First TX recording sessions :0

The kids keep talking about being in a band, but I keep telling them that being in a band isn’t something you do, it’s something you ARE.  In order to see any kind of results it takes practice - first alone, then with others – and some idea of what you want to do.  They’ve written little chord progressions / songs / improve bases before, but never anything finished in any real sense.  I won’t force them into any direction (don’t want to be Phil Spector), but I did want them to get an idea of the work required, so I asked them to come up with a list of 50 songs that they might want to cover.   We’d pare it down to 3-4 to start, and I’d record/produce them and put some bass and drums down for them over the summer, documenting their progress along the way.

They came up with lots of great songs – from Garbage to Kraftwerk to Van Halen – but much of it was a) difficult to cover under the best of conditions (remember, we’re talking about kids playing guitar and piano, here), and b) a little beyond where I thought their skills are.  So, I asked them to try again, with an eye towards something they could actually PLAY.  They came up with:

   The Kinks – So Tired
   The Police – Message In A Bottle
   Warren Zevon – Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner

These are pretty accessible songs (little piano intro for Roland, So Tired has two simple and interesting guitar lines, and The Police tune will be the wildcard).  So, no problem – what are the constraints?


   We decided the list last week
   Today (Jul 5), they left for Chicago for a month.
   As of yesterday, my new build machine didn’t have any recording tools on it

Hmph.  So, on Monday and Tuesday, while I was trying to figure out the best way to install Sonar onto SSD, the kids were busy cranking out their parts, and we all met in the studio on the 4^th, while Trisha was packing for the trip.

Let’s just say the gear finally started to cooperate, and we got basic tracks down for 2 of 3 songs (the Police will have to wait J).  Nothing but a couple of pics ready to post yet, but may post some versions of this as we progress during the summer.  Maybe some of my stuff, too…

Here’s our little rig…  (nice orange room, huh…)

Build nightmares…well, mildly unpleasant dreams

So, between the kids needing to use my machine more lately, the Windows 8 stuff going on, and my ongoing Windows Media Center pain, I was clear I needed to get a machine in John’s room and fix the connectivity to Thomas’ machine.  What better way to do this than to first build a new honking machine for me, and let all the other bits roll downhill…

John’s build was painless, because there was nothing to do…I had a beautiful Corsair 650W PS sitting around, bought a nice Rosewill case (with LED fans in the front and everything…) for John – moved the motherboard (including CPU cooler, memory and an 8800GTS video card), a DVD drive, a couple of HDD from my 3U server rack case to the new one, powered it up and, as expected, worked first time…  just need to wipe some of my stuff off the data HDD, and he’s good to go.

Thomas’ machine (a nice quite Shuttle) is still probably enough for another school year…connectivity is by USB WiFi – will play with that while they’re out of town to see if there’s anything I can easily fix (short of drilling a hole in the floor and running Cat5e...).

My build however…the best of times / the worst of times.  Got the mbd mounted (new Gigabyte Z77 board), CPU in (unlocked quad-core i7 J), 16 GB RAM, re-jiggered the fans to accommodate the 2x120mm fans for the H80 water cooler :D, and powered everything up.  My good luck streak continues, posted first time – except one H80 fan was on full bore, the other not rolling at all…  No problem, plugged ‘em into the mbd headers, no problem, back into the H80 – same result…grr.  OK, we’ll fix that later, it’s running, and too fast = cool, not cooked CPU…  we can live with it for the moment…

Now the new 680 GTS video card – cool!!! Mounted it in the mbd, and posted – no problem – ‘til I realized that in my 3U server case, the top of the case is just a TINY bit above the screws to hold the backplate risers in…these new video cards not only extend almost ¼ inch above the case line, but they expect power jacks to be plugged in vertically into the card.  NO WAY my case is ever going to close with this card (or any similar card) installed….we’ll have to see what kind of goofy case mod this is going to cause me to perform…

Here it is in the rack…case open, haven’t yet done any cable management, but I did install a 240 GB SSD to boot from, and it is faaaast… about 8 sec from dead stop to login prompt, about 2 sec from login to desktop.  Nice.

Gaming, chess and other psychotropics

I was thinking about rebuilding my main recording computer at home so its a better gaming machine.  Why??  To play HL or HL2 again?  To increase frame rates in Diablo or actually replay Myst?  Am I really going to play Crysis or some other insanely compute/GPU intensive game?  I might buy it, but will I ever play it??

I'm not rebuilding the machine so it's a better recording platform, but so it's a better machine for the gaming I'll never get around to...

Priorities, man, priorities.  I'm in the top 100 on the TW13 online play list, but I can't finish 20 minutes of music.  I finished Mass Effect (no number, the FIRST ONE) last week, but, after a month, I just got around to putting up the kids' REAL LIFE basketball hoop.

Like everyone, I have more obligations and hobbies than time to execute them.  I enjoy gaming, and we have every console / platform in the house - a couple of 360s, a PS3 and a PS2, a Wii, a couple of Nintendo handhelds, a couple of iPhones and Android handsets, and, of course, a few PCs.  I keep up with things in the space, and bought Diablo III, Halo 3, MGS3&4, Gears 2&3, Madden 10-12, Tiger Woods 10-13 all on launch day.  I've noticed one thing, however.  With very few exceptions, however, I never get through these games in anything like a reasonable amount of time, if ever.

I'm not a masochist - all of these seemed appealing when I bought them, and still do in the abstract (I'd like to see the end of Snake's story - hell, if it makes sense of any of the Metal Gear canon, I'd probably just sit and watch someone else play through it),  It's just never important enough RIGHT NOW to plop the disc in and play.

I have a  history with old games.  My wife was a chess widow while we were dating.  There was something about learning the game that was fascinating - above a certain level, though, it was more about memorization of opening theory than coming up with interesting attack or defensive play.  So, I got bored, stopped studying, my rating stagnated, and I eventually stopped playing.

Starting to get that way with gaming - more "putting in time" to keep my TW rating up than enjoyment or FUN.  Less willing to put up with the first 90 min of a shooter because it's "training" and, paradoxically, it "obligates" me to another 10 hours to slog through the story line so I can be DONE WITH IT, already.

If the best part of your hobby is slogging so you can be done - rethink it.  No happy ending.  For you it may not be gaming.  If you're actively working on anything you don't like in its own right, stop it.


Right now.  Stop it.

I am going to try and live this – will let you know whether I succeed

Windows 8 first take - having trouble with domain account...

So I pulled down the Consumer Preview and put it on a VM on my Hyper-V server - was a good excuse to put it back online.  I powered it up and got nothing but a high pitched whine...opened it up and the intake fan was caked with muck, I couldn't even turn it by hand - it was the cool LED fan, too :).  Unplugged the fan, whine stopped - went to Amazon and bought two replacements (outflow fan was pretty loud too) and used the excuse to grab another 4GB of memory - it was already pretty strained hosting two DCs and my media center box...

So the parts arrived, (cleaned the box and) installed the parts, ran power and network to the closet in the new office area and powered it up.  Easy job creating the new test machine (too many options for processor in Hyp-V, no?)  Time to get the ISO mounted and OS installed.  The way Hyp-V manages library files makes some sense, but I have a feeling I'll have ISOs littered all over the domain - download, put them somewhere off my main box, transfer them to the library share so the VMs can find them... I need a better way to organize them - media generally (in the cloud - heh, heh?) - the Windows Media Center / My Movies thing is a little long in the tooth - it takes forever to boot and catalog, when it decides to work at all...

Installing Win8 was straightforward on the VM, mount the media, tell it it's a fresh install, and play some guitar while it installs.  I created an email alias so I can register it as a Microsoft ID, signed in with it - voila - Metro goodness - Played with the interface for about an hour figuring out how to go find things, bring up the widgets on the right, configure a couple of apps.  Very first impressions - for power users who know what they want to do, it seems like more cognitive energy (and time) to launch apps and get to work than a traditional start menu. I thought the same thing with the Ribbon UI in Office, and I've come to an uneasy alliance there - now I know where most common things are, and I can find most of the things I want in a couple of clicks, but it takes thought away from the task at hand.  I find myself falling back to keyboard shortcuts, which makes me feel like a Luddite, using 1-2-3 slash commands in Excel...

Generally though, I think I see what they were going for, putting the half-dozen things many folks want right on the home screen.  Given the chance to live with it for a few days, I might even get to like it.  OK, it's running, next step, join it to the domain, install some worker apps (Office, Sonar and VS to get started - my typical buildout) and use real-ish tasks and data to see what the fuss is all about.

Joining the domain was easy - type 'join a domain' and the new help/search feature points you right to the appropriate wizard...very nice.  Not much in the actual wizard has changed since Win7 here, provide credentials, define an administrator account, give the machine a proper name, then re-credential (?) to actually execute the task.  Reboot, and i'm prompted for my demastri domain login.  Success!

Well...not so much

I log in and get dumped on the start page, and there are NO Metro apps displayed.  I had done a little research (honest) and knew there may be problems with Metro apps executing properly when using a domain account, but hadn't seen this.  Without these apps - all that was up was IE, Store (non-functional), and Windows Explorer - the new OS is just Win7 with a really annoying Start button.

Clearly, I just have to link my new MS ID account to the domain account, and I'm in business, right?  This should be an obvious task, but there's nothing in the new help, and surprisingly little through my interface to MS doc and forums (yeah, it's Google), so that's where I am.  Domain account running, unlinked to MS ID, no Metro love.

But Hyper-V server is upgraded and online, and Windows Media Center came up on both Xboxen today. Have to take solace in the little things.

I will get this running and document my feedback.  Unless it becomes a huge timesink...  All I know is that it better be easier for this for enterprise admins to set up or Win8 will stay in the virtual shrinkwrap for a mighty long time...

Arf?  No.  ARF!

Leaving tonight to get the family...end of the Chicago era

I'm sure we'll be back - so many friends.  Seems sad, though, because it should probably have worked out differently.

Will stop by the Morningstar offices tomorrow, too.  So many people have left the group since last December.  It'll be good to catch up, make some re-acquaintances.

Coming back with the kids (and Chauncey) on Monday.  Trisha's packing up the house and coming down next Friday.

Yee haw.