules possible
5. Defined what to do for this release (V1.0)

Github and Wiki

RetroTV is now a project on GitHub, they offer free hosting to open-source projects. The address for browsing the code, and the accompanied wiki, is:

• http://github.com/stitch/RetroTV

The wiki explains what is going on in the code, and tries to show the projects intentions. It will be the first place for user-oriented documentation. Technical documentation is a little bit more different, preferably only design decisions are listed. Check it out: http://wiki.github.com/stitch/RetroTV/

When popularity increases, the github wiki will be replaced with a real one.

Built communication with VLC

VLC has a telnet interface, and something called VLM; VideoLan Manager, which is a scheduler. Both suffer from pretty poor documentation, but its done. When running VLC in telnet mode, PHP can create schedules and playlists based upon the programming specified by users.

Running the SHOW command, after RetroTV has finished, looks something like this:

Added date support in programming

Creating a schedule has now more flexibility. In the previous, unreleased version, programming was a daily cycle. When the day ended, we would start over from the start. With the current date support, its possible to make complex programming. Adding a date is mandatory, and as such a looping programming isn’t possible. Maybe, when only programming for a single day is specified, looping might become a feature.

Creating a new set of playlists currently looks like this:

Roadmap

The first release will be out before/on August 1st; first time it’ll be used is at Eth0:2010 Summer. What has to be done is this:

VLC Streaming Support

The largest blocking issue is VLC’s streaming support. There is a prominent bug in broadcasting M4v content in simple setups. Basically we need to stream any kind of movie file to two different setups. A HTTP setup and a multicast setup. Both experimenting and debugging VLC has proven to be tedious, so this is a risk.

Announcements

Announcements are nearing good-enough-state for version 1.0. Only a few transitions and faster processing are among the desires. I’ve already shown announcements work in a proof of concept.

Logo while Streaming

What’s a TV station without a logo in one of the corners of the video? Well… nothing. It doesn’t seem hard to do, but with VLC you’ll never know. I suspect it will be pretty smooth to do this. The logo has been designed, it was at the top of this article.

Code cleanup

Removing redundant / incorrect comments, renaming some stuff and giving the right place for parts of code. This is a continuous process, which affects every update untill 1.0 is ready.

Further reading

• http://elgerjonker.nl/2010/05/retrotv-broadcasting-project-part-1/
• http://wiki.github.com/stitch/RetroTV/

The Stitch Liveshow is a weekly broadcast playing different musical genres each time. It’s not live, not a show, not weekly, not broadcasted and Stitch is fictional. Follow the Stitch Liveshow on Twitter.

I pulled this one out of the archives because it has really really great tracks. This mix is great for a lazy summers day. Enjoy this real house set, this is the good stuff. Set was recorded and created with Acid Pro on October 14th 2008. Where’s the BBQ at?

Total playing time: 1:01:31

Download

• uber fast Download: right click, save as. (sponsored by: vexocide.org)
• regular fast Mirror: right click, save as.

Filesize: 140.8 MB, 320 kbit.

Tracklist

1. Mister Monday – Future (carl craig mix) (1995)
2. Fear by Force – Danceing in outer space (????)
3. Logic – The Final Frontier (1990)
4. DSK – What we do (1991)
5. Mother – All Funked up (1993)
6. Black Science Orchestra – Philadelphia (1994)
7. Djum Djum – Difference (1990)
8. Fire Island ft Mark Antoni – If you should need a friend (1995)
9. BT – Embracing the Future (1993)
10. Frankie Knuckles – The Whistle Song (1991)
11. Chocolate City – Love Songs (1995)
12. Souffles H – Mondo Grosso (King Street Club Mix) (1995)

The aim of RetroTV is to provide a series of practices and software for running your own TV station. It’s not just software; its the whole package including documentation and guidelines/protips. Currently the software is in alpha stage: i’m developing and testing till its good enough to be picked up by the community.

Throughout this series of posts i’ll show documentation and inner workings, as well as results of the project. For todays post i’ll show the status of the project: it’s far beyond the idea stage, its nearly in beta. And we all know Beta is the way to go.

Automated stations

My goal is not at all to bring live programming or anything of decent quality. My goal is to broadcast old school television: the things we watched in our childhood. In Holland there used to be a station called “Kindernet” which broadcasted Ovide, Bassie & Adriaan, Around the Twist and a host of other series. Kindernet appeared to be a completely automated station.

Its formatting was simple: broad cast a show, have some commercials, and display what’s coming up. This project is largely the same thing, except that you can control its content, its format and will also be able to imitate clip stations such as TMF or MTV.

The Format

For automated stations use a similar way to fill up their time. To understand this format, we have to look at the difference between consumers and the station: which translates into formatting. Below tables show a difference between the consumer-level programming and station-level programming.

So what I want for our software, is to schedule shows from a consumer perspective. The software should create the station-level programming for me. In our case we don’t have contracts with sponsors and obligations to sell expensive air-time: which is a good thing.

Example schedule

RetroTV can already translate the consumer-programming into station level programming. As a consumer we only need to tell what shows air at what time. Look at the following PHP script: this is all we need in the current version.

$showSchedule = new showSchedule();
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "0600", "Penn & Tellers Bullshit!");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_CARTOON, "0700", "Kinder Theater"); // div filmpjes van 5 mins
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_CARTOON, "0730", "Samson");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_CARTOON, "0800", "Teddy Ruxpin");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_CARTOON, "0830", "Ovide");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_CARTOON, "0900", "Bassie en Adriaan");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_CARTOON, "0930", "Around The Twist");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1000", "MythBusters");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1100", "AVGN");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1120", "Aqua Teenage Hunger Force");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1200", "Family Guy");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1230", "Drawn Together");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1300", "The A Team");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1400", "Knight Rider");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1500", "Kinder Theater");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1530", "Spongebob Squarepants");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1600", "The Legend of Prince Valiant");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1800", "Philosophy - A guide to Happiness");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "2100", "Penn & Tellers Bullshit!");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "2300", "Penn & Tellers Bullshit!");

Note: the current version has placeholders to support parental advisory. If this makes the Beta release, i’ll highlight it in another post.

Announcements

Behind the scenes the software is smart enough to fill up this programming with whatever it needs. As an added bonus, it will fill large gaps in the programming with pre-supplied funny movies from Youtube. What things this software can handle will be handled in a next post, describing “Content Packages”.

One important thing is to inform viewers what’s coming up next. For this, the script builds movie files displaying the program schedule. This part of the software is in a very early state, but its already pretty nice. Have a look:

The movie is generated “on the fly” using nothing more than a predefined background, some music, PHP and ffmpeg. The latter two are both powertoys: both haven’t been utilized to their full potential yet. The poor preview quality is intentional: it will only get better.

Creating movie-frames in PHP is a pain though: till now i couldn’t figure out how to do fadein-movement animations. Of course PHP wasn’t made for moviemaking: the default-Beta announcement rendering is already a challenge. I’ll make sure the Beta has enough information to get started on your own Announcement software.

Open Standards

As said before, this project will be released as open software in the upcoming weeks. For now i can already tell you the software packages it “depends”. VLC is the tool that does the streaming. Guidelines and scripts for broadcasting are included: both for unicast as multicast streaming. Just ask your local network adminstrator for Multicast support and you’re good.

Another software package is ffmpeg, a “simple” command line encoding tool. You won’t have any beef with this, as everything with this tool happens behind the scenes. Its used for inspecting movie files and creating announcements.

For storing file information and play-statistics (to make proper playlists) are stored in SQLITE. A database that is near-ideal for small projects like this. You can do SQL, so its all good.

The final package is PHP, with support for GD. The last creates frames for announcements, while PHP does the logic for creating playlists. All playlists are in an open format called Spiff, which they shorten as XSPF.

Next posts…

There is still enough to tell. About content packages, software internals, streaming and of course example rendered playlists. I’m watching a playlist right now and its freaking sweet!! More youtubes soon!

Although configuration options are limitless, most of the time you want to keep it simple. Here is the 4-step deal:

Installation of dircproxy

Installation of DircProxy for various common linux-platforms is a piece of cake. Just log into your machine and tell your package manager you want to use dircproxy. I can’t help you for that. But it might be something like:

apt-get install dircproxy

Telling dircproxy what servers to use

The dircproxy config file is located in your home directory: me@awesemebox:~# .dirproxyrc (where ~ is your home directory or username)

Dircproxy uses “connection classes”: little annoyances which we will get out of the way quickly. You need to know two things: the address of your server and a password. Server addresses are commonplace when connecting to an IRC server; therefore i’ll skip that subject and go straight to the password.

The password is something you create yourself. It is specified per connection: and has to be unique per connection. Just use something you’d remember, such as “OMFGQuakeNet” or something. This way you know what password belongs to what connection.

A strange thing with this password, is that it has to be stored “secure”. Therefore you have to run a script, accompanied with dircproxy that will convert your password into something unreadable. Try this:

dircproxy-crypt OMFGQuakeNet

Now specify your connection class at the bottom of the file. Like this:

connection {
   server "irc.quakenet.org"
   password "Go5XjCYTdnZOI"
}

That’s all. There is no need to specify channels, nicknames or any other thingy. You can leave your dircproxy configuration and log out of your unix machine. Or you could check out one of the gazillion options of the dircproxy configuration file and make it more secure. Whatever suits you best. I think i’m ready to connect macIrssi to the proxy. This will allow me to see what is going on in Quakenet.

Actually connecting to dircproxy

Configuring macIrssi is actually a two step process: the last remaining two steps. First you have to tell that you want to use a proxy. Second you have to add a password to your configuration file. I’m expecting you’re using macIrssi for quite a while, and connect to a lot of servers. You do not need to destroy or alter your configuration heavily.

Connecting to the proxy

While using macIrssi, type in the following commands in the console window.

/SET use_proxy ON
/SET proxy_address irc.bouncer.org
/SET proxy_port 5000
/SET proxy_string_after conn %s %d
/SET -clear proxy_string /SET -clear proxy_password

That was the first step. You’ve just set you wanted to use a proxy (or dircproxy) or whatever. Its okey now and please forget about these settings. Please Quit MacIrssi and continue.

Joining servers and channels

While MacIrssi has a great graphical userinterface, it is has no edit field for proxy-server passwords. I expect this to be resolved in some next version. Untill then, we have to look at another dull text-screen for a while.

Your macirssi configuration file is located at ~/irssi/config (where ~ is your username or home directory)

Open the macIrssi configuration file in any text editor and you’re ready to make the final adjustment. Its just adding one single line to your Quakenet server configuration and you’re done.

A strange thing, here, is that you have to enter your password non-encrypted. Just make a “password = ” section in your server config for the aprorpiate server. Then add your password. Like so:

{
address = "irc.quakenet.org";
chatnet = "ircquakenetorg";
password = "OMFGQuakeNet";
port = "6667";
use_ssl = "no";
ssl_verify = "no";
autoconnect = "yes";
},

Save the file and lets check if it works. Start macIrssi. Just wait a few seconds and… you’re connected to your favorite channels using your own nickname and settings. Enjoy!

References

1. http://www.irssi.org/documentation/startup (chapter 10)
2. http://code.google.com/p/dircproxy/wiki/HowtoConfigureClient
3. http://code.google.com/p/dircproxy/wiki/DircproxyInstallation
4. http://code.google.com/p/dircproxy/wiki/ManDircproxy (Verbose DircProxy Manual)
5. http://www.sysctl.co.uk/

The Stitch Liveshow is a weekly broadcast playing different musical genres each time. It’s not live, not a show, not weekly, not broadcasted and Stitch is fictional. Follow the Stitch Liveshow on

HARDSTYLE: a blend happy of melodies and beats at 150 bpm, with 56 seconds of intro, 8 bars filled with anticipation and instant party time. Every song features the same keyboard, effects but different kicks. Its a contest to squeeze as much bass and sound into a song. Selecting a variety of tracks is possible, even though the majority follows the same format and style.

Early hardstyle sucked beyond belief. Tracks tend to build up until, at the moment of climaxing, a break kicks in. And here is what happened to me: I started to prepare to dance again, shouting… but instead of the whole room going batshit insane everybody stood there watching as I went totally mad. AWKWARD! This not only happened to me, thats why the format changed probably.

Todays hardstyle is reliable. No more anti-climaxes, so you can actually dance to it and lose your mind. Because the majority of the tracks follow the same format, its actually easy to decide if you like it. Do you like one track? Then you’ll like em all. Still it was hard to select the right tunes: I don’t want my set to become boring, and I do want to have some sort of progression in my mix. That happened. Enjoy your hardstyle.

Total playing time: 2:35:23 (> two and a half hour, ^^ mixing and recording seemed like 5 minutes)

Download

• uber fast Download: right click, save as. (sponsored by: vexocide.org)
• regular fast Mirror: right click, save as.

Filesize: 372,9 MB, 320 kbit.

Tracklist

1. Alphaverb – The Otherside (Original Mix)
2. Ivan Carsten – You Try To Play Me
3. Razor DJ – Feeling Inside (Original)
4. Abyss and Judge – Hardstyle Revolution (Showtek rmx)
5. Activator – Figalicious
6. Geck-O – Give Me Some Heat
7. Noisecontrollers – Surge Of Power
8. B-Front & Frontliner – Magic
9. Max Enforcer Feat. The Rush – Fade TO Black (Official Black 2010 Anthem)
10. Frontliner – Sunblast
11. Showtek ft MC DV8 – Electronic Stereo-Phonic
12. Activator – Move Your Feet
13. Zatox – Drop The Track
14. Bass Modulators – Nrgizer
15. Degos & Re-Done – Salsa
16. Max B. Grand & Djanny – Arancia Meccanica
17. Carniflex Ft. Tim – Forever Hard
18. Beat Providers – Abandoned
19. The Beholder & Max Enforcer – Be Amazed (Hard Bass 2009 Anthem)
20. B-Front & Frontliner – Become The Sky
21. Digital Punk & MC Jeff – Keep It Bouncing
22. Ruhann – Don’t Be Afraid
23. Geck-O – Instant Fame
24. Hardstyle Masterz vs Max Enforcer – Rambo Is A Pussy
25. DJ Thera – The Test 2.0 (Crypsis Remix)
26. Technoboy meets Ruffian – The Undersound
27. Miss Tess-X – X-Love (Original Mix)
28. Frontliner & B-Front – Godz Powerrr!
29. Grandmaster Q – Dwarf
30. Josh & Wesz – Lipservice Radio
31. Gostosa – Sutra
32. Noizecontrollers And Toneshifterz – Empire Of The Sun
33. Dozer – Robin’s Revenge
34. Vyolet – Magic
35. Robin Clark – Wiseman
36. Joshua Hiroshy – Endovene (Stitch Totally Fucked Up Mix)