Alex Markley

If you're looking for more SIGGRAPH stuff, read the last paragraph.

I recently started experimenting with using Evolution Email as my primary email client. I've had a love/hate relationship with it in the past, but my recent obsession with GPG, coupled with Enigmail's various deficiencies, meant that my Thunderbird experience was drawing to a close.

I'm always tickled when applications try to be smart, especially in unexpected ways. So imagine my delight when I ran across the dialog box in the picture. Of course, any human being will tell you that the text in the message clearly does not refer to a present attachment. But ‘A’ for effort, Evolution!

And really, my ribbing is only half-serious, as I've forgotten to attach a promised file more often than I'd care to admit. So I can seriously see this dialog box saving my behind in the future.

As for new SIGGRAPH-related blog entries. Obviously, SIGGRAPH is over now, and Peter and I have returned home. I do have pictures, and I have every intention of blogging about the trip. It may take a while though, because my week-long absence has left me with a goodly amount of catching-up to do. So keep your RSS reader tuned to this frequency, but don't hold your breath. (All kinds of mangled metaphors! Score!)

ttyl!

--Alex Markley

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Whee!

As many of you probably know by now, Peter and I are attending this year's SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles, California. What you may not know is that, to this date, neither of us had ever flown in an aircraft.

I don't doubt, from the demeanor of many of my fellow travellers, that the novelty of flying has long since worn off for them. For me, however, I've been quite enthralled by the whole experience. The incredible power of the craft you're sitting in is completely hidden except during takeoff and landing. For me, at least, it's hard not to draw parallels with roller coasters. Except this is the daddy roller coaster. And it has no rails.

By the time you read this, we will surely have arrived safely in LA. But as I write, we're cruising at 30,000 feet. The clouds float below us in a mocking sort of way, and the horizon recedes into a misty haze instead of appearing as a sharp curve like a well-behaved horizon should. In addition, en route to LA we passed over some pretty impressive mountainous terrain – not the least of which was the Grand Canyon – which had me gaping, open-mouthed, for minutes on end.

I've taken pictures, although my camera is still that cheap old snapshot cam. If you're the sort to look, I've attached a few of them to this blog entry. You also might want to explore the gallery.

There's a lot of stuff going down during this trip, most of which will be pretty amazing. I'm planning to blog about much of it, so you'd best stay posted.

ttyl!

--Alex Markley

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No, you didn't just misread that. All of Malex Minute Quarter 11 is scripted and ready to go. Over half of it has been produced already, and the rest will follow within the week. This is a momentous occasion. We've never had more than two or three Malex Minute episodes in the queue before and now we have episodes queued up through the end of November!

The main reasons for us to get ahead so aggressively are security and peace of mind. We've never missed a week in two and a half years of solid production, and I would like to keep that going for the foreseeable future. Three months of extra padding will help us assure non-stop entertainment for you, even in an emergency where we might need to unexpectedly drop the production schedule for weeks or even months at a time.

Oh, and did I mention that Quarter 11 is absolutely hilarious? It contains some of my best writing ever, and some of Peter's best too. So be sure to stay tuned, there's a lot of great Malex Minute on the horizon!

ttyl

--Alex Markley

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It's kinda funny to me. All you've gotta do is attend SIGGRAPH, and suddenly you're eligible for a whole new caliber of junk mail.

I discovered these two gems in the PO Box yesterday. One is for an ad for, near as I can figure, ATI's booth at SIGGRAPH. Not any of their products per se, just the booth itself. Also, I'm not quite sure where the “Dominate Your Design” slogan came from. Frankly, as an artist, I'd rather not allow any of my tools to dominate anything, regardless of how expensive or flashy they are. (Just in case you were wondering, I was not the instant winner.)

Another is for Wacom, leading manufacturer of graphics tablets. Their ad makes a little more sense, touting specifically their most useful, most flashy, and (of course) most expensive product. And if I can get up the nerve to furtively touch it with my unworthy, trembling hands, they'll give me a free T-Shirt to mark the occasion! Yay!

I'm not sure why these things amuse me as much as they do. Perhaps it's something in the water…

ttyl!

--Alex Markley

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Yay!

As you may or may not know, I consider myself something of an amateur DJ. I am not among the class of DJs who can mix four+ vinyl records together while juggling sequencers and stacks of effects on the side, but I do enjoy mixing tracks together – especially tracks I've produced.

Recently, in a search for bigger, better DJ mixing software, I discovered Mixxx, a free, open-source DJ mixing program for Linux, OS X, and Windows. It's an amazing program, which easily bests my old software and my buggy CDJ deck combined.

So I had some sweet, sweet software, but despite all its other problems I had fallen in love with my CDJ deck's jog wheels. Also, I hated the idea of continuing to mix with the mouse. So, I purchased a Numark Total Control MIDI surface. Its design is perfect for DJs like myself, as it's portable, rugged, precise, and (best of all) standards-compliant.

But I didn't know it was standards-compliant at the time, so purchasing it was something of a risk. It wasn't until I brought it home and plugged it into my Linux box that I knew for sure it would work. (Score one for standards!) I could now open the control surface on my computer and see lots of numbers scroll by whenever I touched anything.

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It's about time…

Yes, I've finally updated AlexMarkley.com. It used to be nothing more than a collection of links to Malex Media Network® stuff, but I decided it was finally time to add a bunch more stuff personally relevant to me.

One thing that you guys might be interested in: I posted a collection of high-definition demo reels highlighting my past creative work for the MMN,® including an HD version of The Ruins of Mi'ren. This is the first time it's been available to download in HD, so go get it!

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Interest piqued? Great!

Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a brand new internet mini-series featuring supervillainy, a laundromat, and... singing? It's written/directed by Joss Whedon and stars Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion, so you know it's gotta be good.

The mini-series is in three parts. The first part was released for free on their website today, with the second and third parts following later in the week. If you're going to watch it, you'd better hurry, because it'll vanish off the face of the web by Sunday.

I haven't seen the whole thing yet because, like you, I am not special.

However, I have now seen the first part, and I'm already inexplicably enthralled. Maybe it's the smashing dialog? Perhaps it's the hilarious premise? It could even be the astonishing acting or the criminally catchy cache of tunes! Oh, and did I mention that it's a completely independent production? So I guess my enthusiasm isn't so inexplicable after all.

Fyi, I'd peg the language between a PG and a PG-13 level. It's pretty mild, so unless you're particularly sensitive to such things I'd feel comfortable recommending it. Update: Not anymore. Please see this comment.

ttyl!

--Alex Markley

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I think you'll all appreciate this.

Swiffer!

ttyl

--Alex

People are people too.

Hardly anybody will be interested in this, but I'm posting it anyway. At the very least, this should prove to you I'm not sitting on my hands all the time.

Today, I finally got sick and tired of the old word wrapping program we've been using around the MMN. I wrote it back when I was first learning C, and while it was somewhat fast (compared to some alternatives) it was a little clunky in some spots, and downright buggy in others. (Choked on input texts > 2GB, needed to fit entire text in RAM, etc..)

Like I said, I got sick of it, so I wrote a new one. Go ahead, it's GPL'd, so feel free to use it. It definitely runs fine on Linux and MacOS X and I can't imagine any good reason why it wouldn't run under Windows if compiled with cygwin or MingW.

My program, Wrap, is a bit more featureful than GNU fold, but is a tiny bit slower. (Although the benchmarking process wasn't very comprehensive, so I guess the jury's still out.)

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Quick, grab it!

A while ago, I promised to write a blog entry about my adventures with HD DVD. Sadly, these sorts of things have a tendency to fade into the abyss of obscurity and doubt. Better late than never though, right?

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Check the number and dial again...

Are you one of the poor saps who's been suckered into believing that the world is overpopulated? I've heard otherwise, but I thought it would be prudent to check the actual numbers:

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I just noticed that my digital multi-track recorder has the bizarre habit of creating all my files with a time stamp of Friday 13th, July 2007. That is to say, every single WAV file on the device claims to have been created on Friday the 13th.

On a completely unrelated note, I've begin opening development of some of my various Drupal modules. For example, if you're interested, you can download my Mint integration module and install it on your own Drupal. You can even help out with development by fixing bugs and adding features!

Because that's what Open Source is all about. (Yes, I'm an "Open Source" guy, not a "Free Software" guy... I expect you'll come to terms with the fact eventually.)

ttyl!

--Alex

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Another in a series of blog entries about the recent changes to the site.

You may notice that our mailing list is gone. You may also notice that the new content notification script is also gone. Don't worry, you are not crazy. You would have noticed these things because they are, in fact, gone.

Aside from the extra work it would be to move these things over to the new code base, the main reason for their unceremonious exclusion is that email is becoming too expensive to use.

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Read this first...

In line with my new campaign against disorganization, clutter, and all those other pesky things that are keeping us from upgrading the site, I've closed the online store. This might seem like a drastic measure, but I've been meaning to do it for a while now.

Why? I'll tell you...

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Like a breath of fresh air...

Hey all! So I know I've been talking about upgrading the site, reorganizing the site, and goodness knows what else for a long time. Well, this time I'm here to report real, tangible, immediate progress.

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