Ariendor.net The Endless Road

Last night (June 4th), I had the privilege of attending the Video Games Live concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles (having previously attended the world premiere concert at the Hollywood Bowl nearly 4 years ago).

Unlike the premiere, the production was smaller in scale, but the musical selection was even better. Apparently, they have a repertoire of around 60 video game themes, and each concert allows them to perform about 20 of them, so every concert has a different selection of songs.

Highlights of the evening included:

• The new Crono Cross/Chrono Trigger songs, including a live performance of Time's Scar
• The Diablo/Blizzard songs, including Diablo 3 previews
• The premiere of the Mega Man song performance
• A live guitar hero competition, a human space invaders game competition, and a live Skype video call to Ralph Baer (one of the earliest video game inventors)
• Martin "Video Game Pianist" Leung's performances
• Live appearance (and epic Gears of War sound effects performance) by Dee Bradley Baker
• One Winged Angel rock/orchestra (encore) performance!
• Castlevania rock/orchestra (second encore) performance!

All in all, an amazing experience. If VGL is coming to a city near you, go see it!.

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And as usual, here's the gear list for the tour (as best as I could see).
FOH sound console: Yamaha PM5D
Line arrays: JBL Vertec 4800 series (11 per side, 22 total)
Subs: unknown, 8 per side
Fills: JBL VRX932LAP (3 per side, 6 total)

Lighting Gear:
High End Systems Roadhog Full Boar console (3 DMX universes, direct from console)
(~16) Vari*Lite VL3000 Spot
(~6) Martin Mac 2000 Profile
Assorted PAR cans

Video Gear:
(3) Sanyo large-venue projectors (I could not tell which model)
(2) unknown projectors (rear projecting on 2 stage screens)

An excerpt from: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/obama-doj-worse-than-bush

[...]
Previously, the Bush Administration has argued that the U.S. possesses "sovereign immunity" from suit for conducting electronic surveillance that violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, FISA is only one of several laws that restrict the government's ability to wiretap. The Obama Administration goes two steps further than Bush did, and claims that the US PATRIOT Act also renders the U.S. immune from suit under the two remaining key federal surveillance laws: the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act. Essentially, the Obama Adminstration has claimed that the government cannot be held accountable for illegal surveillance under any federal statutes.

Again, the gulf between Candidate Obama and President Obama is striking. As a candidate, Obama ran promising a new era of government transparency and accountability, an end to the Bush DOJ's radical theories of executive power, and reform of the PATRIOT Act. But, this week, Obama's own Department Of Justice has argued that, under the PATRIOT Act, the government shall be entirely unaccountable for surveilling Americans in violation of its own laws.
[...]

So, who's watching these guys?

From Slashdot...

Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at Stanford, tests his incoming students each year by having them listen to a variety of recordings which use different formats from MP3 to ones of much higher quality, and he reports that each year the preference for music in MP3 format rises.

Berger says that young people seemed to prefer 'sizzle sounds' that MP3s bring to music because it is a sound they are familiar with. 'The music examples included both orchestral, jazz and rock music. When I first did this I was expecting to hear preferences for uncompressed audio and expecting to see MP3 (at 128, 160 and 192 bit rates) well below other methods (including a proprietary wavelet-based approach and AAC),' writes Berger. 'To my surprise, in the rock examples the MP3 at 128 was preferred. I repeated the experiment over 6 years and found the preference for MP3 — particularly in music with high energy (cymbal crashes, brass hits, etc) rising over time.'

Dale Dougherty writes that the context of the music changes our perception of the sound, particularly when it's so obviously and immediately shared by others. 'All that sizzle is a cultural artifact and a tie that binds us. It's mostly invisible to us but it is something future generations looking back might find curious because these preferences won't be obvious to them.'

This is indeed very sad. As an audio technician and musician, it's hard for me to fathom how someone prefers the horrid psychoacoustic model of MP3 over the clear-sounding uncompressed original.

Guess this means that the audiophiles of the world should keep demanding the pristine audio quality and the high-end parts. Someone has to keep the standards up. :)

Whoops. Missed a few important dates (just a few).

Merry (belated) Christmas everyone! And a Happy (belated) 2009!

We're up for an interesting year, to be sure.

For a long time now, I've been wanting to get Gigastudio up and running on my newer 64-bit audio workstation, but I just haven't spent the time to get that going until now. Unfortunately, it's been a mess of catch 22's and software obstacles.

I'm running Windows XP x64, mainly to have access to a tasty 8GB of RAM. Cakewalk Sonar 6 runs natively in 64-bit, Gigastudio 4.01 runs natively in 64-bit. I can either run Gigastudio standalone by using a sound card with a GSIF driver or use rewire to link Gigastudio and Sonar.

Unfortunately, my Echo Audiofire 4 sound card (and just about every other card on the face of the earth) lacks a 64-bit GSIF (2.1) driver, so GSIF is a no-go. Also, it turns out that rewire is 32-bit only at the moment, so that's also a no-go. The only options available remained to downgrade windows to 32-bit and use rewire or my sound card's GSIF 2.0 driver (and go back to 2GB or so of RAM), or get another sound card.

Based on recommendations from the fine folks on the Cakewalk forums and vi-control.net, I've ordered an RME HDSP 9632 sound card (which has GSIF 2.1 support). Apparently, a number of other individuals have nearly the same configuration as I do, and this card has worked well for them, so here's to hoping for the best. :)

Computer hardware and software remain interesting, but at the end of the day, I just want to write music.

P.S. Why doesn't firefox have "natively" in its English dictionary? *adds* :P

As some may know, I'm currently visiting friends in Seattle for the greater part of a week. In the hopes of capturing and documenting the sheer awesomeness of the time I'm (already) having, I'll attempt to blog about what goes on each day.

As a side note, this trip also relates heavily to work on a certain awesome Sci-Fi indie film.

Friday, November 7th
The morning began bright and early at 5am, at which time I woke up, packed a few things, then headed out around 6am with my mother to LAX. I arrived right before 7am and easily caught the 8:30 flight to Seattle.

We took off from LAX over a beautiful Pacific Ocean with a blue sky and not a cloud in sight. Progressing northward, the landscape changed to a more sparse and forested appearance as we passed over Oregon. By the time we reached Washington, all terrain became swallowed up in an endless blanket of cloud. Seattle itself, true to its reputation, remained very wet.

My friend Paul, who is staying in Seattle area for 6 weeks and who also has a hand in the film, picked me up from the airport around noon, and we headed toward Bothell to the home of the infamous film guru Ian Hubert. Just a note: Seattle has the coolest freeways and freeway interchanges I have ever seen, bar none.

We arrived at Ian's rain-washed house and knocked on the door; alas, no one was home. Thankfully, Paul had keys so we entered and took a look around. The whole house bears the distinct mark of its inhabitants, from Ian's father's recording studio and music room upstairs, to the basement with Ian's room and the tons of film art and posters lining the walls. There's an axe on the wall of one of the halls with a sign "Use in case of Zombie Outbreak" as well as a blue plastic back-scratching tool in the bathroom with a sign "Use in case of Giant Spider".

Paul set up his computer in the usual spot in Ian's room, and I found a place for my laptop and set it up. We began to work on our respective parts of the movie, Paul on some epic CG in Blender, and myself on a slew of sound and dialog editing.

Within an hour, Ian showed up. I have to say, the man is one of the most amiable and cool guys, and it truly was great to finally meet him in person. Ian fired up one of his computers and we continued working on movie things, talking, and listening to the Beatles for an hour or so more.

After a while, we decided we all wanted lunch, so we made french toast and tomato soup. During that time, Ian's family returned home and I got to meet his sister, mother, and father. After lunch, we returned to Ian's room. Ian's girlfriend Tasha showed up, and he departed to help her run an errand. During his absence, two other visitors showed up in his room: Nathan Vegdahl (of Big Buck Bunny, the Blender-made movie, fame) and his friend Aaron. We had a great time talking about graphics, 3D, Ian's exploits, and life in general. (I can now also say that I have been hugged by Nathan Vegdahl.)

Once Ian returned, Nathan, Aaron, Paul and I headed to the store to pick up things for dinner. Upon returning to the house, we had an amazing barbecue and enjoyed playing music (including some Cowboy Bebop and Warcraft songs, as well as some personal compositions from Nathan and Paul) in the music room.

After dinner, nearly everyone gathered in the TV room for a Friday night movie session with the movie Battle Royale, and I took a nap in Ian's room. When I woke up around 1:30am, the guests had departed and Ian and Paul had both returned to the room to continue working. Paul and I said our goodbyes shortly after and left for Paul's place.

All in all, I had a truly epic day! One that, itself, made the trip worth it. More to come soon!

I have no idea who thought this up, but if this represents the future of technical manuals, I'm all for it.

Princess Ruruna is stressed out. With the king and queen away, she has to manage the Kingdom of Kod's humongous fruit-selling empire. Overseas departments, scads of inventory, conflicting prices, and so many customers! It's all such a confusing mess. But a mysterious book and a helpful fairy promise to solve her organizational problems—with the practical magic of databases.

In The Manga Guide to Databases, Tico the fairy teaches the Princess how to simplify her data management. We follow along as they design a relational database, understand the entity-relationship model, perform basic database operations, and delve into more advanced topics. Once the Princess is familiar with transactions and basic SQL statements, she can keep her data timely and accurate for the entire kingdom. Finally, Tico explains ways to make the database more efficient and secure, and they discuss methods for concurrency and replication.

Regretfully, I cannot come up with a suitable title for this blog.

This weekend saw a great 4-day business trip in Maryland; my first trip ever to the Eastern US.

However, this weekend also saw the death of a friend of my family in a horrific train accident.

I'm not sure what to think, except to pray...and hope.

Wow, the 2008 Beijing Olympic opening ceremony trumped and completely surpassed all others to date, in nearly all respects. It was the most beautiful, creative, intricate, expensive, and lavishly pyrotechnic show I've ever seen. Seeing it live remains the only way I could like it better.

And now, in the typical spirit of things, a bit of technical info for those interested...
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Beijing Olympics Technical Information
(incomplete, being updated as I find more info)
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Lighting gear:
- (308) Vari*Lite VL3500 Spot
- (316) Vari*Lite VL3000 Spot
- (180) Vari*Lite VL3500 Wash
- (112) Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1200
- (980) Martin Mac 2000 Wash
- (162) Martin Mac 2000 Wash XB
- (12) High End Systems Showgun luminaires

Video gear:
- (86) Christie Roadster S+20K projectors (with (78) HES orbital heads)
- (63) Christie Cinema CP2000-ZX projectors
- (110) High End Systems Axon media servers (official Highend press release says 110, contrary to other sources that say 120)

Lighting consoles:
- (6) grandMA full size consoles (3 main, 3 as backup)
- (2) grandMA Lite consoles
- (4) High End Systems Wholehog 3 consoles (for media server control)

Last night, some friends and I went to see Weird Al at the Ventura Theater. I've attended two of his concerts before, but this one greatly surpassed the others, not only because of all the great new music Al and his band played but also because we got on the meet and greet list after the show.

It was a pleasure to finally meet Al, get his autograph, and tell him "Cal Poly rocks!" to which to he agreed. Outside of the show, I also got to meet Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz (drums), Jim West (guitar), and Steve Jay (bass).

All in all, the whole night was a blast (quite literally! I wore ear plugs, and the sound was still amazing) and I had a very enjoyable time.

And for those who have an electronics fetish as I do, here are some specifications to assuage your interests:

Weird Al - Touring Equipment

FOH Sound Console: Yamaha PM5D
Monitor Mix console: Unknown, it was mostly out of view in the wing on stage left.
Subwoofers: L Acoustics SB218, 4 per side. (owned by Ventura Theater)
Tops: L Acoustics ARCS, 6 per side. (owned by Ventura Theater)
Amplification:
- (4) QSC Powerlight 4.0
- (4) QSC Powerlight 6.0
- (2) Crest PL9001

Lighting console: grandMA full size, 2 DMX universes used, direct from console.
Lighting fixtures:
- (6) Martin Mac 600 NT washes
- (14) Martin Mac 500 profiles
- (4) Martin Atomic 3000 strobes
- Assorted conventionals, mostly PAR cans, I would estimate about 100 of them.

That's about it! :)