Sunday, June 21, 2015

i've now finally cleared out 2014 - and although i'm still irked by what i lost, it's minor in the larger scope of things. i just need to run through it a last time and see if there's anything i need to reconstruct.

i'm going to clear out 2015 overnight because there are some period one updates in there, and plan to finish it. i''m going to wait until i get to the period 2 disc to clear out 2000-2012.

after that, i'll have to finish constructing the front-end for the disc, which shouldn't take more than two days.

i'm going to lose a few this week, though, because i need to get my disability package mailed on thursday, and i have some writing to do.

it's not likely that i'll finish this by wednesday, but i should get fairly close.

as i'm doing most of the work now, the next few aleph discs should not take nearly as long to build front-ends to.

it's not exactly what i want to be doing, but i feel it's necessary to comprehensively close the first two periods. when i do get done, there should be several quick uploads over 2003-2004.
on one hand, i have 1700 pages of writing in this document. on the other, that discussion was useful.

what i'm going to do is "hide" the posts for now, rather than delete them - then go back and delete them in the activity log when i'm sure they're safe.

a little more time consuming, but fail safe.

i kept saying "i'll save it when i get to the end of june". i could have. then it crashed. i don't know if i can really blame myself for a power outage, but i could have been more attentive.

i sent an email to facebook data recovery but it's a long shot...
ugh...

i made a lot of progress in working through 2014 today, but then i lost a lot of it. word crashed on me a few hours ago, which cut out a good deal of february. that means the comments to the beginning of "stuck" are lost. then, the power randomly went out a few minutes ago, which cost me a good chunk of june. i haven't checked the damage yet, but i think it's mostly discussions about performing the time machine.

this power surge happens from time to time; i turned the heat on for a few hours over night (it's been too cold to open the window, and yet the air is just punishing - there's not another option, besides shivering.), and i think the idiot upstairs woke up and throttled the entire unit by cranking his air up quickly. keep that up. blow your fuse.

i'm not yet at the point where i'm willing to turn it up to 30, but i'm not far from it. the weather just won't stay warm. every time it seems like it's just about warmed up, we get two or three days with lows around 10 degrees, which mean i have to turn the heat back on. well, i should clarify - if it weren't for the air cranking everything out, i wouldn't have to. i might even enjoy the cool down. but i've had a very hard time getting the heat higher than 22 this year - and keep in mind that 22 with the "air conditioner effect" feels a lot colder, closer to 17 - which means that any cool down outside is running up against a total lack of stored heat.

the ritual this year has been that i take my sweater off when i go out and put it on when i come home. there's been days when it's a beautiful 30 degrees out and i'm stuck wearing a sweater inside :(.

again: i need the space right now, for the gear. but i'm out of here as soon as the work is complete. unless he dies before then. that would be preferable, because i hate moving. but i can't handle the air. it brings back a lot of childhood trauma, because my shit for brains stepmother used to do the same thing. but, she was just conditioned to working in a lab, not dangerously obese, and she was never this extreme...

it would have maybe made more sense to copy files over on this laptop, because it's immune to power losses. but, my frontend is on the other machine.

so, i'm going back to it on that machine. i'm just going to have to adopt the annoying convention of saving between every cut & paste.

for now, i'm both wired and frustrated, and i'm going to try and get a few hours of sleep rather than get angry.

accessing deleted page data

jessica
hi.

i have a have facebook music fan page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessica-Murray/41134747113) that i've been posting to extensively over the last few years, to the point that it's overloaded with data. when a user tries to scroll down the wall, posts are missing - and eventually the operation sort of times out by producing empty posts. i've come to the conclusion that facebook is not an ideal site for this kind of high volume journal posting, and am in the process of migrating the data into a scriptless html file to host on my own site.

i've been copying posts into a word document for short term keeping, then deleting the posts on facebook. unfortunately, i suffered a power outage between saves and i lost a significant amount of data.

now, everybody knows that data is archived, but you don't offer the ability to download page archives. there must be a way to get the data through request.

it would actually save me a significant amount of time if i could just get the whole thing in one chunk, but i'm specifically looking for posts made between january 1 and july 1, 2014.

facebook
Hi,

Thank you for contacting us to make a data request. You can access your data on Facebook in several ways. First, you can access your personal data from your account (ex: on your timeline or in your activity log). Second, we provide a tool that allows you to download a copy of your account data. This tool is available from the Account Settings page.

For more information, please visit:

https://www.facebook.com/help/405183566203254

To learn more about your data on Facebook, please read the Data Policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/

This policy describes:

• Categories of data being processed by Facebook
• Personal data that Facebook receives from Facebook members
• Sources of this info, if known
• Reasons for processing this data
• Recipients or categories of recipients to whom Facebook members’ personal data may be disclosed

To access the self-service download tool from your account:

1. Click the account menu at the top right of any Facebook page
2. Choose Account Settings
3. Click the link at the bottom of the page "Download a copy of your Facebook data"

Note: We have several measures in place to ensure the security of your information, and will require you to confirm your identity to complete the process and access your account information.

Your downloaded file may contain sensitive information. You should keep it secure and take precautions when storing, sending or uploading it to any other services.

You can also access the personal data held in your timeline any time by logging into Facebook.

If you can’t access your account or don’t have an account, please follow the link below to complete a form and request your data:

https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/166828260073047

You may be required to provide additional information to authenticate your identity. 

jessica
i'm sorry, but i feel you didn't understand my request.

i have a have facebook music fan page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessica-Murray/41134747113) and am looking to download data from it that i accidentally deleted.

(pause)

hi.

i sent this a few days ago and got a response about downloading profile data that misunderstood the request. not to be rude, but i'd appreciate it if the request was read a little more closely, so i could receive a coherent response.

i have a have facebook music fan page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessica-Murray/41134747113) that i've been posting to extensively over the last few years, to the point that it's overloaded with data. when a user tries to scroll down the wall, posts are missing - and eventually the operation sort of times out by producing empty posts. i've come to the conclusion that facebook is not an ideal site for this kind of high volume journal posting, and am in the process of migrating the data into a scriptless html file to host on my own site.

i've been copying posts into a word document for short term keeping, then deleting the posts on facebook. unfortunately, i suffered a power outage between saves and i lost a significant amount of data.

now, everybody knows that data is archived, but you don't offer the ability to download page archives. there must be a way to get the data through request. it would actually save me a significant amount of time if i could just get the whole thing in one chunk, but i'm specifically looking for posts made between january 1 and july 1, 2014.

facebook
Hi,

Thanks for your email. Unfortunately, we don't currently offer support for this type of request through this channel.

You can find answers to many common questions, learn how to report a bug or other issue and get more information about Facebook's products and features directly in the Facebook Help Center:

http://www.facebook.com/help/?ref=cr

jessica
is there a channel i can try?
this isn't really considered a musician's tool, it's more designed for playing back midi files, and by that one would have to deduce the intent is specifically for classical music. it's really meant as a finale or sibelius plugin, to get more realistic sound fonts for music teachers or geeks that just like listening to midi music.

however, i spent most of 2014 converting midi compositions i'd written many years before into finished pieces, and this proved to be a very valuable tool to me in converting programmed notes into usable sounds.

i specifically downloaded it for the drums, because i find the idea of mapping drums to be highly anti-musical. the staff isn't arbitrary. drum notation is a real thing. when i notate a snare, i don't mean a turntable scratch. the lack of attention to this reality by drum machine programmers is really upsetting, and i'm not sure why professional drummers haven't pushed back on it. i should be able to put a midi drum file through any plugin and have it hit the relevant sound fonts. i mean, imagine a plugin that triggered the wrong pitches and a culture that says "well, map the pitches then". it's a combination of ignorance and idiocy.

so, the fact that this is a general midi sound card replacement that understands music notation was very key in choosing it as a drum machine. it has some limitations, as everything general midi does, but they can largely be dealt with through production. and, frankly, i tend to produce my drums not just with reverb but with various types of distortion and some pretty heavy equalization. the key thing, for me, was just getting the notes to map correctly out of the box, and it does that quite while.

it turns out that some of the other sound fonts are quite usable, which i just took as a bonus - but beware that some of them are also quite awful.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may06/articles/nibandstand.htm
to create realistic midi renders for the midi files project, i needed a realistic guitar sampler and, after a little research, decided this was really the only option. technology moves so fast that this may no longer be true, a mere year and a half later.

what i found was that the other options either come with baked in effects or were broadly generative in nature. baked in effects are great if you're basically a piano player and want the guitars to conform to a genre style. so, you see these libraries with guitars categorized with terms like "pop", "blues" or "rock". for a lot of people, that's really enough, and that's fine.

but, i needed it to be as basic as possible, so i could shape my own signal path through guitar rig or whatever else. i wanted the cleanest, most bare samples possible - just the most basic DI sound of picking a completely clean guitar. and, for me, that's actually true, broadly.

it has some issues - it can be a little choppy, and it's maybe a little bit *too* realistic in some ways. alternate tunings would be useful, if they don't want to let you pick notes that would otherwise be impossible to play.

keeping in mind that i'm going to play live guitars for virtually everything out of principle (because i'm a guitarist), this is of such limited value to me that it's not really worth my time to find something that fixes these limitations. but, as a specific tool for the specific project i used it for, i was very surprised by how good it could sound through some effects.

http://www.musiclab.com/products/realguitar/info.html
https://www.musiclab.com/products/reallpc/info.html