Work and all that jazz
I'm working on music for the demo disc I'm making for work. They recorded rather a lot of music for the program which has been okayed for use on the disc, from various traditional and folk singers/bands, as well as some pipe music and other things. I'm not particularly into trad/folk, but some of it's quite good. Or at least, I think it would be quite good if it weren't for the recording quality.
What's depressing is that virtually all the music is in the form of 8-bit, 11KHz wav files. The distortion and hissiness is horrendous, and in some cases is louder than the music. (for reference of those who don't do digital sound stuff: CD quality is 16-bit, 44.1KHz, and most professional recording nowadays is quite a lot higher...) Basically, it makes my ears hurt. And I suspect that it was recorded at that quality, quite a while ago, with cheap equipment, and that I have no hope of getting anything better.
There's also some traditional music recorded by a keyboardist using an old, cheap-ass Casio/Yamaha keyboard with FM synthesis. And *that*'s recorded at 8-bit, 11KHz, plus power supply hum, soundcard noise, etc... It's painful.
I'm now listening to Afro Celt Sound System, which is aural honey in comparison.
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Saturday's GA meet was a bit of a bust for me. I didn't get much sleep the night before (after several months I've finally gotten around to reading the copy of A Game of Thrones that Mishi lent me, and it's somewhat addictive) and I ended up getting bored and pissed off with certain people pretty early on, and wandering off while the group was still in Central.
It's gotten to the point where I'm only really at the GA because of Nate and Mishi, and I very rarely enjoy the meets. Admittedly, I've never been the greatest participant in the GA - I'm a pretty reserved person under most circumstances and, while it was quite pleasant, I've rarely thrown myself into getting to know everybody like other people have. Anyway, I've got something else in the form of SURGe to look forward to, so I'm not particularly bothered.
Anyway, I ended up wandering around the city centre aimlessly, by myself since Nate was still with the group. Stopped and watched a double-decker tour bus that had broken down and was being towed by a big-ass recovery vehicle, basically a small mobile crane on a lorry chassis, designed to be able to lift buses up for repairs or tow them if necessary. Pretty nifty. I'm so easily distracted by such things ^^;
After it left, I headed in a random direction and after a couple of minutes found myself in George Square, at the free jazz festival. I found a nice spot, leaned against a lamppost, and watched what turned out to be Rosie Brown and band, who were excellent. The music cheered me right up, and after they finished their set I met back up with Nate and the others, sat on the grass in George Square for a while, then left for SURGe.
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I hate hayfever. It's the bane of my summers, and when summer goes away I usually end up with a succession of really minor but annoying colds to make up for it. Plus, deoderant sets off my sneezing fits too, so I almost always have ten minutes in the morning when all I can do is sneeze, blow my nose, and wipe streaming eyes. I'd switch to non-aerosol stuff, but I hate stick/roller deoderants. Bah.
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[edit] Regarding work, I forgot to mention this:
This is possibly the stupidest thing I've ever had to use. Basically, everything but the javascript is a normal link. The link is part of my demo program, and worked while I was developing it. Unfortunately, when I demo'd the program to my employer, the link stopped working (it just didn't do anything when it was clicked) for absolutely no reason - I hadn't altered anything, the environment was exactly the same (since I develop on the laptop that I used for the demo)...
So, it now has Javascript attached to it that basically says this: "When the user clicks this link, change the page in the content window to the page that this link points to."
Which is exactly what the link would do normally, if it worked.
It beggars belief - but it makes things work again. Sigh.
I've also found that some of the Javascript I wrote doesn't work in IE5. Damn. For now, though, I just need to get more content done.
What's depressing is that virtually all the music is in the form of 8-bit, 11KHz wav files. The distortion and hissiness is horrendous, and in some cases is louder than the music. (for reference of those who don't do digital sound stuff: CD quality is 16-bit, 44.1KHz, and most professional recording nowadays is quite a lot higher...) Basically, it makes my ears hurt. And I suspect that it was recorded at that quality, quite a while ago, with cheap equipment, and that I have no hope of getting anything better.
There's also some traditional music recorded by a keyboardist using an old, cheap-ass Casio/Yamaha keyboard with FM synthesis. And *that*'s recorded at 8-bit, 11KHz, plus power supply hum, soundcard noise, etc... It's painful.
I'm now listening to Afro Celt Sound System, which is aural honey in comparison.
---
Saturday's GA meet was a bit of a bust for me. I didn't get much sleep the night before (after several months I've finally gotten around to reading the copy of A Game of Thrones that Mishi lent me, and it's somewhat addictive) and I ended up getting bored and pissed off with certain people pretty early on, and wandering off while the group was still in Central.
It's gotten to the point where I'm only really at the GA because of Nate and Mishi, and I very rarely enjoy the meets. Admittedly, I've never been the greatest participant in the GA - I'm a pretty reserved person under most circumstances and, while it was quite pleasant, I've rarely thrown myself into getting to know everybody like other people have. Anyway, I've got something else in the form of SURGe to look forward to, so I'm not particularly bothered.
Anyway, I ended up wandering around the city centre aimlessly, by myself since Nate was still with the group. Stopped and watched a double-decker tour bus that had broken down and was being towed by a big-ass recovery vehicle, basically a small mobile crane on a lorry chassis, designed to be able to lift buses up for repairs or tow them if necessary. Pretty nifty. I'm so easily distracted by such things ^^;
After it left, I headed in a random direction and after a couple of minutes found myself in George Square, at the free jazz festival. I found a nice spot, leaned against a lamppost, and watched what turned out to be Rosie Brown and band, who were excellent. The music cheered me right up, and after they finished their set I met back up with Nate and the others, sat on the grass in George Square for a while, then left for SURGe.
---
I hate hayfever. It's the bane of my summers, and when summer goes away I usually end up with a succession of really minor but annoying colds to make up for it. Plus, deoderant sets off my sneezing fits too, so I almost always have ten minutes in the morning when all I can do is sneeze, blow my nose, and wipe streaming eyes. I'd switch to non-aerosol stuff, but I hate stick/roller deoderants. Bah.
---
[edit] Regarding work, I forgot to mention this:
This is possibly the stupidest thing I've ever had to use. Basically, everything but the javascript is a normal link. The link is part of my demo program, and worked while I was developing it. Unfortunately, when I demo'd the program to my employer, the link stopped working (it just didn't do anything when it was clicked) for absolutely no reason - I hadn't altered anything, the environment was exactly the same (since I develop on the laptop that I used for the demo)...
So, it now has Javascript attached to it that basically says this: "When the user clicks this link, change the page in the content window to the page that this link points to."
Which is exactly what the link would do normally, if it worked.
It beggars belief - but it makes things work again. Sigh.
I've also found that some of the Javascript I wrote doesn't work in IE5. Damn. For now, though, I just need to get more content done.