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Made Out of Babies played NorthSix last Saturday 7/23/05. The gig went pretty well, and featured the New York City premier of their latest song "Gunt".
No, I don't know what it means! It's kind of dreamy and hypnotic in part, chaotic in others with a chugging beat.
Once again I filmed the gig, and hope to share the results with the band at some point. Picture quality came out so-so due to low, mostly red light. Sounds quality not bad, varies depending on where I was standing. As requested I tried to get some footage from towards the back to show that, yes, there is an audience at these gigs!
New, non-album tracks now in the can include Gunt, Space Patoozy, Tractor, Fed and Out (Full Version).
I'm not a music writer, but here's my take :
I was thrilled to see a preview screening of Star Wars Episode III this afternoon. I had to take a 1/2 day off work but it was worth it.
I'd go along with a lot of what has been written in the favorable reviews, and also some of the negative ones.
The only thing left to say is the bits that I noticed that I hadn't read about already. Don't read any further if you are avoiding spoilers!
My feeling is George Lucas did not wimp out as much as I expected him to. He's bridged the two trilogies amazingly well, and ultimately it was about as good as it possibly could have been.
He also seemed to expand his own range, managing to intermix truly political observations with farce and physical humor.
I heard that Steven Spielberg cried at the end, and in a different setting i might have come close myself. Certainly the film made me sad. I knew a lot of Jedi weren't going to make it, but I wasn't ready for most of them to be summarily shot in the back. I also hadn't considered that there are Jedi kids at the academy.
Lucas' dialog is as bad as ever, I now like to think that in fact
they didn't speak English a long time ago in a galaxy far far away,
so in fact everything spoken in the film has been translated at
least once, possibly many times. In fact, once you accept that, the
dialog makes absolutely perfect sense. One day maybe someone will
fix it, with an idiomatic overdubbing, but until then we must make
do with flat computer generated dictionary speak dialog. It's a
small price to pay.
posted at: 22:22 | path: /films | permanent link to this entry
I'm now on my second high-def movie editing project.
I am starting to understand how it works a bit better. The slowness during importing is not because my laptop can't receive the data in real-time from the camera. That's no problem at all, as if you watch the LCD on the camera you see the footage replaying smoothly. Instead it seems to be the transcoding from HDV format (http://www.hdv-info.org/) to Apple Intermediate Codec format, since even after the tape stops, the laptop spends several more hours churning away doing something.
The first time I realised this is how it works I not only pressed stop on the camera as soon as the footage finished, and then disconnected the firewire cable so I could put the camera away (it's not something I like to leave out where it could attract Lucy's attention). Unfortunately, soon after this the laptop noticed the disconnect and killed the import operation retaining only the footage it had finished converting. This seems like a bug to me!
Not wanting to splice together two sections of footage from the continuous source, I deleted my project and reimported. The second attempt wasn't anywhere near done by 11.30pm so I left it running overnight.
The next morning, I came down to find the laptop hard drive near full, with the films clips totalling about 35 minutes - not the full 40 minutes. iMovie HD seems to graciously refuse to take the hard disk to 100% full, instead leaving a few hundred megs out of my original 25GB or so free space.
Editing a large file like this which used up nearly the last few megs of the drive is where even iMovie starts to breakdown. It turns out that the raw filesystem performance for that file can get down as low as 1-2MB/s as observed in the Apple "Activity Monitor" application. This causes iMovie to give up trying to replay the video, so editing becomes near impossible. I was forced to move the files to my external firewire hard drive, which isn't that fast, but is massively faster when it has 50GB free on it than my laptop drive with 500MB!
I eventually struggled through this project on my laptop, but it's clear I'm going to need some serious hardware!
posted at: 22:20 | path: /movie-making | permanent link to this entry
Sony HDR-FX1 - report on my first project
I shot a rock gig to start with to get a feel for this camera. At nearly five pounds, I don't expect to be able to hand-hold it for very long without the $300 brace (which I don't have) so instead I bought a general purpose tripod and took a rather static approach. I'm viewing this project as something of a test, however it turned out quite well and provided a lot of useful answers to questions I'd been wondering about.
I used a regular Mini-DV tape, not the special 63 minute Sony HDV tapes (which appear to be just high-spec Mini-DV tapes anyway). I didn't suffer any dropouts, but if I start to I might invest in the high-grade tapes for "events" like this. Regular tapes, plus regular cleaning, make more sense for experimenting. After all if I get a bit of a dropout filming something I can film again later, it's less of a big deal.
Taking a $3400 camera to a punk rock gig in Manhattan made me a little nervous - I don't even have a case for it yet - so I put it in a plastic shopping bag and just took VERY good care of it!
On the other hand, something so big is a little unusual in such circumstances, especially on a tripod. When people came and stood right in my shot I just tapped them on the shoulder and pointed to the camera. They mostly moved like they'd been stung. I had no right, of course, but if they hadn't even seen the camera and didn't mind moving, well then it worked out. The one person who wasn't so impressed turned out to be half of the headline act - Gil Mantera's Party Dream - whoops, sorry! I'll have to make it up to them...
One thing I have struggled with on these types of shoots is the volume level. Basically these gigs are too loud to record on the built-in mic of my other camera, the DCR-TRV70, so I've had to use a decent quality plug-in powered microphone.
My first question was how is the manual sound level control on the FX-1. So far my answer is "mixed". I used the manual dial and the onscreen levels to adjust the sensitivity, but firstly it's not clear how high the peaks should be - all the way across? Half-way? Maybe this is in the manual, but I haven'd found it. I took a guess and set them to peak at about 75%, but from the soundtrack I ended up with, I would say perhaps this was too high. Next time I will probably try again with my external mic, but anyway my results were :
But I know this not the interesting bit. Audio recording isn't going through quite such an unheaval as the transition from SD to HD and 4:3 to 16:9. The big question is : what's the picture like?
It'd be nice to just post samples, but I haven't shared my results with the band yet, and since they haven't approved any video for release anyway, I'm not about to (but I'm working on it).
The answer though, is this : The picture quality of the Sony HDR-FX1 is absolutely freaking amazing. When I plugged the camera into our Sony TV and played it back for my wife and some guests, everyone was astonished. Colors, detail, lack of low-light artifacts. It has to be seen to be believed. It's kind of unbelievable. I'm glad I did the right thing, I bought one to find out for myself, because trying to be 100% certain it's a good buy by reading the web is a bit like learning about beer from chemistry textbooks. I made a "normal" DVD and I am thrilled with the results (not the audio, my camera-work or editing, but just the sheer image quality). For a rock gig in a tiny venue on the Lower East Side (small, cramped, poorly lit), it's beyond good value for money.
And now some "tech notes" for the truly interested.
These figures point to some of the downsides of the "HD Revolution". My laptop struggled to import the footage, running at 1/4 - 1/8 real-time speed. I'm sure that can't be good for the tape drive in the camera.
When I opened up iMovie with the resulting monster 19GB file, it complained that I need 1GHz cpu for HD (my powerbook is 867MHz). Doing very basic editing of the footage into chapters for each song worked perfectly well, but then when I output to iDVD, the rendering literally took all night. I had to put my laptop on a wireframe cookie cooler that I have, as I was afraid it would break (again) from getting so hot.
Some stuff is a bit more sensible though. For example, it is not actually necessary to own a high-def TV to start working with high-def footage - we don't for instance. When I connected my camera up, I just used the composite video cable, and it "just worked". Clearly it just puts out a non-high-def, but still widescreen signal, and the TV had no problem (Sony WEGA 32-inch).
I'm sure there are people who have put off "going high-def" until they can get an "end-to-end" solution, but in my view there is no need. My workflow is all regular definition for playback, but the extra definition is not impossibly intrusive and I am able to start accumulating raw footage in HD. As time goes by, I'll get the HDTV for living room playback, the "high-def Mac" for editing, and the HDDVD or Blu-Ray burner for making high-def DVDs, but by then my daughter will be a few years older and the bands I'm filming could be famous (or retired and flipping burgers) - I wont be able to go back in time and re-capture high-def versions of past events, and in the meantime, I'm getting better results in regular definition anyway.
High-Def : The Time is Now!
More links : CamcorderInfo.com
posted at: 00:03 | path: /movie-making | permanent link to this entry
I bought myself a new video camera. It's a Sony HDR-FX1. I've got a lot to learn before I can really try it out. In the meanwhile, here are some of the writeups on it that persuaded me this is the one for me
For now, though, I think the overwhelming impression is "that's a lot of
buttons!".
posted at: 21:16 | path: /movie-making | permanent link to this entry
I discussed with an Apple support representative last Friday how my laptop was not fully backed up when I sent it off for repair. When a computer goes from 100% working to 100% not working with no intervening stages, it's hard to pick the right moment to do a backup...
From her tone, I gathered that the merest hint of hard disk problems would have the technician hoik out my hard disk and dump it -before- finding out whether some other component might be at fault. So it looked almost certain my laptop would come back blank.
So I had a long weekend to contemplate just how many files were not backed up on my laptop. It's quite a grim thought. I have most of my email and digital photos backed up, but there are a few weeks not saved.
My weblog lives on my server, so it's fine. However the little rsync script which nicely publishes it for me lives only on my laptop. Doh!
Living without my laptop for a while, I realised my email filters in "Mail" are also completely un-backed-up. Doh!
Browser bookmarks - Doh!
Palm Desktop - Doh!
Lots of brief moments of horror like this. Oh what fun.
So it's with great relief I can report my laptop came back fully repaired,
and yet with all my files. Flextronics of Memphis, Tennessee, you rock!
Applecare? JUST DO IT, it's worth it.
posted at: 23:09 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry
My DSL went down on the day I was travelling to the UK. It had gone down before a few days previously and come back up, so I ignored it. On arrival in the UK, my laptop failed to boot, so I couldn't get online at the hotel in London. Finally I arrived at my parents house to find their DSL was down too.
After several days of frustration I fixed their problem. Sky TV had come in and fitted a new cable box with no filter on the phone line. What a bunch of amateurs!
Getting on-line I found my server still down, so I asked Speakeasy to try and reset the circuit. Their vendor Covad were a little unwilling to help until I'd reset my modem (impossible) but I persuaded them to try it. No joy.
To cut a long story short, my line stayed down until yesterday evening when Verizon replaced a cable from our back wall to the phone pole at the bottom of the yard. There was no useful email waiting for me, as the backup mail exchanger gave up after 4 days or so. So I lost a bunch of email, probably got booted off a bunch of lists and my laptop is due to go off to Apple in a box. Waah!
Lessons learned?
Slim Devices kicks it up a notch
If it weren't for the fact that I'm very satisfied with my original Slim Devices Squeezebox, I might well have some buyers remorse over the upgrade they've just announced.
The Squeezebox 2 takes it to a whole new level - lossless music formats, Burr-Brown DAC, 802.11g WiFi, higher-resolution screen, visualisers. Not to mention "High precision dedicated crystal clocks and separate linear power supplies for the audio stages" and "Huge 64 megabit buffer for extreme resilience to adverse wireless network conditions."
I wonder if it would interest truly hardcore audiophiles now wanting the convenience of keeping music on a server, such as Sun's Tim Bray.
I'm not in the same audiophile league as Tim, no doubt, but he's thinking of a Mac mini and firewire drive setup near his hifi. That's certainly one way to do it. I'll be following his investigations with interest.
Me, I've got an 1466 Mhz AthlonXP/100 GB Seagate IDE/ 1.25 GB RAM/
mid-tower setup, with UPS, Apple Airport hub etc etc - messy. noisy, hot
etc. The thing is, it's in the basement, and I'm listening to music on the
ground floor. Works for me.
posted at: 10:35 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
The choices were to watch "CSI" about a flight attendant brutally stabbed to death in a hotel room, or fit my DDS3 drive and get my workstation backed up.
It's obvious, right? I fitted the tape drive. It actually took about 10-15 minutes of real work, plus 1/2 hour searching for a power cable extender (you know, those internal power cables with molex connectors? I have a bunch of extenders somewhere). I never found the extender, so I snipped a cable tidy holding back the existing one inside the box and got the tape drive fully hooked up.
I think a SB1000 looks very nice with a DVD-ROM and a tape drive. Sure it would be even better to have a DDS4 or DAT 74 or whatever the latest kind is, but they cost about 5X more!
As I write this, I'm doing a level0 backup of the entire machine to tape. Quick, are there files at risk where you (yes, YOU!) live? :)
To get things kicked off, I'm using hostdump.sh which takes 2 minutes to download install and works out what to dump all by itself.
Yes, I know that real men write their own scripts, using star, fancy block
sizes, FIFO buffers etc, but I've always thought it better to start with
protecting the data, then work on the sophistication and efficiency of
the backup system strictly in that order.
posted at: 22:16 | path: /solaris | permanent link to this entry
I bought a DDS3 drive for my Sun Blade 1000 on Ebay. Should arrive any day. This is a DAT based tape drive which has a pretty good $/MB rating these days. I prefer DLT, but only when someone else is buying the tapes.
At a modest 12GB native capacity, and rather leisurely transfer rate, it's not something I'm going to be keeping my digital video projects on.
On my Sun machine, however, the main things are my programming projects, my .profile, my .emacs, my CVS repository. This stuff fits nicely in a few gig. I also like the idea of a backup device built-in. So I can put a fresh tape in regularly, use a cron job for the scheduling and have a stack of tapes on top of the machine. If something goes horribly wrong, it will be fairly straightforward to get files back.
For resilience, once I have local backups running, I'm going to do a sort of "cooperative rsync partnership" with a friend who lives uptown (see Eloptoof.Net) and I suppose one DDS tape is no big deal to take Upstate when we next get away for a bit of geographic separation.
Long-term I plan to have a backup server, with a better tape drive,
running Amanda but whilst data is at
risk, a small local tape drive, plus hostdump.sh is a
good first step.
posted at: 22:37 | path: /solaris | permanent link to this entry
Powerbook - return of the life
My Powerbook came back from Apple safe and sound. Hallelujah!
No logic board swap, no new hard disk, just a new superdrive.
I wasn't expecting it this quick (less than one week) and it came superbly packaged - like "I'm going to keep this box" superb. So on the whole I am once again happy with Apple and my investment in AppleCare is definitely showing a big return (I simply knew something had to give eventually given how much work this laptop does).
Any complaints? Well, the CD that jammed wasn't returned. I'm going to assume it was more work to get it out of the knackered drive, so I'll let them off. I also asked for them to look at the latch which is reluctant to trigger, which they don't seem to have done, but I can see that this laptop is basically in good shape for its age and allow it some signs of again.
During the worrying time when I thought the laptop might get damaged and I might lose files I got a bit more serious about backups again. My research led me to favor Dantz Retrospect software plus a stack of Firewire hard drives for backups and standbys. For more details on the reasoning behind this, please see Take Control of Mac OS X Backups - a rather good "EBook" I bought (and no, I wont forward you the PDF, buy your own!).
I need to take a deep breath before committing that much cash (make sure I don't have any other big bills lurking). In the meanwhile, here's the semi-random things I backed up off my laptop :-
And here are the things I didn't backup, that I realised I'd miss after I handed over the laptop and walked off :-
So here's to backups, but also, here's to a hard disk that didn't
fail. "TOSHIBA MK6021GAS" you made my day.
posted at: 22:27 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry
I made an early start this morning and got to the Apple Store SoHo by 9am. They don't open until 10am. So I'm not the genius in this story, it's safe to say.
Trying again, I made an appointment for 4.45, and just before that time grabbed a taxi, making it to the store just after 5pm. I figured they might be running a bit behind, and I can hang around a bit if they've given my slot away, since I am a little late, should work out nicely, right?
Arriving in the store for the first time wanting to get something out of the genius bar, I found I didn't know how it works.
There might be a sign saying "wait here and someone will see you". But no.
There might be a ticket dispenser saying "take a number". But no.
I had to interrupt a "genius" to ask "how does this work". I consider this already a sign of bad design.
The friendly and overworked person told me there are two sweepers who handle incoming requests ... but she couldn't actually see any. That would explain why there's a small knot of anxious people building up. There are signs overhead showing who's next, but they aren't changing.
They sweepers turned up in a few minutes, and I eventually got to talk to one. Firstly I mentioned I had an appointment and was just a little late. He scribbled something and said "oh, you're fine". This didn't really explain enough to me. I asked him "so do I just ... hang around then". He told me yes, just hang around.
It's only by overhearing do I find out the signs listing who's next are apparently just for show, because when someone asks why they show the same names, they are told "That's not how it works here".
Similarly, I overhear something about a two hour wait - nah, can't be!
After waiting for half an hour or so fairly patiently (I thought) I got a bit tired of standing around, so I sat down at a free stool at the genius bar got out my laptop and hopped on the free Wifi and checked my email. Yes, I was trying to be a little in-your-face, this is New York after all.
This got the attention of "my" sweeper. It turns out the sweepers spend a lot of time doing frontline customer service themselves - simple user error in ipods or laptops they can handle. The guy tried rebooting my laptop whilst holding down the mouse button. Ok, that's nice of him, but I was trying to explain that I already had a case number from AppleCare phone support, and I had already exhausted every known troubleshooting trick for this issue. So he rebooted my laptop for nothing, but no harm done.
I stayed at the bar whilst a number of people seemingly walked up with iPod problems and got immediate attention. The guy right next to me seemed very taken with the woman behind the desk who was trying to make his Dell laptop work right with his iPod. He was chatting about how he arranges his music and stuff. All very nice, but he was into Apple for a maximum of $300.
One of the geniuses caught my eye - a little older than some of his colleagues, and he seemed like he was very knowledgeable and I thought I'd seen him checking out someone's iBook. He looks like the guy for me I thought.
So a girl comes up, bypasses the sweepers and asks him (my guy - let's call him Ted) something. Ted goes to a sweeper and says he's going to just take care of something very quickly. It's an iPod pickup. He does take care of it quite quickly, but that's still at least 10 minutes stolen from all the patient laptop clutching people already waiting.
At this point, I'm starting to lose patience. I'm getting stressed, that acidy stomach feeling is growing. After all, I asked Apple for a time, made a pretty good effort to be there. Surely if they're this late every day (and it appears they are) they should change how they do the "reservations"?
I go to my sweeper and try to point out that some of the staff are taking walk-ups. I understand it's only for quick things, but I point out that since my machine is already diagnosed and 99% certain to be sent off, couldn't someone have a quick go - it's "just a drop-off". He says no, there are different technicians for different tasks. An iPod technician can't take a laptop job, and "we don't do drop-offs".
So eventually my turn comes, about an hour after I arrived (more than an hour after my "appointment"). As luck would have it, I end up with "Ted". Yes, he can't fix it, and yes it does have to be sent to Apple. And yes Ted really is technically excellent - asking me about my backups, checking my contact info, deauthorizing my itunes files in case I receive a logic board swap etc etc. Apple has talented support staff who really care about their job and confirm everything I had hoped for in paying for extended support. But it still leaves me irritated ... this guy, who CAN take laptop questions, also apparently just fills in with "quickies" - because the sweeper disappeared and nobody else know's who's next, because it depends on his secret paper-based system. Fucking Hell!
It's utterly frustrating, but also unnecessary. The sweepers and technicians are overloaded with support questions for iPods and really try very hard to cope. However, in trying to accomodate someone who just needs their ipod reset, they unknowingly undermine the system. Meanwhile a stream of people needing help with their actual expensive Apple computers are told "come back tomorrow" or "wait time is two hours right now" even if they made an appointment before-hand.
Here is my suggestion, for what it's worth. The deli counter at my local supermarket does customer service better than this, so just use their system for now (a really amibitious upgrade would be based on state-of-the-art retailers like B&H Photo Video).
Firstly, throw away the web interface - since you're not using it, it
is just an extra insult to your customers. Just put a ticket system at
the front door, with a sign. "People needing technical help please
take a number". Have the staff providing technical help always serve
the next number. If the person who took the number doesn't respond,
move to the next number. Either have separate ipod and laptop people,
or don't, but please don't let the staff make it up as they go
along. And finally, drop that name, please?
posted at: 22:26 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry
When I decided to have a "rescue" channel for my blog, it was so that I could talk about the crazy broken hardware I find (or buy off Ebay) and try to fix.
My last entry was about a completely smashed iMac for instance.
However, I'm sorry to report my Powerbook has gotten rather stuck - it will not eject a cd I inserted to rip to mp3. It's not as if "Ceremony" by "The Cult" was really worth it, considering...
When I try the various methods of getting the machine to eject the cd, it makes all the noises it normally makes when ejecting. The only problem is the cd doesn't make it out. Then it makes all the normal cd insertion noises, and the cd appears back on the desktop, and typically iTunes automatically runs again. Great...
Next step, Apple's support website. I tried resetting various things - pram, power controller etc.
Final step, Googling for other peoples suggestions, but there's nothing remotely useful so far.
So I checked my AppleCare - 400 days left of coverage - phew! I rang through this morning, and after a few more troubleshooting attempts, I got a case number that I can use at the "Genius Bar" at the Apple Store in SoHo. The lady who took my call commented that they would probably send it off for service, and that they would probably just replace the entire drive. Assuming she was right, this does validate the cost of AppleCare - because althought it may be $350 for a Powerbook (ouch!), I believe Superdrive was a $300 option at that time!
For a machine I use literally every day, that goes almost everywhere I go,
and that has already burned dozens, maybe hundreds of DVDs (e.g. MooB Live at the
Lime Spider), AppleCare was a great investment for me.
posted at: 20:33 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry
My Daughter pulled a fast one on me earlier in the week. I was looking after her by myself while my wife had to work late. So we played a bit, read some books, watched a little TV, had a bite to eat etc. All pretty unremarkable.
At one point, however, she was about three feet from me behind the arm of the sofa. I was browsing the web and she was very quiet, so I figured she was fine - all her books are on a little shelf there. I'd know if she moved anywhere. Anyway after about five minutes I got up to check how she was doing, only to find a picture of absolute devastation. Well, the tissue box was fairly gone anyway.
There seemed to be only two possible reactions - tell her No! collect all the tissues, get the box away from her, or ... get the camera.
Plan B is clearly better, so I now proudly presentThe Tissue
Episode. I took a bunch of stills, then exported them to quicktime
directly from iPhoto. It made a nice little souvenir
posted at: 10:00 | path: /movie-making | permanent link to this entry
I need to rationalise my SPARC machines, so where better to start than with an inventory? I need to see if I can get rid of some of these, because we have to move house soon, and right now we have a big basement. I can't count on having that much room going forward.
I used this for several years as my daily Sun workstation at home. I implemented my first OpenGL component on this machine, which eventually got ported to Windows, and with massive further development can be seen from the Bloomberg function "OVDV" (click on "3d graph").
I find that raw compute performance of the Ultra 10 machine is not bad - that's a 2MB cache cpu. Also graphics are quite good with the Elite card. Not as snappy at 2D as a Creator card, or certainly modern PC cards. I/O performance just BLOWS, however, with the default hard disk and cd-rom.
This machine came with a near-identical "twin" off ebay (same auction) that I set up for a friend - Solaris 8, forte 6.2, 13w3 adapter, the lot. I took it to the Mailboxes shop nearby and shipped it to London for him. Phew, that was heavy! He paid me back in full. Sadly, he never even unpacked it. That other machine is called "feanor"...
This was a "trophy" machine really. I spent way too much buying this little charmer off Ebay. I had a SPARC20 at Goldman Sachs when I used to work there, so this does have some nostalgia value. I used it as a jumpstart server for a while, but it's really quite slow, and it puts off a lot of heat and sometimes a whiff of hot metal smell, and is also noisy. I have some photos of when it arrived here. The "console funnies" were amusing (odd graphics effects when it switches from X11 back to OBP prompt).
My current jumpstart server. Performs very well, and does not put off too much heat (at least with the unscientific "put hand near air vent" test). I put a SCSI DVD-ROM in it. Works fine.
This was also my first Solaris 10 machine. I attempted to do something interesting with zones and multiple NICs with this card, but I ran across a bug in the then-current version of Solaris 10 and gave up for the time being. I need to get back to that idea (future blog ahoy).
This was fun for a while. It has no graphics so I had to hook up the serial console to a serial port on my Ultra 10. Getting Solaris 8 to install on this was "interesting". It couldn't bring up its NIC when it booted off disk whatsoever. Someone had done a reinstall of Solaris 2.6 (IIRC) and been naughty and not tested it, clearly they'd missed some required stuff. Anyway, I put in a SunSwift card I happened to have (NIC+SCSI) and it -nearly- got on the network (the link went up and down once and then stayed down). However when I broke into OBP and then continued, it finally worked it out. The official solution was to use the platform CD ... which of course one tends not to get with Ebay purchases. There is some bug with CPU speeds over a certain level (227 mhz maybe?)and that version of Solaris. Anyway once I managed to get it on the network, I net booted Solaris 8 and it was fine. Performance is good, but rackmount cases have obnoxiously loud fans. I planned to gut it and rebuild into a quiet case but never got around to it.
I used this for several months. I had to fit some SCA-II SCSI disks to it as it came stripped. The RAID controller has an LCD screen and also a serial port. There was a quad Zynix NIC in it which didn't seem to work, and the built-in NIC was also flaky. Currently it has my SunSwift card in it. I also used a spare Creator3D UPA card in it for a while. Once again the dreaded noise aspect limits the fun. I plan to rip out the good stuff and use it in the AXi rebuild project.
This is what I have at work. It's a very nice machine. Built like a tank. Good performance. Firewire, USB, Fiber Channel, SCSI. Fairly quiet, PCI environment monitoring built-in - it's really a "proper server" in a workstation case - the E280R has exactly the same motherboard. The CPUs come on daughter boards which have to be carefully fitted and then tightened into place using a (provided) torque wrench. Complete beast to move around.
This machine can put off a tremendous amount of heat when it runs flat out, but it also has clock speed switching to limit power dissipation under low load, so it's still Energy Star qualified.
Prices on these machines finally dropped recently. Firstly there is now a steady supply of newer Sun Blade 1500, 2000 and 2500 workstations on Ebay which limit how much the older machine can go for. The 1500 and 2500 have a much more suitable workstation processor, the UltraSPARC-IIIi, however they are still relatively new and costly. I have a 2500 at work also, it kicks ass, but overall it's not quite as special as the 1000. The SB2000 might be good too, but I find it doesn't look as nice for some reason.
The SB1000, after all, has the unique illuminated Sun logo - you should be able to make it out here.
This is my Solaris 10 desktop machine. If I do any more home-based Solaris development, this is where I'll do it.
I'm going to finish with the output of one of my favourite commands on SPARC/Solaris. The prtdiag command has special knowledge of the hardware of the machine that is running it, as long as it's called via the correct, hardware dependent path under /var/platform. This includes hardware details such as number, type, cache size of the cpus, graphics cards, bus adapters etc - even CPU temperature. One thing that disappointed me with recent changes in Solaris is this command stopped printing precise temperatures, because it was giving customers too much to think about, and instead only prints "okay" if the temps are within the acceptable ranges.
One of the things that Open Solaris will allow is "fixing" issues like this - I will be able to have my own version of this command, for example.
I hope that when Sun does full-strength AMD based server designs, this kind of valuable utility will be supported (and similar monitoring hardware will be provided) on the x86 side of the reservation.
Note : one doesn't even have to muck about with switch statements to work out which machine scripts are, just use uname - see the following :-
bash-3.00$ /usr/platform/`uname -i`/sbin/prtdiag -v
System Configuration: Sun Microsystems sun4u SUNW,Sun-Blade-1000 (2 X UltraSPARC-III)
System clock frequency: 150 MHZ
Memory size: 2GB
==================================== CPUs ====================================
E$ CPU CPU
CPU Freq Size Implementation Mask Status Location
--- -------- ---------- ------------------- ----- ------ --------
0 750 MHz 8MB SUNW,UltraSPARC-III 5.4 on-line +-board/cpu0
1 750 MHz 8MB SUNW,UltraSPARC-III 5.14 on-line +-board/cpu1
================================= IO Devices =================================
Bus Freq Slot + Name +
Type MHz Status Path Model
---- ---- ---------- ---------------------------- --------------------
pci 33 +s/system-board ebus/ns87317-ecpp (parallel)
okay /pci@8,700000/ebus@5/parallel
pci 33 +s/system-board ebus/se (serial)
okay /pci@8,700000/ebus@5/serial
pci 33 +s/system-board pci108e,1101 (network) SUNW,pci-eri
okay /pci@8,700000/network@5,1
pci 33 +s/system-board pciclass,0c0010 (firewire)
okay /pci@8,700000/firewire@5,2
pci 33 +s/system-board scsi-pci1000,f (scsi-2)
okay /pci@8,700000/scsi
pci 33 +s/system-board scsi-pci1000,f (scsi-2)
okay /pci@8,700000/scsi
pci 66 +s/system-board SUNW,qlc-pci1077,2200 (scsi-+
okay /pci@8,600000/SUNW,qlc@4
upa 120 +em-board/J4501 SUNW,ffb (display) SUNW,501-4788
okay /upa@8,480000/SUNW,ffb@0,0
upa 120 +em-board/J3501 SUNW,ffb (display) SUNW,501-4788
okay /upa@8,480000/SUNW,ffb@1,0
============================ Memory Configuration ============================
Segment Table:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Base Address Size Interleave Factor Contains
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
0x0 2GB 4 BankIDs 0,1,2,3
Bank Table:
-----------------------------------------------------------
Physical Location
ID ControllerID GroupID Size Interleave Way
-----------------------------------------------------------
0 0 0 512MB 0
1 0 1 512MB 1
2 0 0 512MB 2
3 0 1 512MB 3
Memory Module Groups:
--------------------------------------------------
ControllerID GroupID Labels Status
--------------------------------------------------
0 0 chassis/system-board/J0100
0 0 chassis/system-board/J0202
0 0 chassis/system-board/J0304
0 0 chassis/system-board/J0406
0 1 chassis/system-board/J0101
0 1 chassis/system-board/J0203
0 1 chassis/system-board/J0305
0 1 chassis/system-board/J0407
=============================== usb Devices ===============================
Name Port#
------------ -----
keyboard 3
mouse 4
============================ Environmental Status ============================
Fan Status:
---------------------------------------
Location Sensor Status
---------------------------------------
+stem-fan-slot system-fan okay
+/cpu-fan-slot cpu-fan okay
+r-supply-slot power-supply okay
---------------------------------------
Temperature sensors:
------------------------------------
Location Sensor Status
------------------------------------
+em-board/cpu0 Die okay
+em-board/cpu0 Ambient okay
+em-board/cpu1 Die okay
+em-board/cpu1 Ambient okay
================================ HW Revisions ================================
ASIC Revisions:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Path Device Status Revision
-------------------------------------------------------------------
/pci@8,700000 pci108e,8001 okay 5
/pci@8,600000 pci108e,8001 okay 5
/pci@8,700000/ebus@5 ebus okay 1
System PROM revisions:
----------------------
OBP 4.5.10 2002/02/11 10:38
POST 4.5.9 2002/02/05 21:25
bash-3.00$
I've been struggling to get my webcam to work with my Apple Powerbook. I would have thought it had enough performance - Nvidia graphics, fast ethernet, 867 Mhz PowerPC G4 etc etc. For some reason it just can't show the full-size streaming video.
Running the same feed into my Sun Blade 1000 with Solaris 10 and I get a rock-solid 640x480 video feed in my browser.
Both laptop and workstation are plumbed into a switch, which the webcam is also connected to. The Sun machine just hooks up and works. The Apple simply struggles. I've tried using a direct cable (crossover, and non-crossover) into the laptop. I tried fiddling with the ethernet parameters.
Maybe it's because the workstation has 2 cpus, or something to do with
hardware, but it could just be Solaris 10 kicks ass.
posted at: 01:01 | path: /solaris | permanent link to this entry
So did I ever mention I forgot to turn on my Microphone until half way through track 2 during Made Out of Babies set? (only twice Chris, TWICE).
Well Brendan thought the venue was maybe recording it, so on the off-chance I emailed them asking if they could send me a copy and I'd pay. I mentioned I'd driven from Brooklyn, but it seemed all pretty unlikely.
In a couple of hours they wrote back that they'd ship me a cd. How cool is that? The Lime Spider totally rocks!
Actually, let me expand on that. Good size, cheap beers and lots of choice, friendly people. Kick-ass soundsystem. If you're ever in Akron, check it out, once again, it's theLime Spider, Akron, Ohio
Update (2/12/05) The CD never arrived :-(
posted at: 16:46 | path: /moob | permanent link to this entry
The Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson
A book review of sorts
I am part-way through book three of Neal Stephenson's Trilogy "The Baroque Cycle" - Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World
Wow! There is no better word. I frequently find myself thinking it is quite impossible for someone to have written this book. It's huge, and it's deeply thought out, and it touches on a lot of topics, yet continues to entertain, to provoke and to amuse.
What is it about? Well, I'd say it's about Money, Science, Alchemy, Trade, Natural Philosophy, Pirates, Kings, Vagabonds, Slavery, plus a fascinating excursion through late 17th and early 18th century British and American history. And more...
The language is fun, Stephenson uses a lot of anachronisms which hint at the history that lead to current usage. It's often a bit like the moment in Blackadder when the prince's servant (Blackadder - played by Rowan Atkinson) is asked what he's eating - he replies "oh it's just something the Earl of Sandwich recently invented". Funny and educational.
The action is big and bold, people kill each other, marry, divorce, beat, steal, poison, blow up buildings, ships, carriages etc. Revenge simmers for decades, enormous fortunes are won and lost, sometimes more than once by the same people. Babies are stolen, slaves are freed, england goes from bust to boom and back. Coffee and chocolate, newspapers and theatre become popular. London becomes too noisy, crowded, dirty and dangerous for a man who lived there in earlier times but revisits from Boston.
The principal protagonists are fictional, but are on first name terms with all the famous people of the day - Isaac Newton, Leibniz, King Louis XIV of France, Hooke, Boyle, Huygens, Samuel Pepys, assorted English nobility. Not all the historical backdrop is familiar to me - I'm fairly certain the Tower of London did house the Royal Mint, headed by Isaac Newton at the time, but I've never heard of the "Black Torrent Guards" - might be a play on Coldstream Guards. Similarly I know Newton and Liebniz argued over who invented the calculus, but did Newton really have a close, jealous companion called Fatio? Not sure...
So far it's been enthralling, and I'm looking forward to the finale. Sure
there are some annoyances (too much use of italics,
repetition of odd words or phrase like "penetralia", "glacis", "watered
steel", "watered silk"), and quite a few bits that don't ring quite true
(a welshman called "Angus" not to mention long overly clever
conversations) but overall it's a triumph.
posted at: 16:38 | path: /misc | permanent link to this entry
So my Squeezebox arrived. Absolutely outstanding. Nicely packaged, good printed documentation, little extras like batteries for the remote and nice quality phono cable.
The server software is very professional on the Mac, and the sound is great.
My wife thinks it lacks a little something compared to my CD player, but for every bit of extra depth or punch I get off CD, I find an equal or greater amount of harshness. With my hifi setup and now my Squeezebox receiving my 192kb mp3s, I have a nice balance of quality and convenience. Of course, my ears are not as good as hers. I think I've had a spot of tinnitus since I was little. I can remember thinking that our solid state TV was "noisy" in my right ear. I must have been under 10, maybe about 9. TVs can be noisy, but not in only one ear generally.
I particularly like the server software feature where it finds
iTunes playlists and integrates them into the selection even via the
remote. I made a playlist called "Back to Mine" after the CD series
(I have the Orb and Orbital Back To Mine compilations). Right now
it's playing "To The Unknown Man" by Vangelis, which is soothing my
jangled nerves (bad day at work).
posted at: 22:19 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
OpenSolaris pilot really hotting up
I'm getting pretty excited by the developments going on in the invite-only OpenSolaris pilot. I can't discuss factual details, and besides that stuff can change pretty quickly. What I can say is that I am now convinced that Sun really means to do this, and means to do it well.
Solaris has been a part of my life for 10 years now, as well as many friends of mine. It's a life-changing event for me to be invited into the community that designs and develops it.
But it's not just a fondness for past glories here, Solaris 10 is
creating an unparalleled buzz greater than any previous release, and it's
simply a thrill to connect with the people taking the Unix
state-of-the-art to new levels. Whether it's security (Solaris 10
privileges), virtualisation (Solaris 10 zones), file
systems (ZFS),
whole-system tracing (DTrace), service
management (SMF),
or just hot
cpus and scalable
systems, Sun is saying it loud and proud. We do Unix. Bring it on. I
just hope I can contribute.
posted at: 22:05 | path: /solaris | permanent link to this entry
Everybody's at it now...
At last, there is a Solaris blog aggregator - Planet Solaris the perfect place
to feast on all things Solaris from such luminaries as Casper Dik, Jeff Bonwick and other
Sun employees and of course, the non-Sun-rabble such as Rich Teer, Ben Rockwood. I'd add
"and me" if I'd done any meaningful Solaris blogging yet...
posted at: 21:26 | path: /solaris | permanent link to this entry
Closer to mp3 nirvana?
Current iTunes status : 5344 Songs, 30.42 GB
I'm nearly organised in the lounge. Soon there will be only a small selection of favourite CDs, and only as many as can easily fit in the drawers. All other music will be put away, and most of it will also be on-line on a hard drive somewhere in the basement. I'm trying to make myself rip even cds I'm not THAT fond of. If I don't put them into MP3 format, there's even less chance I'll make the effort. Some of my CDs should probably just be discarded. If I'm honest, my Candlemass Live CD doesn't see the light of day very often.
I think Netflix should start a new service, Netdiscs. They send you a bunch of envelopes and you dispatch all surplus CDs. They wait until someone else buys them and credit your account, which is good for buying other CDs that other people dispensed with.
I know, I can see the flaw immediately - buy CDs, rip them to hard disk, send them to Netflix and eventually get some other used CDs and rip them too. Net result, less new CD purchases. The thing is, since this is hard to stop already, it would be interested to see how the record companies could squash it. I'm sure plenty of people simply rip and resell CDs to allow themselves access to more new titles without paying full price for every one.
I'm probably a bit old-fashioned, but I have nearly every CD I've
ever bought. A few have gotten lost, but I tend to eventually give
in and buy such titles again. In fact nothing highlights how
essential it is for me to hear an old CD, or at least one or two
favourite tracks therein, than the feeling I've lost the CD. "Oh ...
no ... I seem to have lost Rust in Peace by Megadeth... must ...
hear ... Hangar 18". Next thing you know I buy it again, full price
in Border's, only to listen to it 1.5 times, rip it and consign it
to the bottom drawer. But at least I know I _could_ listen it ... if
I wanted to.
posted at: 21:06 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
iDVD5 audio sync problems - solved
As usual, a spot of googling works wonder for software issues. Dan Slagel's iMovie FAQ explains how to extract the audio from the video clips in iMovie. Doing this solved the audio sync issues for me. I wish I knew why.
Reimporting my footage from scratch in iMovie HD and re-editing the DVD solved the bad menus issue, so I finally made a DVD. Actually I made about seven copies, which takes about half the day. Roll on 8X and faster drives (maybe my next laptop, or perhaps I will eventually make good on my promise to get a Powermac G5 one day).
The burn to disc image option is useful for checking a DVD. After making two useless coasters, I started to use this feature. You end up with a .IMG file on the desktop, which the OS X DVD player happily plays. You can also burn this file to DVD, but doing so makes a DVD with one file on it - the .IMG file. It doesn't make a playable disc. I presume this is because of the royalty issue
In my opinion, Apple needs to end this policy. You cannot get iDVD free any more. Either you buy a new Mac and get the software pre-installed, or you buy iLife. Either way, Apple could extract the DVD royalty payment for the right to burn DVDs in such a way that they didn't have to lock iDVD to Superdrive.
Otherwise though, my faith in Apple is somewhat restored :)
posted at: 20:39 | path: /movie-making | permanent link to this entry
Ignoring the missing audio for the first 1 1/2 tracks, I've been working on a DVD of the gig.
I mail-ordered iLife '05 a few days ago, and transferred the footage to iMovie, and edited it into shape roughly. I'm still hoping to see a CD from the Lime Spider to provide better audio, but so far it hasn't arrived.
The iLife box arrived last night, so I figured I'd install it first, then do a DVD and make use of all the great new features. Boy was I wrong.
Firstly I was excited to hear about the new archiving option so you can save the complete project. Unfortunately it didn't work, it wouldn't fit on a DVD. Pretty disappointing, seeing as I only have 1/2 hour of footage and am using standard Apple templates. I can't use an external dual-layer burner because of the stupid iDVD burning restriction
So I exported my film from iMovie to iDVD, knocked it into shape using the "Full Frame 1" template and kicked off a burn.
Unfortunately, the resulting DVD wouldn't play on my Sony DVD player, nor on my laptop, the menus would crash the player, the video would eventually get stuck, and the audio was not in sync.
It seems iDVD 5 has some NASTY BUGS. Boo!
So far I have tried a different template from the 5.0 list - still no good, tried an older, simpler template, and tried exporting to an image file (.IMG) instead of wasting another blank DVD. Still rubbish... the video and audio do not sync up.
I sent some "feedback" aka bug report to Apple complaining about this, and in the meanwhile, I think I will have to try reimporting the raw footage into the updated iMovie (iMovie HD). My assumption is that the bug is some glitch when importing a project from an older version of iMovie and then exporting it to iDVD5.
If that doesn't work I'll be stuck, unable to make any more DVDs.
posted at: 12:08 | path: /movie-making | permanent link to this entry
Mac Beyond Repair, but all not lost
My friend Leon from work (home page) came over for some of my chili con carne, a glass of wine and some hardware hacking.
The iMac seems unrepairable. The monitor does not light up, the internal VGA connector puts out no signal, the cd-rom drive does not seem to get any power. So we can't get it to actually DO anything.
Leon got the case off, the motherboard out etc, and after reseatin everything still no joy. We know the motherboard gets power, because it has a green LED on it which lights up. We also tested the hard drive in a PC and it does spin up and has some HFS partitions on it. We even found a readme.txt which explains "why can't I see my files" which apparently is something to do with HFS Extended format.
So why is "all not lost"?
Well, the hard disk turns out to be a 100GB+ unit - I can find a use for that!
Secondly the metal shielding inside the case between the plastic underside and the motherboard looks like a rather good Cylon helmet for Halloween. Yes, pictures are required, and they will be provided.
The evening was also livened up by me trying to show Leon
some of the good bits of Lord of the Rings. I chose the
Prologue, the bridge of Khazad-Dum and the assault on Minas
Tirith, including the Mumakil, Legolas' single-handed Mumakil
takedown, the fight between Eowyn and the Witch-King, and of
course Grond! I think it got his attention...
posted at: 23:08 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry
My last project was an "MTV video" for Made Out Of Babies (see my moob blog). I used iMovie and it was like torture. I was trying to sync studio sound to live footage and iMovie is inadequate.
No problem though, firstly iMovie is great at the price. Secondly, Apple ofers an affordable next rung on the ladder in the form of Final Cut Express which is $300. Not cheap, but once you have run into the limits of iMovie, and spent an even and formed a headache from its poor suport of fine adjustments, it seems to make sense.
So I bought FCE and had a go. The next project is a couple more gig DVDs (which only involves trimming footage which has both audio and video), and after a few evenings and some readings of the manual, I've come to the conclusion I'd rather go back to iMovie.
FCE doesn't control my camera (Sony DCR-TRV70), it doesn't have
any obvious iDVD integration, it seems to get horribly slow once you
apply any filters (filters being one of the selling points) and it's
a huge and complex program. I don't actually think I made a mistake,
but it's going to take a while to learn, and I will probably need
a serious computer to
use it properly. For example, my latest footage (from
http://www.thelimespider.com/) needs to be gamma corrected. So I
install a filter and try some editing. Now my cursor is flickering
the entire time. Everything is slow. The preview window refuses to
show anything, and instead says "unrendered". iMovie is clearly
better for a film-making pleb like me.
posted at: 23:07 | path: /movie-making | permanent link to this entry
I like having a real hifi with a cd player, decent amp, decent speakers etc. I've even still got my turn table hooked up. However, my CD collection is getting completely out of control. Having a young daughter also adds to the havoc in the living room. Anything left lying around (like a cd case) is fair game for abuse, including being stepped on or perhaps chewed a bit.
I made a start at switching from CDs to MP3 back when I used to use Linux exclusively as my home desktop. I used Freeamp and Grip/Lame to build up a small collection of .MP3 files at 128kb/s and played them back on the computer speakers whilst working. Sounded really good for a while, but I didn't see it as a serious alternative to the hi-fi. It was a thrill to rip CDs at 4-5X normal speed on my original Athlon 750MHz system. Nevermind that it made enough noise to destroy all fine detail in the music, I was happy enough to just rock out as I hacked code.
Then one day after a system upgrade, KDE reset the volume to max, and it blew out the tweeter on one of my Logitech speakers when I played a CD. That was not too fun, especially since I didn't feel rich enough to replace them and Logitech's customer helpdesk website was unusable from Linux. I ended up with some cheaper, nastier speakers, and I eventually got a bit frustrated with the Linux song and dance - where did Freeamp go? Oh it's Zinf now. Ok, Zinf needs MusicBrainz, fine, I can do that. Oh crap, that has an M4 bug etc etc.
I may be a professional programmer, but when I start out to listen to music, and end up debugging someone elses M4 bug, the fun is starting to wear thin.
I also had an inkling that MP3s on a real hifi could be good. I bought a SliMP3 from Slim Devices Inc., together with a 100ft ethernet cable. It worked for a while, but my device was one of the original hand-soldered models, and it wasn't very reliable.
Fast-forward three years, I now prefer a Mac for music, and I've been converted by my iPod. MP3 at 192 kb/s is good enough for my ears, I can hardly notice the difference in headphones. Best of luck to the zinf, musicbrainz, grip, lame etc guys, but buy a Mac and Apple takes care of all of that for you, legally, and reliably. And my laptop does ripping at 10X speed on most discs, sometimes 12X. Awesome.
Best of all, Slim Devices kept going, building on the success of
the SliMP3, and now sell a wireless version called the Squeezebox. So I
just ordered one, and have spent most of today ripping more of my
CDs. Current status 4697 songs, 26.60GB.
posted at: 23:06 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
This morning I played some Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life, Volume 1.
When it came to "Sir Duke", she smiled and jigged. So she's got good taste (is is a classic track), and enjoys one of her daddy's favourite songs. The thing is, she 18 months old
I used to play this song in a brass band. The horn breaks are quite
hard to read, but if you understand the flow first and the notes
second, it's much easier. It's really not that complicated a sequence
if you played it without swing, but the swing is why you want to play
it. I was playing solor tenor horn, but I still had to play the full
"solo" line.
posted at: 23:03 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
So the return drive went smoothly. Nothing much to report that you wouldn't expect - bad driving, especially speeding, lots of boring fairly flat countryside in Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, but much more interesting stuff further east. I think a weekends trip back to State College is called for. I particularly liked some parts of I80 between State College and the Poconos, I must look it up on the map to identify the stunning valleys and spectacular road pass cut through the sides of mountains.
The Poconos were still heavily iced this afternoon. Quite eery driving down a perfectly dry clean road with deep frozen trees bent over under their burden imploring the passers-by for help.
I managed to enter a typo strewn blog entry last night, but completely forgot about it this morning, which is why I mentioned not turning on the mic twice. Hmmm, drunken blogging, that is bound to get someone in trouble some day!
So was it worth driving a 900 mile round trip for a gig in Akron? Just for the gig, maybe not. Considering I filmed it, though, yes, I'm glad I did it. The fact I've been wanting to do a road trip in my car makes it all worthwhile. I'm not sure the footage will make a particularly good concert movie, but it's certainly going to be a record of the night, and I'm sure some of it will be reusble.
I have to mention my special McDonald's location algorithm. Leave the hotel, simply drive and take whatever random turns seem interesting, in most towns and cities, your chances are good of finding a Mickey D's. I found one in 5-7 minutes, at 10:58, so I beat the breakfast menu cut off. Two Egg McMuffins AND useful directions back to I76 had me feeling a whole lot better. The diet, as everyone says at this time of year, starts tomorrow.
The band? They're probably on stage again right now. I really hope they
make it through this week.
posted at: 22:56 | path: /moob | permanent link to this entry
I stayed out with the band until 3 something. The gig didn't go too well. Matt has a cold and was a bit off his game, Brendan's guitar was cold and went out of tune frequently as it warmed up at the gig ... and I didn't turn the mic on for a couple of tracks - gah!. Still, the turnout was good and the crowd seemed to like it. I did get some footage from the front, and boy that place has a pounding PA.
They're back in Cleveland, so I guess Akron is history, I'm outta
here asap. The weather is pretty dull. I need to get some serious miles
done before it gets dark again. And first I need breakfast...
posted at: 10:32 | path: /moob | permanent link to this entry
MooB just played the Lime Spider
They rocked.
Unfortunately, yours truly forgot to switch the mic on until half-way through their second song. Oh welk
They are staying in Cleveland, so I think this is nearly it for this strang of the blog. All that remains is a rather long drive back.
posted at: 03:08 | path: /moob | permanent link to this entry
Checked out the neighborhood of the hotel. So it started to snow. Some monster sized bars a few blocks down University Street, Harry Buffalo's, Bricco, Jillians are just some whose name I remember - some of these look like they could feed 300 people no problem. Also saw the local sports arena and a nearby ice rink. I guess this neighborhood would be jumping if it weren't off-season for college kids.
Checked out the Lime Spider
- it's about 5 minutes walk - looks fairly small, which is fine by me. On
the door is a press clipping which says the ownber prides himself on how
he treats out of town bands. That's good, as MooB's gig last night fell
through, I'm glad I didn't try to make that one.
posted at: 18:09 | path: /moob | permanent link to this entry
Arrived in Akron no problem at all. The Radisson has free wireless internet (have to get name and passsword from the front desk). So that's pretty handy.
Encountered fog, rain, ice, and saw a lot of frozen trees, many broken. Route 322 West from State College was great - superb views and swoopy roads.
The film on TNT right now is Deep Blue Sea. I manage to catch this film quite regularly. It's excellent - one of the most hilariously crappy Giant Brain Enhanced Man Eating Great White Sharks in floating deep sea research labs films I've ever seen.
Here are just a few of the problems :-
However, when you have such excellent actor-chomping mayhem after the first hour or less, who can really complain. Samuel L.Jackson's exit is one of his best ever. There's no way he can die better in the final Star Wars films. Even George Lucas would send the scene back for further work - a fish flying out of the water, manouvering mid-air to angle his mouth properly to eat a standing man whole, and then whipping backwards into the water is just ... practically optimal trash.
Oh yeah, the band? They're in Cleveland...
posted at: 16:12 | path: /moob | permanent link to this entry
A family at breakfast was staying in the hotel because power was out. They rang the power company and were told it should be back 10pm tomorrow night. They've got a little girl just about Lucy's age and one of them chased her around the dining room saying "I'm gonna getcha, I'm gonna getcha!" just like we do at home. This weekend is going to suck for them...
Off to Akron in a bit, and yes, breakfast was pretty good. Sausage and egg on english muffin, coffee, juice, cherry danish, coffee
weather : warmer than last night, just stopped raining, low-hanging
clouds making it look gloomy and a bit mysterious. Checked the car
out, this place has a tiny bit of a view, I'm looking forward to
travelling in the day today.
posted at: 10:34 | path: /moob | permanent link to this entry
Brooklyn to State College was not too bad. Trees down under the freezing rain they had earlier over the Poconos, and I nearly ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere, otherwise not bad. Lots of state troopers. I kept my speed down to just about what the trucks do.
As expected, it was possible to get most of the way here without active navigation - Brooklyn Bridge, Holland Tunnel, 7S, 9W, I280, I80, look for State College. I'm hoping Akron is just as easy.
I am connected to the hotel's free ethernet lan and thence the internet. It didn't work until I issued an HTTP request which redirected me to a page about the hotels service. The thing is, it's free to guests, so once I clicked on "configure" which was listed as costing "$0" then a quick DHCP and I was up and running. Why not remove this step?
On the whole though, it's exactly what I want. I will go to the trouble of plugging in an ethernet cable to get on the internet, and maybe even futz about as described above, long before I'll pay for wifi. Wired ethernet uses way less power and mostly has a snappier response. WiFI is only that great in unstructured locations like a coffee shop or my living room. A hotel room, though, is nothing if not structured, at least in my price range.
Next : breakfast is served 7-10, ah yes, hotel buffet breakfast when
you skipped dinner the night before. One of life's little pleasures.
posted at: 01:08 | path: /moob | permanent link to this entry
Not really, just New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Pretty far by myself in unfamiliar parts. But I'm sure it'll be fine.
Itinerary :-
But how bad could it be in a 2002 Subaru WRX sport wagon?
p.s. the batteries and tapes showed up, way to go B&H!
posted at: 22:47 | path: /moob | permanent link to this entry
I finally finished watching the documentaries on the Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King Extended Edition DVD. The last two documentaries are by far the best on a personal and emotional level, closely followed by "Editorial: Completing the Trilogy"
The last two are "The End of All Things" and "The Passing of an Age" and as the names indicate, we are definitely on the home straight by this point. A lot of revealing interview footage shows how close the final film came to slipping its deadline. One crew member jokes that someone will be blow drying the prints before they are shipped to the premier, and more seriously, Peter Jackson is very much looking forward to the film's NZ premier because he "hasn't seen it yet".
Elijah Wood's reaction? "That's awesome!". True, but he does tend to say that about everything, except of course, if something is "fucking amazing".
Not to quibble though (I'm only kidding!), this was something I'd waited for a long time. I will probably scribble and scratch some more once I've rewatched the documentaries one more time. The first time through each disc I just like to bathe in it, not enable too many critical faculties.
For now though, I think the highest praise I can give this
entire project is that, for me, there are really some scenes
that are "better in the film than the book".
posted at: 22:43 | path: /tolkien | permanent link to this entry
Equipment preparations for the weekend
I'm going to take a lot of gadgets with me, but probably wont use them all. The critical thing is not to run out of power or tapes during the gig, so I've ordered a big long-life battery for the video camera, a new battery for the Canon S40 digital still camera, and a bunch of tapes. Best place for a lot like that is B&H
Other than that, then, all I need is :-
posted at: 22:39 | path: /moob | permanent link to this entry
I found an iMac on the street today. It's a 450mhz slot-loading dual firewire model in red. If it can be made to work, it's just what I've been looking for as an mp3 server. If I hook up my external firewire drive and get myself a Squeezebox I can banish most of my CDs to boxes and binders and use mp3s over my WiFi network. That's the goal.
When I first spotted this machine, it was sitting proudly on a big pile of trashbags. A doorman at a nearby building volunteered that it works but it just "needs a new case". That's a tall order for an iMac. He does have a point though, as the case is practically trashed (photos later), and the screen has obvious burn-in. My first investment in this project was a cab ride home. The driver gave me advice on fixing the case - apparently epoxy is best because it's strong and transparent.
Unfortunately after finally getting a power cable in, and hooking it up to a USB keyboard and mouse, the power button does nothing, zippo, nada.
I vaguely remembered the access hatch underneath, so I whipped it open and lo and behold, no RAM. So whoever broke the case knew enough to reclaim the ram. Luckily I had a 128MB stick of PC100 SDRAM which fit nicely. I tried it in both slots, but unfortunately, this is not the only problem. Power is still not flowing.
Another broken computer project - just what I needed, my
wife is thrilled.
posted at: 21:55 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry
I'm friends with the band Made Out of Babies who are going on tour for the first time this week. There are some of my photos of the band on their photos page
I've been documenting their gigs here in NYC with some simple DVD movies I've made on my Powerbook, from footage I took with my Sony DCR-TRV70. This is a lot of fun(!), and I recently moved up to Final Cut Express when I started to find iMovie limiting.
I am still working on a first public release of some video footage, it takes time to get a useful amount of footage, and even longer for me to learn how to use it. In the meanwhile, however, here is a bit of related fun.
I've decided to try and catch a night of the tour also, so the current plan is to drive from Brooklyn, NY to Akron, Ohio this weekend to see them and film the gig.
If I can, I'll blog it here and there. Must practice...
posted at: 23:19 | path: /moob | permanent link to this entry
Blockbuster still doesn't get it
If I rent a DVD from Blockbuster under their new much ballyhooed "no late fees" scheme, then if I happen to keep hold of the disc for a week (as I often do with Netflix, which I love) they will "automatically sell" me the disc.
Oh dear, sounds like a late fee to me.
If I want to own a DVD, it must be box fresh, I'm going to want artwork, both discs, vouchers etc. I want a disc that is fingerprint and scratch free.
Blockbuster still doesn't get it.
posted at: 22:42 | path: /misc | permanent link to this entry
I recently bought a CD by this name by Deutsche Grammophon which has a nice selection of organ classics - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Vidor's Toccata (Allegro) from Symphony No. 5 in F minor and so on.
It's nice to have these all collected together so I can start to put names against these famous pieces when I hear them.
[Aside : I'm a big fan of organ music, especially on a Really Serious Organ - living in Brooklyn as I do now, it's been a long time since I've had the chance to enjoy an Ian Tracey voluntary, but there is absolutely no substitute. If you are ever in Liverpool just before Christmas, take the opportunity to catch a Carol service at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, he always plays something spectacular at the end, and you can walk up and stand between the two towering organ banks. It doesn't get much better than that.]
But I don't get back to Liverpool very often, so...
Here's a way to possibly get some idea what it's like.
Disclaimer :- The following could upset your wife, it could scare your pets, it could kill your house plants, and it will certainly strain your HiFi!
The big discovery for me on this CD was Apparition de L'Eglise Eternelle by Olivier Messiaen. It follows immediately after the Vidor piece mentioned above. The piece has a sort of arch structure - building from a quiet start to an epic, tooth-rattling climax and then fading away into the aether.
If you have a decent hifi, and a copy of this CD (and you should) try listening to these two tracks as follows :
If performed correctly, you should look a bit like Peter Murphy in those famous Maxell Ads - ok, maybe not the extremely gaunt cheeks.
Equipment used in this experiment :-