Bah humbug! You chose to post videos about HOW TO, but you do not let people embed your videos? tsk tsk. (note to my readers: i do recommend clicking the link to his video)
I like you anyways, Gustavo Bravetti. Your video is a good walk through of the coolness of unlinked envelopes in Live 8, though it does apply to previous versions as well, though I’m sure you knew that.
The video is using unlinked envelopes on more of a micro scale, looping a tiny fragment of sound to fill one bar, and then bending/twisting/puching_holes in that bar to create a dynamic sound… out of nothing. I love computers.
This workshop demo video is about using Live’s unique clip unlinked envelopes and Ableton’s effects to easily create elaborated sequenced sounds as well as a “how to” create a bass, a tuned bass drum, a clap and hi hats.
I’ve always been a touch typer. That’s the typing method I was taught in grade school. They put a wooden box over our fingers so we couldn’t cheat and it worked. I’ve felt pretty comfortable with my typing abilities since then but I suppose there is always room for improvement. After all, I know someone who can PROGRAM through touch typing…
I saw a post on Lifehacker about Typing Web, one of the many services for improving typing skills. I’ve checked out many of these services and have been impressed by the tests/drills/feedback that Typing Web offers. I’m on my way through the courses (it’s free) and plan to post my progress. They test you before you start, to track progress (speed & accuracy). I weighed in at 73 wpm.
So I couldn’t resist, I had to see who had the record for fastest typing speed. According to WikiAnswers:
Miss Barbara Blackburn holds that record. Her top speed is 212 wpm. She also maintained 150 wpm for 50 minutes once!
The other day I was talking with some of my fellow art&technicians. We got on the subject of keyboard shortcuts. Each one of us offered up keyboard shortcuts that didn’t exist—but should exist.
The one that has always bothered me is that I cannot right click with my keyboard. I can double click with command-O but I cannot right click. There are some file extensions that I open with many different programs and with no real default application, consistently needing to used the “Open With” function. A good example of this are image files—half the time I am just looking at them and half the time I am editing them.
We tried defining our own keyboard shortcut for it but we couldn’t get it to work. I’ve never really been a fan of customized shortcuts because I don’t just care about MY computer, it pisses me off that I can’t right click on YOUR computer too.
Surprisingly enough, after a recent hard disk failure I found that backing up files and projects wasn’t my problem. Ever since I began using computers as a little tike the elders warned that the day would come.
“Back up, Back up, Backup!” they said.
So I backed up.
Trying to get my computer to the exact state that it was at before it crashed was the problem, finding all my applications that I had installed and then discarded. The problem wasn’t lost files, it was running files.
The first thing an application does is invent it’s own extension. I learned this lesson on a small scale during one semester when I installed a dynamic text editor for note taking. Later my system was wiped for an OS upgrade and I couldn’t find the text editor! Those notes were gone.
They weren’t really gone. It was a text editor and data in those files could probably have been parsed. The point is that as the program becomes more sophisticated, the data, without the program, would be as good as gone.
Let’s consider a scenario. Let’s say that you type all of your notes in Microsoft Word. Your ideas are then dependent on that program. It is hard to consider Microsoft Word vanishing into thin air, considering it’s pervasiveness across every computer platform and business… but it could, right?
So this past month I have not been on the beach. That’s next month. My hard drive died a natural (?) death and I have been slowly getting things back in order.
I have always liked the “it is not a question of if, it is a question of when” motto chanted by computer enthusiasts. After watching countless people who have been absolutely devastated from these sorts of occurences (ranging from computer theft to disk failure), I had planned for this to happen and have kept backups of all my work.
I have found a noteworthy website at http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php which lists “sad” hard drive sounds to watch out for. It’s sort of like a medical test that you can do at home.
