The Bass Geek

Trying to cram rehearsals and writing into the same day after the normal grind may be a bit too much.  I’m having visions of explaining the basic operations of Vista running through my dreams, and that’s probably not healthy.  I’m hearing sections of King Crimson’s “Red” album substituted in for the Fripp-composed Vista sound effects.  That’s definitely not healthy.

Also, “South Park” was right this evening.  A shutdown or reboot of computing devices can help clear up scads of issues.  Learn that now and save yourself some time.

The new IMN podcast is up - download directly or listen at the site.

I’m still recovering from both the schadenfreude of watching the Patriots lose yesterday and the chili contest that accompanied said viewing - an excellent cap for the weekend. All is right with the football world (minus a Steelers Super Bowl win), and life can continue on a positive course. Since the Pro Bowl means nothing, that’ll be the end of football talk for a bit.

The new hard drive is in my system, and I’ve got both an OS X and a Vista partition running without incident. The only hassle so far has been reloading data (not major, as I could just copy data over from the old drive) and programs (slightly more, ’cause I have to hunt down old serial numbers from upgrades). The upshot of it is that I now have more space on the Mac side for music projects, and the Vista side is ready for work on my upcoming laptop book.

I saw the U2 3-D movie over the weekend, and it was an interesting experience. The music was overall decent to this casual listener (aside from a seemingly flat section in “Beautiful Day”), and there were no overwhelming “COMING RIGHT AT YOU!” moments (again, aside from an obligatory Bono reaching out towards the camera - what did you expect?). The drum set stood out particularly well, as did some of the crowd shots, and there were some drawn-in and composited special effects that were interesting as well. It did carry a “layered” look to it - the effects at times appeared on very flat panes that seemed stacked on each other. Still, a decent spectacle.

Alright, so I refreshed my browser a couple of times during the MacWorld keynote speech to see what Apple was coming out with.  I’m not concerned so much with the new laptop or iPhone stuff - it was the improvements to the AppleTV unit and iTunes that interested me.  Apple getting into video-on-demand is interesting, as are the capabilities of the new AppleTV unit (for those of you with digital cable boxes, it’s pretty much like the on-demand services you have right now - one step forward towards a la carte cable viewing as opposed to subscription?).  It’s also cool that some hi-def DVDs are going to include iTunes-ready digital files on the disc.  This fulfills a pet peeve of mine - being able to get a digital backup of your media.  With this, you can have a copy on your computer and your disc at the same time without technically violating the DMCA (even though I’d regard copying that media as well within your rights).  The only drawback is the DRM on the iTunes files.  Even if it’s less restrictive than other DRM, it’s still there.  Baby steps?

It’s also telling to me that iTunes skipped right over music this time around.  Except for mentioning that it’s offered wirelessly through AppleTV and such, there were no new announcements.  Given that record companies are making the move towards Amazon (at least the majors), I’m curious to see if more music offerings at better bitrates and without DRM are in the cards.  And don’t forget, there’s always Tunecore and CD Baby to get your music on these services.

Feel free to download the latest podcast-y goodness or listen to it at the site’s new flash player.

I also recently received my copy of the “Second Life For Dummies” (which looks fantastic, BTW - full color!) just in time to hear about the ban on Second Life Banking. Wisely, the authors stayed out of this and hence, their work remains utterly current and relevant. Well played. It’s terribly difficult to publish a book (a large, unwieldy depository of knowledge) about all things digital and Internet-related (things of a zippy nature that tend to make large, unwieldy depositories cower in fear of advanced obsolescence), and I think they did a wonderful job of sticking to the foundation of SL and offering helpful advice without getting into areas that could change at a moment’s notice.

I’d like to thank the good folks at Propellerheads (creators of Reason) for posting some extensive documentation on their website. The challenge of finding the instructions I needed in a 400+ page PDF more than outweighed the cost I would have incurred by putting my fist through a laptop screen. I’m still a little irritated at the workflow to edit clips in the sequencer, but I suspect that it’s the newness of the procedure, and that learning the keyboard shortcuts might be in order.

Even the image of a punched laptop is making me sad. That tells me two things - first, that I’m thankful it never happened, and second, that I need a small vacation.