As I blogged earlier, Dan and I (collectively known as reverential) were off to the Nashville area for a whirlwind one day recording session. We got back late Tuesday night, and to say that the experience was amazing is really understating it: both Dan and I are really excited about the tracks that got recorded, and while there’s still a lot of work to do before we have finished songs people can listen to, we can’t wait to have people hear them!

I’ll skip mentioning the drive down and back (12+ hours of driving, which were scenic and fun, but tiring), and concentrate on the day that matters: Monday!

We were at the Sound Kitchen, just outside of Nashville, and we arrived at Studio E a little early for our 9:30 session to start. Our producer, Jerroll, was already there, setting up with Ben, our second engineer, who worked at the studio. Shortly after, our session drummer, Scott Williamson arrived, and started checking levels. Not long after that, Joeie Canaday, the bass player for the session came and set up. An interesting side note (which I learned on this trip): there exists an entire industry (collectively know in the business as “cartage”) which involves storing musicians’ gear, getting a call for a session for a studio and time, taking gear out of storage, delivering it and setting it up for the session. Afterward, they come tear it down, and bring it back to storage. Amazing.

After all the technical hurdles were taken care of (levels, patching, loading the first song up), we all assembled in the control room for a talk through of the first song, “What Else Can We Say”. We had provided “scratch” tracks to our producer (basically rough recordings of the essential parts of the song so the session musicians had something to play to), and he played these tracks for the guys, who commented on mix (including wanting to remove different tracks) and asked questions about style. They also went over the chart for the song, which Jerroll had produced for them from the stuff we’d provided. A listen or two, and they went into studio room, and played through part of the song to get a feel for it. This first one was interesting in that Jerroll had decided to raise the key. This changed the pitch of the vocal track, so in order to give the bassist and drummer a better feel for the vocal, they set Dan up in the vocal booth so he could sing on the track (not to be recorded: that would come later).

Once ready, they ran through the song 2 or 3 times, and did a few pick-ups (certain parts of the song where they felt they missed something). And that was pretty much all that was required for the song. Jerroll would rough-mix it from the takes, and we’d re-assemble in the control room to listen, and start talking about the next one.

This was the pattern for the rest of the songs: “Grace Like Rain”, “This is What it’s Like” and “We Will Never Fear”. We had been warned by Jerroll to have extra songs ready (the plan was to do a three song demo), and we used them, and are now looking toward having a 5-song demo.

Oh, and that was the technical description of how things went, which is amazing in and of itself, but what you only get a little bit of out of that description, was how professional these guys are, and how amazing they are at their jobs. Scott and Joeie had worked together before and that showed, but they had never worked with Jerroll, nor had Jerroll worked in that particular studio before, but everything went so smoothly, with no technical glitches and no wasted time. At the same time, things were relaxed and friendly, and Dan and I could completely enjoy and take in the experience. The quote of the morning came from Dan: “I’m having trouble singing, I’m smiling so big!” The only down-side (if there can be said to be one) is something Jerroll said: as studio experiences go, this is as good as it gets: a great studio and equipment to work with, top session musicians and a smooth day, which all allowed us to get everything we set out to get. Anything else can only be just as good. Which, overall, is fine with us.

Once the session guys were finished and had left, my turn came on the piano. For the next 30-45 minutes, I worked on four takes of “Send Your Mercy Down”, the 5th song we had prepared for this. This song, by the way, is just piano and vocals (with some strings to be added later), if you were wondering why it wasn’t mentioned above with the session guys. Dan sang again to help me out, and although the first two takes were shaky (I was having problems playing to the click track Jerroll wanted us to use - on stage we do the song pretty free-form), we got some good stuff in the next two. I think if I had done a fifth take I would have nailed it, but we had enough to put together what we needed. Ah, the magic of the studio.

During this, the cartage guys were busy in the main studio, setting up gear for someone else’s afternoon session, and once I was done (around 1:30), we had the rest of the afternoon off. We were to be back there at 5:30 for the evening vocal session, so Dan and I went to check out downtown Nashville.

We arrived back around 5:15, and while we were hoping to catch the tail end of the afternoon session, they were already finished and gone (man, professionals), and Jerroll and Ben were setting up for Dan’s vocal session. For the next 4 hours, Dan moved between the vocal booth and the control room, alternatively singing and listening to rough mixes of what he had just done. He came through that experience really well, still sounding strong at the end of the fifth song, and we got some great stuff.

As I finish writing this, the process is far from over. We’re about to get the first drum, bass and vocal mixes so we can record our parts, and get those back to Jerroll for final mixing and mastering. But this one day had us more excited about our music than ever before. This really was an amazing experience, and we have some top-notch pros to thank for that. So Jerroll, Ben, Scott and Joeie - if you happen to stumble on this - thanks for a great day!

In a couple of weeks, Dan and I are heading to Nashville to The Sound Kitchen’s Studio E to record parts for a 3-song demo CD that we’ll be using for promotion. I’m excited to announce that in addition to recording all Dan’s vocals and piano for one song, we’ll also be adding live drums and bass, courtesy of session musicians Scott Williamson on drums and Joeie Canaday on bass. These guys have have a long list of credits, and we’re really looking forward to see what happens.

I’ll be blogging the experience, so keep an eye out! We leave the 19th, and are in the studio on the 20th.

Battery Life I’m going to go with the fact that my old devices were getting so bad, both in battery life and functionally, that a lot of the criticisms that people have about battery performance is not impacting me a whole lot. Yes, I have to plug it in daily, but one, I was already doing that for both my Blackberry and Palm, and two, I have power in my car, and I usually have it plugged into my laptop at my desk during the day, so that’s not usually an issue.

3G In addition to being in a pretty well-blanketed 3G area between New York and Philadelphia, my experience is that 95% of the time, I’m near a friendly access point, so the phone usually spends it’s time on 802.11g, rather than 3G. I’ve used EDGE only to test, and that was today (yup, I used EDGE for the first time today). The small amount of time I *have* been on 3G, the performance was adequate that I didn’t really notice a problem.

Typing I’ve already talked about this one in my last post, but I will say that I’m getting better, and it’s mostly alright.

Ok, I have to say (again) I’m really happy with this device, and am using it a lot. But nothing’s perfect, and here are a few of my major gripes. Cut-and-Paste is still the top of my list: I have needed this more often than I thought (but you usually notice absent things more, right?), and this really, really needs to be in the next update. Please? I’ve seen some great concepts for this.

I’m really not a fan of the newly-upgraded apps “forgetting” where the icon was, and putting it in the first available slot once the install finishes. Upgrading several apps at a time means spending the next little bit re-arranging everything again. Oh, and yes I know there are work-arounds, but there has to be a more efficient way to perform the backup when your syncing, right? I think my phone takes about 1/2 an hour to perform the backup.

For location-aware apps that provide a handy button to locate you on the map, why is there no hook in the Maps App to be told by what app is was called, and provide a “return to calling-app” button? Or if there is a hook, can that be documented so developers can start using it? I have several apps that suffer from this, and it’s kind of annoying.

One small thing, which kind of surprises me that either Apple or someone else hasn’t written: why is there no app that displays a summary: date/time, next appointment (or all remaining for the day), unread email/SMS message count, weather, etc? Even better would be to make it options for the lock screen. I’d love to see something like that.

This is a minor thing, but when you need it, and it fails, it fails badly: there are several instances where an app will display a list of stuff with a little round, blue icon with a white right-arrow in it. Two notable examples of this: the phone’s call list, and YouTube’s search results. The gripe is this: the target area for that button is *so* small, you’re almost always going to trigger the main function which, for the above two examples are “call the number”, and “play” respectively. Not great if you’re say, creating a new contact from your call list at 7am, or looking to simply bookmark a video slitting in a quiet auditorium (see my major rant about sound next). This target area really needs to be enlarged: I mean, how bad can it be to do so? The *entire rest of the line* is the trigger for the call/play function…

And now for my biggest gripe: sound. My Palm Pilot had different sound categories an app could be in, and when you pressed the speaker icon, you got a mixer that would allow you to individually control the volumes of each category, including a mute button for each one, and a master mute. As I’ve experienced, there does seem to be different categories for things that make sounds: the ringer/alerts (including SMS and mail), games/3rd party apps, YouTube, and the iPod. So why is it that when I switch the “ring/silent” switch (yes, I do realize it’s the “ringer” switch) to “silent”, it doesn’t mute everything? Expecting that, I was annoyed to hear a YouTube video make sound when I didn’t expect it to. Oh, and both the iPod and YouTube don’t even seem to remember the previously running volume state, resetting to 95% of full. I wonder if it would be possible for a developer to write a mixer app that covers the various sound-making apps.

The last thing I’ll mention has nothing to do with the hardware, but rather providers. Volumes have already been written on this subject, including the guy who got hit with a multi-thousand dollar data roaming bill, but why is roaming (and in this case, I’m limiting myself to traveling from the US to Canada, where I’m going next week) so expensive? I did a small test, whereby I put the phone on the EDGE network only, reset the usage counter, and for 10 minutes, used it “normally”: a couple of emails came in, I answered a couple, I used the Facebook app to update my status (which downloads my friends’ statuses as well), I used the Maps with GPS for a bit (including looking at some satellite imagery), I took a picture and uploaded it to my Flickr account, and there was probably some web access in there too. At the end of that, I checked the usage counter, and calculated, based on the “preferential” rate for roaming in Canada at $0.015/Kb, that that would have cost me $45. Excuse me? That basically makes the thing useless on my trip, and the “Enable 3G” and “Data Roaming” sliders will be firmly remaining in the “Off” position. Nice device, too bad I can’t use a lot of it traveling…

So that’s it: 2 weeks in, and I’m hooked: I’ve been playing with some quality free apps, the overall performance of the device is good, and even the most major of my gripes can be fixed in software, and not even necessarily from Apple. Oh, and not having to carry four devices is *wonderful*.

One final, amusing note: I tried to call AT&T today to inquire about international roaming. I tried several numbers (two 800 numbers and 611 from my phone). Each time, I navigated to a different part of their menu tree, and every time I got to an option to speak to a human, there would be a pause, some clicking, following by the “number not in service” tri-tone. I could not find a way to actually speak to a human there, and it would seem that the telco couldn’t configure their phone systems properly. Ah, who am I kidding - it was probably deliberate.

So a bit of background: I’ve had a palm pilot of one sort of another for almost a decade, but the technology in that space hasn’t really gone anywhere that I wanted to go. So first and foremost, I was looking to the iPhone to fill that slot. This is the primary reason I didn’t get the first version - the lack of apps. I’m happy to say that after downloading a bunch of free apps (and whittling them down), and making my first purchase, I’m 90% of the way to having everything I need - and the other 10% isn’t anything major.
The second major point for me was shedding some of the gadgetry I usually carry with me, which was the old phone (yup, I’m coming from a Blackberry), the afore-mentioned palm pilot, a compact digital camera, and an older iPod. The iPhone doesn’t have the same capacity as the iPhone my iPod, so it’s just going to be for podcasts and a few favorite albums, the phone’s camera won’t replace a real one. Despite that, going from four devices to two is still a big win.

After a couple days of use, I’m very happy with this, and look forward to the coming updates that will hopefully add a few things like cut-and-paste (I’m in agreement with a lot of folks on this one: I’ve already needed it a bunch of times), better home screen handling (including icon placement of an app after an update), and better IMAP folder organization would be great. I also hope some of the minor stability issues get addresses.

Finally, I want to address two of the biggest complaints: battery life and the keyboard. I haven’t found the battery to be too horrible, as it gets me through a day of pretty heavy use (my wifi, 3G, and Bluetooth are always on). Of course, I’m coming from a pile of old devices that needed to be recharged if you used them at all, so maybe I’m not the best judge. Secondly, the keyboard: I’m definitly getting better, but it does take some getting used to. I’ve stopped fighting the predictive text, and it helps quite a bit. My biggest problem is where my thumbs actually come in contact with the screen, resulting in off-by-one errors. These are mostly caught by the predictive text, but when you’re typing a ‘v’ or a ‘b’ for a space, your words run together, defeating the thing that’s trying to help you. Guess I just need to slow down

In addition to some really well-presented keynotes on some interesting topics, I attended some sessions that reinforces my faith in the ability of the organizers to attract (and keep attracting) great speakers with thought-provoking things to say, or vendors with some interesting products or business models (note that this isn’t universal - there’s always those few you listen to or talk to that makes you walk away, scratching your head, wondering how *that* works.).

I attended talks on “Open Source Microblogging”, “MindTouch Deki”, “CSS for High Performance JavaScript UI”, “Open Source as Liberal Art”, and “Machine Learning for Knowledge Extraction from Wikipedia & Other Semantically Weak Sources”.  Like the previous day, I’ll be back to flesh out some of the ideas and things I learned or plan on using - there was some great stuff here.

The day ended with the SourceForge Community Awards held at the Jupiter hotel.  The event was sponsered by ThinkGeek (among others), and we ended up getting a nice bag with some swag goodies.  Overall, pretty fun and decent food.

The hectic pace takes it’s toll: you have to prioritize where to spend your energy.  Unfortunately, in my case, this means getting behind in my blogging.  I went to sessions on Couchdb, OpenID and shell scripting, as well as a Google open source update and an interesting talk called “The Age of Literate Machines”. I keep notes on my daily activities in my personal wiki, so I still plan to come back and fill in some details about the sessions I went to.

Not that I, or anyone else there that night, was complaining.  The last two of these especially had the audience alternating between enthrawled and in stitches.  And it didn’t matter that Damian’s talk ended around 10, or the fact that he talked for almost an hour: the man’s brilliance with original ideas, photoshop and Perl, packaged neatly by his impressive and effortless presentation ability means he could talk for any length of time and still hold an audience spell-bound.

O’Reilly and the conference organizers are to be applauded for putting together a great evening, and a great start to the rest of the week.

In previous years, I’ve picked tutorials that seemed cool or had things I thought I wanted to learn, even if it was not completely something I was doing.  As is usually the case with conferences, I came away from that all hyped up and enthusiastically looking forward to using it, playing with it, implementing it, etc., and…nothing.  You get back to your job, start catching up from being away, and the day-to-day routine takes over, and all the enthusiasm you had fades until 6 months later, you’re cleaning up your desk, and come across the pile of materials from the conference, and you gaze wistfully at the things that had you fired up 6 months ago, and realize that you’re far too busy to get to *that* any time soon.

OK, that was depressing, right?  Sorry for the reality check, however, I say that because this year, I think I actually came across stuff in my tutorials that I can apply to the day-to-day stuff, and that’s a good feeling.  I prefer the hyped-up enthusiasm, but knowing the results of *that*, I’ll take this.  One exception, I took the “Python in 3 Hours”, and, not being a Python person, I did resolve to try and get into it, but I have more of a pragmatic feeling about that, so I’m going with “not the same this time”.

Anyway, a couple of observations about this year.  First, a lot of tutorials didn’t have printed materials (I had none), and almost all had their presentations online, which was great - I don’t really need the paper, and, as the saying goes “you can’t grep dead trees”.

Second, there was no checking at the door if you had registered for a particular tutorial, meaning you could actually go to different ones, which saw a lot of bailing at the break to check out another one.  This made it more like the sessions, which was great for some people, and the seating problem you’d think this would create largely didn’t seem to occur.

In all, it was more relaxed, and was thoroughly enjoyable.  Congrats, O’Reilly, on a great start this year!

My first tutorial was “PHP: Architecture, Scalability, and Security” by Rasmus Lerdorf.  Rasmus, who created PHP, is always inspiring when he talks about the internals of PHP, and using available tools for getting under the hood of what your code is doing at the system call level, and getting optimizations that you might never have thought of.  The first part of this talk was a refresher for me of what he talked about last year, but I never get tired of listening to him, mostly I think because his philosophy toward writing PHP is very similar to mine (or vise-versa: I don’t mean to sound egotistical; Rasmus could code circles around me).  If nothing else, this talk is entertaining: Rasmus runs a web vulnerabilities scanner of his own making against various websites, starting with the conference site.  This year, the talk got a visit from an O’Reilly organizer and their main web guy, hoping the “attacks” were coming from him!  They were nice about it (an change, Rasmus said, from previous years), and even stayed to hear more of the talk.  Other sites scanned were from audience volunteers (at their own sites), and one shouldn’t have: his site had every vulnerability Rasmus’ scanner had a rule for.  Fun stuff.

The afternoon tutorial was “TCP/IP Troubleshooting for System Administrators“.  The speaker, Darren Hoch, was energetic, engaging and funny, making what could be a dry topic (some other word for entertaining).  Most of it covered tcpdump and netstat (although using using some tools (or variants) that I hadn’t heard of: tethereal and dsniff), and using them in different case studies.  The handout will be a useful reference.  In all, some interesting information that can be used in everyday network issues, and a good refresher.