MIDI software

For many years I have heard about MIDI and what you can do with it. But there has never been a need for it - until now. My first experience with buying a new Terratec soundcard was that when I sent MIDI output to the soundcard and did not hear anything.

From that point I had to search for some useful MIDI software I can use. Here is what I found.

Software	Feature
Virtual MIDI Keyboard	With Virtual MIDI Keyboard you can trigger MIDI notes using the mouse or the computer keyboard. It has five knobs which send volume, panning, modulation, and two user configurable midi controllers. Another feature of Virtual MIDI Keyboard is that it can send MIDI controller data when you move the mouse while playing the keyboard. Virtual MIDI Keyboard is freeware.
MIDI Ox	MIDI-OX is a Windows 95/NT program (also Win98/Me/2000/XP/Vista). It is a 32 bit program which will not operate under earlier versions of Windows. MIDI-OX is a multi-purpose tool: it is both a diagnostic tool and a System Exclusive librarian. It can perform filtering and mapping of MIDI data streams. It displays incoming MIDI streams, and passes the data to a MIDI output driver or the MIDI Mapper. You can generate MIDI data using the computer keyboard or the built-in control panel. You can even record and log MIDI data and then convert it to a Standard MIDI File for playback by a sequencer.
Free MIDI music	We also could use some free MIDI sample files to work with. You can find lots of them here. Royalty Free Music.com offers a comprehensive music library of production music for your various royalty free music needs including full albums, tracks and free music clips, loops, and beats available for download.

Audio Master class review

Audio Master Class is an online course for learning how to do audio well. By audio I mean how to record music, how to mix it, and something about all the cool gadgets you can buy to edit music.

If you don't have time to read the entire article, the summary is here:
I find this course to be very light and not very educational. At least if you want to learn as much as possible. If you have no knowledge on this topic you can read and learn a lot. But when you have learned a lot there is still more to learn. Stuff that you cannot find here.

Information about the course

The course is called Music Production and Sound Engineering and are built up of 12 modules, each covering a topic. On print the main text of the course corresponds roughly to 40 pages, printed from Internet Explorer. The twelve topics are:

1. Analog & digital audio
2. Microphones
3. Microphone preamplifiers
4. Equalization
5. Compression
6. Recording Software
7. Effects & Plug-ins
8. Synthesis & Sampling
9. Recording Techniques
10. Mixing
11. Mastering
12. Marketing Your Music & Recording Services

Each module are built up of:

• An introduction.
• The module main text (large HTML page).
• The answers the questions in the main module text.
• Examples.
• Assignment.
• Assignment notes.

For each module you are expected to spend at least a week working on the module text and on the assignment. I am not sure if this is because of the alleged complexity of the course or if it is to make sure you have read and understood the content.

The only way to learn is to spend time and experiment. The course only points you in the right direction, you'll have to work hard to get through the course.

Extras

If you look at the web pages for Audio Master Class, and more specifically to their publications you will find content they want to charge you for. This is content that to my knowledge is not included in the course. I had to ask to get some of them available for me.

My review

I have read through much of the material and the author talks us easy through each chapter of the book and it is fairly easy to learn and understand the topic.

You get listening samples, you get to download good samples you can work with and try for yourself. This is something I have not found anywhere else.

But it stops there. When I am ready to learn more, and I sure will do so - I need to look elsewhere to find the knowledge I hunger for. And if so this course is mostly waste of your money. Money is a scared resource. (The book Mixing Engineers handbook seems to give me a lot more value for the money.)

About the author

My experience with music production and mixing is very very limited, I have started out with the best intent to try learn something new and exiting. But I find it hard to find any good place where I can learn the basics before I go practice.

AHD 200 review

AIPTEK, a company based in Germany have created a cheap and light camera called AHD 200.

Cheap is good, or is it?

In Norway this camera is sold by Clas Ohlson for less than NOK 1000 (nearly €100).

High Definition Camcorder - AVC (H264) performs 720p (1280 x 720) high definition quality at 30fps

I do not intend to write a lengthy review of this camera. For it's price I like the camera. You buy a cheap video camera, and you get what you expect from a cheap camera.

There is no optical zoom with the camera, only digital. When you zoom the picture gets bad, so do not use the zoom.

I have attached some videos from the camera so you can make out your own opinion. All recordings are from the highest possible bitrate and resolution.

1. Outdoor recording of a car driving by. (5MB.)
2. Low light, indoor recording walking down the stairs. (10MB.)
3. A picture of a car and a boat outdoor.
4. The outdoor and the low light indoor recording rendered to a MPEG file with TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress. (26MB.)

Other sources and references:

• A test at SimplyDV
• A test at cnet
• Product homepage

OCS and 0x80090302

When working with an Office Communicator Service 2007 installation I came across the error message 0x80090302 when using the tracing tool. This error message appeared on the back end server when authenticating over the Internet.

after some research we found the reason to be a lockdown group policy that requires NTLMv2. By changing the following policies in the we made it work.

Policy	Setting
Network security: LAN Manager authentication level	Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated
Network security: Minimum session security for NTLM SSP based (including secure RPC) clients	Enabled
Network security: Minimum session security for NTLM SSP based	Enabled

Azure Services platform presentations

Azure Services platform is here to stay. But what is it? The links below are to presentations from a seminar Microsoft held in Norway.

Session 1: David Chappells whitepaper: http://www.microsoft.com/azure/business.mspx

Session 2: Delivering first class Business Productivity from the cloud, Larry Velez Microsoft Corp.: www.microsoft.no/EPG/Seminar/20081209/business_productivity_cloud.pptx

Session 3, del 1: HostingPartner_des 08, Alex Bødtker, Microsoft Norge: www.microsoft.no/EPG/Seminar/20081209/hosting_partner.pptx

Session 3, del 2: Net Works MS Cloud present v2, Peter Nomme, Net Works; www.microsoft.no/EPG/Seminar/20081209/net_works_ms_cloud.pptx

Session 3, del 3: Intelecom Software + Services Microsoft des 08, Birgitte Johannessen, Intelecom: www.microsoft.no/EPG/Seminar/20081209/software+services_microsoft.pptx

Session 3, del 4: NetConnect Team Portal - MS EPG 091208 v2, Rolf Larsen, NetConnect: www.microsoft.no/EPG/Seminar/20081209/netconnect_team_portal.pptx

IIS7 and 0x8009310b

When trying to complete a new SSL certificate request I got this error message:

CertEnroll::Cx509Enrollment::p_InstallResponse: ASN1 bad tag value met. 0x8009310b while installing a new certificate

My setting was a Windows 2008 server running IIS7. But when I looked through the settings I found out that the certificate import was complete and the certificate was ready to use.