Fireproof Socks » Software

Grandcentral: Phone Number Forwarding

admin — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:42:11 +0000

I guess I’m the last one to hear about this awesome free service: Grandcentral.com

Screen Callers
Record calls on the fly and access recordings online
Block Callers
Receive Notifications
One number that rings different phones based on who’s calling
Personalize your voicemail greetings by caller or group
Let people call you from a web page without showing your number
Visual voicemail for your mobile phone
And more!

The Google Gods

admin — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:31:27 +0000

Sometimes people ask me why I named my website FireproofSocks… there is an answer for that, and I’ll tell the story if you ask. But what I didn’t foresee in my choice of a name was how poor my Google Ads would be. Usually when I look at my page, I sneer in frustration at the idiotic ads that appear in articles about Perl and MySQL. Safes? Are you serious? Is anyone really surprised when a door-knob has an IQ that is higher than my click-through rate?

The lesson I’ve learned from the Google Gods is that the NAME of your domain trumps your content to a huge degree. Bastards. As Frank Zappa might say “Who’s @#% do you have to suck to get some relevant ads around here?”

EastWest’s Symphonic Choirs Wordbuilder

admin — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 06:14:05 +0000

Wordbuilder represents a pretty complex MIDI pre-processor. Sure, the samples are good, but it’s what it does with them that count. Wordbuilder intelligently puts together all those oohs and aahs and syllables into words. Very cool. Here are two documents that explain when and how you should use Wordbuilder and how to hook it up to Finale (or to Sibelius). These documents were written from an OS X perspective, but some of the concepts and setups apply to Windows as well.

These documents are provided for personal use ONLY. You may NOT re-post them or their content anywhere.

Download:

Wordbuilder.pdf — Overview: when and how to use it
Finale 2007 uses WordBuilder w EWQLSC.pdf

Sibelius and MIDI

admin — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 06:12:47 +0000

Below is a document I created for how to use the Sibelius music notation software to play stand alone MIDI devices, such as Reason, Kontakt, or even external synthesizers and samplers. I find it much easier to work with than Finale because Sibelius doesn’t try to re-invent the wheel for this purpose.

This file is provided for free, ONLY for personal use. You may not re-post it anywhere. Thanks.

Download:

Sibelius Plays EWQL GPO and Reason.pdf