I gave the Mac Pro a little test tonight…

- 3 browser windows open

- iTunes open and playing a song

- IM client open

- Twitter client open

- Photoshop open

- dvd player playing back Aqua Teen Hunger Force

- 72 track Garage Band session with 72 compressors playing back

…all of this simultaneously.

Seems ridiculous, I know. But when you’re working with multitrack recordings with multiple plugins on each track, as well as a number of different software instruments, this kind of power makes the creative process flow so smoothly.

As long as I’ve been recording, I’ve always been hampered by limitations; when I was using tape-based devices I was limited on track count. When I was using computers at the Small’s studio I was limited by processing power and would have to deactivate plugins or bounce multiple tracks into one track to free up power. And it’s these limitations that often times found me putting my guitar down in frustration and just shutting everything down.

Getting a computer like the Mac Pro was a calculated decision to attempt to avoid these frustrations. I wanted something that would do more than what I would be likely to throw at it. I wanted something that was a bit overboard. I wanted to not lose the creativity.

And I was willing to pay for that.

(And Sarah, I’ll try to keep the Mac-flapping to a minimum from here on out, though it’ll be hard.)

Monday. This Monday. It begins.

Since Dusty’s got off most of the summer from his teaching job, he’s now one of my few friends who are available on my “weekends”. I’ll be leaving Sunday night to go visit him in West Chester. From there we will be making the trek on Monday to Delaware’s Apple store to pick up the coveted MacPro.

“I may have to hook it up while I’m at your place,” I tell him.
“I would expect nothing less,” he replied.

Not much interesting to report on. Dad’s working on getting the plumbing routed to the necessary spots, bathroom and kitchen. It’s not something I can really help out with, so I haven’t participated much. After that I believe is the drywall patching (I think that’s what it’s called). This will not be performed by either of us, but will be performed by hired work since it sounds like it might really just be an economy-sized pain in the ass.

Then I believe painting may begin, given that I can overcome my indecisiveness and settle in on some colors. I’m thinking I’m gonna play it safe with some sort of sage green for the walls and perhaps a lighter shade of green on the ceiling. I had some other ideas, but I just can’t fathom going forth with some experimental colors, hating it and then having to live with them. So I’m thinking minimalist, yet stylish.

In other somewhat related news, I think I might be making a pilgrimage to the Delaware Apple store next weekend (weekend = Monday & Tuesday for me) to pay homage (money) to my God (8 core 2.8gHz MacPro w/ 23″ widescreen display and 2gigs of RAM, upgradable to 32gigs(!!!!)). Because MacPro said “Let there be music,” and I’ll make the make music, and MacPro will see that it is good.

Not 100% definite yet, but seeming rather likely.

And on the 7th day MacPro said, “Let there be one bitchin’ barn party.” And MacPro saw that it was bitchin’.

‘Pro-Life’ Drugstores Market Beliefs:

The pharmacies are emerging at a time when a variety of health-care workers are refusing to perform medical procedures they find objectionable. Fertility doctors have refused to inseminate gay women. Ambulance drivers have refused to transport patients for abortions. Anesthesiologists have refused to assist in sterilizations.

…

If you are a health-care professional, you are bound by professional obligations,” said Nancy Berlinger, deputy director of the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank in Garrison, N.Y. “You can’t say you won’t do part of that profession.

If I had complained at work that classical music was morally offensive to me and I didn’t want to perform parts of my job that exposed me to it, they would’ve asked me, “Then why did you take this job?”

(Via The Washington Post.)

Walking a bit closer to one of the huge guns with my headphones and mics just after a solider fires it into the distance, I inadvertently end up aiming my mics at a group of soldiers talking nearby. They hesitate, and then collectively move somewhere else. I feel slightly uncomfortable and hope that I make it apparent that I just want gun noises, clicking, firing, rounds being loaded, and not their conversation. But a haze of disinterest at best and vague hostility at worst hovers everywhere on the firing range.

Scott turns away from a soldier he’d been talking to and walks back towards me with his mic and digital recorder, giving me a shrug as he does so. He’s a bit concerned about the soldiers’ reaction to us being there to document their training. The vibe is certainly mixed.

The Impact of War series that Scott’s been contributing to is, in my estimation, an attempt to show how truly life-altering a deployment is; an attempt to clarify an otherwise blurry notion many of us may have on what all is entailed in being a soldier.

We were escorted via military vehicle the 15-20 minute drive into the wilderness of the base by the uniformed equivalent of a public relations person. On the ride back he and Scott talked quite a bit about the uneasy relationship between reporters and soldiers. He cites reporters who drop into locations, Iraq, Afghanistan, for a few days and then leave believing they’re experts and qualified to report on how life really is in a war.

Get in, get the story and get out. Then get paid.

The situation between soldiers, reporters, wars and coverage of it is, I’m finding, very complex. To start, the mild antagonism I felt at the base is nothing unusual apparently. And I sort of understood that antagonism in a vague way that I couldn’t quite articulate. I think I might have felt the same way in their shoes. But why?

I’m totally speculating when I imagine there might be some resentment. I know personally if I were about to be shipped off to another country and forced to endure harsh conditions, I might look resentfully upon reporters whose job is so less real, less dangerous, not life-threatening…not relevant.

I think another possibility is is that reporting by nature is parasitic. Scott and I, that day, are making a living off of these soldiers’ grim situation to make a good story. The job of reporting relies on other people to actually do things, to make the news, and reporters feed off of that. And to make matters worse, in the case of reporting on soldiers’ lives, we’re using the very possibility that they may not return home as our unspoken though implied sensationalistic appeal. And then we go back to our computers, type it up, edit and produce it until it’s pretty and attractive for mass consumption

Can it be any other way?

During our drive to the firing range, a female soldier had accompanied us in the jeep and turned the tables on Scott, pulling out a small video camera and asking him a few basic questions about his reporting on the war. Scott told me later on our way home, I need a better answer for the question of ‘Why do you want to cover this story?’ Because I could tell them but it would sound like just a bunch of rambling. That was one of the questions she had asked him.

And that’s really the pivotal question: Why do we want to cover this story? That I think is the ultimate question any soldier should ask a reporter.

As I was running the days events through my mind back at the radio station, I pictured again Scott on the receiving end of some mild disapproval from one of the soldiers. And I’d been trying to figure out for myself why I feel that reporting on these soldiers is justified and how it’s not purely parasitic in nature. And as the imaginary argument played out in my head, in response to the resentment and antagonism of a skeptical soldier, the imaginary reporter in my head replied, “I don’t want your life to be taken for granted.”

And that kinda was the click for me.

I can only speak for myself when I say that I don’t 100% comprehend what it means when I see “3 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq” in the newspaper. I understand what it means, but the impact is so dulled, so vague. And that, really, is just the saddest thing. That three people can die, that three mothers lose their sons, and I can move onto another article with a small sigh and not look back. I am totally missing the impact of war.

As much for me as for other people, The Impact of War series is an attempt to not allow these soldiers lives to shrugged off as another statistic. And because it isn’t a once and done thing, because people like Scott are following the same group of soldiers and learning about their stories, the act of reporting isn’t just a telling of a drama and then picking up a paycheck. The story is a commitment to them that that their lives will not be taken for granted.

Don’t navigate away! This isn’t a Mac-flapping, fanboy, Jobs-worshipping, I-drank-the-koolaid post. This is an honest, praising and also fault-finding examination of the new iPhone.

If some of you live under a rock and hadn’t heard, Apple unveiled the next-generation iPhone to be released July 11th. And while I 100% will be getting one, probably the day it comes out, I do have some mixed feelings about the progress from the previous model to this one.

Apple has this strange capacity for leaving people wondering, “Why would they not include that?” What is “that”? There’s a bit of a list. These are mostly things that other phones have, and maybe have even had for a long time. Here’s my list, but there may be more.

Read the rest of this entry »

Found this in the garage last night as I was petting kitty…

And of course, click for a more fear-inducing resolution.

I’ve never encountered a spider like this before near our house. Petting kitty, I was unknowingly about a foot from this spider when I happen to glance over, squint for a second in confusion and then stand right up and take a few steps away, leaving kitty looking wide-eyed up at me and wondering why I ceased bowing to her whim.

Another shot…

This thing’s actually got a bigger leg span than the fishing spiders I’ve seen. And something about it’s stance just really creeps me out. And after about a half hour of google-searching and comparing images, I’m going to tentatively classify this spider as a Nursery Web Spider. While Wikipedia’s entry on these spiders contains images that don’t look much like this one, a google search definitely found results that looked similar. A great quote from Wikipedia regarding Nursery Web Spiders: 

The female spider will sometimes attempt to eat the male after mating. The male, to reduce the risk of this, will often present the female with a gift such as a fly when approaching in the hope that this will satisfy her hunger.

The conversation I’m sure is roughly something like this:

Male: Bitch, let’s freak.

Female: Mmm, yeah momma want some suga’.

[...grunting, moaning, silk-shooting...]

Male: Yea, you got it good, huh?

Female: Mmm hmm. But you what know baby, momma kinda hungry now.

Male: ….

Female: ….

Male: Here’s a fly bitch. Don’t eat me.

Female: Mmm, you know what momma like baby.

[sucking noises and tapping noises as fly gets juices sucked and male spiders tear-asses it out of the web]

However that scenario goes down, I’m now paranoid-ally itchy all over and quite convinced it’s that damn female spider thinking I’m the one that rocked her world and she’s now seeking to conclude the act.

…mostly.

Sunday while I was at work my dad had apparently wrapped up the rest of the drywall. I don’t know how or why he worked that day as it was about 90-something and humid. He crazy. 

But here’s a few pictures, all clickable.

The one side of the bathroom has no drywall yet. A water heater has to be installed yet. Actually I just realized the inside of the bathroom has no drywall. Shouldn’t take long.

The entrance (straight ahead). Again, the open barn door to the right will eventually be the entrance, with a small deck attached. Bangin’.

The view from the “entrance” barn door. Bottom-right is an un-used shed that will be dismantled soon.

The view from the other barn door of my driveway and house. I repeat that I will have no affiliation with those weirdos once I’ve moved into the barn. The barn and the house are two separate entities and anyone from said house will be considered trespassing if they step beyond those two patches of landscaping you see, at which point I will release the hounds. A moat is also under consideration.

So that’s about where things stand. I believe the bathroom plumbing and the kitchenette have to be worked out before further steps are taken. Moving right along.

As far as I know we’re still on schedule for a barn-warming in July. I don’t think late June will happen. So wipe clean those July calendars and prepare for the social event of the year, complete with goat-racing and lawnmower races. 

Some people check out IKEA or Pier 1 Imports when shopping for the necessary items they’ll need when they move into their house, apartment or barn. Those people have no priorities. Being responsible and forward-looking, I’ve been actively browsing Sweetwater’s website for what should be the top items on anyone’s to-buy list when furnishing a new dwelling space.

A 2.8gHz 8 core MacPro and 23″ Apple Cinema Display. Having a MacPro in your living space is as vital as having plumbing or a drumset; you can’t live without either.

“But Joey, into what will I unleash these phat, fresh tracks that I have eating at my insides wanting to get out?” To which I respond, “Logic Pro, my child. Logic Pro.” Now with like 35gigs of samples and software instruments and sample accurate editing, Logic Pro is stupidly packed with goodies for a great price. [Note: not 100% sure I'll be getting Logic, but probably like 90% sure. Digidesign, the company that makes ProTools, is evil, and I'm trying to boycott their arrogance.]

And the mediator, the middleman, the gateway from the smooth analogous waves of ocean-like sound into the digital world of permanence, precision and perfection, is the Mackie Onyx 1200F FireWire Audio/MIDI Interface with 12 Onyx Preamps, S/PDIF, ADAT, and AES/EBU I/O, and Four Headphone Outs. Pure hard-core unadulterated sexiness. I know. You feel me, right?

Why are these three things top priority? Why does every house, apartment and barn need these three things? Because you have tracks. And not just any tracks, you’ve got “trax”. And these trax are so hip, so friggin’ phat, so stupidly hot and fresh that without the MacPro, Logic and the Mackie Onyx 1200F, your barn will just be a place to house the goats that you’ll inevitably get to fill the time that should’ve been spent in the pursuit of trax of unheard of phatness.

You may live in Falmouth, but you don’t need to race goats.

Get yourself a MacPro.

(Apple of course will be begging to trademark that.)