Hello again, ok I have slacked off since before the holidays, so I better get back on track. In the spirit of MacWorld starting tomorrow, I’ll talk about some geekery. Yesterday I picked up a copy of Reason 4.0! I’ve been looking forward to this move. Some of my favorite new features include:
New Transport! The new sequencer is phenomenal! I will need some time to get completely used to it, but it is a major overhaul. Editing and drawing notes is easier, making multiple note lanes for one track is a great addition, and Flash-like grouping and editing is nice.
Thor, the new polysynth, has so many features that I may never fully understand its capabilities, but if you start with a preset and play around with changing modules, etc, you can have a lot of fun creating a rich sounding synth that far surpasses Subtractor, despite my professed love for it.
Regroove seems very cool, but again, I haven’t grasped it fully just yet. I’m hoping with this version I will really dive into new styles of music and knowledge. It’ll take some time, but I have all the time in the world
I will probably bring this topic up again in the future, but that’s a quick take on how much I’m diggin. I’m now running Leopard on my machine, and it runs great. Only issue I had was with my Ozone not showing up. Apparently M-Audio is working on new drivers, but I did find a third-party program that fixed my problem. I’ll post here when I get a chance. Check out Reason 4 now!
A quick excerpt from a NY Times article about Nintendo being more open with other game software developers notes that playability may just have a better chance of winning in the end over the higher resolution counterparts. At some point this obsession with HD and detailed gaming experiences comes at huge costs, and in the end will hurt their sales more, and disappoint their consumers as well. Nintendo just gets it, and I think it proves that usability and simplicity can outweigh all those extras. (Hmmm, kinda like Apple vs. M$? Just puttin’ it out there…)
At Namco Bandai, Mr. Unozawa said PlayStation 3 was so complex, with its faster speeds and more advanced graphics, that it might take 100 programmers a year to create a single game, at a cost of about $10 million. Creating a game for Wii costs only a third as much and requires only a third as many writers, he said.
But Mr. Unozawa also said Nintendo’s promotional visit in late 2005 helped make Namco Bandai more willing to write games for Wii. When he saw the Wii prototype, and then later saw a PlayStation 3 prototype, he and his colleagues decided the Wii might have more potential than the expensive and difficult-to-operate Sony machine.
“The Wii just looked more fun,†Mr. Unozawa said. “It changed our thinking.â€
From Engadget:
President Bush’s plans for a return to the moon in 2020, with a trip to Mars to follow, were all well and good, but now NASA has finally fleshed out the details of the moon visits, and it seems a permanent international moon base is in the cards. NASA hopes to return to the moon starting in 2020 with short stays to get things prepared, and to have the base ready for extended stays by 2024. The lunar outpost will most likely be placed on the lunar south pole, which is lit by the sun three-quarters of the time, and has possible resources to mine nearby. Two vehicles will be employed, the Orion exploration vehicle, and an all-purpose “pickup truck” of a landing vehicle which attaches to the Orion and can bring cargo and/or crew to the lunar surface in a manned or unmanned manner. It’ll cost a whoppin’ $104 billion to get back to the moon for the first trip, and we’re sure carting supplies up there won’t be cheap, but in the long run NASA hopes to be able to harvest hydrogen, oxygen and other nifty moon resources for the operation of the outpost, tasks which could eventually become simple enough to turn over to a commercial supplier. In an effort to keep costs down and build good will, NASA is welcoming other countries to join the effort, though NASA will be doing the actual design work. “This is not your father’s Apollo,” says John Logsdon of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. “This is not a flag-and-footprints. This is the idea of starting an outward movement that includes long stays on the moon.”
A few choice comments:
Xavier Gill
“…$104 billion…” Wow it’s a good thing there aren’t 37 million people living below the poverty line in the USA…oh wait
G. Snyder
“Comments about poverty lines are idiotic, as these are long term investments…investments which will secure the continuation of the human race (sounds like being a doom sayer, but someday the sun will blow up and take earth with it. It is not up for debate - that is what stars do.)”
OMAC
Yeah people are going to whine and moan about poverty this and environment that. What they fail to realize is that there will always be poverty, disease and environmental concerns. There will always be the haves and the have-nots. I think it’s a safe bet to say that every democratic country on the face of this planet has its homeless, poverty, racial strife, AIDS issues and envirionmental concerns. These things are not going anywhere. It is our responsibility, as citizens, not the governments, to end, or at least mitigate these things.
…
All very valid points. That said, let’s go! I think this will be the first step to A. store information about our history on the moon, B. understand and possibly start to implement terraforming, C. build a telescope on the moon for better research, and D. get more answers to aid our planet back to health
Will it bring all of this? Maybe, maybe not. who knows. It’s a great concept though.
“Imagine a world where war is outdated, there is no shortage of resources, and every human being enjoys a high standard of living.” -JACQUE FRESCO
A genious in the design of future cities, societies, the natural world, transportation, etc. Below is one clip about humans taking responsibility instead of believing a deity or government should have the power to control what happens on earth. Very forward-thinking, perfectly states my own feelings, of course he’s much more thorough than I could ever be. Also check out: Future By Design: The Movie
So the lovely Macbook I bought a month ago was beautiful! I say ‘WAS.’ After two short weeks of Reason Music-creating bliss, the damn thing decided it wanted to stay on when it felt like it, and that wasn’t very often. Alas, 3 visits to the Genius Bar and a load of forum research on the issue, new OS X installs, reseatings of RAM, resettings of PRAM & PMU, plus many other tests later…and they replaced it with a brand-spanking new Macbook. Cross your fingers the issues have subsided. So far so good, but I won’t hold my breath until two weeks in. Kudos for the help from the ‘Geniuses’ despite the cover-ups of the problem. I want to love it, I do, and I will continue the journey into the Intel Mac world. During all this however, I was able to get out a new song, better check it out on Myspace (hint: there’s a link on the right column called “Plastic Minds (my music)”).
So, anyone notice the Del.icio.us tags or my Flickr photo badge? Sweet huh? Want one? TOO BAD! Ok ok, just kidding. Here’s whatcha do. Go to Del.icio.us and create an account. Then you can start adding bookmarks, and add tags to them. That will create a Tag Cloud, which you can create a custom cloud like mine by going to their help section on tags at: Del.icio.us Blog Integrations
For Flickr, I’m not sure if you need an account, but you can get a badge tagged with anything you’d like (i.e. typography for mine, but could be harmonica, music, love, etc.) at Flickr: Make a Badge Fun stuff! You can customize it like I did as well, if you know a lil css/html.
Oh, speaking of, I used the plain black template for my site, and tweaked it to hide things, and add a header. I also changed some colors and added some borders. I usually copy the whole template and paste it into a new HTML doc in Dreamweaver 8 (MX 2004 should have decent CSS support, anything before that ain’t that great), and just manipulate some of the code to my liking. I don’t touch any of the automatic stuff in the HTML, just the look and feel of the site. The templates Blogger has to me seem to be very clean and great to work with. Ok, nuff geek speak. Have a good night!
Also check out: 