An old friend found

Posted on July 30, 2006 by Kirk M

I just obtained a web site address of an old friend that I had lost touch with a long time ago. I had first met Pierre when I was in High school and during the time my sister and I were doing theater work which continued after we had graduated.

He was the rather dynamic and unique director of the classic musicals that were put on in the town of Fairhaven MA. (a regular “Hometown USA type of place). Musicals such as “My Fair Lady”, “Sound of Music” and “The King and I”. My sister always did the acting and I, being the budding technician and novice audiophile that I was, got myself deep into the sound and wiring end of things, with Pierre yelling…I mean…tutoring me all the way.

Studer-Revox B77 Pierre truly gave me a fine introduction to the world of music and sound engineering back when being a true “Golden-Eared Audiophile” really meant something and that actually owning a Studer-Revox B-77 10″ reel to reel (which I eventually did along with a Yamaha B-2 amplifier which was later replaced with a Denon POA-2200 with matching pre-amp) really meant something. Because of this unique individual, I eventually became an absolutely no comprise sound engineer and audiophile working with local bands, studios and occasional theater group (I once had a starring role as “Harvey” you betcha’) down in Southern Connecticut. I even had my own fairly successful mobile sound production business for several years before an accident that had occurred during my time in the service finally took my so-called “golden ears” away from me.

Ah well, such is life and all that.

I find myself very glad that Pierre is not only still around but still doing what he is absolutely best at:

Sound Dynamics Associates

“Founded by owner and audio-engineer Pierre Paquin, Sound Dynamics Associates has achieved an A+ reputation in Southern New England for recording live-concerts and recitals for over forty years. Sound Dynamics is best known for being a “one-contact” company for the recording, duplication, and archival of music, for both professional and non-professional organizations.”

Pierre…I would expect no less.

How to write a book(?)

Posted on July 29, 2006 by Kirk M

Truth is, I just don’t know. Why do I wonder such a thing? Well, let me tell you.

Over the past several years I have written a bunch of short stories, articles of stuff and nonsense and the like and have saved and stuffed them into every computer I’ve had since 1995 or so. I lost them once except for a folder of hard copy which my wonderful lady retyped into her computer and hence put them back into mine.

The few people I have let read this stuff have all told me I should put them into a book and now I beginning to feel that this might be a wise thing to do. I mean, since I apparently have this ability, why not take advantage of it yes?

Problem is, how does one do this thing especially when one is on a limited budget, still working a day job and dealing with a few ornery health problems? Time spent on some research in this direction would probably help. Things like copyrighting, publishers, publishing (and how much), and generally not getting ripped off for my trouble are the basic concerns running around my brain of late.

Ah, well…life has a habit (at least with me) of throwing answers and opportunities my way as need be and since this is something I’d really love to do, let’s hope a pathway opens up soon, eh?

Technorati Tags: writing, writing a book, publishing copyrighting,

A new PFF build

Posted on July 29, 2006 by Kirk M

I just wanted to see if the new 1.3 alpha 3 build of the Performancing extension I received from Jed Brown would crash Firefox 2 beta 1 like version 1.2 did. So far so good but it’s only been up for a short while. I’ll really pound on it later this weekend and see how she sits.

So far, after I wrote up the post in the editor I then set up all the settings under the settings button and then chose my publishing options. What’s the big deal with this? These operations in the previous version caused Firefox 2 beta 1 to crash and burn and as of right now the browser, apparently, “ain’t payin’ no attention” to what I’m doing which is very good indeed.

I’ll just have to pound on it this weekend.

This is one of my very favorite extensions ya’ know.

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Firefox 2, Performancing, Blog editors, blogging, extensions

A complete waste of time

Posted on July 27, 2006 by Kirk M

I was going to spend some time here whining and complaining about being sick enough to drive two hours down to the VA in White River Jct (VT) and getting absolutely nothing accomplished and had to wait around while it didn’t happen.

But I said I wasn’t going to complain about it didn’t I?

So instead, I’m playing with the new Flock browser, “Stumbling” around using the StumbleUpon tool bar and writing this post with the PFF extension. I’ve already used the built in Flock blog editor to do a previous post in Back Woods Tech so, equal time right?

Anyway, the point is I came across this absolutely silly page while I was stumbling around and I thought I would share it with anyone who needs to spend 5 or so minutes wasting time.

Have fun…

Flock and Photobucket

Posted on July 24, 2006 by Kirk M

I had tried out the first version of the Flock “social” browser as a another possible way to make posting to my blogs a bit more convenient and of course to give myself just another way to experiment with blogging altogether but gave it up to wait for a more developed version and here it is.

The fact that it hasn’t crashed in the last hour is the first plus.

I downloaded this particular version (.7) from Photobucket where I store my images to use with the Performancing blog editor extension for Firefox which is the one I use most of the time and since Flock is based on the Firefox browser and this version has been written to specifically work with PhotoBucket (and Flickr I believe) I just had to give it a try.

It took no time at all to set up my WordPress account Just Thinkin and my PhotoBucket account and when all was ready I dragged the IE-eating Firefox logo off my hard drive and plopped onto the editor, the photo uploader window came up and with a couple of mouse clicks from me, uploaded the photo to PhotoBucket and a few seconds later it appeared in the editor. The whole process took about 30 seconds which includes me hunting around my desktop for the little fox image.

Now I’ve actually only been playing around with Flock for the last 45 minutes so I have a lot to learn yet for instance: How to download my existing posts so I can bring them up for a possible edit or how to delete an existing post using Flock but all in good time.

Oh… and memory use is much improved also. The browser’s been up about one hour now and the editor for about 30 minutes and I’m pushing around 52 megs usage which is similar to what I see for Firefox 1.5.04 (I currently use Firefox 2 beta 1 as my main browser which uses even less memory in the long run).

So far I like what I see.

Whether I continue to use Flock or not remains to be seen. I have no problem admitting to the fact that I’m an older guy (gonna see fifty all too soon) and the virtual “social” scene is still a little stand offish to me plus the fact that they all seem to be 20 to 30 years younger than I am (Horrors!) and I especially need to know that I can control all these interacting accounts to my satisfaction.

Older computer techs like myself tend to be a bit more paranoid when it comes to privacy than the younger set who mostly grew up with computers and the even youger ones who (almost) are growing older with “social” type networks and such. People like me however, got our knocks during the “bad old days” of the PC (and later with a brand new thing called the “World Wide Web”) and we definately did not grow up with computers. In fact, I was 26 when the first PC from IBM hit the streets and it was another 8 years until I bought my first one (Windows 3.1 and DOS 6.0). 3 years later I hooked my first dial-up account (with a whoppin’ 9600 baud modem) and I have been off and running ever since.

It’s a lot of fun so far and it’s been quite a long time since the world of the PC and the Internet has offered up anything that peaked my interest and nowadays it’s a veritable playground and Flock is yet another part of it.

Hmmm, inline spell checking would be a nice touch but all in good time.

Wonder what the next ten years will bring?

technorati tags:Flock, Firefox, blog, posting, social

Blogged with Flock

Been busy

Posted on July 23, 2006 by Kirk M

Haven’t had time to post lately. I’ve either been too busy or just too tired to think let alone type something intelligible. Now I know that for personal blogs such as this one, you don’t necessarily have to be intelligible but for me…being wee bit clear headed is a must. Not a lot, mind you…just a little. Being strange is completely acceptable of course.

Right now my head is so stuffed up from all the pollen in the air, it’s a wonder I’m not writng the way I soud whed I speeg ya’ doe?

Alright…I’m not going to get into that but I hate not being able to breath. It makes one rather blue (sorry aboud dat).

The big news today was that I had my first sale at my lady’s shop today. A potholder! I’m so proud.

Okay, so it’s only a potholder but hey…I’m somebody now!

On that positive note, I tig I’b go-ig to go blow by doze.

Hab a nibe eebnig.

A new saw…see?

Posted on July 19, 2006 by Kirk M

So my honey needed a new 3 panel folding “wall” like the one that I made her for her new shop (Long Meadow Farm Quilts). This one however, is for a show put on by the Wooden Horse Arts Guild and this particular folding wall will be used to display some fine examples of her products.

I ‘m also going to be making something we’re going to call “Block Clocks” which is basically one of the 2 or 3 extra blocks that she makes when she puts together a new quilt built into a frame with some clock works installed etc, etc.

Hmmmmm….I thought.

A bad back and your basic circular saw was obviously not going to cut it (so to speak) so off to the local hardware store I went and bought myself your basic $125.00 table saw (on sale for $99.95) and stuffed the box with the saw down into the cellar. After 2 hours last weekend, the thing was together and aligned properly and tonight the pieces for the three panels of the folding wall were cut and screwed together in half the time it would have taken me with circular saw and my rotten backside.

Now, although I’ve spent plenty of time on many a table saw I have actually never had one I could call my very own so here I am, a 47 year old man with his first table saw. Somebody alert the media!

I’ll have a pics of the first Block Clock when I figure out how to use PhotoBucket properly and can successfully add a few image tags. Having them show up on the blog would also be nice but let’s not push it.

Performancing update

Posted on July 14, 2006 by Kirk M

I received a comment from Jed Brown the day after my previous post (the one before this one) about my “beloved pinch hit blog editor”; Performancing (PFF) missing in action for the new beta builds of Firefox 2. He let me know that an update to the editor was coming up soon so PFF could be tested with the FF 2 beta’s and no more than 5 days later…here I am posting from FF2 beta 1 with my newly updated editor. Yeah!

Knowing full well that when testing a newly updated extension in a beta build can be fairly funky at times, FF 2 B1 crashed the first time I attempted to use PFF. After the feedback agent did it’s thing, Firefox restarted and offered me a choice between starting anew or restoring the previous session. I chose to restore and up comes the browser with all my previous tabs open…no problem. I brought PFF up again and continued on without another crash but not without an obvious anomaly.

In Firefox 1.5.04, PFF works along with the “Spellbound Development” spell checker extension which adds the function of in-line spell checking to the editor (and Firefox as well) however, in order to check a misspelled word in PFF, the user has to hit “Ctrl + left-click” which brings up the spelling suggestions menu instead of just right clicking. This is done this way in order to avoid conflicts with the regular right-click context menu of the editor.

However…

Firefox 2 now has a built in, in-line spell checker and although it correctly underlines misspelled words in PFF there is no way that I have found (yet) to bring up the spelling suggestions menu. There is no “Ctrl + left-click” option any longer since that particular function belonged to Spellbound Development and that extension is not compatible with the new Firefox beta nor would I install it if it were. It would most likely conflict with the new Firefox 2 spell checker or at least cause some severe hiccuping.

I can get by with my old tried and true “WordWeb Pro 4” that has been sitting quietly down in my tray for the past year or so. Any word, anywhere in Windows that I might have a question about I can highlight and hit “Ctrl-Alt” +W and up comes WordWeb Pro with a ton of suggestions, synonyms, antonyms, and all sorts of other info so it will suffice in the interim until Jed and his cohorts can figure a way around this. Heck, maybe they have and I just don’t know about it yet.

If I find out, I’ll let ya’ know.

Technorati Tags: Firefox 2, blog editors, blogging, editors, Performancing, PFF