Gruber linked to an excellent post today written by John August on his blog (a ton of useful information about screenwriting), which was a response to a question asked of him by a reader of his site who is a working screenwriter who felt like he was running into a wall with his sense of story, and was worried about continuing to "get better" at his craft. I'm not keen on this post for the screenwriting related reason necessarily... I'm keen on it because of the answer that John gives him, and how the technique offered can apply to EVERY craft - especially in media and art, where there are thousands of other good examples out there of people doing stuff well, and stuff that we like (and don't like - just as valuable!). Break it down, take it apart, learn from what you see there.

As an electric bass player (will record for gourmet food and good company), I hate to put myself out of a job, but MAN, this refill from Propellerhead Software sounds hawt! This is a 16-bit and 24-bit library (which allows you to go easy on your CPU while writing, and the switch over to the 24-bit versions for final mixdown) and a wide variety of tones, where is seems only the very best mics and amps were used to create this thing. I love having access to REAL bass sounds however, when working on writing projects and I'm not actually recording real bass at the moment... nothing worse than a wimpy MIDI bass sound to get the blood NOT pumping!

Check out the samples at the propellerhead Reason Electric Bass page, and see what I mean. Mmm Hmm! I heard about this from emusician's email list and their site, so I've got to give them props, but here's the link straight on through to the main Reason Electric Bass refill page.

The basses they used to create this set are as follows, I got this list from the prop-heads site:

Yesterday, Apple released the 10.5.3 update to Mac OS X Leopard. You can update your OS by running Software Update from the system preferences pane, or you can download the full combo updater directly from Apple's website. Sometimes, downloading and running the updater from the website, rather than using Software Update can provide a more complete and well-pruned update. The jury is out on this practice being truly viable, but for those of you who like to do a backup, wipe and re-install for each new update (not a horrible idea, albeit somewhat time consuming), it's good to be able to download the full package. Then you can run your Leopard install DVD, and lay this combo updater over the top of it in one fell swoop, eliminating the piecemeal step by step that running Software Update each time provides.

The update focuses on the following items (listed on the Support Site at Apple.com) and is recommended for all users of Mac OS X Leopard.

What's included? ...

I know, I know... fanboy bliss and all that. I would be lying if I didn't say I was extremely psyched for this premiere. Films like this make me feel like a kid again, and I love feeling like a kid again. I have somehow remained 99% spoiler free, and I've got my tickets in hand for the midnight show on Wednesday night. My brother and my dad will both be there with me, and that's perfect because the three of us saw Raiders together on opening weekend back in 1981. I had feared that my dad (who's 58 now), would be like, "Midnight show?! Man, you are a geek. Tell me how it is..." But instead, he was "in" before I even got the complete sentence out.

I was interviewed this morning by Joe Donahue on WAMC FM radio (arguably one of the best NPR stations in the country, based in Albany, NY), for his morning show "The Roundtable", because he's going to be playing my tribute song The Ballad of Indiana on the air on Thursday morning, May 22, the day Indy 4 comes out. The show is on from 9:00 am till 12:00 noon weekdays, but can also be heard live over the net at WAMC.org, if anyone wants to tune in.

I had been hearing advance descriptions of the new DCFC record, Narrow Stairs, for the past couple of months, and I must say, I had very high hopes for it being everything I already love about Death Cab with a new layer added: an edgy, raw, darker quality that promised - for me - to elevate this record to "new favorite" in their ten-year discography. I picked up my copy on Wednesday from our local independent record store, Toonerville Trolley Records in Williamstown, (props to Hal!), and listened to it in the car that afternoon on a drive to my brother's place. By the end of the second track I was ecstatic.

Time to kick back, and actually laugh out loud. It's lunch time on a Friday, and what better way to enjoy the moment than by sending just the littlest bit of your sandwich out your left nostril. Try it, I did... it's fun. Oh, here's your fuel for launch. The Sun-Sentinel has put up a "vote for worst album cover of all time" feature, and well... let's just say, picking one's least favorite is not an easy task. Enjoy, and don't say I didn't warn you!

Ok, full disclosure. Total self-plug here. Spent a lot of time working on something really fun - a gift to fans of Indiana Jones, actually - and I want to share it with you all here. If you want to crank our Indy tribute song while you read the blog, pop this Flash player window up, or download the free MP3 here. I give you 'The Ballad of Indiana'.

After the thrill of having our way geeked-out Star Wars-themed tribute song"Farm Boy" (not only a Star Wars homage, but also a loving nod to our proggy, synth-laden youth) featured on the October 13, 2006 episode of "The Force-Cast" with Jason and Pete, my childhood friend and bandmate, Glen Nelson (he's an elementary school music teacher and co-founder/vocalist/keyboardist of CT-based family-friendly rock band Spaghetti Cake and northeastern regional jam-band fave Flipper Dave) and I felt a calling to return to the genre and write a follow-up tribute song in honor of the new Indy film, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", hitting theaters on May 22nd, 2008. Australia-based Ed Dolista's fantastic podcast "The Indy-Cast," focusing on all things 'Jones,' seemed like the perfect place to world premiere our up-tempo rock-pop number written in honor of the good Doctor, and Ed was more than happy to oblidge. The new High Adventure single called "The Ballad of Indiana" was featured in Episode 24 of the Indy-Cast, which came out Sunday April 27th. Dolista did a 15 minute audio interview with Glen and I for the show. If you're an Indy fan and you haven't heard of the show yet, you may want to hit the RSS feed. The Ballad of Indiana is also being featured tomorrow, state-side, on another hugely popular podcast. Adam Christianson'sThe MacCast will be playing the track as its finale for the May 7, 2008 episode. Following is the story of how the song was created.

I experienced a total case in point for this last night. I have an Apple TV 160G, and it's been great. I actually love the thing. "iTunes for the living room" is exactly what it is. That said, there are three or four little things I'd change or enhance... not the LEAST of which is the ability to use a bluetooth or even USB keyboard, ad hoc, while you configure your network or log in... it takes me about 5 minutes to key in my network password with the remote, which makes me cranky and is some major wear and tear on that little plastic remote... it's tedious, like the method used in the coin-op dominated arcade game-laden 80s when you got a high score and had to enter in your three initials for the scoreboard with the joystick, moving a little selector all around the alphabet grid chasing down that damned 'm' or something... even that took a full 30 seconds, and my network password has 20+ characters in it. But that's not what this post is about... I just wanted to take a moment to toss my slip in the ol' suggestion box. USB or bluetooth keyboard extensibility = easy to implement, and a dyed-in-the-wool good idea.

Continued from "Part 1" below ...

So, what is your inner dialogue like? What is actually going on your head after you watch a TV show, or see a movie that you really enjoy? How do you think? I'm so curious about this, that I'm risking sounding like a rambling fool in this long (now two-parter!) post.

Me? I happen to be a really good multi-tasker, so what happens for me is that in addition to the interpretive growth and development dialogue I mentioned, I have these other meta layers of activity going around in my head at the same time. For example my "music and audio layer" is very strong, and just sits there pulsing along like it's own separate multi-processor, handling all the musical and vibrational perception that's either going on in the real world around me and recording it in real time and often like playing it back in retrograde-like loops, and I'm thinking about it and analyzing it. Also whatever current creative project I'm working on or whatever album I just listened to is also playing through in there, so whether I throw on like Sgt. Pepper's or Porcupine Tree, or maybe I was just working on some vocal parts on a new song of mine that I'm either writing, recording or mixing. Those things are just always playing. My own work plays back to me the same way other people's work does.

I had a thought today that I wanted to share with you. The thought occurred to me while driving in the car listening to the most recent Battlestar Galactica podcast, where Ronald D. Moore provides a "writer/creator's commentary" on each broadcast episode, released right after the show airs on Friday nights. He talks in depth (over a glass or two of single-malt scotch), about precisely what each beat in the episode means story-wise, provides a bunch of director's commentary-style technical tid-bits, and discusses in detail how the story development process got he and the other writers to the specific point - or version - that the episode freezes for all time. He talks freely about what he feels works, what he feels doesn't work so well, describes story possibilities that were left out or removed just before final locked edit. The podcast is really insightful as well as entertaining, and I recommend it highly to fans of the show. As a writer, he's talking about all the implication and meaning and symbolism and intention and creativity and craft behind all of the things that end up in the final episodes in terms of scenes and dialogue.

I was driving along enjoying Moore's detailed diatribe, when it dawned on me that it used to be the fans of a show who speculated about all this stuff. Up until the widespread practice of director's commentary on DVD's (which I love incidentally), it was incredibly rare to hear a director or writer talk about the episode of a show in such great detail just mere hours after it initially aired - unless you actually worked on the show, or knew the writer or director. Now, as with BSG, you can watch the episode, and then right there in your iTunes podcast source list, almost as though intended to be part of the viewing of the show is this complete exposure of the inner thematic workings, dramatic and emotional plot machinations, efficiently and lucidly laid out for you by the writers and creators of the show that you love. It was right after it had occurred to me that Ron Moore and others like him are doing our interpretation jobs for us, and felt that twinge a little... I asked myself, "what does that leave the fanboy and fangirl geeks to talk about??"

Engadget posted something beautiful today. Showcased in the 2008 Yamaha design exhibition at the Milano Salone trade fair in Italy, this gem of a lyrics notebook (that's what I'd use it for), looks like something that would be really enjoyed by artists who need to have the keyboard nearby to work out ideas... only this one works on the Moon too.

The iMac line saw a revision this week, and as if they weren't already mind-blowingly fast machines, you can now pick up a 24" all in one machine that runs with Intel Core 2 Duo processors up to 3.06GHz.

Adome Media Player, officially release on April 9, is really a great example of a beautifully implemented product in a field of well-adopted, well-liked products in direct competition, and the question is begged: do we really need another Media Player in the marketplace? Richard Harrington, Author, video podcaster, Final Cut Pro and Adobe software guru, takes a crack at answering this valid question that has quite honestly plagued me since NAB 2007, when I sat in Adobe's cush, refreshment-laden lecture/media hall and saw it first described and demoed to a crowd of some 300-400 people. I was taken aback by the sophistication of its product-specific skinability, and Flash-employing ease of use. Everyone in the room was amazed with the implementation, the look and feel, and the same question seemed to be on everyone's lips, later that night: "clearly it rocks, but why do we need it?"

Just wanted to let every one know that I'm back in the office after a rather long and unexpected time away. Had to take care of some family stuff, and things are now pretty well back on track. I did have some incredible technological upheavals and victories (which resulted in a new free iPhone and a new free MacBook Pro - story to follow... remember my broken iPhone camera and the colored lines on my G4 PowerBook??), and have finally ordered my new 8-core 3.2 Mac Pro (I'm jumping up and down rapidly, clapping my hands like a wind-up monkey - story and hardware review to come!)

I know I go on and on about these guys, but I'll tell you the new Death Cab For Cutie promises to be something ultra special and cool from them. "Narrow Stairs" is due out next month, and the first single is "I Will Possess Your Heart" and the album version is something like 8 and a half minutes long. Gotta love that. The video is on their site, and it's embedded here after the jump. No opinions here... check it out for yourself. There are a bunch of other videos up on their site now for older tracks as well. Some really cool videos that I've never seen before. Enjoy!