Got me a sweet deal today at Guitar Center.  Yeah, I used to really hate that place because it did to little music stores what Home Depot did to the local Hardware store...  But they really have their act together, they carry great products at unbeatable prices and, their cool.  The employees are typically musicians (I've even considered working there on the weekends to get the employee discount and learn about gear). 

Whenever I ask questions, I get genuine interest and they try to steer me to the thing that fits me best. I went to a local Atlanta music store and got such snooty-nose treatment that I wouldn't buy something from them if they were the only place on earth to get it. The owner said, "ametuers shop at those stores (Guitar Center and Mars), we only deal with professional equipment." Then why is it all they have is one canadian line of acoustic guitars and one middle of the road amplifier line? because he's retarded and he's too caught up in not being Guitar Center to realize why Guitar Center grew into what it is, a monster. Still, they've managed not to get pompous.

I got a desk!  I had copied this design and planned to build one of my own (because I just couldn't shell out a grand for a desk).  I never got around to it.  The desk is quite sweet!  As you can see, it is designed to hold the mixing board, studio monitors and computer.  My mixing console is too big and I don't have monitors yet.  I plan to get monitors soon and I have been tossing the idea of trading in my huge Topaz mixing board for a more managable Mackie VLZPro.  Since this desk cost me only 50 smackers, I have some money to spend trading in the board.  The monitors will be partially covered by my mommy for my birthday.  Thanks mom!

 

I am presently reading Volume 1 of Joseph Schillinger - System of Musical Compositon.  Its a hefty read but I think it holds some very important breakthroughs that can be applied to electronic musical composition (and non electronic for that matter). 

I will keep notes here about my progress and observations.  Hopefully there will be works of music to listen to as I apply the techniques, and, if the experiment is successful, software to apply them...

But, for now, I am very much the student and must learn from the teacher.  Its possibly the most exciting journey I've ever taken, I hope it lives up to expectations

 

An excellent paper authored by Dr. Jeremy Arden about the "Schillinger System of Musical Composition" as a submission for his degree of PhD in music.  SSoMC is a mathmatically based approach to writing music.  It served as the core principles on which the Berklee School of Music was founded. 

Dr. Jeremy Ardern's thesis (pdf)

Many thanks to Dr. Arden for giving me permission to host his work and share with everybody!

I was flipping the bod-ometer over into the 30's this weekend so my family went to Florida to relax and soak up some gulf air and sun.  My son got a little too much and ended up with a blister from sun burn.  Oops, d-fax, I promise, it won't happen again.   At least we learned on a short trip in February rather than the middle of summer.  We're now much more aware of how quickly little fair-skinned mini-people can burn.  Now I know what they mean by "the blistering sun"

Rosemary beach is really incredible!  I'll post some pics soon for all to see.  I was very impressed with this little oasis in Florida.  I've never been a big fan of the swampy state.  It all gets so cheesy.  I can't quite figure out why people have to have pink flamingos in their yard and seashells all over the house.  I even stayed somewhere once where the streets were paved with sea shells.  Oooh, great idea! until I found my beach path blocked by the rising tide and had to use the road with no sandals.  None of that in Rosemary beach!

The prices are a bit, um, premium.  You get what you pay for.  The Summer Kitchen (and Blus by Night) was a fabulous local dining spot.  You can literally eat there breakfast, lunch and dinner and never bore of it.  Its casual cafe early, fine dinner in the evening.  The salmon was out of this world and the breakfast was superb.  Apparently the owner/chef studied at Juliard in New York.  All I know is that sounds pretty posh.  The food is proof!  Don't hesitate to eat there no matter what mood you're in.

Seaside was nice.  They have a great market.  We ate at some seafood / po-boy restaurant with folk art on the walls.  Everything was fried.  It all tasted the same.  I asked for the tuna special and requested it rare, explaining I hated over-cooked fish.  It arrived grey, well-done, tasteless and nasty.  I ate a few bites and moved on to finish everyone's fried shrimp.  You can't screw up fried scrump!  So, back to Rosemary with us. 

Note to self: when prices are high, don't get the cheap wine.  I threw out a $17 bottle of wine.  It was acually a $6 bottle marked up a bit.  I should have gotten something a little better, then at least I'd have enjoyed it. 

The last two notes are the only things that went even remotely wrong, however.  Everything else was amazing.  The beach was clean and beautiful, the temperaure in the mid seventies - perfect.  Even the construction was fun, my boy loves "tucks". 

I did have some trouble with the kite I bought.  It took some re-engineering before it would fly.  I needed a challenge for the weekend.  I was very proud when I let the last of the line out and tied it to our rented wagon.  It hung out up there for about fifteen minutes before it crashed to the earth.  Big fun.

Well, back to the grind, I suppose.  Before I left, I thought, "what good is three days at the beach in Florida?  Too far to drive, to expensive to eat, I should just stay home instead."  I was wrong.  It might as well been a week.  I let off a lot of stress listening to the waves crawl gently up the sand.

One last thing: the moon on the night of the 19th was bizarre!  There was a halo around it that filled half the night sky.  I've never seen such a thing.  I pointed it out to some neighbors whose dog had gone nuts and ran into our house.  They hadn't even noticed.  They also hadn't ever seen such a thing.  I will always remember that night sky the night I was turning 30 (I actually turned on the 20th).  When I am 80 and I see it again, I can say, "oh my, 50 years ago when I was merely 30, the moon did that."  ...then I'll make up a story about a ufo and space creatures.  I'd like to do that when I'm old and acn get away with it.

Its official!  VSS sucks a-holes!   I have applied sp 6, I got the hot fix from microsoft to fix the "version not found" bug and I have tried every trick I could find to make VSS recurse.  It just won't.  If I set "Act on projects recursively" in VSS Explorer, close it, and then call ss without the -R flag, it will recurse as I would expect.  If throws a "Version not found" for all those projects not having a labeled file but that would be fine.  Unfortunately, all the products that integrate with vss call it witht the -R flag.

I do not have access to run analize or ddupd but I verified that the structure matches what Micorosoft states is the indicator that the latest db version is there.  I am in the process of trying to copy the entire vss database locally so I can try to fix it on that end and then forward instructions to our network guys on why the stupid thing still, after TWO YEARS of this crap, does not work properly. 

There is a strong possibility that I will not be able to fix this vss garbage and will have to port my c# / OLE programatic work around into nant and replace my vss tasks with my custom task.  that would not be the worst thing I have ever had to do.

I'll continue this thread when I have more to add... 

I have no excuse, I can literally walk to this meet.  It's at the Independent on Monroe Drive in Atlanta on Feb 17, 2005.  If I show up and I am the only one, all I lost are some calories.

When I was a young man, I had very long hair.  It was all one length, reached the middle of my back, and earned me the nickname "Favio" -which also dates the experience.

When I moved to Atlanta, I cut my hair short, real short.  Since then, I'd played with different lengths.  I finally committed to growing it out and achieved a chin-lengthed bob.  This was last summer.  Suddenly, I found myself in an altercation with an old, crotchety, high-strung, unfriendly, selfish, hateful, inconsiderate moron who pepper sprayed me and my dog because he was off his leash in the local park.  The dog was off the leash - just to clarify.  We were both issued disorderly conduct citations and required to appear in court.  The other man and I were issued citations, not the dog.  I was issued a citation for having the dog off his leash however.  Stupid dog.  I told him he was going to get in trouble!

Well, anyone knows that you don't show up to court with a hippee-haircut if you expect to have any justice served.

I cut it short again.  8 inches of hair plus all charges dropped.

So, after 5 long years of in-between length, it had finaly reached "long" status when I lost it again.  It finally looked about like I wanted it to.  It was out of my eyes.  It was artistic and rebelious yet not totally unstylish.  It his the geek that lives in my skin under a shroud of something different, something interesting.  It suits me to have long hair.  In truth, I like to hide behind it.  I like to let it fall over my face when I sing, as if no one can see me and they are forced just to listen.  Perhaps I ought to wear sunglasses...

Hair is not that important to me.  It represented something when I was younger but now I have more important things to concern myself with.  I still miss it, however.

Today, I came into work after having just had my hair cut.  I had let it go a little too long.  I'd event trimmed it up a few times with a bic razor (you'd be surprised what you can do with a disposable razor).  I asked for as short as possible.  After all, might as well maximize the cut.

Several people made some "Joey" jokes with me and a few came right out and said they miss my long hair (women, particularly).  I guess it represented something for them, too.  What, I wonder?

I am not ready, nor willing, to go through the discomfort of trying to let my hair grow past my eyes again.  Not yet.  One day, I think I will.  I think I'll not cut it again, once I do.  I'd better get any more court appearances over with before I take the plunge.  I'll roll into 30: short-haired and clean-shaven.  That way everyone can say I'm having a mid life crisis when I grow my hair out again :)

Improper search unless you find something?

I've been seeing alot of this when I try to get projects by label, date or version using VSS command line:

Project $[suchandsuch] has been destroyed, and cannot be rebuilt.
Continue anyway?(Y/N)y

There is a hot fix available for this bug!  http://support.microsoft.com/?id=887604

In addition, I have gotten used to the message :

"version not found"

when trying to get by label using VSS command line.

The hot fix for this bug is located at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;837417

Your database must be upgraded to the most up to date version as well. 

"To determine if your Visual SourceSafe 6.0 database has been upgraded to the new database format, check your Visual SourceSafe data directory for a file named Crcs.dat and a subdirectory named Labels."  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/153925/EN-US/

The latest service pack (6) for Visual Studio is located:.

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;197050&spid=3036&sid=global

all that being said, I have verified my database to contain the listed file and directory and applied service pack 6.  ss command line still will not retrieve files in sub directories that are labeled with the supplied label.  It's quite annoying.  I will try to get the hot fix applied next week.  If that fixes the problem, I will update this post. 

I managed to get each project set up independently.  I hightly recommend starting with the latest CCNet bits.  I upgraded after I had 0.6 working and regretted it.  Open source folk tend to get a little inconsiderate with breaking expected features, config and interface.  Its free, its their perogative. 

One thing I found with version 0.8 is that you really should stick to absolute file paths for any config path you specify.  There is a new "WorkingDirectory" at the project level.  It seams inconsistently handled when using relative paths in other sections of the config file. 

Eventually, I got 0.8 working.  I have a cruise.build file whose purpose is to clean the project directories, get vss latest source, and call the actual build file that is retrieved from the source project.  In addition, it copies the result of each project build to any necessary consumer projects before they can be built. 

The default target "run" performs the whole solution build.  Each project has a target for: run-, clean-, get-, copyDependencies-, build-.  The build target calls the project specific nant build file in the source directory after the get- retrieves it.  The called build compiles to a directory "build" parallel to the source directory.  The cruise.build file expects this and copies artifacts from the "build" directory of the compiled project to the "source" directory of any project that uses that assembly.  This means a "solution build" must occur before any single project build will work.  That's fine.  I create a Solution project in ccnet.config.  I have a faked out sourcecontrol config block (vss path points to a deep image directory within one of the projects) and specified a forceBuild once per day.  That's my nightly build.  It also calls the target deploy-webProject.  This backs up web.config, deploys the project to two dev servers, then replaces web.config.  The first thing to do is force a build of the solution.  Then, once each project is set up initially, the source control monitor can take over.  I forced each individual project just to get each project into a successful state.

All my projects copy their log to the same web dashboard.  This works out great.  Thre project name is listed with each report. 

The ccnet tray is so sweet.  I love watching the build happening and then the "woohoo" when it all works.  I read a post on attaching lava lamps to X10 autmoation controls to indicate the build state via retro coolness. I'll link to that tomorrow

Nestled in what appears to be an unsuspecting small town gobbled up by the sprawl of metro Atlanta is a great spot to re-caffeinate, check your email and chill out while you inspect some interesting artwork. Yep, its an old-fashioned coffee shop in Downtown Norcross called Northern Star Coffee House.

Driving toward the coffee shop down South Peachtree Street (on the far north side of Atlanta), you can easily forget you are minutes from the busy expressways of the big city. While I like what Starbucks did to the coffee industry, I hate what it did to the coffee shop. Starbucks (and other chain store coffee shops) are all the same, homogenized, sterile, devoid of local colour and missing that important element that makes you feel like you’re buying a cup of joe rather than a marketing-department-designed-coffee-drink.

Northern Star Coffee House has wood floors, brick walls, comfortable lighting, huge seating area inside, a massive patio and of course, great coffee.

My favorite is the Mandarin Mocha, an orange-tinged, chocolate frothy ass-kicker. The other drink I am suddenly addicted to is the Shooting star. That’s two shots of espresso in a tall coffee. Whap! Wake up fool!

They generously provide FREE WIFI internet access. So you can go get your coffee and continue to work. Get out of the office, sit down among beautiful artwork and send some nasty email reply to that pesky accountant. They also support the local artist community. Besides the art on the walls, they have a Tuesday open mic and weekend musicians. There is nothing better then hearing the sound of an acoustic guitar bounce off the brick wall in a place with as cool a vibe as a true to the bones coffee shop. Maybe I’ll stop in one Tuesday evening to try my old hand at a Dave Matthews song or two.

I did.  I had no idea how much I enjoyed my blog.  I missed it.

I've been building using nAnt for about two years now.  each project in our enterprise has a nant build file.  This file expects all dependencies to be available either in the root or the bin directory, whichever is appropriate.

I built a custom build utility application that manages inter-project dependencies and the build process.  It has served us well.  At least I think it has.

I want to move in the direction of more iterative development and integration.  Today, I took a first step.  I set up Cruise Control to operate on our enterprise projects in VSS. 

First I had to create a build file that would set up the entire suite from visual source safe.  This isn't that hard to do when dealing with the latest files.  So I created one target for each project, specifying where to get the source files from. 

Then I worked from the most stable project (with the least dependencies and the most consumers) to the project with the most dependencies, setting up the call to the build file in each source directory and then the copy of the next project's dependencies into its source directory (or bin, where appropriate).

It was enlightening to go through this exercise!  I found that each project, almost without exception, built on top of its child projects dependencies.  Example: (in this case, project refers to source and assembly refers to compiled result)  Project B depends on Project A.  Project C depends on project B and A.  However, project B contains the result of Project A, as it is required for project B's assembly to operate.  Some people may not want to keep a copy of Assembly A with Project B's build result but I think it makes sense.  That way, you can use Assembly (or project) B without worrying much about Project A as long as you get Assembly A when you get the artifacts of Project B.   Therefore, you do not need to explicitly manage Project C's dependency to Project A if you get the related assemblies for Project B.  When its time to set up the dependencies for Project C, just get the compilation result of Project B.

There were a few 3rd party dependencies that needed to be explicitly retrieved from VSS but the final build file was manageable and logical.

Once the build file was set up, I moved on to Cruise Control integration.  I had set it up previously with a small test project.  This helped a lot.  It took the complexity described above out of the equation.  I had only defined one project, previously.  I replaced the test VSS path with the real one and was in business, almost.  First, the change monitor in the sourcecontrol plugin gets the files to a local directory.  I am curious as to whether I can use the same directory for the monitor and the build.  I think its likely that the above mentioned dependency management may corrupt the modification monitor process.  I'll experiment with that and report back.  Second, I have all these inter dependent projects as part of an enterprise solution.  I don't want to monitor and build them independently, I want to integrate them!  Continuously.  That's the point, right?!  The latest version may handle this better, the version I used is out of date. 

So that is the experience so far.  I plan to put together a step by step for those who dare to venture down this road.

Bottom line?  if changes are integrated sooner, problems are caught earlier and resolved immediately.  Developers have, fresh in their mind, the changes that need to be assessed.  If tests can be introduced a little at a time, the application can slowly become more stable and dependable.  If development can be reviewed in a stable development deployment without developer interruption, sponsors and managers can have provide better feedback and more contribution to the overall development effort.  Its a communication tool.  It communicates how things are going.  I like that, it makes me feel comfy.

That's what my "social" category is all about.  This post is merely to make it show up so I can then post to its sub categories.

http://www.atlantacsharp.org

I will be back but, for now, check it out on your own

out of the pot and into the pan...

Let's see how this goes.  this would be the first blog entry on vitaminzrecords.com ever.  Exciting days ahead