The Null Device
2000/11/13
The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable looks interesting:
Take for example, the origins of the word ``business.'' In Old English, the word ``bisignis'' meant an anxiety. Over the years it grew to mean a task over which one was anxious, and now means an appointed task or commercial undertaking.
Moral ambiguity of the day: The Catholic Church vs. McDonalds:
...a Catholic newspaper declared fast food to be fit only for atheists, or perhaps Lutherans. Munching a Big Mac with fries was the antithesis of receiving communion and should be spurned by Catholics, declared Avvenire.
(via YAWL)
Yesterday I finally upgraded my aging Linux machine, with some parts bought from the swap meet. It's a lot faster, though the sound card I bought (a $19 commodity card) doesn't work with Linux, annoyingly enough. (I had to retire my old Gravis UltraSound as the new board lacks ISA slots; also retired is a Roland MPU-401 MIDI interface (ISA). If you want either of those, make me an offer.)
Also, for some reason I have not been able to install Windows 98 over VMWare just yet. (That was one of the reasons for getting a faster machine; being able to run a proper web browser without doing so on my Mac (and possibly destabilising Cubase) or losing Linux.)
Why, you may ask, did I get a cheap sound card, and not something ultra-doovy? Well, I don't intend to use the Linux machine for recording or anysuch, and a cheap card is sufficient for browsing the web and listening to MP3s. Besides, if the cheap-sound-card-grunge effect ever becomes fashionable (as the crackling-vinyl and telephone effects have been), I won't have to spend several hundred on the boutique VST plug-ins that do it.