Technologists Notes

I’ve not used my XO nearly as much as I anticipated:

1. The keyboard is even more a “fatal flaw” than I thought at first.
2. The LCD panel failed (right side went blank) just before I was going to take it to Nicaragua. (A free under warranty replacement machine was shipped promptly, but not promptly enough.)
3. Miscellaneous software annoyances, most notably the WiFi limitations and the power management deficiencies, also limited applicability.

Obviously, the keyboard is not going to get better, the LCD failure is history, but there is good news about #3.

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Thursday, Caroline and I traveled to Richardson (heart of the Dallas “telecom corridor”) to see her father and record his bi-weekly gig. I hadn’t done much with the equipment or Cubase since the trip last year. Setting up the equipment and the actual recording seemed to go smoothly, but I should have been better prepared, for monitoring the recording and better framing the video with the camera.

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Week before last I was given a 2002 vintage 700 MHz G4 iMac, one of the ones with the LCD on an arm above a half sphere dome (“pedestal”) system unit. It has 640M of RAM, so I expect it will be useful running (Panther or) Tiger. The hardware doesn’t meet the specs for “Leopard”. Besides, I don’t own a copy of Leopard (10.5), but do own copies of Jaguar/Panther/Tiger (OS X 10.2/3/4, respectively).

The iMac came with Jaguar on it. It had been unused for a while and no one knew the passwords. So it was time to learn about the esoteric Apple boot options and keyboard commands.

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3+ weeks ago my give one get one XO arrived. I’ve been trying to grok it and show it off. This is a summary of observations, ponderings  and usage.

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When Jerry Barnett & I were contemplating forming the band that became the 1970 Hub City Movers, Jerry was also wanting to build a self-tuning guitar. As a drummer, he was sick of waiting for all of us guitarists to get in tune.

I’ve heard of other attempts since then, but it looks like the first successful realization is available from Gibson. Mechanically, it “sounds” much like what Jerry had in mind in 1969.

Update April 11, 2008: Gibson’s second robo-guitar gets pimped out.