作譜 | Page 9

Cover to cover

By NemesisVex
December 1, 2006

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.

Evaluation period: Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker

By NemesisVex
December 1, 2006

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.

The long weekend

By NemesisVex
November 26, 2006

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

By NemesisVex
November 21, 2006

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.

Evaluation period: Sound Forge 8

By NemesisVex
November 19, 2006

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.

Where you at?

By NemesisVex
November 19, 2006

Vital Signs

I’ve been equally neglectful of all my websites in the past few weeks because I’ve been plugging away at my NaSoAlMo album. I’m pleased to report I now have only two more minutes worth of music left to finish. Updated files forthcoming.

[UPDATE, 11/19/2006, 11:11 AM] Scratch that — I’m fucking done!

Evaluation period: CD Architect 5.2

By NemesisVex
November 15, 2006

Technophilia Aural

I know what I want for Christmas: Sony Sound Forge 8.

Sound Forge comes bundled with another program named CD Architect 5.2, which I’ve been using in the last few days. That sound you hear is me drooling in the manner as Homer Simpson at the mention of the word "donuts".

CD Architect allows you to prepare a CD master compliant with the Red Book standard, whatever that means. All I know is that it gives me so much more control over how to program a CD track listing than Nero or Roxio.

Evaluation period: Finale 2006

By NemesisVex
November 13, 2006

Technophilia Aural

I’ve been on full tilt with working on my album for NaSoAlMo, and this weekend was the first I was actually blocked. So I spent some time trying out Finale.

Finale is touted as the premier typesetting software for music manuscripts. When I saw an academic version for sale at the closing of Brook Mays a few weeks back, I scooped it up. A full version costs a good $600, and I managed to grab it for $107.

I played around with it today, and I’m glad I didn’t shell out that additional $493. As thorough as Finale can be, the user interface is one of the most difficult I’ve ever encountered.

Toys, toys, toys!

By NemesisVex
November 12, 2006

Technophilia

1 Comment

My company paid out the first half of its yearly profit-sharing, and it was a pretty nice sum. Now that I’m flush with all that cash, I’ve felt the urge to spend, spend, spend.

Should I blow it on monitor speakers like I’ve been threatening to do for more than a year? I’ve been thinking about getting some more comfortable headphones.

How about more studio software? What can Ableton Live do for me that Cakewalk doesn’t? SONAR 6 is out now — maybe I should upgrade?

The partition of my hard drive where I store MP3s is filling up — I should really consider another external hard drive. Or maybe a new internal hard drive and a separate hard disk enclosure?

Expedia is having a sale on flights to Hawaiʻi — maybe a visit is in order?

So many options, and the truth is … the money is already spent. It’s called a credit card balance. (D’oh.)

Ah, nostaligia, or spammers turned me into a racist

By NemesisVex
November 10, 2006

Technophilia Professional

*Sigh*.

Oh do I feel wistful for the days when address-scraping robots seeking out mailto: links was the extent of a spammer’s threat. Of course, spammers have been hitting guestbooks, blog comments and trackbacks for a while now. But a contact form or a registration page — no advantage there.

I stopped using the mailto protocol more than six years ago, and the only spam I received from a comment form was sent by an actual human. Not anymore.

The bots are customized now. Someone out there actually took the time to reverse engineer my forms for the purpose of sending spam. I’ve been battling a particularly nasty bot in the past week, and I’m confounded by the idea someone had so much time on their hands to pick my site out of the millions out there on the Internets.

What the fuck ever.