I bought a tent off trademe yesterday. I was going to try it out on the front lawn today, but instead the lawn is covered in building materials, as it seems we are getting a fence, which means we'll have a front lawn we can sit on without the street seeing. I'm not entirely convinced this means I'll actually spend time outdoors, but it might help to that end.
Why did I buy a tent? Camp, of course. It seems like it was ontly a few weeks ago we found out we were playing, and now it's only a couple of weeks till we head down. We're determined to have some new songs in the set by then, so I can only assume we're going to be practising to hell in the next fortnight. We had our first practise outside of Kent's old basement last week, in some guy's skody place where he's got a room for band practises set up. Cheap as chips, but I'm definitely bringing my own bottle of water next time.
I've been playing a bit of Sims 2 on the laptop, as difficult as it is. I thought real life was hard, but no... My characters get into this loop where they end up dying - they can't sleep because they're hungry, but they can't eat because they fall asleep before they get to the fridge. I tried to solve this problem by installing a grill in the bedroom, but it caused so many fires and contributed to the death count more than anything. In the end, the house was so full of ghosts and everyone just stood around pissing themselves over and over I had to restart.
In my current family, I started with a couple who quickly gave birth ("woo-hoo" was the first thing they did in the new house) to a boy, then a set of twins. I've had two nannies on the job, one of which continually takes one of the babies out of the high chair, puts him on the floor, picks him up and puts him back in the high chair, over and over. There's another death loop though - the mother puts the baby in the high chair to feed him, but notices he's tired, so takes him out. Then she notices he's hungry, so puts him back in the high chair... and over and over. None of the babies have died yet, I saved the last one when the mother fell asleep after taking him out and putting him on the floor - I got the baby to crawl away...
So otherwise I've been enjoying my new computer (2ghz duo core, 2g RAM, 450g HD) in all its things-happen-when-press-the-button awesomeness. One flaw I've noticed is its graphics card is some kind of Intel onboard thing, but the RAM seems to handle it fine anyway - Civ 4 plays fine, which is all I really ask for, hehe. For some bizarre reason however Age Of Empires 2 has glowing, nuclear grass, which visually is atrocious and makes the game near unplayable. I hardly ever played it anyway, so no worries.
Music software-wise, I had some hassle getting all the bits and pieces in place and working, as is to be expected when you're not only shifting old versions from one computer to another, but one operating system to another that insists on triple-checking everything. In the end, my Waves L2 VST plugin was rendered unusable, but somehow the later, flashier L3 popped up just fine, albeit in the Direct X set rather than VST, but ah well. At least it's there! And another essential tool in my mastering chain only works in 44 second pieces, but mastering's last in the process, so that's okay.
And working with FL Studio/Audition is such a breeze, everything works quickly and smoothly, especially now I've installed the ASIO audio drivers. One quirk is that I can't run two or more instances of FL Studio at once - if I do, only one has sound - I assume this either has something to do with the development status of the ASIO driver (only just has secured Vista functionality) or the particular way the soundcard on this computer is set up. No biggie anyway.
I've been working on a few demos though, trying to write upbeat, catchy things... here are a couple I've bashed out in otherwise empty afternoons: Name Deficient - Anti-Human Nous. Of course, they're extremely rough sketches and barely even songs, though I surprised my self at the Arctic Monkeys-ness of the second of those two, at least in some of the guitar. And I like the bassline in the former, probably more KittyHawk-ready.
What else? Oh yeah. Applying for jobs. Over and over.
Why did I buy a tent? Camp, of course. It seems like it was ontly a few weeks ago we found out we were playing, and now it's only a couple of weeks till we head down. We're determined to have some new songs in the set by then, so I can only assume we're going to be practising to hell in the next fortnight. We had our first practise outside of Kent's old basement last week, in some guy's skody place where he's got a room for band practises set up. Cheap as chips, but I'm definitely bringing my own bottle of water next time.
I've been playing a bit of Sims 2 on the laptop, as difficult as it is. I thought real life was hard, but no... My characters get into this loop where they end up dying - they can't sleep because they're hungry, but they can't eat because they fall asleep before they get to the fridge. I tried to solve this problem by installing a grill in the bedroom, but it caused so many fires and contributed to the death count more than anything. In the end, the house was so full of ghosts and everyone just stood around pissing themselves over and over I had to restart.
In my current family, I started with a couple who quickly gave birth ("woo-hoo" was the first thing they did in the new house) to a boy, then a set of twins. I've had two nannies on the job, one of which continually takes one of the babies out of the high chair, puts him on the floor, picks him up and puts him back in the high chair, over and over. There's another death loop though - the mother puts the baby in the high chair to feed him, but notices he's tired, so takes him out. Then she notices he's hungry, so puts him back in the high chair... and over and over. None of the babies have died yet, I saved the last one when the mother fell asleep after taking him out and putting him on the floor - I got the baby to crawl away...
So otherwise I've been enjoying my new computer (2ghz duo core, 2g RAM, 450g HD) in all its things-happen-when-press-the-button awesomeness. One flaw I've noticed is its graphics card is some kind of Intel onboard thing, but the RAM seems to handle it fine anyway - Civ 4 plays fine, which is all I really ask for, hehe. For some bizarre reason however Age Of Empires 2 has glowing, nuclear grass, which visually is atrocious and makes the game near unplayable. I hardly ever played it anyway, so no worries.
Music software-wise, I had some hassle getting all the bits and pieces in place and working, as is to be expected when you're not only shifting old versions from one computer to another, but one operating system to another that insists on triple-checking everything. In the end, my Waves L2 VST plugin was rendered unusable, but somehow the later, flashier L3 popped up just fine, albeit in the Direct X set rather than VST, but ah well. At least it's there! And another essential tool in my mastering chain only works in 44 second pieces, but mastering's last in the process, so that's okay.
And working with FL Studio/Audition is such a breeze, everything works quickly and smoothly, especially now I've installed the ASIO audio drivers. One quirk is that I can't run two or more instances of FL Studio at once - if I do, only one has sound - I assume this either has something to do with the development status of the ASIO driver (only just has secured Vista functionality) or the particular way the soundcard on this computer is set up. No biggie anyway.
I've been working on a few demos though, trying to write upbeat, catchy things... here are a couple I've bashed out in otherwise empty afternoons: Name Deficient - Anti-Human Nous. Of course, they're extremely rough sketches and barely even songs, though I surprised my self at the Arctic Monkeys-ness of the second of those two, at least in some of the guitar. And I like the bassline in the former, probably more KittyHawk-ready.
What else? Oh yeah. Applying for jobs. Over and over.
Current Music: Supremes & Grandaddy
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