"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
Tonight I signed up for the Fireside beta. They asked for all my social
media accounts to prove I'm a human. The problem is, I don't have a
twitter account, a facebook account, instagram, etc. Years ago I took
the advice of numerous psychology studies and my own therapist's advice
and got off the social media platforms. It was one of the best things
I've ever done for my mental health.
So hopefully this blog, though infrequently updated (and slightly broken
since the last major perl update), will serve as proof to the people at
Fireside that I am human and not a bot.
It was the Astonishing
Legends Podcast that led me to Fireside. It would be nice to use it
for one of their interactive live chats sometime.
Ninth Runniversary
Yesterday was my ninth runniversary. Like my first day running, I ran on
the treadmill while listening to Broken. Unlike the first time, I only
listened to it once, and covered 4.48 miles during the duration of the
EP, thanking God every step of the way.
I'm confident in knowing that the bone in my ankle has healed completely
now; however, I'm still rebuilding the muscle in that ankle and the rest
of that leg. There was significant atrophy during the early phases of
recovery. Slowly as it may be, I am making progress, and I am thankful
for that.
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
"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.
5K Run for Charity
I have entered the 2008 Lincoln Tunnel Challenge to help raise money for
the Special Olympics. I would appreciate it if every one could make a
donation, no matter the amount.
From the man page for setsockopt: "The include file <sys/socket.h>
contains definitions for socket level options, described below."
1) The options are not "described below."
2) No, that file actually doesn't contain those definitions.
On the other hand... The FreeBSD man page for setsockopt does actually
describe the options and under FreeBSD the <sys/socket.h> file does
indeed contain the definitions.
First the background. The story of how I got into this mess:
I'm trying to get ACPI working on my laptop under FreeBSD. Specifically,
I'm trying to get Resume to work properly. Suspend works, and resume
seems to partially work. The fans spin up, the keyboard's backlight
comes back on, but no screen. And without video, it's a little hard to
figure out what's going on.
ACPI works great on my server. It's running the same FreeBSD 9.1 x86-64
build that the laptop is, but the biggest difference is that it's an
intel motherboard. The laptop is an Alienware, for our purposes, I might
as well just call it a Dell.
I started comparing the ASL output from both machines and noticed some
things. First, the Alienware's ACPI implementation looks for the OS to
be various forms of Windows or "Linux." The intel ACPI implementation
also looks for these Windows variants and "Linux" but it has an
additional OS string. It has an entry for "FreeBSD."
I figured the easiest next step was to use iasl co compile the intel ASL
source and load that DSDT onto the laptop.
I calculated the odds it would work vs the odds I was doing something
incredibly stupid... and I went ahead and did it anyway...
I compiled the asl and I set /boot/loader.conf to override the DSDT with
the intel one I had just compiled and I rebooted. At first everything
was good. The machine went down, I got the boot loader, and the FreeBSD
kernel started to load. Seconds into the kernel load, it rebooted
itself. After the second time, I powered off and tried a cold boot. Same
problem just as I had feared.
Now i was in a situation where I couldn't successfully boot because of
an error in loader.conf I needed to find a way to edit it.
And here's the solution:
The FreeBSD bootloader, like many others, works in stages. At a certain
point, it can be interrupted at which point it provides a set of simple
yet powerful commands to control various aspects of the loading process.
If you still have that default menu at load, I beleive the option to
chose is 6. I disable that menu so during a brief countdown I hit escape
before the boot loader turns control over to the kernel.
Once in the boot loader prompt, I entered the following commands:
unload
load kernel
boot
Pretty simple right? The unload command does what it says, it unloads
the kernel and any modules loader.conf had pulled into memory. The load
kernel command grabs the kernel and loads it into memory... but only
the kernel thus ignoring the broken DSDT in loader.conf. And of course
boot tells the boot loader to continue booting the system.
Once booted, I removed the bad DSDT from loader.conf.
"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.
Fun Conversations
The DeLorean often leads to conversations one wouldn't normally expect.
Case in point: today I had to call my auto insurance provider for an
issue with my daily driver. After taking some info to pull up my account
the conversation went something like this:
Agent: Which car is this?
Me: The Pontiac.
Agent: Am I reading this right?
Me: Reading what?
Agent: I'm sorry, do you have a DeLorean?
Me: Yes.
Agent: I never thought I'd see someone with a policy on a DeLorean.
Me: Well, you've insured both of mine...
Agent: You've had two DeLoreans?
Me: Yes.
At that point there were a few more questions and then we got back to
the issue which my phone call had been about originally.
Windows 8.1 in Virtual Box
I was attempting to run the Windows 8.1 Preview in a VM using
Sun's Oracle's Virtual Box on a Windows 7
host. I ran into a minor problem.
The OS wouldn't boot. I received an error stating:
Your computer needs to restart.
Please hold down the power button.
Error Code: 0x000000C4
Parameters:
[redacted]
Looking for the error code online led me to this
article describing the issue and a fix. The key to fixing this was
running the command:
Disgusted
With the Goofy Challenge just 3 days away, I should be carb-loading. And
I am. And with each bite of my lunch I hate myself more. Every time I
eat, I feel fat. And every time I ingest anything that isn't ultra-lean
protein or high-fiber, I disgust myself. But I sit here, shoving food
down my gullet.
When will I realize...
I've been running for 3 years 6 months and 9 days. I've been 100 pounds
lighter* for 2 years 9 months and 3 days. And I still don't feel like
this is my body.
Acceptance, or lack thereof...
A few days ago I picked up some dumbbells that had been left out, they
were 40lbs each and I lifted them with one hand each. Three years ago
the most I could lift, with both arms combined and "lifting with the
legs," was 43lbs (the weight of my computer).
Last month, I ran a 5K in 19:08. Yesterday during a speed workout I ran
my two fastest 100m ever, 17.9 seconds and 17.87 seconds. Today I ran a
10K at a 6:24 pace, finishing in under 40 minutes. I've set a new PR in
every distance I've raced this year except the half marathon, and that
race I set a new record for myself on that particular course.
I've put lost 126 pounds of fat and gained 36 pounds of bone and muscle.
My body keeps getting stronger and faster.
And I still can't accept my body for what it is....
I wasn't born this way; I made myself.
I heard that Lady Gaga song on the radio the other day, you know the
one that sounds like the Madonna song, and it got me thinking. On the
surface it seems to contain a very positive message about accepting
yourself because you were "Born This Way." You were born like this, you
were made this way, there's nothing you can do about it so be happy with
it.
I disagree. Sure, when we're born we're stuck with the genetic
material passed on to us by our lineage. But we're more than that, what
we are, what we become, is so much more than how we were born. And this
made me think about the Incubus song, "Make Yourself." I find the
message of that song to be much more positive. While the song has an
overt "them vs. you" context, the general theme is one of taking
responsibility for yourself and what you become.
Was I born the way I am today? Judging from the direction my life took
in the first twenty-six years, and comparing it to the last three years,
the answer is no. I was born heavy, weighing in over nine pounds. I grew
into a heavy kid. I was always sad and lonely as a kid. I had few
friends. I rarely went outside. I never played sports. I watched a lot
of TV. I ate a lot. I got heavier. I got sadder. I got lonelier. But I
was born this way, right? I should have just accepted it, right?
While I was born heavy, I didn't have to stay that way. It was my own
choices that made me into the depressed, obese misanthrope I was.
Despite my claims that I was born that way, genetically predisposed to
those conditions, I really made myself that way.
And then I decided to change that. I took responsibility for my life. I
started exercising. I ran. I ate healthier. I lost weight. I had better
relationships with my friends. I started making new friends. I became
happier.
Just as I had made myself into what I was, I made myself into what I am
today. The key to this change was taking personal responsibility for
myself. No longer did I use the excuse of being born that way. I knew I
was like that because of my decisions and my actions. I knew through my
decisions and my actions I could change. And I did. I made myself.
"If you really want to live, why not try and make yourself?"
Duality
Given the infinitesimally small reader base of this weblog, and the fact
that most, if not all, of those readers know me personally, there's a
good chance that you know I've fairly recently gotten a pair of tattoos.
The first tattoo, on my right arm, is a "26.2" in a giraffe print. That
number, of course, is the distance of a Marathon in miles. Approximately
one tenth of one percent of the population has ever completed a
Marathon. I am one of those individuals and it is because of the
Giraffes, the running team my friends started and pulled me into, that I
was able to accomplish this feat.
The second tattoo, on my left arm, is a 6x8 grid of binary digits which
spell out my first initial and last name in ASCII. Beneath the binary
grid is a "v3.1" in a more stylized font. I was named after my father
who had been named after his father, making me the third, version 3.0 if
you will. In the last few years I've "upgraded." I'm smaller, faster,
stronger, kinder, more extroverted and more optimistic than I was, but I
am not an entirely new person. Hence v3.1.
There's more to the meaning of these tattoos than the explanations
above. They represent the duality of myself. One represents the
decidedly geeky nature that has been a part of me for almost my entire
life. The other represents a newer aspect of myself, the endurance
athlete.
It has been difficult for me to resolve these aspects. You were a nerd
or a jock. There was a perceived inherent conflict between the two. You
could be one or the other, not both. I was a nerd. I was never a jock.
Now I'm both.
And I can be both. There is no reason can't, because this is what I've
become; this is what I am.
"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.
Duality
Given the infinitesimally small reader base of this weblog, and the fact
that most, if not all, of those readers know me personally, there's a
good chance that you know I've fairly recently gotten a pair of tattoos.
The first tattoo, on my right arm, is a "26.2" in a giraffe print. That
number, of course, is the distance of a Marathon in miles. Approximately
one tenth of one percent of the population has ever completed a
Marathon. I am one of those individuals and it is because of the
Giraffes, the running team my friends started and pulled me into, that I
was able to accomplish this feat.
The second tattoo, on my left arm, is a 6x8 grid of binary digits which
spell out my first initial and last name in ASCII. Beneath the binary
grid is a "v3.1" in a more stylized font. I was named after my father
who had been named after his father, making me the third, version 3.0 if
you will. In the last few years I've "upgraded." I'm smaller, faster,
stronger, kinder, more extroverted and more optimistic than I was, but I
am not an entirely new person. Hence v3.1.
There's more to the meaning of these tattoos than the explanations
above. They represent the duality of myself. One represents the
decidedly geeky nature that has been a part of me for almost my entire
life. The other represents a newer aspect of myself, the endurance
athlete.
It has been difficult for me to resolve these aspects. You were a nerd
or a jock. There was a perceived inherent conflict between the two. You
could be one or the other, not both. I was a nerd. I was never a jock.
Now I'm both.
And I can be both. There is no reason can't, because this is what I've
become; this is what I am.
WTF?
I'm used to guitarists mocking the bass and bassists. It doesn't bother me
too much. But this... This irritated me. A lot.
Today at work there was a group of people talking about Rock Band and
Guitar Hero 3. None of them actually know how to play
intstruments but they claim to be great at these games. They seem to
believe this entitles them mock bassists.
"Oh man, bass is so easy. It's the guitar that's the hard part. Yeah,
I'm on expert on the guitar."
"Yeah, bass is so stupid."
"So It's me, my brother, and my sister. I play guitar, he's on
drums, and my sister sings."
"what about bass?"
"My friend just got Guitar Hero 3. I'll make him play bass."
[Both laugh]
After making statements indicating this person believes he actually
is better than Tom Morello, "After you make Tom Morello or Slash your
bitch, they play bass for you."
chdir(2)
So today at work another developer many years my senior, with many more years
experience than I, came to me with a Unixy problem.
"When I have a program, how can I have it so the current working directory
for all processes it starts isn't the one that it started in?"
"chdir."
"No, I want so that if this process starts something like ls, when ls stats
'dot' I want 'dot' to be the directory that process wants it to be, not the
directory that process was started from."
After about 15 minutes of me suggesting chdir while he said that's not what
he wanted but then describing chdir, I finally wrote something along the lines
of the following
Alpha
Due to the power failure, there was the loss of several hours of work.
Last night I installed FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE on an old DEC AlphaStation
200 I have. I had started building a new, smaller kernel for it around
23:30 last night. It had not completed by the time of the power outage.
I have restarted that build.
Any one reading this would reasonably ask, "Why are you not as
confused/angry/annoyed with a compile that was not finished in 7 hours
as you were about one that took 3 hours?"
The answer is simple. This AlphaStation is powered by a 100MHz DEC Alpha
EV4 CPU and has 64MB of RAM. To the best of my knowledge, DEC made this
machine around 1994 or 1995. I expected the build to take a long time;
the machine is around a dozen years old.
How long does it take to build a linux kernel?
It has been a number of years since I built a linux kernel. Slackware
9.1 was the last GNU/Linux distro I used before switching back to BSD.
Tonight I put together a machine from some old parts (1.2GHz celeron
with 256KB cache, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard drive) and installed Slackware
12.
I customized a kernel configuration and attempted to build it. I don't
remember the 2.4 kernel taking as long to build as this 2.6 kernel. It
took nearly two hours. Granted, this machine is fairly old, but 2 hours?
After I complete the tasks for which I needed this setup, I'm going to
install an older Slackware with the 2.4 kernel and build that. I may
also install FreeBSD and NetBSD and build their kernels. I'd like to get
an idea how long it takes to compile other kernels on this rig.
Merry Christmas
While the holidays are supposed to be a joyous time, I know and
understand how hard they can be for some people. If you're having a
rough time over the next week or so and need someone to talk to, feel
free to message me. If you're reading this blog, you likely know my
email address or phone number.
Christmas Eve
On Christmas Eve, I headed out around 7:00PM to take a look at the
Christmas lights and decorations around town. There was a snow storm
predicted for around 9:00PM, so I decided to take the DeLorean out for
one last drive before the Wonderful Winter Weather(TM).
The snow started much earlier than expected. The snow was light and
slow, and despite the car not handling well in slick conditions, I kept
going for a while.
As I was driving I had the realization that I was having an experience
no one else in the world has ever had. I was driving a DeLorean through
my town on Christmas Eve, admiring Christmas lights and listening to
Christmas music as snow fell.
I looked over at the empty passenger seat and wished there had been
someone, anyone there to share this with. So for now, until
circumstances like this arise again, I will continue to be the only
person to have experienced this.
I'm starting to get used to celebrating my birthday at TBM concerts.
This year it was about a week prior to my birthday at a show on December
1 held at New York's Gramercy Theatre.
Along with the tickets, I had also purchased the "VIP package." This
package included an autographed poster signed by all members of the
band, a "VIP" laminate on a lanyard, and... the opportunity to meet the
band prior to the show!
You may be thinking, "But they stick around after shows and mingle with
their fans anyway," and "You've already met them a few times!" Both are
true. And even with this "VIP" package meet-and-greet, they still make
time for all their fans after the show. What this provided was a
somewhat quieter meeting in a more intimate setting.
In fact the meeting was in a small lounge beneath the concert hall. Dim
mood lighting, mirrors, and couches set the atmosphere. I spoke with
Rainbow, Michael, and Nate first. Rainbow informed me his name was
Michael also and made a joke about the "power of the three Mikes
lighting the room." After a bit, they started moving me to Chibi who was
sitting on a couch after injuring her knee during a show two nights
prior. She tried to walk to me, but I told her not to. She said, "I'll
meet you half way then."
I gave her a get well card, knowing she had had surgery on her vocal
chords about 8 weeks prior and recently injured her knee. Someone
decided we needed a photo of that and she gave me the card back so I
could give it back to her. I believe it was Owen who said, "Act natural
and hold it for 30 seconds!"
I asked Rainbow about writing "Unfamiliar" because both he and OE were
given credit in the liner notes. He said it was mostly OE; OE started it
and Rainbow had finished it. I said I wanted to thank them because it
was a song that had taken on some greater meaning to me and I relayed a
brief version of the story of the moment I recognized that. It turns
out "Unfamiliar" is one of Chibi's favorite songs too.
Every one of the bands that night were amazing. All, remarkably, were
performing as duos. Creature Feature was a real fun band to see. Their
music is heavily influenced by old horror movies which gives them a
dark yet fun sound.
Aesthetic Perfection put on a good performance. Their drummer is
amazing and fun to watch. They heavily synth-based and while there was a
dark tone to most of their songs, they still had fun and lightened
things up with a Fine Young Cannibals cover.
William Control was the only other act I had heard before the show
(Thanks Last.fm!). He was great live and I'd love to see him again. He
reminded me a little of Dommin in that Dean Martin meets Glen Danzig
sort of way.
The Birthday Massacre was great. They played a good mix including songs
from every album. For most of the set Chibi was sitting on a speaker
placed near center at the front of the stage, wearing a knee brace. She
stood up and moved around occasionally, but not much. At one point
Rainbow sat down on another speaker and stuck out one leg in a similar
fashion to how Chibi was seated and laughed a little. It was easy to
tell by their interaction here that Chibi and Rainbow are close.
If you care (or even if you don't), their set list follows:
Night Shift
Down
Control
Always
Red Stars
Video kid
Lover's End
Forever
Pins and Needles
Happy Birthday
Alibis
Calling
In the Dark
Sleep Walking
Midnight
-- Encore --
Leaving Tonight
The Long Way Home
Blue
The band did not leave the stage prior to the encore as they normally
would. Chibi said, "This is the part of the show where we say thank you
and leave and you clap and we come back out and play some more. But I'm
not going to walk down those stairs anymore than I have to, so do you
want to hear three more songs?"
I'm starting to get used to celebrating my birthday at TBM concerts.
This year it was about a week prior to my birthday at a show on December
1 held at New York's Gramercy Theatre.
Along with the tickets, I had also purchased the "VIP package." This
package included an autographed poster signed by all members of the
band, a "VIP" laminate on a lanyard, and... the opportunity to meet the
band prior to the show!
You may be thinking, "But they stick around after shows and mingle with
their fans anyway," and "You've already met them a few times!" Both are
true. And even with this "VIP" package meet-and-greet, they still make
time for all their fans after the show. What this provided was a
somewhat quieter meeting in a more intimate setting.
In fact the meeting was in a small lounge beneath the concert hall. Dim
mood lighting, mirrors, and couches set the atmosphere. I spoke with
Rainbow, Michael, and Nate first. Rainbow informed me his name was
Michael also and made a joke about the "power of the three Mikes
lighting the room." After a bit, they started moving me to Chibi who was
sitting on a couch after injuring her knee during a show two nights
prior. She tried to walk to me, but I told her not to. She said, "I'll
meet you half way then."
I gave her a get well card, knowing she had had surgery on her vocal
chords about 8 weeks prior and recently injured her knee. Someone
decided we needed a photo of that and she gave me the card back so I
could give it back to her. I believe it was Owen who said, "Act natural
and hold it for 30 seconds!"
I asked Rainbow about writing "Unfamiliar" because both he and OE were
given credit in the liner notes. He said it was mostly OE; OE started it
and Rainbow had finished it. I said I wanted to thank them because it
was a song that had taken on some greater meaning to me and I relayed a
brief version of the story of the moment I recognized that. It turns
out "Unfamiliar" is one of Chibi's favorite songs too.
Every one of the bands that night were amazing. All, remarkably, were
performing as duos. Creature Feature was a real fun band to see. Their
music is heavily influenced by old horror movies which gives them a
dark yet fun sound.
Aesthetic Perfection put on a good performance. Their drummer is
amazing and fun to watch. They heavily synth-based and while there was a
dark tone to most of their songs, they still had fun and lightened
things up with a Fine Young Cannibals cover.
William Control was the only other act I had heard before the show
(Thanks Last.fm!). He was great live and I'd love to see him again. He
reminded me a little of Dommin in that Dean Martin meets Glen Danzig
sort of way.
The Birthday Massacre was great. They played a good mix including songs
from every album. For most of the set Chibi was sitting on a speaker
placed near center at the front of the stage, wearing a knee brace. She
stood up and moved around occasionally, but not much. At one point
Rainbow sat down on another speaker and stuck out one leg in a similar
fashion to how Chibi was seated and laughed a little. It was easy to
tell by their interaction here that Chibi and Rainbow are close.
If you care (or even if you don't), their set list follows:
Night Shift
Down
Control
Always
Red Stars
Video kid
Lover's End
Forever
Pins and Needles
Happy Birthday
Alibis
Calling
In the Dark
Sleep Walking
Midnight
-- Encore --
Leaving Tonight
The Long Way Home
Blue
The band did not leave the stage prior to the encore as they normally
would. Chibi said, "This is the part of the show where we say thank you
and leave and you clap and we come back out and play some more. But I'm
not going to walk down those stairs anymore than I have to, so do you
want to hear three more songs?"
Signs of the Apocalypse
A friend told me this was from Glee. I found it amusing; thought I'd
share.
It's a fact that the book of Revelations predicted Twitter. It's one of
the seven signs of the apocalypse; Along with porn, unexplainable
weather anomalies, martian rovers, Barney Frank, the middle east and
MSNBC. It's like Kirk Cameron said, "It's never too late, until it's too
late."
freebsd-update
I'm attempting to update my laptop from FreeBSD 9.1-Beta1 to 9.1-RC1. The
freebsd-update(8) utilitly was reporting an error finding the public key. A
quick search found this thread. As per tangram's
suggestion, I used
unHide
After a friend's computer became infected with some malware that hides
files in your home directory and tries to extort money from you in order
to "recover" your data, I was inspired to write this little
program.
All it does is search for hidden, non-system files and unhides them. It
defaults to the user's home directory (My Documents), but other
directories can be chosen.
If anyone wants to try it out, please do. If you do try it, let me know
what parts I can do better. I primarily work on embedded systems and
Unix daemons professionally; the user only knows my software exists when
it isn't working. As such, I have very little experience with GUIs or
human-computer interactions. Any feedback would be much appreciated.
Fun little alias
I use a console based RSS reader written in Ruby. It crashes often and
will delete my list of feeds in the process. It also has a tendency to
not fully exit, leaving a ruby process sitting in the background soaking
up close to 100% CPU time. For such occasions, I've added the following
alias to my .cshrc file.
Registration for the 2012 Lincoln Park Triathlon is now open. If anyone
is interested in volunteering, please email volunteers@lincolnparktriathlon.com.
My solution involved allocating new memory from the heap to store the
new string, and changing p to point to that buffer. They didn't like
that answer. They preferred the method of putting the new string in the
data segment as well.
I personally would always avoid that, whenever possible. "Hello" is
stored in a read-only area of memory as is "America" in their preferred
solution. Any attempt to alter those strings will trigger a segfault.
This is an accident waiting to happen.
Races, Races, Races
I've been busy the last few weeks or so; I've done a few races.
On October 30, I ran the Marine Corps Marathon in Arlington, VA and
Washington D.C.
On November 5, I ran the Beavertown Fall Classic 5K in my hometown.
On November 6, I ran the New York City Marathon for the second time.
On November 19, I ran the Knickerbocker 60K Ultramarathon in Central
Park.
On December 3, I ran NJ Winter Trail Series Race #1 Half Marathon in
Wayne.
On December 10, I ran the NYRR Jingle Bell Jog in Prospect Park.
On January 7, I ran the Walt Disney World Half Marathon, part one of
Goofy's Race and a Half Challenge.
On January 8, I ran the Walt Disney World Marathon, completing the
Goofy Challenge.
In 10 weeks I ran a 5K, a 6K, two Half Marathons, three Marathons,
and an Ultramarathon, plus a few training runs in there...
And last night Wii Fit called me a couch potato.
In defense of the game, I hadn't used it in 547 days, and I'm now 11
pounds heavier than when I had last used it. It has no way of knowing
that the vast majority of that weight gain was lean mass. It also has no
way of taking into account all that I've done outside the game.
Even with that in mind, it's still a little frustrating to be called a
couch potato after running a marathon and a half last weekend.
Each of these races were pretty special. I ran MCM alongside some fairly
awesome people; people who I consider to be among my closest friends. In
the Beavertown 5K, I somehow managed to take 12th overall and 5th in my
age group without really trying.
At NYC and then at the Knickerbocker, I ran with the friend who got me
started running in the first place. I credit him with saving my life,
and it was an honor and a pleasure to run with him.
The trail half was my first trail
race (not counting my time on the high school cross country team) and I
ran that with a friend I hadn't seen since our days on the high school
track & field team (she was a runner, I was thrower). We have both run
full marathons in less time than it took us to complete this half.
The Jingle Bell Jog was a fun race with bells and hot cocoa, and it was
the first time I ran alongside my friend and former physics TA. And
lastly, I ran the Goofy Challenge alongside another one of my close
friends and training partners.
These races were a lot of fun. Some of the courses were quite amazing
to see, and these races were opportunities to spend time with some
pretty awesome people.
Disgusted
With the Goofy Challenge just 3 days away, I should be carb-loading. And
I am. And with each bite of my lunch I hate myself more. Every time I
eat, I feel fat. And every time I ingest anything that isn't ultra-lean
protein or high-fiber, I disgust myself. But I sit here, shoving food
down my gullet.
"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.
He said, "I can't believe it, this amazing. I've always wanted to see
one of these. Man, I was just watching the movie last night. Can I take
a picture?"
I said, "sure" and let him know that it still needed some work so it
doesn't look as good as it could. He said, "It doesn't matter; it's a
DeLorean."
Later in the afternoon I went to get some more gas. I pulled into the
station, shut off the car, got out and opened the hood to get to the gas
cap. Neither of the attendants on duty had seen one before and both came
over to see the car. They had some questions about the body construction
and the engine.
I ran in the New York Run for the Parks 4M this morning in Central Park.
My last four mile race was the Grid Iron Classic back in February where
I finished with a time of 29:12 and an AG Performance % of 57.7. (I'm at
that age where my actual time is the same as my AG time).
I really wanted to try and beat that but my IT-band had been acting up
earlier in the week so I was pretty nervous and sure it wouldn't happen.
I woke up this morning and felt pretty good. I did some core training
and light weight lifting and then left for the race with my teammates,
feeling a little more optimistic.
I ended up having a really good first mile, running about a 7:09 pace. I
picked it up a bit and ended up finishing in 27:21 and achieved an AG
performance of 61.6%, beating my last 4M by 1:51.
My new best pace is 6:50/mile, down from 7:05, and I've reached the
"local class" achievement level.
It feels so good and I have my friends to thank for this. They convinced
me to run with them last year and my life has been completely
transformed since then. I've thanked them multiple times for what they
did, but I don't know if they'll ever know how much it really means to
me.
Staten Island Half Marathon
Sunday was the Staten Island Half Marathon. I've been dealing with
overuse injuries as of late, my IT-band has been acting up and I
strained my right hamstring.
I wasn't sure if I'd be running or not, and the temperature was
predicted to be in the low- to mid-50's, so I wore my coldgear; I didn't
want to end up with hypothermia again if I was standing around for 2
hours in shorts.
It turned out that one of my teammates, Liz, wasn't sure if she'd be
able to finish. We decided to run together. And we did. We finished with
the exact same time of 2:34:00. I kept her from stopping and she kept me
from going to fast and re-injuring myself.
It took me an hour longer to finish the race than it normally would, but
I think it went quite well. My hamstring actually felt better after the
run. My IT-band was a little sore the next day, but it was better by
Tuesday.
Running at the slower pace, I was able to actually look around and enjoy
the scenery. The shores Staten Island were not as bad as I was
expecting. Over all, it was a good recovery run. A 13.1 mile recovery
run.
Self Documenting Code
Despite what you think about your code, it is not self documenting. When
writing code add comments, describe what a function does, explain why
you're using that convoluted pointer arithmetic and bit shifting. I'm
sure it makes sense now, but someday you'll have to go back and look at
it and figure out what the hell you were doing. Or worse, I'll
have to go back and look at it and figure out what the hell you were
doing.
Sometimes it is important to have some sort of separate documentation
for the code; maybe some UML or ER diagrams, maybe some English text.
Use what ever it takes to explain what you were doing. Do not paste
snippets of your code into the text and call it documentation.That
is not documentation, that is code.
Acceptance, or lack thereof...
A few days ago I picked up some dumbbells that had been left out, they
were 40lbs each and I lifted them with one hand each. Three years ago
the most I could lift, with both arms combined and "lifting with the
legs," was 43lbs (the weight of my computer).
Last month, I ran a 5K in 19:08. Yesterday during a speed workout I ran
my two fastest 100m ever, 17.9 seconds and 17.87 seconds. Today I ran a
10K at a 6:24 pace, finishing in under 40 minutes. I've set a new PR in
every distance I've raced this year except the half marathon, and that
race I set a new record for myself on that particular course.
I've put lost 126 pounds of fat and gained 36 pounds of bone and muscle.
My body keeps getting stronger and faster.
And I still can't accept my body for what it is....
Scotland 10K 2011
This morning I ran the NYRR Scotland 10K for the third year in a row.
The first time it was cold and raining, and I had food poisoning from
eating at the Macaroni Grill the night before. (The Giraffes had a team
dinner the night before and 40% of us got sick.) I ran that race at a
slower pace than the 15K race a few weeks prior.
Last year, the morning of the race was unseasonably hot and I was
dealing with an ITBS flare-up. I ran that one almost as slowly as the
previous year.
All of the other 10K's I've run were always sub-par compared to my 5K
and 15K times. I had never felt like I had a good 10K race. I always
felt like I let myself down; like I should be doing better.
Until today...
Today's Scotland 10K was the first time I had a good run at this
distance. When I set out this morning, my goal was a 6:56 pace, one
second per mile better than my PR. Central Park was a bit chilly at
about 52 degrees with an overcast sky.
My team made our plans for meeting afterward and we took our places in
the corrals. The gun went off and I started running. As soon as I
crossed the starting line I decided I wanted to see how fast I could do
this, how fast I could run a 10K. I wanted to see if I could break 40.
So I ran fast and hard, watching my pace a little too closely at times.
After the first mile I was warm and debating whether or not to take off
the arm warmers. I decided to wait until later in the race, as one side
of the park is usually warmer than the other. At about 2.5 miles I had
a weird cramping feeling in the ball of my right foot, but within a few
hundred meters the high kicked in and the pain went away. At the halfway
point I knew I'd be close to a 40 minute finish if I kept up the pace.
I kept up the pace until the last mile, then I sped up. I was close to
the goal. I was going to make it or die trying. Well, probably not die.
More likely vomit or pull a muscle or re-injure the IT-band. But not one
of those problems happened. What did happen was I crossed the finish
line less than 40 minutes from the time I crossed the starting line.
For the first time, I had felt good during and after a 10K. I ran the
race I wanted and the race I needed. I accomplished what I set out to do
and it felt awesome.
The official results posted a few hours later put me at 39:46, a
6:24/mile pace. This is a faster pace than my current 5 mile and 4 mile
PRs. I ran at a 67.5% AG performance rating and finished 318 of 8491.
Last night, as an end to my 30th birthday weekend, I went to see The
Birthday Massacre in Teaneck. The show was at the Mexicali Live which is
a rather small, intimate venue with full table service for dining, and a
bar with some really good microbrews on tap.
The first act was A Verbal Equinox. I thought they were pretty good,
especially considering they all seemed to be still in high school. Their
set was pretty tight, with mostly original songs and a My Chemical
Romance cover. Frankly, I think they did the MCR song just as well, if
not better, than MCR. They definitely had a good rhythm section.
The next band, who shall remain nameless, was described by some as
"Armenian Industrial." I thought the music was good, but I wished the
singer would just shut up. No singing, no talking to the crowd. Just.
Shut. Up. Their set would have been awesome as an instrumental.
During their set they had two "gothy cheerleaders" on stage. It turned
out that one of them was my friend's niece. Kinda random.
After their set, I ran into a couple of the kids from the first band and
talked to them a bit. I told them I liked what I heard and they thanked
me and gave me a CD-R labeled with sharpie containing their first
recorded single. Something about that is just awesome.
The Birthday Massacre was great. They played a good mix including songs
from every album.
If you care (or even if you don't), their set list follows:
Pins and Needles
Control
Happy Birthday
Forever
Burn Away
Shallow Grave
Always
Weekend
Video kid
Blue
Looking Glass
Lover's End
In the Dark
Horror Show
Red Stars
-- Encore --
Sleep Walking
Midnight
They didn't play my favorite song, "Broken," but I was not disappointed in the
set at all. After they finished, Rainbow was on stage for a bit talking
with people from the crowd. I told him it was a great show and asked if
they'd be playing "Broken" at tonight's show with Dir En Grey. He said
it wouldn't be in the set, but he loves that song and they'd rehearse it
for their next tour.
A rather blurry picture of The Birthday Massacre from the show.
Last night, as an end to my 30th birthday weekend, I went to see The
Birthday Massacre in Teaneck. The show was at the Mexicali Live which is
a rather small, intimate venue with full table service for dining, and a
bar with some really good microbrews on tap.
The first act was A Verbal Equinox. I thought they were pretty good,
especially considering they all seemed to be still in high school. Their
set was pretty tight, with mostly original songs and a My Chemical
Romance cover. Frankly, I think they did the MCR song just as well, if
not better, than MCR. They definitely had a good rhythm section.
The next band, who shall remain nameless, was described by some as
"Armenian Industrial." I thought the music was good, but I wished the
singer would just shut up. No singing, no talking to the crowd. Just.
Shut. Up. Their set would have been awesome as an instrumental.
During their set they had two "gothy cheerleaders" on stage. It turned
out that one of them was my friend's niece. Kinda random.
After their set, I ran into a couple of the kids from the first band and
talked to them a bit. I told them I liked what I heard and they thanked
me and gave me a CD-R labeled with sharpie containing their first
recorded single. Something about that is just awesome.
The Birthday Massacre was great. They played a good mix including songs
from every album.
If you care (or even if you don't), their set list follows:
Pins and Needles
Control
Happy Birthday
Forever
Burn Away
Shallow Grave
Always
Weekend
Video kid
Blue
Looking Glass
Lover's End
In the Dark
Horror Show
Red Stars
-- Encore --
Sleep Walking
Midnight
They didn't play my favorite song, "Broken," but I was not disappointed in the
set at all. After they finished, Rainbow was on stage for a bit talking
with people from the crowd. I told him it was a great show and asked if
they'd be playing "Broken" at tonight's show with Dir En Grey. He said
it wouldn't be in the set, but he loves that song and they'd rehearse it
for their next tour.
A rather blurry picture of The Birthday Massacre from the show.
"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.
Christmas Eve
On Christmas Eve, I headed out around 7:00PM to take a look at the
Christmas lights and decorations around town. There was a snow storm
predicted for around 9:00PM, so I decided to take the DeLorean out for
one last drive before the Wonderful Winter Weather(TM).
The snow started much earlier than expected. The snow was light and
slow, and despite the car not handling well in slick conditions, I kept
going for a while.
As I was driving I had the realization that I was having an experience
no one else in the world has ever had. I was driving a DeLorean through
my town on Christmas Eve, admiring Christmas lights and listening to
Christmas music as snow fell.
I looked over at the empty passenger seat and wished there had been
someone, anyone there to share this with. So for now, until
circumstances like this arise again, I will continue to be the only
person to have experienced this.
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.
Time Travel?
A few months ago I happened to snap a photo of the DeLorean on Main
Street in Boonton near the Darress Theatre. It's probably one of my
favorite photographs of the car and certainly one of the best I've ever
taken.
The theatre was built in 1919 and has remained largely unchanged since
then. A lot of Boonton still has a very old "look and feel" to it, and
this section of Main Street served as a perfect backdrop for the
DeLorean.
Ninth Runniversary
Yesterday was my ninth runniversary. Like my first day running, I ran on
the treadmill while listening to Broken. Unlike the first time, I only
listened to it once, and covered 4.48 miles during the duration of the
EP, thanking God every step of the way.
I'm confident in knowing that the bone in my ankle has healed completely
now; however, I'm still rebuilding the muscle in that ankle and the rest
of that leg. There was significant atrophy during the early phases of
recovery. Slowly as it may be, I am making progress, and I am thankful
for that.
I thought I had healed from the chafing left after Saturday's River to
Sea Relay... Until I ran in the rain yesterday. To quote a friend, "It
feels like someone took a cheese grater to my crotch."
Tonight I signed up for the Fireside beta. They asked for all my social
media accounts to prove I'm a human. The problem is, I don't have a
twitter account, a facebook account, instagram, etc. Years ago I took
the advice of numerous psychology studies and my own therapist's advice
and got off the social media platforms. It was one of the best things
I've ever done for my mental health.
So hopefully this blog, though infrequently updated (and slightly broken
since the last major perl update), will serve as proof to the people at
Fireside that I am human and not a bot.
It was the Astonishing
Legends Podcast that led me to Fireside. It would be nice to use it
for one of their interactive live chats sometime.
A Day at the Races... In Brooklyn
Yesterday was the Brooklyn Half Marathon. It started in Prospect Park
and made 2 loops around the park before exiting and getting on to Ocean
Parkway at the 7 mile. From there it was straight to Coney Island where
the race finished on the boardwalk near Keyspan Park. Approximately
12,000 people entered the race, and 9,415 people finished within the
three hour time limit.
I was aiming for a pace between 7:30 and 7:45 per mile and ended up with
a 7:33 pace for the day finishing in 1:39:07, ten minutes faster than my
time for the Manhattan Half. While not my best pace ever, it is a half
marathon PR for me.
Team Giraffes had a good showing. Four of the seven runners we entered
finished in under 2 hours, and all finished in under 2:30. Four members
of the team have completed their qualifiers for the 2010 NYC Marathon
now, and another is one race away from completion.
Random Running Related Updates
I ran in another 10K in Central Park this past weekend. I took it a
little easy but still managed to take a minute per mile off my time from
the Homecoming Scotland 10K last month. It's funny how much better you
can perform without food poisoning.
I have a 3 mile race in the Financial District tonight. It was supposed
to be a 5K, but the course was changed due to construction. I'd like to
finish in under 20 minutes, but we'll see how it goes. I'm feeling a
little sluggish today.
The Brooklyn Half is coming up on the 30th. It starts in Prospect Park
and ends at Coney Island. I'm just shooting for a better time than the
Manhattan Half. The weather should be about 50 to 60 degrees warmer for
Brooklyn so I shouldn't really have to worry about freezing sweat this
time. My pace at shorter distances has improved quite a bit since
January so I have that working in my favor as well.
The running team is expanding. We have a new member for the Giraffes.
Hopefully we'll be able to get five men and five women for each NYRR
race so we can be ranked in the club standings. I don't expect we'd do
very well against teams like NYAC or TRD, they seem to be fairly large
teams with a lot of good runners, but it would be nice to see the
Giraffes in the rankings.
Two of The Giraffes (Liz and I) have finished our 9+1 qualification
races and are guaranteed entry in the 2010 NYC Marathon. Two more will
complete their 9+1 at the Brooklyn Half.
Show and Tell
The Birthday Massacre's new live album Show and Tell is out
today. Go get it! I was lucky enough to pick up a copy at their concert
last weekend. It's pretty awesome.
If you're a fan of TBM it's definitely worth adding
to your collection. If you've never heard of them, the best way I've
heard their sound described is as "a combination of synth-pop, black
metal, and 80's new wave."
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.
