Bandcamp, How I Love Thee

Feedburner RSS Feed Changes – File Too Big

Subscribe by Email – An Easier Way to Follow

Hooray for My New HP!

POSTEROUS Post-By-Email Formatting

Unfortunately, every now and then the only way to really test a feature is to use it live.  At the bottom of every post you will note that it says the post was posted by Posterous, a handy post-by-email blog utility.  So far, I have been very happy with the results.  It is amazingly simple, posts across multiple platforms and does so relatively consistently and intuitively.  Posterous, is however, not my actual blog.  Sure, I formatted it to kind of mirror my actual blog (self-hosted WordPress), but really I use it because of its email posting capabilities.  It interfaces nicely with Facebook too, as a separate tab.  Ironically, exponentially more people seem to read my blog via Posterous than my actual blog, but since I like the way WordPress looks and acts, I prefer WP to be my blog’s home.

Here’s an example of some generally successful formatting.  This should be green, bold, italic, and centered.

Next, just by posting the LINK (much easier this way, because Posterous decides which platforms need which format), not the embedded HTML, you should see a YouTube video about some kid getting his finger bitten by his little brother with over 175 million views (why?).  By link, I mean just the web address at the top of your browser.  Yeah, it’s that easy.

Next, you should see some inline pics.  In other words, they are just inserted into the body of the post.  Some services will put multiple pics into a gallery, and just one pic inline.  Posterous does this as a matter of fact.  I don’t like it.  Don’t worry though, if you use WordPress, the pics will still post inline, even if Posterous doesn’t.
Here are those two Pics.  I’ll try to have them centered and will resize one of them by dragging.  Some services will let you click on the images to see the full-size version.  Others will not.  Facebook will generally use them as thumbnails, which is nice.

THIS PARAGRAPH FOR FACEBOOK USER INFO ONLY:  Facebook is a terribly buggy platform and will handle pics differently depending on how many there are in your post.  Just one pic is great.  You’ll get a thumbnail followed by a snippet of your post.  More than that, and it has been posting just thumbnails with nothing else.  I have to put a link in the comments below them.  Strangely, those comments repeat themselves every time I post this way.  I think it’s actually another Facebook bug, but in this one instance it at least saves me from having to re-type the comment.  Even more strange is the fact that a fan page will post it correctly, but the regular interface will not… At least they are consistent… Follow these links to see a fan page example: Fan Page ).

TIP:  When posting by email using Mozilla Thunderbird, make sure you remember to select “Rich Text” (HTML) only under “Options” before you hit send.  If you forget and send the message with mixed plain and rich text, your post formatting gets all squirrelly.

Some things like emoticons (if you are into that sort of thing) are more hit-and-miss.        (typed in) :-$ (pre-formatted by email client).  It usually works best for me to write the post in Microsoft Word, images and all, then paste into Thunderbird (Pics, YouTube links, regular links and visual formatting).

However, there is one particularly annoying quirk that I would like to overcome.

Unfortunately, the way Posterous handles tags only works with Posterous.  Everything else may post perfectly on other platforms, but none of them will have tags or categories other whatever your defaults are set to.  This problem makes search engines useless unless you go back and add them in…  Which, of course, wastes time and defeats the purpose of posting across multiple platforms.  So, when formatting the title, the email subject is the title.  This is how you format the tags in Posterous:  Title of Your Post ((tag:  tag, post, blog, tips, wordpress, post+by+email))
Whatever you do, DON’T FORGET THE OPENING OR CLOSING PARENTHESIS which look like this:   ((     ))  If you do forget, your post title will include a long list of tags.  Very unsightly.  The thing is, if you are posting across multiple platforms, as I do, mistakes can be VERY time consuming to fix.  Overall, I don’t have too many issues…  This problem can be easily prevented, if you just remember to give it a quick glance before hitting send.

Making tags post on other platforms, however, is a different story…  So this post will itself be a test of a work around.  You can tell Posterous not to post anything beyond a pound sign followed by the word end (look for an explanation under “What Else Can Posterous Do?”  I would show you of course, but then nothing else would post afterward…  Annoyingly enough, I think you will see the shortcut at the bottom of this post…  BEFORE that shortcut, I will put in just a couple shortcuts that WordPress recognizes to see what happens.  Normally, I suppose I would put these just before the end of the post, so as not to make them too distracting, but for example I’ll put them here.  Also, I’ll put a duplicate set using asterisks instead of brackets for the WordPress sites so you can still see them:

NON WORDPRESS SITES SHOULD STILL BE ABLE TO SEE THESE UNLESS CONFUSED WITH SOME OTHER KIND OF SHORTCUT, I SUPPOSE
[category Blogging, internet, posted by email, reviews, websites, technology, online utilities, tips, wordpress]
[tags test post, formatting, post+by+email, posterous, wordpress, tips]

DUPLICATE SET FOR WORDPRESS SITES:
*category Blogging, internet, posted by email, reviews, websites, technology, online utilities, tips, wordpress*
*tags test post, formatting, post+by+email, posterous, wordpress, tips*

These are specifically WordPress.com shortcuts.  I don’t know how the self-hosted version of WP will handle them.  As I said, this is a live experiment.  If you want to see if this worked, here are the appropriate links:  Main Blog (self-hosted WordPress); WordPress.com Version

In case you are wondering, I post simultaneously to over 15 platforms including several blog and social networking services.  Why, you ask?  Because I can…  And because, it’s an interesting way to try out multiple features and services at the same time.  Some of them are better at getting search engine placement, others have better templates or better interfaces.  Other than that, it’s just good, clean fun.

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Music Tech Talk on Posterous

HP Laptop Pixel Disaster

So, I bought this new laptop…  A great deal…  Dual core, lots of memory, big LCD screen.  It was the display model, but the only one left, so we took it.  It looked brand new without even a fingerprint.We get the thing home and love it.  Unfortunately, the same day my wife discovers that the same model is being sold for $250 less at a competitor!  “Oh, no,” we said, but we ended-up being able to match the price and all was well.

And they all lived happily ever after…  NOPE!

We woke up one morning to discover that the LCD screen is eating itself!

Huh?  Yeah, you read right…  Eating itself.  In fact I would describe it as a growing ink blot.  First a pixel or two, then 50, then thousands!  I had never seen anything like it.  Don’t worry though, because that superhero called Mr. Warranty was still protecting us, if not the store post 14 days.  I looked up HP’s generous pixel policy and decided that there would be no problem getting it serviced.  Then I discovered that my wife had lost the receipt and that the store only keeps receipt records for two weeks (sounds like bull to me).   :’( …But then my wife miraculously found the receipt in the back of our stroller.  Duh, I mean that’s where everything we can’t find ends up.  Once, I couldn’t find one of my kids…  Guess where they were…  Just kidding…  Turns out HP didn’t even need the receipt anyway!!!   Shoot, HP even sent me a shipping box free of charge.  Their customer service was top-notch….

Until…  Guess what.  They “don’t cover that”…

Apparently there was some sort of internal crack in the LCD screen that was gradually exposing pixels to oxygen, which is what makes them turn inky-black.  I can’t possibly see how this was anything but an obvious manufacturing defect, but they refused to service it none-the-less… That is, unless I was going to fork over $430!  Aaaaah, HP, I hate to tell you this, but I bought the thing for $500…  Oh, and I’d rather hack off the LCD screen and just plug in an external monitor than pay you $430 to fix a manufacturer’s defect that should be covered under warranty.

Wait, it doesn’t end there…

I decided to call the store, even though 2 months have elapsed, and very calmly and politely explained the situation asking “if there was any recourse.”  To my surprise and delight, the store has agreed to replace the computer with an equivalent model!  Wow, what a relief….

Oh wait, still more…

Wait for it….   My wife lost the receipt again!  Unfortunately, it is nowhere to be found this time.  Personally, I think one of the kids ate it.

So, in a day or two, when we get our laptop back, I guess we are going to hope that a credit card purchase statement will be good enough for the store to go ahead and still replace the model.  Otherwise, I’ll be stopping by Lowe’s soon to pick up a hatchet and maybe Best Buy for a cheap monitor.  I don’t even know if there is an appropriate emoticon for that…

Posted via email from Music Tech Talk on Posterous

Sonar 8 – Features and First Experiences

It thought about re-titling this post “Why it is Dangerous to Play with DAWs” or “Knowing Just Enough to be Dangerous” or “Don’t Try This at Home” or “How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Brass Quartet,” but since I couldn’t decide between them, I stuck with the original title. After all, this is a re-post of the very first article I wrote for Music Tech Talk, at which time, no one even knew this blog existed. Now that a few more people have run across my ramblings on various musical and technological subjects and I can post to multiple platforms all at once using (you guessed it) Posterous, I will re-introduce the first couple of articles. Besides, I doubt too many people really have time to go back and look at every article on someone’s blog archives. I know I don’t. Read more »

REVISED-Switching from Wordpress.com to Self-hosted Wordpress Part III – Import/Export

Preposterous Posterous Posting

OK, Here are the various headers that worked and didn’t work. I’m not sure if it was the length of the tags or the plus signs, but it wasn’t the parenthesis b/c the one I messed up posted with them (third posted example). I’ll try to avoid this issue in the future. Read more »

Successful Tags… But ONLY in Posterous

So, here’s the deal. The tags actually worked using this format in the subject line: ((tag: tags, blogging, posterous))

However, they only worked for Posterous itself. For now, I’ll just have to go back and manually put them in via WordPress later. Oh, well. Everything else seems to work amazingly well!

Posted via email from Music Tech Talk

CSS: Upgrade or Headache?

I decided that I wanted to give the CSS upgrade feature on Wordpress a try, because I didn’t like the size of the tiny default font…  And I am interested in changing a few other things on the site in general.  I managed to change the font to a reasonable size and reduce the size of the “posted by:” and date stamp text to make room for the larger titles.

I am completely experimenting with the process, so my first action was to download and save the a template of the original CSS for the theme I am currently using.  I saved it to a text editor and used it for reference.  When I located a line of code that I wanted to change, I pasted ONLY that line into the CSS editor in Wordpress.  That way, I could always tell what I was editing, and I was fairly certain that I wouldn’t mess up anything else.

Read more »

Blogger Import to Wordpress Clean-Up

I just couldn’t stand some of the import issues I found after transferring my blog from Blogger to Wordpress, so I am in the process of fixing them. Initially, I thought I could ignore them. I discovered a few new types of problems and made my best effort to begin fixing all of them. Here are a couple issues addressed:

Read more »

Check The Speed of Your Internet Connection

Let’s face it, all of at some point or another question whether they are really getting the download speeds that they paying for. Especially at the premium prices bandwidth is going for today, you might want to check.

I have Comcast’s 12Mb/s download speed using a cable modem. That does the job pretty well and http://www.speedtest.net/ confirms this. However, it also revealed a pretty pathetic upload speed. They get away with this because most people are using a lot more download speed than upload. The problem is that interfaces like eJamming.com need a heck of a lot of both. In fact, we have had to come up with alternate means to stream our live performance of my new hip-hop beat for our grad recital partly due to this fact… However, I will say that decision was made mostly due to the fact the eJamming seems to be designed with a Mac in mind, not a PC. It’s just way too buggy.

You might want to try peak and off-peak hours too. Here are the results from a few of my tests within minutes of each other:

Here’s what speedtest.net thinks:

What?! Below Average?!

OK, if that wasn’t enough fun for you, you’ll want to check out http://www.pingtest.net/ also. This one actually tests the quality of your internet connection, not just your speed. Both are vitally important. How does Comcast rate here?

Not another bad grade. Come on, I want nothing less than an A+!

Some online games won’t perform well? That just won’t do. Oh, wait… I never have time to play those anymore. Too much music writing and blogging, I guess (those are only done with free time anyway).

Speaking of which, I’ve got other things I need to be doing right now, so you’ll have to go and test your internet speeds while I take a little break and re-group.

Internet2: How Fast is Really Fast?

My class is giving a graduate recital Nov 30th that will be streamed live on the internet. To further compliment the concept of music used with technology, a few of us are trying to work out combined performances from remote locations. At least one of the students is planning on using Internet2. Here is an official definition:

Internet2 is a collaborative project by over 120 U.S. research universities, working with partners in industry and government, to develop a new family of advanced applications to meet emerging academic requirements in research, teaching, and learning. This collaboration is addressing the major challenges facing the next generation of university networks by:

• First and most importantly, creating and sustaining a leading edge network capability for the national research community,
• Second, directing network development efforts to enable a new generation of applications to fully exploit the capabilities of broadband networks, and
• Third, working to rapidly transfer new network services and applications to all levels of educational use and to the broader Internet community, both nationally and internationally.

Here’s what it really means: It’s really fast. As much as 6.63 gigabits per second (Gbps)!

Why do we need these kinds of speeds? The Tim the Toolman Taylor theory would simply be, “We need more Power!” And really, that’s not too far from the truth. Scientists and Universities are ecstatic, because it takes that kind of computing power to come up with crazy quantum equations and to stream live video and audio from around the world with near zero latency (delay).

For example, scientists keep building fun things like $10 billion particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This bad boy will produce 15 petabytes of data per year for scientists to analyze. Here’s how the math works (to simplify things a bit [ha,ha] I am using an extra fast 10Mbps home download speed for my example):

First, you should know that 8 bits = 1 byte.

A megabit (data transfer) is a mere 1,000,000 bits.

A petabit (data transfer) is 1,000,000,000,000,000 bits (1Pb = 10^15 bits). That’s 1 Quadrillion folks (I.e. million, billion, trillion, quadrillion…). In other words, a petabit is 1 billion times greater than a megabit! 1Pb/1Mb = 1,000,000,000 bits.

A petabyte (data transfer) is 1Pb/8 = 125,000,000,000,000 Bytes (1PB = 125^12 Bytes). So, 1Pb x 1/8 = 1PB.

The LHC is supposed to create 15 petabytes of info a year!

With those kinds of mammoth numbers in mind, it is easy to see why there is an endless need for speed. A fairly fast home internet connection (cable modem) will offer about 8 megabits per second (Mbps) or 8,000,000 bits per second download speed. I’ll be honest, I tried to do all the detailed math on this and was never 100% sure I had the right numbers… There quite a few digits to deal with here, and one slight miscalculation throws the whole thing way off. …But it looked like to me it would takes hundreds of years to transmit the same amount of data the LHC can produce versus only several months at about 10Gbps. Lets just say, I wouldn’t hold up any other plans waiting for it to download right now. If anyone out there is a math geek, feel free to drop me some real calculations… I just do music.

On a sort-of-related topic, this gargantuan amount of information that will be produced by the LHC will be delayed at the very least. While I was researching the LHC, I discovered that while it came online in September 2008, it had to be shut down due to a problem with two superconducting bending magnets. It is scheduled to come online again in November. But here’s the weird part… Though no connection has been made or suggested, a researcher and his brother working on the project were just arrested on charges of terr*rism. They are suspected of passing information to al-Q*eda. It kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Article on LHC researcher arrest

LHC Description

More Detailed LHC Info

HostMonster.com Review

I have used hostmonster.com as my web hosting service for several years now. From day one, they have demonstrated excellent customer service and service reliability. HostMonster (HM) offers many services from email to ecommerce. For me, I am interested in the basic services and a reliable, affordable way to host my website.

I researched several web hosting sites, but settled on HM based on reviews. I also discovered that Bluehost (BH) is pretty much the same company/service as HM. A BH forum states it this way:

“all of us know that hostmonster is a bluehost subsidiary with same plan features except for: *unlimited domains”

HostMonster Review

BlueHost Review

You will note their ratings are almost head-to-head, with only a few differences. BH is rumored to be on better servers, but costs a bit more monthly. HM seems to have slightly better opinions about their customer service.

But enough comparison. Let’s talk about HM.

Reliability – I have had no significant issues with HM. Once or twice over a few years I have had brief service interruptions. Average customer ratings, according to webhostinggeeks.com, are 2.9 stars out of 5. Currently, I would give HM around 4.5 out of 5 stars overall.

Email – I am very pleased with the versatility of the email filtering system. I have created several different accounts and filter individually, as well as globally. This allows me to use them for very specific purposes, eliminating nearly all spam from my inbox when used in combination with a few filters on Thunderbird (a free Mozilla email application which I happen to also be very happy with). By using addresses other than my default, I can avoid a lot of spam.

Tip: Never use “webmaster,” or your default username as your email address. You will just be asking for junk traffic. In fact, I would avoid common addresses like “orders,” or “customerservice” as well. Personalize them instead by adding something like company initials (advice that I have not yet taken myself but might soon). For example “DMGOrders” or “DMGWebmaster.” Once you’ve done that, avoid using any of your addresses for account registrations or anything other than official correspondence.

I redirect email incoming to my new main address, then to other categorized addresses. So if I get order inquiries, they go to a specific address. The specific addresses, however, allow no other types of traffic. So, I get only the inquiries that I want to receive. To further eliminate the chance for spam, I use Postini, an email filtering service offered through HM’s control panel. This service comes with a small fee, but is nice because it prevents bad messages from ever reaching my computer. It also sends me an email summary of blocked messages each day, so I can deliver mis-flagged mail or permanently ban addresses. I don’t know about you, but I am always convinced filters are deleting, mis-delivering or incorrectly flagging my email. With the nice Quarantine Summary emails, that is never an issue. I use Postini for my main address only,allowing my filters to redirect and eliminate any remaining unsolicited emails.

Price, Web Space, Bandwidth and Domains – The price is reasonable for the services offered. I cannot afford to put a lot of money into a web host, and HM offers enough stability, bandwidth and space for expansion in the future. Currently, I use such an infinitesimal amount of the available bandwidth and space, I should start hosting other sites on the unused portion…

Tech Support – HM has helped me iron out a few tech issues along the way. They were responsive, friendly and helpful. So far, my problems have all been solvable.

Customer Support – Again HM’s support staff is very courteous, sympathetic and generally helpful. I really never have to wait long periods of time for help or response to my questions. I have used their live chat feature and find it to be very helpful when facing problems that might require me to look a few things up and report result. …Particularly when it concerns messages or computer lingo that I can just cut and paste into the chat interface.

Overall, I am very pleased with HostMonster. It has allowed me to affordably set-up my website and not really have to worry about it. I can set up my account to pay automatically or simply notify me when things come due. I can easily configure my email accounts and filter-out unwanted mail. It is low cost and low hassle. That’s exactly what I am looking for in a web host right now.

CheapTargetedWebsiteTraffic.com – You Get What You Pay For

I have recently been interested in finding ways to increase web traffic to my website. I have started looking into website submission, optimization, keyword optimization, pay-per-click advertising and targeted versus untargeted website traffic. Of these options, I had originally only submitted my website to Google and used a free submission program offered by Statcounter.com. While, not huge traffic generators, they did generate a small amount and made my site fairly searchable. Somehow, I have still managed to make sales on my website even with such low volume traffic.

So, the next logical step was to try some other version of marketing. I had some money from sales in my account, so I decided to give cheap traffic generator a try. I knew it was probably a mistake, but it was purely for experimentation. Cheaptargetedwebsitetraffic.com (CTWT) offers a guarantee of 10,000 site hits in 30 days for $9.95, referring to this as a “campaign”. I seem to be having a hard time finding reliable sources of information when it comes to marketing one’s website, so I gave it a try. Now I am only a few days into the campaign, but I have already decided what I think of untargeted web hits… At least from CTWT… THEY ARE USELESS!

Why are they useless? Well, generally speaking, I am all for international relations… But of all the hits generated so far, NONE have been from the United States! Reviews suggest that targeted traffic would be much more useful. I can’t say I disagree, but I am hesitant to use CTWT to get it. Unless I decide to do more experimentation purely for the purposes of writing about it here, then you can expect that I will be trying something else.

First off, if you are not careful you will think you are signing up for, I don’t know, cheap targeted website traffic… Indeed, the home page options for traffic are their UNTARGETED versions. So, for only $92.95, you could find yourself soliciting 150,000 useless visitors.

To add to the “get what you pay for” concept, CTWT has a pretty pathetic interface. It is ultra-simplistic and, initially, I couldn’t figure out how to log in because I never received a confirmation email or instructions on how to do so. Here’s the scenario:

I clicked on the link to view untargeted web traffic and it takes you to a log in screen. Nowhere does it tell what your login should be. Forget got your login details? Never knew them in the first place, so I clicked on it anyway. This, indeed sent me a password. Problem? Still no user name! So I guessed enough times to figure out that it is just the name of the page you are promoting, no www. and no .com, just the name by itself.

They claim regular web counters cannot keep up with the large volume of traffic generated through CTWT. This is apparently true, given that elogicwebsolutions.com only shows I have received 150+ hits versus the 1,601 that appear on CTWT. I have checked the stats actually generated via my web host, and they are supposed to be more accurate. However, I have no idea what number is supposed to correlate with the data I am looking for. Too much info here!

Dang it, Jim! I’m a composer, not a marketing specialist!

If you are reading this and many obvious suggestions are coming to mind right now, feel free to let me know. What I lack is a reliable source of information on how to go about all of this. As I learn, I will share here. Overall, I give CTWT an unsatisfactory rating. However, to be fair, I will revisit this topic once the campaign comes to a close.

Too Much Inspiration?

OK, so I went through my little period of writer’s block, and now it seems I have more inspiration than I can handle. Classes have started, and I am enjoying my studies right now. We are putting together an online graduate recital. It will be interesting to see how that turns out, particularly since a large portion of the class attends online… A rather important impact technology has had on education. Online students, such as myself, attend virtually. We see and hear the class via streaming video, participate live via chat and/or calling in. I have given several presentations and it really seems very similar to actually attending class in a lot of ways. Sometimes we can get ignored for a few minutes in chat, but then I start typing in all caps and that seems to get everyone’s attention.

You may have heard this before, but taking these courses online can actually be much more difficult than physically being in class. For example, I can’t just turn in a big final project on a disk, like a 2GB audio and video presentation, I have to figure how to convert it to the proper format, preserve the quality, reduce the size and upload it to a finicky server. All this can add quite a bit of time to the project. Of course, communicating with the professor via email can cause a few delays in info exchange, but there is always the telephone. The two things I miss about actual class are hanging out with the other students and playing with any trinkets (like the Theremin) they might bring in. I suppose I wouldn’t mind hanging out in the technology labs either, but at least I have some equipment here. I actually think overcoming these sorts of obstacles is a very valuable experience, giving me a much greater understanding of education through technology. After all, that’s kind of the point of this degree anyway…

Not only have classes inspired me, but so have my friends. This year I have concentrated on writing music for people that have helped me in my musical endeavors in the past. I just finished a string quartet and have already moved on to a new choral piece for another friend. Not to mention, I’ve been working one other adventure/experiment in the world of hip-hop for a friend. I am attempting to fuse his world and mine in one cohesive piece of music, know to him as a “beat”. He is writing the lyrics and performing/recording it, so you don’t have to worry about that part of it. Ironically, of all the work I have been doing, this has by far been the greatest challenge for me. …For two reasons: One, I am way out of my element, so there is a huge learning curve… And two, Sonar 8 has been driving me insane with synth glitches!

Finally, I have been planning out my projects for the next year or two. As soon as I finish the projects I mentioned previously, I will dive into finishing the long-time-coming organ reduction of my Chorus of Psalms. I will have the privilege of working with a very fine organist, Evan Becker, in order to yield the best results possible. While I have written pieces for organ before, the size and significance of this work (to me anyway) demanded that I step it up. I don’t want to lose too much of the essence of the piece in transcription. Post transcription, I will be working on a set of SA choral pieces for a friend in Boston.

One more thing… I realize getting people to read your blog is difficult when I decide to suddenly take a month or more off, but I needed some time to refocus. One of the items on the list for next year’s planning is a blogging schedule. With so much to fit on my plate, I need to first organize the menu. Besides, the last thing I want to do is sacrifice actually creating and performing music just so I can write about it!

My First Second Life

After reading a little about Second Life and looking at Torley’s island, I decided to give it a try. It was free, so I thought it couldn’t hurt… I spent most of my time trying to configure the graphics so that my GPU would stop freaking out–Huge spikes of random rendering kept obscuring my view, especially inside smaller rooms… And sometimes my avatar became a headless shadow-man (an effect I would consider keeping if it weren’t a glitch). It took some time but I think I narrowed the problem down to the following feature in the graphics menu:

Edit/Preferences/Graphics/Hardware Options/Enable VBO

For whatever reason, my ATI X1800XT 500MB GPU hates this setting. I haven’t had this problem since it was unchecked. I am still messing with a few of the parameters to get things just right, but I looked at Torley’s tutorial to help me configure things. A very useful tutorial (below).

I spent a lot of time editing parameters that were available to mess with for my… self. I ended up deleting my default clothes and now look terribly rendered. For a short while, I was stuck completely naked in public. Somehow, I accidentally deleted my hair during my experimentation, and now I am completely bald. The only other problem I had was when I started dancing and couldn’t figure out how to stop. This led to the interesting discovery that one’s avatar can dance while sitting down… Or doing anything for that matter. Trippy.

So after all this, I walked around New Berlin for a while and talked to a few people. The first thing that I noticed was that a lot of people like to dress their avatars like h**kers. Does this imply people are seeking their inner h**ker in second life? Who really knows? I saw only one female character dressed modestly and immediately assumed that she must be a lady of the night in real life. That was probably wrong of me.

The next observation made was that everyone just seemed to be standing around. Many of them were speaking in foreign languages, and I became paranoid that they were talking about me and my pathetic looking clothes. Then this little cardboard box robot kept running into me for fun, which was a little insulting. Plus, I had to wonder how a robot can be made of cardboard. I asked it, “What are you?” It responded, “I am a robot.” “You look like a cardboard box,” I said. “I am a robot,” it concluded, bumped into me again and ran off. Deep. (Please note the h**kers in the screenshots. I am the guy in the black shirt… And no, I didn’t talk to her)

So, bored again, I commented locally on the fact that people seemed to be dressed like h**kers. …In order to cause controversy. Instead, they acknowledged this fact and stated that it was because everyone dressed their avatars with clothes they could get for free. I don’t know if I buy that… Which leads me to my next observation.

What’s with the paying real money to buy cars and stuff? I hate paying for things that seem like they should be free. Well, at least $8 for a car! I can see a small fee like 50 cents or something, but $8! I would have stolen the car if the game would have let me. I’m not saying I want to stop playing the game yet, but I ‘m going to have to learn more about the game before I go buying real estate .

I don’t want to give the wrong impression. The concept of creating one’s own world and character is very intriguing and will no doubt keep me interested for a while. Some avatars out there were very creative, if not a little strange… But I love the creative possibilities and wonder if I will spend 90% of the time creating worlds and messing with my appearance rather than playing the actual game. Or is it “living my second life?” Oh, so much to learn and so little time.

As I was typing this, I was in SL taking screenshots for this post… I ran into a guy dressed as a Star Wars bounty hunter. He offered to show me where to get one and took me on a little tour. He even showed me the costumes before alteration and offered this advice:

“If you’re going to buy one, be sure to select the male model, if that’s what you’re after.”

I replied:

“Thx. That’s good advice. I don’t think I’d look good with bounty hunter boobs anyway.”

He seemed to think that was funny. (Female imperial model in picture to the right)

I think maybe I got my first real second life experience. I feel renewed, excited. Like a new avatar… Maybe this will be fun after all. Especially after I get out of my pathetic wardrobe and into some cool Star Wars threads.

Too Much Technology? NEVER!

Is there a such thing as too much technology for your studio? Really, do I have to even ask the question? Of course there isn’t. Having technology available at your fingertips just makes it that much easier to do and create projects exactly as you have imagined them. The real tragedy lies in not having enough technology to accomplish your goals.

Now, my studio is just a few components all mixed together, thus, not really a studio at all. However, I have just made two exciting additions to my setup… A 32″ monitor (using it at 720P via HDMI) and an HK 5.1 surround sound receiver! Overkill you say? Well, first let me explain why I added these components.

It really has to do with the fact that I moved all of my A/V equipment downstairs so I could dedicate the upstairs to living and the downstairs to more recreational affairs. Not only is the room perfect for surround sound and the LCD TV,

The Setup (Relevant Components):

- AMD Athlon 64 PC; 3 GB RAM; 500MB ATI GPU; Windows XP
- 19″ LCD 16×9 Monitor @ 1440×900 + 32″ LCD 16×9 Monitor @ 1280 x 720 (720P) (Extended display)
- Sony DVD-R
- Sony DV Camera
- PSR-3000 Keyboard
- Samson CO1U Studio Condensor Mic
- Yamaha UW10 Audio Interface (16bit)

Note: My system may not seem like the hottest thing on the market, but consider that it seems to take half the amount of RAM to run XP as it does to run Vista. Personally, I see no reason to upgrade right now.

Main Software I Currently Use:

- Finale 2009
- Sonar 8
- Adobe Design Premium CS4
- A bunch of free video and audio editing programs from NCH Software
- Gimp (for image editing)

That’s it really. That’s all the hardware and software I have to work with. Not too exciting, but it does the trick.

New Found Benefits:

- All of my recording and editing can be done in one location, as well as playback

- The audio sounds much better now through the HK receiver. I’m still pumping it through the Yamaha UW10 before it gets to the receiver for now. I could go 5.1 out of the on-board audio. Still need to get some near-field monitors speaker though.

- Everything is 2.5 times larger now.

Note: Keep in mind, the right 2/3 of the above screen shots appear approx 2.5 times larger than the images on the left 1/3. The screen shot eliminates this effect.

- I definitely do not have to strain to see anything
- I can play all my games in High Definition and the field of view is so large that I feel Like I am actually in the game.
- Netflix online videos play very clean and with surprisingly good resolution with no need to change my setup
- I can watch a movie and use the computer at the same time without using a laptop
- Icons are the size of my thumb

- My video frames per second (fps) have tripled! Using the DVI to HDMI cable has apparently lessened the load on my PC overall, presumably by requiring less effort in the conversion process. I watched my fps jump to an amazing 258 fps in some areas using the highest resolution and texture settings in CoD2 (way too much, but cool anyway). Most moderate game play areas hung around about 140 fps. Intense game play hovered between 55 and 90 fps. Needless to say, there was no lag or visible refresh rate. The most amazing thing is that these huge increases were gained by playing the game at a much better resolution… in HD (720p)!

Note: I can play it in 1080i, but lacking the progressive version of 1080, I like the way 720p looks.

– Half-Life 2 can be played at FULL resolution and perfect clarity
- CoD4 looks sharper than ever and almost all of the lag I was previously experiencing has ceased (didn’t check the fps).

Those are just some of the immediate benefits I could think of off the top of my head. There is a very interesting post from a professional game music composer (Breaking In as a Composer, Part II) that basically says you need a minimum of $14,000+ of software and equipment to even get a foothold in the gaming industry. I can’t remember if he mentioned needing a gigantic monitor anywhere, but it certainly can’t hurt. Anyway… As you can see, I am nowhere near that threshold, so I have a lot of catching up to do. Right now I’ll have to just be content to play the games and hope to win the lottery.

So, the moral of the story is…

Final Episode of The Lost Book

The Final Episode of The Lost Book was released on the 24th of July. It was a nice conclusion to the collaborative book experiment. By now you have discovered that this experiment is much more than just a book. It involved the collaborative efforts of many artists/animators, writers, musicians, composers and fans. I am speculating that the animation and rendering process was the most time/resource intensive portion of the project, and no doubt, why the episodes are somewhat short. That alone would slow down most projects, but adding in original scores and performances by live professional musicians is just amazing, given the time constraints for each episode. Overall, they did a great job of making a fun, interesting and even suspenseful series of episodes. I think the nature of the collaborative, quasi-choose-your-own-adventure concept for The Lost Book actually helped keep the storyline suspenseful. After all, literally no one knew what was coming next!

In the final episode there are many book references, probably for obvious reasons. I happened to like the way the animated the newspaper during the opening sequence. The Otto character still seems a little creepy to me… Probably the mustache… But the dog, Watson, gets to show off his skills while jumping through laser beams, and that is always cool. Finally, just when it seems everyone can sit down and enjoy “a peaceful evening and break from adventures,” a text message comes in:

All Operatives: ALERT! Report to base.

The FULL 6 episodes:

Looks like they are leaving the door wide open for another series of episodes. I can’t wait! If you haven’t taken a few minutes to watch the whole series, make sure you do. You’ll want to be ready to follow the next one. I plan to participate any way that I can.