Dark Thoughts

I’ve had a problem for quite a while with some TemplaVoila templates where images would push elements following them down below the left menu.  I’m pretty sure it’s a “div” or clearing issue, but I’ve found a neat workaround if you have this issue.

In the template, click “Edit Whole Template”, and then go to the Includes Tab.  Change the In the Include Static (from extensions), selected items window, remove the CSS Styled Content TYPO3 extension and add CSS Styled Content v3.8.

For me, this fixes the image spacing problem.  I haven’t worked out exactly what is causing the issue, but all of the CSS Styled Content, apart from v 3.8 seem to cause it.

Note that I am running TV 1.4.4 in Typo3 V 4.5.19, and several other extensions (that may be old, so it could be held over from them.

I’ll update the extensions, when I find time to go through the updates in detail (before applying) and post back if it fixes the problem.

Just solved a small problem I was having today with the Windows 8  people hub not updating my wifes facebook status on my tablet.  It turns out the problem wasn’t with Windows 8, but with the bottomless pit that is Facebook privacy, well maybe with a bit of Windows 8 weirdness thrown in.

What had happened is that facebook had changed some settings in facebook that disallowed ALL external apps from accessing any information off her timeline.  Now what is weird is that it was working, but stopped after I accidentally linked her business page to her profile in people hub (which replaced all her status updates with the business ones in the people hub) and then unlinked them.

Currently (January 2013) the setting can be found under Privacy (top right icon with a lock, next to “Home” –> See More Settings –> Apps (Left Menu Bar)  –> Apps Others Use. 

I checked, and my settings were the same.  Maybe facebook is taking notice of privacy and making it easier for people to stay private (I’d like to think so), but I can’t help thinking it might be a bit of dig at the emergence of alternative ways to access facebook without the ads, like the People Hub on Windows devices.

What I don’t like is that this setting is GLOBAL, ie you can’t just allow your information to be shared with People Hub, for example, you are either all in, or all out.

Anyway

To allow People Hub to do it’s thing you need to enable “if I’m online, My status updates, My photos, My videos, My links and any other item that you would like friends to see”

OK – found a fix for the sensitive pen.

http://www.modulatethis.com/2009/05/ableton-live-802-wacom-tablet-kore2.html

Do this.  Just do it, if you want to run Live on the Samsung Slate.  Works perfectly.  It doesn’t affect the behaviour if you are using a mouse, but it makes the pen work beautifully, so you can turn dials, edit automation and generally have a swell time with the pen and Live.

I wrote my first song using the slate the other day No masterpiece but not too bad.

Any way my focus has turned to upgrading my studio laptop to Windows 7 and trying to get mLAN to run. I've tried b4-bit but the mLAN bus drive just won't install. Going to try 32 bit tomorrow as a lot of people have had success with that.

Can't wait until l can afford to update my musical hardware to something that just works

Have been using the tablet quite a bit these last few days. The pen Input is generally good though you have to remember to put the pen close to the screen before p utting your hand on the screen. The pen calibration is driving me a bit crazy as F cant seem ho get the cwrsor to appear right underneath the pen tip.

Ableton Live is also pretty hand to control with the pen. The slightest moment of the pen when you have a control selected and it's either at O or at Full. Draw mode definately works be for drawing controller data.

Will bring you more updates as Icontinue to use it.

Did all my windows updates, got signed on to Skype and did a few other tweaks.  In mobile format, I'm finding myself using the pen almost exclusively.  It's great to just write emails, and one note notes, and web url's etc.

Most of the little niggles I have to date are pretty much windows related, rather than Samsung related, except for the touchlauncher not being able to be minimized, or to be able to flick to the desktop or change the todo app to outlook.

It is also pretty thirsty for power.  It will be wanting to live in a dock or close to power at least 2 or 3 times a day as it won't last an entire days worth of computing without a charge.

I successfully installed Live 8 (though I did the wrong download and have no samples at the moment - I'll fix that), but it runs fine.  Unfortunately due to the screen real estate, the maximum zoom that you can use on Live is 110%, which is a pity, because it would be great to crank it up to 150, but the Ableton window goes off the screen and you lose the navigation bar at the bottom.

The small dials are also quite tricky to control with the stylus.  I'll play around and see if I can get some better control.  Live it won't be a problem as I have an APC40, but could be tedious on the train.

Wow that was fast.  Slate was delivered the next day.  Still waiting on a few extra bits and pieces.  All unpacked and first impression is that it's actually pretty big, compared with an iPad.

Plugged it in to charge up and it all launched up pretty quick.

First thing - upgrade to Win7 Pro, so over to Anytime Upgrade and $200 later and 10 minutes of installation, and I can join my domain.  No problems except that anytime upgrade complains that the update wasn't successful because of the windows update reboot dialog, but no biggie.

http://connect and follow the prompts, and whammo - I'm on the domain.

Next thing is to authorize office.  The slate will be used for work/email and writing music.  It will kind of be my portable notepad.  I'll mainly be using outlook, word, excel, one note and ableton live.  Launched office, entered my code, and Office setup did the rest.

I notice this thing has Norton Internet Security.  Will have to see if I want to keep that on or not.  Probably will for the time being, though I often find that the "security" products normally have a lot of bloat and a firewall that is impossible to control or turn off (in favour of Windows Firewall).  Will give it the benefit of the doubt for now.

Have had a bit of a play with it now, and a few things I've noticed.  Firstly, use the Security Button Login for a domain, hold the windows key and press power.  Secondly 20GB of the valuable 128GB is taken up by the recovery partition.  That is going to have to go at some stage.  Hard drive space is just too damn valuable on this thing.

Pen input works well, and the Samsung touch interface is pretty cool, except for the insistence on using it's own todo list, rather than my exchange one.  Will have to see if I can reconfigure that.

I've got myself a new toy, and I'm going to use this space to document and review the Samsung Series 7 Slate and setting up and running Ableton Live 8 Suite on it.  I'm looking to use the slate as a mobile composition platform and to incorporate it into our live rig.  It will come home to the studio for hardware treatment and for loading of samples, transfer of information etc.

With a new and growing family, finding time in the studio has become a challenge, so I'm going to try to spend an hour or so a day composing on the train to and from work.  We'll see how it goes.

Labels: ableton, music, samsung

OK, here's another Typo3 modification.

The nbo_podcast extension is a great extension for creating your own podcast, except for one tinsy little issue. It insists on adding the site URL to the start of all uid's (ie file names).

This is OK if you are hosting ALL of your mp3's or mpg's on your server, but sometimes, you have a file size limit, just like I did.

I wanted to host small files on my typo3 server and my large files on another server, but the extension wouldn't let me.

Here's the fix if you want to do this.

In your typo3 backend, go to the extension manager.
Click on the Typo 3 Podcast link (should be under Front End Plugins)
In the dropdown box at the top, select Edit Files
Click on "Edit File" next to mod1/index.php

About half way down in the section that starts with

// Check MySQL ressource

Look for the line that says this

$sourceFile = $this->prepare_url(t3lib_div::getIndpEnv('TYPO3_SITE_URL').($not4 ? $episode['file']['vDEF'] : $episode['file']['vDEF']['xml-value']));

Change it to this

$sourceFile = $this->prepare_url(($not4 ? $episode['file']['vDEF'] : $episode['file']['vDEF']['xml-value']));

Save the file and now the plug in will accept external url's without automatically appending your site URL to them.

There is a small downside to this. You will need to manually enter your site URL for any files hosted on your typo3 server, within the File List, after you use the browser to select them, though this is a pretty minor inconvenience.

Labels: Typo3

Well, I made my way down to the Perth Esplanade on Sunday for Global Gathering.  Caught up with some old mates who I hadn't seen for years, and saw some big name DJ's and Bands.

Here's my quick and brutal review of those acts that I saw.

First up Hook n Sling.  Unfortunately I only saw the end of their set, but I really enjoyed what I saw.  Crowd was pumping and the music was pretty awesome.  These guys seemed to be enjoying playing in Perth. 4 thumbs up.

Next up was Kid Kenobi.  Started well, but started to sound pretty repetitive about 10 minutes in.  Not what I'd call an epic set.  1 thumb up.

Next up was the end of Dirty South, who seemed to have the crowd rocking pretty well.  Not really my cup of tea, in terms of the style of music, but they DJ'd well, and kept the crowd pleased.  Three thumbs up.

Felix Da House Cat was up next, and he's really a stellar DJ.  Pity he didn't listen to the advice of the sound guy who told him to turn his mixer down a bit to get rid of the nasty distortion haunting the audience, so we had this brilliant DJ set let down by overloading his DJ mixer.  Couldn't really deal with the distortion for too long, so had a break to get some food. Four thumbs up for great DJing. Four thumbs down for being a jerk and distorting his set.

Caught the start of the ATB set, and he played a monster set.  I came back a few times later in the day, and he seemed to just get better and better.  There was a very passionate and lively crowd in front of the God's Kitchen stage, and ATB didn't disappoint.  Would love to have been able to catch more of his set, but I was here to see The Orb, so I missed a lot of the action.  Four thumbs up from what I heard.

Next up was The Orb.  OMFG these guys are great.  Dr Alex Patterson and the boys from the Orb really seemed to be enjoying the atmosphere, and seemed genuinely happy to be performing.  I've never had the opportunity to see them before, and the hilight for me was definately Little Fluffy Clouds.  The whole set was live and done on the fly, so big respect to The Orb.  The front man, didn't have that much to do, but he interacted with the crowd and kept the punters at the front happy.  Five thumbs up, and wishing that they could have played for longer.  Definitely the highlight of the day.

After the Orb, I was really looking forward to seeing Sasha.  I really like his production and recorded DJ set's but I gotta say.  His set was a serious disappointment.  He didn't seem to want to be there, and left the stage (or was hiding behind the speakers having a smoke) at one point, just letting the CD's do their thing.  Very uninspiring set overall. 1 thumb down.

Took a bit of a wander around feeling pretty uninspired by all tents, and ended up over at the main stage where Mark Ronson was playing.  Very different vibe, but this man is a born entertainer.  Bought a smile to my face and played some fine music.  Four thumbs up.

Went over and caught some more of ATB.  That man is a robot.  Still going strong.

Changed over to Above and Beyond, who I've never really heard before, but it was a mighty fine set, what I heard of it.  Nice uplifting trance, a throbbing dance floor.  Four thumbs up here as well.

Now for the main act, Kraftwerk.  I've never seen these guys live, but am a big fan of their music.  They are an entirely different thing live.  The sounds that these guys generate are simply amazing.  Big, clear, and they really push the sound system to the limits.  I took a wander over to the Gorillaz for 10 minutes during Kraftwerk's set, and in comparison it sounded like someone had turned down the volume and stuffed cotton wool in my ears. Five thumbs up for Kraftwerk.  I've spent a lot of time making music and sounds and damn their sounds are amazing.  Wish I could afford the quality of pre-amps that these guys obviously use. The wall of sound and dynamic range on a sound system of this quality is something to behold.

Gorillaz was pretty darn packed, but had an awesome video show.  Didn't stay long enough to be able to really comment on it, but they had a big crowd so that has to say something.

Overall, it was a great day. Very well organized and great venue set up.  Big thumbs up to all the workers and guys cleaning up the grounds, bar staff and security guys.  Everyone was pretty friendly.  Visible but not in your face.