Internet woes
The internet has not been all good to
me recently. I often shop online and encourage everyone do so, but
when things go bad, it can (apparently) be a pain to get your money
back.
My first (and second) internet mishap
happened while I was trying to buy an RME Fireface 800 on Ebay. On
two separate occasions, after winning the item and paying through
PayPal, Ebay removed the listing because they suspected it was fraudulent. I got my money back in full in both cases, but
it took a couple weeks for PayPal to go through its formal complaint
process. Weeks during which my money was tied up and I couldn't use it
to buy a Fireface 800. After going through this twice and suffering
through another bad experience (see below), I decided to buy a new
interface from a Canadian store. The transaction went smoothly and I
had the interface within the week.
Internet woes (Part II)
My internet misfortunes continued as a
result of a transaction I initiated in late June when I ordered a
mute from an online retailer. This mute has a microphone pickup
inside it and I intended to use it in my meta-trombone project, so I
was quite keen to get it (and very happy to find a retailer in
North-America). But it wasn’t coming. So I contacted the seller
in July and again in August. By mid-August I wanted my money back.
When I received no reply from the seller, I lodged a complaint with
the Better Business Bureau and informed the seller. No reply from the seller.
Early in September, I reviewed the
seller’s novel approach to customer service on an internet forum
and I informed the seller. The seller promptly went apeshit.
Whereas he could’ve taken this opportunity to renew communications
with me and apologize for missing my previous correspondence, he
called me a liar and publicly insulted me on the forum. Certainly
not the professional behaviour one expects from a seller…
Regardless, the seller agreed to refund me (less restocking fees).
However, the seller also sent an email to the Better Business Bureau
impersonating me in which ‘I’ apologized and withdrew my
complaint. I won’t actually name the seller (due to repeated
threats of legal actions), but I would encourage any reader to
contact me before placing any significant order for musical equipment
from an online retailer located in the north-eastern United States.
Computer woes
One thing you shouldn’t do with your
MacBook Pro is to drop it on the floor. Take my word for it. No
need to try it for yourself. This could’ve been much worse, but I
got off with cosmetics bruises and a dead hard-drive. This is not
too problematic, since I’m rather paranoid about backing-up my
data. Up until now, I’ve been using CrashPlan to backup my main
drive and while I thought it worked quite well, having spent some
time with its restore function has made me yearn for another
approach. I’ve since switched to Carbon Copy Cloner and I heartily
recommend it for all your OS X backup needs. The best thing about it
is that it creates a bootable duplicate of your disk. This means
there is no down time and no need to reinstall software (and search
everywhere for licence information). Also, it doesn’t put your
files in an undecipherable proprietary format that makes it
impossible to locate files without using the software in question (that is so 20th century).
Learning stuff
Having successfully demonstrated
competency in rudimentary university-level mathematics, I’ve started
learning computer programming at l’Université du Québec en Outaouais (in accordance with my previously mentioned epiphany). I’m
currently enrolled in the introductory Java programming course, but
after going through the Stanford introductory course, this one is a
breeze. Feeling inadequately challenged, I also signed-up for a free
online course at Stanford in artificial intelligence. I’m one of
180,000 or so students enrolled. That’s nuts.
I’ve also been teaching myself to
code in Scheme. Not only because it’s the coolest programming
language I’ve ever seen, but mainly because it’s the lingua franca of
livecoding (see Impromptu comments below).
To solidify my hold on both mathematics
and programming, I’ve been using Java, C++ and Scheme to solve
mathematical problems posted on Project Euler. I’ve only solved 19
problems to date and I wish I had more time to spend on these, since it’s great fun, it makes me feel smart and I’m learning stuff. What else
can you ask for?
Meta-trombone
Not much development since I last posted about the meta-trombone, but a lot of conceptual work
happening behind the scenes (mostly thinking about effects). I’m
now very interested in Impromptu and its novel blend of coding,
AudioUnits, OSC and MIDI. I’m not sure exactly how it will be
involved in this project, but I know it will be. One thing that
Impromptu allows is to rapidly create AU by compiling using its AU
wrapper. This would make it possible to create some signal
processing wonders of my own and also to implement some of my Bidule
patches as compiled code, thus increasing efficiency. Normally,
there’s little drawback to using Bidule, but my audio to midi patch
is a bit of a drain on the CPU and could be improved by moving it to
Impromptu. This livecoding platform also has some interesting video applications that I’m more than willing to explore.
Camera (film)
I purchased an old canon film camera
and a couple of lens online and found an old light table locally.
I’m amazed at how cheaply this equipment can be had… an
equivalent digital setup would’ve meant an investment of several
thousands of dollars. For a bit over $200, I have seven lens, an SLR
and a light table. Amazing.
My main reason for getting these
technological vestiges of a previous century is to further explore a
collage technique that I learnt from Collin Zipp when I attended a
workshop at Daïmon. During this workshop, I created a little video
from cut-up and scratched film negatives. While the video is ok,
what struck me was that a lot of the individual frames made stunning
images in themselves and I’d like to explore that in the coming
months, perhaps using this technique to create a short comic.