Punctuating The Silence

And so it begins! The move of the conference to San Jose this year was done under the reason of out-growing Portland, mostly the convention center (which was definitely the case). However, it wasn’t hard to guess that part of the reason for the new location was proximity to O’Reilly’s offices, part of a cost-cutting measure. And in the days leading up to the conference, there were little hints that more cost-cutting was going on, but in a way that hopefully wouldn’t impact the over-all impression of the conference, especially for first-time OSCONers. On day one, a few other changes were evident, the biggest being the lack of food available before the tutorial. They provided coffee, but there was only a conference center breakfast kiosk available, selling $3 muffins. Disappointing, but understandable. In the end, if these measures simply mean that O’Reilly can continue to provide the quality conference we’ve all come to appreciate, than I applaud their efforts. We’ll see as the week progresses.

My first tutorial of the day was “Simplifying Database Design” given by Josh Berkus of PostreSQL Experts, Inc. The talk was geared to people who worked with databases on a regular basis, but learned them on the job, which was the vast majority of the audience. In the end, the information was good and well-presented, but stuff I mostly already knew, or was doing – largely because I’d done it wrong before and finally learned. Still, it was well worth it to know I wasn’t missing anything obvious.

The lunch turned out to be a very nice mix of salads and build-you-own sandwiches, with a selection of cakes for dessert. Everything was good, and I got a chance to talk to a few people. A good start in that department, and it made up a little for the lack of breakfast.

The second/afternoon tutorial for me was “Scaling a Web Application” by Duleepa “Dups” Wijayawardhana. This is a topic area I’m mostly just interested in, rather than needing (things I build tend not to have many users), but I was looking forward to learning things I could do early in a project that wouldn’t take much effort, but would ensure that if things needed to scale, I would at least be partly ready. I took away some useful pointers, with some things I can look at implementing right away, and some other things to play with, including program and query profilers.

All in all, a great start to the week! I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s tutorials, especially the one on API design, and then the rest of the week with the conference proper.

I leave tomorrow for California, spending a few days in the Berkeley/SF area before heading to San Jose to attend OSCON 2009. Each year I say I’m going to blog the conference, and each year I do a little better, with last year looking pretty good with just a slight fade-out at the end. This year should be better than ever, with Twitter along for the ride to augment my memory (look for the tweets in the side bar of this blog, or follow me!).

This year should be better than ever, conference-wise too, with a new, larger venue, and more going on. Stay tuned!

“Come, come, now, Scotty. Young minds, fresh ideas.”
“Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon.”

Kirk, Scotty; Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
(line order reversed deliberately)

The new Star Trek movie by J.J. Abrams was always intended to be a so-called reboot of the franchise, an opportunity to take the Star Trek universe in a direction that would allow for new ideas in a familiar setting. I went into this movie really excited at the potential of this, but came out pretty disappointed: as a long-time, details-oriented fan, there were too many changes for me to accept, and for reasons I can’t yet put my finger on, it didn’t quite *feel* like a Trek movie.

I grew up watching the original Star Trek series (in reruns: I’m not quite *that* old!), and from there, moved into the novels which fleshed out the characters, and especially their pasts (many of the novels in my collection deal with the time before the 5-year mission). From there came the first 4 movies (Star Trek V? I’m pretty sure they didn’t make that one…), and then it started: The Next Generation (TNG). At first I was skeptical: “that’s not really Star Trek”. But it grew on me, and they did a pretty good job of referencing things that had come before. I watched (and re-watched) every TNG episode. When Deep Space Nine started, I was watching, and liked what they did with it, but I don’t think I saw much of the last season. Then came Voyager, and I watched some episodes, mostly in the first season. While they had a great concept, the execution didn’t really hold up for me. I saw even fewer episodes of Enterprise (a show I really wanted to like), mostly because they started to take liberties with what had come before.

What has to be understood is that there isn’t just the shows, the movies and the novels. People invested into this universe in a big way (geek alert!): there were time-lines, technical manuals, and lots of meta-information that either pulled from canon (the accepted authoritative body of work), or became so. At that point, for the people who were paying attention, there was an enormously detailed universe available. Of course, that can be a curse too: there were inconsistencies, and it becomes increasingly difficult to write well in such a universe.

So while one might not blame Mr. Abrams for not wanting to bring along all this baggage, the trade-off is throwing out 40 years of world-building, and throw it out he did. Interestingly, the one thing that would have saved this movie for me (and I honestly sat through more than half the movie hoping this would happen) was if they had employed the classic Trek (and others!) device of a reset of the original time-line once the major plot-point was resolved. Of course, that would preclude sequels using the world that was built for this movie.

As for the film-making itself, I went in prepared for the shaky camera and the lens flares. The shaky camera I didn’t really notice, but the lens flares were way over-done, and became annoying after the first few minutes. I think they (overly-) contributed to portraying a bright, shiny future, but the movie failed to capture the traditional, idyllic Utopian setting which characterizes early Trek. (Oh, and Mr. Abrams? With all of those easter-eggs/references/in-jokes you put in there, to have *that* many pipes in engineering, and *not* label any of them “GNDN” was just a major oversight!)

One quick note about the characters: even accepting that this is a new Trek universe we’re dealing with, and there will be changes to the familiar characters, I really didn’t like the new histories of Kirk and Spock, especially Kirk – something just felt wrong, even if it did serve to explain later motivation, and trying to reconcile this with the fact that these were supposed to be familiar was … jarring.

This movie is an opportunity for a new generation of fans to experience Star Trek, and that’s not a bad thing. I do feel sorry for them if they then want to go back to experience the last 40 years: they’re going to be a little confused. For me, when they make the sequel (and that’s pretty inevitable), I won’t be going to see it, and I’m not at all happy about that. I wanted to like this movie, wanted to have an excuse to get back into Star Trek. But I can’t help wondering, was this movie really necessary? I think about all of the wonderful, unexplored science fiction material out there, begging to be transformed into other mediums, and wonder if the money put into this film wouldn’t have been better spent bringing something new.

Last night, a friend of mine sent me an email wondering why I didn’t have a comments feature on my blog and that he would have commented on a few things had there been one. After the initial burst of panic that something on the site wasn’t working, I realized that while there, the comment link on the theme I’m using could easily be missed. I’ve made a slight change to the page template to duplicate the comments link at the end of each story. It’s not perfect – WordPress has a function call to generate the comments link, which means it isn’t all that flexible – but hopefully it will make things a little clearer for those who were looking for it.

Of course, this makes me wonder about how many other comments I’ve lost out on. This blog isn’t widely read, but I do get a handful of interesting people leaving me things about the things I post, which makes this a lot more interesting, so I want to be sure it’s easy for them and others to do.

Comments?

I just read that NetApp (a company that makes file servers that I have used and administrated for over 10 years, and really like) is yanking their current Graphic User Interface (GUI, which is web-based, and therefore usable on a wide variety of platforms), and replacing it with a “more modern interface”: a Windows application. This would normally be the point where you’d be expecting me to rail on Windows, but I’m not going to this time. The point here could have been made if they’d picked MacOS or something else: in going with a single platform (yes, ok, given the corporate norm, a platform representing the vast majority of NetApp admins), they went from allowing everyone to play, to making it inconvenient at best for people like me to use the interface.

Of course, the *real* point here is that I don’t use GUIs (assuming an alternative), so I will continue to administrate my filer the old-fashioned way, via a command line and config files, annoyed at NetApp’s decision, but unaffected by it.

I just learned my hearing cuts out at about 14kHz, thanks to this page. As a musician, someone who has been to his share of concerts and a person over 25, I guess this is ok:

It’s fairly common for people who are over 25 years of age to not be able to hear above 15Hz

and

Musicians have a much higher risk of hearing loss that most people do

I’ve known my ability to hear high-frequency pitches has been diminishing, as even slightly-misbehaving electronics used to drive me crazy, but don’t anymore: in university, I worked in a department that had a slidemaker that when it was turned on, emitted a high-frequency sound that most people couldn’t hear, but I would have to leave the room or suffer a near-instant head-ache.

One of the joys of getting older, I guess, but as a muscian (and music lover) I’m grateful that I can still hear a normal range of tones.

Looking through my blog’s archive, I never did blog about my getting started with Facebook, but I’m blaming, er, crediting the 2008 O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON). They had put up a note that Facebook was to be the social network of choice for that year. Previously, I had been avoiding Facebook, but with that final nudge, I relented and created the account. And Facebook has been great for reconnecting with people, and glimpsing little bits of peoples’ lives you wouldn’t necessarily see.

There’s a new social networking concept that I’ve dabbled with, but never really got into, called “microblogging”. This is where you make short posts, usually only a sentence or two, or a link. The site that’s been around the longest and is the most successful is Twitter, and no, I do not have an account there. Yet.

I just finished reading an interesting entry on the TED Blog called “How To Talk While People are Twittering“, and it discusses an article on how, as a speaker, being aware of the backchannel communication of your audience can benefit both the audience and you. The point for me is that I’ve been going to OSCON for several years now, and it was only a few years ago that I discovered the traditional OSCON backchannel: IRC.  From that, many of the points this article enumerates, I know first-hand to be true.
So, going to the 2009 OSCON site, seeing that the very first icon in the list of social networks and media to be used this year is Twitter, I have very little doubt that in addition to IRC, Twitter is going to be heavily used and will be another great source of commentary and information (we *are* talking about a group of notorious early adopters).

I know I can easily follow the twittering without an account: there are lots of aggregators out there, but I’m guessing that I’ll create an account for 2 reasons: the first is to be able to participate in the discussion, and the second is that I’ve been saying for the last few years that I’ll blog the conference, and while last year I did ok, I don’t have the greatest track record. Twitter might not be great, in-depth prose, but it will be (micro) blogging, and it will provide a trail that will serve as a memory aid should I then go back and write real blog posts.

Look for me on Twitter. Coming Soon. Summer of ’09. Maybe before.

Even with the name change to reflect the nature of the blog (sporadic posting), there’s definitely something wrong with the way I do things here.  Read any article on blogging, and they’ll tell you about posting often to build an audience and a brand, and I’m just plain ignoring that.  This isn’t really a blog about any one thing (which is a problem any of the previously-mentioned articles will tell you), and that’s coupled with two problems:

The first is that I am, by nature, a fairly private person.  I know that probably seems weird to say, given my online presence, but if you examine everything about me that’s out there, it doesn’t really go that deep.  Regardless, there is a definite amount of resistance I need to overcome just to write something here (or anywhere public, for that matter).

The second problem, more directly related to blogging, is overcoming the mostly-subconscious, self-imposed expectation of having to posting something really great (which I imagine people whose blogs have an audience have), which grows worse the longer the silence gets.  There have been things I could have written about and didn’t because I didn’t think I had the time to do it justice, or just forgot about it.  Then there’s looking at the date of the last entry and thinking “wow, it’s really been a while – I need something to write about”, and then rejecting most of the ideas as “not good enough”.

I have the head-knowledge bit of overcoming this (just write something!), but is there a practical thing I can do to overcome this other than just “getting over it”?

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!

As you may have noticed on our website, we’ve been pretty quiet lately. The summer ended up being pretty busy for us – except for music and gigging. But that’s about to change. Back in February, we hired Gary Stripling, a Christian indie musician management consultant. Through Gary, we met Jerroll Lehman, a producer and engineer. In the past month, we’ve been working on trying to figure out a plan action that’s right for us, and we’re now at the stage where we’re moving forward!

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.