Reviews of Things I Have

I got a pocket sketchbook from Moleskine for Christmas from my brother and like it pretty well so far. It’s a 3.5″ by 5.5″ signature-bound, hardcover notebook great for sticking in a pocket (as the name suggests) or purse.

Moleskine notebooks are currently pretty popular among the GTD, lifehacker, and savvy hipster crowds. I must admit, I can see the appeal. There’s something about a beautifully-bound stack of paper that calls out to you in ways a spiral notebook never can.

Despite the implications of the brand’s name, their products are not made of cotton moleskin, but of a vinyl, leather-like oilcloth. The sketchbook has a hard, cardboard cover. Other Moleskines, like the ruled notebook, have soft covers.

Inside are 80 pages of pretty thick, smooth, acid-free, slightly yellowed paper, perfect for thick ink, pencil, tempera, and maybe even some pastel or crayon.

The first page has an “In case of loss” form for contact information and a reward for return. The back inside cover has a pocket for notes or the included Moleskine history and catalog.

The oilcloth cover would emboss wonderfully, and the back has the brandname on it. As I currently don’t have an embossing machine, mine has a sticker on it, because, you know, I’m cool like that.

The back cover secures an elastic band meant to wrap around the book to keep it closed when not in use. There’s also a bookmark tassel worked into the top of the spine for marking your current page.

According to the included information, Moleskine books are manufactured in China and designed/assembled in Italy. According the the website, the sketchbook’s paper is Italian.

The included pamphlet has contact information for customer service, who are, from what I understand, ready and willing to send you a replacement should you find any defect in your book.

http://www.moleskineus.com/sketchpocket.html

The M-Audio Fast Track is a USB 1.0 audio recording interface, primarily for use in home recording studio applications. It is Pro Tools M-Powered compatible and a demo version of this program is commonly included with the purchase. Other software may be included, depending on the date on which a specific unit shipped from the manufacturer to a retailer. Mine also came with an entry level M-Audio microphone, mic cable & mic clip. The microphone is very basic and is comparable to an inexpensive karaoke mic. It’s useful enough to get you started. The Fast Track Pro also comes with a driver disk.

Installation:

Installing the Fast Track Pro is easy. Basically, you run the included driver disk and go through the installation steps. Then, hook up the Fast Track to a free USB port and you’re ready to go. There are a few snags that you may run into, most of which are easily remedied by going to the M-Audio website and downloading the most current drivers for your particular operating system. If you’re having trouble, you may also want to consider using the Fast Track as your only sound card. This works best if you disable your internal sound card. I’m using Windows XP with Service Pack 2.

Quality: For a mass-produced, near-consumer-level electronics device housed in a plastic case, I have very few complaints. The built-in preamps are a bit weak and may or may not be suitable for certain types of recording. Also, there seems to be a fair amount of background noise present while monitoring. This noise does not appear on my recordings so it could be my monitors or cables but I have no way to test this right now so I’ll leave it open. There is a bit of latency when using the included Pro Tools M-Powered 7.4 demo. However, when I use Adobe Audition, there is no latency.

Two things I would recommend to anyone intending to use the Fast Track Pro for hefty home recordings are 1) A Preamp & 2) A Headphone Amplifier. These two items will ensure that you get the input and monitoring levels you desire and are relatively inexpensive. I may post links to such products at a later time.

All in all, I feel this little box is going to serve my needs as an amateur musician who likes to record a wide range of styles and arrangements.

Sound Clips:

For the following sound clips, I ran my electric guitar straight into the Fast Track. The first is completely dry with no effects, eq, compression, etc. The second is another version of that same recording with some effects from the Waves GTR guitar suite, which I highly recommend.

m-audio-fast-track-pro-example-1
m-audio-fast-track-pro-example-2

Macheist, the heist themed Mac software bundle company, recently gave out some free software for Christmas, calling it the “Mac Giving Tree.”

One of the apps they gave out is called Enigmo 2, a space-themed puzzle game where the object is to manipulate water, lasers, and plasma particles from their starting faucets to their respective drains. The player places mirrors, bouncing drums, cannons, and other interloping devices on the three-dimensional board to guide the flow of matter to its destination. The round is over when 50 particles of each element are contained. There is no way to lose, but bonus points are given for completing it within the time limit.

The user is also able to create their own game with the built-in editor. Could be fun; I’m yet to try it out.

Pros
Enigmo 2 is fun and easy to play. It reminds me a game called “The Incredible Machine,” which used the same sort of physics but applied them to Rube Goldberg type objectives and items. Also, it’s free!

Cons
Certain stages require working in all three dimensions, and navigating around is often far from intuitive. The camera controls aren’t documented, so you’re kind of on your own figuring out how it all works.

Macheist Giving Tree: http://givingtree.macheist.com/
Enigmo 2: http://www.pangeasoft.net/enigmo2/index.html

Lala.com is a place to sample, share and purchase music on the internet.

Here are the highlights:

• Over 6 million songs to choose from, all properly licensed.
• 50 free song credits for signing up with 5 additional credits for each referral (limit 50)
• Access to full samples of each song (you can only sample a song for free once!)
• Ability to sync your computers library with Lala, virtually giving you a free portable library
• Social Networking – write blurbs, add friends, share music, get suggestions, etc
• Purchase songs for online listening for 10 cents per track
• Purchase songs for download for 89 cents per track
• Download format is MP3; playable on any computer or portable music device

How’s the Usability?

Lala is easy to use. The site has simple, intuitive navigation and the software that you use to sync your library is fool-proof. I had no problems finding anything that I needed and the site is darn fast. I had over 300 songs synced and ready to go in under 10 minutes with a 1mbps connection. The songs that weren’t in the Lala database were uploaded in a reasonable amount of time. I’m not sure if others can access them, but I’d be down with that.

Anyhow, now I can listen to songs I bought from Amazon, iTunes or burned from my personal CD collection anywhere I want. (Like @ work, which is going to save me both time with flash drives and money on CD-Rs) This feature alone made it worth the minimal effort required to sign up.

6 Million Songs, Huh?

Yep, and a good variety of ‘em, too. I searched for artists ranging from Rihanna to Elliott Smith and was greeted by tons of songs, artist bios and a gaggle of widgets along the way. It might be worth noting that this site performs really well with modern college/indie/whatever music. Crystal Castles, Vampire Weekend, Voxtrot and many more are available with the same ease as T-Pain and Hank Williams.

You can view similar artists, check artist rankings, check playlists in which the artist is featured, etc. Of course, you can also sample and add particular songs or albums for either unlimited online listening or download purposes.

The Short-N-Skinny

I like it. The features are great, it’s easy to use, I’m keeping it. Want to check it out? Sign up for a free account here.

Here’s a playlist I made really quickly:

For those not initiated, a pen tablet is a computer interface, just like a mouse or a keyboard. With a tablet, though, you interact with the computer by using a pen stylus on a flat board hooked up to your computer, usually via USB. The tablet tracks the pen’s coordinates and moves the pointer on the screen accordingly. When you touch the tablet with the pen, the mouse clicks. When you drag, the mouse holds its click and moves along with you. It requires a bit of getting used to but is amazingly intuitive once you grasp the concept.

Modern tablets also interpret how hard you’re pressing and which side of the pen you’re using. This is incredibly useful in digital painting and illustration work.

I got my Wacom Graphire4 pen tablet about two years ago and I still use it almost every day. This is my second Wacom; my first my mom got me when I was in junior high. It used a serial port and I’m sure would work perfectly today if I still had a computer with that connection.

Mine is the blue version with a 6″ by 8″ surface area. The model also comes in white and with a 4″ by 5″ area.

I use it mainly for Photoshop work and Flash animations. In fact, I’ve gotten so used to it, I can barely work with either of those programs without it.

It connects to the computer with an attached USB cable. Higher models from Wacom interact wirelessly with bluetooth.

The pen it comes with includes the normal plastic nub tip, plastic eraser on the other side, and two buttons about where you put your thumb. They are programmable and work well set as double-click and left-click.

The Graphire4 tablet features a scroll wheel and two programmable buttons. Higher models feature more buttons and more scrollers. The buttons work well for going backwards and forwards in Firefox, moving between frames in Flash, and undoing and redoing actions.

Besides the ubiquitous pen, the Graphire4 also comes with a mouse. The mouse uses the same tablet functionality as the pen, so operation can be a little awkward. When you’re working with your mouse at an angle that’s not parallel with the tablet, a straight horizontal line to you is interpreted by the tablet as a diagonal line. It takes some getting used to, but ultimately isn’t as good as a normal mouse.

The pen works well, without any noticeable lag, even with multiple heavy programs running. There’s 512 levels of pressure sensitivity, which is enough for you to not notice any lack of smoothness. Painting in Photoshop with varying pressures produces the exact flow it would in real life.

The screen on the Graphire4 is also removable, so you can lift it up and put stuff underneath it. Mine has stickers.

It works well on PC and Mac with the included drivers. It’s also bundled with some light software, useful if you haven’t the latest creative suite.

Some specs from the Wacom site:

Tablet size: 278(W) x 263.8(D) x 18(H) mm
Active Area: 150.8 x 208.8mm (6″X8″-A5 size)
Resolution: 2032 lpi (0.0125 mm)
Reading Accuracy: ±0.5 mm
Pressure Sensitivity: 512 levels
Report Rate: 100 pps
Weight: 860g
Cable Length: 150cm
Interface: USB

Final thoughts? Very, very good. I bought mine back in the day for 200 something, and it looks like its price hasn’t changed much, even though Wacom’s come out with new models since. I guess there’s a high resale value, so that’s good. I don’t think there’s much else I could want from it.

http://www.wacom.com/graphire/6×8.cfm