Knuckledragger

7 years ago, yesterday. I've watched a bunch of Puddles' videos on his YouTube channel over the years (including "punk rock" and "new wave" versions of Royals). Many a good, some are not. None are as transcendent as this one.

I had a very scary halloween last night ...and not in a good way. Background: I am mostly blind in one eye. I see very little out of my left one. I was born this way. Had the doctors caught it in time, they could have corrected it. I'd have had to wear an eye patch for several years (arr!) but I'd have gained sight in my bad eye. None of that happened. Last night I lit a candle I got a while ago. It's got 3 wicks and sits in a (rather flimsy) glass jar. The three wicks are a PITA, necessitating turning the candle to get them all lit. I was working on the third when one of the wicks shot off a bit of ash or hot wax and hit me in the face ...right below my good eye. I said "oh shit!" and put down the candle. After insuring I was alright. I looked at the candle. I didn't get hit by wax or ash. The jar shattered and I got hit in the face with a glass shard, a few mm below my one good eye. Ulp.

Click for slightly more happy dogs.

Spent some dome doing research on USB audio interfaces with 4 analogue outputs. NI still sells the Audio 6 ...as part of a $320 package aimed at vinyl DJs: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/traktor/digital-vinyl/traktor-scratch-audio-6/ Hard pass there. I recent bought a 2 in/2 out unit from MOTU and I have been very impressed with it. There's a model with 4 outputs for $220: https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/M4--motu-m4-4x4-usb-c-audio-interface It has a bunch of things I don't need for Traktor, as well as making use of 1/4" jacks for the outputs (necessitating 1/4" to RCA cables.) I don't see to many other similarly priced units that compare well with it. In any case, I found my ancient ESI Gigaport AG and I'm going to do a test broadcast with it in the next week.

Resht in peace, you will never be replayshed.

That went less than well. Had annoying digital artifacts all night, then ~1:45 in, I lost audio. I did a second segment of the show, using a Mac Mini (meant for other purposes) for Mixlr. THAT part worked fine, then Traktor stopped working again. I have no idea what's going on. It's now pretty clear that either my 2015 MBP is closer to 100% dead than I thought or my NI Audio 6 is basically useless. Replacing the former is expensive but doable in as much as AAPL still makes goddamn laptops. Replacing the latter is a much bigger headache as the A6 is long OOP and there's not a direct replacement. I'm going to do a test broadcast sometime in the next week, using a different audio interface for Traktor. That will hopefully give me an answer as to the location of the point of failure. In the interim, tonight's show (part 1): https://mixlr.com/illuminator/showreel/illuminator-on-mixlr-60 Tonight's show (part 2): https://mixlr.com/illuminator/showreel/illuminator-on-mixlr-61

Doing this show with my Native Instruments Audio 6 USB audio interface acting as both my DAC for Traktor and my ADC for Mixlr. This is an arrangement I have sought to avoid since ...ever, really. However, the last two weeks I've had some very strange audio issues with my interfaces. Last week Mixlr was summing the input from my (now removed) Onkyo interface and the built in mic on my laptop. Tonight (and earlier this week while I was working on tonight's set) my Mac straight up refused to see both my Audio 6 and Onyko at the same time. To the point that Traktor would refuse to play. At first I thought it was my (admittedly cheap AF) USB hub. I swapped in a different (and much better) hub, but had the same issue. Cursing, I removed the Onkyo and the hub, and now just have the Audio 6 going straight into the Macintop. Mixlr did the same idiot trick this week that it did last. This time I caught it almost immediately. My 2015 MBP is dying, not so slowly. I am not sure it is the source of my current audio woes. Going with the "KISS" philosophy currently. Also, this is why I need a Mac Mini dedicated to the purpose of streaming for using Reddit's PAN service.

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook - "The Dark Side Of The MOOG" / Live in Hamburg (23.04.1999)

Somehow the ifunny.co watermark improves it. Billie Holiday performing “Strange Fruit” in NYC’s first integrated club, 1939 - Photo by Gjon Mili/Colorized by Jared Anderson. Hot Honey Fried Chicken Ice Cream Sandwich. These CAPTCHAs are so difficult. *shirt tucking intensifies*

Does this belong to a Head-Caser?

2012 Mac Mini quad core etc etc. It was running Sierra. My issues were based primarily about Apple's shitty policy with older versions of OS X (you have to download it, or start downloading it before they update it or you can't have it in the App Sore) not loading from .dmg. Even a known good .dmg sourced from a friend gave me errors. After two days of that and still being stuck on Sierra, I said the hell with it and went with Catalina. The actual install of Catalina was slow, but relatively painless. What's been a headache is ...everything since. In Cat everything has to have permission to do anything. I've got a few basic apps working, but nothing more. For the last (checks watch) 18 hours I have been trying to get Migration Assistant to move (some of) my old data on to this machine. Then I have to get Little Snitch (firewall), 1Password (does what it says on the tin) and my photo and audio apps up and running. Then I might get daffy and try to get Steam to run.

...ayep, Catalina is its own unique brand of Cupertino crafted hell.

After two days of attempting to install Mojave, I just said "uncle" and started the upgrade process for Catalina on one of Macs. RIP all of my old 32 bit apps (and like 2/3 of my Mac-compatible Steam library) but at least I'm moving forward again.

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

Hello, I am an officer in the Obvious Army. I bear the rank of Captain. I bring you this warning: Don't buy cheap bluetooth keyboards. Cough for for an AAPL branded one (even if it has really lame arrow keys) or at minimum a Macally.

Happy borkday!

I have never worked inside a Mini, but it does not seem particularly appealing. Especially for someone with as freakishly large man mitts as myself (I am on the opposite end of the spectrum as our esteemed Commander in Chief.) OWC will include a 512GB SSD for $60 more, raising the price of the quad core model to $710. TBH, that sounds more than worth it. Somewhat related: in February of 2019 I replaced the GPU in my Wintendo. When I did so, I apparently knocked the power cable for my Blu Ray drive loose and didn't notice until ...yesterday. I do not use optical media terribly often. I had a panicked search for photos I took in 2005 that had been missing since February 2006 and only discovered the fact ...also yesterday (more on that in the photography thread at some point.) It took me a couple hours to disconnect 593 cables from the Wintendo, haul it out from its corner, blow a considerable amount of dust out from inside, find the damn drive power wire and plug it in (SATA connectors are the devil.) That was inside an extra wide Fractal case which engineered specifically to be easy to work in. Even in that environment, my hands were too big to get where I needed to reach. I cannot imaging me trying to wrangle small and delicate components inside a Mac Mini.