Recent Posts
Just Googled for "lcd video wall" and got 10 different suppliers in the 10 first results...seriously?-Ath (August 30, 2012, 02:16 PM)
Money no object? Simple. Contact the top 3 manufactures out there and get them to bid on whatever you have envisioned.I know...but I don't know who they are. I was hoping one of you follows these things and would be like "You MUST get this one..."-Renegade (August 30, 2012, 12:57 PM)
Rockbox installed fine, seems to work well and solve both of my complaints. Thank you for this threadwoo! your very welcome.-mouser (August 28, 2012, 10:26 PM)
We are going to wake up one day and find out that half of the content on the internet (facebook accounts, twitter accounts, reviews, kickstarter donations, amazon reviews, etc.) is fake paid content designed to manufacture momentum and positive press. Depressing.I believe it. I don't know if it's the current times, or the fact that I'm in my 30s, or what...but I'm learning a whole lot about a whole bunch of misconceptions in my life. Big stuff. Parents, religion, people, friends, business, this country, the world...none of it is even close to the way it has been sold to me or how I pictured it. I feel like I have studied hard and worked hard for 25 years, and the last 5 years of the internet has essentially destroyed all that stuff. But the soul of all that work still remains, and that is the part I'm keeping. I have no idea what that means, but it sure is weird. I guess that's life.
Hopefully we will eventually find a way to get rid of this harmful practice.-mouser (August 28, 2012, 09:26 PM)
Yay!It's funny, I'm paranoid about that and before I started the whole thing, I triple checked all the cables. But I bet it got dislodged during one of the many reboots and whatever else I was doing. But thanks for not asking if it was plugged in because I would have most likely scoffed at such a condescending remark and said something sarcastic...and that's a hole I don't like digging out of. But that's usually how it goes for me anyway!
Please forgive all of us for not asking if it was plugged in.
That is supposed to be the first tech support question you ask.-40hz (August 28, 2012, 08:44 PM)
I bought a ClipZip for my recent trip to visit family.. It's ok but i can't say I love it.Yeah, I'd say you need to put Rockbox on it. I'm not a fan of the stock firmware either. Rockbox should definitely take care of the folder organization issue, and I think it's also pretty flexible on the sleep options. Also, they still say it's not available on the zip yet, but the only thing not working is insignificant things like solitaire or something. Which reminds me, I've been meaning to put rockbox on my neglected zip. I've been using the plus. I'll post updates.
Only two reasons, but they are real thorns in my side:
First, it takes the "I'm smarter than you" approach to organizing audio files, which you see in newer audio manager. This means it doesnt matter how *I* organize the folders i put on the machine -- it's going to organize them based on found mp3 tags into Artist/Album/etc. This usually works fine but occasionally is a truly painful obstacle to finding stuff.
Second, a function that i find critical to saving battery life is the auto sleep function, where it goes to sleep after an hour or whatever of playing. The ClipZip has such a function but it resets to being off every time it's powered on. Not cool.
Haven't tried Rockbox so I have no idea if it would address any of those issues.-mouser (August 28, 2012, 09:23 PM)
Let us know how it goes. My vote is BIOS boot priority issue also.That's encouraging. Probably the least amount of headache if that's it.
(posting from Windows 8 RTM)-Stoic Joker (August 28, 2012, 05:43 PM)
Lets see: you got an American business + Amercan law being abused to stifle competition and "protect" (largely non-existent) American jobs + election year nationalism playing in the background + California court and jury versus an 'evil' and 'thieving' South Korean company who is arguing for rationality and fairness, and maybe just a touch of sanity? Hmm...tricky...
Did anybody seriously expect any different an outcome?
Oh well. It ain't over yet folks! That was just the opening act.-40hz (August 25, 2012, 06:08 AM)
Go to 3:48 of the video. I see...it's not condom-sah...it's gangnam-style!OPUM-CONDOM-SAH!!-superboyac (August 24, 2012, 09:33 AM)
??? Don't get it...
-Renegade (August 24, 2012, 10:50 AM)
Hilarious music video and terribly catchy k-pop. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
everything.
P.S. he can perform it live:-Edvard (August 23, 2012, 11:31 PM)
My cleanups used to be:I almost don't care that much about any other piece of hardware. Hard drives have been one of my favorite "things" since mid-90's.
-- Buy new computer.
Then I moved on to:
-- Buy new hard drives.
Now, I think I'm going to go with just restoring from backups.(This is the first system that I've run total system backups every day. I have a dedicated 2 TB drive for it.)
-Renegade (August 23, 2012, 06:02 AM)
That actually sounds pretty right on. COunt me in.
Wait...what is the meaning of this?! No more lab?-superboyac (August 22, 2012, 04:23 PM)
Nope. Or at least not a full-bore setup like I used to have. It's all virtual going forward baby, virtual!
Besides, I need the space for musical instrument design and construction. My new career if Microsoft walls off its garden like Apple did. And with all the cloud and managed service moves taking place, I can see an end for smaller SMB support operations like mine where I live. I'm not a coder, so that's not a path that's open to me. And I can't see spending most of my remaining work years doing basic PC repairs...or selling subscriptions to Office 360 or some other big cloud service.
"...the times, they are a changing," as Uncle Bob D once said. Makes sense that they change too. Especially since not enough people and businesses are concerned about putting all their eggs in too few baskets - to say nothing about being unbelievably careless about whom they trust with their information. I'm tired of fighting that battle. About the best I can do now is wish them well. Seriously. I do wish them well.
I'll still keep a small hand in the game I guess. But it will be more along the lines of my getting back to my roots with things like the Raspberry Pi or Arduino boards.
Can't hardly wait!-40hz (August 22, 2012, 06:17 PM)
Don't know if this counts, but after 6+ months of constantly asking everyone I know if they wanted a Linux-based PC or server absolutely free, I gave up hanging onto my small fleet of perfectly usable 'giveaways.' (There were 18 in all, including two Proliant servers.)Wait...what is the meaning of this?! No more lab?
So, after a deep sigh (and an ale or two) I grabbed my trusty power screwdriver and went into full Hellboy vs Golden Army mode...
'The Fleet' is now completely disassembled. And all the pieces have since been given away, sold as scrap, or responsibly recycled. (It's amazing the amount of stuff in the average PC that you do not want to be guilty of just dumping in a landfill even if it were still legal to do so.)
For future projects I'll primarily be using VMs on my two workstations, abetted by some inexpensive low-power single-board computers if separate hardware is needed..
My old lab space now looks barren. It's a liberating feeling.
-40hz (August 22, 2012, 03:17 PM)
Yeah, when I saw that, I was like "WAITAMINNIT!!!..."very nice explanation. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how photons are able to carry the information they do. I know there's probability involved, and I've tried understanding the math behind it...but all the probability functions can't really explain how photons carry their particular information. But that quickly leads to the never ending mass/gravity problems.
- How did they get the shutter to open and close fast enough?? You would have to do it faster than the speed of the photon packet, which is physically impossible. WTH??
- How did they get a picture of a photon packet traveling through a transparent object when you need those very same photons striking the image sensor to take the picture?? By the time any photons scattered off the semi-transparent plastic and particulate in the water, the packet would be already gone.
Then I heard the guy talk in the TED video about how it's actually a composite of a bunch of timed shots put together sequentially, and I understood how they did the actual video. So, it's not "real time" per se.
The answer to the second question is actually twofold and partially self-answering, and how I understand it is, (1) the 'packet' you see is in reality further along than where you see it at that particular frame because it still takes light more time to reach the image sensor than to travel down the length of the bottle, and (2) it's not an image of the actual packet, but the light from the packet that escaped as it went, refracting off the particulate in the water.
This, BTW is how we are able to see anything at all; we don't see the thing itself, just the light reflecting off of it.
Without the particulate and the semi-transparency of the bottle itself, you wouldn't see anything. Notice how at the beginning of the video, there is no light beam coming in before it strikes the back end of the bottle, where photons start scattering.
Cool stuff, anyhow-Edvard (August 21, 2012, 01:14 PM)
A lot would depend on exactly what software you intend to run. Once that's settled, it should be fairly clear what HW specs are required.Agh! As usual, words of wisdom from 40.
For road use you'll want at least two identical rigs if the system is going to be an essential part of your act. If it isn't (i.e. you can do what you need to do on a standalone keyboard if necessary) you can chance going out on the road with only a single rig.
In general. something either very rugged (i.e. a "field-ready" laptop or "industrial PC") or something easy to find, small and straightforward, relatively cheap, and fairly reliable (i.e. a MacMini) is probably a good way to start thinking about it.
I don't like 'real' PCs for most live venues because I tend not to trust CPUs unless they're built into a keyboard or dedicated musical device. I'm also generally not too keen on packing a lot of high-end technology for a gig unless it's part of a show big enough to hire a tech roadie or two. And it's not because I can't handle the technology myself. It's more a matter of me wanting to stay focused on what my real job should be: playing good music and spending some one-on-one time with audience members during breaks.
IMHO too much time spent having to worry about the' tools of the trade' (because they will break at the worst times) distracts from a musician staying focused on the music and the performance. It's ok to do that in the studio if you want to. That's what studio and woodshed time is for. But when it comes to playing for an audience (especially a paying audience) there's no margin for error or stage delays. So simplify, simplify, simplify. Unless you can afford complexity.
But I'm a just bass player who can't even walk and chew gum at the same time - so what do I know.-40hz (August 21, 2012, 01:34 PM)
