ReaWorks

Sorry, that's a bit clannish to follow some company's style guide for English, but I happen to like the company:

Reaper DAW

Not touted on their homepage is probably the coolest and single best reason to get this ($50 for private, noncommercial use although the demo never times out and is fully-functional). Imagine you have a few bits of old networkable technology lying around (laptops, old desktops, whatev) and you're thinking "hey, wouldn't it be cool if I could use these old machines as plugin hosts so I can spare cpu cycles on my main machine?" Yeah, the dream is over. Reaper lets you load plugins and (after you install Reaper and the plugins on the slave machine) start them up on the remote machine, leaving your main CPU ready for handling whatever you want to throw at it. The best reason IMHO to upgrade to gigabit ethernet. Today I purchased a new switch just for this purpose. If your laptops start disappearing to go live at my house, you'll now know why. 802.11b is too slow btw (I know because I tried). 802.11g may work but I haven't tested it yet.

Ambition Makes You Look Pretty Ugly

I predict this post will be heaped with scorn—if not outright deleted-- because
a) it’s not nerdy enough
b) Tom surely disapproves of at least 90% of these bands.

However, in my attempt to bring Culture to the masses and stick it to The Man (while using Gratuitous Capital Letters as much as possible) I have to point you to Stereogum. This music website has compiled cover versions of three iconic albums, available to stream from the website or download for free. I like the Radiohead collection the best, but that’s probably because OK Computer is such a classic, well-written album. Some songs are stronger than others, but overall they are fun re-imaginings of some of my favorite songs.

• Drive XV: A Tribute to R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People


• OKX: A Tribute to Radiohead's OK Computer


• Enjoyed: A Tribute to Bjork's Post

Ride the Tubes

Now easier than ever. I wasn't joking when I said $130 bucks could buy you a really nice tube mic preamp. That includes the power supply[pdf] (see pg 3. Also contains a nice dual-tube schematic). The Kitchen is currently cooking a dual-channel version. Word of warning: this could kill you, be very careful when working with high voltages and capacitors.

This merges two of my nerdy interests into one. Now I can play video games and write electronic music at the same time. See Mom, video games aren't a total waste of time.