Category: Software

May Flowers

Back to the ol’ grind grind. Turmoil at work. Ah, the impersonal slings and arrows of working for a large corporation. I lost my private office recently in yet another reorg, and moved to a new location. Which is fine as far as it goes: I’m in an open area now with my actual colleagues, so the arrangement makes sense and is more social and congenial than it was before when people were scatted all over several floors. And we’re on the sunny side of the building. The thing is, my location has a built-in desktop that was several inches too low (I’m 6’6” tall). Before I left on spring break, the building services people came by and said they’d raise my desk, but when I got back they’d done nothing and closed the work order, declaring the problem solved. So I had to go after these people, which was a drag. When pressed they refused to fix it as a matter of policy. Picking up a screwdriver would cross an uncrossable line it seems. So I moved to another location nearby with an adjustable desk, causing lots of annoyance to my neighbors I’m sure.

Some good news: it was a lovely weekend. The first really warm weekend of the spring, with hint of summer. The girls had their dance recital on Saturday, and both did really well. The studio puts on a really nice show every year with acts and costumes and music. Sunday we did some more yard work, planting and edging, and I went skating and took the Mustang out for a ride, and we made a barbecue.

Also: getting used to the new car. At first I was just relieved to be done with the car shopping ordeal, but now I’ve driven it a few times, mainly to the train station and am starting to get a feel for it. It’s certainly much quieter and less falling-apartish than the old car. Plus the color is really nice. Blue with hints of purple and green when the light strikes it the right way. The stereo is weird. It has subwoofer, so the bass tends to be muddy and indistinct. Also all the bass is coming from the back of the car. It took some time, but I adjusted it to sound better. Next up is figuring out how to set the clock and the radio presets.

I figured out “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” on guitar. Don’t ask me why. The song’s been stuck in my head since the 70’s. Needed to get it out. Lizzy asked my why all songs about disasters are so long (she’s heard me play American Pie too). I figured out the secret for WotEF: it never resoloves. The first and last chord is an A sus, so you never know if it’s in a major or minor key. There’s not a C or C# anywhere in the tune, just a void.

Origami Site Update

I updated my origami site with some of the pictures I took for my book. Also update the blurbs for a bunch of models.

http://zingman.com/origami/
http://zingman.com/origami/adk_ori.php
http://zingman.com/origami/ori_animals.php#loon
http://zingman.com/origami/ori_animals.php#octopi
http://zingman.com/origami/ori_things.php#balloon
http://zingman.com/origami/ori_things.php#canoe
http://zingman.com/origami/ori_things.php#adk_chair

Origami Site Update

I updated my origami site with some of the pictures I took for my book. Also update the blurbs for a bunch of models.

http://zingman.com/origami/
http://zingman.com/origami/adk_ori.php
http://zingman.com/origami/ori_animals.php#loon
http://zingman.com/origami/ori_animals.php#octopi
http://zingman.com/origami/ori_things.php#balloon
http://zingman.com/origami/ori_things.php#canoe
http://zingman.com/origami/ori_things.php#adk_chair

Studio Upgrade

You’ll be happy to know I did get my new mBox 3 Pro. I ordered it from Sam Ash because they claimed they had it in stock but I had a bad vibe about the order. They screwed up the shipping and sent it fedex home instead of fedex ground so I had to cancel the order after they failed to deliver it three times. At least the Sam Ash people told me where to get one at a local music store.

While I was there I had a chance to audition a bunch of electric guitars. I liked four of them well enough to write down the model numbers. Two were Epiphones and two were Ibanezes. The first Epiphone was a Gibson SG knockoff. Dual humbuckers, mahogany body, maroon finish. It played nice and sounded nice. But one of the knobs was missing so I wouldn’t buy it. The next was an Epiphone hollow body modeled after another classic Gibson. Dual humbuckers, four knobs, also maroon finish. It didn’t play right cuz the string for the sales tag was wrapped around the two top strings. But the hollow body felt and sounded good, and reminded me of the main guitar John Lennon played in the late 60’s, a cream colored Gretsch. They had what looked to be a reissue of that guitar for about $2500, way out of my range. So I moved on and saw a nice Ibanez. One was a les-paul style but lighter and with a more agile feeling neck. Played really nice, nice cream color. The last was another hollow also in a cream color and looked alot like that John Lennon guitar, and is my current favorite.

I was surprised to find I really like the sound of those hollowbodies. Playing one feels closer to an acoustic. But I’m not sure if that’s the guitar I want because it seems alot less versatile than a regular electric guitar. For one thing the necks tend to be a bit flatter and wider, which can be both good and bad. For another it seems like some styles would be sort of off-limits with an axe like that. OTOH I don’t really see myself playing metal anyway. I’d rather have a guitar that gently weeps than loudly screams. Anyway people like John Lennon (Revolution, e.g.) and Neil Young have been able to get really hard rocking sounds from hollowbodies. Still, I also like bands like Rush and other that have a more modern guitar sound. (My friend John pointed out that Alex Lifeson played a hollowbody on a number of songs.)

Anyway, I got home from the music store and began to set up the mBox. I did the OS upgrade to 10.5.8, installed ProTools8 and hooked up the hardware on xmas eve. It works great! Michelle helped me get things going. Now she wants to be my apprentice engineer, which is awesome, cuz she has a good head for computers already. So I had her just make some noise into the mic and she decided to sing Away in a Manger. The sound is so good. When I went to play it back, I told her to stop singing now so I could hear the playback. I looked up and she wasn’t singing and I *was* hearing the playback! Later Lizzy came down and did aO Come All Ye Faithful. The new MBox has 2 headphone jacks, which makes this sort of thing alot easier.

Starting to learn PT8. There’s alot of new (to me) stuff in there. Project templates with built in click, nice and handy to get started quick. The built in FX have been upgraded. The basic compressor now has a nice little realtime input/output graph. Lots to explore.

I did a little side project for my mother-in-law she had an old 45 r.p.m. EP of girl scout songs from the 1950’s or 60’s that she asked me to make into a CD. (I’m the only one in the family with a working turntable.) The record was in pretty bad shape with lots of scratches and a few skips. I was able to eliminate a lot of the noise thru a combination of EQ (cut out everything over 4k) and compression (hard limiter to reduce the transients because the the pops were louder than the music) and it sound a good deal better. Still todo is edit out the skips, break the sides into tracks and burn the disc.

Studiowise, next step was to re-attach my midi rig. The new mBox has a single midi in and out, so I could get input from a single controller if all else failed. I have an 8×8 MOTU box that’s been an integral part of my. Last time I tried hooking it up to ProTools on the mac was about two years ago when 10.5 was new, and I totally struck out after lots of hassles. This time it plugged right in and totally worked. Woo-hoo! The other thing was to get SampleTank going again. I downloaded and installed sampleTank for mac 10.5 a month or two ago when I was trying to get up and running with Reaper but no dice. This time it opened in ProTools but my trail had expired. I had a bit of headache with the authorization but I finally got there.

So now I’m up and humming. Began work on Rocket to the Moon tonight. Got a click track and scratch MIDI bass part. I thought I’d lay down a scratch guitar part too using direct inject, but I ran into latency problems. There’s a good 8th or more note delay between the time you play a note and when you hear it in the headphones. Completely unworkable for live tracking. I messed around with the various input buffer dialogs, but to no avail. I’m pretty confident this can be solved if I just find the right control, because for years my old mBox was rock solid with no perceptible latency. I’m wndering if I should deactivate some plugins. Anyway, once I figure it out I’ll let you know.

The plan going forward is to upgrade to 10.6 and PT9 although I’ll probably wait until I’ve completed a song or two in the new setup. I’m also considering getting the digidesign expansion bundle that includes an AI drummer and detailed drum synth/sampler, a virtual analog synth, a fender Rhodes simulator, and some other stuff. Lots of fun ahead.

Practicing the Poetry of Curly Braces

For all the pressure and tumult at my job that last few months, here’s one good result: I’m writing the best code I’ve ever written. I feel like I’ve leveled as a programmer (this seems to happen every 6 mos. to a year with me as I integrate things I’ve been learning) and can now do up to 186 points of damage with a single line of code.

I just spent the evening finishing off a huge feature set that had been my main focus the last 2 months or so. Tonight it was just cleaning up code finishing off a few loose ends, but I was able to sit back and look at my code and say, woah, that’s beautiful.

It’s a bit like Denny Diaz says about the mu chord: you have to practice it until you can do it without thinking about it. So it’s been with me and lots of best practices and design patterns that I used to work hard to implement and now they just sort of come to me as my first idea on how to approach things.

A few specific things I’ve really been focused on down in the details dancing with the devil. One is to never repeat any code. Ever. Everyone copies and pastes blocks of codes, and I used to be much more tolerant of it. Now whenever I temped to do that, I look at the block and make it into its own method and call it from wherever I was going to paste it. The other thing is I’ve been breaking methods up and writing shorter and shorter methods. I’ve had as a rule of thumb that if a method doesn’t fit on a screen its too long. Now I’m thinking more and more that in many cases over half a screen is too long.

Music Update 3: Recording Studio Upgrade

The big news recording-wise is I’ve made some decisions about upgrading my recording studio. This is part of a program of improving my whole recording process. I learned alot from making the last record, and the next one will sound even better. I feel like on Face the Heat I really got it together singing-wise, and the playing, recording and arranging were strong. And of course my main strengths of Rhodes, sax and synths provide a solid foundation to the whole sound. Mixing it down with Erik was a great educational experience. Among the things I want to improve are my bass playing (see a previous post), my guitar playing (more on that later), and my drum sounds. And I want to get some kind of preamp or peak limiter/compressor for the way in when tracking. Had a bit of trouble with clipping on the last set of mixes.

For the next record I’m going to do a lot more of the mixing myself. I’ve been reading an excellent series of books on audio engineering by Bob Owsinski. There’s a volume for recording, mixing and mastering. They contain a wealth of info are an exactly at the level I need. I’m looking forward to applying it all.

The audio I/O box is the heart and soul of the studio, the main thing to upgrade. I’ve been using an original Mbox, which has served me admirably, but has its limitations. The main ones are I can only record two tracks at a time, and I can’t upgrade out of ProTools 7. I might mention that I’ve been using digiDesign hardware and software for almost twenty years now, going back to the original AudioMeda and SampleCell cards on my Mac Quadra. But my Mbox doesn’t work in ProTools 8 and I never got the whole system quite working on the MacOS, so when I’m recording I have to boot in Windows.

After a lot of research, I’ve got my mind set on an Mbox 3 Pro. Hardware-wise the Mbox3 Pro looks like it has a lot going for it. It has 4 XLR inputs and up to 6 line/instrument inputs, as well as 2 SPDIF inputs for a total of 8 simultaneous channels. It also has full-on aux send/return loops for outboard FX. Best of all, it has a built-in “soft peak limiter” on the inputs. This supposedly impart simulated analog warmth and tape saturation on the way in, and if it’s any good ought to save me from having to buy an outboard preamp.

Software-wise this would allow me to upgrade to PT8 (and now PT9), which would open up a whole lot of new drum software and samples and high-end effects. On the downside, I have to upgrade my OS to 10.6 and may have to get a new version of SampleTank. So all of this software updating is nontrivial. On top of that it remains to be seen whether I can use my current MOTU MIDI interface in the then system.

The main trouble is the Mbox 3 Pro is not available yet. It’s release has been pushed back twice, from early November to mid-November, and now to the end of November.

There’s more gear upgrades in the offing. I’m thinking of getting an 88-key piano-style keyboard controller. This has actually been on my list for a long time, but as with everything, finding the time to do the research is the main obstacle. Every few years the product space has completely changed. I’m currently using my old Roland Juno as my primary controller, but it only has 61 keys, and while it’s great as synth, it doesn’t really cut if for doing piano parts. On the other hand, I just finished Karn Evil 9, which is a big a piano song as I’m likely to do, and I got thru that alright by playing some of the more extreme passages in a different octave and then transposing in software.

At some point I’d like to get a drum kit too, but that’s probably a way off still. Every new piece of gear takes time to learn and integrate.

While I’m waiting for the new Mbox and PT 9 I’ve started looking at Reaper, a FOSS DAW. I downloaded and installed it, and was happy to see it discovered my MBox, my MOTU MIDI interface and my VST FX. I’m thinking of doing a quick, simple project to put it through its paces. I have a song in mind, a pop song cover that’s under 3 minutes long, but is one of my all-time favorites, one of those that just stays with you.

Next up: Rocket to the Moon with guitars!!!

Site Update: Music Pages

I got my CD’s back from the manufacturer the other day and am in the process of getting it set up for internet sale on CD Baby and iTunes. To prepare for my forthcoming album release I updated a few of my web pages:

http://buzzytonic.com – the new home page for Buzzy Tonic, my once and future group.

http://zingman.com/music/facetheheat.php – page for Face the Heat, the new album by Buzzy Tonic

http://zingman.com/music – main music page.

http://zingman.com – main home page.

Check ‘em out. This will be your last chance to listen to the full versions of the songs before they are behind a paywall.

Patent Troll From Beyond the Grave

On the heels of my trip to California my former employer is making news, back from the dead after ten years as an undead patent troll, a Patent Lich, if you will.

Way back in the 90’s I worked at the secretive, futuristic think tank Interval Research, owned by the reclusive “accidental billionaire” Paul Allen. It was a very cool place to work, brimming with cutting edge technology and great, creative people and their ideas. Their self-declared mission was to become the next Xerox PARC and the place was loaded with the best and brightest from the aforementioned PARC as well as the MIT Media Lab, the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, and of course Stanford and lots of other places. Douglas Coupland described it in Microserfs as “the coolest place in Silicon Valley.” To me it was kind of like getting a PhD, but earning a real salary instead of accumulating academic accolades. Lots of real good interdisciplinary collaboration with lots of interesting, smart people.

However, the lab has a fatal flaw: hubris. Not satisfied with merely doing cutting edge R&D, their goal was to create startups and change the world and profit wildly, to spawn the next Apple or whatever. I was invited to join the research staff partially on the strength of the work I had done at NYU/ITP, using a programming language called Body Electric to build virtual worlds. This software morphed into a thing called Bounce under the guidance of my friend and mentor Levitt, and made its way to Interval, where it collided with a project from MIT called MediaCalc to create something new and really pretty amazing, particularly for the time, when digital video on a computer barely worked at all, even for the most specialized, high-end rig you could build. Both Bounce and MediaCalc used the idea of a graphical dataflow programming interface to create multimedia applications. Bounce was focused on realtime control and simulation environments that included animation and music. MediaCalc was more focused on generating data streams of metadata from audio and video input and recombining them for new, novel outputs.

At one point I was asked by the Biz Dev group what I thought the commercial applications of our work might be. The Biz Dev people were somewhat removed from the R&D group and the cultural divide was one of the lab’s big flaws. To me the answer was obvious: create a commercial tool for new media artists. Bear in mind that at this time Director and Premiere were still pretty new, as well as their now-defunct competitor MTropoils. Flash hadn’t been invented yet. Pixar was known only to a handful of geeks for being the company that made Renderman, an app that let you farm out our your rendering to a network of SGI’s if you were lucky enough to have that kind of thing. A lot of people there were academics, and were not interested in running a startup anyway. I’d worked at a few small companies before and to me the idea that you start with one core strength and build from there seemed natural. However, I was told that making authoring tools “isn’t a Paul Allen sized idea.” Apparently they wanted to go straight from zero to Toy Story which, needless to say, turned out to be unrealistic.

Meanwhile the world wide web happened, and as the dotcom bubble came to its busting point the lab seemed a little out of sorts. While we were making big investments in deep technology that would come to fruition in the future, the world changed around us. For example, one project got killed when Apple and Sony adopted FireWire rather than our data bus. By 1999 it seemed like anyone with a half-baked business plan could cruise up Sand Hill Road and get a zillion dollars for their startup without any particular technology or protectable IP. Remember pets.com? Interval continued to pursue R&D and indeed filed many patent applications, but never succeeded in launching a killer startup. My guess is that the top twenty coolest things from the lab will never see the light of day and will remain known only to a handful of insiders. One example: there was a guy there named Tom Etters who was working on a complex-plane Boolean logic for quantum computers called Link Theory, based the premise of the square root of not.

By early 2000 Microsoft was on trial for criminal practices with regard to numerous antitrust laws (basically they illegally strangled and killed Netscape), and the day the verdict came down (guilty, but just a slap on the wrist) Paul lost over a billion dollars (on paper anyway) due to the tumble in the price of Microsoft stock. This, in my mind, was the trigger that started the whole dotcom collapse and shawnuff in the next few months everything fell apart. Paul, always wanting to be ahead of the curve, wasted no time and immediately shut down Interval and about a half a dozen other companies of his. The ghost of Interval was subsequently reanimated to “maintain and exploit” its patent portfolio.

Last Friday Interval announced it was suing Google, Apple, and basically all of Silicon Valley for patent infringement. I haven’t read the patents yet, but it sounds from the press release that some of it may be based on my work. How funny. I understand the law of the land may well be on their side, and it’s unlikely that they’d have launched the suit if they didn’t have the patents to back it up, but I still think it’s kind of a dick move. Interval had a more then a decade to develop technologies and businesses based on their prototypes, but they didn’t, so now, years later, they’re crying someone stole their ideas.

Interval joins Viacom on the list of companies I work or have worked for that are suing Google. Unlike Interval, I feel the Viacom’s case is much more in the right philosophically, even if Viacom is the most ironic of champions to the cause. For some reason, Google has gotten away with legitimizing piracy of music, video, etc., where others have been smacked down. The project I was working on my last year at Interval relied heavily on media content sharing and was effectively killed by the Napster decision. Now Viacom is clearly an 800 pound monopolistic media conglomerate here, but at stake really is the ability of anyone working as an artist to get paid for their work in the future world of mainstream media. So the world is changing again. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Zingcookie

Michelle is curious about computers and my work, and asked me to help her make her own web site. She’s got a theme, and lots of great ideas for games and videos and things. Last night I helped her get going with it. I showed her how to use an html editor, what a link is, how to do styles and layout, and how to refresh the page in the browser and upload content to a server. She’s like “That’s like magic! Okay, I know it’s not really magic, it’s technology. But it’s *like* magic!”.

So we got the first page done and she’s off to a good start. Check back periodically for updates.

http://zingman.com/zingcookie