I’m very pleased with my MacBook Pro. So pleased that I decided to break down a song into midi and record it in Garage Band, just to have the midi files.

BIG MISTAKE. Garageband does not export midi. Funny enough, Logic (both Express and Pro) will read midifiles from Garageband projects. So, the midi is in there somewhere. And no-one has written a tool to extract the midifiles. In that lies the drawback of the Mac: unlike in the Apple // days where there was a program for almost anything you could think of, ranging from serialport-programmable lasers to extracting text from Appleworks, somehow the Mac has become more of a “I’m content with what I have” community. Otherwise, someone would’ve come up with a way to extract the midi from Garageband files.

Other than that, I’m happy with the MacBook Pro. I really am.

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Meanwhile, My Twitter Gadget for the Vista Sidebar has been added to the Live Gallery.

This gadget allows you to scroll through your Twitter messages, including the people you follow, and allows you to post directly from your desktop. Just press the “record” button and start typing. Press the record button again to save, or press any other button to cancel.

There’s a lot of options, too! Oh wait, no, there’s no options! What you get is what you see. The only thing you can fill out are your username and password, which are necessary to retrieve your timeline from Twitter.

If you find any bugs or have feature requests, let me know. In the meantime, enjoy!

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The last week we had a small filmathon and we watched a lot of zombie/vampire/werewolf movies which, without exception, all sucked. The one non-fantasy movie we rented, Next was actually more than half decent – that is: more decent than Britney Spears the last year. Nicholas Cage plays a rather entertaining character and the movie itself isn’t bad. It’s one of those movies that’s actually over before you know it.

This weekend, we completed the filmathon with The Darwin Awards, Wild Hogs and Zodiac. Two mild comedies and one thriller that promises to bring the suspense of 7even.

The Darwin Awards has Winona Ryder, a fact that, in itself, warrants watching this movie. She’s the girl that Alyssa Mylano could’ve been: cute, witty, petite, and basically prime drooling material. She ages very graceously and the shoplifting incidient only added to her already impressive charms. And this movie’s also got two of the most extravagant television characters this world has ever seen: the Mythbusters.

And today, we watched Wild Hogs and Zodiac. If you ever have to choose between those two, pick Wild Hogs. If you ever have to choose between Zodiac and The 50 worst commercials of the 50’s, go for the commercials. I will tell you the end of Zodiac rightaway without having to spoil the movie: IT HAS NO ENDING! The movie starts (rather brilliantly) in the 1960’s and then slows down and glides off, month after month, year by year. By the time the producer gets to the 1990’s, he runs out of money and does the rest of the story in 3 full screens of text, basically explaining that the whole movie has no ending and that he doesn’t know who did it. Which is a crying shame if you’re watching a whodunnit movie.

Wild Hogs was something entirely different. If you like your humour light and really funny, go rent this one. All the classical jokes are here! It’s hilarious, witty and light enough on its feet to stop you from getting snacks in the middle of the movie. Definitely recommened viewing. If only for the cameo appearances of our friends of OCC.

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If you thought YOUR day was bad, imagine what tomorrow must be like for the webmaster at http://www.interactieve-digitale-tv.be/

This results in the following really really nice screenshot.

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My efforts in building a Vista Gadget are coming along nicely. Yesterday, I built the script that interacts with the Twitter API. The Twitter API is, in my humble opinion, a very good one. It allows for a developer to fetch a personal timeline (such as available on my blog, in the first column) or to fetch a timeline with friends’ Twitters on it i n a variety of formats. Because a Vista Gadget is actually just an enhanced version of the Active-X Desktop available in previous versions of Windows, a Gadget is just an HTML page. Therefore, the most easy conversion was to fetch the Javascript json version.

I’ve had some other Twitter Gadgets installed, but none of them really got me going. They were too big or too ugly to use.

Mine will show only the most recent Twitter on your “with others” timeline. I still need to add functional forward/backward buttons, a settings page and something that will parse url’s within messages.

And then I’ll only need to add a way to actually post stuff from the gadget. When that’s done, I want to add sound when a new message arrives. And then I’ll have to see if I can do anything about loooooooong lines so that they do wrap nicely instead of breaking layout.

And there’s actually more that I want to incorporate in the little gadget. I want the ability to send you to the Twitter homepage, to either go to the Twitterer’s homepage or to his/her Twitter timeline, I want the ability to display multiple Twitter Gadgets all focused on one person so you can actually fetch a person’s timeline per Gadget. This would be handy if you have a lot of friends on Twitter, or if there’s someone in particular that you want to pay special attention to.

Purpose in life!

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Saturday, the inlaws helped my put my studio together (amongst other things). Today, I finished most of the job and the result is below. It still needs an actual computer (which is on my list and which I will buy once I’m more up-and-runny so I can figure out which one I want.

LTR: two folding chairs (matching the carpet tiles), cover of the Pod XT Flightcase, office/lounge chair, computer keyboard I, external soundcard Tascam, TFT screen I and II, desklight, organisers, a TV for dubbing movies etc, lots of nifty and useful stuff neatly organised into crates, a Samsom Q7 mic and to the far left, cases and covers of various instruments and sizes.

FRONT: Mixing desk, 12 channels, with foldback and main out. In front of that, keyboard II and mouse II and in front of that, the Pod XT, riddled with useful stuff like extra strings, extra cables and duct tape.

There’s two keyboards since that way, I can control the PC from where my Pod XT is lying. Missing in this picture is my Yamaha Keytar which Joop has on a loan.

And since they have all been very nice girls, here is a picture of the Axe family!

LTR: Spanish nylon string, Jackson Fusion EX, Jackson SL-1 CS, Hamer 5-string bass, original Venezuelan Handcrafted quatro, Fender somethingth anniversary acoustic guitar and trying to back out of the picture is the 1/2 sized strat. Not in this picture: the white Jackson Fusion SS which is being turned into a JackAx.

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I have Wordpress installed on my server. It’s the only application I have that actually uses MySql. Wordpress is slooooooooow. It actually takes ages to publish a post or do anything that’s database related and that doesn’t mean fetching. It’s probably “a config switch” on MySql but that only goes to prove why I hate MySql. It’s not a proper database, although millions of people use it. It’s slow and doesn’t work like a proper database. It chooses to ignore standard SQL and throws in weird commands like “bottom”. That’s a television series at best, not part of the SQL vocabulary, darnit.

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