I finally got my DAW computer working today.  I got a Dell D630 Core 2 Duo laptop a couple of months ago and have wanted to use it to replace my old Pentium 4 Dimension 3000.

Problems began when the laptop arrived with Windows Vista.  ProTools (the DAW software I use) doesn’t work on Vista, so I started by downgrading to Windows XP Pro.  Not as easy as you might think, because after paying 75 cold ones for the downgrade, I couldn’t get the XP installation to recognize the hard drive.  After spending a weekend with Dell, my local tech support guys, and completely erasing the hard-drive with U.S. Department of Homeland Security approved software, it still didn’t work.  Turns out I had to set the hard drive to compatibility mode in the BIOS.  After doing that, I got XP installed.

Next I installed ProTools.  But, of course, it didn’t work.  Playback would randomly terminate, and Stylus RMX would only play back about one note out of every 20.  The program kept telling me that it was having resource conflicts with the OS, and I was screaming “You have a Core 2 Duo!  You have 2 GB of RAM!  How can there be a resource conflict?!”

I contacted Digidesign tech support, and they told me that my machine wasn’t supported and so they wouldn’t do anything.  I was ready to give up on it, but I decided to spend this morning messing with it one last time to see if I could find a solution.  I disabled the internal network cards and WiFi, and booted up in diagnostic mode.  Still nothing.  Finally, as a last ditch effort, I disabled dual core support for the processor.  That was it!  Everything works!  Amazing!  I was dancing around for a few minutes with Winnie and Jo.  After two long months, the thing finally works.  It’s a miracle.

In other news, the Ring of Scribes will be featured on the WeasleyCast Halloween special this week.  I believe you can tune in to WeasleyCast on iTunes.  If you would like to help us out, tune in to the podcast and leave a comment about us.

Hope everyone has a very bad, very sad, disgusting Halloween.

As you may have noticed many of us, including me, have a hard time being a fan of the Harry Potter movies. I recently went and saw the latest installment of the Harry Potter movies: Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix. This movie is based on the 5th book of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Being one of my least favorite books in the series, The Order of the Phoenix is not one that I have read many times. I’ve only finished the book two times and the last time I read it was over two years ago. I think this was the key element in my enjoyment of the film. It had been so long since I had read the book that I wasn’t entirely sure what they cut out of the movie. When my wife said she didn’t care much for it when it finished I had to ask why. She went on to list about 20 things that they didn’t get right. As I remembered the various plot points she talked about I realized that they did miss a lot, however it didn’t damper the fact that while I was watching the movie I didn’t remember these things and had therefore actually enjoyed the film. That being said, I don’t think that if I had not read the book at some point I would have enjoyed the movie as much. The thing I like the most about the Harry Potter series of movies is that they remind me how much I love the books. That alone is good enough for me.

I decided today that I am going to do a website based soley on my hatred of the Harry Potter movies. The fans of the books will understand how I feel. When the first Harry Potter movie came out I was incredibly excited. I thought it would be impossible for producers and directors to ruin such a strong and entertaining plot. Unfortunately, the images and feelings the book brought were nearly completely absent from the movie. While the movie was still entertaining to those who had never read the books, it was a huge dissappointment for me and I’m sure for many other true fans. Not too far into the series they changed directors, and Richard Harris (the first Dumbledore) died. This only made the movies worse. Michael Gambon was brought on to play the part of Dumbledore, and the next movie was made. When I first saw “Prisoner of Azkaban” and laid eyes on the new Dumbledore I thought I didn’t like him just because he looked so much less like my idea of Dumbledore than Richard Harris. I was wrong. It soon became apparent that Michael Gambon didn’t act like I expected Dumbledore to act. I find this a little strange, because the character of Dumbledore had been present through several novels at that point, and it was pretty obvious what kind of a person he is. I decided to read Michael Gambon’s take on the role, and he said something about wanting to make the character his own. I realize that if you want to be passionate about a role you should make the character own, but it does not mean that you make up a character and try to be them instead. Michael Gambon obviously doesn’t understand the basic premise of acting which is to try and be like someone else, as opposed to making someone else, in this case a fictional character, like you. But Gambon isn’t the only problem. For some reason Hollywood thinks that sacrificing any action sequences in favor of character development is going too far. If you actually care about the characters in a movie that makes it a “chick flick” right? I feel what is very nearly rage against those who make the Harry Potter movies. So my new anti-Harry-Potter-Movies website will include clips from the movies that I have improved, will allow for clips that anyone else has improved, and will be a place to share your opinions about the movies.

For those of you who don’t know, the 7th and final Harry Potter book hit the shelves on th 21st. As most other eager fans, I went down to the local Wal-mart at midnight to grab myself a copy. My wife and I spent almost the next day straight reading. I wish to post my reactions to the book here. Now, I’m telling you right now. If you didn’t read the book yet and you don’t wish to subject yourself to spoilers, don’t click the read more link.

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Well, the day has finally come. I have been waiting for this day for a long time. Well, although today isn’t technically the day that Harry Potter 7 is available, this is the day of the Harry Potter party. The “Great Hall” was set up last night, picture forthcoming, and it’s looking pretty good. I was unable to stay the whole time they were setting up, but I was able to help somewhat. The walls have been covered with large sheets of gray butcher paper to make them look like stone. There have been props set up everywhere. The Hogwarts house flags hang from the ceilings, surrounded by stars. This should turn out to be an exciting party.

“A Series of Unfortunate Events” could have been the coolest most intriguing books of all time. As the end of the Harry Potter series draws closer, and fans look for resolution of the major and minor plot points set forth by J.K. Rowling in the previous novels, I am reminded of the huge disappointment felt by most if not all of the readers of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” as they read the the final book in the series “The End”. This set of books gained quite a lot of popularity, and many of my friends said they liked it better than the Potter series.

I personally had a hard time getting into these books, mostly because the first five had the same basic plot. However, I became extremely interested in this series as it became apparent that the real story of interest was that of the author and his connection to the mysterious secret society of VFD. Like most of the reader I was dying to know the real connection between Lemony Snicket, the Baudelaires, and Beatrice. By and large, the protagonists in this series, the Baudelaire orphans, are quite static and the reader doesn’t care any more for them then he or she would if they were any other children experiencing the same thing, but the plot was the driving force behind readership. I participated in several forums and other websites that theorized about what would become of the Baudelaire’s and their nemesis, Count Olaf. There were also around 100 other plot points that needed resolution for the reader to be satisfied.

Unfortunately, in the final book all Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) did was to introduce new plot points and then say something like you won’t find out the answers to the questions you have, but sometimes there are things in life that we just don’t know about. Quite frankly, this was the first philosophical portion of any of these novels. The other night I was thinking about what the author could have done to properly finish off these novels, and I came up with an idea that I thought was so great that I was extremely disappointed that Lemony Snicket didn’t think of it too. In one of the novels there is a code introduced called the Siebald code. Basically, the code starts whenever the word “ring” appears in the text. After its appearance every ninth word is kept and the other words are discarded. This continues until the word “ring” appears again.

To those who were disappointed by book the 13 of “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, how would you have felt if you read this seemingly pointless novel, only to analyze it further to find the answers to all of your questions explained by the Siebald code? Then, just at the end of Lemony Snicket’s secret message there was a note telling you the secret location of the last safe place of VFD and how to get in once you found it? During the writing of the novels, it would have been easy for Daniel Handler to construct a secret, out-of-the-way, underground structure and decorate it in the style of a VFD safe place. Most readers would have been hesitant to actually go to such a place, but some of them would have, and once it was discovered, how cool would that have been. I think the publicity and popularity of something like that would have been extremely hard to top. So, to Lemony Snicket, “If you ever read this, you totally blew it.”

I am a long time fan of the Harry Potter series, and I traditionally buy the books the day they come out. This year I have decided to have a Harry Potter party for those of my friends who also buy the book as soon as is humanly possible. The get together will be at my house and I am in the middle of preparations. My plan is to make on of the rooms in my house look as much like the great hall at Hogwarts as I can. Now before you start to think of me as a complete nerd, I will have to say that I currently don’t plan on dressing up for this event. I think my fantasy life is rich enough without the encouragement my neuroses will receive from a full on Harry Potter costume. I don’t plan to start decorating until the week that the final Potter installment hits the shelves. I will continue to write about my preparation and post pictures of the room, food , and the party itself as events unfold.

Hey, all you Harry Potter fans! The glorious day is only 13 days away and we all need a place to speculate. I’ve created the #harrypotter at Jaiku. For those who aren’t familiar with Jaiku, it’s a place where you create a mini-blog that allows you to make simple posts about what you are currently doing. You can make posts via the web or by mobile phone. The #harrypotter channel was created so that everyone could go there and talk about question such as, “Is Snape good or bad?” That’s the first question that I’ve thrown out there, so come on over to Jaiku.com and sign up for the #harrypotter channel.

Here is the link: #harrypotter