作譜

Yearly Archives: 2006

Didn’t I already buy this?

Vital Signs

I don’t know how it happened or even when it happened. I just know one day, I discovered the Kawai K4 I bought from eBay back in January 2005 wasn’t working.

I brought it down to Strait Music Co. to see if it could be repaired, and after waiting a month for the repair guy to get to my keyboard, I learned it was beyond hope.

About half an hour ago, I dropped $250 on eBay for another Kawai K4. I had attempted to bid on a few postings in the past few days, but I always got outbid. I hate the bidding process. Tonight, a seller included a "Buy It Now!" option, which is how I bought it the last time. So that’s what I did again.

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What if?

Vital Signs

If my original MIDI workstation were not stolen back in 1998, I would probably still have all that equipment.

If I still had that equipment, I probably would have been disinclined to write any new music. I had already reached the realization I could never produce the kind of music in my head because my tools were insufficient.

If I did not write any new music, I probably would have forged ahead in a career as a web developer, and I probably could have eventually forgotten what it’s like to write music.

If I forgot what it was like to write music, I don’t know how would have ended up.

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Yes, I have put on a few pounds

WTF

This article has nothing to do with the holidays, but it does mention fruitcake. I figure that’s a tenuous enough reason to post it.

I’ve been working the past year in the localization department of my office, where I’m the token American in a group of French, German, Japanese and Korean staffers. I think some of the Germans are rubbing off on me.

One of the Germans, in fact, e-mailed the link to that article to the group, and that blunt form of communication appeals to me. I’m no fan of small talk. I have this long-standing belief that anyone who asks "How are you?" doesn’t really want to know the answer. You might have the runs and a 102-degree fever, but the answer will always be, "I’m fine."

Some days, I’m flat out lying when I have to give that reply. The extended answer would be, "I’m fine — we can’t stop this conversation now." That question would be so much easier to answer the German way. A negative reply would just be taken at face value. I bet if you’ve ever been greeted with a negative reply to "How are you?" a judgmental trigger goes off in your head. "Oh, you poor thing."

Subtlety would go out the window with such brutal honesty, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

MyBugLog

Technophilia Professional

Leave it to me and my strangely-named sites to test the globalization preparedness of a Web 2.0 site.

Yes, I’m being difficult by giving my weblog a Japanese title with not a single attempt at Romanization, but my little bit of Asian text is enough to gauge whether site developers are even thinking that far ahead.

The latest subject of this test is MyBlogLog, to which Ryan introduced me. It’s a fascinating idea — social networks for your blogs. Of course, I signed up to be a member of The Transmission, HawaiiUP and HawaiiBlog. And I added this site and Musicwhore.org, among others. (My profile, in case your interested.) In using this site, I’ve run across some odd things that can get a bit annoying.

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Tweet tweet

Technophilia Social

Ryan wrote about Twitter, and I got intrigued enough to sign up myself.

I rather like this idea. For all the Voxes, Diggs, del.icio.us.es, Last.fms and MySpaces out there, a site that forces its users to be concise is a rare thing. There have been many times I wish my long-winded online journal wouldn’t look so awkward with just a single-line entry. Twitter lets me braindump without having to be literate about it.

The social aspect of Twitter, however, lends itself to being an extension of instant messaging, which I guess it would since it can plug into IM and mobile devices. The resulting dialog often looks like an IRC chat done entirely with /me commands.

I would like a friend search, though. Friends of mine could have signed up for the site, but I wouldn’t know it unless they announced their presence.

Twitter is an interesting site, compact but wide open.

Cover to cover

Vital Signs

I haven’t been posting much anywhere because I’m indulging in a fantasy of mine — designing album cover art.

I won’t recount the stories of my high school days when pretend bands made pretend albums with pretend cover art. Rather, I’ve been working with Acoustica to improve the tentative cover art for Eponymous 4 albums.

I didn’t make my cover art too complex because the software I used before, SureThing, was limited in what you could do. The straw that broke the poor camel’s back was an inability to support Asian fonts. So I switched to Acoustica. It has its own problems, but I think I’ve managed to improve on what I’d done before.

I’m no graphic designer in the first place, so I don’t think my cover art is all that great. But it does suit the kind of music I make.

Perhaps it would be easier to compare and contrast. The "after" images link to full-size images. The "before" images don’t really have full-size versions.

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Evaluation period: Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker

Technophilia Aural

Whenever I need to make jewel case art for my demos, I fire up SureThing CD Labeler. It’s done me good so far. I could probably be far more creative with an actual publishing tool, but SureThing supports the Memorex labels I buy at the electronics store. So it’s convenient.

Until I start using Japanese.

At that point, SureThing is pretty useless. So I’ve been weighing my options — upgrade my 11-year-old copy of PageMaker 6.0? (Generally, not recommended.) Upgrade to something more industrial strength like Quark? (Which I’m evaluating right now) Or find a label-making program that supports Japanese?

I took a shot with Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker, and I was pleased that I could use Asian fonts without even having to switch locales. At first.

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The long weekend

Vital Signs

This past Thanksgiving weekend, I …

  • … went to see … And You Will Know by the Trail of Dead at Emo’s on Wednesday night.
  • … spent most of Thanksgiving Day watching The Closer and Eureka, attempting to recover from the late night at the concert.
  • … wrote five lyrics for A Ghost in My Shadow.
  • … cleaned up the Eponymous 4 web site.
  • … went to Phoenicia Bakery for the first time and had a gyro.
  • … was outbid on a Kawai K4 on eBay.
  • … bought a music stand for my violin and sheet protectors to store print-outs (or prints-out?) of said lyrics.
  • … picked up dinner from Korea House, and the kim chee is stinking up my fridge.
  • … battled with my old computer over a scanner installation, only to end up installing it on the newer computer.
  • … spilled water on a bunch of papers in the middle of that battle.
  • … caught up on most of the TV I’ve been missing because I was busy with NaSoAlMo.
  • … cooked for myself. Mostly.
  • … am about to cut the commercials out of a bunch of shows I recorded on TiVo.

Money speaks louder than protests

WTF

So a boycott against Wal-Mart protesting the company’s outreach to the gay community is called off. Did the threat of a boycott work? Or are conservative groups taking credit for action that’s has nothing to do with them?

Similar boycotts were initiated against companies who advertised on gay-themed television shows, and those companies said they would stop. The boycotts were averted, but no one checked to see whether those advertisers followed through, which they didn’t.

In contrast, Ford Motor Co. announced it would pull ads from gay publications a number of years back, and the outcry from that decision made the company backpedal. What could possibly be the incentive for companies to appease gay audiences? Duh — money.

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Evaluation period: Sound Forge 8

Technophilia Aural

At first, I really didn’t know what Sound Forge could do for me that Audacity couldn’t.

For a free piece of software, Audacity is incredibly powerful and very competitive for the price. When it comes to working with my demos, I do most of my effects processing in Cakewalk anyway, and I use Audacity only to do some clean-up — add some silence at the end, use a fade out when I’m too lazy to use an envelope in Cakewalk.

But a few things have started to bug me about Audacity.

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