CNN Hero Tad Agoglia

Sometimes you hear a story that truly inspires you. CNN Hero Tad Agoglia's story is one such story.

CNN recently named Tad Agoglia a hero for starting the “First Response Team of America”. When disasters destroy communities Tad provides what is needed. See his compelling story by looking at video, extra 1, extra 2 at http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2008/cnn.heroes/archive/tad.agoglia.html

Voting for CNN Hero of the Year is only open a little longer and Tad could really use our votes. The award carries with it a monetary prize that could help fund the “First Response Team of America” for the first few months of next year. So please watch the videos, share his story, and vote for him!

If you are interested in learning more about Tad or receiving updates from him in the future, please visit his website at http://firstresponseteam.org/heroes/

"Ryan Owens is a Nerd (roian)" is Live!

Check it out, if you are so inclined:

"Ryan Owens is a Nerd (roian)" is Live!

Blogging a year later and 18 months ago.

Well, it's been a year since I set up this blog. I have posted 6 entries, including the original test entry, four of which were in the last month. So I'm starting to use this more. I even have an entry about my new favorite game, "Rocketmen" in draft-mode now.

I've been thinking of this as a way to keep track of my frame of mind at a given point, so when I found an old set of "notes to self" from a year and a half ago about my transition from Java to Ruby I found myself wishing I had been blogging back then. I have a dated list of journal entries in a text file chronicling my frame of mind from before the 2004 Ruby Conference until a week or two after it. It's really interesting for me to read it and just see how much my impressions of things have changed since then.

So I started thinking about starting a new blog, just for code or other technology-related stuff. It'd be great 'cause I could jumpstart it with these old journal entries, but I needed a way to backdate my posts so everything made more sense. Problem was I couldn't figure out how to backdate posts on Blogger.com. I did some googling and everyone said you could do it, but I couldn't see how. Then I found an entry in the Blogger.com knowledge base. My screen did not look like that screenshot. Oops, I was using Safari. So I opened it up in Firefox, and voila, backdate controls plain as day. And a lot of other nice controls I didn't have before. I really should switch to Firefox shouldn't I?

So, now that I have that little thing figured out, I'm launching my new technical blog called: Words 4 Nerds

I know, it's cheezy, but I'm not nearly as clever as my buddy Rich and I'm tired of trying to think of something better. That blog will start about 18 months ago and I'll attempt to fill in the blanks since then with my views of Java, Ruby, Actionscript, Hibernate, Tapestry, Ruby on Rails and whatever else I know a little bit about.

I'll post the new address here once it's up, so look for that tonight or tomorrow. Don't fret though, I'll still be blogging on all matter of other things here. (Who am I kidding? I'm the only one who reads this!!!)

My son thinks I'm fat.

So I'm sitting on the plane with my son Evan (he's 4) flying home from Seattle, and we're playing a silly game. He uses his magic finger to ZAP different parts of me, usually making them invisible.

For instance:
Evan: ZAP - You're mouth is invisible!
Daddy: **points at mouth*** MMM -- MMMMMM --- MMMMMM

Same with hair, shirt, ears, nose, etc.

Then, with a truth that only a child can manage, he points at my stomach and says:
ZAP - I'm gonna move this up here (***he points at my chest***) ...
     
So now you're a GIRL!!!

Logic Pro and Reference Manuals

I've been trying to take the time to properly learn Logic Pro 7. I used to use Cakewalk/Sonar quite a bit before I switched exclusively to Mac, and before that I spent a lot of time with my Roland W-30 and VS-1680, so I felt like I knew a lot about sequencing and whatnot. Being a programmer I feel like I have a pretty good mastery of computers in general, and I've also used ProTools a good bit in the studio and at home. So, initially when I got Logic Pro I just jumped in and started playing around.

I was fairly successful, and man, what GREAT sounds you can get right out of the box. Sculpture is just unbelievable. But after a short time it became obvious I was just scratching the surface. The Logic Pro Reference Manual, like most reference manuals, is a bit daunting and there is just to much detail about every little thing. So I picked up Apple Pro Training Series : Logic Pro 7 and Logic Express 7 and Apple Pro Training Series : Advanced Logic Pro 7 to give me a more practical, faster start. The books are great. I'd only been doing about a chapter or 2 a month until I recently decided to make it a point to dedicate more time to Logic. So today, I finally finished the first book, and I'm starting to feel the power! I think I am going to reread this book before moving on just to solidify the things I looked at back when I was less committed.

I did have a problem today though, and that's what I wanted to write about. I had created a default song template with a nice little setup that I'll improve over time, but most of my tracks were labeled "Drums". I could not find anything about this in my training books and I clicked on everything I could find with no luck. I had no luck whatsoever on google since I really didn't know what I was looking for. Then I had a brilliant idea... use the Reference Manual!! I went and dug the thing up, and looked at the table of contents. There it was, plain as day: Chapter 3, p110, Tracks. So I turned to page 110. I scanned the headings in the chapter, and on page 115, I saw: Naming Tracks. Sure enough, that's what I needed! I guess this is what Reference Manuals were made for. So now my reference manual is just an arms-length away, and I can go there whenever I need a bit more information that my quickstart isn't giving me. Yeah, this is exactly what Reference Manuals were made for.

So in case you ever need to know, This is how you change a track name in Logic Pro 7:

Command-double click the track to edit the name
Command-double click below the bottom track create a new track and edit its name.

MySpace is cool.

I know there is all this hubbub about the dangers of MySpace for innocent teenage girls, blah blah blah. I get that and can see why it freaks people out. However, I just signed up this week and it had been pretty neat so far for a different reason:

I'm using MySpace to find and catch up with old friends, not to make new friends.

I had lost track of a very good friend from my first band Recluse Chant from back in the early 90s. We got together about 3 years ago with the kids and all, but we don't live close and we just lost touch. Between lost cellphones, abandoned email accounts (thanks spammers) and corrupted Outlook databases (no more Outlook for me) I didn't have a current email, phone number or address for him. Just a few months ago I looked through every file and phone I have trying to find his number, but with no luck. I couldn't think of anything else to do so I just put it on hold for a while longer (it had already been a few years).

Now I had never used MySpace before because:
a) I am over 30
b) I'm not really looking for any more friends (I can't keep track of the ones I already have!)
c) I'm very happily married so I'm not trying to find love.

So I didn't think MySpace had anything to offer me. The guitar player from our currently innactive bands Urthmen and Urthgirl had made MySpace pages for the bands, but I let him manage all that PR stuff, so it never really paid much attention. My brother-in-law Andy Zipf pretty much runs his music career from MySpace and has been talking about it for the last year, so I hear about it all the time but just didn't think about using it. Then last week, sort of by accident, I realized that I had heard my old Metal band had a MySpace page. It all finally clicked that I could get in touch through MySpace!

So I signed up, found my buddy, and we chatted on the phone and got together for breakfast last week. It was great! I also got contacted by a friend from my old church who I hadn't seen in probably 6 years, which was really neat. Then by a weird coincidence, I saw her mom at my current church. Very weird, but cool!

So what I'm saying here is,

MySpace is cool.

The Elusive AU validator

I've been thinking that it would be fun, just for myself, to actually start using this blog that I setup almost a year ago. Just for random stuff from time to time. That way in a few years I can look back and see exactly how clueless I was at any given point. And so...

I picked up BFD yesterday. I wanted a really nice drum plugin for Logic Pro, and in was between BFD and DKFHS. After some research it basically seemed like a matter of taste, so I picked up BFD. No great reason why except that it had a lot more expansions (even though it initially comes with less) including one done by Steve Albini which I'll have to get eventually just out of principle.

While I was at Guitar Center picking up BFD, I saw the Pro Tools 7 upgrade and realized that Digidesign never sent me the replacement CD I called about like 3 months ago. Shows you how much I actually use my gear. I have an MBOX and am running OS X 10.4 (Tiger). In order to use the MBOX you have to have the CoreAudio driver, and the only way to get one that works on Tiger is to but the upgrade. I had purchased the 6.9.2 upgrade for $49, but had lost my disk (because I'm an unorganized slob). Since I did a clean install for OS X Tiger I no longer have the right drivers to use my MBOX. So ended up buying the Pro Tools 7 upgrade for $75 just for the MBOX drivers. Which is annoying. I justify it because I still have like 16 Pro Tools sessions I want to export to Logic eventually and I'm sure having the latest software will help. No seriously. Stop laughing at me.

To make it worse, my "guy" at Guitar Center who has been hooking me up like mad for almost 10 years just moved on about a month ago. So I had to pay FULL PRICE!!!! So crappy. But whatever, I am on a mission to use Logic more often and I want some cool drums. I went home and after Family Date Night at the McDonalds Playground and bedtime I went to the office. I installed Pro Tools, and tested the MBOX out. I actually had to call a friend to remind me how to create an audio track with a NEW Audio Object. I still think that should be easier, and it probably is, but I laid down a (poorly executed) acoustic guitar scratch track and retired to a bible study with my wife. I told you it's been a while since I've used my gear.

So after morning and a few hours into the afternoon of playing with my son Evan, I went to my office/studio to check out the BFD. There was no shrink wrap on the box, which was kinda weird, but whatever. I've never had any problem at GC in like 8 or 10 years. Installation was pretty easy, especially since I actually read instructions now that I'm over 30. It took maybe 15 minutes to actually copy all the data from the DVDs and I cleaned off my very cluttered desk so I could be unencumbered once BFD was ready. With more time to kill I decide to register online and see if there are any updated or whatever. So I log on, and MY SERIAL NUMBER IS ALREADY IN USE!! Good grief. So I call Guitar Center, and talk to my NEW guy. He says I can wait till Monday and he'll call the company and get me a new number, or I could drive to another (far) Guitar Center today. So we'll see what happens on Monday. Once it was installed I opened up Logic, and tried to test out my new purchase. Things got less simple now.

I won't bore you with the details, but basically there's a button you press in Logic that shows you a list of plugins to choose from. I pressed the button, but BFD wasn't showing up. I restarted Logic a few times. Then ran the BFD standalone program before/during/after starting Logic, and all the permutations I could think of, but BFD never showed up. I started googling it, but there was nothing on it anywhere. I did however find an FAQ entry on BFD's site saying that Logic was a poor choice for BFD since Logic only supports 16 channels for plugins, so BFD Ultra isn't even usable. Well that's freaking great. About 90 minutes later after following google links across the internet I find a blurb on the Logic Pro 7.2 upgrade saying that it expands the plugin channels to 32, and specifically mentions BFD. So now I'm happy again, but I have to buy a $49.00 'crossgrade' from apple. Oh, and I'm told I need to add $1.01 to my cart to get free shipping. Haha, nice one Apple. So I paid $4 in shipping and $2.65 in tax for a total of $55.65. No free shipping for me.

I still haven't fixed my problem though. Cut to another 30 minutes later I can't find jack on google so I try to log into the BFD support. Oh wait you have to be registered WITH A SERIAL NUMBER. ugh. I eventually find a forum on the site which required registration as well. I tried bugmenot with no luck. Then I happen to notice "registration is free" on the forum. So the forum doesn't actually use my serial... well excellent!! If I wasn't a dolt I would have been on this site 2 HOURS AGO!!

SO on the forum I find this post:
"...I'm on g5 tiger logic 7 all is cool installed bfd it runs fine as a stand alone if I click bfd core audio in the apps but when I load logic it doesnt come up in the plugins..."

and this response:
"Run Logic's AU validator / manager again - Logic sometimes needs a little kick in the rear to detect new plugins."

Well what is the AU validator? Remember how I said I read instructions now? Yeah, well only installation instructions. Not the 2 300 page manuals (or whatever) that came with Logic. I did read the Apple Pro Training Series books on Logic to learn the program, but they never mention anything about an AU validator. I immediately look through Logic and don't see anything like this. I do a google :site query on apple.com and still nothing. What is up? Google is useless to me today, it usually solves my woes in like a minute. I do a spotlight search for AU Validator with no luck either.

Finally I find the Logic PDF manuals on my computer and open them all. I enter "validator" in the search field. FINALLY, after like 3 hours since installation, I find my answer. In the "Late-Breaking News.pdf" there is a section on AU Manager which tells me how to start it. Of course, it's right in the Preferences that I looked at an hour ago and didn't notice.

But seriously. That's a bit ridiculous isn't it? Goodness. Well, now I know.

But, BFD is coming up in Logic now! And I don't have any time to use it, cuz I have a date with my wife in 45 minutes and I have to shower, shave and dress. And I just spent 45 minutes writing this. So, NEXT week maybe I'll let you know what I think of BFD.

Fun with Blogging/Atom

Well, nothing is fun unless you take it way, way too far. So... after my brief blog test last night I decided to try just about every feature blogger.com offers tonight. It was a lot of fun, and mostly everything worked like a charm. Last night I set up the blog to publish to my site via ftp, and tonight I played with the various features. Everything should be linked in the homepage sidebar if I did it right: my avatar/mini profile/profile link, band links, new froogle wishlist, amazon wishlist, audioscrobbler page, atom and rss feeds, custom footer and so on. Pretty cool I think. Well, if you're me it's pretty cool.

The first problem I had was with the Atom feed. This turned out to be a classic case of overthinking the problem, which I seem to do a lot with new technologies I know nothing about. My initial conclusion was that the various atom validators/converters don't like subdomain urls. I still don't know why, but it turned out the subdomain I was using was only resolving for my machine but nowhere else. A quick ping from outside my network did indeed fail, just like the Atom validators were telling me, but I wasn't listening very well. So I moved everything to another subdomain which was working: http://blog.ry4n.com/. That's a better link anyway, I was again trying to be too clever.

The second problem I had was trying to convert Atom to RSS. What's with Atom anyway? Being a Semantic Web guy I am an RSS fan, and now this Atom thing popped up and seems to be taking over. Too bad I think, but what do I know. I'm just whining cuz I already know RSS. Blogger.com only generates atom feeds, but I have a few online RSS tools I wanted to link to. So to use RSS tools I needed to use a free online converter. This worked fine, but the url gets a bit ugly which some RDF tools don't enjoy. Eventually I'll write a script and just wget from the translator url to a file whenever I publish a blog entry. Eventually.

The various lists and feeds are on in the homepage sidebar, so there's really no need for me to link them here.

People seem to be into Feed Validators, so I picked one of those and put their very official looking icons next to my feed links. I linked up my current fav RSS tools and linked all the permutations I felt like bothering with at the time. And now here we are.

These are the various online tools I'm using here so far:
Atom 0.3 to RSS 1.0: http://cavedoni.com/2004/02/rss1
FEED Validator for Atom and RSS: http://feedvalidator.org/
Ocelot (OWL visualization): http://ocelot.semwebcentral.org/
ObjectViewer (OWL visualization): http://objectviewer.semwebcentral.org/
RSS Reader: http://www.skyzyx.com/rss/

Well, we all have stories.