Adding a New Text Search File Type

As heavy Interwoven document management users, we sometimes include Interwoven link files (.NRL files) in SharePoint document libraries. This doesn't give a whole lot of functionality in and of itself, but it is necessary. The NRL is a very simple one line text file that contains a library name and a document and version number. There are times when a user might want to search on the document number, so we needed to add the NRL as a searchable file type.

To do this, there are two places the extension needs to be added in the registry, and the SSP needs to know about the file type (Search settings / File types / New File Type). Your registry keys will look like the entries below. It would be good to verify the GUIDs with the TXT entries on your system. If you navigate in the registry to the locations below you will see how the keys look.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.nrl]

@="{C5BD8BA8-4209-4A15-B010-534AEB020A54}"

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.nrl]

@="{4A3DD7AB-0A6B-43B0-8A90-0D8B0CC36AAB}"

Naturally, this would extend to other text file types and of course you will do this in your test environment first, etc., etc., blah, blah.

Fran Healy and Andy Dunlop in Cleveland

If you are a Travis fan you have probably heard about Fran Healy and Andy Dunlop's current tour of North America. It brought them to my favorite concert club yesterday, the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland. Everything you have heard about this show is true.

From Fran Healy and Andy Dunlop of Travis

The show is a very humorous look back on the history of Travis. There is as much dialog as music, and the audience is quickly won over by Fran's wit. This is a program that is best for hard core Travis fans, and that is pretty much all you had in Cleveland.

Schoolboy was there and made a 24 bit 96 khz hand-held Zoom H2 recording. I heard some of it and it is very nice. Nearly every person in attendance seemed to be buying the "official bootleg" (which is considerably shorter than the full Schoolboy version that is over three hours, including the meet-and-greet).

After the show, most of the crowd (that I would guess at around 150-200) waited around to greet Fran and Andy, and they took the time to chat with everybody. I think I was there for a good hour and a half after the show. In April, the Travis Cleveland House of Blues show proved to be my musical highlight for 2009. Last night was an extension of that great vibe.

Check out my photos and youtube. The video gives a good feel of what it was like.

SharePoint 2010: Honing Up on Powershell

One of the interesting bits to come out of the SharePoint 2010 previews is the inclusion of more than 500 Powershell cmdlets. As a SharePoint admin or developer (remember, you developers, you have to know admin and end-user stuff so you know what NOT to develop) it will be important to know your way around Powershell.

I wouldn't call myself either a command line junky or command line phobic. I always liked command line scripting. Powershell is something I have used, but having touched the surface of it, I've known that I need to know more. I think most of you are in the same position (be honest).

A little knowledge, while being dangerous, can calm those feelings of ignorance. A quick search brought up this TechNet lab:

TechNet Virtual Lab: Introduction to Windows PowerShell

If you spend the prescribed 90 minutes studying it (and trying other stuff), you won't be an expert, but you will feel more comfortable when it comes time to sort and pipe and filter all those SharePoint 2010 commands that are coming your way.

Rounder Records 40th Anniversary Concert

We made a little diversionary trip to Tennessee this last week. My son is an electrical engineering student in his senior year at Purdue and since they had a two day break, it was a nice time for a quick trip. We originally were going to go to Memphis and Nashville, but we didn't get going early enough to include Memphis. None of us had been to Nashville.

Along the way we stopped and took landmark photos at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Churchill Downs in Louisville. We started exploring at Churchill Downs and found that there were no locked doors. That was fun. We ended up in a deserted top level Millionaires Club. Nice view.

Nashville is a nice town. It has a unique cosmopolitan flair. More sophisticated than I expected. I liked it. Much of the city is very beautiful and nicely kept. We walked and drove around quite a bit, seeing lots of nifty stuff, including:

• The Broadway area (bars, shops, etc. downtown)
• The Country Music Hall of Fame
• Ryman Auditorium
• The Parthenon
• Bicentennial Park
• The Grand Ole Opry House
• Belle Meade Plantation

The weather was variable (cloudy some of the time, a little drizzle here and there, nice the rest of the time). It was definitely warmer than we are accustomed to in October. Nice.

I hoped we could catch a good show while we were there, but I never anticipated we would see such a great one. While we were at the Grand Ole Opry in the afternoon (October 12, 2009) we inquired about tickets to that night's performance. They had some floor seats at around $50 each, but they were selling good balcony seats for $12. What a deal. As it turns out, this hall is a good one. The balcony view and sound are first rate. They even have pews just like the Ryman Auditorium (but they are nicely padded).

Here is the lineup we saw. It was the Rounder Records 40th Anniversary Celebration.

• Minnie Driver did a set and acted as MC for the show. She sang beautifully and was very witty. The Show was being recorded for broadcast on PBS in March.
• Nathan & The Zydeco Cha Chas gave Matt and Gayle a nice introduction to live, jumpy zydeco music.
• Bela Fleck did an interesting little set. Mesmerizing banjo, as always.
• Irma Thomas had a special guest of Henry Butler. Very soulful.
• Mary Chapin Carpenter was uplifting and inspiring.
• Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas finished the evening with the most beautiful singing and string band playing you can imagine.

Over all, the show had the feel of many of the Rock Hall tribute shows (American Music Masters). They pulled it off better, but it was a smaller scale. It was a bit drawn out as it took time to switch the bands out. With the exception of Bela Fleck, these were good sized bands! The Grand Ole Opry House gets a 10. They even had a house beer (something like a dark lager - I think they called it Opryhouse Brew).

Goodbye to an Old ...

... well I was going to say "friend," but it's really just a refrigerator, so friend is going too far.

In September 1974 I was a freshman at Ohio University. My first week there I decided a fridge was imperative, so I headed to a place where they rented them. I can't remember if rent was $40/year or $40/quarter, but I do remember that you could buy one of the well used ones for $45 - as-is, no warranty (or maybe a very short warranty). That was a no brainer for me. I bought it. For two years it served me well, and for the following two years I lent it out to friends.

Since then, it languished in the basements of the three houses I have owned since 1980. Most of that time it has been plugged in and running. The last 15 years or so it has been set on a very low setting to keep beer barely cold, the way I like it.

When I went to check on my stash of killer beers today, it was very warm in there. The compressor seems to have been running continuously for a while and it was very hot. I will try (not too hard) to fix it, but I think my old friend may have finally given up the ghost.

Another Use for AVCHD - Hi-Fi

If you are coming into this cold, you might first read my other two posts about AVCHD.

Some audiophiles recently started burning AVCHD discs instead of using DVD-Audio or the LPCM capabilities of DVD-Video.

DVD-Audio and PCM on DVD Video both allow some pretty high quality audio. With DVD-Audio, you get two channels of 24 bit 192khz or 6 channels (5.1) of 24 bit 92khz and lossless compression. PCM on DVD video also goes to 24 bit 96khz, but they take a lot more space and I am not sure if anyone did much with multi-channel PCM on DVD-Video for this reason.

Lots of people have been using those formats for original recordings, vinyl rips and such, but now we have some AVCHD's starting to show up. This is somewhat lost on me because of equipment limitations. My Blu-ray player is in my living room home theater which has Pioneer/Bose audio which is very much inferior to what I use for hi-fi listening in my studio. So far I haven't gotten my studio PC to play these either (although I thought it might be able to with the right software). This will probably lead me to getting a Blu-ray for the studio.

I am exploring tools for authoring this content: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/authoring-bd-hd-dvd. This may be a good way to go for the future. It's nice to have so many options, but I just recently authored my first DVD-Audio (of a nifty vinyl rip I made myself of The Three Sounds "Soul Symphony"). Now on to the next format!

Lastly, I will share some somewhat related links that are cool. The first is some analysis of various formats including vinyl, and the second is a look at DVD-A vs. SACD.

http://users.bigpond.net.au/christie/comparo/part4.html

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/sacd-dvd-a/

9-9-9 Beatles Remastered - Criticism - They Got it Wrong

Today the long awaited remastered Beatles CD's were released. The new versions are not an improvement on the versions released in the 80's, unless you were looking for compressed dynamics and some tweaks in the bass equalization. Like many CD's being released today these days, the new Beatles releases were made to sound louder - they are less dynamic so they don't sound quieter than other recordings.

This of course is not a good thing. The one thing CD's can do well is dynamic range, but lately many CD's are all about being loud. Ultimately this will help kill the CD market and further deaden peoples senses, so they can be happy with horrible compressed audio (MP3, etc.). As far as the bass, I think I could have tweaked in a little bottom if I thought it was missing. I do not understand the whole mono thing (the new releases are available in both stereo and mono). These recordings for the most part were originally stereo, so what's with mono? I want more channels, not less.

My listening tests compared the new CD's with the old ones as well as with vinyl and some oddball Beatles releases like a 20 bit HDCD of Let it Be (Naked) and the Love DVD-Audio (remixed by Sir George Martin and son). As you may know, I am quite the audio snob, with some serious listening gear (electrostatic speakers, tube amps, etc.). I am also a long time Beatles fan - I have purchased pretty much the whole cycle at least two or three times.

So I would be lying if I said I didn't want these new CD's to sound great and jump out of my speakers like the Stones and Kinks and many other old rock groups' high resolution remixes. The regular 16 bit CD's can sound very good too. I wanted these to be good. But they don't offer any improvement for me. In fact, although I may change my mind after more listening, for now I prefer the old CD releases over these new ones.

I did not do any empirical analysis of the new versions of any of the tracks (maybe I could suck them into Sound Forge and measure the dynamic range - for now I used my ears). I also have a strong prejudice in favor of vinyl. Nine times out of ten the listening experience from vinyl (even somewhat worn) beats CD's, HDCD's, SACD's and DVD-Audio. It doesn't matter which digital media is used, vinyl is almost always significantly better. Remember, the resolution of analog signals is continuous, so it has infinitely higher resolution than anything digital. The best digital sound comes from DSD (SACD), but it's still not analog.

I imagine a lot of people will disagree with me, but time will tell as other audiophiles weigh in on the subject. I am sorry if I sounded harsh, I am just trying to steer you readers towards the best sound.

If you have the vinyl, play that, and enjoy the best there is. If you have the old CD's, you don't need the new ones. If you have neither, you can get the new (and hardly improved) ones or seek out old versions. Have they inadvertently created a new market for the vintage Beatles CD releases? Wouldn't that be something.