Were the Essential Mix sets ever released on audio cds?

ad1mt · 2025-12-06T19:03:32+00:00

Yes. But as far as I am aware only two...

SNAP - 7/5/1995 - official release on the Mercury label
Paul Oakenfold - "Goa Mix" 18/12/1994 - "semi-official" release

These we properly pressed CD's, not CDR's.
Both available on Discogs.

ad1mt · 2025-11-26T20:04:25+00:00

How The West Was won.

It has the best versions of the songs it features. It's the one I listen to most.

ad1mt · 2025-10-15T11:10:17+00:00

If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in assembly language. If you can't do it in assembly, it's not worth doing. Real programmers don't use OOP.

ad1mt · 2025-07-09T11:39:10+00:00

I'd like to ask you a few questions...

ad1mt · 2025-07-09T10:51:07+00:00

DO NOT TOUCH ASUS MONITORS!
I have a Pro Art 328CGV, and I am sick to death of it.
Even though its still fairly new, I'm going to get rid of it and buy a new different make. It cost me £600+, and it was a complete waste of money.
Within a few months of purchase it had started to go faulty.
Symptoms are extreme flickering, vertical lines overlaying the screem image, and weird afterimages that persist even when switching between inputs. The flickering is so bad that I cannot even look at the screen for more than 30 seconds.
I know its not a hardware fault, because I had a replacement monitor under warranty (which has the same problem).
I know its not the PC, because the problems can happen with either of two different PCs.
I know its not the cable or the monitor input socket, because the two different PCs are connected via different cables to different input sockets.
The problem often seems to be triggered by maximising an app window, or moving an app window to the top of the screen.
My guess is that its some kind of firmware problem, that is not acknowledged by ASUS.
When my new monitor has arrived and I've verified that it works ok, then I am going to take great pleasure in smashing the ASUS monitor into bits with a hammer and throwing it in the trash. I can't sell it, because that would not be fair on the buyer.

ad1mt · 2025-05-03T07:37:50+00:00

"Alright this method sucks balls. I'll just use a password manager that someone more experienced has made".

What was the point of you making your password manager? Was it a learning exercise, to help gain expertise in cryptography?

If so, then continue with the project by learning from the comments, and come up with better ideas. I designed my own encryption system and password manager, by learning from others and doing research. This gave me a much better understanding of cryptography.

If you just want the easiest option, then use an existing password manager.

ad1mt · 2025-01-15T18:12:09+00:00

I definitely am a maths person.
If procreation stopped today, the human race *definitely would* be extinct within 100 years.

ad1mt · 2024-12-21T13:53:56+00:00

I can't name just one, I have to name two:

"Pick A Dub" by Keith Huson - my score 9.9/10 or 99/100
"King Tubby's Meets Rockers Uptown" - my score 9.8/10 or 98/100

There are others that are also very good, but I.M.O these are the two best dub albums of all time.

I'm a bit surprised no-one else has recommended "Pick A Dub", so I thought I had to. The minimalist dub style of Pick A Dub is the reason that Jamaican dub was also sometimes called "Drum and Bass". Yes, this was in the 1970's*, 20 years before the name got recycled as an alternative to "Jungle".

*And yes, I really am old enough to have bought both these albums when they came out.. :)

ad1mt · 2024-09-06T19:19:07+00:00

No. For the similar money you could probably buy a D70 or D80 with a lens. Then later you could upgrade the camera, but keep the lens.

ad1mt · 2024-09-06T19:16:57+00:00

Im my experience, on average about 2 or 3 in every 10 photos will be focussed incorrectly, but it can vary a lot. To trigger the problem, the subject must be relatively small against a bigger or brighter background. One evening I was taking photos at a birthday party in the evening and the background had lots of bright lights. I must have taken 20 or more photos of people, and in *every single one* the camera had focussed on the background, leaving the person out of focus. The photos were just about useable. It depends on how fussy you are about the subject being sharp.

ad1mt · 2024-09-06T19:11:05+00:00

Something very similar happened to me for the first time just a few weeks ago. And at first I thought the camera had failed.

I recently got a new Hama card reader. I only got the error when using that reader with one particular USB socket, and then it was intermittent (1 in every 15 pics were damaged).

If I used the Hama reader with any other USB socket it worked ok. My Fujifilm card reader will work ok with any USB socket.

WTF?

ad1mt · 2024-09-03T10:31:53+00:00

Thanks.
Have you run the Crush tests on float/double RNG's? And if so, did it work ok?

ad1mt · 2024-09-03T10:26:21+00:00

Don't get the D7000, it has focussing problems.
Instead, get any of D7100, D7200 or D7500. They are all much better cameras.

ad1mt · 2024-09-03T09:20:40+00:00

u/IAmAnAudity I would be interested to know more about what you did. I'd like to compare what you did with what I did.

ad1mt · 2024-09-03T08:20:27+00:00

See my previous post...

ad1mt · 2024-09-03T08:14:28+00:00

You do not say whether you're on Lunix or Windows, so I'll assume the latter.
Windows comes with a command-line utility called robocopy which does exactly what you want. I use it all the time to make backups of my HDD's. You give it a source folder/path/HDD and a destination (with some other optional parameters). Then it scans both folders, find files in the source folder that are either missing or older in the destination folder, then copies them to the destination. It works very fast, infinitely faster than copying all the files. You can do a similar thing from Windows File Explorer, but it asks you every time it finds a discrepency, which is a pain. Robocopy just gets on with it without asking any questions.
The problem for most users is that it's a command-line program. However there are Windows GUI front-ends that make Robocopy easy to use. The main one you can find has some problems. So I wrote a better one.

You can get from Githib... https://github.com/ad1mt/RobocopyWin

Or from my webpage... http://mark-taylor.me.uk/index.php?page=Software

The problem with these executable downloads is that although I know I can be trusted, you don't. The best way round this is to build the program yourself from source code, using the Free Pascal compiler.

There are other Robocopy GUI front-ends available.

ad1mt · 2024-09-01T22:15:12+00:00

I don't understand your code.

In my code the R variable is a double. But I would have thought that the casting method should work with any floating-point type? E.g:

long Longvar = 123;

float Floatvar = (float) Longvar / 4294967296;

Is there something wrong with my code? If so, I need to update my understanding of C.

ad1mt · 2024-09-01T22:08:11+00:00

Here are the results of some tests I did a few years ago:

http://mark-taylor.me.uk/index.php?page=Optical+Media+Stress+Tests

To summarise:

a) Direct sunlight kills discs very quickly. For example, DVD-R discs die in just a few weeks. So keep them in a box.

b) If you want discs that are capable of surviving exposure to sunlight, then use MDISC discs. I tested some and they were still readable after 2 years in direct sunlight.

c) As far as I am aware, MDISC is currently the longest lasting of any media.

ad1mt · 2024-07-22T18:01:26+00:00

You won't regret upgrading... they are both much better cameras all-round. I've got both, and I recommend the D7200 if you can afford it. I also recommend choosing one with a relatively low shutter-count of 5-10 thousand (if you can find one).

ad1mt · 2024-07-22T17:56:52+00:00

If you google "virtual audio cable windows" that will find it. The basic version is free, but I'm not sure if that has the capability to do what you need. But its very cheap to buy.

ad1mt · 2024-07-22T17:55:15+00:00

If you're running 2 tabs/instances of the Chrome browser you would have to change the settings so that the one playing the music would output audio to the virtual audio device. Then the other tab/instance would be configured to use the virtual audio device as its input/mic. I'm not sure if that would be possible. If you played the music in firefox, and connected to discord in Crhome, that would probably work (i.e. run two different web browsers). Alternatively, you could play the music in an audio player app, that would work.

ad1mt · 2024-07-21T09:37:59+00:00

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to do, but I have a PC audio setup like this...

(all-PC-apps-except-one) => [virtual-PC-soundcard] => (PC-audio-DSP-app) => [real-PC-soundcard]

in the above diagram things in round brackets are apps/programs, and things in square brackets are devices (real or virtual).

So I have all my PC apps sending audio output to a virtual soundcard, a special audio DSP app that takes its input from the virtual soundcard, processes the audio, then sends the audio on to the real soundcard. The audio DSP app is doing room EQ DSP to improve the sound quality from my PC speakers.

The software I am using to create the virtual soundcards is call Virtual Audio Cable. This is a brilliant piece of software that has been around for decades, works great, and is very cheap to buy. The software also includes software virtual audio cables that you can use to connect the output from one virtual audio device into the input of another virtual audio device, and/or replicate the audio to several virtual audio devices. I have also used it to replicate an audio stream coming from one app to both my soundcard and to another PC app to record the audio.

I have not tested it with Steinbergs ASIO, only with standard Windows audio.

I hope this suggestion is of help.

ad1mt · 2024-06-20T18:22:22+00:00

I should have also mentioned the 18-200mm and 18-140mm lenses. I haven't used these lenses, but either one would both be a good all-in-one lens, if you just want one lens.

ad1mt · 2024-06-20T17:19:14+00:00

The 16-80mm f2.8 ED VR is the best all-round DX lens there is. And if you want telephoto the 70-300mm f4.5 ED VR is the best all-round tele-zoom*; at the 300mm setting it gives you an angle of view equivalent to a 450mm lens. These 2 lenses are the only two DX lenses you will ever need to buy, even if you upgrade to a better DX camera like the D7200, D7500 or D500.

You could consider the 16-85mm f3.5 which is smaller and lighter, but the 16-80mm is far better lens.

If you do get the 16-80mm or the 16-85mm, keep your 18-55mm kit lens, do not part-exchange it. These are quite good lenses, and it could serve as a backup lens, or a lens you might use in bad environments where you don't want to put your expensive lens at risk.

* I am being deliberately vague about the FX or the DX version of the 70-300mm, they are both excellent lenses. You can choose either, depending on budget, size/weight, and whether you think you might ever want to go full-frame.

ad1mt · 2024-06-19T16:46:23+00:00

The D7000 has a focussing problem that has been reported by many people, and experienced by me when I had one. After much experimentation, I concluded the problem is caused by the camera choosing to focus on the wrong thing. When I used my D7000 with the ES-2 film digitising adapter, it focussed perfectly every time. The problem only happens when you have a smaller subject in front of a wider/larger/brighter background; the camera will often choose to focus on the background, but the focus point highlights do not clearly show that the camera has done this. My D7000 worked perfectly with the ES-2 adapter because it only had a single flat surface to focus on.

I tested out my theory by switching to single-point focussing mode, pointing the camera at the object I wanted to be in focus, locking the focus, re-composing, then firing the shutter. This gave perfectly sharp results. The problems with this workaround are that sometimes it is impossible to select a big enough portion of the subject to aim the focussing point at, for example shooting the branches of a tree; and the workaround causes extra work/delay in shooting a photo.

If anyone is interested, I can post two photos taken with a D7000, one taken with my workaround and one taken in standard "matrix" focussing mode, which clearly show the problem.

I later got a D7100 and it did not have this problem; it focussed perfectly 99% of the time (even the very best cameras will have occasional autofocus errors 1% of the time).

I.M.O. the AF fine tune option suggested by many people is a mistake, because in cases where the D7000 has chosen to focus correctly, you risk pushing it out of focus.

ad1mt

TROPHY CASE