13 inches vs 15?

My 5 year old 15″ MacBook Pro is in VERY bad shape. The random reboots and crazy power management issues are beyond maddening and it’s poor little single core 1.8 GHz processor can’t run Lion, or handle some of my plugins.

Lucky for me though, my tax return is coming this week, so I’m going to bite the bullet and upgrade.

Now here’s where things get tricky…

I decided a few months ago that when I did finally upgrade I was going to go with a 13 inch in the interest of being more portable and to save some money. But now I’m starting to question that.

Hardware wise the duel core (13″) vs quad core (15″) thing isn’t a huge deal. Sure it would be nice to future proof a bit, but at the same time, I was able to make it on a single core for years. Video cards don’t matter too much to me since A) I’m not much of a gamer, and B) I don’t do much in the way of video editing. The thing that is a big factor is the screen size.

The 15″ is a very comfortable size, but do I really need the extra room? Is 13″ going to hinder my productivity, or be too small for a DAW? I can connect a much larger external monitor if need be, and as a friend pointed out, I could get one when I get the laptop and still come out ahead over the 15″.

Later this week I’m going to the Apple store and try out Logic on a 13″ and seeing how it feels. That way I can make a slightly more informed decision.

Either way, I’m super excited to finally upgrade.

New MPCFly

I was so excited about this new MPC iPad controller

MPCFly

… until I read this:

MPC App works with iPad & iPad 2
(Hardware works with iPad 2 only)

My heart sank.

Now, it’s possible that it’s just that the case itself might not fit properly on the first gen iPads, but that the pads will work. If that’s the case, than I’m sure someone will come up with a mod that will make it work. Either way, it’s still a REALLY cool idea.

Re-arranged.

I’ve been on this 90’s – early 00’s rock kick lately. I started combing through my depreciated “Nu-Metal” collection (shut up, you had one too) for samples.

 

I figured this would be a good one to start with:

 

 

So after some chopping of the intro bassline and throwing on some drums I ended up with this:

 

 

You Dared Me To (Re-arranged)

It’s probably just more of an exercise than something that will go anywhere, but its fun to do some more upbeat stuff, especially since the source is so down tempo.

Clear off the dust.

When I started doing this blog in 2008 it was half to share what I was doing with the handful of people who I knew were genuinely interested in what I was working on, and half to push myself to do more and be better at it.
The problem is that there is a thing called responsibilities, and a thing called failure, and I’ve gotten really good at using one to cover for the other. I’m trying to fix that. I’m trying to go back to what the blog was supposed to be about.

So that’s about the size of it. Thanks for reading (listening).