Stupid *beep*!

I forgot my password for 64D after a while – typically I would enter it into the password field and have Firefox remember who I am but thanks to disk failure… yeah. That one came about from rabid use of a hard disk on a computer with 2GB of memory and no graphics acceleration. Thus, virtual memory was increased as far as it could go and the computer was under massive amounts of stress. You see, I am a music arranger and I also do photography and edit videos. For such a limited computer the thought of multitasking just *beep* it out. Plus, I was listening to music during a thunderstorm through headphones – my computer plugged in and charging through a surge protector – and lightening struck the pole outside sending a current down the line through the 60Hz 600v - 400v step-down, then through the 60Hz 400v-250/220/115v step-down, surge through the house, out through the outlet in the wall, zapped my charger, and the transformer in the charger sent a nice surge through my computer damaging (but not destroying) the graphics card, audio card (meaning I could no longer use ASIO4All), and zapping my headphones while they were in my ears. How pleasant that was; a crackling sound followed by an INSANE and INTENSE pain in the ears and muscle spasms as you try to yank the headphones out and unplug the charger. Never again. I will tell you that I did see what I think were sparks and bolts flying in front of my face. I digress… so, I had my password changed thanks to Steven and I'm back (again). I use Mozilla Weave now to keep up with my data so it won't be forever lost again.

I switched to MacBook Pro~

Yep, I switched to a 13.3" MacBook Pro. It has a nice 4GB 1067MHz DDR3 RAM, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA GeForce 320M with 256 VRAM cache, and runs in 64-bit (love x86 compatibility). Plus, I'm running Windows 7 in Parallels so I can still use GM7. The only issue I have is the Sudden Motion Sensor which makes a click sound every time the MacBook is moved. It's really annoying and makes me paranoid of hard drive failure (Apple… you assholes…).

I'm also a registered Apple Developer now. O, the perils of XCODE/Objective-C.

For those percussionists out there…

For those of you who are in band and play percussion, or even those that play a horn instrument, somehow or another you have most likely heard of drum corps and the Drum Corps International. If so, then you probably already recognized the world's cleanest and most famous drum corps, the late Star of Indiana. If not, the video below will help you to understand why are they what they are. This performance is right after DCI finals in 1993 in Jackson, MS after they lost to the Holy Name Cadets. To date there has been no corps able to play at their magnitude and perfection and many have tried.

By the way, the music is from both Bela and Bartók. The parts are often very dissonant, scattered, and intimidating.

New website underway, and with a new name!

Well, I honestly can't tell you that one yet but believe me when I say it's going to have a year's worth of work and a team of a graphics artist, web designer, PHP/MySQL programmer (me), and our idea person. I'm also writing a torrent (not BitTorrent but the true definition) of PHP functions for shits and giggles – if 64Dv3 uses AJAX then some may be a great idea.