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Lost and Found: 1 Grecian ‘Stache

Olaf — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:07:19 +0000

All of you will surely recognize the man on the left. His biblical image comes at you in all of its hair and puffy-shirtness like a thunder clap. Yanni stands as the hairiest, women-loving man I know [of]…though Hugh Jackman must be at the top of this game too! And on his right is the much subdued version of the eighties visage, also Yanni. When did this happen? No ‘stache to whisper its childhood stories to concert viewers. No curly locks of Grecian do to reveal the arcane secrets of musical composition. It’s a transitive state of Yanni’s image much in the same way we all saw Metallica shed their fettered styles of 80′s heavy metal.

So Yanni will be coming to Duluth in April at the Gwinnett thingy (Arena, perhaps?). I know most of my known world will simply abuse me verbally for going to a Yanni concert (which will actually be my third or fourth), but I couldn’t give a crap. If you’ve never seen one of these concerts, you really don’t know what you’re missing. It’s a phenomenal appreciation of the musical arts, internationally complete. I suppose many of you only like your music for its pop artist front [wo]man, but I really enjoy the instrumental musicality of it all. I would compare what Yanni conducts on his stages to that of the Cirque du Soleil band (on a small scale) and Dream Theater / Liquid Tension Experiment. You could draw comparisons with Phish and Wide Spread Panic. All of these bands have two things in common: they’re killer jam bands and composed of some very talented musicians.

Zune 30 Pandemic

Olaf — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:03:19 +0000

Oh, good grief! I awoke this morning to find my Zune in a less than pleasing way. I was concerned that the number of times I’ve dropped the device had finally caught up with me and I was paying the ultimate price. However, I decided to check out what was being said online about this problem – perhaps it’s something Microsoft can service. What do I find? A pandemic of global proportions effecting only Zune 30 users. It sounds like it’s related to a date bug in the device, but it has yet to be answered by Microsoft. Some have hope that normal operation will resume tomorrow, when the date resolves firmly to day 1 of 365. I’m not holding my breath. The timing couldn’t be worse as we’re heading off for a short vacation tomorrow. If neither mine nor my wife’s Zune won’t work, I’ll be sorely disappointed.

I had thought this might be a good excuse to buy an upgrade to the newer generation Zune 80 or 120, but I’d have to find my place all over again in the current audiobook I’m listening to (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”). Arrrrgh!

Search around on the net and you’ll find no shortage of complaints and Microsoft bashing surrounding this recent development. It’s a sad day, and ironic one too. I had just poked fun at a friend recently who bought an iPod without thinking of the alternative. To be fair, however, had she bought a current model Zune, she’d be unaffected by the problem.

*UPDATE* Microsoft has released a statement regarding the Zune 30 bug that hit all of us this morning. They’re essentially telling everyone to wait until tomorrow morning to turn on the Zune. As of 7:00am for Eastern timezone folks, your Zune will magically begin working again; almost ass mysteriously as it stopped.

Though it’s not in their official release, the problem is most likely due to a bug in its ability to handle a leap year, which 2008 qualified. The idea being that a leap year has around 366 days instead of the usualy 365. As of January 1st, Greenwich Meantime, the device will be back on 1 of 365 – and working. It’s a logical solution, but a very unfortunate goof for the Zune hardware team. Maybe we’ll get a coupon toward the purchase of a new generation Zune in the mail for our trouble (ahem…are you listening, Zune team)!

Beating the Goat at Midnight

Olaf — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 07:20:20 +0000

The big deal for me at Christmas this year was the receipt of my first stereo, personal field recorder. I got a Zoom H2, which has its list of unhappy customers, but is also one of the more popular devices to own for the money. This is the big time for yours truly because it means I’ll be able to record my drum circles and the occasional Gypsy band jam session (in which I am a contributing percussionist). I am so looking forward to this!

I have also recently attended a drum building workshop (mental note: blog about the workshop), and built my very first drum. I should say, finished my very first drum shell – that is where the workshop begins. It has been several weeks since the workshop, but I have only just been able to dedicate proper time and attention this evening to the tuning of said drum. Since I was trying somewhat to be good to my neighbors, I kept the energy attenuated.

To kick off my eager anticipation of the H2 and Thunderhead, I’ve recorded my first moments using both. It’s completely raw and unedited. There are also some distinctions in the three recordings that are really only meaningful to me. Suffice it to say, I’m still working with the tuning of my drum and the use of a new electronic gadget.

Soft Saidi:[See post to access streaming content!]
Saidi, Short:[See post to access streaming content!]
Masmoudi:[See post to access streaming content!]

Threadless (Critique): Everybody Loves Eye Scream

Olaf — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:01:34 +0000

This design has been sitting around on a couple of drawing pads for a while now. I finally got it finished up to a point that it’s ready for some critique. I think I may still be an image off from original goal of one submission per month. However, I still have several ideas to put to paper, as it were.

Also, this is a pretty big departure from my most recent submissions. It had started looking like I was going to be a one-trick pony with only bones in the repertoire. I decided to get this one out before submitting another anatomical piece.

“No Bones About It” For Sale

Olaf — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:03:37 +0000

I used my wife’s advice and chose to create a Zazzle.com account. It didn’t take long at all and I was able to setup a front and back, long-sleeved, black t-shirt for the Threadless “No Bones About It” submission. I didn’t win on Threadless, but I can still have my designs printed should somebody want one. Unfortunately, they’re going to be more expensive this way. If you dig it, awesome! I think you can actually modify the parameters and get a cheaper, short-sleeved version printed too. Either way, it’s cool to have this outlet when the design fails at Threadless. If things go well, you should see a new design each month on my Zazzle account – or at until I win a competition and Threadless and am restricted to resell it elsewhere.

I retitled it for Zazzle (Tribal to the Core), so go take a look (click the image to be taken to my zazzle.com store):

Tribal to the Core (Long Sleeve)
by

gradinDotCom

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Esquire, Magazine of the Future!

Olaf — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:54:06 +0000

Dippin’ Dots are so 2000…E Ink is the future. Esquire magazine is making a bold move to use E Ink on the cover of their October magazine. What’s more, they snagged the rights to the deal from E Ink Corporation for a year. That gives them megacreds towards the potential future of magazine design. Remember when National Geographic created the holographic cover? It featured the skull of Homo erectus. That was really cool in 1985, but this is quite different. Instead of a static image composed of millions of dots of color, E Ink is the application of tiny double-sided dots that react to electrical stimulation. The dots can flip when commanded to show one of two colors, typically black or white. When multiplied to the size of a magazine cover, you have a dynamic screen that has some basic video capabilities. It’s the same technology used in the Amazon Kindle, if you’re familiar. Esquire’s plunge into this market worked out very well already. Ford was willing to pick up the additional cost of the cover’s production through an advertisement. They will be featured on the inside of the cover, another piece of E Ink wonder. It will be truly amazing one day to see the photos of people on magazine covers in grocery stores winking back at you. It’s Harry Potter technology brought to reality!

I don’t really know what Esquire is all about, but I’ll buying a copy of this one off the stands when it comes out. It’s a historic moment.

Link: BoingBoing

Threadless Submission (Critique)

Olaf — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:21:53 +0000

I am planning to start posting more submissions to Threadless for consideration in their shirt designs. Their methods have matured so much since my earlier submission and purchases! They now have the ability to allow artists to submit designs for critque prior to final publishing. It’s a great way for someone like myself to get the hang of their rules, as well as understand what people like to see in their illustrations. I’ve just gotten my July submission up tonight, so I encourage you all to go and cast your vote to help me with my progress.

Interface: Flash

Olaf — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:44:33 +0000

Pentagram: Flash

Pentagram: Flash

Olaf — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:38:40 +0000

Interface: Flash

Zune 2.x

Olaf — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:43:18 +0000

You may recall that I had written up the Zune Wish List a couple of months after I received mine in December of 2006. I took the time to assess my needs and what the Zune hardware and software could do to meet those needs. It has now been nearly a year since that list and it’s time to update it.Microsoft released their 2.0 Zune Marketplace software with the newer Zune hardware made available for Christmas of 2007. The new software addressed some issues with the older software, but more than anything I think the new version was an aesthetic shift for the product team. Maybe they’ve completely replaced the creative group in favor of a sexier image. At any rate, with a good number of users and a year or more on their belt as Zune users, there were clearly going to be some polarized debates about the change.Refresher: Here is the old and new iteration of the Zune (Marketplace) Software, respectively…
Here are my original ‘wants’ for the hardware and software after 2 months of use:

Zune Hardware:
- Alphabet ToC Navigation in addition to click-wheel
- Ratings categories (so I can play 4-star or 5-star music only, for instance)
- The ability to remove songs from my “quicklist”
- Setting EQ attributes to a song or album uniquely
- Inline normalization
- New category…or put a recently added link at the top of each category
- Make playlists of video files
Zune Software:
- Faster *My software has long periods of unavailability, though I realize I have an over-sized library
- Automatic playlist creation
- Support for OGG
- Insight into the folder monitoring – some sort of progress or status on this
- Better album art application – album art isn’t always displayed immediately after you add it
- Without knowing any better, I wish the album art was embedded within the ID3 tag of the file rather than being added as a hidden file in the directory
- Perhaps support for a real database back-end – I feel the need for enterprise class media management

There were also some real problems that needed attention:

Crashing…the software crashes, the hardware crashes. Sometimes it’s solid, but then it goes into a fit and crashes consecutively all to often. **UPDATE – I found out that the hardware is most likely crashing due to an electrical protection feature. Static electricity is not the Zune’s friend.
Renaming/hiding MP3’s. This could be related to crashing – I’m guessing that MP3’s were being indexed and something went wrong. Then, the Zune software went and renamed a *lot* of MP3’s to their cataloged GUID and hid them. The files won’t play until I rename them back to a .mp3 extension. It will annoy me when it comes up – so far only a few of these songs have come up in my shuffle list.

In the hardware category, Microsoft did exactly zero to fulfill my wishes. The closest they came was to introduce sorting by “date added” to the software. That’s actually very helpful, but it doesn’t help me find new music on my device after I’ve left the computer. The Alphabetical ToC thing would still be cool, but I will say that the click wheel seems to be spinning songs by faster than it used to. It hasn’t bothered me as much that I can’t jump to a letter in the alphabet quickly, though it would probably make me a safer driver if this feature were added. Depending on your attitude towards the “Ratings” debate, the new software either decimated your organization, or has drug you from Ratings procrastination. I’m somewhat in the middle on this. I’m adapting quickly enough, though I had finally figured out a decent way of rating my music along the 5-star basis that helped me managing my music. The new Zune uses only a “Heart” to signify the emotion a given song lends. You love, hate it, or are indifferent. Despite the change, there is still no way to play music on the device that you’ve “Hearted” unless you create a playlist first (static). Microsoft took away the “Flag” option in the Zune hardware. I was using it a little bit, but it was so unnecessarily slow and useless that I had stopped altogether. I had hoped that the new firmware would add much needed functionality to the flagging option, but now we find it missing in action. No love lost for the old function, but I would like to see the ability to flag a song for my review back at the software. I would primarily use it as a reminder to do something with that song (e.g. add to playlist, look up artist, etc.).

The Zune software; that is, the part installed on a Windows machine for interaction with media and the device itself, is a piece of work. I mean that in two very polarized ways. Piece of Work: 1) Quality craftsmanship, exemplary; 2) opp. The worst, poorly demonstrated – syn. Piece of Shit. I may sound a little harsh, but this new software encourages me to use Microsoft’s new “Heart” ratings to express my emotions. This brings me to my earlier comment regarding the product’s shift in direction. I really get the feeling they threw the old software out and started fresh. On the love side of things, I really like the new look. While I prefer the technical features of an app to let me do all matter of evil to it (i.e. preferences, customizations, tweaks, etc.), I really do like the slimmed-down simplicity of the new Zune software. The previous software left me feeling like I should see more options, but didn’t. This software, on the other hand, gives me the impression that what I see is what I get. It took a little while to get used to – I’m still a little unfamiliar in its kid-gloves aesthetics – but I’m gaining proficiency. I also like the fact that this software appears to be running faster with fewer crashes. I haven’t had any MP3′s get renamed (and hidden) to GUID replacements. While file monitoring still doesn’t lend any insight as to the percentage complete, it does seem to run faster and more consistently.

On the negative, the functionality of the software has been grossly gimped. I am no longer able to do something as simple as edit my own ID3 tags in a simple form-based interface like before. I can’t seem to update an album against a web lookup – it happens automatically, but I don’t have finite control over the process as was given in the previous software. While I love the addition of the podcast category, I don’t much care for the level of experienced interaction given to users here. I prefer the more technical feel when it comes to podcasts. They tend to vary wildly in format and compatibility, so it seems best that I have the option of modifying URL’s, identifying what URL’s are being used, and possibly see the actual error message for a given RSS URL when the Zune software rejects it.

Ultimately, the Zune software direction has the potential of being good. I feel more like I’m using an Alpha product than something released for public consumption, but the good stuff is really good. With the negatives going against my my expectations of software for this type of work, I would actually rather use a third-party application to synch to the Zune. As I’ve stated before, MediaMonkey is my favorite (in case their developers are reading).