Etude: November 2017 – Challenge: Two Minute Romantic Comedy Trailer – Hans Zimmer Masterclass

November 2017 – “Romantic Comedy Challenge”

We were provided instructions and a voice track (narration and character-dialog) by an imaginary director who is looking for a score for romcom trailer.  The “director” set a one-week deadline!  I sweated this one a bit, given that this is also Fall Projects season here at Prairie Haven.

Pretty darn cool challenge.  This was by far the most complex mix I’ve done in quite a while, 26 tracks across 13 scenes (in 2 minutes!).

Some fun!  Here’s the link to the 2 minute trailer.

Continue reading →

Installing Flow-Rite battery watering on a Polaris Ranger EV

Definitely a narrow-audience scratchpad post.  We love our electric Polaris Ranger EV utility vehicle here at Prairie Haven.  But putting water in the batteries is not a lot of fun.  Messy, tedious, slow, etc.  So today’s project was to put a battery watering system in.

UPDATE UPDATE: ONE YEAR LATER

Everything is fine and we still heartily endorse this gizmo.  Battery watering now happens once a month. Continue reading →

Wide tires on a Polaris Ranger EV

We’ve been noticing that the Ranger has been pretty tough on our trails here at Prairie Haven.  Our pet theory is that the EV (plug in electric) version of the Ranger is quite a bit heavier than a normal one and that the standard (narrow, aggressive-tread) tires add to the problem.

The Mission: wider tires for the Ranger EV

We’ve just mounted four Carlysle 25x11x12 Multi-Trac (574369) turf tires .  These are a little wider than the standard tires and have a much less aggressive tread pattern.  Here’s Marcie on her test drive — early returns are positive.

Continue reading →

Push custom light guides and knobs from Kontakt to Komplete Kontrol

A scratchpad post to remind myself how to configure a Kontakt instrument so that light guides and knobs will show up correctly in Komplete Kontrol.  There’s a video walkthrough at the end of this post.

Here’s a picture of the destination – the light guides appear on the keyboard and Komplete Kontrol knobs are mapped to the patch in two banks.

Continue reading →

Scratchpad post: clearing up a failed nameserver transfer between Godaddy and Cloudflare

This one’s going to get the least hits ever, I bet.

I transferred the authoritative nameserver of a domain from Godaddy to Cloudflare and things got stuck.  The NS propagated pretty well, but it never got picked up by Google or Verisign’s public DNS (check with https://www.whatsmydns.net).  Since my ISP uses Google’s 8.8.8.8 server for customer DNS, I couldn’t reach my sites and mail got goofy.

The problem turned out to be outdated DS records that lingered at Godaddy after I tried their DNSSEC product, had all sorts of problems and turned it off.   DS records aren’t deleted automatically in that process — they need to be deleted manually on the Domain Details/Settings tab.  Who knew?  Why should I have to know?? Continue reading →

WiiMote -> OSCulator -> Wekinator -> OSCulator -> Ableton Live

This is a scratchpad post to remind myself how to put together a machine-learning system on a Mac.  This won’t work on a PC as some of the software is Mac-only.  In this configuration a WiiMote (input device) is connected to Wekinator (real time interactive machine-learning software) through OSCulator (OSC bridging and routing software).  Wekinator outputs are mapped to MIDI to drive Ableton Live through another instance of OSCulator.

Here is a block diagram (clicking on it makes it bigger)

WiiMote OSCulator Wekinator Ableton Live block diagram Continue reading →

MySQL repair or replacement on OSX Server (Yosemite)

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Another scratchpad post.  This one is a reminder of what I did to repair MySQL on OSX Server after the upgrade from Mavericks to Yosemite kinda broke things.

I was working to solve two problems: intermittent “unable to connect to database” errors on all our WordPress sites, and the dreaded “unable to update PID” errors when starting and stopping MySQL. Continue reading →

Life after ICANN

Several of my ICANN pals have asked “how are you doing??” recently and I decided to write a little blog post to make it easier to describe the current sorry state of affairs.

Basically, dropping the ICANN stuff has freed up a lot of time.  What follows is a sampling of how I’m filling it. Continue reading →

Adding SSL to my OSX server

I decided it was time to make a little statement and add “always on” encryption to this completely innocuous site.  The online equivalent of moving a lemonade stand inside a bank vault.  Now when you read about refurbishing my car, or fixing a seed drill, you’ll be doing it over an encrypted connection.

This is another scratchpad post for folks who run an OXS Server and want to use a multi-domain UC (unified communications) SSL certificate.  The rest of you can stop here — this is probably the most boring post of all time. Continue reading →

More bottom!

Samantha Dickinson Tweeted this photo from the ICANN meeting today and tagged it #VolunteerFatigue.  I’m living proof.

ccIANA

Let’s say that each of those 7 working groups needs 4 volunteers — that’s almost 30 people.  Just from the ccNSO.  Just for upcoming working groups.  Never mind the GSNO, ALAC, SSAC and GAC.  A rough extrapolation puts the total required at over 100 volunteer community members just to handle the IANA/Accountability/Transition work.

ICANN is dangerously thin at the bottom of the bottom-up process.  Are there that many people with the experience/time/expertise/will available?  What happens to all the other Working Group work in the meantime?

 

Difference between a customer and a client

There’s a difference between being a customer and being a client.  People on both ends of a relationship always get into trouble when they don’t understand this.

A customer – is always right

A client – expects to hear the truth, especially when it’s unpleasant

This is true in professional relationships.  Doctors, lawyers, accountants are expected to provide good advice in their professional relationship — but their customers are always right.  Reports should be: on time, of high quality, and delivered at a fair price. Continue reading →

ICANN participants

Slide1I do these scratch-pad posts for really narrow audiences, the rest of you will find them a bit bewildering.  Sorry about that.  This one is aimed at the GNSO Council, as we ponder the question “how do we increase the pool of PDP working-group volunteers?” Continue reading →