Shane_B.

1 hour ago, Notes_Norton said:

Agreed. If that's the case, I try to find an alternative.

I have an old, paid for, and owned version of Microsoft Office. There is nothing in the new, rental plan, that makes me want to subscribe. If there was, I'd try Open Office, Libre Office or something else.

I don't mind paying for the tools I use, I just don't want to pay again and again and again and again and again and again.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

 

OpenOffice for documents and spreadsheets and Gimp for photo editing are just as good as MS and Adobe for my needs. I did buy Adobe Light room for RAW editing. I have the last version you could buy.

I have nothing against subscriptions as an option. Most times it's actually cheaper if you are one to always upgrade to new versions when they are released. I just don't like the idea of being locked out if I don't keep paying a fee monthly. 

10 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Sheesh, I feel so cheated when I hear a band that plays with backing tracks.

It's possible they weren't, but I have never heard a band so tight before. Maybe being from the big apple the bar is a lot higher and there's a better talent pool to form a group from? IDK. They even had a full sized sound shield in front of the drummer.

I noticed when they started, the low mids were brutal. A guy came out from the back of the stage area. He had an iPad and was walking around the room making adjustments to their sound system with it and got it cleared up before the first song ended. That was the only time I saw him. The singers had iPads on their mic stands too.

There were two small column like monitors that they were all mixed through. There was a drummer, bass, sax, lead guitar player, lead singer/acoustic player, keyboard, and a second lead singer. It was all controlled via an iPad wirelessly. 

I've been thinking about playing live again but after seeing that kind of competition I think I'll just slink back in to my hole and find another hobby.

I'd be a hypocrite if I cried foul though. Toward the end of my band days we prerecorded tracks and played along. At least we did it old school. It was me playing all the backing tracks on an 8 track I then transferred to DAT and we didn't hide it. And we did do about half of the night 100% live.

But it's accepted now and the norm I guess.

I went to my neice's wedding this weekend in upstate NY. They had a 7 piece band at the reception that was out of NYC. My brother was a drummer playing live for over 30 years and I played geetar live for over 16. We weren't used to being on that side of the mic and we were sitting there critiquing them the whole time. They were so tight there is no way they were truly live. They had to be playing to some kind of backing tracks and never varied their songs with an extra lead or repeated verse when the dance floor was packed to keep them up there dancing. Don't get me wrong, they were excellent, but there is no way they were fully live.

During one of the breaks I saw the lead singer sitting out in a seperate room by one of the bars by herself. She didn't associated with the other members. It was just the two of us and the bartender. After I did the 'Lenny and Squiggy palm bite' I mustered up the courage to go sit down and talk to her. We were trading band stories and said she'd been singing in bands professionally for 15 years. I swear she didn't look a day over 20 but man could she sing. She was off a couple times so I know at least the singing was live.

15 hours ago, craigb said:

What's noticeable to me is that I wouldn't want to watch movies (provided I actually did watch movies) on such old resolutions!  4k 2160p is required!  (8k and 16k are completely unnecessary since humans can't tell the difference except on a stadium-sized screen!)

It's all about the compression. I'm talking about physical media, not streaming. Streaming compresses everything and degrades it.

An uncompressed 1080p video is every bit (hah!) as good as a 4K video. Side by side you couldn't tell the difference if both were full uncompressed files. HDR disc's have better compression and hold more data than a Blu-ray's so whenever we watch a Blu-ray, it's compressed, a lot in some cases.

What they seem to be doing is, on older movies shot on film, they are using software to restore them after scanning them in 4K. But the benefit you are actually getting is from the restoration. If they did two scans, one in 1080p and one in 4K, set up the software to do the exact same thing to both, then released the uncompressed version of both files, you couldn't see a difference, unless you tried to watch them on a ridiculously sized monitor. On our typical home screens up to 70" you couldn't see a difference.

Same thing with new movies shot in digital. If you had two cameras side by side or two different resolutions built inside the camera, one at 1080p and one at 4K, then viewed the uncompressed files side by side, you couldn't tell the difference. 

I actually have a couple movies that look better on Blu-ray vs. the 4K release.

That said, the second 8K becomes mainstream, I'll be lusting for an 8K player and TV. ?

I do think a good spell checker would sovle a lot of problems 'round here.

I miss the 'eating popcorn' emoji. We used to use it a lot around here. ?

I will not use anything that I use to create my music with that requires a subscription. 

I think it's a sleezy scummy way to scam people out of more money coupled with the threat of locking them out of their own work if they don't continue to pay forever.

My brother owns a business machine company. I started running calls for him again once in a while when he gets really busy. Some of those fancy touchscreen point of sales systems you see in stores and restaurants require a "software" license to be purchased yearly. You know, just to keep everything up to date. You get a warning message on the screen saying you have 30 days left to renew your license. If you don't do it the system shuts down and will not work. You can't renew the license remotely. A tech has to go out and do it.

A friend of mine bought a V one time. It could never be set up properly and played like ?, according to him.

He got so frustrated with it that he took it out in his back yard,  dumped gas on it, and burned it.

True story. 

Perennial Encroachment Needed Imaginative Sickling

On 5/2/2023 at 2:14 PM, craigb said:

When I danced at Chip 'N Dales

I was asked to join the Chip 'N Whales one time. Me and two bandmates were out trying to book gigs at a dance club one night and this short very wide gentleman dressed in a very expensive suit came up to me and asked me if I would be interested in joining.

The guy gave me his business card and told me if I was interested they'd send a limo to my house and take me to an audition in NYC.

From that day on our bass player Terry called me Chip. He passed away about 15 years ago but the guys in the band that are still alive rib me about it to this day. Terry was laying on his stomach on the bar laughing so hard he was crying and pounding his fists and kicking his feet. I admit it was really funny. One of those band stories you never forget.

11 hours ago, craigb said:

He might be at his country studio...

I don't think he records there anymore because they are still only tracking at 192/16.

"24bit matters" ...

Bad day today. Makes me wonder and worry who is next.

On 4/30/2023 at 7:19 PM, craigb said:

So Shane, did you "win" or did the other guy end up donating more than you? ?

I honestly think it was the same guy with 2 accounts. Two different names but the personality is the same. Happens here ... you know what I mean. ?

The guy/gal/whoever 'they' are has donated 10s of thousands to her.

I'd link to her channel but I did once before a long time ago in another similar topic thread and it was deleted for some reason. me ghan y eah. All one word. She's PG. Nothing trashy at all. Then of course there's Doc (Dr. Disrespect). What a career he made for himself ... just playing games. He makes millions a year. Plays as a fake 80s retro gamer but he kind of sucks. Makes fun of himself/ego and its very entertaining.

On 4/30/2023 at 7:20 PM, craigb said:

Maybe you need to use a SoundBlaster card? ?

 

?

Realtek for me. 

☹️

Gamers that stream live make a LOT of money. Some of them make millions of dollars a year.

One of my favorite ones to watch is a young woman paying her way through college by streaming herself playing games. I saw two guys get in to a donation war one night on her YouTube channel. By the time it was over they donated over $20,000 between the two of them.

As Liberace once said, "I'm laughing all the way to the bank!"

Hold my non-light beer, I'll show you amateurs how to get a thread deleted!

???

21 hours ago, Grem said:

Wow!! LOL!! Quote Of The Day right there!!

LoL!!

I agree. Why, if we lived closer together Kenny, I'd buy you an ice cold ??.

On 4/5/2023 at 1:19 PM, SteveStrummerUK said:

Don't fancy yours much Kenny ?

 

I used to watch her all the time but she seems to have vanished from youtube. No new vids in a long time. Maybe she switched to forks.

50 minutes ago, SteveStrummerUK said:

Reminds me of swimming in very cold water

These do too ...

I was in a band with one of the best guitar players I've ever heard back in the 90s. He was completely and totally tone deaf but he was dead on with his lead covers. He argued with me about whether Smoke On The Water was in a major or minor for 20 minutes one night and he could not hear the difference that one of us was playing a major and the other a minor. Tried to get the bass player to back me up on the spot but that didn't help. ?

The next week at practice he leaned over to me before we started the song and he whispered to me, "I checked my sheet music. You were right.".

And his singing ... it was tragic. He was a talented guitar player. A walking encyclopedia of music. But the guy could not hear the difference between notes. It was purely technical playing.

The guys in that band had been together a long time. I had just joined. It made me wonder how many years they were playing the most basic song in the universe wrong and why nobody ever called them out on it.

16 hours ago, hockeyjx said:

I've never had one BIOS update issue with Asus through the years, but oddly enough had them with Gigabyte ...which you had the opposite. So strange.

I may have got the names reversed. It's been almost a year since I turned on my DAW. I do remember that I always had one little thing I needed an update for that they would never put out. But I admit I may have reversed the brands.

Side note ... 2 days ago I had to connect a large color MFP to a new laptop that was running Windows 11 ... I Am not a fan of Windows 11 and Am not looking forward to the day I have to "upgrade" to it.

4 hours ago, craigb said:

Something tells me he won't be RIP!  ?

Yeah. That big spaghetti monster can be a vengeful one. ??

On 3/11/2023 at 2:52 PM, kitekrazy said:

I think Intel is out of the consumer board market and I also liked their boards.

I always liked Intel boards too. I was very disappointed when I discovered I could no longer get them. Always had bios issues with Asus. It always needed some update they would never put out.

I use Gigabyte now. My last build is stuck on Windows 10. It says I am one generation too old for Windows 11 even though lesser CPUs than mine are deemed acceptable. Frustrating.

I love the process and just tinkering in general. I used to build them for work and I built every PC I've ever owned except for my very first one. That said, when the time comes for my next upgrade (when Fallout 5 lands and the current hardware is finally capable of running Fallout 4 at an acceptable framerate) I'll be getting a pre-built from Jim. I trust him and he's helped me so much here over the years it's the least I can do.

The other thing about getting a system from a builder like Jim is you don't get overloaded and bogged down with bloatware. That is huge. Anything off the shelf from a "name brand" is going to take a ton of time just to clean the crapware out. And yeah they may be slightly cheaper but there is always a reason why. PSU lacking, RAM speed and amount lacking. Cooling inadequate. There's always something in the fine print that screws you when you need quiet, cool,  low latency and/or consistent reasonable framerates.