The Karaoke Report 6-18-12

Last night pretty much turned out the way I expected.  With The King of The Wing stealing all the weekend thunder, we had a sparse (but eager) crowd at Fatty's.

Epic Awesomesauce Moment of the Night

Did I mention how much I like debuting songs people have probably never heard?  Yeah, it was in my last report.  Teehee.  Well, I figured since the crowd wasn't huge I'd try my new song crush out.  Here it is, Russian Love:




Catchy right?  There's just something about accordions in dance songs...

WTF Moment of the Night

So these girls all line up to sing Born This Way by Lady Gaga.  Seeing as this was the most action I saw on stage that night I thought I'd take my Random Party Pic.  Would you believe the girl closest to the door bolted out?  Honestly I don't know if it was me pulling out the camera or something she saw outside but she sang the entire song from right outside the front door.  Go figure.

Buzzkill Moment of the Night

Y'know I'm not even sure if we had a buzz to kill that night.  If anything it was the TV flickering right at the first song.  I think I better look into replacing that HDMI cable.

Random Party Pic

LOL!  Check out that blond streak on the right.

Not Available In Your Area

You like that?  You can make your own here.  Yahoo! recently decided to put the squeeze on some of their videos.  When I try to view them I get this cute blue smiley:

Booooo!  Booooo, Yahoo!  Why'd you guys lure me in with a cool and funny web series like Burning Love and then just yank it away from me?

Well, you guys know how I do.  Far be it from me to let something like this get in the way of my funny bone.  So I'm searching for ways to bypass this with free proxies seeming like the most popular method.  I think I burned through 10 of them before I gave up.  They either didn't work, gave me the same message or told me the video was no longer available (pretty sneaky, sis).

Then I started to get extreme looking at browser plugins and port blockers.  Yeah, forget I even mentioned any of that.

Finally, I found the answer I needed.  A quick, easy (and best of all FREE) solution that worked and I can share with the masses:  TunnelBear.  This app establishes a Virtual Private Network connection allowing you to browse the web as though you're doing it from the US or the UK.  The catch: you're capped at 500 megabytes of free usage.  I burned through 67 mb just to watch my one episode of Burning Love (it was about 9 minutes long).  If you're an avid Internet video watcher then you'll probably burn through that pretty fast.  However, if you have a Twitter account you can get an additional 1 gigabyte of usage.  Best of all you can do this every month to get the 1 gb.  Easy right?  You're welcome.

The Karaoke Report 6-11-12

Karaoke was a great way to cap off my birthday weekend.  There were so many enthusiastic singers in the house last night (and inebriated ones too).

Songs That Made The Bar Sing

Ice Ice Baby, Vanilla Ice
Proud Mary, Ike and Tina Turner
Somebody That I Used To Know, Gotye
Sex On Fire, Kings of Leon

Epic Awesomesauce Moment Of The Night

I kinda pride myself on finding new beats and introducing them to my crowd.  I can tell you it's not often that someone comes up to me and asks me the name of the song I'm playing.  It happened last night.  Last night I debuted this song:



Good to know I'm doing something right.

WTF Moment Of The Night

We actually finished ON TIME last night!  It's amazing!  I got to be in bed by 3AM! :)

Buzzkill Moment Of The Night

I'm officially tired of people asking me for Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show.  I swear I get this request every other week and I CAN'T FIND THE DAMNED THING!  From what I hear none of the mainstream karaoke companies have made a version but I just found one on Karaoke Version.  I'm going to see how hard they make it for me to buy it.

Random Party Pic

Movieoke!

Do you like movies?  I mean REALLY like movies?  Well we're planning a party and it's going to give YOU a chance to be the star.  I'm talking about Movieoke and it's karaoke for movie lovers.

The concept became popular in New York City in 2003.  It doesn't have a huge following but it does have a devoted one.  Customers select a DVD and a scene.  The image is projected on the screen behind the performer and smaller monitor is placed in front of them.  The volume on the DVD is muted and the subtitles are turned on.  The customer takes it from there.


A couple friends and I are planning to have a Movieoke Party on Saturday June 16, 2012.  Keep an eye out for the invitation.  We're hoping to have more friends there than we can handle. We don't have huge DVD libraries (well, I sorta do but it's far from every movie ever made), so we'll be providing select DVDs, asking participants to bring their favorite DVDs with them and we'll be taking requests for special movies once the Facebook event is set up.  I'm going to leave the locational details up to the owner of the studio.  Don't worry guys, you won't have to worry about someone calling the cops on us for being too loud.  Oh, and there's going to be popcorn.  I can't wait!

Malware Targets Microsoft Update!

This is big, people.  The mother of all malware.  Someone has found a way to exploit the delivery system that Microsoft uses for their updates.  Here's the short version of what's going on.  When your computer checks for a Windows update there's a chance that a malware server posing as Microsoft will substitute their malicious software for the actual updates.  In a way, it's like going to the Post Office to pick up a package only the postman isn't really a postman and the package he's giving you isn't the one you're supposed to be getting.

Fortunately, security experts have gotten on this one pretty quick but there are still thousands of infected machines out there.  That's why it's important that you run the patch from Microsoft even if you regularly install your Windows updates.  Go here to download your patch.

Oh and if you don't know whether you're getting your updates or not, it'll be best if you turn on your Automatic Updates.  It's in your Control Panel or you can use Windows Help to search for "Automatic Updates".  That'll give you the right link.

Icons you should look out for in your taskbar signaling it's time to update:

Windows XP

Windows Vista/7

The Karaoke Report 6-4-12 (Day Late, Dollar Short Edition)

Yep, it's a day late but only because I was considering axing this report altogether.  But the fans doth protest too much so here I am back at it. ;)

Songs That Made The Bar Sing

F@&k Her Gently, Tenacious D
Your Love, The Outfield

Epic Awesomesauce Moment of the Night

Remember all those issues I had with the new computer and the TV mounted in the bar.  Well, on a whim I decided to try again.  Lo and behold the image held for the majority of the night only flickering on and off a few times.  I'm think perhaps it's the cable I got and maybe purchasing a better cable might clear up those issues permanently.  Also, I've been beta testing Android emulation software and I found that it was messing with my overall outputs (audio and video) so I've disabled that permanently.

WTF Moment of the Night

I brought my own TV for nothing.  Like I needed more gear to lug around.

Buzzkill Moment of the Night

People don't seem to understand just how sensitive wireless microphones are in terms of their signal strength.  Did you know that if you hold certain brands of cellular phones near a microphone that when someone calls you it makes this annoying noise?




Well, neither do my patrons.  And no, I can't shield the wiring in the microphones.  Therefore, leave the phones in your pocket when you're on stage.  I had to temporarily commandeer one that night.


Random Party Pic

Early Birthday Gift

Yeah, I probably paid too much for it but it wasn't too expensive so I went for it.  This is what I got:

Yes, I got that very color. :)

So you're probably thinking "It's just a bluetooth headset.  What's so geeky about that?".  Muhahahahahaaaaaa!  If that's what  you're thinking you don't know me very well.  It's the reason that I bought it is what makes it geeky.

I mentioned earlier in my blog that I'm an avid DC Universe Online player on the PS3.  Well I've been hooked up with a league for a while now (think guilds in World of Warcraft).  We do raids, alerts, etc. and generally help each other reach higher levels.  Communication is key in the game and sometimes taking the time to use the built in keyboard is just too slow and cumbersome.  Not to mention while you're typing your character just hangs there...waiting...all vulnerable-like.  In the Player vs. Player phase this almost always got me killed.  So I've been looking at getting a microphone for my PS3 for a while now.

Here's the weird thing about the PS3: I'm constantly forgetting it's essentially a computer.  While there's a multitude of gear made specifically for it you can just as easily use other input devices designed for a computer.  After a quick Internet search I found that you can pretty much use any USB connected headphone as a mic simply by plugging it in.  I also discovered that any bluetooth headset will work with the PS3.

Took me a lot of tweaking last night but I finally got it too work.  Who knows, maybe if it takes I might actually pop back in Call of Duty: Black Ops. No wait.  On second thought, never mind.