Scratch Paper

The girls went to a birthday party and stayed overnight afterwards. Today they were tired when we went to Collet d’Allevard.

Lots of folks were sharing the slopes with us, many of them no doubt on vacation from other parts of France. There was plenty of snow, with some extra having fallen yesterday.

Probably like downtown Washington, D.C.

The Western Digital My Book 500 GB drive I have been using to back up this computer must have gone out of warranty recently, because it seems to have died this afternoon.

Hmm…

Since the drive does not seem to want to turn on, how do I check to see whether I want any of the data back?

Inclement weather today. This morning I went for a run over to St. Vincent and was completely drenched.

The picture was taken more than an hour after the rain stopped, draining the back yard. This is mudslide weather.

We looked at nearby slopes through the webcams. All snow seems to be washing away.

Maybe this problem goes away if you buy the latest version of Apple’s software… but…

I’ve been trying to remix some instrumental songs, because the levels in mp3 were too much lower than in Garageband. An exercise in frustration.

The discussion, Garageband output volumes in relation to other sequencer output volumes…., does not indicate yet why although Garageband lets you go into the red without distortion, the mp3 you send to iTunes is distorted in spots (unless you lower the level to the point where you have to adjust the volume when you play your song). Furthermore, distortion in the mp3 output does not seem directly related to clipping in the recorded tracks.

If only Garageband were “what you hear is what you get.” In other words, here’s my RFE: what gets sent to the headphones when I’m playing my mixed song should be what gets sent to iTunes when I export, even in a lossy format like mp3.

Don’t tell me I should know how to record and how to mix, by the way. If I knew what I were doing, then I wouldn’t be using Garageband.

When recording guitar, especially bass guitar, I was getting a consistent, annoying hum upon taking my fingers off the metal parts of the instrument. With enough high end, you could call it a buzz. Terrible.

This happens not only with my little amp, but even with the preamp direct into the computer. My guitar cables aren’t balanced. Maybe the real solution is to have XLR outs from guitars. That must not be good for other reasons.

Anyway, what seems to work is running a wire from the jack to my body. I was going to wear the wire (show on the right) as a bracelet, but that leaves too little contact to be effective. So for now I have to hold the wire under my tongue. No hum/buzz. But maybe I won’t try recording during a thunderstorm.

Somehow Gilles and I got onto the subject of advertising. He says it works because either we do not pay attention and it leaves a residue, or we do pay attention and find it silly, but it still leaves a residue. When we then go to make a decision where either the choices are very similar, or where we do not have enough information to distinguish between similar choices, the residue of advertisement works in favor of the goods or services advertised.

So what should we make of the photo to the left of this text? If you actually read the labels of the photos, you notice they contradict what the rest of the text is trying to get you to buy.

Why did they do that?

Is it a typo?

Are they trying to get me to see the fnords?

Today was our first time at Collet d’Allevard this season.

The snow was wet and getting soupy, at about 6 C when we left.

The girls were skiing with much more confidence than at the beginning of last season.

Last weekend I was in the US, and went to visit family in Asheville, North Carolina.

Went running at the Arboretum where fall colors were still impressive. We also went to see three waterfalls.

Safari still seems the best on the Mac, with Chrome for cross-platform use.

(Click the screenshot to get the full size version.)

With screens seeming to get wider, it surprises me how much extra vertical space many browsers use for the control area. The first impression with IE 8 (not shown) was that they wanted a third of my screen for their ads and other crap.

Next steps are maybe to allow you to hide the control area except on mouseover and to make it sticky with mouseover + click. Maybe that’s already doable, but just not self-evidently obvious to configure. Maybe it’s an awful suggestion.

Sebastien Najjar suggests putting control areas (docks, etc.) down the side of the screen.

This Sunday we went down to the lake for some fishing.

Lots of fall colors.

Unfortunately the fish were not biting much.