Zoom-in Online

Audio Scrubbing is one of those functions that has either a "need it to live" or "never use it" kind of status among users of Logic. I've found it indispensable in those moments where I need to know exactly where I am and what I'm looking at - especially when I am zoomed way in on something.

I encourage you to read this entire post before trying this yourself...

See my post from earlier today for a play-by-play of the agony. But hey, it's not even 5pm eastern yet on the day of launch... and I'm watching MLB plays on my first-gen iPhone with a couple App Store offerings running perfectly. This morning was a major pain, seeing as I needed my phone for more than a coffee cup coaster today and could not use it at all (my own fault for trying to update to 2.0 manually), but things seem to be back on track now.

Ok, personal moment. I can't say enough about this video, so I'll say very little - just has to be shared here. Maybe you've seen it already, but my friend Don just forwarded it to me. Softy that I am... geez, it made my day, let's put it that way. It just communicated such a complete wave of joy and, I don't know... good vibes about life and the world.

In what has now become an anticipated (and I must say, welcomed) move before each new product launch, Apple has put up a full fledged iPhone 3G Guided Tour page.

Apple is bringing MobileMe online in early July, and for all of you .Mac users out there (dot-mac) like myself, there are some things we can do to prepare.

Time to post the conclusion to my first adventure into the land of RAID 5. I wrote last week that I got a report from RAID Utility in Mac OS X that one of my drives had failed. I mentioned that I had a spare matching drive on hand.

It's been six weeks since the Mac Pro 8-core 3.2 arrived, and it's been a dream among dreams-come-true. Fast as the day is long, and performance in tasks like encoding, transcoding and rendering have been as lickety as split can be.

Found something really cool today scurrying around the blogs.

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.