Dave Randolph

One thing I love more than anything else is building something but this sometimes comes with unforeseen peril. You never know exactly what you getting into and sometimes you end up with a half finished project or one that just is never going to work or any level in between. Welcome to “From Box to Cube Non-Stop”.

I have ordered a Cupcake CNC Deluxe kit from MakerBot Industries from batch #3 and in a perfect world I will have it before December 5^th. If you don’t know what a Cupcake CNC is then let me quote the wiki.

“CupCake CNC is our pride and joy. It’s a rock solid open source 3D printer that is easy to build, easy to run, and easy to use. Its 100% open source, built to be hacked, and beginner friendly.”

Go check out the site at http://www.makerbot.com or if you want to read up on the details check out the wiki at http://wiki.makerbot.com

So I will be doing a webcast from box to cube in order to show every single step of the process. No cut to commercial, no montage, no payoff shots. I will not open the kit till I start broadcasting and once I open the kit I will not stop working or broadcasting till I have made a small cube. Hence the name “From Box to Cube”.

I will go through the entire build process and then get it up and then figure out all of the software. I work with 3D software as part of my day job but only for the entertainment industry so I have no idea about Skeinforge, Gcode,ReplicatorG, Blender,SketchUp which is my goal to start figuring out the open source software on the day of the build.

I’m also looking for other Cupcake owners and guest to help fill dead air time so if you’re interested in helping or have suggestions please contact me at cupcake@avidquestion.com

So what is the date and time? Well if shipping goes according to plan then it will be Saturday December 5^th but if shipping is delayed then Saturday December 12^th. Either day I want to start at noon pacific time and it goes till its done.  If it doesn’t come in time for December 5th it will be a rough week of me hovering around a box like a kid at christmas.

More details coming as it get closer as I’m building out the room to build and host it in. So be sure to stop by and say hello. I think its going to be a fun day of building, playing, learning together.

So I bought the original iPhone on launch day. Then I bought the 3G version on launch day. I think this makes me qualified to say that I have as much if not more time spent on the iPhone than anyone ouside of Apple headquarters and I must admit I love the iPhone. But like most relationships over time the magic wears off and soon you look for another lover, a younger, slimmer, more limber, more active mate. The Palm Pre is that mate for me. However with any new love there are areas of improvement.

Its been 24 hours and I’ve been using and exploring every option on it. You can look elsewhere for reviews and stats and photos galore but I want to focus on whats missing and what is better on the Pre than the iPhone. The first is the network. No more AT&T for me. AT&T has been nothing short of a nightmare in San Francisco. There are more dead spots and dropped calls than I could ever point out. It got to a point that I refused to take calls while driving and if I was in a high rise I would use skype which then completely defeats the point of having a cell phone. If I could predict the dead sports then I could plan around it but they seem to move. One day no problems in my house and the next I would have complete drop outs. Always showing full bars and then going to none also defeats the purpose of have any bars at all. It might be better if AT&T just had a “working” “not working” icon. I did a drive from San Francisco to Sacramento with the Pre and the iPhone both playing Pandora. The iPhone lost connection 17 times and I had to restart the phone. The Pre had no drop outs and I had music the whole time. If and when AT&T are out of the picture I would consider going back to the iPhone because that is the main reason for switching to the Palm Pre at this time. I however do see a future where the Pre and the iPhone will match each other.

Now that I am done with bitching about AT&T lets get into the features I love. I love having a keyboard even though its smaller than any others. They did put a touch screen keypad for phone operation which works great but I would also like to see an on screen keyboard when the clam shell is closed. The multi-apps run great, even better than the Android phone and switching between apps is easy, fast and frankly fun. The screen layout and button sizes are great except that the touch screen is slightly unresponsive and takes slowing down to register commands sometimes.

The camera works well and the flash is a welcome addition and they even have built in support for uploading photos to some site. However they only support facebook and photobucket at this time. I want flickr!

With the email if you get it to work with your client good luck. The exchange support is there but an unsigned certificate makes it hard to sync with most exchange servers. Rarely does anyone ever get a sign certificate for their servers. They promise a fix but its not there yet. So if your using exchange then wait for a fix. In email there is no bulk erase, so I have to view each message and then delete it.

Which then goes into calendars and once again I was plagued with the same problems of exchange. However if you like google calendar or facebook calendar. (I didn’t even think facebook had one) But the calendar works well and the contacts are the same deal.

The navigation format is great and very different from the iPhone however it does get confusing that there are pages and each page scrolls. So it takes some getting use to. The GPS is fast, accurate and gives great real time directions. While I might not give up my TomTom just yet it is a usable GPS and will help when I don’t have my tomtom around. The clock app is cute and only has 2 themes at this time but what is missing and what I used on a regular basis is a timer and stop watch both seem to be missing from the app and from the app store. The memo apps is a nice replacement to notes in iphone. You get a nice pegboard with all of your notes on it. You can plug it in to USB and use it as a thumb drive but what I really like is that when I plug it in the phone ask me what I want to do, sync,drive mode or just charge. That was a welcome change. The notification area is great. Unlike the iphone that pops up center screen any new messages, mail all pop up at the bottom of the screen out of the way of the app your currently in. You still have a youtube apps and it is far more responsive than the iphone version. Pandora is a toss up for me I looks great on the pre and is fast and responsive and has some nice bells and whistles but I did like the album view and purchase options on the iphone. Webpages load must faster and don’t lock up till loaded like on the iphone and the bookmarks are much nicer and its great to seem large icons in one place that’s not the home screen. Going into airplane mode is amazing, touching the top of the screen brings up a staus page with battery,Bluetooth,wifi and airplane mode on it. Location service is turned on once per app and then your done, no clicking each time you launch like on the iphone. The one app that is missing that I miss the most is there is no solitaire game. Really? Come on! Boost phones even have solitaire and snake too. Doc view and pdf view work great, clean and easy navigation. Yes it does synce music and videos with itunes and the phone even shows up as an ipod which is great but don’t plan to load any music you buy on itunes with DRM. It wont copy over but you can always buy music from amazon from the phone and you wont have to be on wifi to do it.

So the missing apps I want. Now I’ll give them time after all it took Apple 2 years to get ustream and slingbox on it and it still has to be on WiFi. Lets see if sprint can make apple and AT&T suck it!

Solitaire,

Slingbox

Countdown timer

Voice recorder

Better twitter app

Qik

Stickam

Ustream

UPDATE:

Jeff Schoby mentioned Spaz which completely flew under my radar when looking for twitter apps in the store.
Spaz has all the features I was looking for in a twitter app. a good view with my tweets, @’s and DM all listed and it even lets me RT. Unlike tweed which made you look at timeline or @’s or ones i posted or direct message and not at the same time. Spaz feels more like the iPhone versions of twitter apps and tweed feels more like the ones on the Android.
Sadly though solitare is still not in the store.

Required Experience:

· Ability to troubleshoot complex audio video and AMX/Crestron control systems.

· Ability to upload and down load AMX and Crestron code.

· Ability to configure and trouble shoot Clearone/BIAMP and/or equivalent audio DSP systems.

· A Minimum of 5 years experience in the audio video industry.

· Intermediate to advance knowledge of video, audio, networking, electronic systems, and PC skills.

· Associate Degree in Electronics/Computer science, or equivalent job experience.

· Must be able to lift minimum of 50 Lbs.

· Driving requirements for 50% to 90 %.

· Candidate must be a team player, with excellent verbal and written communication skills. One who is honest, dependable, and committed; dedicated, energetic, and willing to take the initiative on projects. Additionally, the candidate must be able to successfully manage multiple projects.

Job: AV Field Service Technician/Engineer

This is my Soldering Iron. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My soldering iron is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My soldering, without me, is useless. Without my iron, I am useless. I must solder my joints true. I must solder straighter than my enemy who is trying to short me. I must flux him before he fluxes me. I WILL…
My soldering iron and myself know that what counts in this circuit is not points we contact, the resistors we crimp, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the pools that count. WE WILL solder…
My soldering iron is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sponge and its tip.  I will ever guard it against the ravages of interns and live power as I will ever guard my legs, my arms, my eyes and my heart against fumes.
I will keep my iron clean and ready. We will become part of each other. WE WILL…
Before Weller, I swear this creed. My iron and myself are the defenders of my motherboard.
We are the masters of our enemy. WE ARE THE SAVIORS OF MY LED’s.
So be it, until victory is terminated and there is no resistance, but peak!

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of articles from computer techs about what its like to be an Apple repair person or Microsoft person or Linux guru and how no one could ever understand them. So I figured it would be a good time to tell my side of being a broadcast engineer.

It wasn’t that long ago that a broadcast engineer spent the day with a soldering iron, a service manual and a scope turning knobs and tuning everything till it fell into range. Oh there were computers and they dealt with them but they were few and far between. Mostly just basic terminals with simple controllers to controller tape machines. It was considered impossible to get video to go in and out of computers in high “broadcast quality” a term I will address later. Master controls had people manually load a tape for each segment for the show and an editor cut every commercial break together to tape. Watching a MCO (Master Control Operator) slide from one side to the other throwing tapes around and pushing buttons at the exactly right moment was like watching Picasso paint, shear beauty and expensive. All while broadcast engineers run around in the back calibrating decks and terminal gear with a greenie. (little flat head screwdriver with a green handle) Tape machines were usually ¾ tape while actual post work was still done to 1” reel to reel. ¾ decks would cost 50-60k each and the MCO would have 5-10 of these machines just for them not including the rest of the building. 1” machines cost almost as much as a small house and the post production people needed at least 3 of them. It wasn’t uncommon for an edit suite to cost a million dollars and they had custom kitchens and couches and sometime mini-bars all just to keep directors and producers happy. I say it wasn’t that long ago because it was the early 90’s. I look back on these times as they king of media and where I began. I still look at photos or suites long abandon with a lot of respect because the operators were true artist and the engineers were just as much a part of the production and the editors or the producers. We would rewire the equipment between each edit or tweak the decks to give it a certain look or completely rewire the building to make a 6 sided video cube spin in space.

Then not long after that computer devices started passing video with ease and we started seeing computer based switching like the Video Toaster. Now you had one box creating effects and CG (character generator, not computer graphics) and controlling the decks. The giant million dollar rooms turned into 10 smaller rooms. Most engineers were annoyed at the idea that computers could handle video and just let the operators handle the computers on their own. This is where I would build my strengths. However these edit bays still suffered from one flaw, every single edit of a project took forever because it was linear. So a project had to be pieced together from the first frame to the last in that order and if you want to add or remove a shot in the middle you would copy the master tape, edit in or remove the shots you did or didn’t want and then edit the remainder of the tape back on. Now if you were trying to be professional about it you would rewind the master tape, make your change and remake every single edit again to the end of the program. Thankfully the computer kept track of every edit you made and all you did was load the piles of source footage into the machines.  Master controls started getting their first computers as well. Automated tape loaders and play list managers. This is where the problems of computers and where my career truly begins. I realized that computers were going to be in this business and that they will never be like other machines. I took charge of all the CG boxes and effects boxes in the live studios, toasters, CMX editors in the edit bays and automation playout in master control. If you remember back then, it was amazing if you even knew how to turn a computer on. Well I was crazy enough to think I could handle zero down time, high demand equipment. I got a very new title, I was no longer “Broadcast Engineer” I became “Computer Video Engineer”. Having CVE on a business card was pretty sweet to look at while listening to Bon-Jovi Slippery When Wet on tape.

Now the problems start. We have Broadcast Engineers who are not strong with computers, operators who don’t know computers and little me. So not only do I have to understand the engineering side but now I also have to understand the operator’s side of the equipment. You could say things like “well its just gone, start over I guess”. So I would go into the various software and try to figure out what happen. The best way I could explain it is if you open someone’s word doc and trying to figure out if they really meant to put an extra period in a sentence or it was a mis.take.

With Nirvana Nevermind playing on FM radio a new box arrives at the door and by box I mean forklift. On the side it says “Avid” and like a curious puppy my head cocks to one side and my eyes grow wide. Welcome Non-Linear editing, sort of. The video was highly compressed but it would playback real time. It looked a lot like a youtube video with large chunky block everywhere. So you would edit the “offline” version and send it to “online” or back to the linear edit bay for assembly. The linear editors would become assembly line workers just bolting parts together and they never saw it coming. So editors are lined up at the door saying “teach me”. They were not ready to learn and it really took a new kind of person to be a non-linear editor then. Some did alright but many would fail. It was like being taught to write with your right hand your whole life and then being taught to write left handed. You’ll never be as good as you were before because the two editing techniques were that different. This is when I realized that I would have to involve myself with the editor’s process and not just keep the systems running. I had to truly understand every aspect of the art form in order to be a better engineer. Nothing really changed for MC or Studio during this time.

Cue Art school: Heck I might even find out I was destine to be an artist.
OK, I was NEVER going to be an artist and it didn’t take long for me to figure it out. I spent my entire time in college jumping from every aspect of production just so that I would understand the people I would be working with. I understood why they wanted a red light in the scene even though red light would screw up the tube cameras technically. This is still the roll I play today. I spend most of my time discussing projects in details with clients and not only thinking about the technical requirements of the project like how much storage they need but about aesthetic concerns as well.

So today I drive to a client with my iPhone docked in my car listening to a Pandora mix of classic Pearl Jam thinking about the project on a super wide “big picture”. I then sit down a discuss the project, maybe watch a rough cut and besides asking questions like what’s the power requirements and cooling output of a room I have to also know the production backgrounds of everyone and the artistic vision of the project. If there is a problem I have to solve it two steps, one get them up to a functional level and then get them back up to full speed because downtime is death. If a website goes down for an hour it might suck and unless you’re someone like Amazon it’s not a huge deal. In broadcast or film if you’re down for an hour the world ends. It’s a strange world where there is redundancy everywhere except with time.

Those broadcast engineers that were afraid of the computers but did amazing work are few and far between and are not as valued as they should be. So if you ever meet a true broadcast engineer please sit down with them, they have such a great knowledge of electronics on an analog level, which is a dying art in America. Most of these original engineers have faded to people like me who are more computer than broadcast anymore. With people doing 3d and post work on laptops bought from Best Buy and master controls being fully automated and sometimes unmanned altogether the roll of the broadcast engineer has changed from fixing the equipment at a core level to advanced operators with an intense I.T. background and still understand electronics. As things get simpler maybe one day in the very near future people like me will to fade and maybe who ever replaces them will write a blog post about them. Just not before I’ve retired.

I’ve been thinking about cats and the shelter sent me these reccomendations. What do you think?

Mission San Jose Animal Hospital

500 Washington Blvd.

Fremont, CA

The orange tabby is an eight-year-old female named Skittles.  She is spayed and  current on all her vaccinations.  She is very loving and affectionate.  Skittles would do best in a cat-only home as she does not get along well with dogs.

The black and white cat is a twelve-year-old neutered male named Sharik.  He is also current on all vaccines and is a bit of an attention whore.  Sharik is long-haired and overweight.  He will require weekly grooming-easily done at home with a brush and/or comb.  His belly is shaved and it’s a good idea to keep it shaved as he is too large to properly groom his stomach.

The gray and white cat is a fourteen-year old female named Smokey.  She is spayed and current on all her vaccines.  Smokey is mellow, quiet and would love to have her own bed or cat tree to hang out on during the day.

Subject: F.B.I WARNING

From:“FEDERAL BEUREA OF INVESTIGATIONS” <info.optusnetbb@optusnet.com.au>

To: undisclosed-recipients

- CYBER WIRETAP & FUNDS RECOVERY DEPARTMENT, FBI INTERNET FRAUD & SCAM UNIT.FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, (FBI). J.EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING 935 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, NW WASHINGTON, D.C 20535-0001, USA .WEB-PAGE: www.fbi.org Date: 30th Of November 2008.

FBI Assistant Director
Agent Joseph Periscini Jr. ,

Being on the ass end of TechTV and the middle of G4 and the beginning of Revision3 I figured it would be good time for to write about online media in general. It always interest me to read forum post that talk about “core audiences” and being what TechTV was and not what G4 has become and so on and so on. The short answer is advertisers pay for what they know. Advertisers don’t get the “core audience” because the core audience doesn’t usually buy the products. They are not really affected by advertising in general. This is the problem with uber-geek culture in general. This is why places like CNET and G4 still make money. G4 changed focus to general male culture which is a tangible demographic for advertisers to go for. CNET reports news and reviews which is a great place for advertisements since people watch are looking to buy products. However with high end tech(SYSTM), training(PixelPerfect), narrow demographic shows(PopSiren) it is difficult not only to find an audience but also to find advertisers. Take PixelPerfect for example what companies have a marketing budget and could find customers through the show? Adobe? The show is about them, how much more advertising do they want to dump into it? Etc. Etc. How about Systm? Imagine the liability and general public image from being associated with a show like that. Finally think about the numbers needed for traditional advertisers. They count in the millions usually, not in the 10 to 100k range so not only do they have to be convinced that it’s a great idea to invest the money into non-traditional shows but a non-traditional format with lower numbers and a focused audience that might not be interested in the product in general.

So I hate to say it about the “core audience” since I am one of them but to advertisers we don’t add up to a hill of beans and in current times were not worth the risk. Until we as the core audience start listening to advertising and stop listening to good research (which I hope we never do) content specific media will be tough without the “core audience” directly supporting them.

I feel that this type of media will only grow if the people creating them do not consider it the main source of income and treat it as secondary and are only reporting on their daytime jobs. Better yet businesses create programming to not only promote themselves but also encourage a deeper understanding of their markets. A great example of this is “willitblend.com” Right now I’m working with a company that makes products for the music industry and they are bringing in artist to talk about music and engineers to talk about the products right down to manufacturing and they are doing it to amazing detail. This is how the future can be for now till the market recovers and advertisers in general understand how to exploit “core audiences”.

Looking at shows like Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, Prototype This, Smash Labs You can easily tell they only put about 3 minutes of content into a hour of fluff. I still watch them and my ears perk up everytime they start geeking out. But even the MythBusters flash up a warning “Science Content” sign when there about to get nerdy on the show.

Sorry Internet you’re just not ready for big budget “Core Audience” shows yet. Maybe in the future but not yet. Support the little folks and the one-off shows as much as you can, wear their shirts and put bumper stickers on your car. They are the ones that can truly live up to the phrase “content is king”.

When will it be ready? When Coke or Pepsi advertises on a show on the internet then it will be time.

Tools that should be on every techie thumb drive.
This is a list of tools I personally run and some that were recommended to me via twitter post a few weeks back. Enjoy part one and soon I will be posting part two so if you want to add your own tools to this list leave them in the comments. Also not that it will happen but if this somehow gets on digg could someone be so kind to drop this list in the comments there? This being a wordpress blog and not very stable I would hate it if people couldn’t see the list.

ccleaner: http://www.ccleaner.com Good util for cleaning the registry and removing privacy files. Good to run after your done with a clients system.

AVG: http://www.grisoft.com Are you working on a machine where the user didnt think they needed a virus checker? First slap them on the back of the head and then install AVG.

autoruns: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx See everything set to autostart on a system and you will soon realize how much junk people install on their systems.

spacemonger: http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm Get a nice visual image of all the files on a system and notice the giant avi file they downloaded which is filing up the harddrive. They swear they never saw that file before but you know better.

Memtest86: http://www.memtest86.com/ Could it be the RAM? did you swap it out? do you have enough ram and patience to figure out what is bad and where? I don’t.

TrueCrypt: http://www.truecrypt.org Do you wear a tin foil hat? Are you reading this through a proxy server just in case? Is the lone gunman and 9/11 conspiracies monthly delivered to an unnamed PO box around the corner? IF so then you should encrypt all of your drives and thumb drives.

SysInternals: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx not so much a single app but a collection of apps from microsoft. Also they let you run most of them directly from the web http://live.sysinternals.com/ Good for when you forget your thumb drive or the system is so bad you dont want to plug your dongle into the USB (much like Paris Hilton)

avast: http://www.avast.com another free virus checker because you should always get a second opnion.

CPU-Z: http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php OK so you just want to know what type of RAM chips are in there or the tempature or while model and serial number of the processor they have. I dont think there is an easier way than this.

BGinfo: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897557.aspx Want to be the cool guy in the server room? Run this app and it will put a ton of text containing all sorts of stats on the desktop background. No so many geek points for the home user but all the I.T. guys will think your the master of MSPaint.