Murphy (and a few other notables) piss me off

This morning Sonar crashed on me, so hard that I can't even open any song I've ever worked on. I will probably have to reinstall the product, and pray all the linked files relink into themselves. The cd and activation key are somewhere buried, deep in the basement.

Temporarily, I said "screw this", rebooted into Linux... I checked out the cornucopia of open source music applications. Three years ago, there was nothing.. today... hmm. a little tweaking, a little hacking, I think, and then:

Exorcism

"Forgive me, Richard
for I have ONE windows box
It keepeth the bits that make the taxman cometh not.
It maketh me lie down and scream for freedom
freedom I cannot gain without GNU"

I actually have an honest to Bill! genuine one hundred ninety-five dollah Microsoft Windows Professional license for "squeezebox". It comes with one of these non-rippy holographic CDs... It's not a shrinkwrap license but the license code is!!! The license code is on this little teeny enie piece of shrinkwrap plastic... wrap!!! the width of your thumbnail. What's next? Licensing that dissolves on air-contact - you open the shrinkwrap, the license evaporates!!? I haven't a clue where it is - that little bit of scrap, of debris, that tiny piece of shrinkwrap - !@#! the pathetic weak dying grasp of a software company on the physical world. I have no stinking idea where that piece of @!# !@# !@# is!!!

Doesn't matter so much about the license. The Windows Professional CD? Scratched.

This box, this is the last windows box - - there's Sonar/Soundforge/Reason/Acid/Dragon Dictate on it. I need these. But I swear this is the last physically licensed software I ever buy.

Judging from the curve of improvement, just over the past year, audio software under Linux should be "good enough" to do what I need all that I need it to do, soon, if not already. I was already doing sound editing in Audacity, with a decent sequencer I could chuck windows entirely... Speech recognition, well, I'm sure it would get better if the researchers opened up their products... Hmm... A couple of the kde midi sequencers look competent, but everything's requiring kernel patches for ALSA these days... I'm not up to patching my kernel today... well, let's see what the UI looks like.

I type ./configure --prefix=/usr; make

raging ADD kicks in. I realized that I had to clean the kitchen, left the kitchen to get a dirty cup, hit each room, forgot what I was doing.

I have a 8 songs totally screwed up right now and I don't have any valium, or a punching bag, or any stinking clue where that !@#!@ cd activation code for Sonar is. I don't want to reinstall the damn product. I just want to fscking fix it and go back into being creative... Hey Bill! Hey Murphy! Hey Cakewalk people - can you hear me cursing your names!? My voice, and others doing open source - That's the sound of your doom, oh makers of pathetically unreliable software that lets read-only binaries corrupt and require that I retain stupid pieces of paper or plastic just so I can load it... just you wait... It's almost good enough... better run you fuckers!!!

make me search my whole house from top to bottom to find a little sticker of a string of numbers that lets me use my @!#!@ computer, I grumble subvocally. I'm punching the keyboard like each key was a little green marketing alien.

I've got a todo list with dependencies on other todos at least 7 layers deep. And ADD.

8:00 AM

Oh, first thing to do. Find that ipaq that has the todo list.
That's under one pile, right... first, clear the pile, shit, what was the first thing?
But first thing to do, find the device that has the todo list.
OK, that's fine, and I needed to do this, why? Oh, yea, find the licenses for cakewalk
and. Well, actually, I need 2 liicenses and a 3 cds
lets go in the kitchen. Hmm, maybe I should clean up, hmm, wow, it's raining
It's too wet to bike down to the beach to surf.
I wonder if I have any other dishes to do
man, fire needs tending
let's install redhat9 on kmr
oh yea the !@#!@ !@#!#!@ machine is too loud
lets remain calm, let's do music on the quiet box... that's crashed @!#!
hey, there's another linux box in the house, 129 day uptime...
maybe I should blog that, yea
this coffee mug should go in the kitchen and I really should make a todo list

(repeat until 2:00PM)

Found this attempt at a blog entry from a few weeks back.

The Jazzman of the Hedge

There I was, tending my garden, talking to computers. It's a process of subtraction, to see things as they are - and how they will change - and how they can change - for most of the past year my view of the world has been frozen solid. When a sparrow fell, it lay there for months. I was only capable of adding to my efforts, not subtracting from them - I was building systems that had warts on warts on warts.

I've been unfreezing my worldview.

I'm thinking hard about how to get going again - when - weep, wail!... when even my computer misunderstands me.

I wandered my garden two weeks ago, noting things I had to do in it, and came back, sat down, and started dictating into Dragon Dictate while some music was playing in the background. I wasn't very focused on speaking clearly, and I had a lot on my mind.

"The garden is full of things that you recognize."

What I actually said was

"my garden is full of things that I do not recognise."

Well, that's what I thought I actually said. hmm. I tried again. And edited a little.

"My garden is full of things that I did not recognize. There's bluebells spreading, roses' leaves bursting and while attending the dead leaves of september... looking for needles, the walkways the only place where I felt safe - I recognize when we was - when I want to"

Then I was off on verbal roll and stopped looking at the screen as the mic slipped below the optimum range... I got gripped by a new idea and started talking faster:

"Finally the shape of things gradually begins to crack into shape and my core - The core of my paranoia is that the computer is hearing what I'm actually saying... not what I'm trying to say, or what I think I said, or remember saying" -

I wrote, "the jasmine of the hedge", I remember saying that - but the rest came out

What dragon dictate thought I said...


The avocado tree as many leaves the black students and it looks to be due to.
It turns out he can cut back concerns were involved anyone's may come back strong and never
sometimes talk about the processes traction to take him without having a name of the thing
I can say what it was large in the anterior and the down payments means fewer cut them back the UK on a
tiny means and probably perfect were placed in.
33 pushes pushing plants next to the order for.
Together they just too early spring blackberries need to cut back
was still left around because they were succulent owner will.
This jazzman of the hedge with minimal red flowers just beginning of.
The cut back the powers someone who was a little sloppy and to kill our men
actually put down from the trial of the site components of the West.
And in finishing at the the effect that it not adding if you mumble this day of awful
it if you get ideas into flying lying flat on my back really relaxed this focusing on it
never truly well portray it relaxes focused landing like
the jazzman of the hedge when I said jazzman uses the psychotic the jazzman of the hedge is minimal red flowers

I have no idea what I actually said. But, crash!, like a hit on a high hat, I understood how important misunderstanding was to the creation of new thought. You strain at some idea with the tools to comprehension you're already packing - and there's a...

meme shift. memex. meme drift. memetic decay. It's a ROGE-POGE... It's not "I say potato you say pota'to - It's "I say potato you say tomato." - and what the heck is a meme, you ask?

Thought physics

Communication's a combination of the telephone game and the prisoners game. Meme propagation has a speed, like the speed of light, but hasn't been measured in a vacuum. There's radioactive (memoactive?) decay, there's advanced and retarded waves, memetic quanta get scattered by particles in the way...

and if you have to ask, you don't know said the jazzman of the hedge.
  ¶ 8:37 AM