Infrequent Posts

Sorry about my rather scant blogging output this last week -- I had expected it to be a good week for blogging, but several things came up. One of the more exciting was that I got a new computer for the first time in more than six years, so the last couple of days have been taken up with getting it all up and running and tweaked to my satisfaction. It is not the most cutting edge machine I could've bought because I wanted to make 100% sure it would work with linux more or less out of the box, but it is miles ahead of what I've been using (especially since the harddrive in what I've been using has been teetering on the edge for some time and does its work very, very, slooooowly). I'm using the latest Ubuntu distribution of linux, which I think I like better than the older Red Hat distro that I've been using for the last few years. Anyway, I had to spend a few hours tinkering to get the sound working and am still unclear which of the configuration changes I made actually did the trick, but that was the only serious problem I've run into. And then migrating all of my stuff from my previous machine has been painstakingly slow (see the aforementioned harddrive slowness). But it is very exciting overall. For one thing, this new setup will allow me to do something I have been dreaming of doing since I bought my last computer: speedy and non-cumbersome audio editing in linux. I've made a couple of attempts to play around with it in the past, but the combination of old, slow hardware and software that wasn't far enough along in its development meant that my successes were satisfying but took far, far too long to consider using it for any work with regular deadlines. But the unexpected temptation to return to some sort of radio work continues to afflict me, and now I can start figuring out if the tools at my disposal make it practical...

Anyway. Enough self-indulgent technotalk for the moment. Getting back to the point, this coming week is unlikely to result in very many posts either, as it is shaping up to be quite intensive in terms of my childcare responsibilities...but keep checking back here, because I have one book I've been meaning to review for over a week and several other ideas bouncing around my brain, so if I have the energy in the evenings, I may manage an item or two. And if not, I'll be back to a more reliable work schedule the following week.