The Pezman

I can't draw, paint, sculpt, or do pretty much anything with my hands. Trust me. For the future, what forms of art are acceptable? Photographs? Significantly altered existing images? Well-textured and colored 3D models/scenes? Please let me know.

Anyone have any more cries of dissention?

Fixed. Especially since it's pretty much next door to my town.

You get to name them when you first get them, anyway. Though I doubt SE would stomp all over tradition and suggest "Kaeru" as the default.

Ridley's Theme. I'm surprised; thought there'd be more of a clamor for this one.

In general I try to play the games beforehand. It's much more meaningful to me if I can listen to the remix and say "Oh, I recognize this melody!"

I kinda hope they redesign the controller itself to include this feature by default. That way the bottom port remains open. And since I haven't purchased any additional remotes other than the one with my system, this means I'm in a decent position to get them.

Yes. By a guy who sounds damn close to George Newbern (American voice). That isn't to say we're sticking 100% to voices like the American voice actors, but in this case it definitely worked. Check it out.

The auditions for all the named characters were a couple of weeks ago. There was a thread here, but there didn't seem to be a ton of interest. Leon K./Random Hajile got Barret, though. However, like I said, anyone who's interested should get on his Ventrilo server.

Okay, so I want to make a mix to put on bLiNd's get-well album. Unfortunately, until July 26 I'm 8 hours away from my home, which has my instruments and controller. I tried setting up FL Studio, but my computer's on the verge of collapsing and doesn't cooperate with anything more intense than gaming or CD ripping. So I downloaded Audacity and figured I'd make a very very rough a capella mix (of Ridley's theme, no less). It would be silly and I think (hope) bLiNd would enjoy it. Now I think I understand why Audacity isn't discussed around here. I have not found ways to perform even basic tasks like moving audio clips around or snapping to a grid. Of the few links which worked on the help page, they all pointed to simple, meaningless tasks I had no use for. Can anyone give me enough information to complete this track?

Except for me. And I'm 21 now.

No worries about time or degree of acting experience. I'm playing Hojo and Dyne on this project, but since we're going through chronologically we actually haven't gotten to either of them yet. I have, however, already recorded lines for a noname character (the guy who sells Cloud the batteries to get up to Shinra HQ). I rehearsed them with Mesden on Ventrilo, and then recorded them in Audacity. All told it took me a half an hour. You'll also probably have a wide selection, since I believe the rule of thumb is that any noname character who the PCs appear to have an actual conversation with will be voiced. Pop in to Mesden's Ventrilo server, hostname vent36.light-speed.com and port 5124. You can come on late because, unlike us normal people, Mesden lives across the country and is stuck three hours in the past.

Lame... I don't have any instruments on hand, nor are any sequencers running to any workable effect (which won't change til I get Macbook Pro). Can I a capella something? Totally serious.

Maybe I'll make something. It will probably suck, but hopefully have that "I made my first mix just for you" charm to it.

Oh yeah, I know. A close friend has been a Machead from birth and most of time we got into playful arguments about it. I've worked on his laptop and on the Macs in my Comp Sci labs many-a-time before, and he has pledged to show me the ins and outs of it once I get it. My brother got an iMac, so I was able to plug in my controller. I was flabbergasted: I hadn't believed I could truly just plug in and go, but that's exactly what happened. No setting the appropriate MIDI input or track output. As people often say, everything "just worked."

This is good news indeed, especially since my roommate bought Rock Band a couple of weeks ago and I have grown quite masterful (expert) on drums (I'm a real drummer with lots of prior rythm game experience), pretty good(medium/hard) on Guitar/Bass, and decent (Easy/Medium) on vocals. Someday I'll have to buy me all this for myself, but it's still a while off. I'm glad to see Rage, Peppers, Dream Theater, and Megadeth, but wish they had different songs. Master Exploder by Tenacious D is spot on, though.

Good, though it seems the issues people have with MBPs aren't seeing the light of day... can I hear about BGC's issues and AnSo's Leopard problems?

Yeah, let's start organizing hotel stuff. As usual, it's best if we get three, four, five people to a room.

Mixmeister, as the name implies, is for DJing, which is essentially the idea of cutting and mixing up existing music to create new phat beats. However, in terms of remixing as this site defines it (which is usually creating a MIDI, loading soundfonts, and much processing), Mixmeister is probably not very helpful (since I'm assuming its MIDI capabilities will not extend in that direction). That said, I have no idea whether an acceptable remix could be made in a "DJ form" as it were, so someone in the know about this should post here.

Old habits hard to break, huh Dougie?

I wanna hear it.

Factor in insurance and gas. AnSo, I don't have a choice. The machine I get will come with Leopard. Can you be more specfic about the problems? Fantastic. Don't you dare edit that post.

Typo. Fixed in the original post. It's a bit over $3000.

Parents are telling me I'm going to the Berkshires that day. Would love to wait and go the next day, but I'm already coming back early for Otakon. So doubtful. Put me down as a "Probably not."

Fair enough, but now you do: I'm disgraphic, which means that writing legibly is difficult for me and takes more time than others. When taking notes, there's no way that works out. I didn't have a laptop through high school and it created a problem not only with legibility, but with organizing my notes come test time. Since using a laptop, things have been so much better. I can access, read and edit my notes at any time. And I didn't even know about OneNote! Now that I do, taking and organizing notes with ol' lappy should be even easier. The portability also allows me to try my hand at using the machine live: install Ableton, hook in a controller and I'm in business. The world may see something as soon as Otakon. Not to mention the fact that I don't have a car at school, so if I came home for a break it would be very difficult to bring my computer along. The reasons pile up. Finally, as for the specs, let's take a look: The most expensive iMac has a 3.06 GHz with 6 MB L2 Cache, 1920 x 1200 display, up to 1 TB HD, and an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS with 512MB of GDDR3 memory. The current Macbook Pro specs are actually not indicative of the machine I'll have, as Apple is nearing a redesign, and I have been waiting patiently. But since I'm sure the new machine won't be wildly different, let's go through it anyway: 2.5/2.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 6MB shared L2 cache, $100 upgrade to 1920 x 1200 resolution with LED monitor (better colors, more battery life, more environmental), up to 300 GB HD, and NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB of GDDR3 SDRAM. The MBP Processor has the same amount of L2 cache, and I seriously doubt a difference of .4 GHz is going to make a significant difference in my computing life. Much less hard drive space, but I intend to get an external hard drive. Yes, it's probably more expensive than the one I could choose for the iMac, but not by much and it affords me up to an extra 250 GB of space (the internal drive in the laptop). The video card appears to be the only appreciable difference, but unfortunately that is not something you can get around in a laptop. So I may have a worse card, but I don't even know by how much. As Fishy has said and I've seen from my in-person friends, games run pretty smoothly. As for the price, I don't know what goes into making these guys, so I can't comment on whether it's reasonable. Believe me, I'd rather not spend around $3000 for a quality laptop, but with the experience I had with this clunker I'm typing on, plus the way Microsoft has been bungling things in general lately and Apple has been getting so much right, I can't help but feel I have to switch teams. I never intend to purchase a Mac Desktop because of its hardware restrictions. At some point in the future, when I'm living in a single place for the long term, I'd like to build an uber PC rig, but that's not going to be in the cards for several years. Can't live in 1988, dude. I need a machine with some muscle. And oh god the Air is ridiculous. The next time I need a computer that can fit inside a manila envelope I'll draw one (or rather, model one. Disgraphia and all).