Author Archives: Chris

About Chris

Chris is an IT/IS management professional with over a decade of experience in IT, IS, Network Engineering, and Telecommunications integration. Chris specializes in web server deployment and information management. This includes CMS, CRM, and dynamic content deployment. Chris also manages a full service Video Head End with over 200 digital TV channels. Chris also has five years of project management, knowledge management, and engineering design experience. He specializes in both the Agile and Scrum project management methodology. He also has a background in computer forensics and information security including federal or state compliance audits (such as SOX).

Any Press Is Good Press

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Empire State Building in NYC - Main off air transmission array for TV.

Empire State Building in NYC - Main local off air transmission array for NY.

Quick note, you’ll see me interviewed in today’s edition of The Times-Herald Record. The story centers around one customer of ours (“ours” being my employer WVT Communications) who seems to be having ongoing issues with her cable TV service. The first time I ever heard about her was on Monday (12/14/09) when she left me a voice mail in the afternoon while I was at PT. I returned her call early yesterday morning (12/15/09), but only got her answering machine. I then got another call later that day from a reporter with the Record requesting an interview. With our CEO’s permission I gave a rundown on the good, the bad, and the ugly about digital RF off air reception including addressing how you deal with as a TV cable provider an overall weaker local channel signal level and a higher susceptibility to co-channel interference. Of course the upside is that same local channel signal provides better picture clarity and audio, as well as, allowing multiple channels to be broadcast within a spectrum space that once only allowed one. I haven’t heard back from Mrs. Watson, but I hope I do– I honestly feel there are other issues at work here aside from the digital off air transition issues as she’s stated to the Record she saw them on all channels (not just the local NY/NJ channels) and that leads me to believe there may be something unique to her house happening that is causing her ongoing issues. Either that or there’s a bigger problem I’m not aware of. She alludes to other customers having the issue as well, but makes no firm identification of who those individuals may be. My hope is one of those other customers (or Mrs. Watson herself) allows WVT to look at their equipment and isolate the issue, which may have nothing to do with those previous digital off air transition issues. Only then can I offer all the effected subscribers resolution and restore their service to proper working order, which of course is my ultimate goal.

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Deck The Halls

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DJ Tech Tools VCI-100SE Arcade... this and my two front teeth are all I want for Christmas.

DJ Tech Tools VCI-100SE Arcade... this and my two front teeth are all I want for Christmas.

If you’ve checked out df.com lately, you’ve already seen over the last 48 hours we decorated the site for the Holiday Season. Groucho the Cat has kindly offered to reprise his role as Groucho Clause once again. If you load df.com in Mozilla Firefox you’ll even get little snow flakes falling on your screen. It doesn’t work in Microsoft Internet Explorer for several really nerdy reasons that you’re not going to be interested in either way. So… if you like snow go with Firefox. If you don’t, load up IE. Problem solved.

Work on “digitalflood Pirate Radio Vol. 5 Ep. 4” has started and we’re on target 100% for a release this Saturday (12/19/09). I grazed through the set very quickly and it honestly sounds great. The final production version you’ll hear will be even better.

This afternoon J Diddy showed me a new DJ controller he saw on the G4 Channel’s “Attack of The Show”  the other day called the VCI-100SE Arcade. It’s made by a company called DJ Tech Tools and I have to say that I was completely blown away. The Arcade is a custom built remodeled variant of the original VCI-100SE USB DJ controller that includes arcade gaming style buttons in lieu of the traditional “brick style” trigger buttons found on most controllers. The design was engineered by electrical engineer, musician visionary, and WordPress web guru Ean Golden who is part of the “Controllerism” DJ mixing style. Controllerism is basically using mapped sample cue points in mp3 DJ mixing software (such as the Traktor Pro software used by Ean) to remix/rebuild an existing song or in some cases create an entirely brand new mashed up song. The style is notable for its quickly triggered samples that in turn require a highly sensitive USB controller. Hence the arcade style buttons that offer low latency, high durability, better tactile feedback, and less wear/tear on your hands than the aforementioned traditional controller. You can watch the video of Ean mixing live for a real quick introduction to his DJ style. He’s pretty darn nifty at DJing in my not so humble opinion.

MIDI Fighter DIY Kit - This week on "This Old Controller" Norm builds a sampler.

MIDI Fighter DIY Kit - This week on "This Old Controller" Norm builds a sampler.

This got me thinking about my “Cut Like Crack” style of mixing and how I can actually incorporate this into my mixing technique. I used some different software for my production (VirtualDJ, Acid Pro, and Sound Forge) and a different USB controller (M-Audio X-Session Pro), but the underlying concept is the same. In fact, many DJs are using M-Audio’s controllers with retrofitted custom arcade button configurations similar to how Ean rebuilt the VCI. I am thinking though that I can harness the same tricks through remapping my existing controller input knobs, wheels, and buttons to both a custom effects mapping setup and a custom cue mapping arrangement. The result should be very similar. I can then work backward to incorporate it into my existing methodology to hash out my own bastardized variant (Cut Like Crack In Control anyone?). I’m going to experiment during downtime between production, but if something develops you can be sure as heck to expect to see it turn up in a future Pirate Radio mix session. I’ll let you know how it goes either way.

I’m also eying the DIY MIDI Fighter kit. You need to add 24 arcade buttons and the whole thing prices out to about $200 in material with shipping. If I find something compelling in my aforementioned Controllerism experimentation this could be any easy option that allows me to not have to purchase the VCI. Ideally I’d like to keep using my M-Audio X-Session Pro (which I arguably absolutely love because of its underlying smoothness and ease of use) in conjunction with the MIDI Fighter to pull the whole Controllerism DJ setup off without having to foot the whole cost associated with $1k for a VCI. I’d actually end up better off because then I would have 24 sample/cue triggers plus my existing mixing controller’s setup and $800 in savings. Since the style is cue based I’m not losing anything in the end. Again, I’ll have to see how things play out; but I see the whole thing as a viable option.

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Back to the Grind

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Virtual DJ 5 Mix Session-- this isn't one of mine though. I mean God that's a crappy playlist!

Virtual DJ 5 Mix Session-- this isn't one of mine though. I mean God that's a crappy playlist!

All my audio production applications are back in order as are my art and web production applications. The short version is I’m 100% back in business and fully recovered from my computer’s main hard drive failure. With that, production will resume on digitalflood Pirate Radio starting tomorrow. Release for “Volume 5 Episode 4” will be this Saturday (12/19/09). I’m also going to try to crank out “Volume 5 Episode 5” by 12/21/09. That will put us back on schedule episode wise. Like most people who’ve run Microsoft Windows XP on the same computer for five plus years and then were forced to format– I’m enjoying my new found speed and system stability. I guess either way it was about time for me to reload Windows. I’ve been running on a patched together operating system for like two years and a bad hard drive for about four months. So all in all it could be worse.

While I was at it, I loaded a whole bunch of new effects into Virtual DJ. So you can expect some fresh new tricks to be rolled out over the next few Pirate Radio mix tape sessions. My latest trick is what I call the flanger solo. You’ll hear it in Episode 4 pretty pronounced, but those of you who listed to Episode 3 from this season will be able to kind of figure out where I’m going. If you have a good subwoofer you’ll also notice my new experiments in what is called sub-bass. My goal is to set off the air bag in your car. I’m almost there.

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Shoulder Surgery – 7 1/2 weeks in

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Scapular Strengthing w/weights (Courtesy: http://grantpierce.wordpress.com/)

Scapular Strengthing w/weights (Courtesy: http://grantpierce.wordpress.com/)

Last post I talked about how I was returning to a normal life. At 7 1/2 weeks away from Open Bankart Surgery on my right shoulder normality seems closer and closer. Shortly after my last blog post I had my follow up visit on 12/4 at physical therapy (PT) where I was able to reach an all time upward amount of 170 degrees. If you recall, 180 degrees is full rotation. It was very painful to go past 160 degrees, but I did it.

With that I continued my normal at home PT routine over the weekend and returned to work on 12/7. I was able to work both my PT in that day, as well as, my 3 at home (or work) PT sessions. Again, I was able to hit 170 degrees at PT and did so with less pain. We also continued external rotation (moving my arm away from my body) towards 30 degrees. Again, 180 degrees outward is your maximum, but for now this is the limit my orthopedic surgeon wants me working at.

I had to miss my 12/9 PT session because they closed their office for snow and to top it all off I came down with a cold that same day. This laid me up the whole week and stopped me from doing my at home PT work. When I returned to PT on 12/11 the effect was I reached upward to only 165 degrees, but was still able to go outward to 30 degrees. In short, my muscles though stronger overall from the rest are also tighter. We worked through a brutal upward stretching session that left my bicep feeling like chopped meat.

At that same PT visit the therapist added a scapular stretch, which is the motion you would do if you were standing straight up and pulled out a draw from a dresser while bending your elbows. Over the course of this coming week they will actually start me on scapular weight training to start building the strength back into my lower arms back up to normal, as well as, my shoulder blades and back.

The good news is that I’m noticing less and less daily pain. Sitting still there is normally little to no pain. Driving is minor discomfort when I get around 10 miles and I can finally sit through dinner while out to eat without having one of my arms pop out of the socket. This is all very good news. I also notice my upward reach in my protected zone (150 degrees or lower) is painless as well. I was able to get through four hours of mall shopping yesterday and over 50 hours of work this week. All with little to no discomfort. So there have been good gains overall. I plan now that my cold is letting up to get back to my at home PT starting today so I can catch up and restore any range of motion that I’ve lost over the last week or so.

As always, I let you know how it all goes by the end of this week.

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Baddabing

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Just a quick brief update on the status of my crashed PC– I’ve got it rebuilt with a new hard drive. Still have to get my music programs installed again, but that should only take another day. If all goes well, I should be working on finishing “digitalflood Pirate Radio Volume 5 Episode 4” by Monday night (12/14/09). I’ll let you know how that shapes up, but at least things are starting to look up again. As always, thanks for hanging in there!

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