no. that drive's dead.

but i'm going to have to let it sit until april, anyways. maybe somebody at a data recovery shop will be able to get what i want out of it.

or maybe that's long enough to let it think it's back at the factory. that's ultimately what i think happened to the magically reworking laptop.

until then, i'm going to have to just keep going. i have one more trick to try - maybe it'll read through an external sata in. if not, i'm going to wait until i see if i can recover the data before i start downloading gigs of wave files from bandcamp.

here's some hope: windows knows there's a disc plugged in. it says it's "unknown", but it at least knows it's there. that's more than the bios can say. so, i'm going to throw on a temp install and see if it reads it...

i had a problem with my laptop's hard drive last month that in the end turned out to be a corrupted mbr. regarding the laptop, it was minor in the end cause....just reformat and that's that. but i cannot format this drive under any circumstance. and i even don't care about the hardware. it's almost ten years old. i don't think 250 gb drives are even on the market anymore.

it's doing something very strange that is both worrying me and giving me some hope. it's only reading the empty drive if the failing one is not plugged in. i mean at a bios stage. i've reset the cmos and it's not helping.

so i'm going to start swapping cords around. i don't see why plugging in the failing hard drive should stop me from reading a functional one.

if it's a board problem, that's a bigger issue. but it might mean i can get the info off. which is what's important. i can replace a dead drive relatively easily. i can't replace some of what's on it without a great deal of effort.

i spoke too soon. the drive is not reading at all. i should have taken the data off while i had the chance.

the c: partition is designed to be throwaway. there are two smaller partitions that are not. one is an install partition with reinstall scripts. the other is a temporary partition that currently holds all of my temporary recording material.

i think i can reconstruct the last one, although it will be a lot of work. that's the most important, by far. i can't reinstall the machine as it is without the second, but i can get around that.

it could conceivably cost me a month. so i'm hoping i can get the data off somehow.

lesson learned: a chkdsk may stop a hard drive from whirring, but it doesn't mean it's fixed it. and i should have worried about it.

grargh.

so, i'm going quiet here *again* for the foreseeable future. *sigh*.

that was a scare. hard drive started whirring on me....

it would have mostly been an annoyance. i built the pc to be modular. 1 tb total memory, over four 250 gb hard drives. rather than use something like raid, i've just left one empty. if a drive begins to die, and this hasn't happened yet, the plan is just to copy it over to the empty drive, unplug it and replace it. worst case, i might have to reinstall, but the process is automated.

as it is, a chkdsk stopped the whir and i'm not going to worry myself about it. but i blew the morning on that...

well, i got the stuff printed on monday, then spent 6 hours walking on tuesday to finish up most necessary spring shopping, did spring cleaning (and much sleeping) on wednesday in the midst of a horrific blizzard and should get a start on the track today, after i do my taxes, duck student loan repayments for another six months and fill out some other necessary paperwork.

don't get me wrong. i appreciate the six hundred some dollars i'm getting back from rent. it's almost a month of rent. in theory, that's substantial.

but, if the government thinks it's doing me or the economy a favour by dividing it by twelve and giving me $50/month for the year, it's really sadly mistaken. what i'd like to do is spend the money on furniture. bookshelves and tables, specifically. at $50 a month, it's going to take all year to do something i'd rather do quickly. it's going to mean i'm going to have to save the money up over the course of a few months and probably go shopping every two months or so with roughly $100.

....except that it's a virtual certainty that i'm not going to do that. instead, i'm going to waste it on nothing of any importance, and mostly on items that are not taxable due to repressive laws.

i'm well aware that the idea is to prevent low income people from wasting it on drugs, or beer and popcorn, but whomever thought that up has obviously never been low income or done drugs, or drank beer and ate popcorn. there's not much chance i'm going to spend $650 all at once. that would be pretty much smoking myself stupid. however, there's a pretty good chance i'm going to pitter away what is more or less smoke money, at $50/month. the way to stop me from pissing it away is to give it to me all at once so i can spend it; the way to have me waste it is to give it to me in monthly installments that aren't enough to buy anything with.

as policy, it's just not very intelligently thought through.

i'm actually considering not claiming the energy credit, so the refund is under $360 and it just comes in in one chunk.

now, that's this year, when i just moved into a new place.

next year, $650 might buy me some gear if it comes in at once. if i played video games (i don't) it might have bought a new system, rather than a new game for an old one every month.

some people could use it to pay down credit card debts. $50/month just keeps them on the interest paying hamster wheel. useless.

...all to try and combat the imaginary problem of people blowing their tax returns on beer by budgeting them monthly beer money instead....

the other options are both more economically useful and more functionally useful.

of course if i was a real economist, i'd say something about investing it somewhere. which is probably true of a small number of people. you'd think that would be what they'd want.

but what i'm irked about is the idea that giving me a small amount will help me spend it more responsibly, because i'm too irresponsible to spend a lump sum. i'll even concede that i'm irresponsible, but they've got the whole thing backwards.

at least give me the choice how to adjust to my inherent irresponsibility, rather than trying to enforce a model of fiscal responsibility on me that is alien to what i know my nature is.

that sort of forced fiscal planning always fails.

you ever helped a bug get from a to b, or maybe moved it out of the sink because you're doing the dishes (but didn't want to kill it because it's a beneficial insect) by coercing it on to a spoon and then carrying the spoon across to a crack in the floor?

might that insect think it just had an experience with god, or perhaps was abducted by an air monster?

nah...

i'm going to hang on to them; used tires aren't particularly hard to find for free, and there's enough rubber there for a few tries.

why not try it? nothing to lose.

i wonder if it's possible to just buy a sheet of rubber and cut it up with a drywall knife.

yeah. that should be possible. hrmmn.

actually, you know what? i bought some goo. i'm going to see if i can hack something together.

that's too big for tape

the one on the other side is a little smaller, but the same basic problem.

if i actually *could* scan it and feed it into a printer that could print out the right size...

those shoes were actually split right down the sole, both feet. if somebody told me that a nefarious shoe vandal broke in overnight and used a machete to slice right through the bottom, i'd agree it was a plausible explanation of the state the shoes are in, if a little less credulous an explanation regarding the path of them getting there.

i hadn't checked the bottom until now. well, i could see holes on the front, so i didn't have to get that far to come to the conclusion that the shoes have holes. the rubber is worn through around the places the sole is cut, creating what is almost a "sinkhole" kind of effect.

just literally worn out.

....meaning i'd need more than epoxy or shoe goo to fix these things. i'd need plastic and rubber. and a 3-d printer might be useful. really, it would cost less in both labour and currency to replace them. they're dead.

so, they are now drying in the sink, until i can get them to a proper disposal centre along with a bunch of electronics and other things i've put aside. they were a pair of gravis skate shoes that lasted close to five years, which is not bad at all considering how much walking i do.

nothing to be done about that.

you should be able to see the slice through the material.

i'm actually surprised i couldn't feel this, except for the wet.

6 hour walk.

dead feet. tender calves.

...but a few tasks completed.

for a small city, it is about as scattered as possible. i want to say it's badly planned, and it is, especially the lack of sidewalks, but it's more like it's planned as a giant suburb of detroit rather than a city of it's own.

so, the necessity of fixing my bike is quite apparent.

one of the things i needed to get was some water resistant spray for some shoes. there's plenty of options, but they're all at least an hour walk one way or the other. how can that be? i'm not sure, but i'm going to take a guess....

see, if i walk down the street that comprises the business district closest to me, it's pretty sketchy. there are some successful businesses, and some very old ones. but a lot of the storefronts are either boarded up or for rent.

could these have previously been somewhere to get shoe spray? it's a reasonable deduction, i think.

for twice the price that it's sold at walmart.

so, i'm going to hypothesize that windsor is in that middle phase where the big box stores have decimated local businesses and they haven't moved into the core yet.

i have to think that there will eventually be a mall built downtown. right now, it's just strip malls a km or two in either direction and a half dead city in the core.

which is why the rent is cheap.

which is why i'm here...

with the spray specifically, i think there's a few places around here i could try and i'd guess at least one would stock it. it's an example of limited actual applicability. i wouldn't have gone as far as i did just for that, and probably wouldn't have actually had to. any kind of electronics would be a better example.

freakishly small feet strike again.

a few months ago, i bought a pair of little girl's rainboots because they fit and they were only $6. not sized.

my shoes are demoed to the point that walking on moist ground produces wet socks, so i took a walk around. i'll get some goo later and save them for emergency; i just wanted to see if i could get something cheap, as that's easier. it turns out i'm a children's size 6, and just about any pair of adult shoes is literally not made in my size.

seriously. i spent an hour in the adult section looking for something small enough, before i walked over to the kid's aisle...

i actually can't remember the last time i bought a pair of sneakers. for years, i've been inheriting shoes from my sister, who has a habit of ending up with shoes that are too small, somehow. i don't ask questions, i just take the shoes. but it means i'm not sizing my feet. the ones she gives me are usually a tad big, but i deal with it.

well, now i know. and there's an upside to it, as kids shoes seem to be cheaper...

the ones i picked up were in a weird store a few blocks down that is something like a cross between a dollar store and a kmart. everything in the place is cheap. they actually had a two-for-one sale, which is the only reason i bothered. even if they are gone at the end of the year, two pairs of shoes for $15 is something i can deal with in the short run.

i think i'll make 'em last longer, though. i've been known to wear $10 shoes for three or four years - until they develop holes, basically.

with stuff like shoes, i'm actually convinced it all more or less comes off the same assembly line. $10 walmart shoes and $150 nike shoes are made by the same children in asia, they just have different labels stamped on them. i don't see any reason to pay more than the least amount possible for it.

it's less that the inexpensive shoes aren't cheap and more that the expensive ones are just as cheap and preposterously priced.

the handful of counter-examples seem to mostly be skateboarding shoes, which are built differently because there's a higher wear level. i have tended to gravitate towards them for that reason.

it actually seems to be the salt that finally ate through a part of the pair i just replaced. i'm thinking if i clean them up, then patch them with the rest of the epoxy i have left that should extend their life. but i needed something with better grip, anyways.

for me, a big part of "urban living" is walking everywhere. this isn't currently the best city for that lifestyle, which just puts extra stress on the shoes. when you're regularly walking five or more km, it doesn't matter what the label on your shoes is - they're going to fall apart. so, you'd might as well try and strengthen them.

i think with the salted through ones, the epoxy will actually make them stronger.

see, this is what i mean. if you analyze this part, it's pretty simple. just two arpeggiated chords. but it somehow got saved in this fucking mess that's almost illegible.

that, by the way, is unregistered win 9x software. save your binaries, kids.

i should probably go looking for a freeware replacement, it's just that the format on nwc is really unique and awesomely simple.

i'm not sure one really exists...

so, that's 18 1-3 page files to print at the library tomorrow. and then i'll be on to recording the parts.

something i'm remembering is that a lot of the tracks got split into bass/treble clefs as a part of the process that made them illegible. so there's actually less parts that that. i'll leave some split, recombine others. easier if i just print all possible combinations and figure it out after.

something else i'm going to need to do is figure out just how bad my acoustic is. it got warped on a cross country trip ten years ago and sounds atrocious. may have to use an acoustic simulator. or even look for something cheap on kijiji.

hopefully it's at least playable.

it's amazing how often i can lose 3,4,5 hours staring at the ceiling and contemplating what is really nothing much of any real importance at all.

so, the sun is finally coming up at an almost reasonable time and you want us to push it forward another hour? 8:00 sunrises in march? fuck that.

i've been on cst for the last few weeks, and absolutely sticking to it.

uploading footage of an occupy fundraiser from last year to youtube

shredding a little at an occupy ottawa fundraiser, in the summer of 2012. this is the most stripped down version possible of the second and third movements of symphony #9. which is an "industrial grunge opera".

recorded first movement of the piece:
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/proverbs

full version of fundraiser:
https://vimeo.com/45641874

the most important things i learned from occupy are:

1) people that share a dissatisfaction with the world as it is do not necessarily form a shared vision of how they'd like to see the world.
2) capitalist indoctrination is far deeper than many anti-capitalists consciously realize.
3) a tendency to throw temper tantrums is not necessarily something people grow out of.
4) at the end of the day, the revolution can only ever be in the mode of production.
5) hippies don't like challenging music

but, despite the substantial challenges ahead of all of us, it's important that we continue to take the time to speak out against fucking bullshit.

i'm just remembering the precise reason i didn't do this before.

i don't have any formatting! i lost the nwc file, leaving an unwieldy midi file that sounds 'right' on playback but is an annoyance to read. it's a linear scroll. and it's not even barred right. it starts with an artificial slur an eighth off the one and runs forward horrifically....

tactics...

i think if i can get each staff out to a pdf file and take it down to the library to print it, i can mark it up by hand. so, that's tomorrow's goal.

grargh. well, i need to do this. and once i get going it'll be more fun.

stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (vst mix) (original upload)

written in early 2001. initially rendered mar 6, 2014. corrected on mar 7, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/vst-mix