esaruoho - Tumblr blog

[esaruoho]

Did you know Scotty from Star Trek hosted this Cold Fusion: Fire From Water-documentary featuring Sir Arthur C. Clarke? #scotty #jamesdoohan #startrek #ColdFusion #LENR #LENRCANR #lowenergynuclearreactions #ChemicallyAssistedNuclearReactions #FreeEnergy #freeenergynews #eugenemallove #FringeScience #PonsFleischmann #QuantumHeat #science #MartinFleischmannMemorialProject #MFMP DVD

[esaruoho]

Image from The #steornofficial #steorn #orbo 28.10.2015 Orbo demonstration webinar. It is a USB charger that can charge two smart-phones before it runs out of charge and then it starts recharging on it's own. So it is a selfcharging USB-charger. #usbcharger #charger #chargeriphone charges itself to full capacity in 24hours. Going up for sale in December for 1200€. #FreeEnergy #freeenergynews transcript by yours truly at http://freeenergy.news/steorn/steorn-o-cube-webinar-full-transcript/

[esaruoho]

What happened when I requested Support from Apple Music Connect Support based on two same-name artists called Lackluster (one me, the other US Ohio Rockband)

UPDATE: Apple Music Support fixed it. They still haven’t mailed me after the mess-up, or the re-fix. But, whether they send me a notification of having fixed it or not, the Apple Music Connect Profile is re-instated, the right artists can be found, etc. 

Hi. This has been an interesting ride, and it's far from over, so I'll keep editing this post as I get new information.

The starting situation / details: I'm Esa Ruoho a.k.a. Lackluster - a relatively unknown Finnish electronic music composer with quite a few records under my belt (vinyl, cd, mostly digital). The name Lackluster - by the very definition of it being present and accounted for in the English language dictionary - is not something that some other band might not come up with. So, I've clocked about 3 or 4 different Lacklusters over the years.

Most of them have started, put out a demo, and quit, or maybe disbanded, or renamed themselves. That's to be expected.

But one band has actually gone digital, a U.S. - Ohio-based Lackluster, who mostly operate as LacklusterBand on the web. They've pushed two records up for sale on iTunes / etc (also Spotify) - one is called "Two Birds, One Stone", and their EP is called "EP4".

I kept encountering these for a while on Spotify and iTunes and wondered what to do.

So, I decided to go the SpotifyArtists route, and upload my own profile picture to Rovi. This is the image I've used everywhere on the web, since (I think) it fits the music very well. This was relatively harmless and not a great deal of trouble to go through.

When Apple Music Connect was announced, I immediately registered for Lackluster on Apple Music Connect - when I sent in the application, the profile picture for Lackluster was my newest release (Lexicon of Goods, released digitally in 2015). I thought, cool, things are going well.

I got the confirmation, I was accepted in, I started posting on Apple Music Connect as Lackluster.

Then I thought, well, hang on a minute, Apple Music Connect has a Support segment, I'll mail them and ask if there is any chance they could separate "me" (Finnish Electronic Music with 12 albums on iTunes) from "them" (Ohio US Rockband with 2 releases on iTunes).

So, I mailed them on the 2nd of July 2015. It was a fairly simple e-mail - requesting that they could separate these two Lacklusters from eachother. On the 6th of July 2015, I got a response from Apple Music Support - they asked me to provide Apple IDs or iTunes Store links for all the albums that I own - and instructions on how to deliver those links or IDs.

I replied by giving them links to all the albums that are mine, and, to help them, also sent them links to all the releases that are not mine (i.e. by the Ohio US Rockband).

Then, 2 days later, 8th of July 2015, I got a nice "Thank you for providing this info. We are currently working on the request".

I promptly forgot about the whole thing - I'll get a notification when it's done, right? Sure.

So, today, 10th July, I decided to go on iTunes to check out my Apple Music Connect profile for Lackluster.

Now, mind you, ever since the Apple Music Connect thing became a thing that gave me a link ( https://itun.es/fi/0tAC ) that I could give out to people, I've been doing my best to give that link to people. Cos that's what you're supposed to do, right? Right.

As an aside: Of course, I'm peeved that it gives a link to /fi/ - being the Finnish iTunes Store - of course, I'm wondering when Apple will iterate it further so that I can get a global, stable link that will boot up Apple Music on every device, and not take me to a regular "View on iTunes" type store-page on the WWW. But I know (or, mostly, hope) that Apple will get around to improving that segment of Apple Music Connect.

I look at Apple Music Connect, browse down a bit - there's been some new posts from various artists that I follow (which I'm doing mostly to find out how others are using it, and whether they have succeeded in actually uploading a track - I just saw, a few days ago, that Flying Lotus had succeeded in uploading a 1h59minute mix called Lovers Melt 4 - which was well worth a listen, btw). And then I see my post.

What is my Apple Music Connect Artist profile picture? It is no longer a greyscale image of my Lexicon of Goods album - it has been released by.. Can you guess? The US Rockband Lackluster's newest release (EP4, from 2014). Something has gone dreadfully wrong. I click on the profile picture, and, why..

Everything has gone completely and utterly wrong. The latest release is by them. All the Top Songs are by them. The Albums listed under my Apple Music Connect Lackluster Profile, are:

1- Lackluster: EP4 by US Ohio Rockband Lackluster (2014) 

2- Lackluster: Two Birds, One Stone by US Ohio Rockband Lackluster (2011) 

3- Lackluster: Slice by Finnish Electronic Music Composer Lackluster (2005)

Yet the Similar Artists (Proem, Loess, Adam Johnson, Funckarma, Ilkae, Mr. Projectile) are still of "my" artists, i.e. electronic music, we have been on the same compilations or released on the same labels over the past 16 years.

Things are going great, right? I'm in charge of the US Rockband Lackluster's Apple Music Connect - and all my Electronic Music -related Apple Music Connect posts are now on "their" profile.

I never asked Apple Music Support to switch my - registered - profile to be their profile, and if I had known that Friday 9am would turn out like this, I would have never contacted Apple Music Support. Never in a billion years.

I now have a disfunctional Apple Music Connect Lackluster profile, which isn't mine - but which still is buggy - a kind of mutated version of mine and theirs...

But here's the fun bit: There's a new Apple Music Lackluster profile. https://itun.es/fi/l-PQ8 which has 11 albums by me. It also has no links - or even a mention towards Apple Music Connect.

I used to be able to tell people to check out my music via http://itunes.apple.com/artist/Lackluster - guess which Lackluster it links to? well, the lucky US Ohio Rockband, of course!

I decided to check out iTunesConnect, and why yes - my profile image is now EP4 by Lackluster US Rockband. That's neat, right?

Yeah. This has been an endless barrel of laughs. If I was doing this for shits and giggles, I'd be well keen on this, but I'm not.

EDIT: Yes, I did email them. Of course! 

I've mailed them requesting that they either switch the two profiles around, or somehow fix the situation. I hope they'll respond a bit quicker than the usual 2-3 days. I can't afford to call their customer support since I'm broke. What they would need to do to fix things now would be to move the 3rd album (my album) out of the Lackluster Ohio US band - which I've asked them to do, to the actual electronic Lackluster profile.. And then reinstate the http://itunes.apple.com/artist/Lackluster as the electronic Lackluster profile - and reinstate the Apple Music Connect profile URL as the electronic Lackluster profile. I hope they can pull it off. So far, no response.

Previous article continues.

So, if you are in the unenviable position of having a doppelganger somewhere on iTunes Store - just a word of advice, don't go to http://support.applemusicconnect.com/hc/en-us , don't leave a support request to them, don't do anything.

It will only get worse.

P.S. this is the one they decided to help me with - instead of addressing how to post a profile picture or a cover photo to Apple Music / iTunes Store - I think the designers amongst you will really love to see what Apple Music Connect has done with the colouring of the artist names in any of my posts. http://imgur.com/b8rDr7o

[esaruoho]

#NowPlaying Lackluster/Esa Ruoho: Albums, EPs, Compilationtracks, Remixes, etc. by Lackluster

[esaruoho]

Virtualbox, Windows 98 Second Edition, Impulse Tracker and EMS

Apparently you could use something like this in Config.sys to get EMS inside W98SE.

DEVICE=EMM386.EXE RAM I=D000-EFFF I=B000-B7FF I=CC00-CFFF FRAME=D000

(found via Virtualbox forums)

[esaruoho]

Lowering expectations for Apple 2015 keynotes

Here's my only hope for Apple's 2015 keynotes. Ok, here's two.. Ok three.

Mac App Store gets Wishlist.

AppleTV 4th generation.

Command Center gets configurability so can show Cellular Data On/Off there.

That's it. I don't know if we'll get 'em but hey..

[esaruoho]

Using EML2MBX to get from Windows Live to MBOX to (hopefully, OS X Mail).

You know what?

People will sell you any kind of solutions for OS X for the conversion of .EML files exported from Windows Live to OS X Mail. And they'll charge you 19.99$ or maybe 29$ or some such sum. 

And they'll be happy enough to post such "solutions" onto Discussions.Apple.Com and elsewhere, touting their awesome applications.

And they will probably work, too, which is a right shame.

But, keep going. You'll find an app called EML2MBX. But here's the weird thing. There are a couple of sites for this app, and only one specific tutorial instructs you (well, me) to utilize EML2MBX, Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail and OS X Mail to get EML files converted to MBOX, then loaded onto Thunderbird and then imported to OS X Mail.

They even give a simple batch-file for converting multiple EML files to MBX. The other ZIPs linked on other websites / discussion-forums containing EML2MBX.exe do not have the batch-file, which is weird.

For, you see, EML2MBX is an application for Windows that will simply convert one chosen EML file to one MBX file. So. For the sake of posterity, here is the batch-file I was able to find on a specific page.

for %%a in (*.eml) do eml2mbx "%%a"

P.S. Don't even bother with the Thunderbird extension "ImportExportTools", it will do absolutely nothing. Or maybe it'll do everything. But I was unable to get it to do anything with the EML files, on Windows 7 and on OS X Yosemite...

[esaruoho]

Wish-list for October 16th Apple Event (Titled: "It's Been Too Long")

So, the October 16th Apple Event, titled "It's Been Too Long" has been announced. Here is what I would truly hope to see in it:

A completely re-designed Mac Mini with a PicoProjector and an optional beamed keyboard

iDevice accessory: portable picoprojector which also functions as a camera - so the actual projected image can be manipulated with hands to control the iDevice or Mac Mini.

Offline Siri

Offline Maps

iBooks Author updated for OS X Yosemite

OS X Yosemite, obviously

iOS 8.1 with Indoor Mapping

iTunes '12 released in Europe

iDevice accessory: universal charger based on solar panel layering and a Fuel Cell.

New generation Apple TV with the same projection capabilities

iPad Air 2 with TouchID, Solar Panel layering + Fuel Cell to keep it charged

Update: Well, we got some. iBooks Author for Yosemite, OS X Yosemite, iTunes'12 released for Europe and iPad Air 2 with TouchID.

[esaruoho]

Experiencing ReWire crashes on Ableton Live 8, 9, 9 Beta with OS X Yosemite? Remove ReWire

I was experiencing repetitive crashes (on start of App) for Ableton Live 9 Suite, Ableton Live 9 Beta, Ableton Live 8.43. There was always a ReWire error right before the crash.

I contacted Ableton Support, and they told me to wait till OS X Yosemite goes public (this would be in the Fall of 2014). I decided to try something I found on a forum:

Removing Propellerheads ReWire altogether.

Here is how you do it.

Launch Terminal (from either your Spotlight or via Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal.app)

Type in cd /Library/Application\ Support/Propellerhead\ Software/

Switch to the administrator user by typing in sudo su

Insert your password

Delete the contents of the folder ReWire ( I used " rm -rf * " (without the quotes),  but unless if you know what you are doing, you might want to just go to the ReWire folder and delete files one by one)

Exit Terminal

Now you can run Ableton Live 9 Suite / Ableton Live 9 Beta / Ableton Live 8 without encountering the OS X Yosemite specific ReWire crash error.

Incidentally, if after doing this, you try and go back and download and install ReWire to get a screenshot of the specific error, after installation Ableton Live will work nicely and you'll have your precious ReWire.

[esaruoho]

WWDC 2014 Wish-list, and a free grain of salt

Here is my WWDC 2014 Wish-list.

As we all know, the Apple Special Event of June 2nd, 2014 will be streamable via http://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2014/

Vaguely reasonable:

iOS8: Control Center: Cellular Data On/Off switch

iOS8: Shazam integration

iOS8: Multiple log-ins / user settings per either facial recognition or TouchID

iOS8: Offline Siri (regular iPhone/iPad functions like Calendar, Reminders, Notes, and, of course, Cellular Data On -command)

iOS8: More Siri languages

iOS8: Background App Refresh scheduling (every 5, 10, 15, 25, 30 minutes, f.ex.)

iOS8: Maps - Transit directions

iOS8: Siri goes Babelfish/Universal Translator, example: Russian to English, English to Russian

OSX: iBooks Author ability to save into the iCloud

OSX: Find My Friends

iOS8/OSX: iBooks feature: select a line of text and translate it to other languages

Web: http://maps.apple.com - Apple Maps available on the web, just like Google Maps.

iCloud: Bookmarks

iCloud: Reading List

iCloud: Messages (even if just limited support)

iCloud: Photo Stream

Utterly unreasonable:

Mac Mini with video-projector capabilities and a projected keyboard

Apple TV 4th generation: App Store

Apple TV 4th generation: Siri

Apple TV 4th generation: FaceTime calls (audio + video)

Apple TV 4th generation: Video-projector capabilities

Apple TV 4th generation: C3 Technologies-based live video re-processing (regular video streams re-mapped to isometric view in order to better annotate, f.ex., education streams or sports streams)

Web: Apple Maps with augmented reality feeds from fashion shops and other shops such as the Apple Stores

Web: Apple Maps with location-based Facebook/Twitter/other Social Media posts showing in real time from your friends

OS X 10.10: Similar to Snow Leopard, i.e., "we added nothing and fixed everything!"

Why does he even list these:

The usual Free Energy Apple Device, be it solar panel touchscreen layers coupled with the liquid metal fuel cell technology, or directly powered by Apple Wireless technologies filched from, well, Nikola Tesla Wardenclyffe World System (Update: Obviously this electrical utility company disruption device would be either an iPhone/iPad charging a competitor’s mobile device, or charging a MacBookPro)

Cellular Mac Book Pro

Apple Electrical Utility device capable of powering a house.

Redmatica / Logic Pro X -integration, either in the form of EXS24mkIII with Auto Sampling capabilities, or..

Redmatica / Siri -integration, where you go through a list of words and Siri can from there on talk in your voice. Ultra useful for education purposes (Richard Feynman gave a ton of lectures, use the Redmatica AutoSampler technology to chop his words into syllables, collect them into the Siri database, and lo and behold, we have a walkin’ talkin’ Feynman, ready to go through his lectures and writings.. aka “Ask Feynman a question” -feature)

Apple Ionic Wind Generator: U.S. Patent No. 8,305,728 for “Methods and apparatus for cooling electronic devices” - coming to an Apple device near you.

Stirling Engine: Implementation for Apple server farms, laptops and desktop computers, for energy savings and electricity re-generation

There’s always more, and I have no illusions that any of these will be announced during WWDC 2014. Just a wish-list, y’see.

update: well, 3 fulfilled wishes out of the wishlist, that's not half bad is it? (iOS8: Shazam integration, more siri languages, iBooks Author ability to save to iCloud)

[esaruoho]

How to get rid of Smart Quotations on OSX Mavericks' TextEdit

I was running into this issue forever - I would press Shift-CMD-T and TextEdit would switch to non-RichTextFormat, yet everytime I would place a quotation mark ("), it would change it to a curly quotation mark (“”). Since I do a bit of HTML updating with TextEdit, this meant that I was simply unable to copy & paste HTML code with quotations without resolving this issue.

Luckily, there's a place you can solve this issue right away - same with disabling the Smart Dash (a -- would change into a — which, again, causes issues).

Where? In System Preferences? Nope. In TextEdit -> Edit -> Substitutions -> Smart Quotes & TextEdit -> Edit -> Substitutions -> Smart Dashes

So, if like me, you're running into OS X Mavericks suddenly deciding to modify your quotation marks or quote marks, when you least want it to, just disable these two Substitutions. 

It took me a while to Google the answer to this issue so here's an article about it. 

[esaruoho]

Using Automator to run a Sudo command on the terminal to fix USB Tethering issue on OS X, be prompted for password

Interesting issue, ran into a MacMini2,1 that was unable to connect to the net with an iPhone through USB Tethering - after some fiddling around, found out that you can actually force USBTethering to work with a sudo kextload command.

However, having to type it every time you boot up OS X lead to trying to find out how to use Automator to do it for me.

So, here you go. A couple of assumptions: You know the Admin password, and don't have a problem typing it every time you wish to connect to the web. You actually have this issue (for some reason, it occurred on OS X 10.6.3).

Start up Automator

Choose Application for your type of document.

Pick Run AppleScript from your Actions -list

type up do shell script "sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext" with administrator privileges

Remember to right-click on the little stub that connects "Application receives files and folders as input" and "Run AppleScript" and select Disable.

save to Desktop using a name you recognize.

Now run it everytime you boot up OS X 10.6.3 - in case your iPhone USB Tethering does not work.

[esaruoho]

Commentary on MacWorld article: "For OS X Mavericks, the best is yet to come" -

Another case of commenting broken on an Apple News website, this time MacWorld with their "For OS X Mavericks, the best is yet to come"

This whole thing screams "Special Music Keynote" (or whatever they're called) for Autumn. Why?

Because Mac Pro & Logic Pro X utilizing 2 GPU's (FCP X with an audio slant?) is enormously interesting for composers and producers - they could also focus on how iTunes Radio / Match / the over-all iTunes ecosystem is doing. 

If it's tiny enough as a keynote, they could easily ram in Mac Book Pro updates and obviously Mavericks would assist in making Logic Pro X even snappier on older machines. Overall I'm guessing the changes and additions to Logic Pro X which are fueled by the Redmatica-acquire will actually take some time to work in. 

Let's not forget that iOS7 also unveiled Inter-App Audio - this is going to take some time to break down in a cohesive way during a keynote..

And since Redmatica is definitely related to automatic audio-chopping on iCloud -level, this would be a great way to inform us of Offline Siri-capabilities for both iOS and OS X Mavericks. 

I can't wait! :)

[esaruoho]

TUAW: Weekend Poll: What would you have asked Tim Cook at All Things Digital?

Interesting article on TUAW, "What would you have asked Tim Cook at All Things Digital?".. TUAW have a buggy system so here are my questions..

1- What are your thoughts on BloomEnergy with their Bloom Box Fuel Cell product? Are you satisfied with the performance of these devices on your FuelCell Farms and will you be purchasing more of them in the future? Do the Bloombox Fuel Cells fit the Apple ideal as using the best methods for energy generation, or would you like to see them (or Apple) go further with this?

2- D'you think the world will eventually move away from Coal, Nuclear, Oil and Fracking and towards Fuel Cells, Solar, wind and vortex-based water power production?

3- Will Apple one day be able to produce a Terawatt of energy via your server farms worldwide?

4- I would like to never have to charge my MacBookPro or iPhone - I'm also not a big fan of iPhone cases with solar panels, or backpacks with a battery and a solar panel as added weight - and they aren't aesthetically pleasing either. Should I give up and buy one of these clunky things, or can I remain hopeful that Apple could one day provide us with iDevices with solar-panel layered touch-screens, fuel cells and thus also a laptop that will never require charging?

5- You know one industry that is ripe for disruption? The Electrical Utility industry. Could you envision Apple as an electrical company?

6- If you were to re-think the original "Think Different" -campaign, which scientists, inventors, philosophers, educators  and artists etc would you add as the north stars of Apple for 2013 and beyond?

7- Who were your childhood heroes?

8- You've accomplished a great deal during your tenure at Apple - is there something more you would like to accomplish during your lifetime?

9- What steps have you taken to make sure that research engineers experimenting with inductive/wireless charging will no longer be dying of cancer at Apple? Is there a plan to advance internal knowledge at Apple re: cancer so that you no longer lose valuable employees?

10- Steve Jobs was quoted at AllThingsDigital as saying (of his passing) "Well, it won't be a party" (for the rest of Apple), but can you imagine Apple bouncing back from this great loss? Will it take some more time, or can you already witness healing happening at the company?

11- Do you have a message to all the armchair critics who constantly analyse all of your hires and decisions in the most negative light possible? I'm guessing most of these types of people do not register on your radar at all?

[esaruoho]

FTFY: Greenpeace’s Senior IT Analyst Gary Cook. ”Jackson can make Apple the top environmental leader in the tech sector by helping the company use its technology to become an electric utility company and to provide the clean energy that both Apple and the world need right now.”

FTFY: Gary Cook of Greenpeace (with edits)

[esaruoho]

VOB to M4V to iBooks Author

If you have a VOB you wish to add to an iBooks Author file, you can do so easily by using Compressor.

Compressor will convert the file to .M4V, after which you can add a Media-Widget inside iBooks Author and drag the file from Finder to it.

The Movie Optimization will start, and after that, well.. There it is! :)

[esaruoho]

ARC 102L/ARC102/ARC 150: LACMA Field Trip January, 25th 2013 (Week 3)

Dymaxion Map (Fuller Map)

For those of you I was able to catch and find yesterday I tried to explain the virtue and the radical nature of this map. To find out more about this and Buckminster Fuller, see the links below. For your own diagrammatic interpretations of your trip to the studio (due Monday 8:00 am) please note that one of the benefits of a diagram is to change and refocus the way we look at things. 

http://www.bfi.org/about-bucky

http://www.bfi.org/about-bucky/buckys-big-ideas/dymaxion-world/dymaxion-map

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map