Copying 2TB despite a dinosaur that shoot lasers from its eye

Of course, I could copy 2TB of files with the 32-bit Carbon version of Finder without any worries, but Apple’s 64-bit Cocoa rewrite of Finder paid off, and it still makes me happy I bought a Mac.

Back when I was a Windows user, copying nearly 2TB of files was a hell. Explorer would fail somewhere in the middle, and I’d have to see where it left off and resume manually. Finder is a solid file manager. I knew about Win32 copy apps such as Xcopy, but OSX comes with a solid app to do what you need replacements for on Windows (Teracopy, for instance).

From Macro and Cameras, posted by Raymond Abril III on 3/03/2010 (122 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

Another test to celebrate organizing the 13,000 pictures I’ve taken recently and want to share soon!

From Venice Beach, posted by Raymond Abril III on 3/20/2010 (200 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher



If this works, kudos to the developer”

Sunset to dusk

Sunset to dusk, 360 degree panorama preview of Phoenix, Arizona from my 3rd story roof. 129 images, -2,0,+2 bracketed exposures taken in Februrary 11th, 2010 by a Canon EOS 450D created with Hugin.

This may take a while to load depending on your connection.

I love to show people the view of the mountains and the city from my 3 story home south of downtown Phoenix, Arizona. Soon I’ll be able to show everyone what it is like to be on the roof… it is beautiful! I’ll spend time working on the HDR panoramas, so in the meantime here’s a silly video of me climbing my roof set to a song I created. I took my pictures in style, wearing a Fedora and gathering the attention of passerbys and neighbors! This video was sped up 1000% as to not waste your time and I put a part of a song I created as the soundtrack.

I’ve just made a few ‘test’ HDR shots from not ideal circumstances. I had dual plane gas filled windows, which refracted light. I climbed to the roof of my 3 story home to take an 3 shots each to create a set of HDR Panoramic pictures.

I’m trying to see if I can make multi-dimensional todo lists by hand. If I have a master plan for every alternate universe I might get sucked into, I just might make it back alive.

IMG_0654, originally uploaded by rayrayisforever.

Had a fantastic time taking pictures at Huntington Beach with friends. Flickr Set, Link to my own gallery, Facebook Album.

Also updated my PixelPost Photoblog @ pixel.rayrayisforever.com and RaymondAbril.com. Enjoy!

Personally, I love having the ability to run both Webkit and Safari simultaneously. Webkit downloads daily updates, a small annoyance every day for having two browsers running in their own processes. Firefox feels slow once you start adding plug-ins and extensions into it. I believe Chrome has a great idea, running each tab and window in a separate process. Since Firefox of whichever versions runs as one process, it becomes sluggish even when on a multi-core Xeon there is plenty of free CPU and RAM. Sadly, not even the bookmark manager works in the Mac OSX Chrome dev builds yet.

The beauty of Weave is that as opposed to FBRE backups or Xmarks, it is a Mozilla created project and is compatible with bleeding edge versions of Firefox. That means that all of the same bookmarks and passwords are seamlessly synchronized between the two. With one account, no exporting/importing your files constantly.

On a side note, Xmarks promises to work with Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox. I thought about synchronizing all of my bookmarks, but that is what my delicious account is for. In addition, there appear to be downsides to installing the Safari extension. Currently there are very few plugins available for Safari that will run in 64-bit mode. Safari and Webkit are amazing enough that I don’t mind not having ad blocking installed. Plus, I’m using Allbookmarks (free) to show me all of my bookmarks for every browser. The Firefox plugin does add some neat features, but it is bloated for this purpose.

Anyways, how to run Minefield and Firefox simultaneously on your Mac easily!

First, install the Mozilla Weave plugin and setup an account. Synchronize your bookmarks and passwords.

Use Finder or Spotlight and open up Terminal.app in /Applications/Utilities/

Paste this into Terminal and hit enter: /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin  -Profilemanager

Create a second profile. I just called mine “Minefield” for simplicity. Profilemanager help page.

Once your second profile is created, start with your default so your regular Firefox.app will continue to use it. Retry the Terminal command if you are taken into the Minefield profile instead, as you will be able to just re-select the default again.

Download a Minefield nightly build

Mount the .dmg & drag to your Applications folder.

There are more than two ways of running Minefield with the new profile. You simply need to setup an easy way to pass command line arguments to its firefox-bin. Here is how to do it in Automator, although Script Editor from this  MacOSXHints page could be superior. Just depends on how much time you want to spend on it. I’ll assume if prefer Script Editor, I don’t need to explain anything to you

Use Finder and open Automator.app in /Applications/

Select new Workflow and simply select from the Library > Utilities > Run Shell Script

Here you can paste in /Applications/Minefield.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -P Minefield &

(Replace the Minefield after -P for Profile with whatever name you called the new Profile.) I should mention that I have my Terminal.app default settings set to close the shell if it exits cleanly. This is a simple preference in Terminal.app that will prevent a window from staying open after passing the arguments to Minefield.

Now all you have to do is save the Automator action as an Application into /Applications. You can even give it the Minefield icon. This is basically just a shortcut to run Minefield with a different profile without using the command line.

Install Mozilla Weave, synchronize, and enjoy having a Firefox with loads of speed and a Firefox with loads of features.

I was rather surprised that Microsoft actually made a client for Windows Live Mesh for Mac OSX Snow Leopard! This is especially surprising since Ubuntu One is Ubuntu only. At least Dropbox lets me synchronize across all platforms. Previously I was using MacFUSE/FUSE Userland sshfs mounting for my Dreamhost backup space.

2GB Free – Dropbox – Mac OSX, Linux, Windows

5GB Free – Windows Live Mesh – Windows & Mac OSX, however the icon stays in the dock which is rather annoying. The menubar icon is the control for Mesh, so the dock icon is extraneous.

2GB Free – Ubuntu One – Ubuntu only, but integrated with Ubuntu 9.10+’s file manager. Since I was reformatting my laptop quite often to try new variants, this let me save important things such as bookmarks or how to get the proprietary Nvidia drivers to work with the Xorg.conf.

I recommend Dropbox because it works on the three platforms I use the most and is often easier than setting up a shared folder on the network.

When I first bought my house, I really wanted two kittens so that they would be able to play with eachother if I was not around. I was so excited and overwhelmed when I first saw their litter. There, on one of the last steps of the staircase, was a clump of fur made up of patches of different designs. All but one of the tiny kittens were sleeping together. The first one to catch my eye was the white cat that was chasing imaginary butterflies and jumping around completely crazy while the others slept. I knew I had to have him.

Next, I wanted a girl. There were two calicos and I decided to get the warmest and fluffiest of the two. As I picked her up, she melted in my arms and into my heart.

I had my two choices, but there was something that caught my eye. A cat with a fur coat that looked like he was wearing a tuxedo. I thought to myself that 3 cats would simply be too much, but he was handsome and I had to ask… can I have three? I would later tell people that it is because I have three floors in my house and so I could have one cat per floor, but honestly I’m not sure why I couldn’t leave him. He was just charming, sleeping there. Perhaps I liked the idea of balance – one crazy cat and one sleeping cat. Plus, since I was getting the ADHD kitten then I was sure that he would need a boy to play with. I was right.

The first night was so awkward. I thought to myself, what if they don’t like me and spend their time hiding somewhere? I had never had a cat before, and so many of my friend’s cats were loners when I was around. In order to get the white cat to calm down, I had to put him under the covers of my bed. The calico slept right next to me. The black cat slept at my feet. I was worried that he wouldn’t be fond of me… How surprised I would be.

I named them after Final Fantasy VI characters. Kupo is the white, hyperactive cat. Locke is the black gentleman cat. Celes is my calico, self appointed princess of the house.

Since I have such a huge house, we spent the first few weeks we getting to know it one floor at a time. Every night they slept on top of me. I would later count this as a mistake because now, two years later, they still sleep on top of me at times and I will wake up with a large weight crushing my chest and a fluffy tail in my face! After they became used to the whole house, they still did not like to be away from eachother and would meow when they became separated from eachother… or me!

Oh how they got in the way of my work! Sometimes I had to put them in a bedroom that was full of boxes just to get anything done. They were climbing on everything, and always sitting on my keyboard as I type.

Yet I have changed because of them. To have three cats follow me down 3 stories when I was just getting some water and then all the way up is love. To have them all cuddle up next to me as I lay down and purr at once is love. To be waken up 6 hours early because they just want my attention is selfish, but it is still love. And I love them back.

These days they give me a little more beathing room and as they grow up, they have relaxed. Still, Kupo is quite the attention getter and every visitor falls for him and so many people have wanted to take him for themselves! If only they knew how much of a pain he is!

I’m sure I would have amazing sleep, unscratched furniture, and a very quiet house if it wasn’t for their habits yet I am not sure that I would want to live a life without them. I’m not sure I was truly living life before they came into it. I know that I am now. They are my children and family, and I cannot live without them.

And thanks for mp3suitereview.com for the shoutout!

RayRay DJing at Hookah Bass 2005

I wanted to share a picture of me DJing at one of the pivotal events that I had the pleasure of playing at. Hookah Bass was held at the Red Sea Lounge in Tempe, Az and put together by a good friend named Brice. Here, I got to play for 4 full hours anything that I wanted to a room full of happy, bubbly, hookah smoking people. The lounge  was redecorated with blacklight posters and phosphorous paints. What was absolutely divine about this gig was that I brought enough vinyl for 8 hours and had been frustrated with the 1 hour DJ sets that most DJs have grown accustomed to. I was prepared for everything – even as far as to breakdown the crowd from the intense, high energy driven music that had been playing for 4 full hours before me and explore any style of electronica and dance music that I wished. It was finally a time to see what it was like to be the shaman of a tribe.

I remember the order of almost every song that I played. I lowered the tempo through a steady 45 hours and dropped in Rabbit In The Moon – Deeper. I had always wanted to play this vinyl live, and the predicted few people came up to me asking for faster. I remember saying that this is just a new beginning and that all will be revealed soon!

After the set was over, my back killing me with pain for not moving from the turntables, a crowd of people swarmed me. One guy told me that I had changed his life – his girlfriend left him, his dog died, his truck got stolen, and in one night I had given him the hope he needed to live. This was the first time, and definitely not the last time from this point forward that I would receive these kinds of kudos. A few more pictures from Hookah Bass can be found in a new album in the gallery.

You can also view it on Picasa:

Posted via web from rayrayisforever’s posterous

I decided it was time to redirect the feed to Feedburner so we could use their fun widgets and stats. In order to save CPU, I would often wget the files from Drupal so that Apache just had to serve a static file. This also takes care of that.

There are some important exemptions that need to be taken into consideration. For one, the iTunes store caches data and Feedburner checks every 30 minutes. I wanted the iTunes store to also have the raw XML feed, since Feedburner has a 550K limit on how much of a feed it carries. There are actually two feeds. One for iTunes that just has the podcast media enclosure, summary, and details. The second is an RSS feed that contains the full tracklistings as they appear on the site for use in readers. I decided that I also wanted the Trance Design Facebook page take the feed from the server, since it is quite slow to update and this lets me tier the notifications. Facebook also sends the note to Twitter.com/trancedesign automatically, so the sooner the better. It is actually quite nice to have a landing page at Feedburner so anyone can see their choice of reader in order to subscribe. For the easy-going, there has always been a direct link to the iTunes music store where one may subscribe.

So here are my mod_rewrite rules for the .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner/* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedValidator* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !iTMS* [OR]
RewriteRule ^trancedesign\.xml$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/TranceDesign [R=302,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedValidator* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FacebookFeedParser* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner/*
RewriteRule ^rss\.xml$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/trancedesign-full [R=302,L]

Finding the user agent for Apple’s iTunes Music Store required some log grepping, and the user agent iTMS comes from Apple’s IP block range. That out of the way, I was then able to use FeedBurner’s Optimize tab and enable BrowserFriendly‘s redirection option. This places the original URL in the list for subscriptions, and lets me use FeedBurner to count how many unique subscribers we have while not permanently redirecting the traffic away from the site. Since FeedBurner is not redirected to itself, it will have the most up to date feed from the site.

Now I get some fun widgets to display on the page:
Regular subscribers:
Full Tracklisting subscribers:

It has only been a day since I made the change, and some issues I’ve been having with the site on the new host have made the download URLs sometimes return a 404. I’ve been tracking this down and it seems to have to do with having caching enabled.

I was seeing in my error_log: Premature end of script headers: and internal_error.html in my database log.

Hopefully this fixes the problem, as it has surely been frustrating when somebody tries to download a file and then unsubscribes. I was fairly certain we had at least 600+ subscribers, but since I’ve been putting up mixes of different genres, this could also turn some people off from the podcast entirely. Still, it is nice to have a place to post mixes when I find good ones or when I can get around to publishing a mix.

Since the site is now hosted with Dreamhost, I found a rule on Ravi Sagar’s blog that also helps to see the analog statistics they provide that Drupal and other sites that use rewrite rules prohibit you from seeing.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/stats/(.*)$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/failed_auth.html$
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [L]

I got the gist of this idea from a Perishable Press post, however since Feedburner’s user agent is FeedBurner/1.0 adding wildcards to the RewriteCond was necessary to make it work. Otherwise, Feedburner just pulled the feed from itself.

For all I know, I still know nothing

]]> http://blog.rayrayisforever.com/2009/08/for-all-i-know-i-still-know-nothing/feed 0 http://blog.rayrayisforever.com/2009/08/testing-the-new-cannon-eos-rebel-xsi http://blog.rayrayisforever.com/2009/08/testing-the-new-cannon-eos-rebel-xsi#comments Sun, 02 Aug 2009 10:51:04 +0000 RayRay http://www.hardcoredreamer.com/blog/?p=334

The gallery album that I’ll update.

This will be very fun. :]

The ubiquitous DJM-600

I purchased a DJM-600 because it is the de-facto standard for DJ Mixers found at almost every Club and Party I have attended. Not owning one was a major set-back the first time I ever played the large Silver Room at the famous Icehouse Venue in Downtown Phoenix. Considering how dark it was and the conditions that I was playing vinyl in were absolutely terrible – such that any step on the stage would make the needles skip as they were aggrevated by the enormous bass that was being pumped out of the speakers and reflected back at me… It was a mess to try to figure things out. I vowed that I would get my own and discover its secrets.

There, within the instruction manual, was perhaps the most essential secret that I use continuously to this day. Even though I have moved to digital DJing, I still do my mixing through the Analog circuits of my Pioneer DJM-600.

This mixer has so many outputs and inputs that it fits any job, but too often have I almost been in tears to see somebody using the “Record Out” plug with a 3.5mm adapter into a Laptop’s often microphone input jack… Absolute blasphemy! The Record Out is at full power and easily overwhelms the puny input jacks on Laptops and basic Desktop sound cards.

Their second option is to connect to the “booth monitor” out and adjust the booth monitor volume so low that it barely registers. This completely ruins the capturing of the bass, as anyone who has turned down a high-end volume knob can decree that the audio changes color significantly. While avoiding some clipping, this is not a great way to record.

Now, I do not use the Effects on my Pioneer DJM-600 live, unless I’m bored out of my mind and I want to contribute to somebody else’s set by making it more lively… sometimes to success and other times to failure. That’s what the effects do. Sometimes they work and sometimes I want to let the DJ know what I really think about their trying to show off and impress a crowd with the same effects everyone else has. In my opinion, if somebody is using too many effects then they should have practiced their mixing more or brought better songs.

So on to some actual helpful information and my secret that I’ve been wanting to tell other DJs for a while. Did you know that the Effects Send Out use not only much higher quality cables (1/4″ TS Unbalanced) than both the Record and Booth outputs, which are puny RCA? Not only that, but the Effects output is sent at -10db!!!

One would think that having a lower volume output would be a bad thing, but in this modern age everyone should be recording at 24bit, which equals 144db of headroom. The benefits of having -10db include:

1. Never clipping
2. Less noise in the signal path as it bypasses the master amp
3. Has been right under your nose the whole time!

There is one downside, however. In order to record from the Effects Out, you must have the Effects input knob set to Master and NOT TOUCH IT during your mix. Setting it to another channel will mean that only that channel’s output will be sent. Effects are cheesy unless you’re really innovative anyways, or you’re Sasha using a custom MIDI controller with a pimped out Ableton Live. You will also need a decent hardware interface. Currently I use a M-Audio Firewire 410 so I can use direct 1/4″ TS to 1/4″ TS into its inputs, record at 24bit (or 32bit IEEE Floting Point), and not worry about clipping.

When I DJ, I try to keep the levels as close as possible. Unfortunately, unless you know your record’s RMA loudness and Peak Loudness, you’re going to have some fluctuations. With a 24-bit recording, you have enough headroom to utilize software multi-band compressors/limiters/dynamics to really get the most out of your mix. I recommend Ozone 3, and surely Ozone 4 now that it is out. Izotope is a fantastic company and use 64-bit mathematics in their VST/AU plugins. That precision is nice because it gives you extreme freedom to make the mix properly fill in the missing headroom before you convert back to 16-bit for CDDA/MP3 audio.

The key point is that by using the Effects Out on a Pioneer DJM-600, you can focus on your mix and not on accidental clipping. You also get a far superior recording compared to the other methods.

I don’t think he even mentioned it in this video…

Well, if anyone wants help recording their mix or promoting it, please feel free to contact me!

On Thanksgiving day in 2005 I wandered downtown Phoenix taking pictures of everything I could fit in my viewfinder. You can find the full gallery here.

Courtesy of Raymond Abril

I have had some of my pictures in print!

I stumbled across some pictures that I took at one of Tiffe Fermaint’s fashion shows a few years back at the Phoenix New Times!

I kept wanting the models to slow down, because I did not have one of those super fancy cameras like some of the other photographers. That, and I think there’s no reason they have to be so quick about it!

I have actually been to quite a few fashion shows over the last few years. Some day when I get a much better camera, I’d like to go again. I remember that for the first Labelhorde Fashion Ball, the curator of the Scottsdale Museum of contemporary Art (SMOCA) gave me his seat right next to the runway so I could get some amazing pictures! I’ll share them soon.
I’m pretty sure I know a lot of the models… or at least have met them and forgot their names. It has been a while. Tiffe Fermaint has gone on to have a career that makes me so proud of her! The first time I met her, she was 16. The first thing she said to me was “I’m going to be a fashion designer!”

Its her birthday, so Happy Birthday Tiffe!

TiffeFermaint.com

Twitter.com/Tiffe_Fermaint

She is out at Lake Havasu doing wardrobe for a movie! Sounds like fun!

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There will be unique content not found on any other blog on that site!

WE CALL IT TECHNO! tells the story of a tempestuous phase in music history, the first time that pop culture was created significantly in Germany. With exclusive interviews and comprehensive, mostly unreleased film and photo archive material from the years 1988-1993! –

OST: http://www.discogs.com/release/1388974 – 3 Phase feat. Dr. Motte – Der Klang Der Familie Bam Bam – Give It To Me Cosmic Baby – Cosmic Trigger 4 Cosmic Baby – Galaxia Cosmic Baby – New Zone Cybersonik – Technarchy Dance 2 Trance – We Came In Peace D-Shake – Yaaaah! Eon – Spice F.U.S.E. – FU2 F.U.S.E. – Substance Abuse Frankie Bones – Call It Techno Kid Paul & The Weird Club – Acid In My House Komakino – Dynacore Mark N-R-G – Turn The Bass Microbots – Cosmic Evolution Microglobe – What Is Space Nitzer Ebb – Warsaw Ghetto Ongaku – Mihon 3 Resistance D. – Cosmic Love Sequential – Ambiant Block Sequential – Sonne Space Cube – Pure Tendency T-Bone Castro – Wize Guys Are Freakin’ Lower Teste – The Wipe Break Boys – My House Is Your House Overlords – Sundown Thomas P. Heckmann – Floatation Thomas P. Heckmann – The Sound Of Colour Umo Detic – Fahrenhei

Trance Design’s Facebook Page

I was happy to make it out to Bassmint 1.5 and see a lot of old friends. I have a few pictures up. These make me really want to invest in a much better camera… but it is the fun that matters! Two DJ stages, fine art decorating the walls, and great people to have conversations with. I chose this picture to post in my blog because it is about time for bed after a night of being out. Chao.

I have been joining a great number of social networks lately as a prelude to releasing some audio production related projects. I’m pretty excited about the possibilities!

On a side note, I’m looking to broaden my horizons and skills with using a DSLR in formal events such as weddings. If you know anyone in Arizona who is looking for an Photographer, or you have an event that I could gain some experience for a portfolio, please let me know

I am still trying to figure out which DSLR I would like to invest in. That’s quite a bit of a research project, however I long ago reached the limitations of what I could do with a prosumer digital camera without RAW capabilities. I have the software to pre and post-process large numbers of pictures with great ease… so I may as well enjoy them!