I recently gave a 2 hour workshop on how to get started with home recording, titled “Record like a Rock Star”. Here are a number of resources that I recommended to the participants.
Zoom recorders
H1: Product Site | Buy Online: Amazon.com
H4n: Product Site | Buy Online: Amazon.com
Q3HD: Product Site | Buy Online: Amazon.com
Mac Book Pro: Apple
Recording Interfaces:
- Avid (Protools, mBox, 003, etc)
- Focusrite ( Saffire series)
Software:
- ProTools (avid again)
- Apple’s Logic Express or Logic Pro
- Nuendo
- Ableton Live
- Sony Acid Pro
- Audacity
Further Resources:
- Mixing with you mind (book). Michael Paul Stavrou (Stav)
- Audio Technology Magazine. http://audiotechnology.com.au
- Guerrilla Guide – Recording & Production.
- Live Sound Mixing. Duncan R Fry (helps to build a basic understanding of sound theory and technology). Amazon.com
Most people follow the following formula for life:
Go to school -> Get good grades -> Go to Uni -> Get a good job -> Work for the best part of your life / 40 years -> retire on some small savings -> die.
Others doubt the validity of the above formula.
What if it was possible to remove part of the equation (and a large expense), and then simply replace with: Socialising?
Here is how: 8 Steps To Getting what You want without formal credentials
Could it really be that easy? Well Michael Ellsberg from Forbes.com believes it is, what you know combined with who you know can land you your dream job. And guess what, if it doesn’t work out, you can always go back to doing things the long hard and expensive way, but now you have a head start of real world knowledge in your chosen area.
Disclaimer: If you want to be a doctor, engineer or anything other major job that requires a degree to be certified, you should do the degree (although there is nothing stopping you from applying some efficacy rules to make the degree more stream lined). But most other jobs that traditionally require a degree, they can be suitably hacked using the 8 step method.
Today I received the following error after bringing a XenDesktop Virtual Desktop Delivery Controller back up after a power outage: The IIS Admin Service service terminated with service-specific error 2149648394 (0x8021080A).
A quick search on the internet and I found this resource:
http://geekswithblogs.net/mhamilton/archive/2006/12/13/101055.aspx
Here are the steps outlined (and what I used to fix it):
Check in C:\Windows\System32\Inetsrv and you’ll find a ‘History’ folder. Within here – hopefully – you’ll find fairly recent backups of the Metabase.XML and MBSchema.XML objects. Before doing the following – be sure to backup the existing Metabase.xml and MBSchema.xml from C:\Windows\System32\Inetsrv first.
Now, rename a recent backup from the ‘History’ folder – renaming a recently Metabase.XML object, and then a recent MBSchema.XML object. Copy / Paste each of these to the C:\Windows\System32\Inetsrv.
Ahh, not quite done.
Now do a IISRESET from a command prompt.
IIS started and staff were able to get back to work.
James’ Quick Bio:
Job Title: Cinematography | Photography (Or Cinematographer | Photographer)
Current Employment: Freelance contractor
James and I sat down over a cup of coffee to talk about some of his recent projects.
Andrew (AB): What projects have you been working on lately?
James (JB): I’ve just recently completed one of my biggest passion project: Locomotion. – But my next biggest project I’m starting up is based around chess out of all things.
AB: How do you envision creating something around Chess?
JB: In a basic way I’m hoping to portray a narrative around chess and tell the story of a game where you can actually see what’s going on within the moves. Most times I see others vids on chess, I can’t physically follow what’s going on. So by using a mixture of different focal lengths and angles to show the moves more clearly, dynamic lighting which changes as the mood of the game changes, and music and back story behind the players to keep the story interesting.
AB: What are some of the things that you like/get inspiration from in your line of work?
JB: hmmm, Keith Loutit is a Sydney photographer who was my complete inspiration for my tilt-shift stop-motion “Locomotion” Still very inspired by his work!
AB: and anything that you dislike?
JB: Freehand camera work without justification!; Lack of narrative in film; people telling me that I must take good photos because I have a nice camera!!! Give me a phone camera and I’ll still take an awesome shot! =) – (AB: yea, maybe with one of those new 5MP + cameras like the iPhone 4!)
AB: What’s the most creative thing you’ve seen this past week?
JB: I find it incredibly inspiring where someone does something completely fresh and different – a video I saw recently (http://vimeo.com/14803194) did this. An artist organised a professional dance choreographer to create this dance which was filmed, to which he drew frame by frame this emotive piece. Using the real video to aid in more realistic human movement! Very amazing!
More on James: – James Brereton Blog: http://blurredvision.com.au and on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/blurredv
Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.
Recently we have had a number of Windows 7 machines added to one of the Windows Based Domain network’s that I look after.
Upon login, the login script that is delivered via a group policy doesn’t appear to be mapping the network drives that it does on Windows XP machines. After hunting around I found the following fix:
By adding the following registry entry it appears to fix the issue:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
EnableLinkedConnections = 1 (DWord)
Disclaimer: This is not supported by Microsoft and was never tested. Use at your own risk.
For a detailed explanation on how/why it works check out this article: windowsconnected.com
More information: windowsconnected.com and technet
The other day I was trying to compare different phone caps across the multitude of carriers and I found the task quite daunting and difficult. The new price per unit or Standardized pricing that the supermarkets have been using is a great way to easily compare similar products. So I started thinking, why don’t we do the same for mobile phone plans? This would allow us, as customers to easily shop around and get the best deals, empowering us to make the best mobile phone plan choice that suits what we want and need.
And thus the phone cap comparing spreadsheet was born.
I now have 1 of my programmers working on turning it into something you can easily use on this site.
Watch this space over the coming weeks.
P.s I know the reason why this isn’t a popular thought, mobile phone companies like Telstra and Optus don’t want you to have the power to easily compare their plans.
[How to] Bulk import/rip multiple CDs easily in Windows. (Windows 7 and Windows Media Player)
Recently I had the task of importing a large number of CDs. Being one that doesn’t boring and tedious task like this I set out to make it as easy as possible. It seems that Windows Media Player is rather good at this (or at least version 12 is, the one with Windows 7).
I was able to get it to a point where I had 2 piles of CDs. One to rip and one that had been ripped and all I had to do was take 1 from the to Rip pile, insert it into the CD tray and then after the tray ejected (automatically) I placed it in the ripped tray and then proceeded with the next CD, so on for the next 30 or so CDs. All with no software interaction.
Here is how I did it.
1) I inserted the first CD and opened up Windows Media Player.
2) In the library video click on “Organize” -> “Options” -> “Rip Music” Tab.
3) I set all the information required:
- Location of files
- Format (I used MP3 at Best Quality or 320 kbps – Hard drive space is cheap these days).
- I also ticked “Rip CD automatically” and “Eject CD after Ripping.
4) Finished up with Clicking Ok and then Rip. Then I carried on some other tasks on the computer. When the CD finishes it opens the tray, I had to change it, insert the next and away it went – automatically.
Side note – I also had iTunes opening each time that I inserted a disc. To fix this I did the following.
- Click on Start (or what should be start, the round ball in the bottom left corner).
- Searched for “AutoPlay” (Can be found the long way under Control Panel -> All items).
- Under “Audio CD” I changed the setting from “Play audio CD in iTunes” to ” Play audio CD using Windows Media Player” – Easy fix.
That’s right…tomorrow is the next big game changer for the Australian tablet market, the iPad 2 is being launched.
According to Lifehacker Australia’s sources the new generation iPad will be available online from 1am tomorrow (25/03/11), but if you want to buy one in store (at a selected authorised Apple dealer) , your going to have to wait until 5pm. Maybe this is designed to build more hype. I know when we purchased our iPad last year we just walked into a store at 9:10, picked one up and left 20 minutes later, no lines or mass queues.
Pricing has also been released:
For Wi-Fi only models: 16GB is $579, 32GB is $689 and 64GB is $799. For the Wi-Fi+3G models, the 16GB model is $729, the 32GB is $839 and the 64GB is $949. Standard smart covers are $45, while the leather versions are $79.
In today’s Green Guide from the Age it was reported that 70% of iPads sold in the first day in the recent US launch were sold to new customers. So those looking at upgrading might miss out tomorrow unless you get in quickly.
It also appears that recent world events in Japan may cause component shortages and may even cause the price of some electronics to increase due to a loss of both facilities and a workforce.
A new challenge for the next 7 days….only 1 page for spiritual food. And I mean quite literally a single page torn from an old bible is to be the only part of the bible that I read for the next 7 days. The verses are: Mark 6:20b – 7:35a. (ether for those that don’t know about or are new to the whole Jesus, Bible, God thing: The bible is broken up into 66 books by a bunch of authors and there are 4 books that talk about when Jesus was alive – Mark is one of those books.)
This steams from a story our Bible Study leader recently learnt of: a christian man was in jail during the cold war and some managed to smuggle in just 1 single page of a bible for him to feed himself off.
This exercise may have an interesting out come. Serval things may happen:
-I forget about it and get to busy and a million other lame excuses.
- I read it once, and get bored and put it down.
- I read it once, and receive an amazing revelation.
- I read it multiple times, each time learning and discovering something.
The good thing about God is that is he’ll use just about any situation to get a point across.
Let’s see what happens.
12 weeks is all we have. 12 weeks to go from who we are to who we want to be. 12 weeks off competition in a real life book review geared around hacking the human body.
Book 1:
“The 4 Hour Body” by Timothy Ferriss
(Crown Archetype (December 14, 2010)
Book 2:
You Are What You Eat
by Gillian McKeith (Plume March 28, 2006)
Tim’s book is centred around the small things we do that make large differences (see the video at the end of this post for more information) vs Gillian’s turn your current life upside down on it’s head & make some rapid radical changes that produce radical results.
The goal is simple: look better than the other guy (in this case, girl).
Some background on our competition: Carolyn Managh (Carolyn’s Blog) had started reading Gillian’s book as a way of getting healthy for the start of the new year. Around the same time I received my new copy of the Four Hour body. Carolyn started changing some things in her life, like walking 20 minutes in the morning to work, where as I started doing some things like investing in some measurement devices, drinking a green drink (that has been called numerous things from pond scum to radiator inhibitor – it is neither) & just generally getting my head around the concepts of the book (health and fitness has never really been my thing, but science, things you can measure, test and track…data…that’s more my thing). Each of us was getting there, but we needed something a little extra. A push, or an additional edge. Something to turn it from just “getting healthy for the sake of getting healthy” to “getting the best result possible in a predefined time”, something with a completive edge. Our competition was born.
As we go though this journey I’ll document as much as I think is necessary and explain a bit about what each of us is doing. This has moved from just getting healthy to a game of science.
Let the competition begin.
Here is the short clip I mentioned earlier: