Eponymous
http://skinnymf.com/~mforde/blog/index.pl
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean ownerenEponymous
Eponymous
About
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean owner
Eponymous
http://skinnymf.com/~mforde/blog/index.pl
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean ownerenEponymous
Eponymous
About
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean owner
Race Against Crime and Drugs
The Hoboken Race Against Crime and Drugs is tonight. Online entry is
closed but race day registration should be open this evening for anyone
who wants to run and hasn't signed up. The race starts at 7PM on Pier A.
The Giraffes are splitting into three subspecies for tonight's race. We
have three three-person teams running with a little friendly competition
going on. I hope I don't let my sub-team down tonight.
I'm not feeling very fast. In fact, my right calf is still sore from the
speed work I did at the track yesterday. I ended up doing about seven
and a half miles of intervals and sprints over the course of about an
hour.
Hopefully it won't be too bad once I get warmed up. The 5K course in
Hoboken is fairly fun; flat and alongside the Hudson River for most of
the way.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information. [/politics]
permanent link
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech. [/musings]
permanent link
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
Almost anywhere you go on the internet, they are following you, building
a profile on you, and selling that information, your information,
to the highest bidder. Even if you don't have a user account for google
or facebook "services," they've built a profile of you using this
surreptitiously collected data.
It turns out there are some steps one can take to prevent these
companies from following you wherever you go. It's not perfect, but it
helps a lot. First, don't use Chrome. Second, install ad-blocker plugins
for your browser. Third, use your firewall.
It turns out Google and Facebook are large enough that they have their
own Autonomous Systems (AS) composed of numerous subnets. Google owns AS
15169, while Facebook owns AS 32934. Using a little bit of shell, it's
relatively easy to look up all the subnets owned by these companies.
That's a lot of subnets. Because I have different operating systems on
different computers and still want to block traffic to and from
all those IP addresses, I've written some simple scripts to add
rules to various firewalls. I have scripts for IPFW on FreeBSD, IPTables on Linux, and the Windows Firewall that should work from XP SP3
through Windows 10. I've only tested it on Windows 7 and Windows 10, and
it worked in those.
All of these scripts can be found in this
directory. The IPFW and IPTables scripts are self-contained. For the
Windows command shell batch files, the *ips.txt files are also needed.
I have to say, the internet looks very different with these firewall
rules in place. There are noticeably fewer advertisements and pages load
faster. Embedded YouTube videos and Instagram photos don't appear.
Sometimes the frame disappears, sometimes you get a "failed to connect"
page appearing in a frame in the middle of a page. (Yes, these rules
block YouTube and Instagram; they are owned by google and facebook and
reside in the subnets owned by those companies.) On a relatively rare
occasion, I come across a site using some sort of javascript or css or
something hosted by a machine in one of those ASs and that will be
blocked. Sometimes the site handles that gracefully, sometimes it stops
being functional. A small price to take back your life.
Update: Twitter has trackers on a decent amount of sites out there too,
so I've added scripts to block Twitter's AS 13414 as well. Those scripts
are in the same directories as the others.
New PGP Key!
So apparently Evil32 happened.
Approximately 24,000 PGP keys were generated that had collisions with
the 32-bit short IDs of existing keys. Then someone decided to use those
conflicting keys to generate revocation certificates and upload them to
the keyservers. Joy.
Though my old keys still work, they were affected by this mass
revocation of collsions. I have created a new key which can be found at
http://skinnymf.com/~mforde/mforde.asc.
On a related note, if anyone is interested in Key Signing Party, shoot
me an email. I haven't been to one of those since college.
[/musings]
permanent link
I suppose I've posted this for two reasons. The first is so I have a
record of how I eventually got these little things working in case I
have to do it again. The second is in case anyone has similar issues
with their hardware; if they happen to stumble upon this, it might give
them some hints.
[/unix]
permanent link
*Simple design from the early days of the world-wide-interwebbings, and mobile friendly!
Powered by Blosxom.
Eponymous
Eponymous
About
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean owner
"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme
state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case."
-- Daniel Ash
Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent.
I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the
new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like
I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in
my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I
produce sounds right.
I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the
urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I
need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that
I am able to write.
I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This
usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails.
Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.
I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward
with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do
anything.
In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a
much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going
through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic
music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a
way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will
make things easier.
NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East
Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.
I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets
went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up
with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor
seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of
concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.
As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets
at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless
and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be
best to get there early.
My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his
apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby
Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the
arena.
We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one
of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets
waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several
hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.
We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a
few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring
that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than
not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in
line.
After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading
"NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near
the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the
procedure to me.
I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what
the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into
the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the
presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up
the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside
and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to
me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.
A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another
staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at
ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter
the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower
section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor
tickets remained on the line.
Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to
have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of
the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked
around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We
stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff
member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the
other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no
problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would
be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine
Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked
him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.
It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the
stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a
view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing
away from us).
After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite
a while until the openers started.
I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the
merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did.
I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession
stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around
the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.
At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They
were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one
song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the
gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have
been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not
booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for
the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you
to all the people who cheered because they like us."
I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit
longer, maybe another song or two.
At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it
ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The
Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd
exploded.
The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and
lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the
screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the
instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin
Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which
included a new rendition of Piggy.
After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to
hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song,
which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent
Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only
way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise
in the shape of a person's face.
At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion
played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until
the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly
as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.
The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was
about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set
highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured
songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show
was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather
than distracting from it.
I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone.
There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent
during Hurt.
There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that
feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about
it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment,
perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't
say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't
help but look forward to where it's going.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"
The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script,
it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin.
Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of
browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively
complete list of supported platforms can be found here.
Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC
still decided this was the best solution.
I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than
this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash.
While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is
supported in Unix.
We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following:
Compatible operating systems:
Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5).
Compatible browsers:
Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.
My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers
of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining
information.
FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my
workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my
liking yet, but almost everything works.
The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When
this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the
system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system
disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the
BIOS and none work.
If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller
the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this
requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of
apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller
seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner
available.
I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the
SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any
one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard
drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me
some insight into this issue.
Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time
discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or
configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title
for this either. I'm going to change that.
A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot
reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the
take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed
down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.
Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot
about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by
Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned
by Google) removed the video immediately.
The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was
in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which
granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the
last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.
Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC
and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.
Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a
while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in
Montclair.
We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us
were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at
the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the
mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.
We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And
waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came
over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order
the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not
very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else
instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our
drinks.
We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25
minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We
split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and
goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and
only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant
a little over an hour prior.
As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold
for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this
point and starting to run short on time as well.
The food was all quite good. One
friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato
sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be
desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak.
The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All
of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the
plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend
liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak
was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it
was the first steak I've had in several months.
As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds
rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites
and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to
the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly.
The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an
hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other
people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated
than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay.
I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and
wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd
like to try it.
Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but
this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent
Versions System.
Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album
related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several
key points.
First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it
would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be
able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work
out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each
song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and
maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to
move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was
numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to
be the first track on the album.
Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version
history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the
album, and merge our changes.
Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has
its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to
that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an
arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now
known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.
The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it
and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had
time.
Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known
as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.
It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not
familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?
Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction
of the album.
If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any
comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is
on this page.
A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up
again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a
second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second
track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June.
The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and
the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.
So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix.
This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once
again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would
report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are
updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now,
I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling
multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a
multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this
for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.
Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes
complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The
other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the
actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental
mix found here.
If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments
and criticism.
CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute
of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware
of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one
student made some recordings of the lectures.
Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became
harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present
to you The Bloom
MP3s.
*Simple design from the early days of the world-wide-interwebbings, and mobile friendly!
Powered by Blosxom.
Eponymous
http://skinnymf.com/~mforde/blog/index.pl
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean owneren
Eponymous
Eponymous
About
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean owner
Eponymous
http://skinnymf.com/~mforde/blog/index.pl
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean ownerenEponymous
Eponymous
About
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean owner
Eponymous
http://skinnymf.com/~mforde/blog/index.pl
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean ownerenEponymous
Eponymous
About
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean owner
Eponymous
http://skinnymf.com/~mforde/blog/index.pl
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean ownerenEponymous
Eponymous
About
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean owner
Eponymous
http://skinnymf.com/~mforde/blog/index.pl
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean ownerenEponymous
Eponymous
About
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean owner
FreeBSD Unix on Dell Precision M4800
I installed FreeBSD 10.3 on the laptop I recently acquired and
almost eveything worked out of the box. The gigabit ethernet and
wi-fi coards worked fine and by setting the BIOS to discrete graphics
only, the nVidia Quadro was recognized.
I installed the binary driver from nVidia, because they support FreeBSD
because they're awesome like that. The nvidia-xconfig(1) program was
useful to streamline the process of getting X.org to use the Quadro.
There were a few things that did need some tewaking though. First
there's the sound card. Because the quadro supports HDMI (in addition to
VGA and DisplayPort), it includes an HDA-compliant sound card. This card
is recognized before the primary HDA-compliant sound card in the
machine, the one that's actually connected to the speakers.
I did some research and there were some suggestions about using
sysctl(8) to control soundcard GPIO pins to connect the nVidia sound
device to the speackers but what ultimately worked was using sysctl(8)
to change the default primary sound device to the dedicated card. There
were a few ways to make this happen but the one I found that actually
worked was to place sysctl(8) command lines in /etc/rc.local.
Now when boot completes pcm2 is set to my default and sound "just
works" and sndstat shows pcm2 as the default.
I found ACPI support has some weirdness as ACPI support often does. What
I found was that Suspend works from console, but resume doesn't...
HOWEVER After I start X ACPI suspend and resume work just
fine. Normally I prefer to boot into a console and only start X if I
really need it, but because I want suspend and resume to work "by
default" I've enabled X to start at boot by allowing the xdm console in
/etc/ttys.
But this had one last issue. See, when manually starting X, I added the
-dpi 143 option to get graphics and text to be appropriately sized for
my screen. XDM needed to know about this.
This probably wasn't the best place to do it, but I edited
/usr/local/lib/X11/xdm/XServers and modified the call to X(7) to add the
-dpi 143 option. Now when Xdm loads at start up, the DPI is set
correctly.
The function keys for adjusting the screen brightness don't work;
however, xbacklight(1) works just fine. Similarly the volume keys don't
work but I can adjust the volume quite easily with aumix(1).
I've submitted my dmesg output to NYCBUG's
dmesgd repository.
I suppose I've posted this for two reasons. The first is so I have a
record of how I eventually got these little things working in case I
have to do it again. The second is in case anyone has similar issues
with their hardware; if they happen to stumble upon this, it might give
them some hints.
Megapath sucks
Speakeasy was by far the best ISP I ever dealt with. Freindly, and above
all, knowledgeable. Since they have been purchased by
Megapath then merged into Global Capacity, their tech support has been,
frankly a bunch of idiots. Furthermore, their website routinely has
"Service failed" errors that prevent you from logging in, changing
passwords, and viewing account information.
Today, after being unable to log in to the website due to "service
failed" the tech support rep on the phoned didn't understand what a
subnet mask or gateway address were. Eventually I just got her to read
me "all three IP addresses" on the screen in front of her.
But at this point my only other option is Verizon. So I'm sticking with
Megapath.
Eponymous
http://skinnymf.com/~mforde/blog/index.pl
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean ownerenEponymous
Eponymous
About
My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean owner
Friday night was the Birthday Massacre/Mindless Self Indulgence show.
Due to various circumstances and events, my friends and I made it to
the venue just in time to see the last 3 minutes of TBM's set.
I made an attempt to see The Birthday Massacre last August in new York
but that attempt failed due to prior commitments. So for two years in a
row I tried to see them, and for two years in a row I failed. Sorta.
After seeing the last 3 minutes of the set and being very disappointed, I went
over to the merchandise booth to buy a souvenir T-shirt. My friend James joined
me and we, mostly James because of his gregarious nature, started a
conversation with the guy at the counter, whose name was Zimmy. We told him
what had happened and asked if there was any chance of catching the band as
their equipment was being packed up.
He told us their gear had already be packed, but if we hung out after the show
they'd be coming out to meet the fans. So we hung out after the show.
After the crowd dissipated, we went back into the venue's main room. Sure
enough, several members of The Birthday Massacre were standing around, signing
autographs, and talking to the fans. James and I went up to O-En first. He was
very friendly and talked with us for ten or fifteen minutes. I told him about
missing the show two years running and he gave me his sympathies and thanked me
for trying to get to the shows. I asked him if he had any idea when they'd be
in the area again and he gave me a general idea of when to expect them to be
back. He was nice enough to sign my copy of Violet and let us take a
photograph.
Next we went over and talked with Chibi. She was also very friendly although we
didn't speak to her for quite as long as we did O-En. She signed Violet
and took a photo with me and thanked us for coming to see them, even though we
missed the set.
The last member of the band I got to see was Rainbow. Like O-En and Chibi, he
too was very friendly. We talked to him for several minutes and I collected
another autograph and photo.
All three of them were very friendly with every one and they all seemed to
genuinely care about their fans. I had heard from some one who had met them
before that they were some of the nicest people you could ever meet. O-En,
Chibi, and Rainbow confirmed that on Friday night. Now that I've met them, I
can't wait for the next opportunity to finally catch their set.
Not that anyone really cares, but these are the photos James took. If you view
the full version, be warned that I'm in the photos too.
Friday night was the Birthday Massacre/Mindless Self Indulgence show.
Due to various circumstances and events, my friends and I made it to
the venue just in time to see the last 3 minutes of TBM's set.
I made an attempt to see The Birthday Massacre last August in new York
but that attempt failed due to prior commitments. So for two years in a
row I tried to see them, and for two years in a row I failed. Sorta.
After seeing the last 3 minutes of the set and being very disappointed, I went
over to the merchandise booth to buy a souvenir T-shirt. My friend James joined
me and we, mostly James because of his gregarious nature, started a
conversation with the guy at the counter, whose name was Zimmy. We told him
what had happened and asked if there was any chance of catching the band as
their equipment was being packed up.
He told us their gear had already be packed, but if we hung out after the show
they'd be coming out to meet the fans. So we hung out after the show.
After the crowd dissipated, we went back into the venue's main room. Sure
enough, several members of The Birthday Massacre were standing around, signing
autographs, and talking to the fans. James and I went up to O-En first. He was
very friendly and talked with us for ten or fifteen minutes. I told him about
missing the show two years running and he gave me his sympathies and thanked me
for trying to get to the shows. I asked him if he had any idea when they'd be
in the area again and he gave me a general idea of when to expect them to be
back. He was nice enough to sign my copy of Violet and let us take a
photograph.
Next we went over and talked with Chibi. She was also very friendly although we
didn't speak to her for quite as long as we did O-En. She signed Violet
and took a photo with me and thanked us for coming to see them, even though we
missed the set.
The last member of the band I got to see was Rainbow. Like O-En and Chibi, he
too was very friendly. We talked to him for several minutes and I collected
another autograph and photo.
All three of them were very friendly with every one and they all seemed to
genuinely care about their fans. I had heard from some one who had met them
before that they were some of the nicest people you could ever meet. O-En,
Chibi, and Rainbow confirmed that on Friday night. Now that I've met them, I
can't wait for the next opportunity to finally catch their set.
Not that anyone really cares, but these are the photos James took. If you view
the full version, be warned that I'm in the photos too.
Demo -- Update
Rskutins recorded his drum part and sent it to me via the wonders of
TCP/IP netowrking. On Friday night I finally had enough time (and
motivation) to start recording.
I spent a lot of time fighting with ProTools. It repeatedly crashed.
Often, when it didn't crash, it simply stopped recording and reported
that an error had occurred. I'm remembering this for the ProTools rant
that will be coming in the future.
After 45 minutes I had recorded about 6 seconds of vocals and the 24
second bass line. The next block of Copious Free Time(TM) I have, I'll
begin the rough mix of the three parts. Hopefully ProTools won't crash
as often during that phase.
With any luck, it'll be mixed in the next week or two.
Demo
In the next few weeks we are going to attempt to record and roughly mix
a demo of a short track which will serve as an introduction to the
album.
Currently known as 11, it is a very short piece in 4/4 time at
80bpm. It is in the key of B minor and the spoken words are taken from a
quote attributed to Nietzsche.
What upsets me is not that you lied to me,
but that from now on I can no longer believe you.
This short demo will hopefully get me motivated enough to put more time
into the album.
More information will be posted when it becomes available.
