Ariendor.net The Endless Road

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...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Beijing Olympics Technical Information
(incomplete, being updated as I find more info)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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! :)

Quarter of a century old now, and on Friday the 13th nonetheless. Superstitions can go die in a fire. :P

It has been over a month...time for another blog I guess.

Life in general remains mostly routine, not a whole lot has changed in the day-to-day. Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel content.

Hopefully, I will start drum lessons soon.

I've been out recording some more stock footage for my steadily-growing sound effects library. Soon, I will have a fair amount of audio editing work on my plate for a film project. More on that in a later blog post.

Anyway, that's about it.

Prices on computer components just keep falling.

I just bought an additional 4GB of DDR2 RAM for my audio workstation. And I could get 4GB of Corsair DDR2 for my laptop for about $70.

This is getting ridiculous...but in a very GOOD way. :P