KW1305 – A Soundseeing Tour of Brussels

This week Knightwise talks about cutting the cable and some thoughts about what this could mean for not just your pocketbook, but also your sanity. There are tons of places you can get content that you source and curate yourself. Come join us to hear about a few.

Producer’s note: Originally recorded in 2017, but not originally aired in KW Season 12.

Links

Credits

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Review : Samsung Level headphones. Bling or Brilliant ?

When Samsung asked us to review their line of “level” headphones we were a little skeptical. Headphones are back ! They are the high tech fashion statement – sound producing ear warmer of many hipster these days. It was only yesterday we relied exclusively on discrete form fitting ear-buds for our audio entertainment. Today it are the big over-sized headphones whose primary function seems to be to match our outfits/social-subculture and prominently display their brand logo’s on the side of our heads. The trouble here is that with all the attention going to the “looks” of your headphones, few (despite their exuberant prices) actually produce good audio. After traumatic experiences with a pair of Dr Dre headphones (They produce so much base they make a Vivaldi concert sound like Tomorrowland) we were skeptical for Samsungs products .. so we tried them on.


levelon

The Samsung “level on” headphones.

The Samsung “level on” headphones are ‘on’ your ears. A hard plastic bridge with foldable legs make the headset feel very sturdy and decent. The leather padding both on the earmuffs and underneath the “bridge” has a soft, high quality feel to it. The phones have a 3.5mm mini-jack connector for your cable so you can interchange the cables should they break (a problem with many headphones) or should they not match the color of your underwear (it happens !)

The Level on’s are slightly heavier then your regular run of the mill headphones, but the overall distribution of the weight when you have them on makes them feel very very comfortable. The leather on the earmuffs is very soft and there is hardly any noticeable pressure on your ears when wearing the set. A great bonus is that it warms up immediately to the body temperature of your ears making the entire headset a natural extension of your body.

Enough about the ergonomics : How do they SOUND ? Well , they sound amazing ! The audio is warm, crisp and “correct” . No over-boosting of non existing low range audio. Just a clear , well represented audio spectrum being pumped into your ears. We loved them (even after wearing them for 3 hours straight we found no signs of ‘headphone fatigue” or worse “sweaty ears”.

Looks ? They are white ! Just like with Dr Dre’s people will see you wearing them from 2 blocks away. Deal with it. (But they are also available in black … so deal with that too !)

 

level-over

 The “level over” headphones.

The level OVER headphones go OVER your ears. The leather padding on the larger ‘cups” surrounds your ear and presses against your head , completely surrounding your ears and ‘isolating’ you from the rest of the world. Part of this is due to the excellent padding , the other part is because the level ‘overs’ are active noise cancelling headphones. They pick up noise from around you and send “anti noise” through the speakers so you can’t hear the noise. This means you will have to charge the headphones from time to time. Added functionality is the fact that you can use them as stand alone Bluetooth speakers so you don’t need a wire. But as a little bit of an audiophile we could not bring ourselves to use this functionality. The audio we wanted to test had to be as clear as possible so we went via the “analog wire”.

Using the “level overs” is like stepping onto the surface of the moon .. and then hitting play. The sound is warm, its everywhere, its crystal clear and there is no residual noise from around you. Samsung charges top dollar for these things but they are probably worth their price. Short of using duct tape this is the best way to drown out the noise of nagging kids and enjoying your favorite tunes. For the hefty price you might also be able to book a weekend cottage in the woods .. but when you get back from that you still don’t have any decent headphones.

Conclusion.
Audio isn’t Samsung’s core business and these baby’s are no Sennheisers … but we are very happy that the Chinese company DID focus their attention on the quality comfort and AUDIO part of these headphones. This is not fancy overpriced bling .. the Level line does what it is required to do : Produce a very good headphone experience.

Prices :
Samsung Level on : 165 USD (amazon)
Samsung Level over : 310 USD (amazon)

Samsung Level headphones (Site)

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Can a Chromebook keep you entertained ?

So its day Three of the “Chromebook only” week. A week in which I promised myself ONLY to use my brand new Acer C730 to get things done. In a previous article we’ve talked about the first impressions of the device and what it feels like to take your Chromebook to work. That’s all nice but … what about downtime ? Can the Chromebook entertain us ? We’ll find out.

Before I start I want to make a confession : I’m a cable cutter ! Yes, we have ditched ‘traditional tv’ in favor of streaming content from the internet and from our personal library of backed up Dvd’s to our television. So demands for ‘conventional television’ aren’t very high in our households. However : With the holiday season coming up there is the need to catch the Doctor Who Christmass special on BBC2 … But I live in Belgium .. So what to do ?

Enter the HOLA extension. A little app that lives in your browser and allows you to “tunnel” through local proxies in the US, the UK and other countries to be able to watch ‘their’ content. ‘Hola’ works great for watching content like Bbc or watching the Extended Netflix catalog in the US. The Chromebook keeps you entertained for hours.

As for music : Plenty of services out their that want to stream their soundwaves your way. Some extensions even let you upload your music to your google Drive and stream it from there. If you don’t feel like doing that , how about Spotify, Stitcher, Grooveshark and plenty of other services ? The audio quality on the C730 is pretty good although it IS lacking a little bit in the lower part of the sound spectrum. No doctor Dre .. but no tinny radio either.

pixel-gaming-e1368126144829

As for games : They are (of course) web based. Some of the apps in the Chrome webstore are nothing more then glorified links to websites where you can play said games. But thanx to Java, Ajax, Ruby and other forms of webmaster-black magic you can play a decent game inside a browser these days. If you don’t mind the occasional apps for adult-daipers in the upper right corner .. you can find online (clones) of Command and Conquer .. or really go for it and dive into some classic arcade games that are a dime a dozen out there. And lets not forget the Internet archive with their Internet Arcade ! Play a ton of classics .. in your browser .. on your Chromebook.

Conclusion :
If the internet is a geeks daycare center where he can spend hours while his/her parental units go off to do other things in the real worls … the Chromebook is your hot babysitter ! It will keep you linked up to the world wild web (that ain’t no typo) and if you know where to look you can spend hours playing games, watching movies and listening to music WITHOUT spending a dime OR breaking the law. As long as you keep the Chromebook connected .. it will keep you entertained

Links.

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KW904 : Reviewing the Oneplus One

We get our greedy hands on one of the most desired smartphones of the day : The Oneplus One. Is it worth the begging for invites, the groveling, the craze ? We take a good hard look at the Oneplus One and give you our first impressions of the phone when it comes to hardware, software and its place in the Smartphone market of today.

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kw807 : Youtube-Dl

We go into depth into one of the most powerful command line programs to delve into the treasure chest of cat video’s we call youtube. We explore Youtube-Dl, its capabilities and the vast combination of switches and parameters you can use to turn Youtube (and other video sites) into your personal b*tch.

Shownotes.

Command line overview 
Youtube Download 
youtube-dl <url of the video>

Youtube Download audio only 
youtube-dl —extract-audio —audio-format mp3 <url of the video>

Youtube Download search results (50)
youtube-dl ytsearch:”ted talks computers” 
–playlist-end 20 -R 50 

Youtube Download channel or topic (50)
Youtube-dl <urlfothechannel> —playlist-end 50 -R 50

Youtube Download ‘watch later que’
youtube-dl -u username -p password :ytwatchlater


Youtube Download audio only 
youtube-dl —extract-audio —audio-format mp3 <url of the video>

Youtube Download search results (50)
youtube-dl ytsearch:”ted talks computers”
–playlist-end 20 -R 50

Youtube Download channel or topic (50)
Youtube-dl <urlfothechannel> —playlist-end 50 -R 50

Youtube Download ‘watch later que’
youtube-dl -u username -p password :ytwatchlater

Subscribe : add
add “playlist-end 1 -R 50”

Make pretty : add
“ -o ”location/file/%(title)s.%ext)s”

Extract only the audio of a channel.
—extract-audio —format-mp3  “playlist-end 1 -R 50”

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KW Videoblog for 28-6 : Community news and a peek at my desk.

We are back with another weekly videoblog and fill you in on whats going down in the Knightwise.com sliders community. We drop a couple of big names on who is signing up for our “Avengers assemble” project where we are looking for guestbloggers, content creators and backend mavens. As a bonus we swivel the camera around and take a close look at the production desk and what kind of clutter we use to punch the show together. 

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Get the audio from a Youtube video with one command.

By now most (if not all of you) have dabbled a little bit with Linux. Although it might look geeky and complicated at first glance, once you dip your toes into the great lake of open source it becomes a very refreshing computing experience. How do I mean ? Well : I challenge you to the following : Take a Windows Machine OR a Mac and, within 2 minutes FIND and INSTALL a free application that allows you to download a Youtube video and extract the audio to MP3. If you started off your search in Google (or in the Mac App store for that matter) you are starting to realize it is not that easy. There is a ton of ‘supposed’ freeware out there that, after installing it gives you either an app that does not completely work (unless you pay for it) or is just too complicated.  Do you (as a true slider) have a Linux machine handy ? (perhaps a virtual machine or a server ) Then lets fire up the command line and give you a one line command to make that technology work for you.

Introducing “Youtube-dl”

Youtube-dl is a command line application that lets you download Youtube video’s and if you want to, extracts the audio from said video’s. The command is simple. On Ubuntu you can install it by hitting : 

sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

After the installation is complete you need to update the app to the latest version. Also .. a couple of  one liners.

sudo youtube-dl -U

You will get an error that you need to update via the GIT repositories once more. Easy peasy (copy and paste people)

sudo wget http://youtube-dl.org/downloads/2013.05.01/youtube-dl -O /usr/bin/youtube-dl
sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/youtube-dl

Lets start Downloading.

Now surf to the Youtube video of your choice and copy the url to your clipboard.

Go back to the terminal and type : 

youtube-dl <paste your url here>

Presto ! You will have the youtube video all for you ! What if you want the audio ? 

youtube-dl --extract-audio <paste your url here>

Cross platform compatibility

Youtube-dl is also compatible with Macs and there is an .exe for our Windows friends. But because the command line is so easy I just leave a terminal open to my linux machine (on ANY machine i’m working on) and just copy and paste whatever cat video I would like to keep for prosperity.  And youtube-dl does also support tons of other video sites like Vimeo and more ! 

Links : the Youtube-DL page.  and their howto for Windows and OSX users.

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kw505 : Curating the library of your mind.

The internet is a valuable source of information but the question is : How can we get the most out of it ? In this show we take a look at the possibilities of gaining knowledge and experience from the wide wide web. We look at the different sources of information that are out there and how you can streampunk these informationstreams into your way of life. Last but not least we give you some essential tips on where and how to consume your carefully selected information to “curate the library of your mind’.

Shownotes.

Music by Aes Dana : Principles of Gravity.

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Season 3 of Knightwise.Com is approaching. (Audio Message)

If you thought we were dead ? You are sadly mestaken :) . Just a quick shout out to all the devote Knightwise.com fans out there that good stuff is coming your way fast. We are hard at work behind the scenes on getting everything ready for season 3 of Knightwise.com and together with an entire overhaul of the website, the podcast, the screencast and the whole graphic shebang … making pure awesomeness out of ground up unicorn puppies … if something like that exists. So hang on tight as we relaunch Knightwise.com into season 3 .. and enjoy this message.

These trailers are part of a technical test of our new RSS feeds (the code magic we need to atomagically get the good stuff to your podcatcher. Sorry for the double content but we could not get bunnies and gerbils to test on .. So it had to be you !) 

 

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The new lords of the Media.

video

The New lords of the Media. 

I sit here in the darkness, broken only by the light of my monitor typing away the morning dawn. My fingers huddle around the warm cup of cappuccino i just made myself , to avoid cramping up in the cold. I could turn the heater on but I refuse. Outside the drizzle marches on for the fourth day in a row , Its presence only occasionally broken by an outright downpour or the faintest illusion of a clearing of the clouds.  It does sound like an autumn tale .. But its actually mid August.
This summer has been a truly weird one. Having frozen  our preverbal behinds off in ‘the winter that would not end’ giving us the chance to fire up the boilers until may, the brief glimpse of summer we had was like looking into the exhaust of a launching space-shuttle with temperatures of 36 degrees and more for days and days straight.

Binary Weather system.

And now .. plunk : Rain-season has been bestowed on us ! Incredible but true. Its like we have a binary climate system here. Summer / autumn / summer / autumn etc etc .. Not that I mind the latter weather. I mean , OK , its drowsy and cold .. but one must admit, the drizzle brings the chisel to the geek. What better excuse to spend hours behind the computer then a never ending monsoon season outside. And thats what I have done yesterday all afternoon. With my wife (still sounds weird) having a cold in the midd of summer and feeling poorly, stretched out on the couch underneath a pile of pillows.. I was hammering away on one of the most time consuming varieties of computer use : Video editing. The down part of having 400 pictures, 2 hours of video and 3 hours of audio recorded on your wedding day .. Is the fact that you have to edit it all ! Wanting to make something special for our guests I am going with the ‘video’ approach and am pouring everything into my own ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ epic wedding video-with-more-pictures-then-actual-video. All-tough fascinatingly interesting to do, peaking all of ones creative hairs .. its actually quite amazing if you think of it. With a 1200 euro laptop and the enclosed software one is able to edit pictures, organize them, turn them into movies, arrange the movies, edit the movies, add effects to the movies, add menu’s to the movies, animate the menu’s to the movies, add titles and scores to the movies and utterly come up with a completely ready to play DVD.

99% Crap.
Ok , 99 % of what people make is utter crap , (possibly including mine) but the fact is that its incredible that this kind of multimedia editing power is at the fingertips of the average computer user. Add a pinch of talent and one does get a dangerous alternative to the crap thats on TV.  In the span of 5 years , from the analogue linear editing consoles to the completely computerized home video studio , a lot of power has been put into the hands of the average joe and I'm utterly fascinated at what people do with it. Where places like Youtube are piled up to the rim with crap, the occasional gem does sparkle in the form of some beautiful contribution to the meld.

We become the media.
The conclusion : WE have become the media. And as the power to create is bestowed on us , I hope the big time media conglomerates are finally seeing that : Maybe they should get their act together. As PVR’s and Portable media players free us from the linear consumption of media we are no longer shackled by the bounds of ‘what’s on now’. We have become not only the kings of the realm of ‘anytime anyplace and on any device’ when it comes to consuming media .. We are also the ones that say : If its crap  ? We’ll make our own.

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