Been a busy couple of weeks and not much time for the weblog or the software behind it. Just barely managing to slip a new picture on each day.

At work we have been busy getting TranzPort ready for the NAMM Show, which started yesterday.

It has been an interesting process seeing TranzPort go from concept to a physical device. It started off as an idea put forth during a pizza fueled brainstorming session. Next there were electronic prototypes: little sections of perf board with chips, switches, and a scrub wheel. Graphic designs were rendered and tweaked, eventually leading to SLS prototypes, more designs, more prototypes, and eventually to spec'ing out a final bom (bill of materials) and manufacturing company.

And of course all of the software: Windows drivers, Mac drivers, and plugins for most of the digital audio editing applications.

Hey, maybe I can write a How Zone article about it?

Since not everyone gets to go to NAMM (like me!) we decided to put together a TranzPort movie, to show it in use. I brought in a camera tripod, lighting gear from my light box, and a dark blue flannel sheet for a backdrop. We used an old Sony video camera and Brian brought in a microphone (most of the office audio gear had already been shipped to NAMM).

Lights, camera, ideer...

It's fun to pick on my friend Brian's New Englander accent, with all of his "ideers" and trips out the "back doiyahd." But he did a great job...after a few takes. Next I hooked the camera to my powerbook over firewire and brought the video into iMovie. For the rough cut of the move I did it all in iMovie which makes putting together a movie and audio really simple.

For the finished movie I moved over to Final Cut Express, which I got in a cheap competitive upgrade a while back. Truth be told this program is way over my head. I'm more of an iMovie kind of guy, but it was educational to put the movie together in Final Cut.

I think the hardest part of making any movie is figuring out what format to save it in for the web. There are dozens of video and audio compressions, streaming hints, and other doodads. We only want two things: perfect quality, miniscule file size. Right?

For the time being the movie is on the company's homepage, TranzPort movie. Spread the love: post the link on your site too!

In my spare time I've been working on a couple of projects. Thanks to pointers and inspiration from Shelley I have a copy of OSCommerce running on my powerbook with a mini-store in operation. Really pretty easy to install and administer. PHP and mySQL, same mumbo jumbo that powers this website.

Another project in the making is a bulletin board, ultimately as a user support center for Frontier. There's a bunch of BBs out there and at first I started playing with phpBB, which installed on the powerbook no problem. I let it languish for a bit and when I came back to it decided to try something else. At the moment I'm working with PunBB , a smaller, lightweight bb system that also uses PHP and mySQL.

As chance would have it, PunBB's developer has been working with my host provider, TextDrive and powers their support forums. Just to put in a quick pitch, if you are looking for web and weblog hosting check out TextDrive. Their rates are good and they have decent software packages, including the very nice TextPattern weblog tool. (which I don't use simply because I wrote my own)

Since all new Macs come with the Apache webserver, PHP, and Mysql already installed (even the mini) you can easily install things like OSCommers, PunBB, and TextPattern and play with them locally. That's how I work. I usually install a program on my laptop, tweak the code and graphics to my nefarious purposes, and then upload it to a server when it is ready for public consumption.

Sure, the Mac is great for movies, photos, music, and virus-free living. But for web development the Mac KicksButt™. ":^)

Speaking of the Mac Mini, I have one on order for the house. It's going to be pulling a bunch of duties. I'll be hooking it to our weather station for keeping the internal and external weather databases up to date (replacing an old pc laptop and some snarly VB app). I've been waiting for this exact product: a small, headless, wireless Mac with all of the scriptable goodness that entails.

I plan to nestle the mini in with the TV/Stereo upstairs and use it as a backup of our music. Might hook the audio out to the stereo and use iTunes in the living room, not sure yet on the best means of remote control (TranzPort maybe?). Ya know, if I got a video converter or a TV which took DVI input I could junk our old DVD player and just use the Mini. Hmm...