Check out:
SacredScenery.com
Recently, I’ve been taking advantage of being 5 minutes away from Kuta beach with some really crazy fun powerwalking.
Here’s the most concise instruction video I’ve found online. 5 minutes later, I was bursting from Seminyak over to Pettitenget, which is about 4km back and forth under 30 minutes.
Give it a go! It’s not as silly as it looks especially if your starting to look fitter and feeling GREAT!
]]>
(OK, maybe not the last point)
The Mac OS 10.5 install DVD was already inside my Macbook, the button was about to be pressed – I wasn’t going to put up with the most infuriating block to my music production workflow any longer. I had already decided upgrading to Snow Leopard was a horrible idea, if only for this one issue that would have my copy of Ableton Live 7 crashing.
Quite a few people on the Ableton Live forums had already put in their two cents about how the ‘complex’ sample warping mode would crash their Live session — unless they disabled their audio output altogether and re-enabled it once they altered their warping mode. Here’s the forum post on the Ableton Live forums.
Nico from the Ableton Live support team responded in SEPTEMBER :
I can confirm that Complex mode in older Live versions is incompatible with Snow Leopard. The Complex mode is based on zPlane’s “Elastique Efficient” algorithm (http://www.zplane.de). zPlane has already released a fix for it. There will most likely be a final update for Live 7 which includes this fix.
Live 8 is not affected, because it uses v2.1 of Elastique Efficient which works fine in SL.
Best,
Nico
Finally, yesterday, I had casually wandered into the backstage download area for Live and lo-and-behold 7.0.18 was available for download.
So no roll-back. No switching to other sequencing software. No crash-induced furniture flinging.
Now I’m back to writing music. Phew.
A few points to the Ableton Live team:
1. Not everyone can afford to or see a reason to upgrade to version 8.
Don’t leave them in the dark. It was beginning to appear that Ableton Live was forcing users to fork out for an upgrade to 8 by intentionally keeping vague about a SL fix for Ableton Live 7. You guys wouldn’t want to be accused of unethical business practices as a software company, look at Microsoft.
2. A development roadmap will keep your customer’s expectations in check.
We wouldn’t have to constantly harass guys like Nico with questions about WHEN bug-fixes are about to happen. Transparency keeps everyone happy and your customer support lines clear for more important issues.
3. Tell EVERYONE. FAST.
I found it hard to believe that Ableton Live didn’t send a a release to Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music. He’s been such a great supporter of the Live software and he carries allot of credibility among digital musicians. Here’s his coverage of the Live 7.0.18 fixes.
4. Time is money.
I know for a fact that allot of semi-professional commercial music producers and audio engineers depends on Live to support themselves. As a graphic designer, Snow Leopard really improved my rate of production, and forcing users to hold back on such an important OS update reeks of slack.
But really, thank you for not closing the door on Version 7. It costs us ALLOT of money this side of Asia to be able to fork out to buy original software in the first place. Great to know that Ableton Live keep to their word.
]]>While I was away in Kuala Lumpur, Aman, our household hen gave birth to 10 chicks. So far, 9 of them have survived and continue to terrorize our garden with their peeping and chirping.
It’s quite a racket.
After a her morning stroll around the compound with her kids, I finally managed to snap a picture of her taking a little nap with her brood.
Ah – the simple life.
]]>I get to start a new category. Introducing: food. Why? Because I think one of the most mindblowing experiences is the act of eating good and nourishing food.
Here’s a series of pictures that I took during one of my last weekends based out of KL.
Feel free to click on the thumbnails to get a better look as well as any of my notes on the picture.
This is the first time I’m using my flikr account to post any of my pictures onto the blog, so bear with any of the glitches you might encounter.
3 days continuous eating
Ray takes us out to Pudu Raya to have some Teochew porridge on Friday night. Faridah joins us.
The following day, we go for Yong Tau Fu in Puchong. This was a personal highlight for me during this #nom adventure.
We have a little interlude with some lemongrass apple crumble from Yasser.
Then we pick Static Itch up and we head over to the opposite side of KL — Ampang — and nosh into Zaini’s Satay and the sloppiest Ramli Burger on the planet.
The following day, we all meet up for dinner and head over to PJ for a proper Cantonese style cookup.
Full happy food trip. One of the best. Special thanks to Ray for leading the #nom quest!
Don’t forget to leave your comments.
]]>
I love my mornings like I love my napalm.
Right Oz?
(Happy Birthday)
]]>
Next up, Forest, Acid, Morning, Techtrance, Prog-psy, et al.
]]>It’s Monday. 2:36am here in Penang. It’s a lovely night out with a full tropical moon with plenty of wispy clouds trying out for a lunar tan.
So I climbed onto the roof and took some photos.
Click here to see the full-sized pic.
This is my first HDR photograph following this tutorial. There seems to be allot of grief going around about HDR photography, especially the kind that uses 3rd party software to generate the high dynamic range.
But whatever, it looks cool.
It’s a picture of the spirit house that’s on the top of my parents house with the Batu Ferringi skyline in the background. 30s long exposures in 3 multiple exposures with different exposure biases for each one.
Tripods and remotes rock!
]]>Here’s a photograph I took of the Dang Wangi Polis Station impound lot. The result of many, many a-clusterfucking.
I did not see any Macs in the piles and piles of computers. They would have probably been taken home.
I ♥ Twitterfox. But one of the big issues that I’ve had with the Twitterfox addon for Firefox is the lack a search function, preventing me from looking up any #-tags that I might be interested in.
I didn’t want to resort to a 3rd party client separate from my browser because I’m quite stingy when it comes down to sharing system resources.
Step 1.
Get the Add To Search Bar addon.
This is a ~wonderful~ addon that lets me put obscure site search bars (like Psydb.net) into my Firefox search bar.
Step 2.
After you’ve installed the addon, log into Twitter, and right-click on the search field on your page.
Step 3.
Add Twitter to your search bar.
Step 4.
Search for a #-tag.
Step 5.
Profit.
