tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56656142024-03-07T09:51:36.057-08:00IndeedThings that seemed important enough at the timecflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.comBlogger184125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-31166598895733855692008-08-03T00:50:00.001-07:002008-08-03T00:50:32.753-07:00DCI Quarterfinals on Thursday<center><a href="http://www.dci.org/cinema/"><img border=0 src="http://www.dci.org/images/cinema/banners/BLL5_250x282.jpg"></a></center><br /><br />I'm taking off work this Thursday to watch the DCI Quarterfinals in theaters - the first time I've seen them live since I aged out. <br /><br />With scores for the top 4 so close this weekend, this next week should be interesting. If other in the area are going to watch - let me know!cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-6452871313491080702008-06-16T00:18:00.001-07:002008-06-16T00:18:52.980-07:00Mario Kart WiiWe've had a copy of MarioKart Wii for a few weeks, and it's a lot of fun. I passed the 50cc and 100cc races without too much trouble, and now I'm starting to work on the 150's.<br /><br />The real fun is racing online though - we have a few friends that we have raced with so far, but it would be great to find our other friends that own the game. Send an email to let me know!cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-61084068940070856882008-02-25T00:10:00.001-08:002008-02-25T00:10:28.005-08:00Tom DowdyWhen browsing through some of my blog links the other day, I ran across a post that said Tom Dowdy passed away recently. I didn't really know Tom, so I'll point you to better descriptions than I can give:<br /><ul><br /><li><a href="http://javworld.com/JAVBlog/comments.php?id=P155_0_1_0">JAV's Weblog</a></li><br /><li><a href="http://www.fernicola.org/loquitor/index.php?/archives/51-Remembering-Tom-Dowdy.html">Pablo Fernicola's Blog</a></li><br /></ul><br /><br />Tom was one of the first people I ever met at WWDC. <a href="http://travler.net/">Travis</a> and I came out with student scholarships back in 1998 when the program started. There were tons of great sessions and experiences during the week, but the student sessions really stood out. Tom was there talking about Apple, SimpleText, and other things I can't remember anymore. It was pretty easy to spot the really tall guy with long hair during the rest of the conference, and he was always happy to stop and have a conversation. His enthusiasm helped create one of the most inspirational weeks of my life.<br /><br />I don't think I ever spoke to Tom since then (our paths never directly crossed), but I'm saddened to hear the news. If anyone else has other experiences, please post them or link to them from the comments. cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-33539074764019918492007-11-30T22:12:00.001-08:002007-11-30T22:12:58.101-08:00This explains itWhile <a href="http://clickie.livejournal.com/">Daisie</a> and others have teased me in the past about getting "huggy", I now know it's out of my control. I blame my heritage:<br /><br /><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071129/ap_on_fe_st/swedish_hugs;_ylt=AhEuyVhSpgMH67GVirl9uwwEtbAF">Swedes are habitual huggers</a><br /><br />I would normally make fun of studies like this, but in this case I am happy that they have helped me better understand myself.cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-91138549425345425572007-11-29T23:26:00.001-08:002007-11-29T23:26:12.716-08:00DCI Finals Broadcast ChangesI saw this the other day, and I have struggled to find the right words to say:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dci.org/news/view.cfm?news_id=907ff620-2aae-4201-a595-fc05eed6d41e">dci.org: Drum Corps International places ESPN2 airing of World Championships on hiatus</a><br />(originally found from <a href="http://www.drumlineblog.com/">drumlineblog.com</a>, which is a great source for other marching info)<br /><br />I am really disappointed that I will not be able to watch these going forward, and it saddens me to know that there are many others that will not have the opportunity to see drum corps at all as a result of this.<br /><br />Even though I try to make it to as many drum corps shows as possible during the summer, I still look forward to the ESPN2 (and formerly PBS) broadcast every year. I still have the recording from this year sitting on our DVR in case I get the urge to watch it for a 4th time. <br /><br />I have always had a love/hate reaction to the broadcast. Overall, I loved that it existed. Having marched a number of years I always found the "special interest" segments to be really cheesy, but they are necessary for people that are not familiar with the drum corps activity. I really dislike how they cut down the show times to make everything fit in two hours. With the special segments and commercials I do not think they showed an entire performance for any of the groups. Some were trimmed only a few minutes, but for some of the corps they only showed a 30 second clip (out of an 11 minute show).<br /><br />There probably is not very much money in the drum corps business overall, so I understand that it can be hard for DCI to fund everything. I have heard that the costs for hosting a show are rising as well, making it difficult for organizers to make a profit. With all of this, I hope that DCI is not using this to drive people to their paid video content. While it may help finances in the short term, I worry about it changing the 'soul' of DCI.<br /><br />I am sure this kind of discussion (or whining :) happens up every time a free service goes away, but this one hits close to home for me.<br /><br />cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-7087337267962101602007-11-10T00:52:00.001-08:002007-11-10T00:52:54.291-08:00Leopard Dock/Finder tipThere's a cool thing that I discovered you can do in Leopard:<br /><br /><ol><br /><li>start out without any Finder windows open</li><br /><li>drag an item from the desktop onto the dock icon for the Finder (don't let go!)</li><br /><li>press space - and <strong>a new Finder window appears!</strong></li><br /><li>you can then drag the file to the desired location as you normally would</li><br /></ol><br /><br /><font size=-2>(it's possible that this worked on Tiger, but I don't have an easy way to check)</font>cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-76925338572969020632007-11-03T01:10:00.001-07:002007-11-03T01:10:57.494-07:00TwitterThis isn't really news, but I have a twitter account that I've been posting to for a while:<br /><br /><a href="http://twitter.com/cflake"> http://twitter.com/cflake</a><br /><br />If you have no idea what twitter is, well… your best bet is to check the links off that page.<br /><br />I do all of my posting from <a href="http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific/">Twitterific</a>, which just released a new version a couple of days ago (I still need to try it).<br /><br />In general, if I want to post something to the web quickly I will tend to do it on twitter, as long as it can fit (they only allow up to 140 characters). Ideally I would have posted this message over there, but well, you see the problem.<br /><br />That is all.cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-26581626793582448002007-10-08T00:04:00.001-07:002007-10-08T00:04:10.919-07:00Goodbye, cruel code!Wednesday the 26th was an odd day at work. Things were busy as I tried to finish up some loose ends before heading out on vacation. I had been going through a bunch of my old papers, magazines, and other miscellaneous things as I packed up my office for a pending move. There were also meetings to attend and other people to talk to during the day, but that part was normal.<br /><br /><strong>The weird part was knowing that I might not ever write code again.</strong> <br /><br />I have been working on Soundtrack (and related projects) for the past five years. Looking back it feels like both an extremely long and short amount of time. It has been a lot of fun and a great set of challenges for me. We had three major releases and countless other small ones. We were in 'super-secret' mode twice (once for each 1.0), which is rather unusual. I have worked with a lot of great people from our team and others. I learned A LOT - coming from a QA position and picking up SCM, debugging, building, and countless other skills.<br /><br />But for me, this all goes back even further.<br /><br />I went to school for a software engineering degree at Iowa State. I loved the Mac, and I wanted to work on it - somehow. The engineering part of my degree (rather than being in computer science) was how I tried to follow after my dad, and meant that I had to take more electrical engineering courses. I quickly realized that EE was not my forte (with transcripts to prove it :), but I stubbornly stayed with the engineering part of my degree. <br /><br />There was no HCI program at ISU back then, and if I had known those programs existed I would have done things differently. For the courses and positions I was in, I did my best to design things well and present great user interfaces.<br /><br />In Soundtrack and other places at work I have tried to do as much with UI as possible, but at the end of the day I was responsible for the code, and that was what got priority. My heart was still hoping to spend more time dealing with the designs and the UI interactions. <br /><br />Then this summer I heard about the opportunity to work with UI all the time. I jumped at the chance and worked as hard as I could, trying to get the position that I have always wanted. And I'm very happy to say, things worked out well :)<br /><br /><strong>So when I go to work today, I will be beginning my new job as an HI designer.</strong> I will be working with a great bunch of people, and learning as much as I can from them. It should be a fun and challenging time, and am really excited to get started.<br /><br />Now, it is possible that I will still write some code. Coding has worked its way into my heart as well, and it would be difficult to give up entirely. It is very likely that I will not ever write code as a part of my job, it may end up being something for me to do in my free time. Check back in a few months or years and I will let you know :)<br /><br />cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-43489522112136580622007-06-17T02:43:00.001-07:002007-06-17T02:43:48.251-07:00RatatouilleTrailers for <a href="http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/ratatouille/">Ratatouille</a> have been showing up on TV more and more recently, and Lisa spotted something about a "sneak preview" on one. After a bit of digging on the internet, we got ourselves some tickets for a showing on Saturday (the 16th) and headed out to see it.<br /><br />And it was awesome! My memory is probably skewed, but this is certainly one of my favorites. I was a little worried about the 1:50 running time, but it just flew by. It was surprising to have another good theater experience (we saw this in AMC Saratoga, but the new theaters in Valco were nice for our previous movie), even with a sold-out crowd. <br /><br />Ratatouille is an amazing film, and I'm happy that we stumbled on this opportunity to see it already. This frees up my schedule for that other thing on June 29th :)cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-3854639208296454022007-06-08T10:21:00.001-07:002007-06-08T10:21:02.204-07:00Sibelius 5I'm excited. Very excited. <a href="http://www.sibelius.com/products/sibelius/5/index.html">Sibelius 5 is announced</a>, and it has undo!!!<br /><br />:p<br /><br />To be fair, it has always had great undo, except for plugins - and now those have it too. I've barely had a chance to look at the other features, but there is one other that sticks out - this version is a Universal Binary.<br /><br />Just those two make it an essential update for me. More when I have time...cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-47736073170596572562007-06-06T22:05:00.001-07:002007-06-06T22:05:49.389-07:00iPhone excitementA couple of weeks ago I was fine waiting for the iPhone. There hadn't been many interesting articles about it for a while, which lulled me into a state where I forgot that I REALLY REALLY WANT ONE. But as it turns out, my current phone actually wants it more.<br /><br />I started hearing static from my old T610 that would change depending on how I was holding the phone. It wasn't something about the signal, it would change depending on how my individual fingers were positioned. I eventually figured out that by squeezing the phone fairly hard it wouldn't have any static, but that is not a fun way to carry out a conversation.<br /><br />The prospect of buying a replacement phone two months before the iPhone seemed ridiculous, but I needed to do something. After thinking out loud around my coworkers, <a href="http://www.defchild.com">Iroro</a> graciously offered up his old phone for me to use, and things started working again.<br /><br />For a couple of weeks.<br /><br />Now the static has crept into this phone as well, and I must continue to wait for the iPhone. At least I have pretty <a href="http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/">iPhone ads</a> to keep me interested. <br /><br />(sigh) It's gonna be a tough month.cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-84114812788158407962007-05-16T00:02:00.001-07:002007-05-16T00:02:03.342-07:00I need to post moreWell Winter Percussion has been done for a while, Final Cut Studio 2 has been announced and will be shipping soon. You'd think that I'd have all kinds of free time with those things out of my hair, but that doesn't seem to be the case.<br /><br />I've been spending time catching up on things recently, and I have intended to post more - but it hasn't happened yet. So here is a start. More posts to follow soon... hopefully.cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-15040684959866420072007-03-28T01:42:00.000-07:002007-03-28T01:44:48.374-07:00Fremont Winter Percussion 2007We're very close to the end of the winter percussion season and I just realized that I haven't posted anything about it.<br /><br />This year we are doing Shostakovich's 9th Symphony, and the show is titled "Not Another Winter Drum Show". So as you might guess from the title, we do some weird stuff in the show - playing other bits of music, doing visual jokes, wearing lots of costumes, etc.<br /><br />The idea came to me after watching a really great DVD of Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic (read the <a href="http://www.leonardbernstein.com/studio/element2.asp?id=399">script</a> if you're interested). It's part of a whole series called "Young People's Concerts" which contains a lot of amazing stuff. He goes through many of the different musical jokes that are part of the symphony - so we took those and add some of our own.<br /><br />If you're interested in hearing some of the music, here is the set of original recordings that I made with Virtual Drumline 2: <a href="http://cflake.org/fremontpercussion/">Fremont Percussion page</a><br /><br />And here's a video of one of our recent performances: <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1215146615012878961&hl=en">Fremont Winter Percussion 2007 - Granada Video</a> (Google Video)<br /><br />It's been a couple of weeks since that video was taken, and we've added enough things that the show looks very different. We have one more competition this weekend, and then we perform at a school concert April 9th (let me know if you're interested in seeing it).<br /><br />Enjoy!cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-1160633431587365512006-10-11T23:03:00.000-07:002006-10-11T23:10:31.643-07:00Steven BanksWow. The internet rules.<br /><br />Back in the day I taped a comedy routine that was on Showtime, and forced everyone I knew to watch it. It was "Steven Banks Home Entertainment", and of course, it's on youtube:<br /><br /><a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=62EePXzshX8">Steven Banks Home Entertainment - Part 1</a><br /><a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=W47pc0D722A&mode=related&search=">Steven Banks Home Entertainment - Part 2</a><br /><a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=vbVHaHxqE2Q&mode=related&search=">Steven Banks Home Entertainment - Part 3</a><br /><a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=v2yKKlJDdvE&mode=related&search=">Steven Banks Home Entertainment - Part 4</a><br /><a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=TKYX03Hfw40&mode=related&search=">Steven Banks Home Entertainment - Part 5</a><br /><a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=b4eVzIsXwBc&mode=related&search=">Steven Banks Home Entertainment - Part 6</a><br /><a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=aYxobCVQHSo&mode=related&search=">Steven Banks Home Entertainment - Part 7</a><br /><br />It's pretty funny, and he does a bunch of really great songs. He sings, plays guitar, banjo, bass, harmonica, drums... I was amazed back when I first saw it, and it's still really cool.<br /><br />I've been hoping they would release it on DVD, but I guess this will do for now. I still have my VHS copy, if anyone ever wants to see it in it's continuous glory.<br /><br />I also stumbled upon the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Banks">Steven Banks wikipedia entry</a> and was surprised to find out that I'd seen him recently as the mime in the Aristocrats, and that he writes for SpongeBob SquarePants. Crazy cool! Good job internet!cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-1158992570966412132006-09-22T23:22:00.000-07:002006-09-22T23:34:37.476-07:00Nike++My nano arrived today, so my lonely iPod sport kit (which was patiently sitting on my desk for the past couple of days) got some company - and I had to go <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cflake/250229375/">try them out</a>.<br /><br /><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cflake/250229375/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/79/250229375_b810bfea0b_m.jpg" width="240" height="112" alt="First run" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;"><br /><span style="font-size:10pt;">(Any idea what the color of the line means? Some people have a yellow one...)</span><br /></p>Given where I work, I have tons of iPods. I didn't really think I needed a new one - until they announced the sport kit. It was then a matter of waiting for a new revision and finding some free time - and here we are.<br /><br />All of the components are pretty nice - the hardware is really simple, software on the iPod is easy to figure out* (except... more on that later), the integration in iTunes is pretty transparent, and the Nike website is really cool. I mean - I'm in a graph... how awesome is that!<br /><br />I'm enough of a data nerd that I'm somewhat tempted to carry my nano around with me all day to see what it would look like - maybe once or twice, just to try it. And since the battery lasts 24 hours, it could actually work :)<br /><br />The possibility of wearing it during marching band rehearsals is intriguing too - both for myself and using one of the kids as a test subject :) ... it would be educational - really! However, that would mean I would need to trust one of them with my iPod...<br /><br />Digging through the content of the iPod directories, it looks like the content of the run data is stored in XML files, which alleviates my fear of having data locked into the Nike site (as cool as it is). It doesn't record each of the individual steps (which would have been really cool for marching band tempos :), but it has a summary and some information about events in between - though I didn't look too close yet.<br /><br />I wish there was some way to add information to the runs on Nike's site, to give some reference info about what was going on. I tried doing a 45 minute run tonight - which started out with me walking at first to warm up. I ran for about 20 minutes, and then my episode of <a href="http://coverville.com/">Coverville</a> (<a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73329622">on iTunes</a>) ran out, and I needed to pick another. Unfortunately I was still trying to keep moving during this, and I accidentally ended my workout session. I started another and ran the rest of the way home. I was going to grab food, so I just paused the workout until I started walking again.<br /><br />The end result is that I have 2 workouts, both of which have quirks. My 45 minute workout lasted 25, and I have another 30 minute one where I'm only running for 10. Whew - it feels good to get that out... no more hanging my head in shame. I just wish I could write that on Nike's site somewhere :) Including the walking sections in my workout brings my average mile time down, so I'll probably avoid that in the future (gotta beat the system somehow).<br /><br />On to the future...<br />I'll probably "gear up" soon and get a real pair of running shoes. I really don't like having keys in my hand (even less in my pockets) , so the Nike shoe 'wallet' appears to be in my future as well. I really like the new iPod headphone design, but my left earpiece was falling out constantly during the run - I'll have to figure out something for that too.<br /><br />Drop me a line if anyone else wants to do challenges - with my recent lack of exercise I'd imagine I can help you feel good about yourself :)cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-1158830857144819512006-09-18T21:47:00.000-07:002006-09-21T02:27:37.186-07:00Coming up for air...(I tried posting this earlier, but there was a problem somewhere in the chain between Ecto and Blogger)<br /><br />I finally had some free time this weekend, for the first time in quite a while. I apologize if I haven't responded to an email recently - I will start working through my backlog soon.<br /><br />More to come...cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-1155453093524344862006-08-13T00:06:00.000-07:002006-09-05T00:54:33.503-07:00DCI championshipsDCI championship week ended tonight with Cavies taking the top spot. <a href="http://www.dci.org">dci.org</a> was down for a good chunk of the evening, which just made me miss marching even more. I thought championships were going to be on ESPN2 again this year, but I couldn't find anything about it online...<br /><br />I'm used to being able to find pages and pages of information about computer stuff online - it feels strange when I search for drum stuff and don't find anything useful. Does anyone else know what's going on with the broadcast?<br /><br />Update: Greg had added some comments earlier, but I just looked up the times that it will be on for 9/5 - it starts at 5pm for us west coast people. My DVR is set...<br /><br />also see <a href="http://www.dci.org/tv/">DCI's page</a>cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-1154886407710367322006-08-06T10:41:00.000-07:002006-08-06T10:46:47.766-07:00WWDC weekIt's gonna be a busy week. <br /><br />I'm already up in SF for the student Sunday sessions, and I'll be around for the next 3 evenings.<br /><br />Here's my schedule, for anyone that hasn't heard it already :)<br /><br /><strong>Sunday night</strong>: possibly the #macsb dinner - <a href="http://upcoming.org/event/96636">http://upcoming.org/event/94755</a><br /><br /><strong>Monday night</strong>: <a href="http://weblog.scifihifi.com/2006/07/23/party-time-excellent/">Buzz's party</a> - <a href="http://upcoming.org/event/96636">http://upcoming.org/event/93479</a><br /><br /><strong>Tuesday night</strong>: Drinking at the Irish Bank - <a href="http://upcoming.org/event/96636">http://upcoming.org/event/96636</a><br />(everything else had an upcoming.org page, so I created one too)<br /><br />And then I have 12-hour days of band camp for the rest of the week...<br /><br />I hope I survive :)cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-1153295448328076522006-07-19T00:08:00.000-07:002006-07-19T00:50:48.383-07:00VDLMidi 1.1 Released!Yesterday I finally released a new version of VDLMidi - it's now a Universal Binary, uses SparklePlus for updating, and fixes some other bugs and annoyances.<br /><br />The Universal Binary was pretty easy - I checked the box, recompiled, and the app ran! But wait - it app wasn't sending MIDI messages (that's 90% of what it's supposed to do). In older versions I was using a Cocoa framework for sending MIDI messages (<a href="http://pete.yandell.com/software/">Pete Yendell's PYMIDI</a>, btw) - which was a quick way for me to get things done without having to actually figure out much MIDI code. It was only built for PPC though, so I figured the Universal release was a good time for me to figure out the MIDI code myself, and it really wasn't that hard.<br /><br />I added Sparkle support because it seems like the in thing these days :). If you aren't the avid blog nerd that I am, you might not know what all of this is about - <a href="http://andymatuschak.org/pages/sparkle">Sparkle</a> is an open source framework for automatically updating applications. <a href="http://ironcoder.org/blog/2006/06/14/sparkle-plus">Sparkle-Plus</a> has some additions that allow me to track what I should use for system requirements. The stuff is pretty easy to set up and get working, but it adds another bit of complexity to my build process. More for another post I guess…<br /><br />After a day of being available, I saw that my total downloads from MacUpdate were over 1000 - which is a milestone I guess. I'd be more excited, but I'm sure there aren't that many people using it day to day. There are probably some bots out there that do downloads, because I pretty consistently get 2-3 downloads on the dull days (before the release, for instance).<br /><br />Still, I'm excited I have it out and start working on other parts of the application. People seem happy with it so far…<br /><br />And since marching season is approaching, I will be spending more of my time writing music soon - I'll make sure to get good use out of the new version :)cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-1150675753598169272006-06-18T17:05:00.000-07:002006-06-19T02:06:49.843-07:00Recent stuff (domain, VDLMidi, drum corps)Yesterday I went up and caught the tail end of the Hayward drum and bugle corps show and was able to see a few of the corps.<br /><br />I saw SCV's drumline warming up in the fields, and they're back to flat snares with traditional grip - the line looks and sounds pretty good.<br /><br />BD's beginning (music from the Godfather) sounds great and looks good - especially for the first show of the season. They have stripes on parts of their uniforms, and do some talking/chanting stuff - neither of which was very clear to me. The drums sound really clean and the drill looks sharp - both of which helped them end up 4 points ahead of SCV for the night.<br /><br />If anyone happens to read this for VDLMidi stuff, first off - send me an email and let me know. Then you can check out a new pre-release built as a universal binary, with a few other features and fixes thrown in. That can be found...<br /><br />At <a href="http://cflake.org/Files">cflake.org/Files</a> - part of the new domain I registered last week. I've wanted to register a domain for a while, and I finally got around to it. I intend to play around with Ruby on Rails a bit and add some other content eventually, but right now it just has a few video files from my camera. People might be interested in the Apple one and the video of what I think is SCV's 2006 60-second warmup (which is pretty cool!). Follow the link above to check them out...<br /><br /><strong>Update</strong> - I've added SparklePlus support to the VDLMidi 1.1a2 bundle on the server. You can try it out and let me know if you run into problems... but I have done very limited testing with it. When the app finds a new version it will download the update and replace the original - there could be bugs, so please be careful and back up your data!!!cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-1149981427182237152006-06-10T16:13:00.000-07:002006-06-10T16:17:09.613-07:00cflake.org<a href="http://cflake.org">cflake.org</a><br /><br />w00t!cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-1148880309429624762006-05-28T22:19:00.000-07:002006-05-28T22:25:09.496-07:00Help with a scanning problem - surface reflections on a photoI'm back at home for a bit, and I'm trying to help my parents scan an old photo when I'm here. I've never done all that much photo scanning, and I've found a problem that has me stumped. So I turn to you, the internet... (more specifically, my friends on the internet, but strangers and enemies are welcome to reply too)<br /><br />Here's a flickr post with a portion of the scan, to get you started:<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cflake/155311298/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/cflake/155311298/</a><br /><br />...and the real photo, if I can get it to work:<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cflake/155311298/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/75/155311298_2a0f77fa6e_o.png" width="143" height="109" alt="Old photo scan - help!" /></a><br /><br />The photo doesn't have those white spots when you look it it normally, but when I use a 10x loupe and have the light at the correct angle, I see reflections as well. I haven't had much luck removing the "noise" with Photoshop (v7), so I'm looking for other ideas.<br /><br />There's a small corner of my mind that thinks the reflections would go away if I turned the photo 90º and re-scanned, but the rest of me doubts that would work.<br /><br />I could take a digital macro shot of the picture, but then I have to deal with shadows, any warping of the paper, and DPI conversions that I don't want to think about.<br /><br />One forum post on the web said that wrapping the photo in good quality plastic wrap would eliminate some of the glare... but that was just one guy on some random forum.<br /><br />The closest match that I've found on the net is this part of the FAQ in <a href="http://www.scantips.com/">scantips.com</a>:<br /><a href="http://www.scantips.com/faq2.html#moire">http://www.scantips.com/faq2.html#moire</a><br /><br />...which tells me: 1. I'm screwed, and 2. try the digital thing I mentioned before.<br /><br />Has anyone else had to deal with this? Any good ideas?cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-1147501351794654642006-05-12T23:19:00.000-07:002006-05-12T23:22:31.850-07:00LeakedIt has happened - the secret information has gotten out...<br /><br />My parents know that I have a blog.<br /><br />When I mentioned this to someone, their response was:<br /><br />"Well, at least you don't write anything interesting..."<br />(it was said in the nicest way possible)<br /><br />And we both laughed, because it's true on a number of levels...cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-1147420744685112802006-05-12T00:56:00.000-07:002006-05-12T01:00:29.963-07:00Ecto problems on Intel? (not anymore!)I've been having trouble posting with Ecto on my Intel machine.... I've moved all of my account information and started over, so hopefully this will work...<br /><br />(update) And it seems to be fine - hooray!cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5665614.post-1147415369709046712006-05-11T23:27:00.000-07:002006-05-11T23:29:29.720-07:00So much spamSometime back in January I got tired of manually filtering all of my mac.com spam messages and I turned on Mail's auto filtering. The number of messages keeps climbing though, and it looks like I've got 325 for the past month. An unfortunate side effect is that I no longer take the time to report these spams back to mac.com, so I'm not really helping the "greater good". If anyone has a script that automates forwarding a junk email to the spam address, let me know... I suppose I could file a bug/feature request too...<br /><br />Of course the mac.com number that isn't even close to the 679 from my main gmail account in less than a month. That's what I get for listing it on the web, I guess.<br /><br />Strangely enough, the gmail address on my <a href="http://cflake.backpackit.com/pub/244180">VDLMidi</a> page doesn't have any spam...<br /><br />My numbers are small compared to people that own servers, but it's still a hassle. And don't even get me started on all the crap I get in the mail... I need to call the number from an entry that <a href="http://travlersblog.livejournal.com/4869.html">Travis</a> did... of course the link won't work unless you're one of his friends. The rest of you get to suffer with all your extra credit card offers.<br /><br />It pays to know Travis.cflakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01266275910406495302noreply@blogger.com1