J5’s Blog

Rome.ogv

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Above is a song I was writing for my sister’s wedding. Unfortunately I never finished it and logistics got in the way of me bringing a guitar to Italy (namely I didn’t want to lug a guitar all around Italy). I thought I would record it using my Cannon PowerShot camera and edit it with Jokosher and PiTiVi to see how far our tools have gone.

I have to say it was fairly easy but I still ran into issues. As far as UI Goes PiTiVi is much easier to use than Jokosher in terms of organizing what I wanted to do. I really only needed Jokosher to tweak the sound a bit but it was still a bit of trial and error to get something decent. I used the high and low pass filters to filter out background noise and echo from my room. Jokosher lacks a basic noise filter effect which can be implemented manually in most other editors by taking a sample of the ambient noise and phase shifting it 180 degrees so the ambient noise is canceled out. Unfortunately the solid bar UI which departs from the usual wave graph makes it impossible to do this by hand. In any case the low and high pass filters worked fairly well to get the most annoying twangs and hisses out.

Another issue is not being able to mark cutin and cutout points and have PiTiVi sync the video with these point. I essentially had to do minimal processing in Jokosher so I could easily sync the video to the edited sound in PiTiVi. It would have been nice to trim the audio in Jokosher and when I imported it into PiTiVi, had it sync up to the correct points in the video. Manually doing that in PiTiVi is hard because of the timeline scale and the fact that it is exclusively drag and drop. It would be nice to be able to enter exact values or load markup metadata so I could snap to my cuts. Once the audio is in PiTiVi we are stuck with PiTiVi’s audio tools which will never be as complete as Jokosher’s (assuming Jokosher gets some development love). It would be nice to be able to jump back and forth between the two.

All that being said, once I planned out what I wanted to do it took no time at all to do it for a video as simple as this. It might not be all roses and honey yet but it is much better than it has been. The next step is to start multi-tracking in Jokosher and syncing it to a video. We shall see.

Forget all that sci-fi mumbo jumbo and papers on University Professors injecting themselves with microchips.  The future is now and for years they have been implanting tracking chips in pets to aid in recovery if they ever got lost.  Never mind that I a bit jealous that my dog got the bionic treatment before I could have some sort of electronic enhancements embedded in me, not that I would want a tracking device under my skin.  And, no, it isn’t because I am a cruel task master or that I have an ugly mug which makes me afraid of Ty running away.

Ty has actually been great on the long leash though he does get distracted and run ahead sometimes.  In my driveway I can leave the gate open and let the leash hang free, confident he will listen to all my commands and not bolt when he had an opportunity.  Outside the gates he is a bit less disciplined as sensory overload tends to win over his short attention span.  Hot dogs do have the power to eventually bring him back though.  Right now I am trying to train him to eventually be able to walk off leash.  If he walks ahead he doesn’t go that far before he circles back to check that I am still there and when he is by my side (usually begging for treats) he will stop when I stop and turn when I turn.  All of this are good signs but I still need to train him to stay by my side unless I release him to run around.

Because I wanted to have confidence to drop the leash while training him I wanted him to be chipped.  I didn’t want to confuse him or make him nervous by being myself being nervous when letting go of the leash.  I brought him to the vet and lo and behold, he already had a 24 Hour Pet Watch chip in him which saved me some dough.  Actually the vet didn’t know which company Ty’s chip was from so I ended up cold calling one of the companies whose tech person was more than happy to take the serial number and tell me it was a 24 Hour Pet Watch chip.  I signed up on the web site and now Ty is good to go.  For further insurance I also bought a dog tag which has the number of the company along with the serial number engraved on it.

This is all leading up to a fall camping trip I am trying to put together where I am going to allow Ty to hike with just a light clothes line attached so he feels like he is off leash.  If he does well eventually he will be able to walk in the numerous off leash dog parks in the city, including Russell field right behind my apartment and that would be trey cool.

OMG HSFC!!!  Today I went to Enfield, CT to pick up my adopted dog Ty.  Adopting Ty was sort of a impulsive 3 year decision.  After moving to Porter Square I had always said my next apartment would have to allow dogs.  When Bryan Clark needed a third roommate and asked me to move in I jumped at the chance.  Part of the reason for that was his dog Moose who was and still remains to be awesome.  When Bryan went to Mozilla Messaging in Vancouver, Moose went with him.  With no dog to greet me when I came home from work it started getting pretty lonely at the apartment so I started looking for the perfect dog to fill that void.

While on vacation in Aruba I spotted Ty at Pet Finder and instantly fell in love. After getting back I called up Adopt a Lab and found out that Ty was still available and that they were coming to New England that Saturday. The catch was I had to agree to adopt Ty, sight unseen, for them to go through the process of getting him checked for transport and bring him from the midwest to the east. The way it worked they explained, is that I had to commit to at least two weeks with the dog and if it did not work out they would arrange foster care and refund my money. After a day of deliberating I called them up again and started the process rolling. That is when the adventure began.

My friend and resident dog expert Sara agreed to venture two hours out of Boston with me to the agreed upon meeting place where 22 other adopters were gathering to pick up their chosen dog at 11am. All was well when we pulled into the parking lot of Enfield’s Town Hall fifteen minutes before the pick up. Whole families had come to get the first glimpse of their future pets. This is when one of the volunteers notified us that the air conditioner on the transport vehicle had broken down and that they were delayed until 1 o’clock because they had to replace it. This was no big deal as Sara and I were hungry and it would have been hard to get lunch once we had a nervous dog on our hands.

Coming back at 1 brought new troubles as the skies opened up and proceeded to deluge us. On top of that, the transport only made it around 3 o’clock.

I didn’t mind the rain or the delay.  I was just anxious to finally meet Ty.

When Ty finaly came out of the truck, he was a bit excited.  I could hear oohs and ahhs from my fellow adopters which was the chant recited whenever a particularly cute dog came out.  I walked him around a bit on his lead away from the crowds to calm him down.

A quick drink and bathroom break later, we were finally on the road to Ty’s new home.

To calm Ty down even more Sara gave him the plush mole toy she had bought him as a gift.  The funny thing about that mole is that Ty seems completely indifferent to the Kong with a snack in it and the tennis ball I had gotten him.  He loved that mole though.

It was pouring outside which made our way home slow going.

Ty didn’t mind though as he darted his head from window to window taking in all of the new sights he was experiencing.

After dropping off Sara in JP we made our way back to Cambridge and Ty’s new home where he drank a couple of bowls full of water.  When the rain died down I took him for a run and he finally settled down enough to eat.  Even after the run he was still a bundle of energy and even though he kept nodding off he would quickly wake up and nudge me to play some more.  Finally around 8 he fell asleep for an hour and a half.  Right now he is calmly watching me write this blog and perking up every time I look his way.

Oh ya, J5 and Ty – I think I’m going to keep him!!!

My twin sister just called me to tell me she got engaged to her long time boyfriend.

I just found out a couple of days ago my best friend proposed to his girlfriend Missy and she said yes. That is great news in itself but I also found out I am to be the best man at their wedding. I haven’t known Missy for that long but I do know she is beautiful and sweet and a perfect match for Charlie.

I snagged this from my brother’s facebook page.  For years I have been pleading with my parents to get another dog.  My dog had passed away after my sister and I moved out of the house and I can’t have one in the place I am living at.  My parents finally got one some months back.  Cookie, the world – the world, Cookie.

My twin sister was recently featured on the eyewitness news heath section. She appears in a session about keeping your back straight. Pretty cool stuff and sage advice for those of us who hunch over computers all day.

I just found out my bro has put down his deposit on North Eastern Univeristy. Last time we spoke it was between that and Loyola, Maryland. I was a freshman dropout of the Univeristy of Maryland* so I was worried about him going to Loyola. At least in Boston, if he needs to unwind he can always take the T to my place to decompress for a bit. It is also far enough from New York that he can feel independent but still go home when all of his friends aren’t around.

As a graduation gift I am taking my brother to Amsterdam the week after GUADEC.  Anyone have suggestions of where we should stay?

* I later graduated Hofstra which in a winding path finally led me to Red Hat, so no regrets