"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.