Marine Aquarium 3 Rumors and Speculation

[Jim Sachs]

A couple of years ago, we gave a comedian permision to use the Aquarium as a background for a Comedy Central spot. I forget his name, but I'm sure it's the same one.

As far as the aquarium light packaging, I've notified Prolific.

[jpjoe]

ok

[Dave Snotear]

Tonight (Fri 01-19-07) during his standup act Ben Bailey had what looked to be about a 20 Ft. projection screen with MA SS playing.The strange thing was that there were no FISH.Just the air bubbles... I posted this on 01-20-07 and there was a bit of a discussion about it at the time.Since that time I've learned that the comedian was Ben Bailey of the "Cash Cab" program on the Discovery Channel.

[Jim Sachs]

Yep, that's the name - Ben Bailey.

[Tiny Turtle]

Originally posted by jpjoe:

Anybody aware of this?
http://www.nano-reef.com/gallery/sho...hp?photo=21144  

Ouch!

[Jim Sachs]

A quick update on MA3 -
I've been stuck for several days trying to figure out how to allow the program to play music. The user will be allowed to build a playlist from music files on their machine. Dealing with text strings and file paths has never been my type of programming, but I was slowly making headway until I tried to play a default sound track that will be imbedded in the program's Resource file.

Within DirectX, MP3 files must be played with DirectShow, instead of the more intuitive DirectSound or DirectMusic. It would be nice if there was a simple command like LoadFile() to load the sound file, but nooooo. The commands are so arcane, unintuitive, and undocumented as to be almost useless to an amateur programmer like me. To load a file, the command IGraphBuilder::RenderFile() must be used, but it will only load a file from disk or a web URL, not from the application's own Resource. I just spent three full days scouring the Internet and Microsoft docs, not finding any useful info at all on this subject.

Finally, last night I posed a question about this on the Microsoft Developer's Network Forum, and this morning I got an answer that kind of, sort of, points in the right general direction. It will take some detective work to track down all the clues, but at least it's a lead.

[Jim Sachs]

Another note -
To save memory, the default music will be a MIDI file. To avoid copyright problems, I needed to use a public domain classical piece, and render it myself. I had not used a MIDI editor since my Amiga days, but I found a good shareware product from Russia, Able Editor 1.3. There is a free trial, so I spent several hours happily putting together a version of Pachelbel's Canon. It was pretty good, so I tried to save it.

I got the message, "Since this copy of Able Editor is unregistered, only the first 60 seconds will be saved". Well, OK - the software had served me well, so I bought a license. There was a glitch in their purchasing system, so it took a couple of days to get a Key Code (during which time I had kept the program running so as not to lose my work). I finally got the Key, entered it, and found the program had to re-started to accept the Key, so I lost all my work. A fatal flaw in an otherwise excellent try-and-buy scheme.

[henemly]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

Another note -
I got the message, "Since this copy of Able Editor is unregistered, only the first 60 seconds will be saved". Well, OK - the software had served me well, so I bought a license. There was a glitch in their purchasing system, so it took a couple of days to get a Key Code (during which time I had kept the program running so as not to lose my work). I finally got the Key, entered it, and found the program had to re-started to accept the Key, so I lost all my work.  

I feel yer pain. That is a REAL pain!

[Patrick Gallagher]

Jim,

Good choice! I love Pachelbel's Canon. Please keep on trying for that as your default. I used to be a BIG fan of shareware but things like that kind of slowed me down on using it in for any serious work.

[debavocet]

If this makes a few people mad, here goes: I've been following the postings for a while and noticed demands for increasing complexity for MA 3, now built-in music capability. We can only burden Jim with so much, and if anything, he's been over-patient in trying to accommodate everyone's demands. Let's drop the whole music option and let Jim finish the best aquarium out there. If we want music with our MA, we can switch on the stereo.

[Jim Sachs]

I've gone too far to drop it now. It has roots all over the program. I don't know if I could remove it even if I wanted to.

Actually, I have to admit that the folks requesting music were right. Other competing programs have it, and it's one of the few additions that really might make a difference whether someone would purchase or not. I've only got a mock-up running, but have now become accustomed to hearing Pachelbel's soothing melody when the Aquarium starts up. I just wish I hadn't lost the nice orchestral MIDI file I had built. The temp version I downloaded isn't terrible, but would never be confused with a real orchestra.

[patscarr]

Debbie, nobody is demanding anything. And if they did, it would fall upon deaf hears. Jim bows to no one. Some forum members were merely kind enough to make some suggestions on how they thought would improve or make MA3 better, and Jim must have agreed with them or he wouldn't spend his time incorporating it into MA3. Jim has mentioned before that MA3 is very close to leaving the Alpha testing stage and going into the Beta testing (or going public) stage. It wont be long now before everyone can enjoy his work. Take a step back, take a deep breathe, and say to yourself three times, "I can be patient. It will be worth it."

[patscarr]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

I just wish I hadn't lost the nice orchestral MIDI file I had built.  

Are you going to re-build it?

[Wizwad]

Personally, I'm hoping the answer to that will be, "Yes," but I've also experienced in the past where something I put a lot of work into went kablooie and one tends to get demotivated towards putting all the effort in again when that sort of thing happens.

Jim, all I can say is that now you've got a fully registered program it'll be worth it to go through the effort just once more!

[feldon34]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

Able Editor 1.3. There is a free trial, so I spent several hours happily putting together a version of Pachelbel's Canon. It was pretty good, so I tried to save it.

I got the message, "Since this copy of Able Editor is unregistered, only the first 60 seconds will be saved".

I finally got the Key, entered it, and found the program had to re-started to accept the Key, so I lost all my work.  

I have also spent a very long time working on a Shareware program before and when I go to Save, it gives me this message with no way around it, and no guarantee that buying it will save the file I'm working on.

With pirated software so easy to find, restrictions like this only hurt the legitimate users. And shareware authors wonder why people steal their software.

[Jim Sachs]

Pat - Yeah, I'll rebuild it, but first I need to get the programming part done. By then I'll be tired of hearing the temp file, and ready to make the real one.

[Marian Nichols]

Having also lost work I have done, I would attempt to rewrite it from memory but never wrote the same thing again but usually found the second time around that it was better than the first. Boy, would MSWord get upset over that looonnnggg sentence and tell me to consider revising.

[patscarr]

How about Handel's Water Music?

[memilm]

so much time invested in those "play-music" option...
why not starting the winamp or windows media player in minimized mode with the mp3-list file(*.m3u) as parameter?

[Jim Sachs]

I guess they just want the music to start automatically when the Aquarium does without having to fire up a separate program.