Monsters from the Id 怪獣大悪脳

This one is for me as much as anyone else.

Once every six months or so I find myself in a situation where I need to either play an Avid Quicktime or convert it to another codec that's more useful to me (like MJPEG A), and I'm on a system that doesn't have the Avid codecs installed.

Yesterday I had to do it again. And I had a hard time finding the right codecs on Avid's website again. So here they are in all their glory:

Avid Meridien Quicktime Codecs for Mac OS X, Mac OS 9, Windows XP, and Windows 2000. These are the latest versions.

Avid Quicktime Codecs for Media Composer / Film Composer 10.5 and Xpress 4.5 (Mac OS 9). This includes ABVB 9.3 and Meridien 9.4.1.

Avid Quicktime Codecs for Media Composer / Film Composter 10.1 and Xpress 4.1 (Mac OS 9).

Avid Quicktime Codec ABVB 8.0.2 for Mac OS.

Avid's software download page. Though for some reason you can't actually find the latest Meridien drivers on this page.

Don't forget to put your Quicktime codecs in the right place! In OS X, they need to go in /Library/Quicktime. In OS 9, they need to go in System Folder/Extensions. (Windows users, I have no idea. Sorry.)

Codecs for OS 9 will not work in Classic under OS X!

Posted by Jon at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

... or How To Blow Your Website Statistics Right Out Of The Water.

I'm a sound guy. They pay me to put funny noises in movies. I like to play with computers. I watch Star Trek, and I love fantasy books and video games. It's a simple life, but I enjoy it.

So I decide to put up this website because maybe there's that one other person out there who finds anything I have to say moderately interesting. Yesterday was one month to the day that I started tracking my weblog's statistics with Site Meter. In one month I had 400 visits. Something like 14 visitors a day. And I know that at least one of them is my friend, Ariel, from college.

Last night I decided to do a little playing with the new iTunes that Apple released, and I posted an article about some things I discovered. It is now after 9pm here in the West Coast and I have had 834 visits to my site! In one day! Someone must have thought my look at Lossless compression noteworthy enough to post it to MacSurfer this morning and I have had a steady stream of traffic ever since.

It's truly amazing. Maybe this graph can show you the huge difference.

Prior to today, I had about 25% of my traffic from Macintosh computers. I know that a nice chunk of that was my own since I'm often checking and rechecking spelling, grammar, or finding an article reference in a new post. After today however... well, I'll just let this one speak for itself.

Well I'm flattered. Thank you all for visiting. Feel free to drop by again in the future. Though I will understand if I don't have another 800+ day for a long time.

Posted by Jon at 9:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If you keep up with Apple developments at all you probably already know that today is the one year anniversary of the iTunes Music Store. In honor of that Apple released iTunes 4.5 and Quicktime 6.5.1.

The new version of iTunes includes features like the Party Shuffle, Jewel Case Insert Printing, and iMix. You can read about all that stuff over at Apple's site or pretty much any other Mac news website.

The feature that I found most intriguing is the new Apple Lossless Audio Codec that comes with Quicktime. MP3s and AACs have revolutionized how we think about music. But let's face it, they are compressed audio files. Any CD will sound better. iTunes and the iPod will quite happily play uncompressed AIFF files but they are much larger. You are probably familiar with an MP3 at 128 kbps. An uncompressed AIFF file runs at 1411 kbps. In other words, 0.94 MB per minute versus 10.33 MB per minute.

So I pulled out my CD of Jet's "Get Born" and decided to do a little experimenting with "Are You Gonna Be My Girl." Marc Heijligers did some excellent qualitative studies of various types of audio compression in "Encoding Observations." I used a method similar to his to analyze Apple's Lossless compression.

I used Peak to rip an uncompressed AIFF of the track. I opened that file with Quicktime Player Pro and exported it to a movie with the Lossless codec. (Unless I missed something, it seems that only the "export to Quicktime Movie" option allows you to use that codec.)

Just to be completely legit, I exported another movie with the audio uncompressed. The first thing I noticed was the difference in file size. At 3:33 long, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" was 36.1 MB uncompressed and 27.1 MB with the lossless compression. The compressed file was 25% smaller. Again in comparison, a 128 kbps MP3 is 91% smaller. For this song it would be about 3.3 MB

Obviously an MP3 or AAC is a lot smaller, but you also lose some of the sound information in the process. This new Apple Lossless codec promises to save 25% in file size and is supposed to sound exactly the same. To test this out I opened both the uncompressed movie and the lossless movie in Peak.

Visually the two files seemed to have identical waveforms.

Uncompressed Audio

Lossless Compressed Audio

With a quick listen on my studio headphones, I couldn't tell the difference. I needed to be sure though that there was literally no difference. This is where I used a method that Marc talked about in his article.

I inverted the phase of the Lossless compression file.

Then I copied the entire file to the clipboard, and using Peak's "Add" DSP function, I mixed the phase inverted Lossless audio with the original uncompressed audio.

The resulting audio file was completely silent.

A sound waveform looks a squiggly line drawn along the X-axis of an X/Y graph. You might be familiar with a Sine wave from trigonometry. A simple tone looks like that. When a sound is phase inverted, the peaks and valleys of that squiggle are swapped. So where the original sound might have a peak at 4 on the Y-axis, the inverted sound would have a valley at the same point in time at -4 on the Y-axis. Obviously if you add 4 and -4 you get zero. So a phase inverted sound mixed into the original sound should give you a silent audio file.

Since I phase inverted the compressed file, mixed it in with the uncompressed file, and wound up with a silent file, the codec truly is lossless. The two files are sonically identical.

Out of curiosity, I imported the original AIFF file into iTunes. I went into the preferences and changed my import settings to "Apple Lossless Encoder."

Then I used the "Convert" function under the Advanced menu to convert my AIFF into a compressed file using the new Lossless codec.

The resulting file was an AAC file with the same .m4a extension as my other AACs. When I got info on the new AAC, I found that it was 1061 kbps.

Uncompressed Audio

Lossless Compressed Audio

With a space savings of 25% and truly no loss of sound quality, Apple's new codec is definitely something to take a look at for both sound professionals and audiophile consumers.

Posted by Jon at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (2)

Dear God, Baby Jesus, or which ever higher power has executive control over Tom Cruise's movies:

Please make him stop.

I finally watched Dances With Bravehearted Ninjas "The Last Samurai" last night. I know, I'm late. I was kind of busy in December.

Anyway, we need you to make him stop. It's bad enough that he has to use the patented Tom-Cruise-Is-Really-Emotional-And-Here's-A-Close-Up-To-Prove-It shot in every other scene. Not to mention the "plucky American gets beat down again and again but keeps getting back up until everyone gains some respect for him" scene. But what's really infuriating is that somehow we are supposed to believe that the Japanese cannot possibly appreciate their own rich cultural heritage until Tom Cruise explains it to them by handing over an ancient sword.

And speaking of that, how come a thousand samurai can get blown up with cannons, and riddled with Gatlin gun fire, and only Tom Cruise is able to survive? And he just has a slight limp? What's up with that? I think you'll agree that this kind of thing can't go on.

If that's not enough for you, don't forget that he gets to kill a proud warrior from a family that has defended Japan's honor for a thousand years, and within like a month is raising that man's children as his own, and playing "hide the katana" with that man's wife.

Please for all of us. Oh, and we'll be talking later about that "strict" translation of Homer's ancient Greek in "Troy."

Posted by Jon at 11:34 AM | Permalink

One of the fun things about keeping statistics about my website is seeing how people managed to find it. Referrals will tell me which pages linked to me when someone clicks that link to get to my site. It also tells what words someone entered into a search engine thereby finding my site. Today I believe that I have found my favorite search that resulted in someone getting to my little corner of the web:

Effect of brain eating amoeba

Thank you person from the domain il.us for visiting my site at 5:17pm PDT on April 26, 2004 after using that search phrase at askjeeves.com. I hope I was able to help.

Posted by Jon at 12:06 AM | Permalink

No one is going to come out and say, "Guess what? We only have enough oil left on this planet to last another 75 years." At least no one in the U.S. government or in the U.S. main-stream media. The evidence is there but they try to deny it or only hint at it.

Now of course I don't know that we actually have 75 years worth of oil left, maybe we have more like 100 years left or maybe only 50. The fact is that we've been using oil for 150 years and a lot of signs are pointing to the fact that we have reached or are nearly reaching the peak of oil production. If we continued with the same amount of consumption spread out over the same amount of time, that would mean that we have enough oil to last another 150 years. But we know that's not the case. Every year we need more and more oil to live the life we want to live.

So where are those hints? Reuters published an article yesterday about the G7 conference that just wrapped up. The body which represents the financial chiefs of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan agreed that "the global economic outlook had brightened significantly", but as France put it "The principal risk is the oil price risk." Now why is the price of oil a risk to the future of global economics? Here in the U.S. the industry analysts that are called upon to make a statement whenever there is another hike in gasoline prices often cite increased demand. In fact over the last few months there have been several increases in gas price, and the increased demand of the summer driving season has been regularly suggested as a reason.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm a crazy or I don't really understand global economics--and believe me I don't pretend to understand global economics--but that does sound like a drastic over-simplification of the situation. The kind of "sound bite" material that the American press loves to make use of. Not to mention that I'm not sure that the U.S.'s summer driving season (which if I'm not mistaken we haven't even hit yet) can be the sole reason that the entire world sees increased gas and oil prices.

It seems much more likely that in addition to increased demand world wide--don't forget that China and India are rapidly industrializing a large scale--a decrease in the amount of readily available oil, or an increase in cost to get that readily available oil, would be just as much if not more of a factor in the increased price of oil.

Take a look around. You'll see hints of it everywhere. Today, one day after the G7 conference, Reuters published another article about yet another gasoline price increase. The national average price of gas went up another $0.03 in the last two weeks.

Posted by Jon at 8:27 PM | Permalink

A few pictures of the room I stayed in at The Hotel at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

The sitting room / office of my mini-suite.

The office part of the room.

My NAB badge and a kazoo I got from Location Sound.

I took pictures of the bedroom and the bathroom as well but they came out even worse then these. Suffice to say that they are really nice rooms.

Posted by Jon at 6:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

For many years the DAT recorder has been standard for both timecode and non-timecode field recordings. Now that Digital Audio Workstations are supporting file standards beyond the 16 bit, 48 KHz limit of DATs, it makes sense to look at other options. I was able to check out 3 cool new recorders at NAB.

Deva V

Zaxcom's Deva recorder is in essence the grandfather of the hard disk field recorders. There have been others but they are the first to really offer one that has gained widespread use in production sound.

Their latest recorder, the Deva V, which is due "any day now", is a big improvement over the 4-track, 24 bit, 48 KHz Deva II. The new recorder offers 10 tracks of audio at up to 192 KHz. It also has a touch screen menu which offers much better access to functionality than the few buttons of the Deva II.

In the demo I saw, the Deva V has an on-screen keyboard which allows you to enter text like track name information, and scene and take, which was only previously possible through an external digital mixer with a built-in keyboard. The Deva V also allows you to route any input channel to any record track (or number of input channels to number of record tracks for internal mix-downs). The older Deva II had a similar functionality but the new track matrix screen makes it much easier to see what's going on. (Ask any Deva II user about their first time with the machine and they will probably admit to multing Input 1 to every record track for a while. It was a common mistake.) The only problem with these on-screen functions is that the screen is quite small so you need a pointer similar to a PDA pen to select many of these functions.

They've also added a Firewire port to the device and and optional internal DVD-R. The DVD-R is a smart move away from DVD-RAM. If you've read my previous article on the headaches of DVD-RAMs in the Mac, or you've experienced it yourself, you know what I'm talking about.

It's a cool device and I've only just touched on some of the new features. It is a bit pricey though. It will set you back about $13,000.

Sound Devices 722 and 744T

These two recorders are very impressive. They are extremely small--a little larger than a VHS tape. They have a very clean and simple interface. According to the reps I talked to at NAB, they are 60 days away from release.

The 722 is a 2-channel recorder, while the 744T is a 4-channel timecode recorder. They both do 24 bit recordings at up to 96 KHz. The 722 has an internal 20 GB hard drive which would give you about 30 hours of stereo recordings at 16 bit, 48 KHz, or about 10 hours at 24 bit, 96 KHz. The 744T has a 40 GB hard drive, so it would give you about the same amount of time but with 4-channel recordings. (Or double the times of stereo.)

It has a Firewire interface, so that when you plug it into your computer, it shows up as a hard drive on your desktop for transferring files. It also has what they call a C-Link interface which allows you to daisy chain multiple recorders together and have them all going into record at the same time with the push of one button.

The price is right on these as well. The 722 will go for about $2600 and the 744T for about $4200.

Fostex FR-2

This is the recorder that impressed me most. It's about twice the size of the Sound Devices recorders but it is very light. Like the others it records 16 or 24 bit sound files, but it can go all the way up to 192 KHz. It's only a 2-channel recorder, but there will be a timecode option available later this year. It is also in stores right now.

It only has a USB interface to attach it to your computer and transfer files, so it is not as fast as the FIrewire of the other recorders. However, the $1300 price tag more than makes up for a little extra transfer time.

The one caveat is that it doesn't have a built-in hard drive. You have to purchase that separately. This is can be seen as a bonus though too. It supports recording to 1.8" Type II PC Card hard drives. Many of the 5 GB models now go for about $250. The other option is that it supports Compact Flash Type II cards for recording. The same ones used in some digital cameras. The 2 GB cards go for about $400 right now. It is an additional expense, but there are no moving parts. Plus by recording to compact flash, you can pick up a $20 USB compact flash reader and transfer your recordings to your computer without eating up your recorder's battery time. With a 2 GB card, you can get about 3 hours of 16 bit, 48 KHz stereo recordings or 1 hour at 24 bit, 96 KHz.

Posted by Jon at 9:43 PM | Permalink

Lee is looking to sell some of his paintings. He has some very nice ones of rockstars, and others as well. You can find more information about the paintings and his contact info at his website.

Shirley Manson

Adam Ant

Morrissey

Also: Pregnant For The Last Time, Paris One, and Betty.

Posted by Jon at 3:16 PM | Permalink

Yet again, Wil Wheaton has turned me on to something funny. According to BBSpot, Paramount is releasing Star Trek Service Pack 1 to fix all the errors in the original series. Maybe w3.org can work with the studio to come up with a strict validation for Enterprise.

Posted by Jon at 12:43 PM | Permalink

It goes without saying that the most important thing about an audio workstation is that you are able to hear what you are working on. This often leads to the continual quest for the best sounding speakers and headphones. The question that those of us who work in the sound field don't always think about is "What is the best mixer to use?"

A standard Pro Tools system has 8 outputs. (Yes, the HD hardware can output up to 16 but often on a standard editorial system, people only use 8.) The various flavors of the Mackie 1604 has been the work-horse of mixer setup.

However, ever since Pro Tool 5.1, the software can be configured to handle an internal surround mix and output in 5.1. With this change editors using workstations that are configured to monitor in 5.1 really only need to use 6 outputs. So on the mixer side of things, you need the 6 or 8 inputs from Pro Tools and probably another 2 (stereo pair) for the Mac speaker. Sometimes you might have other gear like a DAT or video deck that you want to monitor independent of Pro Tools, but often you just need the 8 or 10 mixer inputs to handle everyting.

The problem comes with the outputs to the speakers. The easiest way to deal with a 5.1 speaker setup is to assign each bus out to a speaker. So you need 6 buses to handle the outputs. The Mackie 1604 only has 4. You can make use of the Aux Sends for the two additional outputs but it's not configured as nicely. So now you're looking at jumping up to an 8 bus mixer and that's starts getting much more expensive.

And really when it comes down to it, if you're setting up a 5.1 workstation, you don't need or want individual EQs on every channel. And individual volume controls become a big hassel. After spending a long time calibrating the Sound Pressure Level of the room, you want to lock those faders down so that the relative volume from one channel to the next is aways the same. What you really need is what I've been refering to as "the box with the big knob" for a year now.

Let's face it, consumer surround receivers have it right. Plug your 6 channels from a DVD player into the receiver. Six cables from the receiver go to the home theater speakers. And there's a big knob on the front to adjust the level of all speakers up or down. That's the idea we need to recreate in the professional sound editor market.

I have yet to find a good solution to this but at the NAB show in Las Vegas, I did see a step in the right direction. Mackie has just released a new mixer that they call surprisingly enough "The Big Knob". (Mackie, feel free to put a check in the mail made out to me--oh yeah, I never filed a copyright on that name. Damn!) I was so excited when I saw that thing in their booth. No individual channel faders, just a big knob in the middle of the board.

Unfortunately, it's configured for stereo pairs. It does have 6 ins and outs (3 stereo pairs) but you can only tweak levels on two channels at time. This might not be a problem for Left / Right or Left Surround / Right Surround, but the Center / Sub pair could be a little hairy. It's possible though that with a little level tweaking on the Pro Tools interface, this mixer could me made to work with a 5.1 studio. I told the guy I talked to at the Mackie booth that I thought it was a great piece of gear, they just needed to get cracking on a true 5.1 version.

Posted by Jon at 9:45 PM | Permalink

Oi! My feet are killing me! I'm back home after much walking around Las Vegas. I have things to say about stuff I saw, and places I went. But not now. Now it is late. Or at least late enough. And I'm tired. And the kitties missed me. Goodnight.

Posted by Jon at 11:04 PM | Permalink

Insanity! The NAB trade show is huge. Think of something big. Now think of something that could beat up that big thing. Now triple the size of that. You're starting to get the picture of just how big this thing is.

We spent nearly 5 hours today tramping around there talking to people, checking out the latest audio and video hardware, and I am beat. We skipped most of the broadcast video stuff. Spent a lot of time in the Audio / Radio section, and barely touched on the "Multimedia" area. We're going back tomorrow. That multimedia section is where Apple, Avid, Digidesign, ATTO, Discreet, Adobe, and all the other computer-based hardware and software guys are.

I have spent my share of time at the San Diego Comic-Con and I thought that event was big. This doesn't even compare. More later. We're about to go to dinner and Cameron has to see the Lakers.

Posted by Jon at 7:25 PM | Permalink

I'm writing this entry from Las Vegas. It's quite the town. I usually manage to make it out this way once or twice a year. Though I think this is the first time that I've ever come here for something other than gambling and booze. (And since I gave up the booze three years ago, there's only gambling.)

This hotel I'm in is very swank--The Hotel at Mandalay Bay. It's the new tower behind the original Mandalay. I'll have to take some pictures of the room before I leave. But let's put it this way: mini-suite for $170 a night. Nice.

I do, however, feel the need to let you know that I'm a big dork. So let me try to explain...

We had a nice dinner at Chartsteak at the MGM Grand, and then the friends that we've been hanging out with wanted to go to a club. They're members of the Foundation Room which is the exclusive "club with in a club" at the House of Blues. So we went there. Unfortunately the bouncer (for lack of a better term) at the door wouldn't let me in. I was wearing tennis shoes.

This kind of thing keeps happening to me. Look, I'm not a very classy guy. T-shirt, jeans, sneakers. That's the way it goes. I have a couple of pairs of nice shoes for the right occasion. I have some button-down long sleeve shirts. I even have a sports coat but those are a "need to wear" basis.

I packed very light to come out here. My standard wear. I knew I was going to be spending a lot of my time at the convention center walking around. Those clothes are perfect for that kind of thing. I threw in some shorts in case we were going to hang out by the pool and I brought a couple of long sleeve shirts for a nice dinner like we had last night. And I brought my leather jacket. See I'm from LA. All you need is a leather jacket. You can throw that on over anything and you're ready for any kind of event. I figured I had the bases covered.

In fact I had another run in with a bouncer at the Foundation Room in LA. A couple of years ago, it was summer and hot and I was doing whatever I was doing in the office. And I was wearing shorts. For the most part I don't wear them to work but if it's really hot, I might. Anyway, Cameron gets a call from a friend about going to see Cheap Trick at the House of Blues, and he asks me if I want to come. Sure. So we leave right then and I'm still in shorts. Cheap Trick is awesome, and afterwards when this friend of Cameron's tries to take us to the Foundation Room to hang with the band, they hassel me over the shorts.

So back to last night. The bouncer won't let me in. Everyone turns to me. I say, "It's fine. Have fun. I'll see you later." They ask me if I can go back to my room and change my shoes, and I have to tell them that these are the only pair I brought.

"Well, what size are you?" Kurt, one of the guys we are with, is about my height.

"I'm like a twelve in most shoes."

"Ok, come with me," Kurt says. And this is where it gets all embarassing for me and where I feel like a dork. We go back to his room. And he gives me a pair of his shoes to wear. They're not a perfect fit but they're pretty close. We get to go to the club. I get to be the butt of lots of jokes like, "You should walk a mile in another man's shoes. Oh wait-"

Maybe other people wouldn't feel embarassed about someone helping them out like that, but I do. He loaned me his shoes. I don't know. Maybe it's because I could have easily had an appropriate pair with me if I'd thought about it. Maybe a part of it is because I'm not the classy guy. Whatever it is, I still feel like a dork.

Mom always told me to make sure I was wearing clean underwear in case I got hit by a car. I should probably ammend that to bring along a pair of dress shoes, just in case.

Posted by Jon at 9:38 AM | Permalink

In just under 3 hours I will be getting on a plane for Las Vegas. The NAB geekfest awaits me.

Apple is making some big announcement today, if I remember the MacCentral news correctly. So tomorrow I should be able to see what ever cool new products they have at their booth.

I'm also planning on checking out Digidesign, mSoft / Soundminer, Zaxcom Deva, and HHB. Fostex supposedly has some relatively new 2 channel hard disk field recorder that will do 24bit, 96KHz for like $1200. I'll have to take a look at that.

I'm sure I'll be bumping into half the engineers and tech guys I work. It'll be fun to catch up when it's not some kind of mission critical emegency like normal.

Plus we have reservations tonight at Del Monico's.

Posted by Jon at 9:50 AM | Permalink

Yesterday was nominated "Fun With Windows XP Day!"

I spent nearly 10 hours in Long Beach working on my Aunt and Uncle's computer. I mentioned before that I took a look at it on Easter and found it to be chock full of virii and adware.

After backing up the essentials like bookmarks and Word documents, I restored the computer to its original factory state using the CDs that Gateway provided with the computer. That was all very painless and easy.

Problems started to arise when I tried to get them back on the internet. They have a Charter Pipeline cable modem, just like I do, so I didn't think it would be any big deal. Wrong. The cable guy who'd installed the modem hooked them up through USB which meant that I needed the driver installed to talk to the modem again. No Charter Pipeline installer CD anywhere to be found. I'm hooked up to my cable modem through the ethernet port and I find that to be much easier. But we didn't have a crossover cable. So it was off to CompUSA to pick one up.

When we got back I could not get the ethernet to work. I plugged the cable into the computer and the modem. Restarted both many times. The Network Connection window in XP kept saying that the network was not plugged in. I tried different combinations authentication methods listed on the setup screen to see if something was conflicting but nothing worked. Finally in frustration, I pulled my Macintosh PowerBook out of my bag, plugged it into the ethernet cable, and what do you know... I was online. I went back to fiddling with the XP machine but I could never get that Network Connection to say it was plugged in.

I tried downloading the Charter Pipeline software from the internet (on my Mac) but they don't seem to have it on their website. I tried looking for it in their customer support pages but I was kindly informed that they don't support my computer. (Gotta love the WIndows bias and the fact that they shut you out of their webpages because you're not currently sitting at a Windows machine.)

I was beginning to think that we were going to have to run over to the cable company to pick up a Charter Pipeline CD and my aunt was about ready to pass out from lack of food (I get on my problem solving kick, and I tend to forget about things like that), when it occurred to me to check for a driver from the manufacturer of the modem.

After about 30 seconds on the Motorola webpage I had the drivers downloaded, copied to my USB Flash Drive and over on the XP machine. I got them installed and we were back in business. FINALLY!

Even after all that we still had to go through another hour or so of critical updates to patch problems with the software. At some point in the WIndows Update process something got installed that caused the monitor to go black whenever Windows loaded. Thankfully they have that system restore feature so I was able to back up a few steps and continue on.

I put their Norton Internet Security program back on and within a few minutes it was already popping up messages that the system was infected with the Walchia virus! One of the ones we where trying to get rid of with this whole reinstall process! Luckily Norton was able to delete the six copies that had already propagated throughout the system.

Things were finally beginning to settle down with the computer. I installed Mozilla Firefox as their web browser and Mozilla Firebird as their email program. I showed them how the Microsoft stuff was still there but that with Firefox's pop-up blocker they shouldn't have the as many of the virus and adware problems as they had before. We spent a little looking at some of the easy was to find things on the internet--like the Google search bar at the top of the Firefox window. And I called it a day around 9pm.

Boy am I glad, I have a Macintosh!

Posted by Jon at 8:28 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

This is cool. Beethoven's 9th Symphony time stretched to 24 hours with some really sophisticated software. (A standard performance of the 9th Symphony is usually just under 74 minutes. The original CD standard was set so that an entire performance could fit on one disc.)

I've been listening to the 5th movement. I feel like I've just touched the monolith, and now I need to beat on things with a bone club.

Posted by Jon at 12:34 AM | Permalink

You are now looking at the Movable Type version of my website. After a lot of work I was able to get back to the same functionality that I had under iBlog plus a few extra little features. I'm hoping to add some things in the future. Some of them you won't even notice--like an interface on my end so that I can quickly add new links. And some more style sheets including one optimized for printing. But all that is down the road. I think the only thing that hasn't carried over from my iBlog version are the comments that people left for me at Haloscan. There weren't many. I will add them in over here. Unfortunately the original dates of the comments won't carry over. Oh well.

Please let me know if you notice any problems with the new site.

Posted by Jon at 10:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

I just finished reading "The Dragon Reborn", the third book of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I have to say that these books are amazing! I've read the first three one right after another and I think I'm going to go out tomorrow and buy a few more. (The first two books are "The Eye of the World" and "The Great Hunt".)

The story is truly epic. Of course it is the classic tale of good versus evil. The young farmer who has no idea of his true past is suddenly thrown into an adventure far beyond anything he could imagine. It's like the tale of Luke Skywalker from the original "Star Wars", or Bilbo Baggins from "The Hobbit" or any number of other legends and myths far older than today's pop culture. The scope of this tale is larger than anything else I've read or watched before. The first three books weigh in at a hefty 2200 pages together. There are at least seven more books in the series and I can't see anything that makes me believe that they aren't a continuation of this same story.

This is definitely not a series for the faint of heart. This isn't slick little quest that will be wrapped up nicely in 400 pages. The scope of the mythology that Robert Jordan has created is quite vast. The detail that he writes into his stories and the characters makes you feel like you are actually living the adventure with them. This a refreshing change from the paper-thin characters that I often have to see every day in the Hollywood films I tend to work on.

Robert Jordan has done a superb job of starting with the basic blueprints of a fantasy story and creating a world entirely his own. This is a world of men of many nations with a continuous political struggle between them. The wizards of the standard fantasy fair, are replaced by the Aes Sedai (Eyes Seh-DIE). Woman who channel the One Power bending the forces of Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Spirit to their will. Men cannot wield this power without eventually going mad. And when the Aes Sedai find out about a man who can, he is "gentled"--cut off from the One Power permanently.

Men live in this world with a mysterious giant people called the Ogier. They are the lovers of nature. The caretakers of the forests and in ancient times, the builders of fantastic cities of stone. Ogier live hundreds of years longer than men, and are a gentle folk. Rarely some among them are "treesingers". By singing to trees they can shape wood into anything they can imagine.

I said it was a story of good versus evil. The men of the world fight against the forces of the Dark One. Trollocs are large half-man, half-beast monstrosities who feast on the flesh of their victims. Myrddraal are eyeless fiends who command the Trollocs. Grey Men are people who have given their soul over to the Dark One and act as his assassins.

This is a "must read" for fans of epic fantasy--readers longing for thick and juicy character development that they can really sink their teeth into. I can't wait to pick up the next book.

Posted by Jon at 10:09 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

It looks like we worked out part of the problem we were having with the Digidesign Core Audio Drivers that came with Pro Tools 6.2.3. If you remember from my earlier post, we are trying to use this on an officially unsupported system: PowerMac G4, OS X 10.3.3, Pro Tools 6.2.3 software, and Pro Tools | 24 Mix Plus hardware. I haven't really used the OS X core audio drivers before. I didn't realize that there was a Core Audio Setup program in the Digidesign folder. Once we ran that, and selected the proper interface, everything seemed to work fine. There is still one little bug though: both Pro Tools and the Core Audio Driver think that the 888 | 24 that is hooked up to the Mix Plus cards has 16 channels in and out. (Not the 8 that it actually does.) If haven't tempted fate to see what would happen if I selected Outputs 9 through 16.

I did notice that Digidesign has slightly updated its compatibility page. It still lists the Mix hardware as being in testing, and they still note that there has not been any problems with a PowerMac G4 in early testing. They have changed to information on the G5 though to say that it does NOT work with Mix hardware and that support is TBA.

We've started using Soundminer as our sound effects database program and it's excellent! We spent many hours yesterday letting the program scan our hard drives full of sound effects, and compile a database. Today Cameron pulled some sound effects for a friend and it took only a few minutes to make some selections and then transfer them to a folder. (This was a huge change from some of our recent experiences with Mtools where we'd spend an hour or two just trying to get the software to behave long enough to get the files on to a hard drive.)

One effect that was needed was the sound of someone getting hit in the face with a bell telephone. That's not exactly the kind of effect that you tend have sitting around. And even though I'm willing to give up quite a bit of my life to my career, getting smacked with a telephone while a microphone is pointed at me is not one of those sacrifices. So the sound had to be built from individual components. A couple of hard telephone hand set slams, a body hit, a punch, and a slight bell ring off made the perfect "phone introduced to head at high velocity" sound. Cameron didn't find quite the right bell sound, but he had a lot of great old phone rings. With the Soundminer software, you don't have to transfer the entire sound effect. You can set in and out points for the piece that you want. He selected the tail-end decay of a phone ring, had just that section transfered, and there was the needed ring-off.

On the on the "when are we going to get a paying gig" news front: we have been given scripts to three different movies that studios are interested in having us do the sound on. All of them start later in the year, and it would really be nice to find something that starts up in May, but I'm not complaining. It's nice to be wanted. As long as we can convince the "powers that be" that we're the right ones for the job, we should be busy the second half of this year. Keep your fingers crossed.

Posted by Jon at 9:30 PM | Permalink

Good things always come in threes, right? Today I saw an amazing documentary, and it's weird how well it fits in with the two documentaries that I had meetings about last week. I caught a matinee of "Mayor Of The Sunset Strip" appropriately enough at the Sunset 5. Wow! Just awesome.

This film is a film about Rodney Bingenheimer, a legend in the LA music scene. Rodney started out as a superfan of the bands of the mid to late 60s. (I'm going to stay away from the term "groupie" even though it is used in the film. I was a superfan of a few bands in my time, and it really takes some dedication. There's a great book about what it's like to be a superfan, "Bye Bye Baby: My Tragic Love Affair With The Bay City Rollers" by Caroline Sullivan. But I digress...) Eventually he wound up playing Davy Jones' double for the Monkees TV show.

From there he hung out and got to know every band and artist that was ever anybody--The Beatles, The Doors, Sonny & Cher, The Mamas & The Papas, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley. Everybody. Watching this documentary, seeing the photos and the films of Rodney with all of these classic bands makes you think he's some kind of real-life Zelig. He introduced David Bowie to America. He opened his own club on the Sunset Strip in the early 70s where all the rock stars would party. The Runaways. The New York Dolls. Iggy Pop. Alice Cooper.

Finally in the mid-70s he wound up with his own radio show on KROQ. He became THE guy to break all the hot bands of the day. Every band from The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, and Blondie to The Go Go's, The Smiths, and Dramarama got their start (at least in the U.S.) because Rodney played their songs on his radio show. Even more recently bands like Oasis and Coldplay got the nod from Mr. Bingenheimer and have gone on to be huge.

He is truly an amazing individual, and director George Hickenlooper has done a fantastic job of capturing Rodney's humanity and charm. A great documentary is informative, funny, passionate, and poignant, all at once, and "Mayor Of The Sunset Strip" is no exception. For me it ranks up there with other documentaries like "American Movie". Even though the subjects are quirky people, they are so endearing that you can't help falling in love with them.

Posted by Jon at 12:01 AM | Permalink

Let's Go Out The Coast, Have A Few Laughs

Rahul Mahajan is the author of a couple books about the U.S.'s involvement with Iraq. He is currently in Iraq making daily updates to his blog from Baghdad and Fallujah. It's an interesting read.

One of Rahul's books is about how we are going to Iraq to secure our oil reserves. It is something I have been thinking a bit about recently. I am not an expert but I read and I can make some basic observations based on what I see. So bare with me because this might start to sound a little silly:

I was watching "Die Hard" the other night. (See I told you.) The first one. The good one. In the beginning of the film, they set the stage for all the guns and explosions that happen later. We see John McClain on the plane, his wife in the office while the Christmas party is getting started, and the ominous truck driving around Los Angeles that we later find out is full of bad guys.

Here's the point: In one of the shots of the truck, it drives by a gas station where you can clearly see that the price of gas in Los Angeles at the time of the movie, 1988, was $0.74 a gallon. Right now in Los Angeles, gas at most stations costs about $2.29 a gallon--and that's basic unleaded. So in 16 years, the price of gas has tripled in the same market. That's a huge increase in price!

Maybe that's to be expected. Maybe base salaries have tripled in 16 years. Maybe inflation on consumer goods across the boards has increased that much. Like I said, I'm no expert. But it is something to think about.

Posted by Jon at 10:32 AM | Permalink

I'm still working away, behind the scenes, on my new version of Monsters from the Id. The first release probably won't look much different from what you're seeing right now, but trust me... it is. I have to say that I'm very impressed with Movable Type. It's a very slick system. And so many people make use of it that there is a lot of information online about tips and tricks that you can do.

I've been trying to set it up in such a way that it will be very customizable once it's up without redoing the structure again. I am going to have about 60 files that won't exist anymore, but I think I've found a couple of PHP scripts that will allow me to create an array of redirects in the "404 File Not Found" page. The cool thing is that I'll only need one file--not 60--and I won't have to keep the old folder structure that iBlog created. Plus with this script, it will literally say, "Oh, you tried to find this page? Well, it's now this one." And send you on your way.

Every page of the new weblog is now a PHP file (you know with a .php extension). I don't actually have a single line of PHP code in any of those pages yet. And I might not have any in there by the time I go live with this update. But by naming the files .php from the get go, I'll be able to add code to the pages later and I won't have to do yet another round of redirects when the name changes from .html to .php.

One thing I did notice in the course of this redesign... despite my best efforts during the previous conversion of my website from tables-based layout to pure CSS, I definitely did NOT have XHTML 1.0 Strict code. I thought I did. I knew there might be a few issues with the stuff that iBlog was generating but I didn't realize the extent to which my code was bad. Well I'm happy to say that I ALL of my new pages are XHTML 1.0 Transitional. They're all good. I've run them through the validator and they check out. I might even be able to bring them up to strict but there's one variable embedded in Movable Type which produces a image tag with the 'border="0"' attribute and that's a no-no in Strict. So we'll see.

The biggest culprits in my code were the links I made to sites with databases. Often the URL in address bar in my web browser would have several of the "&" symbols separating the variables that were sent to the server. I would just copy and paste this URL in my link but that's not quite correct for a webpage. You need to encode the "&" like this "&". Using that will give you valid XHTML code.

It's too bad that I outgrew iBlog so quickly--it's always nice to support Mac software. But Movable Type is so much more flexible, I'll be able to make posts on computers other than my own--even *shudder* Windows machines!

Posted by Jon at 4:33 PM | Permalink

Did everyone have a nice Easter?

I did. I drove down to Long Beach and spent the day with my aunt and uncle. They are going to get a new TV soon because their current one is a twelve-year-old projection set and it is definitely showing its age. The picture is warped, it's losing its brightness, the focus is soft, and the colors aren't that spectacular. I was telling them all about the Sony Projection LCD that Cameron recently put in his house and I think they are going to go that way. They are looking at the model that he has and also the next step up. My uncle is into having a huge picture so he feels he needs the 60" one. That 50" just isn't good enough.

I will very likely wind up in Long Beach again later this week because they are having trouble with their computer. I took a look at it yesterday and it is a bit messy. They have a Windows XP machine that they bought a year ago or so. It is now infected with 4 different viruses which have oh so conveniently attached themselves to necessary files like the winlogin.exe. Plus they have about 25 different adware and spyware programs that are now running on their computer. Norton Anti-Virus wasn't able to get rid of any of it. Unfortunately I'm probably going to have to do a complete re-install. It's possible that I might be able to boot from the system CD and replace the 4 infected system files with clean ones from the CD, but I'm not sure. Then I still have to track down all those adware programs try to disable them manually. Pain in the butt!

I told them that after I get this done, we'll have to sit down and I'll show them a bit about what kinds of things not to trust. And what kinds of things not to install on their computer.

It's so much easier on a Mac!

Posted by Jon at 11:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

I just bought tickets for the two Sleater-Kinney shows at the El Rey here in Los Angeles from everyone's "favorite" legal scalper, ticketmaster.com. Fifteen dollar face value on each ticket. Twenty-five dollars after Ticketmaster has had its way with you. Sixty-six percent markup?! WTF?! Loan sharks offer better interest rates.

But don't worry. They're not a monopoly. That would be illegal.

Posted by Jon at 1:52 PM | Permalink

Ok, so in just a few hours after my last post, I did some more research into various weblog and BBS software, and got Movabletype installed on my server. It's a very cool piece of software. I didn't realize. It's not all that different from iBlog--though it definitely has a lot more "bells and whistles." The authoring software just runs on the server as a set of perl scripts instead of on your local machine. But then it generates all the pages. I was thinking it was going to rely more on pages that we generated "on the fly". That's how a PHP-based system like Geeklog would work.

So this is good. I should have a pretty darn fast site with the most of the content on the pages being hard coded. All of those slow downs I experienced because of offsite content generation won't exist because it will be handled by my own server. Plus with full pages of HTML existing on my site, there shouldn't be any problems with search engines.

I've already managed to get all of my posts converted over. There's still quite a bit of work to do though. I have to get my templates working so that I have my "Halloween" style back. Plus I have to figure out if there are any plugins I want to install to add even more functionality to my site. And I have to go and make up some document referrers to point the old pages to the new ones, and a good "404 page not found" to help people transition over to the new version.

Posted by Jon at 9:21 AM | Permalink

Sometimes it would be much easier if I could just accept things they way they are.

I've really enjoyed my time getting back into web development on this site. I like being able to type up a little something, click the "Post" button and away it goes to my homepage.

But I've found certain things to be rather frustrating. This program that I'm using, iBlog, is great if you just want to type in some text or post a simple image. But if you want to get your hands dirty with a little more HTML like a bulleted list or a blockquote or whatnot, it's a bit difficult. You have to add extra tags around the HTML. And all the HTML has to be on one line with no returns. Plus iBlog isn't so great in it's Rich Text to HTML conversion. Instead of putting <p> and </p> tags around paragraphs, it uses two line breaks. <br /><br /> This isn't the best form and then when you add in block HTML which has its own line returns built in like lists or blockquotes, you get 2 blank lines instead of one between paragraphs. So then you have to delete the extra returns between paragraphs. And that in conjunction with HTML with no line returns makes very unreadable text.

Plus I have extra features of my site added by outside providers. My search engine is by Freefind. Comments are by Haloscan. The Blog Roll is by Blogrolling, and I'm listed at Technorati. Several of these services use outside Javascript so if their site is down or particularly slow, my site doesn't work well.

So of course I've been investigating other methods of running my weblog. Mac OS X is pretty cool in that it is a UNIX operating system. It comes with Apache web server and PHP already installed. So today I upgraded my PHP to the latest version and installed MySQL and I've been playing around with other ways of running my site. I'm thinking about using Geeklog. It's still going to require a lot of testing but it seems promising so far. By using that instead of iBlog, I'll be able to handle searches and comments on my own site. And quickly adding new bits of data like additions to a Blog Roll are very easy.

I haven't decided definitely on what I'm going to do. I also want to look at phpBB, and I should also check out Movabletype--though that one is perl-based. We'll see. I'm sure whatever I choose, a new roll out would still be several weeks away. So like I said, it would be much easier if I could just accept things the way they are.

Posted by Jon at 9:10 PM | Permalink

I spent most of another day with Cameron today. Dana, his wife, is always making jokes like "So when are you moving in?" They are such great people.

We were setting up his second Pro Tools system in his office / guitar room at his house and I found out some interesting things. We were able to get Pro Tools 6.2.3 working on a Mix Plus with Panther. Here's the specs:

• Power Mac G4 1.25GHz (OS 9 bootable "Speed Hole")
• OS X 10.3.3
• Pro Tools | 24 Mix Plus Hardware
• Pro Tools 6.2.3 Software
• ATTO UL3D SCSI Card
• Aurora IgniterX Lite video card with 6.2.2 drivers

Digidesign has not officially qualified Mix hardware for use with Panther and the 6.2 software. The setup that we have on our systems at Fox is Pro Tools 6.1 and OS X 10.2.6. Panther is so much nicer, I've been dying to use it for work. Digi does say though that they haven't experienced any problems in early testing on the Mix hardware.

So we thought we would give it a shot since we're not on a show right now. Pro Tools seems to function fine under basic usage. I was able to create a new session. Import some guide tracks and a movie. Play, scrub, shuttle, lots of fast starting and stopping, basic cutting and fades all worked. Now obviously a "real" session has many more than two tracks--lots of files and edits and fades. We haven't beat on it very hard but so far it's working well.

They also have finally fixed the Grid Mode bug that's been in 5.3, 6.0 and 6.1 where zooming way in would cause the grid lines and the Feet and Frame timeline to disappear.

I did encounter a problem with the Digidesign Core Audio drivers. When you select "Digidesign HW" in either Sound Output or Sound Input, the name changes to "Digidesign HW (Mix)" which is good. However, none of the options appear like setting the sound level or left / right balance or anything. Also when "Digidesign HW" was selected in Sound Output, iTunes would only intermittently work correctly. Sometimes I was able to play songs fine. Other times you'd hit play and a blank window would pop up that said "Hardware Setup" in the title. The song wouldn't play and you'd have to Force Quit iTunes to get out.

I'll keep you informed as we discover new things. I would welcome any comments from anyone with their own experiences of Mix hardware, Panther, and Pro Tools 6.2.

Posted by Jon at 12:38 AM | Permalink

This is gross. My eyes are screwed up as it is. I got my first pair of glasses in the 3rd grade. There is NO way I'm going to put "jewelry" in the "mucous membrane" of my eyeball!

Bob Dylan is not a good looking man. I'm sorry. "Blood On The Tracks" is one of the all-time greatest albums. I have a ton of respect for the man. But he should not be juxtaposed with girls in their underwear.

Posted by Jon at 12:00 AM | Permalink

Session drummer turned aspiring filmmaker, Gary Gardner, met with Cameron and I today about a documentary he's been working on for the last two years. It's about an LA jazz club called The Baked Potato which opened in its doors in the early 1970s. Practically every jazz musician has played that club in the past 30 years. Gary was recently able to interview Lou Rawls about his experiences at The Baked Potato. I suspect he still has a ways to go before he gets this whole thing pulled together, and even though I'm not a jazz fan, this is one exciting project.

First there's going to be a documentary with all these major jazz musicians like Al Jareau, Steve Lukather, Larry Carlton, and Robben Ford. (If I'm remembering the names correctly... again, I'm not the jazz guy.) Then there will be a live concert recording of these jazz musicians each playing 2 songs at the club. I think he was saying that he's planning on 30 different artists. That concert will be released on CD and DVD.

So even though the classic rock documentary I was talking about recently is a little more my style, this one is very cool for including the concert. We've already been talking about doing the 5.1 DVD mix to give a true feel of a small club experience.

And A Bowl Of Noodles

Cameron and I also spent time today goofing around with some instruments of our own--Cam on guitar, I was on bass. I've been learning to play bass for a few months now. It's so much fun. I'm never going to be great at it. In fact right now I'm definitely not good. I need to practice more. But bass is very cool.

Posted by Jon at 11:41 PM | Permalink

Bioware, the company that created Neverwinter Nights, is kind enough to provide a Dedicated Server for their program. What this means is that you can download this application. Install a copy of any modules you have into it's module directory, and run the server without needing another CD Key. Of course it's dedicated which means you can't play on that machine. That's the whole point, you play on another machine and connect to the server.

However, on the Mac you have to have direct access to the machine to setup and run the server. After some recent posts to the Mac NWN forums, I've been contemplating various ideas on how to make a remote control for the server. This would allow you to change settings, like selecting which module to load, and not actually be in front of the server computer.

I've been playing with AppleScript UI scripting for several hours tonight and I'm banging my head against the wall. The major problem is that the Mac Dedicated Server does not seem to send the proper response to the system after it has run. With basically every Mac application, even ones that are not directly AppleScriptable, you should be able to send this command:

tell application "Dedicated Server" to activate

If the application is not running, it will run and come to the foreground. If it is already running, it will just come to the foreground. It is critical for the application to come to the foreground for UI scripting because you are simulating mouse clicks and menu selections. For some reason with Dedicated Server, the activate command will cause it to run, but then the AppleScript will hang. If the server is already running, the script will also hang on the activate command. You end up have to press Command-Period to escape out of it.

If the activate command would work properly I am convinced that I could quite easily come up with a remote control. All of the user interface elements show up properly when interfacing with AppleScript's UI Element Inspector. In fact I can use that program to simulate clicks to the various buttons on the server interface. But because of that stupid activate command not working, no dice.

Ugh.

Posted by Jon at 12:02 AM | Permalink

I just got an email from my buddy Ben who's taking off for Japan and Australia tomorrow. His girlfriend and her friend have already been in New Zealand and Australia for a bunch of months checking things out. So they're reuniting in Tokyo which I'm very happy about. And thankfully we all get to read about it in their weblog, The Adventures of Katie and Emma.

We hung out a bit the other night when we went to see "Hellboy". (And at some point I'll finish up my review of it and post it here.) I told him that he had to bring me "ninja stuff" back from Japan.

Today is actually the one month anniversary of the new Monsters from the Id complete with weblog and swivel action kung fu grip.

"So I've got that going for me.... Which is nice."
--Carl Spackler

Posted by Jon at 11:27 AM | Permalink

Everyone and their brother is talking about the fact that 10 years ago today, Kurt Cobain killed himself. You can check out Wil Wheaton's take on it or numerous other writers over at Black Table.

I do remember exactly what I was doing when I first heard that Kurt was dead. I was in college trying to sleep after a late night party. It's almost funny that I made my post yesterday about how much I didn't like Daylight Saving Time. How difficult it was to cope with that missing hour.

April 5, 1994 I was trying really hard to cope with that missing hour, even if it was a few days before, and was losing badly. Back then I was the master of the snooze alarm. I could manage to hit snooze for 7 minute snatches of sleep for two hours straight. I don't