Welcome to LukeMcReynolds.com!

This is my place to put stuff online so I won't forget it, show the world that I can make a decent website, and share my thoughts with family and friends. It's also a place for me to share Linux/web development tips and tricks with the world at large, and a place for me to post pictures of my cat. If you don't know me and would like to, please get in touch with me - I'll try to respond right away.

Free Nokia Lumia 800 Giveaway

I just read that Nokia and Microsoft will be giving away 85,000 of its new Lumia 800 smartphones - 25,000 to developers, and 60,000 to “bloggers and cultural influencers”.

I’d love to get my hands on one of these. I love Nokia’s hardware - I rocked an n95 for a solid two years, and the thing was darn near bulletproof - but wound up switching to Android a while ago because I didn’t want to subject myself to Symbian any longer. I’ve got a T-mobile Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant now, and I’m very happy with it, but I’ve heard really good things about the new Windows phones too. Maybe Nokia hardware = Microsoft software = a win? We’ll see.

Posted on Oct 31, 2011 - 03:12 PM Categories: Geek
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How to Set Up A Microphone With Virtual DJ 7 (and the Hercules DJ Control MP3 e2)

I’m just putting this here so I won’t forget it and have to troll the virtualdj.com message boards in the future. Hopefully you’ll find it useful as well.

Basically, in Virtual DJ 7, you need to map your mic to a deck or decks in order to use your microphone with Virtual DJ.

Go to Config, Skins, and then choose a four deck skin. I have a big monitor, so I use the 1440x1024 one. Then go to Mappers. I used

deck 3 linein ‘mic’ & deck 4 linein ‘mic’

(replace the curly apostrophes with the straight ones, if you copy/paste) to map the “Scratch” button on my Hercules DJ Control MP3 e2 to enable the mic on both decks, so it doesn’t matter which side the crossfader is at. If you don’t have a controller, you can use another key: “M”, for example.

That ought to be it - let me know if you have any questions. Note: if your mic isn’t working in Windows in general, then it won’t work in Virtual DJ. Make sure to set it up in Windows first, and to test it with the sound recorder program or Audacity, before you start trying to get it to work in Virtual DJ.

Posted on Oct 24, 2011 - 12:23 AM Categories: Geek, Music, Open Sourced
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My Creative Bucket List

I came up with a couple things that I want to do before I die - things I want to do before I “kick the bucket”, so to speak. I want to go to a lot of places and experience a lot of things, but these are some of the creative things on my bucket list.

In no particular order:

Write, sing and do production for my own R&B album. I’ve been taking a lot of inspiration from The Weeknd‘s “House of Balloons” mixtape. It’s simple, brilliant, and it seems like something similar to that could possibly within my reach to accomplish. My stage name, if/when I do this: Pistil.
Give this website, lukemcreynolds.com, a makeover. I just realized it’s had the same design since 2008. :-/
Write a science fiction novel about alien Christian missionaries. The concept sounds silly, but if it’s properly executed, the novel won’t be. I just had this idea about half an hour ago, so it’s still in its infancy, but I think it has a lot of promise. Basic premise: several hundred (thousand?) years in the future, humans make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. Many of the extraterrestrials believe in a Messiah, similar to the Christian messiah, Jesus Christ. I would likely be taking a lot of inspiration from C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy series, and from Madeline L’Engle’s books.

That’s the idea anyway. Or at least, three of them. We’ll see which ones I accomplish. :-)

Posted on Jul 30, 2011 - 08:49 PM Categories: Art, Personal
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Pipe Delimited U.S. State List

Copy/paste this if you need a pipe-delimited U.S. state list for some reason:

AL|AK|AZ|AR|CA|CO|CT|DE|FL|GA|HI|ID|IL|IN|IA|KS|KY|LA|ME|MD|MA|MI|MN|MS|MO|MT|NE|NV|NH|NJ|NM|NY|NC

|ND|OH|OK|OR|PA|RI|SC|SD|TN|TX|UT|VT|VA|WA|WV|WI|WY

(Inspired by Trevor Davis’ ExpressionEngine form builder tutorial.)

Posted on Apr 25, 2011 - 02:44 PM Categories: ExpressionEngine, Geek, Open Sourced
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EMP.cx - Online Streaming Electronic Music

I’d like to encourage everyone to check out a new internet radio station that a friend of mine and I started: EMP.cx.

We play electronic music of all kinds, from dubstep to house, trance, darkstep, neuro, future garage, goa, UK funky, swinghouse, glitch hop, you name it. I DJ every week or so usually, and if someone isn’t doing a live set, we’re broadcasting live set archives.

A direct link to the stream is here, or you can listen to it on the EMP website, http://emp.cx.

Also, if you’re technologically inclined, join the IRC channel and talk to us - irc.emp.cx channel #electronic, or use mibbit if you’re not down with the IRC chat.

Posted on Apr 07, 2011 - 01:49 PM Categories: Music, Personal
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MiracleBlue, New Trance Artist/Producer from Australia

I’ve been talking with MiracleBlue, a.k.a. Nicholas Kircher, for some time now. We both love electronic music, reddit and travel, and our personalities are similar enough that we get along quite well together.

Anyway, it turns out that this guy is a very, very good trance producer. He’s a 23 year old from Canberra, Australia, and while I’m not normally a trance fan, he makes some slick, exhilarating and deep music.

Check some of his stuff out below. When I listen to it, even though I don’t really seek out trance music, I forget that this random Australian kid makes this music, and just assume it’s some 20 year veteran of the European club circuit who’s making it.

Distant Signals (Original Mix) by MiracleBlue

Into The Sun (NEW and IMPROVED mix!) by MiracleBlue

MiracleBlue has an EP out on Omerta Records out of Vancouver, but they’re really not promoting it the way they should. You can buy his EP on iTunes (MiracleBlue - Into the Future) or Beatport (MiracleBlue - Into the Future), or you can like MiracleBlue on Facebook right here.

Posted on Feb 15, 2011 - 12:13 AM Categories: Art, Music
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Two Farrar Wilson Paintings

I love these. Thanks to Andrew Patterson-Tutschka for the hookup and the gorgeous photographs, and although I haven’t met them yet, Farrar Wilson for creating these and his partner Judy for her support given to the artist.

Posted on Jan 27, 2011 - 09:52 PM Categories: Art, Personal
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How to find a person’s Facebook profile from an image

I figured out the other day how to find a person’s Facebook profile page from an image linked to that profile.

For example: say someone posts a photo from their Facebook page on an internet forum. The photo URL will look something like this:

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs213.ash2/47632_591801253534_15302248_33857587_6862829_n.jpg

The member ID for the Facebook user is in that URL - it’s the group of numbers in bold, after the second underscore from the left. In my case, it’s 15302248.

So, in order to find the URL for that person’s Facebook profile, just go to http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=15302248.

There you go! It’s super easy… perhaps TOO easy. Everyone should keep in mind that they’re basically advertising their Facebook profile whenever they post a direct link to an image they uploaded to their Facebook account.

Posted on Jan 10, 2011 - 05:35 PM Categories: Geek
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Pitchfork mpd Media Player comes alive again - Patchfork!

The best server-based mp3 jukebox I’ve used yet has come alive - Patchfork!

I’ve found that it’s a drop-in replacement for Pitchfork, the awesome mpd-based jukebox software that stopped being updated in 2008. Joshua Wise was kind enough to patch the Pitchfork 0.5.5 source and make some much-needed changes, including fixed lyric lookup support and Amazon coverart grabbing, and adding a view-only mode.

You can grab the files directly from Joshua here, un-tgz them, and drop in place of your existing /pitchfork/ directory. Make sure the /config/ directory is writeable by Apache, and so long as your previous Pitchfork install was functional, that was all you should need to do.

Before grabbing the Patchfork snapshot, you may want to make sure there’s not a newer version in the git repository. Click on the “snapshot” link in the top right of the shortlog on Patchfork’s site to download the newest version.

Edit 2/13/2011: You can still grab a copy of the old Pitchfork here.

Posted on Nov 04, 2010 - 05:15 AM Categories: Geek
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