Rick Reifenstein

I love my new day job. I really do. However as with any job where you are replacing someone who has moved on, there are a lot of old projects that come back to haunt you. One of those for me has been the revival of an XML file used to generate an RSS feed for final exercises at the University. The feed is used to notify patrons what locations are open for remote viewing of graduation. First let me say that most of my experience with mark up languages has been centered on what XAML code I needed to know to write Microsoft Surface applications. So writing XML code to create an RSS feed was new to me. Plus there are several other pressing projects to deal with at the same time as this one. The previous owner of the script that generated the XML file was a PHP coder. So that's what we had to go by. My IT manager and myself are not PHP language people so I was lost. The owner of the PHP code did come back and give us permission , but when my team rewrote and saved; the file was rewritt...

Gremlins have camped out at my house. This happens to me every once in a while. They lie in wait until my household budget has reach a point in the year where things are tight. Then they attack. Systems fail all over the house. This time they attacked some key systems in our house. My music studio computer was the first to go down. Now my surround sound system has a dead left channel. So for our family movie night last night I brought up an old stereo system with a psuedo surround dsp chip in it and re-wired my entertainment system. The system is one of those that has surround speakers and uses a dsp chip create false rear imaging. Usually this is done with phase shifting and a bit of echo. I was pressed for time so I just connected the front main speakers. Turned the dsp on and used the "Rock" preset for the eq. Surprisingly I had a better theatrical audio experience with the fake 3D surround then I did with the real surround system. The 3D imaging was fantastic! Not only di...

Yes even a Director if Technology can have his home computer die! I'm almost embarrassed to say that the last computer I bought for myself was a first generation iMac. It was a 600mhz G3 in a wonderful smoky color case. I recorded several self produced recording projects on that machine. I used it for recording up until 2005. Now don't misunderstand me, I've since used faster computers, but they were all hand me downs in a sense. Someone would upgrade and ask if I wanted their old computer. Most of the time their computer was faster than the one I was currently using, so I'd say “yes”. The most recent machine was a Dell XPS 600 that I inherited from my friend and Ships on Fire collaborator L.E. Spry. He upgraded and asked if I wanted the Dell. It has been the main machine for the last 3 years. All the music I wrote for various soundtrack projects in the last couple of years was done on that machine. So know I start the process of moving over to another machine. Curr...