Journal Entries
Still Alive & Well
Posted Feb 22, 2004
Amazingly enough. 
I'm sitting at one of my sister's houses, in what most people would probably make the formal parlor, or "living room" as it's know in local vernacular. This one is the main house computer room.
It the youngest of my neice's birthday- she's 12- and I came up to eat steak & potatos & sing happy birthday & eat cake and see all the relatives & whatnot.
We even tried to get Ken (my brother-in-law's) network up and running- to no avail.
He's got some piece of second=hand junk upstairs in the attic, and it's connected to all the cat-10 cables he snaked through the openings in his house-frame made by the cable & electrical installers. It looks like a 13-port hub- but I don't think that's quite what it is. The documents I've been able to srounge up for it on the internet say it's a "concentrator", and generally describe it's usage as connecting groups of sub-nets to other sub-nets and perhaps serve as a bridge between these networks and a telephone network like a PBX or something.
At any rate, it won't let any of the computers on his (hopefully) soon-to-be household LAN talk to each other through it- though the proper lights flash and blink to indicate traffic when an attempt to ping another host on the LAN is performed.
If only he had a plain, simple, dumb, HUB to plug all of this into, as I had suggested he should have! Of course, he told me that the gizmo upstairs was a hub, and it certainly looks like one. Shame on us both!
His only back-up solution is a micro$loth "wired base station"- which is your basic router finagled so it can't be run without having windoze installed on at least one computer, and it want's to be your internet gateway (via your DSL or Cable modem)- in fact, if it doesn't get control over this resource, it won't install (though I imagine you could fool it with a linux firewall running a DHCP server and IP masq). Every other router I've ever dealt with has had a simple web-based or telnet-based interface to set it up well enough for everything on the local LAN to talk to each other- irrelevant of the WAN connection (a DSL internet connection in this case) and it's status. Even if it came with one of those "wizard"-type interfaces
for configuration in the windoze enviroment.
In other words, the functionality of the devices is needlessly complicated and limited in order to firmly tie it to the windoze operating system. Much as Lexmark needlessly complicated the way it's printer cartiges communicate with the printer- and got an injuction against an after-market producer of lexmark-compatible printer cartriges (who were selling their cartiges at a considerable discount from the average $35.00 US the genuine lexmark cartriges sell for) based on the DMCA- because the needless-complication to bar compeetition used an encryption scheme in it's communications.
I hate those kinds of obtusification and complication. Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING irks me quite as much.
Oh, well.
Anywaze, I felt like writing something, and the space was available...
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Feb 22, 2004
Still Alive & Well
Posted Feb 22, 2004
Amazingly enough.
I'm sitting at one of my sister's houses, in what most people would probably make the formal parlor, or "living room" as it's know in local vernacular. This one is the main house computer room.
It the youngest of my neice's birthday- she's 12- and I came up to eat steak & potatos & sing happy birthday & eat cake and see all the relatives & whatnot.
We even tried to get Ken (my brother-in-law's) network up and running- to no avail.
He's got some piece of second=hand junk upstairs in the attic, and it's connected to all the cat-10 cables he snaked through the openings in his house-frame made by the cable & electrical installers. It looks like a 13-port hub- but I don't think that's quite what it is. The documents I've been able to srounge up for it on the internet say it's a "concentrator", and generally describe it's usage as connecting groups of sub-nets to other sub-nets and perhaps serve as a bridge between these networks and a telephone network like a PBX or something.
At any rate, it won't let any of the computers on his (hopefully) soon-to-be household LAN talk to each other through it- though the proper lights flash and blink to indicate traffic when an attempt to ping another host on the LAN is performed.
If only he had a plain, simple, dumb, HUB to plug all of this into, as I had suggested he should have! Of course, he told me that the gizmo upstairs was a hub, and it certainly looks like one. Shame on us both!
His only back-up solution is a micro$loth "wired base station"- which is your basic router finagled so it can't be run without having windoze installed on at least one computer, and it want's to be your internet gateway (via your DSL or Cable modem)- in fact, if it doesn't get control over this resource (though I imagine you could fool it with a linux firewall running a DHCP server and IP masq). Every other router I've ever dealt with has had a simple web-based or telnet-based interface to set it up well enough for everything on the local LAN to talk to each other- irrelevant of the WAN connection (a DSL internet connection in this case) and it's status. Even if it came with one of those "wizard"-type interfaces
for configuration in the windoze enviroment.
In other words, the functionality of the devices is needlessly complicated and limited in order to firmly tie it to the windoze operating system. Much as Lexmark needlessly complicated the way it's printer cartiges communicate with the printer- and got an injuction against an after-market producer of lexmark-compatible printer cartriges (who were selling their cartiges at a considerable discount from the average $35.00 US the genuine lexmark cartriges sell for) based on the DMCA- because the needless-complication to bar compeetition used an encryption scheme in it's communications.
I hate those kinds of obtusification and complication. Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING irks me quite as much.
Oh, well.
Anywaze, I felt like writing something, and the space was available...
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Feb 22, 2004
More on my midi keyboard, soundcards, and the cursed Micro$oft monopoly!
Posted Apr 10, 2003
Here I was, all set-up to convert to a TOTAL linux network here- I had worked-around access my windoze-only printers and scanners by installing VMWARE on monster (my newest and bestest computer), and I thought I had it licked. No such luck.
Because Creative Labs (who make the Soundblaster Live, several of which I've accumulated on the premise that they're the best card you can buy for recording & stuff short of getting one of those thousands-of-dollars "pro" cards with all the multi-channel dongles hanging out which allow you to plug-in your generic guitar/analog jacks straight from your instruments and/or mixers for live multitracking directly to digital.
My own set-up is to have 4 soundcards with one jack each for any given instrument, one of which has a 4-track analog recorder patched in (though you can only extract one channel at a time from the analog tape, if you want to maintain the track integrity- i.e. to avoid the pitfalls of the traditional "ping-ponging" mixing down of 3 tracks to one track to recover the 3 tracks you've just used- with resultant loss of control over the volume/effects/etc. of the tracks so "ping-ponged"). See, by feeding the tracks to be "ping-ponged" one at a time to the computer, you can keep each track separate, and hence that all-important control over all aspects of the track before you make the final mix-down. The old method of analog "ping-ponging" more or less made you do several "final" mixes on various tracks, which could end up screwing up everything you'd done to date and make you start over from scratch- or accept a product you're not really satisfied with....
Anywaze, after installing all this, and even installing openmosix which would allow me to simultaniously multitract via mosrun with each computer in the node acting as one channel in a multichannel setup (reduce disk noise, interference from playback whilst recording-something you HAVE to be able to do in order to do decent multitracking- etc.), I discovered that there are *issues* with the midi sequencer for the SBLive and Linux!
ARRRRRRGGGGH!
And it's because Creative Labs refuses to make drivers/utilities for the Linux operating system- whilst blithely churning out windblows drivers and tools by the score!
This blows goats! Seriously!
I NEED MY MIDI INTERFACE! I NEED TO BE ABLE TO FEED MY KEYBOARD SOUNDFONTS OFF MY DISK! Especially since when I was toying with it when I was still running winxp on George- my second-bestest machine- and uploaded the crappy default SBLive fonts to my keyboard, making the drumkit on it sound like someone beating on tin-pans! And the drum-kit feature of my keyboard was one of the things I was MOST counting on- since I LOATHE programming drum machines (even though I know some guys- like my cousin- who can actually program drum tracks that are indistinguishable from a real drummer)! I'd much rather just hit a few keys, get the sound and feel of a live drummer (since a human is actually banging the keys) without having to learn yet ANOTHER goat-damned programming language! SHEEESH!
So, although I've done this full of self-revulsion and disgust, I've installed windoze *only* on poor George! Monster still has his linux partition, and prolly always will, since I've found that the linux CD burning software is much more robust than the windoze burning apps. With windoze apps, I turn out as many coasters as viable CDROMS from the process- while I've had a 100% success rate with the linux tools.
I just want to barf over it, though.
I spent WEEKS getting together the multitracking tools for linux! COMPILING them, searching for dependency libraries for that, and then INSTALLING them! Nice tools, too, and FREE!!! But it's all shot-down by Creative-Labs tight-assed "we don't make no steeking linux drivers and tools!" attitude.
Bastards and bounders!
Grrrrr!
Hey, and windoze screen-savers aren't anywhere near as cool as X screensavers! So I gotta look at boring screensavers too!
*sigh*
Well, hopefully, some competent linux geek will resolve the midi problem, and I can FINALLY make windoze go away once and for all!
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Latest reply: Apr 10, 2003
Here I sit...
Posted Dec 11, 2002
Reviewing my last few posts on my personal page. Tsk. I'm SLOW at everything!
You realize that I've only JUST THIS MONTH got a midi-connector for the keyboard I announced in an ealier post? *shakes head ruefully* I've been SLACK man!
NOW I'm waiting for a gameport extension cable to arrive, because the midi adapter isn't long enough to reach from the midi-ports on the back of my keyboard to the gameport on my SBLive. *sigh*
Still, things are moving ahead. I may actually have music for people to listen to in just a few months on my website! ( http://mrpooter.sytes.net ) if they let you link out anymore... Seems like I read someplace they were allowing external links again. About **** time!
Anywho- for those who give a rat's behind, I'm still alive and kicking! :o)
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Latest reply: Dec 11, 2002
Another birthday, and PRESENTS!
Posted Oct 1, 2001
Well, I had another birthday this week. Surprisingly enough (or maybe NOT so surprisingly, as I'm growing into what is called "middle aged" now), I had forgotton all about it until my two youngest nieces sent me birthday cards on the fateful day. This amazes me as well, since not only do I forget my own birthday, but my mom's and dad's as well. My mom's is easier to remember, since her's is only 4 days after mine- and I was under the impression that my dad's was April 2nd, until he corrected me the other day and informed me it was actually the 24th or that month. Oh, well.
I was flattered and pleased that my two dear little nieces still thought enough of their Uncle to remember my birthday- even if I had forgotton!
I did get a wonderful gift this year- the COMPLETE HITCH-HIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY- which includes the short-story "Young Zaphoid" and the grande finale of the trilogy (book 5), "Mostly Harmless", which I've ached to read since Fenchurch informed me of it's existance.
I miss Fenchurch. 
But I understand she's a new boyfriend, and has prolly weened herself from her net addiction.
Now all my friends from real-life are getting on the net, we even have our own mailing list & stuff, but at this point I'm becoming bored with the net myself. It figures, doesn't it?
So unless I'm just completely bored (as now), I just bother to check my e-mail and such, flame a few idiots on the ultra-leftwing boards I like to annoy, and do very little else on the net.
It's amazing to me how little productive work I've got done on my computer since I've been on the net- which has become more restrictive and commercialized as time has passed. *yawn* Even to the "no outside links" here, which is basically just a way for the BBC to attempt to keep everyone who has an account here spending their time just in this spot- though they don't have the amount of sheer SPAM to be found on simular forums with simular restrictions.
This is the first post I've made here since the WTC event. That was probably the most unreal day I've spent. I received the news via the net- and my first thought was "this has to be a hoax, it couldn't be real.". Of course, further research and exploration revealed just how real this horror was.
A virtual "friend" of mine get's off at the WTC subway station each day to go to work. Luckily, he was a bit late getting into work that day, so his train was stopped a few stations back before the buildings collapsed.
Why can't people just live their lives, and leave people alone who leave them alone? What is it with people that they have to dictate what everyone else may or may not do with their person's or property?
Discuss this Journal entry [5]
Latest reply: Oct 1, 2001
Baron_Shatturday
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