I’ve decided that I’m going to blog about my experiences as I fly Trans-continental, and around the world in the next year.  Why?  I think there’s a market out there for people curious about what kind of service airlines are offering.  There are a lot of videos out there, and a few blogs but with changes happening in the market place – Air Canada and their new jets with changes to service, United still going through changes with their merging with Continental, American merging with US Airways, and game changers from the middle east, it’s good to get some updates from those of us who travel.

I love what has happened to Air Canada.  I used to prefer Canadian Airlines prior to the merge with Air Canada.  Still, sadly, it’s a Canadian pastime to hate Air Canada.  While I have had some poor experiences, they’re certainly much much fewer than positive experiences.

A week ago, I was upgraded to what Air Canada is now calling Transcontinental Business Class on my Toronto to Vancouver leg of my trip to Portland.  What differentiates Transcon from International Business Class?  In short, the only thing missing is the amenity kit and slightly kicked up food options.

Honestly, relative to what I have experienced in the past, Air Canada really is kicking up food options on their Transcontinental routes.

Take a look at the menu to the left.  Moroccan-style lamb, Atlantic salmon, Ratatouille and Chicken.  More options and the presentation was quite nice.  The salad is pretty standard for Air Canada, however I love the presentation.  Of course, a perennial favourite of mine, the cookies and ice cream.

Believe me, the food was good before, although presentation did leave something to be desired, but it wasn’t bad.

Don’t be fooled.  As someone said in another blog I was reading, within North America, Air Canada really does First Class, not Business Class.  You get real plates, real cutlery, linen and great service.

We had a bit of an incident over at mathan.ca where we ended up losing pictures on all our blogs.  It was my mistake.  So I might go back and put pictures in where needed and important.

20ish years ago around this time in February, at the age of 20, I went back to Newfoundland after leaving when I was 4.  This was also the first time my Dad had seen me, and that I had seen Dad since his last visit to Ontario when I was 12 years old (for complicated reasons).

My step-mother picked me up from the airport as Dad wasn’t feeling well, but he got up when I arrived and he gave me the biggest hug he could, reaching up at my 6ft3 frame.

I went back one more time to Newfoundland during August 1995, 6 months later, on my way out to England to study in Norwich.  Dad insisted on paying for my flights out and back, with the provision that I stop in St. John’s on the way out.    It was the last time I would see him as he passed away Christmas Eve 1995.  It wouldn’t be until 1998 that I would go back out to St, John’s to see my step mother.

I felt so awkward during that trip, but we made the best of the time together.  I also had a bad cold, probably a bit worse than the one I have now.

So much has happened and changed in those 20 years.  Graduating, getting my first car, getting married, getting jobs, losing jobs, travelling, the ups and downs of life.

I wouldn’t have changed the experience for anything.

I’ve often struggled with having to figure life out for myself without having that father figure.  That doesn’t mean the efforts of my grandfather and uncle are not going unrecognized – they did the best they could with the energy they had (my grandfather), and with their own families they were bringing up (my uncle).  What doesn’t kill us does make us stronger.

I’m also thankful to those who have been able to step up and help out in that mentorship role since, and I’ve been glad of the opportunities where I’ve had a chance to share my own wisdom as well.

So today’s magic number is 263.  That’s 54lbs down since October, and that’s 6 lbs more than what I lost under Weight Watchers a few years ago.  30ish more pounds until goal.

I have to admit, i’ve been cheating a bit with this diet.  It started with my last trip to Portland where I got fed up with eating the same thing over and over again, and I decided to have the hotel specialty for breakfast – Eggs Benedict.  Over the past two weeks ago I had the equivalent to

• 1 piece of Pizza Pizza, Pizza;
• regular cheese in Tampa with a number of meals;
• rice with Teriyaki and yes I had the sauce.
• dim sum with the Teriyaki meal.

I’ve always gotten back on plan when I’ve done this with the exception of the cheese in Tampa.

I’ve always lost between 4.5 and 5 lbs on the plan.  I have no plans on slowing down at this point, but I am at a point where I feel I need to eat more towards regular foods so that when I hit goal, I’m not suddenly switching and gaining all that hard earned weight loss back like I did with WW.  I also need to learn to balance it so I’m not reverting back to old behaviours.

For example, I bought some low-carb rye bread made with flax.  I’m allowed two pieces per day.  Great!  I’m nervous about gaining weight on the stuff, but looking at the labels, it’s all on plan.

We’re going to be eating more protein, relative to where we were at in October. That’s been a major shift for Scott and me.

So we’ll see.  While I maintain my weight, I’m planning on continuing my regular weigh ins, and may even get us a bathroom scale.

But that’s not for 30ish pounds.

Scott and I are on our new, annual vacation.  Something we committed to last year when we went on our honeymoon.

We’ve had a few interesting ‘magic’ moments during our holiday this post is my way of thanking everyone who added to the magic thus far:

• Scott and I have been trying to find a Piglet pin for me, for a year and they simply don’t exist these days, or so we thought.  We went to the Pin Traders at Downtown Disney near The Marketplace and asked.  One of the cast members actually had one, and when asking what we could trade it for, she gave it to us!  We had gone off to pay for some other pins and went to find her again and she had disappeared.  We didn’t get her name, but still want to say thank you to her!
• When we got to our room, we had noticed two omissions – Bev’s character autograph book, and a mis-spelling of my name on an embroidered blanket.  It was too late to call, but we called in the morning.  They had the autograph book to us within 30 minutes of our call, and a new blanket was waiting for us at night.  They didn’t take the mis-spelled one, so we have a funny momento of our time here.
• At Cinderella’s Royal Table, Scott asked how much it would cost to get additional copies of the picture and frame together.  $29.99.  We opted not to as not all of us needed the frame and there were extra copies of the pictures.  As we were eating dinner, John, the cast member handing out photos came up to us and asked about Betty and Bev’s first time, our anniversary and my 40th birthday we were celebrating.  He passed us an additional 2 packages!
• Additionally at Cinderella’s Royal Table, I was given a HUGE cupcake for my birthday.   Thank you again to the folks at Cinderella’s Royal Table for helping us celebrate Thanksgiving, and for making that night magical.
• On our way out of Cinderella’s Castle after the fireworks, we ran into the stage manager of the show and he provided us with some neat info about the castle, some of the changes they made to the lighting and a tip on what’s coming up for the holiday season. *GRIN*
• PhotoPass – They now do videos!  We have two – one featuring Betty screaming on Seven Dwarves Mine Train and me being very stoic; and Mike from Monsters Inc. bouncing around one of our pictures. 🙂

Talk about some great memories and things we’ll cherish for life.  Thank you to everyone who has made out trip thus far.

After a week of sitting in my make-shift studio, I finally got some time to play around with the Roland TR-8 I picked up.  Wow, what a machine.  It totally to me to my late-80s/early-90s techno roots.  What a phat beat pumpin’ beast.

Forget the basic Roland TR-808/TR-909 sounds it emulates, add the scatter functionality and you’ve got a beast that doesn’t just drum for you.  If you’re not a strong beats guy like me, and you get stumped, the scatter functionality can help create breakbeats and fills to way more than satisfy my beat needs.  Tie in, not just the audio over USB, but throw in the midi data and you can create some out of the world beats with your DAW drum set (Reason, Logic, etc…)

Check this sample out.

I’m starting to post some pictures from starting in 2000 when I had a Kodak DC265 Zoom camera. Those were the days! Most of these are more my attempts at something artistic. If you want to follow, please do!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mathan416/

I also have some photos at the following link as well:

http://mathan.ca/Gallery/index.html

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information out there about how to setup instruments that can connect to a DAW such as Propellerheads Reason over USB, with MacOS X Mavericks.  Most tutorials start having completed the setup process already.

Here is a tutorial about how to setup a Roland TR-8, Roland TR-3 with MacOS X Mavericks (10.9) and Propellerheads Reason.

I am currently using the following equipment:

• Roland TR-8 Rhythm Performer
• Roland TR-3 Touch Bassline
• MacBook Air

I am also using a Korg Microkey25 and a Kaossilator Pro which were setup quite quickly.

The high level steps for this are:

1. Download the drivers.
2. Setup your audio devices
3. Setup Reason’s preferences
4. Setup the audio tracks

Download Drivers

The first thing you have to do is to download the drivers for your TR-8 and TR-3.  If you gave the drivers installed, then you can setup your audio devices to talk to CoreAudio, Apple’s technology for interfacing everything audio on your Mac.

Setup your audio devices

Do this via Go > Utilities > Audio MIDI Setup and you should see your TB-3 and TR-8 setup on the left side.

What I noticed in Reason was that I could select one of the TR-8 or the TR-3, but I could not play and record both at the same time, which is not really all that helpful. I also noticed the same in Logic.

You need to setup an Aggregate Device:

1. Click the ‘+’ button and select “Create Aggregate Device”
2. Select the Built-in Output, TB-3 and TR-8
3. Select the Clock Source as “Built-in Output”
4. Let the sample rate be 96 kHz.  The TR-8 and TB-3 both are high resolution audio devices, though some may argue that one doesn’t need to sample that high.  Your call.
5. Rename the Aggregate Device – I set mine to TB-3&TR-8 (yes, I mistyped it in the image above).
6. Right click on the new device and select “Use this device for sound input”.
7. Ensure your actual Built-in Output  is setup for sound output.  If not, right click and select “Use this device for sound output”.  You can also select, “Play alerts and sound effects through this device”.
8. You’re done with this part!  Take note of the output channels for the Mac’s own Built-in Output, you’ll need this for the next step. In my example, above, here is how to read the inputs and outputs:

• TB-3 has the first two input and output channels
• TR-8 has inputs 3 through 16 and outputs 3 through 6
• The Mac has only outputs 7 and 8

You want to add the Built-in Output in the Aggregate Device so that you can select it as the outbound device within Reason.  You’ll see this in the next step.

Setup Reason’s preferences

Load up Reason and do this via Reason > Preferences > Audio.

1. Select the Audio Device as the device you created in the previous section.  This is what stumped me, I was looking for separate audio in and out and out fields.
2. Click the Channels… button next to Active Input Channels, select all of the Inputs.
3. Click the Channels… button next to Active Output Channels, and select only the output channels
4. You’re done with this part!

Setup the audio tracks

Now you want to go ahead and create the audio tracks.  Everything should be virtually wired up and ready.

1. Go to Create > Utilities > Audio Track and an audio track is added.
2. Expand the device on the rack and under Audio Input select the input for your device.
3. If you want, rename the Audio Track to be more representative of the device you are adding.
4. You’re done.

Hit the Start/Stop button on your device and you should hear everything come out of your Mac’s speaker.

Pain Points and Tips

There are definitely some pain points to this setup.  What I have found is:

• After turning off your devices and existing Reason, it may be possible the devices get forgotten by MacOS X, or it may be the way the devices boot up.
• Reason might forget which devices belong with which channel or that channels should be enabled.  You may have to go to Reason > Preferences > Audio to set this up.
• Be sure to save a default file with the audio tracks setup.  This will save you time, and name the devices after the device and sound.
• The TR-8 will send out a stereo signal on the first two channels, one for left and one for right.  The remaining channels are for the individual sounds if you want to capture the individual audio tracks separately.
• The TB-3 will send out a stereo signal, as well, on the first two channels.  One for left and one for right.
• This one is a big frustration point for me.  The USB plug into the TB-3 and TR-8 are FRAGILE and they can be tough to plug in.  Specifically, I actually broke the plastic post on the USB port of my TB-3.  Thankfully it still works, but I need to get some glue to fix it.  I’m not pleased with how cheap the ports are.

And there you go.  Hopefully I’ve taken away some of the pain that I had setting up my equipment.