On a lark, I tried the 32-bit version on my 6-year-old laptop - took about half-an-hour to a full boot. Amazing.

That said, the dual-drive Mac Mini makes a great machine for Reason and the RAID array means the data is always backed up. Which is nice. But it definitely doesn't like Windows. At all. Even when given its own drive and no Boot Camp. What a prima donna.

So now I'm going to revisit Ableton Live Lite (free, courtesy of Soundcloud) and see how it plays with Reason. And we'll never talk about Windows again.

I'm also jotting down notes in a new blog for the good For Dummies folks, so feel free to enjoy my musings over there as well.  There are some other notable blogs over there, like Bob LeVitus's Dr. Mac blog.  The Wiley folks are moving a good deal of their instructional content online at Dummies.com, and I'm happy to be a part of it.

And now I'm going to get some sleep and try to avoid a head cold on a show weekend with a book deadline rapidly approaching.

Somehow, I don't think there's a book in this one. Sorry, Hoff.

For a good long time, there wasn't a modern console in our general living area - there's an old Genesis moldering in the closet, and I occasionally fire up a PS1 to remember the good old days of the Pittsburgh Steelers under Kordell Stewart (such magical times - the mental equivalent of suffering a Theismann injury), but I know what kind of time drain I face when I'm around these things. I can probably justify it a bit as research into video game music, but that's a hollow reason. It's just time to accept a bunch of wasted time.

I wonder if my wife know she may never be able to use the big TV again?

Hypothetically speaking, though - if you've been busted for illegal filesharing, please at least acknowledge what you've been doing and have a well-reasoned and thought-out argument for doing so.  I can respect your logical viewpoints on the matter, even if I disagree with them.  A blank stare and stammering protestations will earn you nothing.  Especially if you're asking for my help.

Enough. I'm linking to a photo from the Hamer Guitars website of a lovely 12-string bass. I got to hear the sound of it played solo on a documentary a couple of days ago, and it reminded me of all that is good and right in the world.

Now multiply that by the five versions of Vista I have to account for my current project, and all the fun should become clear.  I'm writing using Vista Ultimate, which includes the whole shebang, and I'm trying to take into consideration all the features and such people might not see.  Joy.

Also, the new IMN podcast is up.  Download it here or listen at the site.

I tried to sound intelligent.

Also, "South Park" was right this evening.  A shutdown or reboot of computing devices can help clear up scads of issues.  Learn that now and save yourself some time.

The new IMN podcast is up - download directly or listen at the site.

The new hard drive is in my system, and I've got both an OS X and a Vista partition running without incident. The only hassle so far has been reloading data (not major, as I could just copy data over from the old drive) and programs (slightly more, 'cause I have to hunt down old serial numbers from upgrades). The upshot of it is that I now have more space on the Mac side for music projects, and the Vista side is ready for work on my upcoming laptop book.

I saw the U2 3-D movie over the weekend, and it was an interesting experience. The music was overall decent to this casual listener (aside from a seemingly flat section in "Beautiful Day"), and there were no overwhelming "COMING RIGHT AT YOU!" moments (again, aside from an obligatory Bono reaching out towards the camera - what did you expect?). The drum set stood out particularly well, as did some of the crowd shots, and there were some drawn-in and composited special effects that were interesting as well. It did carry a "layered" look to it - the effects at times appeared on very flat panes that seemed stacked on each other. Still, a decent spectacle.