Doodles A Through D

As You Can See, I Used To Really Know How to Party

This is from my 25th birthday party.



Also, this picture is proof that Brian Shimkovitz used to hang out at my house with my roommate Mike Klinge.

Since I'm dropping names, here are a few more.
Back row, from left: Peter King, Chris Barth, Aaron Deer, Pete Sebeckis, Jaxon Swain (hell yes, he was worthy of rocking hair like that), Colin the dude who got to make out with Marie Cleaves (not pictured), Brian Shimkovitz.
Front row: Frickin' Maggie Frickin' Hilt! Nothing else matters.

This picture was taken by Heather Haynes.

Photobooth Phun.

Hello world! It's like a vanity license plate, but for the internet.



This is really just an advertisement for the cool flippy thing my hair happens to be doing today. Consider yourself a consumer.

RjDj Has Pleasantly Surprised Me Yet Again

I've written about the iPhone app RjDj here before (both here and at Makezine.com), but there have been some really cool updates to the application and their web service that are really exciting.

In their most recent update to the program, they have allowed for two pretty important changes:

• First, users can download new scenes from the RjDj website. This is a big deal because it used to require some iPhone jailbreak SSH mojo to get new scenes into the application, something way beyond the scope of what a casual user would want to do.
  
• Second, users can upload what they've done with the scenes to the RjDj website.These are then posted to the website as embedded files that anyone can play. It's not only a cool way of seeing what an RjDj scene does, but it also lets you see what's popular, and what other people are doing with RjDj. A very Web 2.0 way of presenting what I consider to be an already-exciting foray into the world of generative mobile audio.
  

This beefed-up ability to share scenes and recordings of scenes is exciting because it makes the whole process of creating scenes a more community-based effort by making it really easy for users to submit feedback, for developers to see just how people are using their scenes. Would I have guessed that running bath water would sound good going through Noble Choir? No, but it does, and now I know, thanks to someone who uploaded their audio 17 hours ago.

It's really innovative in that they are not just encouraging developers (this is one of the few times when PDers could be considered developers in the way that traditional programmers are considered developers) to write new scenes for their application, but they are also encouraging the users out there to submit what they've done with the scenes that they're using.

Anyway, here is my profile as an RjDj Artist (for the record, I didn't write that bio, but I am quite flattered by it, they have really done their homework), and here's the scene I wrote, where you can download it (if you have an iPhone and the free RjDj app) and also listen to what other people have done with my creation (anybody with a web browser can do this). Fun stuff.



As the stats show on RjDj, there are 13 recordings that users have submitted using my scene, Noble Choir, and there are 344 people "rocking this scene," which is probably more people than I have ever rocked being in a band ;-)

P.S. Long time, no blog, I know. I haven't had a ton to say lately, and I've also been busy with school, friends, music, and um, other stuff. If you really need your daily Dixon fix (right?!?), I might recommend trying my Tumblr page, which is just a collection of bizarre pictures I sometimes find on the internet.

It's going to be an exciting time for the next couple of months, I'll be sure and keep you posted.