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I Aten’t Dead
And that’s pretty much it for now; there’s far too much been going on for me to itemise it and, when it hasn’t been, I’ve been coping by playing games ¹ to shut my brain/mind down — as I’ve mentioned before, the ultimate meditative technique is playing FPS games on Über Extreme Hardcore Nightmare difficulty level ².
Sob story, ‘plot development’, yadda yadda yadda
… one of the mission criteria being Do Not Kill Anyone (how I laughed).
Unable to build up a stock, because I keep having to use the one or two I find at any given moment, I’m barely surviving medpack to medpack.
I’m in an empty (so, no cover), underground carpark (parking lot) with
1. an almost empty assault rifle
2. a shitgun accurate to about six feet — unless someone else is shooting me with it (when it has the range and accuracy of a 50 cal. sniper-rifle)
3. a pisstol — it pisses people off when you shoot them with it, but doesn’t do them any actual harm
My shituation is not good.
Of course, the biggest drawback to playing on Extreme Hardcore Über Nightmare difficulty, so that it’s a bit of a challenge, is that is does make it a bit of a challenge … and there has been not a little latenight shouting at the TV — the neighbours probably think I have Tourette’s ³.
Meanwhile, however … one constructive thing that has happened is a bit of a rebuild of the studio (Cf. the ‘featured’ image to this post) …
Finally added the third external display on the far left, so that I can see twice as much of the timeline by extending it across the two leftmost monitors, but still have the extra vertical real-estate of portrait mode.
Got my hands on a subwoofer. Sadly, not 13Hz, but 25Hz is still 13Hz lower than my main monitors will pump out, so …
Yes, it’s a domestic unit, but the rest of my system is noise free and it’s an output, not an input, so it’ll be as good as it can get — just need to get/build a hardware crossover and it’ll be good to go once it’s plugged into a power regulator.
And it was a gift, so I’m not going to look that horse in the mouth and complain its teeth are yellow.
Rationalised things a bit in terms of i/o …
Replaced the audio interface and two breakout boxes described here with
- an all-in-one ai that not only provides all the i/o I could possibly want (ADAT, SP/DIF, 8-in/10-out balanced analogue XLR/TRS, 2x headphone out with independent volume control) but, furthermore, supplies a driver that works in both ASIO and Windows default mode — meaning I no longer have to change divers and configurations back and forth when switching between my DAW and other apps (which is really nice)
- an all-in-one unit that can work in standalone mode, so I can record from external sources to a harddisk recorder without the need to turn the rest of the system on (which is convenient)… or use it as an alternatively configured ai in its own right (which is also nice)
Yes, SouthpawPoet, that is a Mac mini on the left there, but I’m not too embarrassed about it.
First of all, it was a gift, so …
Secondly, it has 16GB RAM … so, I can send audio to it over the network via reastream, have it process it with fx and send the result back (delay compensated by reastream), freeing up my laptop’s CPU and RAM for the purpose of generating that audio glitch-free in the first place and necessitating much less freezing of tracks (which is more than nice when it comes to maintaining creative flow, believe me).
Yes, it’s still a crApple device … but at least I’m not left-handed — I can live with it.
So, like I said, I aten’t dead … and I’ve been doing some constructive creative stuff in the meantime too … but that’s all I have to say for now or the immediately forseeable future — you’ll just have to keep making do with your feverish fantasies of me for a little longer until I’m properly back.
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¹ Something I haven’t found time/space for in my life for quite a while now.
² All there is room for in your head is “How much health do I have left, how much ammo and will I find any more before someone kills me?” … no stray thoughts have even the least chance of creeping in and disturbing your inner tranquility.
³ As I’m sure Aura will appreciate, I don’t think I’ve uttered anything but “off”, “you” “f*ck” and “c*nt” (albeit not in that specific order), for about two months now, maybe even three.
