Austin Prime's Blog

I’m one of those people that requires some type of sound playing to get me to sleep or to get things accomplished. While doing homework I’ve discovered listening to music is not the best idea because I get too into it and it becomes distracting, and at night I used to have to have the tv running with a sleep timer and a fan running for noise.

Well now thanks to SimplyNoise.com I can have white noise playing from the speakers on my computer. White noise can aid sleep, enhance privacy, block distractions, mask tinnitus, configure audio equipment, soothe migraines, and many other tasks. The best part about it is that you can listen to it forever and it never gets annoying.  SimplyNoise is my new ‘go-to’ place for white noise.  It is by far the coolest and simplest sound generator I have found on the internet. It’s not loaded with features, but it does have one VERY cool feature which is the ‘oscillate volume’ button which will turn the volume up and down making it sound as if the ocean is roaring. Start listening to free white noise now at SimplyNoise.com.

I hope you enjoy my pick of the week! Let me know if you use it in the comments!

I don’t like to make blog posts about reality tv shows, but today I flipped on the news and saw a story about someone auditioning for Britain’s Got Talent. Her name was Susan Boyle. When she first came out on stage, everyone including myself were thinking wow, what a joke. But to my surprise and everyone else’s watching, she was an amazing singer. Watch the video below:

She was really happy, it was true joy. But do you know why she auditioned for the show? Here’s an interview with her: (Sorry for the low quality, it was the only version of the interview I could find. You can view a transcript of the interview here.)

Here is the news story I saw with Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News about Susan:

I had insane chills after watching her preform, and I’m not gonna lie I almost cried. We need to keep in mind that talent does not require a perfect body, or a perfect face. It’s not all about looks, age, or size. It’s about talent.

Let me know your initial response to Susan’s appearance and then her performance in the comments.

Most of my blog readers know me as an internet personality that broadcasts on online radio stations and live video streaming websites. Justin.tv has many channels of cool animals, well the other day, “daphnel” also known as “tweeter2″ in my chat told me about this really cool website called WildEarth.tv.

This is by far one of the coolest live streaming websites I have ever seen! If you thought Justin from Justin.tv was cool for broadcasting his life, check out these people broadcast in Africa! This is not just a channel that has an animal on camera all the time. These people actually get on a 4-wheeler type vehicle and go around Africa looking for wild animals!

Enjoy this week’s website pick, and if you see anything cool on the stream, post it in the comments!

I just got back from the coolest trip of my life! I went on a cruise from Port Canaveral in Florida to Nassau, Bahamas.

We had to take a bus ride that was about 16 hours. This is a picture of us pulling up to Port Canaveral and catching a glimpse of the ship for the first time.

We had to go through an exciting checking in process which took about an hour. Once we got into the ship we were amazed by everything we saw!

During the first day we did some exploring around the ship and swam in the pools. One of my favorite parts was the water slides. We went on those the first day, after that we didn’t really use them anymore. There was just so much to do.

At night our towels were folded as animals which I thought was pretty stinking cool.

At night there was a show in the theater which was pretty lame, so I spent most of my nights in the  Karaoke room. That’s right, Karaoke. It was quite entertaining seeing old drunk people trying to sing. The cool part was everyone remembered my performances. I would be on an elevator and people would be like “Are you Austin from Karaoke?” It was pretty cool. I was famous on a cruise ship! haha.

On Friday we made it to the Bahamas. It was REALLY pretty. Above is a picture of us pulling up to the islands. At the top of this blog post are two pictures that I took on the island.

So yea, my first trip out of the country was REALLY fun. Have you been on a cruise before? Let me know in the comments!

As an online dj, I have been trying to get the word out about internet radio for a long time. Many people know there is internet radio, but some people don’t realize how awesome it really is.

To some people, internet radio is AOL Radio, Yahoo Radio, Pandora, and all the other sites like those. Well that’s all well and good, but to me this isn’t ‘real internet radio.’ Tons and tons of work is put into ‘real internet radio stations.’

Internet radio stations can be found on most popular media players such as Windows Media Player, Winamp, and iTunes.  iTunes and Windows Media Player have an index of online radio stations that are selected by a ‘real human’ rather than a robot. This means that most of their indexed stations are high quality and well programed. Other programs like Winamp grab internet radio stations from sites like ShoutCast.

If you have ever listened to a station online and thought “wow this station sounds horrible.” well some stations broadcast at a low bitrate. Bitrates for internet radio stations normally only broadcast at kilobytes per second (kbps). The higher the number, the higher the quality. 128 kbps is typically the highest quality, 64 kbps being the middle, and 32 kbps being the lowest. Some talk stations have been known to broadcast as low as 16 kbps. If you have a slow internet connection you will want to listen to the lower bitrate ations and if you have really fast internet, you want to listen to the higher bitrates. Next time you listen to a station, look carefully at the bitrate!

Many stations are not well programed. Many of your local FM stations broadcast online. The down side on most of these statuibs, is that they broadcast at very low bitrates and tend to have many short commercial breaks or occasional long commercial breaks. That’s no good. Most internet only radio stations have little to no commercials. Also, some stations such as FLY 104.9 have a staff member called a program director who manually chooses each song every day to garuntee a perfect rotation of music. Some stations have an automation program that choses music randomly and sometimes they have a bad rotation. It is sometimes difficult to find the internet radio station with the perfect rotation.

So next time you are planning to tune into a radio station online you know what to look for!

CheckUserNames.com is a really neat tool that I found this week through a tweet that someone posted on Twitter. With this tool,  you just simply type in a username in the input box. It will then search tons and tons of sites like YouTube, Wikipedia, Wakoopa, Rejaw, Twitter, Digg, Vimeo and many other social media websites to see if your username is available. If it is, you can click the Available link and it will take you to the selected site to register. No registration is necessary. CheckUserNames.com.

Let me know in the comments if you used it, and if you signed up for any of the sites!

Enjoy this week’s pick!

This week’s Webcam Comments: What does your desk look like right this second?

My desk was really messy, but what does yours look like? Don’t make any changes because that would be cheating!

Also in your comment, let me know what you think of this idea. Do you think it’s a good idea? Also if you have any suggestions for future webcam comments let me know! Have fun!

This week I came across something VERY unique. The website is called Throwboy.

Throwboy is a new company that designs tech pillows! When I first saw them, I thought holy crap I need one! From what I have read, they are amazing.

Currently they have one set available, the Icon Pillow set. This set includes a few Mac icons which are pretty awesome! New pillows are coming soon including Chat It Up with sayings such as “O RLY, wtf, OMG, LOL, TTYL, etc. They are also planning on releasing RSS logo pillows too!

The cool thing about them is they are hand made! They are not made in a factory, so you are assured great quality!

Hopefully I will have the money to buy a pillow soon, as for now you guys totally should check out Throwboy today! Enjoy your tech pillows!

I can not believe it! It’s March 1st and it is snowing in Virginia! I live in central Virginia and we rarely get snow, and when we do it is NOT in March! And this isn’t just a ‘snow.’ It’s snowing like hardcore. The roads are all covered and everything. Well I made a video a few hours ago when it first started, so check it out:

Make a video response in the comments, and let me know what the weather is like where you are!

“48% of all children in Atlanta, in poverty, live in families with annual incomes of less than $15,000 a year.”

An event is being held in Alpharetta, Georgia to help bring awareness to the starvation problems in the area.

The event is called Dodge Hunger 2009 and it is a Dodge Ball competition and a lockin at the YMCA in Alpharetta, Georgia.

This is important to me, so be sure to check out DodgeHunger.com