Rösle Tea Strainer: If you prefer brewing leaf tea, such as Indian Assam, this little gizmo is impressive when it's time to strain the elixir from the source. The mesh is fine enough to catch 99.44% of the unwanted matter while allowing enough liquid flow to execute a perfect pour every time. Highly recommended!

One of the cooler blogs: Stuart Hobday
Stuart often switches from one blogging platform to another and shifts domains from time to time, but his posts are always interesting observations.

Additional impressive design sites:
red-design
sb-studio
nicholascary

Studio Log 20100405: Here is a 51 second stereo audio sample (a two-tone sweep from 440 Hz to 40 Hz – one linear, the other logarithmic – followed by studio silence). The tracks were recorded using two Bluebirds from Blue Microphone. (Left channel mic serial #xx2763 and the right is #xx3183.) The mics were positioned next to one another (1¾” gap) 8 feet away from a single speaker. Note the difference in background noise between the two mics, especially through a spectrum analyzer. The recording was made through a Yamaha AW1600 with mic gains set identically (at max).

Bluebird xx2763 has not been used due to its higher noise floor (by about 10 dB). Instead a substitute Blue DragonFly works nicely for Piano recordings.

Microphone Placement: Some interesting reads

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Studio Log 20100403: Installed the latest version of the M-Audio driver for the FireWire 410. Cubase Studio has been hanging a few times during the day and it seems that the 410 was the culprit. Also, testing both Bluebird mics to locate that 13kHz anomaly. One of the Bluebirds has a much (much) higher noise floor that the other is not really useful in this test. Reporting the mic problem to BLUE. The one quiet Bluebird is just that...really quiet...perfect for measuring the studio background noise...which measures 14dB on a still night.

Anomaly Detected: We're detecting a high frequency in the area at about 13 kHz. This is both measurable with a sensitive microphone and with the naked ear when all is quiet. Our hypothesis is that there are two RF carriers that are creating this 'beat' frequency. We first noticed its presence following the digital television conversion last June.

Update: interesting research article about hearing RF read more

The Quietest Place on Earth: The anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories is the Quietest Place on Earth, as awarded by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Frustrating: We have a six-year-old Linn Classik system with bi-wired Katan speakers. We've been quite happy with this over the years, but the majority of the time it has been in standby mode. The problem is that lately the receiver tries to reset itself, going on and off, flicking out of standby, etc., and finally settling on displaying "11C". We can get it going for a couple of days by unplugging and resetting everything, but after a day or two, there it is again. Also, the CD player does not display status anymore such as track number or time remaining. If anyone has an idea how to fix this, let us know.

Update 20100412: delivered the unit to Definitive Audio for service

Warmth for Kitties: An abandoned kitty has taken up residence in a box on our porch. We installed an outdoor small animal heating pad (totaling $37) to help out with the overnight temperatures dropping to 14 degrees. Kitty seems very happy! Highly recommended if you can spare the 25 watts. See CozyWinters.com and look for the "outdoor" version.

Also, here's an excellent resource for learning about options for keeping kitties kozy.

Easy, intuitive, beautiful!:


Portable pocket-sized stand-alone wonder-machine with 8 synthesizer models, 8 samplers and effects like Delay, Flutter, Filters and EQ all built in. The Operator 1 is tentatively slated for a Spring 2010 release. See TeenageEngineering

Squeaker is romping in heaven

The CD version of mode includes an 8-page booklet of art designed by Alyce N. Hoggan, M.Des.

Twitter: follow us under the alias rareEntity.

Cubase Studio 5 arrived in the mail yesterday morning...we can't wait to dig in.

Ordered Cubase Studio 5 today...gotta keep up. Also, added a few news feeds to the bottom of this blog.

Designing for Scalability

Here's a white paper I authored and published while at Microsoft in 2000 titled "Architectural Design: A Scalable, Highly Available Business Object Architecture." The paper has since been dropped from TechNet, but it embodies the essential guidance for availability and scalability derived from integration testing with the Barnes & Noble order processing system. This paper is referenced by nine technical articles and two patents (6542902 and 7114158). It is here as archival information. The paper can also be found in archive.org



2019 update: The scalable workflow architecture described in the white paper predates what we now call a microservices architecture.
Further reading on scalability can be found here

A Good Cause: A nonprofit group called kynamatrix is supporting interactive communication research. They recently connected a number of university labs together using donated high-definition video equipment. It's like opening a window between labs! Perhaps this can help improve the nation's collaborative research infrastructure...reduce expensive travel and carbon footprints. More people should recognize and support creative efforts like this.

mode

The debut album "mode" is now available at CD Baby. You can read more about the artist there.

Please note: The album is participating in the CD Baby $5 sale, so pick up a copy or two today!

mode is also available at all three locations of Silver Platters in the Seattle area. These guys are great about carrying the music of local independent artists.

All songs composed by James W. Dunn

Instruments & Effects

1-Mode 120BPM 4/4 Fmin
Texture v1.2
Roland XV-5050
CM-505 v1.02
ZebraCM
Crystal v2.4

2-Rhythmetric 76BPM 4/4 Cmin
Texture v1.2
ZebraCM
Proteus VX v2
Atralis OrgoneCM
Motion 2.8
CompressiveCM

03-Octahedral 110BPM 4/4 Fmin
ZebraCM
Dominator
Proteus VX v2
Roland XV-5050 w/ SRX-06

04-Vector 100BPM 4/4 D
HALionOne
Roland XV-5050

05-Harmonic 120BPM 4/4 Fmin
Garritan Steinway
Roland XV-5050 w/ SRX-06
Access Virus Classic

06-Spiral 85BPM 4/4 Cmin
Analog Warfare 3.1
Roland XV-5050 w/ SRX-06

07-Inevitable 81BPM 4/4 Cmin
Proteus VX v2
GenesisCM
Atralis OrgoneCM
Vocals: James Dunn / Alyce Hoggan
E-Phonic TapeDelay v0.2
Phaser / StereoEcho / Reverb
Glitch v1.3
CompressiveCM

08-Transcend 120BPM 4/4 Cmin
Proteus VX v2
Roland XV-5050
Texture v1.2
A1 Analog Synth v1.0
VB 1
Grungelizer / Reverb
Tranceformer v1.2
Vocals: James Dunn

09-Continuum 86BPM 4/4 Cmin
Garritan Steinway
Roland XV-5050 w/ SRX-06
Access Virus Classic
LM7 v1
ReaFIR v1
Sampled ocean waves

10-Departure 120BPM 4/4 F/C#
Access Virus Classic
AmpSimulator / StereoEcho
Mysterizer / DaTube / TAL-Dub-2
Vocals: James Dunn

11-Solace 120BPM 5/4 Fmin
Garritan Steinway
Analog Warfare 3.1
Proteus VX v2
Motion 2.8
ZebraCM
Tranceformer v1.2 / Glitch v1.3
TAL-Dub-2

12-Convergence Fmin
Roland XV-5050 w/ SRX-06
ReaFIR v1
RoomWorks

Here's an interesting music service for emerging artists and interested listeners: TastyAudio

Cubase has announced the next version of its flagship music production system which boasts "stunning innovations and additional enhancements that boost productivity and performance". (And just as I was getting comfortable with Studio4!)

Microsoft Research has an interesting tool called SongSmith which generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice.

We received 204 pounds of CDs today (that's 1000).