Feng Shui

I've been on a simplification kick lately. Less clutter, less stuff, less to worry about. Moving my main machine to a Mac mini (crap, that's a lot of m's) has helped me simplify my computer room. I'm finally happy with the room. The cables are under control, the deskspace is adequate, and I just enjoy being in the room. Here are a couple of pictures of the desk and the electronics cluster in the corner.

Personal Content Production

In my efforts to give Apple as much of my money as possible, I've recently been experimenting with creating books in iPhoto and ordering up large prints of some photos. For the most part, I've been quite satisfied. I like iPhoto a lot, even if it is a bit slow on my admittedly low end Mac mini. I have had iPhoto crash on me a couple of times and when it crashed, it took some of my work with it. That's no good, and now I don't trust it completely. Every half hour or so, I'll do a Quit and Restart of iPhoto, just to gurantee my changes aren't lost. Man I hate doing that.

Anyway, while looking through my nicely bound and printed iPhoto books, I got to thinking..."Why doesn't Apple do this for all sorts of content production?". Apple likes to make a big deal of their Made on a Mac slogan. It even says so right in the back of the iPhoto books. They are also looking to pull more people to their platform and they've always been known to have the full solution. For instance, with iPhoto you can import and organize your own photos and then you can order prints and books. You can make your own songs in Garage Band. How come you can't order your own CDs with your own art on them? You can make your own DVDs in iDVD. How come you can't order your own DVDs with disc art and cover art? Sure you can burn these things and write on them with a sharpie. You can even print decent looking art on your home printer, but you can print decent looking photos too, but I'd still rather pay a few bucks to get the size I want, the quality I want, and get it right the first time.

I first thought this might be a copyright thing. Apple probably doesn't want to get in the middle of producing small runs of bootlegs, but this issue exists with photos too. There are even cases of some places refusing to print photos because they look too professional and therefore are probably covered by someone else's copyright. So maybe they lack an ordering system. No, wait, they already built that for their online store and the iPhoto books. So, they have content producing users. They have content producing apps that they own and can update easily. They have an ordering and distribution system. What's the hold up? Can any of you think of a reason they aren't doing this (other than cost of running the business)?

Maybe this will get solved when the iTMS lets the little guy upload and sell their stuff. I'm still waiting for that one :)

Ring It Up

The landline is gone, sort of. We recently switched from a local phone company to Vonage. In all, I'm quite pleased.

Our main reason for switching was cost. We were paying $40-45 a month with McLeod. We now only pay $17 a month with Vonage. After getting the Vonage adapter for free after rebate, the savings is adding up quickly. It's also nice that they just charge it to your credit card. That's one less bill to write a check for.

Audio quality is fine. There is a slightly elevated background noise level on our end, but I can't hear it on the remote end and no one else seems to either.

We've activated 911 on the line, and I'm not all that concerned about needing to dial 911 when the broadband is out.

We used Line Number Portability, so we kept our old number. That switch was the most painful. Vonage didn't seem to like our first two attempts to fax in the LNP document. After they accepted it on the 3rd try, the switchover was fairly quick. McLeod were idiots about it though. They sent us a letter that pretty much read "sorry you are leaving, but we really don't care" and they also told us we had to call all of these people to finish the switch. Yeah, we didn't have to do that. Vonage had already done the switch before McLeod told us to jump through some hoops.

Vonage also has a great "dashboard" that updates in near real-time with how many minutes you've used. We won't even get close to using all of our minutes each month. We really don't talk on the phone that much. It's also fun to get voicemails as .wav files on your computer if you'd like. They need a Tiger Dashboard widget to allow easy access to these.

In all, I'd recommend Vonage.

Two Turntables and an iMic at Home

So I was anxiously awaiting my iMic. The Mac mini didn't come with an audio input and I've really missed mixing and listening to my vinyl. You see, all of my DJ gear is attached to my computer and my speakers are attached to the computer. No computer, no sound, simple as that. I picked up the iMic for a decent price off of Amazon, but I've spent all night fighting it, and the vodka isn't helping.

I've managed to get it to output sound, but only if I record a new live instrument in Garage Band. Audacity isn't doing trick, even though I used it a lot under Windows. So far, I've only been able to get it to work in Mono mode with Audacity. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Yes, this is a grumpy post.

Pinpoint Accurate Photos

We recently took a vacation to Alaska. One of the greatest things about it was that 5 of us on the trip had digital cameras, and we used them. In all we gathered nearly 2000 still images that do a fantastic job of capturing the beauty of the terrain and the fun we had. The problem lies in making sense of all of those photos.

Writing code for a living, I'm well aware of "garbage in - garbage out". Unfortunately, this concept applies to far more than computer software. Of those 5 cameras firing off images for over a week, only 2 of them had proper dates set in them, and none of them were adjusted to the local time zone. So what? Well, now that I have the power of iPhoto's Smart Albums, I want to be able to sort the pictures by location, and without useful geocoding of those images (we'll talk more about that later), I'd like to rely on the timestamp and my own knowledge of where we were on that day to sort out the pictures. Since I now have a few hundred pictures that think they were captured in 2047, I'm going to have to figure out the power of Automator to fix that metadata. So my first wish for more accurate picture taking is cameras that can auto-set their own date and time.

Next up, location, location, location. By no means is this an original idea, but I want GPS enabled cameras! Built in is great. Bluetooth enabled cameras so that I can use an external Bluetooth GPS is fantastic too. I'd even be happy with a manual setting on the camera where I could pull up a map and point to where I was. That location would then be assigned to the photos. The software could have a setting of "Expire location after 1 day" to prevent false location data for pictures you'd take later.

We're starting to see products that do this. Ricoh has a GPS ready camera, and Mappr! is the start of just what I'm wanting.

My second wish for more accurate picture taking is location based Smart Albums in iPhoto. These would be both assignable, and searchable in iPhoto. To assign, you could select a group of photos and choose "Assign Location". Hopefully that would bring up a selection of methods for assigning location including an Atlas, Google Maps, whatever. You'd also be able to browse based on the location. Certainly Apple could create some slick panning map that would zoom photos up as you passed over the location. They could also make Spotlight smart enough to translate location names in to geocoded locations. That way, I can search for "Chicago" and get pictures of a Cubs game without having to tag the photos manually.

I don't know about the rest of you, but iLife was one of the major draws to get me away from Windows. If Apple continues to step it up and deliver features like these, I see even more switchers.

Deets

Moving contacts from Oulook under Windows to Address Book under OS X can be a pain until you figure out the easy way to do it.

I tried exporting to a .pst and importing that in Address Book. It didn't like that. I tried exporting to tab delimited and comma seperated. Outlook complained it needed to install a translator and then wanted the CDs. Forget that. I'm not digging those out. Finally, I found the way. Forward as vCard. Why Outlook doesn't offer vCard as an export type, I have no idea.

Anyway, just open your contacts in Outlook. Select all and then click Actions->Forward as vCard. Send that email to something you can retrieve on your Mac. Get the email on the Mac. Save the attachments out and then drag them from the Finder in to the Address Book. Bang, done, and you even have your contacts as vCards that can be easily backed up.

Hike and Float

Ben has been on me to post some pictures from my trip to Alaska. Well, here you go...






This is a picture of the Chilkoot Trail. We only went a few miles on it, but I'd love to go back and hike the whole thing. The Chilkoot Trail has quite the history behind it. This was the trail the gold seekers had to travel and Canada required 2000 pounds of food and gear per person that they could survive on. As 100 pounds is a lot to carry, most of the rushers had to hike the trail both ways, carrying near 100 pounds, at least 20 times. Ouch.

We took the hike and float tour with Skagway Float Tours. These guys were fantastic. I highly recommend them. The guides knew their stuff and were a lot of fun to talk with.

So who wants to go back and hike this with me? If you're driving, I call shotgun.

New Evil Nine on iTMS

I just got an email from Apple letting me know that two new Evil Nine tracks are now up on iTMS. Downloading now. That is all.

Like a Sound You Hear That Lingers In Your Ear

California Soul

I've been absolutely intoxicated by this song over the last few days. I first heard it in Product Placement, an amazing live mix of soul, jazz, hip hop, and funk by DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist. It's actually a combo CD and DVD and in the DVD, they have images of the 45's they are playing spin across the screen. I latched on to California Soul and then began the hunt to find out more.

My journey has taken me to many corners of the web (thanks Google). Here's what I know. It seems that California Soul was originally recorded by The 5th Dimension in 1968. If I'm wrong on that, please tell me.

I also found that 2 versions of it are used in Product Placement. First is a version by the Gerald Wilson Orchestra. This is followed by a version recorded by The Messengers.

Finally, I picked up a copy of a live recording by the daKAH Hip Hop Orchestra on iTMS. Great stuff. It's quite worth the dollar.

Watch the Movie, Take Home the Soundtrack

How many times have you walked out of the theater at the end of a movie thinking "Wow, that had some good music. I should buy the soundtrack and/or score."? I know I've personally done it many times.

Wouldn't it be cool (and highly profitable) for the movie theater to have a CD vending machine in the lobby filled with the soundtracks of the films it is showing? You could even stick the crappy, we made it in a week, companion video game in there. Don't tell me there isn't room for it. Kick out that beat up Mortal Combat game and get with it.

Sell the soundtracks at $10 each and you'll make a fortune. Why collect quarters, when you can collect 10 spots?

What Color Is This?

Links to this color blind test seem to come up in discussions every now and then. I am colorblind with a few colors (you already knew that), so the site is of particular interest to me. If you haven't been there, go check it out. If you are wondering, yes, other than the first one, all of the red-green tests are spots to me. If I know what I'm supposed to see and I stare at it long enough, I can make out the hidden number.

Now to add something here, let's talk about the real world and colorblindness. As stated on that page, 12-20% of males are colorblind. 1 in 5! That's a lot of people. Why don't product designers take that in to consideration when they design their latest gadget? Nearly everything with a battery uses green for good battery and red for bad. Yep, that's all but useless to me. Working in the color amber doesn't make it much better. My simple request, use seperate LEDs or add a blink pattern so those that can't make out the colors can still make sense of your product. Green should be a slow pulse of green. If you've seen the power LED on a sleeping mac, you know what I mean by pulsing. Red should be a sharp, quick, blink.

Next time - how the hell do I get my clothes to match?

Recent Music Purchases

Everyone seems to be in a music talking mood lately, so let me join in with thoughts on my recently obtained tunes.


Moby - Raining Again
Typical Moby single. Halfway decent title track. A lame B-side. Remixes from hot producers.

I picked this up for two reasons. One, I'm a Moby collector (although I'm steadily losing interest), and two, it includes a freakin' Evil Nine remix! I like the Evil Nine remix. Not their best work, but well worth it.


DJ Nu-Mark and Pomo - Blend Crafters
Yow, this is some good stuff. If you like instrumental hip hop with some funk flavor, you gotta check this out. DJ Nu-Mark is the DJ for Jurrasic 5. If you haven't heard of Jurassic 5, please bring some cookies and milk to my house and we'll have a listening party.


The Chemical Brothers - Galvanize
Power, grace, style. That's all that needs to be said.

This track rocketed to the top of my iTunes most played list. You gotta love Q-Tip on the vocals. In case you care, the iTMS version is different from the album version. The single version is also different from the album version with the single version being the longest and quite DJ friendly.


Lyrics Born - Same !@#$, Different Day
A very strong remix album. This is the follow up to Later That Day.... There are some tremendous remixes on here. It's tough to capture the same panache when creating a remix album. This is one of the rare few that do. If you like lyrical hip hop with beats that make you grin, give this a spin. Also be sure to check out the Stereo MCs remix. They can still drop a groove.

Switch!

It has begun. It seems like it has been forever but I finally have my own Mac. I first decided that my next computer was going to be from Apple nearly 2 years ago. I really didn't need a new computer at the time, so that idea was put on the back burner. My enthusiasm was resparked when I got an iBook at work to do some testing. I fell in love with the thing and knew that it was time for Windows to go bye-bye at home.

That began "the wait". I knew Tiger was coming and I knew I wanted it. I didn't want to buy anything until Tiger released because I didn't want to pay for Tiger and I didn't want to deal with upgrading, no matter how easy it was going to be. I waited a loooonnnngg time for Tiger to release and by that time I was going to be away from home for most of the month of May and with WWDC coming in June, I figured I better wait just a bit more. WWDC came and went with no new hardware, so I stuck to the original plan of getting a Mac mini. I'd been hoping for a G5 Powerbook, but I knew the chances of that were slim.

I chose to build up my Mac mini a bit. WiFi (cough AirPort) and Bluetooth were a must for my needs, and I didn't have any USB keyboards or mice, so I went with the Apple Bluetooth stuff. These items greatly increased the cost (relatively), but it was still far cheaper than any new PC I've ever bought. BTO added 8 days to the ship time. During that time, rumors swirled that the Mac mini might get an update this past Tuesday. As mine was scheduled to ship on Tuesday, I was nervous that I would miss out on the new stuff, and excited at the same time, thinking I might have hit the cycle just perfect and I'd get a fresh one with the latest goodies. Well, they didn't up them, so I got what I originally ordered, and that's just fine.

I've spent tonight copying files off of my old Dell and getting things setup on the Mini. I'm typing this on the mini right now, using my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, which worked cold out of the box. Neither a USB keyboard nor a mouse touched the mini. That's kick ass user experience. My gigantic iTunes library copied over perfectly, preserving all of my treasured play counts. Even my Casio camera, which does not work with XPs Photo management, hooked right up with iPhoto and pulled in my recent vacation photos.

I also signed up for my trial of .Mac. That was the most confusing thing so far, but obviously I figured it out because the image in this post is hosted there.

There is so much more to explore, but that'll have to wait until another night.

Apple, having used your gear before, I had high expectations for my Mac mini. So far you've met or exceeded every expectation.

My name is Ryan, and I'm a Software Engineer.

I Think We've Met Before

So what kind of fan would I be if I didn't mention the rerelease of my favorite album of all time. Dj Shadow's Entroducing... has been rereleased in a 2xCD deluxe edition.

Me, I love it, but I fear that there isn't a whole lot in the deluxe edition for those new to Dj Shadow. There are a couple of remixes that may be of interest, but most of the extras are demos and slightly different versions of the original album tracks. The price will also keep most newcomers away. At $24 or more, it is lots more than many other 2xCD releases in your local record shop. If you are intimately familiar with the album, the bonus CD is an intriguing look in to the creation of the album and the time following its release. I enjoyed it but I gurantee I'll listen to the album 20 times for every one time I listen to the extras CD.

Without Me

Has it felt empty in here? Yeah, it's been awhile since I posted. Well, to get back in the swing of things, I thought I'd share a story from my recent cruise vacation.

We were at sea one day and saw they were having a martini demonstration. I like martinis (I drank way too many of them on the cruise) so we decided to go. We get there and they have a setup of bottles, glasses, and...a boom box. Ok, sure. Let's see where this goes.

The first demo starts and it turns out to be typical Cocktail style bottle tossing and goofy dancing. As the one guy starts tossing bottles, another fumbles with the boom box. Next thing we know, Eminem's - "Without Me" is blasting. I think to myself, that's odd. The track continues on and I realize it is not the radio edit. That boy is swearing. Now I don't care, but half the people in the room are over the age of 60. We hit the part of the song where Em decides to put his "bum on your lips" and then changes his mind and gets a little more graphic. If you know the song lyrics, I'm sure you are laughing and singing along at this point. I see a few horrified looks in the crowd and can't contain myself. I'm LMFAO!

So I regain my composure and we move on to the next drink. The woman that is hosting isn't a native english speaker. She's having a rough time with it. She starts to talk about the next drink which is a chocolate martini. This martini includes melted chocolate drizzled on the sides of the glass. She proceeds to tell us that you can write things with the chocolate. Things like "I love you honey, I love you Dan, I love your Dick." Yup, she said it. Loud and clear. At this point many of the 60 somethings are laughing with me. The host gets a confused look on her face and can't figure out what is so funny.

I didn't know it was going to be that kind of cruise :)

Lateral Stability Fluid

I love movies and I love Netflix. I love Netflix because it allows me to see movies I wouldn't normally see. I've watched plenty of stinkers, but you only need to find one good one to make up for a whole handful of bad ones.

I just got done watching Equilibrium. Now, if you don't like Sci-Fi movies, then quit reading right now. This movie floored me. Remember the first time you saw "bullet time" in The Matrix? Yeah, I felt like that. It's obvious the movie didn't have a huge budget, but they did a fantastic job with what they had. The fight scenes in many of these sci-fi fighter movies grow tiresome and make me want to join the fight just so I can get my ass knocked out. The fight scenes in Equilibrium left me mesmorized. There is even a fight that is all about not being able to fire a gun at a guy. Think Jackie Chan, but without the bad jokes, and with big, big, guns. I enjoyed. I enjoyed.

Ohh, I nearly forgot, I dug the plot too. I found myself pondering the world on display in the film. I definitely would be part of the underground and I bet you would be too.

Give this film a shot, it deserves it.

Z-Trip Link

The Z-Trip album is growing on me. I plan to use a track in my next mix which should be a fun one. I promised you a live set from Z-Trip long ago. I was just over at the official site and was surprised to find a link to Old Mixes. I haven't finished downloading anything from there yet, so maybe it is all whale noises or something, but if you want to hear some live Z-Trip, you might give it a shot.

The Night Speaks To Me

I was in Las Vegas last week and had a great time. One night stuck out more than the rest. I won't say it was the best night, but it certainly was the most surreal.

Things started with a visit to friend's room in THEhotel. Wow, what a nice place. Widescreen TVs on the wall, barware, a DVD player, and nice artwork. I really wished I had stayed there instead of the regular Mandalay Bay hotel.

From there we went on to Red Square, a resturant with a Russian/Soviet Union theme, and a large selection of vodkas. The martinis here were good. If you want a spectacle, order a Chernobyl and watch them mix it. We had a Russian speaker with us, so it was nice to get the translation of things written on the walls and menus. Oddly enough, he skipped out on the pre-dinner drinks because he couldn't resist the siren song of the nickle slot machines (lol).

The surrealness began when we sat down to dinner. I began to hear very familiar music building in the background. As they turned the music up a bit, I was able to confirm that it was indeed DJ Shadow - Building Steam With a Grain of Salt. Wow, I thought. I'm liking this place even more. If you've been following along, you'll remember that I named this DJ Shadow album in my top ten of all time. I offered anyone at the table $5 in the could name who was playing. I'm pretty annoying with that game. I'm not sure why, I just do it.

After Building finishes, I hear another DJ Shadow track, The Number Song, come in. Wow, I'm really liking this place now. The vodka is setting in, I'm with friends, and my favorite music is playing. Again, I offer up the $5, and no one thinks to guess the artist that I told them the last time. No winners yet.

The third song is again DJ Shadow. I'm getting the hint that they are just playing most of the album now. No complaints from me. I again offer up the $5 prize and no one wins. I guess my friends are slow learners. The DJ Shadow experience continues for the next hour as we dine on traditional Russian dishes and put back a few flights of vodka.

After spinning about the town for the rest of the night, I returned to my hotel room and decided to check the weather for the next day. Of course, the only proper way to end the night was by hearing an old ambient Moby track playing behind the forecasts of sun. Moby is also on the top ten list and is my most collected artist. The night had spoken, and I listened. Thank you Las Vegas.

More Apple Gushing

So last week I was pissed off at my iPod. I thought it was dying. It wouldn't sync for crap with my XP box. It would BSOD the Dell. The iPod would lockup and I'd have to warm boot the iPod. I warm booted that thing more in two days last week than I have in the entire time I've had it.

I got fed up enough to decide I needed to attempt the dreaded "restore to factory defaults". I couldn't get the XP box to live long enough to do it, so I used my iBook from work. Everything went great. I was feeling better. I hooked it back up to my Dell to sync to my library and "blah blah blah, I need to make this work with Windows, shall I do that?" came up. Sure, whateva. Go for it you hunk of crap. So, it did, but of course it restored to an older version than what is current because Apple doesn't software update the installer to PCs, only Macs. So after it finished that, I had to go download the current installer and do it again.

It was finally latest and greatest and Windows flavored and it still took a dump when I connected it. WTF? I disabled iTunes enough that I could mount the iPod and run scan disk on it, even though Apple says don't do that. Scan disk found nothing. Then I checked iPodlounge and found the disk check secret handshake. It ran and said everything was fine.

So, last ditch effort, I decide to load music in to my iBook and sync from there. Guess what? It worked perfectly. Yeah, no problems at all. Once I drained the moron juice from my head I remembered that you can turn off the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library". Even better, now I can sync through the iBook without filling the drive.

But then, I found the ultimate. Did you know that you can just drag files from wherever onto your iPod icon in iTunes and it loads them up? No need for them to be in the iTunes library. It will happily copy them on to the iPod and leave the library out of it. Maybe you knew that, I didn't. So, I still need the iBook, but only as a "drag between" my external Firewire drive and my iPod, my lovely iPod.

Installing - Are you sure?

This is the poster child for bad app design. I can't blame it all on Firefox, most installers look like this. As a software engineer, I'm ashamed. Why do we need to tell the user 4 times that we are installing? Surely some of those other status areas could say something more useful, or not be there at all?

Even better, if what we are doing is called installing, why did I run Firefox Setup? Sure, someone will jump in with why setup includes installing, but to the I-just-want-to-use-it user, it's all pretty confusing.

While I'm picking on Firefox 1.03, why, as I sit in the Blogger editor, is the status circle continuing to spin and the status bar still says "Transferring data from www.blogger.com..."? IE doesn't say that. Safari doesn't say that. Firefox, take note, the page has loaded.

Don't get me wrong. I like Firefox, and I'm glad that folks spent time writing software to give to my whiny ass.