The official Head Case broadcast thread

[Knuckledragger]

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

[Knuckledragger]

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

[Knuckledragger]

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

[Knuckledragger]

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

[Knuckledragger]

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

[Knuckledragger]

Macintop is stuck in a loop where it won't full boot.  Probability of a radio show tonight very low.  Weekend is going to be "interesting" in the sense of the Chinese curse.

[Knuckledragger]

Voice = Spongebob Narrator "Two Months Later"

I got an idea how to resurrect my radio show even without a laptop.  Stay tuned.

[Knuckledragger]

Oof.  That might be a complete nonstarter.  The target machine's SSD is not big enough for my data.  RIP.

[Knuckledragger]

A friend of mine texted me this evening "So is your show ever going to be back on the air?"  I said "Still don't have a new lappy and Macintops are four grand easy.  I'm not famous enough for a Patreon or a GuFundMe."  He said "You should set one up anyway."  

[Knuckledragger]

Was supposed to pick up my new lappy and iPhone yesterday, but an unforscene complication on the other end put the kibosh to that at 9:30 in the morning.  Currently everything is up in the air.

[Knuckledragger]

Soon.

[Grahame]

No live on air unboxing?

 

[Knuckledragger]

No, I'm not Kuckles' Tech Tips.  TBH, the new Macintop is STILL in its box and it'll be a bit before I have it fully spun up.  In the next few days I have to:

1. Either un-fuck my current version of 1Password or upgrade to the new one, which SaaS with a monthy fee.  Ugh
2. Aftering doing the above, get 1PW up to date and running on 4 computers and one iPhone not including the new lappy.
3. Sign up for Proton VPN (officially broke up with Nord) and get it running on the same machines.
4. Did I mention I bought a new iPhone?  Get IT working with all my various 2FA sites/apps/etc.
5. Update a bunch of passwords that are past due for refreshing.
6. Finally start in on the new lappy, which will take days of work including data migration and account/software setup.
7. Pay my property tax, which was due on the first.  I am a nearly 50 year old clown.

[blessingx]

What is the 1Password non-subscription alternative at this point? Assume it’s no longer LastPass? Man, it sucks every tiny, single product development team is jumping to SaaS. Have to leave Pathfinder after all these years for the same reason. 

[Beefy]

8 hours ago, blessingx said:

What is the 1Password non-subscription alternative at this point? Assume it’s no longer LastPass? Man, it sucks every tiny, single product development team is jumping to SaaS. Have to leave Pathfinder after all these years for the same reason. 

I like Bitwarden. Fully-featured free version, with very cheap premium option.

[Knuckledragger]

Just got Traktor to run without locking up for the first time on the M1 Mac.  Had to edit a text file and disabled multicore processing (and a fuckin' BeatPort nag screen) to get it to load.

[Knuckledragger]

I made a discovery today: I have no idea as to the location of my DJ mixer.  I moved it off my desk some time in the 6+ month period I’ve been off the air and I haven’t the foggiest where I stashed it.  It’s large, fragile and expensive so I know I put it some place safe.  I have no idea where that is.  I do have an even older backup unit, which I am probably going to press into service at least for test purposes.  I don’t relish using it for anything beyond that.  

[Knuckledragger]

The good news: I found my DJ mixer.  I had indeed put it in its original 2005 shipping box, which is what a Smart Knuckles does.  

The bad news: I think my shiny new MOTU M4 is borked.  I cannot get sound out of channels 1-2 no matter what I do.  The device is class compliant (does not require drivers) and it worked (or rather "worked") out of the box.  I got Traktor to recognize it, though it showed up in the device list as "Audio Out."  I assiged the two decks to outputs 1-2 and 3-4 respectively.  The appropriate volume bars on the M4's display lit up when I play back a track on either deck.  Channels 3-4 worked just fine.  No amount of swapping cables and inputs on the DJ mixer could elicit any sound from 1-2.

I then installed the M4's Mac drivers (certified to work with Monterey) and enabled the extension (everything is disabled by defualt in newer versions of MacOS.)  That caused the M4 to show up in the device list under its own name, but it didn't fix the lack of sound output on the first two channels.  I've powerecycled everything (including the DJ mixer) but nothing has worked.  I might try the M4 on a different machine, but I STRONGLY suspect my M4 is faulty

So, uh, no show next week I think.

[Knuckledragger]

Oh boy 45 minutes on old with Sweetwater.  Their hold music BLARINGLY, DEAFENINGLY LOUD.   Also terribad and interrutped by unnaturally perky sounding people telling me shit IDGAF about in any lifetime.  

Finally got a tech, which lead to another 45 minutes of back and forth, installing a creepy-ass TeamViewer app, much fuckery with Traktor, system configs etc ...all of which lead to confirmation that yes, Julia, channels 1 & 2 on the MOTU are in fact dead.

New unit being shipped for Friday.  I hafta get the old one in the mail within <mumble> days.  Probably no show this Friday, either.

[Knuckledragger]

New M4 arrived.

Tentative good news.

[Knuckledragger]

Today I got everything wired up (MOTU M4/Mixer/laptop) and am testing it out.  I've spent much of the evening ...just poking at things.  It's a bit like re-learning Traktor from the ground up.  6+ months away plus the UI changes to the new version have left me struggling to remember basic functions.  Also, and this is not a small point, I have been running Traktor since late 2008.  I set a bunch of config options back then and they carried over version to version.  With my new install, all of that is gone.  I've had numerous instances of "X isn't doing the thing I expect" then figuring out what that function is, where it's located in the options menu and setting it the way I want.  Talking to a friend, I've likened the situation to sitting down in my car only to find that the clutch pedal has a different depth, the speedometer has different graduations and the stick shift is in the wrong place.

I did get the new Mixlr app and the MOTU M4 working at least.  I am [gosh darn] tired, so I don't think I'll do a test broadcast tonight.  I am going to try to mix a few tracks just for myself later.

[Knuckledragger]

Quote

sent 77.67G bytes  received 210.50K bytes  3.71M bytes/sec
total size is 77.74G  speedup is 1.00

^ That's my entire virtual record bag, archived.  Normally only the changed files need to be copied, but part of the process of rebuilding my virtual DJ infrastructure changed the mtime on every single track in it.  This M1 MBP doesn't have ethernet of course, so that transfer had to happen over WiFi.  Related, I'm eyeing one of those CalDigit TB docks.  

Probability of me finally returning to the airwaves this coming Friday increasing.

[Knuckledragger]

Okay so I had a NAP today which, means I'm wide TF awake RN and therefore attempting to work on my show.  This new version of Traktor has some strong "is that a feature or a bug" energy to it.  Tonight I discovered 100s (of the 6600+) tracks I have in my record bag are not displaying key text.  That's bad because I love to mix in key, but I am a dumb DJ and not a muscian so I need to know if that song is in Cm or not.  Currently running a background process scanning the songs in questions.  1h10m remaining.  I tried this once before and Traktor cheerfully ran the process but didn't write any tags.  I futzed with config settings and I'm unsure if I actually fixed anything.  I have a third party key detection software (the open source KeyFinder), which can write tags.  Unfortunately, Traktor doesn't recognize those tags.

  

[Knuckledragger]

Doing a soft launch of my show tonight, as much of a technical test as an actual radio show: http://mixlr.com/illuminator/chat

[Dusty Chalk]