Convergence

OK, I have been thinking about this for a couple of months.

We have USB Flash Drives, MP3 players, digital cameras. Each with its own ram card.

What if...

What if our MP3 player, digital camera, cell phone, all took USB as a memory device.

Then, I could grab my flash drive, pop it into my cell phone, copy pictures off the phone, backup my phone numbers, pop the drive into my computer and copy everything there.

If I am busy banging off lots of pictures, I can use my flash drive as more memory.

I write my own music and I have them all stored on my MP3 player so I can listen to them when I want. But, right now, I also have to store them on my USB Flash drive if I want to be able to copy them to someone.

Getting pics off my cell is a challenge. Expecially once the proprietary software on my laptop stops being able to see that the cell is plugged in! :(

Oh I know. Smaller memory. Faster response. etc, etc. Lots of reasons to have speciic slots for specific memory. But why not allow the USB Flash drive to connect AS WELL.

I'm done. :D

Been a while

Yes, it has been a while.

Let's see. New music will be online soon. I am thnking to build a little interface to allow you to select which songs you like and their order, and I will ship you a CD! Pick your favorites and create a custom disc.

I just read an interesting article at PCMag about putting applications on your USB Flash Drive. Then, pop it into a computer and have access to, not just your files, but also your applications! Cool idea!

I also recently discovered Google Desktop and Google Earth. I recommend them both. Add a couple of plugins to Google Desktop and you have quick access to email, pictures, utilities and more. Google Earth lets you view the Earth from overhead via satellite photos. High res in some areas. Find your home! Some data is textured, so you can tilt the view and look at mountains lie you were flying through them! There was a really cool flythough of the Grand Canyon. This is not mapping software, but really cool and fun, if you are like me and love exploring.

I am working with some people on a really huge new web project. Can't talk about it, but I am full of excitement. So, this is a teaser! Perhaps I will be able to put more up here later. Big, BIG , BIG!!!

I'm outta here.

Looking for a recorder

So, I spent a couple of days talking to sales dudes about a stand-alone recorder. I have been asked by 2 different people to record their band, master and burn to CD.

Turns out, either there is no support for connecting to a computer. Or, the device contains a whole raft of effects, etc, that I don't really need (becuase I use Sony Acid on the computer). The latter solution was almost $2000. Ouch! But no laptop needed for recording.

I did find a couple of solutions.
1) This is a very, very simple box. It takes 4 to 8 inputs (XLR and/or 1/4) and send the data to the computer through a firewire port. Cost in the $500-$800 range. This would be perfect, except I have no firewire port on my laptop. This solution uses the idea that the hard drive on the laptop is where the sound is stored. It is less expensive becuase it does not have a hard drive nor any media to store the sounds.
2) Alesis makes a mixer with a USB port. This is what I ended up buying. The USB lets the mixer act as an external sound card for the laptop, so I get bidirectional sound through the port. The only real downside is that the USB does not have a large enough data stream to support more than 2 channels of data (each direction)! So, an 8-track mixer only outputs the mixed down stereo result to the computer. Cost, $200-$300. Apparently, Alesis is coming out with a firewire solution similar to (1) above.

I picked up the Alesis. I have run into an issue and I will see how long their support takes to respond. Will keep you informed!

Jenny

The pain of demos

OK, so I figured out how to get the 5.1 out of Sony Acid Pro in multiple WAV files, then Besweet to convert that into one muli-channel WAV, then Fraunhaufer's encoder to turn it into multi-channel MP3... So I was all ready to go with a demo to some friends.

Well, don't you know, demos never work as intended unless you do all your testing on the exact equipment you will be demoing with. I didn't.

See, I did all my testing on my desktop machine and I did the demo on my laptop. Yuck!

Problem that occured is that the multi-channel WAV file that Besweet created, sounded like Chipmunks! Now to see if I can figure out why in worked on one machine, but messed up on the other machine.

MP3 surround

So, I have been playing with MP3 Surround.

I found that Sony Acid will output 6 mono WAV files. Then, use BeSweet to convert those 6 files into one Extended Wave format file. Finally, drop that one WAV file into the Fraunhoufer Encoder.

Now, play back the resulting MP3... On any other player, the sound is downmixed to stereo, but on the Fraunhaufer player, you get 5.1 audio out!

Hmm... Now to try 5.1 headphones....

Jenny

Calling ASP.NET methods from JavaScript

This is really cool! OK, so you have a VB (or C#) method behind a web page. I had a Button_Click event. Clear, simple, easy.

The problem was, I needed to call that function BOTH, when the user clicked the button AND from JavaScript. Yuck.

I found I needed just TWO lines of code!

1) In the JavaScript, when you want to force the button to be pressed, call
__doPostBack('Control','')
2) In the VB.NET code, put this line immediately before the CLICK and COMMAND functions. I put this in front of both but did not test which one gets called...

<system.security.permissions.permissionsetattribute(system.security.permissions.securityaction.demand)> _

That was all it took. Like I said: "Cool"

Jenny

Weather, Riding and Music

The weather here has been unseasonably warm. I have been out on my motorcycle for about a month now. :) Yea! Just be careful of the corners. Around town is far dirtier than the open highways.

I recently discovered that there is a new MP3 file format. This extends the MP3 spec so that they handle multiple channels, not just stereo. So, my next task is to write a song that uses 5.1 sound and put it into an MP3 using this new structure. Apparently, the format is such that if you play back a 5.1 encoded file on a player that does not support it (like all the existing players!), the file is automatcially down-mixed to stereo. Cool! Check out http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/amm/techinf/layer3/ for information.