well i’ve been scrounging parts around work and think i can finally build wasted the way she ought to be – at least without spending any money!
i’ve got a dell poweredge 1300 base box. i’ve done some stratigic cpu swapping to put dual pentium iii 550s in it. so far 2 9 gig scsi drives make up the storage. and i should be able to put 384 mb ram in. i’m downloading red hat 8 isos – hopefully they’ll be done in the morning.
that should serve me well for now…
well, belated birthday anyway! (aaron’s birthday was tuesday for those of us who missed it.)
regarding engage damn it. engage!. i’d have to agree. seems similar to my concept of “motivationally challenged”.
is it ok to sit on the couch and watch football each sunday? (now being in a “fantasy football” league makes that more enjoyable – unless i’m losing.) there must be better things to do with my time!? “oh yeah, i’ll do it later.” what’s the point? anyone up for a discussion on “the meaning of life”! 
over the past few weeks i’ve been tinkering on and off with the various dvd ripping and divx encoding techniques. i think i’ve got the knack of it now. i’m not that keen on watching movies on my computer – my 36″ toshiba and onkyo receiver do a better job – but i wanted to learn more about the dvd format and what all the decss fuss was about (at a more technical level). actually, when done right, watching on the pc isn’t too bad!
the best source is doom9 and the gordian knot program (which packages a lot of the needed tools into one package). clonead’s claddvd xp is really good for the ripping part.
i’ve started to get into the audio encoding as well, such as dolby ac3 5.1 and dts encoded within divx avi files.
my quest for good fonts on linux led me to the core fonts project at sourceforge. the “core fonts” microsoft made are distributable, so this packages them for installation in x windows. very cool – i’ve got verdana, tahoma and all the other standard cool font in linux now. it’s not quite perfect, but it’s a start!
one thing i have been pretty much keeping up on is reading. i finished various positions – a life of leonard cohen a little while ago. great book. i had no idea cohen was as prolific as he was. i’ve added his works – both poetry and fiction – to my reading list.
my buddy kevin just got married. we had a great time! he gave the groomsmen all books relating to music. (all of us are pretty much geeks with various music topics from songwriting to producing to latest bands.) i happend to get the ambient century: from mahler to trance: the evolution of sound in the electronic age. it’s really cool and quite comprehensive.
i’ve been reading ecstasy club by rushkoff. pretty interesting so far.
ok, i know… again no posts in a while. maybe the novelty has worn off. i hope not! i got to get back to posting. no excuses!
acid pro 4.0 came out recently and i went ahead and upgraded! man, is it sweet! it’s got automated effects that are totally cool. and it supports vsti! yup all those virtual synths now work in acid! it’s got a ways to go, but still super cool! did i mention the new resonant filter?