Colton J. Provias

This is just a heads up. Expect regular updates to resume this week.

On a side note: I just filled up 3 TB of HDD with HD video and audio. Expect a new video later this week or some time next week.

Due to technical issues, all of my websites will be moved to a different server over the next 24 to 48 hours. There will be downtime. I apologize for any inconvenience.

UPDATE: The first phase of the server move has been completed.

As I have previously discussed, I will be doing a video per day for all of 2010.  Well, the project has started and as I stated in the first video, there are a few guidelines I have to follow.

1. 1 video-per-day
2. Videos cannot be posted in advance
3. Videos can be posted late as long as they follow sequentially so no dates are skipped
4. As a bonus, try to do something different with the technical aspects of each video.

Two days down so far, 363 left.  You can find the videos on my YouTube channel.

So my family just bought The Climax, the world’s only drive-thru strip club.  Here are some links for those who haven’t heard of it:

• Hold the Pickles, Please (Time Magazine)
• World’s Only Drive-Thru Strip Club (RoadsideAmerica)
• Road Trip – Pennsylvania’s Drive-Thru Strip Club (Automopedia.org – Best Pictures)

The club has also been featured on David Letterman.  I’ll be getting video later today and some pictures will be appearing on my Twitter feed.

In zymio and now in MusicHostr, I’ve developed a few solutions to simplify problems.  So I present to you my confirm and alert dialog solutions.  These extensions to jQuery UI are meant to simplify alerts and confirmation dialogs considerably.

Installation

1. Download jQuery UI 1.7.2.
2. Download dialogs.js.
3. Include the following code in the head of your HTML file(s):

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="path/to/jquery-ui-1.7.custom.css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="path/to/jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="path/to/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="path/to/dialogs.js"></script>

Quick Alert

To quickly display an alert, all you need is:

$.alert({text: "This is an alert!"});

That’s it.  Quite easy, isn’t it?

Displaying a Confirm Dialog

A confirm dialog would take more code.  Here’s just a quick and dirty example of how code would be written for a confirm dialog:

$.confirm({
    text: "Click OK to release the hounds.",
    ontrue: function () {
        $.alert({text: "The hounds have been released."});
    }
});

Customizing Dialogs

There are numerous options for the dialogs.  So far you have seen text and ontrue.  However, this small script has been written for full customizability.

• title – The title of the dialog  (Defaults: “Confirm” for confirm and “Alert” for alert)
• text – The text within the body of the dialog  (Defaults: “Are you sure?” for confirm.)
• width – The width of the dialog.  (Default: 300)
• height - Height of the dialog.  (Default: 150)
• text_true – (confirm only) The text for the true button.  (Default: “OK”)
• text_false – (confirm only) The text for the false button. (Default: “Cancel”)
• button - (alert only) The text for the only button. (Default: “OK”)
• ontrue - (confirm only) Function callback for true.
• onfalse - (confirm only) Function callback for false
• onclose – Called after the dialog is closed

MusicHostr Profile View

Introducing the new design for MusicHostr!  In the next few days, I should be able to get a good bit of the site done and get it close to release.

Two quick changes:

1. Music URLs will be changing entirely.  There will be no deprecation of the old URL due to technical issues.  Instead, old music URLs will no longer function. Please be aware of this.  All users will be informed of this change during the release.
2. The site will now be known as MusicHostr instead of MusicHostr.com.  I am looking into possibly naming it zymio as I still own the domain.

And one quick question.  Should the site remain as MusicHostr or should I change it to zymio?

MusicHostr is being redone with HTML5 and CSS3. This means that the site may not function or display properly in Internet Explorer. If you are using or will be using the service, please make sure you are using a compatible browser. I personally recommend Google Chrome. The latest versions of Firefox, Safari, and Opera will also work. Camino may also work.

Expect the first screenshot of MusicHostr within the next 24 hours.

I finally have joined the smartphone era in the past 24 hours.  I used to use an LG Chocolate VX8550 (VX8500 before that).  Needless to say, I quickly bypassed activation on my phone and started installing applications.  At this point, I have already filled up the phone’s internal memory so I can try different applications out.  There are somethings I want to mention about this phone.

I am rather fearful about the touchscreen.  This fear is well supported as I am one who tends to carry an electronic device in each pocket and this device will most likely take quite a bit of stress.  My iPod touch already has a few deep cuts in the surface of its touchscreen.  My LG VX8550 has taken a good bit more damage from use (unreadable screen, broken power socket, and damaged battery contacts).  I have no idea how long the Droid will last especially due to the flimsy camera and volume buttons on the right side of the device.

The Android OS, however, it quite amazing.  Many of the applications I use on my iPod touch are also available for Droid, quite often sporting more complete feature-sets or interfaces.  Even the switch back from Droid to iPod touch now feels awkward.

One feature I will find myself exploring on the device over the next few weeks is the Google Latitude service.  Unfortunately no other friends of mine use Latitude, but I might find a use for it soon.

For years I have been using Sibelius 4 on both Windows and Mac.  Here is the process that I used to go through each time I started a new song:

1. Create a set of themes or one main theme and get excited enough about it to want to put it into a full orchestral score.
2. Load up Sibelius and create the score.
3. Load up Kontakt 2.
4. Load the instruments in Kontakt 2 so they correspond to the instruments I am using in the score.
5. Map each staff with its appropriate instrument via MIDI channels.
6. Fine tune each instrument to get the sound that I desire from it.
7. Sit down and do a test to make sure all of the instruments are mapped and configured properly by having them play a scale or something of the sort.
8. Finally start inputting the theme.
9. In most cases give up because I no longer have the drive to go through with the project as I did 30 minutes to an hour earlier when I was first starting up Sibelius.

Needless to say, when Snow Leopard came about I ended up with my computer crashing quite often due to compatibility issues with Kontakt 2 and Sibelius 4.  This is a major reason why I drifted away from doing film score and toward my smaller ensembles that I have been working with recently.  I did create templates for Kontakt 2 and Sibelius, but small things like accidentally leaving the mixer open in Sibelius 4 or just changing the impulse in Kontakt 2’s convolution filter will either crash the program and require me to reset all of my audio devices or completely kill the window manager on my Mac.

Today I have finally upgraded to Sibelius 6.1.  The sound libraries I was using before have been upgraded to work with Sibelius 6.1.  Needless to say, I have had very little issues with it.  But probably the most stunning aspect is how this has changed my workflow.  Now when I start a project, it goes as follows:

1. Create a set of themes or one main theme and get excited enough about it to want to put it into a full orchestral score
2. Start up Sibelius and create the score
3. Start writing the piece
4. Fine tune the instruments while the piece progresses.

Suddenly a process that used to be upwards of one and a half hours due to computer issues has become just a couple of minutes.

Unfortunately I haven’t had much of a chance to use Sibelius 6 except for about half an hour today.  I do, however, have a small sample of music that I ran through Sibelius 6.  Here is a quick and dirty rendering of Celebration of Life.  Absolutely no changes were made to the score.  I just simply opened the score and recorded it to test Sibelius 6.  With a little bit of fine tuning, I could probably get my old sound back.

[MP3]

If you take a look to the right, you may notice that two new widgets have appeared.  The first is my Facebook Fan Page Widget, of course.  It focuses mainly on music and I tend to update it about my works more often than I do this site.  If you want to receive more frequent updates on my music, I would recommend becoming a fan of me on Facebook.

Just below the Facebook Fan Page Widget is a Google Friend Connect Widget.  This is a new service that I’m going to be trying out.  As my Facebook Fan Page focuses just on music, users of this service will receive a much more general overview.  I will send out occasional previews to projects that I am working on days before the material appears on this blog.  The material may even remain exclusive to Google Friend Connect in some cases.  A Google Account is not required as it will accept other services such as Twitter, AIM, Yahoo, and OpenID.