ok. back at it. and, i want to push myself to the end of the year, so i can stop to do some cleaning afterwards.

today just kind of disappeared. i decided at the last minute to do an unplanned grocery run, due to the long term forecast not providing the reprieve i wanted in the first week of february. it's actually been a relatively mild winter overall, but my grocery runs are three or four hour walks, often with a cart, so i was hoping to get a day above zero and without snow, to facilitate the cart. alas...

i get the january check before christmas, so it's always a weird month, grocery wise. it's predictable that i'll end up doubling my january bill, then buying almost nothing in february. which is what seems to be happening, again.

the upside is that i have nothing planned until the cloud nothings show on the 7th. my body is tired and my feet are sore, so i don't expect to finish anything else tonight. but hopefully tomorrow is the big day....stated yet again....

update: the imaginary tour demo is posted to nov 19, 2014.

update: time is posted to nov 19, 2014.

update: 9:46 is posted to nov 15, 2014.

update: rabit is wolf is posted to nov 8, 2014.

so, about an hour ago i hear all kinds of smashing and drilling and sawing upstairs. a few minutes ago, i finally went up to see what the commotion is..

"what are you guys doing?"
"tearing the ceiling down."
"can i ask why you're tearing the ceiling down?"
"there's a leak upstairs."
"can i..."
"there's a leak upstairs. it needs to be fixed. would you like to help?"
"i'm not going to be of much help to you...."

it's not my fault. i was born with this.

i just want to clarify that i'm waiting this guy out.

he's dangerously obese, and in his 60s. he should die any day, now. heart attack. diabetes. he could fall and be unable to get up.

i'd kind of like to sit the new property owner down and explain this to him. i'm not sure what the exact relationship is, now. the previous owner was the guy's brother; i think that the new one is an in-law. he may be a little unclear about the reality of the situation, which is that i'm his long term tenant. the fat moron upstairs has five years, max. the heavy smokers two flights up are no doubt going to leave when their son moves out, which should be in a year or two; otherwise, they've had health issues, themselves. there's another tenant upstairs that is also old and in visibly poor health.

i am thirty years younger, and in excellent health. i won't just be here longer than any of the other tenants, i'll probably be here longer than the existing property owner owns the building for.

so, i'd kind of like to sit him down and level with him. he should be concerned about what i want, first and foremost - because i'm the one he's going to have to be dealing with, years down the road.

so, that's two saturday mornings in a row that this smell has wafted downstairs and started to affect my head.

here's another thought: i don't have the slightest clue what crack-cocaine smells like. could somebody in the building be smoking crack? i wouldn't be able to identify it - i'd just notice something smells bad and complain about a headache.

windows are open until it passes....

i got up until the end of october done yesterday, which is much less than i'd like. but, hopefully, i can get that extra push today.

update: clarity is posted to oct 21, 2014.

update: the wave is posted to oct 6, 2014.

i'm actually glad that i'm doing this, as much of a pain in the ass as it is, as i really am going to have to give the second part quite a bit of a facelift to finish the remaining sections.

there's a lot of stuff coming. a chamber music compilation. a vocal disc, with vocals that are currently unreleased. and, expansions of almost all of the singles...

these are mostly ideas that i chickened out on the first run through. as i said before: the focus is different, now. no, i want to be comprehensive. so, all of these ideas need to come back...

i'm excited. really.

but i have to finish this, first. i didn't expect it would take this long. but i guess i underestimated the breadth of writing.

really, i should have done this over the summer, before the alter-reality came up. now, i'm stuck - and i have to push through.

at least i'm getting some listening in, too. that's always a benefit.

this is great news:
https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/01/24/everything-is-terrific-the-bandcamp-2016-year-in-review/

i had a false start yesterday due to finding an error in the vlogs from the 19th and 20th (of january) at the last minute, requiring a re-render. and, then i had a publishing error this morning that stole about 10 gb of bandwidth...

but, i'm posting today. starting now. and, in fact, i want to get a lot done.

fwiw, the window was only open for about an hour this morning and i don't currently plan to re-open it. we'll have to see, but right now it seems like it's ok....

this editing process was slowed down by a number of weird factors, but i should be back to posting within an hour or so. i just need to call my gp to book an appointment, presumably with an urologist.

i'm a big advocate of tort law. and, i think that the solution to smokers rights v. non-smokers rights lies in shifting the burden to the smokers, themselves.

so, while i'm not really an advocate of laws that ban smoking, i am an advocate of adopting a "polluter-pays" approach to dealing with the externalities related to cigarette smoking. remember: i live in canada. so, i can support high taxes for cigarettes, but only under the argument that the money goes towards health care. what i'm talking about right now, though, is the question of what is to be done about tenant smoking, and finding ways to balance tenant rights for smokers and non-smokers.

i would both argue that smokers have the right to smoke and argue that non-smokers have the right to not smoke. the novel part of my argument is that i would argue that non-smokers should have the ability to hold smokers liable for costs incurred in smoke-proofing their buildings. for the practical example in front of me, i would argue that the smokers in the building should be held liable for the heating and electrical costs incurred as a consequence of me opening the window to neutralize their habits. if a cost is placed on their pollution, perhaps they'd think twice about causing these externalities.

so, i woke up to a different smell today: cyanide & carbon monoxide. that is, the smell of cigarette smoke.

that's a smell i know well. it's dankness - the way it falls over everything like a blanket. you simply can't address this without opening the windows and letting the room air out.

i'm actually not sure if the tenant directly above me smokes or not. i think he might be a secret smoker from time to time, which is why this comes and goes. i think that the other tenant on the main floor does. the tenants two floors up are very heavy smokers and you can smell it when you walk in the front door but it doesn't usually bug me down in the basement.

this isn't the first time i've noticed this, but i don't think it's been this bad before; or, perhaps, my smell is better now than it has been since i've moved here. but, i didn't quit smoking just to deal with the second-hand smoke from upstairs. so, i'm not backing down on this point: the windows will remain open (with the heat up...) until the smell clears out.

and, the answer is to stop smoking inside.

update: jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj is posted to oct 3, 2014.

update: existence is posted to oct 3, 2014.

i crashed hard this afternoon after yet another absurd day down here...

as mentioned here repeatedly, the situation has been clearing up over the weekend, although not decisively. and, while the smell seems to be gone now, it may take a while for the apartment to clear out completely and me to get my head back. i remain oozy, but am a little better than yesterday (which was a little better than the day before). i am convinced that something was fixed, at least, and believe it was a consequence of my tactics to draw attention to the issue. if the issue reappears, i will not hesitate to repeat.

but, what happened? i glossed over this in the vlog, but i'll be more detailed, here.

there was rattling upstairs on friday afternoon. the smell became noticeable on saturday morning; the headache hit before noon, and i fell asleep. i opened the windows on saturday night and actually mostly left the heat off (except when i was up to eat). the initial goal was to try and get him to turn the heat back on upstairs; given that i believed that the cause of the leak was turning the heat off the other day, getting him to turn it back on would at least put him face to face with the device, and have him see if he damaged anything. i sent the email out on sunday, which explicitly pointed to the likelihood that something was knocked loose on friday. it was not until monday morning that i gave up hope on him turning his heat back on, and turned mine up to 30.

late on monday morning, i heard another rattling upstairs followed by the liberal use of a spray bottle. about an hour later, a "gas inspector" that looked a lot like the new property owner showed up in construction gear. he walked around a little and concluded there was no sign of a gas leak, but agreed, when pressed, that the fact that i've had the windows open for several days would make it hard to get a good reading.

i gave the guy upstairs a chance to be honest, but i didn't expect that he'd take it. in the few years that i've been here, i've experienced nothing but dishonesty from him. he wouldn't admit to why he wanted to let dogs down here, for example. and, his own brother has asked me to not give him checks because he, himself, doesn't trust him. if your own brother does not trust you at 60-some years, there must be a serious problem, right?

but, i've been clear - repeatedly - that i do not think that he can be held legally liable and ultimately elevate responsibility elsewhere. the way you want to think of it is like this: suppose you told a six year-old that you think he accidentally broke the furnace. six is maybe a tad young, but you get the point. if that six year-old is home alone, and you told them this over email or phone, what would the six year-old do? well, first, it would check to see if it could fix the situation, and then it would destroy any evidence (such as spraying the area - and i don't actually know if febreeze would mask natural gas). then, it would deny culpability in any way possible by blaming others or making things up. if you asked the six year old directly, the six year old would lie. if eventually caught, the six year old would admit that the reason it lied was that it didn't want to get in trouble.

now, this might seem a little outlandish, but the evidence i've gathered around me has led me to conclude that this is the psychology in front of me. i've been operating this way for quite a while, now. i mean, you might ask the reasonable question: if you think there's a gas leak upstairs, why not just knock on the door? and, the answer is that the person that opens the door is incapable of dealing with the situation in an honest or adult manner, and needs to be directed from outside.

the reason that i glossed over this is that - given the situation, more broadly - it doesn't matter. i need to do what i did to get a reaction. and, i got the reaction i wanted. hopefully, the experience is enough to act as incentive for everybody to be more careful with the furnace.

as mentioned, the gas guy looked a whole lot like the property owner. again: i didn't ask questions (except when i did, and he shuffled nervously). i mean, if he were to go to the absurd point of putting on construction gear to try and convince me of something...

he admitted his device couldn't pick much up in context, and instead tried to blame the smell on the baseboards. i guess the solution is another furnace, right? lol. i set this up to demonstrate that this idea does not make sense. but, i wanted an analysis, and not an argument, so i just let him walk out.

as mentioned: the smell (which, as has been the case previously, was localized in the bathroom) has lifted. they did something. they might not be telling me what they did. but, i got them to do it. and, hopefully the threat of expenses will have them behave more carefully in the future.

i'm going to get something to eat. the vlogs should be done rendering by then. and i should be back at it when the sun comes back up.

i'm a lot better right now, but i'm also apparently unable to close the windows without getting woozy. the stench continues. with the heat set to 30, it's a decent balance, for now.

again: i've pointed this out to the old property owner several times and i'm not getting a real answer. he's going to have to wait until his gas bill shows up to learn, i guess - along with his electrical bill, which is heating a basement with the windows wide open because the gas is leaking.

who am i kidding. he'll blame it on the windmills in northern ontario and demand a tax cut. i'm going to have to call the new property owners over the next few days; the landlord is useless, and i'm not going to even bother, i'll just leapfrog him right off.

anyways. i spent the morning finishing the editing up until jan 20th (inclusive), which means vlogs are done until the tenth of february. they're rendering, right now. i'll start uploading when i close the virtual machine when they're done rendering...

so, the last 48 hours were not a total waste. but i really hope i can get a head start on the rest of the week this morning.

focusing yesterday wasn't going to happen; i wasn't tired, but i needed to sleep. and, now i have a list of vlogs to watch.

the headache is still there, and the windows remain open...

i'm going to get something to eat soon. i expect today will be unproductive. a migraine can knock you right out.

windows are still open, and i'm noticing the same basic cause & effect as i have previously: the headache gets a lot better if i stand beside the window for a few minutes, even if it comes back afterwards.

methane - which is my concern, not carbon monoxide - is not a poison. it can't actually hurt you, in low concentrations. what it does is smother you, so you can't breathe. but, i'm obviously getting enough oxygen. so, if i'm right about what's happening, the headaches i'm getting from the methane are basically the same thing as getting woozy after climbing a mountain: i'm just experiencing low oxygen. there aren't long term side effects, or at least won't be if the exposure is kept minimal. it's just irritating.

i'm going to try and get back to work for a few hours. i don't promise much.

i had a mild headache yesterday morning, so i stopped at about 11:00 am to lie down for a few minutes. i wasn't planning on sleeping...

i woke up in the afternoon with a brutal, splitting headache complete with blurred vision and "aura": a textbook migraine.

i didn't have a history of these up until last year, but that's more than twice, now. but, the thing is that it seems to be correlated with the tenant upstairs turning the gas off...

i remain convinced that there is a gas leak in the basement, and that there's not a lot i can do besides open the window (as an incentive to action...) until the property owner fixes it.

the headache persists. it got a little better around midnight, but it's back - with aura. i don't expect to get anything done today.

so, i'm doing a little bit of vlog editing, instead.

update: spin... is posted to sept 24, 2014.

update: give 'em hell / strung out is posted to sept 7, 2014.

update: me, myself... was posted to sept 6, 2014.

i just split three days up into little pieces and, in the end, ended up back where i was to begin with. i guess i needed to catch up on the sleep. i was up on the 17th about 17:00, and ended up awake on the 19th at about the same time after sleeping for most of the day (in fact most of the last 24 hours). so, i'm cycled back around and ready to pick up where i left off.

but i need to pick up the pace...

i need to eat, first. and then i need to have a productive night.

also, in the long run i'll need to keep an eye on my cholesterol. but, it's currently actually pretty outstanding.

i've been over this: my diet seems terrible, until you realize that i don't eat very much and i walk a lot.....

these numbers are real. and attainable. note: both of my parents have/had high cholesterol. my dad actually had several life-threatening cardiovascular episodes before brain cancer got him, and his father died of heart disease. if this were a purely genetic concern, i'd be in a lot of trouble. and yet look at these numbers....

chol: 3.69 mmol/L = 66.42 mg/dl. this is actually lower than the normal range (3.8-5.2). i also have low blood pressure....

tg: 0.88 mmol/L = 15.84 mg/dl. lower end of normal range (0.6-1.7).

hdl:  1.37 mmol/L = 24.66 mg/dl. this is pretty much in the middle of the normal range (1.00-1.80). higher hdl is preferable (apparently, above 1.6). but, i have to keep in mind that i'm low, overall. the way you measure a situation like this is to look at a ratio, and while it's not on the print-out, google confirms my logic. my ratio is 2.69; under 3.5 suggests i'm at low risk for heart disease.

ldl: 1.92 mmol/L = 34.56 mg/dl. this is also lower than normal (2.0-2.6), but again you have to keep in mind that the total is low. the important ratio here is ldl/hdl, which is 1.4. that again suggests very low risk - around half of the average risk, it turns out.

non-hdl chol: 2.32 mmol/L = 41.76 mg/dl. this measure is just a difference between total cholesterol and good cholesterol; it's the amount of cholesterol that is not good cholesterol. apparently, i want to keep the difference between non-hdl and ldl less than 30 mg/dl. well, i'm at 7.2.

i have to keep an eye on this because i should be at high risk. but, my lifestyle is very different than either of my parents, and the effects of that are showing pretty clearly.

ok. umm...

i was vaccinated.

the doctor is...he's got a lot of work to do....this is why i asked for the print-out...

the blood test results indicate i'm positive for anti-hbs. that means i'm immune. given that i also have immunity to hep A, i must have gotten twinrix at some point.

the test that the lab requested is to determine if i may have defeated it naturally and become a "chronic carrier". note that a "chronic carrier" is not the same thing as a "chronic infection". whether i misunderstood or he misspoke is less important than getting it right...but i think he read the information too briskly and misspoke, leading me to a false understanding...

when i said today that i should wait until march because there's a temporal component and i wouldn't learn anything from an immediate test, he nodded and said something about a graph and appeared to be struggling to remember something he hadn't thought about since college. google is so remarkably useful. he was no doubt thinking about this:

if i had picked up hep b in the blackout, i wouldn't have tested positive for anti-hbs a mere 11 weeks after infection, which is what happened. i must have already had immunity. what he told me had led me to believe that they had picked up lgM anti-HBc which, at 11 weeks, would indicate exposure. that is not the case. this was a miscommunication.

if i wasn't in shock, i would have asked for it in writing in the first place.

doctors are not magicians. it's always a good idea to ask questions, get things in writing and do independent research. i'm not upset because i consider this to be my responsibility, and not his.

but this is cleared up. whatever sickness i had this month, it wasn't hep b. i'm already immune to hep b. and i think it's clear that i'm immune to hep b because i was in fact vaccinated.

i still don't know what happened that night, though.

i woke up sopping wet because i was outside in a torrential downpour. my reconstruction of the last moments of the blackout suggests it's probably why i got in the guy's car. but it means that any relevant evidence got washed off.

there was nothing on my clothes. and, i was bruised, but there was no residue.

i should have inquired around about the existence of an anal rape kit rather than assumed one doesn't exist. i was in a daze and didn't want to deal with it.

"There is no chronic (long- term) infection with hepatitis A. People do not become carriers of the hepatitis A virus."

"Avoid having sex while you're infectious – hepatitis A is most infectious from around two weeks before the symptoms start until about a week after they first develop."

ok. so...if i got hep A in the blackout, the person i got it from would have had to have been exposed recently. and, further, it would have had to have been in an anal-oral transmission. even in the worst blackout scenario, i would have no doubt gagged. 

i wish he would have told me that or printed the results out, because the transmission possibilities around hep A really rules out the possibility of a consensual encounter. i was either raped or i was vaccinated. which is more likely?

on the one hand, i think it's pretty low probability to suggest i happen to have been raped by somebody who was in an active transmission stage of hepatitis A in detroit in 2016. this is a third world disease that has a short window for transmission. and, i guess that detroit is in bad shape. but, poverty does not introduce disease, right? the disease has to come from somewhere. this is so unlikely as to rule it out.

unfortunately, however, the low probability of the scenario doesn't rule out all of the other evidence leaning towards a sexual encounter and a disease transmission: waking up with a sore anus and bruises, and then getting sick not once but twice over a long period of lethargy that included a bout of possible jaundice.

of course, it's not impossible that i could have had sex that night and already been vaccinated.

there's nothing i can do except wait. but, i think that the possibility that i got hep A is really so remote that the presence of antibodies is re-opening the potentiality of a vaccination in my mind; i had all but ruled that out once i got sick. and, if i got a hep A vaccination, i would have almost certainly gotten it with a hep B vaccination.

i can't handle being unable to deduce this. that's what upsets me. but, it's just more demonstration of the superiority of empirical epistemology. like i needed one....

i stopped by at the doctor's office today, hoping to get more info on the urologist referral. no progress. but, i got him to print off my full blood test results, and it turns out i also picked up hep A.

or, perhaps i got a twinrix vaccine? i went to florida when i was a kid. hrmmn. oddly enough, the presence of hep A antibodies is making me think it's more likely that i was vaccinated.

hep A hits faster. and, i was quite sick about a week after the blackout. it seems a bit quick, though, even for hep A; i thought it was some kind of bacterial infection in my throat, and tied it to a toke at a steve reich concert. could it have been both? apparently, hep A is mostly about anal sex. it felt bacterial. it's gross, but it actually makes sense.

with no memory, it's very hard to say anything.

the fresh air was beneficial; i feel better than i have in weeks. so, hopefully i'm over it. i'm still waiting until early march for the next blood test; results are on the 6th.

update: the intersection of two identical particles moving in completely opposite directions just posted to july 25, 2014.

update: the symphony of psilocybin-induced madness just posted to july 23, 2014.

so, how am i feeling?

a lot better. really.

i think i'm realizing that my liver is back at close to full strength after what might have been a worse situation than i really realized. the jaundice is fading, and i have more energy. but, the hormones are also working better. my stool is looking more healthy. the coffee seems to be actually working. and i'm legitimately hungry for the first time in quite a while.

i guess you don't really miss your liver until it's gone, right? trust me: you definitely want a liver. it gives you life, man. short for life-giver, really? we all know this abstractly, but actually feeling it start to go and then come back is...

well, i'm glad it's back. and, hopefully, this translates into working through the rest of this more quickly.

as i'm working through the journal, i'm realizing that the final update over 2001-2003 is going to be more profound than i realized. 1999-2000 will have minimal mods. but, some of the eps from 2001 are going to be very dramatically expanded.

i'm just approaching this with a different perspective. my concern on the first run through was listenability; i was being a lot more selective. but, i've since introduced the idea of the download-only track. i've constructed double ep singles, and hybrid physical/download double ep singles. so, much of what i buried is going to climb out of the grave.

beware of the oncoming zombie apocalypse, i guess? well, at least it will sound fucking great - i can promise you that. if you're going to have your brains eaten out anyways, you'd might as well enjoy it, right?

the oppression of logic can actually be remarkably satisfying.

i'm being silly. but that's actually a good sign. coffee's working. liver's working. life is good.

just an update: i just posted the time machine, published to july 21, 2014.



i'm very, very far behind schedule.

i've been very tired, but i'm feeling beter.

i've decided i have to have a zero (new) ranting policy until i get this worked out. so, i should hopefully be more productive, now.

that was sort of a hump, but it's pushing into something else that's going to be post-heavy, too. just have to keep plugging...

i've republished two more music videos.

1) inertia. this is dated to dec 28, 2013.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdjPvgGh2qw

2) the time machine (vst mix). this is dated to july 5, 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtpW0Ve6t8A

i think i'm going to do the chamber music comp, after all. not sure where i'm sequencing it...

i quit smoking one year ago. sort of, anyways. i've bought a handful of packs over the last year, either when i had set aside all nighters for drinking or i was going through my biyearly headclear. that's certainly a lot less than 350+ packs.

350*8 = $2800. $2800/12 = $233.33/month. so, $200+/month. where did it go? the answer is that i went to more concerts, and went to more expensive concerts. i also bought some new hardware. and, i bought a lot of cigarettes for $0.50 or $1.00 a piece.

but, after a year of social smoking, i'm taking the plunge. i made this choice at the detroit bus station in october, on the way to lansing to see touche amore: i'm going zero nicotine on jan 13th, 2017.

well, i've been smoke-free since the end of the headclear, which was on dec 26th this year. so, i'm already cold turkey over the last two weeks. this has been the norm for me for the last year: zero cigarettes for several weeks, then a binge for a night or maybe two, then zero for another several weeks, etc. so, nothing changes today or this week or probably even this month.

it will be in the spring that i'll have to face going to my first concert smoke-free.

but, this is it. it was a good year for me; i made a lot of progress in breaking habits. now, i need to spend the year finishing the job.

this is the second part of pulling the soundcloud site down. it's gone, now. these tracks may or may not end up here, but will moved to singles if they aren't.

most of my songs begin as conventional guitar songs before they get ripped apart and demented into various abstract concoctions. that means that a lot of my pieces have two different versions. i've always deferred the raw guitar versions to eventual live performances, but i'm at a space in life where i realize that these live performances are not likely to ever materialize. so, i'm going to compile the live/guitar versions of my larger pieces here.
 
it's unclear to me at this point where i will space this in my discography, but it will probably be around 2008.

i'm getting my predictable attack of nausea.

we're going to have a VERY early spring, here.

grargh.

this isn't the first time i've kind of had one of these reality checks: i moved here 3.5 years ago. the first six months were a wash, and then i was super productive for a year and really happy about it. and, now i've lost the last year and a half sorting through 20 year-old material, and now the last two weeks trying to reconstruct a journal of those 3.5 years.

i'm wasting a lot of time. or, at least it feels that way.

but, i need to reiterate: i'm done. the old material, anyways. it won't be much longer before i can be a little more forward thinking in at least approaching material that needs some live playing.

i know. i know. i'm feeling it, too. why do you think i'm having so much difficulty focusing? but, it will be soon enough.

what i'm upset about is not the amount of time i'm spending on the past but how little time i'm creating in the present. i have almost nothing done.

i'm going to finish the transfer of the soundcloud tracks to bandcamp tonight. it's just a handful of tracks, the most recent in late 2014. and it really demonstrates the sad point: i haven't done any live recording since april, 2015. i haven't even picked up a guitar. it's horrible.

but, soon.

here's those rough tracks. the tracklist will be updating over the next hour...

since i've moved to windsor, i've spent most of my time completing existing recordings. but, i have put aside a few demos for later, too. i'm just interested in sharing these, right now, so they'll be here for streaming, only. i initially had a soundcloud site for this, but i want to shut that down.

these tracks will eventually be moved out of this space, completed and placed on to singles, eps and lps for download.

the cold snap finally breaks today.

the long term looks reasonable. short winter? let's hope for it.

and i need to be far more productive today than i was most of last week.

it took me several days to get through may, 2014 and to the first new release in early june (dated to jan 10, 2001). but i don't have any serious hardware problems for a good year, now. so moving through the rest of 2014 should be relatively fast, so long as i actually do it.

can i get to the end of the year? i got stuck on the electronic symphony near the end of 2014. hopefully, i can get caught up to there if i'm really focused...

http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.ca/search?updated-min=2014-04-01T00:00:00-04:00&updated-max=2014-07-01T00:00:00-04:00&max-results=500

that was a scare...

i've been aware for a while now that something wants to destroy my archives.

listen: so long as it's open and in RAM, i can reconstruct it. and, i'll waste as much time as is needed to. it's kind of important.

so, i got roughly a month of opaque posts down today.

i want to say that i'll need to pick it up tomorrow. but, i know that the next batch of posts will be a little lighter, too.

i'm doing this until it's done. but, at the rate of a month/day? i'll be doing this until february. let's hope not...

http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.ca/search?updated-min=2014-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&updated-max=2015-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&max-results=500

i know i'm posting a lot of computer stuff to 2014 right now, but i had a lot of computer problems...

the bottom line is that i'm an electronic musician, that i've always been an electronic musician (since 1997, anyways) and that fighting with electronics is a big part of what being an electronic musician is all about. it's a nerds only kind of a job.

it's easy enough to be like "just because you're a nerd....", but you don't have to take my word for it. look around. if you avoid a few years of awful 70s and 80s hair metal, which you should avoid anyways, you'll quickly see that the historical record is actually quite uniform.

the person that i know of that has spoken about this most articulately is david bowie, who has admitted over and over again that the stories about drug use and partying (especially in berlin) were in actuality a way to hide the reality around how sterile and boring the recording process actually is. i know that he's on the record for this, over and over. in later years, he dropped the facade and just refused to talk about it, using the argument that he didn't want people to know how boring he is. he apparently use to install a punch card in the studio as a kind of sardonic joke, and make everybody clock in.

but, this reality is across the spectrum. i've heard everybody from roger waters to billy corgan to kevin shields to trent reznor talk about how dry and awful music production and touring is. which, in actuality, might be why all of that awful 70s/80s rock music took it upon themselves to go spinal tap in their promotional material.

i think the key point to keep in mind is that this is meant to be documentation, primarily. i'm publishing it as promo, because why not?, but it's meant for the historical record. if it's going to be interesting or appealing to people, it's going to be interesting or appealing to the same kind of people that enjoy studying journals of composers. which should not be confusing, at all.

i seem to have skipped the alter-reality. it's there, now.

http://rssmix.com/u/8219500/rss.xml

i'm posting....let's hope i can get most of the way through 2014 before i fall asleep....

so, i'm out of the shower and ready to get back to it, but i'm going to force myself to get some sleep and get at this again when i wake up...

the slow down of the last few days is coming to a close. i needed a lot of sleep over the last few days, partly from the 6 hour walk on the 31st and partly from the virus that i'm now largely over. it was about noon yesterday when i finished write-ups for the vlogs all the way until january 25th, so i won't need to worry about that for quite some time. as of this morning, groceries are done until at least the 18th (when i have to go out for an appointment). i have the first of two loads of laundry in; when that's done, i'll take a shower and probably go to sleep. but, i have nothing else to do until the 18th and have every intention to get a good chunk into the period disc by then.

i've got the new drive installed, and have moved a good deal of the data on to it, but i want to let it sit for a bit before i move forwards with it. i mean, what if it dies next week? if it makes it a week, my confidence in it will grow very quickly. this works out because i have all of those posts from 2014-2016 to post, still...

but, it spins. it's a good start, anyways.

this is consolidated: youtube, bandcamp, blogspot. i've shut down the delicious link dump, as it's superfluous after the move to blogspot and it was pushing ads in the feed (gross). i'm on the brink of closing down soundcloud, i just need to clear it out first. it's full of spam, because you have to pay to turn the comments off. facebook uses a proprietary feed algorithm, so they've been excluded by choice (that's just another reason to not use facebook). i would also like to add disqus, but they don't support this, either. i'm going to keep an eye out for a comment system that allows for rss and i'll no doubt use it exclusively if it presents itself. in the mean time, this is as much as i can put together in one place.

http://www.rssmix.com/u/8219212/rss.xml

even realizing what's going to push me...

i have to think i'll *start* by dual-booting 32/64 bit xp, and only move to 64 bit very slowly.

there's no use in getting too far ahead. what can i say about this very moment?

i did a huge amount of walking on saturday on no sleep while battling what seems like the flu. there was a delay before it knocked me out, but i spent the whole day sleeping.

i'm going to spend the night filing, which includes installing the new drive. i've got vlogs for the next month uploaded and have to do write-ups for them, as well. then i'll finish cleaning when the sun comes up, get in the shower at the end of it and then get back to what i was doing either tonight or tomorrow.

how much longer to finish posting 2014-2016? i don't know.

as mentioned elsewhere, the only wall i've had to scale or think i will ever need to scale is in ram. the newer vst sample plugin libraries want 16+ gb of ram, and i'd need to get to 64-bit to do it. that's a potential driver nightmare. it's likely workable, i just don't want to do it until i have to.

i'd have to reimage, to start with. it took a long time to build that image, and i don't want to even think about it. but, i'd certainly use 64-bit xp, fwiw. there's no benefit in upgrading; i just keep the machine offline.

what i'm wondering in the short-run is if i can convert one of these 250 gb drives into a pagefile. it would not be as fast, of course. but, it might potentially let me run a sampler.

this is entirely theoretical, right now: i haven't *actually* had an issue with a sampler that i can't resolve with the existing set-up. it's just that i see where the push factor is, and what's going to eventually force me to upgrade, one day. i'm going to eventually need more ram and have no choice...

actually, you know what? this is a moot point.

i'm not replacing my system partition; that is, my C: drive will remain on an older drive.

the new drive will neither launch the os, nor launch programs, nor do anything else that would be faster over ssd. it will simply store data.

i really just needed a lot more space.

there are currently 3 250 gb hdds in there. i bought it with four. it's split into a lot of partitions, including a 50 gb C: drive. one of the drives is solely for music, and that won't change. what i'm going to do is combine a lot of the smaller partitions together into a larger "discography" partition that will utilize the entire 2 TB drive. this will include things like wavs for burning cds and isos for burning dvds and blu-rays, as well as all of my source material, organized in iso files. so, it's all data storage.

as i move things to the new drive, it will open up space on the old drives. so, the remaining partitions (the virtual machine partition, the temp partition, the install script partition) will be able to grow. extra temp space will be useful, but it's otherwise not going to be much of a change.

again: i didn't buy this to increase speed. the machine is already blazing fast, because it's very well maintained (software. not hardware.). i bought it because i needed more storage space. and, that's the only change i'm expecting - more storage space.

so, why is my machine such a fast boot and yours so slow?

well, it's 32-bit. my hardware specs are pretty much maxed for 32-bit. but if you're running 64-bit then yours might be better. if you have an old machine, you know it. it's probably not why.

the reason is probably that i keep my software footprint to a bare minimum. i run regular scripts to clear out caches. nothing loads on start-up - not even backup services. and, the machine has xp on it.

so, i'm not disputing the premise. but, if i got a 25% increase in speed from an ssd, that would take my start-up time from ten seconds to 7.5 seconds. it would take my cubase launch time from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.

it hardly seems like it's worth the price, and the associated risk of using volatile storage on a system with very, very high data transfer rates.

what i needed was a lot of safe, permanent storage space. integrity. longevity. size. speed was not in the list of things that are of concern to me.

fwiw, my machine boots in seconds, anyways. it's about a ten second boot-up. you read through reviews of ssds and it's things like:

outlook launches in less than 30 seconds

i don't run outlook, but it would be launching in less than 30 seconds on my machine, trust me. cubase takes about 20 seconds to launch.

if your machine takes more than 30 seconds to launch fucking outlook, you need more than a solid state drive. you need ram. you need a faster cpu. and you probably need a fucking reinstall of your os, too.

thirty seconds to launch outlook. fuck. what is it, 1998?

this is completely backwards. the most important issues when you're buying a drive are:

1) data integrity.
2) longevity.
3) size.
4) price.

while ssds might be faster on paper, you will never experience the difference.

i've thought about this, and i'll simply never warm to volatile data storage. it's a contradiction in terms. and i consequently don't expect ssds to win, in the end.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/battle-between-ssd-hdd-over-141508916.html

(edit: that article isn't opening for me. this one goes through the issues better - although the exaggeration around speed is comical. and, they talk about fragmentation as though it's the 1990s and they've never heard of a defrag.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404258,00.asp)

i finally got some winter boots today for the first time in years. it doesn't seem to snow half as much here as it does in ottawa, so i haven't needed them, really. but we got a good dump a few weeks ago, which reminded me i should have something in case i *do* need them. i've had to trudge through snow drifts in running shoes in the past, and it....it destroys your shoes. you get boots to save your shoes.

but, the reason i'm posting is to update on a running gag i've had in place for years. i got a good deal, yet again, by buying kid's boots on sale. how small are my feet?

a children's size 6 - made for roughly 6 year olds - was actually just a little bit too big. i got them instead of the 5.5's, which were a closer fit, in case i wanted to double or triple up on socks....

if they were shoes, i would have got 5.5's. so, i can for real buy shoes made for 5 or 6 year olds. i just did. and i'm about 5' 9" - relatively tall, actually.

i've continually pointed to a few biological gender markers like this. i don't think gender is genetic, i think it's a social construct. so, i reject the idea that being trans is a genetic condition (which is the actual scientific consensus, outside of religious circles on the left and right). but, if you pay close attention to trans people, you *will* notice these kinds of things that make you wonder if the rejection of a monolithic social construct around gender does *sometimes*, or *often*, have coincidental biological causes. for me, the things i've noticed most prominently are a lack of body hair in certain regions (i've never grown a hair on my chest, ever) and hand and feet sizes that are pretty unambiguously not-male.

hormones don't change your shoe size, of course. but 36 year-old grown ass men don't fit into shoes made for 6 year-olds very often, either. that's an entirely biological observation, and one that almost never applies to men.

i'm not suggesting we should go around measuring kids' feet and assigning them gender roles based on it. i'm just a little hesitant to declare my absurdly small feet to be coincidental to my gender identity and would point geneticists to markers like this if they want to find something. that's more evidence, to me, of a biological cross-wiring than any desire to wear a specific kind of clothing.

i actually hope i never have to wear them. but i'm glad i have the option.

the boots were something that i needed anyways; i also picked myself up a new 2 TB hard drive for the recording machine this afternoon as my christmas/b-day gift to myself, with a combination of money sent to me and money saved from a quiet december.

i bought the recording pc in 2006 with four 250 gb hard drives. three of them are still spinning. the fourth melted into itself in march, 2014 (i couldn't have saved it...rather, i should be happy that it didn't take the whole machine down, or start an apartment fire).

the immediate purpose of the new drive is going to be to store the entire discography, including period discs with vlogs. i'm going to be working on this in the new year, so i did need this, now - i've waited long enough. but, as i work this through, i'm also going to be converting the drives into permanent storage. there's still not any way to get 100 or 200 gb on a disc; these 250 gb drives will ultimately be ideal storage solutions.

so, what that means is that i've now begun what will likely be a lengthy process of swapping out drives. in the end, all four of those 250 gb drives should be replaced by 2 TB drives.

it's a dual core 3.6. yes, it's ten years old. and, i actually *have* had a few reasons to think about upgrading to 64-bit, specifically issues around RAM. but, i still see no reason at all why i'd want a faster processor than that, and don't see why i ever will. i was aware that the technology was hitting a plateau around ten years ago, and that it was going to take fundamental shift to break through it; that machine could very well last another 20 or 30 years, so i'm comfortable in committing to a long term plan around upgrading it.