[Editors note: This was written yesterday.. and seeing as Matt bought the MacBook, its likely he may start posting endlessly on the subject, and thus asks me to apologize on his behalf.] 

I’m sitting here thinking “hmm, I wonder if they’re in stores yet?” Should I race out and buy one? I’m so frightened.. yet in a rather Mark Hanser-ish way, tingly…. Ok.. so let this be an entry to help rationalize the damage I’m about to do to my fiscal situation…I don’t know if I can rationalize it, really.  Do I even need a laptop? I mean.. hell yeah, I want one, but do I need it?

I have a crapy laptop.. the sort a self respecting person refuses to take out in public.. Plus it has no hard disk space… and I can’t really do anything with it. Right now it rests by my bed side as a DVD player.. and even for that it sucks.. cause of the screen.. depending on the angle of view.. you can’t see things.. and you certainly can’t do design work on it.. plus it’s a PC so half my software won’t run on the damn thing.

Yeah.. there’s lots of reasons to want a new laptop…  and yes.. I do believe in the notion of having both a laptop and a desktop.. ether that or just a really powerful laptop.. but seeing as I have a monster of a desktop.. the laptop need seems less.. is it just for computing when I’m not sitting in this chair? 

I wonder how such a laptop could change my life. When I got the cheesy laptop.. I thought “oh cool, I’ll be able to work anywhere,” and I fantasized about the meaning and implications of this. But the reality was.. I was lucky if I got 2 hours of battery life out of it.. you could barely watch a whole movie on battery.. I certainly couldn’t do design work on it.. and lets face it.. it’s a pc, and who likes PCs? And there was the issue that it was rather heavy to have to lug around.

It did become my main computer for a time… My G4 PowerMac was so much more wimpy.. all it had going for it was hard drive space.. 

Latter that night, having picked up a new MacBook

Yup, I got the MacBook. How is it? It’s pretty awesome.. I have a video review I hope to put together..

There’s some technical issues.. I’m planing on replacing the hard drive.. which means I can’t really install any software that’s copy protection scheme ties it to the disk.. So.. so far about all I got on there is DP and Reason.. none of the Native Instruments stuff, Liquid Mix can’t run on it cause it has no hard drive..  

I suppose I could put some of that stuff on there in demo mode but.. thing is it literally takes about a day to install all my software.. and I’m not even sure that it would all totally fit.. and what if, in the interest in disk space.. if I should want to not put certain types of stuff on the laptop.. how should I divide my stuff up?

So yeah.. long story short.. I have limited software on there for now.. as I wait for a new drive to arrive.. once I get around to buying the thing…

I will say that battery life is way better then my old Dell… it’s also lighter, better constructed, less bulky, better designed, better OS, significantly more power all around… better features.. and.. well, costs a good deal more. (The old one was free after all) 

So.. I’m already feeling like the experience will be substantially different then what my experience was before.. We’ll see. 

So, if you haven’t heard.. a couple hours ago from this writing, Apple announced new laptops.. revisions from the MacBook Air to MacBook’s to MacBook Pros.. I’m not feeling totally up to speed on things… but I’ll give you where I’m coming from.. But I’ll give you the basics of what’s new, and follow it up from there.

What’s the hubbub about?

First off, what’s new and exciting?

• New “unibody:”  Stronger, lighter, thiner, nicer design
• Multi Touch Track Pad supporting gestures
• New Screen: Better color
• All Around more speed: processor, RAM speed, bus speed
• New Graphics system.. Apple claims up to 5 times the speed of the old laptops (Adobe CS4 stuff ought to really take advantage of this)

Ok, so that’s really about it..  Contrasts between MacBook and Mac Book Pro

• MacBook Pro offers two graphics processors.. one that consumes less power, the other is more powerful.. where as the MacBook only has one. 
• 13″ versus 15″
• 4.5 pounds for the MacBook, 5 pounds for the Mac Book Pro
• MacBook has 2 USB 2.0 ports, where as the MacBook Pro has 2 USB 1.0 ports plus a Firewire 800 port.. and oh yeah.. the MacBook Pro has a ExpressCard/34 slot.. 
• MacBook Pros have faster processors.. though not by large margins
• The new MacBooks Start at $1300, the Pros at $2000.

Out side of all that.. you do get more hard disk space on the pros.. and blah blah blah… but its all custom configureable from Apple’s website. There’s a New MacBook Air on the way.. which is significantly more attractive to me then there first model..  so.. What computer makes sense for you, of course, has to do with what your needs are.. to illustrate this concept, I’ll give you what I’m looking at. 

Matt’s Laptop Needs

I own a Mac Pro.. and an outdated cheesy pc laptop. In a new laptop I’m really looking for a secondary sorta Mac.. so for this reason “cheap” is good… There’s been roomers that Apple would announce super cheap ultra portables.. If they did, the question for me would be “is it the right mix of stuff?” This didn’t happen, though might still happen in the future.. one would think this could have a huge effect on Mac market share if it did.. so one assumes there’s some likely hood to it.. but even in a secondary laptop I do want “some power.”

I do everything from video to sound to animation to graphics to web stuff.. and who knows what I’m forgetting to mention.. all of which like power.. but um.. ok, here’s what I’m really looking at:

• To be able to do presentations
• I’m thinking of looking at doing work as a live sound engineer, and to have a system for making those live recordings.. and latency willing.. possibly effects processing.. where I can use my effects as a pose to what a house system has on offer..  Along with this goes a making multitrack recording of live performances that then can be mixed and potentially done any number of things with.
• Live Rig as musician.. use my synths and effects.. this can be my rig.
• The usual not being tethered to a desktop stuff.
• Some software allows you to connect multiple computers in order to increase your power.. like render farms for 3D graphics.. this kind of thing.
• If I were doing web work.. I could show you right from my computer.. what I was working on for you.. This is really ideal.
• Being able to watch movies portably.

Because I have a Mac Pro.. this laptop being secondary.. power not being so important and portability being more important then power or other considerations..

I find myself looking at the 13″ MacBooks  

Size matters 

The first issue is screen space.. 13″ is not happy time for pro apps… productivity is an issue.. but you can connect up a second monitor.. and I happen to own a 17″ monitor that’s not getting to much play these days.. so instant duel monitor at home.. and 13″ does have a portability advantage over larger laptops. And we’re only talking about 4.5 pounds.

But I want my Firewire Port!

Currently my studio features 2 pieces of Firewire Gear.. an audio interface and Liquid Mix 16. The latter is a DPS processor that, do to how it connects to your computer.. has huge latency issues making it useless for live applications.. Still.. not being able to use it with a 13″ laptop is still an issue. 

On the interface side of things.. stuffs a little more complex. My current interface would like to be updated.. the trouble is that, generally speaking, firewire interfaces are better then there USB brethren: USB 2.0 doesn’t have the same data rates.. not to mention requires more processing power… so in USB interfaces you don’t get the same number of ins and outs, and or sample rates.. as you can get over firewire. Things like MicPres are more important to actual sound quality.. but the better Pres are often limited to more high end gear.. and that gear is on the Firewire side.. it’s sort of suggestive that I might have to buy 2 interfaces.

Of course, as it turns out, my studio does have 2 USB interfaces: a Kore 1 controller plus an H4 Portable recorder.. the latter featuring phantom power even.. So really the only reason I would need to invest in a new interface is for live applications where I had a band going into the laptop.. and it turns out there are fairly cheap interfaces that can handle the mount ins I’d likely be wanting to handle.

I suppose the other issue is most video cameras want the firewire port… and Firewire drives are surely preferable.

So those are really my only complaints / Issues

There maybe more issues when I look more closely at the subject.. we’ll see.

The model I’m likely to go with probably runs $1400 plus a kind of extended warranty deal. In addition to that I’m thinking of getting a Mobile Me account and a $500 1 TB Time Capsule.. and a $50 AirPort Extreme Card for my Mac Pro..

Of course the trouble is.. I have limited money till a CD matures in a few months.. so I don’t know but..

And the other thing is a social media friend is looking to sell his old Mac Pro.. I was feeling pretty serious about buying that.. till Apple announced the new MacBooks..

Later that night: 

Well, I just discovered that hard drives are super cheap for this sorta computer.. we’re talking $80 for 500GB.. which means Matt’s going to go for a cheaper laptop and buy a drive to swap in there.. So.. anybody wanna buy a lap top drive? 

If you haven’t seen these videos, or heard about them, perhaps its time you have? The iPhone is turning into a pretty interesting little music making platform.. today we highlight to programs.

Beat Maker 

Ok, tell me this isn’t uber cool!? 

Did I mention it was only 20 bucks? 

iDrum

Guess how much this one will set you back? Try like $5. 

I thought the following was just fun.. an example of someone doing something with iDrum: 

lol, guess that’s what happens when you bring music making technology to the unwashed masses! 

Well I personally haven’t gotten a chance to check these out yet but.. you can expect a full report in the not to distant future, I’m guessing. And so thus end todays journey into music production on your iPhone.. dig it!

Great, just lost a post I had spent the day writing.. in a computer crash. Fun.. 

So what the hell, why not regress to talking about Apple’s new 3G iPhone that Steve Jobs announced in his Key Note at this here WWDC 08.  I figure I can do apple analysis just as good as the next guy anyway.. so why not?

So, what’s new and exciting in the land of the Apples iPhone platform? For those of us inclined to follow such things, including the surrounding rumor mill.. not much really… Thing’s are more or less going as expected, though perhaps not as exciting as expected, and perhaps that might have something to do with Apple’s less then amazing stock price around the event? Aww, but what the speculator’s missed.. which is the most important thing for Apple’s iPhone business would be the price cut of the new iPhones… price cut in half!

Why is this exciting to Apple’s business? Well the old iPhone price forced it to compete with other “smart phones.” Smart phones being a kind of ultra portable / mobile computing platform.. In this market.. smart phones do a lot that the iPhone doesn’t.. where the iPhone kicks the but on conventional smart phones is in the user interface / design / experience department.. which is literally revolutionizing the cell phone business today. The trouble is, I think it’s safe to say, if you’re serious about your smart phone, you probably won’t give it up for an iPhone because there’s a smart phone feature or two you live by.. Of course Apple will have a robust ecosystem of apps running on the iPhone shortly.. and when that happens the balance of power will shift, to one degree or another, in Apple’s favor.. but lets face it boys and girls, the smart phone is probably not the largest area of the cell phone market.

Cutting the iPhone’s price in half means it’s now competing against phones that are, to put it a certain sorta way, “much less smart,” and when you now consider what you get for $200 or $300… things have gone a little crazy. So, what do you get?

1.  A mobile gaming platform: I don’t know how good or bad the iPhone, is in practice, as a gaming platform.. Apple doesn’t exactly have a great reputation among gamers.. but the novelty of being able to play games that rely on a touch screen interface / the iPhone’s ability to sense how it’s being moved through space.. you at least have something interesting going on.. It would seem to be the wii of portable gaming. Getting this for $200.. if it turns out to indeed be a killer game platform.. well that would be reason enough to buy it, wouldn’t it?
2. You get an iPod.. Boys and girls, do you realize that the iPod Nano costs $200 for the 8 GB version, and the 8GB iPhone costs $200? The iPhone, if you just thought of it as an iPod.. is a MUCH better iPod.. I mean you get a big old wide screen on that there iPhone.. a very very nice one at that! Not to mention that the user interface of the iPhone is a good deal better!
3. You get a kind of mobile internet platform.. and in my view, this is probably where the iPhone outshines everything out there the most.. The mobile internet, as anyone who’s interested in the mobile web will tell you, is a world with amazing possibilities.. and realities that truly suck. Developing websites for the mobile web sucks because there’s a zillion web browsers on a zillion different phones.. and for you’re site to work well on any of them.. well you’re going to have to specially develop for each particular browser.. which is expensive!  Consequently.. nothing too amazing is happening on the mobile web today.. but on the iPhone we have safari which, as it happens, is a pretty good web standards compliant browser.. which means it can view all current well designed websites… and it really doesn’t take that much to optimize a site for the iPhone.. I mean we are mainly just talking css here, right?
4. Yes boys and girls, we finally got our GPS? GPS, if you don’t know, is a groovy little technology that.. via the magic of global positioning.. can tell you where you are at any given moment. Now why would you want something like that? Well the obvious application is if you’re lost, as I often am, it can give you directions.. another sorta obvious advantage is location based search “show me the closes gas station, I’m on E” But wait, the fun doesn’t stop here.. there’s mobile social networking.. “hey look, my friend is just down the street!  Hey friend, wanna do lunch?” Aww.. stalkers have never had it so good! But wait, there’s more.. there’s games like Geo Cashing.. which I wont go into here.. and.. my favorite.. it probably wouldn’t take too much work to develop a program where by you.. press a button every time you take a picture with your camera [in my case I’m not talking about the iPhone camera] and your iphone generates an XML file with those times, and a “Geo Tag” which contains your GPS coordinates with the time you pressed that button with where u was.. and you have another little program that looks at the time code in you’re comera’s picture’s meta tags, matches the two.. and automatically puts geo tags in your pictures.. how cool is that? Of course I won’t go into that here ether, and thought it might sound like a whole other language from the one you know.. you’re just going to have to trust me, its cool.
5. Organizational apps stuff: You got you’re calendar, you’re address book.. your etc.. synching with your computer.. I’m not real big on this sorta thing.. but if I ever get my act together and get organized.. I’m sure this’ll be uber groovy.
6. Did I mention it’s a kind of mobile computing platform? Time will tell what this looks like.. but its exciting.. 
7. Did I mention it’s 3G? Well the deal here is you have a MUCH faster internet experience.. but at the cost of battery life. My understanding is you might be able to turn the 3G on and off.. which will help.

Latter that day:

So, will Matt buy one?

The big thing I wanted was a video camera.. I real want the ability to stream live from anywhere.. and for the moment, to do that, you need one of them “really smart smart phones.” [which costs around 4 or 5 hundred dollars] An this is the big thing causing me to want to kind of hold off on an iPhone.. 

On the other hand.. though I’d probably want the $300 16GB model.. the part about what you get for $200.. has me getting ready to make the jump.

Top reasons why I’ll probably get one: 

1. I would have had a lot easier of a time getting to last nights tweet up.. where I spent a lot of time walking around because I couldn’t remember the name of the place the meet up was at.. and went to the wrong places.. if I had an iPhone.. I could have found it pretty quick… 
2. I go to lots of meet ups as a part of the local social media scene.. these often involve going to places I’ve never been before, and thus often involve getting lost.
3. Being able to have email on the go is huge. I’m just not a phone person.. the idea that I can still be connected to the world via email, while on the go..  solves a lot of issues.
4. Being connected….  being able to tweet on the go.. hell, being able to blog on the go.. being connected to my social networks on the go.. that has huge value to me.
5. Just the idea of having a cell phone, that I actually use, actually own.. has great value to me.

Is There anything else to be considered? 

Surely different people will have different things to consider differently.. but I think the only real thing I’ve left out in all this is the topic of calling plans. I don’t know what the the story is here.. I read, on friendfeed, a friends twitter..  which talked about the 3G data plan as being $10 a month more then it was for the previous iPhone.. perhaps this has something to do with how cheap the new iPhone is? Well, that friendfeed twitter seemed a little suspect for reasons I won’t go into here.. but yeah, I think it’s reasonable that we might see calling plans, including unlimited data.. starting somewhere around.. I want to say $60 or $70 a month? It doesn’t strike me as too unreasonable a price.. but it’s surely something you need to figure into all of this.

Yeah.. so I don’t know, what do yo think of this iPhone business? Did I mention that I don’t really know anything about smart phones, or any of this stuff I’m talking about? [editors note, always beware the unreliable narrator!]

Ok, how about some commentary on Apple’s iPhone announcement from yours truly? Before we get started, let me remind you that Apple is still dead to me.. ok

You can watch the apple announcement here. Basically Apple’s released the iPhone SKD, so developers can develop apps for the iPhone.. which will be sold and controlled through Apple.. Apple takes a 30% cut… many apps will no doubt be free.. and Apple has done a good amount of work to make the iPhone more ready for.. enterprise stuff.. which translates to making it better for working with your company..  basically.

Matt’s commentary

What really impressed me the most is how capable the iPhone is as a gaming platform. I figured.. just for the iPhone interface, and what have you.. well I didn’t expect it to have any kind of 3D graphics ability to speak of.. but if you watch the above announcement, you can see what Sega and EA, in just a couple of weeks of work, where able to do with the iPhone. I dare say it makes the iPhone a gaming platform! One who’s controls are scarily close to that of the Wii.  

What’s also impressive is that the iPhone is really poised to be a whole new kind of platform.. as a kind of mobile.. almost computer, with internet… the built in camera, etc. Which, of course, has been an impressive part of the iPhone all along.. It’s just that maturation has been taking some time, I suppose you could say.

It’s hard to truly envision what the possibilities of the platform likely are. What we take for granted on our computers is.. computing is context sensitive.. on some level.. its just that on a computer the context is static, where as.. in the mobile world.. its not. So its like… as you go about your day.. what kind of app would you like…. what would serve you? How could your iPhone serve you?

I can think of many types of things I might like.. but I’m not entirely sure what the iPhone is truly capable of.. processor wise. I live in a world of high powered computing.. so most of what I use a computer for.. I can never have enough power for.. so when I think of things.. I usually think of things that might need a little power.

For instance, could you build media arts tools into an iPhone? Lets say you record a message into it.. and want to trim it up.. turn it into an MP3, and send it some place.. or hell.. just use it as the message you want to leave on an answering machine? Would it be possible to, via the iPhone’s built in wifi, or perhaps via the internet for that matter, to bring video into the iPhone and edit that? Could you use the built in camera to do stop motion animation? Could you make a little art program / image editor? Could you make a little sound tool? I don’t even necessarily know why you’d want to.. I suppose for working with utters, seesmic, and the like.. emerging social media stuff.. these kinds of tools would be great to have on the go.. 

Mobile Social Networking 

I’ve always thought mobile social networking would be an interesting thing.. the equivalent of finding your date on MySpace.. accept.. transfer that to some other space.. could we look at modeling human interactivity and how this could add to a particular social experience? 

One thing I think of is.. something like “the tracks people leave.” So you go to an online store and you comment on a product.. and other people comment on that to.. and this allows us to see how humans, on a mass sorta scale.. harnessing the wisdom of the crowds, so to speak, feel about things in cyber space.. but what if this same idea where applied to real world locations? I mean there’s the obvious.. lets look at user generated reviews to this restaurant we just wondered by, or even into.. drilling all the way down to particular menu items.. 

Maybe we get gossip on the individual sales people at a given store. Maybe the notion of local could play a roll in community building.. like you’re walking around the city when you realize, not from a lamp pole, but from your iPhone.. that Cindy’s cat is missing.

Well.. I’m just speaking out loud here.. random stuff.

Closing Thoughts 

The SDK is free.. but if you want to test directly on an iPhone, or distribute your stuff through Apple.. it’ll cost you $100.. and with that you’ll get some tech support. It seems like a cool thing to explore, and I know its something I want to do.. but with all that’s on my plate.. I don’t expect I’ll get the chance to too soon.

But all this does make the iPhone that much more enticing to me. Right now.. its just a question of getting a faster internet, plus a video camera built in.. so I can do qik.. if they do that, I’m sold. 

I just bumped into this Mac Pro review on ars technica. It’s the first review of the Mac Pro I’ve read..  It’s probably a little narcissistic to say this, but if you’re interested in what I’m using, it’s probably a good review to read. The difference between there review unit, and mine, is mines has 2.8 GHz processors, as a pose to the 3 GHz system they used.. and of course I got the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, while they used the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, which is in Apple’s default configuration (and as they say, kind of a cheesy card for such a pro system). So they have faster processors and I have a better graphics card.  Oh, and mine’s a little cheaper then there’s.

Even though I own the computer, I’m still interested to see what reviewers have to say.. As I’m coming to it from such an old system… I have no real idea of where the Mac Pro fits in the scheme of things. On the bases of this question, the ars technica review didn’t really help me all that much. For instance, I wonder what the power difference is between an iMac and a Mac Pro, or a Mac Book Pro, and a Mac Pro. Is it really worth all the extra money, from the perspective of power? Further, there benchmarks don’t have anything to do with what I’m using it for.. which is sound, video, and animation. I suppose the last problem was.. they are so technical.. they don’t bother to break stuff down, or explain some of there new fangled techno jargon.

I guess where things come out is… Well.. its interesting that if you took a single 2.8 GHz core from the new Mac Pro, and compared it to.. if they even had them, a single 2.8 GHz core from the old Mac Pro, the new one would perform significantly faster in a number of instances.. The reason being faster RAM, bigger buss, and more cache on the processor.. 

From my perspective.. the advantage of the Mac Pro is being able to have a better graphics card.. this is big if you’re interested in animation… I like being able to have so many internal drives.. mine has 3 500 GB drives in it, plus the default drive.. 2 of which are set up in a RAID. I like being able to have 2 24″ HD monitors attached to it… and I like having room to upgrade, as far as RAM is concerned. These advantages mean a lot to me..  I don’t know if they mean enough to be worth giving up on a portable.. but it does allow me to set the trajectory of my work in a different direction. 

A look at the Mac Books and Mac Book Pros. 

I had planned to get a Mac Book Pro but, when I was buying, it was clear that the then current Mac Book Pro was at the end of its product cycle and I hate to buy new computers then.. So that was one of the bigger reason behind going with the Mac Pro. In the last week Apple has come out with new Mac Books, and Mac Book Pros.. which leaves me feeling a little pissed off.  Pissed because my Mac Pro only came in the last week or so.. because of how long it took Apple to configuring and ship it.. unacceptable!  So what was the advantage of buying this then? Well, again, it facilitates me going in a different direction then I otherwise would have.. Consequently Apple is Dead to me! (click here for the Apple is dead to me back story)

I have, in my head, the notion of buying yet another computer.. in maybe 2 years. If things stayed, technologically, as the are today.. having bought a Mac Pro puts me in the position of feeling like.. it would feel fine if my next computer was a Mac Book..  For me a Mac Book doesn’t make a very good primary computer..  slow graphics card, small screen..  But if you have a primary computer that meets these bills, even if it’s a little older.. then you’re demands are a little less. Plus, with at least a few apps, you can network your computer’s together to have more power.

The new Mac Book offers more hard drive space standard, and a faster processor.. It’s got 2 finger scrolling, though I don’t know if that’s really new or not. The Mac Pro is the same story… faster processor and more drive space standard..

If you ask me, the extra hard drive space is “about time.” I say this simply because, when I was shopping for a Mac Pro, I really felt the need to add additional disk space to it.. which came at something of a premium.. So this kind of a big thing for me.

Oh yes.. and the Mac Book Pro does come with a multi touch mouse.. same deal as the Mac Air, which is very cool. 

It’s been a while, ha? Man, I’ve been suffering through a bit of a nightmare. My old computer died.. and with it all my passwords and user names.. and access to all my sites.. and so it’s taken me this long to get back in here.. I’ve been blogging, in the mean time, on my myspace.. if you’re into reading me and find  that nothings happening here.. that’s a place you could always go and look.

So lots has been happening since last I spoke here. I’m not even sure what I’ve said here and what I haven’t.. I don’t mean to repeat myself.. but um.. I don’t know, I think today’s blog post ought to be a random smattering of.. just whatever might be in my head and wanting to express its self.

I finally got Reason running on the new computer, and I’ve started my first project… Reason on a Mac Pro is very different then reason on a G4 Power Mac, or for that matter Reason on a budget PC laptop from a few years back. My suspicion is that Reason doesn’t have great multithreading.. which means it’s not great for taking advantage of multiple processor cores.. which is at the heart of what makes this new computer so powerful..   I’m only using, at the peak points of my current project, about 10% of my processing power, but Reason tells me I’m about half way through my processing power. I’m not sure exactly how this works but…

A big part of the difference, between working with Reason on the G4 versus Mac Pro, is how many effects and instruments you can use before your computer starts to choke. Normally I’m working under fairly strict restrictions.. but so far on the Mac Pro.. I have no sense of limitations.. or at least not of limitations that I in anyway feel.

The implication is… well I just keep throwing instruments and effects into the rack.. I’ll sorta be thinking “well, for the next section I want to sorta go in this direction” and I assemble a kind of sonic pallet for doing so.. but I feel as though I’m putting together a larger pallet then I’m actually using.. Or.. the project simply hasn’t grown into the pallet yet.

An implication of this is you’re projects can become a little unwieldy.. Suddenly you have to organize and manage about 10 or 20 times as much stuff.. You’re thinking along the lines “how can I take advantage of the power difference between the new system and the old one?” An obvious answer is that you’re now able to enter a world of sonic complexity that is many order of magnitudes beyond where you previously were at. All of which is great, but it also magnifies the labor in equal measure.

It’s been a little while since I’ve done much with Reason.. since I was doing serious sound work.. not since november really.. So a part of what I’m doing now is really just warming up.. really just sorta.. well trying to get to where I was at before.

You know.. my music production process is a little complicated. It’s the sorta thing where every breath you breath.. every bit of energy, you can put into it.. At that point there’s a richness, and a complexity.. that… well its as if your head can only hold so much at any given time.. and so to fully jump in these waters, you need to be willing to make a deep commitment..  and there’s a kind of transitional period between normal life, and the life of one who’s spending time in these waters.

Once I’m fully warmed up.. the challenge is to take this stuff to a whole new level. I suppose the trouble is that Reason is only a small fraction of the new software studio environment.. I’m also going from Live 6, to Live 7, going from Komplete 3 to Komplete 5, and going from a very old version of Digital Performer, that I never really mastered, to the new version. So as deeply as I might be trying to jump into Reason.. it’s really only a very small part of a larger world to jump into.

On my Zarmattathustra’s Deep Space Adventures project, I anticipated much of where I pan on going now. ZDPA was about trying to do the most I could with as little as I had.. that 867 G4…  So I explored creative possibilities that circumvented the limited processor resources.. which forced me to explore working in ways I hadn’t before. Well.. in many ways that’s where I’m going now.. accept add to that having a hell of a lot more power.. like maybe by a factor of 24 or so?

I’ve set before myself a notion of a project that would take 2 years to complete, but central in this notion is the idea of mystery. What this means is.. yeah, sure.. we have this 2 year guideline… but we don’t even know what the guideline really means!

Along time ago I was thinking.. If I could only get this set of tools together.. just imagine what I could do. Well, now its time to explore that for real. Will it be anywhere near my dreams? I don’t really know.

The guideline… lets just atomize it. Lets just talk about what we REALLY want to accomplish.. not what we think we should, or to worry about ways of rationalizing what we really want. I think there’s a sense of a timeline for skill development. Another words.. I’m interested in what I’ll be capable of at whatever period of time.. perhaps even more then I’m interested in producing finished, or great, product.

Another important thing is to actually produce finished project.. hopefully of some greatness.. and actually bring it to market, and try and make some money from it. Actually turn all this crazy art stuff into a business!

Do you spy a contradiction in here? Well I think what I’m saying is.. you could look at a 2 year span of time and think “what could I achieve in that time period?” I think what I’m saying is that my metric for success is not what I can achieve in that time period in a purely products sense.. I think product is a part of it.. is central to the journey and adventure.. but its needs to be balanced with other ends as well.. which must be given equal weight…. or weight equal to.. however important I want to make them.. Or I mean its an open question as to what the order of wills ought to be… this is a part of the mystery we must manage.

A few latter:

I think Reason is inspiring this thought.. along with the prospects of new sound software. In the mix of things I’m planning on taking on, sound is the part that I already have the strongest mastery of. Another words it doesn’t have a steep learning curve associated with it. I want to go nuts with music, but that doesn’t necessarily forward the cause of mastering steep learning curves, though it does further many things.

If sound were to be the center of what I’m doing.. Perhaps 3D and video.. perhaps I don’t need to bring these things to a super level of mastery.. I mean if these are projects that are more bout the sound then video.. I say this knowing full well that animation and motion graphics are important to me.. creating an aesthetic experience is important to me.. but maybe…

A few latter:

Well I guess the question could be like.. how complex a given thing is. Ok, we all know that high level 3D takes about 6 months to get so you can actually do it.. but lets say you carved out a kind of niche.. particular parts of the whole where you were to put your central focus on.

So lets say we want to start by creating some basic models… well maybe not all that basic but… If we are doing a space opera.. we probably want to build some space ships, some and some “sets.” If photography is playing a key roll in our adventures.. much of the sets could be.. almost like faux 3D.. like you take a photograph and cut it up, and use parts of it for different things.. instead of going to the trouble of modeling a forest.. you have pictures of clumps of forest.. maybe even video of forests… that get projected onto 3D Models that are.. well I don’t know what exactly.. but simple anyway. We’re not shooting for realism.. we are abstracting things, surreal-izing them if you will. And doing so in such a way that they require less mastery of the over all learning curve.

And we’d probably want to create some characters in here somewhere.. but the point is.. is it possible to get great results by limiting our scope in certain areas.. there by managing the learning demands? If I can create a visual language that only uses a part of the total tool set.. I can then bring that to mastery in a much shorter time period.  

Latter:

Ok, lets post this sucker. 

Well I’m back from my shopping spree… and so here I am, blogging the story.

It started with the realization that via my Father’s ATM card I could get $1K out of the ATM at a shot.. so out to the ATM we go.. but apparently the ATM didn’t want to give me $1K. Ok, I’m new to all this stuff… but what the hell? Why is banking such a pain in the ass?

From here it was off to Guitar Center, they where having some sort of mysterious sale. Guitar Center is a somewhat evil institution.. or it seems to me this way every time I go.. Well sometimes they can be cool.. I actually am on something close to a first name basis with many of them… after all I seem to be helping them put there kids through college and all that.. but I don’t really trust these guys..

Do to the mysterious sale, the place was pretty crowded.. a sales guy.. trying to get buy.. sorta bumping into me.. you end up bumping into people an awful lot at times like these.. And just the way the guy calls me.. “buddy” or was it “partner” or I don’t know what it was.. but it was definitely creepy. 

Prior to leaving the house, I had kind of gone over my budget to see where I was.. and what I discovered was.. well that what I’ve been looking to buy is a little bit more then what I’ve budgeted for. This meant today’s shopping spree would likely be less then I had planned.

It turned out, there was no compelling reason for me to spend any money at Guitar Center.  So it was off to Microcenter.

I haven’t really done too much shopping at Microcenter.. but I don’t know of two many computer stores closer by.. I recently took a field trip to the local best buy and.. well I was unimpressed… It’s surely the place someone goes when one doesn’t know any better…  So it was off to Microcenter, which was way off in Boston. (more then a 44 min drive)

I had gotten a little news paper thing with various sales.. They had 500 GB SATA hard drives, on sale, for $104. I’m planning on working with high definition video… and even with standard definition video.. you never really have enough hard disk space when working with video. So I thought “hmm, maybe I should get 3 of these” and I did.

The sales people at Microcenter, as near I can tell, work on commissions… but unlike Guitar Center, I’m inclined to trust these guys.. And unlike an Apple store.. you get the feeling that we are in touch with reality at Microcenter, as a pose to being in touch with our desire, at the expense of reality, as we are at Apple. In fact I was really blown away by how good the shopping experience was at Microcenter.

Next morning:

My “tool budget” was really something I did to try and give me a framework for thinking.. so that I wouldn’t go too crazy.. one must be smart about these things.. its just a way of.. thinking through this stuff.

One of the things you get into is.. if you shoot off in 5 different directions, you can’t really go as deeply as if you just went in one. I suppose it’s all about trade offs.  The question is, what and where do you want to make your trade offs?

For me there’s a real process to all this.. a process that’s like a spider weaving his web.. he doesn’t think about how he’s going to build the web, he simply does it out of his nature. So.. I guess what I’m doing is trying to explore all these subjects in order to get an image of these worlds.. that’s one phase. Another phase is dreaming about what you want to do.. what you could do.

This is sorta like my process in general..  I’m thinking mostly intellectually: I have so many ideas that I work through, so much information that I’m always processing, that it’s entirely impossible to keep it all in my head at any one time..  So there are often times where I find myself in a position where I have no idea how I got there.. Or sometimes you’re positions come under pressure.. where you are forced to articulate you’re position… in order to maintain your ground.

To the subject of budgets.. it’s a little like this.. like “why am I making these choices, or thinking in these ways?” Well, I take a step back and realize that my true center has something to do with multimedia.. I like the camera I do.. because its perfect for just putting in your pocket, it’s not really that expensive, and it’s capable of great results. Sure.. It doesn’t put me in the greatest position to call myself a serious videographer.. but you know what? I’m not really trying to be a serious videographer. I mean sure, I want to make this feature length film.. do this crazy project.. and make it amazing..

But in a lot of ways the film is more about sound then it is about video… to say nothing of animation.. I mean the sound is probably going to be the center of it all. Hmm.. as I think about it now, I realize I haven’t posted any of the drafts that talk about the actual project ideas.. so I guess this is just a preview of it?

Anyway, my point is that it’s all just a part of the process.. and exploring that process seems something worthy of  blogging about.

It should get here in 6 days. My life will start a new.. There’s more to say, but I’m too tired now.. I’m now even more pissed at Apple.. after they send me a thing to give feed back on my shopping experience, which was piss poor, and they didn’t even give me the space to express myself.. which I only find out after writing a lengthy response (too many characters)..  They really like to rub it in!

You can read a bit of the back story to my Mac Pro buying saga here. The long and short of it is.. I bought the computer on January 18th, and they still haven’t shipped it! The excuse being that they still have to “make it” as it’s a custom configuration… however.. that custom configuration amounts to popping in a graphics card.. so… why should it take nearly a month to do.. when I could do it myself inside of a few minutes?  Thus my anger over this situation.

So yesterday I got an email from Apple saying “we were not able to authorize your purchase.” Umm… why not? The card is a Visa ATM card from my bank.. takes it out of the checking.. and at no time did the amount in the checking end up less then the amount of the computer. So what’s up?

Well.. just now, going through the card’s paperwork I find out there’s a limit on how much you can spend on a single purchase with the card… or how much you can take out in a single day Umm.. why? Plus there’s a 2% transaction fee! Nice how they never tell you about the fine print! And don’t these sound like stupid rules for which there is no reason, other then that the Bank wants to make your life more difficult?

So as far as I know.. this leaves me in a kind of.. well annoying situation. I have one credit card in my name… and is there enough available credit on that card to allow me to buy the computer? It is somewhat doubtful. The other option is my father has a couple of cards, but I don’t actually know what the available credit on those look like. Perhaps I could pay off my discover card, online, to give me the space I need… but do those transactions go through right away, or do I have to wait?

On the other hand, might there be a way I could go down to the Apple store and just write a check or bring the cash? Further, at what point would this screw up the order.. where I’d end up having to go through this whole wait period all over again? This, plus, I bought a printer as a part of the order.. where you get a rebate so the printer only costs $30.. but to get the rebate the printer has to be a part of the same order.. will that get fucked up in the process? 

To further complicate matters, there’s a limited amount of money in the checking. It’s not that limited but..  Imagine you go and put down $3K on a credit card.. to give you more head room.. and then it turns out not to work… I still need to go buy a monitor.. and other stuff.. for when the computer actually comes… 

I cashed out a CD, distributed that into 2 CDs, and the checking, but that’s not likely to get into the checking account till about tuesday.

A few latter:

So it looks like the online bill paying system through the bank, though I haven’t quite figured it out yet.. but it sounds like it takes about 4 Business days for a bill to be paid..  So.. It looks like I basically have no options to buy stuff online, accept via credit card… and it’ll be 4 business days before I can do that.

A few more latter:

Wish I had an AMX card for this kinda thing.

It looks like my dad has enough available credit on one of his cards, for the computer. He has an AMX card.. but I have nooo idea what the limit is on that.

A good deal latter:

Ok, so I call Apple, to see what I gots to do.. and I go and put it on the card, I thought, that had the proper credit limit. You must understand that I get transfered about 4 times.. many of which..  you’re on hold for a good 5 minutes.. So we change the card… then I have to go call the credit card company.. to get it authorized..

It’s under my dad’s name.. so more hassle.. but finally.. ok.. the credit card company says it’s a go.. so I call back Apple.. again you gotta go get transfered a bunch of time.. lots of time on hold..  Finally get someone.. and they tell me the card is still declining.. even when they go through automatic and manual authorization process.. whatever that means.. one even involves them calling the card company.. that takes another 5 minutes…

So.. time to call the Credit Card company AGAIN! I talk to some kinda of a manager guy..  and here we get more fun news..  Turns out the card is declining because we haven’t paid the balance on it.. its one of the Card’s that was in my mom’s name.. one of the ones that I’m apparently not supposed to be using… (this is a long story) but in essence I was advised not to pay the card’s that were in my mom’s name..  

What is strange is.. the first time I called the credit card company.. they say I have 4K + available credit.. and its all good.. second time.. opps.. no can do with that card.. so now I’m supposed to use a different card to make the oder, which mysteriously now has the 4K + available? And this new card we can’t find in ether my father, or my mother’s wallet.. but whatever.. we got what we need to make the order..

So it’s back through Apple.. and blah blah blah.. and finally they accept the card, after a lot of hassle.

But then I learn.. the computer is still not being shipped! OMG, after I had to go through this horse shit?!!!!!!  He gives me some story about how they told me it would be 5-7 weeks. The last time I called the women said they had said it would be 2-3 weeks.. and the only reason I didn’t go bolistic is because it was like.. “well the date of March 3rd is the latest it would get to you on.”

All of this has me pissed as hell at Apple. But what the hell can I do really? What’s worse is I’m now looking to upgrade all these tools.. and many of them are Apple..  I tell you.. I don’t want to give Apple any money right now.. I want to talk down about Apple..

Here I was hoping, on account of the credit card BS, that the computer was actually shipping.. as in soon.

So where this leads us is.. if anyone has any idea’s, for any sort of collective action, that might help hurt the Apple brand.. please leave a comment on this blog entry.. I’m happy to help in anyway I can!

I should perhaps note at this time.. that after the computer has actually arrived.. and I’ve cooled down, that I might be less motivated to take much action… but.. I do think I’m going to use this blog platform.. and probably other means.. to bitch about Apple and this story..  

The other issue:

So, long time readers no doubt know I’m was planning on paying off all the card’s that were in my mom’s name… because it looked like I had to. Then I talk to my aunt Jackie.. and she tells me she’s not sure I have to.. she’s going to go talk to lawyer about it. Ok.. groovy. Well… here’s the deal on this card we tried to use…

Apparently it’s been used more recently! I took my dad out to eat sometime ago.. I told him I was going to pay it with cash.. and while I’m away.. ether smoking, or in the bathroom, he goes ahead and pays it with a credit card.. apparently this is the card I tried to put the computer on tonigh.. and not only this.. but I think the manager guy put my name on the card.. so between these two things.. even if I didn’t have to pay it before, I might very well have to pay it now. Fun, ha?

Yeah.. so I destroyed the card.

Still.. I have the money to pay off the credit cards in the checking account.. what I was thinking was.. if it turns out that I don’t have to pay these credit cards.. that money could be a part of an advertising / marketing budget for my projects.. so we’ll see how all this turns out.