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| I don't really want to say too much, because I'm on the ship right now using non-free wi-fi, but I just wanted to mention how much I enjoy the featured weblogs. There's some REALLY good stuff in there. I don't spend a whole lot of time specifically on xanga, but when I am on, I copy all the featured blogs and paste them into a document so I can read them later without wifi. So I've been doing a good job of keeping up with them.
But yeah, I've been really enjoying some of them, and recently there've been a number that really hit me in some way. I wish I had more time to leave comments on them and read other peoples' comments, cause I think I would enjoy that too...
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| So I finally got my ipod replaced. But man, was it hard to get everything the way it was on my other ipod. Supposedly it's as easy as backing up your old device and restoring from that backup on your new one. But not quite that simple.
So I back up my device decently regularly anyway, so that part was no problem. I connected my new device and it asked whether I want to set it up as a new device or restore it from a backup. Well I wanted to restore it from that backup, but it told me that since the OS is different, I can't. So I had to set it up as a new device, then put the current OS on it. But when I tried to set it up as a new device, it warned me that it would make a backup... which generally means it erases the old backup. So I figured I better make a copy of the backup just in case. Then I set it up, updated the OS, and tried restoring it. It seemed like it might have worked, but then I looked on my device and... nothing new was there. But, oddly enough, all the apps that come on the device already were on the pages that they were on my old device... I thought maybe it just didn't go through completely, so I tried again. I didn't want to just sit there while it restored, so I closed my computer, hoping it would still run. But that didn't work. So a third time... same result as the first time, and I noticed that my saved screenshots had transferred correctly. So then I thought maybe I need to put the apps on the device first. Luckily I had transferred them all to my computer previously, so I clicked sync apps, and it seemed to do so. So a 4th time, I attempted to restore. It seemed to mostly work, though I noticed some apps were there that I had deleted, and some apps weren't there at all. Then I realized that for whatever odd reason, my approximately 5 newest applications were just unchecked. So I checked those, synced again, and finally, on the 5th restore, things seemed to be all correct.
Except not actually, because the TTR3 songs didn't really get back on correctly... I'm currently telling them about that issue.
So something that supposedly is really easy was actually a lot more complicated...
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| So we cruised next to a hurricane... it was a little ridiculous, and very rainy.
While we were in Cozumel, we got off the boat, despite the downpour going on. I had my computer and ipod in my backpack... which was really in no way enough to keep the water off. So both of those things got kinda wet... especially the ipod, which stopped working for a day. Fortunately it started working again... I guess they're pretty good at making electronics that purposely don't work until everything's dry so that nothing gets ruined.
My computer got a little wet, but the metal case is pretty good for not letting just a little on the outside do much. My battery is charging extremely slowly however... actually it says "not charging", though I discovered it actually does eventually. At some point I'm gonna see if I can find a screwdriver and check to make sure nothing inside needs to dry off some more or whatever. In any case, it's just a minor inconvenience anyway.
Oh, so I discovered just the other day that there are non-state-but-still-in-the-US quarters now. I got an American Samoa quarter, and was just kinda like... what??? So yeah... guess I got some more quarters to look for :)
Oh what else... I dunno... got direct deposit set up, which is good, cause getting 1200 in cash every other week would be awkward.
I dunno, I guess that's all for now.
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| So I recently got a MacBook Pro.
I already have a windows computer that still works, but the motherboard is a bit messed up, causing it to crash for any or no reason... and it’s a desktop, which doesn’t exactly easily fly and carry onto a ship with little space in my room. So I needed a laptop.
The next debate... windows or mac...
Side note, I had a friend who told me not to count out the other systems... and then proceeded to tell he didn’t recommend the other systems anyway haha.
Anyway, from my first sentence, obviously I chose Mac. Why? Well one reason is just so that I could at least have one of both. Not knowing what the future may hold for me in terms of a future job means not really knowing what I’m going to need to use computer-wise. Having both a mac and a windows pretty much means that I’ve got 99.9% of the stuff out there covered. In actuality that’s not the case, cause I’ve got Windows XP, so things that were made specifically for Vista might not work... but whatever, you get the idea.
And actually I took a section of my hard drive and installed windows onto it, so that way I can use either.
So now that I’ve had this computer for a month or so, and my ipod touch for half a year, there’s some things I’ve noticed about Apple...
They’re all about being pretty. It sometimes disguises a program as being able to do more than it actually can.
Let’s take iWeb for example... watch the intro and it looks great! Easily make a great-looking web page! But you can only use .mac (something like that) locations. And what about existing web pages? Nope, you can’t do anything with them. I was in charge of the Hawkapella website the past maybe year and a half... iWeb would’ve done nothing for me.
iMovie: Ok, so I have dealt extremely little with video stuff, largely due to very rarely having a video camera... but with the built-in webcam, I can actually deal with video now if I want. One thing in particular I can imagine I could use quite a bit is recording myself doing multiple parts to music (a cappella songs anyone?).
So let’s take a look at the iMovie intro... cool, you can use transitions and such... and put music on top... and even put a second video in a section of the screen...
Then I tried what I thought would be really simple: making a video that has me singing the 4 parts to a barbershop tag. Recorded the bass, then played it back while recording the baritone part. Off to iMovie to see if could get them to share the screen...
Well sure, I can add the baritone video to the bass video... but then it’s covering part of the bass video... I couldn’t figure out how to actually make the starting video smaller!
What I ended up having to do was just deal with it partially covered, export it as a video, then plop it in as it’s own single video and put the bass part in again, this time able to be small and in another corner. Export it as a video again, plop it in again, put the lead part in another corner, export it again, plop it in again, put the tenor part in the final corner. Done, but for such a simple task, it took an awful lot. (Any tips on better ways to do it would be appreciated)
GarageBand: Ok, so I’m a ProTools user. Unfortunately, as of two weeks ago, they have yet to create a ProTools that works with this newest system of Mac. Which means that until they do/until I have time to download it, I have to settle for GarageBand.
Coming from ProTools, GarageBand is just kinda like... what the heck is this? At least my mbox 2 mini works with it... but it just doesn’t match up software-wise.
I had audio that was in “stereo”, but actually the sound was only out of the left channel. Could I split the halves up into two separate mono channels? Nope...
What the heck, why not?
And I want to briefly mention Numbers as well. Start up a new “blank” spreadsheet, and... what’s this? Why are the first column and row shaded? Did I say I wanted them shaded? I thought this was supposed to be “blank”... Most of the time I use spreadsheets for my own purposes, and it’s not necessarily the very first column and row that I want to stand out.
Can you do a lot with a Mac? Well, sure... just as long as it’s stuff that Apple has said you can do. Can you imagine if everybody made videos using the setups and transitions in iMovie? Or webpages using the templates in iWeb? Everything would start to look the same really really quickly.
Now on the ipod touch and iphone, there’s this awesome game called Tap Tap Revenge. The maker, Tapulous, has released quite a number of apps now, most recently Tap Tap Revenge 3. Some months ago, an employee of Tapulous guest lectured at a Stanford iPhone developer programming class. The videos of that class are all available for free in iTunes, so I decided to check out her talk. It was very informative.
One thing I want to particularly notice is that she mentioned how much Apple is about looks. If you make an iphone program that visually goes along with the whole Mac scheme of things, Apple is more likely to promote you. She also mentioned that one of the things they need to accomplish as a company is to make the product look really nice, without compromising too much on performance.
And this is one of the big things about Tap Tap Revenge 2 (and 3 from what I hear). TTR2 looks really awesome! And then as you play more and more you discover... oh, my game just lagged? And then later... um... I definitely tapped there, so why didn’t it register? Similar games without such flashy graphics seem to do much better in terms of registering taps and such.
Apple is good stuff... but far from ideal. I even had the Mac equivalent of a “blue screen of death”, in the form of a panic message that gives you even less info than the windows message does.
But as my friend said... there is no great system... it’s just about choosing from the lesser of the evils.
What do you think? Is Apple too based on appearances?
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| Greetings from Miami!
Yes, that would mean I have officially left for my new job :)
A number of people seem to be interested in keeping up with what I'm doing, so I decided to create another xanga to specifically be about my job. So I'll write something new there soon: theshipblog.xanga.com
So the past couple weeks I spent visiting people, and I gotta say, it was great!!! Went down to Regent University in Virginia Beach to visit Rachael, stopped by in Delaware to visit Whitney, and then Rachael's mom, up to Penn State with Cindy to visit some of the many HHS kids there (included watching a blue band rehearsal), then up to Hartford to chill with the new Hawkapella, as well as some other good friends still at school there, up to Springfield, MA to visit Matt T, over to south of Boston to see Steph, went to Alyssa's wedding and saw many more Hartford people, including a lot who have also already graduated. This last thing was particularly fun. It felt like we were back to IVCF 4 years ago, and we got to hang out for a while after the wedding as well :)
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