About a couple weeks ago I got a Sony HDR-CX100 video camera. I was specifically looking for one that was capable in recording HD, and now I’ve also been learning how to do basic video editing.

And here’s one of the results: a home video of myself performing “Rain 2”. It’s also available in HD.

The only edits I did were: brightening, audio noise filtering, fading in/out, and adding text.

Enjoy!

I’m in the process of producing my next album. I’ve got the song list and booklet cover photo ready. However, I need more photographs for the booklet.

I’m inviting you to participate in my photography contest.

The winning photographs will be put in the CD booklet for my next album. I still don’t know how many photographs I need. It depends on the outcome of the discussion between myself and my graphics designer. So far, it looks like I’ll need 2 photographs (but this can change).

The prize: A special copy of my album, autographed by myself.

Eligibility (partially copied from a previous post):

1. During the full period of the contest (10 February–17 April 2010), you must either (at least one is enough):
   • subscribe to my mailing list (if you’re not subscribed, subscribe now).
   • subscribe to my Facebook page.
   • follow me on Twitter.
2. In case of a tie, the amount of support your demonstrate to me will become a deciding factor. For example, if A and B obtain the same score, A subscribes to my mailing list and supports me on Facebook, whereas B only follows me on Twitter, I’d rather give the prize to A.

Rules and conditions:

1. I reserve the rights to alter the competition.
2. You can submit up to 5 photographs. Each photograph must be at least 1500 pixels in width and at least 1500 pixels in height.
3. Any photograph you submit must be your own work.
4. For every photograph that I choose as a winner, you must be willing to give me a licence to use it without any practical limitation. Well, I only intend to use it to support my music promotion (like putting it on my website), not to decorate my house. I have to say this just in case you hate me in the future, you will not sue me for using your photograph. In addition, I will not need to pay you any royalty. More on licensing later.
5. You retain the copyright on your photograph (if you have not waived the copyright). I have no objection that you use the photograph for something else, like, for example, re-submitting it for someone else’s album.
6. The submission deadline is 24 February 2010.
7. My verdict will be final. In plain words, whoever win(s) is/are up to me.

What sort of photographs I’m looking for: The theme is nature. Bear in mind the following keywords: butterfly, flowers, leaves, grass. Example 1, Example 2, and Example 3 should give you the rough idea, but be creative. Excite me with your shots!

How to submit: Email me with the subject “Photography Contest”. In the body of the email:

1. Provide the links containing the photographs. Do make sure that I can easily access them without having to do extra hassle, such as typing a password, or waiting for a confirmation. I suggest that you put your photographs in on a photo hosting site, such as Flickr, Picasa Web, or PBase.com (if you do, make sure to set the submitted photos public). It’s a suggestion only, not a requirement.
2. Tell me how you are supporting me online. If you subscribe to my mailing list, simply send from the same address you use to subscribe to my mailing list or mention which address you use for that. If you subscribe to my Facebook page, just tell me your screen name. If you follow me on Twitter, just tell me your username.
3. Declare that all photographs submitted are your own work.
4. Declare that you give me a licence to use any winning photograph without any practical limitation. I am not comfortable asking you to reliquish your rights totally. What you can do:
   • Put your photograph in the public domain. Or,
   • Apply Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence and grant me the permission to attribute your work to you by simply putting your name in my CD booklet, use it commercially, and create derivative work from it. Or,
   • Come up with your own licence. Warning: I don’t like reading long text.

Here is an example email body:

I'm following you on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mytwitterusername

I declare that the following photographs are my own work:

http://abc

http://def

http://ghi

The CC Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence applies to these photographs.
For details of the licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Any questions? Feel free to ask me.

What are you waiting for? Join now!

I was recently interviewed by the Ozip magazine, published in Melbourne and targeted to Indonesians. The interview has been published in the February 2010 edition. It’s in Bahasa Indonesia. In addition, Visions has also been reviewed by Harliza Keumala Fuady and published in the same edition (also in Bahasa Indonesia).

The review translated to English:

The “Visions” album contains songs by ade ishs, an Indonesia pianist currently living in Melbourne. It’s an album that’s worth considered by classical and jazz music lovers, or music lovers in general. ade ishs has come offering a fresh concept among recent Indonesian bands. The strains of unique acoustic piano sound with a touch of classical music and also jazz in the album is suitable for accompanying your relaxation times or also your study times or moments when you need peace. Those are what this album offers, piano strains without any additional instruments or vocal being the simplicity trade mark of this album, but this is also decorated with the richness of inspirations. Pieces like “Sky” and also “Soil” are songs with powerful melodies that make the listeners inspired while listening to piano performance by ade ishs. In this album, ade ishs has also successfully explored softer and more relaxing music, such as demonstrated in “Birth of Love” and also “Matahari dan Rembulan”. ade ishs’ classical music background results into plus points, making this album mature without any overstatement. This album is suitable for classical and jazz music lovers, and also for those who don’t like classical music as it is interesting for anyone who likes music to listen to this album. You can obtain this album by buying at cdbaby.com, or listen at http://adeishs.com.

Just a side note: in the interview page, the leftmost photo at the bottom is a picture of Mixed Up, a jazz trio consisting of myself (keys), Sandra Bogerd (vocal), and Yugo Isal (bass). The rightmost photo at the bottom, believe it or not, that was a skinny version of me, in 1995.

[Before reading, let me warn you that this post is technical in nature, and does not contain anything musical. However, if you are a musician wanting to set up/modify a blog, this may be useful.]

Some time ago, I mentioned that I needed to find a new blogging solution. The news is that, I’ve got one already, with some compromise.

I’ll now mention what it is and how it addresses the things that I need and avoid (as I already mentioned). Before that, do you notice anything drastically different? No? Neither do I. The main different thing is the engine that powers this blog. Previously I was using Blogger (which I think is great overall) and now I’m using WordPress. I think WordPress is a bit more complicated, but more flexible. In its raw form, the performance of WordPress in terms of computing power utilisation efficiency is poor, but can be optimised so that it’s on par with my old Blogger blog. More on this later.

Now, what I need are:

1. Free. Yup, WordPress is free. No further explanation needed.
2. Customisable template: Down to the HTML+CSS level. The level of flexibility offered by WordPress is higher than that offered by Blogger SFTP publishing. And if you’re a geek, you should see that this blog is still using the same CSS. I have made so far zero change to the CSS (but may need to do that when I see something really different). [EDIT 4 Feb 2010: I have changed the CSS code for the comments only.]
3. Static HTML page rendering: Well, this is one of the trickiest part. In its raw form, WordPress does a lot of CPU processing and I/Os, and as such, not so efficient. Therefore, I use the WP-Super-Cache plugin so that when a page is accessed for the first time, the resulting HTML is cached to a static file. Given that the content of that page doesn’t change, that file is then served for subsequent requests.
4. Keep the current post permalinks. Easy. WordPress can be configured to use Blogger-style post permalinks, i.e. year/month/hyphenated-title.html without any plugins. Individual comment permalinks break, though, but I’m willing to break them anyway.
5. Manual HTML input. This is also built-in in WordPress.
6. Web-based user interface. Ditto.
7. Secure data transmission. Now, this is somewhat tricky. My music still doesn’t sell as well as Pat Metheny’s, so I can’t spend money on SSL yet. As a compromise, I use the Semisecure Login Reimagined plugin.

I’d like to avoid:

1. MySQL, but I got no choice here. I hope Dreamhost will support PostgreSQL in the future.
2. XHTML. Just edit the template and bye, XHTML. I’m using HTML 5 as much as possible.

Hopefully, nothing impacts the readers of this blog. Enjoy!

I have been booked to perform on 10 March 2010, 1—3 pm at the University of Indonesia’s Faculty of Computer Science seminar room.

Whether you are a music lover or a computer geek, you will hopefully enjoy it. I will play music and do a music technology presentation as well. In particular, I will talk about music information retrieval. For geeks, the essence of my talk will be drawn from my PhD thesis. However, I will not put all those technical details there. I have the presentation slides (PDF) ready.

Entry is free of charge.

And thanks to Yugo Isal and the UI Faculty of Computer Science for organising the event.

[EDIT 7 Feb 2010: link to presentation slides added.]