What was wrong?
Every time I would set things up, it would work fine.
Until an hour later, the DNS would become flaky and it would be hard to connect to and eventually disappear all together.

Why?
.local
You can’t have xxx.xxx.local as the domain name.
The .local makes things break.
So simple but so annoying, it took me ages to figure out and happened to be the only thing I wasn’t doing differently.

‘It’s always the last thing you try’ – that’s a stupid quote, of course it is. If it was the first thing I tried I wouldn’t have to keep trying.

Perspective.

There are 2 types of people, those who wait and those who don’t.
The people who can’t wait, get it first but risk teething problems.
The people to can wait get the 2nd revision, no teething problems.

Didn’t your mum tell you patience is a virtue?

Personally, patience is not in my vocabulary.
…..except when it comes to technology, I guess thats what comes from working in IT your whole life.

Do you resent Windows users for having that nifty little application Paint built into their OS’s?

Well don’t be concerned, there is a solution! Soggy Waffles has created this great little (5MB to be exact) app that makes this possible for all MAC OS X users…

Paintbrush – The Bitmap image editor for Mac OS X

With Paintbrush you can create your own work of art in no time, or even edit an existing image or screenshot to fit your needs without the necessity for alternate full blown image editior applications.  Paintbrush is great fun and with a simple and streamlined UI very easy to use!

And best of all, Paintbrush is totally FREE!  So visit Soggy Waffle’s Paintbrush page to get your hands on it now!!

Happy doodling  ;)

MD.

Does the above sound like a digression? It’s not. From the start of my audio adventures I was raised on Pro Tools; I learnt all the tricks and shortcuts and definitely flew the “it’s the industry standard” banner. I could rattle off the positives, and there are many, for hours. I felt I could do everything I wanted to do with Pro Tools and there was no need to look at alternatives. It wasn’t until I became an active member of several audio forums, including the DUC (Digidesign’s Pro Tools forum), that I realized what I might be missing out on. It seems it wasn’t just me experiencing constant stability issues, compatibility issues, painfully long loading times, arbitrary limitations on functionality (like low track counts and a lack of automatic delay compensation). It reached the point where the struggle I was fighting with Pro Tools was heavily impeding my ability to do anything creative with it. Either it would crash or, frustrated beyond belief, I would.

So, with the spark of revolution smoldering in my heart I began to look into alternatives. While I was excited about the prospect of taking advantage of the impressive underground VST (the non-Pro Tools plugin format) developing community, I was worried about flashy GUIs, overly complicated workflows and confusing layouts. I had dabbled with Cubase previously for midi and knew that switching to a program like this would be a painful trip to the re-education camp. Pass. Eventually, I found Reaper.

Reaper, developed by the creators of Winamp, seems to be a special piece of software. Only a few MBs in size, it starts in seconds and can famously be run from a USB stick. Unlike Pro Tools, it’s also 64bit (more ram, MORE RAM). It’s also free of any arbitrary limitations – unlimited track counts, endless routing possibilities and so forth. It’s cheap ($60 for a hobbyist and only $250 for a commercial entity – good for two full version numbers of updgrades) and, most importantly, it’s stable. The thing that struck me most though was the customizable interface and workflow. Without going into too much (or any, really) detail, you can make it work how you want. Even cooler, you can make it look the way you want. The gui is very customizable and the creators host a vibrant user community that churns out amazing themes – from the stunning/flashy to the functional (and some beautiful mixes of the two). There are even themes created to mimic users’ previous DAWs – including Pro Tools. So, we have a customisable, stable DAW with endless possibilities, supported by a vibrant and passionate user community and regularly updated by brilliant developers. Sounds good?

Sounds good.

The features and the user community have me sold for now – as soon as my current Pro Tools sessions are completed I will begin the Reaper experiment. I’m sure I will revisit Pro Tools at some point (like a dementia-stricken relative in an old folk’s home), but for now I am going to, finally, go for something that doesn’t coast along on the “industry standard” tag. I’ll let you know how it goes.

To check out Reaper, go to http://www.reaper.fm

OMG!  What is thinking!  Woman much prefer men that smell like women… Dont they?

It could be due to the fact that everyone has those special little days that they enjoy come around – For some people its Wednesdays (hump day of the work week), for others it Friday 4:30pm, knowing that the weekend is only 30 mins away, but the boss has already left, so screw it, lets take the extra 30 mins!

Click here to view the embedded video.

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[tubepress video="owGykVbfgUE"]

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