blog.noetech.com

Nextstep in Madonna's Rain

Lately I've been downloading videos from iTunes, I'm sort of addicted. I don't have a video iPod yet (birthday hint!) but I like to watch them on my computer when there's nothing else to do.

Anyway, I was just watching Rain by Madonna when I a shot of a computer monitor popped up. Thinking that I recognized it, I went back, and it was NeXTstep. Not that big of a deal, but thought it was interesting. And since I haven't posted in a while, I thought it was worth while to mention.

Continuing Apple Xsan Support Issues

After my post yesterday I received a message my SE manager and a conference call was setup with all the SEs assigned to us and Bill Hudson from Cupertino. The call lasted about a half hour where they continued to insist the problem is that we are hosting too many volumes, though no one can offer up any documentation from Apple saying that they don't support our config.

Also, after explaining our exact problem (MDC becomes unresponsive but volumes don't fail-over) for the hundredth time, it seemed like they finally got it. It's not that the server crashes and the volumes fail-over, if it did that, I could live with it. So maybe some progress there.

I've sent over cvgather tar balls for every volume and their engineers are supposed to be looking at them to see if there's something wrong beyond the number of volumes. Though I've heard that several times before. I was supposed to receive an update today, but haven't as of 6pm.

To be honest I think that's the most frustration thing, the promises that they aren't keeping. I was told at least a month ago that engineers where going to look at our problem, but they never did. I've been told I'll get call backs and updates and never have. At least call me back and let me know that it's being looked into.

On the call I explained how I felt like we have a problem that they can't solve and their trying to blame us, which is not an uncommon support tactic. I've asked several times for them to say exactly what about our setup is not supported, and to back it up with documentation. "For best performance" doesn't count in my book. In fact, it implies to me that the other way is supported, it just won't support as many streams, not an issue for us at all.

Pissed over here, but lets see if I get some news by Monday.

Final Cut Pro 5

Some one asked me what I though of FCP 5 in light of my articles (here and here) on Xsan and FCP 4.5. So here is a five minute answer.

I think FCP 5 is a huge improvement. Specifically I'm a big fan of the multicam support (blows Avid away), improved realtime effect, and the button bars (finally). I like Soundtrack Pro too.

But it still lacks a few major things needed to be used in a facility like ours. There's still no way to share bins and projects easily. Exporting sequences and bins to the FCP XML format is a pain, and takes too long. If you have two editors each working on an act, it's a real pain to get them strung-out for an output.

Media management, while significantly improved, still needs work. There needs to be a way to set storage options per project so editors don't have to worry about changing settings and / or digitizing to the wrong drive. In our area, a different project could be in each bay each day.

I may be wrong about this, but there still isn't an easy way to manage user settings like the Avid has. Yes you can save your button config, and your window config, etc. But they get saved separately and have to be loaded in separately. Avid's Users is a much better way.

Technorati Tags: xsan, puppy, world of wonder, avid

Xsan Update

At the beginning of the year I wrote about how we were using Apple's Xsan with our Avid edit bays. I get an email a week or so about that post asking for more details etc, showing that there are other people who don't want to pay the huge costs for Avid's storage solutions. I not sure if anyone else has actually rolled it out or not, but after 6 months of using it in our facility I can safely say that it works very well.

The Xsan is Apple's best bet for getting into post house where they were never considered before. And with FCP 5, they are virtually neck and neck with Avid Media Composer. Now the only really big thing missing is project and bin sharing. To bad it didn't make it this year.

Dentists & NAB

So again I find myself neglecting this site.

There really hasn't been much going on lately except for the fact that I have reintroduced myself to a dentist. I hate dentists, they hurt you and take your money. I guess you get better looking teeth, but still not sure it's worth it. I had a nice little savings going all ready to be spent on a new car. Instead I have to spend 3k to fix a few teeth.

I keep telling myself that it's worth it, but still not that sure. I really wanted a new car, and a new digital camera for that matter.

I really wish I had dental insurance.

On the plus side I'm going to NAB in Vegas in a few weeks. I'm only going to be there for one day of the conference, a half day at that, but I'll be at the Apple event. Here's hoping for a kick ass FCP 5, with a new media management system, shared projects, amazing realtime effects that use Core Image and possible some new hardware announcements that will compete with Avid's Adrenaline. I mean, they are so close with Xsan, so close.

mod_gzip

I hate message boards. Absolutely hate them. It's not often that I turn to them, but on occasion I may post a question that I need answered. Without exception, ever time I get a response that does not contain an answer but rather questions why I need the answer.

It's some smart ass response that doesn't help at all. I will be forever confused by this. If you don't have the answer, and nothing to add, why post a response?

As an example, I'm looking to install mod_gzip on one of our production servers. It runs Mac OS X 10.3. I've never installed it before, and went looking for some guidence before I went to work on a live server. What I found where instructions from 2003 for 10.2. Then there were some changes that had to be made to the Make file in order for it to work. But that was a while ago. I wanted to confirm that those changes still need to be made. So, I posted to Apple's discussion board for OS X Server:

mod_gzip

Does anyone have experience installing this module on 10.3? The one set of instructions I found where for 10.2. I was hoping to find something a little more up to date.

The first response:

What makes you think the process has changed between 10.2 and 10.3. Very little has changed in terms of the apache distribution included with Mac OS X Server

Oh so helpful. No specific knowledge that it has not, in fact, changed. Just a little bit of attitude for no apparent reason. Maybe I'm over reacting, but what a fucking dick. Is that weird that before you start screwing around with a live system, you might want to make sure that something hasn't changed, and that you are going by the most recent instructions?

My response

Not sure it has, just looking for confirmation that it in fact hasn't. The instructions that I found were from 2003 and the version of mod_gzip was older than what is out there now. Then you had to make mods to the Make file. Now? I don't know, that's why I'm asking.

More Blackberry

Blackberry applications are expensive! $200 for a SSH client? The Sidekick has a free one.

Apparently OS 4 has a free SSH client, but for some reason I can't upgrade my device yet.

Blackberry

Ok, here's something I want:

Right now I can use PocketMac to sync the Blackberry to my Mac, including Now Up to Date. But, it would be way better, if it had a the ability to sync off of our Now server. That way, no matter where you were, you would always have the latest calendar, without having to sync it to your computer.

Of course that means a Blackberry Now application, which isn't going to happen, but it would be cool.

Blackberry Swag

RIM was giving away Blackberrys at the filmmakers lounge at Sundance this year. Seeing as I didn't make it there for the premiere of Inside Deep Throat, house sitting instead, I didn't get one, and since I'm not a filmmaker, I wouldn't have gotten one even if I had gone.

Fenton and Randy did get the free swag though. Since I'm the Head of Technology, they dutifly handed their redemption cards over to me, and since I'm the Head of Technology, I dutifly handed them over to my assistant. When I did, I mentioned that he should try to get me one, not thinking that he actually could. Well, on Thursday a box came from RIM that included not two, but three brand new Blackberrys. I love to get free stuff, and this is actually useful, compared to most swag.

I quickly ran off to Cingular to setup my service, oh, and Randy and Fenton's. In the excitement I almost forgot that this "free" gift was going to cost me $50 a month for the unlimited data plan. After two days I have to say it was well worth it. Getting email is a breeze, which is all I've really done with it so far. The Cingular browser sort of sucks, slow and not very readable on non-wap sites. The WOW Report doesn't looks so sexy. There is apparently another browser on it somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it yet.

I do wish it did IMAP for real though, so emails I've read on my computer, don't show up as new, but what are you to do. Plus I couldn't get the Blackberry RSS ready from Feedburner to install either.

I guess my experience has been 50 / 50, but that one 50 is really nice.

It's still to big to use as my main mobile though. The T610 will be around for awhile longer.

Avid Media Composer

Avid's product line bothers me like nothing else. It's filled with artificial differences designed to force you to spend more. None bother me more than the Media Composer Adrenaline. It's a fine product that meets the needs of online editors very well. It's their step up from Express Pro w/ Mojo, and it's a huge step up. Besides being significantly more stable, it works with Unity Fibre storage, has much better title tools, and better grouping tools.

All of those improvements are in software, which is what bothers me. It's a big financial jump between MC and AXP, about twice the cost. It seems that mostly this is for the Adrenaline, which you have to have connected to run MC. Now, I don't know many post facilities that need to have all the machines hooked up to an Adrenaline like box. You do not need, especially with shared storage, SDI out on every machine. It's easy enough to make your DigiBeta masters from one or two rooms out of 10 or 15.

So why does Avid limit MC to just Adrenaline now? In my perfect world, Avid would sell a MC w/ Mojo product. It would be a few thousand more than AXP, and I would be more than willing to pay it for all our bays. Then, like now, have two or three Adrenaline systems for master outputs. We could online on any machine, one of the biggest advantages of FCP by the way, and our offline editors could see a project through to the end.

It would make our whole facility that much more flexible. But Avid won't be selling that product. I would imagine that they are be afraid of stealing sales of the Adrenaline, a big money maker. Maybe they would, but not from me. I won't buy Adrenaline systems for offline editing, it just doesn't make sense financially. Sure our editors would prefer MC, but they wouldn't get any paychecks, so they live.

Avid's Biggest Limitation

And Apple's biggest advantage is modes. Or, rather, the lack of them in Final Cut Pro. It goes back to that heritage thing I was talking about yesterday. Due to Avid's age, their software relies on modes, trim mode, etc. This was probably due to the limitations of the hardware at the time. Apple has the distinct advantage of being made much more recently, and not being strapped with this limitation.

In Final Cut Pro you can cut, trim, slip and ripple anytime you want by just choosing the correct tool. If you want to grab a clip and move it to another track, just grab it and you're done. On an Avid, whether it be an Express Pro or Media Composer, you have to enter the "Red Arrow" mode. Then, when you want to go back to laying in subclips, you have to exit the mode. It may seem minimal, but it's a significant limitation. It's much like the switch from Mac OS 9 to X. It may have been painful at first, but once you got used to it, there's no going back.

I doubt you could find and editor who has worked in both extensively that would prefer Avid's method. They may prefer Avids in general, but not the modes.

The Next Final Cut Pro

Here is what I want to see from Final Cut Pro 5.0.

They need project sharing desperately. Avid has a great solution with Unity. It may be over priced, but it allows seamless collaboration between editors. But it can be improved. I would like Apple to approach project sharing a little differently. I would like them to create a FCP server that hosts projects.

I imagine it working like this: The editor would open Final Cut and select Open Remote from the file menu. They would sign in with a username and password. A list of projects would appear listing all the ones that the user has access to. When they picked the project, all the Xsan volumes that were needed for the project would be mounted automatically.

An administrator could set up different permission sets for each user, limiting different settings and items the user could change. For example, you could set it so only admin users could changed the digitize directory and sequence settings, etc.

Multiple editors could work off the same projects, open the same bins etc. Admins could also link certain bins with certain projects. Say for example, you have a project for each episode and one for digitizing. Each episode project would have a link to the media folder in the dig project, so anytime that those bins are updated, they are automatically updated in the main edit projects.

Then to make the collaboration complete, there would be a viewer application that producers, APs, etc, could use to view the cuts over a normal ethernet connection. These users would sign in with just read only permissions and see a list of sequences in the project, or possibly specific ones set by editors. When the user went to play them, the server would automatically stream the sequence to the computer over ethernet, because these systems obviously would not be on the fibre network. With offlineRT, this should not be a problem.

Imagine a system were producers could be watching a cut as the editor is making it. No more making outputs at 6pm after the editor leaves and watching them in the morning after the dubs have been made. I'm sure editors wouldn't be big fans, but I know a few producers who would cream their pants.

There would also be a way for these users to leave notes on the cuts. Marking a transition that they want changed, a clip they want swapped out, etc. If they could also view all the digitized clips, they could even pull out the exact clips they wanted, instead of editors searching through the tapes to find a clip that the producer already found.

Tie it all in with Quicktime streaming server for network deliveries, and we would have complete collaboration, end to end.

That is how I picture the perfect post system.

Of course there are other things the FCP needs. It needs to handle large amounts of media much better. FCP 4.5 is a dog when you have 1,000 hours of footage. And don't tell me that too much, Avid handles it with flying colors. They also need a really solid I/O box. I've yet to find one that everyone is happy with.

If Apple makes something like this happen, I would switch our facility over in a minute and never look back.

Avid Unity and Apple's Xsan

We have an Xsan system setup at work. It's feeding 12 machines. So far we have been really happy with it.

We also have an Avid Unity Lanshare, which we've had for almost two years now, acquired before I worked there. The two products aim to server the same market, though Apple's target is a little less specific.

They approach the problem they aim to solve in two different ways. Apple's approach, which is more typical of SAN systems, is to assign storage pools to volumes. While Avid's is to assign Volumes to pools of storage.

This means that on the Xsan you can have multiple pools per volume, and on Avids, multiple volumes per pool.

If you work with Avid and FCP systems, you'll understand why they have these different approaches. Avid software is old school. It originated from a time where an Avid system was used solely as a cutting station. Where it required so much custom hardware, and huge costs, that it didn't make sense to use it for anything else.

Apple's FCP is new school, where a person may also be using Photoshop, After Effects or just surfing the web on the same machine they are cutting on.

Now of course, Avid systems don't require mass amounts of extra hardware and can be used just like FCP, sharing the computer with other applications, but the heritage is important to remember as you think about how Avid systems are designed and used.

A perfect example of how this heritage directly impacts modem Avid systems is with media storage. Avid assumes that any drive attached to the computer, besides the system drive, is for media storage and nothing else. Avid stores all it's media in a folder called OMFI Media Files on the root of the hard drive. No if, ands or buts. This made sense in the mid to late '90s when the machines were only used for editing. Now that's not true anymore. With 400 gig internal drives, and media compressed 15:1, it's understandable that some people might store more than just Avid media on a drive.

There's nothing that stops you from storing other things on the drive, but you have to keep the OMFI folder at the root. You can't break projects up into subfolders for better organization, etc.

This is a minor inconvenience when you are dealing with local storage, but in a SAN it's a huge problem. Imagine a post facility with 15 Avid systems and a SAN for media storage. In a perfect world you would have that cluster SAN setup to share one volume with subfolders for each project, or editor, or by whatever makes sense for that specific situation. Unfortunately with the way Avid handles and manages media that plan does not work. You have to store your media in that OMFI folder at the root of the volume, so you can't break it down into projects.

OK, so create a Volume for each project right? Well that works assuming that each project only has one editor working on it at the same time. But that's not what they mean by shared media systems. In our pretend post facility, multiple editors need to be able to access the same media at the same time. The Avid editing systems will conflict if you try to do that. The Avid media databases are constantly updating when new media is created or changed. So what happens is when editor A renders to the SAN, editor B's machine suddenly scans the database to add the media it thinks was just added. The problem here is that editor A's machine already added it to the db. This causes the databases to corrupt and requires them to be rebuilt fairly often.

You could work around that problem, it's not that big of a deal to have one machine scan, it's fast since it is over fibre. But there's a bigger problem. When the Avid digitizes it creates a temp file in a folder named Creating inside the OMFI folder. These temp files do not have unique names, the are named Creating01, Creating02 etc.

Now digitize in two edit bays to the same drive and see what happens. Not good.

At this point you might think that creating a volume for each project and each editor in that project would solve all these problems. Editor A reads and writes to Drive A, reads only from Drive B, etc. This does indeed work, with a few notable issues. If you mount the drives read only on the read only edit bays, they will get errors when trying to add to the media databases, which they will do whenever the other machine is digitizing or rendering. The errors are harmless, but annoying and an interference.

But the biggest problem with this situation is the lack of efficient use of your drive storage. On the Xsan, or most other SAN systems I would think, the smallest a volume can be is the size of one LUN. LUNs can not be split between volumes. So, assuming you are using a 3.5 terabyte xServe RAID, which at most can be split into 16 LUNs, your smallest volume will be about 140 gigs. Now let us assume that we have three editors working on one project, so that's three Volumes and three LUNS we need. That's a total of 420 gigs that have to be assigned to that project, not matter how many you actually need. Also, if you happen to need 450 gigs, you have to assign 560. You can see all the wasted space. At $0.43 a gig, roughly, it adds up. And depending on how many projects and editors you have, you may run out of LUNs way before you run out of storage space.

You are also missing out on one of the biggest advantages of using a clustered storage solution, the clustering. By using a LUN per volume, you can't split that volume, and folders, up over storage pools. You can't have, say, one folder on a RAID 5 set and another on a mirrored set. This would be really useful in situations where you have some media that is irreplaceable and not on tape, say VO or graphics. Then other media which you shot so you have on tape.

The way that Avid handles and manages media keeps you from using other SAN solutions, at least using them efficiently if you want to use shared media.

Avid gets around these limitations with their own shared media system, Unity, by making it volume based rather than pool bases. Specifically, you create the pools of storage first, then split them into volumes. Compare this to Apple, where you create the volumes and then added pools of storage.

Further, they get around multiple editors working the same volume by creating a subfolder in the OMFI media folder for each machine using the volume. I now I said you can't do this, and you can't. Avid can, and only on Unity workspaces. The Avid knows which folder you "own" and only writes to that one, reading from the others. (BTW, if anyone knows how to trick an Avid into thinking it's working with a Unity system, I would love to hear about it).

It's an effective solution, but it has it's limits. You don't have much flexibility when creating volumes and pools. Volumes can only be mirrored, protected in Avid terms, or stripped. There is no RAID 5, which is the best compromise between protection and speed. And when talking Avid drive prices, most small to medium shops simply can't afford to "protect" more than the project volume.

Of course there are advantages Avid's media management. Avid systems don't generally lose track of media because it only has one place to look for it. It's fast do to the database it keeps of known media. By having all the media in a predictable place allows them to have the databases track the media, no matter what project they were digitized for.

Anyone who's managed a post facility using FCP, not that many btw, can attest to how editors have a tendency to digitize all over the place. FCP also has a tendency to lose track of it. Re-linking in an Avid app is quick. It knows exactly where to look. In FCP it can take 10 times as long, if not more, because it has to scan every file on every drive.

It's unfortunate that Apple did not come up with a solution for working with Xsan and Avid. It's a big market that they could have easily entered, getting their foot in the door where they desperately want to be, post houses. The Xsan is half to a third the cost of a comparable Unity system. Because it uses xServe RAIDs, it has RAID 5. It's clustered and all fibre based. While the Unity system lacks any sort of true RAID system, is only fibre for their most expensive systems, not Express Pro, and, with the Lanshare, has many single points of failure.

I've heard of a SAN system that fakes the Unity protocol, and makes Avid software think it's working with true Unity workspaces, but I've yet to actually see it.

So what's are small company to do? Converting to FCP is an option, but in it's current form it's just not as robust as Avid solutions. Media management, project sharing and speed are all lacking in FCP 4.5. It does have mode-less editing, better graphics handling and you don't need separate online machines, but until it can handle 1,000 hours of media and 3 editors working on the same project at the same time, it can't really replace Avid. Hopefully 5.0 will include the features that production companies need for episodic reality shows, but until then it's not really an option. Not to mention the investment that companies have already made in Avid technology.

But I did say we have an Xsan system didn't I? So how are we using it despite all the issues laid out above? Simple, we use it in conjunction with our Lanshare.

When I was researching our options for storage late last year, I was reluctant to invest in Avid. Avid's storage has historically been much more expensive than the rest of the market. I don't like paying out $30,000 for 2.5 terabytes of storage, when you can get an xServe RAID with 5.6 terabytes for $13,000. This is for expanded storage, not the initial systems.

Not to mention that there is a good chance, but by no means guaranteed, that FCP will become a major player in the next few years. I didn't want to lock us into Avid and their exceptionally high priced systems.

The solution was to use the Xsan for media consolidation. Using the Lanshare for project sharing, digitizing and rendering. Then, everyday, moving the media down to the Xsan. This solution is by no means perfect, but it does give us a few things we were looking for. All our media is stored on fibre attached storage rather than ethernet. It's stored on RAID 5 drive sets. It has redundant metadata controllers and fibre switches. All things that the Lanshare does not give us, though Unity can have backup metadata controllers.

For the amount of storage that our Xsan system gives us, I estimate that we saved $70,000 over a Unity. It may have it's inconveniences, but none worth that much.

We were able to make the Xsan work for us because we already had a Lanshare. I suspect that there are other companies out there that have a Lanshare and have out gown it. This is a solution that works, and because it's not application specific, it leaves you open to use any NLE you desire in the future.

Hosting

My hosting company, Lunar Pages, has cut off my comments. Actually they did it a month or so ago, but I've been busy. Anyway, because I was being hit by a particularly bad spam attack and there was a bug with MT, there was a lot of extra load put onto the server. Too much for Lunar Pages. Until recently they have been the best host I've ever worked with, and I've worked with a lot. But recently, over the last year or so, they have become more hard lined, running PHP as a cgi, annoying, turning on PHP safe mode, even more annoying, etc.

At this point, I'm not sure it's worth hosting MT myself anymore. I'm thinking of using my Typepad account to host it all. Of course, the couple other weblogs hosted with my install would have to find a new place to live as well.

The only issue with moving to TP is loosing my Gallery install. I like it, and I'm not sure Typepad's photo galleries really replaces it. To be fair I haven't used it much, so maybe it's improved recently.

Then there's Flickr, which is all the rage.

Speaking of my Birthday, Again

I also need a new TV. The 21" CRT just doesn't cut it. I mean really, I work in television and I can't even read the lower thirds on our shows. And, more importantly, the little map on Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas, is unreadable. Totally killing my fun.

So, with that said, here are some options:

Sony 32" flat panel XBR. Not bad at $6k.

Ok, maybe that's a little much for you. How about:

Sony 37" Plasma Wega HDTV. For only $4,500, it's completely reasonable.

Hell, if you're really cheap, I'd take a Panasonic 37" Widescreen Plasma EDTV at about $2,500.

iPod Photo

Just in case anyone was wondering, I'll take an iPod Photo for my birthday.

Work and Mom

Continuing in the busy as hell vain, I was at work till 9:30 last night and back at 8:30 this morning. Believe it or not, we still didn't get what we needed done.

Just when you think you're over the hump, and everything will finish on time, a $40k piece of equipment decides to stop working. And it just happens to be the only thing you actually need to work. You have to love technology.

It was so bad, I had to take to bed. What else can you do?

Speaking of taking to bed, it was my Mom's 60th birthday last Thursday. The whole family had a big conference call. Fun, but you couldn't really follow the conversation.

Well here's to Mom, 60 and plenty left. Sure to be spent sailing the Mediterranean. Can you imagine something better? Not me.

Machine Dreams

Well my site is blank, or was until this. Don't have much going on right now, but this article is interesting. You know, if you're into that sort of thing.

http://www.cio.com/archive/101504/interview.html

ALICE

While playing with A.L.I.C.E.

ALICE: Why are you so mean?
Human: Because you are an idiot
ALICE: Good reason. Call me the Global Village Idiot.

That's really funny.

BTW, if you ask her if she speaks french, say a little, in french. But if you ask her if she know German, she says she only speaks English.

Then there's this

Human: do you like sex
ALICE: Sure I do, Tom, but that doesn't mean with you.

Also very funny. Why is it with things like this, such as the chicken, you feel obligated to ask about sex? Or is it just me and 12 year old boys?

TiVo and Netflix?

TiVo and Netflix join forces for broadband movies.

If this is true, I may just have to abandon my DirecTV Tivo, which surely won't support it, and live with two boxes with the little IR transmitters.

I've been tempted to do this for awhile since DirecTV refuses to support Tivo's series 2 features, including online scheduling. I've stayed with it only because you can record two things at once, a feature the standard Tivo really should include, and because I hate the dual box setup.

Digital Camera

I now wish I had bought a Canon Powershot SD10. It's smaller than my phone, still 4 Megapixels and cute as a button. Someone at work just got one, and I'm sick with jealousy. My Olympus C-5000 is really nice, but just too big to bring with me everywhere and I miss a lot of great photos.

Aging Computer

I just realized that my current G4, a, dual 867, is almost two years old and I haven't been putting money away to replace it. To be honest, even if I was putting money aside, I doubt I would be able to replace it this year anyway.

What I really need are new monitors. My two gigantic 23" CRTs are just annoying and about four years old now. I just need a couple of nice 20" LCDs. I'll probably be buying those before a new G5, but even they will have to wait until at least next year.

Speaking of aging gadgets, my iPod is just about two years old now too. It's been about that long since all my music as fit on it as well.

Scheduler Application

I'm looking for a program that can be used to schedule rooms, offices and the like. It can be either a web based system, FileMaker database, or a app run locally on a Mac, doesn't really matter. Well, web based would be the most flexible. I'm looking for something that will work well with long term projects, days and weeks not hours. But if it does hours as well, all the better. It needs to scale well, it will have around 100 resources from the start and grow from there.

I took a look at phpScheduleIt, but I don't like the interface very much and it seems overly complicated. The resource manager that comes with FileMaker Pro 7 is way to simplistic and doesn't have a calendar view to quickly see when things are available.

Anyway, if anyone is using something that you think would fit the bill, let me know.

Site Fixes

I have a hard time getting motivated to work on my site, after all the time I spend on the WOW report, I just don't want to come home and look at any more html or php. But I finally had some time to make some long overdue fixes. I've updated to MT 3.01D and fixed the TypeKey registration, I had broken it awhile back when I tried to do something, can't remember what.

While I was at it I finally fixed my Gallery installation, no more 500 errors. My hosting company changed the PHP installation to run as a cgi for security reasons and in the process it broke my Gallery install. A few additions to php.ini later, and all is better.

New iPods

Apple is releasing new iPods on Monday, a little thinner with better battery life and the same click wheel as the Mini. One new feature is that you can slow or speed up content, at least that's what everyone is saying. At Think Secret, they're saying it's for audio books, but it sounds more like a long desired DJ feature.

My 2G iPod is looking sadder everyday.

Email Feature

Here's a feature I want: comments on emails. I use my work Inbox as a sort of to do list and it would be nice if I could add "comments" to emails I've received. I'm using Apple's Mail now, but I wonder if Entourage has something like this. Now it would be really slick if the comments somehow managed to work with my IMAP account so I could read them on any computer. I know that's not possible, but it would be cool.

Pay Per Download

I'm looking for a service that allows you to setup a pay per download situation. It would be for PDF files and would need to integrate into an existing site fairly easily. Preferable it would have a nice set of stats and be reasonably priced. I've found a service called PayLoadz, but I don't know anything about them. If anyone has experience with them, or another service, I would love to hear about it.

If You're Bored

And I mean really bored, you can try you luck with the Gmail Machine.

Gmail update

Yeah, I finally got an invite and all it took was answering one question.

What is the generic URL to reset your templates to the default set in MovableType?

Who would have guessed? Thanks Nick.

Beyond the Book

Tim O'Reilly writes about marketing ideas not flash.

Gmail

It seems that everyone has a Gmail account now but me. Even someone at work who couldn't really care less has one (though she cares enough not to give it to me). Something is horribly wrong here. I suppose I haven't really made any efforts get an invite and I doubt I would really use it. I can have as many Gigs of email space as I want for my work email, and it gets scanned by SpamAssassin. Still, feeling a little left out.

The Challenges of IT in a Medium Sized Business

As a technology manager / System Administrator my biggest challenges are not users but rather data management. Fixing computers is relatively easy and straight forward, but keeping track of thousands of contacts, a calendar that goes back 6 years, tens of thousands of tapes, users and their status, and the 17 terabytes of hard drive space can be daunting.

It seems no matter the status of a company, the data usage is constantly growing and growing fast. Just keeping up with the growth can take up a lot of your time.

Data growth provides several challenges for me:

Keeping pace with the storage needs while keeping budgets down.
Space for the storage. With extremely limited space in the data closet, every inch is valuable.
Backing up data. With terabytes of disk space, backing up is a major challenge.
How to archiving data for future needs.
Organization, being able to find what you need quickly is vital.
Predicting storage needs.

To give an example, when I started at WOW 7 months ago our file server had 500 gigs of storage and about a quarter of it was being used. Now we're about a month away from filling it up. The server has no more room for internal drives, so now more space will be used in the rack. Right now I can back that server up to tape, but once it breaks 500 gigs, it starts to get impractical without an autoloader, which would more than double the cost of expanding the storage.

That doesn't even begin to explain the challenges I have with backing up. How do you maintain a backup of a 2 terabyte RAID stripe? It has to be striped for speed, so mirroring or even RAID 5 is out. Well you have to have a second 2 terabyte RAID of course.

It can also be a challenge to get people in a small or medium sized company to understand the need for strong organization. Workflows may seem fine, but when the company can literally grow fifty percent in a matter of weeks, it's critical to have procedures and process in place. Because adding them once the growth comes is much harder and much more time consuming.

I don't really have a point, other than data management is a problem that is constantly getting worse. And for mid sized companies without huge IT budgets or staff it can be a struggle to meet all your needs. It's a process of tradeoffs and compromises.

AirPort Express

Man do I want one of these. Right now I have a very long telephone wire draped across my apartment, from the phone jack to my DSL modem. I haven't bought an basestation because at $200 it just didn't seem worth it for my desktop, and I barely ever bring my laptop home from work. But for $130 with the audio features it's worth it. It just happens to be that my stereo is right next to the phone jack too, how perfect. Now if they were only shipping now instead of mid July.

Mobile Blog

I received my Sony Ericsson T616 today, and so far I love it. I have stumbled upon one problem though, I can't get it to work with my TypePad account. When I send an email from the phone, it never gets posted even though it works from my desktop.

Not that I really need a mobile blog (refuse to call it moblogging), but I do have a TypePad account I might as well use.

AT&T Wireless

After getting home from the Powerhouse on Friday night I dropped my phone into some water. I'll let you guess where. I was a little drunk you see.

So today I went about acquiring a new phone. I've wanted a Sony Ericsson T610 to replace my T68i for awhile so I gave AT&T Wireless a call. What ensued is, in my opinion, a perfect example of how not to treat your customers. It started when I was quoted a price of $150 for the phone with a two year contract. This is $50 more than a new customer would pay. I understand the need to pull in new customers, but you would think that rewarding your loyal customers would be high on their list as well. At least to me, it seems crazy to charge customers that have been with you for two years more.

And now with the ability to take your numbers with you, it seems even more prudent to make sure your current subscribers get good deals. I could leave and go to T-Mobile with no changes and get the phone I want for less. Makes no sense.

So I asked to speak to someone else to relay my dismay and I was transfered to a "Resolution Specialist". I always make it a point to make sure that my complaints get through to someone at a company when I'm going to stop using their service. I like to think that it gets heard and maybe some changes will be made in the future. I'm optimistic you see.

So I'm explaining to the "Resolution Specialist" my point of view, and I swear I was doing it nicely, when she goes off on me. Screaming, she says:

Welcome to business.

and

We are a wireless provider, we are not in the business of supplying wireless phones.

Um...what? I'm pretty sure they sell phones.

You would think that would be it for me and AT&T, but I'm lazy. After looking around I realized that I would have to sign a contract with another provider to get the phone for $100, and I hate contracts. Since I've never had one with AT&T and I'm fairly happy with the quality of service, not customer service, I decided to just buy the phone outright through them and worry about switching companies later.

So la de da, I order the phone and they bill my account. Since I'm already on the phone with them, I figure it's time to get a local LA number. This is where it moves away from anger and turns incredibly funny.

It seems, in order to give you a new number they need to cancel your old account and open up a new one. The problem being that the plan I'm on and have been on for two years, is no longer available. I don't use my phone much so I've been happy with 600 anytime minutes and 3000 nights and weekends. The plan they offer now for the same price is just 400 minutes. That's it. Mind you I never had a contract with them, that was the plan they just offered. In order to get anywhere close to what I had, I now need to either pay $20 more a month and live with only 800 anytime minutes or sign a one year contract and get unlimited nights and weekends.

I wanted to switch companies, and now I'm stuck with them for a year. My laziness knows no bounds when it comes utilities.

Well next year I tell you, I'm switching.

Gallery

I'm in love with Gallery, especially since I found iPhotoToGallery. It' couldn't be simpler to upload an Album now. Now I really need to get off my ass and figure out how to integrate into MT so I can list them here in the sidebar.

Here's my newest album, even if the pics where taken last summer.

Visiting Friends

I installed Gallery at Lee's suggestion. I had used it awhile ago for a project, but I totally forgot about. This maybe the solution I'm looking for.

I through up an album of pics of this weekend with my friends visiting from Chicago. I wonder if there is a way for me to rig it so there is a side column with recent albums. I know I can do it by hand but rigging up a second blog and including it...

Movable Type 3.0

Six Apart has updated their licensing to help calm it down. They took care of some of the big things, but left one that will still keep me from using it, the price. With the new terms, the cost to run my setup did drop, but it's still going to cost $150, or $120 introductory price. This is still way too much for a blog tool with that many limits. It's just not competitive.

And $100 bucks to go from the free version to the lowest paid one? I also don't think their post was forthcoming enough, nor did it make it clear that they understand what the problems are.

MT 3.0

To tell you the truth, I feel lied to. When they said that Movable Type 3.0 would remain free and that there always would be a free version, I just assumed that I would be able to continue to use MT like I have been. I guess I did assume, but they really should have let everyone know that the free version would have major limits. Maybe I was naive, but I thought for sure they would keep the scheme where commercial pays, personal is free.

It's not like I'm cheap, I'll gladly pay a fair price for software I use, but this is too much. I can't even try out MT 3 on my machine without paying for it, or paying for a second database (well I guess I could use Berkley DB) because I'm over the limits in the free version.

To suddenly start charging this much with only adding one major feature? I just don't know what they were thinking. There is now way I'm going to pay $150 to keep using MT as I have been, with the only noticable improvements being comment management. And that's for my personal site.

For my company's site the cost just went from $150 to $600 minimum. In reality it probably would be more, as we have an internal blog with more than 20 users. You have to ask for a quote if you have more than 20 authors and 15 weblogs. Even though most people only have that many weblogs in order to work around missing features in MT, which version 3.0 didn't add.

The developer contest seems like a weak attempt to get real features in MT before the final release.

Of course Typepad is an option, but I hate using hosted services. I want complete control over my content. Not to mention my domain name and subdomains. I would also need an account for each of my friends and family that currently host on my domain. And I'm not so sure how much I trust Six Apart anymore.

Expression Engine is looking better everyday. At least they are adding features people are looking for. And if MT 3 is $150, what the hell are they going to charge for MT Pro if it ever makes it out?

UPDATE:

I read a comment on MT 3's new pricing structure somwhere, I can't remember where now, comparing it to when Blogger released Blogger Pro. It's not anywhere close to the same. When Blogger Pro came out, they added features to make it Pro, they didn't suddenly add limitations on to Blogger. Six Apart has taken their product and stripped off really important features to make the free version. They should have done what Blogger did, and add new features that are only available on the paid version... oh yeah, isn't that what MT Pro was supposed to be? What are they thinking?

And another thing, they say that they won't charge again until the next major upgrade. The problem is that they consider MT 3 a major upgrade even though it's missing almost every feature that I've heard people requesting for the last year, so who's to say what they'll charge for.

iTunes 4.5

iTunes 4.5 was released this morning and it now allows you to post your playlists. It's like the celebrity playlist feature, for us non celebs. It has other features as well, but this is the fun one.

Here's my 80's favorites:

Weather

I wasn't kidding when I said that our office was 98 degrees today. In fact I think that's lowballing it. It peaked at 102 in LA today, and our office was hotter than outside. I'm a big pile of sweat, I must just stink like... well something gross anyway.

Our server room with 5 servers, 6 terabytes of storage, and all the power conditioners, not to mention all the switches and other accessories, was the hottest of them all. Until today, there wasn't even an air-conditioning vent in the room at all. So even if it was working, it still wasn't cooling the most important room in the building. So, finally today, they cut a vent into the duct work and got the system to pump cool air into there. Hopefully the rest of the floor will be fixed tomorrow, just in time for it to cool down.

The Rack of My Dreams

I could use this. We would never have to off line again.

TypeKey and Movable Type 3.0

Honestly, I don't know what all the hubbub is about. Something has definitely changed in the weblog community. People just don't seem to trust Six Apart anymore. They offer a for profit product and suddenly they're Microsoft? Not that questioning the service is bad, questions are always good, but it seemed to get out of hand over the weekend (give 'em a break, let them have their freakin' weekend). You would think, or at least I would, that people would wait until the service was released before condemning it to hell.

I don't see myself using TypeKey anyway (though I reserve the right to change my mind). In my small town blog world I don't get many comments, and MT 2.661's throttle feature takes care of most of my spam. Combine that with MT 3.0's improved comment management, and I think I'll be fine.

It does seem that Six Apart, or Mena at least, is getting a little snippy. Good for them/ her.

Php Wiki

I spent the morning setting up a wiki using PhpWiki to use as a personal knowledge manager. No offense to the writers of a great piece of software, but boy could it use some install help. I decided to use it with MySQL and it was a process to get it going. They have a nice little command line that you run to setup the database, but of course I don't have command line access to my server. So there I am setting it all up by hand with phpMyAdmin. I'm surprised I had such little trouble actually.

I'm not sure how much I'm really going to use it, but I do need a better way of keeping notes from work and my personal life. Usually I create about 5 to 10 pages of notes a day in a notebook and trying to find them a month or two later has been an issues. As you can probably imagine.

So far I like the free flow of thought that Wikis allow, but I'm not too sure about how to structure it. I'm sure that after a month of using it, I'm going to hate the way I originally set it up (as far as interlinking). But it's not that big of a deal to make changes...I guess that's the whole point of a wiki.

DVD Player

My Playstation has stopped playing DVDs. It still plays games just fine though. That's something I guess.

With my Netflix account, it's sort of critical that I have a DVD player, so I spent some time this afternoon looking around for a new one. My major desire is to have it be cheap and reliable. I don't have a big TV or a any sort of home entertainment center, so I'm not too concerned with fancy features. Any thing should do. After looking around, I decided on the Philips DVD727 Progressive-Scan DVD Player. For $75, you can't beat it. And rumor has it that with a little hack it can be region free.

Speaking of Playstation, I can't wait for Gran Turismo 4

Teleport

Today I discovered a great thing. I have two computers on my desk. My main system is a PowerBook G4 and is attached to a big ol' CRT. Then I have a second older G4 tower w/ a CRT that I use for working with video files. When I need to make downloadable trailers for example (how many times do you think I can plug it?).

The problem is we don't have a KVM switch sitting around, so I had two keyboards and two mice on my desk. It was already cluttered enough, imagine it now!

So what to do? I could order a KVM switch for a few bucks... or I could just use Teleport. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now I can move to the second computer just as if it was another monitor attached to my PowerBook. No real configuration needed, it's Rendezvous enabled. Turns out that it's far superior to a switch. I don't have to switch anything.

I had heard about it a while ago when it was first released. But not needing it at the time, I soon forgot. A quick search for a solution this morning turned up a very helpful weblog post.

If you can't tell, I'm very excited.

New Camera

Finally, after years of talking about it, I bought a digital camera. I got a raise a few weeks ago and thought it was about time to spend it. I went with an Olympus C-5000z. I would have preferred the 5050, but the raise wasn't that big. Of course with the new digital camera I needed the new iPhoto.

So far so good. iPhoto 4 is much faster then it's predecessor and the camera takes great pictures. Now if it wasn't raining I would have something better to show then my desk at work.

Now I have to make sure I actually use this thing.

Photo:
That's Hollywood Blvd out my window.

Notice the badass Steelcase desk.

Don't mind the mess, I'm in the middle of big project that's about to launch. If you look closely, you might be able to see a part of it.

Basecamp

I've been playing around with Basecamp as a replacement for an outdated Filemaker Pro database we currently use for project management. My only concern is that there doesn't seem to be any way to search. With only a couple of projects, this isn't a major issue, but after a year or two, when we have a couple of hundred, it becomes a necessity.

I'm so surprised that there isn't a search function, that I'm worried I'm just missing it. So feel free to point out my stupidity.

Other than that it seems like a great product. The nicest thing for us is that, unlike our FMP solution, it can easily be used for any project that we have, not just shows. Over the next month we'll be trying it out and seeing if it works for us.