First, a thanks:

Thanks Anna (gopher://gopher.club/1/users/agk/) for your response to my
"unexplainable" question, or in your case, and as you say "Inexplicable",
your story is very thought provoking and emotional.  Reading it I almost
felt the panic set in realizing you were in a place you really needed to get
out of.  Also thank you for your deep and learned insights into histamines, I
will be showing this to my wife and hopefully it'll help her perfect her
treatment regimine.



Chips 'n Dip

There's a few interests in my life that come and stick around for awhile and
then fade away for awhile but always come back.  Every time these interests
spark again I discover something new or find a new appreciation for something
I didn't pay much attention to in the past.

One of these is MOD music (modules, tracker music, whatever you want
to call it).  If you are unaware these are small music files, usually less
than 1MB  If you know what a MIDI file is, they're like that but instead of
synthesizing notes they contain samples (recorded sounds) and the music player
manipulates those sounds to make music.

For example the composer would, with the use of some tracking software,
include a sample of a piano note; maybe a c major.  The tracker can then bend
the pitch to make it any other note, and change other properties of the sound
sample to produce a wide array of effects. A few small sound files a pinch
of compression, and hours of tedious but (presumably) enjoyable human effort
manipulating all of this in a computer produces a song that fits in
less than 1MB (or thereabouts).

I might have got some of these technical details wrong, I haven't dabbled with
tracking (composing) myself because I lack the musical talent.  But I do enjoy
listening to them and I am appreciative of the technology behind them.

Anyway, stepping away from this technical close-up, this interest has popped up
yet again and I find myself listening to these files and obtaining more of
them.  I thought I might dabble with streaming on aNONradio.  Tried it
yesterday during Open MIC but unfortunately about a minute into the stream
SDF started getting really laggy.  Some very helpful people in COM were
wondering if my computer was lagging, possibly transcoding, but no my CPU
usage was low, internet in general not having any slowdowns, and even after I
shut off my stream all of SDF was still super laggy including COM, well the
shell as a whole, the SDF website, and of course the aNONradio stream that
picked up where I stopped.

So I'm going to try again today just to verify that I have things set up
properly on my end and to confirm that the slowdown that happened yesterday
was not my fault.

If all goes well I will send an email in the aNONradio mailing list asking
for a regular timeslot.  It looks like there's one available which also
lines up with my availability.

Besides MODs I'd like to play some SIDs and other chip tunes as well as
dipping into chip-tune adjacent music, hence the working title of the set:
Chips 'n Dip, or maybe Chips with Dip, or just Chip Dip, something along those
lines.  My first thought was "The Mod Squad" but that kind of sucks because a)
one guy, a squad does not make.  and b) a squadron feels too military like
we're coming attack aNONradio listeners with chip tunes.
Actually that's kind of funny, but also just very much not me.  Also I don't
want to be pigeon-holed into just MODs, I want to be able to dip my toes in
other pools of music which is one or two steps away from mods.

I have had some reservations about starting a regular thing just because I
know that my interests do come and go so after a time it might start to feel
too much like a job and my heart may not be in it anymore but if that happens
I can just relinquish the timeslot.  I guess it's better to do something
temporarily than to not do it at all.  Besides, everything is temporary, life
itself is temporary.

.