After what seemed like forever, and in reality was just about a year, I finally have my studio back. If you have been following the Blog you know about the "Did you cook eggs?"(see below) incident with the basement flood. Insurance pays some, but not all of the costs, so our finances held up the new floor, drywall and paint. In the meantime, the studio was taken down and stored in a safe place.

Just the other day we completed the work, and I set everything up again and fired it up. Everything worked fine, but of course I had lot of updates to do, and in my questionable wisdom I decided this might be a good time to to move to Pro Tools from Digital Performer. I love Performer, but while my studio was down my writing partner moved to protools because of some projects he had, and I always like us to be on the same platform so we can share files with the least hassle.

Pro Tools lead to a series of additional updates - long story short it was the better part of a week before everything was where it needed to be to work smoothly. I also took the opportunity to replace my aging snake with one that had headphone jacks. This means I no longer have headphone extensions criss crossing the studio floor. What a joy! Sometime its the little things that put a smile on your face.

By the way - thats a David Crosby track, "The things We do for Love" - loaded on the two screens. Its from a Fab Dupont tutorial (from Pure Mix) on mixing - Highly recommended - some great stuff in that video. Learning a few new tricks after the long dark night away from the gear.

There's a new bounce in my step, and new work in progress. Will be sharing some of that on this site soon.

Tags: Home Studio, Recording, David Crosby, Fab Dupont, Puremix

Well I finally got a new laptop - the latest greatest 15" MacBook Pro complete with touchbar, 1tb ssd, and 16gigs of memory. My company bought it for me. Been spending the last week getting to know the new machine, and moving files onto it from the old MacBook (2009). In fact the whole purpose of this particular blog entry is to test RapidWeaver and insure that everything is working as it should be. Its a little stressful, as I have never moved RW files from one computer to another, and didn't want to trash the company web-site - so I am testing it on my personal site first.

But since I am doing this entry, I may as well do a review of how I like the new machine. Remember this is in comparison to the 2009 version.



First - what I like (a lot). Its fast! Very fast. Everything is faster - booting up, reading files, writing files, opening apps - everything. And the screen is fantastic - razor sharp - everything jumps out at you. Still getting used to the touchbar , but I use it all the time, and I like it - not a deal breaker though (it may get to that point as more apps use it). I like Siri - though she isn't always consistent - like if I say "Siri open Word" - sometimes she will - other time she will reply "sorry Dennis, you don't seem to have word installed" (which of course I do). I like to keep my dock on the svelte side, so I really like being able to open stuff with Siri.

Not a fan of losing the magsafe - though I do like being able to plug the laptop in on either side. In my opinion, the best solution would be a magsafe on both sides. Oh well - you win some and lose some. Otherwise I don't mind the new thunderbolt ports. Bought a little Satechi mini dock ($39) - it matches the color of my MacBook (space grey)and it covers all my needs.

I don't know about the rest of the new users out there, but I am getting nowhere near the claimed 10 hour battery life. I haven't run it totally down yet but I think I am getting around 6 hours - mind you I am doing nothin g particularly power intensive - just mostly moving files back and forth, browsing, emailing, and creating a few Office docs. I expected it to be better - definitely a disappointment. However, considering that the old laptop was down to 25 min of battery life ….

So - lets publish this puppy and see if all is well in the Rapidweaver world.

Tags: 15" MacBook Pro w touchbar

"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding a deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars." Dr. Martin Luther King said that.

I am sickened by all the senseless death that our nation is currently experiencing. We need to stop. I am reminded of a comedy piece by Bob Newhart where he is a therapist working with a troubled client. His advice is simple and of course funny, but pertinent just the same: "Stop it!"

I know its never that simple but I want to scream it out just the same. STOP!!!

Tags: violence, hatred, Fear

after a little Hair pulling - well ok a lot of hair pulling, I finally got the new look for the website finished. Had 2 major problems - first was getting the video to work properly. That was due to outdated documentation for the software add-on I use. After a fantastic experience with customer support at Joe Workman, I sorted it all out. Once you get it, its really very straight forward and simple. Last problem was with a picture I wanted to use on the home page. After hours of trial and error, I finally tracked the problem down to a weirdly corrupted jpeg. Anyway - here we are. I hope you like the new look. In the coming weeks, I will post a few more videos, and also some new music.

"Did you cook eggs?". Thats what my wife said when she came home from work. I was out on the deck lighting the charcoal. I had not cooked eggs, but on returning to the kitchen I could also pick up on the smell. It bugged me - the smell I mean. So, after supper, I decided to go down and check the basement, since nothing in the rest of the house seemed to be the source of the smell.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs there was a splashing sound when I stepped off the last step. Not good.

It seems that sometime during the past winter the outside faucet froze and split. I had been out watering the new garden in the back for the first time. When I opened the valve (unbeknownst to me) water started pouring into the basement. Of course I (being outside) was not aware of the consequences of my actions inside. To make matters worse, I didn't shut the valve - just stopped the water flow at the nozzle.

Several hours had passed since I finished watering the garden, so a considerable amount of water had pored into the basement. The insurance company sent out a clean-up crew, and they have been here for the last 3 days, with at least two more days to go.

The good news is that I din't lose any studio gear. May have lost one video camera - still letting it dry before attempting a power-up.

Tags: Flood, Close Call