This is a one time issue I ran into on both my first Surface Pro and its replacement, so I think it might be just a corrupt preinstalled driver.

The symptoms are if you, within the first week or so of using the Surface Pro, start having limited connection with any WiFi or Bluetooth network.  For Bluetooth, you may also be getting the option to connect via "Direct Connection" instead of "Access Point".

The fix is to go to the Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Device Manager > Network Adapters.
Just uninstall all devices and restart.
Windows 8 will automatically reinstall the default drivers and everything works again.

Note: For Bluetooth, you also need to pair up your phone and laptop again.  This is the case even with Windows Update updating your drivers, which can be annoying.

So I picked up a Surface Pro on its release a couple days ago.  Funny enough the Microsoft Store in Corte Madera was fairly empty and there was no trouble at all picking one up in 128GB (plenty of stock).  Guess they aren't very good at marketing.

I installed pretty much everything I normally keep on my laptop onto it without a hitch.  Virtually no cons so far.  Runs Photoshop, Premiere, FL Studio, Visual Studio, WinSCP, etc all just fine.  Type cover keyboard works great and I'm able to run anything I normally do on my regular desktop.  If you don't like Windows 8, you can just download ClassicShell which brings back the Start menu and lets you switch to Desktop mode permanently, making it essentially Windows 7.  Even the lack of 3G/4G is easily fixed by tethering it via Bluetooth to the cellphone in my pocket.


The only thing that bugged me so far is the type cover sometimes is not responsive; noticed this occurred the most when the device was left charging overnight or running on the carpet for a few hours.  Reconnecting doesn't help; usually it just resolves itself if you turn off the unit for some time to cool off.  Maybe heat or static charge bugs it or something, I'm not sure, but the few times that happened were when the tablet got warm lying flat on carpet or on someone's lap.
*Update 20130218: Contacted MS's Surface team about the keyboard issue and they promptly shipped me a new Surface Pro.  New one works fine so far, so no more issues there.

Otherwise pretty content here, don't think I'll be bothering to look for competing products (currently none out in release).  Been waiting a long time for a real upgrade to my existing Dell M1330 laptop that would be significantly lighter and still as powerful for video editing etc.  The stylus and touchscreen are just pluses on top of that.

In retrospect, the lack of demand in the store and all the bad press just makes it more perplexing whether I'm missing out on some defect of the product or something.  I don't really understand the comparison to regular tablets (lack of apps, etc) since the functionality is entirely different with it being a full-featured computer, but Microsoft supposedly only stocking 1-2 Surface Pros in some other retail stores around the country doesn't really help its own case either.

I've been trying to find  something  similar  to  the  Surface  Pro  but  even  lighter,  faster,  and  more  battery  life.  Seems  like  the  only  other  tablet  in  the  same  vein  is  the Kupa X15?
http://www.dynamism.com/top-notebooks/kupa_x15.shtml

I  haven't  been  following  this  stuff  for  years now  though,  so I  don't  know  if  my  Google  searching  skills  are  up  to  par.

 Anyone  know  of  anything  even  better?

I haven't been following cameras that closely but just saw this today.
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-DSC-RX100-Sensor-Digital-Camera/dp/B00889ST2G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1348019580&sr=8-2&keywords=sony+rx1

Apparently it's also very small like any other pocket camera but has 20 megapixels (+2 times the usual sensor size for image quality) instead of the usual 10-12.  When did that happen?

Scary - can't wait to see when pocket cameras beat professional cameras

Recently watched "Delicatessen" by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro (very interesting film by the way ).  Ironically what caught my attention a lot more in the film were the toys, particularly the moo-ing can and saw used as an instrument.

For a while, I could not figure out what the can was actually called (Googling something without a name is hard), but I managed to find the item here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001K7OHNI/

They call it a cow voice but similar products on other sites have different names.  Basically the toy is a simple-looking can with no electronics or batteries.  When you flip it, it emits a "moo" (or "bah") sound.  Quite pointless but that's the point.

The saw is actually a pretty popular instrument it seems.  It's called a "musical saw" or "singing saw" and is also available on Amazon (without teeth), though I suppose any real saw and cello bow would work as well.
http://www.amazon.com/Snap--Industrial-296-Stradivarius-Musical/dp/B002IB1C6K/

It's also on MusicalSaw.com as a complete set and guide:
http://www.musicalsaw.com/

Definitely going to try to learn it the next chance I get.  The sound it makes doesn't seem like a real instrument (more like a ghostly computer-generated synth) but I thought it sounded pretty neat in the film.

Just a bit background on why I bother - had a disappointing upgrade from the Samsung 64GB SSD that came with my Dell XPS M1330 to Intel's 320 80GB SSD.  The Samsung drive was already several years old, so I thought it'd be worth upgrading to a modest SSD - Intel seemed safe.  Turns out after running the drive for a while, I noticed programs tended to load rather slowly.  I had installed my Samsung drive to another computer and decided to start up the same programs in parallel - the Samsung drive was up to a quarter faster at times.  Definitely not very happy about that, considering it was several years older (did technology downgrade over the years???)

Anyways, for space reasons again, I went out to upgrade to another SSD.  This time to the Mushkin Chronos which is rated generally among the same speeds as the top performing drives currently, though much less expensive.  Fairly content with it so far.  It is definitely faster than the Intel at least and seems about the same speed as the older Samsung I had.

Here are the load times in seconds (run twice each for good measure):

Task Intel 320    Mushkin Chronos Bootup   25, 25 22, 25 Photoshop   5, 2 3, 2 Premiere   18, 6 10, 5 You'd think 3-4 years would be safe to just upgrade to any current product, but I'll definitely be benchmarking my upgrades in the future just to be sure.

Just spent all evening looking through EQ tutorials.  Fun stuff.

This one was most helpful imo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESVRCT28d5o

You really do need an analyzer to pick out the bad frequencies to cut.  I wish I knew this stuff sooner - would save me a lot of headaches trying to make my stuff sound cleaner.

Current song in experimentation is "Nightfall."  We'll see how clean I can make this next piece...

Picked up a new Optoma PK320 pocket projector after my first one (PK301) broke down after lending it out (colors all green). Maybe for the better - this new one is twice as strong so I don't even need to turn out the lights anymore.


In the future though, if you do borrow it from me, please be more careful with it.

Edit: After some usage, I have to say I prefer the older PK301.  The newer one, while brighter, actually is a little blurier (for when you have to project something of high detail).  It also tends to not detect the correct aspect ratio, forcing you to manually switch from 4:3 to 16:9 and vice versa if your video changes.

Not sure what this type of query is actually called.  The basic idea is you have multiple tables linked together, but you want to only grab n rows from Table C per iteration of each row in Table A.

A more illustrative explanation: Suppose you have a table listing 10 albums and a table listing 100 records.  You only want 5 records per each album.

As you might expect, Googling such a solution was pretty hard.  A common solution was:

However, this returns a flat 5 records total, not per album.

Took me a bunch of playing around to finally come up with something like this:

So far this works but I'm not sure whether it's the most efficient way to go about it.  Any improvements are definitely welcome.  Hopefully this helps those of you also looking for the same solution but having trouble find it.

There seems to be a trend going on lately that whatever was used back in the 90s must be dated and irrelevant today.  This isn't just on MIDI but more on that maybe some other time.

Some of the more frustrating comments I've heard these days is that somehow MIDI "sounds" dated or cheesy.  There is always so much surprise when someone finds out I use MIDI to record my music but worse is when they suggest *not* using MIDI as a way to improve the quality of the sound.

Now you can say - sure, there's always going to be misconception about various things, especially technology related.  The more troubling thing is this was being taught in a few university classes I took on music and computers.  Hard part is hearing the lecturer rant against MIDI as some old way of making music that sounds cheap to the ear, when really MIDI does not "sound" like anything at all.  It is merely a sequence of recorded notes in digital form (like digital sheet music).

Needless to say, I didn't really take much away from those classes, but this has bothered me a lot.  I wasn't sure if it was just my own misunderstanding of the MIDI issue, but some quick googling brought up similar confusion.  This topic, for example, from Gearslutz.com hits the nail on the head: Realistic Midi?

Glad to know it isn't just me wondering what people are talking about when they refer to MIDI as sounding like anything at all.  Of course there is definitely the aspect of vibrato etc not being recorded but that's where the editing comes in depending on your software.  For now, I guess I'll blame Microsoft for making such a cheesy default soundbank for MIDI in the first place.