Internet Killed the Video Star

What happened to music videos? What happened to MTV and VH1? I haven't seen a music video on television in years and Im not exaggerating. Sometimes I click over to MTV for nostalgia's sake, hoping I might catch a Nirvana video. Or maybe some NIN on 120 minutes. VH1 used to be the place you, or your parents, could go to watch a Chris Isaak or Bonnie Raitt video. It was like the adult contemporary music video channel. No more. Now it's all "reality" shows. Some kind of alternate universe where "reality" is a bunch of morons competing with each other to see who gets to go home with another moron. No time for music on Music Television when there's great shows like "Bromance" and "Who Wants to Hump Brett Michaels?" to watch. But I digress.

I think it's probably for the best. Now you can go online and see any video you want and artists don't have to depend on MTV to break them to a larger audience with a music video. Besides, sometimes videos ruin a perfectly good song. Especially during the 80's. I love the song "Maneater" by Hall & Oates. It's a great song when you just listen to it. It has a slight reggae groove to it, vocals and lyrics are good, danceable, a real 80's staple hit but in a good way. I was listening to it in the car the other day and just out of curiosity I checked out the video on youtube when I got home. It's one of those stereotypical 80's videos with a panther and a mysterious woman (the Maneater). All of the instruments are unplugged, Oates is rocking that 80's mustache and mullet, there's a gratuitous sax solo and plenty of unnecessary eyeball and facial close-ups. It's the corniest video and it totally changed my opinion of the song at that moment. All of a sudden this song that I loved was corny and lame. I've since recovered but check out this video and tell me if you feel the same way. This is assuming that you actually like the song Maneater to begin with.



See what I mean? Did you catch a young G.E. Smith of SNL fame on guitar?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to bash Hall & Oates because Im a genuine fan. More of a music video/MTV bashing. Actually Darryl Hall has a great site where he hosts a different band or musician every month and they jam at his house. Check it out along with an excellent reggae version of "Maneater" at http://www.livefromdarylshouse.com/index.php?page=ep3

Data Recovery for Dummies

So I was debating whether or not I should post this here on the numerikblog because it's not really music or numeriklab related but...what the hell. I hope it's something no one will ever have to deal with it but it happened to me over the weekend and I was in a complete panic. I deleted my inbox and all 3,000 or so e-mails in it! It didn't just go to the trash either where I could recover it, I completely deleted everything. I dont know about you guys but I use my e-mail inbox to find old attachments, links, e-mail addresses, etc... All of my precious e-mails...gone. You know, super important e-mails like this one from Bradley Magruder:

From:   Bradley Magruder

Subject:  I SING AND RAP 

Date: April 12, 2006 1:42:54 PM PDT

To:   info@numeriklab.com

Body:       SO WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR ME?

I CANT DO ANYTHING FOR YOU BRADLEY BECAUSE I JUST DELETED MY INBOX! It was an innocent mistake really. I set up my e-mail address to use a new server and I just assumed that I could delete the old account with the old server settings without wiping out all of my old messages. Big mistake. As soon as I switched back to my inbox it was completely empty. My new server settings worked on the first try though, so that was a plus. Here is the good news, I was able to recover everything and here's how I did it step by step.

Step 1: Freak the fuck out!

Step 2: Google like crazy and eventually figure out you're going to need a data recovery program. Also figure out that the more you use your computer the more likely it will be that your e-mails will be overwritten and completely destroyed forever. Lame.

Step 3: Download Boomerang Data Recovery. This is a great little app. It's shareware so you can try it out for free. They let you see all of your missing files but if you want to save them you have to pay. So basically they held my emails hostage and I had to pay a ransom. It costs me $99 for 2.5GB of data. I thought that was pretty clever of them.

Step 4: Realize that all of your emails are in .emlx format and they wont import back into Apple Mail unless they are in mbox format. So... download emlx to mbox converter. This was totally painless and free. I love their site too, very basic.

Step 5: Open Apple Mail and import your newly converted emails back to their rightful place in your inbox.

Step 6: Sigh O' Relief

So that's it. Now I just need to go through and re-delete all of my spam.

NCIS: The Official TV Soundtrack

It's finally here! NCIS: The Official TV Soundtrack. Featuring the theme from NCIS by numeriklab and a very stigmataesque remix by Ministry. You can check out the site and a very outdated photo of numeriklab here. We weren't really into taking pictures so the pickings were pretty slim for a photo of the three of us together. As for the numeriklab website, we are still in the process of updating so check back often as we add back our mp3's and other content.