Category: San Francisco

there’s just too much good music coming out these days. over the last couple of weeks, i’ve thrown together a new mix in my spare time. mostly some indietronik stuff, but some other random odds and ends as well. it’s a bit all over the place in some ways, but there’s some pretty sick tracks in there. check it out and leave a comment to lemme know what you think. also, last time i uploaded a mix, i guess pretty much everyone had issues downloading it for some reason. too large of a file maybe? so this time i’m also including the mix broken up into three chunks for easier download… each of the chunks should seamlessly come together if you have itunes w/ gapless playback.

Download the entire mix here: Question mark mix.

or, download it in 3 chunks here: Question mark mix part 1, Question mark mix part 2, Question mark mix part 3.

(oh, btw, the last track is pretty NSFW so dont play it for your boss or your mom)

Tracklisiting below:

1. David Byrne – Dance On Vaselin (Thievery Corporation remix)
2. The Martin Brothers – Stoopit
3. Freeform Five – No More Conversation (Mylo Remix)
4. Man Like Me – Oh My Gosh (Hoi Polloi Mix)
5. Gameboy/Gamegirl – Sweaty Wet/Dirty Damp
6. Yelle – Je Veux Te Voir
7. Klanguage – Priceless Things
8. Crystal Castles – Air War
9. ELMar – Suck That (Colt 45’s Remix)
10. Alan Hostage – Let’s Pretend (PornScar Remix)
11. Cajuan – Dance Not Dance (Digitalism Mix)
12. Riot in Belgium – La Musique (Van She Tech Remix)
13. GoodBooks – Leni (Kissy Sell Out Remix)
14. Cut Chemist – What’s the Altitude (She Wants Revenge Remix)
15. Au Revoir Simone – Fallen Snow (The Teenagers Remix)
16. The Valentinos – Kafka (Bagraiders Remix)
17. Le Castle Vania – Tigertron (Feat Factory Aire)
18. Spank Rock – Bump (Pink Skull Remix)
19. Thunderheist – sueños dulces
20. Spank Rock – Lindsay Lohan’s Revenge

*v

I was working from home today, as usual, when i heard tons and tons of sirens outside my house. this is not uncommon around here.. it seems like all the time shit is going down. usually it’s probably the police. this time it wasn’t though. when i looked out my window i saw a ton of black smoke gushing out of a building less than a block away. i grabbed my camera and ran outside to see what was up.

it was nuts!! this building was smoking like crazy and every once in a while you’d see all these flames gush out of the top. there were at least 6 fire engines around, and lots of ambulances etc as well. a large crowd had gathered and we all stood there staring up at the fire. eventually, as time passed and they sprayed more and more water on it, the smoke changed from black to gray and soon i could tell that the fire was pretty under control. i’m still not sure what caused the fire. it was so crazy though!!

the rest of the fire photos are here .

*v

for the last couple months i’ve been working at Votigo.com, and we just beta launched our site last week. dude, it’ so cool to see this website go live. it’s really neat that this site that was built by me and just a tiny handful of others is now on the internet and being checked out by a bunch of users. seeing the site slowly grow is so dope!

in case i haven’t already told you, the point of the site is online contests. people can submit either photos or videos into various contests, and then other users vote on them. also, any user can create their own contest, so as the site grows there will be more and more cool contests to check out and interesting videos/photos to watch.

right now, we’re running this promo w/ epic records. anyone who’s got photos of this band Augustana (i hadn’t heard of them, but they’re semi-big… been on letterman, vh1, etc) can submit them for the chance to win a camera. in just the last 10 days or so, the contest has gotten almost 12,000 views! not bad for a website that was just launched!

if any of you have some time, i’d love it if you checked out the site! the url is www.votigo.com. try it out… start your own contest, enter someone else’s contest, or just vote in contests. the more contests/photos/videos we get on the site, the better… and who knows, you just might get hooked. also, i’d be down to hear any feedback you have. how does it look? is it easy to use? are there any things that make no sense, or could be better? any general suggestions? any help or thoughts would be great!

lemme know what you think!

a few things to keep in mind:

a) you’ll have to register to make entries, vote, etc.

b) the site is LIVE… if you make entries/comments/whatever, make sure they are relevant and not just gibberish “asdfgdsagfd”, swear words, or anything else. dont mess up the site, and dont get me fired!! i hate being fired! 😉

thanks peeps!!

*v

here are my photos from Hue.

here are my photos from Hoi An.

*v

a couple weeks back, out of the blue, someone who used to be my boss emailed me and asked me if i was interested in switching jobs. he was creating a new startup and wanted to know if i was down to work there. he told me a little bit about the plan for the website etc, and it really sounded like it could take off. i was definitely interested…

…but should i take the job? on one hand, i loved my current job at consumerreview. working as a contractor, i had ultimate freedom, could take as much vacation as i ever wanted, worked as many or as few hours as i pleased, the people i worked with were hella cool, and the salary was damn good. if i took the job offer, i would end up working more hours since startups are always really hectic and also, after doing the math, it turned out that i would be taking a steep paycut. hrmmmm, the typical startup life… working more hours for less money… sounds good, right? but still… the thought of trying something new was really intriguing to me. starting a new company and new website from the ground up sounded really exciting. i struggled w/ the decision for a while… but the more i thought about it, the more i was tempted to go for it.

taking this job seemed like quite a risk… so many startups just dont make it. at the same time, their idea did seem like one that could really be successful. plus, if there’s ever a time to take risks, it’s when you’re younger. i wouldn’t necessarily be able to jump into an opportunity like this when i’m say 40 years old and have to worry about mortgages etc etc. finally after a little negotiating, i decided to go for it. i just couldnt pass this up.

so, here i go… off into the unknown. i’ve been working at the same company for the last 7 years or so, and i’ve become very comfortable w/ everything there… it’s time to push my limits and see what i can do in a totally brand new environment. wish me luck!

*v

8/13/06

dayum, this post is like 2 months late. i turned 30 this year. yup, 30. in my mind, that’s just insane. 30 has always seemed so old to me. like, your 20s are this nice in between age where everything is still ok, but 30 year olds… that’s straight up adult. 30 year olds are grown ups who are serious and have careers etc. i keep feeling like there’s some weird mistake.. there’s no way i could be that age. i’m still a young guy… right? so, as it got closer and closer to my birthday, i was really not looking forward to it. luckily, i figured out a foolproof plan to get through it:

1) avoid thinking about it as much as possible
2) spend the last 2 weeks leading up to your birthday having a blast in a foreign country (distraction)
3) arrive home on the day before your birthday and have a huge party (be sure to get really drunk)
4) spend your birthday recovering from the day before and celebrate all over again
5) home free! it’s all in the past now!

ok, i’m kind of kidding… well, partially.

my birthday celebration was hella fun. we rented this party bus that drove us all around the city. there’s something really cool about being driven around the city and being able to party it up the whole time. the bus had a soundsystem inside, natasha rocked her ipod, and everyone got trashed. we went to a bunch of bars, and also stopped by levis plaza for a little bit to have cake. the cake was bomb… but a damned security guard kicked us out of the plaza soon enough. we ended the night at the beach.

here’s some photos that i stole from natasha’s site:

i couldn’t have had too much to drink?

some more photos at natasha’s site

*v

usually i leave shopping for a costume until within a couple days of Halloween. I’ll drive down to the Halloween superstore and spend some time frantically running around and searching through the leftover costumes and debris. this time, for once, i actually got a costume early. along w/ natasha and erica, i’m gonna be a pink bunny this year. pretty random.

Caryn’s friend Becky had a Halloween party last weekend, so i got to try out the costume. driving through the streets of sf, 2 weeks before Halloween, was pretty funny. lots of people yelled out and waved from their cars.

i called my brother only 45 minutes before the party and tried to convince him to go (how’s that for short notice?). despite not having a costume, he was able to throw something together at the last second.

Joey’s costume was pretty funny

*v

it looks like nobody was really able to download this mix when i posted it the first time. ugh.

so, i’m reposting it here with a new url which should actually work.

the new link is at: http://www.thisisvlad.com/music/

the tracklisting is still:

1. Metric – Monster Hospital (MSTRKRFT Remix)
2. Mystery Jets – The Boy Who Ran Away (Riton Re-dub)
3. The Futureheads – Skip To The End (Digitalism Remix)
4. Justice vs simian – We Are Your Friends
5. Para One – Dudun-Dun (MSTRKRFT Remix)
6. The Presets – Are You The One?
7. SebastiAn – Walkman
8. The Gossip – Standing In The Way Of Control (Soulwax Nite Version)
9. The Valentinos – CCTV (Bang Gang vs. Van She Tech Remix)
10. The Rapture – Whoo! Alright-Yeah…Uh Huh
11. The Gossip – Listen Up (ATOC Extended Mix)
12. Klaxons – Gravity’s Rainbow (Van She Remix)
13. Animal Machine – Persona (Para One Remix)
14. Young Love – Discotech (ocelot remix)
15. Bloc Party – Banquet (boys noize remix)
16. The Killers – Mr Brightside (Jacques Lu Cont’s The White Duke mix)

The kind of music i listen to is constantly changing. sometimes i’ll listen to a ton of indie stuff, then be into breaks for a while, then underground hiphop, then whatever. for a long time i’ve been really psyched on indie tracks with an electro edge, and lately there’s been a ton of those kind of tracks coming out. apparently, NME dubs this stuff “new rave” (how lame is that?) but everyone has their own name for it… i prefer indietronic. it’s all indie guitars mixed with hard beats mixed with electro mixed with an 80’s flair. I’ve been downloading shit like crazy from Pound for Pound and any other site i can find.

I recently downloaded a copy of MixMeister to mix some tracks together. now, after djing for hella years, mixing with anything other than vinyl seems almost like sacriledge, but i decied to give it a shot. dayum, it really wasn’t easy. unlike house etc which is pretty much made to be perfect for mixing, a lot of these songs were really tough. listening to other mixes, i noticed that so many of the transitions are just hard cuts into the next song instead of trying to make a long mix… isn’t that pretty much cheating? anyways, here’s my first attempt at putting something together. cut me some slack…. i’m still getting used to the software and to mixing this kind of music. if you listen to it, lemme know what you think…

the tracklist:

1. Metric – Monster Hospital (MSTRKRFT Remix)
2. Mystery Jets – The Boy Who Ran Away (Riton Re-dub)
3. The Futureheads – Skip To The End (Digitalism Remix)
4. Justice vs simian – We Are Your Friends
5. Para One – Dudun-Dun (MSTRKRFT Remix)
6. The Presets – Are You The One?
7. SebastiAn – Walkman
8. The Gossip – Standing In The Way Of Control (Soulwax Nite Version)
9. The Valentinos – CCTV (Bang Gang vs. Van She Tech Remix)
10. The Rapture – Whoo! Alright-Yeah…Uh Huh
11. The Gossip – Listen Up (ATOC Extended Mix)
12. Klaxons – Gravity’s Rainbow (Van She Remix)
13. Animal Machine – Persona (Para One Remix)
14. Young Love – Discotech (ocelot remix)
15. Bloc Party – Banquet (boys noize remix)
16. The Killers – Mr Brightside (Jacques Lu Cont’s The White Duke mix)

You can download the mix here or here. Neither of these links work correctly. instead, go here: http://thisisvlad.com/music/.

*v