The Soundorganic Log

the radio mic conundrum

2007-06-20T21:32:00.000+01:00

Looks like some movement on the looming Ofcom spectrum allocation issue for radio mic use in entertainment. BBC News.
I'm off to Australia on Monday. Will be visiting Melbourne and Hobart. Back on July 16.

the pismo is back!

2007-04-27T09:03:00.000+01:00

After a couple of months dead, my beloved black Powerbook G3 has made a comeback, after I successfully replaced the power supply board (the one under the trackpad) earlier in the week. It took two failed efforts and various Ebay bits to get there - after the machine died in February I first replaced the power adapter, then the sound/DC board, to no avail. Anyway, it's now working, and what's more the machine started up and the Firefox page I'd had open at the time of breakdown restored itself! This computer was the last of the black G3 notebooks (Pismo, circa 2000) and runs OS 10.4.9 fine - although I think the upcoming 10.5 would be pushing it. It's odd to look at this computer now and think about how things have changed and what makes the G3 Pismo still interesting today. I've got a native Airport card in mine, which means no messy third party cards that stick out the side, although those who value high-speed office networking might find the original Airport's 802.11b standard a little slow. The dual Firewire ports look a little unusual today, given that they reside alongside the dual USB 1.1 ports on the machine's rearside. I guess in 2000 USB 2.0 was only on the horizon and Firewire looked like it'd be the future of interconnectivity - especially to Apple. It certainly has its uses, not the least for fast ad hoc 400Mb/s networking between two Macs. My Firewire CF card reader is also a tad quicker than a similar USB 2.0 unit when tested on a newer machine.

So, I'm back to expounding the pros of not necessarily using the latest, and reading sites like Low End Mac. Mind you, with Photoshop CS3 now in the stores, upgrading my [everyday machine] multimedia-oriented 12" G4 to something MacIntel might be on the cards for sometime in the next year.

2007-04-23T13:42:00.000+01:00

Back from a weekend on the road, taking in Norfolk and Birmingham. Two good shows, but I'm still deciding how much of a friend the Yamaha LS9 is.
I was in Great Yarmouth on Saturday, and was expecting something a bit like Blackpool. It turned out to be the case, and this non-Brit was faced with the generous array of `amusement centres'. We sat in a cafe abuzz with 20th century nostalgia on the heaviest wrought-iron chairs I've ever seen.

back from the IOW

2007-04-16T09:50:00.000+01:00

Had a nice time on the Isle of Wight at the weekend. We loved the crossing from Lymington to Yarmouth, which seems a much more sedate and low-key trip when compared with sailing from the Southampton or Portsmouth rat race. Once on the island we visited The Needles, which was somewhere I hadn't seen before. The walk up the hill to the old battery and High Down [former] rocket engine test facility was a highlight of the day, complemented by a chairlift ride down to Alum Bay and a boat trip to view The Needles up close.

After that it was on to Wootton Bridge and a few days for a Ship of Fools meet, which was the biggest I'd ever participated in. Pictures on Flickr here

2007-04-12T09:06:00.000+01:00

Off to the Isle of Wight for a four day Shipmeet today. We're getting the car ferry from Lymington.
Back Sunday.

sign of the times

2007-04-11T12:56:00.000+01:00

A century after the invention of the electric traffic light, it appears that some drivers are yet to get used to the idea of how they work. Ok, perhaps there's a little more to this sign than meets the eye, but there can't be much, given that this is a permanent sign and not just a road works signal where traffic is temporarily restricted to one lane. Picture taken today, at Wimborne Road, Poole.

Sunday bargains

2007-03-25T18:41:00.000+01:00

First day of summer time and we went to a car boot sale in Poole. I got two small wooden food trays for £2 and a portable MiniDisc recorder for a fiver. Quite a bargain - the technology is quite obsolete, but it'll be a useful backup recorder for something or other.

break time...

2007-03-05T17:30:00.000Z

Back from touring the land for now. Did a gig at the Tivoli in Wimborne on Saturday, which was a nice end to the set of gigs as I was able to just pop on home afterwards. I drank Fosters for the first time last week - it's assumed in England that all Australians drink the stuff but I'd never had it until some well-meaning musician bought me a pint on Friday.
Time to continue with the house painting, gardening, wedding prep, etc... :)

back for a bit

2007-02-27T13:49:00.000Z

Back in Poole after five days on the road from one end of the country to the other doing gigs in far flung (Dundee, Berwick, Durham) and closer to home (Weymouth) places. It's fantastic to have a day of chasing up life's paperwork, surfing the Ship, managing email and contemplating house decoration and an upcoming wedding :).

gigs again

2007-02-22T11:19:00.000Z

It's gigging week again, with a stint of monitor mixing on a touring show. Last night it was Hastings, with a show in the boomy White Rock Theatre. Tonight Epsom, and tomorrow Weymouth.

hmmm...

2007-02-01T09:21:00.000Z

Things I have learned this week:

Don't despair if a Citroen Pluriel's rear window assembly jams when you're getting the roof back on. Turn on the ignition to power-up the latch, lift out the assembly, re-align and try again.

A Linksys WRT54g wireless router will work with an NTL 250 cable modem. In my case a hard reset of the router followed by cloning the MAC address of the computer I used to initialise the broadband connection did the trick, followed by setting up a key for basic security.

The VCR port on a Samsung 2110c set top box seems to be an output and not an input. In any case, if your tv only has one SCART port and you want to use this VCR port on the STB to connect up a Playstation, you can then turn off the STB (there's no `AV' button that I can see), and expect the audio and video to pass through the STB and out to the telly. Well - the video comes through but not the audio. No one on the web seems to know about this either.

gig 1

2007-01-19T10:59:00.000Z

Had my first go last night operating monitors on the new Yamaha LS9 audio console. Seems a good machine, but with a few traps in the solo/monitoring section that I'll need to be wary of for my own sanity. Digital mixing consoles and in-ear monitoring really clean up the stage physically and in terms of sound spill. Same again tonight...

back in live sound

2007-01-18T17:35:00.000Z

This week I'm up at Cheltenham on a live sound gig. It's good to be back doing this. Will report more later...

Very stormy weather today.

got a new monitor

2007-01-10T09:42:00.000Z

I ordered a pair of Dell LCD monitors - my my and Emma's computers - on Saturday and they arrived yesterday (Tuesday), which was quite impressive service. The one for me is a 2007WFP widescreen, which has a 20" screen and a good supply of connections: VGA, DVI, S-Video, Composite plus two USB slave ports (which really means one extra one, once you've connected the uplink cable to your computer).
So...I'm yet to play around with the settings, but I've tried it out with my 12" Powerbook, using the proprietary Powerbook DVI adapter. The Powerbook will run the widescreen display at a good resolution in extended desktop mode, and in mirror mode the widescreen shows the same image as the laptop, albeit stretched to fill out the screen. This mode is not the best looking and as I might use extended and mirrored modes in equal amounts depending on the task at hand, for mirrored mode I plan to experiment a bit with the Dell's settings.
It's for things like Photoshop that I have the extended desktop in mind. But...I think it'll take a while to set it up how I like it. Several questions - does Photoshop have built-in facilities to remember how you like your extended desktop set up? It'll be running from my Powerbook which I'll frequently want to disconnect from the system to take it with me on the road. I've got into trouble in the past with extended desktop on a Windows machine, when I plugged in an external screen to a Dell laptop, slid an application window over to the new workspace, then disconnected the screen without bringing the application back to the home screen. As a result, the computer got `phantom limb' syndrome and thought the application was still there and I couldn't get it back until I'd reset a few things.

Happy New Year

2007-01-01T17:00:00.000Z

Happy New Year folks! After a nice overnight (well, of course...) new year gathering, we went to Compton Abbas airfield for lunch, and Emma and I went for a spot of flying. The rain was setting in but we saw a bit of nice Dorset countryside before it was time to land.

Got my weekends back

2006-12-18T10:15:00.000Z

Television production has slowed down for the year, so I have my weekends back for the time being.

And...last Tuesday I asked her, and she said yes!

the age of the toy helicopter

2006-12-06T10:02:00.000Z

I have come to the opinion that 2006 is the year of the toy helicopter - the year when real, 3-D flying, untethered radio-controlled helicopters have escaped the rarefied world of middle-class portly moustached technicians, glow engines and computerised radio systems and have turned up in disposable bubble packs on racks in toy shops. Electric of course. No doubt advances in Lithium-Polymer batteries and similar technology have resulted in power systems that are light enough and cheap enough to get a plastic foam toy off the ground and hovering in someone's suburban garage on Christmas Day. YouTube has a good collection of people's attempts at flying such contraptions, along with some truly amazing skills with machines from the forementioned category on display.

web tv

2006-11-29T09:55:00.000Z

The BBC has some interesting online articles on the future of television, and I got onto the Galacticast website which has some amusing SF material. Worth a look.

the new gadget!

2006-11-08T13:04:00.000Z

I bit the bullet and got on the digital radio bandwagon today, with the acquisition of a Pure One DAB receiver. I'm not sure why, but it seems that designers of DAB think that we all want to hear radio on a faux-fifties woodgrain finish tabletop unit. I think most of them look a bit crappy as a result, with just the higher-end Tivoli Table Radios getting away with it, albeit at a price. I did a bit of research into radio performance, and it seemed from internet opinion that the Pure One was the best cheap one to go for, and for me, the plain but modern styling helped sway my decision its way. It certainly works fine, and here in Poole it gets all the stations that I want to listen to with the antennae barely extended. The same can't be said for Freeview here, which is a no-go.

one of London's quieter stations

2006-10-31T18:14:00.000Z

I had a few hours to spend in London yesterday, and pulled out my `closet trainspotter' hat before heading to a station made famous by the game with the same name. It's on the Charing Cross branch of the Northern Line.

2006-10-20T23:23:00.000+01:00

I watched Gavin Newman's excellent 2005 film Wookey Exposed this week. It's a superb, shall we say, exposé, of cave-diving in the context of the place where the sport had its beginnings - Wookey Hole cave in Somerset. There's a real element of insanity with the whole cave-diving thing, but the footage captured from the furthest points of the the cave's exploration is just superb and very engrossing to watch. Leo Dickinson's 1985 film Nosey Parker is included on the DVD, and that chronicles the late Rob Parker's record-breaking push into Wookey back in the 80s using the still experimental tri-mix breathing systems. Leo Dickinson has produced some marvellous aerial films about skydiving and his impressions of cave-diving as being many magnitudes more dangerous than jumping from a plane are quite insightful.

batteries...

2006-10-02T12:59:00.000+01:00

Such is the lot of a broadcast audio engineer...it's been a long weekend.

passing through London

2006-09-25T12:47:00.000+01:00

I'm sitting in the Apple Store in Regent St, using the free wi-fi on offer. Lots of people around with their shiny Macs. There is a guy using a PC laptop nearby, but he's getting lots of dark looks, I suspect!

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

2006-09-20T11:45:00.000+01:00

Late hours television continues at Maidstone. I've been having a look around this town during the day (after sleep!), and yesterday I watched a guy operating a model boat in the lake at Mote Park. It was a glow-engine powered machine and it seemed to break down often, requiring the hapless modeller to row out in a little dinghy to perform the retrieval. I saw on a noticeboard that there is to be a model yacht event at the lake this weekend, so I might wander down then.

This is cool - an article i wrote about my encounters with Apple computers has been published halfway down this page.

in sunny Kent

2006-09-15T12:06:00.000+01:00

I'm in Maidstone in Kent, having a lazy day after doing an overnight shift of audio supervising for the quiz show The Mint. I'm sitting in Cafe Nero using the wi-fi-hotspot. It's a nice place to sit and watch the world go by.

Are all coach drivers comedians?

2006-09-11T19:57:00.000+01:00

And in other news...a major inconvenience at Victoria train station - not being able to pay to go to the loo. Hopefully they'll fix it soon.

I went over to Maidstone in Kent yesterday, to learn the ropes of a simple show that is produced for ITV at Maidstone Studios. It was an ok session, if quite long. The Calrec audio console is a familiar style and not unlike the last one I used at Ten in Melbourne.

My journey to Maidstone yesterday started in Poole, with a bus trip to London Victoria, then, seeing as they were doing `engineering works' at Victoria, I had to take the tube to Blackfriars and get on a train bound for Ashford, which conveniently enough dropped me a Maidstone East, which was the original plan. The ride out from London and back is pleasant - I like above-ground, overland train journeys, and generally feel quite relaxed at the end of them.
It was hot today on the bus from Victoria back to Poole. I guess there hasn't been an enormous market in the UK for mobile air-conditioning, and the driver did apologise for the fact that we were on an older coach which did not possess such air-cooling apparatus.
With the warm weather today, it was punter city in London, especially around The Palace.

Monday trains

2006-09-04T15:00:00.000+01:00

I went off to Southampton this morning on the train to see someone about getting an NI number. Not that I had doubts, but I knew I was in England when two fellow passengers in front of me started whinging about the impunctual nature of British trains, and what needed to be done. Spike Milligan suggested that the very concept of lateness had its origins in the workshop of George Stephenson, where the first steam locomotive began its life. Were Mr Stephenson around today, I'm sure he'd pass the buck to James Watt.

It was my first real visit to Southampton, and I must say it looks straight out of the sixties. I'm sure I've seen some of the concrete urban architecture before in a Boring Postcards book. No matter. The guy I spoke to at the Job Centre place was friendly, and seemed quite keen on Monty Python. I'm a fan, but suspected that perhaps the Monty Python ruse has credentials as means of weeding out the potential terrorists (if suicide bombers recite the Spanish Inquisition before pressing the switch, then the profiling system has hit a new hurdle).

2006-08-31T11:34:00.000+01:00

Got back from Greenbelt on Tuesday. The Cheltenham Racecourse venue in Gloucestershire seems good for this kind of thing, although, like any outdoor, grassy venue, the trampled mud plus rubbish smell does get a bit on the nose towards the end. It was a good long weekend - I was thoroughly `seminared-out' by the the end of it, and enjoyed some good music, too. There is so much to do and see at this festival that one can't possibly get remotely near to doing everything. Highlights? Sampling the interesting brew in the Organic Beer Tent. Camping with fellow Ship of Fools folk was fun, and much wine was consumed. As for the festival program, I heard talks by David Batstone, Jim Wallis, James Alison, John Bell, Steve Stockman and Clive Stafford-Smith. Jim Wallis has much passion but I find his talks to be a bit too `mass-produced' sounding to be engaging enough. James Alison was every bit as good as I was hoping, and his storytelling style really tickles the imagination. It was great to meet Steve Stockman - I've been enjoying his BBC radio show for several years via the internet.
Greenbelt caters well for it, but I didn't go to many of the emerging-church oriented events, although I attended the Sanctus evening session in the New Forms Cafe on the Saturday night.
On the music front, I saw Martyn Joseph live for the first time. He did a good set on the Friday night, sounding nice through the main stage's Meyer line array loudspeaker system. I regret not hearing more of Brian Houston, though. I got to his short gig in the red Christian Aid Performance Cafe, and wished I'd made it to his longer set on the main stage. He's very good. Having said that, it seems that CDs that you buy at a gig after hearing the artist for the first time rarely deliver. I bought Brian Houston's recent release Sugar Queen, and like his spare live style much better than the full band sounds delivered on the album.

Yesterday I went out to sunny Kent to visit a place of potential work at the Maidstone Studios in Maidstone. After a one-hour train ride from London Victoria to Maidstone East, I made the walk from the town up the hill to the well-appointed studios. It looks like there will be some worthwhile freelance opportunities to be had there.

Greenbelt

2006-08-27T20:22:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post from Greenbelt Festival. Just been to a fantastic seminar by James Alison - I've read quite bit of his stuff but he's such a great storyteller in real life. It was also good to meet and hear from Steve Stockman at his seminar last night. On the music front, there's been some good stuff, but Brian Houston (no not the Hillsong one, the Irish one!) was superb in a short set he played this afternoon.

off to Greenbelt today!

2006-08-25T06:19:00.000+01:00

Well, it's the day we pack the car and head up to Cheltenham, Gloucestershire for the Greenbelt Festival. I think I'll make it a computer-free weekend (given that I'm camping there won't be much power nearby anyway).
Back next Tuesday. Feel free to send email, but I may not get back to you until then.

Is anyone else frustrated by Blogger's new Google Beta thing? I find it less than direct to get to the Dashboard. Who's getting offered upgrades?

down in Dorset

2006-08-23T16:51:00.000+01:00

Wednesday afternoon finds me down in Poole, with a few gadget-related things to play with. I've been working on setting up a wireless network at a friend's place, in between learning how to use my new Motorola L7 phone. Greenbelt this weekend, then I'm heading over to Maidstone in Kent next Wednesday to see about some potential tv studio work.

The flight over on Monday-Tuesday went ok. I'd definitely fly Thai again. Their Melbourne-Bangkok runs have good planes with the best on-demand video systems I've seen in economy. Unfortunate they're still using the `old-school' 747s on the Bangkok-London leg, where the minimal video material is delivered to everyone via a handful of overhead screens.
Air security wasn't as major a nightmare as I was expecting, although I knew most of the restrictions of the past two weeks had been lifted. In Bangkok airport's departure lounge a large team of staff thoroughly checked all hand luggage (including all zip pockets, etc.), while two others performed simple pat body checks of everybody. I think they were doing a good job of it all, with patience, professionalism and cheerfulness all round (although Melbourne's Tullamarine still has the most good-humoured baggage screening staff I've encountered!).

hmmm...

2006-08-17T12:57:00.000+01:00

Well the grand plans for a region-free Superdrive have been thwarted by a small screw in the side of the PB that refuses to budge and is now stripped. I think a drill will be in order, but I'll leave it a while. The 12" PB seems notoriously difficult to get into, with removal of the entire inside and about 40 screws to get to the optical drive. The newly flashed drive works fine in the G3 Pismo, at least.

not long now...

2006-08-11T01:03:00.000+01:00

Not long to go now, and I'm heading off. At this stage it seems that liquids are forbidden on flights out of Melbourne to the UK.

I've been working on setting up my G4 Powerbook with a new Superdrive, that will enable dual-layer burning and Region Free DVD playback, two things the factory standard drive doesn't have. Following the excellent articles at Low End Mac and downloading firmware flashing tools from RPC1 Firmware page, I successfully flashed an Ebay-bought Pioneer drive using my G3 Pismo. Installing the optical drive in a 12" G4 Powerbook looks like a nightmare though, despite the pictorial guides available online. The machine's going off to a professional today.

more new music

2006-07-24T05:20:00.000+01:00

There are some musicians who release recordings and you know that they're going to be worthwhile simply because of who's behind them. For me, Bruce Cockburn fits well in that category, if such a category for him can be found. With his latest release Life Short Call Now, the man again confounds expectations with a collection of songs that are rich, honest and at times beautifully awkward. I'm not totally into it yet, but it's early days. The Cockburn's 1991 Nothing But a Burning Light is one of my favourite CDs, but it took me nine years to get there.
Enough waxing lyrical. Does Life Short Call Now deliver? So far, there's a lot of promise. The distinctive Bruce guitar sound is there. He's got a string machine, and some fine brass, reminiscent of his 70s era. Humans find comfort in being able to compare things, to relativise things. In this album there are many traces of this artist's musical past. This CD pairs nicely with You've Never Seen Everything, with perhaps a slightly springier step. The opening, title track sticks in my head like My Beat, and Different When it Comes to You draws shades of the Trouble with Normal era. An early standout is the rarefied track 11 To Fit in My Heart, with a brass arrangement strangely reminiscent of I'm Gonna Fly Someday.

I do miss the spoken word pieces of recent past albums, but Bruce never stands still. There're more things to explore. This one's worth a listen. With a glass of red, perhaps. And a good stereo sound system. I've only given it three spins so far and there must be a lot more here to find.
More news at the excellent Cockburn Project website.

On the tech front, I've invested in a USB tv tuner. I've been eyeing one off for at least the past year, and the very latest one from Elgato looked like the go. Pretty similar to the Miglia one - like a big USB memory stick. They come with a small toy stubby antenna, and believe it when the literature recommends using a real rooftop aerial - the toy one didn't work at all, even when tested under the digital repeater at Como in South Yarra (although I'm sure an RF geek would have a dozen reasons why being too close to the transmitter is bad for reception).

good enough sound?

2006-07-17T03:49:00.000+01:00

I remember having a discussion with a musician friend a couple of years ago, about DVD audio sound versus CD sound. I'm actually yet to sit down and do an AB test between identical material on CD and DVD-A, but in this conversation my friend was describing sense of space and relief that DVD-A sound quality offered over regular CD audio.
So with that back-drop, I'm thinking that my old iPod is decidedly ordinary in terms of audio quality. I've started listening to my CD Discman again, and the sense of space and relief is evident over the ripped versions sitting on my little white gadget. I think if it wasn't for the marvellous world of podcasts, I'd be tempted to ditch the iPod.
Ok. My iPod is old - 2nd generation. Maybe the newer ones are better. Maybe they've got an equaliser that is actually useable and beneficial to listening on high quality but bass-deficient in-ear phones. I'm not sure. I've played around with different bit-rates (unfortunately my model won't play Lossless Compressed formats) but my Discman still sounds better. Uncompressed music from the iPod is a slight improvement, but disk space and battery life becomes an concern pretty quick with this approach.
So where is all this going? I've noticed that the DVD-Audio versus Super Audio CD `battle' has given way to the HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray stouch. No one seems to be pushing any sound quality benefits, but the issues of copyright protection are never far from the spotlight.
Maybe sound quality is no longer an issue these days. Perhaps no-one cares: we're all busy listening to compressed music on one of those `iPod compatible' portable sound systems that seem to be populating the windows of home entertainment stores. I guess who's to argue...if the ear is the final judge.

And, in un-related matters, kudos to Bryce Amner for nicely integrating a session of MS Flight Simulator into a sermon on Revelation at Holy Trinity Port Melbourne on Sunday. And no...I don't believe The Rapture was even mentioned.

Liquid Architecture 7

2006-07-15T01:20:00.000+01:00

I got along to the Friday evening program of this sound art festival. The gig was in the North Melbourne Town Hall, where Outlook Communications had set up a fine sounding Funktion-One surround system to act as canvas for the aural expositions on display. Julian Knowles and Donna Hewitt kicked things off, with visually engaging e-mic and guitar work. Dean Roberts followed with some guitar and vocal work, which struck as slightly in the `acquired taste' category. A short interval and it was time for the collaborative efforts of the Swiss Australian Collectibles. This combination of Speak Percussion's live instrumentation combined with computer audio modelling from Martin Baumgartner, Myles Mumford et.al utilising every size of aluminium Powerbook was most enjoyable.

Le Tour

2006-07-03T10:23:00.000+01:00

Hooray for SBS and their live coverage of the Tour de France stages. Who cares if it's in the middle of the night? Aren't we already up watching the soccer?

There're some good things set up at the official Tour website, including the Tour on Google Earth.

New music coming!

2006-06-27T11:41:00.000+01:00

I'm excited. Bruce Cockburn's new cd is due for release on July 18. Hmm...quicker to order from Amazon or buy locally? JB-Hi-fi had YNSE on the shelf right on release date in 2003 so I might check with them to see if they'll be getting it.

a flying diversion

2006-06-27T01:16:00.000+01:00

I was madly into model aeroplanes from when I was under ten to my late teens, and I must say the bug never quite goes away. It's the building that I enjoyed as much as the flying - very satisfying. In fact, despite getting to a level of solo proficiency at the controls of an RC aeroplane in the mid-90s, the time spent actually constructing a bit of aviation machinery was just as therapeutic. The potential high expense of this hobby does present something of a personal ethical hurdle, but it doesn't have to be expensive to be fun and enriching. I think lots of things are like that - building a house, a boat, a shed, an organisation, a relationship - your imagination about the finished product drives you ahead during the design, build and preparation stage (hopefully!).

Anyway...talking of model aeroplanes, I found this excellent site from the US about a guy who's designed an RC slope soarer (pictured) and made the design available over the internet. Such un-powered aircraft rely on gravity and wind to reach speeds that surpass most powered model aircraft. It looks like a fine ship, and it makes me yearn for having a good workshop once again. Starting to think...

And in other news...I've booked my ticket for Greenbelt 2006 so am greatly looking forward to attending.

foiling cinema pirates?

2006-06-21T00:31:00.000+01:00

I saw this article on the BBC about experimental measures being developed in the US to block the video cameras of cinema movie pirates with white light.
It's a tricky one, and no doubt it's not just cinemas that might be interested in such a set-up. I was wondering if an effective means of foiling video cameras in cinemas might be to vary the frame rate of the film itself - thus interfering with the coherence of the video camera's constant frame rate capture - but on second thoughts that might be extremely complicated and cause people in the audience to feel ill.

2006-06-19T07:54:00.000+01:00

Thinking about the ease of commodifying artistry.

In a world where many self-appointed critics decry our consumerist ways, the yawning gulf between producer and consumer is often pointed out. We don't meet the person who grew our coffee, glued together our fancy runners, assembled the parts that make up a computer. We probably don't wish to either, except in moments of rare altruism where someone inspired us with good feelings about smelling the roses and living in a big happy community.

Digital technology is a great buffer in the transfer of artistic media and is useful in perpetuating this gulf. The music gets made on one side, and we listen to it on the other, but in the middle it exists merely as ones and zeros in storage and in transit all around the networked globe, meaningless until something at the other end transforms it into something we can actually hear.

Further thoughts...here

more on net neutrality

2006-06-16T08:25:00.000+01:00

Further to my previous comments, there's an argument on Crikey.com that suggests that enforcing net neutrality would be a bad move that freezes innovation. The implication here seems to be: let all decisions made by ISPs over pricing structures for different levels of user fall into the marketplace and see what swims and what sinks.

It largely seems to be about internet-delivered television, which would require substantial investment in network infrastructure and understandably higher charges to people who use the internet predominantly for this purpose. In this trend towards [presumably, ultimately, live] online movies and programmes, can one be forgiven for thinking "what about regular terrestrial and satellite broadcast?"?
I guess, like there's only one electromagnetic spectrum, there's only one internet. Funny how it's become so retro-fitted over the years. Copper lines that once carried analogue phone signals are now used to service digital broadband connections.
So does all this exciting online telly need to be available live? Or is it enough in the medium term for it to be available in download form, like podcasts? Listen-again-on-demand can be good, but I imagine the server requirements are enormous, especially if it's to be high-quality video. Perhaps the programmer can stream the material in one go, like television (i.e. you have to watch it at the time it's on), and leave it to us with our ever-growing arsenal of personal video recorders to `tape' it.
No doubt we'll be told that whatever happens it's all in the name of `what the customer wants'. That old mantra. The cynic in me presumes this to mean that the quality and flexibility of delivery will always exceed the quality of the programme material itself.

Having said all this...as a fan of online overseas radio stations and radio programme podcasts, I'd be interested in watching more overseas telly if I could find a good directory of what's on.

the issue of net neutrality

2006-06-13T12:36:00.000+01:00

The idea of a two-tier internet is looming, according to some commentators on the recent rejection by US politicians of the principle of internet neutrality. BBC article.

I suspect many of us have come to take for granted that all internet traffic, whether it be email, web-page downloads, personal photo uploads, streaming video or chatting is all treated in an egalitarian way by the companies providing the physical network infrastructure. A two-tier system would presumably imply an internet environment where those with the means could enjoy a level of service and media material not available on a lower level. Perhaps that great little website you've been working on will only be viewable by every online user if you've paid extra to have it on the high level internet, rather than the regular internet that doesn't go everywhere.

Time will tell. It's disturbing. Perhaps it was at our peril that we took the net's neutrality as given - after decades of a broadcast media landscape dominated by the mostly one-way traffic from the megaliths of commercial programming.

new music from Mr Burnett

2006-06-06T07:49:00.000+01:00

I've just got the new CD The True False Identity, by T-Bone Burnett. I've just started listening...
Have made a booking to head over to the UK in August to start another big adventure. I'm on the waitlist with Thai Airlines (the cheapest option I've found for what I want), and if it all works I'll be in the UK for Greenbelt.

some religion late in the week

2006-06-03T02:48:00.000+01:00

On Thursday I went to hear Dr William Cavanaugh deliver a lecture with a somewhat long title The Sacrifice of Love - The Eucharist as resistance to terror and torture. It was part of the Catholic Theological College's lecture series, and while I have no links with that particular institution, I was alerted to the lecture by the good folk at Ridley College Bookshop in Parkville.
Dr Cavanaugh hails from the US and delivered a talk that drew on his study and personal experience with the situation in Chile when General Pinochet was in command, and led on to our current day experience of the so-called War on Terror. There were significant points made, one being about torture being a requirement to maintain a supply of enemies so that a war could carry on. "Despite the rhetoric, wars are never simply about making friends. Wars are about the imaginary dividing of the world into friends and enemies. And enemies must exist in sufficient abundance and sufficient monstrosity if a war is to be sustained".
People can be made to say anything under duress - even those with no connection to the resistance. The atrocities at Abu Ghraib were mentioned in relation to comments by former US interrogators that they never got intelligence from their interrogation subjects.
Much more to say, but I think I'll look out for the transcript if it appears on the web. I'm told a podcast will be available, too.

And on the computing front, I've acquired an Airport card for the old Powerbook G3. These original 802.11b cards are hard to find and expensive on Ebay, but this one came from a friend who was retiring an old PowerMac G4. I've got the new G4 PB with Airport Extreme of course, but having the old G3 set up for Airport internet sharing is handy and I've had my fill of trying to get the job done with third-party PCMCIA cards and flaky third-party drivers.

website update

2006-05-26T00:44:00.000+01:00

I've created a new front page graphic for my website. I think I'll keep the `three biscuit' logo happening for a bit. I quite like it. I'm now working on some new article content.

FreeWheelsEast

2006-05-24T12:35:00.000+01:00

I was walking up Chapel St towards Channel Ten today and I got chatting to two cyclists from the UK who are well into a cycling trip around the world, avoiding air travel (trains and boats are ok, though!). Ben Wylson and Jamie Mackenzie had parked their bikes on the footpath in South Yarra and were `peddling' a booklet detailing their trip so far and chatting about how their journey was going. They have a website running called Free Wheels East.

2006-05-23T13:05:00.000+01:00

I just watched the very disturbing film Seoul Train, on SBS, about the underground railroad movement in China, which is concerned with getting refugees from North Korea out to safety in more friendly countries than China (such as Mongolia). The program website provides lots of useful discussion points and contact details of people to write to.

The crane's coming down

2006-05-23T12:33:00.000+01:00

I'm really not sure how it's all going to work, but they've started taking down the crane(s) on the very tall Eureka Tower. I was in the area today and luckily had the camera with me. The smaller crane removed the boom from the larger crane, then lifted the boom apart, presumably to lower it part by part.

The smaller crane lifts the boom off the winch base

The boom is laid on the roof to be dis-assembled (view from other side)

The boom is taken apart.

Ship of Fools - 5 years of discussion

2006-05-23T01:20:00.000+01:00

The forums (er...fora?) at Ship of Fools went online five years ago yesterday, I'm told. I've been a member for most of that time, and it's been an enriching experience of online community. I was on quite a bit in the early days, when I had a permanent net connection via the college where I was studying at the time. A couple of years of dial-up, moving cities, then on to broadband, leads to where I am now.
The UK-based Ship of Fools has become quite well known, and the front-end `Magazine of Christian Unrest' is but a portal to the bulletin boards within. Discussion of the world and all that is in it, in a place where no topic is taboo and moderation is strict (although there are private boards for some topics). The Ten Commandments of the board are enforced to enable a productive, fun and worthwhile experience for people with many various viewpoints. It has been interesting to reflect on the time I've been involved, and to see which `shipmates' are still there and who has (apparently) dropped off. Last year there were some notable events - including the passing of at least two shipmates.

It seems that there have been many people joining the boards in the last year or so - probably the increase in permanent net connections has helped here as much as media attention and word-of-mouth. I understand there were particular problems in the pre-2001 developments of the boards, but it has been heartening (in the long run!) to see people, who, on joining up, espouse some apparently narrow point of view like it's their god-given truth, then soften their stance in the midst of many people with many stories, going on to become a valued member of the community. Many parts of the Christian tradition are represented, with a notable (and not unsurprising) apparent lack of Pentecostal/Charismatic folk.
The virtual aspect of online communities is open for debate, I believe. We can no longer make a blanket dismissal of `virtual worlds' as being something less than the real thing. On one hand, people can sign up to Ship of Fools with a good degree of anonymity (as long as they have a valid email address), and `outing someone' is frowned upon. In such an environment, I like to think that people can share quite personal stories in relative confidence. On the other side of the deck, real-life Shipmeets are a frequent occurrence, and there is a section of the boards dedicated to organising such gatherings. I think I've met about 50 of the 10,000+ members, in Australia, North America and Britain. Not a lot, but enough to provide a vague idea of who's on board.

So happy birthday to the SOF Boards. I'm very glad you're here.

R.I.P. G4

2006-05-17T14:01:00.000+01:00

The PowerPC G4 is now obsolete, with the introduction of the MacBook, which is replacing the iBook and remaining Powerbook model. Looks like a good machine - Intel Duo, 13" widescreen, digital audio i/o , native extended desktop. It does have shared graphics but that will be fine for many people, I'm sure. There is an option of getting a MacBook in black, but it seems that you pay quite a premium for this (the other extras with the black one hardly justify it). I'm glad I've got my black Pismo, and it seems to get on fine with the 12" PB so I think I'll be right for a while.
I was reading in some Mac material that Adobe have put out an update for Photoshop. In the current Mac climate where Adobe is under the hard glare over a MacIntel-ready Creative Suite, `update' can be a powerful rumour. No big deal though - just a regular update with a few bug fixes, it seems.

Malick's latest

2006-05-17T01:06:00.000+01:00

I went to see The New World last night. Terrence Malick makes few movies, and they're worth the wait. His last film The Thin Red Line is one of my favourite films, and one that I think I'll enjoy for years to come. This new one is definitely `vintage Malick', if such a term can be used. Sunlight through trees, birds flying, lingering landscape, and grass. Lots of grass. I went to this film with great expectation and it delivered on many levels, but it's not his best. The cinematography is marvellous. John Horner's score works quite well - perhaps a little `forced' and not as free-flowing as Hans Zimmer's work on TTRL.
Terrence Malick seems extra self-indulgent here - especially with his `people' shots. Arms. Hands. Shots from below. The close-up scenes of the key characters dancing in the forest are many, and one is required to suspend most belief, resisting the need to dwell on details and practicalities.

Malick seems to work on a different tune when film-making. A pretentious and cliched "I made this film for me" sentiment is perhaps in effect with much of his work, yet he draws me in deeply. He can linger, and invites us to linger, and be enriched enormously in the process. Whether there is a satisfying conclusion to this lingering is a decision to be made by the audience.

Using a VCR to be finally decriminalised?

2006-05-14T10:10:00.000+01:00

Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has made a further announcement about proposed changes to copyright laws in Australia. Recording a TV show to watch later and ripping CDs to MP3 and other digital formats to be made legal! Just think...those everyday technological tasks undertaken by the least techy technofreaks like using a VCR for its intended purpose and filling an iPod from your CD collection will actually be permitted in Australia. A fair-use policy. About time. I'm sure many people are not even aware that such things have been illegal in this country. I do wonder what loophole was exploited in the late 70s when VCRs first went on sale.

In other news, those who remember the Church of Fools may be interested that Ship-of-Fools' Simon Jenkins is assembling a new venture - picking up where the other left off, I guess - in the form of St.Pixels. It's in the early stages so far. Keep an eye on it. Cool name.

2006-05-09T05:52:00.000+01:00

Well, the guys are finally out of the Beaconsfield Gold Mine. If the media is to be believed the good humour of the trapped miners continued all through. Parallels were already being drawn with the Quecreek mine rescue in the US in 2002, and it seems a reasonable comparison, with the sad note in the Tasmanian case that not everyone made it out.

I caught up today with Ben Whimpey from Orsino Images, and he seems full of ideas of where his video production company could head next. It was also good to get a fix of discussion about Apple, HD cameras and audio! My new Powerbook is now loaded up with RAM and will run AVID Free DV quite happily.

For those webcam fanatics who've had their fill of online eagles, the Mt.St.Helens webcam is always worth bookmarking, even though right now it's a tad dark.

Rash

2006-04-23T06:18:00.000+01:00

I just caught Nicholas Hansen's film Rash, about street art in Melbourne. An excellent little film, with a good balance of opinions from various artists and councillors. Worth looking out for if you missed it.

The pier re-vitalised

2006-04-23T03:24:00.000+01:00

St.Kilda Pier has been given a boost with the recent opening of the kiosk, re-built after the previous one was destroyed by fire in late 2003. With the kiosk open that means that the breakwater is now also accessible for that evening stroll. Look out for penguins, too!
I feel fortunate to live in this part of Melbourne, and those who know me may know that I have a large collection of photos taken down at the pier, during different seasons, different times of day, from various points of view. It's especially nice to visit late in an autumn afternoon, after a heavy rain.

2006-04-19T08:02:00.000+01:00

Back after Easter, and time I posted on this blog. Emma from the UK was down in this this neck of the woods for a couple of weeks, so it was nice to show her around a bit of Melbourne. We also went down to Hobart for six days and visited Mt.Field, Richmond and Salamanca Market, among other places. Some bike riding along the Pipeline Track on a rainy Good Friday was also a welcome bit of outdoor adventure.
While in Hobart I visited my old school (The Friends' School) to sit in with Paul Radford's (a friend from a while back) music class - I had a listen to some of the students' recording projects. There was some good stuff there - it's great how computing has made high-quality recording so available to ordinary mortals.

Was just reading about fake iPods. I'm surprised these haven't been around sooner. Maybe they have. I've ordered a 12" Powerbook G4, which hopefully will arrive in the next day or so. The MacBooks with the Intel processors beckoned in a `sort-of' way, but I'm waiting for a smaller version to be released, and if the forums (fora for pedants?) are to be believed, Adobe Photoshop - which I use quite a bit - is some way off from being ready for the Intel system. I was reading a review of the MacBook Pro today in a prominent Australian PC magazine, and they said they liked the inclusion of a battery meter that didn't require the computer to be turned on. My Pismo G3 has that and it's six years old!

Jim Wallis in Melbourne

2006-04-05T00:44:00.000+01:00

Sojourner's Jim Wallis will be speaking in Melbourne this Sunday at the Town Hall, along with Tim Costello from World Vision.

the games are over

2006-03-26T22:22:00.000+01:00

Well, that's it for Melbourne 2006. After a hot, long day at the very pleasant Botanic Gardens setting for the road bike race, it's time for a bit of a final de-rig today and then back to contemplate the F1 Grand Prix and the footy season.

All in all, the broadcast of M2006 was an enjoyable gig to work on - good crew, low stress and great weather.

M2006 triathlon imminent

2006-03-17T00:37:00.000Z

The broadcast setup at St.Kilda for the outdoor road events at the Melbourne Games has been going ok, with much of our audio work involving maintaining a family of Sennheisers around the venue to capture all the audio effects needed. Quite low-stress so far. The weather has been a bit temperamental, so I think Melbourne's reputation in that department is probably being confirmed in the eyes of those visiting from interstate.

Skype

2006-03-09T08:40:00.000Z

I had my first grizzle with Skype this week. It's been running fine on the Powerbook for the last six months, but I updated to the new version (1.4.0.35) and there seemed to be a HUGE delay in the conversations. Up to seven seconds. That hardly helps when you're having some big discussion about something or another. I thought it might be network trouble, and the Skype forums seem to have a set 5-point answer to any delay/echo problems (too big to list here).

So, I figured that the problem only started with the new version. Therefore I reverted to the previous version and all is good. Bit of a mystery.

2006-02-26T06:37:00.000Z

With the Games almost upon us in Melbourne there is a big effort to make sure the city looks good. This includes lots of `stern words' from people in power about the evils of graffiti. Sure, tagging can look a bit vandalistic and pointless to the masses when there are some good creative images around. There's a good selection of websites and books around on street art in Melbourne. Famed UK stencil artist Banksy has displayed his wares around the place, as this website attests (the image of Child in Diving Helmet is actually in Cocker Alley, just opposite the Flinders Lane police station. I had a look at it this afternoon).

2006-02-03T04:13:00.000Z

I find this somewhat bemusing...iPod lawsuit over hearing damage. My first reaction was: "you're several decades late, mate!" I reckon they weren't listening to Mozart. Ever since the invention of headphones, and perhaps particularly with the introduction of the walkman there has been a risk of hearing damage due to having the level up too high. Many music players of all types have some sort of volume limiting system.
Perhaps the good sound quality of modern music players makes it tempting to turn up the level to enhance the enjoyment factor. I remember when I got my AKG monitor cans in 1996 and, when connected to a good amplifier, they sounded fantastic, so I turned up the level...and afterwards my ears felt like I'd been in a club.
Listening to a portable music player in noisy, commuter environments does lead one to want to turn up the volume to get over background noise. I find my Shure E4 isolating earphones to be good at blocking out outside noise (great on the plane and train), so you can listen at a lower level. The downside here is that you'd be unwise to wear them when walking down a busy street as you may not hear that wayward car until too late...

Adobe answers Apple

2006-01-31T11:05:00.000Z

For better or worse, Adobe's new pro photo application Lightroom will invariably be compared with Apple's Aperture. Adobe have a free beta version of Lightroom available but it needs at least a G4 to run (or a good Windows machine). No go on my trusty G3! It looks like a promising start though, from what I've read, and making it freely available in beta version until the planned commercial release in the middle of the year means plenty of input from folks all around the place with ideas on how to improve it.

the twins are here

2006-01-19T23:11:00.000Z

I'm now an uncle three time over. My older sister Michaela had the twin boys on Tuesday night. They're very small and will hang around the hospital for a month or so, well accommodated in incubator things with various machines that go beep. No names yet, as far as I know. It's T1 and T2 for the time being.

The CMS bump-out went smoothly enough on Wednesday afternoon, and we got the audio-visual gear back to the PA People just in time. Time to start writing some notes on the system layout and operation for the next person to do the job if I'm not around to do it in 2007.

CMS

2006-01-16T11:39:00.000Z

The CMS conference is going ok, with most of the sound gear performing well. The JBL VRX compact line-array boxes (two per side) are excellent, and seem well suited to speech reinforcement duties.

CMS conference 2006

2006-01-11T22:36:00.001Z

Heading off this morning to look after audio for the six-day Church Missionary Society summer conference at Phillip Island. The Driverack is programmed, the cables are prepared, and all we need to do now is get down there and pull an all-nighter to get it all in place for tomorrow's conference start.

Back next Wednesday.

new OSBD site

2006-01-05T21:10:00.000Z

One Small Barking Dog have a newly designed site which looks very nice. Check it out.

it's 2006

2006-01-02T00:59:00.000Z

Happy New Year everybody. I'm back in Melbourne after a nice cool Christmas and New Year (we seemed to avoid the hot weather altogether) in Hobart.
I went for a walk to the Hartz Mountains National Park while down south. This park is a great spot for an easy day of walking with superb views over the south west and D'Entrecasteaux areas. I've made numerous visits to this area since 1987 and the trackwork done in recent years has been a good attempt at minimising the impact of walkers yet making for an enjoyable visit for the [slightly] less mobile. The pic above is from Hartz Peak with Hartz Lake below and Mt Picton on the closer horizon to the left of my head.

Hobart again

2005-12-23T04:09:00.000Z

Back in Hobart, and enjoying the wireless network that my mum's got running now. Seems to work ok, although I suspect if I had a native Airport card that used the inbuilt antenna on the Pismo G3 the range would be a little better than the performance I am getting from this Belkin PCMCIA wi-fi card.
There's a new (ish) bike store in Hobart called Bowman-Pimms Bike Ride. It's in Liverpool St just down from the mall. They have some nice looking Orbea and Cannondale bikes there.
The weather here's quite summery, with the smell of bushfire smoke floating on the breeze.

On FireWire

2005-12-17T03:12:00.000Z

The future of the IEEE 1394 (FireWire 400) link is apparently coming under a lot of speculation, as this article at MacMod alludes. Certainly, the rapid expansion of the USB 2.0 empire has been seriously cutting into FireWire's cake, and for consumer peripherals like portable music players, digital camera card readers and the like, FireWire no longer has any visible presence. The current line of iPods no longer support FireWire, even.
USB 2.0 is ubiquitous - being an Intel thing - especially on PCs, so the lack of FireWire devices would hardly matter to many. For those of us with older Apple computers (which seem to stay capable for longer than equivalent specced PCs), it's either FireWire or USB 1, which is painfully slow for anything except perhaps a printer and user input devices. For digital photography work I use a Lexar FireWire CF card reader, which was hard to track down and quite a bit more expensive than an equivalent USB 2.0 device, and my iPod is early generation and uses a direct FireWire connection.

It seems that a safe haunt for FireWire for some time will be the audio-visual production scene. DV cameras use it under some guise for data transfer, and for mobile recording with a laptop it's the only way to go if you want to record more than two channels at a time.
FireWire was developed largely by Apple, and USB 1/USB 2 by Intel. With Apple's move to Intel chips, it will interesting to see how the future of FireWire 400 fares. It seems that in practice FireWire 400 and the much quicker FireWire 800 offer superior performance and versatility compared with the current offerings from the USB camp.

back in sunny Melbourne

2005-12-13T17:01:00.000Z

Got back to Melbourne yesterday afternoon. The combined 19-hour flight from Europe (in this case, Vienna) to Melbourne via Singapore is a killer.
All in all a good trip. Some great links made, and thanks to all who I was able to meet and greet on the journey. It will be good to come back soon.
I'm writing this at 4am as I awoke early due to a bit of jet-laggy stuff, I think.

2005-12-11T12:34:00.000Z

Back in Vienna after a pleasant couple of days in Salzburg. The weather has been fine (if expectedly cool) and the train ride was very nice and scenic.

Heading for home tomorrow.

2005-12-07T12:26:00.000Z

Well, having thought that my wireless card was on the blink, I've now found it works fine and I'm posting from the departure lounge at Heathrow. T-mobile are charging a fiver for an hour.

Off to Vienna soon, but it appears that the flight has been delayed by an hour.

2005-12-06T10:02:00.000Z

Back in Bournemouth after a crazy road trip north - Bournemouth to Cardiff to Glasgow, via Blackpool and Lancaster. We went north from Wales through Shropshire and stopped at a cheese shop/cafe near Leominster.
I'd wanted to visit Blackpool to see what the kitsch British seaside holiday resort was like. It was mostly all closed up, and a somewhat bleak place. The promenade abounds with `fun' places and of course the large tower.
Glasgow was good. A good Ship of Fools meet was had with about 19 people. While there I also visited Glasgow Cathedral which was really excellent. It has a great underneath bit.

travels...

2005-11-27T08:58:00.000Z

Travelling through England and meeting with various Shipmates. Went to Manchester yesterday for the first time, and heading down to Bournemouth later today (Sunday).

I'm off...

2005-11-23T23:17:00.000Z

This arvo I head off in the northern hemisphere direction. London via Vienna with Austrian Airlines.

Will update as I go, and be back on December 13th.

rogaining at Chiltern

2005-11-20T03:18:00.000Z

Went in the Black Dog Bush six hour Cyclogaine/Rogaine yesterday up at Chiltern. We did it on foot, but the bike option looked pretty good. It was good to be up out of the city in a part of Victoria I haven't visited for years, but the warm weather, blazing sun and numerous flies made for slightly trying conditions. The friendly `family' atmosphere and inclusiveness - of all levels of confidence and fitness - that I've encountered at rogaine events is very welcoming.
I looked at the results of the last rogaine we did at Mt Disappointment in October and it seems that our team got a very good score for doing just six hours (the full length of the event was 12 hours).

And on another note...Paul Schmelzer has linked to a great collection of weird and wonderful bicycles.

Flying off to the UK on Thursday.

iTunes opens in Australia

2005-11-03T01:53:00.000Z

The iTunes Music Store is now available to Australians!

Not that I'm really one for downloading singles, but some of those audiobooks look tempting.

2005-11-01T22:39:00.000Z

It was a hot night last night here in Melbourne and I got up in the wee hours, and for want of something to do, I downloaded and installed the 97MB 10.4.3 update for Mac OS X. There seem to be various horror stories of this update going wrong, but my computer seems ok, apart from having a startup disk that needs a repair (I thought I could perform the repair from Disk Utility in DVD-boot mode, but no luck in the immediate term).

Dons slightly nostalgic snob hat...

With the iPod culture well entrenched - a result of Apple's enormous marketing machine - I am often thinking dark thoughts about the way music is being distributed today, and the enormous oversaturation of the market in terms of ways of downloading singles (and, more irritatingly, ringtones, etc.). For me, the music listening experience is about having a disc in my hands (or, preferably in the disc player, with the liner notes in my hand), and sitting down to listen to the album in its entirety.
Nokia and EMI are joining forces to commandeer the Bluetooth interface to allow people to download music in [suitably equipped] cafes. Any way to grab a bit more money for a single...once you've downloaded it from the web, ripped from a CD (like - who does that???), or got from a friend, you can then download it to your phone all over again...
Never mind the reality that there is probably software that will transfer the music files to your phone. I guess the marketeers will tell you that it's the immediacy that matters - if the single is available to buy and download then and there then people will go for it, especially if it's only a couple of bucks. Quick Fix music is what it's about.

My first thought is usually that such facilities are no good for me as the kind of music I like, while not all being *out there*, is sufficiently off the beaten track enough to probably not be available through avenues such as a bluetooth music server in a cafe. Perhaps in my cynicism I underestimate the range.

and then there was one...

2005-10-30T04:55:00.000Z

My Thinkpad died last week. The CMOS battery was flat and when I replaced it something must have been unhappy on the motherboard as the machine would no longer start up (well, it would start, then stop on the way into Windows). Thank goodness for external hard-drive enclosures - I was able to retrieve all that I needed from the Thinkpad's disk, although much of it was backed-up already.
So...it's just me and the Powerbook now. It's a fine machine, now that I've upped the memory and increased the hard-drive capacity. I'll look around for an old PC in a month or so, though, as I need one to run Driveware for sound system setting up (and for Solitaire). It also seems essential (especially as I seem to insist on using second-hand hardware) to have two computers at one's disposal, so that if one goes down you can get online with the other one to seek help.

upgrades...

2005-10-18T23:50:00.000+01:00

The Pismo G3 now has a bigger hard drive. I picked up a 60GB Fujitsu MHV2060AH, after many hours comparing brands and specs and trying to ensure that it would work. My Windows experience of drive cloning wasn't good, and I wasn't looking forward to reloading everything manually onto the new disk. However, my internet travels came by a good little application called Carbon Copy Cloner, which is a `donation-shareware' program that does a full disk clone onto a new one. I installed the new drive into a USB enclosure, connected it up to the Pismo (via USB 1.1 UGH!), formatted and partitioned the drive with Disk Utility, started CCC and left it to it for the evening. All seemed to transfer ok, so I removed the new drive from the enclosure, swapped it with the original 20GB one in the computer, turned on...and...it all worked! There was my computer, just as before, all files in place, except that now the hard drive icon was revised to represent the [two] partitions of the newly formatted 60GB disk.

For those wanting to upgrade their Mac's hard-drive via the `cloning' process, I can recommend Carbon Copy Cloner, and there is a facility to make a donation to the company. I would suggest that a Firewire or USB 2.0 drive would be much quicker way to make the transfer, though. I do lament the fact that, despite Firewire's real-world speed advantage over USB 2.0, Firewire products are still more expensive and harder to find than USB 2.0. Must be part of another Windows conspiracy...

Weekend rogaining

2005-10-17T00:49:00.000+01:00

I went on the M.A.D. 12 hour rogaine on Saturday. It was my first rogaine, and for the uninitiated rogaining is like orienteering except that the duration is longer, you participate as a team and you don't have to reach all the checkpoints. This event was held up in the Mt Disappointment area, about an hour north of Melbourne. Such a nice day, and pleasant forest country to ramble through. And...it seemed that all the closet Polarfleece wearers were out in force, too, which made for a good atmosphere.
We just stayed out for 6 hours (12pm - 6pm) and racked up some good points from a few hard-to-find checkpoints.

another Shure thing

2005-10-05T07:00:00.000+01:00

The Shure E4c earphones I'd ordered from Ebay arrived today. They are very sensitive and certainly show up the soundcard on my computer, and the internal noise on my discman seems more obvious, too, but the sound of the phones is excellent. Looking forward to using them on the plane.

Michelle Shocked at the Corner

2005-09-29T00:47:00.000+01:00

Michelle Shocked played at the Corner Hotel last night. It was the first time I'd seen her live. Gigs at the Corner are usually smoke-free now, which is fantastic.
Tonchi McIntosh opened the show. He's getting pretty good. I remember he opened for Bruce Cockburn last year at the Brunswick Music Festival.
After some `Shockioke', hosted by band member Rich Armstrong, Michelle emerged with the band. It was a small band, and included well-known `local' Peter Luscombe on drums. Rich Armstrong proved himself to be an fluent multi-instrumentalist, with percussion, trumpet, flugal horn and vocal duties going down a treat. The house sound system is good too, and the marvellous use of delay and reverb effects on vocals and instruments complemented a hugely enjoyable and fatigue-free audio mix.
Michelle has an amazing set of lungs, although, she did admit to being a bit thin on the vocal side, 13 shows into a rigourous 16 date Australian tour. She noticeably eased off a bit toward the end, and *wisely* finished the show sans encore, "quitting while ahead". I didn't get a close look, but it looked and sounded like she sang into a Neumann 105 mic, which made short work of her enormous dynamic range.
Wow - her passion, talent and apparent ease with being herself made for a truly uplifting show.

Footy over for 2005

2005-09-26T00:30:00.000+01:00

Well, the 2005 AFL season has come to a close. Worked for Network Ten on the Grand Final, in the Swans' room at the end of the game. It was pretty manic in there, with the all-singing-all-dancing team amid a throng of close fans. My role as audio assistant (microphones and IFB) quickly turned to include camera cable handler, as the cameraman dived into the wild torrent of jubilant folk, in pursuit of the sports presenter for Sports Tonight.

On another note...I heard quite-well-known London author and minister Dave Tomlinson speak last night at UrbanSeed church last night. It was an uplifting gathering. Mark Pierson displayed the excellent Digital Snapshot film as food for thought as we began.

Ah...location!

2005-09-16T00:53:00.000+01:00

As pointed out by Paul Schmelzer and We Make Money Not Art, location is everything.

cameras, etc.

2005-09-06T00:17:00.000+01:00

Well the D30 now has a companion. Just last week, I bought a secondhand Canon G5 from Ebay. Two years ago I was drooling over this camera, and now have one for under half its price when new.
I must say though, having used a digital SLR (albeit an old one) for the last year or so, SLRs really are the most enjoyable machines to use if you enjoy the practice of composing the shot and pressing the shutter and getting an instant response from the shutter inside. The G5 is still a fairly high-end compact, but, like compacts in general, there's still a short delay and feeling of `detachment' from the scene when you press the button all the way home. However, I sort of bought the G5 as more of an everyday knockabout camera, having lent my Panasonic compact digital to my sister who is overseas.
So is the G5 a good machine? It certainly feels the business - well built and well laid out. It's a 5 megapixel CCD camera. The resolution is a bit immaterial, I reckon. As far as I'm concerned I get excellent results on the old 3 megapixel EOS D30 - I nearly always shoot in raw mode and import the images from a Firewire card reader through Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw. Much quicker than mucking about with direct USB 1 camera connections. Camera on-board image processing apparently has greatly improved over the last few years and I figure that by shooting raw with the D30 (circa 2000) I am reducing the amount of work that the camera has to do apart from just exposing its sensor to the world for short fractions of seconds.
There's no escaping the higher resolutions, though - the manufacturers make better, higher resolution chips for less money and can't help but incorporate them into the models that appear on the store shelves. Perhaps it is important for some people to always have the latest and greatest - higher resolution being a key selling point of the modern digicam gear. I now shoot with two secondhand cameras and process on a secondhand G3 Powerbook, and I believe that higher resolution images just make for more unnecessary work for an older computer like mine.
I took the G5 off and snapped a whole lot of shots around the St.Kilda Pier area on the weekend, and the results look ok on the computer screen. The pictures are good - but there is definitely quite a bit of noise in there. Best to keep the ISO setting as low as possible, I think.

New Australian cinema

2005-08-22T06:30:00.000+01:00

Went to see the new Australian film Look Both Ways last Friday. It's a superb film and I think I'll have to go and see it again. Another one of those films that looks at people, relationships, death and life in the context of several people brought together by a tragic accident.

I'm off to Austria and Britain in late November and look forward to catching up with folk on the way...

Gen Pets

2005-08-02T09:50:00.000+01:00

Canadian sculptor Adam Brandejs has created a chilling and provocative installation. Gen Pets is a study of a commodification of life, as seen from a perspective of a genetically engineered world.
Thanks to Paul Schmelzer's excellent Eyeteeth weblog for the link.

And more mundane matters...

A boring but important bit of digital photography gear is a card reader and today my Lexar FireWire CF reader arrived. This means that I can now easily transfer image files from a CF card to my G3 Powerbook, which suffers from a broken PC card slot. In this day and age of USB 2.0, FireWire devices are a bit hard to find for this application. Ebay is indeed a handy thing.
The Lexar card reader came in an envelope with no manual and it did take me a while to work out how to insert the card.

new image

2005-07-20T05:37:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I fired up Photoshop and have now got a new image on my website's front end. I got some source images from freeimages.co.uk.

Ok...now for CMS planning

2005-07-13T09:23:00.000+01:00

Ok. I've been given the gig of audio director for the CMS summer conference in January so it's time to start thinking about how I will proceed. It's a new venue this year (still at Phillip Island).

And also on the pondering simmer...planning on heading over to Europe and Britain for a quick trip in early December.
Something of a `reccy' for a possible upcoming stint of work in the UK...
Lots of uncertainty.

I believe it's a sin to try and make things last forever
everything that exists in time, runs out of time someday.
Got to let go of the things that keep you tethered
Take your place with grace and be on your way.

-Bruce Cockburn, Mighty trucks of midnight (NBABL)

Independent World Television

2005-07-05T11:04:00.000+01:00

Those Canadians are at it again...

IWT News

back from SA

2005-06-26T06:18:00.000+01:00

Just back in Melbourne after an amazing week experiencing the mind-blowingly beautiful landscapes of the northern Flinders Ranges in SA. In a short while I'll put Photoshop to work on the 70 or so raw images files that collected inside the Canon over the week.
Thanks to the intrepid David Amery for his enormous enthusiasm and knowledge of the area (and his superior command of a 4WD vehicle); fellow pilgrims Karen Bass and Simon Bailey; Terry and Phil from the Iga Warta community and Sid Nichols for the extensive tour of his property that is Angepena Station.
And Thank God for fine red wine.

the desert experience

2005-06-17T00:22:00.000+01:00

I'm off on an Eco-Spirituality week in the Leigh Creek, SA, area on Sunday. I'm looking forward to seeing some great semi-desert Flinders Ranges scenery. Away from the computer but with Photoshop CS2 now loaded on the Mac I plan to get some nice raw images with the Canon to work through when I get home.
I'll be back on the 26th June.

The latest incarnation of Photoshop looks to be good. As has long been the case, one can get some great results after hours of experimentation with this software, and only be barely scratching the surface of what the image editor is capable of. An experience which is truly daunting and inspiring.

Is 80s enough?

2005-06-10T01:06:00.000+01:00

Chartbusting 80s wrapped up in grand style last night. A bumper two-hour episode. Plenty of visual `crew gags' to keep the humour at some kind of level. Mr Egan was directing and we rigged up a microphone for him and also did a segment from the control room, courtesy of a DV cam in the control room with a wide-angle lens. There were around 150 people in the studio audience too, so there was plenty to keep boom operator Chris Hampton busy. Extra folk spilled into the control room and since there is no separate audio room I had to retreat into headphones for some of the time in order to properly mix a show amid the control room's party atmosphere.

Digital Media Festival

2005-06-02T14:49:00.000+01:00

I went to the Digital Media Festival today with Bryce Amner. It was ok, with a few tasty gadgets from Sound Devices and some good demos of Avid and Maya. Had a good go with a Wacom graphics tablet too, which was fun. The highlight was a 90 minute seminar on the new features of Photoshop CS2, run by Mark Galer who teaches and writes about Photoshop. He had some excellent comments on the new workflow tweaks to PS and came across as quite impartial. The improvements to the RAW and Bridge facilities looks especially good. I'm now hanging out for my copy of CS2 to arrive...

Austrian stories

2005-05-30T07:20:00.000+01:00

Been a bit thin with the posting lately. My sister Imogen, however, is quite prolific. She's in Austria right now.

I've been attempting to get my G3 Pismo working with Airport, using a Belkin PCMCIA 802.11g card. After reading various comments on internet forums regarding which of these third-party cards will work with the Airport installer, I've come to the conclusion that they simply won't work with Mac OS Tiger, until a new driver is available.. It seems lots of people are waiting for a driver to be written, so I think I'll have to take a number and join the queue...

Eyeteeth blog

2005-05-15T11:19:00.000+01:00

Just started reading Paul Schmelzer's Eyeteeth blog, having arrived there from Adbusters.

almost a new Mac!

2005-05-10T14:12:00.000+01:00

Entered my fourth decade last week. And on an unrelated note I've just installed OS 10.4 on the G3 Pismo. Seems to work ok, although it's no speed demon. I had planned on installing it in parallel with the existing OS 9 but it wasn't having it so a clean install was the go. The copy of Tiger came with a trial version of iWork so I've been playing around with the new version of Keynote.