What.  Is.  The.  Point.

Of selling dance music (already a niche f*$%ing market) ON THE INTERNET if you’re going to RESTRICT SALES BY GEOGRAPHY?!?!?!?!  And moreover, if there’s a song that I’m not “geographically eligible” to purchase, WHY WOULD YOU PRESENT IT TO ME FOR AUDITIONING, AND PUT A BUTTON MARKED “BUY” NEXT TO IT?!?!

Quoth TJIC: “Rope.”

Around 8, I was thinking of going to elements at the Phoenix Landing to see Crook and Lenore (the residents) spin.  I started messing with a drum & bass setlist to sort of get myself in the mood for that.  Shortly before 9, I started trying to make a mix out of the setlist, and finished up that attempt around 10 (when elements gets rolling).

I stuck around here and listened to the mix, appalled at how bad the first few transitions were, but noticing some promising bits and thinking of ways to make it better.  By around midnight I had a new setlist figured out, and thought again about going out to catch the second half of elements.  Then I thought about going to bed, or having something to eat.

Instead, I rubbed my eyes a bit, and went back to the turntables to attempt a second mix.

And…I’m not ashamed.  Link to 80MB mp3 after the break.

(more…)

My once and future digital production partner/sensei writes:

so explain to me the ideology governing the move to use vinyl to control digital audio files - on one hand, i feel minorly poserish ’spinning’ without a set of turntables in front of me, but on the other hand, i would feel minorly poserish getting out a bunch of hardware just for the sake of looking hard in the booth.  are you rocking a hybrid setup, e.g. half vinyl half digital?  do you just like the feel of vinyl?  or what’s the deal?

The more I think about it, my answers become more accurate, more numerous, and less cohesive.  Join me, will you, for a bit of light philosophizing.

The Technics 1200 interface has some awesome objective qualities:

• It’s big as hell.
• None of the controls look like any of the other controls.
• The controls that light up each light up with a different color.
• When spinning, the edges of the platter convey pitch information in an intuitive visual format.
• It has a lot of angular momentum in it, so clumsy human-scale forces can be applied in ways that result in very non-clumsy changes to its behavior.

Having said that, it’s possible to imagine a software control interface with equally well-labeled controls, more features, and zero danger of derailing the show by accidentally bumping the large, very lightweight, fragile object splayed over half of the work surface.  [[[The best available software]]] is far from ideal, but it’s highly configurable, comes with a great integrated mixer with effects and sampler, and doesn’t have any tonearms.  Instead of an external mixer, you could use a midi controller built to look like a mixer (which exist), or you could use a real mixer that also outputs midi control signals (which also exist).

On top of that, [[[Beatport]]] exists, so it’s now entirely feasible to audition lots of potential source material, find the <1% that you actually want to play, then acquire it a) instantly, b) affordably, c) with rights to play it out, and d) in an archival-quality lossless format.

It’s worth contrasting that state of affairs with the world of even 3-4 years ago (to say nothing of pre-2000, to say nothing of pre-internet boom), where the whole dance music economy was based on barriers to entry: a) limited availability, b) high prices, c) singles were generally vinyl only, CD releases were generally mixes (and thus unsuitable for DJ use).

So maybe this isn’t so complicated after all:

1. Past states of affairs, few of which had anything to do with UI design, led me to invest in a set of mixing interfaces.  That’s not just a financial investment of course, but an investment of time, experience, hope, activation potential, etc.
2. The vinyl interface has clear theoretical weaknesses relative to interfaces using software with external midi control, but it also has strengths that go well beyond familiarity.
3. Although my mix output doesn’t heavily feature “vinyl tricks” (scratching, tears, backspins, live braking), I do make light use of them, and I find the idea of backspinning on an oversized midi knob unsatisfying.  To be clear, that’s my problem…not the knob’s problem.  The knobs work; they sound great.
4. More than the feel, per se, I’m more tuned to the sounds of mixing vinyl than I am with the discrete digital alternatives.  For example, wiping a beat back and forth under the needle in preparation to release it into another, nudging a track forward and hearing the whole thing pitch-up momentarily, scraping my fingers lightly against the side of the platter to gently pull a track closer to one following just “behind” it in beat space, etc.
5. Controlling digital sources from vinyl timecode takes the best things about vinyl (the interface, the familiarity, and indeed some cool factor) and divorces them from the ungodly bullshit involved with actually acquiring and maintaining a collection of record singles.

At the end of the day, it’s not really about having the best possible tools.  It’s not even about having the best possible tools for what you personally want to do.  It’s about having whatever tools inspire you to actually do shit instead of just talking about doing shit.  This [[[vinyl timecode shizzle]]] rigged up to [[[Ableton]]] on the recording end got me spending more time at the decks over the past few days than I’d spent in the previous couple of years.

Native Instruments is currently running a special on their “Komplete” bundle of products.  If you own a qualifying DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) product, they’re taking $300 off the price of the bundle (which works out to about 30% off).

Upon hearing this “news,” my wife suggested I “use what [I] have.”  Good advice.

So out of the basement came:
1 - turntable stand
2- turntables
1- M-Audio Connectiv audio i/o

Problem the capitalists want you to have: After those pieces were all wired together, along with a 4-channel Pioneer mixer borrowed from a CD mixing rig, the USB cable from the audio i/o wouldn’t reach my home computer.  So I installed the Connectiv/Torq software on my work computer, transferred some (legally licensed!) music to the work machine, and turned everything on.

Over the next hour or so, I practiced mixing (first some dnb, then some new disco / ed banger stuff).  It’d be interesting to try to use one computer to both drive the virtual vinyl process AND record the results (coming from the outboard analog mixer) through a separate interface.  I’m sure the Mac Pro has the processor horsepower to handle that, but I’d be a little worried about doing all of that i/o against the same hard disk.

Other options for recording are (of course):
1. record using a second computer
2. record onto a non-computer (like a MicroTrack II…or a tape cassette)

RIM is about to get pwn3d. Whether they merely get partially pwn3d or wholly pwn3d is somewhat up to them. Apple’s smartphone market share is 28% and rising, but their share of mobile browser hits is more like 75%. Predictions:

• in the next 18 months, Apple’s device share numbers will climb to 45%, and no other platform will seriously compete with either iPhone or Blackberry
• that trend will accelerate noticeably when the 3G iPhone is released
• if RIM (or someone) develops a BB browser that seriously competes with mobile safari within that time frame, they have a shot to strong-stalemate and retain like 40% of the market…
• …else they’re like totally bwned. If their ego can stomach it, they’ll become a niche company specializing in camera-less devices with strong crypto support for the government market or something.

If I were a major RIM shareholder, I might actually be holed up in my bathroom puking my guts out right now.

I was away over the past couple days, failing to get a pre-release (alpha-ish) version of a custom app installed in a customer’s mainframe test environment. The following note represents the most valuable results of around 16 hours of direct professional effort, during which I developed a sore jaw from chewing gum, and our business partner spent about ten grand:

\redacted\-

The following is an overview of the SSL problem, which should provide IBM with enough insight to ‘hit the ground running’ to bring it to resolution.

- - - - - -

We’re trying to initiate a mutually-authenticated SSL session from a z/OS client program to a remote Linux server.

The z/OS system has the client-side certificate / private key ADD’d to the RACF certificate store, as well as the CERTAUTH certificate that was implicitly ADD’ed with auto-generated label ‘LABEL\redecated\’.

In our gsk trace, IRRSDL00 throws an SAF 8, RC 8, REASON 84 error. According to the RACF callable services reference, that indicates:

“The key ring profile for RACF_user_ID/Ring_name or z/OS PKCS #11 token is not found, or the virtual key ring user ID does not exist.”

We’re not trying to use a virtual key ring. We’re trying to explicitly target the keyring and label with the userid/ring-name string and label names in our gsk_* calls to setup and subsequently apply the gsk_environment to the socket we open.

There are two key rings, one for each user we’ve tested with, each of which is CONNECT’ed to BOTH:
1. the client certificate (PERSONAL use)
2. the CERTAUTH root relevant to the client cert

So in each of our tests, the job owner has owned the target key ring. In half of our tests, the job owner does not own the client certificate itself, but in those cases the job owner has UPDATE authority to the LISTRING resource in the FACILITY class.

When we RACLIST all of the profiles that match DIGTRING, we clearly see profiles that appear to map onto the key rings for each user.

For most of the tests, we did NOT have a generic IRR.DIGTCERT.* resource profile, but did have specific ADD, ADDRING, and LISTRING resources defined. When we debugged to the point of discovering IRRSDL00, we found doc indicating that we should define a generic resource, and we did so. We then permitted one of our test users READ authority on the DIGTRING.* generic resource profile, and did a setropts refresh.

There was no change in our program output or the gskssl trace.

Ta daaaaaaa! *takes bow*

I happened to be in Guitar Center this week, looking for guitar stands and keyboard stands and things like that. But to get to the keyboard stands (you see) I had to walk through the Pro Audio section, where they were having a rare sale on KRK Rokit 5 powered studio monitors.

So I called the missus, informed her of my fortunate predicament per our “no purchases over $x without prior notification” arrangement, and fed the monkey.

Last night I got both speakers hooked up and tried them out. The left speaker was loud and clear, but the right speaker (while somewhat clear) was not loud at all. I tried switching the cables on the audio i/o side, but the right speaker was still much quieter, so it definitely wasn’t a problem with the audio interface.

What I didn’t do was try to switch the cables on the speaker side, which would have been a decent way to diagnose a bad cable.

So I packed up the right speaker last night, and brought it over to GC this morning. Homepiece hooked it up to a system there, and the speaker sounded fine to him, and I had to admit it sounded a bit louder than it had the night before. We agreed that the cable was the most likely culprit, so I resolved to test that when I got home tonight.

I just tested the speaker using the other cable. It’s working great.

But here’s the kicker: I just tested the left speaker (known good) with the suspected-bad cable, and…it also works great.

---

Update: Hours later, the muted quality has returned to the right speaker. Changing channels or cables has no effect. My guess is that it has something to do with temperature…the speaker was far colder than room temperature when we tried it in the shop this morning (okay performance), and had been sitting in the back of my car for hours by the time I tried it at home earlier tonight (performance equal to the other speaker). I’ll exchange it tomorrow, hopefully without complaint.

---

Update 2: Shared puzzled bemusement at the temperature theory with three guys at the GC pro audio department this afternoon, swapped out the speaker, let it warm up in the house for a couple hours while having beer and a couple games of darts at the People’s Republik, sounds great. Maybe it’s just been a really long time since I listened to music outside of headphones, but these are putting me through a remedial clinic with respect to “stereo imaging.” Not too much bass, highs aren’t splashing all over each other…just crisp, clean sound with remarkable sharpness. Anyway, good times. Dinner time.

Pair of morning meetings at company X. The first was ostensibly to discuss a piece of our technology, ostensibly to gauge their interest in derivative work or some kind of related joint venture. On average, that would rank as “slightly interesting,” but the meta-goal was to let them sniff us. They do pretty advanced systems programming and cutting edge policy-based crypto stuff, all day every day, and we claim to have the chops to help them with, well, basically anything. So it’s fair enough that their heavy hitters might want to rake us over the coals a little with some “pop quiz hot shot!” and make us concede that their marquee tech is more classy than our sideshow act. So it was a subtle blend of letting them whip it out and swing it around, while making clear that we knew our shit and could bring armies of homunculi in line with our eminently-competent will.

Second meeting was refreshingly straightforward. They have some stuff, they want to make sure we can support it. I suggest we take a look, set time and expense targets for fixing something they’ve wanted fixed for a while, and let their opinion be influenced by both the targets and our performance relative to them. Lots of vigorous agreement. If only all business were that easy.

In the car on the way back, other engineering lead tells us about weapons systems projects he worked on for the Navy. Including, but not limited to, anti-missile systems that use x-band radar to track bullets. See, the 30mm gattling gun pops off a few rounds, tracks them for error-correction purposes, then essentially throws a solid wall of lead in the path of a piece of debris. See, this is the backup system for when they don’t intercept the incoming supersonic missing until its within 5 miles of the ship. Oh yeah, and the system also prioritizes the debris targets based on size and direction. It’s hard for an engineer not to feel a little twinge of red-blooded nationalism after hearing some shit like that. Hey that reminds me…need to pay some taxes. Nationalism mitigated!

Afternoon meeting with company Q. This time they brought their attorney, so it was on like Gina Gershon eating bon-bon’s in pink chiffon. Only, you know, with more ideas about how to mate their IP with our IP and build something cool…and get a dumptruck full of cash money the government stole from the middle class. Hah Haaaaahhhh! pwn3d!

The rest of the day was cool too. Also had a great dinner with the wife and TJIC, watched Wargames (in keeping with the themes of the day, I guess), and more good conversation about non-technical, relationship type shit. And robots.

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