I've moved from a computer consting of 8 years of secondhand freebies to a Quadcore Phenom II beast with 8GB Ram. Yesterday I set an mp3 to encode at the insane setting marked 'non-realtime' it rendered at twice realtime :)

This may literally save weeks of my life.

Yesterday I searched for some multitrack audio software. I already use Audacity and do prefer a free, open-source tool, but need MIDI support. My soundcard came with lite versions of Ableton Live and Cubase, without going into undue detail, these programs have limitations on them unless you buy the cheapest version of the tool, which is still a cut-down version of the full product.

Eventually however, I found this:

http://www.reaper.fm/

It also deals with MIDI and has a sensible 30 day evaluation period during which the product is as it would be upon purchase, no restrictions, it has good online wiki documentation, and so far I've found it very well organised and feature-rich. Barring unfortunately weirdness, I expect to pay for the full version, which is less than 10% of the price of Cubase.

So in preparation for the murder mystery, I needed to print out a lot of stuff, and the inkjet printer was not cooperating. It would print out streaks of int and was apparently close to running out. So I cycled at lunchtime to shops went in 6 different shops all of which had ink for insane prices...insanely high that is!

Typically £40-£50, even the non-brand ones were expensive. Until I found Maplins, they had refill kits so I bought a couple for a few quid each and that night filled the ink back up.

Apparently Epson have put little chips into the cartridges which tell the printer the ink is empty and will not adjust that opinion once it becomes total crap. So the next day in desparation I went back to the Maplins at lunch and bought a black ink cartridge for £6 or something. It was fine, but then the printer still printed the streaks, so I needed to do all the head cleaning nonsense, which required the colour cartridge to be full. That night I went back and got the colour cartridge, the printer didn't think it had any ink now and would certainly not be printing anything for the game which was to occur the next day.

This would have been a sad tale of printing disaster, had it not been for my anticipating the printer acting like a complete ****!

That evening while buying the colour ink cartridge I also shopped around a bit and bough a sexy Laser Printer which uses wifi. I did have to get it home on my bike (in the rain) though...

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But it all worked out well in the end :)

After seeing this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPywgDBjM1Y

and this website:

http://www.david-laserscanner.com/

I decided to embark on a project to build a device that could scan a small object into the computer...in 3 Dimensions! Using Lasers! Mwuhahahaha!

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What say you?

I passed my theory test. Next on to driving lessons!

Also read Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

( Minor Spoiler Alert )

So it goes.