Hello World

Getting back onto my feet reminds me of coding your first program to display "Hello_World" on the screen.

The weather has warmed up [in the day] to 76F degrees which greatly helps my spine and body (that adores heat and humidity). As for the rest of my idiodic health [as usual] it just runs its course and consumes whatever amount of time it wants to.

So I'm back riding my ToDo_List and expect to complete a slew of projects. Mind you, where I come from, being productive or getting things done is NOT the epitome of life. Living here in the mountains by a lake in our motorhome and doing absolutely nothing can be shear joy to say the least.

Nevertheless, I DO have a lot of irons in the fire and would like to get the majority of my busy_work accomplished before Summer.

On a final note, over the past year I've been banging my head learning XHTML, DHTML, CSS and javascript. It's really cool that I've mastered my challenges. I plan to revamp my older websites and install them into the new shell design which required some tricky business in the coding department. So, after a lot of Google searching, forum reading and studying some research materials in my library here at home, I have figured out how to accomplish what I am wanting to do.

Yay Harry!

;;cheers;;

Nailed Again - Continuing

Jeeze, this has grown interesting. My todo list is twice as long as it was, and it appears that my spine is winning. It's nice that I can blog from bed using my NintendoDS... tis more than I can say for iPhone users who don't know what blogs are.

Anyhow, I am admidst a sea of spinal agony so not much is getting done. I've completed my purchase lists for the remainder studio gear. The new vocal process won't release until April, so no hurry for that.

Have drafted up replacement websites for both the /pchelp and /slot1 which is changing to /games to accommodate other gaming consoles as well as NintendoDS. Will be nice to finally dump the Fireworks prototypes and their mega-sliced HTML-ism.

For now, guess I will just rest up and get ready to burn rubber the next time I am on my feet.

;;cheers;;

Nailed Again

Somebody please tell me something that I don't already know!

I'm up to my ears in morbidity. See ya when I get back.

;;cheers;;

Ask Harry

Logic Cubase Sonar DAW digital mixers 01X MOTIF XS recording DAW controllers EuCon mLAN MIDI Firewire ADAT TOSLink S/PDIF "ask me anything"

;;cheers;;

A Mixture Of Things

Hello and sorry to keep you waiting!

Been extremely busy since my last post. I entitled this blog, "A Mixture Of Things" because the past few days has been just that.

Some travel to the big city to visit and help my uncle who's health is failing and needed assistance with quite a few things. Also, he will be needing to move to another location and will need somebody to do some footwork for him to help find a dwelling to meet his needs.

While we were there, his leg infection became an emergency and we admitted him to the hospital where he is much improved now, but it appears his heart just isn't doing its job and that is causing many of his newer problems.

Meanwhile, I am still ordering toys and equipment for NASAV_studios, along with some cables and wiring. I know I have discussed this many times now, but between wrong parts and change in design, it was necessary to change the type of cables to get the job done. Also, the 30 inch LCD will be moving to the other side of the RV. I previously announced this and due to my own health challenges, the LCD has not been moved yet.

Additionally, I am ordering a new 12_string acoustic electric guitar. I found a nice Ibanez which should prove useful for recordings and live performances.

Still find time to play games on both the Xbox360 and the NintendoDS. The new games rock! All of the new games coming are fantastic, engrossing and fun to play!

In web news, I finally got over my DHTML, CSS and javascript hurdle. I am so jazzed that I got my head wrapped around this so I can now begin to apply this technology to my new designs and websites. Talk about happy times.

Although I do have a /pchelp website up and running, that website is going to get ANOTHER facelift with MANY changes, including no content omissions.

Believe it or not, the PC Help Videos website is going to get a facelift and a bevy of new videos added to the site, along with older videos getting updated. HappyHarryNET PC_Help_Videos will continue to participate as a major contender in the PC Help arena!

For those of you who are into socnets (social networks) such as MySpace, facebook, and Twitter and want to stay in the loop with what's going on in the world of HHNET, it would be my suggestion to join facebook, Twitter or subscribe (RSS) to my blog and use the Flock web browser which makes it really easy to manage all of your socnet activities. And, Flock is a really good browser!

Thanks again for listening. There's much more to come!

;;cheers;;

Nailed Again - Familiar Territory

Today I wokeup with a vicious headache. This was around 9:45 am. I slept well as usual and upon my first awakening I noticed improvement in my L5 and tailbone, meaning less pain.

Trying to get onto my feet was another thing. This was one of those blinding screaming headaches with the morbidity of death. I medicated and immediately began a skull massage using my infrared massage unit. I must have passed out for I don't remember anything after that.

Then I woke up again. Headache was down to a dull roar. Phone ringing. Some idiot telling me my car warranty is about to expire so when I asked them about it, of course, they did not have access to those records. Now I'm awake and realize that in the middle of this headache I'm dealing with the first telemarketing call to hit my new phone number.

Now to begin my day. Looking over my notes from yesterday I am reacquainted with my excitement about Q-Mic product line which I will be ordering. But, for now, I am going to take this day slowly and not dive into any projects.

;;cheers;;

Nailed Again - But Still Hammering

Well, nothing new to me. It's challenging sorting out which excercises don't irritate my spine, especially L5 and my tailbone. Toss in a few headaches and poof, there goes a week reaL easy!

Anyhow, during a recent trip into the city I took measurements of the iMac24 so I can simulate it here in the studio area. The 30 inch LCD will also be mounted above the Mac so I needed to know clearances between the two monitors.

I've decided to try out a pair of monitors that will be useful with the PC/Mac and then I can proceed with ordering the new TC-Helicon VoiceLive_2 and get started with that. Reference monitors are MORE important for MIXING than actually playing the instruments per se, so by the time I have maybe 2 to 3 songs recorded I can order the Yamaha monitors and subwoofer.

Well, its good to be back on feet. I was wiped out with Dramamine last nite, jeeez, I could easily overdose on that crap. I'm not traveling well these days, whether I drive or not. Getting equilibrium issues again real bad, so back to the neurobrain people to see what's going on. Perhaps it's scan-time again, hopefully no negative changes there.

Meanwhile, I got a couple web projects to finish up and then it will be time to totally rip up HappyHarryNET and give it a facelift while widening the web space area to accommodate some of the new pages and upcoming content.

For now I am going to keep all YouTube content (including music) on my Hornstrum account so to get there it's pretty easy  youtube.com/hornstrum  I will put a logo-link on my site today, a few people have asked me about that.

And for those of you who have asked me here for it, I WILL be creating an "Ask Harry" section on my website so you can ask questions or make comments. Then I will publish your questions and my responses on a dedicated "Ask Harry Blog" so look for that soon.

;;cheers;;

Peggle - Finally Here!

Wow! Peggle is a fun game. I first went goofy over this game when PopCap made it for RealArcade. Ever since then I dreamed of it for both NintendoDS and Xbox360.

I've already been playing the Peggle Dual Shot on DS, tonite I just bought the 360 version of the game which is better in a few different ways, including more colors!

One interesting note of trivia. When I was exiting the game back to the dashboard, there was one sound effect linked to pressing the "A" button which was the "infamous Windows asterisk sound" used for dialogue boxes and when you click on the volume control slider in the system tray ;;heh;;

Anyhow... Peggle is on my 2 favorite gaming consoles and that's all that matters!

;;cheers;;

Working Out Is Working

Tomorrow marks three weeks since I began my workout routine. It's going very well. Currently, my program runs 90 minutes. 30 minutes cardio, 30 minutes strength training, with the remaining time spent swimming, sauna and hydrotherapy.

Still, I miss the "range of motion" that only the Total_Gym can provide and plan to purchase another one very soon. The Total_Gym [as seen on TV with Chuck Norris and Christy Brinkley] is a wonderful piece of exercise equipment which will give you immediate results. In the past, I have even taken my Total_Gym with me on commercial aircraft when I am visiting away from home, simply because I prefer to use it rather than typical gym equipment.

Friday marks the beginning of 40 minutes cardio and doubling my reps with weights. My swimming time will increase as my back and spine become stronger, and I look forward to swimming this spring and summer here at the resort where we live.

;;cheers;;

TC-Helicon Voice Live 2 and 1

The VoiceLive_2 is an impressive "stomp-box" vocal processor. Being a user of the 1stGen VoiceLive unit, I was immediately engrossed with the QUALITY of the new VL2 unit. It now possesses all of the vocal processing effects of their rack units as well as now providing 8 harmonies live.

Meanwhile, I shall continue to use the VoiceLive_1 shown above. It's a quiet, quality unit that can also serve as a quality mic preamp for pres that are short on gain or the ones that get noisy when you crank them up.

;;cheers;;

Nailed Again

Well jee, another insideous headache. I thought I might get the 30inch LCD moved today. Perhaps later, i'm checkin' out.

;;cheers;;

25 Things About HappyHarryNET

01. People who get to know me will learn that I am passionate about everything that I do.

02. I disagree with most "green technologies" that are offered to the public as environmental heroes.

03. Slogans amuse me. My favorite is, "If should's and but's were candies and nuts, it would be Christmas everyday".

04. Music is my first love. That is, writing, singing and playing guitar, piano & banjo with the xylophone being one of my favorite orchestral percussive instruments.

05. The Flock browser is a ingenius method to stay, "in the loop" with all of your social nets.

06. The finest historian of our century is Eustace Mullins who was embued by Ezra Pound.

07. I find most things funny, and if it's not funny, then I think of something funny
ABOUT it.

08. Although I wanted my own biological children, I have none. And I have many wonderful step-dots.

09. I enjoy learning new things by video tutorials, to the point I created many of my own that are on my PC Help Videos website.

10. Distractive therapies are tools that I use to detour chronic pain from controlling my time.

11. Had I never been hit by a car, I never would have taught myself to be as good as I am.

12. Girls ;;sigh;; Ahhh yes! Thank heaven for little girls ;;smiLe;;

13. Since its inception, I have truly loved computer software.

14. One of my favorite outdoor activities is spending time with, "the ducks".

15. My favorite indoor activity is living full time in our motorhome where I do everything indoors.

16. It's a shame that cellphone "texting" has replaced, "the first date".

17. I am NOT a phone-bug. However, feel free to call me anytime after 9 PM PST or weekends ;;grin;;

18. Don't expect me to come visit you. Metro-hysteria is NOT something I embrace.

19. Humid climates such as FLorida are heaven to my body and its thermostat.

20. Q: Why did the turtle cross the road? A: To get to the Shell station.

21. I am absolutely strict with regards to respecting other people's property.

22. In the year 2001, my doctors quoted me 15 years of life to end 8 years from now.

23. My favorite pizza is anchovie, pepperoni and cheese, thin crust.

24. I love cold nonfat or 1 percent milk in a frozen glass. The temperature is 38 degrees Farenheit.

25. Have a cow! Take a frozen 16 ounce glass, fill half with milk, top off with rootbeer.

;;cheers;;

I've Become A Flock-er

Finally got around to spending time to try using the Flock browser. First of all, let me begin by saying installing and "getting up to speed" using this browser, IS A SNAP! Additionally, this is a full featured browser than runs at a rabbit's pace and manages every conceivable online activity you can muster up and throw at it.

The Flock browser integrates all social networking features into your browser. I REALLY like this! At a glance, I can see the status of all my webmail accounts, Twitter, Facebook, 2_MySpace accounts, myBlog and RSS feeds. IF you are a member of any of the following, you NEED to be using the Flock browser!

PEOPLE
+ digg
+ Facebook
+ Flickr
+ MySpace
+ Twitter
+ YouTube

MEDIA SHARING
+ Photobucket
+ Picasa
+ TinyPic

BLOGGING
+ Blogger
+ Blogsome
+ LiveJournal
+ Typepad
+ Wordpress.com
+ Xanga
+ Self-Hosted Blog

ONLINE FAVORITES
+ Delicious
+ Magnolia

WEBMAIL
+ AOL Mail
+ GmaiL
+ Yahoo! MaiL

For information and tutorial, visit http://www.flock.com

P.S. Kudos to Microblitz ^5

;;cheers;;

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Shifting Studio Around

Well jee, time flies when you're having headaches and fun ;;heh;;

In order to accommodate all the fun stuff that I am wanting to do in the forward cab of our motorhome, it was imperative to redesign space considerations.

Had I continued on the original design course, I would have lost use of the 30" inch LCD for home theater and Xbox360. That's not an option.

The solution was to stick with iMac24 for studio center piece and move the 30 inch LCD from this side's overhead and mount it overhead, "on the other side". Run extended component video cables and Ethernet over to studio table. This eliminates having to move the home theater subwoofer, rewiring the optical 7.1 surround. Also, this enables Xbox360 to the 30 inch LCD, the home theater for movies and streaming Netflix and AppleTV. Yay! No spacial conflicts! Keep in mind, we're talking 8 feet of very square space, here in the forward cabin of NASAV.

I'm looking forward to Yamaha 01x, Cubase and Logic on Mac OSX very SQQN !!

Once this nonsense is complete, I will publish pics and video. Still designing NASAV_studios website on yellow legal pad, so will be awhile before THAT site is hot.

;;cheers;;

Got My "Jasper" Xbox360

Got my Xbox360 replacement yesterday! Wow, what a difference. I suspected my 1stGen unit had some problems, but now I know it had problems.

The new "jasper" chipset is the latest 2008 build of the 360 including smaller CPU chip, lower power supply and overall less HEAT. Also, whereas I live in a motorhome in a particularly quiet area, it is OBVIOUS to me, the new units are much quieter during operation and there is no doubt about it, most of the LOAD times are faster.

The longest load time noticeable because it is a major NXE dashboard function, is that it takes about 20 seconds [while it does nothing] to populate your recent games list. I THINK MICROSOFT SHOULD FIX THIS. When you pop out of a game and want to jump into another one, especially the XBLA games that you purchase, no user should have to wait 20 seconds for a file listing TO APPEAR.

I am pleased in all respects! Last night I had my first 5_hour romp with Civilization Revolution. Real fun game.

The Arcade pack also comes with 6 FULL VERSION games [2 of which I already owned]. SEGA Superstars Tennis [Sonic], Boom Boom Rocket, Feeding Frenzy, Luxor 2, PAC_MAN Championship Edition, and UNO.

[sidenote] NintendoDS has a new game called Big Bang Mini which is a stylus game very similar to Boom Boom Rocket on the 360. It's very colorful and a lot of fun! It's one of those games you start swishing the stylus and 3 hours later, you're still playing it!

The Arcade compilation disc has a nice, simple interface. However, I was dissapointed that Microsoft did not include NXE in their startup video, which would impress new 360 buyers. Actually, I didn't realize how much better NXE was until I saw the video that showed the previous, "blades interface".

In anycase, for me, it was totally worth buying the $199 Arcade360 to replace my 1stGen unit, popped on my 20gig hard drive and in minutes had my machine, Netflix and Media Center configured and up and running.

Thank you to Ars Tehnica for the photo.

;;cheers;;

Busy Times

What a nice way to recoop from the usual pain-riddin lifestyle.

We got a couple days break from rain so I got up on RV roof and repaired some worn spots to disable a tiny, minor leak. FTW ^5

Enjoying the health spa and gym 4 miles away. Yeah! Didn't even know it existed. Everyday I workout and use sauna and hot tub. My body responds to hot moisture so well!! The exercise is good too. Also, a bonus. To get into the health club you must climb 2 healthy [steep] rows of stairs. Once inside the building there are stairs up to the cardio area and elsewhere as well. So even if you don't use the facilities, just walking around you get exercise on their stairs!

My Xbox360 began freezing up. No RROD (Red Ring of Death) yet, but no matter. The freezing is caused by the ATI graphics processor coming loose, I plan to rip open the console and repair it myself. Meanwhile, this coming week I plan to purchase a new Xbox360_Arcade which is the newer chipsets not prone to be problematic.

Still putzin with the /pchelp website. Should be done in another week or so. Keep trying the link on my main site. It will be obvious when it's hot.

Just beginning to dismantle the home theater system and wiring. Moving everything 180_degrees in the RV. The surround subwoofer and speaker connections are getting transferred to the other side of the truck so the 30inch LCD will be taken down from the overhead mount and attached to its table stand where it will grace the studio table and be used with Cubase4 DAW for recording. Additionally, I have a nice PC/Xbox switch to flip back and forth between games and the PC. The PC over there will boot to Cubase4 and fire up Yamaha mLAN. Dedicated recording. Where I am sitting now will be the MacBooth, where TWO iMac24 will be making home any day now.

I won't order the monitors until the stands are made and the surround job is done. Its just too congested in here when things are, "not in place".

Very much looking forward to March. It's music time!

;;cheers;;

Nailed Again

Pain has outran my ability to distract myself from it. I see based on last blog and my overall health and looking at date on computer that I am losing days left and right. Today I tried a simple accounting of past few days and was not able to reconstruct today let alone past two to seven days.

Started some new AJAX code for website. Will get back to that when I am happening. So much to do, so little time with it flying by getting UN-USED.

;;grumbles;;

Nailed Again - Rip Roaring Headache & Spine

Jeez my head is gonna explode and my spine is on fire! Well, so much for getting anything done today. I'll putz around if I can stay on my feet.

Let's keep this one short. I'll be back.

;;cheers;;

Rewire Time

Right when I was about to order speaker monitors and subwoofers, it came to my attention that the arrangement of gear in my studio area, including gear on the other side of the RV needed to get swapped with the studio-space side. For very good reasons, it is a good thing that I caught my own oversight! Now, all present entertainment functions will be possible at any time, along with the recording studio. Had I went ahead as planned, home theater surround, cableTV and Xbox360 on 30_inch_LCD would have gone down the drain.

So, next week is a RIP-UP when i remove all cable runs for cableTV, surround system, ethernet and power. New power runs as well with both line conditioning and UPS's on both sides of the truck, then run new cable runs from the forward cab and back to the electrical panel.

This is good timing. The 2 new iMac24s won't be here for a month anyhow, and the Vista laptop that is currently in use will be installed "under" the studio table and be a dedicated power-on to Cubase and mLAN for 01x and MOTIF_XS.

All in all, I am pleased. Even though I am two months behind my original projected schedule. In the end it don't matter anyhow. If the studio setup is not functionally correct, I won't be publishing any redbook CDAs. Where I come from, they call that confidence.

;;cheers;;

MOTIF_XS - A Real Workhorse

While NASAV_studios continues to be under construction, I do have the workstation set up now in dedicated space which has allowed for much more TIME to spend learning the DEPTH of this outstanding, 8_element synthesizer workstation. What's left to do? Actually, alot! In this basic 6x4 feet of space, every detail is crucial to the end result of the project studio. I'm considering a dedicated hard disk recorder which will require another uprising stand through the table, so I am pausing plans.

As you can see, mixing is very much the same as a traditional mixing board, and of course the 8_faders and 8_rotary encoders are tied to all controls including the mixer, making adjustments a breeze. Still, I prefer working with 01X and DAW. However, there are some real advantages to dedicated hardware such as HDD recorders having the ability to mix audio, right onboard during a session without the need to transfer data over to a DAW. In other words, no computer needed.



For those of you who like to see things up close, this is a better shot to get a better perspective of the fader, encoder and transport controls. This synth is extremely intuitive to use, considering what a complicated machine it truly is. I keep learning more stuff every time I turn it on. Sometimes things get a little, "hairy" because of it's complexity. However, the upside to that is, when you want to create some special little detail that is not, "built-in" the XS will accommodate your idea with ease!

NASAV_studios photos and videos will be on the new website.

;;cheers;;