Well, it's about time!

I've always been a very visual, right brain thinker. I feel more comfortable contemplating ideas and working in spaces that are more open, organic and designed simply. At work, when I create reports, emails and presentations they are simple, bullet pointed, and clean -- no fluff or extraneous garbage. Even when I wire up my home theater system I'm a fanatic about keeping the spaghetti bowl of connecting wires bundled neatly, coiled properly out of sight, hardware components stacked and lined up precisely. When I was a kid, I loved coloring within the lines, but not because I didn't want to 'break the rules'. Rather, I liked things that were smooth, uniform, uncluttered, clean. I'm the same way as an adult. Keep it clean, keep it simple, keep it open. That's my motto.

It's taken me a long time to jump the fence when it came to my choice in personal computers, but finally it's happened. I've joined the cult of mac! Hallelujah!

[Disclaimer: that's not me up there, no need to worry, family. Hmm...I do have a haircut coming up though, and I'd love the chance to out do my cousin Kyle and his new haircut....]

I've long since been a Microsoft Windows user, but have always gazed longingly through the window (pun intended) at the ingeniously designed, clean and simple interface and programming code packed in some of the best built machines on the planet. After holding my breath for what seemed like a lifetime, I finally ordered my dream machine, a 20" iMac. Even before booted it up for the first time, I encountered a big part of the Apple experience. I smiled widely at the clean, artfully and carefully designed (yes, designed!) packaging for the machine. I admired how much work and attention to detail was poured into the outer packaging of my new computer. It was immediately evident to me that this is a company that cares about more than just ones and zeroes.

After opening the smooth, delicate clamshell lid, removing the styrofoam insert for the keyboard, the clean white box containing the wireless mouse, software disks and two Apple logo stickers (a 20 year tradition) I unsheathed the pure white face of the machine from it's soft protective white envelope.






That's it, the whole computer. No tower to set up, no external screen to connect. They've taken the concept of an all-in-one solution of a laptop and combined it with the usability of a traditional desktop machine. Even when you remove the cover and see how beautifully the insides are put together, you get a sense that the engineers and designers at Apple care very deeply about the products they build; they take pride in their work. It's well known that the creators of the very first Macintosh back in 1984 all put their names on the inside cover, even though nobody was ever to see them. They considered themselves to be artists, and as such they felt compelled to take pride and ownership in every chip, connection, circuit and fan blade. This spirit lives even today. Every wire, every transistor, every square millimeter of the iMac was logically and cleanly laid out. Click the below image to see the quality up close.



Compare that to what you see when you open up a typical PC:


The size, design and physical aesthetics of the iMac are only one element of its endearing quality, though. The OS X (pronounced "Oh Ess Ten") Tiger operating system follows the same philosophy...nay, mission that the rest of the design has, from the marketing to the packaging to the hardware design: intuitive, fast, clean, and simple. Prompts and on-screen instructions are written in plain English. No wonder Apple is the choice for artists, musicians, and visual thinkers from all walks of life! Windows XP is a great system, but at its heart it's still clunky, complicated (at least as far as the the back end programming code goes), and bloated. And to think, Microsoft has openly copied Apple's OS interface since the first point and click mice were sold in the early 1980's, but still they get it wrong! But let's be honest, most people don't dig down into the programming code of their computers to see how they tick, they just want to point and click, and it's here that you can really see and feel divinity in the details of Apple products.

Little messages guiding us what to do and asking us what we want to do are part of any operating system interface experience, especially with Windows and Apple products. Both can be described as intuitive to an extent, but Apple takes the time to write these messages in simple, plain English like a really helpful, patient friend sitting next to you helping you through a task and asking questions in a conversational tone. These little messages and questions are not the kind of short, choppy often angry little jabs you encounter using Windows. When you use an Apple computer, you get the feeling a lot of thought went into what the messages say. For instance, when I first booted up with my wireless bluetooth keyboard and mouse, I fully anticipated settling in for a lengthy operating system install process with lots of scrolling code and other utilitarian, technical looking stuff, .dll files and the like, all rapidly ticking by robotically as the machine readied itself for duty, much like how a Windows machine would greet its new master. I've installed plenty of Windows operating systems, and although they've gotten better at humanizing the initial boot up process all computers must exectute, they're still light years away from being an enjoyable experience. Not so for the Apple. Instead, after a few seconds of a brief, soothing soft grey screen absolutely barren except for the famous Apple logo a cool animated, sweeping "Welcome!" title sequence began, complete with cool sounding music which greeted me in fourteen languages.



As warm and fuzzy as this message is, it plays only once during the machine's initial boot sequence to introduce itself to me. All that work, to be played only once. That's the point. I'm sure that the sequence code, images and music all took up a lot of room and power to run, which would infuriate a linear, left brained scientific type right down to his pocket protector who might want only the the barest minimum, raw utility from his machine, and in some ways he'd be right in his dismissal. Did it make my day more productive? Did the greeting allow me to crunch an extra few megabytes of data in the same amount of time? No. Nevertheless, for me it was great; a nice touch that made me smile, and that's worth a lot in my book. When I walk into a Starbuck's I enjoy being greeted by a friendly, smiling face and wished a good day when I leave; not a stern, slightly annoyed person who robotically announces the cost of my beverage then deposits it firmly with an expressionless ":NEXT:" when our transaction has concluded. I'm a sucker for warm and fuzzy, I guess, and the Apple definitely delivers in that department.

Next, three or four simple screens walked me through the setup of my new mac. They were written in a laid back, relaxed syntax -- no harsh warnings or stern, complicated commands like I saw installing Windows. (Again, with the warm and fuzzy!) I loved it. Once I glided through the setup process (all of a couple of minutes) I was automatically connected to the WiFi signal broadcast throughout my house, connected to my shared network external hard drive (where we backup all our data) and was on the web in no time.



There are still some tweaks and adjustments I want to make to tailor my new toy to my liking, and also some new schemas and ways of thinking I need to develop to overcome the deep grooves carved into my brain by Windows over the past decade or so, but so far I can't believe how much better the experience has been. Like Apple fans and devoted programmers everywhere say, it just works. It's so easy that I've begun experimenting with web page design for a family website that will soon have pictures, movies, and who knows what else? You can check it out at voigtfamilynews.com. It's a work in progress, so make sure to bookmark for future reference!




Well, it's time to get back to work. I'm trying hard not to daydream too much, but obviously -- I can't wait to get home tonight to jump back into my warm and fuzzy down comforter of a computer!

University of Illinois....Online?

In today's Chicago Tribune, I read an article on how the University of Illinois, the collegic academic home to both my wife Paula and my brother in law Dan was looking to expand their campus beyond the hallowed halls traversed by some of this century's greatest leaders and thinkers into the profitable arena of remote e-learning. I have mixed feelings about that.

On one hand, if ever there was a brick and mortar institution of higher learning that can jump the technological fence into the online arena, it's U of I. On or about 1992, about the time I was perfecting my beer slamming skills at Western Illinois University a couple of hours away, two students -- Marc Andressen and Eric Bina created the first web browser there. They named it Mosaic, and released it to the public in 1993. Before Mosaic, people didn't have a good way to get to the internet; Marc and Eric provided the vehicle to point and click your way anywhere you wanted to be online. Mosaic eventually led to the development of Microsoft's Internet Explorer; I'm sure you've all heard of that. You're probably using it right now. Of all the accomplishments that have risen from the minds of students attending school on the beloved Champaign campus, this one may be in the top five that have truly changed the world.

Incidentally, Marc and Eric didn't really amount to much after that. They went on to form a little known company called Netscape, which after years of standalone competition with Microsoft is now the browser used when you surf the net with America Online. Netscape also spun off Mozilla, which is used by many of you NOT using Internet Explorer right now. Andreesen has since launched a couple of other web related and thoroughly brilliant ideas. Slacker. I bet he can't even slam a beer half as fast as I can.

I wonder, what would Marc and Eric...or any of the other notable Illini Alumni think of their alma mater stepping into the online learning industry? How does it differ from classroom learning? What would this mean for incoming students who will never have the chance to walk the Quad in mid October as the leaves are turning, or attend a live stage performance at Krannert? Was it possible to learn remotely? Or does a real live geographical campus of learning offer some intangible, indefinable texture of sights, sounds, and a plethora of interpersonal relationships that when woven together better defines the human condition?

I might be able to offer some first hand insight to the discussion. About the time I was perfecting my beer slamming skills at Western, I somehow got the misguided notion that I didn't need to finish college to have a great paying career someday, I would just get by on my experience rather than my book smarts (or lack thereof) I never went back to complete my senior year. Not the brightest move I've ever made. Fast forward twelve years, and the career roadblocks I had been barely able to dodge up to that point without a degree eventually became insurmountable -- my debauchery and shortsightedness had finally caught up to me, and I finally embraced (after twelve years of fierce resistance!) the grim reality of the corner I had painted myself into -- I needed to go back to college. Since my career was already full swing on the East Coast with Heineken at the time, I couldn't afford to step away and go to school full time while climbing the corporate ladder. This left me with precious few options: I could go to night school, but then that would mean spending hours a week sitting in a classroom with other students trying to absorb lectures. Or better yet, I thought, I could enroll at one of those online universities and get the same degree, and attend class from my home, on my terms and according to my schedule.

Online learning was all the rage back in 2003/2004 -- and leading the charge was the University of Phoenix Online. Sounds like a great place, huh? My pride swelled as I attended my first class from my home computer connected to my fellow students through broadband fiber optics -- "I'm a student at the University of Phoenix!". At first, the classes seemed challenging and communication between my classmates was robust and filled with brain nurturing dialog. I was hooked! I felt like I was part of a wave that would change the world. Imagine the possibilities, I thought as my mind drifted during one "class" on a random Tuesday night. "People all over the world can sit in the same virtual classroom, read the same virtual lecture the same professor copied and pasted onto our screens remotely. We can all chat together in the chat room about the same topics, and best yet -- we can archive those fruitful conversations for later reference!". Ah, academic life was grand.

That is, before I started noticing that the lectures the instructor posted, often times dozens of pages long a night, were all perfectly formatted -- not one grammatical, spelling, or punctuation error. Not one fat fingered snap of the wrong key as he surely toiled away day after day preparing lectures. Either I had the most precise and articulate writer as an instructor, or these 'lectures' were written some time ago, for a class long since graduated, and copied/pasted into browser windows night after night by an instructor that hasn't written anything new in God knew how long. I pushed the negative thoughts back as far as I could and focused hard on how wonderful it was to be learning...online!

But the thoughts began to creep back again and again....how different was this from just sending us an electronic Microsoft Word document text book at the beginning of the semester, telling us to read it on our own, and giving us a preformatted pre-typed test at the end of the class, while the 'instructor' kicked back and collected paychecks while watching his favorite TV programs listenging to a nearby laptop for the occasional blip or chirp that indicated a student had just posted a question to him? I began carefully scrutinizing the syntax he used in his pasted lectures, vs. the syntax used when we as a class would post questions live in the chat room to one another, with the prof occasionally chiming in with guidance or words of wisdom. To my astonishment, they were the same. When I asked a fellow classmate a question about the recent lesson, a response would pop up from him or her on my screen within a couple of minutes, often times with the occasional grammatical error or accidentally, unintentionally bumped key. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in chat rooms, discussion forums, or online learning classrooms learns quickly to look past this sort of noise to get to the meat of the poster's words. But our instructor never made mistakes when he replied to us. Again, I thought, he is either a phenomenally hyper-accurate typist, or he's pasting preformatted answers. One night, I tested my theory. I asked a specific question about the lecture, not unlike every other night, and when he responded in full I timed him. My one sentence question took about ten seconds to write. His six sentence response took less time, with fewer errors. Zero, to be exact. I may not be the fastest typist alive, but I'm definitely not the slowest. Also, I noticed all of his answers were irritatingly ambiguous; they never answered a specific question, they simply turned the question back around to the OP (original poster). He was answering questions with questions. The same few questions repeated. Was it possible he had a bunch of preformatted answers (reply-questions) developed over many classes that he would simply regurgitate again and again? I dug deeper into his answer and came up with a question I knew he couldn't have a preformatted reply-question ready for. His response, one sentence, took about twenty seconds to pop up, and had one or two minor grammatical errors as I recall. He also forgot to capitalize the first word. After a couple of weeks in his class, there were more errors in this sentence than all his lectures and previous answers combined. My heart sank.

How was online learning any better than picking up a $100 textbook on my own and teaching myself? The bright light of my enthusiasm and passion for technology dimmed ever so slightly. I knew....knew people could learn effectively online, but only if they could truly interact with one another, and the leader/instructor/professor/guru/you name it. But two way, live, organic communication was the key, not regurgitation of data and information.

I had no choice but to drop out of UoP Online and immediately enrolled in a traditional classroom environment at Concordia College near our home in New York. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." I thought with a sigh. Surprisingly, the whole experience really opened my eyes to the value of face to face learning. The structure of the advanced degree program was tailored for career individuals like me -- a full liberal arts degree for students who already have a strong foundation of previous credits from other schools. I earned my Bachelor's degree in one intense year of night school. It may not have been the idyllic environment young late teen college students are immersed in 24/7 for four years, but it was by far the next best thing. Not only was I engaged in the classroom with instructors who taught me a wide, varied curriculum, I made wonderful friends with the six others who were in the same class as I was.



As fruitful as my previous online conversations were, nothing compared to chatting it up before class begun with Angel, Rich, Diane, Jillian, Ed, and Claudia. The seven of us attended all the classes together as a group for one whole year. We emailed notes to anyone who may have missed a class due to illness, we hung out at each other's houses, we studied together, and in times of crisis and personal loss we were there for each other with hugs or even just a kind word.

I would never trade my experiences at Concordia for online learning. That's not to say that one cannot learn online if the curriculum was properly designed and the instructors adequate, it just means that I think there's something to be said for walking the hallowed halls, greeting friends and fellow learners with a smile, late night study sessions over pizza with a few classmates, and most importantly of all -- memories and friendships that last a lifetime, borne from the fruits of the most human experience of all -- the desire and accomplishment of higher learning.

Our new recording studio (so far)

It's been a while since my last post. It's hard, time consuming work to continue thinking up new topics to write about while maintaining a balance between family, a new house, and a career. Instead I think I'll write more of a "what did I do today" type of post and tell you about a new...garden we planted yesterday.

Now, this isn't the sort of garden that produces vegetables, flowers or weeds -- it's more like a garden to foster creativity. My wife watersoul (Paula) and I have discussed for some time a need we feel to express ourselves creatively. To this end, she has recently enrolled in a piano class at the local community college near our home (College of DuPage for you locals). The goal here was not to walk out of there and have a thorough knowledge of all things musical, but rather to master the basics of reading and writing music, developing fine motor control on the keys, etc. Paula's always had great ideas for songs she has created in her head, but until yesterday we lacked the technology to develop them.

As home studios go these days, you can build a solution that -- as far as the hardware and software goes -- is near to the high end equipment professional musicians have access to when they rent out by the hour, like what you see here.

That being said, we're careful to avoid having any delusions of grandeur. As we planned and dreamed, we knew we wanted something very basic, something we could add a piece here and there whenever the time was right, but the first seed in our new garden had yet to be planted. Above all else we had to start with an instrument, something musically flexible and relatively universal enough that it could be used to produce entire pieces of music when eventually paired to computer software and hardware designed to make modern music. We chose the Yamaha P70 as our cornerstone:

It's an excellent instrument, with a full set of 88 weighted keys that sound and feel remarkably like the real thing. Gently play the keys and the internal processor analyzes the downward pressure created by the player's finger, considers hundreds of actual recorded sample recordings per key, and plays the appropriate recorded sound based on the impact of the key -- all in real time. What you hear is a gentle note just as you would on an acoustic piano. Strike the keys hard like the percussion instrument it is, and the P70 rewards you with strong powerful notes. It even reproduces the almost indetectible resonance of adjacent strings that vibrate on an acoustic piano when a note is struck hard!



You quickly forget you're basically playing a computer that feels and sounds exactly like a baby grand when you close your eyes. Yamaha sets standards (in our price range) for realism, and is the choice of many pro musicians. It also has a small selection of instrument sounds to choose from (harpsichord, strings, church organ, etc.), but the reason we chose it was because of the Grand Piano setting. I can't say enough -- the sonic reproduction is amazing and lifelike, even when played through the modest, built in speakers. In the future, we'll eventually plug it into a high end Mac with software that will allow us to record multiple tracks of any instrument you can think of.

As good as the built in Yamaha speakers were, we knew we needed something better, especially later on when we have a more complete studio setup. It was very important for us to have something that sounded true to life. Also, the monitors had to have some muscle, something we could really push hard that would not distort in any way. There's nothing more disappointing to us than wanting to hear the intricacies or impact of a particular instrument or piece of music than to have it fall flat sonically, inhibited by underpowered drivers.

We settled on Event SP8 studio monitors. I can't say enough about them. They're lifelike, with a gorgeous flat response and plenty of punch -- especially for a home studio in a small room. Highly praised in the industry, SP8's are considered by many to be the Holy Grail of studio monitors.



So for now, that's all we have. I think it's a good start, and definitely not the end of the road for us. Next steps will be to add an Apple iMac which can record and manage multiple tracks (drums, vocal, instruments, etc.) similar in theory to how the pros do it. We're going to add a decent studio microphone soon (Paula has an exceptional singing voice!). I'm also thinking about eventually adding one of my lifelong passions – the legendary Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. And, over the years there'll likely be processors, preamps, and equalizers stirred in as needed.

We are not envisioning living the life of professional musicians here by any means. Rather, we (especially Paula) simply want a way to nurture, develop and grow our creativity, then preserve it. A small home studio will give us the tools to do that. Painters need brushes, a canvas, and paint to nurture their creativity; sculptors need clay and a wheel; photographers need cameras, lights and darkroom equipment. We feel this pursuit is no different. We're really looking forward to making music together, and when we do we'll post the songs here, so stay tuned!