I always liked electronic music, but I’m not a musician. In recent moths, I’ve been exploring the world of DJing. It’s a way for me to feel that I can do music without deep knowledge of musical theory. It’s a fascinating world.

Last year I bought a Pioneer DDJ-400 controller for use with my Mac mini. There is two major roadblocks in my experience so far: finding good quality tracks to mix and selecting the best DJ app. I want to draw your attention to the software side of my story.

Some well known DJ apps are Rekordbox, Serato and DJay. My understanding is that in recent years, software makers all switched to subscription models. Application like Rekordbox will “unlock” some of its features while being used with certain DJ controller models, but to get the whole thing, you have to subscribe to some plan. It’s irritating for someone like me who’s just trying to learn and experiment. But there is another problem: applications design sucks. Rekordbox and Serato are visually terrible. On the Mac, these apps really feels like aliens coming from… I don’t know… even on Windows they probably look aliens. The best looking application is Algoriddim’s Djay, by far. Problem is, the application is lacking many features. For now, my conclusion is that It appears that we cannot have both fully featured applications with a great design.

The Surprise Me! plugin for Micro.blog is undoubtedly a lot of fun to play with. It will pick a random post from this blog out of 1578 posts published since 2018. It’s a fun way to resurface old yet still relevant content. Try it! I wonder how many hours of my life were used to write and publish all that stuff?

First, consider this announcement from Samsung:

“In 2022, Samsung is introducing the world’s first TV screen-based NFT explorer and marketplace aggregator, a groundbreaking platform that lets you browse, purchase, and display your favorite art — all in one place.”

What? Why is there so much talk around NFTs these days? What problems do they solve? What am I missing? This short Twitter thread makes me think that I’m not missing a lot, and that I should probably move on. Nothing to see here. Yet, how long before platforms like Unsplash steps in? 🤦🏻‍♂️

For no apparent reason, I started a photo series of this little guy in all sorts of visual contexts. I’m using an album to store them all. I’m currently at 23 photos of him. He’s so cute, isn’t he? I got my inspiration from someone here on Micro.blog who did the same in recent months. I can’t remember who, though. So who knows where this is headed. It’s the time of the year for frivolous projects. 😂

Finally was able to finish season 2 of The Servant on Apple TV+ yesterday, just in time for the third season. What a weird story. The only occasion I can spend time watching TV series is during the holidays. Using AirPods Max for the listening experience is pure magic; nobody in the living gets distracted by the TV, and the sound quality is impressive. Now, I should finish For All Mankind Season 2.

To all of you, even though I don’t know you personally, since I spend quite some time here all year long reading your posts, I kind of feel familiarity. It’s like being part of a small community. I like this a lot. It’s something not possible on Twitter. So, I want to wish you a merry Christmas to all of you. Take care of you, of your family and your friends. 🎄

Well, I’m not a video guy. I prefer photography. My experience with Vimeo is coming to an end. I won’t renew my subscription. I’ll keep my account but returning to the free tier will remove many of my previously published content. This prompts me to remove some content from my main blog too. Deleting content is something that I don’t like to do. It’s like putting hard work, countless hours of work down the drain. 😔

You can have a look at my Vimeo profile if you are curious.