Author Archive
my first trance mix (transcendental dreams)
As much as I loathe anything that begins with “My First” or “My”, I guess the time has come to make one. I threw together some tracks with my handy dandy xponent mixer-controller. The mix weighs in at 64 minutes, so it’s CD-able (meaning feel free to burn it onto a CD, if you still use those 
It’s far from perfect since I am still trying to learn beat matching better (they say it takes months and months of practice), but hopefully you enjoy the track selection. Some newer tracks, mostly old tho since that’s what i know better.
There’s two versions, one that’s a zip of split up into individual tracks and one long mix (you’ll need to right click (or ctrl-click on the mac) and choose Save As.. if it instead starts playing in your browser). If you like to skip around the songs you’ll want the former, if you don’t care and always listen to it straight through from beginning to end, the later should suit you fine.
Tracklist:
- Plastic Boy - Twixt (Original Mix)
- Ian Van Dahl - Try (Micheal Woods Remix)
- Insigma - Open Your Eyes (Instrumental)
- Ayu - Connected (Push Instrumental Dub)
- Space Brothers - Heaven Will Come
- Deepstar - Pacific
- Rusch & Murray - Epic
- Robert Nickson - Close Your Eyes (Vocal Mix)
- Rising Star - Clear Blue Moon
- Tilt - The World Doesn’t Know
- DT8 - Destination (Instrumental)
- Oceanlab - Sky Falls Down (AvB Mix)
- Plastix - Release
I spent a ridiculous amount of time on this trying to make it as perfect as I can (at my early stage DJ’ing), so hopefully it doesn’t suck too bad If you like trance, check it out!
parking snafu resolved
i got the best news i heard in a long time. it came in the form of a voicemail. and the source? my building’s management company. seems they now have a parking spot specifically for my motorcycle within the building’s garage!
so why is this blog worthy? a little background info is necessary to explain why this has made my day. see back when i purchased my first bike, i tried to park it in my car’s spot (along with my car) since the spot is plenty big for both vehicles, but when they found out about this, they weren’t happy. i normally pay $110/month for my car’s spot but it seemed asinine i couldn’t fully use it. so after my first bike got knocked over being street parked (as easy as it is to find parking), i could not have that with my new bike, so i vowed to park my car on the street. what’s worse, my spot is subsidized by the building’s management office since the garage is leased out (and they normally charge like $350 for a car), so the garage company wanted to charge me $160 for a spot a fraction of the size of the one i pay for my car. Fortunately, my building came through and got me a spot for $50.. yipee!
well street parking in my area is a ginormous pain in the ass, so knowing i don’t have to park my car in the street anymore, it seems
- no more getting 8 parking tickets in one month,
- no more getting towed (twice),
- no more having my car get disgustingly dirty on a regular basis,
- no more hesitating whether i should go somewhere by car because i’m giving up a valuable parking spot
- no more worrying about whether the cold weather will mean my car will have trouble starting, and best of all,
- no more circling around the block for an hour or so trying to find a spot that isn’t too far (esp now that it’s winter).
i swear, if i wasn’t sick at the moment, i would have hugged my building manager, he had to settle for a hardy handshake instead but i think he wasn’t too disappointed.
finally a blog.. sort of?
After many years of wanting to set one up, i’ve finally decided to set up a blog. It’s funny that the reason I decided to actually go through with it has to do with work. No, i didn’t set it up so work can spy on me, i mean so i can keep track of all the great work i do. The actual reason is because I was tasked with setting up wordpress for a client, and as much as I dreaded it, the procedure was stupidly simple. I was floored and thought, ok so now that I know this won’t take up an evening and a half of work, I can do this too!
And so behold, my blog.. long long long overdue, but hey.. i’ll just say I was waiting for the new year to start. Thank you 2009.
p.s. Oh, and i’m going to attempt to back-post all entries that I would have made if i had a blog all along (so if you posts from 1999, no wordpress wasn’t around yet, but i was
learning to DJ..
I got pretty interested in mixing, ala dj-style a few weeks ago and purchased a mixer, well, sort of. It’s actually software based but has a usb controller (via midi). The one I went with is the M-Audio Xponent. I already found Torq beforehand, had to [k]rack it myself so i could get familiar with it but yah, having a dedicated controller is way more productive than trying to use mouse clicks in multiple places
reason i wanted to try my hand at this (yet another) hobby is because for a long time i wish i had more control about what songs go into a mix cd you make for people. plus dj’ing hip hop is a lot of fun but dj’ing trance is actually a lot harder than i ever imagined :-\
As for a DJ name, well everything i could think of was taken (esp. DJ cynikal).. so i decided to use DJ Loose Key, as my dj handle, since it’s basically how people mispronounce most of my last name
motorcycle upgrade
As much as I love the 250, i thought it’d be time to try something a little zippier So i purchased a 2006 Triumph Daytona 675 off craigslist. Sadly, it’s worth more than my car, still I love both equally, maybe the car a little more since I’ve had it longer. And since I don’t have a spot for it, my car will be street parked for the time being 
My ninja got knocked over a few months ago and there’s a big dent in the gas tank, i’ll have to replace that before I can sell it. I don’t want the same thing to happen to the triumph!
foray into motorcycling
After Chris, a porter in my building started talking about motorcycles one day, he showed me his red Yamaha YZF-600, i was like.. damn, this is pretty sweet. So I looked into getting the ability to ride my own sometime soon. I went to the DMV during a lunch break at work took the motorcycle permit exam, which cost $21 and really only took me 45 minutes total (including waiting @ the DMV, ugh). After that I took the MSF (Motorcycle Safety Foundation) BRC (Basic RiderCourse) course, a two or two and a half day course that lets you skip taking the road test. The road test in NYS for getting a motorcycle license is a real hassle (need to have someone drive the instructor down in your own car and you need someone else to bring the motorcycle there who of course is licensed). I’ve heard of people failing the road test before they even got on the bike because the car had expired registration!
So as of late july, I am a licensed motorcycle driver, errr rider.. and so now I purchased a 2006 Kawasaki Ninja 250 (from a cool fella on craigslist). It’s a fun little bike, great beginners bike and really very nice for the city, where you really can’t go over 100 mph, and I don’t think i’ll want to (at least not the first few months).
new job: FXCM
Posted by: aleks in Professional on December 28th, 2005
After working for the city and this recent transformation (mostly thanks to Judy), I think I am going to try my hand in the financial sector (i worked in both the tech sector and the public sector so far). My friend Rodrick once again came through for me, as he’s starting there on Jan 1st 2006.. my start date will be a week later, so I can give sufficient two-weeks notice to DoITT.
My initial offer letter was disappointing (when placed next to Rodrick), but i negotiated my salary a little higher and I think it’s do-able. It’s definitely a bit more than for DoITT but hey the more the merrier!
wallpapers galore
I came across a collection of wallpapers from National Geographic. I have them on my gallery if anyone wants a new background for their desktop. Here are some of my favs:
