A plea for tech help.

Rich Pav 7 Comments

Oh, man, I hate asking for help. It decreases my virility.

I have a PCI video board that won’t work well when I add a USB 2.0 PCI board. When both are installed, videos play at about one frame every ten seconds. I’ve tried moving the boards around to different slots and I’ve tried reinstalling the drivers. No joy. In Windows XP, how can I track down the problem? This is a real PITA.

Alternatively, would anyone be willing to pay to see me naked so I can afford a new motherboard? Maybe that’s too disgusting. How about instead, for $250 I’ll shave your company’s name into the hair on my back and feature it in my next video.

Public Service Announcement: iTunes 4.9 + QT 7

Rich Pav 3 Comments

When marketing trumps engineering on determining the release date of a product, Bad Things Happen. And when they decide to force users to install software they don’t want, users get mighty angry. Oh man, I’m having flashbacks about the enormous multinational hellhole I used to work for. (Actually, it wasn’t that bad. Just sometimes.)

Here are some links that’ll enable you to downgrade to iTunes 4.9 and run QT7 at the same time.

iTunes 5.0 problems? Download iTunes 4.9
iTunes 4.9 for Windows (The provied link in pcdoctor-guide.com says 4.9, but it’s really 4.7.)
Download the Standalone QuickTime Player (thanks, Centrax!)

Update: iTunes 4.9 can’t read some file or other that iTunes 5 writes. Have fun rebuilding your frikkin’ library…

House Tour Video

Rich Pav 24 Comments

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Here it is, finally! I edited the house tour video, getting it down to a decent length and size. Of course, I could pick it apart for mistakes, but that’s just me. Overall, I really like it, despite being able to hear snot whistling in my nose, jump cuts galore, and there being a raindrop on the lens. Actually, I like the jump cuts. For some reason they seem to add comic timing.

You’ll need to install Quicktime 7 to view it in its full widescreen H.264 glory. Unfortunately, these days you can’t upgrade QT without also upgrading iTunes to the craptacular version 5.

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More videos to come, but life is still getting in the way. I spent all last night Crap Cleaning and defragging my landlord’s computers instead of editing media as planned. Also hooked him up with free anti-virus and anti-spyware utilities. He was very pleased. Next I’ll try to convert him to Firefox.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (56.3MB) | Embed

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Preview of the next video: House Tour

Rich Pav 4 Comments

Tony (a.k.a “Booger”) shows our house to the world after Daddy spent the day deep cleaning. (Mommy’s eyes popped out of her head and rolled around on the floor when she came home to a “house” instead of a “habitat.”) I got about as much cooperation as I can expect from an 8 year old who was pulled away from the PlayStation for 20 minutes. Preteen kids can either help you learn patience and compassion, or they can deepen your understanding as to why some animals eat their young. It all depends on your attitude.

This is a sneak preview of the real video to come as soon as I finish editing. The final version will look a WHOLE lot better in hi-res widescreen. The cheapo ultra wide-angle lens I picked up on Friday for US $50 is wonderful. When the video is encoded at half the resolution of DVD, you can barely notice the chromatic aberration around the edges.

I took a couple more videos over the weekend. They’ll be out this week. Along with the podcast from the Apple Store in Shibuya that goes along with the video I posted a few weeks back.

Helping podcasters in iTune Store-less countries

Rich Pav

Remember way back when I had an idea to help podcasters who can’t submit their show’s RSS feed to iTunes because they can’t get an Apple Store account in their country? I’ve been meaning to follow up on this.

Really, the easiest way is to ask your listeners to help out. Somebody listening to your show is going to be from a country in which iTunes has a presence. Or just send me an e-mail, since theoretically I should be able to open an account in the iTunes Japan store.

I’ve written to Apple 3-4 times already about my submission being in limbo. They only answered once with a canned response. I might have to change my RSS feed so I can resubmit it. I should do that anyway, and split the main feed into video-only and audio-only feeds. Seems like that’s the “in” thing to do these days.

Independent Artists: Sell your music on iTunes!

Rich Pav 4 Comments

I’m still busy as hell. Bossman is very serious about having a disaster recovery plan, and I agree so I’m not complaining. Meanwhile, I still have my regular workload to keep up with and my normal duty of fixing stuff in the office when it breaks. Waking hours=working hours these days. Things will get better soon.

I’d like to start featuring indy music from Japan. That’ll make it easier to put out shows since I can fill ’em up with content I don’t have to make myself. So far I’ve only played three bands, and you can’t buy their music online from overseas.

I want that to change. If I’m going to play music, ya’ll out there should be able to buy it and the money should go into the artists’ pockets.

Apple is accepting applications from indy artists so their music can be bought via iTunes. (Let’s hope the system works better than that for submitting podcasts. I’ve had absolutely no luck getting HFJ into the directory.) Problem is, the application form is in English only.

Ideally, I’d like 1) to help Japanese bands with the language barrier so they can get their music onto iTunes and 2) become an iTunes affiliate to make it worth my while. Knowing Apple, it’ll be a bitch to set up, so we’ll have to start any way we can.

First step: Is there an independent artist out there who’d like to fill out the iTunes application? Please let me do it for you. I’ll make a Flash tutorial as I fill it out, like I did to show how to subscribe podcasts in iTunes. I’ll make the tutorial available here in both English and Japanese, and also let anyone post them whevever they like. It would be nice if people who benefit from the tutorials would let me know so I can feature their music on my podcast and link to their music in the shownotes as an iTunes affiliate. But even if I can’t make any money, I’ll still make the tutorials and play their music with permission.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Busy busy busy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah…I’m still alive.

Rich Pav 4 Comments

Do you want to know the truth? I hate editing audio. It seems like I’d rather do almost anything else. I need an attitude adjustment.

So what did I do last night when I should have been cleaning up the recordings I made at the Apple Store two weeks ago? I was surfing digg.com. I love that site. Their podcast is good too. Listen with friends and drink every time one of them say “dude.” You’ll get really fu*ked up.

The new visitor map helps me feel guilty for not putting out a podcast. I paid for the expanded version that shows the last 100 visitors to push my guilt to the next level.

Totally irrelevant, but it’s my blog, so here goes: Has anyone using Windows 2000 noticed their computer has become really, really slow since installing last week’s security update? Recently some of our workstations at work are one by one becoming painfully slow, but I can’t track down the cause. That patch was rushed out, which makes me suspect it’s the culprit.

Here’s a new Google Map/MSN Virtual Earth/Flash mashup. This is the location of the Apple Store in Shibuya. You can see the line of trees that camoflage it. Here’s where I want to record my next podcast. The Cicadas, crows and other birds in this park sound amazing. The building to the west is the Canadian Embassy. The smaller building to the southwest is the ambassador’s residence, and a little further to the southwest are the living quarters of the Embassy staff. Nice digs.

From now, I go shopping for some hot-swappable hard drives so we can keep a copy of our company data offsite at all times. All the recent earthquakes have my boss seriously thinking about disaster recovery, which is good.

HFJ Video Chumbucket: A Walk Through a Supermarket

Rich Pav

Last weekend we were at Ito Yokado, one of two department store/supermarkets in Koga, so Tony could get his video game fix. Right before we left, I took the video camera out of my backpack, turned it on and walked through the supermarket holding the camera as inconsicously as possible. Since I couldn’t see what I was filming, the video is crooked and jumpy. I’m tempted to figure out how to attach the camera to the front of a shopping cart in a way that won’t draw too much attention. And also to buy a wide-angle lens for it.

Here’s the RSS feed for the The Herro Flom Japan Video Clip Chumbucket:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/hfj_videochum

You can also watch the video at OurMedia.org and YouTube.com.

I’ll try to do a better one sometime in the future. This one’s like looking at the world through the eyes of a midget with one leg a lot shorter than the other.

Apple Store Shibuya

Rich Pav 6 Comments

In this episode, I almost do a videocast inside the new Apple Store in Shibuya. This one is in 320 X 240 resolution, so the file is a bit bigger than the previous ones. I did a podcast at the same time but haven’t finished editing it yet. It’ll be out soon.

P.S. Next time I do a videocast, I’ll be sure to wipe the shiny off my face first. It was really, really hot that day.

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