From East To West
I've been thinking more -- and talking with friends about -- my East vs. West entry from the other day. And it occurred to me that, whenever I deal with metaphysical puzzles such as this, it's nearly always useful to consider how
Alfred North Whitehead would have approached it.
Whitehead was an advocate for process philosophy -- indeed, he is responsible for the revival of this idea in the 20th century. Though I've always thought there were better terms for it; Whitehead himself used the term "philosophy of organism," which I've occasionally abbreviated to "organic philosophy."
The basic idea here is that process, as opposed to substance, is the primary building block of existence. Put another way, existence is a verb and not a noun. Whitehead's masterpiece, Process and Reality, is one of the densest books ever written (and right up there with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Heidegger's Being and Time as the most difficult books I've ever read). Whitehead was a mathematician, so his theories are complex and as complete as he could make them. His goal with this book was to generate a "categoreal scheme," or what I might call a metaphysical map, "in terms of which every aspect of our experience can be explained." A pretty noble -- and perhaps impossible -- goal, though I will say that Whitehead comes closer than anyone else I've seen. And the reason he comes so close is because he thinks in terms of process. This opens up an entirely new way of thinking metaphysically, which allows for everything from common experience, psychology, magick, quantum physics, relativity, and everything else I've tried to throw at it.
So to bring this system to bear on the problem I articulated in the previous entry, I think that Whitehead would say that we can only be aware of the moment; but each moment is pregnant with context (past) and possibility (future). So by fully focusing our awareness on the richness of every moment, we are by definition also focusing our attention on where we have been and on what we are trying to create.
Another way to say this is that the clear-cut distinction I've been drawing between past, present, and future is not so cut and dry. After all, without a past to provide context, there can be no present moment. And without a future towards which the present is aimed, there is no meaningful present either.
I think the Buddhist emphasis on the present is really an emphasis on experience; our consciousness can only directly experience the present moment. Past and Future can only be experienced abstractly, through memory or imagination. So when a Buddhist urges us to Be Mindful of the Present, I think she is really saying to Be Mindful of our Experience. And some of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had were suffused with energy, as I was fully mindful of the present moment, but also acutely aware of the reality I was cultivating for myself. This is, at its core, nothing less than magick.
Cybermonkey mind
Slashdot pointed me to a very interesting article,
Life Interrupted. The basic idea of the article:
We're shooting through technological rapids that have opened doors and changed the dynamic of work, how we communicate and live, and sometimes even think. All these tools have made our lives easier in many ways. But they're also stirring deep unease. Some are concerned that the need for speed is shrinking our attention spans, prompting our search for answers to take the mile-wide-but-inch-deep route and settling us into a rhythm of constant interruption in which deadlines are relentless and tasks are never quite finished.
Scientists call this phenomenon "cognitive overload," and say it encompasses the modern-day angst of stress, multitasking, distraction and data flurries.
Makes sense to me. As our minds become more fragmented, the need for activities such as meditation, which are technologies to quieten the mind, become more important. It seems to me that at least some time daily must be spent calming the mind, creating a sort of
tabula rasa that can then be written upon by our daily activities.
It certainly makes me want to spend more time in quiet meditation....
Trouble on the Island
About 2 weeks ago, Matt and I wrote a song. As is usual with us, I wrote the music/chord progressions/parts, Matt wrote the lyrics and the vocal melody, and we collaborated on the arrangement. This is our usual mode of writing; I come up with some sort of groove/chord progression, and we jam on it while Matt improvises lyrics. Hopefully I'll have a part A, part B, and a part C, ie, several different progressions that together, once arranged, will make up a song.
One of the songs we wrote 2 weeks ago is called "Trouble on the Island." The island metaphor was particularly striking to me, since Marillion's song Fantastic Place uses the island as a metaphor for intimacy, escape, and relationships.
But one of the lines in our song has to do with an incoming tidal wave (I can't remember the exact line). Which of course, given recent news from Asia seems a bit jarring, to say the least. I've certainly felt the human repercussions of this gigantic sneeze from Mother Nature. A great disturbance in the force, perhaps?
Perhaps with Matthew's help I can post some lyrics here soon, or better yet on Freakwitch.net.
East vs. West
I've observed over the years one thus far unresolvable tension between two of my most fundamental life principles. On one hand, I have a deep appreciation for the Eastern/Buddhist notion of non-attachment, of staying in the moment to savor a deep appreciation for the full flowering of every moment. This is an essential component of happiness; staying in the moment cultivates a sense of appreciation for what one actually has, not a sense of loss or lack for what one does not have.
On the other hand, I am also a believer in the Western/Neopagan notion of magick; of creation of one's reality. Any sort of responsible, grounded magickal work of this sort requires a deep sense not only of where one is, but also of where one wants to go. So by looking forward in order to make an informed choice about which possible reality one wants to cultivate, one must by definition not focus one's attention on the present moment.
So how do you resolve them? How do you look forward and make responsible choices, while at the same time cultivating awareness of the present? Once possible answer is that looking ahead requires a firm sense of where one is, a sense that is served by Buddhist present awareness. So we're back to the classic sense of moderation; one shouldn't spend too much time in either place, but must, in the words of Nietzsche, "lie in ambush, observing oneself from behind"; while one is in one state, one must be prepared to leap into the other. Opportunities will present themselves; one must have courage to make the most of these opportunities.
And there are signs that one is spending too much time in either place. If one is unhappy, and spends energy lamenting what one does not have, then it is a sure sign that too much focus is on the future. On the other hand, if one remains passive and fails to move anywhere, fails to create realities, then one may need to spend more time cultivating one's reality.
Lastly, one must keep these two modes in perspective in terms of time. The present is the here and now, it is what we have; all of our past experience culminates in the facticity of the present moment. The past and the future are both shadowy; they don't exist in terms of consciousness except in memory or imagination. There are futures that are more probable than others, but this just indicates the amount of work necessary to alter one's present trajectory. So in that sense it is impossible to do good magick without a deep awareness of what one actually has; indeed this awareness is necessary because we must have something solid, something definite against which to imagine alternatives. You have to know where you are in order to know where you are going.
But overall, I think the lesson here is that while it can be healthy to imagine "what ifs," in order for them to be healthy they must be grounded in the here and now. Part if this means that if your "what ifs" involve other people (as they nearly always do), one must take into account the choices of these other people. Hopefully, we are in a position when we do our magickal work, that we can do them together with those around us. But then, such alignment of one will amongst many is itself a tremendous amount of work.
new blog software?
I'm thinking of converting this site over to a new software infrastructure called
WordPress. The advantages would be non-reliance on an outside website (everything would be hosted locally on Freakwitch.net). Also, WordPress is Free Software, which is A Good Thing.
Though the last thing I need is more technical stuff to do. It is possible, though nontrivial, to import my old blogger entries to WordPress, however.
Perhaps someday when I have nothing to do I can try this....
shoveling in the sleeze
A friend of mine calls snow/sleet/freezing rain "sleeze," and it seems to be appropriate to my reality at the moment. We had a winter storm come through last night, when I was
working. We had calls in queue pretty much all day; it was by far the busiest day I've seen since I started working there almost a year ago. Driving home after my 12-hour shift was fun.
My holidays were good. We had another amazing Yule fire/circle/vigil. I made it all the way through, tending the bonfire from sunset until sunrise the next morning; my daughter even managed to stay awake until about 4am. What a trooper. Gifts were great this year. I got my daughter some games that we can play; I was tired of telling her "daddy's not a game person" so I picked out some games that I actually do like, so we could play together. So far, the most-played game with us has been Stratego, LotR edition. Pretty cool. She also has expressed interest in role playing games; "yes, honey, daddy can help you with that." Heh. I also picked up a Nietzsche anthology for a friend of mine, a fellow Fritzophile. Santa brought me a digital camera as well, which is quite cool. I've wanted one for quite some time, and this one is a nice one; simple for the non-professional, yet powerful and flexible. And it works great with Linux.
Since Yule, I've been focusing on the nature of my current spiritual work with a friend of mine. It's difficult, personal work, and our focus is creating safe space between us that is grounded on all levels, so that we can relate to one another authentically. but it's good work, and I think the rewards for all the work will be well worth it.
I also made the mistake of dipping my toe into long-stagnant waters this week. Gee, what do you know. It stank, and I got slime on my toe. I suppose it was too much to ask that the water would have cleared up on its own. Ah well, luckily toes are easily scrubbed with no ill-effects in the longterm. Live and learn. Again. *rolls eyes*
I'm also growing used to my laptop. The conveniences of it are wonderful. Very cool.
Google Zeitgeist
The
Google Zeitgeist for 2004 is up. It's an interesting cultural snapshot, as it outlines the most popular Internet searches for the year. Google has become a verb; if you need to learn about something, Google it. Etc.
Some of the results were surprising; of course the top 4 entries are robotic babes; britney spears, paris hilton, christina aguilera, pamela anderson.
In Tech Stuff, linux was #5, behind wallpaper at #1 and filesharing topics (kazaa and mp3). The top company query was interesting, as sco, the company suing that they actually own the Linux source code and that everyone running Linux is violating the law, was #1. It's good to see that people are paying attention to this most important case.
Steve Hogarth - out of the broom closet?
On his webpage,
Steve Hogarth of marillion refers to himself as a "pagan" in his latest message:
Well blimey here it is again!
No matter where you are in the world - whether you're traveling, visiting or staying home, I'd like to wish you a happy and peaceful Christmas in your MIND (which is where it matters most). Try to be NICE to someone who doesn't entirely deserve it (we can give more than presents) and, if you're not totally broke, choose a charity and send something to those less fortunate. Don't be afraid to sing a carol. Don't be afraid of anything. Drink LOADS, try not to get sick and be patient with those who do. Don't eat too much, and I'll try not to also. If you're not a Christian, have Christmas anyway just for fun. If you're a pagan (like me) dance naked and I hope you don't get arrested. Here comes summer...
It's a circular ride.
LOVE, PEACE, UNDERSTANDING
h
Now, "pagan" is basically Latin for "redneck," and is furthermore arguably the most broadly-defined terms in history. Not sure exactly what he means, but it would fail to surprise me if he means "pagan" in the "modern neo-pagan religious practitioner" sense. I've suspected for a while now, actually, based on his lyrics and comments in interviews, etc....
Microsoft: we cannot trust code we don't own
How can I trust Firefox? is an article/blog entry by a microsoft employee. According to
Slashdot, the article raises "some interesting security related points."
But I didn't read the article that way. To me, this article cannot imagine a reality outside of its centralized system of control. There are ways around his concerns that do not involve giving control of one's machine to microsoft or anyone else. Open Source software is open, and you can examine it as deeply as you want, right down to examining every single line of code if you are so inclined. If you're that concerned, download the source code from two different places, double check them against each other (using, say, the diff command in Linux), compile it, and run it.
But even if you aren't so motivated, let's think about this pragmatically. How many people are having security problems with Firefox? Raise your hand? Hello?
And I know countless people out there are using Firefox. Even some of my friends are starting to switch. Firefox is the first Free software application to be attractive to several of my friends, which is saying something. You, my dear readers, have been listening to me (and probably others) pontificate about free software for years. I have not yet been able to turn a single person I know onto Linux. Or OpenOffice. But I know several people using Firefox, which is significant.
This is, at bottom, nothing more than FUD. There is no pragmatic need for such draconian security measures. It's not about control. It's about openness.
file transfer works
Alright, I'm sure my readers are growing weary of my geekish technical ruminations here. Too bad for you. ;-) I got ftp between my 2 machines working last night using ssh. This means that, from the laptop, I can transfer files to and from the desktop machine, all wirelessly, from whereever I happen to be. Very cool.
There are 2 things I need to work on now; the first is security to ensure that my network is reasonably safe, and the second is transfer speed. I was getting about 600kB/s in file transfers, which is about twice the typical rate I get out of my cable modem. I was expecting it to be much faster. I still don't know much about this networking stuff; there are doubtlessly many parameters to tweak that will improve performance.
But hey; at least it's working.
At this point there are really only 2 things left to get working optimally on my laptop. The first is getting ACPI working with the fnfx package, which will allow things like suspend to work, and make things like the volume controls etc work properly. This package will require me to recompile my Linux kernel, which I've done before and has its benefits; I can slim it down and get rid of things that I won't need. The problem with it is that it's more work, and it introduces another layer of complexity that doesn't need to be there. I'm tempted to just leave it be and live without the ACPI features. We'll see.
The second thing is to get the Synaptics touchpad driver. At the moment, the touchpad in my system works as a standard mouse-ish driver, but this driver would allow some advanced features of the touchpad to work.
I've also been updating my Linux on Toshiba page to reflect this stuff; before too much longer I should have a more concise version of that page.
computers playing well with others
Well, now that my router is working and both machines (desktop and laptop) can see the Internet, it's time to get the 2 machines talking to one another. I was able to set up a simple network, and I can copy files from one to the other using
ssh. But all this networking stuff is new to me; pages like
this and
this. Ideally, I'd like to be able to transfer files from one machine to the other using
gFTP, it would be basically the same as uploading files to a website. Not sure how to make this happen, but hopefully it won't be too difficult to set up.
Anyway, things are working well in this area. Hopefully I can continue to climb the learning curve....
WiFi w00t!
Well, that was simpler than I expected it to be. Today I bought a
Linksys WRT54G wireless router, and brought it home. Lo and behold, it Just Works™ with Ubuntu Linux! Everything was preconfigured in the install. All I had to do was run the Network Setup wizard from within GNOME on my Linux desktop and it worked fine out of the box.
So now I can be online while wandering about the house. Maybe I'm typing this naked....you'll never know. Heh.
I've said it before, but Linux has come a very long way in terms of user friendliness....there was a time when stuff like this required recompiling the Linux kernel. And if you don't know what that means, count your blessings.
why is this so difficult?
I'm sure an experienced, professional typesetter would laugh at this question. "If it was easy, we wouldn't have jobs." And they'd be correct. However, I'm not referring to typesetting in general, but rather to using sections, master documents, and subdocuments in Openoffice. I'm getting it, and once I grok it it will be a very good tool for the work I have before me. But until then, grrr.....
it's like beating my head against a brick wall.
I sense a theme here. The ways in which I use computers have been pushed to their limits recently. New laptop. Studio computer giving me fits. Trying to grok OpenOffice for advanced document preparation. Getting wireless working (that's on the horizon actually).
Well, in theory I'm good at this stuff....
judgment unreserved
When I first saw
The Return of the King in theaters a year ago, I decided that I would reserve judgment until the extended edition DVD came out. After all, for the first 2 films in the trilogy, I regard the extended editions as being definitive. It just seems ludicrous to me to limit a movie to 3 hours, just for marketing reasons. The extended edition movies are just better, in every way except brevity.
Well, suffice to say that this third extended DVD continues the trend of the first two. Indeed, I take all the movies together, extended edition, as one long 11-hour movie. And I also regard it as the most striking cinematic achievement in history. It's certainly my favorite film, without question.
I won't go into the details and the nitty gritty. But man. Peter Jackson, along with the thousands of people working with him, have cemented their place in our cultural legacy.
Now I want to take the time to watch the entire trilogy, back to back, blocking out an entire day to do so. Anyone feel like throwing a LotR party? ;-)
an expose on spam
This article on Salon.com is a very interesting expose of how spammers work. I use Mozilla Thunderbird, which filters out much of the spam I get, but it is still interesting to know the levels of masking and deception at work in spam. I think a study on the relationship between spam and capitalism is in order....
Don't you know, we're at War!
Well, I've been watching the
Extended Edition Return of the King DVD. In it, there's a scene that I regard as Peter Jackson's jab at President Bush and the war furor that is being protrayed in the American media. In the scene, Frodo and Sam get swept up in an orc batallion and are forced to march to war, with an orc sargeant smacking everyone with whips. His words are straight from George W Bush's mouth: "Don't you know, we're at war!"
It is of course entirely possible that Jackson meant nothing by this and that I'm reading way too much into it. But somehow I doubt it.
Information wants to be googled
This looks very cool:
In the coming months, Google will collaborate with Harvard's libraries on a pilot project to digitize a substantial number of the 15 million volumes held in the University's extensive library system. Google will provide online access to the full text of those works that are in the public domain. In related agreements, Google will launch similar projects with Oxford, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library.
The beginning of complete digitization of information, perhaps? Harvard's library is 2nd only to the Library of Congress in terms of number of books contained. I can't imagine the labor involved in this process.
Though it's important to note that this will only be the case for books written before about 1920, since very few books published since then are actually in the public domain, Creative Commons stuff notwithstanding.
Typesetting books with OpenOffice
As I've mentioned, I'm currently typesetting a couple of books. There are several ways to accomplish this, some more efficient than others. I'm still sort of feeling my way around trying to learn the best way for me to do this kind of work.
This page is a good start, I wanted to document it so I can easily find it again.
Chomsky on the 2004 election
As ever, Noam Chomsky has
insightful comments on the 2004 election. My favorite passage is this one:
In 2000, "issue awareness" -- knowledge of the stands of the candidate-producing organizations on issues -- reached an all-time low. Currently available evidence suggests it may have been even lower in 2004. About 10% of voters said their choice would be based on the candidate's "agendas/ideas/platforms/goals"; 6% for Bush voters, 13% for Kerry voters (Gallup). The rest would vote for what the industry calls "qualities" or "values," which are the political counterpart to toothpaste ads. The most careful studies (PIPA) found that voters had little idea of the stand of the candidates on matters that concerned them. Bush voters tended to believe that he shared their beliefs, even though the Republican Party rejected them, often explicitly. Investigating the sources used in the studies, we find that the same was largely true of Kerry voters, unless we give highly sympathetic interpretations to vague statements that most voters had probably never heard.
As usual, Chomsky also calls for organization and sustained action. He is optmistic, because he sees more mobilization and awareness of issues now than he saw in the 1960s. Let's hope he's correct.
Deserters? Or clearthinkers?
CBS is running a story about the over 5,500 (according to the Pentagon) US soldiers who have declined to participate in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.
There are more of them than I thought.
I applaud them. The soldiers interviewed for the story are saying the right things (right, at least from where I stand):
"I found out, basically, that they found no weapons of mass destruction. They were beginning to come out and say it's not likely that we will find any -- and the claim that they made about ties to al Qaeda was coming up short, to say the least," says Hughey. "It made me angry, because I felt our lives were being thrown away as soldiers, basically."
"People should have a right to say, 'I'm not fighting in that war. That's an illegal war. There's illegal stuff going on the ground. I'm not going,'" says House. "And anyone who says soldiers should go to jail if they don't fight in an illegal war is persecuting them."
Wasn't he supposed to follow orders? "I was told in basic training that, if I'm given an illegal or immoral order, it is my duty to disobey it," says Hinzman. "And I feel that invading and occupying Iraq is an illegal and immoral thing to do."
It's good to see that so many soldiers are seeing these truths, and recognizing Empire's invasion of Iraq for what it is. But the last quote is most interesting in terms of war criminals. If this invasion/occupation is indeed illegal and immoral, then those who participate in it are not only NOT doing their duty by obeying an immoral/illegal order, but also are war criminals.
And please don't give me the "support the troops" nonsense. What exactly does that mean? I've written about this before; the best way to support them is to get them out of an impossible situation where they cannot do the right thing. I reagrd these soldiers, despite their choice to participate in this illegal invasion, as victims of this war. Their lives will require rebuilding; their souls will be marred with their participation in this war.
I hope the US recognizes its insanity and gets these people out of Iraq where they are so clearly not wanted by the local people.
But hey, at least the oil is somewhat safe, where safe means under the control of American corporations...
permanent wageslavery
Well, I got some good news at work today. Effective tomorrow (12/13), I am no longer a "seasonal" employee; I will be permanent part-time. This is good, though I am working Every Single Fucking Weekend, the schedule actually works pretty well for me as it means i don't have to come in during the week (unless I want to pick up some extra hours).
Anyway, yay me. Or something.
Laptoppage
still working on my laptop. Getting used to it. I accidentally hosed my Ubuntu graphical system through my own carelessness. Luckily, I was able to rebuild it. My task now is to get my PCLinuxOS install working correctly, which means fixing the 1280x800 resolution problem. Now that Ubuntu is working correctly again, I should in theory be able to fix that fairly easily.
Not much else going on. Still haven't even begun to tackle the studio computer. I still have to finish editing George's book, George's other book, The Commoner, and stuff for radicalpolytics.org. Yes, in a manner of speaking I'm falling behind. Lots to do, but it's all good work.
I'm looking forward to Yule. I'll have more thoughts on that in due course.
Linux on a Toshiba Satellite M35X-S149
I've written a brief howto on installing
Linux on a Toshiba Satellite M35X-S149. It went well; I just wanted to put the link up here for posterity.
Ubuntu and Toshiba, sittin' in a tree....
I'm writing this from my new
Ubuntu Linux installation on my new Toshiba laptop. I'm thrilled with how well this machine gets along with this Linux distribution. Everything seems to just work, with a few exceptions like the obligatory libdvdcss foolishness to get Linux to play DVDs. I still have more tweakage to do, but so far everything works, even suspend works.
Furthermore, I'm getting used to GNOME again, after having been a KDE user for a long time. I do have to admit that GNOME 2.8 under Ubuntu runs really smoothly. So far, so good.
I first tried to install PCLinuxOS on this machine as well, but it couldn't get the screen resolution right. I may try to futz with it some more; in theory I should be able to tweak it.
I've wanted a laptop for many years. I'm so glad that this one fell into my lap. It was an unbelievable deal, and it plays well with (at least some versions of) Linux.
more laptop stuff
Well, a new laptop has caught my eye. It's a
Toshiba Satellite M35X-S149, which is widely available for $899. Good news is that it has a firewire port, as well as USB 2.0. Decent hard drive size at 60GB, though I'd need to bump up the RAM to 512, especially because it shares video memory with RAM. Plus it comes with a DVD/CDRW drive, as well as built-in networking and wireless. It actually looks to be a better match for me than the Dell, all things being equal and assuming it runs Linux OK.
The thing I need to do is see how well it runs Linux. The best way will be for me to go try it with a Linux live cd and test it. There are some question marks. This machine uses a Celeron M processor, which I'm not sure about. And I don't know which chipset it's using. It uses the Intel 855GME graphics system along with the Realtek ALC250 sound system. It's a 15.4" screen capable of 1280x800 resolution.
So, yeah. This should be a really nice laptop for me, assuming that it runs Linux OK. I'll have to go to Best Buy or Circuit City and test it. this page has very useful info on running a Toshiba M30, which presumably is the older version of the M35. They seem to have very similar specs. Additionally, this page shows that Mandrake runs on the M30 pretty much out of the box; he had video issues but his M30 uses an nVidia graphics board, something this M35 doesn't have. Also, this page gives a very detailed outline of a Gentoo installation, which is arguably an order of magnitude more complex than a PCLinuxOS installation.
Wow. I just called a local store, they have them in stock, and there is a $300 rebate on it! Wow! I think I'm going to go pick it up this week....
Bears should not use computers
Where to begin. I've been an utter Bear to deal with lately; the owl part of my personality has been dominant in dealing with logic, hardware interactions, and inflexible corporate pricing policies. Put another way, let's just say that this week has been a challenging one for me in terms of computers. This is true mainly on two fronts.
First, as I've mentioned I'm in the market for a laptop. I've been a bit intimidated by the process of finding a laptop, because a) I've never purchased a laptop; and b) I want to make sure the one I get will do everything I want it to do (ie, run Linux, record audio, etc). So after quite a bit of research, I found a Dell machine that seems to fit the bill, as others have run Linux on it and it should have plenty of power to record audio. Anyway, I poked around Dell's website, got the configuration I wanted, got a price I could live with, and hung out until all my fundage fell into my lap in a couple days, feeling good about my decision and my ability to find what I wanted at a good price. This was Wednesday.
Well, yesterday (Friday), I called Dell to make sure that the price I saw was indeed the best price, to see if I could talk them down a bit, and then to place the order. Silly Freaking Me. Apparently in the 36 hours since I saw the price online, the price for the laptop had gone up by $100. I went round and round with the operator, but she told me all about Dell's "24 hour pricing" policy, and that they were willing to lose a sale over this matter.
So much for Dell. Bastards. Fuck 'em. At least now I have cash in hand and if I see a good deal on a laptop, I can jump on it. But now the laptop research wheel begins turning anew. Sigh. I hate wasted labor.
But the story just begins here, because the more serious and more disconcerting area of my computer dissonance has to do with the studio computer. All this time I've been running the studio computer with just one hard drive, which of course goes against any sane backup strategy (never keep your data in only one place!). So I decided to add a new hard drive. My computer is compatible with a new type of hard drive (SATA) that is faster and more capable than a normal (IDE) hard drive. So I added it, and got everything to work after some small hassle.
The problem is, now every time I record audio, I get pops and clicks on the resulting audio tracks. I've tried several solutions (I may post a detailed account in a bit...posterity, you know) to no avail. The problem seems to be in regulating how data moves through the motherboard. Recording high definition multitrack audio requires some serious data transfer, lots of info moving in and out of the machine. The machine accomplishes this through what are called IRQ channels. One thing to do is ensure that the audio card has its own IRQ channel with nothing else on it to interfere; so far I've not been able to accomplish this. Until now it hasn't been a problem, but the new hard drive means more data is flowing; hence the pops and clicks. It's never been an issue in the past.
To make this matter even more frustrating, Matt and I this week had arranged for 2 full days in the studio so we could focus (sans interruption, sans kids,etc) on "making tracks" for this album. Both days were lost, as I spent the entire time wrestling with the computer.
So my owl is exhausted, and my bear is rampaging.
I think I need to smash something with silicon in it...take that metaphor any way you want.
