I am a Mac guy. There's no question about it. My job, my sensibilities, and the enjoyment I get from computers all points me down the road to Cupertino. Unfortunately sometimes the rest of the world decides to stand in the way of that path.

Now to be honest, I haven't always used Macs. From the time my dad first started bringing computers home from the office when I was in grammar school---remember the Compaq luggable?---all the way through high school I used various DOS computers to do my school work. However, when I went off to college I bought my first computer and it was a Macintosh LCII. I'd used them in the computer lab in high school and they seemed so much cooler.

In college I always had a Macintosh sitting on my desk in my dorm, but I used a mixture of Macs, Windows, DOS, and Unix at my work-study job in the campus computing center. Later when I entered into the "real world" of life after college and got a job working on post-production sound for film, I found that a large percentage of Hollywood makes use of Macs.

There was a period of time when I was working that I didn't have a lot of spare money to throw around and I've always enjoyed tinkering with computers, so I built my own Windows machines for a while. They were much less expensive than my beloved Macs and since Apple was caught in the doldrums of System 8, I only felt occasional pangs of abandonment guilt.

It wasn't until a few year later when I started working for some other companies when I saw the coolness that was System 9 on Blue and White G3s and Graphite G4s that the longing became unbearable and I had to return to the fold. Step back into the warm, embracing arms of Steve Jobs' goodness. And that's where I've remained until yesterday. Actually it's where I will remain, period. Unfortunately like I said, sometimes the rest of the world gets in the way.

I've started working on a project that pretty much requires me to run Windows. I fought against it as much as I could but not even my copy of Virtual PC could fill the gap of an ugly grey box sitting on floor of my apartment. So after talking it over with some people, a bit of internet research and a lot of soul-searching, I stopped by a local "build-your-computer"-type store and picked up a new motherboard, processor, some RAM and an OEM copy of Windows XP.

Last night after work I dusted off the last of my FrankenPCs, an unwieldy 500MHz Celeron running Windows 98---first edition---in the largest case you've ever seen, and ripped the guts out of it. By 2:30 in the morning I had an AMD Athlon XP 2800 nestled in the socket of a new ASUS motherboard, a 120GB second hard drive removed from one of my Macs reformatted (of course only after moving 80GB of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix bootleg concert FLACs to the safety of an external Firewire drive) and Windows XP installed.

I crawled into bed and lay snug while dreams of DDR RAM danced through my head. At least until 5:30 when the alarm went off so I could get a couple more hours of work in before I had to go back to the office for a temp dub. The update to SP2 went down without a hitch and I installed the 5 CDs of material that I need for the project. Unfortunately when I went to fire up the application for the first time it crapped out on me when the first of the 3D graphics were drawn on the screen.

It was a crushing blow to spend all those hours and be so close to the finish line and have my hopes dashed. Suddenly I started to remember why I enjoy Macs so much more. Of course I've had programs crash on me, or strange bugs have popped up that I've had to diagnose. But it's been a fairly rare occurrence. Maybe I've had good luck or maybe I just know more about how to head off trouble from Apple's computers, but firing up a new system in the world of Macintosh is a pleasurable experience. On the other hand, my travels in the Gatesian realms usually leave me feeling like I've been mugged by a street gang "saying hello" to foreigners.

Thankfully by 7:30, right around the time I was giving careful consideration to seppuku, I was forced to pull myself together and get in the shower or there was no way I was going to make it into the office at 8am. And in the hours since, I've had time to reflect on the joys of Windows system construction and do some research on the ASUS and NVIDIA websites. I'm crossing my fingers that it's just an issue of old video drivers being used in Windows XP SP2. Tonight I'll find out when I go back to fight some Redmond dragons.

Nuendo has group tracks. Click on plus sign in the group track labeled "AFX" and it will open revealing all the AFX tracks. By clicking the solo button on the AFX group track, all AFX tracks are soloed. If you solo tracks, only those tracks will be printed on the cuesheet.

I soloed predubs A through D---the BGs. Under the "Project" menu I selected "Track Sheets". A new windowed opened and I saw my cuesheet. I clicked on the "More" button to show all the options. By default the cuesheet is a vertical US letter (8.5" x 11") page. I selected "Page Setup" from the "File" menu to change that to a horizontal Tabloid (11" x 17").

Back in the cuesheets (track sheet) window, I turned off the timecode column from the pulldown menu, filled in the blanks for the name of the cuesheet and editor, and dragged the track width until everything fit on two pages across. Then I selected "Print" from the "File" menu.

So amazingly easy.

The cuesheets look pretty good. If I had my way, I'd make a few minor tweaks to the layout. I think there should be a space between the track header and the first cue. Likewise there should be a space between the cue in-point and the description. Plus there are a couple of line-wrapping issues that need to be resolved, but considering I was able to print out those four reels in three separate passes each in less than 10 minutes, I didn't care.

This was such a huge difference from my usual struggle with Tape. Plus with OS X 10.3's built-in "Print to PDF" option, I was able to save great looking digital files of all my cuesheets that I could email to the dub stage for safety.

If I have some time tomorrow, I might investigate and see how hard it is to open a Pro Tools 5.1/5.3/6.x session in Nuendo and print the cuesheets from there. It might be possible to Pro Tools 6.4.1's DigiTranslator to save an OMF file with no media. Open that in Nuendo and print.

I offered my services to a great group of people doing some amazing work for the Neverwinter Nights game and they accepted. So as of this afternoon, I am officially a member of the Dragonlance Adventures team. Take a look at the screenshots in the gallery on their website and you can see the quality of work they do. I just hope that I can live up to their high standards.

One day when I was in fourth or fifth grade my mom took me to the bookstore to pick out some things to read. Actually she took me to the library and the bookstore often, but on this particular day I happened upon two paperbacks. One had a red spine---the other blue. They both had "dragons" in their title and I soon discovered the fantastic realm of Krynn.

Tanis, Flint, Goldmoon. Draconians and Kender. It's cool to think that I'll be making a contribution---small as it may be---bringing this world to your computer screen.

The Kir'Shara is Matrix code.

"It is illogical to not realize that the Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."

After bugging me for the last several weeks about playing Christmas music in our cutting room, Dana finally convinced me today to put some on. For the last few hours that we were in the office we worked away to the gentle melodies of the Glenn Miller Orchestra's "In The Christmas Mood" volumes one and two.

When I was growing up there were two Time-Life cassettes of Christmas music that my parents had and for me those songs really represent the spirit of the season. Unless my memory is playing tricks on me, I think the series was called "Home For The Holidays".

Time-Life doesn't sell it anymore but thankfully a few years ago I discovered that they had a new set of CDs with nearly the same track list, "The Time-Life Treasury Of Christmas". I gave those as a gift to my mom that year and now I insist that if she's going to put on some music when I visit her, those have to go into the rotation.

Christmas music is one of those festive holiday things, but I can't take a lot of it. I hoping that we don't have to listen to it everyday for the next three weeks.

Plus Dana and I tend to have many pop culture-related conversations while we are doing our work.

"'Dance Fever USA'? That sounds a lot like that movie with Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt."

"'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun'?"

"Exactly. What was the name of the dance TV show on that?"

"I don't know. But Shannon Doherty was the younger daughter."

"Yes, but who was the geeky little brother?"

"Little brother? I don't remember that one."

"'Tune-in Tokyo'? No? Jonathan Silverman."

"Oh yeah!"

Of course it's not always that easy to remember all the names or the movies so we're often going online to look at IMDB or All Music Guide or Google searches. So without the internet today, the conversations tended more towards the oblique.

"You know. The guy. That one who did that thing."

"The guy? What thing?"

"You know, in that movie with the woman with the hair."

"Most of them do have hair."

"No. But she married that other guy."

Much less fun.

I first got on the internet when I started college in 1992. Twelve years is certainly a long time to be online. However back then it was with my 2400 baud modem---not even comparable to a 512kbps DSL connection today. I don't think I had a dedicated broadband internet connection in the office I worked in until 2000. Obviously I used the internet a lot in those eight years but it was really only sometime in the last four that it has become so pervasive, so much a part of my life that I feel a sense of loss when I don't have access to it.

The problem is that intent does not always equal success. Good intentions are certainly good. We all like good intentions. However, when those good intentions lead to failing miserably, you have to ask yourself, "Was it really worth it? Are good intentions all they're really cracked up to be?"

I have a goatee. I'm one of those "trim around the edges" kind of goatee guys. It can get big after a while if I don't cut it back. Initially, years ago, I started growing it out because it didn't come in very full---kind of the comb-over equivalent to facial hair. Now it comes in much better.

This morning I had the brilliant idea that I might finally be able to set my trimmer to #2 and just buzz over everything. Much faster and probably cleaner looking in the long run. Easier than the trim around edges.

Unfortunately I now have a couple of bare patches on my upper lip thanks to some over-zealous clipper work. Thankfully it grows back. I'll just have to suffer through looking like an idiot for a couple of weeks until I can even it all out.

"Hello. I'm Jon. Big dummy."

Overall reaction from him?

I think he was pleasantly surprised. I did hear him chuckle a couple of times - so that's always a good sign. He had a few suggestions here and there, and was certain to tell us about the stuff he did like. From Felix's illustrations, and the stand-in footage of the troll - he's very keen to see the completed Mica. He'll also be scripting some very short dialogue for the guards to be speaking around the lake. So I guess - all in all - it was a success. Especially considering the screening of Troll Bridge we showed him, had a lot of stuff only half done (or not even done at all).

So I think we've done good. I know I for one was a nervous wreck those last couple of days as Dana who shares a room with me at work can attest to. It was, at least in my mind, a big undertaking for me. I was providing all the sound for something that I really cared about.

I've been working in the sound industry for just shy of nine years. I know how to use the software, in fact I know it quite well. I know how to do a lot of the functional parts of editorial like converting picture to usable formats, sample rate converting sounds to get them in sync, and doing changes from change notes and worktracks. But for nine years I've been an assistant sound editor. I know that job really well. I haven't done a lot of actual cutting---a lot of sound editing. I know what I like when I hear it. I can use the sound database better than most people but that process of cutting and positioning and combining and stretching and processing, I haven't done a lot of it. So this is a big step for me.

I'm glad I'm taking it. I hope everyone is pleased with the end product.

Unfortunately even that leads to another question by the lesser informed of my countrymen. "Oh. Who's Douglas Adams?"

"You know, 'The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy'?"

"Oh yeah! Never read it."

"Well, it's satire of modern life and pop culture told in science fiction novels. Douglas Adams, that is. Terry Pratchett does a similar thing with fantasy. Kind of a literary Monty Python."

Thankfully most Americans are at least passingly familiar with Monty Python.

A little over a year ago, I was delighted to read about a intrepid group of Australians who decided to make a live-action version of one of Terry's short stories, "Troll Bridge". After a little investigation I found their website and starting reading about their undertaking.

As it turns out they got in touch with Terry and he agreed to allow them to make the movie. Terry's stories have been turned into plays, mostly in England, and there are even two cartoons available on DVD and VHS of "Wyrd Sisters" and "Soul Music". But there hasn't been a live action version. Until now.

My immediate reaction was "Wow! Wouldn't it be great to work on a Discworld film?!" So I sat down a wrote an email to Daniel Knight, the director, offering my services as a post-production sound guy. For some unknown reason, he was actually impressed with my resume and said "Sure."

And for the better part of a year that's been it. This is a mostly volunteer movie. People offering their services because they, like me, wanted to work on a Terry Pratchett movie. Or they just wanted to work on a movie period. But most of us have day jobs. The things that pay the bills. So it's taken time.

About 2 weeks ago, I got an email from Daniel asking if I could help him out with some sound. Terry himself was going to be sitting down to watch some scenes and he wanted to make it as cool as possible. Of course I agreed and that's what I've been working on in my spare time. This weekend has been the big editing session for me. They're meeting with Terry Pratchett on Thursday. Work for me seems to have gotten extra busy recently. And Daniel is 19 hours ahead of me in Australia so this weekend is really my last chance to get the majority of the work done.

It's been a lot of fun. I'm continually amazed at what I can accomplish on my laptop with an Mbox, Pro Tools LE, Soundminer and a good sound effects library. Of course this isn't even really a temp dub. When it comes time to really do the sound, I'll be working on my full-blown Pro Tools system because there will be a lot more sounds to carry and I'll try to work out a deal with a local dub stage for mixing.

But with that little setup, a fast internet connection, some online storage space, email and instant messaging, we've been able to make this happen. It's been an exciting time.

"MY MODEST PROPOSAL: THE U.S.A.R."
By C. B. Shapiro 

I feel bad for the Red States. 

Yes, they won the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and most of the state houses.  But they still can't have the country they really want because the last few Blue States won't roll over.  So I am making a simple proposal:

Secession.  Divorce.  Splitsville.

Personally, I think we made a huge mistake not letting them go when we had the chance back in 1862.  Well, no time like the present to correct an old mistake.

Then, they would finally be free to have the kind of society they've always wanted; church and state can be fused so they build the kind of theocracy they've dreamt of, with Jesus at the helm.  Then the new USAR (United States of America Red) can ban books, repeal civil rights, persecute gays and have all the wars they like. They want prayer in schools?   More power to them.  They can ban abortion and post the Ten Commandments in every federal building in their country.  Bring back slavery, if they want.  We'll be free to live with our like-minded countrymen who believe in science, modernism, tolerance, religion as a personal choice, and truly want limited government intrusion in our personal lives.  Why should each side be driven mad by the other any more, decade after decade?

Call the Culture War a tie and everyone go home.

Of course, we in the U.S.A.B. get the Gross Domestic Product, businesses and universities of California, New York, Massachussetts -- basically the whole Northeast and Northwest (plus Illinois and Michigan if they want to come along).  They get Wal-Mart and Duke and most of the Nascar tracks.  But they can feel free to import movies, TV shows, financial services, and defense technology.  We'll import country music, bibles and Confederate flags.

The two countries will by necessity have open immigration policy: anyone who feels they are living in the wrong country can just move across the border, no questions asked.

Ultimately, why should I have to convince my fellow countrymen that Darwin may have had a point and that the word “liberal” is not equivalent to “godless communist?”  And why should they be forced to live in a country with morally corrupt non-believers?  I'll stay in the messy, free-thinking U.S.A.B.  And to the U.S.A.R. I say…

God bless you all, and see you at the U.N

I woke up this morning and walked into my own horror movie when I saw the electoral votes on the TV.

A -37 error usually happens when you try to copy two or more pieces of media with the exact same name into one folder. You've got duplicated audio. Two files have the exact same name sitting in two different places on your master cutting drive(s). They are both referenced in your editing tracks in the Pro Tools session. When you try to combine everything under one Audio Files folder with a "Save Session Copy In" the copy quits when it tries to copy the duplicate file and returns the -37 error. Those two files might be identical in every that counts for Pro Tools---name, Unique ID, length---but they don't have to be. They could be completely different sounds but have the same name. Look back over all the shows you've cut. How many "Applause 1" or "Footstep 27" do you have in you library?

Thankfully there's a pretty quick fix.

1. Open the master session. This will set things like timecode and I/O's to the settings you're looking for. It's also your chance to double-check that all your fades are created and that you're not missing any audio files.
2. Save and close the session.
3. Create a new session on the layback drive using whatever settings you need---16 bit or 24 bit, 44.1KHz or 48KHz, etc. Make sure that "Last Used" is selected for the I/O.
4. Select "Import Session Data" from the File menu.
5. Choose your master session from the other hard drive.
6. Make sure to choose "Copy media" from the audio pull-down menu.
7. Highlight all tracks for import (or at least all tracks that you want to layback---you might have more in your master session). Make sure that you're importing "All" data and that it's from the master playlist.
8. Click the "Import" button.
9. Wait while all your tracks and media are copied to the new drive. You can watch the process in your Task Window. Any duplicates will show up as -37 errors at the bottom of the Task Window. The regions will still show up in your tracks but they will be blue because there is no online media associated with them. Everything else will be copied to the new drive.
10. Save and close the layback Pro Tools session.
11. In the Finder, open the layback hard drive and open the folder of the layback session you just closed.
12. Rename the "Audio Files" folder to something else like "Audio Files 2".
13. Reopen your layback session in Pro Tools.
14. Pro Tools will warn you that there is missing audio. These are just the files that are now in the "Audio Files 2" folder. Select "Manually Find" and check "Rebuild Fades" if necessary.
15. The duplicated media that didn't copy the first time will be found on your master drive. A new "Audio Files" folder will be created and the duplicates will be copied into it.
16. In the Relink Window, only check your layback drive. Even better, only check the layback session folder in the layback drive. Highlight all missing audio files and click the "Fink Links" button. Click "Commit Links" when all files are found.
17. When all the copying and relinking is done in your Task Window, save and close your session.
18. Reopen it to make sure that everything was copied. Be sure to choose "Select -> Offline Regions" from the Audio menu above the Region List to make sure that you're not missing any files.
19. You might have to repeat at step 10 if there are 3 or more files with the same name in the session. Go ahead and repeat as many times as it takes to get all files copied to your layback drive.
20. Your "Audio Files" folder will probably only have a few files in it while "Audio Files 2" might have hundreds. This doesn't really matter, but for the look of things, you might want to rename "Audio Files" to "Audio Files dupes" and "Audio Files 2" to "Audio Files". It's all up to you. If you rename any folders, you should probably reopen the session one last time and "Manually Find" any files that are now "lost".

Yes, it's a lot of steps to describe, but I think you'll agree that it's not very hard. This definitely works with Pro Tools 6.4.1. I would imagine that it's the same under 6.4 with HD hardware but since I don't have that, I'm not 100% positive. If I remember correctly 6.2.x and lower always asked you where to save audio and fade files on import. In that case you could just create a new folder in the Save Window and save things there.

Wallet? Check.

iPod? Check.

Cellphone? Check.

Keys? Oh crap.

Every two or three years something happens and I manage to step outside my apartment, close the door and almost immediately discover that my keys are now on the otherside of 2 inches of wood and a Schlage lock.

I guess I was due because that was the situation I found myself in this morning just before 8am. My internal clock had me up early since we just had our time change. I was doing a little cleaning around me apartment. When I went to take the trash out, I immediately discovered that although I had managed to have nearly every other technological gadget about my person, the necessary keys were sitting on the counter.

Thankfully since I had my cellphone I was in touch with a locksmith within minutes and a half-hour later he was crouched at my door jiggling his tools in the handle.

This was obviously the first call of the day for him and he had that rumpled "I just got out of bed" look about him. But he was a friendly fellow and proceeded to wax rather philosphic while I stood around impatiently waiting for him to let me in.

"Wow! Look at that tree! It's beautiful! You know you have quite a view up here."

I guess he was working on the lock by touch and sound because he was looking past me down the hill and over the morning rooftops of Burbank.

"I bet you could just sit and stare out the window on the other side of your place looking at the mountains all day long."

"Actually that window just looks into an alley."

"Still, you know a tree like that takes a lot of work to get it to look that beautiful."

"Yeah. Probably."

"You know, you have to trim it once a year. You have to make sure all the branches are pointing up or they'll just end up breaking off."

"Ok."

"You know how much it costs to trim a tree that size."

"I have no idea."

"Five thousand bucks.'

"Wow."

"Yeah. Hey! Check out that hummingbird! You know a tree like that supports an incredible amount of life."

"Uh huh."

"All kinds of different things live in a tree like that. Imagine if all of us could live in a tree like that. The number of people it could support. That would be incredible. You know my neighbor this old guy doesn't trim his tree. The branches don't point up. They're all going 'zoom' like this and back like that. Ok, let's try this lock the other way."

"Actually it opens clockwise like how you were first going."

"I know. I'll reset it if I get it open."

"Ok."

He went on and on like that for the twenty minutes it took him to get the door open. After suggesting that I hang a shower curtain in front of my balcony to get more privacy and informing me that my neighbor's wooden shingle roof was a huge fire hazard, the lock finally popped and my cat Max who was really curious about all the racket that was going on at the door stuck his head out through the crack in the doorway.

I managed to get Max back inside before he escaped, thanked the locksmith for coming to my aid, and went on with my life with a whole new outlook.

Ok. Maybe not.

You can see all the pictures in the photo album.

Billboard to Rank Cell Phone Ringtones

... The music market tracker Billboard will begin ranking the customized mobile phone sound snippets beginning next week....

As it does with other music sales data, Billboard will publish the top 20 ringtones purchased for each week.

Is it just me or is this totally lame? I have never had much use for the Billboard charts. They certainly don't reflect the music that I'm interested in and that I buy. Of course I'm also not a 12-year-old girl. But it seems to me that this is the final nail in the coffin of Billboard's relevancy. Are the record labels so anxious to justify themselves that they have to bolster their self-esteem by keeping track of which 15 second music-bytes are the most popular on telephones? Does this mean that there is going to be a surge in the "Macarena" on the charts again? How about "Hava Nagila"?

I've got an idea. My current ringtone is the theme to "The A-Team". I think those crack commandos from the 80's deserve to be on the charts. If everyone called me my cellphone maybe we could make it to number one. The number is 818-555... oh nevermind.