well, i got the ram updated in my old pc from 640mb to 1gb, which cost me $12. 1 gb is the max the board can take (this thing is ooooold). i haven't re-installed my sleek image yet, but it's definitely faster just browsing through the desktop. i have a usb 2.0 card (yes, the ports are 1.1, it's that old) coming for $10. i'll eventually have to replace the hard drive (mechanical parts, *will* eventually die), but this old clunker is otherwise absolutely maxed out.

the guy that sold it to me jerked out, though. he said he'd sell the 256 sticks for $4 each or give me 5 for $12. well, it's no brainer. i was expecting at least one of them wouldn't work, and sure enough one of them doesn't. but, within the 5 sticks are 2 64s. so, i got 2 working 256s, a broken 256 and two working 64s. well, i would have paid $6 a stick (that's still stupidly cheap), but if you're going to sell them at $4 a piece (and having one that doesn't work is a reasonable chance one takes when buying 15 year old ram from kijiji), why bother basically giving me two 64s for free? why not just tell me you only had 3 in the first place?

i'm going to hope he made an honest error on that, cause it doesn't otherwise make sense to me.

...not like i have any use for two sticks of 64-mb sdram.

this is one of the ones that your great great grand kids will go to the theatre to see....

(relevant tracks: confused, others)

people have heard swans and lpd, but the truth is that my analog string sounds in the late 90s were mostly trying to emulate the mellotron found on this record, which would subsequently be purchased by tony banks and used prominently in genesis. in any case, this is the root of all of it. so, the other suggestions are not wrong, they're just finding a common influence.

(relevant tracks: constant, throughout)

this more or less replaced fixed as my go-to nin record for busing and had a big influence on me in terms of rhythms slowly developing over time. it's something that mostly comes out in the remixes, this sort of evolving, mutating thing...it's very much process music....

(relevant tracks: on sexual awkwardness in adolescence, symphonies 4 & 5, teenage jesus (suicide), others)

this record had such a weird influence on me, mostly because the sequencers are consistently using vanilla general midi settings, which is all i had available to me at the time through my pc sequencer. so i found myself relating really heavily to these primitive string sections...

(relevant tracks: schizoid, wish, on sexual awkwardness in adolescence)

deathtokoalas
this was their comeback disc, after their disastrous attempt at trying to be real life big ass rock stars. it's interesting to note how many people are pointing out they were young when it was released. i was 14 as well. first sonic youth disc. and, yes, it had a huge effect on me..

(relevant tracks: screwed up, all the symphonies, [2002], more)

Paul S
they've never screwed up, not artistically. Don't think they ever been considered 'big-ass rock stars' ----where did you get that from ? theyr'e like the artiest rock band ever,

deathtokoalas
they toned things down dramatically at the precise time they signed to geffen. the band had a bit of a split personality for pretty much it's entire existence, but they were very obviously in world domination mode between daydream nation and washing machine, and i don't think it's a coincidence that that's their weakest period (non-inclusive), musically.

Paul S
I like all their albums but fair enuff.

rickiwarrior
Hi. I could not help reply.... I understand how this album is a comeback, but I do not consider it´s predecessors disastrous attempts at all. I think that Sonic Youth´s relevance is based in that period you call "weakest" as well, because then, they proved that their talent can be comprehended massively (or commercially), not only by hardcore fans.---------------------------------------------------- I was born in 1982, so in 1995 I was just 13 years old. I started with Sonic Youth recently, around 2000, after I borrowed Dirty from a friend, and since then, is one of my Sonic Youth favorite albums. Washing Machine is really difficult to dig, so it takes 5 times more to love, and at this moment, for me it´s equally loveable as Dirty, I don´t know how would I feel about this in the future - (by the way, I can get enough of WM and The Diamond Sea.....ufff)----------              Finally, where does the Geffen period ends and begins?

deathtokoalas
what you mean to say is that they watered the sound down to sell more records.

sonic youth's cultural relevance is not their geffen years. it's their sst years. sister and daydream nation, particularly (although daydream nation wasn't on sst). the stuff after washing machine was very good for a while, but it will have no cultural impact. likewise, as bad a record as it was, people in their 40s today may look back at dirty as something they liked in a period of their life, but it will not be passed on to the next generation.

daydream nation, on the other hand, will be referenced for the next century.

this redefined epic for me.

(relevant files: screwed up, first movement, too cold, others)

if you haven't heard this, well.....you gotta hear this.

(relevant file: inrisampled)

well, this is hardly under-rated. and who doesn't know of it's existence? but i should also mention it as relevant, for a great number of files. i take the contentious position that this was their peak and it was downhill from here.

(relevant files: nope.mp3, wish, drive, many others)

i also should have pointed out the underratedness of this album yesterday, but it's still underrated today.

(relevant file is nope.mp3)

i should have said this was a great song yesterday.

it's still a great song today.

(relevant file is nope.mp3)

this isn't just bowie's best record, it's one of the decade's best records. that little comeback stint in the 90s was his most interesting period, musically. but, will we ever hear it in it's initial and intended form?

(relevant file: schizoid, confused, on sexual confusion in adolescence)

discovering the bus pirate

this might be the most awesome thing ever. i am not speaking lightly.

it's like 1% of the cost of the tools that recovery rip-offs use. it's actually cheaper to buy this little thing than it would be to hack together a homemade solution, and it's actually multipurpose - not only is it 1% of a pro device, it actually even pays for itself. it's even cheaper than a recovery evaluation would be...

but the assembled nature of it cuts out all the uncertainty of stringing together cannibalized cables to power sources. things get fried that way, but it's a last resort. not any more. it cuts out the need to use legacy hardware. should work direct from a laptop.

it's going to come with a learning curve, sure. but it could put the fucking vampires out of business. given what this could sell for, to manufacturer it like this and sell it for $30 is just shockingly decent.

http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/Bus-Pirate-v36-universal-serial-interface-p-609.html

was looking at a blu-ray writer for better storage. the price of media is still ridiculous. but finding one for under $30 is no longer infeasible (if still requiring a little luck). not a priority, though...

there may be a new format out in the next two years. that should help bring the blu-ray prices way down.

the flash made it give up faster, which is actually an improvement. cleaning the drive turned the fan noise down but didn't fix the read issues. it just spins. windows. dos. no os at all. same thing. so, i'm concluding that the drive is broken.

which means i haven't ruled out the ide on the board.

today, i need to get an external sata/ide-->usb thing and some other things. i'll be taking a run for old parts (ram for my secondary board is like $2/stick, might as well fill it up. it's also time to upgrade to usb 2.0, lol, given that usb 3.0 cards have pushed the price down. it's useless from a store's perspective. like, $5. and if i can find one for cheap enough ($10) i might even upgrade the chip from a pIII 500, although the max the board can take is pIII 950.) tomorrow and will grab an old ide then.

i mean, that board has maximum specs that are dirt cheap to attain. might as well...

alright, yamaha...

i know it's a little odd to go looking for a dos firmware installer for a cd-rom manufactured in 1999, but you really couldn't spare the 200 kb on your website? was it the bandwidth?

jerks.

there's legacy hardware sites, but they don't even support dos anymore, so i have to install windows to flash the drive. ugh...

i don't even think it's going to work, it's just a last chance before i trash it.

worse, people that flash things know it's not always so good to flash things from windows.

i could brick it trying to fix it. right now, i don't know if it's programming is corrupted, if it's physically broken or if it's just ridiculously dirty.

that little 200 kb (if that) file could prevent somebody from having to buy a new....

yeah. great system we've got going, here.

if you're curious, i'm trying to get the boot block on my motherboard to kick in. it's just simply not reading the floppy connector, but i think it's because the pin is damaged on it. the sata drives are spinning, but they're not reading. and i don't think i'm getting power to the usb ports. the ide connector seems to work, and the drive is spinning, but the drive isn't reading in my other pc at all, so i can't really conclude that that isn't working until i can verify that the drive is working. i have an ide dvd but i know it doesn't read cd-rs well. so i need the drive to work to rule out that the boot block isn't kicking in, before i go through the process of trying to serial in.

48 hours until i can get back to working on my mobo. it's going to be a while before i'm back to recording.

so, i'm going to do a song a day. i've been playing with this "channel trailer" feature on youtube. honestly? ridiculous idea. but, it does provide for a big button to push. i'd rather they set it up so it cycles through a list, but it's clearly designed for tv shows rather than musicians...

but, i can do that myself with minimal effort. so, song a day, moving forwards, chronologically (and selectively).

i'm going to start here. this is actually from april 11, 1998.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNDvac3oCwc

so, the guy upstairs wants to turn the air conditioning on when it's a high of two degrees. i'm an open-minded person, but that's really a signal that it's time to lose some weight for your own health. and i see no option but to turn the heat up to 25.

i get the feeling that the window is going to be open all summer.

i hereby declare this weekend to be....

PASTA WEEKEND.

(preferably stated with some ominous dread)

some of the other answers might get you something close (just be sure to crank the fuzz with some kind of tube preamp, and probably even a line booster - this is very high gain), but it sounds to me like that octave-y sound is actually an electronic relic of his guitar synthesizer tracking in and that the actual answer is something along the lines of digital distortion on a violin or cello patch, rather than anything created with guitar pedals you can get in a store. it's also probably manual whammy technique getting that envelope wah, rather than anything digital.