I love the sound of edits in the morning

Flaked out fairly early last night, and made up for it by getting up at somewhere around 5am. Blink, blink. And since I didn't get any album work done last night...

Fixed the sync problems in the last chorus of "Little Computing Machine". There's still one pitch problem -- one blasted note -- that will probably require re-recording (it wavers, so simple pitch correction won't do it).

Fixed numerous sync problems on "TEOTW"; there may still be some minor ones left, plus one or two minor pitch problems. Possibly OK. I want to redo the shaker part now that I've fixed the timing.

This leaves "Someplace in the Net" as the only one I really can't live with, plus drum on "Guilty Pleasures" and one remaining effect bit on "Vampire Megabyte" that would be nice but not essential.

And then there are the insert, tray card graphics, and paperwork. I still have to come up with a suitable IP rights form for my performers to sign off on: anyone out there have an example I can crib? Yes, I'm running late with this stuff. Problem with doing it all myself -- I can blame my lazy, undisciplined, incompetent minions all I want; they're still me, myself, and I.

The joys of Linux package management

Here's a blog post from Mark Pilgrim, who switched to Linux a year ago (from Mac) and was warned "You'll be tweaking MORE, configuring MORE, installing MORE because NOTHING is as packaged and polished. ... Enjoy your time with Linux, and when the endless Google searches to fix some miniscule package dependancy version problems finally drive you away, you will of course be welcomed back."

Well, it's a year later, and he concludes his post with...

In 2006, the only thing I had to compile on Ubuntu was Mplayer. (Oh yeah, and Supertux.) At the end of 2006, I switched from Ubuntu to Debian. In 2007, I don't compile anything at all. (Especially since I discovered the Debian-Multimedia repository. Weekly builds of Mplayer, Mencoder, Ffmeg, libavcodec, and libavformat. Professionally packaged, for multiple platforms. If that doesn't mean anything to you, don't worry about it; it means a lot to me.) Let me repeat that: I. Don't. Compile. Anything. I have 902 packages installed, and 0 compilers. Everything I need is already packaged.

Enjoy your time with Linux, and when the endless Google searches to fix some miniscule package dependancy version problems finally drive you away, you will of course be welcomed back.

One year later, I look back on comments like this, and I just laugh. Sorry, Anonymous Commenter, you couldn't have been more wrong. You got it exactly backwards. When your operating system finally comes with a package management system that is both comprehensive and extensible, you will of course be welcomed... to the 1990s. In the meantime, I'll continue to enjoy my time with Linux.

(From Don Marti -- don_marti on LJ.)

He's right. I've spent a lot more than a year on Linux, and was a Unix user before that. I've tried most of the newer OSs and found them to be inferior, in most respects, every time -- I've never had a reason to switch. Oh, and...

   [steve 536] dpkg -l | grep ii | wc -l
   1175

Backups and UPSs

Meanwhile, my disk test is finally on its final write pass. At roughly 3.5 hours per pass, I'm guessing sometime between 2 and 3am. (ETA: 03:56:13, as it turns out) I'm really enjoying having an OS that's stable enough that you can run a two-day I/O-bound process without having to worry about anything more likely than a possible power failure. (Not entirely unlikely, though -- we've had two at work so far this season. There's a reason why my machines are on APC UPSs.)

Learning to program

Recently I've been looking into the programming language Ruby. This page has a lot of good resources, including some for people who know nothing at all about programming and want a quick introduction. Ruby turns out to be a particularly good first language, in part because of its closeness to Smalltalk, which was originally designed as a teaching language.

Learn to Program, by Chris Pine is a good introduction to programming, in 12 easy web pages. Reading this and following the examples won't make you a programmer, but it will get you pointed in the right direction.

Why's (Poingnant) Guide to Ruby by why the lucky stiff is a quirky, funny, occasionally (yes) poingnant guide to the language with cartoon foxes and weird sidebars; significantly more complete than Learn to Program. Experienced programmers will probably find it too slow and rambling, but it's an entertaining ramble if you have the time for it.

Programming Ruby (The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide) by Dave Thomas is a more traditional introduction, perhaps not as elegant as the Report on the Algorithmic Language Algol 60, but highly accessible. You could easily use it as an introductory programming textbook.

If you're already familiar with some other programming language, you should head directly to Ruby From Other Languages -- although it doesn't mention Smalltalk, which is arguably the closest match.

If you're a web developer and haven't been living under a rock for the last four years you already know about Ruby on Rails.