thing-a-day #11: mac stabilization

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been fighting my mac for weeks now, with constant freezes, hangs, system-wide crashes or video corruption from 1-100 minutes after reboot. seems i followed some bad advice in the past and turned on something i shouldn’t have. so, my thing for today is sharply worded advice:

Do not enable QuartzGL (2D acceleration) on your Mac Pro. To check that QuartzGL is off, open Terminal, paste in this line and press Return:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver QuartzGLEnabled -boolean NO

Reboot to make this take effect. Voila, no more annoying crashes. You’re welcome.

deleting users

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If you’ve had trouble posting on my blog since I opened up comments, you should be able to do so now. I’ve deleted all registered users – so, if you were registered before, now you shouldn’t be forced to log in just to comment.

thing-a-day #10: choc chip cookies

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Still burned out on music. So I made chocolate chip cookies, from this NY Times recipe. I had to make a few substitutions because of what I had on hand:

  • Whole wheat flour instead of regular flour (still used the cake flour)
  • Dark brown sugar instead of light brown sugar
  • President’s Choice chocolate chips instead of the gourmet ones suggested

Delicious!

thing-a-day #6: recovering old digital performer projects

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I had a terrible scare tonight. None of my Digital Performer (my DAW) projects from before I moved to my new Mac would open. It suddenly felt like I’d lost 5+ years worth of musical experimentation.

After panicing a bit, I did a whole lot of research, and came up with this process. It’s slow, but it works. And it’s a thing for today since no one else has ever written it all up in one place before.

  1. Go to the Terminal and change directories to your project, for example: cd Waynemanor/DP\ Projects/Barracuda\ Project/ (If use of a UNIX command prompt and escaping spaces are new to you, you may want to read through a tutorial first.)
  2. Use ls to find the files that are your project files. In this case, I have two: Barracuda and dys4ik 2006-02-28.
  3. Install the Apple OSX Developer Tools if you don’t already have them.
  4. Use the following command: SetFile -t PERF -c MOUP <project-file-name>substituting each project name in turn.

You’re not done. Your audio files may also be corrupted. Try loading the project into DP. Still problems? Getting a Resource file was not found (-193) error? Your DPII’s resource fork got lost, probably because you copied to a non-Mac system and back. Try these steps. Some guesswork may be required.

  1. Download, install and run SoundHack.
  2. Use File > Open Any (cmd-A) to open your first sound file from the Audio Files directory.
  3. Use Hack > Header change (cmd-H) to assign the correct sample rate, number of channels and encoding. Most DP projects have single channel. You just have to know what the sample rate is (usually 44.1 or 48) and how many bits deep it is (8, 16, 24, 32 are most common). Press Save Info
  4. Select File > Save a copy (cmd-S). Be sure to set the same bit depth here as you used in the file’s header, or SoundHack will do a conversion! Save a copy somewhere else, like your desktop. Be sure to save as the same name as the original file to prevent confusion later.
  5. Navigate to where you saved the file and double-click to open in your favourite sound program. This could be QuickTime, AudioFinder, DSP-Quattro, or even DP itself. Play to make sure it sounds right. If not, you got the sample rate or number of bits wrong. Go back to SoundHack and try again.
  6. Painstakingly repeat this for each of your sound files. This could take a while.
  7. In the DP project folder, move your Audio Files folder aside. Place all of the newly patched files into a new folder called Audio Files.
  8. Try re-opening the project in DP. You should be able to pick up where you left off.
  9. Grab a cold one. You deserve it!

thing-a-day 4: civic action

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OK, I had to take a detour from my “all things music” thing-a-day for a special request. A house down the street from me had a building permit posted that I didn’t read clearly until 2 days ago. Seems they wanted to split the 30′ wide lot into 2 15′ wide lots, destroy the original 2-story 120-year old building with a gorgeous historic facade, and put up a 3-story semi-detached monstrosity. In fact, the historic facade (which is in surprisingly good shape!) is identical to a few others on the street! My response: “Ah, no.”

I spoke with the neighbours immediately to the north, who were also concerned, and a neighbor across the way from me who’s a good friend and fellow Victorian home owner/restorer. We jointly put together a letter of opposition and presented it in front of committee today.

We won.

The proposal was rejected on the grounds that it was not in keeping with the nature of the other homes in the area, and that the narrow proposed frontage was further unacceptable. The committee went so far as to impune the reputation of the current owner, who clearly hasn’t been keeping up with preventative maintenance. The implication was that, if he can’t maintain the current property, there’s no guarantee he won’t cut corners on the replacement structure as well.

Of course, the applicant is appealing the decision, so this isn’t over — but it’s exciting to get involved and to realize that just 30 minutes spent on a letter of objection, and 5 minutes speaking over at City Hall, is a great way to stay involved wtih your community.

If you want to read the letter I put together and had my neighbours sign, comment using your email address and I’ll send you a link.