Matt's Weblog

Question for ya…

matt — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:14:10 +0000

Let’s say you’re living in a country where a large atomic energy company that has been, up until that point, run by the government is being sold. Sold to a private company and they know that instantly! roughly 800 jobs would be cut. Now you are a tax payer in that country so you feel as if you have a say in how that money is spent. You’d like to think it’s used responsibly and efficiently. Now this ‘buyer’ has obviously done some looking into their perspective acquisition. They’re somewhat aware of what it is capable of doing without ‘extras’ On the other hand they could be a bunch of total morons convinced they’ll be able to actually run the thing! Any ways. My point here is how would you feel about those 800 people loosing their jobs. They pay taxes too. Do you say.. Hrm. If they really didn’t need them.. then I possibly don’t feel so bad considering it’s my tax dollar that’s paying for some useless stuff. Think of the phone company guys in the vans and hard hats. Or the security guards, or parking guys or whatever. They, just like you, pay tax too! Do you feel bad that they’re loosing their jobs or not. Are they a drain on your money or do they just have a ‘place’ I’m sure every body knows of that guys brother or your roommates friend who has this strange… longer term – short term job. Which is it?

matt — Wed, 25 May 2011 03:04:12 +0000

Had an interesting walk home tonight in Madrid… in about 4 seconds I walked past a group of about 50 cab drivers and garbage men hanging out having a major conversation, a guy drunk as fuck pissing on the wall and and massive political protest almost a week after they started camping outside in a huge square in Madrid. Too cool.

Here’s a article on the protest.

iTunes help

matt — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 23:10:09 +0000

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/ Dupin is a pretty cool program for itunes that will check for duplicates and allow you to clean them. There are also several free Apple scrips for iTunes that allow you to clean up your library, add artwork etc.

Digital Archiving

matt — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:02:46 +0000

Here’s an interesting read.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation

The WIkipedia article is really the tip of the ice burg when it comes to digital preservation. There are many people specializing in Audio, Video, photography and other forms of information that are working hard in order to ensure the long-term preservation of digital content.

Digital… it’s perfect forever right.. well as it turns out there is a growing problem with archival and long term storage of digital information. The digital mediums themselves deteriorate, and on top of that, they are made obsolete so quickly that reading the information may be difficult in the near future.

Just think of the past few years and the many types of media storage formats you may have used… some analog, some digital.. VHS, Beta, floppy disk, Laserdisc, Minidisk and even CD’s. Some are already gone.. some on the way out.
But all of these formats have a shelf life, not to mention maintaining the machines required to read them. There are other sustainability factors that apply across all digital formats for all categories of information.

So there is constant work involved in storing mass quantities of information in some form of digital archive. Work to ensure that the rate at which technologies to store this information are grandfathered isn’t faster than they can get stored to the medium itself.. and that in the future these formats will still be readable. zoinks.

As an aside, if you’re interested.
http://www.iasa-web.org/ is the The International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives.

This article is about Digitizing the past and present at the Library of Congress. Pretty cool read for sure.

well..

matt — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 02:12:23 +0000

I figured I’d start to write here again. I’ve neglected any of this type of record keeping for a while. The tour is in Spain now.

Moscow

matt — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:42:43 +0000

Here are a few photos from tear down in Moscow..

WTF

matt — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 01:27:55 +0000

This is a cigarette add in Japan. Nice.

Corteo Video

matt — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 23:35:19 +0000

Been a while…

matt — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:43:47 +0000

Well, it has been a while since I’ve written. I’m working for a tour in a big blue and yellow tent, run by some famous french canadians. It’s pretty exciting.

I’m in my hotel in Ottawa, just about to head to work. We’re here for another couple of weeks then move to Miami. Once Miami is finished, pack it all up and head for Japan! Yes. This will be an experience.

Salsa!!

matt — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:05:08 +0000

This show had to be one of the most rewarding I’ve done in a while. Wil Campa Y Gran Union, a 14 piece cuban salsa band rolled through the Kelowna Community Theatre and we did the audio. It was 12 monitor mixes and lots of Cowbell.
We brought the A&H ML5000 for monitors, the Verona for FOH with the Martin 5 way PA.. which I have to say sounds fantastic. It is such a smooth, musical PA. It really is a pleasure to mix a show on such a nice sounding rig.

Anyways. This band was incredible. Salsa music is so energetic and fun, it was hard not to dance a little.. which is exactly what most of the audience did. They set up a dance floor in front of the stage and it was used! Wil and his band were super happy with everything!

Good times.