fuzzyraygun

I got the Toontrack EzDrummer for my Logic Pro setup to help me do drums. I am pretty happy with it overall. It is a basic setup and is not to complex. You can edit between a couple of snares, kicks hi-hats etc. and you can control the overall mics in the mix. The extra midi drum snippets are a good bonus but overall they are just a little iceing.

The one drawback seems to be the crash cymbols. They were having a tough time breaking through the sound of the kit while it was playing. I ended up just using a separate instrument channel in Logic with some crash symbols.

Overall I think it has greatly improved the sound and complexity of the music I am doing. Here is a link to one of the tracks i did with it.

Tinyblackdots.com

So the new iTunes is pretty sweet. They moved some icons around and changed some layout problems but overall it is a great upgrade.

After seeing some of the new features and stuff that came out of yesterdays Apple thingy (Roadshow, Demo, Meeting, Conference, Media Event, Sitzung), I decided to download the new iTunes 7 player.

OOOOH shiney new blue music icon.

I was pretty impressed with the new user functionality. A nicer layout for the left bar. A cool new jukebox album art layout. Some bug fixes that were pleasing. Like having the Music Library stays in the same place even when you go to other sections of the app and come back to the Library. Nice. Been waiting for that one for a while.

I wanted to try the new “Movies” download section and it was nice and painless. I bought “Hidalgo” a movie from a couple of years ago staring Vigo Mortenson. The download took about an hour and a half on my decent DSL connection. The movie played nice and the experience was a nice extension of the Music player experience.

Time will tell if there are hiden little bugs to drive me crazy.

I had to go and buy some stuff from Dell today, which is not that often but we do buy laptops and servers and stuff from them. I do make web and UI stuff for a living so maybe I am a little overly critical in this respect.

It took me about 10 minutes to figure out that they would not let me purchase backup tapes (small business products) in the same shopping cart as a laptop power cable (Home and Home office).

Is this the dumbest thing you have ever heard of? I mean I work in this industry and I could not figure out what the fuck they were doing… Or better yet, Why?

Do you go to the grocery store and sit in line and then when you go to check out they say “I’m sorry this is the fruits and vegetables line only, if you have cheese or meat you have to go and buy those items in that line over there.”

Did they suddenly hire cold war east germans to setup their shopping cart? This is the one step that you want to make as painless as possible for people to do. This is the part where they give YOU their MONEY!!!!!!

What is with the random association of products? Why is a laptop power cable now a “Home and Home Office” item? It wasn’t even like some fucked up Amazon thing about dinging me for shipping either because they didn’t charge me shipping for either. They simple would not let me purchase this item with that item. Weird… They could have saved some shipping costs if they had let me. Oh well.

“It is easier to kill the lightness inside of you than to fight the darkness all around you.”

We watched Nightwatch over the weekend. The 2004 Russian Sci-Fi film by Nochnoy Dozor is a nice departure from the usual shite that the genre spits out year after year.