mcq – Page 4 – News from Great Castle Wilson

MacBook performance

I have two Mac laptops, a 15″ MacBook Pro from 2011 and a 13″ MacBook Air from 2012. I use the MBP as my main home Mac, and it’s also the one where I do my music production. The MBA is my work laptop. To give you some idea about their relative performance, here are … Continue reading “MacBook performance”

To give you some idea about their relative performance, here are their GeekBench scores — bigger numbers are better:

As you can see even though the 15″ MBP is older, it is a bit faster (19%). Mine even has an aftermarket SSD in it, which likely improves things further.

For comparison purposes, here are the numbers for the fastest current generation MacBook Pro and Air:

In both cases, that’s a gain of about 25% over what I have. I do find it interesting that the current MacBook Air is faster than my existing MacBook Pro.

Anyway, all this rumination is because I have been thinking about upgrading my work laptop to one of the new MacBook Pros. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Air, but unfortunately it only has 4Gig of RAM, which is fine for almost everything I do, except for running VMs with entire WebSphere installs on them (that require 4Gig allocated to the VM at minimum). You can get a new MBA with 8Gig of RAM, but honestly, for this use case I think going for 16Gig makes more sense, which means it has to be a Pro.

The thing is, given that the performance improvement is really not all that significant, I could probably hold off on getting a new machine for another year by switching my work environment over to the current MacBook Pro. The problem with this idea is that it would require me to move all the music software I use over to the MacBook Air. If you aren’t a musician, you simply don’t understand how painful that can be. Suffice it to say that I have three separate hardware (i.e. physical) “keys” that lock various pieces of software to one machine only. You have to painstakingly un-authorize each music application (and all the plugins) on one machine, then move the keys over, then re-authorize on the other. In a world where most of the software I use can be installed on a new machine by just connecting my Apple ID and going to the App Store, the music software industry just seems archaic.

In any case, it may yet come to that. I don’t imagine I’ll see much of a bonus this year, and without that I can’t actually afford a new machine. I guess we’ll see.

Divertimento Fall Concert

Just letting you know that the Divertimento 2013 Fall Concert is in just over a week: November 8 & 9, 2013, 8pm L’Église St. Thomas d’Aquin 1244 Kilborn Avenue Ottawa This is the orchestra that I play cello for, and I certainly hope to see you there. The pieces we are playing this time are: … Continue reading “Divertimento Fall Concert”

Just letting you know that the Divertimento 2013 Fall Concert is in just over a week:

November 8 & 9, 2013, 8pm
L’Église St. Thomas d’Aquin
1244 Kilborn Avenue
Ottawa

This is the orchestra that I play cello for, and I certainly hope to see you there. The pieces we are playing this time are:

Cardy — Kissing the Joy as it Flies
Wolf-Ferrari — Suite Concertino, Op. 16
Tchaikovsky — Symphony No. 4 Op. 26

The Cardy is a nice modern little piece built around the cycle of fifths. The Wolf-Ferrari is a bassoon concerto, with Ben Glossop as the soloist; it’s also reduced orchestra, which means I’m not playing in it, but that is fine with me given that the Tchaikovsky is definitely taking all of my energy — seriously, there are parts in it that that my cello teacher claims she would have difficulty playing.

Anyway, as usual, I can get tickets for $2 off the price at the door, but unfortunately if you want me to get you some I need to know by Thursday (i.e. tomorrow). [Apologies for leaving it so late]. The price at the door is:

Adults — $20
Seniors/Students — $10
Children under 13 — $5
Children under 6 — free

If you’ve got a printer handy, and you’d like to help us by putting up a poster, here is a PDF…

Woo hoo! GCW is a Maverick!

Yup. I upgraded the Mac Mini to Mavericks. Amazingly, it went almost flawlessly. A little bit of confusion with some file permissions and the need to re-enable PHP again, but that was it. I’m sure there are a bunch of lurking issues that still need to be resolved, but this blog, and the old content … Continue reading “Woo hoo! GCW is a Maverick!”

Yup. I upgraded the Mac Mini to Mavericks. Amazingly, it went almost flawlessly. A little bit of confusion with some file permissions and the need to re-enable PHP again, but that was it.

I’m sure there are a bunch of lurking issues that still need to be resolved, but this blog, and the old content from Deb’s “deblog” both came back, which is really what I cared about the most. Note: If you’re looking for updates from Deb, she now uses the blog attached to her Shopify account.

The rest I can work through as I find them.

Nothing like giving the old Mac Mini a new lease on life to make your day. 🙂

Ottawa Synth Meetup

Here are some pictures from last Saturday’s Ottawa Synth Meetup. It was an evening of conversation about gear and technique, along with much making of odd noises and even a smattering of actual music. 🙂 Mostly it was an opportunity for some of us analog synth nuts to get together and realize that there really … Continue reading “Ottawa Synth Meetup”

Mostly it was an opportunity for some of us analog synth nuts to get together and realize that there really is a scene in Ottawa. It was a ton of fun.

Btw, if you’re interested in getting involved in the next one, you should join the Ottawa Synths Facebook group.

a pair of synths one for audio and one for video plus a ribbon controller — One person brought two analog modulars, one for audio (at the back) and one for video (in front). See the last photo for an example of the video synth in action.

a pair of classic analog polysynths — Someone brought an Arp Omni and a Korg PolySix. Classic sounds, that were instantly recognizable!

Techno in a box — Awesome tube powered drum machine, crazy synth in a wooden case, plus a very nice, beats focused eurorack machine.

The synthesizers I brought — This is what I brought: Pittsburg Modular, MiniBrute, MonoTribe, Monotron Delay and a Qunexus controller.

Eurorack and ribbon controller — Monde synth ribbon controller controlling a eurorack setup. I got a chance to play with this, but I need to try it again in a less chaotic environment.

A really nice eurorack setup — This was a very nice eurorack setup, plus an Elektron Machinedrum and keyboard controller.

Video synth in action — The video synth driving the projector.

And there a few others that I didn’t manage to get pictures of.

Mini Review: Kobo Aura

I didn’t really need another ereader. I have numerous tablets in multiple sizes and a phone with a retina display, all of which have reading apps for every ebook store out there. I even have a Kobo Touch, which is a perfectly reasonable e-paper device once you figure out how to get all your content … Continue reading “Mini Review: Kobo Aura”

But I had seen various reviews (like this one from Engadget) that said good things about the Kobo Aura, so I went down to the local Indigo and checked them out.

I must say, they really are every bit as nice as you would expect for a $150 device: light weight, solid in the hand, easy to hold onto with a textured backplate, a brilliant front light [pun intended], and a capacitive touch screen. For me it was this last point that was the deal maker. I’ve never liked the feeling of “reaching past the bezel” of the Kobo Touch (or any of the IR based e-readers) to touch the screen. I’ve always found it error prone both in my targeting and the device’s ability to consistently register the interactions. Unlike IR based devices the Kobo Aura has a perfectly flat front face, and in addition to just being more responsive and accurate, I suspect the move to the capacitive screen also helped them get the overall size of the device down — the Aura is significantly smaller than any other reader I’ve seen with a 6″ display.

Anyway, as I noted above, the deal was made. I ordered an Aura from the Kobo store and Canada Post even got it to me undamaged, in less than a week. Time to go to bed early and catch up on my reading. 😉

Technology! Just because you can do something…

… doesn’t mean you should. I bought a Philips hue starter kit a while ago. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a system for controlling the colors and intensities of LED lightbulbs remotely, via a wireless base station connected to your home network, which in turn speaks the Zigbee protocol (I believe) to the … Continue reading “Technology! Just because you *can* do something…”

… doesn’t mean you should.

I bought a Philips hue starter kit a while ago. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a system for controlling the colors and intensities of LED lightbulbs remotely, via a wireless base station connected to your home network, which in turn speaks the Zigbee protocol (I believe) to the lights. Essentially, it allows you to do stuff like this:

There are actually 3 lights in that picture, red and green ones visible, and a blue one lighting the top right corner.

Anyway, my thinking when I bought the kit, was that I was going to use the (very cool) RESTful API it provides to do some interesting web hacking of my the lights. Of course, I haven’t had time to do that — I don’t know why I thought otherwise — and so what I have effectively done, at this point, is replace a perfectly functional light switch with an app on my phone. I.e. enter room, get out phone, start app, tell lights to go on, put phone away. Not a win.

But wait, I think, someone must have built a light switch that will control a hue setup. All it would have to do is tell the lights to go on when the switch is flipped. Well… this may exist, but I couldn’t find it. The closest I could come was this:

So, this is a light switch that, in addition to doing what it normally does (i.e. switch the current to a light on/off), also talks to your wireless network. That, in itself, wouldn’t solve the problem, but along with the obvious feature of giving you yet another app that can control your lights, the WeMo switch also interfaces to the brilliant site IFTTT (a.k.a. “if this then that”).

IFTTT is a website that lets you set up simple rules based on a trigger (i.e. “this”) and an action (i.e. “that”). It behaves exactly as you’d expect: when the trigger happens the action gets executed. There is quite a range of triggers and actions — it’s worth checking out — but the operative detail here is that WeMo light switches can be triggers and hue lights support several actions including turning on and off. Can you see where this is going?

The sequence of operations is this:

Hit WeMo light switch
Light switch connects (over the internet) to IFTTT.com
IFTTT tells all (3 of) my hue lights to turn on.
Room lights up

Unfortunately, aside from the completely gratuitous use of the internet to control something entirely within my home office, there are two real problems with this:

One of the 3 hue lights is connected to a wall sconce that is physically switched on/off by the WeMo switch. Because the power to that light is interrupted when the light is turned off, when it turns back on, it comes on white (i.e. it loses whatever color setting it had before).
Although IFTTT does get the other two lights to turn on, the time between when the switch trigger happens and the resulting action is fired is… variable. Often it’s only a couple of seconds, but I have waited as much as 15.

Oh well. The end result is I can now almost turn the lights on and off again, and I have learned an interesting lesson in the limits of technology.

(Oh, and my lights flash when someone blogs about Orion. 😉 )

Pics of the new deck.

After 17 years, our old backyard deck had had enough: the wood was rotten in several places, the dog nails had shredded several of the boards, and the stairs were failing to the point where they were starting to get dangerous. Since we really do use the deck a lot in the summer, we decided … Continue reading “Pics of the new deck.”

Since we really do use the deck a lot in the summer, we decided to get it replaced. Here are some pics of the new one.

We’re very happy with the work that was done, and as you can see, the results are stellar.

And now, a bonus picture. We also had our garage door replaced. Here’s the new one:

ChromeBooks

So, my wonderful wife decided to get me something especially nice this Father’s Day. I had pointed out to her the Chromebooks that they have down at the local Future Shop, so she took me out Friday night and we went and got one. This one, to be exact: At $250, it’s clear that compromises … Continue reading “ChromeBooks”

At $250, it’s clear that compromises were made, but it works surprisingly well given it’s specs — 2Gig RAM, 16Gig SSD, 1.7 GHz “Samsung Exynos 5” processor (ARM Cortex-A15). The benchmarks show it as faster than a base Atom machine, but only 30..50% of an i3. Anyway, plenty fast enough.

To give you some idea what it’s capable of, as I type this, I’ve got a mouse and keyboard plugged into it, along with an external (HDMI) monitor. I have about 10 Chrome windows open (because, really that’s all you can do <g>) with one of them pointing at Rdio (and playing the latest Punch Brothers album over the HDMI speakers), one showing a remote desktop on my home server, one SSH’ed into my Raspberry Pi, a couple being used to write this blog post, and one connected to JazzHub where I’m keeping notes.

It also has a builtin microphone and camera and will happily participate in a Google Hangout video chat. It will cold boot in about 10 seconds and wakes from sleep in about a second.

As to the apps for it, in addition to the above, I managed to find solutions to almost all the things I normally need to do:

Files — DropBox, GoogleDrive, iCloud
Mail — iCloud Mail and GMail for home email; iNotes for work
Chat — Hangouts; no solution for Sametime yet
Twitter — Tweetdeck
RSS — Feedly
Reddit — Reditr
eBooks — Kindle Cloud Reader, Kobo Instant Reader, Google Play Books
Office — Google Docs, Sheets, Slides (and iWork once it comes out of beta)
image editing — Pixlr

I even managed to get access to my password safe, albeit without the full browser integration.

Of course, the reason I wanted one of these was to use it for testing the experience of working with Orion. I’m going to try to use it for my day to day development and testing for at least the next few weeks. So far, the experience has been good, but I’ll let you know if I discover anything particularly limiting.

So what don’t I like about it?

Regardless of the offline support some apps provide, this really is a one trick pony: It’s for being on the internet, and if you don’t have a connection, you might as well save your battery life.
The external hardware support works, but just: I wasn’t able to get the acceleration rate high enough on the mouse I use; the max resolution on the HDMI port was lower than the native resolution on the monitor I use; I hung the entire machine twice while getting the display hooked up; etc.
The keyboard layout is pretty wonky — massive ctrl and alt keys, with a tiny shift key and hard to hit return key, and somebody must *really* like the backslash character since there is a key to enter it on both sides of the keyboard (in exactly the right places to have you accidentally hit them while going for the shift and return keys).
It really does have an incredibly small SSD drive, plus limited ability to expand that using the built in SD card slot since the memory card sticks out so far you have to remove it when you aren’t using it. *sigh*. The former I might understand given the low price, but it makes the latter unforgivable.

Anyway, it’s not a replacement for the MacBook Pro, but it works pretty well. I could see taking just this device (and a USB HD to download pictures) if I was travelling. I believe the pricepoint is interesting too. It’s a nicer experience to work on than an iPad (even with a keyboard) at a significantly lower price. Now all they have to do is get the app ecosystem a bit bigger and it might start to make sense for the wider community.

First workout

In an effort to finally get back in some kind of reasonable physical condition, I’ve started going to the gym again. Last week, my wonderful wife took care of getting me (and Dennis) signed up at Goodlife where she was already a member. Today I did my orientation and a first workout: all 9 machines … Continue reading “First workout”

In an effort to finally get back in some kind of reasonable physical condition, I’ve started going to the gym again.

Last week, my wonderful wife took care of getting me (and Dennis) signed up at Goodlife where she was already a member. Today I did my orientation and a first workout: all 9 machines of the “basic” set, twice, 12 reps on each, followed by 15 minutes on the stairmaster. Of course, all of that on settings so low that I suspect catatonics could keep up, but in any case, it’s done, in just under an hour of steady work.

Now all I have to do is keep going regularly. I could imagine getting there twice a week, but I doubt I’ll be able to do more than that. I guess we’ll see.

Author: mcq