I won’t write a blog post about each one, but at least upload them to a set on SoundCloud. Anybody can listen or download them for free from SoundCloud (you don’t have to sign up or anything) and it will auto post to Facebook and Twitter for me. I don’t know how long I’ll go, but the tradition for this kind of thing is a year.

Here are my rules so far. Yes, I’m making this up as I go along and they may change:

1. Each song will be written on a single day, in a single lunch hour
2. There’s no schedule and no deadline. I intend to write and release one a week, but have no clue what day that might be
3. No mixing, mastering, adding, or tweaking after the fact — I write it and post it in one go
4. I’m releasing each track with a Creative Commons Attribution license. Anybody can take a track, change it, share it, re-write it, release it for profit — whatever — as long as they give me writing credits and link to this website. I do reserve the right to expand or combine anything I release into another song, and that song may have more restrictive rights but that doesn’t effect the license on the original release

I think that’s it.. So, here’s the first track.. It’s called Aggressive Buddhism

It was actually issued to me for work. My Blackberry Bold 9000 was dying, and people in our enterprise have been gravitating away from Blackberry to iPhone, so it was the logical choice. Work doesn’t allow Android devices yet, but our management solution can handle it (as well as Windows phone), so it is not far off.

For my personal phone I use a DroidX on Verizon (running stock Android 2.3.4, aka Gingerbread). I love the Droid and it has served me well.

The Blackberry also served me well for that matter. I disliked moving to a non-touch screen (previous work device was a Treo 650 and personal was the original Android G1), but I really did enjoy the hardware keyboard. I only used the Blackberry for mail and calendar, so the lack of a touch screen wasn’t too big of an issue. I could have done with a larger screen, though.

I have played with a few iPhone iterations, but never “got” it. I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Once ordered, my expectation was that after I lived with an iPhone for a few weeks that I’d fall in love with it and “join the fold” so to speak. Well, it’s been a couple weeks and that hasn’t happened yet.

I’ve gone from mild amusement and admiration for the hardware design to mild contempt. Below I’ll hit the major points of the device compared to the other devices I’ve extensively used.

Screen
The screen truly is a beautiful display. Nice and crisp, vivid colors, and good lighting.. but it is so tiny! Comparing the size to my DroidX is like comparing the iPhone screen to the Blackberry. The super duper resolution of the retina display causes text to be on the small side which isn’t too bad for web pages and such since you can zoom. The accessibility options leave much to be desired, though. Rather than increase overall font sizes it allows you to “triple finger tap” to zoom in, then pan around the zoomed screen.

My eye sight is good, so I’m OK with this, but I think it’s something for those with low vision to keep in mind. No surprise, I prefer the accessibility options in Android’s current 4.x incarnation (aka Ice Cream Sandwich) which acts more like traditional operating systems by adjusting font and icon sizes. Gingerbread doesn’t do this, so if you need it make sure the device you choose has ICS or better. ICS  doesn’t quite go far enough since it will not globally change fonts in applications, but I think it’s better than Apple’s choice.

Keyboard
I think this is my biggest gripe with the device. Spacing is OK, and the clicky sound feels natural, but text predictions are limited and the implementation sucks. Text predictions help immensely when typing on the go, and trying to get thoughts down on a small mobile screen. I hardly notice when IOS is predicting for me so blow past the words. When I do pause and look it’s usually wrong in the single guess as to what I want to type.

Another issue is that special characters and numbers require hitting an extra button. Even worse, really common special characters (#, +, *) require hitting a second special button to get to. This is particularly frustrating when you use secure passwords for your lock screen and web sites. Between shift and symbol keys it takes 12 key presses to type in an 8 character password. The Android method of “long pressing” to get numbers and symbols is far more elegant.

I do prefer IOS’s method for zooming through already written text, as well as selecting text to copy. Copy/paste came late to IOS, but they implemented it well.

The clincher for me is that you can’t download alternative keyboards. This is the first place that the locked down Apple experience really started annoying me. Other areas include the App store, the browser, and a few other app areas.

I even preferred the Blackberry hardware keyboard. It too had annoyances with regard to special characters, but doing selections copy/paste with the shift key and trackball worked great.

Unforeseen is that the iPhone keyboard is actually causing me to make more mistakes on my Android phone! Luckily, my existing prediction history and excellent auto correction is helping maneuver this bump. Hopefully my brain will auto compensate for this once I get used to the IOS keyboard.

Siri
One of the break out features of the iPhone 4S, and in fact what the “S” stands for is Siri. When this feature was first announced I predicted that it would largely be unused. I haven’t seen difinitive proof one way or the other on this but it seems to be the case, and will likely hold true for me.

The voice recognition is excellent – better than Android’s, but that’s not my issue. The two primary drawbacks to me are that it takes several seconds for Siri to analyze what I’m saying and more often than not she has no idea what I want.

It works well for doing the things in the Apple commercial, but when I try something that I think falls right in line with what Siri should do (for example, “how far away is Biloxi, Mississippi”) she returns brain dead search results that do not infer what I wanted. This is far from a “magical” experience.

Siri is pretty responsive when at home on wifi, but when out and about I can type a search for what I want faster than watching Siri’s blank screen, waiting for her to get it wrong.

I will continue to try queries, and I’m sure I will love the ability to quickly schedule appointments or place calls while I’m driving. I’ll come back and update the post if I do use Siri regularly.

Performance
This is another area that the iPhone really shines. It is responsive. It loads into apps and swipes across screens fluidly. Hands down, the best experience I’ve had with a phone in this regard. In my experience, most complex devices start this way, but things get gummed up once you’ve been using it for a few months, so I’ll check back in. My friends with iPhones never complain about them slowing down, so I think performance will continue to be great.

Camera
Another excellent mark here. The camera is wonderful. It launches instantly and the pictures are great. Overall a much better experience and better pictures than my DroidX.  I plan on moving to a Samsung Galaxy S III when I am eligible for upgrade and I can’t wait to take the cameras head to head. I’m pretty sure that the iPhone will still come out on top. 

The photo gallery is much more responsive than my Droid as well. The android photo gallery can take forever to open up once you tap it. Once inside it is fluid, and if you re-launch it is fine the rest of the day but then (presumably) the process gets kicked out of memory and it takes forever to launch again.

Battery
Battery life is good, but not much better than my DroidX, so this is pretty much a wash. I easily go all day while using the phone pretty heavily and just charge each night as I sleep. I would prefer to have a removable battery with the option to buy something with a longer charge, but I think I’m OK with it. We’ll see in a couple years if the battery starts degrading.

The Blackberry battery is legendary. Well, not the battery itself (though it is removable), but the device’s power performance. You can use it heavily and still not have to charge it for days. This isn’t a fair comparison though, giving the limited processing power, limited data, and limited apps.

Apps
Yes, there are a bazillion apps in the App store. But you know what, just about any good app costs money and there are few demo or “light” versions. This is very frustrating coming from Android where it is more common to have ad supported apps with the option to buy an ad free version. I’m not even going to touch the fact that your only option is to use Apple’s store. I may throw the phone against a wall it frustrates me so.

The truth is, I’m rarely disappointed that an app is available for iPhone and not my Android. There are usually analogs that work just as well, or almost as well (and sometimes better) but are free. Yes, there are plenty of stinkers, but the power of user reviews and ratings makes steering clear of those easy.

I hear an area where the iPhone shines is music creation apps. Unfortunately, I can’t really take advantage of playing with these as it is a work phone. Blackberry app choices are abysmal. I’m sure there are lots more out there that I just never found, but I never experienced the same discoverability or ease of installing inherent in the Apple and Android stores.

Other Issues
I haven’t touched on a number of issues, but they’ve all been well documented by other people. Some are device specific, and some are more philosophical. I may write a blog post dedicated to these in the future. Among the other gripes are: the proprietary connector, reliance on paid Apple services for what I consider to be basic functionality, lacking configuration options in many areas (ie: Apple making choices for me instead of giving options), no removable storage, the perils of hacking and jailbreaking, poor task switching and app concurrency, minimal hardware buttons.. That’s most of them. Other small annoyances have cropped up as I’ve used it more.

The Scoreboard
Here’s where I give scores to these three devices. I will rate each aspect from 1 to 10 (10 being best). Best possible score is 100. Let’s see how they did.

OK Apple fans – now it’s your turn to tell me why I’m completely wrong and how I still don’t get it. It has only been a couple weeks, so I’ll come back and update the post in the next month to see if I still feel the same way.

But I give up. Between proprietary hardware drivers and slow software release cycles for the things that matter most to me, I’m done.

I just spent two hours to accomplish the following: Download a new album that we paid for and play it back on my television. That’s it!

Two. Fucking. Hours. And still no music playing. So, I rebooted to my Windows 7 partition:

• Boot to desktop screen: 30 seconds
• Launch Google Chrome, load and login to GMail, click on e-mail link: 10 seconds
• Download new album: 60 seconds
• Plug in the HDMI cable, launch VLC: 10 seconds
• Total time: less than two minutes and now we’re listening to Metric‘s new album Synthetica.

Loving the album by the way. They struck out on their own from their record label for the last album Fantasies and this is their second independent release.

I’ve been trying for the last couple years to move my music composition and podcasting away from Mac and Windows to Linux with mixed success. Podcasting under Linux is simple as long as you have basic hardware that is supported: class compliant USB devices, or a reasonably mainstream sound card.

I can internally route Skype streams, web clips, other sources and record it all to independent tracks to Ardour for later editing. There’s some great info about this aspect from the Balticon panel about open source podcasting.

Where things break down for podcasting is if you need to use advanced audio hardware like Firewire or USB2 mixers and interfaces. Driver support is minimal, flaky, or (more likely) non-existent.

This isn’t a shortcoming of Linux, or the community of thousands of passionate hackers that make it all work as well as it does – this is because big companies refuse to open source their drivers, and don’t have a profit motivation to make their software available on Linux.

In fact, none of my issues have to do with Linux itself. It’s just that, due to the way the world works, it takes awhile to get things fully functioning. I’ve got another blog post in the works that delves into this a bit more in reviewing my latest laptop. The device is so new (it was a warrantly replacement) that there are even huge issues in Windows – they’re just not as frustrating as they are under Linux.

Music composition and production is an entirely other matter. Aside from hardware issues, the software is still far from where it needs to be to get out of your way and let you make music.

Ardour and Audacity are solid, but they’re still butt ugly. Appearances shouldn’t matter but the hard edges, jagged fonts and buttons take your attention away from the waveforms you are making dance.

Hydrogen is a decent drum machine, and there are some good sounding drum kits for it, but it is still far less flexible than it needs to be to create something other than a demo and there are many features still lacking to make it a professional contender.

Then there are the plugins.. oh, the plugins. This boggles my mind as there are some really awesome open source plugins out there. But there are holes that have been waiting to be filled for years and years (real time noise reduction anyone?) and even though the pieces are there, nobody has had the time to scratch that particular itch and pull them together.

Again, nobody’s fault – they are pouring their time and energy into making this great free stuff that we all benefit from – but frustrating none the less. I contribute bug reports and money where able, but it doesn’t get songs written any faster.

Another glaring hole is virtual instruments, particularly software synthesizers. Not important to all musicians, but something I use a lot. Again, there are some solid contenders out there, but the offerings on Windows and Mac are far superior either in their audio engines, interfaces, or presets.

As I said, I’m going to write a post on the new computer, but in short; using Linux on it is a near daily struggle with one aspect or another for many interactions. I’m fighting the sound card, video driver, or struggling to get my mouse to work.

Rant over.. I feel better getting that off my chest. Thanks for sticking around!

I may not walk away from Linux on the desktop entirely (it will certainly remain my server platform of choice) but for the next few days at least I’m going to ignore it, cool down, then sort out my currently broken configurations and decide whether to keep putting energy into it or not.

Update 4/8/2013: I did make the move to 100% Windows 7 on my primary workstation. Overall it’s been a good move and has greatly increased my creative output. I never did write that laptop review.. I need to get on that as well as updating my Toolbox page since a lot has changed.

Here is the description from from the Balticon program guide

Open source and free software allow the beginning podcaster to get started for just the cost of minimal gear and an internet connection.

What most podcasters may not realize is that open tools go well beyond Audacity including support for some surprising audio formats as well as options for no hassle feed management.

Join Thomas Gideon and the panel as they discusses their techniques for producing a mature, multiple format and feed podcast using all open, free tools from scripting to upload including options and alternatives to help meet whatever needs your show may have.

Moderator: Thomas “Command Line” Gideon
Panelists: Peter Bryant, Chooch Schubert

Things we discuss include:

• Kubuntu (a remix of Ubuntu)
• Mumble (voice conferencing)
• Ardour
• iFree Recorder (Skype recording for Windows)
• Audacity
• Levelator (not open source, but free to use)
• KXStudio
• JACK
• Reaper
• Izotope RX2 Noise reduction/removal (not open source, and expensive)
• Audio Hijack Pro

The site has dedicated feeds that contain only promos which is intended for podcasters to find new promos to play. You can browse the site by show categories or tags as well as subscribe to the category feeds to receive all new promos as they come in.

Soon we will launch a podcast to discuss shows and do interviews with podcast creators, producers, and service companies. There is an interview form on the site if you’d like to request to be interviewed.

The site can be found at http://promos.chooch.us

In short: I loved it.

There is some weak writing and plotting, but great acting and the whole is better than the sum of its parts.

The major complaint I’ve heard is that characters make stupid/out of character choices towards the end. In truth, they make stupid choices the whole time. Just roll with it.

For example (no spoilers.. I mean, you know that they go to an unknown planet and walk around, right?) why would you spend a trillion dollars to travel for years to another solar system then jump right out of the ship and into some caves rather than wait until the next day and maybe… I dunno… run a few scans?*

Similarly, how can the geologist walk into a cave – made of, and containing plenty of rocks – and not get at all excited? No, he just walks around with everybody, then wants to leave because the anthropology and biology wonks come across something they find interesting. I’m surprised he walked in with everybody in the first place – why not drill some core samples right outside the ship?

The poor decisions continue throughout, and there are some plot holes and silly physics, but that’s not what we’re really here for anyway, right? We want to see aliens, G! So, do we see any? Yes my friends, yes we do.

The secondary complaint I hear is that there are more questions than answers. Yes and no.. but you have to keep in mind that it was written to have a sequel that will bring more answers. We get some answers and we get some new questions. I’m OK with that.

The acting is good all around other than Charlize Theron. I really like her as an actor, and I think I know what she was going for, but (for me at least) she missed the mark. Her performance wasn’t bad, just flat.

I think that the movie is definitely worth seeing, and the effects make it worth catching on the big screen. It’s not that they were “wow” “bang” “vivid” – in fact visuals were largely subdued – what it was for me is that everything seemed so real. If you want vivid, go watch Avatar again. If you want bang, watch anything Michael Bay**

* Not to mention, how can we travel across the galaxy, but not have some kind of drone or robot to check things out before going on walkabout?

**No, please don’t — if we stop watching maybe he’ll just stop.

An important note is that we are primarily discussing WordPress.org, which allows you to host and control your own content. Also available is WordPress.com, which hosts your content for you. The primary draw back to WordPress.com is that they limit themes and plugins that you can run.

WordPress 101, recorded May 27, 2012 at Balticon 46 in Hunt Valley Maryland
Moderator: Terry Flynnstress
Panelists: Chooch Schubert, Doc Coleman, Gary Lester

Things we discuss include:

• Thesis Theme
• Exploit Scanner
• TAC (Theme Authenticity Checker)
• Jetpack
• Peanuts Anime
• PayPal
• Square mobile payments
• ZenCart
• Dreamhost
• imhosted
• Akismet (comment spam block)
• AVH First Defense Against Spam
• SEO Pack
• WordPress Database Backup
• Role Scoper (manage multiple moderators/admins)
• NexGen Gallery (photo management)
• CFoms II (form management)
• Contact Form 7 (form management)
• WordPress mobile control apps
• Install WordPress locally to do faster edits and testing
• Artisteer Theme Creator
• WordPress Mobile Edition (automatically present your site to best fit phones)
• PodPress (podcast management)
• Note: regardless of what panelists said, it is being updated again
• Powerpress (podcast management)
• Note: for statistics you need to sign up for a (free) Blubrry account which ties them into your echo system. On a plus note, their system can audio advertising to bring you revenue from your podcast

Thank you to everyone who came to the panel and asked so many great questions! And of course, thanks to the Balticon organizers for making this discussion possible.

Music is a collaboration between myself and John Taylor Williams

I recently purchased a TC-Electronics VoiceLive Play when my hand me down CreateXT started getting flaky. Overall I’m very happy with the device. It is solidly built and extremely easy to use and program. The controls are logically laid out and it’s got all the inputs and outputs that I need.

The hardware has a great, solid feel. You’re not afraid that you will break it when you stomp on it during a show. The input and output ports are pretty standard for TC-Helicon: an xlr mic input (which handles dynamic and condenser mics, delivering phantom power), stereo xlr outs, a headphone jack, an aux-in for connecting a music player, an external foot pedal connector, mini usb port, and power.

That aux-in is a great feature. The pedal has a practice mode that lets you kick back and listen to a song and sing along. It will try to auto-cancel the vocals so that you can take over the lead ala Karaoke. This has varying degrees of effectiveness depending on how the original song was recorded (or vocal effects on the original) which is normal for this feature on any device and works reasonably well.

In practice mode you are presented with live statistics of what note you are singing, as well as how accurate you are. This lets you train your voice, by seeing what notes you have a hard time hitting (or holding). It’s a bit confusing to read, but is truly helpful.

The aux-in can also be used to route an output from an instrument – and whether the source is instrument or recording, the unit will detect the fundamental key passing through it and use that to dial in it’s pitch correction (ie: auto tune). It also has little condenser microphones built into either side so that it can do the same thing without plugging a cable into it.. more on that later.

The usb port allows you to use the pedal as an audio source to record directly to your computer, as well as use their software to update the firmware and manage your presets. While I like being able to manage presets in this way, the software leaves a lot to be desired. It is quite limited and cumbersome when you have a lot of presets that you want to move around.

Preset management in the software is very basic – you can rename and reorder them, but not change their settings or “twiddle the knobs” so to speak. I wish that the software was more akin to Line6, allowing you to tweak and change all aspects with your mouse, as I find this much easier than using the knobs and buttons on the unit.

I do have some things I really don’t like about the device. Primarily that there isn’t very fine grained control – especially over the core tone. It’s designed to be “easy” to use, so all of the settings are very basic/shallow and rely on the presets.

The overall sound quality is great, and like with most things, the effects sound good when used in moderation. Many of the harmony and other effects tend to “sound” like effects when it’s just you in a room singing – there is a “digital” sound that’s obvious you’re voice is being processed.

For some of the effects this makes sense because they are supposed to be extreme (T-Pain style auto-tune, alien and robot voices) but for others it’s distracting. When playing with a full band this isn’t as noticeable since the natural reverb of a room or club masks it. Because of this, it would only be useful in a live environment, not in the studio which makes sense having the word “Live” in it’s name and all

More about limitations:
According to the manual, you can set tone on each patch/preset as an “effect”, but there is no such configuration page in the settings (the manual says there are eight effects, but there are actually only seven – the missing one being Tone). I updated the firmware to the latest version, but it’s still not there. For overall tone you don’t have any kind of EQ, gate, or compression settings – just a handful of presets, which is disappointing.

The advertising leads you to believe that the ambient mics will pick up the sound from the stage and atomatically set the key for harmony and auto tune effects. While this is true, it is limited to a single instrument being close to the unit; ie: it’s not going to work sitting on the ground in fron of you with the whole band playing, it would need to be close to a single guitar amp, or keyboard. Since it takes aux in, this is kind of useless. It is isn’t a big deal, really, but a let down. I primarily play bass in my band and do background vocals, so it doesn’t really apply to me.

Definitely worth the money, and some of my gripes may be fixed with future software updates. Depending on your needs, some of the other pedals in the line may be more appropriate. Even with the limitations, this is perfect for a lead singer, or a backup singer like me who isn’t doing solo performance with a guitar or keyboard.

For a score, I give it 4 out of 5 – a solid buy.

I’m excited to be speaking on two panels this year with Eric S. Raymond! Don’t worry if you don’t know who he is, but his work touches your life multiple times a day.

Click through for a list of the events I will be participating in. Come on by and say hello- I’d love to meet you!

The schedule has been a bit ethereal this year, but I’m pretty confident that these are accurate. There is always a possibility that some of the times or rooms may change – so please check back before heading out to make sure you’ve got current info.

The Writers Guide to Guns
When: Friday 10:00pm – 10:50pm
Where: Derby

It’s not a clip, it’s a magazine! Some stories have pistols, some have roscoe’s others play with the trusty sawed off shotgun. With all the different facets of firearms that make their way into stories how big of an impact that they make is all dependent on the writer or audio producer.

How do you play with firearms?

Beyond the Wall Live!
When: Saturday 8:00pm – 8:50pm
Where: Derby

We’ll be doing a live recording of SpecFicMedia Presents Beyond The Wall: A Game of Thrones Podcast

Come hear us discuss the latest episode of HBO’s outstanding adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.

WordPress 101
When: Sunday 3:00pm – 3:50pm
Where: Derby

Learning to go from novice to hero using the WordPress content management system.

Science Fiction Title Chain
When: Sunday 6:00pm – 6:50pm
Where: Parlor 3041

It’s a game! The audience provides the words for a science fiction story or novel’s title, the panelists arrange them in a more or less coherent order. Then each panelist and an audience member who is not an author come up with a descriptive synopsis.

In honor of our Science GoH, every synopsis MUST include one of these words: physics, quantum OR the phrase “coolest stuff”.

The audience votes on the synopsis they like best.

Open Source Podcasting: From A to Z
When: Sunday 10:00pm – 10:50pm
Where: Derby

Open source and free software allow the beginning podcaster to get started for just the cost of minimal gear and an internet connection.

What most podcasters may not realize is that open tools go well beyond Audacity including support for some surprising audio formats as well as options for no hassle feed management.

Join Thomas Gideon and the panel as they discusses their techniques for producing a mature, multiple format and feed podcast using all open, free tools from scripting to upload including options and alternatives to help meet whatever needs your show may have.