Category: Tech Tools

Tools and tech tips to get stuff done (music tech has its own category)

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My How You’ve Grown

I was looking at specs for my shiny “new” Mac G4, fresh out of 1999. I mean, it sold for around $1600 when it was new! I loaded it up with 1.25 GB of RAM, a fresh HD, and man, this thing is rocking!

Well, sort of.

That’s when I realized that a new Raspberry Pi 3 B+, which costs about $60 including a 32GB flash card and a power supply, is faster. It’s also way smaller, more power efficient, quieter, and generally better in every way.

Except it’s not a Mac G4, and it can’t run OSX (which, arguably, the G4 can’t really run now either).

The RaspPi is based on ARM architecture. It comes with four (4!) CPU cores, 1GB of RAM (running at 400 Mhz), n-band WiFi, Bluetooth, and HDMI with hi-def audio built into it. For $40.

My Mac G4 was also about $40 once I souped it up. It has a single 400 Mhz CPU, and 1.25 GB of RAM (running at 100Mhz). Everything else is pretty much on par, more or less.

But gosh darn it, I just like the G4. I like the “ooohm” sound it makes when you turn it on. I like looking at it. Sure, it’s a little noisy. But it has clear handles! And a DVD drive which isn’t fast enough to play movies on. And 64-bit PCI card slots. And did I mention the cool boot-up sound it makes? It’s like magic.

sigh

I know progress is never-ending. But you know, it makes me think:

If most people can get by with using a Raspberry Pi as a very basic computer- which is what it’s aimed at- then what’s wrong with using a 20-year-old Mac for the same purpose if their performance is even closely comparable?

Seriously though, I’m going to have to get one of these Pi 3’s. Would make a killer little NAS file/cloud server.

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The Increasing Irrelevancy of Digital Technology

I’ll admit it, I’m a nerd. A geek extraordinaire. A pseudo-hacker-wannabe.

But I hate using digital technology.

Let me clarify: I love the idea of technology. But I can’t stand the way it’s being, and has been, developed.

When I was young, I devoured sci-fi books by great authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and so forth. I was absolutely enraptured by the idea of what technology could theoretically do. Robots, artificial intelligence, space travel, and all sorts of fantastic things. Along came Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Star Wars, and it seemed like our bright future was right around the corner. And you have to understand, we were all waiting for that utopia. We wanted it to become reality.

Then we started noticing the warning signs. George Orwell’s 1984. Films like Blade Runner, Ghost In the Shell, (the original, not the live-action remake) and even The Matrix warned us of possible ultimate end-game scenarios. It was exhilarating, yes, but also a dark foreshadowing of the consequences of technology.

Fast-forward thirty years. Now we have smartphones, internet-connected fridges, self-driving auto-updating cars, toasters that can tweet, and absolutely none of it does what I thought technology was supposed to do: make life simpler. The idea was that computers and technology were supposed to take care of the mundane things, so that people could get back to just enjoying life. But that’s not what happened at all.

Continue reading “The Increasing Irrelevancy of Digital Technology”
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Macwards Compatible

I recently had a discussion about Apple products with a friend. As usual when I discuss Apple, it reminded me of how much control companies have over our overall technological experience.

I recently picked up a vintage Power Mac G4 (a Graphite G4 AGP, for those wondering), and the first thing I thought of was “what OS should I put on it?”

If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time, you’d know that I’m a proponent of Linux, and I knew Ubuntu at one point had a distro made for PowerPC-based computers, so I started digging. And what I found kind of both disgusted me, and confirmed what I knew about Apple all along.

Time warp: I remember, back in the late 90’s, when they first introduced Mac OS X. It was a huge slap in the face of Microsoft at the time, because it signaled a transition to a “real” operating system, based on Unix. Which of course meant that it was stable, fast, and easily extended. And then of course, Apple took the very best things about Unix, locked them down, and made it into a proprietary platform that was (in some ways) worse than Microsoft Windows.

Continue reading “Macwards Compatible”

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Blog Woes (and Other First World Problems)

A big part of having a blog is writing stuff. And as a semi-serious writer, I don’t really have a lot of time to mess with stuff that’s gimmicky. I need something simple, effective, and trouble-free.

For writing blog posts, I normally would use the WordPress editor- until I discovered they recently replaced it with a piece of garbage something called the “Gutenberg Editor.” I’ll be honest: the new WordPress Gutenberg block editor is extremely frustrating and unintuitive for me. And I’m not alone. As for now, you can install a plugin that lets you revert back to the classic WordPress TinyMCE editor (why do I even have to manually install something for that??).

But the absolute worst part of this whole disaster is that WordPress admins and developers absolutely don’t care at all that everybody hates it. This alone is enough reason to give me pause.

Realistically, this is a huge PR disaster for Automattic. They have gotten so much negative press for this, they’d have to be blind not to realize this mandatory rollout was a huge mistake. It even caused their Accessibility lead developer to resign.

I’m not a web developer or a programmer- I’m a writer. I don’t do custom coded plugins, I don’t use custom media types, I don’t mess with CSS or PHP unless I have to, and even if I did, there are already plugins that handle all those functions.

I don’t use WordPress.com’s commercial products- I use the open-source software backend to run my self-hosted site. I feel like they should be free to develop whatever they want for paying clients as need be, but the backend should have been left alone. It’s painfully obvious they only were considering their commercial clients, and not the thousands of developers (running millions of sites) that use the backend in different ways. Even with thousands of pieces of feedback saying this was a bad idea, they went forward with it anyway.

However:

In an attempt to not sound like a whiny brat, I’m going to actually try to make something good out of this. I understand why WordPress.com changed their editor to compete with other layout-driven website designers like Wix. I understand that the old editor had issues. I know there needed to be improvement (even if I vehemently disagree with the direction they went).

So in order for me to fully use the Gutenberg editor, it will require me to learn what it can do, and why. Only then will I be able to give constructive feedback to hopefully make it better for people like me, who don’t care about all the developer stuff and just want to write.

Going forward, I will be documenting my foray into the Brave New World of blocks and web developing and all that stuff, even if only for me to be able to have a well-reasoned argument as to why I don’t like it. Who knows, I may even throw in a tutorial here and there as I learn how to use it.

But really, isn’t writing supposed to be fun and enjoyable? It kind of makes me wonder if WordPress was trying to make blogging more difficult. I don’t appreciate them trying to force me to become a developer (or having to pay someone else to). I just want to write.

We shall see: time will tell. The proof is in the pudding. And all that stuff.

(But I’m still a firm believer in “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”)

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Pedalboard or Laptop?

This is what I’m currently using to play guitar in church. It looks kind of complicated, but there’s a method to the madness.

One of the goals I’ve had for this pedalboard since I started building it was to create a one-man-band busking/performance setup. And with this last piece, I’m very close.

I added a Digitech Jamman Solo XT- but not for looping. No, I still need a looper that can sync to MIDI clock, and there’s only a few on the market. I’ll probably end up getting a TC Ditto X4, or a Pigtronix Infinity for that. The Jamman is for running backing tracks. That’s right, I can load up the SD card in it with .wav files, and use it for background pads, full-blown tracks, or whatever. I can even run click tracks on one side if I have to run a full backing track.

Of course, minimalism is something I consider an art form. And this board isn’t very minimal. In fact, it’s getting pretty big. And it makes me wonder, “Should I replace it with a single thing?”

But the only things I can find that would do what this board does would be either a laptop, or something like a TC Helicon Voicelive 3 Extreme. Neither one is a cheap alternative.

If my goal is to lead music solo, then this board is moving in the right direction. But there’s still more it could do: I can add vocal effects, and a programmable MIDI controller, and a switcher, and a looper…

At this point, I have more money tied up in these pedals than I do in all my guitars and amp put together. But would it be simpler to just sell all of that and use a laptop? Could that even be a possibility? Continue reading “Pedalboard or Laptop?”

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Alternatives to Google

In a previous post, I discussed the idea of avoiding closed software, and specifically, how to quit using products tied to the Cloud made by Google or Apple.

There’s also privacy and security concerns using third-party cloud vendors like Dropbox and Evernote.

One solution would be to rent your own NextCloud server, which would at least break you free of Google or Apple, but still ties you to a third-party cloud vendor.

The only way to be completely free of these companies (or any third-party company) and still have the convenience of Cloud connectivity is to run your own Cloud server. But once you have a cloud server set up, the rest is shockingly simple.

I’ve done this using ownCloud, and I’ll be covering how to do that in another article. It only cost me $75 for a refurbished Dell desktop tower, and some time and energy learning how to do it. The hardest part was configuring Apache’s SSL redirects through arcane and ancient nested text config files (which is fodder for yet another how-to article). Continue reading “Alternatives to Google”

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Closed Software

I’ve come to a logical but painful decision.

I’m not going to use software under Windows or Mac OSX any more. And I don’t really want to use Android, either.

After trying to get Windows 7 running in a virtual machine in Linux, I discovered that Microsoft now cripples the activation process for OS’s that aren’t OE supplied.

If I can’t get it to run in Linux in some form, then I pretty much don’t want to use it.

Here’s my dilemma: I actually have software that won’t run in Linux, that I use on a semi-regular basis (hence the reason I was trying to get Windows running in a virtual machine). In particular, I use HPTuners software (for tuning my car) and SoundTower’s Adrenalinn 3 editor. Neither one of them is particularly well written (they won’t run in an emulation layer because of weird UI glitches), but they cover a need that nothing else does.

I’ve been looking at other software as well- games mostly- that won’t run in Linux. Not even if I run Steam in Wine (which is a whole other dumpster fire).

But really, the kicker for me is music production software. There’s millions of useful programs I could buy for Windows or OSX, but that requires me also dealing with the horrific privacy and security mess that goes with each of those options.

I don’t really want to compromise my future security or privacy for the convenience of a nifty tool that I may or possibly may not use. Continue reading “Closed Software”

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Google: Redux

Once again, I’ve discovered that Google is killing off a product that I use on a regular basis. Sigh.

You may remember when they killed Reader, and then killed MyTracks. Now I hear they’re shutting down Google+ and Hangouts, which will get rolled into their corporate product package, or something. Maybe? Either way, it will join the extensive (and constantly growing) list of products in the “Google Graveyard.”

It reminds me that Google/Alphabet is a company aimed at big businesses, and not regular people like you and me. In fact, it never really was for regular people. It was always aimed at making advertising money through monetizing our search data. This shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. This is how gigantic businesses work.

I’ll eventually have to look for a replacement for Hangouts. And in reality, I need to free myself from Google products in general. Even though they’re embedded in my phones. And I avoid using Facebook Messenger like the plague. Maybe Signal.org?

As with almost all social media apps, Google+ is dying a slow death because nobody uses it. Despite having a good feature set, people just weren’t going to join it unless everybody they knew was on it. It’s a catch-22. Everybody uses Facebook because everybody uses Facebook. It’s reached critical mass, like a black hole sucking in everything around it. All the other social media platforms have been relegated to museum curiosities. Twitter is spambot central. Tumblr is like a house of horrors. Gab.ai is a dumpster fire of litigation brought on by idiots. Diaspora has been around for ages and still has no adoption. I don’t even know what else is out there, because outside of Facebook’s event horizon, nothing else matters.

Well, I guess I shouldn’t just rant, though there is plenty to rant about. Ultimately, we’re complaining about free services, so what should we expect, right?

We’ve become spoiled by instant communication and information. We’ve lost the art of discourse through writing. No thought is required to post anything to social media.

This is largely why I keep blogging, year after year… it requires thought to put together blog posts.

Anyway… I’m looking at options for non-Google phone apps, and am trying out F-Droid on my phone. I don’t think I’ll be able to completely de-Google all my accounts, but I can certainly reduce the impact it has on my life.

In general, though, I am very dependent on technology, and I don’t need to be. It’s a convenience, and I’m not being made a better person with conveniences at my fingertips. I could say much more on that, but for now, I’ve said enough. More wake-up calls for the digitally enslaved.

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Data Highways and Information Overload

A while back, I posted about how I was using Evernote to manage information in my house and life. Probably a year ago, Evernote decided to change their user terms, and limit how many devices can use their free plans. So essentially, I can use it on my phone, and have to use the web version (which absolutely sucks) on everything else.

A while back, I also posted about how I was moving towards my own self-hosted cloud server, which has been actually working quite well. But as great as it is, ownCloud has a few limitations- namely, the lack of add-on features. Especially ones that work with my phone.

As a result, I’m sort of stuck in limbo with my data. I don’t have any really good solutions yet. I may go back to Evernote, but only if I feel like ownCloud isn’t meeting my needs. More than likely, though, I’ll just keep using ownCloud. I’m not sure the convenience is worth the cost, or risk of data breaches.

But at the end of the day, I’m in control of my data, and I am responsible for what happens to it. I’m not really comfortable with any large company selling my personal information for profit. Not to mention they’re obligated to hand my data over if the government decides they want to look at it.

Really, I don’t like the idea of Big Data to begin with. Sure, the information is easier to find and store. And I don’t have massive stacks of filing cabinets. But you want to know the truth? Once I’m gone, that information means nothing. How much of it do we really need in the first place? Continue reading “Data Highways and Information Overload”

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Rise And Fall Of Social Media Giants

In the last few weeks, there’s been quite a bit of news going on with the Presidential campaign (which I won’t talk about) and how the media covers it. Specifically, there’s been a LOT of people complaining that social media platforms are censoring honest criticism, and mostly on one side.

This of course is a problem if you live in the United States, where we (supposedly) have protection of free speech under the First Amendment. If you post something that someone doesn’t like- you could be censored, suspended, or in extreme cases, have your account terminated or even be personally attacked, without actually violating the site’s TOS.

With the recent craziness going on at Facebook and Twitter, defenders of free speech have been getting banned from the social media platforms, and are looking for alternatives (and they’re out there). The most recent I’d heard of is Gab.ai, which isn’t even in full production yet, but is already garnering a huge influx of users migrating from Twitter and Facebook because of its staunch “no-censorship” policy. Users are welcome to filter anything they don’t want to see for themselves, but they won’t be able to get other users censored for saying something they don’t like (illegal activity is still addressed, of course).

But from the looks of it, the Social Media giants are slowly showing cracks at the seams. Twitter’s stock is declining steadily after a failed attempt to sell the company, and Facebook’s insistence on becoming “all things to all people” is bordering on anti-trust territory.

You could almost say… they’re ready to croak.

Nevertheless, I am overjoyed there’s someone stepping up to fight for free speech. And with Gab.ai’s user count exploding, I can’t be the only one!

(Two year update: Gab’s “free speech” platform was quickly swarmed by trolls and turned into a complete cesspool, involving legal action, and all sorts of stupidity. So much for that…)