Playing with Vuforia!

One of my pals was playing with AR in the browser, so I did a bit of googling and found about Vuforia. It is really well developed, works well with Unity, only needing to import the Vuforia asset package, getting a custom "target" i.e. thing to track created, and BAM! It works.

A Sombering Truth

Sticker graffiti on the way home.

Osprey Backpacks

When I was a kid, I remembered buying at least one new bag a year. The el-cheapo stuff we got always tore open from the heavy books we carried to school, or just simply the crappy materials being worn out over time.

The first bag that lasted me a damned good long while, was an Osprey. One of my friends was a mountain climber - maybe that's the wrong word, but she would hike up to the Himalayan Basecamp, practice over at Mount Kinabalu over weekends.

Prior to one of these expeditions, she got an Osprey pack that she didn't need, and offered it to me at a good price - and I took it up.

Fast forward the 13 years+ with that Osprey, it was still working great, until some idiot left it in his London rental before leaving for Montreal >.>

That Osprey pack - I don't know what model it is - has been through loads with me. Sea, Snow, Storm. Holding my lenses and what not. When I got back to Singapore for a break, I did go check out the Osprey bags there, but the prices turned me off, and I decided to go for a daypack off one of them internet resellers. It wasn't particular cheap, nor was it super expensive (SGD30+, iirc). It did the job.

For 3 months. And then the bloody zipper came loose >.>

Get a good pack, it lasts a while.

Marketing thoughts.

You know what good marketing is?

I was at the supermarket, to pick up some shampoo, which happened along the multivitamins aisle.

So, I was like... "hmmm, maybe with vitamins, I can finally figure out how to add 2 plus 1 without a calculator....."

Of course, there were like dozens of choices. Increased Energy. For a healthy prostate. For luscious hair.

Ok, I'm making those up. But the one I chose simply stood out because it has one word.

"Adult".

That makes sense, right? And what's best, beside it was another one marketed, "For ages 50 and up"

So simple!

Straight and to the point, no need for me to faff about.

Quiet Steps

A short piece for string quartet, titled Quiet Steps

Larpers on Mont Royal

A Short Diversion: Presto

I think it's coming together now! I will still be focusing on string quartets - this has helped immensely from a harmony/counterpoint stand of view for 4 voices. The need to mix a short tune nearly every week has helped greatly with learning my monitors as well! VSL Solo Strings is doing a kickass job here too!

Finally went to 10.8.4

Having stayed with Snow Leopard for the last few years, it was time to make the move. Mainly as I wanted to check out Xcode. To be safe, I cloned my entire drive to an external backup, then ran the ML install.

I was very surprised with the results - I'd expected everything to be broken and slow, but no! Actually, after the first boot up, things were very slow - I'm guessing that's the various caches being rebuilt - but a reboot later, things actually felt snappier....

My main applications on OSX (Logic, Kontakt, VSL, Addictive Drums etc) ran perfectly out of the box. What's better, Logic somehow seems _smoother_ - not sure why, but I'm not complaining!

Not a fan of the "natural scroll", turned it off. It worked very well with the touchpad actually, but I don't need to be confused when switching between Mint and OSX.

Interface wise, we can now resize from the edges of the windows! Took the apple devs long enough! Maybe one day we can use the super key to resize/drag windows like on linux.

With the move being so smooth, I have thoughts about moving to a faster 7.2k drive, or even a SSD, but we'll see.

I did have one issue when attempting to purchase the ML upgrade, and a very big one indeed. Switching countries. As I bought my macbook in UK, my apple id was setup for UK. Switching the region to Canada went smoothly, but the previous purchase of Pixelmator, does not appear on the list of purchases. Which is disconcerting. Especially since stuff like Logic X is download only from the app store - imagine if I had to move to another country, and lost access to that application! Ouch!

Googling this issue brought up loads of hits, and seems like us expats are just at the wrong end of the stick. I also have had friends returning home telling me that their itunes purchase are no longer valid >.>

At this point in time, I can't see myself moving to Logic X as Logic 9 is already overkill for what I do. If I do want to move on from Logic 9 though, I would very likely choose another DAW, as I do not want to deal with having my purchases no longer be valid when I move countries.

A Short Diversion: Andante