patoadam

The new machine is up and running and producing sound from Cubase. I *think* that I've loaded all of the plugins that I should have on the box, although the list seems shorter than before. That may be because I haven't loaded a few plugins that I never use that I picked up as freebies. And that is just as well.

The old box has had the CMOS beaten into submission again and a new battery is now installed. I removed the Thunderbolt and Firewire cards and have it sitting in one corner of the studio, powered up and waiting to see if I need to use Remote Desktop to go find anything on it.

But the studio is up and running again. And that makes me very happy.

And very relieved.

earthobservatory_iod_feed

Posted by NASA Earth Observatory

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/154502/blast-from-the-past-vredefort-crater

The world’s oldest and largest known impact structure shows some of the most extreme deformation conditions known on Earth.

doonesbury_alt_feed

http://wpcomics.washingtonpost.com/client/wpc/db/2025/07/01/

mdlbear

Welcome to July, 2025!

It's worth noting that "happy" is a very rare mood tag these days. The last time I used it was in 2019, after Mom's 99th birthday party.

Current Mood: happy?
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag

billroper

The optical drive arrived today on schedule. It only took a few minutes to get it installed, the new computer buttoned up, and then I was able to take it to the basement.

It took a while to work through the Windows 11 install, because it kept wanting drivers that needed to be downloaded and there was no computer here to do it with, the old machine having been disconnected. Eventually, I got bright enough to bring my laptop to the basement for the driver downloads which allowed me to stop going up to the second floor. :)

Anyway, the good news is that I got the Universal Audio software installed and it promptly detected the Apollo interface on the other end of the Thunderbolt cable. I am now in the process of reinstalling all of the other software that makes things run down here.

And then there is the copying of the audio files. I had intended to bring them across from the old machine, but I think the BIOS battery there has given up the ghost, so it is not going to be booting up until I replace that, hook it back up to a monitor and keyboard, and fix those problems. But everything is backed up to the NAS in the office, so I am now entering the second quarter of a projected twelve hours of copying files down.

Whee!

But I should be able to get things up and running again tomorrow -- depending on how much software still needs to be installed. :)

earthobservatory_iod_feed

Posted by NASA Earth Observatory

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/154493/blast-from-the-past-a-modern-lake-in-an-ancient-crater

Famously visible from space, ring-shaped Manicouagan Lake was filled at the dawn of the Space Age when Canada dammed a river to flood a Triassic-aged impact crater.

doonesbury_alt_feed

http://wpcomics.washingtonpost.com/client/wpc/db/2025/06/30/

mdlbear

I have heard the sad news from several friends, who heard it from a friend of a friend, that acelightning passed away suddenly two days ago.

Sadly, I never got to meet her IRL; all I knew of her was her signature purple posts and comments that occasionally brightened my days. I was always glad to see that flash of purple on my reading page, and now it's gone, never to be seen again.

Farewell, Ace -- perhaps I'll see you again, with Colleen and Ame, somewhere over the rainbow bridge. The purple rose icon I made for Amethyst has rarely been so appropriate.

Current Mood: sad
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: Purple Haze?

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3109/

It's important for devices to have internet connectivity so the manufacturer can patch remote exploits.

https://xkcd.com/3109/

billroper

For a variety of reasons, I was later getting down to the studio to start recording than I'd hoped. I fired up the Apollo unit, woke up the computer, and discovered that they were not talking to each other. Again.

I unplugged and replugged the Thunderbolt cable with no improvement. I rebooted the computer. Same story.

I can't get work done with the machine behaving this way. It was now time to go to my backup plan and build a new computer. Today.

I went to the Micro Center website and threw together a configuration based on the research that I did last weekend. It has twice as much storage and RAM as the current machine, because it didn't cost that much more. I wanted the same case that I had for the old machine, but Micro Center doesn't carry Antec cases and the soonest that I could get one of the Silent series cases here from either Amazon or Newegg was about two weeks which was not any help for the time frame that I'm looking at, so I grabbed a Fractal Design case and am hoping that it is reasonably quiet, given the minimum number of moving parts. If not, I can always cannibalize an old case and move things around, but that was not going to be today's project.

The one thing that I couldn't get was a CD-R drive, but I *can* get one of those from Amazon to show up here tomorrow. I placed the order and tore out for Micro Center so I could get the parts and get back home tonight.

It took about two hours (and a modicum of swearing and dropped screws), but the machine is now assembled, save for the optical drive which can easily be popped in tomorrow.

And then we'll fire it up and see how it works. Which will be tomorrow evening's project.

I am going to buy the old machine from Dodeka for whatever it is worth and use that to help defray the cost of the new box. Gretchen is going to need a new desktop to replace the one that is ten plus years old (the previous studio computer) and which will absolutely, positively never run Windows 11. This machine is wretched overkill for what she'll do with it, but that's ok. :)

Just for those observing, the total cost of this build will be well less than half of the cost of some of the fancy pre-built recording computers that I could buy. And it has a fancy gaming motherboard, because that got me the right combination of ports on the back.

The best thing about it is that I can have it tomorrow.

I hope...

earthobservatory_iod_feed

Posted by NASA Earth Observatory

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/154488/a-cosmic-explosion-over-siberia

On June 30, 1908, an incoming fireball exploded kilometers above Earth’s surface, scorching and toppling large numbers of trees.

$mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)$

mdlbear

I went out walking five times last week. Altogether they probably amounted to 2.5km, but I have been going a little farther most days. Other than that I don't feel like I've gotten a whole lot done.

That's not entirely justified, however. I ordered a replacement for m's keyboard, which was apparently stolen off of their neigbors' porch. I got what I hope will be the last shot in my 2-year course of treatment. (I was expecting a follow-up phone call, but that had to be rescheduled due to a major phone outage. And I updated my LinkedIn profile and my "professional" website (https://stephen.savitzky.net/) to make it clear that I'm not job-hunting. And helped N get most of the patio furniture, in flatpack form, out to the patio. We put together one of the two Adirondack chairs this afternoon.

I also went down some interesting rabbit-holes, many of the m involving the Vera C. Rubin Observatory -- more links under Wednesday.

You don't have to prefix things with "doom" anymore, that's just the default now. You can just say scrolling. OTOH, if you're on Mastodon and need a break, check out #Bloomscrolling.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag

billroper

Once I finally got the studio computer to behave again, I went back to working over tracks for "Crosstime Bus" and laying down more guitar tracks and replacement scratch vocals that wouldn't be contaminated with the original scratch guitar. The first song wasn't much of a challenge.

And then I was off into "It's All Right". I have been practicing this song. It shouldn't be a problem.

Except I can hear that the second chord that I'm playing in the song is *clearly* not the same chord that is on the scratch tracks. It's labeled on the lyric sheet as "Bm7/A". Right...

Ok, I can hear the high A on the first string clearly. What are the other notes that are in this thing?

Eventually, I realize that this is a D7sus moved up to the third fret. The guitar chord analyzer tells me that it is (among other things) "Bm7/A". Uh huh.

It's amazing how much easier it is to play the guitar when you know what you are playing.

earthobservatory_iod_feed

Posted by NASA Earth Observatory

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/154481/a-dusty-vestige-of-the-old-west

Owens Lake, an arid playa tucked between the Inyo Mountains and the Sierra Nevada in California, is the site of dust mitigation efforts.

billroper

I am not thrilled by troubleshooting. I am even less thrilled when the trouble shoots back.

You may recall the incident a few weeks ago where I installed a BIOS upgrade on my studio computer and killed my Thunderbolt port which is highly necessary to being able to do recording. Eventually, I managed to roll back the BIOS "upgrade", get the studio functioning again, and have been down here merrily recording tracks.

Today, I came downstairs, woke up the computer, and it stubbornly refused to see the Thunderbolt interface. Great.

Step one was to try all of the non-invasive stuff. I unplugged the cable and plugged it back in. I turned it over, which should make no difference, but occasionally does. I got down on the floor and checked to be sure that the cable was still plugged into the interface. (I do not so much hate getting down on the floor as I do getting *up* from the floor. In any case, the cable was plugged in correctly.)

Of course, at this point, I *still* didn't know whether the failure was on the computer end or the interface end. But my laptop has a Thunderbolt port, so I got K to (grudgingly) bring it downstairs so that I could plug the cable from the interface in there. And the laptop saw the interface, so the problem had to be the computer.

At this point, I powered down the computer, opened up the case, pulled out the Thunderbolt card, reseated the cable on the motherboard header, and put the Thunderbolt card back in. I fired up the computer and it now saw the interface.

And there was much rejoicing. And some muttering.

Everything is now reassembled and still working. I am hoping that it stays that way.

I have priced a backup plan, which involves pulling the motherboard, CPU, and RAM out of the studio computer and installing it in a case upstairs with a motherboard that is too old to run Windows 11; then installing a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM combination that includes built-in Thunderbolt ports. That's going to cost a lot of money before I am done even if I don't replace any other parts in the process. And it will take a lot of time.

I am hoping not to need the backup plan. We'll keep an eye on this.

doonesbury_alt_feed

http://wpcomics.washingtonpost.com/client/wpc/db/2025/06/28/

billroper

We've been running the Fortify app against our source code and the section that I'm responsible for has been pretty clean for the most part. But there was one set of routines (that I did not write) that was being stubbornly difficult in being changed to avoid an unreleased resource leak. I tried one approach (a poor one, as it turned out) that just broke everything in the area, so I backed it out and went after it again.

This time, I refactored the code to avoid the particular construct that causes Fortify to lose its mind as it scans our code. Once I did that, the code still worked, which was good.

And it passed the Fortify scan that just finished.

Yay, me.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3108/

To combat the threat, many airlines are installing wing-mounted spray bottles.

https://xkcd.com/3108/

earthobservatory_iod_feed

Posted by NASA Earth Observatory

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/154484/western-mountain-snow-melts-fast-and-early

A warm and dry spring in the Pacific Northwest quickly depleted the seasonal snowpack, raising concern over summer water supplies and wildland fire risk.

doonesbury_alt_feed

http://wpcomics.washingtonpost.com/client/wpc/db/2025/06/27/

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It Lives!

Blast From the Past: Vredefort Crater

Doonesbury for Tuesday, July 01, 2025

"Rabbit rabbit rabbit!"

Reassembling the World

Blast From the Past: A Modern Lake in an Ancient Crater

Doonesbury for Monday, June 30, 2025

River: A shade of purple has left the world

Dehumidifier

Another Learning Experience

A Cosmic Explosion Over Siberia

Done Since 2025-06-22

Chord Wars

A Dusty Vestige of the Old West

Trouble Shooting Back

Doonesbury for Saturday, June 28, 2025

Fortified

Laser Danger

Western Mountain Snow Melts Fast and Early

Doonesbury for Friday, June 27, 2025

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