Irreverence is Justified

If you’re used to using Windows, a Mac is a bit of a jump. If you know your way around linux or unix, it’s not quite so big a jump, but it’s still a jump.

I say this only as advice if anyone is considering getting a Mac and has been a Windows user up to now. Expect a learning curve. Basic things that you’re probably used to won’t work. Like copy and paste. Or your keyboard having such things as a delete key. Or your mouse having a right mouse button that reliably works.

To that end, I am planning on getting a bigger keyboard for the Mac, still a Mac keyboard since they come with that other key (hold on… aye, the cmd key) but one with a delete key, and maybe a page up and page down key would be nice. And I’ll switch to a normal mouse, because I’ve had it already with this Mac mouse and it’s tiny scroll wheel that makes my finger feel like the skin is being dragged under the plastic. It’s awful. But the Mac experience in general is going well to the point that I now sit at my Windows machine and wonder why I can no longer copy and paste and discover it’s because I’m using the Mac keyboard shortcuts.

I fully admit to being a keyboard shortcut junky, and I also know I’ve learnt about 0.3% of the keyboard shortcuts for the Mac, whereas I probably know about 70% of all the Windows ones (feels like I know 100%, but there are bound to be plenty I don’t know). Once I get a handle on them, I’ll be a lot more comfortable with it. That said, I’m actually quite comfortable with the Mac already and I’ve only had it for, erm, a week? I honestly can’t recall when I got it, last week was weird and I never knew what day it was. It would have been either Tuesday or Wednesday. Wednesday, that was it, I think. Anyway, less than a week, and I’m getting there.

Trying to get my external audio equipment to work reliably with it has been a struggle though. On Sunday, it just wasn’t working at all and a reboot solved the problems, so I don’t know what was going on there but it is in some way reassuring to know that rebooting does fix things sometimes on a Mac. The audio setup includes an Alesis io|2, a Boss DR-880, a Pod X3 Live, a Fender strat, a Yamaha bass (man I need to replace it), an Ovation, a Yamaha Clavinova and a Shure SM58. I have managed to get it all working together, with relatively little pain, aside from MIDI. That took some effort. But I did get there, I can now get Logic to play the piano. It even creates sheet music as I play something, it’s totally awesome.

So all in all, it’s been some week and I’ve learnt a lot. Still a long way to go, but I’m definitely getting somewhere.

For well over a year now, I’ve been considering getting an iMac because I’ve been recording music on my Windows laptop and I’ve always known that Macs are apparently better for this kind of thing.

So I finally decided to make the jump and I’ve now got a 24″ iMac sitting on my music bench. Indeed, I’m using it to type this right now.

So the main thing I’m trying to do is to get music recorded. However, it’s fair to say that just understanding how this damn thing works is going to be a bit of a learning curve.

For a start, there are a number of small things that I’m still not sure about, 48 hours after getting it. For example, the keyboard doesn’t have a delete, page up or page down key. I think there are keyboard shortcuts for these, but I can’t quite remember them. Delete is function-backspace, although whether that works in all applications, I don’t know. It certainly seems to be working right now. And I used to swing between tabs in Firefox using CRTL-Page Up and Down, but I have yet to find out how to do that. I will find out, I just ain’t yet.

By far the hardest thing is working out how to get my audio devices to play through Logic Express 9. I went for it rather than Logic Studio mainly because the stuff that doesn’t come in Express 9 didn’t actually mean anything to me, and I know I can upgrade and only have to pay £10 more overall if I decide to do that. It took a day and a half just to get my guitar to play through Logic and my Pod X3 Live. Again, I got there in the end, but it was a heck of a lot of reading to get there.

Overall though, I do have to be honest and say that this iMac does have to be one of the most attractive things I’ve ever seen. That’s not the reason I bought it, but it certainly is a good additional bonus :)

I got myself a Nokia N97 yesterday. It’s rather nice, and I just wasn’t ever going to get an iPhone to tell you the truth. I’ve ventured away from Nokia in the past and regretted it, so I’ve been sticking with them solidly for the past couple of years and probably won’t go elsewhere unless there’s a really good reason.

So I got this N97. It’s so packaged full with features, I’ll never comment about all of them in one post, so here’s a post about the first main thing I’ve tried that didn’t work totally awesome – transferring music.

The thing comes with 32GB of disk space. Now that’s sweet. I don’t tend to carry about all my music with me, I currently have 17GB of music on my iPod so I figured I’d put that on my N97. The phone comes with various applications for your PC, one of which is called Nokia Music. It’s rather clunky, moreso than iTunes (no, really). And it’s not good at transferring the music over.

I started it going and after a heck of a long time it was still only 30% of the way through. I should have timed it, but the worrying part was that it said that there was 2 hours 42 mins to go, then later there was 3 hours to go, then later still 3hr 12min, then later still 3h 24min. It wasn’t looking hopeful. It got as far as transferring 1159 tracks, and I hit the cancel button.

At this point, those tracks were on my N97.

Later, I started it again, assuming that it would pick up where it left off. Except it seemed to start from the beginning. I let it get to about 73 tracks done and hit cancel – this time, no extra tracks were on the phone. Strange.

So I’ve given up and am transferring them by having the N97 connected as a mass storage device. It’s much quicker doing it this way – it’s transferring at around 3.5MB/sec. Which is still pathetic since USB 2.0 should allow 480Mbit/sec, but it’s massively faster than it was before.

The only potential is that it’ll transfer all the music over, but the N97 might not pick it up and I’ll have to use Nokia Music. I really hope not.

[ Added later ]

The transfer hasn’t finished yet, but I’ve spotted that this is a documented method of transferring the music, and if the N97 doesn’t immediately notice the music, I can refresh the library. Sweet.

The Script were on Radio 1′s live lounge. I’m no fan of Jo Whiley, so rarely listen live but do use the “listen again” feature from time to time. The Script did a cover of the Foo Fighters’ Times Like These, which sounded similar to the Foo’s version from their live album, Skin and Bones. It’s well worth a listen, if you have the time.