As technology continues to evolve, I find myself being greedy and wanting technology that doesn’t exist. Here is what I would have:

First, I would have an extremely fast central computer system that was running in my home. It would be the central hub of my system. It would have the ability to run all your standard desktop applications as well as all multimedia applications. Connected to it would be a HD projector for visual display and a 7.1 surround sound system for audio. Hence, it would also double as my personal theater. Along with this central computer, I would require a service that would let me download HD audio and video content at extremely high speeds so that playback was instantaneous. This content would have to include any and all major films, music albums, etc.

Second, I would have a handheld device. It would have all the current technologies, phone, media player, GPS and soforth. This device would have a large screen with touch controls and would directly interface with my central system wirelessly. The device would be able to stream the audio and video from the main system at extremely high speeds so that I would have complete access to any of my content at anytime. Furthermore, this device would automatically detect whether I was at home, work, or in the car and be able to wirelessly interface with various speaker systems that I have set up in those areas.

Almost all this technology currently exists, it just hasn’t been put together in this fashion. This is what I would like and hope that it becomes available to me some day.

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.

I met this guy the other day that really bugged me a lot. He was the systems administrator for a small web company. When he found out that I was a mac user he started to go off on how much he hates macs and what not. I’m not usually bugged by people who hate macs, but I’ll have to admit that I was quite bugged by some of the things this guy said. One of the statements he made was this: “Apple can’t do anything right so they just have to be critical of Microsoft.” Now if dominating the music player industry and having your stock rise from $7/share to $180/share in 5 years isn’t doing something right, then I don’t know what is. I’m completely accepting of anyone who has a preference of operating system, but to say that Apple or even Microsoft aren’t doing anything right is just ignorant.